Blog R.I.P., Mac Support Site Lives On

I have decided, after much deliberation and thought, to discontinue this Mac Support Site Blog, and only continue my actual Mac Support Website. This is due to time constraints, etc.

I will leave all the information that's currently on this blog on the Internet for some amount of time, and I will update my Mac Support Website from time to time, but I will no longer be maintaining this blog. It was good while it lasted, but nothing lasts forever! Farewell!

P.S. You can also check out some other cool sites I will continue to maintain at LifeisaPrayer.com.

Running Mac OS 9 (Classic) Applications in Mac OS X

I received this email today:

"My grandpa just bought a new Mac with OSX 10.3.4 on it. He has Canvas 3.0 that he could run on OS 9 but now, OSX will not run Canvas anymore and he asked me for some help. I know a bit about Mac's but I'm mainly a Windows user. He has a copy of OSX 10.3.4 and OS 9. So, do I have to install OS 9 from within OSX to run the old programs or ... what is the solution?"

My response:

To run older OS 9 applications in OS X (any version), you will need to make sure you have Mac OS 9 (any version, preferably 9.2 or later) installed on your Mac and Classic installed in OS X. For detailed instructions, read these Apple Knowledge Base Articles:

• Mac OS X: How to Use Mac OS 9 Applications
• Troubleshooting the Classic Environment in Mac OS X

Google Labs: "OS X Rocks" - New 'Google X theme' [UPDATED]

Today Google Labs has released 'Google X' - an alternative home page for the Google Search engine that features a dock-like interface for clicking on different sections to search - News, Pictures, Video, Froogle, Local, etc. It even includes Magnification

I played around with it, and it's pretty cool. The icons will magnify as you move your mouse over them, while other icons move to make room for the bigger icon. It's not 100% as fluid as Dock magnification, but that's acceptable; not even Google can match Apple's Quartz engine ;-)

UPDATE: It seems Google has pulled Google X from its site. No reason has been given. I will post again if I can find more information.

New Mac Help Articles - Startup Sound and Right-Clicking

Lately I've received a few questions in my email concerning right-clicking on Macs and disabling the startup 'Chime' or 'Bong' sound, so I've finally found some time to post them on my Mac Support website.

Here are the links:

How to Right-Click on a Mac
How to Mute or Turn Down the Startup Sound

Choosing a Drive to Burn to in iDVD 5

From my latest Mac Help Article, Choosing a Drive to Burn to in iDVD 5:

With the release of iDVD 5.0 (in the iLife '05 suite of Apple's apps), Apple finally enabled disk image burning and burning to external drives. Unfortunately, you cannot currently choose which drive you'd like to burn your DVD to if you have more than one DVD-burning optical drive. According to a reader of this website, the Hack/Easter Egg I explained here fulfills this role!

If you would like to choose which drive to burn to on a multi-burner Mac with iDVD 5.0, please read the following directions. iDVD will remember your drive selection, so you need not follow these procedures every time you'd like to do a new burn (unless, of course, you need to switch drives).

For the rest of the page (including step-by-step instructions), click here.

Show and Hide Drive Icons on Mac OS X Desktop

I was recently asked via email:

"I have a quick Mac question. Is it possible to hide the hard drive icon from the desktop? In both OS9 and OSX. If you can, how can the administrator access it or restore it?

This is, in fact, very easy to do. When you are in the Finder (click on the Finder icon in the Dock to be sure), click the "Finder" menu and select "Preferences...". Once the preferences window shows up, click on the "General" button at the top. You can control what you see on your Desktop by checking or unchecking the items under "Show these items on the Desktop:".

You can choose to view or hide Hard Drive icons, CDs, DVDs and iPods, and Connected Servers.

This may be useful for you if you like a perfectly clean Desktop or if you would rather not have a user see the hard drive or other media connected to your Mac (maybe, say, your child or a friend who is using your computer). There are also many other useful options you can choose in the Finder Preferences, including how long it takes to open spring-loaded folders, what view windows open in by default, Finder window sidebar options, and more.

Search Mac Help for "Finder Preferences" for more information.

Use Your Old PowerBook or iBook's Trackpad for Scrolling

In addition to SideTrack and uControl, you can now install a replacement mouse driver on a pre-2005 G4 PowerBook or iBook and scroll using the trackpad the same way you would with a new PowerBook G4:

From Apple.com:
"Scrolling through web pages or large documents on a trackpad can challenge even the most nimble fingers. That’s why every PowerBook G4 features a new trackpad with scrolling capability. Just drag two fingers over the trackpad to scroll vertically and horizontally or pan around any active window. Change this feature to suit your needs: Customize your trackpad settings or turn off scrolling completely via System Preferences."

If you go to this website (iScroll2), you will find a downloadable installer that enables this new scrolling functionality on older iBooks and PowerBooks, as long as you have a new kind of trackpad (use this utility to check if you have a supported trackpad). To install the trackpad driver, go to this website and follow the directions for downloading and installing the driver found on the page. I have been using it for a couple of weeks now and it works great for me! I love being able to scroll horizontally using the trackpad like I can with my Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0 while I'm at my desk. Kudos to the author of that web page!

Review: Assignment Planner (for school, work and more!)

About one year ago, I found a gem of an application. I was browsing apps on MacUpdate.com when I noticed one app that looked promising: Assignment Planner. I downloaded a beta version, and, although it was fairly rough at the time, it looked nice and was helpful for me.

The App

I emailed the app's developer, Logan Rockmore, with some suggestions I had (things like allowing people to use the keyboard to create new entries and enter information, tabbing between fields, making it integrated with iCal, etc.), and Logan was very appreciative of the help and worked with me to squash every bug I found and implement every feasible feature I could imagine. This app is free -- it shows a 'please donate' screen when you start it up for a few seconds -- and it runs very well on any Mac I've used it on.

It is very easy to manage your courses, your GPA, your assignments, and integrate everything with iCal (enabling iPod-syncing!) using this program. I have been using it for over one year now, and I have only had occassional problems with the spinning beachball, but most problems have been solved with the version 1.3 release; those that have not been solved will be soon enough, I'm sure, because Logan really does care about this app, and he tries to make it the best Schoolwork management app possible. Here's the app's description (from MacUpdate.com):

"This simple application stores all of your Courses and Textbooks, and allows you to add homework assignments to any of them. Easy completion is included, so you only have to view what homework you have left to do. You can even integrate your assignments with iCal and move them to your iPod, for carrying around school. This is a simple and easy-to-use application thats great for College or High School students."

The Verdict

I agree 100% with everything he has to say. It is a simple app that takes up very little space and works like a Mac program should. It is a must-have app for any student who uses a Mac and needs to keep track of assignments. You can download the program here.

Myst IV: Revelation - Final Review

Well, I have finished my game of Myst IV: Revelation. It was quite an experience. Luckily, I was able to save the game almost every 10-20 minutes, after dragging the game folder to my desktop (suggested by Ubisoft support), but the game continued to crash almost every time I saved it, after the save file was written. Ubisoft's support representative told me there would be a patch released soon to deal with this issue, and it only occurs on Macs running OS 10.3.7 (earlier OS version run Myst fine).

The music for this game was top-notch, enjoyable, and relaxing. There were a few songs that, in unison with the vivid and flowing onscreen imagery, really made my spine 'tingly'. This Myst game's puzzles were not as impossible as many in Riven were, but they are very challenging. After solving all of Tomahna's puzzles on my own, exploring most of Spire, Serenia, and Haven, and solving a puzzle here, and a puzzle there, I resorted to online walkthroughs to help me finish the game.

Luckily, this version of Myst is not like the original, in which you could finish the game in a few minutes without exploring all the environments! To solve the final puzzles, you must explore various worlds, and find pretty much all of the clues left behind by Atrus' unruly sons. The plot is intriguing, with few bothersome inconsistencies, and I found the game to be very well-paced and enjoyable (except for the occasional crash when accessing the main screen).

I played the original Myst on my sister's iMac for a few minutes, for old times' sake, and it is amazing how far advanced this new Myst is. The old myst displayed a small image that was 100% static, and movies could only be played in a static location - they were grainy at best.

In the new Myst IV, environments are lifelike, you can look around, birds are flying in the air, wind rustles the trees, animals run about you, the clouds move, water shimmers and creates fog, and everything is mind-bogglingly detailed. The folks who designed this game spent plenty of time getting the details right!

My recommendation: if you liked the other Myst games, this game is an absolute must-play; if you are ABSOLUTELY stuck, the game's built-in help might carry you through, but searching Google for "Myst IV Walkthrough" (I found this gem of a Walkthrough for Myst 4 when I searched) might help a little more. Five stars out of five!

iTunes Bug - Recommended Update to 4.7.1

I was notified by a friend of a news story today on TechWeb.com:

iTunes Bug Leaves Users Vulnerable to Hack

"Just a day after Steve Jobs touted a new $99 iPod, a Danish security firm revealed that the iTunes software, which lets Mac and Windows users download purchased tracks to their computers, and thus to their iPods, has a "highly critical" vulnerability.

Security vendor Secunia on Tuesday warned that iTunes 4.x suffers from a vulnerability "caused due to a boundary error within the handling of .m3u and .pls playlists." The bug, said Secunia, can be exploited by a maliciously-crafted playlist to cause a buffer overflow on the target computer, which could then let the hacker gain complete control of the machine."

Apple now recommends you should upgrade to iTunes 4.7.1 to alleviate this problem; I found this page on Apple's site:

"iTunes 4.7.1

Available for: Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000
CVE ID: CAN-2005-0043
Impact: Malicious playlists can cause iTunes to crash and could execute arbitrary code Description: iTunes supports several common playlist formats. iTunes 4.7.1 fixes a buffer overflow in the parsing of m3u and pls playlist files that could allow earlier versions of iTunes to crash and execute arbitrary code. Credit to Sean de Regge (seanderegge[at]hotmail.com) for discovering this issue, and to iDEFENSE Labs for reporting it to us."

iDVD 5 and iDVD Easter Egg Support...

So far, I have been unable to find out whether or not the iDVD Easter Egg will work with iDVD 5, but I have found on Apple's iDVD website an interesting tidbit about iDVD. It looks like iDVD will finally feature built-in disc image burning support! I think this is a credit to all the feedback everyone has given to Apple - I am very happy about this :-)

"iDVD even has a new option for those occasions when you’re between media (i.e., you haven’t made it to the store) or you’re authoring a DVD on a system without a SuperDrive. The solution? Save your project as a fully-encoded Disk Image. Not only can you burn finished projects to disc more quickly once you’re back at your SuperDrive-equipped system (after all, they’ve already been encoded, so you just have to drag the Image to a blank DVD), but Disk Images make great read-only archives."

As soon as I receieve any new information concerning the iDVD Easter Egg, I will post it.

Blog Reading Explodes in America (and a bonus!)

After reading an article on ZDNet News, I felt obligated to post part of it here and comment on it.

From the article:

"The number of blogs and the use of blog readers rose rapidly last year--but a majority of Americans still do not know what a blog is.

A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, called the "State of Blogging," discovered that readership of Web blogs--essentially, Web-based diaries--spiked 58 percent last year, with 27 percent of Internet users, or 32 million people, saying that they read blogs. Twelve percent of people who read blogs also chose to post comments on them.

Blog creation is also growing. By the end of 2004, seven percent of U.S. adults, or more than 8 million people, had written a blog, according to the study.

...Blog creators tend to be young men who have broadband and are Internet veterans. Fifty-seven percent of bloggers are male.

Hmm... who does that sound like?

Interestingly, I had never heard of a 'blog' until early this year! I set up a preliminary blog at the beginning of my school year with a free service called 'Xanga', but have since set up my own blog on my own webspace (I like having the control) using an open-source blogging app called 'Thingamablog'.

The most amazing aspect of this 'blog revolution' is the fact that almost every Google search I now perform brings up as many blog entries in the results as 'old-fashined websites'; and a lot of times that's a good thing. Blogs are 'new' and 'current', while many older pages are 'static' and 'outdated'. There is still a place for the traditional, static website (check out all of mine in the links column here) — but the blog is here to stay. For some, it's their livelihood, for others, it's a fun diversion. But for all, it can help to disseminate important information at a more rapid rate than traditional media (as was evidenced by 'Rathergate' and many other 'blogosphere exposés').

This entry includes a bonus! To those of you who hope to set up a well-read and awesome blog, here are some tips:

1. Keep entries somewhat short (i.e. no books on pages!).
2. Use proper grammar (this is NOT a chat room!).
3. Find a service (or set up your own blog, like me) that is indexed by Google and other web search sites, and try to get people to link to your blog - this way people will find you blog when doing web searches. Xanga did not do this.
4. Link to sources of information, and try to include other's information, pictures or links from time to time (it adds some variety).
5. Try to use a service (or set up your own blog) with RSS or Atom news feeds.
6. Read other's blogs to find out what looks nice, and what doesn't. The design of a blog is very important!
7. Keep a sense of humor. Blogs aren't news sites—they ought to be somewhat personal.

What Do "Syndicate this Site" and "RSS" Mean?

I'm not sure if many blog readers have noticed, but there is a link on the sidebar of this blog, and many other blogs throughout the blogosphere, that says 'Feed (RSS)', 'Syndicate this site (XML)' or something similar. What exactly does this mean?

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" - for allowing people to view, via a 'newsreader' updates of information (usually news or updated blog information, for our purposes). For more history and information concerning RSS, read XML.com's article, "What is RSS?"

So, what does this mean for you and I? This means you don't have to visit a blog or news website to find out if it has updated news or a new blog entry; you can simply open up your newsreader program (list of a few at end of this entry), and it will tell you if there are new blog entries! Some websites even give you some or all of the blog entry or news article, so you can see if you're interested in reading the whole entry by going to the site.

NewsFire Logo

Here are some RSS newsreaders:

For Windows PCs:
Feedreader - Free
RssReader - Free

For Macintosh:
NewsFire - Free (What I use)
NetNewsWire Lite - Free

Use iDVD to Burn to an External Drive

Well, here goes for my first 'Mac-related blog topic':

I have written an article about a 'hack' or 'easter egg' that allows a person using iDVD to burn his or her work to a non-Apple SuperDrive or external FireWire drive (as long as Finder Disc Burning works), to burn to DLT Tape drives, or to 'burn' to a disk image. But, I've never given the reasons why someone would want to do such a thing. Well, here they are:

1. If you are having trouble burning to your internal SuperDrive or to an external drive, burning to a Disk Image will solve almost any burning problems; I have yet to see a disk image burn get stuck on Stage 4 or have an error during the disk image creation.
2. If you would like to test your DVDs before burning them to a semi-expensive DVD-R disc, burn a disc image.
3. If you want to burn more than one DVD, but don't like how long it takes using iDVD, or would like to burn the same DVD from time to time, but not have to re-render it in iDVD for every burn, you can use a created disk image to burn an image (using either Disk Utility in OS 10.3 or Disk Copy in OS 10.2 or earlier) multiple times.
4. You might like to archive your work so you can come back and quickly burn a DVD a long time from the original burn, and so you can burn a disk image for that purpose (plus, the disk image is whatever size your finished project is on DVD, usually less than 4.7 GB!).

I always burn a disk image instead of burning directly to DVDs, for the four reasons mentioned above, and because I have an external FireWire case that I swap my hard drive and disc burner in and out of, preventing my from ever burning straight to a DVD. I hope this helps!

Email: Video from FCX Won't Play in iDVD

I was recently emailed a question concerning a Final Cut Express video unable to be played via exporting it and copying it into iDVD.

Emailed Question

A four-minute movie plays perfectly in Final Cut Express 2.0. Exports to Quicktime 6.5.2 I drag it to iDVD. It won't preview (or play when burned).

Before this started happening, I was getting perfect audio but no video in iDVD preview. I tried this with two different movies. Same problem with both. They both play beautifully in Final Cut Express. I have been on several Final Cut discussion pages for info but have decided this must be an iDVD problem.

My Answer

How did you export the video? Did you click "File>Export>QuickTime Movie..."? If you did, did you make sure the 'Include' menu had "Audio and Video" selected, and the 'Markers' Menu had "Chapter Markers" or "None" selected?

If you do all of the above and still have a problem in iDVD, there are a couple more things you should try in Final Cut Express:

Instead of choosing "File>Export>QuickTime Movie...", try Exporting via 'Using QuickTime Conversion...". For the 'Format', choose 'QuickTime Movie', click 'Settings...', and set the following options:

In the window that pops up,

1. Click on 'Settings...' in the Video section (and make sure the 'Video' checkbox is checked, and choose "DV/DVCPRO - NTSC" from the video codec menu, "Best" from the Quality menu, and make sure the 'Frames Per Second' field is blank. Then click "OK".
2. Click on 'Settings...' in the Audio section (and make sure the 'Audio' checkbox is checked, and choose "None" in the 'Compressor' menu, '44.100 kHz' in the 'Rate' menu, "16 bit" in the Size section, and "Stereo" in the 'Use' section. Then click "OK".

Finally, click "OK" in the dialog box, choose a name and location for your file, and Export it. Drag this file into iDVD and see if it works.