appleJAC Macintosh Users

Want to change your Macs Logon Name

One thing that has been a problem for a long time is finding a way to change an incorrectly typed short name for your user logon.  Here is a trick I saw in MacLife magazine......

The only works in MacOS 10.5.  Start by going to System Preferences: Accounts.  Click on the lock icon near the lower left and type your password to be able to make changes.   Next control-click on the user name and a selection opens called Advanced Options.  Select that option and see the dialog box below.




There are only two things you dare change and they must both match.  First, change the "Short Name" to the new name you want to use.  Then in the field "Home Directory", change the part of the name after "/Users/" to match the short name you used.

A couple of warnings.  Only do this if you have a complet backup of the user folder.  My recommendation would be to use a Short Name that contains no spaces.

Introduction to Automator AppleScript Actions Tutorial

Automator, in conjunction with AppleScript opens doors for you that will simply amaze you.

This tutorial shows you how to create an action for the Automator application using AppleScript as the implementation language. You are going to learn how to create an action by actually developing one. The tutorial assumes that you are familiar with AppleScript, but otherwise has no other prerequisites. It is helpful, however, if you have some experience with AppleScript Studio.

This comes to us from Apple's developer web site so the content is of an advanced nature.

Why isn't my Harddisk as big as I thought?

Mac OS X reports hard drive capacity in binary math, hard drive manufacturers report capacity in base 10 math

Modern operating systems such as Mac OS X use binary mathematics to define the total capacity of a hard drive. Using binary math, an 80-gigabyte (GB) hard drive reports approximately 74.51 GB of available space.

In binary math, 1 GB is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes, whereas conventional (or base 10) mathematics instead calculate 1 GB as exactly 1,000,000,000 bytes.

This numerical discrepancy (73,741,824 bytes per gigabyte) represents a difference between the physical “base 10” specification used by hard drive manufacturers and Mac OS X’s binary measurement of available capacity. The 80 GB and 74.51 GB values represent two methods of mathematical measurement that describe a hard drive with approximately 80 billion bytes.

This is normal behavior, and there is no hard disk space missing. Regardless of which method is used to measure total capacity, the storage capacity in bytes of the hard drive is the same. Previous operating systems (including Mac OS 9 and earlier versions) also demonstrate this mathematical difference.

Other factors, such as the system software, applications, updates, and customer data count against the available disk capacity, meaning a new Macintosh computer will not show the total capacity listed as available for use. The amount of hard disk drive space required for normal operation of a Macintosh computer will vary widely, depending on configuration, model, and personal requirements.

Note: Hard disk manufacturers may also round off decimal places when stating storage specifications, such as approximately "39.5 GB" instead of "39.49 GB".

You can convert a Boot Camp drive to a Parallels Volume

Yes, you read correctly. It works but it is a painful process.

This tip was pointed out by Jason Piper...

The challenges are as follows:
1. Backup your Boot Camp partition and convert it into a VM .hdd file.
2. Repair your Windows install so that it can work under the significant hardware change

The process is as follows:
1. Boot on Windows and clone your drive (I used the evaluation version of Snapshop
1.1. You will need lots of disk space for this. In my case I had to save the snapshop files on my mac partition (through MacDrive)
1.2. This snapshot file will have to be made available to a Parallels VM so put is somewhere you can share it through Parallels Shared Folders.
2. Create a new virtual machine in Parallels and install Windows on it. Once it boots, install Snapshop.
2.1 Configure "Shared Folders" to make your snapshop files available to your new VM.
3. Create a new HD for your newly created virtual machine. Make sure it is as big (or bigger) than your Boot Camp partition.
4. Configure the new drive within Windows. For XP, instructions are available here: http://blog.kevindonahue.com/archive...tall_addit.php
5. Once your new virtual drive is available, open Snapshop and restore your Boot Camp cloned drived onto your 2nd hard drive.
6. Create a new Parallels VM that will use your virtual HD that now contains your restored Boot Camp partition.
7. You are not out of the wood yet... If you try to boot the new VM, it won't work. You need to boot from your Windows install CD and and enter the repair console to repair your Boot.ini file. Instructions on how to do this are here (follow method 2): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314477/
8. After doing this, my install still didn't boot (even safe mode didn't work - boot freezed after loading the Mup.sys driver) so I had to boot (again) from the windows install CD, select setup and repair my windows install as per the following instructions: http://www.theeldergeek.com/replace_motherboard.htm
9. Reboot (again) your new VM, install Parallels tools
10. Now if you want to get rid of the Windows selection screen at boot time, you will need to edit your boot.ini file to remove the entry that links to your boot camp partition. Instructions on how to do this are here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022/EN-US/. In my case, all I had to do was to delete the last line.
11. Now you probably open the Add/Remove programs control panel and remove the Mac drivers needed for Boot Camp.

After going through all of this, you will have to reinstall all the windows updates you installed in Boot Camp (the Repair process reverts to the original Windows version) but you should have all your data, applications and settings intact. In my case, everything worked.

Even more details at MacOSHints.