appleJAC Users Group

Use a digital camera to test your Apple Remote

Ok, this one is a little off the wall....

A digital camera or DV camera with an LCD display can be used to or you can use the built-in iSight camera to see if your Apple Remote is emitting a signal. Infrared beams are invisible to the human eye, but most digital camera and video cameras use Charged-Coupled Device (CCD) chips or image sensors that are sensitive to infrared light.

To use an iSight or digital camera to test your Apple Remote, follow these steps:

• Turn on the camera so you see a live picture through the LCD. If you are using an iSight, turn on the iSight by opening the video preview window of iChat.
• Point your Apple Remote toward the lens of the camera.
• Press and hold the Menu button on the remote while looking at the LCD or the video preview window.
• If you see a faint blinking light coming from the Apple Remote on the LCD or the video preview window, then the remote is working properly.
• If you don't see any blinking light on the LCD or the video preview window, replace the battery in your Apple Remote and then test it again with your computer (see this article for instructions).

Interested in an Apple TV?

Interested in the new Apple TV but not quite ready to take the plunge? Or are you a new ownre with a few questions? This handy Fast Start guide will help you install, set up, and teach you how to enjoy your iTunes Store content on your widescreen TV.

There are many articles here that will likely answer all your questions.

How about a new port for your drive

By Jeffy Milstead of MacWorld

Drive vendors are touting one new step in hard-drive technology: a more flexible type of hard drive known as the quad-interface (or four-port) configuration. Quad-interface drives—with USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA ports—are smart choices because they’ll satisfy your backup needs now, but they’ll also be relevant in the future.

Why would you choose to buy a four-port drive when perfectly good three-port models are available for less money? Depending on where you shop, the difference in price between triple- and quad-interface drives of the same capacity can be surprisingly close: from 0 to 20 percent more for a quad-interface drive. Pricing always matters, for sure, but in most cases, that extra port is affordable.

Perhaps the best reason to choose a four-port drive is that it allows for maximum flexibility. Three-port drives can connect to a variety of ports, but four-port drives offer the external SATA (eSATA) port—one you may find yourself using more often two years down the road. The eSATA connection isn’t yet another new type of hard-drive connector that may or may not catch on; if you own an Intel Mac, you’ve been using an internal SATA drive, perhaps without realizing it. SATA lets you realize high speeds; it’s here to stay, and we’ll be using it for years to come.

iClip: Instant Access to Critical Information

a review by appleJAC Member, Tom Piper

Wouldn’t it be nice to have frequently-used information right at your fingertips as you need it? In most products that I create on my Mac, there are pictures, addresses, logos, phrases and other critical information that I use over and over, regardless of the software I’m using. In Mac OS 9, the Scrapbook was an indispensible tool to keep these things handy . . . in Mac OS X, I have successfully used iClip every day for over three years on my desktop and laptop computers at work and home. It is the right tool in the right place at the right time.

As shown on the iClip Preferences box below, all of my critical information is kept in individual “bins” which pop-out when needed on the left of my computer screen (this can be moved to the top, bottom or right, and can be either round or square bins in various sizes).
You can even adjust the amount of transparency and change other settings, like Hot Keys. In addition to having many bins in a set, you can also have different sets for different purposes, depending on the task at hand. There is a lot of flexibility in this tool, and its responsive to how I do things. 

At a retail price of $29.00 US, this utility software is a real bargain. I’ve never had a problem with it, even when doing major system updates, like Mac OS X v.10.3 to 10.4. For a really nifty screen demo, go to their website to learn more for yourself.

Have you ever wanted to find that special type character, symbol or widget but cannot find the correct font or keyboard combination to insert into a document?  OS X provides Mac users with a much expanded character set with Unicode support. Now you can access a broad range of characters for foreign languages, math symbols and dingbats. The secret is hidden in the OS X Character Palette.

To access these special characters - add the Character Palette to the menu bar by the following steps:

1. Open the System Preferences and click on the International preference pane.
2. Click on the Input Menu tab.
3. Check the box next to Character Palette.
4. Click on Show Input Menu in Menu bar
5. Go ahead and close the preferences panes.

The Character Palette menu item is now displayed at the end of menu bar at the top of your screen (It is an American Flag) . This menu item is available always and in all applications. Now choose Show Character Palette from the Character Palette menu. Then choose All from the View menu and click the Unicode Blocks tab.

Use the Insert button to insert the character(s) you'd like to include in your document. You can use the insert button only in native OS X cocoa and unicode aware applications. In classic and carbon applications the insert button will be gray.

Finding the Combined Size of More than One Document

Let’s say you have several files on your desktop, and before you copy them all onto your jump drive, you want to find out their combined size. Here’s how it’s done: Select all the files for which you want the combined size, then press Command-Option-I, which brings up the Multiple Item Info dialog, complete with a list of how many files are selected and their combined size.

Mac OS X/Windows Vista file sharing, printer sharing issues: fixes

From MacFixIt:

It appears that there are some issues with file sharing between Mac OS X and Windows Vista systems. Several users are reporting problems with seeing shared files in both directions via Samba (SMB) networking. Users are also reporting issues with previously used (under Windows XP) printer sharing methods.

MacFixIt reader Chic writes:

My Windows XP and Mac OS X have networked well for years. As soon as I upgraded to Vista Home Premium, I can see the Mac OS X computers in the workgroup but can not access the files.  On the Mac OS X side, I can mount the Vista Home drive but all of the folders are empty except for the Public folder. I have sharing 'on' on both machines and my passwords, etc are correct.

Logging into a Mac OS X system from a Vista system In order to login to a Mac OS X system from a Vista system, follow these steps:

1. Open System Preferences on the Mac OS X system and go to the Sharing pane.
2. Click on the "Services" tab
3. Check the box next to "Windows Sharing"
4. Click on the "Enable Accounts" button
5. Check the box(es) next to the Mac OS X user account(s) you would like to enable access for, and enter the appropriate password(s).
6. Take note of your Mac's IP address, which will be displayed at the bottom of the Sharing pane in System Preferences
7. On the Windows Vista system, go to the "Run" command line by pressing the "Windows Key" and the R key simultaneously
8. Enter the following: \IPAddressusername (e.g. \192.168.1.100bwilson)
9. You should now be prompted for a username and password. Enter the aforementioned (\IPAddressusername) again for the username after receiving the prompt, and your normal password.
10. Another option (or necessary procedure) is to authorize sue of LM and NTLM - use NTLMV2 session security in Windows Vista.

As described by Apple Discussions poster ydc:
Actually you will need to make a change on your Vista machine to enable this, but you can do it without the Group Policy editor or the Security Policy editor.

To do it:

1. Click Windows Visa Start Orb
2. In search box, type "regedit" and return
3. Once regedit opens, click File -> export to make a backup copy
4. Navigate to ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlLsa.
5. n the right pane, right-click the "LmCompatibilityLevel" key and select "modify"
6. Change the value from 3 to 1
7. Exit regedit and you should now be able to properly authenticate to your Mac OS X (or other Samba) share.

Printing from Mac OS X systems to Windows Vista-connected printers Another point of contention with Mac OS X/Windows Vista interaction lies with printing. Some users have found that they are unable to print to devices connected to Windows Vista systems from networked Mac OS X systems via built-in printer sharing routines.

If you are having a similar issue, you can try using LPD printing via these steps:

1. Navigate to the Windows Vista Control Panel
2. Go to the "Programs and Features" pane
3. Click on "Turn Windows Features on or off"
4. Turn on te LPD protocol and make sure that all desired printers are set to be shared
5. On the Mac OS X system, open Printer Setup Utility (located in Applications/Utilities)
6. Hold down the "Option" key and click the "More Printers" button
7. From the top menu select "Advanced"
8. From the "Device:" field select "LPD/LPR Host or Printer"
9. In the "Device URI:" field, lpd://(name of your Windows Vista system)/(name of your printer), e.g. lpd://BobPC/Printer1
10. Click the "Add" button

Resizing Photos for Emailing

Have you ever noticed how freaked out relatives get when you email them high-res photos from your six- or eight-meg digital camera? For example, your grandmother in Minnesota may not have Photoshop CS2, and so dealing with that 26MB, 41-inch-wide photo you shot with your eight-meg camera might put a strain on her system. That’s why you might want to reduce the size of those photos you’re about to email. You don’t even have to launch Photoshop — because you can do the resizing right within Mail.

After you attach a photo to your email message (you can just drag-and-drop the image into the New Message window), take a look in the bottom-right corner of your email message window, and you’ll see a pop-up menu where you can choose the Image Size you’d like to send. As soon as you choose a size (other than Actual Size), the image is immediately scaled down right within the email message window so you can see the exact size of the photo you’re sending.

Creating Aliases Without the Word “Alias”

Another great tip from Apple..

Do you find it as annoying as I do that Mac OS X adds the word “alias” every time you create an alias? (I know, previous versions of the Mac OS did that as well, and it annoyed me there too.) Well, you can bypass the “adding-the-word-alias” uglies altogether by holding the Option and Command keys and clicking-and-dragging the original file outside the Finder window it’s currently in (I usually just drag mine to the desktop).

This creates an alias without the word “alias” attached. (Note: Don’t worry, you’ll still know it’s an alias, because its icon will have a tiny arrow at the bottom left-hand corner.)

Forcing a Document on an App

Here is another Apple Tip I found....

Sometimes docked apps don’t want to open your document, even though they may be able to, so you have to coax (okay, force) them to give it a try. For example, let’s say you created a document in WordPerfect for Mac a few years back. if you drag that document to Microsoft Word’s icon in the Dock, chances are it won’t highlight (which would be the indication it can open that document). If that happens, just hold Command-Option, then drag the document’s icon to the Word icon in the Dock, and you can force it to try to open that document.