appleJAC Users Group

New 27" iMac can be a DIsplay for another Mac

With Target Display mode, you can use your 27-inch iMac with Mac OS X as an external display. Connect any computer or other device with a Mini DisplayPort to your 27-inch iMac using a Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable (Cables and converters available separately.)

Products Affected
iMac (27-inch, Late 2009)
To use a 27-inch iMac in Target Display mode with another computer as the source:

Make sure both computers are turned on and awake. 

Connect a male-to-male Mini DisplayPort cable to the Mini DisplayPort on each computer. The 27-inch iMac will enter Target Display Mode and display content from the source computer.

Note: If you are connecting two 27-inch iMacs, connect a Mini DisplayPort cable to each computer and press Command + F2 on the 27-inch iMac keyboard that you will use as an external display.

To leave Target Display mode, press Command + F2 on the keyboard of the 27-inch iMac that is in Target Display mode. To return to Target Display mode, press Command + F2 again.
Points to keep in mind:

Applications running on the 27-inch iMac computer remain open and running while it is in Target Display mode.

Software to Backup Your Mac

by George Kopp

In my article from last month, I described what to look for when you purchase a harddrive to backup your Macintosh.  This month, I am going to discuss software for doing the backup.  There are a number of backup applications available for the Mac and many of these have been around for years. 

I will describe the types of backups that could be done and the relative merits of the different backup types.  I will also list a few applications I have had luck with.  By no means is this software list complete.  It is only a sample of applications I would trust to do my backup.  So lets get started.

First off, I consider there to be 3 different types of backups.

Comprehensive Backup Included in the Operating System

In MacOS 10.5, Apple introduced what I consider to be a revolution for data safety.  Time Machine is a utility that is part of the operating system intended for comprehensive backups.  Apple has made Time Machine so simple and has given it so few settings, that novices can easily backup their data and be completely protected.  Prior to this ease of use, other third-party backups, while able to run automatically, provided nowhere near this ease of setup.

MacOS 10.5 is designed to recognize a new hard drive when it plugged in and asks if you want to use this for your backup.  If you hit OK, you now have just setup Time Machine.  If the drive you plugged in is a PC-formatted drive, it may ask to reformat the drive, but even that happens automatically.

Time Machine allows for a full system restore if you lose everything, or an incremental file restore if you just accidentally delete a file.  With this, it provides the best of both worlds.

Incremental backup Utilities (usually third party)

This backup type is usually a utility you download, or purchase, that backs up files from your main hard drive to another drive.  Sometimes these utilities will claim they allow a full restore but my experience is that these utilizes are best suited for file level backup.  This is the act of copying critical files or folders to another drive. 

Many utilities in this class (like Retrospect) backup all your files to a single compressed encrypted file.  While there is a place for this, most home and small business users don’t need it.  In fact, it can turn an already bad experience worse if you cannot get the software installed for the restore or the backup file you created is somehow unreadable.  My recommendation is that if you use an incremental backup utility, stick with one that backs up your files to a drive that you can look at to confirm and see that your files are actually there.

Prior to MacOS X 10.5, my backup recommendation in this class was Silverkeeper from Lacie.  Silverkeeper is a small application that can run on a set schedule that basically copies files you have preselected from one drive to another.  It can be setup to run at a time when you are not busy and it then will update only files that have changed since the last time it has run.

SilverKeeper consists of an application program which will copy, compare, synchronize or restore files, folders, and volumes from a Source to a Destination. It will ease backups from your Startup drive to an external drive. While optimized for hard drives, SilverKeeper is also compatible with network drives, and removable drives, and DVD-RAM discs. Compatible drives may be connected to the SATA/eSATA, IDE/ATA, SCSI, USB, or FireWire busses of Macintosh computers. The only requirement is that the drives must have at a writable volume. SilverKeeper is not directly compatible with tape drives, or CD-R/RW and DVD-R/RW drives.

Unlike other backup and archiving programs, SilverKeeper uses the Macintosh file I/O to perform copy operations, so the backups are always readable files that can be used as-is on another computer without resorting to a special restore application. No special application software is necessary to read the backup files, and it can create and maintain a bootable volume from which it can startup if the internal drive fails.

Apple, through .ME (or .Mac), membership provided a utility called…. Backup that did a similar function.  While it was, and still is, a good choice to backup your personal information (addresses, calendars, and settings) to MobileMe, it is not at all a good choice for disk-to-disk to disk backup.  It puts the files in a single encrypted file and creates a new file for any new changes making it such that a restore, starts at the beginning and then applies all the changes.  Restores using this method could take days if you have been backing up for a quite while.

There are also many other options in this category.  Most more premium drives come with a backup utility.  But, in general most of them stink.  They are thrown in for free and are worth every penny of that.  There are also more enterprise utilities (like Retrospect) which are good programs but much too complicated to setup, and even more difficult to execute a restore.

Disk image utilities

This is the third type of backup you might consider.  A disk image utility will make an exact block-for-block copy of one hard drive to another drive.  It usually is a slow process but you end up with an exact block-for-copy of the drive on another drive.  I actually use this for my quarterly off-site backup. 

There are three free applications that can perform this backup quite well.  Disk Utility (included in the Utility Folder of the Applications Folder) can do this for you in the restore tab of the drive.  Basically you just restore one drive to another drive, and end up with an exact copy.  Not really very intuitive, but it works and you already have it.

The other two of these can be downloaded.  One is Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and the other is SuperDuper.

CCC  features an interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure very intuitive. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact bootable replica of your source hard drive. CCC's block-level copy offers the absolute best fidelity in the industry.  It can also do incremental backups, if needed.

SuperDuper is the wildly-acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. It's the perfect complement to Time Machine under Leopard, allowing you to store a bootable backup alongside your Time Machine volume—and it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC.

When to Backup?

So, this begs the question, “How often do I backup?” My response is, either run your backup, or check your backup at whatever interval you feel you could accept a data loss. In other words, if your data is highly critical, a backup method or schema that backs up every day, or every hour, makes good sense. If you don’t want to deal with that much effort, or if you can afford to loose data for a small while, maybe weekly is often enough for you. It all depends on the value of your data to you.

If you are using a backup utility that requires you to schedule the backup, here is what I would do. Consider your backup a religious experience . . . here is what I mean. Schedule your backup to run while you are at church. On Sunday, before you leave for church, turn your computer on, and the backup can run while you are gone.  Making it a routine allows it to get done as part of your regular schedule.

Recommendation

Basically here is my recommendation for this article. If you have Mac OS X 10.5, use Time Machine. If you do not have Mac OS X 10.5, upgrade to this level, and use Time Machine. While other third-party solutions work, and definitely have a place in a belt-and-suspenders approach to bootable backup, Time Machine is reliable, easy and inexpensive. What else can you ask for?

So that’s what I have seen work. Give one of these a try. Keep in mind, the most important thing about backing up is to be sure you schedule a time to do it, and verify it is happening at least once a week. Needing the files from a backup is too late to find out your backups have not run. And, as I mentioned in my earlier article, always pick a backup hard drive that is at least 50% bigger than your internal hard drive.

It is my hope that other people will add to this discussion in the comments and tell us what has worked for them.

Good luck, and keep your data backed up!

Right-Click: The Often Overlooked Treasure

-- Review author: Tom Piper, appleJAC Macintosh Users Group, and Apple User Group Advisory Board

"I'd switch to a MAC, but I couldn't imagine giving up the right-click." This lament of a PC user is a broad and correctible misconception. Right-click functionality has been built into OS X since 2001, so third-party mice would work. Even though you don’t clearly see it, the Macintosh mouse has had built-in right-click since August 2005.

This article is only about right-click, so we will ignore the clickable customizable scroll-ball and side-button features of the Mighty Mouse. The magic of touch-sensitive technology transforms this seamless top shell into a two-button wonder, in wired or wireless versions. The primary use of the right-click feature is to access contextual menus, a feature that has been in the Mac operating system since OS 8.0 (control-click of the mouse was the alternative). Be sure it is set to “Secondary” (see screenshot).

“Contextual menus” are menus that can be brought up virtually anywhere by clicking the right mouse button. Many programs implement this very well, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Apple Mail being among those that do. The Finder also has this feature, which consists of commands such as "Eject" and "New Folder". You can choose how to view a folder, where to arrange the icons, and more. Both operating systems can "show info", or "get info" an an icon if you right-click on it, and both can also give you help if you need it, simply by right-clicking and selecting "Help" from the menu that pops up. You can actually change your desktop pattern by right-clicking on the desktop (see examples below).

Most people have never even heard of these menus. One favorite use of the contextual menu comes in the dock while iTunes is open. Right-click on the iTunes icon and you will get a menu that displays the currently playing song, as well as options to pause, go to the next song, go to the previous song, show iTunes in the Finder, or quit iTunes. If you've never tried the contextual menu before, you can try it now. Point to a picture on the site, and right-click. A menu should pop up, asking what you want to do with the picture. Or, point to an open app in the dock and right-click, and you will get a menu of open documents in that app and the option to quit the app. Drag a folder into the dock, right-click it, and you can browse the folder quickly and easily. Want to empty the trash? Right-clicking it will give you that option.

Contextual menus are a great way to do things faster and more efficiently on your Mac. They also give you some added functionality to programs, while just giving you easier access to frequently-used commands in others. Overall, contextual menus are very useful. If you haven't considered using them, try them out. You just may start asking yourself how you could have lived without them.

If contextual menus don’t do all that you want, you can enhance them. Abracode’s free Shortcuts lets you perform contextual-menu magic. After launching Shortcuts, its Assign Hot Keys screen presents you with a list of current contextual menu items, divided into the type of action each performs: actions on text (Spotlight searches, third-part text-munging tools), on files (Automator actions, third-party file manipulation tasks), or on folders (similar to files). To assign a keyboard shortcut to a contextual menu action, you simply choose it from the pop-up menu; a dialog will appear asking you to press the desired shortcut. (An item displayed in red in one of the pop-up menus means you’ve already assigned a shortcut to that item.)

But, there is more. If you are using any version of Windows through Boot Camp, Parallels or VMware, then the right-click will continue to work in the same way that PC users have been accustomed to all along. In fact, in addition to the Mac Mighty Mouse, the right-click feature will work with virtually any USB mouse that has this feature in Mac, Windows or Linux mode.

As you can see, right-clicking is a real treasure on the Mac. Hopefully, you will never look at it the same, and be able to enhance your control and enjoyment during daily computer use.

Pool Your Printers

Have you ever sent a document to print only to be in line behind someone printing a book?

Do you have more than one printer in your office you sometimes print to?  Would it be nice to always print to the one that is not busy printing other documents?  You need to create a printer pool.

A printer pool lets you select multiple printers and let the Mac OS determine which one is not busy making you wait for the print less frustrating.

Go to System Preferences and Print and Fax preferences.

Now select more than one printer by Command-clicking on the printer names.

Now press Create Printer Pool and give your Pool a name.

Now when you print, select the named pool and the Mac will print to whichever printer is not busy.

How to clean up the auto-complete list in Mac OS X Mail

from Tom Piper, appleJAC Secretary/Editor

I finally found the answer . . . to clean up or empty the auto-complete the list of previous email recipients' email addresses in Mac OS X Mail:

  • Select Window | Previous Recipients from the menu
  • Highlight the address you want to remove
     (You can highlight multiple addresses by holding down the Command key).
    - or -
  • Click on the Last Used header so the arrow points downward, hold down the Shift key, and click on an address last used a year ago (or whenever you want) to highlight an old group.
  • Click Remove From List.

this works VERY well . . . and, you will be amazed at how many email addresses you've collected.

Twain Sane makes old scanners new again

 From Tom Piper, appleJAC Editor

With the advances in Leopard, a number of USB devices became inoperable . . . my portable flatbed bus-powered CanoScan N656U scanner was on of them, and it is a nice simple ease-to-use quality scanner.

I found a great TWAIN SANE Interface for MacOS X (http://www.ellert.se/twain-sane/) that really works well with the new Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 . . . previously, it couldn't even see an attached USB scanner, now it knows it by name. On the other hand, although Image Capture sees the scanner, and activates it, it seems unable to capture the image.

if you didn't already know about this free set of utility drivers, it is very successful in assuring continued use of some older equipment . . .

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.

Make your New Apple Mighty Mouse act like your old Mouse

So you have a new mac with one of those new fancy Mighty Mouse mice but as hard as you try, you just can't get used to all the button locations. If you feel more comfortable in using a standard type Apple Mouse, you can adjust the settings to make the Mighty Mouse not quite so mighty.  Just set the System Preferences for Mouse and Keyboard like the window shown here.

With those setting, your new mouse acts just like the old but you can still use the ball to scroll.

Lesa's Graphic Secrets for MUGs: How to resize images from digital cameras

This is the first in a series of tutorials on dealing with and editing digital images. This month Lesa explains how  resolution works and when you need to worry about it. Using the affordable, yet powerful, Adobe Photoshop Elements  6, she'll show you how to resize an image fresh from your digital camera for both print and email. Hope you enjoy the tutorial! 

Read the full article from Lesa.

Creating X-Axis Chart Labels in Excel 2008

Q:I must say the new version of Microsoft Office has suddenly made me less productive. I can't even make the most simple charts in Excel (Which was easy before).

Can you make a chart from this data that shows:
1. Number of images in columns
2. Number of images is the vertical axis
3. Year is the horizontal axis and labeled as such (not 1,2,3...)

I've ordered a book on Microsoft Office but it's not out yet.

A:  It's a bug in Excel 2008 but there is a work around......

Okay, here's how to do it (explanation courtesy of Bob Greenblatt — there's no way I could have figured this out on my own!):

To specify a range of cells as the labels on the X axis, click on one of the data series in the chart (for example, click on one of the colours in a bar chart).

When you do, you will see a range appear in the floating formula bar. In my case, the range in the formula bar was:

=SERIES(Summary!$A$5,,Summary!$B$5:$R$5,3)

The space between the two commas is where the X axis labels are specified. In my case, for whatever reason, Excel didn't pick up the labels when I created the chart. I added the range of cells containing the X axis labels (cells B3 through R3) like so:

=SERIES(Summary!$A$5,Summary!$B$3:$R$3,Summary!$B$5:$R$5,3)

Wireless Printing with Airport

All of Apple's airport products now have a USB port that can be used for sharing a printer.  The real problem is finding out if the printer you have (or are thinking about purchaseing) will work connected this way.  This is where iFelix comes in.

The website called iFelix has an exhaustive list of printers that have been tested with Apple's Airport technology built on Bonjour.  Not only are working printers listed, but they also list printers that they know for sure does not work. 

In my experience, sharing a printer this way is a great way to wirelessly print from a laptop.

Creating Web Clip Widgets

Leopard makes it easy to create a Dashboard widget from a segment of a web page. For example, you can capture a “new releases” list from a media website, or the “latest posts” field from an Internet discussion group. These Web Clips appear, automatically updated, whenever you open Dashboard.

Click on the Web Clip button.  The entire page darkens save for a bright rectangle. Drag the rectangle from its center and edges until it covers the segment you want to capture. Then click Add and Safari sends your Web Clip to Dashboard.

(If Safari doesn’t display the Web Clip button, choose Customize Toolbar in Safari’s View menu and add the button to Safari’s toolbar.)

Now the Web Clip appears as a new widget in Dashboard. You can still edit it: Move your cursor over the widget’s lower-right corner until a small letter i appears. Click it to resize or reposition the content, or customize its border using built-in styles.

Create an iCal Event from Apple Mail

Leopard is smart—smart enough to recognize dates within the text of an email in Apple Mail.
When your cursor hovers over a date in the body of an email, a dotted rectangle surrounds the date, and a small arrow appears. Hold on the arrow, and up pop two iCal options: Create New iCal Event and Show This Date in iCal.

Choosing Create New iCal Event generates a dialog box. Its default name is the subject line of the original email, though you can change it here. You can also specify the location and duration of the event and add additional notes. When you’re finished, choose Add to iCal. Leopard adds the date to your calendar—without even opening iCal.

Not sure if you’re available? Choose Show This Date in iCal. This opens iCal at the date in question, but doesn’t add the event to your schedule.

So your Scroll ball on your Mouse won't......

Although your Mighty Mouse never needs to be fed or watered, you may occasionally find that you need to clean it.

If your Mighty Mouse is covered in fingerprints or its surface has become soiled, it can be gently wiped with a clean lint-free cloth. If necessary, moisten the cloth using only water, making sure not to oversaturate it. Be aware that the mouse contains electronic components that may be damaged if water drips from the cloth into the mouse via the seam around the scroll ball or around its underside.

The same procedure can be used to clean the scroll ball on your Mighty Mouse if it has become discolored or dirty. Use a clean lint-free cloth lightly moistened with water. Wipe the ball and the surrounding area, making sure to rotate the ball itself to ensure complete coverage. If the scrolling feels rough or if the scroll ball isn't scrolling up, down, or side-to-side, hold the mouse upside-down and roll the ball vigorously while cleaning it to help dislodge any particles that may have collected on the internal hardware.

For a QuickTime movie demonstration, click here (the movie is approximately 600 KB).

ColorSync Utilities

Mac OS X contains a number of useful utilities that can enhance creative workflows. In the root-level folder /Library/Scripts/ColorSync are editable AppleScript utilities that perform various common design tasks.

Say, for example, you have a collection of images in a directory that you would like to prepare for the web by embedding the sRGB color profile. Rather than open the images individually to assign the profile, you could use the "Embed chosen profile" script instead by simply dragging-and-dropping your collection of images on that script's icon in the Colorsync folder. A real time-saver when dealing with hundreds of images. And, because these scripts are editable, you can customize them to be specific to your workflow needs.

Knowing When to (Force) Quit

With the Force Quit command in OS X, you can escape from “frozen” applications on your Mac without shutting down the whole computer or disrupting work in other programs.

If an application hasn’t responded for a while to mouse clicks, trackpad scrolling, or other persuasive actions, click on the Apple menu and select Force Quit.

A pop-up window lists all the applications you currently have open. Stalled applications are listed in red and say (not responding) after the application name. Scroll up and down through the list with the arrow keys, or just click on an application name to select — then click Force Quit to exit only that program. You can restart the application from your Dock or Applications menu, but any unsaved changes may be lost.

But there’s an even easier Force Quit trick: Simultaneously press Command-Option-Esc and the Force Quit pop-up appears — an especially useful trick if your Finder has frozen and you can’t select the pull-down Apple menu.

Importing Photos into Events in iPhoto 08

Q: I've been doing some image "house cleaning" on my office PC, in preparation for the iMac.
I've backed up about 6,000 images to a network drive.

Now, I can still just access these images from Windows (on the mac), but I thought I would want to pull some of these into iPhoto for all the obvious reasons.

But If I pull 5K images into iPhoto '08, it's gonna try to put these in events and they are just not organized in that manner. And I'd be left with a hell of a lot of sorting/merging/spitting.

What is the best way to import them and make events that make since?

A: Did some testing....

I created this file structure......

I selected the Folder called "Import Test" and it created these events.

This verifies that iPhoto will create an event for each folder it finds.  I would hone the organization of the files as they are on the drive now and then just do one massive import and let iPhoto handle the rest.

iPhoto, Aperture: Yellow exclamation marks appear on some book images

When you design a book or order prints, a yellow "exclamation point" warning symbol indicates any low-resolution photos or images in a book. This warning lets you know that edits you have applied to these images have reduced the pixel density to a point that they may not print well.

This happens most often due to cropping. If you crop too much, there may not be enough remaining pixels to get a good printed result.

To improve a photo's print quality

• Choose a smaller print size. In a book layout, you can do this by increasing the number of photos per page.
• If you previously cropped the photo, revert to its original version and crop off a smaller portion, or leave it uncropped.
• If you positioned a photo within its book frame by zooming in on it, zoom out of the photo.

A digital photo is made up of millions of individual dots of color, called pixels. A photo's "resolution" is the number of dots per inch (dpi) that it contains. Some photos may look jagged or blurry when printed if their resolution is too low.

A Few iPhone Tips and Tricks

After working with the iPhone for a few days, here are a fw tips and tricks that I have found.  THe first one I figured out but the next two are from Mac Rumors.

Folders in Mail

I wondered how I could create folders to put some of my email in on my account.  Normally, I use POP to check my email and I found no way to have any other folders show up on a POP account.  I then tried using the IMAP server for the same account and found that any folders I created on the IMAP server show up on the iPhone.  This allows me to save a few emails in a folder to refer to later.

Here are a few I found on MacRumors

Safari Web Browser

I just found this today and thought it was a really useful feature. I was reading TUAW on my iPhone and got to the bottom of their news feed and wanted to go to another site. I was beginning to scroll back up to the top to get to the URL entry field and accidentally hit the top bar, the one with AT&T and signal strength and the time and battery life and found myself at the top of the page staring right at the URL field. So amazingly simple and brilliant.

In short:

1. You're at the bottom (or anywhere) of a webpage on your iPhone and want to go to the URL field.
2. Tap the top bar with the time and battery life indicator.
3. Boom! You're at the URL entry field!

Typing a Period (or and other Punctuation)

When typing, here's a quick way to input a period. Click on the .?123 button and slide your finger over to the period (or comma) and release. A period will be written, and the keyboard will go back to letters. Alternatively, click the .?123 button with your left thumb and tap the period button with the other. Again, you'll get the period and the keyboard will switch back to letters.

iPhoto: How do I change the theme or type of my book, card, or calendar?

If you would like to change the theme of your book, card, or calendar to another theme but are concerned that this change may affect your images and text, you can make a duplicate copy of the book and make your changes to the copy. That way you can compare the original to the modified copy to see if any data was lost.

Please follow these steps to duplicate the book, card, or calendar:

1. In iPhoto, Control-click (hold down the Control key and click) the item you would like to duplicate in the Source column on the left and choose Duplicate from the shortcut menu (or select the item and press Command-D).
2. Click the Themes icon in the bottom left of the screen. A message will warn you that text may be lost. Click OK.
3. Browse the various themes and templates for your book, card, or calendar and make your selection. You can also change the cover type of your book.

Be sure to preview your selection before you place your order to confirm that the text and images look right. Here's how to preview:

1. Select your book from the Source list on the left.
2. Choose File > Print or press Command-P.
3. Click the Preview button on the bottom left. This will create a portable document format (PDF) file and display the file using the Preview application.
4. If you are happy with the book, close the PDF file, return to iPhoto, and click the Buy Book button.