Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Mac

Shiren the English-speaking Wanderer

ignignokt — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:44:05 -0800

I'm trying to play the SNES version of Shiren the Wanderer, with the English translation patch, on a Mac. The ROM without the patch works fine. When I put the patch in the same directory with the same base filename (the procedure for using a patch), the ROM loads and hangs. I'm using SNES9X as my emulator. Has anyone gotten this working? I'm willing to try any emulator.

Trading a desktop for a laptop

showbiz_liz — Tue, 21 May 2013 07:29:51 -0800

About a year ago I bought a refurbished iMac. I now totally regret buying a desktop computer and really wish I had a laptop instead. Is there any way for me to trade in my still perfectly-functional iMac for a Mac laptop? (In NYC if it matters) I don't know if I'm looking for a business who will buy the thing from me and give me credit, or a forum where people trade electronics, or simply a way to sell it and get the maximum amount back for it, or what. All I know is, I have a $1200 computer that I hate using, and I don't want to spend more than a couple hundred dollars more on another computer so soon after buying this one.

(I feel like an idiot for buying it in the first place- I just thought desktops were more "grown-up" somehow. But I had gotten used to the convenience of a laptop, and now I hate having to sit at my desk to use the computer.)

Is it possible to convert my Hi8's this way?

Sakura3210 — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:23:42 -0800

So, I have a bunch of old Hi8 tapes that I want to get on my MacBook pro. I have a camcorder that plays Hi8's (but is only analog) and a DVD recorder. Can you help me? What I had been doing was connecting the camcorder to the DVD recorder, burning DVDs, then ripping those DVD's onto my computer. This has proven time-intensive, and I am looking for a way to condense the process. My idea: connect the camcorder to the recorder, then the recorder to the computer (using it as a analog to digital converter). Is this possible? I should note than the recorder doesn't seem to have a digital visual output (no FireWire/USB, just composite cables, etc.) though it does have a digital audio output (PCM, bitstream).

I'd really like to use the recorder as other options (avdv+FireWire, digital camcorder that plays Hi8's, video capture card, etc.) would be rough on my budget.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Help a longtime Mac user switch to Windows.

hwickline — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:20:45 -0800

I haven't used Windows since the year 2000, but a new job means this longtime Mac user needs to learn how to. A couple specifics related to image editing and task management software plus general words of wisdom/ encouragement requested within. In addition to the general feeling of at-seaness of starting a demanding new job, I find myself needing to learn a new OS: Windows 7, used in a large institution context, with all the Outlook, help ticketing and other systems stuff that implies. I've always been a Mac person (and in fact was the de facto IT guy for some small teams I've worked on in Mac shops), and find myself fighting decades of muscle memory and maybe even a little prejudice in this switch. So, my questions:

1. One of my first tasks is creating a set of images (photos overlaid with text, nothing too fancy really) that will live on a couple lobby computers as screen savers and be given to a retiring employee on a digital picture frame. On my Mac, I would fire up Keynote, size the slides pixelwise a couple different ways, drop some nice text with a partially opaque background text box on 'em, and call it a day. Here on my Windows 7 machine, I tried PowerPoint (sizes only in inches?), Paint (no transparency on text boxes?), and spent a whole morning banging my head against the problem with unsatisfying results. I don't know Photoshop, and can't believe I really need it to do what I want to do. What software would you use to complete this (really, terribly simple) task on a PC?

2. I'm a GTD person, and have happily used OmniFocus for the past several years to manage tasks. I'm trying out ThinkingRock right now, but it seems like more than I need (I generally just use projects/ tasks, start and due dates, and contexts) and that added complexity makes for more time-consuming data entry. Also, it's ugly. Do you have a favorite GTD app for Windows? Bonus points for iPhone syncing. Bonus bonus points for full cross platform so I can use it on my home Mac, too.

3. More generally, are there apps it took you a while to find, but now love, when switching from Mac to PC? Are there apps that have no Mac equivalent that you love on your Windows machine? Are there shortcuts (keyboard or otherwise) that you can't live without that you wish someone had told you about right away?

Any help much, much appreciated. Thanks!

Mac: Mount ejected flash drive without reinserting

Slap*Happy — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:55:10 -0800

I have a nifty little USB thumbdrive that I want to use to make backups of various documents; it will live on the powered hub in my office, as I'll only need to use it in the office. It's something of a pain to unplug and re-insert every day, or every time I need to leave the desk with my laptop. After ejecting, the drive is no loger visible using diskutil on the command line, tho I can see it in the system profiler. Is there a way to have the system recognize the device and mount it whenever the Macbook wakes from sleep? I've got sleepwatcher installed, but I'm not certain how to get the system to recognize the USB device without unplugging it and plugging it back in. Shutting down and restarting the mac every time I want to leave my desk with it is not a viable option, either. I'm running 10.7.5 on a Core i7 15" MBP.

Poor Little Old Laptop...

polly_dactyl — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:44:33 -0800

Is my PowerBook G4 officially dead? My PowerBook G4 (purchased in 2007) spontaneously stopped working this morning. It is a sad day in the 'dactyl house. It's old, it's not worth much money, but it's my favorite out of the laptops I have and it's been my primary machine for six years.

When I open it up, the machine seems to start processing, but the monitor stays black. Then there are three beeps (sounds like a weather alert thing), and then the sleep/indicator light starts to blink. I took the battery out and let it cool down, I tried again and got the exact same thing.

I can accept that it might be dead for good -- I have absolutely gotten my money's worth out of this machine. I'm wondering if the beeps/blinks are a known thing (code?) Later today I can try hooking it up to a monitor but in the mean time I guess I was hoping you smart people might have seen/heard of this before.

There was no trauma, and it was working fine last night. The original battery just died around Christmas and I replaced it. I'm pretty sad right now, even though I knew this day was coming...

booting linux on a mac

lhude sing cuccu — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:25:24 -0800

How can I make a bootable USB on a mac to be used to boot linux on a mac? I could also use linux on my other computer to make the USB, but I don't have windows, and I want to be able to boot from the mac. So, booting linux on a pc is pretty easy and simple. In fact I installed xubuntu over windows on my PC (take that, windows!), so now I can't really use windows anymore to make my bootable USBs. So now I can either use xubuntu or my MacBook (OS 10.5.8) to make them. I can't use unetbootin because I want to boot the USB on a Mac (only works for PC's), and I can't use Penguintosh because my MacBook is too old.

So, I heard of BootCamp and diskutil and rEFIt but I think they are only used for partitioning? I want to be able to make .iso images into bootable USBs, too. In fact I think I am more interested in live booting (puppy linux!) than actually partitioning my Mac's hard drive, at least for right now.

So, how can I make a bootable USB from an .iso image, using either xubuntu or Mac Leopard (OS X 5), that would be bootable on a Mac? And how would I live boot said USB from my Mac?

How do you block gmail through etc/hosts?

tomargue — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:46:43 -0800

Most "distracting" sites I can block by an entry in my etc/hosts file (Mac OSX 10.8.2). e.g.: 127.0.0.1 plus.google.com But this method doesn't seem to be able to block gmail. Here's the relevent lines in my etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcastlocalhost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost

127.0.0.1 https://gmail.com
127.0.0.1 gmail.com
127.0.0.1 www.gmail.com
127.0.0.1 https://mail.google.com
127.0.0.1 mail.google.com
127.0.0.1 https://accounts.google.com
127.0.0.1 accounts.google.com

But none of these seem to block gmail.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I could try a "site blocker" but most of these rely on setting a "blocking time" e.g. 30 minutes -- this is not practical for gmail as I want to be able to log into it when I need to confirm my email address if I sign up to a site. I would prefer to be able to block gmail with the knowledge that I could unblock it in about 30s -- I find this "overhead" gives the best of both worlds.

I could also take Ritalin, and/or practice my self-control. That's also another option :).

NB: moments before I was about click "post" I was able to solve this. I'll post the solution then close the question in the hope it helps someone else.

How can I send an invitation from iCal to a Google Calendar user?

The corpse in the library — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:37:02 -0800

When Mr. Corpse and I were both using iCal I could send him an invitation to an event; if he accepted it it blocked off the time in his calendar. Now that he's switched to Google Calendar this system doesn't work. The invitations I send from iCal look, on my end, as if they've gone through, but he doesn't get the invitations any more. They don't show up in his calendar (even though I'm sending them to his gmail address) and they don't show up as e-mails.

I want a solution that will show up in his calendar for him to accept or decline, and for me to be able to see if he's accepted or declined it. Please advise.

Word doesn't get the (insertion) point - style shortcuts at end of word

snuffleupagus — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:05:45 -0800

In Mac Word 2011 - When editing a block of existing text, with the insertion point at the end of newly typed word, using command-B or command-I seems to style the word preceding the insertion point, and that I just applied styles to, rather than turning the styles off for the word I am about to type. Can this behavior be altered? This is contrary to the behavior of every previous version of Word I can recall using (and every other word processor, generally) and is driving me nuts in trying to clean up an existing document. My current kludge is to type a space, then Shift+back-arrow to select the space, then Command-B or whatever to disable the style, and then space and resume typing.

But that's stupid and way too much work for what should be accomplished with one keystroke.

What should I use to dial phone numbers on my computer?

amanda — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:50:46 -0800

I've got a Mac and an iPhone. I have a huge list of phone numbers to call in a spreadsheet. I'd like to copy/paste from the spreadsheet into a dialer which then dials my phone. Any suggestions? This is an "odd job" I'm doing for a few days and then hopefully will never need this again. So, hoping to find an app solution for very little money.

USB interface for vinyl conversion with a mac?

brokeaspoke — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:46:28 -0800

What device do I get to connect from preamp out to Mac via USB for better sound quality in converting cassettes and vinyl to digital media using my existing stereo and existing Mac mini? I don't want or need to buy a new sound system or computer. I want to covert vinyl and cassettes to digital formats. I've done this before but it was some time ago and with a completely different computer and audio system setup.

I have a decent amp, preamp, turntable and cassette deck. I have a 2012 Mac Mini computer. I know I can use output from stereo to Mac Mini line/mic input. It seems to me I might get even better quality (eliminating noise form the computer itself, better processing, etc.) if I can find an external USB sound card or other device that has an inbuilt processing that is then sent along to the Mac Mini.

Currently the diagram would look like this:
[turntable]-[preamp]-[mac mini mic/line in]
The future diagram:
[turntable]-[preamp]-[USB sound card / processor device in question]-[mac mini USB port]

What's the mystery device? (Recommendations from family and friends has been Griffin imic, Turtle beach External sound card, Zoom H4N). Ideally the device is USD $100 or less; certainly $200 or less. Bonus points for software recommendations. I've used Audacity and rather like it but would entertain other suggestions.

I've read many questions regarding similar but not the same scenarios. I've also searched google but haven't really found the answer from someone who wasn't biased because they are trying to sell a service or a product. I'm looking for real world users to make comments and suggestions.

Would someone give me a Mac Pro, please? Thanks.

run"monty — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:48:54 -0800

Would the addition of a decent graphics card turn my workaday PC into a competent NLE workstation? I've managed to get by with running Adobe Premiere CS6 on my 2009 Mac Mini. It's useable but involves a lot of waiting. (Not so bad when cutting ProRes but rendering takes an age.)

Now, I may be able to secure a small amount of editing work. That is, not so much work that I could justify the purchase of a new computer.

I have two options. Work slowly with a workflow optimised for my Mac or upgrade my PC.

This is my PC (I'm running Windows 7 64-bit).

I'm not looking for the power of a souped up Mac Pro. I just want a machine that won't fall over during the most basic of picture edits, will encode to ProRes pretty fast or handle AVCHD well, let me grade footage at more than a snail's pace, and won't complain when applying the simplest of SFX.

This upgrade would be done on a tight budget. I'll likely be adding more memory and another single SATA HDD.

I understand the Adobe's Mercury Playback Engine makes use of CUDA graphics cards. I would like to know if there would be any significant improvement if I installed a low priced card (not more than £200) in my ageing PC. Would it be false economy? Should I just spend £200 on a new machine?

So did you find a new MacBook Air on a plane the other day?

Crotalus — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:09:20 -0800

Lost my MacBook Air with sensitive files on the SSD. How worried should I be? I left my MacBook Air in the seat-back pouch of a Southwest Airlines flight. I filed lost and found reports with the airline and the airport, but it has been almost two weeks, and it seems pretty clear that it's gone forever. I seriously doubt that anyone will be able to login to my account, BUT one thing has me very worried. I was doing my taxes on the computer, and I had PDFs of my tax returns (2006 - 2012) in the Skydrive folder on the laptop. They are not password protected. (I know, I know ...)

Given that I know very little about Macs, my questions are: (1) If someone logs into the computer using the guest account, surely the operating system would not let them into the files of my user account, right? Right?!? (2) Given that MacBooks are hard to crack open, and the data is on a SSD, is it not highly likely that someone who had decided to keep the machine would just wipe the OS and reinstall it fresh? (3) I guess what I'm asking is, how worried should I be about the SSNs and financial information of everyone in my household sitting unprotected on my lost Mac? Pretend you know all about Macs and you're the kind of asshole that would keep the MacBook Air you found on a plane. What would you do with it?

My Brother wireless printer doesn't work after resetting my laptop.

The Card Cheat — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:13:09 -0800

I have a MacBook running OS X 10.6.8 and a Brother HL-2270DW printer. This morning I had to reset my entire system using Time Machine; everything else is up and running, but the printer doesn't work. I've tried reinstalling it with the printer setup disc, but the laptop won't detect our wireless connection when I get to that step (it suggests disabling my personal firewall, but I don't have one set up.), and the laptop won't let me add any printers in System Preferences. Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated, because I've spent all afternoon trying to figure this out.

Best place to sell laptop or laptop parts NYC mac

edbles — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 17:16:33 -0800

My girlfriend is looking to sell an Intel Mac for parts or whole. It's 10 years old, it currently has a damaged power line into the battery, but the screen, processor and hard drive are still good. Battery won't charge anymore and the genius bar suggested that it has a limited life left running off of just charging cord. She's looking to sell this in parts or whole and put the money towards a new machine. So we're looking for the best potential options for selling either for parts or whole, in New York City. She's looked at a few of the repair shops around the city, but none have gotten back to her. Tekserve's quote was pretty low. Are ebay and craigslist our best options? I realize this question has been asked beforebut not recently, looking for best place or way tot get a fair price.

Simple, intuitive map software/service for a business

Clandestine Outlawry — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:39:16 -0800

My (small) company provides services in people's homes. We'd like to use electronic maps to plan technician routes and better understand where our clients are geographically. What (Mac-compatible) software or web service might help with this? My company serves about two thousand homes in the Toronto area, most of which need to be visited daily by a technician. Right now, we have the region divided up into about forty zones for purposes of work assignments, but the zone borders are pretty much traditional neighbourhoods and we don't have a visualization to confirm that they're sensible.

The idea is to make sure that no one technician is given an unreasonably high workload, nor asked to go too far afield.

Our CRM is a pretty rudimentary web app - definitely not capable of this kind of thing. It can't even give us a dump of the current customer data, so we'll be pulling out addresses and the like manually.

What I'm envisioning is something that will let me plot ~2000 homes on a map, by address, and group them into zones (where I can set the borders). Ideally, I'd be able to get a report on how many clients are within each zone. It would also be nice if I could print maps of zones or arbitrarily defined areas.

Four staff would be operating this system, so it should be fairly intuitive. GRASS GIS would be an example of "whoa, too much".

Desktop software or a web service are both okay. We are willing to pay. Mac compatibility is essential.

The best thing I've managed to find so far is ArcGIS Online, but I'm so very unfamiliar with all this, so I imagine there are more appropriate options. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Having trouble trying to partition the hard drive on my old Mac

el chupa nibre — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:07:35 -0800

I'm trying to partition the hard drive on my old mac (model 4,1 running OS X 10.5.8) so I can dual boot Ubuntu. The problem is that when I go to Disk Utility and and select to partition the drive I get an error saying that the partition failed because there's no space left on the device, even though I have lots of space. This happens no matter how small I make the partition. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm not very computer savy and the google searches I tried before coming to mefi didn't make sense to me.

Modula? Modula? Wherefore art thou, dude?

Chrischris — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:29:06 -0800

Who or what was Modula? Not the typeface, or the programming language, but the album cover designer of such bizarre creations as Fleetwood Mac's "Mystery to Me" and Camel's self-titled album. Numerous google searches turn up nothing.

SimCity 4 Mac language change?

DoctorFedora — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:39:30 -0800

So I have a copy of Simcity 4 for Mac OS, and the patch to run it on Intel. I'm looking to switch the language from US to UK English (I want left-side traffic) but all of the instructions I've found online to do such a thing are for the Windows version, and involve modifying the Registry, which by definition ain't gonna happen for the Mac OS version. What can I do? How do I change the game's language settings on Mac OS?

Mac Clipboard Manager with "Paste and Remove from History"

backwards guitar — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:08:36 -0800

I'm looking for a standalone clipboard manager for OSX that has LaunchBar's "Paste and Remove from History" functionality. With LaunchBar, I'm able to copy 3 items, and paste them into a separate page in reverse order (every time I hit CTRL+CMD+OPTION+V the last item I copied is pasted and deleted from history, so the second to last item I copied is now next in line for pasting).

I'd like this functionality in a standalone clipboard manager, as I'm planning on giving Alfred 2 a try as my launcher.

Paid or free is fine.

OS X legal billing software

DavidNYC — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:16:59 -0800

Looking for an OS X equivalent of Legal Billing from Chaos Software, or just any good law firm billing software package for Mac. Specific requirements inside. 1) Some sort of clickable timer for keeping track of separate billable matters.

2) A simple interface.

3) Timesheets easily exportable to Excel.

4) Cheap! This is for a paralegal in a solo practitioner's office.

I've used (and liked) Chaos's Legal Billing in the past, but it's Windows-only and I've since made the switch to Mac. Any suggestions for a replacement would be greatly appreciated.

Help me not get scammed buying a computer used

BlahLaLa — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:33:23 -0800

After my previous question, I'm considering buying a used Mac laptop via Craigslist. Help me not get scammed? When it comes to computers, I basically know nothing about nothing. But I'd like to buy my kid a mac laptop for his birthday. I definitely can't afford new. My local Craigslist (Los Angeles) has a jillion listings...but...other than "hey, that's in my price range" I don't know what the next step is.

What do I look for? What should I look out for? What questions should I ask the seller? How can I get a machine that works, and that will work for my kid (internet browsing, Minecraft, etc.).

Bonus level: when it comes to playing Minecraft, how old a computer is too old? What specs am I looking for?

Hotkeys for special characters in a document created in Google Drive.

Flashduck — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:24:50 -0800

It's got to be easy, right? Using Google Drive to create documents;need to write in Italian and English. There must be an easier way to enter latin characters à è ì etc than going through the insert>special characters>drop down menu. It indicates that I can set up a hotkey with U+ but to no avail. I'm on a Mac

How to run both Mt Lion and Leopard on the same MacPro?

dpcoffin — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:37:11 -0800

I've got an early 2008 Harpertown MacPro that's running 10.5.8 and I'm about to install an SSD into it and put Mt Lion on that, keeping the Leopard drive in there as a multi-boot option for when I need some of the old apps on that. Seems like that'll work, but if anybody's got any tips or caveats, etc., I'd love to hear 'em! A bit more detail... I do mostly Adobe Creative Suite and Final Cut work now, plus some occasional Logic/NI/SoundTrack audio stuff, and will be upgrading to the latest of these soon or later. The Leopard system is crammed with stuff (mostly no longer used), plus it has lots of daily work-flow tweaks that I'll be trying to retain or improve on, but I need to be sure that I can still do everything I currently rely on, so that's the dual-boot (using SysPrefs usually) idea.

TIA for all replies!