Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with macintosh

Stupid MacIntosh Problem

SLC Mom — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:40:04 -0800

Mac-Filter: How do I make the clickbar work again? I accidentally turned off the clickbar on my husband's MacIntosh laptop.

I think I did this by depressing the FN and Apple buttons together and clicking. I was looking for some combination to simulate a right click. Now the click-bar won't work. The track pad is functional, and I can select items by tapping. But if I keep doing that I will end up throwing it through a window. That is one of the hazards of light weight computers.

I've checked in System Preferences/Trackpad, but can't find anything that reverses this. I have also tried to duplicate the mistake, but that hasn't worked yet.

It is running OS X, 10.5.8 FWIW. Or 10.8.5. It's downstairs, I'm up here on the PC.

Yes, we have both, but we have to keep them separated.

Thanks hive mind!

Writer meets arthritis

grumblebee — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:18:40 -0800

Mac voice-recognition software for a writer with arthritis. My father's arthritis is making it more and more difficult for him to type. This is hard for him, because he's been a writer for decades (over 25 books and countless articles). He is considering switching to voice-recognition software.

Here are some things to note:

- He is originally from England but has lived in the US since the 1950s. He is a very clear speaker, but his accent is a mix of British (cockney originally) and American.

- He owns a Mac.

- He is not highly computer literate, but he lives in a university town and could find people to help him set things up if necessary. He probably will have trouble if the voice-recognition software itself is overly complicated to use.

I am looking for any advice and experiences with this. What is the state of the art these days? What's available for the Mac? What is the experience like for people who are heavy users?

Need help setting up AirPort on my Mac

Joseppi — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:52:14 -0800

I'm trying to set up an AirPort on my Mac and I'm having some issues. It's asking for OS X 10.4 and I'm running 10.5 but it still doesn't work. Any clue as to why this is happening? I'm trying to set up an AirPort on my Mac and I'm having some issues. When I try and install the software I get a message that says, "You cannot install AirPort on this volume. The version of Mac OS X on this volume is not supported." It's asking for volume 10.4 and I'm on 10.5. This is beyond frustrating as this is supposed to be such a simple process. Does anyone know what my issue might be?

Want separate desktop on Virtual Machine

hdh — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:13:22 -0800

Question. I upgraded to Parallels 5.0 to run a Windows Virtual machine on my Macbook. The problem is that icons on the Windows desktop show up on the Mac desktop and vice versa. How can I set up Parallels so that both desktops are separate identities that don't impact each other?

How difficult is it to become a Certified Mac Tech?

sammich — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:13:45 -0800

Any Apple Certified Macintosh Technicians in the house? How difficult was it for you to get certified? This question has been asked before but I want to expand on it.

I manage all the Macintosh computers at my work. I also setup my office location as a Apple Self Servicing center, which means, among other things, I am allowed to access Apple service resources (order parts, look up service manuals, etc) just like a regular Apple repair store can. But the difference between me and a real repair place is that I can't do official warranty repairs, because no one on my staff has been certified by Apple to do them. Fortunately one of the perks of being a self servicing center is free access to on-line training to become certified.

My primary duties at work are managing software installs and servers. I deal with about 150 Macs at work, almost half of them are laptops, and I guesstimate no more than 10% of those need some kind of warranty repair during the 3 years of Applecare. I'll do the occasional repair but only if it's out of warranty. I've always tinkered with taking apart computers but only for the occasional hobby.

Looking over the course topics, the software side is pretty elementary to me, but the hardware topics seems (naturally) extensive and complicated. The training courses cover the ins and outs of the guts of every Mac of the past 4-5 years. In my job I've typically only work on Mac towers (G5/Mac Pros) and PowerBooks and MacBook Pros (when I mean work on, I mean things like power supply removals, cracked LCD replacements, etc). I don't have much hands on experience with lower end hardware such as Minis and iMacs.

So my question is, how hard core should I brush up on Macs i'm unfamiliar with? If I replaced a drive in a Macbook Pro would it be safe to say that the MacBook Air would be just as easy if i just glanced over the instructions? During test time, will they quiz me on every model? Will they do something like give me an iMac and tell me to take it apart and reassemble? Do you think it's worth it for an IT guy like me to get certified? I don't plan to be a technician.It's more of a job convenience for me than anything else.

Feel free to PM me if you feel that you're bound by an Apple NDA or whatever.

Options for a small & cheap Mac laptop?

attercoppe — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:01:07 -0800

What are my options for a cheap, small Mac laptop? I'm on a tight budget, but would love to get a laptop. I've been looking at netbooks because I love the light weight and small size. However, I may be about to get a job at my school, which basically is an Apple campus, so now I'm considering a Mac instead. I'd still like to find something cheap, small and light, and with some serious battery life. Of course one option is to buy a used or refurbed Mac (maybe an Air?). Could I also buy a netbook and install OS X? Or install some *nix - how compatible (not look and feel but interoperability) would this be?

P.S. I could probably do some research and get some good info, but I thought I'd see what ya'll can tell me first. I've read other questions here, and they seem to be either out of date or about desktops (or both).

Why is my Macbook Pro so slow to load applications?

shivohum — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:28:52 -0800

My 2.4 Ghz Macbook Pro running OS 10.6 seems awfully slow to load applications. Any advice? I have a 2.4 Ghz Macbook Pro with 4 GB of RAM, and compared to a lot of other Macs - like the 2.6 Ghz/2 GB iMac I'm typing this on - it seems awfully slow to load applications. I'm running Snow Leopard, and the problem has not gotten any different or better.

For example, if I quit Word, after opening it, and then start it again, it takes 8 seconds. On this iMac, it takes 2 seconds. They're both running Word 2008.

Firefox 3.6 often takes 6 seconds to open, compared to more or less instantaneously on the iMac. It's true that if I open Firefox, close it, and then open it again on my MBP, it sometimes then loads instantaneously, but if I wait 30 seconds, it might take 6 seconds again. Similarly, it often takes 4-6 seconds for system preferences to open up. And on and on.

I have my graphics card set to "high performance," so it should be using the nVidia card rather than the integrated card, and I have the 7200 rpm hard drive.

What's the deal? I can't think of any exceptional CPU/memory-hogging application that I'm running in the background, and activity monitor shows 85-90% capacity idle. I do run Carbonite and Growl in the background, but they don't seem to take up any CPU power normally.

I have 170 GB of hard disk space free, too, if that matters.

I have installed all software and firmware updates.

Any idea what the deal is? Thanks!

Little deaths 4kb at a time

arniec — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:27:59 -0800

Is my data gone? Convoluted data storage question involving two Macs, a Drobo, and some file permission errors... Question on possible recovery options, and questions on how to stop it from happening again. I have recently switched to a mostly Mac household, with one Windows XP machine and one Windows laptop still around.

For data storage I picked up a Drobo and put in 3 1TB disks on it. I have it hooked to a Mac Mini on the network so it can be used for data storage. I have been moving files off my primary machine (a Macbook Pro) to the Drobo when space was needed on my hard drive.

I have gone back to get some of that data and I cannot get to it. I get the error message:

Item "itemName" is used by Mac OS X and cannot be opened.

I have tried opening these files from my Macbook Pro, from the Mac Mini where the Drobo is directly connected, I've tried moving the files to a new location, opening the files, etc. and I keep getting that same message.

I have checked and even reset all the file permissions to ensure my account does have rights but still the file won't open.

Now it appears many of the files are only 4k or 8k making me think that something went wrong. I'm guessing these files are names only taking up the minimum possible space on the disk and that my data is gone...is that right?

But I don't know if something went wrong when moving the data to the Drobo, when just being stored on the Drobo, or something else. Has anyone encountered anything like this at all?

Help keep my old Powerbook G4 on WiFi. (Technical Mac Question.)

Mid — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:57:25 -0800

Help keep my old Powerbook G4 on WiFi. (Technical Mac Question.) I have an older Powerbook G4 that has seen better days. At some point, the internal Airport card stopped working (I think because the internal antenna broke after a fall). I then popped an external wireless card into the PC slot (the Morotola WN825G) and it worked like a charm for 2+ years. Suddenly, however, the external card is dead. None of the LEDs light up and the computer does not detect it in any program or profiler. I bought a new card (they're only $20) and got the same result. I have done about every kind of reset there is -- battery and power out overnight, reset-nvram in the firmware, control-apple-PR, etc and there is no change. When I look at "Console," nothing happens when I put the card in and pull it out -- i.e., the computer is not registering that a card is in the slot as far as I can tell.

Here are my questions:

1. I have not done any software re-installs. Is it worth it to start re-installing the OS? This seems more like a hardware problem, no? If I re-install, do I need to wipe the drive and start over? Or can I just re-install the system on existing drive?

2. I have not done anything with drivers. I'm pretty sure the Mac does not need a driver to operate this card because the card uses the same chipset as the orginal Airport card.

3. Assuming this is a hardware issue, should I just junk the machine? I feel like anything over $250 is wasted in a machine that is already pretty beat up.

Thanks for your thoughts and guesses.

AVI-to-MP4 while preserving creation dates?

philosophygeek — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:06:08 -0800

I'd like to make a script to mass convert .avi files from my digital camera into iPod-sized .mp4 files, while preserving the creation dates from my camera. I'm on a (non-snowy) Leopard mac. My current workflow involves getting my movies off the camera through iPhoto and then exporting/converting the files to .mp4 via MPEG Streamclip. The downside is that the new .mp4 files have the current date/time rather than the time that the movie was taken on the camera, which messes up my organizational system. I'm sure there's a way to automate the creation date conversion, but I don't know how.

Free methods are obviously preferable to paid ones.

How much should a contract programmer cost?

LadyOscar — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:20:48 -0800

How much should we pay a contract programmer to migrate some code for us? Is it customary for the programmer to present a bid, or do we come up with an amount to offer? Our biology lab is looking to migrate some complicated MRI data analysis from a Linux box to a Mac. Currently we're using a mixed bag of Perl scripts and Matlab modules set up by someone who is no longer with the lab. We'd like to hire a programmer to initially just get the whole thing working on the Mac, then later re-write it, probably in Python, to be more streamlined. However, we've never hired a programmer before, and I have absolutely no idea how much they expect to be paid. Per week, what kind of amount are we looking at? (We're in the Los Angeles area, if that makes a difference.)

Also, is this person likely to have a price that they'll quote us, or do we have to come up with a number? Who sets the time estimate, us, or them?

Thank you for your wisdom, o business-savvy people!

Help with name

fluffycreature — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:47:06 -0800

Trying to locate early nineties database software that was fronted by a comedian, the names of either would help. I am trying to remember an early nineties piece of software that was part database and part information manager. It was for the Macintosh (Windows was to be written but never came to be that I am aware of...)
The company spokesperson was a comedian; he was thin, a mustache and dark hair. I think he was in a couple TV shows but never hugely popular, just recognizable.

I am trying to remember the name of either, which could then lead me to discover the other. It is the software I am mainly interested in.

I have hit a wall in searching for this and am hoping someone has a better memory for this obscure tidbit. It was an interesting piece of software.

Can you "Save For Web" in Lightroom?

chocolatepeanutbuttercup — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:53:12 -0800

Best web photo prep software? Will Lightroom work? Asking for a friend: She is using Adobe Lightroom on a Mac and is familiar with preparing photos for print. Now she needs to be able to prepare photos for a webblog (usually jpgs at medium compression and at no more than 500 pixels wide.)

I looked (quickly) at Lightroom and couldn't figure out how to first, resize an image and second, control the compression. Perhaps it's possible and I just couldn't find it?

If Lightroom is not the answer, I was hoping to find a standalone version of something like Photoshop's "Save For Web" feature where you can see how much compression you're adding and what the end result will be. She could export her photos from Lightroom, pull them into some standalone program to prep them for the web and save them from there. Bonus points for open-source.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Graphics card for G4?

Brocktoon — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:21:04 -0800

What is the best graphics card I could get for a Macintosh G4 dual 1ghz? Would it also be worth getting for my G5 dual 1.8ghz?

What software should I organize my pictures with, when I need seperation into 3 topics?

jakobmunster — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:45:41 -0800

Can anyone recommend me software for a mac, that can help improving my workflow and organization of images, while I keep the images separated into 3 topics? It's possible to categorize my photography this way: 50% hobby photography (or you could call it experimenting and improving my skills), 40% pro photography for costumers while the last 10% goes to "niche photography".

I'd like a piece (or pieces) of software for a mac, that would help me keep my images organized. I've tried programs like Lightroom and Aperture, but it ends up beeing a mess, as I'd like to keep the 3 topics of my photography seperated.

My workflow:
- Import RAW images
- Convert to DNG
- Sort the pictures in keepers and delete the rest
- Rate the pictures. I prefer to use a star rating
- Process the pictures with photo-editing software
- Archive all the pictures and export the ones I would like to display immediately

Suggestions to improving my workflow, is also very welcome.

Can anyone recommend me a combination of software, that will let me do my workflow and still keep my images organized and seperated into the 3 main topics?

Latency? This. Is. Infiniteloop!

selfnoise — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:28:23 -0800

Help me try and fix my mother's weird internet/Mac Mini issue. So, my mother has a Mac Mini. This is one of the older PowerPC ones... no wireless. It's connected via a cat5 cable to a ZyXel wireless router, which is then connected to a DSL modem. The problem she has is a delay between requesting a webpage and having it start to load (in any web browser). Since I am a Windows user, I don't know much about Macs, so I am at a loss.

Pertinent factoids:

-When I go to dslreports.com and run a speed test, I get a latency of between 500-900ms, which seems really high.

-When I ping google.com from within OS X's network dialog, however, the latency looks normal.

-My netbook and another Windows PC can connect wirelessly without this issue. I also connected my netbook to the router using the same cat5 cable; no issue.

-I tried setting the DNS servers to opendns instead of the default; no change.

Apparently the system did not originally have this issue. Any ideas?

Apple/MacIntosh training in Portland, OR?

nickthetourist — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:10:34 -0800

Apple/MacIntosh training in Portland, OR? One of my coworkers recently purchased a new MacBook Pro and needs some training similar to Apple's one to one that is offered when you buy a Mac from an Apple store.
Does anyone know of other places that offer similar training in Portland, OR?

Synch me up

kestrel251 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:54:07 -0800

How to best keep my Mac laptop & desktop synched? So I have a Mac laptop (MacbookPro running 10.4.11) & desktop (um, not sure; I'm on the laptop now). I go back and forth between them. In some periods I'm mostly using the laptop, and in others mostly the desktop. I try to keep them mostly synched up -- every now and then I start up the laptop in "target disk mode" via firwire, and drag and drop.

But that's tedious, requires work on my part (feh!), and is totally fallible. E-mail isn't a problem. But word docs, .pdfs of articles, pictures, and music? Big problem. The two computers are definitely not totally in synch. They don't even have all the same folders. Is there a way to fix this, other than a horrible marathon manual transfer session? What software is available?

Ideally, the software would
a) recognize when two files with the same name are not the same (think older/newer versions of a document)
b) recognize when two files with different names are in fact the same (think .pdfs that got saved with different names)

I apologize if this is a dumb question... I searched older questions, and googled, but everything I came across was several years out of date. This makes me suspect that there is some obvious new solution. I don't have an Apple Time Machine -- I suspect that might be a good idea after I sort this out, right?

Thanks!

Looking for a printer without the problems of finicky ink.

blueberry — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:36:09 -0800

[MomFilter] Looking for a reasonably cheap, reliable printer (for printing text) for an iMac. Leaning towards laser as the experiences with inkjets have been that bouts of little use lead to still full, yet dry and thus worthless ink cartridges. Looking for a printer for my Mom's iMac. She is wanting to print up a bunch of stories she has written, so the printer will only be used for text.
(No need for color, an attached scanner, or anything else)

She's had two cheap inkjets in the past where they were cheap to buy, but then you got gouged on the ink cartridges. These printers would up being a bit like "disposables" or white elephants—either getting gummed up after a while, or she'd not print anything for a month or two by which time the ink would have dried up or otherwise stopped working.

Fellow MeFites, do you own or know of any reasonably cheap (both pre- and post-sale), reliable b/w laser printers that you can recommend out there? Also, am I correct in guessing that laser toner has a longer "shelf life"?

Or, if lasers are too spendy, do you own or can you otherwise recommend an über-reliable inkjet that, say, you can just buy black ink for, and you've never had gum up or dry up on you?

Thanks all!

Replacing a broken Macbook optical drive.

You Can't Tip a Buick — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:23:37 -0800

So I've got an older Macbook with a broken optical drive (it takes heroic measures to get it to eject discs), and I'm trying to figure out the best way to replace it. This is probably a ridiculously simple question to answer, but I wanted to get the hive mind's advice first anyway. My plan is to buy an external cd/dvd drive and just write off the internal as a loss, since the guides I've found for replacing an internal optical drive indicate that it's more of a major task than I'm prepared to take on, and having it professionally replaced would cost a significant fraction of the value of the computer. Is there anything I should watch out for with this plan? Any specific drives that people recommend? I've noticed while idly browsing in stores that most all of the drives I've found say "requires Vista" or something equivalent; does this actually mean that these drives won't work with a Mac?

How do I expand Now Compress archives?

NewGear — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:26:43 -0800

I'm trying to find a way to expand a file that's in an ancient Mac archive format (Now Compress). So I find myself needing to access some files I created back in the mid-1990s. Back then, I had everything on floppies (remember them?) which later on got archived on Jaz discs (remember those?) which were in turn copied over onto cds. There's a bunch of things in those files that I now find myself wanting to access.

Only problem is, most of the files have a ".now" extension. As I recall, that's the extension "Now Compress" used for their archived files. Fort hose that don't remember, Now Compress was part of "Now Utilities", which used to be THE utility package for the Mac back in the OS9 days. Now Compress was sort of Now's "Stuffit" program. It could compress files automatically, create archives, etc. I can barely find information on Google about the old program, let alone any suggestions of how to handle these files nowadays.

So the question is, does anybody know of a program that runs under today's OSX that can expand these files? I'm in a quandry!

Many thanks...

What's a good replacement for Mac Quicken

diode — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:57:23 -0800

What's a good replacement for Quicken on the Mac? I've been struggling with Quicken for years now. 2007 is my latest version. Perhaps it's me that's the problem. . I don't want to flame on Quicken, I just want something else. My primary thing I like to do is download my accounts directly from my bank. All else is optional.

If the Amish used computers...

Sys Rq — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:58:12 -0800

How do I get files from my modern PC onto an ancient Macintosh? I have come into some ancient MIDI gear, and I would like to put it to work. I have a vintage 68K Mac SE running System 7, loaded with all the MIDI stuff (OMS, Mirage), hooked up to all the necessary external doodads. All that's missing is an actual MIDI sequencing program like Opcode Vision or MOTU Performer or whatever.

Aside from constantly scouring eBay, the only way to get such software is to download it. Sounds easy enough (I've found it), except that the Mac has its original 800KB floppy drive. Fun.

Question: How do I get the files from my PC (Windows XP; floppy drive: yes) onto a disk that can be read by the Mac? I'd rather not upgrade the drive (it requires upgrading the motherboard), and I'd rather not curb the SE for a sexy young SE FDHD. I just want to get the files from A to B in the simplest way possible (is it possible?) given what I have.

Any help greatly appreciated.

P.S. I don't need to be told how stupid and unnecessary this is. Really.

What is the Mac 10.5 version of Paint Shop Pro?

CancerMan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:34:21 -0800

Please help me find the Mac 10.5.x version of Paint Shop Pro. I want to move my photo editing tools from my old PC to my new Mac. I have Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 on my WinXP machine and really like some of the features it has. Thinking that all photo-editing software was the same, I went and got Aperture, only to discover that it's a totally different beast.

I did some research into Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Elements, but I can't tell if any have some of the tools I used to use in PSP7. I just like the range of features in PSP7, which gave me the flexibility to do what I wanted with my photos. I've done things like remove red-eye, and most software seems to have that. I also want to be able to do special things, like remove blemishes by color-replacement, and work with GIF and RAW images. Some of the tools I used in PSP7:

- Layering. I sometimes made composite photos by layering one over another, then merging the layers (flattened, according to PSP7).

- Edge smoothing. I sometimes crop and resize photos, and used a smoothing tool to soften the pixellation.

- Selection. Shaped, or freehand, selections that let me copy-paste onto another photo, or within the same photo as a new layer (see above on Layering).

- Re-sizing. A bit different than just saving the pic at a higher resolution, this tool essentially allowed me to enlarge or shrink a photo in my workspace.

PSP7 also had other fancy things that, while I never played with, I would like just in case I decide to dabble.

I am not a professional photographer, and I do not have a standardized workflow for how I process my pictures. I've used mostly point-and-shoot digital cameras, but will likely invest in a D-SLR sometime in the future. What Mac photo-editing software bears a semblance to the PC-only Paint Shop Pro?

On the spinning wheel ride

otolith — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:33:30 -0800

The Gray Screen of Death: another hanging Mac question. A friend of mine generously gave me her older iBook G4 that she didn't need any more. However, the other day when I tried to turn it on it got to the gray screen with the apple logo and the spinning wheel and hung there. That's as far as I've been able to go since then. Neither my friend nor I are 100% positive what OS it's running, but I'm pretty sure it's 10.4.1. Now, bearing in mind that I'm not terribly competent at fixing computer problems, I've tried what seem to be the standard quick fix ideas and here's what happens:

-Starting in safe mode: it gets to the gray screen, stays there for a minute, then shuts itself down again.

-Resetting the PRAM and NVRAM: no change.

-Starting in verbose mode gets me to this message:

Checking disk
Mounting local filesystems
/dev/diskOs3 on / (local)
kern.sysv.shmmax: -1 -> 4194304
kern.sysv.shmin: -1 -> 1
kern.sysv.shmmni: -1 -> 32
kern.sysv.shmseg: -1 -> 8
kern.sysv.shmall: -1 -> 1024
Resetting files and devices
mkdir: /private/tmp: No such file or directory

and it stops there.

Further complication: the computer originally came with OS 10.3.5 and I have the disks for that. However, as I said before, I'm pretty positive that it is now running something above 10.4 (my friend must have upgraded at some point, but she doesn't remember how or when). The tip sheets that I've seen online all say NOT to use disks with an older OS to attempt fixes. My friend also offered to lend me the disks for her current Mac, which are OS 10.5.2 but I'm not sure if that will help me. My question(s) are, can I potentially use any of these disks to do some sort of diagnosis or fix on the computer? If so, which ones and how (again bearing in mind that I'm pretty clueless about this stuff)? Based on the information given, can you think of any other ideas that might fix this problem? Thanks, folks.