Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with windows and apple

I'm trying to win a bet

metacort — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:30:50 -0800

Is Windows 7 an upgraded version of Vista (like Snow Leopard presumably is of Leopard) or completely re-built from the bottom up?

Can anyone lend me a hand in designing my new home network computer setup?

decrescendo — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:54:03 -0800

Can anyone lend me a hand in designing my new home network computer setup? I have two computers right now.

1. Macbook Pro from about a year ago. In awesome shape. Bought it new. I currently use it mostly on travel and in my living room when I'm watching TV and browsing the net.

2. Desktop I built myself in 2006. I use this computer to store all of my music and listen to said music through speakers that are hooked up to it. I also have tons of pictures and videos stored on this machine. 3 harddrives, around 1.5 TB of space I believe.

I'd really like to make this Macbook Pro my primary computer. I spent too much money on it to use it for browsing the net in my living room. I want to be able to have access to the videos, pictures, and music that are currently on my desktop wirelessly while I'm on my Macbook.

How would I best go about this? I can see retiring this desktop or using parts of it to create a server. I envision this server living in my closet somewhere with a lot of storage and backup capability. I'd like to be able to access the data on this server wirelessly via my Macbook anywhere in the world.

And if I have speakers in my bedroom and a 7.1 system in my living room, how can I "beam" music on my server to these seperate speaker setups via my Macbook (basically it would sorta function as a remote control). I don't want to listen to music THROUGH the laptop or speakers connect to the laptop; I want it to come through other setups.

Also, would swapping out my laptop for a new one in a few years be an easy way to tech refresh this system since the server probably wouldn't have to be built from the most up-to-date components? The laptop is going to be what accesses the internet and edits video and what not.

So can I make this setup work and is it easy? (And does anyone have any good resources for building this server?)

What's up with my music files on my PC?

ishotjr — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:12:02 -0800

What is up with my music files' titles turning into nonsensical four-letter titles? Ok, this is a little long, but it's a weird problem that is hard to describe.

I use iTunes on a (Dell) Windows Vista PC laptop. I noticed this issue probably over a year ago, but was too lazy to do anything about it until now.

Thousands of my music files are in files within "C:\My Music" that are named with F and then a number, F00 thru F49. All of my music was originally in "C:\Users\ishotjr\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music," and some of it still is. Within the F-named folders, the files are named/songs titled in three different ways.
1) Most are with four letters in caps, example: AJOM. They are seemingly random and not acronyms of the real titles. Within this, most, in the artist/album, etc. fields in Windows Explorer, have the correct info. A few have nothing at all in those.
In either case, if I choose to play it in iTunes (by clicking the option within Windows Explorer, where I'm viewing the files), it brings me to the song that is properly titled within iTunes (i.e., AJOM takes me to "Levitate Me" by The Pixies in iTunes).
2) A few of the songs are named with their correct name, but with the track number proceeding it (i.e. 01 Debaser)
3) Even fewer are named completely normally, with just the actual song title.

Another weird twist is that in iTunes itself, there are a handful of files that are actually named with the four letter names. Most of these are all from a Velvet Underground greatest hits compilation, but there are a few that aren't.

There seems to be no pattern as to how I procured the music and what's in these weird files. I did bring most of the music onto my computer from my iPod when I got the computer, but some of it I have purchased since owning this computer. The software I used to bring the songs from the iPod to the computer was some free program that I don't recall the name of and deleted to save hard drive space when I was done using it.

The real kicker is that most of these weirdly-named tracks are NOT duplicates, so I can't just delete them. Most of the time, it's one or two songs from a given album that are named weird and in the F-named folder instead of in the folder with the rest of its album-mates.

It seems that I might be stuck consolidating the 49 "F" folders into one (not so hard, just tedious), then trying to rename the thousands of song backs to their proper names by clicking them through to iTunes and manually entering the name of each song into the file name in Windows, then moving all of the songs to the correct place. It's not necessary to do this to be able to listen to the songs, but it's annoying having my files all over the place, especially when I want to delete entire albums off of my hard drive to make space.

My actual question is two-part:
1) Has anyone ever had this weirdo thing happen to their music files before?
2) Does anyone know a better way to fix it than to do everything manually (which will take for-ev-er)?

What is the best way to sync my contacts (name, email, phone number) between my iPhone, MacBook Pro, and Gmail? I am using Address Book at the moment but should I be using something else?

decrescendo — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:50:45 -0800

What is the best way to sync my contacts (name, email, phone number) between my iPhone, MacBook Pro, and Gmail? I am using Address Book at the moment but should I be using something else? What is the best way to sync my contacts (name, email, phone number) between my iPhone, MacBook Pro, and Gmail? I am using Address Book at the moment but should I be using something else?

I just synced them using the "Sync with Google" option in Address Book. Then, I deleted all the garbage contacts that Address Book pulled in from Google since it apparently takes in the "My Contacts" and "All Contacts" contacts. (I ended up with a bunch of stupid Craiglist emails getting pulled in to Address Book; aggravating.)

Then, I plugged in my iPhone and it updated itself with the Address Book.

After that, I went back and completely deleted my Gmail contacts since Gmail wouldn't sync itself back with Address Book in order to delete all the garbage Craiglist contacts it had created.

Then, I used "A To G" to create a .CSV from Address Book to import into Gmail. The big pain this creates (other than not having Gmail sync in the step previously) is that I have to re-add all of Google Talk contacts.

There HAS to be a better way? Does anyone have any ideas?

And I haven't even begun to bring my PC into this equation. Does anyone have any tips for that, too?

64-bit Vista on Mac Pro?

richg — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:24:02 -0800

I'm thinking of getting one of the new desktop Mac Pros recently announced. I'd like to both run Apple's OS X and also use Boot Camp to run 64-bit Windows Vista on it. The question is: will I be able to use the Mac Pro's keyboard and mouse with Vista? Will I be able to use an Apple Cinema Display with Vista? If I have to plug in a PC keyboard and mouse, and use a PC display, that doesn't appeal. I'd like to use the 64-bit version of Windows Vista to access more 6 or 8GB of memory. I'm worried about the lack of 64-bit device drivers, esp. for the Apple keyboard, mouse and display.

I'd appreciate advice from anyone with experience or insight into this.

How to read .msg files on a Mac?

Coherence Panda — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:56:33 -0800

I've got a bunch of (important) single .msg files that I want to read on my Mac (10.5.x). Any advice? Any tool that converts entire mailboxes doesn't seem to apply, and the only dedicated .msg reader I could find is broken. Renaming as .txt doesn't work either. Nor does Emailalchemy or NeoOffice. Help!

Forgive me, Steve Jobs!

photomusic86 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:31:44 -0800

What do I need to do to prep my MacBook Pro for running Vista as a virtual machine? I need Windows to run two or three specialized programs. I am also a die-hard Apple lover. Thus, I don't know what needs to be done to a Vista system to keep it from catching every virus ever made. I'm running last year's MacBook Pro model OS X 10.5 with free virtualization software VirtualBox. And please explain everything as if you were teaching someone who knows nothing about Windows (of any type), and only just barely knows anything about VirtualBox, or any virtualization software. Links are appreciated.

How to stop iPod nano time from changing when syncing with iTunes?

paleyellowwithorange — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 11:56:29 -0800

My iPod nano clock resets to a different time whenever I sync it with iTunes. How can I prevent this? My newly acquired 8GB fourth generation iPod nano reverts to a time 10.5 hours earlier whenever I sync it with iTunes. For example, if the current time on the iPod (set by me) is 10:30pm, when I sync it with iTunes, the time changes to 12 midday.

I've Googled to find a way to prevent this, and an Apple iPod touch discussion forum was the closest I came to a solution. But nothing suggested therein (basically: unplug iPod, close iTunes, open iTunes, connect iPod) has worked for me.

I haven't been able to find this raised previously in Ask MeFi, either.

I'm using Windows XP, which I keep regularly updated; both iTunes and the iPod are also updated.

Why can’t my movies be as convenient as my music?

arniec — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:06:24 -0800

DVDs and Blu Ray discs are such a pain with their ability to be scratched and the need to find where a disc is, is it in the right case, etc. I find myself often drawn to standard definition “on demand” movies on cable (free ones) instead of searching my own high definition or DVD movies. Is there a way to have the convenience of “on demand” and the quality of the original media? We have sold off many of our DVDs with the intent of rebuying the movies on Blu Ray, but we still have about 100 DVDs and maybe 20 Blu Ray discs. What we’re looking for is a way to have those all perhaps ripped to a hard drive that we could then navigate to play the movies. I’m not interested in additional features, deleted scenes, commentaries, just the actual video itself (if I want the others I’ll grab the disc).

I know we can rip the standard def DVDs, but if I bought a Blu Ray drive can those discs be ripped at 1080p quality? If so, how much storage is involved, and what device will play it back at best quality with 7.1 surround sound? Do any media centers do HDMI?

We currently have in our house a 4TB Drobo (2.7TB actual storage space), and I have a Mac Mini that I know many people use as a media center; but if we can get this functionality we would not be opposed to buying Apple TV or some other device. We are a mixed PC/Mac household so software and hardware on either platform will work. Mostly we want easy-to-rip, easy-to-play.

Any suggestions?

Is an Apple keyboard on a PC supposed to be glitchy?

qvtqht — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:53:45 -0800

I have strange issues with my keyboard and mouse in Picasa: shortcuts with modifier keys don't work. Other keyboard and mouse glitches also occur in other applications. Windows Vista; Apple aluminum keyboard; Microsoft Habu mouse. Most of the time, the shortcuts with modifier keys, like Ctrl+A, don't work in Picasa. Also, selecting multiple photos with Shift+click doesn't work either. They work occasionally, but not usually. Things like the spacebar for starring a photo and the arrow keys for navigating still work.

Another glitch, which may be unrelated to the first, is that the tools do not seem to work most of the time in Photoshop. Regardless of which tool I select, clicking on the image doesn't do anything. In Photoshop, shortcuts with modifier keys work fine.

- Vista Home Premium SP1 on your average crappy HP desktop/tower
- Apple aluminum keyboard (I suspect this is the main problem here)
- Microsoft/Razer Habu mouse
- Picasa 2.7
- Photoshop CS3

Mac replacements for Windows software: Bonus points for open-source and/or freeware

curagea — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:35:50 -0800

I'm in the market for an MBP, and thus will need to migrate stuff from my PC eventually. I'm looking specifically for Mac software that are very similar in UI and/or features to the Windows software I'm using now. I found this AskMeFi post, which helps a bit, but doesn't cover everything I'm looking for

My list (sorry, this will be long):
- Notepad++
- FileZilla
- Trillian - I understand there's Adium
- Manga Studio EX - it's kind of stupid how the Debut edition is available in Mac, but not the EX version. Might downgrade.
- VirtualDub
- Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP)
- MozBackup
- Bink and Smacker
- WinRAR
- I need CD/DVD burning software. Nero crapped on me a while back.
- A simple font viewer. Right now I have Free&Easy Font Viewer.
- Cabos - Am looking at AcqLite
- CamStudio
- MP3Gain
- Total Audio Converter
- PowerISO and MagicDisc
- if anyone can think of a better torrent client than Deluge, let me know
- OpenOffice - I know it's available for Mac, but I'd like to know if there are better suites.
- Acronis Disk Director (is partitioning available on Mac?)
- Notebook Hardware Control

Again, it'll be great to get Mac software that are similar in interface so I don't spend too much time hunting for some task that used to appear on the left hand side of my PC screen, or something like that.

Thanks in advance!

Help me listen to my music ... please?

chairish — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:38:15 -0800

Tossing an idea around here ... I'd like to use my old Powerbook as a media server for my Windows network. 1. Me - Vista Business notebook, brand new. I also use an eeePC when I go away.
2. Beloved - almost new XP Pro notebook
3. Son - teenager at home - aging XP Pro desktop, aging Pocket PC, Windows compatible phone
4. Daughter - comes and goes - aging XP Pro notebook

And I have a spare G4 Powerbook that, although three and a half years old, is running nicely.

What I want to do is somehow turn the Powerbook into a media server for our Windows machines. We are a wireless household and we all love our music and movies (currently over 100GB of each on an external hard drive - NTFS). I'd love to be able to use the Powerbook as some sort of server for our media. Ideas?

See, I told you Macs and PCs don't play nice!

joshrholloway — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:51:27 -0800

I'm having a weird Final Cut Pro issue relating to projects interacting with local and remote media files with authentication on server login. (I know that probably didn't make much sense, but this is kind of an emergency issue so I'm frantic. I'll try to give all the details here in the post.)

So the company I work for has a couple of video editors in our marketing department who use Final Cut Studio 2 for editing. We're using the latest versions of all the Pro apps and QuickTime. Here comes the weird issue:

Our two editors, let's call them Jack and Jill, are working on different projects all the time. These are pretty typical video projects incorporating video, audio, text, pictures, etc. You know the drill. These project files are located locally on Jack and Jill's Macs, and the media files for the projects are located on a combination of their local hard drives and Windows Server 2003 file shares in the building using Active Directory credentials for login authentication.

So Jack is the primary video editor, and he's having a problem with his projects. When he's got the servers open and logged in using his own AD credentials, the projects will not open. It gives him the error message, "This project is unreadable or may be too new for this version of Final Cut Pro." The weird part comes in here: when he does the exact same thing and the only difference is that he is logged into the file servers with Jill's credentials, the projects open just fine. Again, the projects are saved locally, not on the servers.

We discovered this evening that Jack did not have proper permissions on some of the locations on the servers where media files were, so the permissions are being changed overnight and we are going to try again in the morning. I just need to know what's going to happen next. It seems to me that if he was logged into the file servers, even if he did not have permissions to all the files, the project would open just fine but would have offline media rather than not opening at all. Is this right?

Again, I'm pretty frantic right now because he's in the middle of a big project that has to be done tomorrow and we just made the change requiring Mac users to log in with AD credentials, so if giving him full permissions on the server doesn't work, I honestly don't know what to do next. Any suggestions?

How to remap Windows XP keyboard shortcuts to standard Apple shortcuts

Frankieist — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:48:45 -0800

I'm used to the keyboard shortcuts on OS X, but I have to use a Windows PC at work. What are some ways that I can remap the keys on XP to get as close to Apple's as possible? I recently set up one of the new Apple Aluminum keyboards on my PC. The drivers are set up fine, so the default windows keyboard shortcuts work on it (Ctrl+alt+del, Command => the Windows key, etc.). I've tried searching google, but many of the options are only partial solutions, and I'm not sure how well they'll work together.

The specific keyboard mappings I'm most interested in changing are:

The ability to use Apple's accent and diacritic shortcuts (e.g. option+e for acute accent, option+c for cedilla). I find the US-International IME on Windows to be a pain.

Some of the OS X shortcuts borrowed from emacs, like Ctrl+A for beginning of line, Ctrl+E for end of line, Ctrl+K for delete to end of line.

Some other text navigation shortcuts, such as option+→ for move forward one word, option+← for move back one word.

I don't really much use the windows key, and I miss the ability to use alt as a meta key (Just using it for menus seems like a waste of a good key). Can any of this be done, or do I just have to deal with using different shortcuts at work and home?

Installing Vista from Upgrade in Bootcamp

Aanidaani — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:39:08 -0800

Has anyone tried installing Windows Vista in BootCamp (On a Mac) using an upgrade disk? I've installed Vista perfectly using this guide on a computer I built myself, but I want to do it on a new Mac. I'd like to install Vista on a Mac using BootCamp, but I don't have a full copy of the OS. I do have a legal upgrade disk, which I've used to install the full OS as described in the link above. I'd just like to know if the same thing is possible on a Mac, or if there is a guide to doing this. Thanks!

Make Windows a partition on my Macbook Pro again!

jk252b — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:36:08 -0800

How to fix screwed up Windows partition on my new Macbook Pro? I have two Macbook Pros -- an "old" one (from July) that got pretty beat up in an accident recently, and a new one that was a replacement. The old one still works, so I tried to using Migration Assistant to move my data from the old to the new.

Almost everything went well, except the migration of my Windows partition (I've been using Boot Camp). Instead of creating a separate partition, Migration Assistant moved it to the os x partition, under the file "/Files from Untitled" (Untitled being the name of my Windows partition on the old computer).

I realize the "easiest" thing to do would be to just delete the new "/Files from Untitled" folder, create a new partition with bootcamp and reinstall Windows. Only problem is, although my Windows is a legal copy, it's from my school and came with a license that expired for installation 5 days after downloaded (back in August). In other words, I don't know if I can get a working copy of Windows to install.

So, how can I move this data to a bootable partition and get Windows to work again?

Keeping my laptops in sync

chairish — Tue, 22 May 2007 02:11:24 -0800

I need some ideas to keep my email, calendar and some key files on my laptops in sync. I work as a trainer / consultant in more than a dozen workplaces. Presently I'm using Google Apps for my email and calendaring and syncing back to Outlook 2007 on my (main) Vista laptop.

30% of the time I work in Mac workplaces so I want to be able to sync the same things on this system.

I tried putting it all into Google Apps but a couple of my work places block GMail and associated domains. I tried using my cellphone as a modem ... but several of these workplaces are in areas where I can only achieve dial-up speed on my modem. One place is so rural that the cellphone only works on 'good days' This is just a bit too tricky. Added to that, Google doesn't do IMAP.

I'd love some ideas.

switching to a pc (sort of) and I need to find some equivalent packages

nickehsmith — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 16:44:00 -0800

For reasons of folly I thought I'd give Windows Vista a go. As a long-time mac user I'm used to relying on the apple community for useful software suggestions and ideas. With windows, I'm not entirely sure where to start so was hoping for suggestions of equivalent software to the following: Unison, Toast, Adium, Transmit, iPhoto, and Stuffit/Other compression utility Low cost is good, but i'll take positive feedback over price tags any day.

How to install OEM Windows XP SP1 in BootCamp

frenchbenj — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 17:16:12 -0800

Can I use the Windows XP SP1 CD that came with my Dell PC two years ago to install Windows on my MacBook using BootCamp?

MacBook Pro PRIMARILY for use with Windows?

scarabic — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 11:30:27 -0800

Please comment on the wisdom of buying a MacBook Pro PRIMARILY for use as a Windows computer. I need a new Windows laptop for work, and I think a new MacBook Pro would be way better than anything IT would spring for. I've always liked Apple's laptops for their form factor, quality, and good design. Nothing in the Windows laptop world appeals to me.

I do use the Mac OS occasionally, but not every day. Having the ability to reboot into MacOSX would be a great bonus.

How well is XP working on these MacBook Pros? Is it totally seamless? Or is it a dumb idea to hope that I can run Windows XP on it and expect all the same functionality I'd get with a Windows-native laptop?

Thanks!

I want to convert from Word to Pages

partner — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 11:24:05 -0800

I'm a professional writer and book editor. I'd like to buy an Apple Mini and at long last get out of the grips of Microsoft. This means I want to use Pages as well. Does anyone have experience converting from Word to Pages.? I now use Word for simple writing and editing of .doc files. I sometimes use the "track changes" feature of word and occasionally footnotes and indexing. Does Word have any trouble reading a file generated in Pages? Will I encounter problems converting my present Word files to Pages?

Running dongled app on Apple Intel box

thayerg — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 11:28:06 -0800

I'm thinking about running Windows on an Apple Intel laptop. Unfortunately one of the apps I use needs a hardware dongle on the parallel port. So I'm wondering whether one can attach a USB/parallel adapter, attach the dongle to that (maybe requires a gender bender) and have the app see the dongle that way. Or is the interaction between the app and dongle too low-level for that? Any help would be appreciated. I can't quite bring myself to buy an intel apple, buy windows xp, load it all up, and then find out I'm SOL. Thanks in Advance.

Does booting often hurt my computer?

visual mechanic — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 21:02:11 -0800

Does booting a computer often lower its life expectancy? I just did the boot camp xp and osx process on my macbook pro. I have 1 application that is windows only that I use once a day. it now occurs to me that I will be booting my laptop at least twice a day to run that software, whereas I used to boot my macs once a week.

Will this cause my hardware to fail more quickly? I've always loved how long my macs last. If it will hurt the computer, I'll switch to a virtualization solution like Parallels.

Which laptop for a skinflint graphic designer?

godawful — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 01:45:49 -0800

The new 15 inch Powerbook suits my computing needs perfectly, but one of those plus new software would actually break the bank. What's the closest I can get with a Windows laptop? Thanks in advance for all your help. This purchasing decision is causing a lot of stress - I can't afford to make a bad decision and end up with a turkey.

I am trying to claw my way into the graphic design profession. Money is tight for the time being. To do my job, I need a laptop that's durable enough to withstand all my commuting, powerful enough to run several heavyweight apps at the same time, and with a high screen resolution. Weight is a factor, as is build-quality.

I have done a lot of research (including past ask.mefi threads) but I've not yet found a machine that I feel comfortable with. I feel sure I'm missing something good.

Or is it the case that the Powerbook will pay for itself? I could be receptive to a cogently argued case for chuffing up the extra cash...