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Data Backup, Part I: Even If You Think You Are, You're Not

Image by brianjmatis via Flickr

[ I've been dealing with a family emergency. I think it is over. Sorry to both my readers if you missed me :-) ]

Today's tip will be the first part in a series about backing up data on Mac OS X. If you are coming up with a backup policy for a bank or the CIA, just stop reading. If you use your Mac for work, then this series may be a good starting point for learning about backing up Mac OS X data.

But if you use Mac OS X for email, video editing, web surfing, gaming, etc... Then I'm writing this article for you. My hopes are that this series will be a big help for you.

Before backing up your data, you need to accept that you are a victim of the three fallacies that everyone has about backups

They know what data they need to backup.

They are backing that data up.

They know how to recover data if they need to.

Thirty years of computing have convinced me that these are universal truths. That being said, you can still improve things.

I feel that 30 years of computing has taught me lots about backing up systems. I recently lost my MacBook Pro's disk, gone through the recovery process, and again have been humbled by the three universal truths about backup.

Subsequent postings in this series will step you through the process of starting to backup your data or improving your data backups.

PS: I like my MacBook Pro very much, but this was a horrible thing that Apple did. Rewarding beta users by forcing them to do extra work to keep their data simply shows a lack of interest in customer service.

Related articles

10 Mac Tools That Every Student Should Make Use Of (makeuseof.com)

I'm struggling to understand why I would ever use iCloud storage. (theludwigs.com)

Before Disaster Strikes - Simple Backup Strategies (brokenpc.wordpress.com)

#Backup #Mac OS #Utilities #Mac OS X #Mac #Backing Up #Data Recovery #Apple #Cloud computing

[mactipaday]

Holy Cannoli Batman! Where Has All My Disk Space Gone?

At least in my personal experience, the amount of free disk space that you have has follows two metaphysical impossibilities:

You need a minimum of 110%. Radical strategies such as doubling your disk space only momentary relief. 

Even once you have deleted the photos of people and places that you don't remember and given up the delusion that you were ever going to listen to your copy of Saturday Night Fever's soundtrack ever again, you simply imagine where your disk space has gone. 

This leaves you with the unpleasant task of deleteing the files that you don't even know about. 

I happen to be a big fan of Grand Perspective. Lifehacker has a good posting about it. But I think disk cleaning utilities are like breakfast cereals. It is easy to tell when you have a terrible one but no reason to expect that other people will like the same cereal. It's all a matter of taste.

So, while I was looking for links to Grand Perspective, I found this posting about OmniDiskSweeper. I've not tried it out, but I think that Lifehacker has fairly high standards for its postings so I thought I would mention OmniDiskSweeper. 

While I love Grand Perspective, it has a UI that will discourage some people. It seems like OmniDiskSweeper may help those people.

PS: In case you're wondering, I'm looking at Mac OS X disk space because I'm trying to save the data from my MacBook Pro's disk

#Hard disk drive #OmniDiskSweeper #Disk Management #Mac OS X #Grand Perspective

[mactipaday]

Installing DMGs With A Bit Less Work

While today's posting should be entitled Why It Is Important To Backup Your Harddrive Before It Crashes, that isn't a particularly Mac OS X specific subject. I still haven't gotten my MacBookPro running but I've usurped my son's MacBook Air and think I have all my data backed up but need a bit more than the 64Gig the MacBook Air has on it to get my data back and check.

I found a cool trick for installing DMGs. It only saves one step and doesn't seem to work on all configurations of all browsers. It seems to always work on Firefox. 

Typically, you download a DMG and save it to disk and then have to open it separately. Despite DMG's being Mac OS X's specific file format, it is easier generally easier to install something from a .zip or a .tar file. Firefox gives you the option to save the file or open it immediately.

But, at least in FF, you have the option to open a DMG file directly. The only problem is that FF doesn't give you any programs to open the DMG file with. But it' there if you know where to find it  So, the next time you open a DMG and are given the choice of using an application to open it:

Select the choose option to bring up a file selection menu.

Then type& ⌘^G.

Copy and paste /System/Library/CoreServices.

Then select the DiskImageMounter app.

And voila, you get a Finder window with your DMG's contents already in it.

Related articles

Using encrypted DMGs to store sensitive data on OS X (petewarden.typepad.com)

#Mac OS #Apple Disk Image #Disk Utility #Mac OS X Lion

[mactipaday]

Pimp Your Dock

Image via Wikipedia

  Today I'll talk about a nice, simple utility. While I will discuss Launcher at some later point in time, I promise that this tool provides instant gratification, at least if you like monkeying around with Mac OS X's UI.

The first is a fun UI app that let's you change the look of your Mac OS X Dock. Not surprisingly, the app is called Docker . For reasons that I don't understand,Docker is not in the Mac OS X App Store. You can download it from the publisher's website at Docker or you can download it from a Web download site such as downloading Softpedia's distribution of Docker or from C*NET's distribution of Docker. I frequently prefer to use the respectable download sites as I'm always a bit nervous about downloading software so I so I try to follow Star Wars' Quotes quote #71 and not trust strange computers.

I think discussing Docker in any length is a waste of time. It is easy to use and fun to play with. So, with a single cautionary note, I suggest you download Dockerand enjoy.

The cautionary note seems obvious when you hear it but is easy to forget. Making minor modifications to how something like the Mac OS X dock looks can have significant impact on your computer's performance - especially the computer's displaying of graphics. If your computer is running fine, then pimp your Dock and enjoy. But if you are playing some browser game that has lots of graphics and you keep getting your head split open because your computer is too slow, then you should consider changing your Dock settings. While I'm a heavy computer user, I'm not a big gamer so I have no problems with my pimped out Dock. Here's a few rules of thumb should

Animation is slower than no animation. This applies to the opening and closing of windows (I dig that genie minimize effect) as well as whether or not your Dock autohides.

3D is slower than 2D.

Transparent or translucent is slower than opaque or invisible. In general, if you have show an image at 1% transparency, 50% transparency, and 99% transparency, they will all slow your computer down equally. You need the 0% transparent (ie: opaque) or the 100% transparent (ie: invisible) to make a difference. 

Related articles

Weekly Poll: How Many Apps Are in Your Dock? (mac.appstorm.net)

Customizing Folder Icons (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

#Mac OS X #Dock #Mac OS #Finder

[mactipaday]

Adding 3 + 5, Part VI: Using A Launcher

[Long posting today guys but

Today is the final day of the series of different strategies for implementing the simple calculation of/3 + 5/. Today's entry is a bit different as it involves installing an application. The application is a /launcher/. Mac OS X is famous for its launchers and almost equally infamous for the battles between fans of one launcher v. another. You can think of a launcher as the Spotlight on steroids.

There are some very fancy graphical lounchers. The launcher we're going to discuss today is surprisingly called /Launcher/. You can download it from the developer's [[http://bit.ly/ni0oRH][website]] or directly from [[http://bit.ly/pb32IZ][Mac App Store]] (probably simpler as it is just a couple of clicks. While it may seem silly to download a program just to do a trivial math problem when there are so many other means of doing mathematical calculations on Mac OS X (this is the 6^th posting in this series), a Mac OS X launcher is one of the most powerful productivity tools. 

So go download /Launcher/ from one of the links below. It will only take a minute if you pull it from the [[http://bit.ly/pb32IZ][App Store]] link.

Once you have it installed, you can do our /3 + 5/ equation by triggering Launcher and then typing /3 + 5/.

1) \^-Space will bring up Launcher's window. IT is just a single text box for entry.

2) Type /3 + 5/ and you'll immediately see the answer /8/.

Yeah yoah. I know. Big whoop. Even I can do addition, at least up until 10, without having to take my shoes and socks off.

#+CAPTION: Launcher with answer options closed (see right-pointing triangle at the right part of the window). 

[[http://bit.ly/qqFfUz]]

From here, you can expand te options by clicking the triangle on the top right of the match pane:

With the matching possibilities expand, you can move the cursor through various matches using some combination of arrow keys and tabs. Hitting enter will copy the current match to the clipboard. 

Before ending for the night (and one day behind but we'll ignore that as I'll retroactively date this posting - but it's a secret, don't tell) I should point out a few other simple tools that you can do with /Launcher/.

1) Open /Launcher/ with the ^-Space keys and type the word /hello/. You'll immediately see a dictionary definiton of the meaning of the word. If you hit the Enter key it will open up the Dictionary app with a more complete definition.

2) Open /Launcher/ and type in an URL. Let's say you choose one of your favorites: /http://mactipaday.neilsmithline.com/. Then hit the Enter key. And if you want to save some typing, you don't need to bother with the http://.

3) Not wanting to overload you with Launcher's functionality as even a wimpy Mac OS X launcher can easily overwhelm a new user), I'll show one more final use of /Launcher/. Surprisingly, it can launch programs. So if you bring up the Launcher window and type /cal/ you'll see a few options. Depending on your specific configuration, you may have a different number of options. But everyone probably has /Calculator/ and /iCal/. You can move the cursor down using the arrow keys to the option you want or click on it with the mouse. 

One of the really cool things about Mac OS X launchers is that they try to adapt to your behaviour. For example, select whatever is the second app. It doesn't matter. Once it opens close it. Now pring up /Launcher/ again and type the same /cal/. The odds are good that what was the second item will now be the top item. If not, try it a few more times and it will learn your preferences.

I think that /Launcher/'s, and other Mac OS X launcher applications, greatest power come from the fact that a single application that is always one click away can do so much. Today I've demonstrated using /Launcher/ as a calculator and an application launcher. It also integrates with the web, search engines and more. But that's for another posting. 

I'll talk more about launchers throughout as I post. While I may give tips about other launchers, I will focus on /Launcher/ for the same reasons I chose it today: It is relatively easy to use and install and it's free.

Related articles

The Best App Launcher for Mac [Mac App Directory] (lifehacker.com)

Adding 3 + 5, Part III: Spotlight (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Growl! (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

#Mac OS #Mac OS X #Open source #App Store #Spotlight #Calculator #Web Searching #addition

[mactipaday]

Mac Tip A Day Takes A Personal Holiday

Full service will resume tomorrow.

[mactipaday]

Adding 3 + 5, Part V: bc

[Uh oh! 10 minutes and I'm just starting.]

Today is part V in my series on different ways that Mac OS X can do a simple mathematical operation. While our example 3 + 5 is pretty simple, I've tried to focus on the pros and cons of each strategy. I say that because today's solution is the least elegant that I will present in this series. This solution requires brining up the dreaded Terminal window and running *nix command.

But don't panic. It's an easy thing to do.

Open a new Terminal app window.

When you get the prompt type in: bc -l - that is, type in the  the lower-case version of BC -L

You'll get a few lines of text and then no prompt but bc is running in the window. The -l flag is not needed for our simple example but I always add it because it seems to cost nothing and makes bc do more.

Now type in: 3 + 5

Hit enter.

Voila. The answer appears.

So you may be asking yourself why I would bother showing you such a nasty looking calculator. It's a fair question.

The answer is that this ugly, nasty-looking calculator is one of the most powerful calculators I have ever used. It's not programmable and it won't graph. But it will do arbitrary precision calculations and that is very rare. And it will do them incredibly quickly. 

Arbitrary precision is easier to explain by explaining its opposite, fixed precision. Open up the Calculator app that was discussed in part I of this series. Then divide 3 by 7. Depending on the settings you have in Calculator's View-->Decimal Places menu. You will see up to 15 digits to the right of the decimal point. While most of the time 15 digits is more than enough, what do you do if you ever need 20, or 50, or 100?

That's where bc shines. Go back to your Terminal app and divide 3 by 7. I think you get 20 digits by default. No problem. Copy and paste these lines into bc:

scale=100

3/7

I guess 100 digits of precision isn't that impressive for a computer for division. But how about this one:

scale=1000

4*a(1)

First, I'm no math wiz. I stole that directly from the bc man page. It's on your computer but if you don't know how to get it, just look at this online version. And, in case you're wondering, little bc just calculated the first 1,000 digits of pi. On my computer it takes about a half second to do that. 

While my examples have only involved numbers with large decimal portions, setting bc's scale variable works on the non-decimal places as well. So if you want to calculate some really large number, bc is there as well. 

Unless you're trying to impress your friends by memorizing 1,000 digits of pi, you probably won't need bc very often. But it is a very handy tool when you do need it.

Also, bc is probably the easiest of all the calculators we have looked at to copy-and-paste the input or output. Sometimes that can be helpful.

I think tomorrow will be the last in this series. Please let me know if you have other ways of doing math on the Mac. I can always add another part in a week or two.

Related articles

What is the square root of 65 to 1 decimal place (wiki.answers.com)  This is an interesting example. bc  will do this just by copy-and-pasting the two lines below. This means you can get dumber as long as you remember how to read the bc man page to find out that scale is the number of decimal places and that sqrt is the function for square root.

scale=1

sqrt(65)

Adding 3 + 5, Part II: The Dashboard (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Adding 3 + 5, Part I: Calculator.app (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Adding 3 + 5, Part III: Spotlight (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Adding 3 + 5, Part IV: Browser Search Box (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Correct Decimal To Floating-Point Using Big Integers (exploringbinary.com)

#Calculator #Mac OS X #Mac OS #Arbitrary-precision arithmetic #Arithmetic precision #addition

[mactipaday]

Adding 3 + 5, Part IV: Browser Search Box

This is part IV in my series on adding 3 + 5 in Mac OS X. The first three parts have covered using Calculator.app, the Mac OS X Dashboard Calculator, and Ma OS X's Spotlight. Today's solution, while not specific to Mac OS X, is another option that you can utilize in Mac OS X.

According to this monthly survey from W3Schools.com, there are only five browsers with significant usage. W3Schools.com doesn't seem to separate mobile from desktop browsers but this blog is about the desktop Mac OS X and not iOS, the iPad OS and iPhone operating systems, so I don't think it matters.

I'm also assuming none of my readers are using Internet Explorer. If you do use IE, at least by choice, I think you should just stop reading now. It isn't personal. I'd just prefer if voluntary IE users (eg: not at work) don't read my blog :-)

That leaves us four browsers. In alphabetical order they are Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. The instructions for each browser vary slightly but they are all similar. Being each browser has its own style, unless you are a web surfing wizard, I recommend you only read the instructions for the browser you use. The browser-specific instructions are:

Chrome: Go to the search box, make sure Google is the current search provider, and type 3 + 5. If you have disabled instant search, you'll need to type Enter to get the answer. Also, if Google is your default search provider and instant search is enabled, you can type 3 + 5 into the URL bar of Chrome as well. You can manage your Chrome search provider and instant search settings.

Firefox: As in Chrome, make sure Google is your current search provider if you are using the search box search suggestions enabled. Then just type 3 + 5. You can also use Firefox's URL bar if Google is your default search engine and you have search suggestions enabled. At least for my Firefox setup, I needed to put the equation in a pair of parentheses. I had to type (3 + 5). Firefox also lets you create keyword searches (see instructions) that allow you to use keywords similar to Opera, though you still need the parenthesis.

Safari: Go to the Safari's search box, select Google as the current search provider, and type 3 + 5.

Opera: Go to the URL bar and type g 3 + 5. In Opera "g" is the default search shortcut for Google.

Note: All of these are strategies depend on your browser version and settings, your Google settings, and perhaps on your language and location.

While this solution uses Google Calculator and not a Mac OS X-specific solution, it is still another calculator that is available to you when using Mac OS X. And Google Calculator is a wonderful.

GoogleGuide, an excellent site, has a tutorial on using it as well as a quick-reference cheat-sheet. While I virtually never use Google Calculator as a calculator, I routinely use it as a unit converter.

So, for each of the above browsers, you can replace 3 + 5 with 5 lbs in grams. So, unless you happen to know that 5 (US) pounds is about 2.7K grams, you may find this helpful.

While it may just be me, I frequently use the word as instead of in. Sounds fine but as doesn't work.

There is at least one more posting in this series, perhaps two.

PS: Note that I will not be covering web calculators in general. I don't really consider random web pages as part of Mac OS X. The uses of Google Calculator that I covered above are accessible from the browser URL bar or search bar. With instant search/search completion, you don't have to ever visit the web page.

Related articles

The Best Web Browser for Mac [App Directory] (lifehacker.com)

How to Enable Instant Pages on Google Chrome Browser (quickonlinetips.com)

#Mac OS X #Mac OS #Apple #Firefox #Chrome #Safari #Google Calculator. #addition

[mactipaday]

Adding 3 + 5, Part III: Spotlight

This is the third in my series demonstrating the wide variety of ways that you can use Mac OS X to do the simple task of adding 3 + 5. Part I discussed using Calculator.app, Part II demonstrated the use of Mac OS X's Calculator widget. Part I used the standard Calculator app. Today we'll use Mac OS X's Spotlight.

This tip is so simple that it hardly seems worthy of a posting. But the 3 + 5 series is not about any one tip, rather it is about the wide variety of tools that Mac OS X provides that let everyone develop their own style of use.

Here are the steps for using the Mac OS X Spotlight as a simple calculator:

Open Spotlight. (See previous posting on keyboard shortcuts for details.)

Type into Spotlight: 3 + 5

That's it. There's no need to click on the answer or hit the enter key. Once you have the answer you can just hit ⎋ (that's Mac for the Escape-key.) If you want to do more complex arithmetic or are going to be doing multiple math operations, you can select the finder item. That will open up the Mac OS X Calculator.app so you have it handy.

In Part I of this series I touched on using the the keyboard to enter data into Calculator.app. Yesterday I mentioned that you could use Enter instead of the equals sign. There are a few more common keyboard shortcuts worthy of mentioning.

Multiplication is not the letter "X" but rather the asterisk (*).

Exponents such as 32 are written as 3 ^ 2 (that's the caret symbol, you get it by typing ⇧6). 

If you want to see more keyboard shortcuts for the Calculator app, open the Calculator's help menu and type in keyboard.

Note: A least on my computer, typing shortcut does not produce any help results even though shortcut is in the title of the help page. Something is broken somewhere.

Mac OS X Spotlight

using the Mac OS X Spotlight.

#Mac OS X #Mac OS #Apple #Calculator #Spotlight #addition

[mactipaday]

Adding 3 + 5, Part II: The Dashboard

For part two of 3 + 5, we'll use the Mac OS X Dashboard calculator. 

Due to the Dashboard's popularity and ease-of-use, as I stated a couple of days ago, I am not going to go into details about using it. If you are unsure about how to use Mac OS X's Dashboard, see this iCreate posting. It predates Mac OS X Lion but the only difference is how you open the Dashboard so it should be fine. 

Unlike the rich Calculator.app that I mentioned yesterday, this is a fairly wimpy calculator. That being said, It is very handy. If you don't have the calculator widget open on your dashboard, you can open it by double-clicking on the Calculator in the Dashboard manager widget (center of picture). 

Image via Wikipedia

Once you open the calculator in the Dashboard, you can use it just like the Calculator app that was discussed in the Part I posting from yesterday. While this calculator isn't nearly as rich as Calculator.app, it is very convenient to keep open and have it just a few mouse clicks or keystrokes away.

While I didn't mention it in yesterday's posting, both Calculator.app and the Dashboard Calculator widget allow you to use the Enter key instead of the equals sign (much easier IMO).

There are some valid concerns about the Dashboard making your computer run slower or use your laptop's battery faster. While I'm not an expert on the Mac OS X internals (love to hear from one if they read this), as best as I can tell, the Calculator widget is not a widget that causes such problems. In fact, I think leaving the Calculator.app running is actually more costly than the Dashboard widget.

#Mac OS X #Mac OS X Lion #Calculator #Dashboard #Mac OS #Apple #addition

[mactipaday]

Adding 3 + 5, Part I: Calculator.app

Image via Wikipedia

This is the first in a series of posts that will demonstrate the various ways that Mac OS X provides for doing mathematical calculation. Being that this blog is about Mac OS X and not Calculus or Non-Linear Differential Equations, I'll stick to the simple example of  3 + 5.

We'll begin by using Mac OS X's Calculator app. If you have Calculator in your Dock, you can open it from there. If not, you can go to your competer's Applications directory to run it from there or type ⌘-space and type Calculator Into the Spotlight window.

Once you have the Calculator app open, you use your mouse or the keyboard to enter:

       3  + 5 =

Hopefully you won't be surprised by the answer. 

While you have the Calculator app open, you may want to look at some of the menu options. The View menu has Basic, the default mode, but Scientific, Programmer and RPN as well. If you don't know what those words mean then you probably don't need them. 

IMO, the best option is in the Window menu which gives you access to the Paper Tape window. This window provides a self-updating history of the math you've used Calculator for. Now there's need to write numbers on stickies :-)

If you knew this already, don't worry. I have at least three or four ways to do math on the Mac. This was just the intro posting. They get better as the series progresses. 

And I'd love to hear any strategies you have for doing arithmetic on Mac OS X. I think there are so many that no one person can know them all.

#Mac OS #Mac OS X #Calculator #addition

[mactipaday]

Seeing ALL Your Files In Finder

Mac OS X's Finder is a great application. It is certainly better than Windows Explorer. On average, I think it has about equal utility of Linux finder applications (hard to say more as there are so many *nix's and so many finder apps on them). 

It is because of its great utility that I have spent 20-25% of my previous blog postings on the Finder and the Dock.

I previously posted that Mac OS X is *nix and demonstrated an awkward way of demonstrating it. But just a few days ago I read about a clever widget1. The Hidden Files Widget's UI is just a single button that sits in your Dashboard. That's it. But it is a very good button.

To see the button do its thing, open a Finder window to your home directory. Look at the files that are there. Then open your Dashboard and push the button and go back to your Finder window. You may find that your Finder window has disappeared. This is normal behavior and it should be back in just a few seconds. 

When your Finder window does come back, you'll many more files. This will be similar, perhaps even identical, to the files that you see using the ls(1) command described in my previous posting.  

If you are really feeling adventuresome, go to your hard drive's / directory, probably called Macintosh HD in the Finder. You will now see a handful of new directories there. I've never checked disk usage on a new Mac OS X install but I think that over 50% of what comes on a Mac OS computer is in these hidden folders.

Most of the time you can just happily use Mac OS X and forget about all those files and folders. They're hidden because they're not typically needed by users and if you do the wrong thing, you can make your Mac very unhappy. But it's nice to have such convenient access to these files.  

Footnotes

1. Widgets are the thingamajiggies that run on Mac OS X's Dashboard. I've not discussed the Dashboard as in Leopard, my first Mac OS X, Apple was shoving the Dashboard into your face that it was pretty hard to miss. Lion has made the Dashboard even more prominent.

Related articles

The Best Alternative File Browser for Mac [App Directory] (lifehacker.com)

Mac OS X Is *nix Too (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

The Best FTP App for Mac [Mac App Directory] (lifehacker.com)

#Mac OS X #Mac OS #Finder #Dashboard #Windows Explorer #Apple #Dock

[mactipaday]

Having Trouble Watching Or Listening To .{wmv/mp4/mp3/...} Files?

Mac OS X can sometimes have trouble playing some types of media files (especially ones that were created by Microsoft). I've previously posted about that VLC can handle many media types.

But if you are still having trouble viewing a specific type of media file or would like to view it in your browser instead of in a standalone app, Perian may be just what you are looking for. It Perian has a trivial installation process, integrates with your browser, iTunes, QuickTime, and other media players, and is configured via Mac's System Preferences.

If you are still having troubles with certain video formats after installing Perian, Perian's /Explore/ tab has links to additional resources you can install.

Related articles

Video Viewing And Editing Options (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Doremisoft Upgrades Mac Flip Video Converter To Support Mac OS X Lion 10.7 (prfire.co.uk)

iFunia Media Converter updated for Mac OS X Lion (themactrack.com)

#QuickTime #Mac OS #iTunes #Media Player #VLC media player #Mac #Mac OS X

[mactipaday]

Customizing Folder Icons

Yesterday's post discussed a Business Insider article about saving space in your Mac OS X Dock by displaying all of your new applications in a single folder icon in the Dock. While this is a great idea, I simply cannot bare to add yet another light-blue folder to my Dock. I have enough of those already. This means either we don't organize our applications into a folder or we make the folder something other than the standard light-blue default icon. In case you can't guess which option I chose, here's a screenshot of my dock.

While this example will assume that you wish to change the directory icon of a folder named +MyApps. This was folder introduced discussed in this blog a couple of weeks ago and enhanced in yesterday's post, what is discussed will work for most Mac OS X folders.

To change a folder's icon you need two things: (1) a folder, and (2) a new icon. Mac OS X is rather picky about what iconss can be used for folder icons and how to use them. The directions that follow work with the icons from this icon pack and I recommend that you use this icon pack the first time you add a custom icon to a folder so you get the feel of doing it.

Starting with this icon pack, I then:

Opened a Finder window and went to the Applications directory.

In the Finder window I right-clicked on the +MyApps directory and selected Get Info. This brings up a window with information about the +MyApps directory.

I left the info window open but ignored it for a bit.

I unzipped the icon pack.

Browsed the icons in the MAC directory until I found one I liked.

I then opened that icon in Mac OS X's Preview application. For me, Preview was the default application for opening the icon but it may be different on your computer. If opening the icon doesn't bring it up in Preview, simply right-click on the icon and select Open With to open the file with Preview.

If Preview does not have a sidebar showing you thumbnails of the icons, select View–>Sidebar–>Thumbnails in Preview to get the sidebar.

Select the top thumbnail in the sidebar. This should be the biggest icon.

In Preview, select Edit–>Copy.

At this point you should have a Preview window on top of your desktop and a Finder's info window somewhere. I completed the icon change by:

Selecting the info window making it the current window.

I know this sounds strange but in the top left corner of the info window is a small folder icon. Left-click on that small icon. The icon actually gets a little darker when you left-click on it but the change is very subtle and can be missed. If you aren't sure that you clicked on the icon, just click on it again.

I then went to Finder's menubar and selected Edit–>Paste.

Now the folder has a new icon. When you view the +MyApps icon in Finder you'll see that new icon instead of the default light-blue folder icon. The +MyApps folder in your Dock should change to your new icon. If it doesn't change, right-click on the folder icon in your Dock and select Display as–>Folder. Display as–>Stack does not show the custom icon.

Apple has a page describing this process that you can use for reference. I found that Apple's page was simpler but only worked with a limited number of icons.

Related articles

How to make Lion more like Snow Leopard (macworld.com)

Application Installation Revisited (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Installing Applications (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Three ways to fix OS X Lion's Finder sidebar (zdnet.com)

How to Change Dock Icons on a Mac (maketecheasier.com)

#Finder #Apple #Mac OS #Mac OS X #Dock #Folder #Icon

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Application Installation Revisited

I previously posted a strategy for installing applications in Mac OS X. I have just found an article in Business Insider that recommends a similar strategy but adds an improvement.

My previous post on installing applications recommended that you create a new folder in your computers Applications folders and store any apps you install there. I recommended that the folder be call +MyApps as the plus-sign makes the folder be first when sorted by name in the Finder.

The improvement, and I think it is a very clever one, is to drag your new folder, +MyApps in my posting, to the right side of your dock. This will put the applications you have installed in your Mac OS X Dock in a folder of its own.

The article has a nice tutorial to help you through the steps. There are a few places where I recommend different practices from what they recommend

I think +MyApps is a better directory name than the plain Apps that they recommend. It's a small difference but Apps seems easy to confuse with a Mac OS X directory name.

In their step #4, they are not clear that you should only move new applications into the new directory. They do not mean that you should move all of the applications in the Applications directory into your new +MyApps directory. Moving all of the applications may cause problems when you get a Mac OS X update.

This is the one that I think is the coolest so I'm saving it for tomorrow :-)

#Mac OS #Finder #Dock #Mac OS X #Mac #Folder

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Video Viewing And Editing Options

Image via Wikipedia

When it comes to video viewing, Macs have quite a few built-in options. iTunes is the most well-known. The underlying audio/visual support for iTunes comes from a Quicktime. Quicktime doesn't have much brand recognition but is frequently a browser plug-in for watching videos on PCs.

While these are fine applications, I try to stay away from them, especially iTunes as its privacy policy makes me a bit uncomfortable (nobody needs to know that I'm still a Scooby-Doo fan).

Among the many wonderful audio/video applications, my favorite is VLC. It is, of course, free (but in need of donations). It is multi-platform. It runs on about every desktop OS that you can name. And it seems to play just about anything I throw at it. Once in a while I throw a file format that it doesn't recognize but it tells me where to get an update, called a codec, to play the file (read more about codecs).

I have also found VLC to be the best app to use when watching video on an external monitor (eg: my LCD flat-panel). Besides being able to fix any aspect ratio problems, it has the very neat ability to have the controls on your laptop with the video on your TV. There are also countless VLC remote control apps for smart phones or other desktops.

Even if you like iTunes, you may want to grab VLC in case you run into a video that iTunes won't play for you.

Related articles

Skip Forward and Back Five Seconds in iTunes with a Keyboard Shortcut [Video] (lifehacker.com)

Media players - It's the media world after all! (aktechnation.wordpress.com)

PS: I'm still wondering whether I should have gone with this picture instead of the VLC icon for this post.

#iTunes #Quicktime #VLC media player #VLC #Video #Mac #mac os x #mac os

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I Miss My IM Buddies

The Adium Icon (Image via Wikipedia)

Never fear as Mac OS X is here (it's been a very long week so far - my pun-iness tends to run proportional to my level of exhaustion).

There is no doubt that Mac OS X, and Apple in general, are famous for their audio/visual features. The list includes minor things such as: iTunes and its redefinition of music and movie distribution, the iPod, the iPhone, built-in cameras on all of their laptops (even the teeniest MacAir has one) to enable video conferencing, some great video editing programs, etc... And that is not to mention the first affordable, color, home PC, the Apple II back in the early 80's. 

Apple became so heavily identified with audio that they were actually sued by Apple Records for trademark infringement (apparently it wasn't infringement until Apple became a music distributor). If I recall correctly, Apple Computers settled the case for some huge licensing fee to Apple Records, the label that produced The Beatles.

Getting back on track, despite all of this, Apple's iChat program is rather basic. It only supports AIM, Google, and Jabber (Facebook is Jabber-based) networks. Perhaps that would be enough but iChat is kind of a dull program. Fortunately, there are some free, 3rd-party vendors filling in the gap.

As far as I can tell, Adium has been The IM Client for Mac OS X. I love the feel of the program, there are about a gazillion customizations you can download from the site. It, of course, integrates well with Growl, and supports a ton of IM networks.

But I think Adium may be losing ground as it doesn't support voice or video. If you want voice or video IM on your Mac OS X computer, there really aren't that many options. Skype has been souped up for Lion (see article below). There's also a collection of web clients such as Google Talk. There is no desktop Google Talk for Mac OS X.

While it is still too soon to tell, I think that the technology that Vonage uses is likely to win in the end. For that there are many clients. Blink seems to be one of the more popular ones (and it to integrates with Growl). There's a free/lite version available on their website with a pointer to the full version in the Mac App Store.

Related articles

Growl! (mactipaday.neilsmithline.com)

Daily Mac App: Adium (tuaw.com) (Curses! The wrote the same article 2-weeks ago. I wouldn't have know it except that Zemanta popped it up as a link.)

The top 6 best Instant Message client apps on any platform (thenextweb.com)

Apple's iMessage Will Work With iChat, Bridging the Gap Between Text and IM (readwriteweb.com)

Lion Support & HD Video Calls with Skype 5.3 for Mac OS X (blogs.skype.com)

New Facebook Integration with Skype 5.4 for Mac OS X Beta (blogs.skype.com)

Three iMessage trademarks surface, point to Apple messaging consolidation (9to5mac.com)

Review: iChat 6.0 (macworld.com)

#Mac OS X #Mac OS #Apple #instantmessaging #IChat #im #skype #adium