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NEWSLETTER
Where to Recycle Used
Computer Equipment
How To Install An
Application Demo
http://www.crc.org/
Our Saturday March 13th Mac meeting, we’! see how to insta! a
new program on the laptop. Kathy wi! demonstrate insta!ing
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 on her iBook at 9 a.m.; Election of
Officers for 2010.
Check out iRecycle!
http://earth911.com/iphone/
iRecycle makes it easy to find
recycling locations anywhere in
the U.S
Redwood Moving &
Storage in Healdsburg,
off Foss Creek Circle recycles
electronics & computers at no
cost. (707) 433-2240. (See Pg. 14)
MAC
NEWSLETTER
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
MARCH 2010
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SVCG OFFICERS President
Beth Pickering
[email protected]
Secretary
Kathy Aanestad
[email protected]
Treasurer
Joan Fabian
[email protected]
Newsletter
Kathy Aanestad
[email protected]
Members-at-Large
Chip Allen
[email protected]
Elizabeth Palmer
[email protected]
Dave Bixler
[email protected]
Jeanette Barekman
[email protected]
Dennis Astrubel
SVCG Evangelist Veda Lewis
[email protected]
Webmaster
Kathy Aanestad
[email protected]
Board Meetings: Open to all members.
S.V.C.G. meets second Saturday of each month
at Sonoma Public Library, 755 West Napa
Street; HOURS: Mac: 9AM-10:30AM,
Windows: 10:30AM-noon unless otherwise
notified. Guests Welcome. No Charge.
About this publication
Sonoma Valley Computer Group Newsletter is published monthly by
Sonoma Valley Computer Group. Desktop publishing services donated
by: Kathy Aanestad. Call: (707) 935-6690, email [email protected].
© 2009, SVCG. All rights reserved. Sponsored by our local ISP,
DataProfessionals, on 19480-8th St. East.
Mailing Address:
Sonoma Valley Computer Group
PO Box 649
El Verano, CA 95433
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SVCG USER GROUP
BENEFITS AND DISCOUNTS
PEACHPIT
See Pg. 3 for info.
O’REILLY
Members receive a
20% discount on
O'Reilly books and
conferences. Contact
Kathy for the code.
NEW RIDERS
BOOKS
http://
www.newriders.com
BECOME A NEW
RIDERS CLUB
MEMBER. You can
save up to 20% on all
books every day at
newriders.com simply
by becoming a New
Riders Club Member.
Membership is free
and easy. All you have
to do is answer a few,
short questions in our
ongoing, online
survey, which you can
access on any book
page. Don't worry.
All of your
information stays with
us--we won't sell it or
give it away to anyone.
After you've filled out
the profile, you'll save
MARCH 2010
20% automatically
whenever you log on
to http://
www.newriders.com
as a member. It's that
easy!
Note that you may use
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Coupon Code ON
TOP of your Club
Member savings. Just
remember to log in
first when making a
purchase and then
enter the code at
checkout as well!
Contact Kathy for
code.
WILEY BOOKS
http://www.wiley.com/
WileyCDA/Section/
id-350383.html
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MAC USERS — 2010 TOPICS!!
We’re going to take a look at:
• How to Install an Application
• iPhoto
• Mail
• iPhone Apps
• iCal
• iDVD
… and MORE!!!
PEACHPIT: PUBLISHERS OF TECHNOLOGY BOOKS, eBOOKS, AND VIDEOS
You can save 30% on all books every day at peachpit.com simply by becoming a Peachpit Club
Member. Membership is free and easy. All you have to do is answer a few, short questions in our
ongoing, online survey, which you can access on any book page. Don't worry, all of your information
is confidential and stays with us--we won't sell it or give it away to anyone. After you've filled out
the survey, you'll save 30% automatically whenever you log on to http://www.peachpit.com as a
member. It's that easy!
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
MARCH 2010
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Take Control of
Your iPhone Apps
By Jeff Carlson
Mail, Maps, Messages, Phone, Photos, Remote, and Safari
(and for iPod touch owners, the Music and Video apps, too).
If you've had the nagging feeling that you're not getting as
much from your iPhone or iPod touch as you could, this
ebook is for you!
TidBITS Publishing, Inc.
November 2009
Pages: 122
Learn iPhone app basics
and get numerous clever tips based on author
Jeff Carlson's real-world experiences with
using the iPhone for work, photography, and
fun. Apps that Jeff covers with the sharp eye of
a professional tech writer include include
Calendar, Camera, Compass, Contacts, iPod,
SVCG MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION/RENEWAL FORM
New Applicant______
PLATFORM:
Renewal __________
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Name: _____________________________________________________________
Address: ___________________________________________________________
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ZIP: ____________________________
Home Phone: _____________________
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Send check to:
DUES:
USER LEVEL:
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Active member (participation on Board or
Library): FREE
Novice _____
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Non-active member: $10
Intermediate _____
Advanced ____ Expert ______
How did you hear about the Club?
Class ______
Club member _______ Newspaper _______ Newsletter _________
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
MARCH 2010
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Popular Science Archives Online
Popular Science magazine has been published
for 137 years. Now, every issue ever produced has
been scanned and posted the archives at their
website, at no charge.
Each issue appears just as it did at its original
time of publication, complete with period
advertisements.
http://tinyurl.com/y9h2lsf [The search
feature on their URL didn't work for me, but the
Google Books one did]
Check out the January 1984 edition featuring
the Macintosh computer at:
http://tinyurl.com/ybh9tdj
Bugs & Fixes: Avoid trouble when
moving your iTunes library
by Ted Landau, Macworld.com
Here’s how to avoid this:
As your iTunes Library continues to grow, the
time may come when it outgrows the
available space left on your hard drive. When
that happens, a common solution is to move
your library to another (larger or more empty)
drive. Doing this is not difficult.
Move only the iTunes Media
folder; leave the rest alone
However, as iTunes has a number of similarsounding options and installs a number of
similar-sounding iTunes-related files on your
drive, it may not be self-evident how to go
about moving your music library. What
makes the task potentially treacherous is that
a wrong move can leave your music files in a
state where iTunes is no longer able to find or
play them.
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
By default, your iTunes Library files, together with
an assortment of other iTunes-related files, are
located in the Music -> iTunes folder of your Home
directory. Within this iTunes folder is a folder
named iTunes Media. This is where all the
gigabytes of your audio and video files are stored.
(Note: If you have an older version of iTunes or
have not updated the folder organization, the
relevant folder may be named iTunes Music instead
of iTunes Media. Also, if you deselected the default
option to copy files imported to iTunes, your media
files may be scattered anywhere on your drive, not
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just in the iTunes Media folder. For simplicity, I am
assuming that’s not the case here.)
The iTunes Media folder is the only folder that you
will be relocating. All other items in the Music and
iTunes folders, such as the iTunes Library and
iTunes Music Library.xml files, should be left
alone.
Look before you leap
You may think the first thing you should do is copy
your iTunes Media folder to your desired new
location. You would be wrong.
Actually, this might work if you were moving,
rather than copying, the folder to another location
on the same drive partition. In a support article,
Apple explains how to move an iTunes Music/
Media folder so as to make it shareable. In brief, it
says:
your existing media, iTunes still expects them
to be in the now-deleted original location —
which is why iTunes can’t find them.
When I tested this out, I tried several potential
fixes, short of copying the folder back to its
original location and starting over. None of
them worked. For example, I held down the
Option key when launching iTunes. This
brought up a dialog from which you can select
to choose a new Library. Doing so had no
effect.
How to do it right
The correct procedure for making the
relocation is described in another Apple
support article. Briefly, it says:
1.
1.
Move the iTunes Music/Media folder to the
desired new location (such as to the Shared
user folder);
2. From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences
and navigate to Advanced;
3. Click the Change button for “iTunes Media
folder location” and enter the new location
of the folder.
However, for relocating your Library to a new
drive/partition, you will be copying the iTunes
Media folder. If you attempted the above
procedure, and then deleted the original
supposedly-no-longer-needed iTunes Media folder,
you will wind up in trouble. iTunes will continue to
list all your files. But when you click to play any of
them, you will get a message that the file “could not
be found.”
Before you move anything, list the
intended new location in the Advanced
section of iTunes Preferences;
2. From the File menu of iTunes, choose
Library -> Organize Library;
3. From the dialog that appears, select to
“Consolidate files.” Doing this will
copy all the files to the new location.
When complete, you can delete the
original iTunes Media folder.
Everything should now work as
expected.
Regardless, as covered in a recent article by
my colleague Christopher Breen, it pays to
have a backup of your iTunes Library before
you begin. If anything unexpected happens,
your precious media files are still safe.
This happens because changing the location listed
in Advanced in this case only affects where “new
songs and other items you import” are stored. For
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
MARCH 2010
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Font tips: Printing Type Samples
by Jay J. Nelson, Macworld.com
When choosing a typeface to use for a project,
there is no replacement for a printed type
specimen. Fonts just look different when you see
them in print, compared to how they look on
screen. So, when you need to choose fonts for a
print project, it's smart to have a type specimen
book handy that shows exactly how all your fonts
look on the page.
Clever developers have come up with several
useful utilities for printing font specimen pages—
not only for active fonts, but also for folders full of
fonts you haven't yet installed. Some of these
utilities are free, but the best ones will set you back
a few bucks.
Let's start with the Font Book utility that comes
with Mac OS X. It can print useful type
specimen pages in three different layouts, but
only for the fonts the user installed via Font
Book. (If you use a third-party font management
utility such as Suitcase Fusion 2 (), FontAgent
Pro () or FontExplorer X Pro (), the fonts you've
activated in those utilities will not show up in
Font Book.) If necessary, you can temporarily
activate the fonts you need to print by choosing
File> Add Fonts…, then deactivate them after
you've created your font specimen pages.
(Deactivating them after you print is especially
important if you do use one of the third-party
font managers.)
Here's how to use Font Book to print type
specimen pages:
Printing dialog #om OS X's Font Book utility.
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
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1.
Highlight the fonts you want to include
from the list of fonts in Font Book. To
select all the fonts press Command-A or
Edit -> Select All. To select all the fonts in
a Collection, highlight the name of the
Collection and then press Command-A. To
select individual fonts to print, hold down
the Command key while clicking on each
choice. To select a group of fonts in a row,
select the first one and then hold down the
Shift key while clicking on the final font
you want.
2.
Choose File -> Print and, if necessary, click
on the triangle next to the name of your
printer to see Font Book's printing options.
3.
With Font Book selected in the Print
Options pop-up menu, choose one of the
three types of reports from the Report Type
pop-up menu.
4.
Set options for the report type you’ve
chosen, such as Show Family and Sample
Size for the Catalog report type (to cluster
your fonts into their logical typeface
families); Glyph Size for the Repertoire
report type, and Show Font Details such as
Kind, Manufacturer, Version, Designer, and
so forth, for the Waterfall report type.
5.
Just under the page preview, note the
number of pages you're about to print. You
may be printing more than you expect,
because some OpenType fonts have a
tremendous number of glyphs. If that
happens, you may want to scroll through
the page previews, choose the pages you
TypeBook Creator interface.
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
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really need, then type specific page
numbers into the Pages fields.
6.
Now click the Print button. You can also
create a PDF of the pages too, for
safekeeping and future reference, by
clicking on the PDF button in the lower
left-hand corner of the Print dialog and
choosing Save as PDF from the menu.
Bohemian Coding's Fontcase ($56) is incredibly
cool and sophisticated, and although it has just
one layout for printing font specimens, that layout
is well-considered and truly useful. It's also the
2009 winner of the Apple Design Award for Best
Mac OS X Leopard Student Product. (I give it
extra cool points for using the pangram, "Pack my
box with five dozen liquor jugs" instead of the
usual one featuring a quick fox and a lazy dog.)
Font Book is fine for printing the three types of
layouts it supports. But if you need a more variety,
or want to print uninstalled fonts without
temporarily installing them, you'll want to look
into third-party applications. The simplest and
most useful ones I've found useful are
Ksoft's FontCat ($20), which has several useful
layouts, and PiDog Software's FontThing ($10),
which prints rudimentary font samples.
Veenix Technologies' Veenix TypeBook Creator is
the absolute best program I've ever seen for
printing type specimens or books. You can print
samples of active or inactive fonts in any of 16
classic layouts—and customize the text used in
the samples. It can even categorize your fonts and
then help narrow down your font choices by Serif,
Sans-serif, Text, Condensed, Expanded,
Monospaced or Shadow & 3D.
Third-party font-management utilities such as
Suitcase Fusion 2 and FontAgent Pro can also
print font samples, but they’re limited to printing
one line of text per font. Linotype’s FontExplorer
X Pro 2.5 raises the bar for printing font
specimens: it offers five professional layouts, with
optional custom headers and footers, and you also
can create your own custom layout.
The recently released version of TypeBook
Creator 2.4 has a unique new feature that assigns
an "energy level" to each font. This helps you find
fonts in your collection that are best suited for,
say, a metal band CD cover versus a children's
book. TypeBook Creator costs $50 for one user
and up to 5,000 fonts and $400 for a multi-user
license with unlimited fonts.
If you use Adobe InDesign () CS3 or CS4, you
may want to try Chris Paveglio's ID Font Catalog.
This $15 script lets InDesign create a font catalog
of your active fonts. There are several layout
options, including a list with family styles grouped
below each font (such as bold and italic). You can
omit common system fonts and select others to
skip as well. If you export the catalog to PDF, the
script creates bookmarks for each family.
Type specimen books have a long, revered history
among font fans. After spending some time with
the tools mentioned above, I think you'll
appreciate the value of type specimen books in
your own work.
The following utilities really stand out as
professional font printing tools:
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
[Jay J. Nelson is the editor and publisher of
Design Tools Monthly, an executive summary of
graphic design news.]
7.
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A Collection of Macworld’s Favorite
Mac OS X Hints Tips
by Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com
Typically in this spot, you’d be reading an
installment of the thrice-weekly Mac OS X Hints
blog. Today, though, it’s something a bit different,
as this is actually the final Mac OS X Hints blog
entry I’ll be writing for Macworld.
Starting next week, I’ll be transitioning to a new
career outside the hallowed halls of Macworld—
after nearly 10 years of running macosxhints.com
(and almost five with Macworld), I’m joining Peter
Maurer at Many Tricks to help run the business
(more details here, including contact info for my
new job).
While I’m leaving Macworld, I still hope to
contribute articles on topics that aren’t in conflict
with my new job in the software development
business, so I think you’ll still see my byline
around here going forward—but it won’t be
associated with the Mac OS X Hints blogs.
•
•
•
So for this, my final Mac OS X Hints blog, I
thought I’d pick out a sampling of my favorite blog
entries from the last five-ish years—with a special
focus on the older hints that still work in Leopard
and Snow Leopard. These aren’t necessarily the
best hints, or the most popular hints, but ones that I
just find personally interesting and/or useful. In no
particular order, here they are.
•
•
Run a screensaver as your desktop
background: This one is still my all-timefavorite hint for showing off the power of
OS X. It lets you run a screensaver as your
desktop “image,” complete with full
motion. When I first wrote about this, this
trick took 50% of the CPU power of a
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
G4/733MHz machine. Now it takes
around 1% to 3% of my 2.66GHz
MacBook Pro’s CPU. Very fun!
Quicker custom icons: A simple timesaver
to ease creation of custom icons. On a
related note, I also really like the Easily
view an application’s icons hint, which
explains how to quickly see all the icons
—including the glorious 512x512
versions—for any application.
The color picker: The color picker—that
small dialog that appears when you want
to pick a color for fonts, boxes, and so on
—is amazingly powerful, but surprisingly
few people know all of its tricks. Secrets
of the color picker revealed many of those
tricks. Later, I explained how to use
images in the color picker.
Safely modify Apple’s widgets: I love to
muck about with stuff in the system, and
Dashboard widgets are a favorite target.
Because they’re mainly HTML, CSS, and
Javascript, it’s possible to change how
they look and work with some minor
tweaks. The linked hint explains how to
do that safely, and includes links to a
sampling of modifications.
Display info in the login window: You
may know you can cycle the information
you see in the login window, but did you
know you can permanently change what
appears there? I have mine set to show the
date and time, which seems much more
useful than the machine name.
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•
•
•
•
Change the login window background:
While I love Apple’s desktop pictures, I’d
really rather see one of my own when I’m
on the login screen. This hint explains the
safest way to change it in OS X 10.5 and
newer.
Limit the bash shell’s prompt length: If you
spend much time in Terminal, and navigate
into deeply-buried folders, the path that
shows as part of the prompt can get really
long. This hint explains how to limit its
length. Note the instructions are a bit out of
date—you’ll be editing .profile,
not .bash_profile, but the rest should
work as described.
Terminally fun Friday: A couple fun
examples of completely non-productive
things you can do in Terminal. If you want
even more Terminal fun, how about a textbased adventure game?
Force Mail to go ‘old school’: Old school
as in nothing but monospaced text. This
hint forces Mail to ignore all formatting
commands in e-mails and display them in
plain text…the way all us old fogies prefer
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
to read our e-mail.
•
Hints about sound levels: There are two
volume-level hints that I really like. The
first is an odd, but definitely not-a-bug,
behavior of the Mute key on your
keyboard: you can use it to set a superquiet volume level—something above
Mute but below the first bar of the
onscreen slider showing volume levels.
Speaking of the onscreen slider, you can
change that in fine-grained increments,
instead of one full block at a time.
That’s ten of my favorite older hints blogs, all of
which should still work fine in 10.5 and 10.6.
And with that, I’m officially handing the reins
of the Mac OS X Hints blog over to Macworld.
For now, there will probably be an assortment of
guest editors writing the entries until someone is
hired to fill my spot.
I’ve had an amazing five years here at
Macworld, and I wouldn’t trade my experiences
for anything. With any luck, you’ll still see my
name around these parts on occasion, just not
with the same regularity, and not here in the
land of hints.
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Macworld’s Tip on How to Simultaneously Save
Files to iDisk
by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com
Reader Recutecu seeks a way to easily save files to
his iDisk. He writes:
Is there some way to save files to your hard disk
and iDisk at the same time?
I’d use Automator for this kind of thing. Like so:
Now all you have to do
is save your files to the
Save to iDisk folder
you created. As files are
saved to the folder,
they will also be
automatically copied to
the Saved From Mac
folder on your iDisk.
Create a folder on your Desktop and call it Save to
iDisk. Mount your iDisk, add a folder to your
iDisk, and call it Saved From Mac.
Launch Automator, choose Folder Action from the
sheet that appears to create a new folder action.
Attach the folder action to the Save to iDisk folder.
Now drag the Save to iDisk folder into
Automator’s actions area.
Add these actions: Get Folder Contents and Copy
Finder Items. Drag the Saved From Mac folder
from your iDisk to the Copy Finder Items action to
add it as the destination for your saved files.
E-waste Recycling
Center
North Bay Self Storage is located at 720 Southpoint
Blvd. in Petaluma on the same street as the
Department of Motor Vehicles. We are a Bay Area Green Business and a 100% solar
powered office building and storage facility.
Recently, we became a Green Spot Drop Off location. You can bring your e-waste i.e. computers, monitors,
printers, print cartridges, cell phones etc. for recycling. You can drop items off during regular business hours, 7
days a week. Call for more info at 707-766-9900.
We make no money from this service but our partner
Coastal Recycling donates $1 for each recycled item to
the Petaluma Educational Foundation.
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
MARCH 2010
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MacJournal 5.1
Outstanding journaling tool
protects your privacy
by William Porter, Macworld.com
Do you keep a diary on your computer? Do you
blog, but hate your blogging service's editor? Do
you find yourself using your word processor to
write notes about a variety of subjects, and then
find it difficult to locate those notes later? If the
answer is yes to any of the above, you may be just
the kind of person MacJournal 5.1.4 was designed
for.
Journaling
MacJournal is a journaling program—part word
processor and part file manager. It's kind of like
iPhoto or Aperture, but for written documents
rather than photos. MacJournal can handle a
variety of media including photos and videos, but
at the heart of the program is a very capable text
editor, built on Mac OS X's outstanding text
services and Quartz 2D Extreme.The editor is so
good that you could use it as your main word
processor, so long as you don't need advanced
formatting options like footnotes or columns.
MacJournal even has a full-screen editing view to
let you write without distractions. Now, to that
excellent rich-text editor, add a dedicated file
manager that will help you keep track of your
entries using a variety of metadata fields, including
date, topic, status, labels, flags, tags, and more. It's
a powerful tool for organizing and filing your
writings. And you can supplement your text with
photos and drawings, audio files or podcasts, even
PDFs and QuickTime movies.
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
Why use it?
Now, it's true that you can
do in your favorite word
processor much of what
you can do in MacJournal,
at least insofar as
composing documents. But
MacJournal is designed for
writers with a certain set of
special requirements. For starters, MacJournal is
perfect for keeping a diary or daily log of your
thoughts. I'm pretty sure the security that
MacJournal provides is better than the little lock
on the diary I wrote in as a boy—or perhaps its
moral equivalent, password protection in
Microsoft Word. I can imagine the program
being useful to my psychologist sister, who has
to write reports about patients on a daily basis
and needs them to be encrypted. In fact,
MacJournal offers two levels of security to
choose from, password and encryption.
Since MacJournal can include almost any kind
of content, it could be used by writers who are
doing research and gathering data, pictures, and
maps, although the program might work better
for novelists or even journalists than for
scholars, who would need additional support for
footnotes and bibliographies.
And if you want to share your thoughts with the
world, MacJournal supports direct publishing to
a number of popular blogging services. It took
me a few seconds to sync MacJournal with one
of my Blogger accounts, and once I'd set the
account up, I was able to write a post in
MacJournal, include a couple of pictures, then
quickly upload the post to my blog. Getting the
pictures to appear in the blog required a brief
visit to the user manual, but the instructions
were easy to understand. And if you have a
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Google Picasa account, MacJournal offers
integration with it, too.
MacJournal doesn't support HTML
editing, so if you are the sort of writer
who uses your blog's HTML editor, you
might find MacJournal a bit limiting. But I
think most bloggers will find
MacJournal's editor easier to use than
their current online editor and might
appreciate having their blog saved on their
local drive.
What's new?
If you've used MacJournal in the past,
then you'll want to upgrade to version 5,
since this new version adds significant
improvements to a program that was
already top in its class. MacJournal 5 has
been revamped to take advantage of Mac
MacJournal supports a number of multimedia formats and works
OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6).
we! with major blo%ing so&ware packages.
Where previous versions used "drawers"
for file lists, MacJournal 5 has an integrated
window with a toolbar at the top, file list on the
left, and main editing area in the middle, much like
Macworld's buying advice
Apple Mail () or iPhoto (). MacJournal now
supports Snow Leopard's QuickLook feature, so
Much of what you do in MacJournal 5.1.4 can
you can peek at an entry right in the Finder without
be done without it. You can use your blog's
opening the program.
online editor or a service like Google
Documents to write your posts, for free. Online
MacJournal 5 also gives users improved control
free services such as NotePub or commercial
over where and how files are saved and how files
desktop applications like Circus Ponies
are organized; it even has Smart Journals (saved
Notebook () and Ulysses () are excellent tools
searches). I really like that you can now resize
for taking and organizing notes. But if you are
photos right in MacJournal. And if you're really
also interested in expressing and organizing
cool, you can record a movie right in MacJournal
your private thoughts, having them all in one
using your iSight camera. If you have a MobileMe
place, and keeping them private, then there's
() account, you can use MacJournal and sync with
nothing better on the Mac than MacJournal.
it.
Mariner Software has announced a version of
MacJournal for the iPhone, which should be
available this spring.
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
[William Porter is a database applications
developer and event photographer in Dallas.]
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Macworld 2010 A Success
Online Review In general, the show had about 50% of the vendors.
Apparently a number of the ones that did show up
made the decision at the last minute. I also heard
that there were about 30K attendees. The vendors
that were selling on the show floor were very happy
with the results of their sales.
I am so glad that things went so well. I am going to
double my efforts to make it next year. Yes, thats
right, IDG has schedule another event for next
year. It will be moving back towards its original
time frame, as it will actually be in January. But to
the relief of a great many there will still be nearly a
month between Christmas and Expo. Of course
that is the greatest sign of success.
The date next year is January 25-29, 2011, still at
San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Lets all plan on
being there and let your favorite vendors know that
you expect them to be there.
Meanwhile, there are photos and video of this
year’s activities and the opportunity for a limited
time to get free admission.
Check it out at http://www.macworldexpo.com
Mac Tip of the
Week #262
where you want to paste this info,
tap to bring up the Paste option,
and then just tap the Paste button.
Excerpted from The iPhone Book,
Third Edition by Scott Kelby and
Terry White
Mac Tip of the
Week #261
Cut, Copy, and Paste
Excerpted from The Mac OS X
10.6 Snow Leopard Pocket Guide
by Jeff Carlson
Double-tap on a word, and you'll
get blue grab points to select what
you want to copy—this can also
include images. If you double-tap
where there is no word, or tap-andhold your finger on the screen for a
few seconds, you get a different menu that
allows you to Select (using the grab points) or
Select All. Once the area you want to copy is
selected, tap the Copy button. Go to the app
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
Adding a USB Hub? Get
More Power!
If you decide to add a USB hub to
your configuration to give you easier access or
more ports, a powered hub is a better choice than
a passive hub. A powered hub has to be plugged
in separately to AC power, but it also allows the
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use of nearly any kind of USB device. Passive
hubs, which are powered by the computer via the
USB port, sometimes cannot pull enough juice to
operate certain kinds of USB devices, such as
cameras or even phone chargers.
Menu Info window and drag the Menu Volume
slider to its leftmost position. If you change your
mind, raise the volume level. To silence the menu
for good, drag the icon out of the Audio well, and
it disappears in an animated puff of smoke.
Mac Tip of the Week
#260
Excerpted from The iPhone
Pocket Guide, Third Edition by
Christopher Breen
Mac Tip of the
Week #258
Group Photos on Your
iPhone by Orientation
Excerpted from Apple Training
Series: Mac OS X Deployment
v10.6: A Guide to Deploying and
Maintaining Mac OS X and Mac
OS X Software by Kevin M.
White
If you always want to view your
photos at their best advantage
(horizontal shots in landscape
orientation and vertical ones in
portrait orientation), yet you tire
of repeatedly flipping your iPhone
to rotate and resize the images, try this: Create
photo albums based on picture orientation. Put all
your portrait-oriented photos in one album and
your favorite landscape shots in another. When
it's time to view or show off your photos, they'll
always look their best without your having to
reorient the phone.
Mac Tip of the Week
#259
Excerpted from The Macintosh iLife '09 by Jim
Heid
Silencing DVD Motion Menus
You might like the look of a motion menu, but
maybe you don't want any music or sound effects
to play. To silence a motion menu, go to the
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
Use Apple Remote Desktop
(ARD) to Rename
Computers Remotely
Assuming that you have access to your deployed
Macs from the Remote Desktop administrator
application, you can easily set new names for
those computers remotely. While in Remote
Desktop, select the Mac(s) you want to manage.
Then choose Manage > Rename Computers. In
the dialog, you can set a specific name for a
single computer or set a similar name with a
number appended for multiple computers. Then
click Rename. This feature is especially useful if
you have reimaged Mac computers but you didn't
provide an automated method for assigning
specific computer names. The Remote Desktop
application will attempt to reconnect to any Mac
saved to a computer list, even if it's not using the
same computer name as used previously.
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design -- rather than paying $278 million to
acquire the whole company! -- then are free to
modify and integrate it as they see fit. It’s much
different than the model for Mac desktop or
laptop computers, in which the CPUs are wholly
Intel products.
The iPad CPU
All You Need to Know About
the Apple A4
by Loyd Case
The fruits of Apple’s 2008 acquisition of P.A.
Semiconductor finally saw the light of day when
Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s iPad. Underlying the
sleek user interface and minimalist hardware is
the Apple A4. The A4 is a system-on-a-chip
(SoC) running at 1GHz. No mere CPU, the A4
includes integrated 3D graphics, audio, power
management, storage and I/O interfaces.
The A4 is actually built around a CPU core based
on the common ARM Cortex A9 CPU, a 32-bit
core that comes in several different flavors, with
different numbers of cores. In typical cases,
companies like Apple actually license the CPU
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
One of P.A. Semiconductor’s key principles was
to design high levels of power efficiency into all
their CPUs, which is probably one of the key
reasons for Apple’s interest in the company.
Getting 10 hours of continuous battery life out of
a 1GHz CPU using a 25Watt-hour battery
requires aggressive power management. Indeed,
the entry level MacBook is rated at
only 7 hours with a 60Watt-hour
battery.
Apple hasn’t disclosed many
specifics about the A4, so it’s
unclear as to how many CPU cores
it actually has. The A4. The
graphics and audio components
are likely licensed from PowerVR,
including the PowerVR SGX GPU
and PowerVR VXD for audio and
video. These are all integrated into
a single chip, although flash
memory, networking and other
components are on separate chips. The A4 is actually built by
Samsung, most likely using a
45nm manufacturing process.
The PowerVR SGX is a capable GPU, offering
pretty decent 3D graphics. However, the iPad’s
relatively low resolution (1024x768) is probably
tied to a combination of limited video memory,
and the fact that the chip’s raw pixel-pushing
performance just isn’t up to pushing pixels at
acceptable frame rates above that 1024x768
resolution. That said, at this resolution the SGX
is a solid performer, and the iPad is likely to offer
substantially better gaming performance, and a
more robust gaming experience, than an iPhone.
It’s quite possible that gaming will be the iPad’s
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killer app.
The ability to integrate custom features and
functionality onto a single chip is what allows the
iPad to be as compact as it is. While pundits have
quipped that the iPad is just a big iPhone (or iPod
Touch, depending on model), that’s not far from
the truth. The internals of the iPad have more in
common with a smart phone than a Mac.
The iPad, which essentially replaces much of the
function of a low-end PC, needs other chips as
well, of course. There’s storage -- in the form of
flash memory -- plus Wi-Fi networking, GPS and
3G wireless cellular network capability.
So What Does This All Mean?
Using the A4 gives Apple -- legendary for
wanting to tightly control its hardware and
software destiny -- even more control over its
hardware. Future iPads will almost certainly use
descendants of the A4.
The use of the A4 inside the iPad also strongly
suggests that the next iPhone will use a derivative
of this chip. Designing a custom SoC isn’t cheap,
so it makes sense for Apple to take further
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
advantage of its $278 million investment. We’ll
likely see higher resolution displays and higher
clock speeds in even thinner and lighter form
factors over time. However, some of these
advancements will also be dependent on the
evolution of other technologies -- like better
displays.
It’s also likely that the A4, or some derivative,
will be used in the next generation iPhone. Over
time, this would allow Apple and its developers to
develop to a single code base, rather than having
to manage multiple different versions for different
CPUs.
So that’s the story on what could happen. But
what’s not likely to happen? First, the A4 won’t
show up in future MacBooks or iMacs.
MacBooks and iMacs will still use Intelcompatible CPUs, not some version of the A4.
While Apple does like to control its destiny,
modern Mac applications require very highperformance CPUs and higher-end graphics than
is likely capable with a system-on-chip.
Also unlikely: you won’t see an Intel Atom in an
Apple system of any kind.
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Wi-Fi iPad goes on sale April 3 in U.S.
Posted on Mar 5, 2010 5:57 am by Dan Moren,
Macworld.com
specifically mentions Australia, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and
the U.K.—will have to wait until late April for
The wait for the iPad is, er, well, it’s just
beginning I suppose. On Friday, Apple
announced that the new device would go on sale
on Saturday, April 3 in the U.S. Customers who
want to pre-order can put in their claim on March
12—just a week away, so get your clicking
fingers ready.
either model.
Of course, the April 3 date only applies to the
Wi-Fi-only models. If you’re holding out for the
3G versions, you’ll have to wait until late April.
And those customers outside the U.S.—Apple
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Pricing for those countries is still unknown,
though Apple said that it would be announced in
April. The company also said that the iPad would
ship in additional countries later this year, so if
you’re not in one of the above locations, keep
your fingers crossed.
On March 12, customers will be able to either
pre-order either the Wi-Fi or 3G models from the
Apple online store, or they can put their dibs
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down on a Wi-Fi model and pick it up from their
local Apple Store. As previously announced, the
Wi-Fi models will run $499 for 16GB, $599 for
32GB, and $699 for 64GB, while the respective
models including 3G will cost $629, $729, and
$829.
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Oscar Nominated Documentary Film
Makers Talk About Their Films and Final
Cut Pro
by Michelle Delio
Don’t get us wrong, we appreciate tasty eye
candy like Avatar. But documentaries tend to be
the films that really amaze us. The impact of the
right story told by an artist compelled to share it
tends to stay alive in our hearts and heads long
after we’ve forgotten whatever passed for a plot
in the big blockbuster productions.
And our fondness for documentaries and
independent film makers was deepened this year
when we found out that nine of the ten Oscar
nominated documentaries in both the
"Documentary Feature" and "Documentary
Short" categories were made using Apple’s Final
Cut Pro software.
Saving Custom Text Colors
It’s easy to change the color of
text in most Mac applications.
But what if you want to use a
custom color, or copy a color
from a favorite web page or
photo, and reuse this color in an
email or other document? Here’s
how.
in its upper left corner. Next,
use the magnifying glass to
hover over a color you’d like to
copy. Click with your mouse to
copy the color to the horizontal
color bar at the top of the color
chooser (next to the magnifying
glass icon).
First, you need to bring up the
Mac OS X color chooser. This is
usually found in an application’s
menu bar under “Format.” For
example, in TextEdit, just
highlight a word, and click on
Format > Font > Show
Colors in the menu bar. In
Mail, just highlight a word and
choose Format > Show
Colors.
Next, click-and-hold in this
horizontal color bar and start
dragging slowly—a tiny square
will appear under your cursor.
Just drag-and-drop this square
onto one of the white square
boxes at the bottom of the
Colors dialog.
When the Colors dialog
appears, click on the color wheel
This saves that color for future
use, so when you want it, all you
have to do is click once on that
square (no more messing with
the color wheel).
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
MARCH 2010
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Movist Plays Your Movies When QuickTime
Can’t
by Dan Frakes, Macworld.com
VLC Media Player has long held the
crown of “best free, handle-anything
media player” for Mac OS X. But
these days, there are a number of
quality alternatives, including
MPlayer OS X Extended (which we'll
be looking at soon) and today's Gem,
Movist. Movist has been around since
2007, but it’s made some big
development strides over the past six
months or so. The current version
offers VLC some much-needed
media-playback competition thanks to
an interface that I find to be more
attractive and easier to use.
Like VLC, Movist is based in part on
FFmpeg, a cross-platform set of
codecs that lets you play a plethora of
media formats not supported by OS X’s
own QuickTime technology. Movist also
provides many playback features you won’t find
in QuickTime Player, as well as some features
QuickTime Player lost in the transition from
version 7 to Snow Leopard’s version X.
For example, Movist offers a wide range of
playback navigation options, including variablespeed playback, frame-by-frame playback,
configurable-second skips, and range playback
(where you set the beginning and end of a clip).
There's also a built-in screenshot feature that lets
you save an image of the current video frame.
As with most media players, you can choose the
size of the video-playback window; however,
when in fullscreen mode, Movist lets you choose
how the movie fills the screen—by expanding or
cropping. You can also change the aspect ratio of
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
any playback window; Movist shrinks or
stretches the movie to fit the chosen aspect ratio.
You can even set a playing movie as your
Desktop background.
Movist also offers the most-flexible subtitle
controls I’ve seen in a media player: After
choosing the subtitle track, you can customize
the fonts, the vertical margins, the
synchronization, and the position of subtitles.
You can also manually open or add subtitle files.
Another great feature is Movist’s fullscreennavigation mode: Double-click the Movist icon
in a blank Movist playback window (or choose
File -> Full Screen Navigation or press
Command+N), and Movist takes over your
screen, letting you browse your ~/Movies
folder using an interface very much like Apple’s
own Front Row. (Movist’s preferences include
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settings for browsing video in iTunes, as well,
although iTunes-hosted videos didn’t show up in
this interface for me.)
As with VLC, you can create a playlist of videos
that play sequentially and, if desired, repeat.
However, you can’t save playlists, and if you
drag a video file directly into Movist, rather than
into your playlist, you lose any playlist you’ve
created.
In my testing, Movist handled most video files
with aplomb, although on rare occasion the
program crashed when viewing a video that VLC
played without issue. I like that for movie
formats that both FFmpeg and QuickTime can
handle, Movist lets you switch between the two
to see which provides better results. Movist also
provides lots of other settings (though not quite
as many as VLC), as well as support for the
Apple Remote.
Movist also has a few other drawbacks. For
example, you can’t view a VIDEO_TS folder
(from a ripped DVD) directly; you must open the
folder and drop the individual .VOB files into
Movist. And you won’t find many of VLC’s
more-obscure settings or its audio- and videotweaking options. Movist’s biggest shortcoming,
however, may be that it doesn’t have the kinds of
documentation and developer community you get
with VLC.
Still, Movist has replaced VLC for much of my
day-to-day viewing of video that QuickTime
can’t handle—and even some that it can.
Note From The President
LIBRARY HELP NEEDED:
We are going to need more help at the library on Fridays from 11 am to noon. It really is
generic stuff and easy to do, but those of us who regularly work have limited availability in
the next few months. At the same time, because of Mary’s retirement and the budget crunch,
the library staffing is at a bare bones minimum and our help fills a gap. The Library staff
really appreciates our help and giving it is part of the agreement we made when we started
meeting there.
ELECTIONS IN MARCH:
We are having elections this month and we still don’t have a full slate of proposed officers.
If you are willing to serve, or have a nomination for someone who will serve--please email it
to me before Saturday, March 13th.
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
MARCH 2010
PAGE 23
Sonoma Valley Computer Group
POB 649
El Verano, CA 95433
Sonoma Valley Computer Group
Mac Users Newsletter
• MARCH USER GROUP MEETING
Date: Saturday, 3/13/2010
Place: Sonoma Public Library
755 West Napa Street
Time: Mac Users 9 a.m.
Topic: How to Install an Application
and Election of Officers
for Mac and Windows Users