Category Archives: Mac

Macintosh

Bookmarking in the iTunes store

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Posted by Leefe on 26 December 2009 – 11:14 pm
Filed under Mac, Web sites
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Do you ever find things in the iTunes store and think “I don’t want that now, but might be interested later”? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bookmark feature in iTunes?

Well its good to see that I am not the first person to want it. Back in 2003 Chuck Toporek wrote an iTunes store feature wish list, with bookmarking a feature high on the list. And even the idea of a wish list so people could buy you stuff.

Then I came across kirk’s suggestion of dragging out urls to make webloc files. But I really don’t want to have to file the bookmarks somewhere else. A directory of bookmarks it not that easy to manage, of space efficient.

The best idea I saw is from AgingGeek of creating a playlist in iTunes and dragging songs to it from iTunes store. That this should create a list if files you are interested in. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to work in iTunes 9.

So it looks like we are back to the drawing board?

Add to Wish List menu optionNo, not completely. As of iTunes 9 there is a small drop down menu arrow next to the ‘buy’ button for albums and tracks, which has an ‘Add to Wish List‘ option.

So, now there is a wish list. But how do I access its contents? And where did my Shopping Cart go?

The Wish List can be access via a link (hidden) right at the bottom of each iTunes store page.

The Shopping Cart has gone. It is no more. Only 1-click shopping is offered these day in the iTunes store.

From iTunes help:

IMPORTANT:Only 1-click purchasing is available. If you were using Shopping Cart in earlier versions of iTunes, the contents of your Shopping Cart can now be found in your Wish List.

So, Apple have decided that a shopping cart gave you too much of an option to back out of purchases. And moved to only having a 1-click purchase model. Cutting down on the ummers and ahhers.

IMPORTANT:All sales are final. You can’t cancel a purchase after you click Buy or Buy Now.

Some like the new iTunes, and gave it a good review:

And others detest the new iTunes store interface:

Personally, I think hiding the Shopping Cart as a Wish List at the bottom of the page is a not very user friendly.

I still want a way to Bookmark songs or albums. Much like you do in a web browser. That would allow you to categorise and file your bookmarks, not have them all dumped in one list.

As the iTunes store is really just a web site (using iTunes as its browser). I don’t see why this would be hard to implement (I presume that iTunes uses the same web technology as Safari). It just requires some realisation from within for the need to change.

Q: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.

The weather will be mild, and blazing hot

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Posted by Leefe on 7 November 2009 – 11:52 pm
Filed under Mac
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If you are using a Mac, there is a nice Dashboard Widget that displays the next 7 days weather forecast in Australia, Weather Australia. Drawing its data from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). Much better than the widget that comes with the OS for Australian information.

Weather Australia on MacBook ProThere are the occasional hicups though.

Looking at today”s temperatures on the MacBook I can see that it was a scorcher. A day you would melt in at 18-37.

Though I don’t seem to remember the day being that hot.

Weather Australian on Mac G4Where as, on the other side of the the room, the G4 thinks it was a nice 18-23. A day to stroll about and not be too worried.

This seems more like what I remember of the day.

They are both on the same network. So should be pulling the same data. And displaying the same results.

Perhaps the MacBook just exists in its own continuum. Or it is thinking back to the day just passed where the temperature soared to 37 degrees and above?

Restart your Mac for PowerPoint Help

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Posted by Leefe on 2 November 2009 – 9:34 pm
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On needing to install a new PowerPoint theme, downloaded from the web, I found these useful instructions in the help menu.

  1. Save the template to /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/My Themes.
  2. Restart your Mac.

PowerPoint-RestartMacAfterThemeInstall-crop3I suppose these instructions are written for all the Mac switchers. To make them feel at home with Microsoft again.

You have selected a different option. Please restart you computer for the changes to take effect

Of course I ignored this instruction, and just closed PowerPoint. When reopened, PowerPoint found the theme and I was able to use it without a problem.

Now I wait for my Mac to explode. I’m sure PowerPoint Help is upset I didn’t restart the computer and wants to take revenge somehow. :)

StarCraft2 Beta & StarCraft on Intel Macs

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Posted by Leefe on 15 June 2009 – 6:10 pm
Filed under Games, Mac
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Recently read on a tweet that Blizzard are looking for people to Beta test StarCraft 2.

Seems nice. You have to login to Battle.Net, and tick an ‘opt me into beta testing’ box. But I can’t seem to remember what my Battle.Net password is, and it says my credentials for getting it reset are not valid.

After some chasing details. Searching how to install StarCraft on Intel Macs. I discovered that I wasn’t actually registered on Battle.Net, just the Battle.Net you access via the game (which expires after not using it for 3 months anyway).

Along the way I found this nice guide for installing StarCraft and Diablo II on Intel Macs. And I got to play a game I haven’t for a while.

To put yourself down as a potential beta tester you need:

  1. to register a Battle.Net login (and login)
  2. Add a game to the Manage My Games list, using the CD key from your game
  3. check the Beta Profile Settings and tick the games you want to be down to test.

After registering I found that you can download CD images of StarCraft and Brood War from the Battle.Net site. Quite nice if you still have your CD key, but lost or damage your game CDs.  You need a bit of spare bandwidth though, about 1.4 GB for StarCraft and wasn’t Diablo II in 5 CDs?.

It is also nice to see for a change that Australian games get to have a go before everyone else. Reading the StarCraft II FAQ I noticed that Australia will be in the first batch of countries offer beta testing.

When does the StarCraft II beta test start?

We don’t have an exact start date to share at this time, but note that when it does begin, we will be adding additional regions to the beta test in phases. North America, Australia, and New Zealand will be the first regions to begin beta testing, and other regions will follow afterward in phases. We will have more information to share about all of these phases in the future.

Are people starting to see the worth of Australia as a good English speaking test bed with its fast uptake of technology? Or is it just that being such a small region it was easier to set us up first?

1001 1.0.17

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Posted by Leefe on 1 June 2009 – 11:21 pm
Filed under Mac, Photos
Tagged as , , ,
10011001

The flickr upload software for MacOS X, 1001, has been updated to version 1.0.17.

This release seems to fix the problems that I recently started to experience with 1.0.15:

  • No sets were being listed, and
  • Photos were not being added to groups.

Nice to see that the software is still being maintained.

The Apple Buzzle Puzzle: Did AAPL control insolvent reseller

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Posted by digg on 7 May 2009 – 5:52 pm
Filed under Mac, News
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Apple Australia is being sued for allegedly controlling a failed reseller, trading while insolvent for months. This reseller (and by inference, its managers) was so grossly incompetent that Apple did not trust its management’s ability to manage and account for its own business!

read more | digg story

Get on the iPod train

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Posted by Leefe on 21 January 2009 – 11:56 pm
Filed under Mac, Photos, Travel
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The iPod trainLooking back through the photos I have taken in Tokyo I found this one of a train covered in iPod advertisements. Not just the outside, but also all the ads inside.

Being the major transportation form in Tokyo, about 70% of all travel, trains are also the perfect venue for advertising. There are ads around the inside of the car just below the roof; banners hang from the ceiling at intervals the length of the car; and JR East carriages have video ads above the doors (with all the dialogue in subtitles).

But this train was special. All the ads are for iPods, all the poster, all the video, and it even had some on the outside. And not just this car, but every car of the train.

I wonder how much it costs to have a train devoted solely to your advertising? And is it worth it?

I have only seen a couple of devoted trains in my stay. But I can see when they might be effective: you have 5 to 30 minutes of a lot of people’s time, with only your ads to look at (aside from their keitai or PSP).

iSquint at PSP MP4 converters for Mac OS X

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Posted by Leefe on 16 January 2009 – 12:01 pm
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I have a nice new PSP 3000 and thought it nice to upload some video to it. But all the software I found for MacOS X crashes or produces bad files. All that is but one.

Looking through the things available in MacUpdate and VersionTracker wasn’t too useful. The stuff listed is all a little old, or unrated. And searching Google turned lots of links old bulletin board posts and sites that looked dodgy.

Finally I found a piece of software that worked, was stable and did the job, and I was able to upload working files.

What software did I try? And how does it stack up? Read below.

  • iPSP Movie Loader (1.0.2, 2005, Feeware)
    Free, but not updated since 2005. This program crashed every time I tried to open it.
  • iPSP (2.0.4, 2005, Limited demo)
    A shareware program. Opened some times. Tended to crash if you tried to do anything.
  • iPSP (4.0.1, August 2008, Limited demo)
    Without registration it keeps popping up windows telling you that it was a ‘feature limited demo‘. And when I clicked on the video icon in the left, it briefly displayed a listing of my Moives folder then crashed. (Not to mention their site has separate pages about version 2.0.4 & 4.0.1)
  • ffmpegX (0.0.9x, January 2008)
    After all the extra software you had to download separately (for licensing reasons), this looked promising. It has pre-set Target Format for PSPs. Movie conversion took around 30 minutes, though I’m not sure as there was no indication and I just left it in the background. The movie played in Quicktime. But the PSP did not see the movies uploaded using the instruction on their site. When I worked out where to upload the MP4s, the PSP thinks the files are corrupt.

So, what did I end up using?

  • iSquint (1.5.2, March 2008, Freeware)
    When you open iSquint, the first time, it asks you if you would like to get VisualHub their commercial product. After that it doesn’t bother you. It just works. (With a nice easy to use interface.) Drag the video you want to encode into the window; select ‘Optimize for iPod‘; click the Start button; and 15 minutes later your 700 MB file has been converted to a 180 MB MP4 ready to copy to your PSP. Selecting H.264 compression it took a little longer, 20 to 30 minutes. Copy the files to the PSP and they play without any problem.

Unfortunately this great product has one drawback. It is no longer being developed. In October 2008 the developer announced that the company was moving to other projects [2, 3]. Which is a pity, because it is a great program.

But not all is lost. iSquint continues to work. And the source of  Techspansion’s 3 programs have been released as Open Source projects. There has even been a guild to compiling the Open Source projects written (by one of the compeditors to cash in on the current search for iSquint).

How to upload video to the PSP?

Here are instruction I would have liked to find more easily:

  1. Attach your PSP to your Mac with a USB cable.
  2. On the PSP, from the ‘Settings’ menu select ‘USB Connection‘.
  3. The PSP will shortly mount as a drive on the desktop.
  4. Inside the drive there should be a folder called VIDEO
    If there isn’t create it.
  5. Copy your MP4s to this folder.
  6. Eject the PSP.
  7. You should now be able to play the videos by going to the Video menu, selecting Memory Stick, and choosing the video to play.

Notes:

  • You can put videos into sub-folders of the VIDEO folder, the PSP can find and play them.
  • The MP4s downloaded from YouTube also work on a PSP.

And for your reference, the machine I used to do the above is:

  • MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
  • running Mac OS X 10.5.6
  • PSP 3000 (firmware 4.21)

Steve Jobs has menopause

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Posted by Leefe on 7 January 2009 – 2:00 pm
Filed under Mac, News
Tagged as , ,

In recent news I see that Steve Jobs is having hormone issues. Reports say that his current weight less is not due to a recurrence of cancer, just a hormone imbalance.

Isn’t it obvious, at 53 Jobs, the mother of Apple computers, has entered menopause.

Jobs has entered the ‘grandmother‘ phase of his life cycle at Apple, and now needs to help nurture a new mother. Speculators believe that Philip Schiller is to be the new mother after giving the Keynote at this year’s MacWorld.

This is not a new phenomenon in the computer industry. With Steve Ballmer replacing Bill Gates as mother figure at Microsoft.

Still, many pause to see what effect this will have at Apple.