Tips & Tricks

Save your iTunes Ratings

Rating Writer 1.0 is an AppleScript for iTunes 4 that writes your current star rating to a song file's ID3 tag. The script can then use the information from the ID3 tag to restore the star ratings, either to transfer them to another computer or user or to recover them after library corruption. Rating Writer is free for Mac OS X 10.3 with iTunes 4. http://ratingwriter.midwestdjs.com/

TextEdit - Find and Replace in a selection

TextEdit (at least version 1.3 in Panther) supports restricting a Find and Replace to just the selected text in a document rather than the whole thing. Press the option key when the Find dialogue window is open, and the Replace All button switches to read In Selection. Somewhat oddly, the button will switch even if no text is highlighted to form a "selection."

Transfer Internet Bookmarks from OS 9 to OS X

In Internet Explorer, copy the file Favorites.html from the OS 9 System Folder (System Folder -> Preferences -> Explorer) to the Explorer Folder in your OS X User Folder (Users -> your user name -> Library -> Preferences -> Explorer).

Netscape users, copy the file Bookmarks.html from the OS 9 System Folder (System Folder -> Preferences -> Netscape Users -> user name) to your OS X User Folder (Users -> your user name -> Library -> Mozilla -> Profiles -> user name

How to Restore from your Apple CDs

When you use Apple Software Restore CDs they first erase the hard disk, and then restore all the software. You can use these steps to reinstall parts without erasing the hard disk.

For Mac OS X system software, use the appropriate System Software Install CD to reinstall the missing software. Unlike the Restore discs, the Install discs do offer custom installation.

If you need an item that is only available from the Restore CD set, you may install it without erasing the hard disk by following these steps:

1. Make sure you have at least 2 GB of free hard disk space on your computer.

2. Make a new folder.

3. Insert the Software Restore discs one by one and copy the disk image (.dmg) files in the Configurations folder from each disc to the folder you created on the hard disk. There may be up to five images depending on the restore set.

4. Open the Disk Copy application (Mac OS X 10.2.8 or earlier) or Disk Utility (Mac OS X 10.3 or later).

5. Drag the first .dmg file from the folder you created to the Disk Copy window. The disk image appears as a hard disk on the desktop. This disk image volume contains all the software that your computer did when it was first purchased.

6. Open the disk image volume and locate the software you want to reinstall.

7. Copy the software from the disk image volume to the hard disk.

8. If you are using Mac OS X 10.2 or later, use Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature. If you are using Mac OS X 10.1.5, use the Repair Privileges Utility 1.1.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106451

Browsing for Network Servers?

The types of service that appear when browsing the Network on your computer are set in the Directory Access application. It's in the Utilities folder (/Applications/Utilities). If something is not selected in Directory Access, your computer is not "listening" to the "shouts" for that type of service.

For example: You may notice that AppleTalk servers and zones do not appear when you browse the Network. This is because AppleTalk is turned off by default in Directory Access (a behavior that differs from Mac OS X 10.2.8 and earlier). To change Directory Access, follow these steps:
1. Click the lock button to authenticate.
2. Click the checkbox next to a directory service to turn it on or off.
3. Click the Apply button.

Note: To browse via AppleTalk, you must select AppleTalk both in Directory Access and in Network preferences. AppleTalk can only be active on one port at a time. Selecting AppleTalk in Network preferences does not automatically turn it on in Directory Access, and vice versa. AppleTalk is turned on by default in Directory Access in Mac OS X 10.3.3 and later.

This tip from Apple's helpful "About network browsing and connected servers in Mac OS X 10.3" http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107804

A Map to the UNIX file system

Did you ever wonder what exactly should be in the /usr/bin directory? Or maybe what goes inside the /usr/local/sbin directory? There is a great resource of the standards for UNIX describing all the directories in a basic UNIX filesystem. Very handy!
You can find the document here: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

Burn Multi-Session CD-Rs

Most people do not realize you can burn more than one session on a CD-R disc using Apple's Disc Burn software. In OS X, open Disk Copy, and choose Burn disc from the File menu. After selecting what you want to burn, click on the little blue triangle for more options. You will see you can check a box that lets you burn more sessions to the same disc.

Backup Stickies

If you use Stickies a lot and don't want to lose any of the data, make a backup of the database.

In OS 9, you can find it located in the System Folder, called Stickies file.

In OS X, open your Home>Library folder, and then Option-drag StickiesDatabase into a backup folder or disc. In case you somehow lose your information, the backup can be copied back to the appropriate location

How to Optimize Your Macintosh OS 9 System Configuration

Although written with Microsoft Office users in mind, this article in Microsoft's knowledge base provides some good tips on how to optimise a pre-OS X system. It covers the process of increasing the amount of RAM allocated to an application, the use of Apple's virtual memory system, checking to see if there's sufficient free space on the boot volume, removal of excessive fonts, system extension conflict resolution, how to rebuild the desktop file, the number of colours to run the screen in, and setting up background print spooling.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/q297/2/38.asp&NoWebContent=1

Text Drag and Drop

Text Drag and Drop is not broken in OS X. It just works a bit differently than before.
After you select text, click anywhere inside the selected area (even in a blank area) and keep the mouse button down for 0.5 to 1 second without moving before dragging. This tells the system you intend to drag-n-drop. If you move too soon, it's interpreted as a text re-selection instead.

Empty the Trash automatically with AppleScript

One option that's missing for many in the Finder is the ability to automatically empty the Trash as you drop an item onto the Trash Can icon. Fortunately, it's possible by setting up a simple Folder Action with an AppleScript. One word of warning-once you set this up, any item you drop onto the Trash Can in the Dock will automatically be deleted from the hard drive, so consider this option carefully. Should you decide to proceed, launch the Script Editor and in it, enter the following script:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items try tell application "Finder" to empty trash end try end adding folder items to
When you've completed the script, name the script emptytrash and save the file as a script in Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts. Now, choose Go > Go To Folder, enter ~/.Trash and click the Go button. The Finder then displays the hidden trash folder. Next, [control] click on the .Trash folder and choose the Attach A Folder Action option. Then, in the open Choose A File dialog box, select the emptytrash script. With that script assigned as a Folder Action, the Trash will automatically empty whenever an item is moved into it.

How to find what's causing disappearing disk space.

You can use the OS X Terminal App (in Utilities folder) to produce a list, sorted in decreasing order, of disk space consumed by every file and folder on your boot drive in OS X (in unix speak this is designated /).

Open Terminal.app, become the root user by typing
sudo su -then on successive lines type
root# cd / root# du -ax |sort +0 -rn > /tmp/du.txt open /tmp/du.txt

This can be applied to other drives if multiple drives are present, just cd into /Volumes/whatever and run from 'du -ax |sort +0 -rn' again.

Changing the default email program or web browser in Panther

If you want to change your default email or web browser, in Jaguar (OS X 10.2) you'd just select the Internet Prefs pane in System Preferences and select say Eudora from the pop down menu in the Email tab. Similarly for the Web browser in the Web tab. Unfortunately in Panther Apple has decided that you need to go to the relevant Apple application and in its preferences change the default application. So to set Eudora as the default email application under OS X 10.3 you open Mail select the Preferences under the Mail menu and navigate to General/Default Email Reader, choose Eudora. Similarly you go to Safari's Prefs to change your default browser.
The limited setting available from Apple's Internet preference pane can still be gained by copying the pref pane from a Jaguar installation or backup over to your Panther environment. It still works but is no longer installed in Panther. Look in System/Library/PreferencePanes for Internet.prefPane. in your jaguar installation. I copied it to Library/PreferencePanes in my Panther install and needed to reboot for it to become visible in the System Preferences window.

Alternatively you can use a shareware utility like "MisFox" or "More Internet".
MisFox http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12848
More Internet http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12849

iPhoto won't launch after 4.0.1 Update?

For those people experiencing the generic iPhoto and failure to launch after updating iPhoto to 4.0.1, the problem is permissions. More importantly, this is caused by people having used some means to install 4.0 other than the iLife CD/DVD. When iPhoto is simply copied from another computer or, ahem, downloaded off the net, then the permissions don't get set up correctly inside the app. When the 4.0.1 updater runs, it changes ownership of some of the files back to root/admin, but doesn't otherwise change the access permissions. For files that were readable only by the owner, they are now locked out. The Apple Repair Permissions utility cannot help in these cases because, since iPhoto was never installed, there is no receipt in /Library/Receipts. A receipt is how Repair Permissions knows what to do to fix things.

Bottom line: Don't copy iPhoto from another computer to install it, but instead use the iLife CD/DVD. In all cases, that will set things up correctly for the 4.0.1 updater. Aaron Disario

To fix the problem you can try this:
The generic icon and not launching is due to some directories within the application package having incorrect "no access" permissions.To fix it follow these steps (type the information in the quote marks, without quotes):

1) Open terminal
2) 'cd /Applications'
3) 'chown -R <user> iPhoto.app'
With <user> being your username.

chown changes ownership of the application, and -R cascades your ownership permissions through the application's directories. Sean Earp

MACinations April 04