So, here’s my report on things to watch out for in this process.

Choosing the Mac

Any iMac I picked was going to be a quad core as opposed to my old dual core, and would be much faster. You might look at the comparison below and say, “Do I want to pay $300 extra for an 8% increase in processor speed?” True, you might never notice that, but look down to the Memory section. The more expensive model has an option for 16 GB RAM, while the base model only goes to 8 GB.

Even if you have no intention of buying extra RAM now, this is important. The 2.7 GHz model has 4 memory slots while the base model only has 2 memory slots. Here’s the RAM portion of the System Report for the 2.7 GHz iMac. Note that it has two empty RAM slots.

Later on, extra RAM will be cheap, and software bloat will make it necessary. But will you have anywhere to plug it in? What you’re buying for $300 is expandability. That’s the very thing that often forces you to buy a new computer — the fact that you simply can’t add more memory to the old one. It also means that you won’t necessarily have to discard the old RAM to plug in the new RAM.

The Display

I was a little leery of the glossy display, having always had the less reflective type. It’s a potential problem, but as soon as the screen lights up, everything is great. Photos and videos never looked better.

The Mouse and Keyboard

I like the wireless Magic Mouse. It takes some getting used to, but having the top of the mouse react to swipes and other gestures is great.

The Apple Wireless keyboard is a miserable little chicklet keyboard. And yes, the allusion to the much-maligned 1980s-era IBM PC Jr. keyboard is deliberate. Did Apple deliberately copy the design of the worst keyboard ever? The worst thing is the spacebar. When typing extended text, the space bar fails to register on about 10-20% of times I press it. I’m using the USB keyboard from my old Mac now, or this post would be filled with runtogetherwords.

The Apple Wireless keyboard operates via bluetooth. At one point during the migration process, I started my Mac, and it didn’t recognize the keyboard at all. No amount of pressing the button on the keyboard helped. The mouse was working, so bluetooth was turned on. The keyboard batteries were at 100%. It’s pretty hard to type your password without a keyboard! I had to hook up a USB keyboard to get past that problem. Not everyone will have one available.

Migratation Assistant

My old Mac was to be handed down to a family member. So began a daisy-chain of Mac migration. Apple’s Migration assistant is your friend in this process. It makes it easy to move user accounts and all of their data from one machine to another. I used this several times in the process, both via network, and via Firewire. Firewire is your best choice. It’s fast and reliable. Migration Assistant gave up a couple of times due to unspecified wireless network errors. It took many hours to move everything around. Migrating accounts from three computers to their new homes took about three days, with migration assistant taking up to eight hours to copy an account. Often things were migrating overnight. I couldn’t use Firewire with my new Mac, because Apple has changed the connectors again. I have Firewire cables with two different connectors on them, and nothing fit because Apple has introduced yet another Firewire jack.

When buying a new Mac, a Firewire cable that fits the old and new machine would be a good accessory, although I got by without it. If I had known about this problem in advance, I would have acquired the cable.

Software Incompatabilities

I have found a few things that require the purchase of new software to keep functionality that I had previously. As you may know, Mac OS Lion no longer supports compatibility with PowerPC applications. Everything must now be native Intel. For this reason some older software will no longer work.

I have a pretty new Epson flatbed scanner. The Epson software that came with the scanner doesn’t work on Lion, and Epson has no plans to update it. (What are they thinking?) This was a nice, full-featured scanning application. Mac OS Lion recognizes the scanner automatically without downloading a driver. You can perform basic scanning functions using the built-in Image Capture application. However this doesn’t provide the level of control I needed from scanning software.

I bought VueScan from Hamrick Software to solve this problem. The $39.95 standard edition is working fine for me. It’s a little pricey, but it’s very nice. VueScan seems to have a little bit faster workflow than the Epson software I was using before. You can download and use the trial version to make sure it works with your scanner before buying it.

Claris Works/Apple Works software no longer works. Claris Works/Apple Works documents couldn’t be opened. I took some back to the old Mac to export them in another format. Beware that although AppleWorks can save in “RTF” format, I wasn’t able to read those documents on Lion with TextEdit. It said the documents were corrupted. The iWork applications, Pages and Numbers may be able to read AppleWorks documents, but I haven’t tried that.

My favorite, free, genealogy application Generation X no longer works, and apparently it is no longer being supported. It works directly with standard GEDCOM files, so I should be able to read them with any reputable Genealogy application.

The Amadeus II sound editing application I’ve used for years is not supported on Lion. Although I had paid for this in the past, there is no free or discount upgrade path to Amadeus Lite or Amadeus Pro versions. This has always been a nice app, and I will be upgrading next time I really need to.

First the obvious, but non-free solutions. Microsoft does sell the Office suite, including PowerPoint in a Mac Version. It’s a nice product, and sometimes there are deals which make it less expensive than you might think. Educational discounts are especially attractive if you’re a student or teacher. Also, many Mac users will have purchased Apple’s iWork package, which will open PowerPoint documents in Keynote. Keynote is $19.99 in the Mac App Store.

Microsoft has a free PowerPoint Viewer for Macintosh, but it is so old that it is useless on any recent model.

As far as free office applications go, you should consider NeoOffice or Open Office for Mac. NeoOffice was a port of OpenOffice to make it more Mac friendly. Meanwhile, OpenOffice has updated their own offering to also be a native Macintosh application, so take your pick. These are full-featured application suites that let you create and edit various document types, as well as import and export the corresponding Microsoft formats.

Now for the outside-the-box answers.

You can sign up with free on-line document services which will allow you to create, view, store and manipulate documents remotely via the web. These are the Cloud services you’ve heard about. Microsoft has such a service called Sky Drive. You will need to sign up for a free Windows Live ID to use Sky Drive.

Similarly, Google Docs will open Power Point files. You will need to have signed up with Google for this one also. It’s the same ID you need for a gmail account.

The only software you need on your computer for these cloud-based solutions is a web browser. Using the cloud for this purpose has a security benefit. When someone asks “How Do I open files of type X?” it’s usually because people want to read the latest chain mails containing PowerPoint files of funny or interesting photos. Opening these is dangerous. You don’t know where they came from or where they’ve been. PowerPoint files can contain malware.

By opening these files using Google or Microsoft’s system, you are shifting much of the risk and security burden to these heavyweights of the computer industry. They are much more likely to have fully protected and updated their software from the latest malware threats than you are.

I haven’t seen any features in Apple Address Book or Google Contacts or similar software to handle death. There needs to be an explicit status of DECEASED. Here’s why.

I don’t want to delete the dead from my address book right away, if ever. I want to keep their photograph(s), correspondence and relationship information around. However I certainly don’t want to send email or make phone calls to the dead — that would be awkward.

Apple has tied the Address Book into the faces feature of iPhoto. The address book entry helps to distinguish between people with similar or identical names. I have many photos of long-dead relatives. Sometimes I would like to add a contact card for them, for reference, but I don’t want those names showing up in my phone book or email.

So, if you’re writing contact management software, don’t forget to include the fundamental distinction between the living and the dead.

-Jamie

The first and probably only thing you will find while searching the Internet for iTunes-to-Android products is DoubleTwist. Frankly, I hate it. It tries to do too much. It wants to replace iTunes, but is clearly not up to that task. Every time I start it, it treats my 1 TB USB external hard drive like a device that needs to be synchronized. There is no way to dissuade it from this behavior.

DoubleTwist will import playlists from iTunes and sync them to an Android device. This is the behavior I wanted from the program, but there were too many problems.

It is glacially slow. Worst of all, DoubleTwist failed to actually synchronize my files more often than it succeeded. Usually it would say it was done, but the transfer was very incomplete, or the old playlists were still there. Support at DoubleTwist answered my request for help, and suggested deleting DoubleTwist’s preferences files and retrying. This worked once, and then the program went back to its old ways.

Enter Salling Media Sync. When you connect an Android device, Salling Media Sync brings up a very iTunes-like interface to let you choose playlists, photos, etc., to be synchronized to your Android. That’s all it does, but it’s worked every time, and that’s all I wanted it to do.

On the downside, Salling Media Sync doesn’t act like a proper Mac application. It installs itself in the menu bar. I really don’t need anything else in my menu bar, thanks. The application has windows, but no menu bar of its own. Apparently, it runs all the time. There’s no way to quit it. I really only need it about once a week.

DoubleTwist is free.
Salling Media Sync is also free. A registered version makes sync go faster. The unregistered version replaces all files at each sync. The registered version intelligently only replaces those that need to be replaced. Registration is $22. The unregistered version updates my ~ 3GB playlists in about 40 minutes. This is mostly related to the speed of the flash memory card in my phone, I think. As I understand it, if you have a lot of turnover in what you are syncing, registration won’t make much difference. But, if you mostly keep the same file content from sync to sync, then the registration will make it go much faster.

-Jamie

Some publishers publish a trial or free version of their app, but what I’m looking for is a general scheme that works for all apps. I would be much more likely to buy a paid app, especially a more expensive one, if I could try it first.

Does anyone know of any existing way to do this?

-Jamie

We peeked into some seldom-seen corners of your favorite Mac applications. Everyone learned something at this meeting.

MacMAD May 2010

Address Book
Most people don’t know that you can print envelopes and address labels directly from the humble Address Book application. Select File:Print, and explore the extensive print dialog box that appears. It contains many powerful options, including templates for printing on the commonly available Avery labels. You can even customize your return address with an icon. This is great for sending invitations or Christmas cards.

Show Birthdays in iCal
Add birthdays to your address book contacts with Card:Add Field:Birthday.
Birthdays from address book can show in iCal, but you must enable this in the preferences. In Address Book, you can customize the fields. You can change a field for one card, or add a specialized field to the template used for all your Address Book cards.

Tips for Mail
Did you know you can select multiple mail messages and then Save Attachments?

Also, you can select two or more mailboxes such as your inbox and outbox, and then select View:Organize by Thread. This view makes it easy to follow the conversations you were a part of.

Use the rules feature of Mail to help control spam, and to put mail in the desired folders.
Dennis uses the Previous Recipients list in a rule to help determine if a message is spam. Mail keeps this list of every email address you have ever used, whether they are in your address book or not. You should take a look at it occasionally to delete unwanted entries, and to add wanted ones to your address book. The previous recipients list is also used to make pop-up suggestions as you type email addresses, so your life will be easier if you delete incorrect entries.

Dennis likes the free plug-in Letterbox, which adds the option to moves the preview pane to right side of the window in Mail.

Smart Folders are a powerful tool in Mail. Smart folders show a kind of virtual view into your mail. For example, you could make a smart folder that shows any message containing “MacMAD”. Beware that if you delete a message from a smart folder, you are deleting the original message everywhere.

iPhoto Tips
iPhoto opens faster if you turn off sharing. If you’re not using photo sharing, you should turn it off.
If you hold Option-cmd while opening iPhoto, you will see several options, including the option to rebuild your iPhoto library. Make sure you have good backups before doing this.

iPhoto has its own trash. Deleted photos still take up space on your hard drive until you empty the trash from within iPhoto.

Preferences
Dennis went over some gems from the System Preferences. His best tip was to always explore the preferences pane of a new application to find out what it will do for you. You may find features that will pleasantly surprise you.

Other Apps
Dennis recommended the use of SuperDuper! as a backup utility. It makes a complete copy of your hard drive.

Use the free utility Monolingual to save space by removing unused foreign language support from your system and applications.

Apple’s Preview application can merge PDF files! If you have several separate PDF documents, you can drag and drop them to create a single merged PDF document.

Where did these tips come from? It should be no surprise, but Apple has some excellent tutorials on using the Mac. These videos tend to be short and to the point. See:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ or for switchers from Windows, see http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/ .

Also, Macworld has some excellent tips. Visit http://www.macworld.com/howto.html .

Members are eligible for a 30% discount from Take Control Ebooks . Just ask one of the club officers. We are not allowed to put the discount code on the web. These books tend to cover their topic in great detail. If you are looking for in-depth discussion of a specific topic, try these.

See you next meeting.

-Jamie

First of all, I urge you to make sure your copies of these products are up-to-date. Adobe has been releasing security updates to fix some exploits that are already being used by hackers. If you are using a Macintosh, there’s a good chance you don’t need or have Adobe Acrobat installed. That’s because Apple’s Preview comes with MacOS and does a fine job displaying PDF files.

If you don’t know why you need Acrobat reader instead of Preview, you should delete it from your Mac. Preview won’t handle some of the more esoteric features that can appear in PDF files, which is precisely why it is less likely to be hacked. If you do have Acrobat Reader installed on your Mac, this may be of interest to you.

One of the gee-whiz things Acrobat supports is embedded Java Script in PDF documents. Not only can it read the documents, it can execute them! That’s dangerous. That’s why security expert Steve Gibson (www.grc.com) has been recommending on the Security Now! podcast that users of Acrobat go into the preferences and turn off Java Script.

But what happens if you have Java Script turned off, and run into one of the rare PDF documents that actually uses that feature? Here’s what happened on the Windows version:

And sure enough, if you click Yes, it re-enables Java Script not just for that one document, but for all time, leaving the door wide open for the hackers.

This is very poor. Adobe is arrogantly assuming that they know better, and that you really should have that turned on from now on.

First, select an innocent photo of a bird in iPhoto, and select the straighten tool:

Now the slightest adjustment of the straighten tool:

Here’s another manifestation using the crop tool. That weird rectangle in the upper left shouldn’t be there. Also notice the appearance of the overview thumbnail (it looks like the same junk as the photo above).

The first time I saw this, I though my photo was probably ruined, and I would have to reboot. However, I have found that the problem is only on the screen. Fortunately, the photo is not permanently affected. Usually, as soon as you exit the edit mode and look at the picture, it looks normal again.

I called Apple Tech support about this once, but didn’t really get anywhere. The problem was present under Leopard and persisted after the Snow Leopard install. I am using a 20″ iMac 2GHz Core 2 Duo.

Update: Nov 30, 2010. I am now on 10.6.5, and I haven’t seen this problem for a while. I’m thinking that it was fixed by one of the recent system updates. I haven’t installed iLife ’11 yet.

Update June 20, 2011. Now on 10.6.7, and iLife ’11, and no recurrences of this at all! Yeah! Thanks Apple.
-Jamie Cox

Tutorial podcasts can be a great way to learn about your Mac. They are usually brief, and usually packed with a lot of information. There is something for everybody. I’ve been using a Mac since 1984, and still learn some useful tips from some of the basic tutorials.

Apple’s own video podcasts are a great way for beginners to learn about the Mac. All podcasts are free. Podcasts were originally audio, but many now have video.

We also took a look at iTunesU and the Free on iTunes page, both accessible from the front page of the iTunes music store.

Someone asked about importing a VHS tape into the Mac. To do that you need a hardware converter box, such as the EyeTV 250 from Elgato.

Several members are using the EyeTV software or hardware to record TV programs off the air. There is a TV tuner for the Mac from Hauppauge which is compatible with the EyeTV software.

For watching all that video on your TV, you might want to use an AppleTV, or a similar set-top box, such as the one from Western Digital mentioned at the meeting.

AT&T U-verse (TV/phone/internet service) is now rolling out in the Melbourne area. The service got some good reviews from those that have it. It’s not available everywhere, though.

-Jamie Cox

On looking at the duplicate entries they are apparently identical. Why oh why can’t Apple’s iSync be smart enough to recognize these automatically?

Right now, I’m trying to clean up my address book which now has hundreds of contacts which have 2, 3 or even 4 duplicate entries. That’s a lot of work that I shouldn’t have to do. This stuff should just *work*. This is not rocket science.

I’m currently on the newest version of MacOS, Snow Leopard, MacOS 10.6.2, but as far as I can tell, nothing has improved on this front in many versions.

When syncing, it will also randomly pick some items that are in “conflict”. When you click Details, it asks which version of the contact you would like to save. However, in a horrible user-interface bug, it usually fails to show any of the contact details which would allow you to make an intelligent choice! You just get “John Doe, .Mac”, “John Doe, Address Book”, pick one. How do I know which one is right? It doesn’t show the phone number, email address or anything else! UI Fail.

I can’t be the only one. Anyone else have these problems too?

-Jamie Cox

P.S. It *is* nice that Apple added sync with Google contacts as an option, but it doesn’t work any better than the other options.