Copy Address

I use this right-click menu option all the time. I manage a couple largish web communities and I need to cut/copy/paste emails often. In Snow Leopard, Firstname Lastname Email Address gets copied to the clipboard. WHY? I don’t want the name, and I don’t want the brackets. If I wanted the name, I’d have used the “Copy Firstname, Lastname and Address, and throw in a pair of idiotic brackets” right-click option (doesn’t exist). I just want the email address… naked. That’s it. Like in Leopard. Please?

10.6

First Last <email@domain>

10.5

email@domain

Bluetooth Mouse Disconnections

Every 30-60 minutes my Bluetooth Mighty Mouse stops working. Then I get the “Connection Lost” OS X message. Then I click the mouse button, then I get another 30-60 minutes of uninterrupted mouse usage. This bug is no stranger to the the Apple Discussions.

I just found Aperture’s key-combination re-mapping setting. Why is this useful? Key combos save me time, but when they’re difficult to get to with my left hand, I tend not to use them. With this, I can easily remap Aperture commands to trigger them with left handed key combinations. That allows me to keep my right hand on my mouse.

^^^ click ^^^

If you’re a Mac key remapper, you’ll love this. If not, become more productive with your Mac and learn some key combos. You will do more in less time, I promise.

After writing a forum post about Time Machine and how it, well, simply worked for me when I needed it to, I’ve been noticing some downsides.

It’s slow at backing up over WiFi

I have a 500GB Time Capsule and a 2.2Ghz MacBook Pro. It takes forever to back up a couple gigs of data, and it slows my work down because it takes up processor and disk resources. I often do a Stop Backup from the menu. I tried a wired backup (ethernet) and found it to be perhaps 10x faster. But the layout of my home office these days is not conducive to a hardwired situation.

The interface is slow

And a little too dramatic… do we really need to fly through the Andromeda Galaxy when we need to get a document we accidentally deleted a week ago? I don’t know if that’s the speed crusher, but I can wait for a minute for the full complement of backup points to load. The interface is frozen while I wait.

It’s inflexible with backup frequency

You can choose any backup frequency you want, as long as it’s once every hour. This is too often for me (see my slowness complaint about backups over WiFi, above), but yet I’d still like an automatic backup. A week ago I switched it to manual, and I now go to the menu and select Back Up Now.

All in all I like it, but I’m crossing my fingers for fewer OS speed hits, better interface speed, and real choice with backup frequency. C’mon Apple, let’s do this.

How cool is merging two cards? Just Command-click two cards in the list and execute that command.

But why would I have two cards for one person? You might ask. Here’s the answer: you might have Bob with his phone number, and then one day add Bob from Mail.app’s “Add to Address Book”.

Will the Leopard 10.5.2 update be 400MB? Will it include a user-selectable transparency level for the menu bar? Will it fix Keef’s Firewire problems?

Tune in to find out!

I used it last night and again today. I’m getting a bunch of files back from the otherside.

I emailed PhotoRec author Christophe Grenier asking if it recovered . NEF (Nikon Raw) files. The documentation says that it does, but in the file types listed in the “choose what you want to look for” in the application’s interface, there is seemingly everything but .NEF.

no .NEF choice here

He emailed me within 10 minutes and said that format is a child of .TIF, so just select that. And voila, it started recovering my raw files.

The names of the recovered files are different, but I can live with that.

Now to give myself 100 lashes for letting this whole thing happen in the first place. Note to self: get data re-org projects done in one day, not 30. The longer that window is open, the more likely a fly will come in.

Nathan, thanks for the PhotoRec tip.

If you’re getting The message … could not be moved to the mailbox … in Leopard’s Mail.app 3.0 or 3.1, you might want to uncheck “Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox” in Preferences >Accounts > (account) > Mailbox Behaviors.

Thanks to James in this thread.

Hang in there gang. Together we can work out the bugs in the Mail.app 2 to 3 transition.

What does it do?

• AirPort

  Allows password-protected accounts on AirPort Disks to show up on in the Finder’s Shared Sidebar.
  Resolves an issue with saved passwords for wireless networks.

• Back to My Mac

  Improves the reliability of Back to My Mac-enabled Macs appearing in the Finder’s Shared Sidebar.
  Improves compatibility with D-Link NAT gateways.

• Disk utilities

  Restores the functionality of the progress bar during permission repairs in Disk Utility.
  Addresses an issue that could produce an alert when creating disk images using Disk Utility or Terminal.
  Improves disk partitioning when multiple RAID sets are created on the same disk.

• iCal

  iCal alarms are now more reliably delivered via email.
  Resolves an issue when inviting attendees via a CalDAV account.

• Mail

  Improves stability when resizing columns in the message viewer or switching between Stationery templates in email messages.
  Addresses an issue in which attachments enclosed inside an HTML link may not be clickable in email messages.
  Fixes an issue with email accounts added using the “Simple Setup” feature in which messages cannot be sent due to an SMTP connection failure.
  Improves Smart Mailboxes compatibility with .Mac Sync, and addresses an issue with To Do’s disappearing when using Smart Mailboxes.
  Resolves an issue with syncing Mail accounts with .Mac in which multiple On My Mac folders appear in the Mailbox pane.

• Networking

  Addresses an issue in which Microsoft Windows shared folders may be read-only when connected via SMB.

• Printing

  Resolves an issue in which user-selected values on Paper Feed PDE are reset to default while saving a custom preset.

• Security, Firewall

  Addresses a code signing issue; third-party applications can now run when included in the Application Firewall or when whitelisted in Parental Controls.
  In Security preferences’ Firewall tab, the “Block All” option is now called “Allow Only essential services”
  Includes recent Apple security updates.

• System and Finder

  Addresses a potential data loss issue when moving files across partitions in the Finder.
  Resolves an issue with login after turning off FileVault for a specific user account.
  Improves compatibility with Adobe Flash-based uploaders used by .Mac Web Gallery and certain other websites and applications.
  Resolves a potential text drawing issue with certain Adobe Flash-based websites and applications.

• Time Machine

  Addresses formatting issues with certain drives used with Time Machine (specifically, single-partition MBR drives greater than 512 GB in size as well as NTFS drives of any size and partition scheme).
  Resolves an issue in which files restored in Time Machine may be restored to the backup hierarchy rather than the folders to which they belong.

I’m a web developer and photographer, and I’m moving to Leopard full-time after a week of testing on my PowerMac G5. My critical apps that work with 10.5:

• Aperture (update to 1.5.6)
• Coda 1.0.5
• BBEdit 6.5.3 (I know, 6.x is a dinosaur… but it’s a solid, capable dinosaur)
• Transmit 2.6.2
• Photoshop CS3
• Firefox 2 and various developer extensions

Have you moved to 10.5? Waiting for an app to be Leopardized?

Apple updated Aperture to version 1.5.6 on October 26th.

Besides stability tweaks and modifications to make Aperture work smoothly with OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, changes include compatibility improvements with iPhoto, iLife Media Browser and with reliability when recovering an Aperture Library from a Vault.

Run Software Update to get the update.

If you add a To Do item when offline, Mail.app might crash repeatedly when you go online, with no way out of the crashing loop (!).

I found the solution to this nasty Mail.app crash here.

Start Terminal application: it’s in Applications/Utitlities/ folder. In the following, do not type the quotes, just type what’s in the quotes.

Go to ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-email_address@mailserver/.OfflineCache like this

"cd ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-email_address@mailserver/.OfflineCache"

and list the contents like this

"ls -al"

Then delete all the files with numbers, like this

"rm 1"

WARNING: this worked for me. If you’re not comfortable with any of this, don’t do it. Back up the .OfflineCache folder first if you’re uncomfortable, but brave.

OS X has never had a mouse tracking setting I can use with any accuracy. Leopard’s no different.

I don’t remember pre-10.2 or OS 9, but certainly with OS 10.2 and newer I’ve turned to IntelliPoint 6.22 For Mac. I use MS mice so there’s no problems with hardware/driver compatibility.

So what’s my problem? It’s the rate of acceleration the Apple driver gets all wrong. It’s like it has two speeds, slow and fast. You move the mouse very slowly — no problem. Move it quickly — no problem. But going through the mathematical line that separates these two states causes a jump in cursor speed akin to a Dodge Charger 440 launching on a 1/4-mile run.

No amount of fiddling with tracking speed in the OS X Preference Pane helps.

And — just as annoyingly — it works the same way when slowing. The MS mouse driver has a much more linear speedup, and it makes for faster mousing.

The following by AppleSwitcher member Comandante was taken from the AppleSwitcher Mac Forum thread Hands-On-Leopard.

I’m going to look at this Pro migration path tomorrow from a web developer’s perspective: Coda, Firefox 2.0.0.8 w/ extensions, Parallels w/ XP, BBEdit etc.

As with any upgrade, take caution if you use your Mac for a living. I’ve installed 10.5 on an external drive, and will use that as a sandbox to test the applications I depend on.

I have installed 10.5 Leopard in my G5 Quad backup. So far I see a number of improvements and some minor slowdowns (Disk Utility takes longer to repair disk permissions, for instance). The Network control pane is vastly improved, allowing the setting of permissions of individual-designated users (a la AppleShare) for the first time. This is great news for schools and corporate outfits. Safari and Mail run much faster (actually like they were supposed to run since their creation), Spotlight runs orders of magnitudes faster doing searches but only after it has rebuilt its database, which could take, say up to an hour in a large hard drive (>400GB).

Printer SetUp Utility has disappeared from the Application/Utilities folder and is now located in the System Preferences as the control pane Print & Fax, as is Dock. Other new control panes include: Exposé & Spaces, Time Machine (a backup system-level system that I have not tried yet) and Widget Manager (allows to turn widgets on/off). Airport menu now shows locked (and thus unlocked visible networks) with a padlock next to the network SSID.

Warning: I have not tried to print to any of my three printers nor have I tried to use Aperture, Photoshop, Quark or any other elaborate environment that use calibrated ICC profiles for printing. This will come over the weekend when I can get round to futz with it.

So far the review is positive with the cautionary above.

OS X 10.5 “Leopard” hits shelves at 6pm Friday, and expectations are high.

See our Official Leopard Hands On thread where we’ll talk about first impressions.

Vote in the Will You Buy Leopard? poll.

I’m interested in what the community will see as its best feature. Time Machine? Spaces? Let us know what you think.

These screenshots (and the build in general) are probably what we’re going to see in the final shipping OS next month, and I’m excited. Lots of features, lots of eye candy, and lots of solid visual design. Excellent.

^^^click^^^

And check that out — locked/unlocked icons for Wifi signals in the Airport menu dropdown. Cool. I’ve been using the wonderful but $8 Wifind by Tastyapps.

I just rediscovered how to do this after knowing it then somehow forgetting it long ago.

If you listen to streaming radio with iTunes and can’t be bothered to do one of the various methods of finding the station in iTunes, this is the tip for you. You don’t have to use iTunes to start your stream; in fact iTunes need not be open.

Tested with iTunes 4 and iTunes 7; should work with 5 and 6 also.

1. grab a radio icon from iTunes
   
2. drag it to the Documents half of your Dock, it will take on the Web address Mac OS icon
   
3. click on it
   
4. that will open a web page in a browser and trigger a download of a file called something like listen.pls edit: name depends on the radio station
   
5. drag listen.pls to a nice location for long-term storage, then rename it and drag it onto your Documents half of your Dock edit: after renaming the downloaded file, Get Info -> Lock it

   

That’s it, all done. Enjoy.