Mac Geekery

Welcome to yet another series of short answers. I’d write something larger but there are two factors preventing that:

1. The lack of time to actually write it, these days.
2. The lack of geeky questions in the queue to fuel my desire to slack off on real work and write something fun.

It’s not you, it’s both of us. It’s just not working out. However, I think with a little effort we can get this going again.

So, with that in mind, let us go forth in my effort to reduce the size of the queue in my search for something to write a long and heavy article about…

Where is the best place to buy IPOD in New York?

An Internet Porn Obfuscation Device? No clue. If you want an iPod, though, hit 5th Ave.

There are countless threads about iMovie 08 running only on dual G5’s and Intels. Many of us have gotten it installed using Pacifist, but we still get a warning when we launch it, and then it quits. Anyone found a hack? Thanks.

While the makers of XPostFacto may have you believing that hardware limits are arbitrary, as a developer I can assure you they are not. In fact, using iMovie 08 on a first-generation MacBook Pro I can say that I’m at the low end of what would be acceptable hardware for that program. My Mac mini wouldn’t cut it. Trying to get around hardware requirements rarely yields anything good when the bottom-end of the supported hardware is having a less-than-stellar experience.

I have been looking for a way to listen to music in my iTunes library over the internet, much like the way iTunes sharing works, but for computers not on the same network. I haven’t seen anything that works like what I might have in mind, so I was wondering if there was anything out there.
My general goal is to be able to sit down at any computer (with an internet connection, of course), go to the proper address, and access my home computer’s iTunes through some sort of webUI.I know that I could use VNC to achieve the same end result, but that requires installing software on both ends, and provides much more (and not better) features and functionality than I’m looking for.
SO, is there anything out there that can do this, or do I need to use a workaround?

Simplify Media.

I would like to have an external HD act exactly like the iPod, by this I mean I wanna backup my whole iTunes library to the external HD, so I was thinking : – Create a partition on the external HD that is the same as the iPod – I don’t know, put firmware in it and everything…
So when I connect the external HD, it would look like an iPod in iTunes, and then automatic sync, that’s exactly what I want : if a song gets deleted from the CPU, it gets deleted from the HD and vice versa….Is it possible?

iTunes checks the FireWire/USB ID of the parent device of the mounted volume to ensure it’s an iPod, so that wouldn’t work out for you, no. However, you could just use psync or SuperDuper! to do the sync and then use the old have launchd watch Volumes trick to start a copy when the drive is attached.

I was wondering if there was a hack or settting or software to stream my Itunes/Airtunes to 3 or more airportexpress at the same time. In different rooms thru out my home.

AirFoil.

I have a photo library quite big on a Windows Pc, which i wan’t to move to a iPhoto. The catch is the old library is allready divided into folders that are each roll of pictures How can i automatically copy the pictures in each folder to a roll with the name of such folder??

Drag them into iPhoto one roll at a time. Automator or AppleScript may be able to help automate that. iPhoto treats each import operation as a single roll, so by dragging each folder in you’re using/abusing that concept to make rolls for each of your, well, rolls.

Is there a way to automatically sinc the libraries between to Macs running iPhoto?

I’ve wondered this as well. I’ve yet to find an answer.

Is there a command that allows you to burrow down into the application folder to remove all the subfolders and files, thus allowing you to use the rmdir command without having to specify the plethora of subfolders first?

The rm tool has an -r flag that is recursive. It’ll even get the top directory for you. rm -f CrappyApp.app is all you need.

Can you guys help spread the word about iPhone Developers Camp? http://barcamp.org/iPhoneDevCamp

Better late than never.

I installed an app that changed a bunch of file associations. I realize that I can get info on a file and select a different “Open with” app and select change all… However, I was wondering if there is a way to find out which file types are associated with, for example, TextEdit.

RCDefaultApp.

Is there a defaults write command (or some other Unix/CLI command) that can be tweaked so when a server volume is mounted on the desktop in Tiger, it does not auto-open and show all the contents?

No. This is a preference stored in the .DS_Store file at the root of the share. Delete that file and/or have the owner of that file close the window before ejecting the share and it should stop. To prevent it in the future, delete the file, use touch to create it again and then chown root:root and chmod 000 to prevent it from being changed. It’ll never bug you again.

I deleted @ sign on a spring from the dock. Where did it go? It took me to Mac OS X website. How do I restore it?

You had an @ sign in your Dock? Wow, it’s a good thing you got rid of that; that’s a well-known system-destroying trojan (because Macs don’t have viruses). It’ll delete your files and then put Dick Cheney desktops in rotation. Good riddance.

More seriously, it was a link to http://www.apple.com/. Just go there and drag the icon to the left of the URL in Safari to the Dock and it’ll appear again.

Or you could just run mdutil -i off / for each of your drives. Six of one, half a week and upgrade hell for the other. Have fun.

Is it possible to sync the items in a the finder’s sidebar between two (or more) Macs? We use the sidebar as a holder for in-progress jobs which are stored on the server. If the links to these items could be synced among the various team members it would be really useful…

That’s stored in the user’s preferences folder under com.apple.sidebarlists.plist. You’d have to sync the array items and then push it out to each user. You could probably automate diff and patch to do this with a moderately-smart script.

How to restart VNC on MAC OS

/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -agent -restart

In Terminal, do ls -lrt Library/Preferences/ | tail to get the ten most-recently-changed files. Open System Preferences and change an Expose setting, then re-run the command.

The answer is: com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist.

So, that’s not the problem. In situations like this, I usually recommend the Conflict Catcher half-and-half approach. Drag all the files out, drag in half. If doesn’t happen (after a logout & login) then drag in half of the remaining files. If it does happen, then something in that set caused it, so drag out half of the set you just put in and repeat. You should be done in 8-10 cycles at most.

Currently I am running 10.4.9. One of the security updates, however, between 10.4.8 and 10.4.9 caused application dialogue windows (quit, save, sync, etc.) to lose the highlight or aqua ring around one of the buttons that often represents the opposite of the colored/aquaed button. For example, when launching NetNewsWire, two options appear: Get Changes as a colored button; Cancel as a highlighted or aquaed ring around button. Of course, depending on the app, the colored/aquaed button can be chosen with the Return key and the highlghted button can be chosen with the Space Bar or Esc key. So, now in this example, the Cancel button has lost the highlight and the Space Bar key does not select this function. Clicking is the only way to select this Cancel button.
First thought was to install 10.4.9 Combo updater. Your thoughts would be appreciated. The related plist file is not readily apparent to me.

You want to turn on Full Keyboard Access in the Universal Access preference pane.