Seems Photoshop CS4 has buried within itself a deep, dark secret. We’ve heard about all the improvements and enhancements for both the Windows and Mac versions of the flagship image editing program, but it turns out there are a couple of Mac-specific features that you might not have heard about.
For those who have a MacBook Air or one of the latest generation MacBook Pros, it turns out that Photoshop CS4 supports multi-touch gestures. Seems to me that’s one of those underutilized features that Apple built into its hardware—maybe that’s just because it hasn’t made its way to the standard MacBook line. Yet.
Anyway, using your multi-touch trackpad in CS4 lets you rotate, pinch to zoom, and even “throw” images across the screen. Wired explains in more detail:
…if you hold the space bar down, click and drag the image when it is zoomed in and then let go, the picture will continue to move before slowing and coming to rest. It’s very similar to the scrolling on the iPhone.
Sounds…odd. But it’s cool that there’s at least some support for multi-touch outside of what Apple offers. Maybe this will help usher this under-appreciated feature into popularity?
With the introduction of iTunes 8, Apple removed a few settings from the application to simplify the preferences panel. Although most people won't even notice that they're gone or wouldn't necessarily miss them even if they did know, there are probably those who consider at least one of the vanished preferences a deal breaker for them.
Among those missing from the latest version are whether or not to display the genre column in the iTunes Browser, the ability to hide or show links to take you to the iTunes Store, playing songs while they're being imported or converted, and loading complete iTunes Store previews before playing them for people using slower Internet connections.
If the disappearance of any of those concerns you, hop over to the mothership where Rob Griffith's has jotted down the Terminal commands for each of the settings mentioned above. The single line 'true' and 'false' commands for tweaking hidden preferences ought to be pretty familiar with if you've been reading MacUser for any length of time.
If you're on Windows, however, they won't be of much help. Well, fear not, soldier, because over at his personal blog, Ocram has a couple of tricks for you that will help you disable at least two of the aforementioned features--the genre column in the iTunes Browser and the iTunes Store links. Wanna do the rest? Switch to a Mac. Just kidding.
No, seriously, switch to a Mac.
I was beginning to think I was crazy (or crazier than usual). New emails would show up in Mail, via the nifty little Dock icon telling me I had "x" number of unread messages waiting for me. But the "new mail" sound was nowhere to be found (heard). Since I know the deafness hasn't totally set in yet, you can imagine why a MacFixIt tip about Mail's lack of sound would pique my interest.
It seems that even new Macs have encountered this odd little problem of not playing a "new mail" alert sound but still displaying relevant Dock indicators. Possible solutions include the following (see MacFixIt for more details):
One of the casualties in the .Mac to MobileMe transition was iCards, a service that allowed you to send free greeting cards to your near and dear ones on special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, and weekends--what, you don't consider them special?
If you'd been wandering around listlessly on the interwebs, trying to figure out how to tell that special someone that you miss him/her/it, you'll be glad to know that a solution still exists. And a better one than iCards. Right on your Leopard-powered Mac.
One of the much hyped, but not very enthusiastically received, new features in Leopard was stationery in Mail, a feature that allows you to choose from a variety of predesigned themes, plug in your own photos, add some text, and email it to anyone. Sound familiar?
Yes, stationery in Mail is the new iCards, only more customizable, extensible, and with better designs to choose from. How do we know? Well, Apple was gracious enough to point us in the right direction themselves through this neat MobileMe news blog thing they've got going on. See, and you thought they'd never post anything except apologies and free extensions!
Since setting up my media vault (more to come on that, I promise), Leopard’s screen sharing has been an invaluable resource. With it enabled, I can access my Mac mini’s screen from anywhere in the whole wide world with no problem (as long as the mini doesn’t decide to log off the wireless network—but that’s another story).
But if you’ve ever forgotten to enable screen sharing or found that it was disabled for some reason, you’ll be glad to know that a quick Terminal command can turn it on or off (as long as you’ve enabled Remote Login in your Mac’s sharing preferences). No, this won’t display your remote Mac’s screen as animated ASCII art (bummer!).
Just connect to your Mac via Terminal and issue the following commands to enable the screen sharing goodness:
$ cd /Library/Preferences$ echo -n enabled > com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd
Done and done. Want to disable the service? Here you go:
$ cd /Library/Preferences$ rm com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd
Erm. Yeah. So that’s it. The whole post. What are you still doing here? I’m not your monkey!
It’s always a good idea to check Apple’s refurbished products page on the store when you’re thinking about bringing home a new family member (what? you don’t treat your Macs like family?). It should almost go without saying, but we’re all busy, forgetful beings.
Right now, the page is a treasure trove of great deals. MacBooks start at $899. They’ve got the original base Mac Pro for $1999. Then again, maybe you’d rather spend that 2k on the single quad core processor, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB hard drive, Radeon HD 2600 XT Mac Pro instead. I know I would.
Go check it now and pick me out something nice.
I’m in the middle of an epic journey of computer self-renewal, but I’m not the only one exploring ways to make my home more digital-friendly. The fine folks over at Lifehacker have put together an excellent article detailing how to duplicate the a Sonos wireless music system for a mere fraction of the price.
All you really need, it seems, is an iPhone/iPod touch, wireless router, and an AirPort Express. Thanks to Apple’s Remote application, you can now control your computer’s iTunes Library from wherever you are in your home, and the AirPort Express lets you pump those same tunes to your stereo system.
Technically, I can achieve the same thing with my Xbox 360 and Connect 360, but I have to admit that the Remote program feels far more elegant—otherwise, I have to control the music from the Xbox controller, which is kind of irritating. Perhaps an AirPort Express is in my future.
Many developers desperately want to virtualize various Mac OS X releases. Right now, that’s not a possibility, unless you consider this pseudo hack. You can run Leopard client version virtualized as long as you’re tricking Fusion into thinking it’s the server version.
The trick relies on the existence of a file in the disc image. First step, create a disk image of your Leopard install disc. Once that’s done, mount it (make sure it’s read/write). Then run this command:
touch “/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist”
Then you need to run more command.
touch “/Volumes/Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist”
Replace Macintosh HD with the name of your hard drive. You then need to reboot. That last step fools Fusion into thinking you’ve booted Mac OS X Server.
Yeah, that’s a lot of work. And it probably won’t work for long. And it doesn’t address the real desire developers have (older versions of OS X). It’s a start though. Hope.
Hiding the hard disk icon on a Mac's Desktop is one of those tricks that I feel could go both ways: either so many people know about it that it's not worth mentioning, or only a handful of people stumbled across it while doing something else in the Finder.
The premise is simple though. When in the Finder, open the Finder's preferences (I'm a fan of pressing Command + the comma key, but Finder -> Preferences is perfectly valid too) and click on the "General" button that resembles a light switch. For super neat-freaks who hate having anything on their Desktop whatsoever, decluttered nirvana is as simple as unchecking the boxes under "Show these items on the Dekstop."
Files already stored on the Desktop will still remain there, which would throw a wrench into the whole "I have the cleanest Desktop ever!!!" thing. There are also options for what new Finder windows should open (the Home folder, hard drive, etc.), and options for playing with spring-loaded folders (Which. Are. Fun). Sadly, there are no options for cleaning my physical desktops which, depending on where I am, contain eyeglass-spray and sunglasses, or a heart-shaped paperweight and old Administrative Assistant's Day greeting cards.
I checked my iTunes app updates today--lo and behold, there were 24 updates waiting for me. I thought it was app update Christmas and Santa Jobs had come down the App Store Tree with lots of presents for us nice iPhone users.
But no. Frickin' iTunes just frickin' told me I had multiple frickin' updates to the same apps--5 for AIM 1.2, for example, 4 for OneTap, 7 for PhoneSaber, and so on.
Frickin' iTunes with its stupid frickin' app update rubbish.
Why could this frickin' be? I asked myself with the curiosity of a frickin' cat. I did some investigating: Turns out that when you update an app in iTunes, it doesn't actually overwrite the older version--it just throws it into your iTunes/Mobile Applications/ folder with the standard duplicate-file number suffix (so AIM would be AIM.ipa, AIM 1.ipa, AIM 2.ipa, etc.).
Some research showed that I'm not the only frickin' one with this problem (thank-frickin'-God), and some folks have figured out temporary solutions. Let's take a look.
Continue reading "Frickin' iTunes App update system going wonky-frickin'-bonkers"
