How-To - page 103

Many Mac users have multiple systems of varying ages, and often several different copies of their iTunes and iPhoto libraries. Here’s how to get them all in one place:

Your post today about sharing libraries made me wonder whether you have addressed importing/merging libraries across two Macs. My wife has a desktop PowerMac G4 Cube and a newer MacBook. She wants to import both her iPhoto and iTunes libraries to the MacBook, but I’m not sure how to accomplish this. Also, because the Cube has slow USB and the MacBook has no Firewire, I’m not even sure how to get the data over to the MacBook without it taking eons. Any thoughts would help.

Thanks! Rik

The Mac and Mac OS X have changed tremendously in their nearly three-decade long existence, but some problems stand the test of time. Finder Error Code 36 has plagued Mac users since the Beige Days:

My girlfriend and I have matching 13″ MacBook Pros (4Gigs RAM and both with ample HDs) and are the same “age”. We both are music nuts and have tons of music and my Mac performs beautifully but her computer has been pausing/stalling (with spinning beach ball) when she plays music on iTunes. This happens mainly, but not limited to, when the screensaver starts up. We took it to the Genius Bar and their solution was to disable the screensaver with a hot corner. I find that solution unacceptable.

Inheriting an old Mac does not always mean it’s ready to go with freshly reinstalled software. The Startup (Boot) Manager might show its friendly face sometimes when a valid boot drive can’t be found:

Recently I have been given a iMac G5 (light sensor). The guy who gave it to me has wiped the HD so I can start again. I intend to give this Mac to my parents for a present but before I go and buy a copy of OSX i decided to try and install a borrowed copy just to make sure the computer still works. As far as I know the copy works. But my Mac won’t have any of it. (don’t worry, I’m not asking you for advice on pirating). All that shows on the screen are two buttons. One has a circular arrow and the other has a straight arrow. Nothing happens when I click on either of them.

Sharing an iPhoto or iTunes library between two users is a common request, but Apple doesn’t make this easy. Home Sharing will distribute purchased media but does not allow you to manage a single shared library. Here are some Apple recommended options:

I have my iPhoto library located in my /Users/Shared folder. My wife is an Admin and I am an Admin and both login apps are linked to it. I have gone as far as selecting the permissions to read and write for everyone, but there are still videos she can’t watch and when she imports items they don’t save to the library. Importing can only be done from my login.

Can you detail the exact method for sharing?

Those of us with Macs take for granted how easy it is to import pictures from our iPhones and iPods to our Macs – at least, once you’ve done it the first time. Things are a bit less obvious for iDevice owners running Windows:

Is there an easy way to move all the pictures from the camera roll [on my iPod touch] to my computer or an external hard drive?

Richard

Readers continue to contact us with questions about their Macs and iDevices, so we’ve decided to run Ask MacRx more frequently during the week. Today we address one of the most common questions for a Mac consultant, why do I get that spinning beach ball all the time?

It seems like there is never a day goes by that I am not confronted with the Spinning Ball of Death, most often while in Safari (although granted, that is the application that I use most frequently). Lately (post Lion installation) I have even been getting a message “Browser is Not Responding.”

Although it’s by no means immediately obvious, Mac OS X includes a handy tool built right into Safari that enables you to capture streaming video from most websites.  In this video I’ll show you how it’s done.

We received a slew of tech questions from Cult of Mac readers after our inaugural Ask MacRx column, and even provided a few answers! Glad we can provide a useful service. Today we discuss ways to control your Mom’s Mac from afar, missing QuickTime codecs after getting a new Mac, and line spacing issues with replies in Apple Mail.

With OS X Lion, Apple announced a new file sharing feature called AirDrop. While the concept of AirDrop is great, it’s lack of support on older Macs cripples it’s functionality for some users. In this video, I’ll show you how to enable AirDrop on your older Mac as well as use some of AirDrop’s lesser known functionality.

Photographer Chase Jarvis is one of those photographers who employs staff. Yeah, that’s when you know you’ve arrived.

Anyway his lead assistant Scott Rinckenberger wrote a great blog post back in March, explaining how the pros in an office like his plough through many thousands of images to pluck out the best stuff.

Microsoft has been showing if its upcoming Windows 8 operating system at its BUILD conference in California this week, and while I may be completely dedicated to my Mac, I can’t help but think Windows 8 looks pretty darn nice.

We’ve already showed you how to install the Developer Preview on a Boot Camp partition on your Mac, but there is an easier method for those of you who just want to play around. In this how-to, we’ll take you through the setup for installing Windows 8 in a virtual machine — in just four simple steps.

With the release of Windows 8 for developers, many people have been trying to install Microsoft’s new operating system in a virtual machine with little success. Fortunately, Apple’s own Boot Camp application not only runs Windows 8, it runs it far better than most virtual machines will. In this video, I’ll show you how to set up Windows 8 on your Mac with Boot Camp.

In today’s high tech world, sometimes we can all use a bit of assistance. This week we’re launching a new troubleshooting column for Cult of Mac readers, Ask MacRx, to address your questions and issues about Macs and iDevices.

In today’s edition we’ll tackle restoring the Mail Message Preview Pane, more options for overcoming MobileMe sync problems, and questions about duplicates in iPhoto.

Those who jailbreak their iPhones have access to a plethora of interesting and unusual themes. While some of these themes are less impressive than others, a new theme has popped up that stands out from the rest.

Want to make your iPhone look like it runs OS X Lion? There’s a jailbreak theme for that. And it looks incredible.

Ever since the switch to OS X Lion, there’s been a few little tweaks in the Finder that have annoyed me. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t like change, but either way, I went about looking how to fix these problems. In this video, I’ll show you how to fix little annoyances you may have found with the Finder in OS X Lion.

Wireless networking is de rigeur these days, but in large buildings or crowded urban environments it can sometimes be difficult to get connections working reliably throughout a facility. Extending your WiFi network allows you to provide strong coverage through a home or workplace while allowing wireless devices to roam about and keep connectivity.

The most reliable way I’ve found to extend WiFi network coverage is to create a single network with multiple Wireless Access Points, connected via a wired backbone to a single internet router. Here’s how this is done.

Have you ever wanted to change the default screenshot format in Mac OS X? The default PNG files can end up being huge, especially with higher resolution displays. In this video, I’ll show you how to change the format to anything you’d like, even a PDF.

Have you ever wanted a quick and easy way to search iTunes and the App Store from your Mac? Tunesque allows you to do just that, by giving you access to all of iTunes from your Mac’s menubar.

One of the most annoying features in OS X Lion for me has been the little checkbox on the shutdown dialog box that states, “Reopen windows when logging back in.” Going through the trouble of managing this checkbox every time I shut down is a hassle I’d rather not go through. Fortunately, there is a neat little Terminal trick that will allow you to render this button useless, as I’ll show you in the video below.

While OS X Lion is an excellent operating system, it may not be perfect for some people. Since some applications haven’t been updated to run on Lion yet, some users may need to downgrade to Snow Leopard in order to keep using the applications they need on a regular basis. In this video, I’ll show the best ways to downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard.

After buying a new 27″ iMac last week, I was surprised to find a few missing features that I’ve been accustomed to in OS X Lion on other machines, including the removal of many desktop wallpapers. In this video, I’ll show you how to get back features in OS X Lion that you may be missing on a new Mac.

The new version of Preview in OS X Lion has a handful of interesting new features. From adding signatures to improved searching, the application is overall more useful and handy when it comes to viewing and editing documents and PDFs. In this video, I’ll show you the new features in Preview, and how to use them.

I’ve mostly been very happy with my migration to Lion, but I did get bit with one bug after the upgrade: for the life of me, I couldn’t get sound to output through HDMI when using my Kanex Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter. That meant the days of hooking my 11-inch MacBook Air to my 47-inch 1080p HDTV were at an end.

I wasn’t alone. Apple’s support communities are filled with threads from frustrated Lion upgraders who suddenly lost the ability to pump sound through their HTPCs. HDMI sound also stopped working on my girlfriend’s MacBook when she upgraded to Lion. It’s obviously a widespread problem.

Luckily, today I finally figured out how to fix the issue, and it was remarkably simple. Here’s how to get HDMI sound back into Lion.

Have you fallen in love with Google+? Do you find yourself checking the social network frequently throughout your day?

There’s a free app in the Mac App Store that let’s you run Google+ from your Mac’s menubar, and it’s called Tab for Google+. With this app, you can easily check and interact with Google+ while doing just about anything on your Mac.

One of the most noticeable changes in OS X Lion is Apple’s reversal of traditional page scrolling. In Lion, Apple has adopted an iOS approach to scrolling by changing the way that the user scrolls up and down; instead of moving the window around the content, you actually move the content itself.

This method of scrolling works great when you’re on a touchscreen device like an iPhone or iPad, but a more traditional desktop experience doesn’t lend itself to what Apple calls “Natural Scrolling” in Lion.

If you’d like to go back to the old way of scrolling in Lion, here’s how to do so.