catnamedmac

So what disk is this anyway...

2008-04-14T20:12:00.000-04:00

Dad's been busy organizing the family Mac's lately and found himself wanting a good way to know which FireWire drive he was booting from. If you've ever had occasion to boot from a FireWire backup drive, it can be confusing as to what your system drive really is. There are several ways to verify it, but I made a suggestion to Dad that works pretty neat.

1. Set your startup disk as your FireWire backup drive and restart your Mac.
2. Control click on your desktop (or use the right button on your mouse if you have one).
3. Select Show View Options and increase the icon size to the maximum setting
4. Move your startup disk icon out in the middle of the desktop with plenty of room around it.
5. Press Command - Shift - 4 and a small cursor will appear with numbers next to it
6. Click and drag a rubber banded box from the upper right hand corner of the icon leaving plenty of room to the right and below

7. This will create a file on your desktop named picture1.jpg (rename the picture, i.e., startupdrive.jpg, and drag it to the pictures folder)
8. Now change your desktop background by selecting the startupdrive.jpg picture and use the Tile option
9. Now your desktop will show what disk you're on every time you boot from it.

Customer Service Rant

2008-03-01T17:06:00.000-05:00

I guess I need to turn this one over to Dad after his latest experience with customer service...

Thanks Mac! I don't know how often the rest of you might run into this, but I sometimes believe that Customer Support organizations put up as many "roadblocks" as possible to get you to just give up and go away...

I called a company about a defective wireless usb mouse (still under warranty) the other day. I had to go through the normal "Listen carefully because our menu options have changed...". Then after figuring out what category my call fell in to I got the next menu choice... "Dial 1 for PC Support, Dial 2 for Mac support...". So far so good...

After a short 5 minute wait I spoke with Bruce. Bruce asked whether I was using Vista or XP =-(. I explained that I was on a Mac and that my mouse kept turning on and off. "Can you wait a minute, I'll be right back..." Five minutes of music... then five minutes of total silence. Time to call in again...

Back through the numbers... 2 for Mac support &-| This time I got Eric... Eric listened to my problem took my contact information and told me to "Hold on while I check on something..." Five minutes later Eric actually came back on. "I'm sorry but that mouse is not compatible with the Mac".

I tried to explain that it has worked just fine for 6 months then started getting flaky on me. Eric said he'd transfer me to the Repair group and that maybe they could help me... Ten minutes later Laura greeted me with "Is this for Windows or Mac?" MAC I responded. Do you have a Reference #? No... I gave Eric all my information but we never got as far as a reference #. "Well, it doesn't look like he entered any information... What's your name? BLAH...BLAH...BLAH

Fortunately, Laura did eventually end up helping me and once I return the defective mouse, I'll be getting a new one in return. Ultimate outcome... 1.25 hours on the phone... Met 3 new Tech Support friends... and I'll be getting a new mouse... If that one doesn't work I'll just go buy a new one. Where's the Staples Easy Button when you really need it ;-(

iPhone 1.1.3

2008-02-06T11:54:00.000-05:00

Did I mention how neat the latest version of the iPhone software is?

Dad updated his iPhone shortly after MacWorld and started making the icons wiggle first thing...

For those of you that don't know what I'm referring to, Version 1.1.3 gives the iPhone user several tools to customize their phone. If you press and hold an icon, all the icons start wiggling to let you know that you can move them around. You can even add them to another home screen page. Once you have them where you want them, you just hold down the Home key and the wiggling stops and you have your new interface. This makes it really convenient to put those items you use the most in a convenient location for quick access.

One of the other features that are really cool is the Web Clips feature. You can navigate to a favorite website in Safari. Once there, you hit the + symbol and you can add that website to your home page. Then anytime you want to return to that site, all you do is tap the icon for the site. No muss... no fuss... It's really great if you would like to subscribe to a favorite blog (like

catnamedmac ;-)

because it saves you a lot of typing and time.

I'll mention some of the other new features in a future blog post... SeeYa!

CatNamedMac

Working without the internet and other stuff

2008-01-16T12:10:00.000-05:00

Hi Again... It's been tough wrestling away the laptop from Dad lately... or sometimes even getting on the internet over the holidays (windstorms and DSL sometimes don't cooperate). But, now I'm back again.

I've been watching Dad as MacWorld has approached. Rumors, speculation, excitement, anticipation... then the keynote and the inevitable letdown. Last years iPhone announcement was great, followed by a great product. But this year, although his "Steveness" reminded us of all that's been announced in the first two weeks of 2008, it just doesn't come close to last years excitement. Sure hope that there's still some cool stuff on the way...

iPhone thoughts... Dad really saw the value of his iPhone demonstrated during our recent DSL outage. Some folks may complain about the Edge network speed, but when there's work that needs to be done over email and the web, it is a lifesaver!

CatNamedMac

iPhone ToDo Tip

2007-12-03T20:09:00.000-05:00

Having a lot of time on my paws every day, I've been hearing a lot of ideas and tips on various blogs and podcasts about the lack of ToDo sync support for the iPhone. After kicking it around with Dad for awhile, we came up with a great method that works really well...

- On your iPhone, schedule a daily appointment named ToDo Items.
- Set the event as All-Day with no end date.
- In the Notes section, list all your ToDo Items.
- Sync your iPhone and your ToDo Items will appear in iCal with your latest list.
- When you complete an item, delete it from Notes for that day then save for Future Events.
- Next time you sync, the current and all future versions of your ToDo's will be updated.

Enjoy your Synced ToDo's until Apple makes the real thing...

CatNamedMac

Leopard on our laptop

2007-12-02T19:48:00.000-05:00

Welcome back!

Well, Dad's been busy recently with a new strategy for the G4. He ordered a new graphics card with 128 mb of video RAM and a 2nd hard drive. After installing the hardware he installed Leopard on the upgraded system and now he's purring again, with two of my brother cats (Tiger & Leopard) on the same machine.

I mentioned last time that I'd share the rest of our Leopard saga. After the initial G4 upgrade, Dad decided to "Go For It" and Update our MacBook Pro Core Duo. He would have liked to do an Archive & Install, but the old MBP was a "...bit short on disk space". I tried to warn him, but sometimes he just won't listen.

But I need to give you a little background on this latest incarnation of the family laptop. I guess the best way to describe it is sort of a "litter-box of software" as a result of upgrading several versions of Mac OS X. The laptops have been good to us, but we just seem to go from one version to the next without cleaning it out and freshening it up before the next update. So although Leopard's up and running it's a little sluggish and we get some strange things happening from time to time.

So the plan is to get a good clone, once SuperDuper (our main backup tool) releases a Leopard compatible version. With that in hand, we'll be reformatting the disk and reinstalling Leopard. This may be seem pretty severe, but this "litter-box" is full and just needs a good cleaning.

Talk to you soon...

CatNamedMac

Tired of waiting ;-)

2007-11-25T15:33:00.000-05:00

Hi... Sorry I've been away so long. I've been bugging my Dad to get back to this blog thing, but he's just been too busy. So being the resourceful cat that I am, I took it into my own paws and I looked up a lady by the name of Mavis Beacon and learned how to type for myself. Now I don't have to wait for him to type for me. Besides, this way you get it straight from the Cat's mouth ;-)

In fact, who's the cat here anyway??? I'm a CatNamedMac, not him, so I'm taking his pen name back. From now on he's just 'Dad' and if he's got something to say he can go ahead and add stuff. Besides, I've got more time on my paws than he has anyway.

Dad has had the opportunity to work with my newest brother in the Mac OS X family. You know Leopard... I'd like to say that it was a "piece of catnip", but unfortunately he's been calling it a few other things that I can't share with you.

He thought he'd play it safe with his newly "supercharged" G4 Digital Audio. He's put in a Dual Layer DVD drive; upgraded to 1.5 Gb of Ram; upgraded the PowerPC to 1.6 Ghz. It was a lean, clean machine with Leopard in its sites. So after using Super Duper to make a clone of his hard disk, he popped the Leopard Family Pack DVD into the drive and "updated" the Tiger 10.4.9 system to Leopard. He was so happy... for awhile ;-(

Suddenly, that cute little 3D dock just wasn't as snappy as the dock had been in Tiger. Most everything else seemed OK, but just about anything that involved graphics just wasn't cutting it. Time Machine wouldn't even launch... We didn't even have a translucent menu bar to complain about.

It seems that after checking a little further, the old 16mb of graphics ram just didn't cut it with Leopard. We checked with the

"Mother Ship"

(www.apple.com)for the Tech Specs and they didn't even mention anything about graphics memory. Sheeeesh!

So after agonizing over the decision for several days, Dad just used our Tiger clone and went back to 10.4 until we figure out another strategy.

Well, my paws are getting tired, so I'll stop for now... But I'll continue the Leopard saga next time...

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

CatNamedMac

What a week in the Kingdom of Apple!

2007-09-06T12:00:00.000-04:00

Wow... CatNamedMac has had that "deer in the headlights" look since Wednesday. At first I thought it was just him getting over the holiday after going back to work. But when I heard him muttering under his breath about $200 I realized it was the announcements from "the Steve". I'll let him tell you...

Mac (the cat)

Wasn't that some Keynote by Steve this week? It's just incredible the number of iPods out there to choose from after the announcement on Wednesday.

Funny... I thought one of the first things Steve did after coming back to the helm of Apple was to eliminate all those different models of Mac to eliminate all the confusion. Now we have an iPod Shuffle, iPod nano, iPod classic, iPod touch, iPhone. Maybe since they're small it's not so confusing ;-)

Don't get me wrong, they're all nice, but between colors, sizes, video, wifi and phone there's a lot of choice and potentially a lot of confusion for consumers.

Of course I already made my choice with the iPhone ;-)...

In case you didn't hear, Stevie J dropped the price of the iPhone by $200 (66 days after the launch). Making the iPhone an even better bargain.

But, I guess I learned a long time ago that buying technology is like buying a car. The price on what you bought drops when you take it off the dealer lot. Bottom line, I got a great phone that I'm totally happy with and as a result of the uproar I'll also get a $100 Apple Store credit... Woo Hoo... Leopard here I come!!!

CatNamedMac (CNM)

Messin’ with the iPhone

2007-08-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

Well, I can tell that Dad is pretty excited about this iPhone thing. I keep hearing him say “COOOOL”. I don’t think I’ve heard it that much since he got his original Mac… the computer that is ;-) I guess I’ll have to let him explain.
Talk to you again soon…

Mac (the cat)

I thought I’d just ramble on about a few things that I’ve discovered on my iPhone…

Apple finally fixed an iCal bug on the iPhone. If you’ve ever looked at the iCal icon on your dock, you may have noticed that it generally didn’t show you the current date, until you opened iCal. Then suddenly the icon was correct. A minor little thing, but it always bothered me. Well, I’m bothered no more. Every time I turn on my iPhone the date on the calendar is correct… Yoo Hoo!!!

Another cool feature that you’ve probably heard about on the iPhone is all the ways that you can zoom in on things. If you’re in Safari, double tap in an area and that portion zooms up to readable size. You can then move the image around with one finger.

The other way that you can zoom is using the “pinch” (actually it’s a reverse pinch). Bring up a picture or an email and touch two fingers to the screen, then spread them apart… Voila, the picture enlarges.

The zooming works in nearly all the cases, except… If you go to the Settings -> General -> About menu, then pick “Legal”, you get all the “fine print”… And it’s going to stay that way forever! Zoom, in any form doesn’t work. Actually, I guess that’s a good thing, since it takes 36 “screen flicks” to scroll to the bottom of the document. We would probably have room for another movie on the iPhone without all the “legalese” ;-(

Speaking of zooming… I have a new tool for use at business meetings! I used to spend a lot of time re-copying things I’d written on the white board, or convincing some unsuspecting soul to take notes for me. With the iPhone, I can take a picture using the camera, erase the board, then return to my notes photo and “pinch” to zoom in on anything that I need to recall. “COOOOL”

CatNamedMac

iPhone... I thought Apple made computers

2007-08-13T12:00:00.000-04:00

Dad showed me his “manual” that came with the iPhone. I remember the days when Mac software came with a bunch of manuals, or at least a CD in the box. With the iPhone, you get a "cutesy" little pamphlet called “Finger Tips”… Interesting, but hardly a User’s Guide. CNM doesn’t generally have too much problem with technology, but he had a few… I’ll let him tell you how he got his questions answered…

Mac (the cat)

The pamphlet in the box was cute… informative, but no User’s Guide. It turns out that there is an iPhone User’s Guide on the Apple site. It’s well done and got me a lot of answers to my initial questions. But eventually, I needed more information…

Of course before the iPhone was released you couldn’t open a web page without some story about the iPhone. But now that the iPhone was available, it was time to find some quality sources…

My first stop was at our brand new Ann Arbor Apple Store in Briarwood mall. I checked on line with the Concierge service and set up an appointment with a Mac Genius (I had a Bluetooth headphone that I just couldn’t pair with my iPhone). I also noticed that there was an available iPhone class shortly after my Genius Bar appointment. So after a successful result with my headphone, I sat in on the class. All in all, a very productive evening at the Apple Store.

One of the first places that I discovered on the web (from a mention on the MacBreak Weekly podcast) was the Apple Phone Show blog and podcast (

http://www.applephoneshow.com/

) with Scott Bourne. Scott’s been talking about the iPhone as long as or longer than anyone out there. His weekly podcast includes Andy Ihnatko, Christopher Breen and Scott. The discussions are fun and funny and continue to give me some insights into the iPhone. The Apple Phone Show Blog provides reviews, tips and news from several contributors that can really help the new or experienced iPhone user.

Another site that’s been helpful is the iPhone Application List (

http://www.iphoneapplicationlist.com

). As you may have heard, Apple has limited the types of applications (widgets) that can be used on the iPhone. Basically, you connect to individual sites that have iPhone compatible interfaces. The iPhone Application List gives you the “run down” for many of the iPhone applications. It’s one of my favorite stops for the newest iPhone widgets.

CatNamedMac (CNM)

What's a CatNamedMac???

2007-07-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure you are aware, Macintosh OS X has a long history of association with the Cat family. Beginning with my cousin's Puma, Cheetah, Jaguar, Panther, Lion and soon Leopard, cats have played an important role in the history and direction of Apple...

My name WAS Mac. I WAS part Siamese and part barn cat. I WAS because my 9 lives ran out and now I'm just floating around out here in the "ether", keepin track of what's been happening in the world of my namesake.

;-)

Since I never was much of a typist (sitting on top of the monitor was my talent), I've passed on the blog to my 'Dad' (CatNamedMac) to share OUR thoughts on the world of Apple, Macintosh, hardware & software.

We hope you find it interesting and entertaining... Mac the Cat