Devolblog » Mac

Hide Time Machine volume.

Scott — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:49:33 +0000

I keep coming back to this one, so I figured I better mark it down for future reference. Also from macosxhints.com. This is mainly for using time capsule / airport drives for Time Machine backups. I’m not sure I’d want to hide usb/firewire drive volumes.

To hide:
SetFile -a V '/Volumes/Time Machine Volume/'
killall Finder

And then if you want to bring it back:
SetFile -a v '/Volumes/Time Machine Volume/'
killall Finder

Change Leopard login background.

Scott — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:33:35 +0000

Since I keep having to look this up I better note the two ways to accomplish this.

rename /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg to something else and then copy in your own version of DefaultDesktop. Just make sure you rename the original first so that you’ve got an easy backup.
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture “/Path/to/picture/you/want/to/use/image.jpg”. Put the image in /Users/Shared so that all users have access to it, otherwise might be permissions issues.

You can also always go with a couple little gui progs that’ll do this for you too.

How I sync Outlook/gCal/iCal/iPhone

Scott — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:02:17 +0000

[2/13/09 update: As of Feb, you can use Google Sync setup the iPhone to sync contacts or calendars OTA. I still use the below desktop application to also sync iCal instead of waiting for an iPhone sync to update it.]

[update: Google now has an app that'll setup the gCal / iCal sync for you. Sweetness. link]

So first, let me lay down the framework of what I’m trying to accomplish. At work I’m now using google apps (gmail for domains) instead of exchange server. But I’m so used to the Outlook interface that I set up Outlook as an imap client for gmail (don’t forget to enable imap support in the gmail interface). So where does that leave me for a calender? Well luckily google already has a windows desktop app, google calendar sync, that sync’s gcal into the outlook calendar; so I’m covered there.

But at home, I’m primarily on the mac which means I’m using iCal and then syncing that to my iPhone. Google calendar has CalDAV support. Just follow the instructions and gCal and iCal sync. Which also means that if you set your iPhone to sync all calendars you’ve now got your gCal on your iPhone.

None of this was more than a google search away so the reason I’m recording this is to remind myself of one small, undocumented step. Either that or I just don’t know how to use iCal … which could be the case.
Appointments created on other calendars in iCal don’t sync to gCal.
That means any appts on your Home/Work calendar don’t make it to gCal. I kept banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why they weren’t working. Sounds obvious now right? Not so much at 11pm last night.

What you have to do is select the gCal calendar in iCal and create the appt there for it to sync. Duh. Not the most intuitive though. And if you put your personal appts on your home calendar they’re not going to be marked as busy for your gCal (in my case work) which could cause scheduling problems.

Make iPhone ringtones with iTunes and GarageBand

Scott — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:43:23 +0000

There’s a perfectly good tut on lifehacker but I wanted to copy it here so that 6mo down the road, when I want to do this again, I don’t have to worry about the link being dead. [edit: actually I like this one from tuaw.com better.]

There are reports that the rename trick has been squashed, but I haven’t verified. So this is the GarageBand way. Which also means it’s Mac only … which is fine, this is for me so I have a guide on how to do it next time. And I have a Mac.

So fire up iTunes and GarageBand, find the song you want to turn into a ringtone (this is of course assuming that what you want as a ringtone is already in iTunes) and drag it from iTunes into GarageBand. If it’s not in iTunes, just open the file in GarageBand right?

Now that the file is in itunes click on the Cycle Region button

which activates the region loop tool (images stolen from LifeHacker)

Now adjust the region to the section of the song you want; it has to be < 40sec and I've found that sometimes GarageBand complained and wouldn't export certain selections > 30sec. I don’t know what the criteria is that it’s using, but I’ve also never created a ringtone this way that didn’t work in iTunes/iPhone so I’m fine with it. A small tipe that LifeHacker doesn’t mention, I like to do a tiny bit of fading at the beginning and the end of the selection so that the transition isn’t so abrupt.

Lastly, and this is the beautiful part, Share -> Send Ringtone to iTunes.

iPhone wallpaper

Scott — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:24:06 +0000

I needed a place to drop iPhone wallpapers so that I can grab them without having to put them in iPhoto. Probably going to be updating this post for awhile with more wallpaper as a I make/find them.

[update] I’ll probably just end up setting up an iPhoto album/event just for wallpapers, but I’ll still leave this here and update it anyway.

iPhone 2.1 upgrade … this is how it should’ve worked from the beginning.

Scott — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:11:15 +0000

I woke up early Friday morning because I had to get Logan out the door before the house cleaner showed up, and I sat in my chair pondering if I should click that upgrade button. Last time I upgraded (was it 2.0.2?) it took upwards of 40min, and then got stuck in a restore loop where it kept asking me to restore the same backup over and over. Which finally resulted in my having to do a full wipe and restore. Luckily, then, I had the time. This time I didn’t. With Apple’s recent track record of botched rollouts I felt like I was rolling the dice.

To my surprise, I walked away to go shower and get Logan ready, came back a few minutes later and it was all done. No restore loop. Everything synced up correctly. Hey, it worked!

3G reception, whether it’s real or just messing with the signal display, more closely matches my old samsung blackjack. Haven’t had a dropped call, or one that couldn’t be initiated, yet. Contact list is snappy. I don’t have reboot the phone every 24hrs. No app crashes. No app updated loops. No mystery voicemail notifications. So far, it just working flawlessly.

It’s painfully obvious that the release should’ve been delayed until this version was ready. There’s no hesitation in recommending the iphone to people who ask. I think Heather might even want one now.

SimplifyMedia: How long till this iPhone app gets nuked?

Scott — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:06:44 +0000

I completely forgot to mark this one down; and to be honest, I’d kind of given it up for dead since it was so flaky. But I picked it up again a few days ago and have been loving on it ever since.

It’s just another itunes sharing app that lives on a computer and reads/streams the itunes dbase. To be fair, it also works with winamp and rhythmbox. But its claim to fame is that they’ve successfully gotten a iPhone app published to the itunes app store.

Why would I want to stream my music from my home computer when the iPhone has a perfectly good iPod interface and you can load uncompressed music locally? Is your music library < 16GB? I know mine isn't. This app gives me access to all my music. I still load stuff I want to listen to when I don’t have a network connection, or I want higher quality than a compressed stream.

Sound quality is pretty decent, performance is great (now) and bandwidth usage is almost immeasurable. So now I’ve got iTunes living on my home server with the simplifymedia app. It streams over ssl so no need to configure odd ports through the firewall. And you can stream friend’s libraries if they’re using the app too.

I’m just wondering when ATT throws a hissy fit and it gets pulled from the app store.

Starting to not like the iPhone … apple in-store support for it is laughable.

Scott — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:02:44 +0000

They sell a couple million iphones, but they expect you to use the same support infrastructure as their computers? I went in because when set to 3G I can’t make, answer or maintain a call and they wanted me to wait until tomorrow (the soonest appt available at the “genius bar”).
Just as I was angered at their unintelligent way of dealing with limited availability and lines, I’m angered that they don’t staff at least one or two dedicated iPhone support reps.

So I walked down to the ATT store, discovered that I could’ve ordered one online and had them call me when it was in (uh, why didn’t I think of that?!?) which is a much better system than waiting for 3hrs in line. Although, being in the middle of the mall, there was plenty of eye-candy to keep me entertained.
But back to ATT; I walk in get helped, they look over my account and pop a new sim in the phone. Not that it actually helped, because I’m pretty sure from all the other people on the net complaining of poor 3G reception that it’s just the phone’s problem. But at least they helped me.
All of Apple’s recent growing pains are laughable. For a company that’s so smug about how smart their designs and engineering are, they don’t have much to be smug about when it comes to product planning and support.
Would it be too much to ask that they have a dedicated iPhone specialist seeing as how they’ve sold a couple million iPhones recently?
And I’m not able to reliably use the 3G network. It’s back on Edge for the time being and seems to be working great there. Now I just have to decide, is it worth have an ‘iPhone 3G’ that isn’t really 3G (might turn out to be a good thing, in 2hrs being on 3G the battery icon has dropped to the halfway mark)? I like it, but having a device that doesn’t operate properly bites at the back of my head.

Got my iPhone

Scott — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:43:52 +0000

It’s a long story, but I finally got an iphone. I’m actually posting this using the wordpress iPhone app.
Sadly, I’m thinking about taking it back. 3G reception is awful, and wifi blinks on and off randomly.

Vista bootcamp drivers for broadcom 802.11n wireless

Scott — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:38:17 +0000

You’ll want these [edit: Damn, wordpress 2.5 won't let me upload or link to the zip file within the wordpress directory structure; I'll have to find somewhere to put the file] Dell drivers for the broadcom 11n adapter if you’re running Vista 32bit running under bootcamp. Without them, I was getting 3mbps max; now I’m up to 10-11mbps, which is what I get under OS X 10.5 … I’d get better if the router wasn’t stuffed away at the back of a storage closet.

It also cures a lot (but not all) of the crackly sound.