Latest Posts in Mac 911

Upgrading a MacBook Pro's hard drive

Reader Matthew Thomas would like to upgrade his late-2006 MacBook Pro. He writes:

I am currently using a 15” Macbook Pro 2.33GHz and I’ve run out of hard drive space. I came across this article at Macworld, and will attempt to swap my hard drive, following the iFixit guide. My question is, for my laptop model, is there a maximum capacity of hard drive that it can take? Would I be able to put in say, a 320GB or 500GB hard drive?

Yes. Currently your MacBook Pro (which is the same model I have) will hold up to a 500GB hard drive, but that’s not a hard limit. If someone can make a hard drive of a larger capacity that fits in your MacBook, you could use it.

The iFixit guide is very good as is the article penned by Dan Frakes that you mentioned. Allow me to suggest one other resource. OWC offers free installation videos for a variety of Macs, including your MacBook Pro. It’s worth taking a look if you find it easier to learn from a video than text.

While you’re on the OWC site, have a gander at its Upgrade Center page. Here you can select the model Mac you own and, by clicking through a couple of links, find any OWC upgrades available for that model. You certainly don’t have to purchase from OWC, but it’s nice to know just how far you can take your Mac.

More on etiquette and email

In what came as a surprise to me, my recent Mac 911 entry, Etiquette and the Bcc Field, generated more supportive feedback than I’ve seen in years. And not so much because the advice I provided was news to most readers—that advice being, don’t dump a bunch of email addresses in the To field because it’s rude and violates privacy—but rather because so many people are frustrated that the less-savvy email users among us do employ the To field and Reply All button unwisely.

It appears that in addition to validating the views of some readers, this entry has offered the additional benefit of providing a way to alert friends, family, and coworkers to the dangers of their email habits. Those who are annoyed by this kind of behavior have discovered that sending a link to this article and then ducking has been helpful to some.

As it is, it seems only right to enhance that advice with a few additional email tips in the hope that they too will be passed along.

Where is the Bcc field?

A couple of readers interested in employing the Bcc field couldn’t find it. Here’s where to look:

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Word and the anonymous commentator

A friend in the editing business recently passed along this Microsoft Word head-scratcher.

I’m working on a project where a Microsoft Word 2008 document is being passed from person to person. I received the article last night for a final pass and discovered that all the tracked changes and comments were now attributed to “Author” instead of the people who made the changes. Some of those comments and changes were mine and had my name attached to them the last time I saw the document. What happened?

From the sound of it, the last person who worked on the document enabled a security setting that stripped the document of personal information. Specifically, that person opened Word’s preferences, clicked the Security preference, and enabled the Remove Personal Information From This File On Save option. When you enable that option and save the document, the option is as good as its Word and does exactly what it suggests—it strips out all the names associated with changes and comments and replaces them with a generic “Author.” In the process it also removes the date and time stamp from those changes and makes each change and comment the same color.

Secure though it may be, enabling this option can wreak all kinds of havoc as the loss of the author names and the date and time stamps makes it impossible to trace changes and comments back to their source. Invoke the option and the electronic “paper trail” is gone.

It’s for this reason that it takes some work to do this. The option’s not on by default and when it’s switched on, it applies only to the active document. Switch to a different document and open that Security preference and you’ll discover that the option is disabled.

If the loss of this information has proven to be more than a little inconvenient for you, I suggest you contact the person who last had the document and ask if they have an earlier version that they can update without switching on this option. During that conversation you might also stress that enabling an option like this is a decision best left to the last person tasked with touching a document.

Bugs & Fixes: 10.5.5’s font display problem

September’s Mac OS X 10.5.5 update has been the subject of the last two Bugs & Fixes installments—the first on hassles with third-party apps, the second on why you may not have noticed all the promised fixes. Let’s go for a three-peat, with another 10.5.5-related issue.

The OS X 10.5.5 update introduced a rare font display problem. The problem occurs only if you have a PDF file that has the TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT font embedded in the document and you display it using Apple’s built-in software (such as via Preview or Safari) rather than a third-party PDF-viewing application. In the offending apps, the text displays with too-thin lines and generally looks unattractive (as reported in this Apple Discussions thread).

One obvious work-around is to use Adobe Reader to view the document, instead of Preview. Otherwise, you’ll likely have to wait for 10.5.6—or some future OS X update—for a fix.

Document switching shortcuts

Reader David Utts has recently emigrated from the Land of Windows and poses a question about Macintosh windows management. He writes:

I have a hard time moving between open Microsoft Word documents on my new Mac. In the Windows environment I am used to going between open documents with a keyboard command. Can you offer any suggestions for more easily switching between documents?

Sure. Start by memorizing this keyboard shortcut: Command-` (that’s the Tilde key next to the 1 key at the top of the keyboard). This is a universal Macintosh shortcut for moving through open windows within an application or the Finder. Just hold down the Command key and bang the Tilde key each time you want to move to another open document. Press Shift-Command-` and you’ll move in the opposite direction through those open windows.

Or you can use your mouse. Word lists all open documents in its Window menu. Regrettably, it doesn’t assign keyboard shortcuts to these open documents as does a program like Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit. Still, you’ll find them listed in this menu so feel free to mouse up and choose the one you want.

Or you can click and hold on the Word icon in the Dock. Do so and at the top of the contextual menu that appears you'll see a list of all the open documents. Choose the one you like and it becomes the active document.

Finally, locate the F10 key on your Mac’s keyboard and give it a press (or Fn-F10 on a laptop). This invokes Exposé’s Application Windows function, a handy feature that exposes all of an application’s open documents (except for those you've minimized). To select a different document, just drag the cursor over the window you want. Its name will appear when the cursor moves over it. Let go of F10 and the document you were hovering over will come to the fore.

This feature is so useful that I’ve assigned my mouse’s scroll button to invoke it. You can make that kind of assignment in the Exposé & Spaces system preference.

Etiquette and the BCC field

An unnamed relative, learning the ways of the Internet, might have written:

Recently I sent out a message to friends and family regarding the upcoming election. Instead of the supportive reply I expected, an upstart relation chided me not only for putting the recipients’ addresses in the To field of the message but also for replying to the group. What’s his consarn problem!?

My guess is that he was, as gently and respectfully as possible, alerting you to the idea that in polite society, one does not plaster dozens of email addresses in the To field. This is considered both rude and a breach of privacy.

Messages of this nature are often passed around, and when they are, all those addresses can be passed with them. Suppose such a message is passed along to a spammer, phisher, or other Internet ne’erdowell. With one message you’ve violated the privacy of anyone hoping to keep their email address under wraps.

A packed To field can also be inconvenient for the recipient. For example, every so often I get a hunk of business-related email with dozens of recipients in the To field. Reading such a thing on my iPhone is a bother when I have the Details field open (as is my habit). I either have to hide details (and remember to turn them back on) or scroll, and scroll, and scroll some more to finally get to the meat of the message.

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Bugs & Fixes: Finding 10.5.5’s bug fixes

Based on news reports, it would be difficult to overestimate how many bugs Mac OS X 10.5.5 managed to fix. Macworld reported that the update addressed “33 issues with the operating system.” Other sites suggested that 10.5.5 patched “nearly 70 bugs.”. According to Ars Technica, the update provided “tons of fixes.”

Depending on your viewpoint, it’s either impressive how much Apple fixed or how much still needed fixing, considering this is the fifth maintenance update to OS X 10.5.

You might suppose that, given all of the hyperbole, after you updated to Mac OS X 10.5.5, you would easily notice at least a few of these improvements. “Not so!” claim many, if not most, Mac OS X users. These users report seeing not even one difference between 10.5.4 and 10.5.5.

How can this be? What’s the explanation for this apparent paradox? Quite simple, really.

Read more...

Muting the Mac's startup sound

Reader Stephen Mette faces the age-old problem of how to shut up the Mac when it first boots. He writes:

I’ve always loved the Mac’s opening chime. But I’m the early riser in my family, and the volume of my new iMac’s chime is very loud. For the sake of family harmony (excuse the pun) is there a way—a terminal command or something—that I can reduce the volume?

You can solve this problem with a little forethought. On a newish Mac just press the Mute key on the keyboard before you shut down the Mac. When you next boot the Mac, you’ll hear nothing more than the Mac’s fans and hard drive.

If you’ve neglected to take this step and face a Mac that will bong with the best of ‘em on startup you can mute it by slipping a miniplug (found on a set of iPod headphones, for example) into the sound output port.

Finally, if you’re forgetful both on the back and front end, you can use this AppleScript, courtesy of Mac Developer Tips, to shut down your Mac and, in the process, turn off its volume so you hear no startup sound when it boots.

tell application "Finder"
	display dialog "What would you like to do?" buttons {"Shutdown", "Restart", "Cancel"} default button "Shutdown" with icon caution
	if button returned of result is "Shutdown" then
	set volume 0
	shut down
	else if button returned of result is "Restart" then
	set volume 0
	restart
	end if
end tell

Save the script as an application, make it Run Only, and use it to shut down or restart your Mac rather than the standard Shut Down and Restart commands under the Apple menu.

If you’d like to also automate returning your Mac’s volume to audible levels, create yet another AppleScript, save it as a Run Only Application, and make it a Login Item in your user account. That script simply reads:

set volume 5

Remapping PC keyboards

Reader Roger Vaught would like to bring a little more Mac goodness to his PC keyboard. He writes:

I got a used Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard with no manual. It works, sorta. The problem is the Apple (alt) and Control (Cntl) keys do not work like the keys on Apple’s keyboards—the Option and Command keys are reversed, for example. Any solution?

If you’re running OS X 10.4 or later, check out the Keyboard & Mouse system preference, and within it, the Keyboard tab. Click the Modifier Keys button and you’ll find that you can change modifier key assignments (such as Caps Lock, Control, Option, and Command).

If your keyboard doesn’t respond to such treatment or you’re running an older version of the Mac OS, check out my colleague Dan Frakes’ solution from back in 2005. It’s just as worthwhile now as it was then. That solution is Michael Baltaks’s free DoubleCommand, a kernel extension you can use to swap the Alt and Windows keys on a PC keyboard. This isn’t DoubleCommand’s only talent, however, as Dan says:

DoubleCommand got its name from its original purpose—to remap (change the function or position of) the enter key to the Command key, thus giving PowerBook users two Command keys. In the current version, the DoubleCommand preference pane allows you to remap a number of different keys on your keyboard to suit the way you work.

Definitely worth checking out if System Preferences wont’ deliver.

(Updated to include information on Keyboard & Mouse system preference.)

Bugs & Fixes: OS X 10.5.5 causes hassles for some apps

As with any OS update, Mac OS X 10.5.5, released nearly two weeks ago, is a bit of a trade-off. While the update fixes a slew of bugs, it inevitably introduces a few new ones. In some cases, the bug is more the result of a third-party application having problems with the update, rather than the update itself. Here are two examples:

Adobe printing errors

According to an Adobe TechNote, after updating to Mac OS X 10.5.5, “printing to certain printers from Illustrator, InDesign or InCopy results in pages rendering with incorrect scaling and/or rotation.” Based on reports in Adobe’s forums, the most common specific symptom appears to be that, when printing to Adobe PDF 8.0, a resulting image is half its expected size.

Adobe offers three work-arounds. The simplest is to export the file as a PDF and print it from Acrobat or Adobe Reader. Otherwise, from your original Adobe application, select Print and navigate to the Printer Features options. From here, change the printing resolution back to 600 dpi. Unfortunately, this is not a permanent fix, as the settings change is not retained as a preset. A third solution, as detailed in the TechNote, is to use the “Defined by Driver” option in Paper Size control, also accessed via the Print dialog.

Adobe says it’s “investigating” the issue. Expect a fix eventually.

Green-purple video display

Elgato reports that Mac OS X 10.5.5 introduces a rare problem, where video is displayed with a very annoying green-purple cast. It appears to be linked just to certain combinations of hardware (especially Power Mac G5s with ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics cards).

The proximate cause is the new version of OpenGL in 10.5.5. This means that, if you have the troublesome hardware, you’ll see this symptom in Elgato’s EyeTV, Apple’s own DVD Player and any other application that uses OpenGL.

As a work-around, but just for EyeTV, you can turn off use of OpenGL. To do so, launch Terminal and type:

defaults write com.elgato.eyetv "use OpenGL" -bool NO

For other affected applications, you may have to wait for Mac OS X 10.5.6.