MacBook PrOwner

HOWTO Move Aperture Project Files

Justin — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:22:47 +0000

I’m still in the stone age of Aperture 1.5, and I have about 60 gigs of photos on my MacBook Pro. Clearly, this is a problem since the hard drive is only 120 gigs.

A few weeks ago, I purchased a WD Passport 250 GB (actually more like 230 GB) USB hard drive from Amazon, and today I moved my photos from 1998 to 2003 - totaling about 10 gigs - onto this hard drive.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me how to do this, but this blog post on moving Aperture projects informed me that I could simply drag the project file into a new location - in this case, a Finder window for my external hard drive.

I did notice a rather annoying bug when exporting from Aperture: hitting the space bar in any other program (e.g. Firefox) popped up the information window in Finder for the file I was currently exporting. So much for multi-tasking.

Also of interest is the relative size of each year’s photo collection:

And this is before I got my 6MP Nikon D70s DSLR.

Let’s hope we continue to get better and better ways to store and manage photos. Aperture is a decent system, but I wonder if it’ll continue to scale at the necessary rate.

Recursive Office 2008 Zen

Justin — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:58:25 +0000

I’m using Office 2004 on my MacBook Pro and am finding it a decent, though far from excellent, product. Entourage in particular seems to need work, so I’m considering upgrading to 2008. PowerPoint 2008 is significantly better on the MacBook Pro, as it’s the first version (to my knowledge) in which you can view different things on your laptop screen and the projector (for example, so you can see your notes on your screen, but only the slides show up on the projector).

Today in the Apple Store for Education, I found this product listing for Office 2008:

Huh?

I guess all you need for Office 2008 is Office 2008. Nice.

Incidentally, the “home and student edition” does not support Exchange Server, which is something I need, so I’ll be paying the full price despite being an education user.

Mouse Cursor Slow After Sleep? Blame iStat Pro

Justin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:17:17 +0000

When waking my MBP from sleep mode, I noticed that the cursor would often be extremely slow and jumpy, to the point that it was nearly unusable. A reboot was the only way to fix it. This thread on the Apple forums hinted that iStat Pro, the popular performance statistics widget for OS X, may have been causing the problem.

I disabled iStat Pro and had no problems for weeks. Problem solved.

On a lark, I re-enabled iStat Pro yesterday, and sure enough, the problem returned. While this isn’t a scientific test, it’s as close as I’m going to get to solid evidence that iStat Pro is causing the slow cursor problem on Leopard.

Update 5/10/08: After a giving the iStat Pro gurus a few months to fix this, I decided to try again. I’ve been running the latest version of iStat Pro for a few weeks, and this problem appears to be gone.

Review: AirMail MacBook Air Sleeve from Manila Mac

Justin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:39:15 +0000

The duo that announced the AirMail sleeve for the new MacBook Air were certainly quick out the gate, announcing their product within days of the Stevenote at which the MBA was announced.

Being a fully converted fanboy, I ordered both the MBA (first looks) and the AirMail sleeve right away. The MBA arrived quickly, but the AirMail took a bit longer. It’s here now, so I thought I’d share some thoughts.

First, like the MBA, the AirMail sleeve is very, very thin. It’s made of supple vinyl, lined with a thin fleece. The FAQ on Manila Mac’s website claims that the fleece is “thick… [and] will protect your laptop from any cosmetic damage and smudges, and keep it safe from bumps in daily use.”

I think this is a bit of a stretch; any situation that would’ve caused real damage to the MBA’s guts would still cause said damage if it were in this case. However, as claimed, it is nice for keeping scratches and incidental damage from affecting the geek-chic appeal of the MBA.

As you can see from the first picture, the MBA in the AirMail sleeve is still thinner than a MacBook Pro.

The buttons are plastic, which was a bit of a surprise, but it comes with a spare as well as some extra string, should there be a problem with the closure hardware. Plus, the sticker (easily removed) is pretty nifty, and they even wrote WebbleYou on it to prove that these pics are original (I’m sure that’s what they had in mind).

The sleeve came with a letter apologizing for the delay and moaning about how difficult it was to get into light manufacturing on the spur of the moment. Yeah, that’s why most of us don’t do that (they’re backordered again, by the way).

At any rate, it’s a decent sleeve, and would be a good choice if you either weren’t planning to travel much with your MBA or if you have a secondary case (e.g. built into your bag) that provides all the protection you need.

How Long Since I Rebooted? Using the uptime Command

Justin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:13:26 +0000

I often find that my MacBook Pro sleeps and wakes for dozens of cycles without needing a full reboot. Sometimes, though, it gets sluggish and needs a reboot.

If you’d like to know how long it’s been since your last reboot, simply open Terminal and type the command
uptime
and hit enter. This will display the amount of time since your last reboot.

Note: this includes time your computer has been asleep, so it’s not a measure of how long the computer has been on and active, just a measure of how long it’s been, in real hours, since you last turned on or rebooted the computer.

Keyboard Shortcut for “Edit Cell” in Microsoft Excel for Mac

Justin — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:02:41 +0000

As a heavy user of Excel, I was dismayed when I found no obvious replacement for my beloved F2 key, which in the Windows version of Excel allows you to edit the contents of the currently selected cell without using the mouse.

It appeared that my only option was double-clicking the cell or clicking in the formula editing toolbar, but some deeper digging revealed that the shortcut for edit cell in Excel (2004) for Mac is ctrl+u.

HOWTO Delete Remembered Text Box Entries in Firefox

Justin — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:51:35 +0000

Since just about every website has some type of login system now, it’s helpful that Firefox remembers recently-typed usernames and other information you type in text boxes. However, if you want to get rid of something (for example, your friend’s username from last time he used your computer) so you have fewer items to choose from in the dropdown list, it’s nice to be able to delete them, too.

For example, I often use [my.name]+test@gmail.com for secondary logins to sites with which I already have an account using my email address. Over time, these build up, and pretty soon it’s hard to find my actual email address in the dropdown list.

To delete items from a text box’s autocomplete suggestions, scroll down to it and hit shift+delete.

Undercover: Recovery Software for Leopard Laptops

Justin — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 06:12:17 +0000

Orbicule’s program Undercover promises to get your Mac back if it’s ever stolen.

I’m impressed with the $49 price tag and the near-foolproof tactics Undercover uses to catch the thief:

IP address and ISP detected and reported when you report laptop stolen and it’s taken online
Screenshots are sent to you every few minutes, so you can see the perp’s email account or whatever they’re doing with your computer
Best of all, the built-in iSight camera takes photos of the perp and sends them to you
If all else fails, the system feigns a hardware failure and/or freaks out, forcing the perp to take it in for repairs, or at least increasing the chance that they’ll get noticed and caught

Sounds like a deal to me. I’m going for the $59 household license for the MBP and the MBA (though you’re allowed up to five Macs with one household license). Education bulk licenses are only $8 per computer.

To be fair, I decided to check out Lo-Jack for Laptops. Alas, this is all I got:

Nah, I think I’ll just go with Undercover, thanks.

The Air Is Here - First Look

Justin — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 05:45:13 +0000

I pre-ordered a MacBook Air for my wife, and it came earlier than I expected - Monday Feb 4 instead of Wed Feb 13 as originally predicted.

The odd thing is, no matter how many times you’ve heard about how thin and light it is, it’s still shocking to actually hold it in your hands. You gape in disbelief that it’s actually a full-featured computer, given that it weighs less than a freshman chemistry textbook.

The screen is glossy, the keyboard is MacBook-ish (though the function keys are remapped, like on the new iMacs), and the multi-touch trackpad is nifty. Oh, and the AC adaptor is nice and compact, and the battery life is great.

I installed Office 2004 in a few minutes using the remote disc software and the optical drive on my MacBook Pro. I had to look in the brief instruction manual to figure out how to do it, which was not difficult but surprised me given how much on Macs is intuitive and obvious.

Beyond that, I’m sure you’ve read the big tech blogs and Apple.com for the details.

What do you think of the MacBook Air?

Firefox Not In Focus When Command-Tabbing Between Apps in Different Spaces

Justin — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:53:51 +0000

If you use Firefox in one Space and other apps in other Spaces, you might have noticed the following bug:

If you hit command+tab to switch from another app to Firefox, and this involves moving to a different Space, the Firefox window will not be selected (in focus), so you have to click somewhere in the window to use it, e.g. to type something.

Clearly, the purpose of a keyboard shortcut is to do something quickly without having to use the mouse. But command+tab app switching won’t let you do that with Firefox and Spaces. It’s not a problem when either the app is in the same Space (if there aren’t other windows of the same app open in other Spaces) or when Spaces is turned off.

This bug has been reported by other users. You can report it to Apple using their feedback form, and hopefully it’ll get fixed soon.

One workaround for now is to put Firefox in its own Space, then hit ctrl+# (# being the number of the Space Firefox is in) to switch back to Firefox. Cmd+tab will still get you to your other apps. Ultimately, this may be faster if you learn the behavior, because you’ll never have to hit cmd+tabtabtab to scroll through your open apps until you find Firefox. I’m experimenting with having 9 Spaces, with Firefox in the center Space (#5).