Latest Posts in Mac 911

Speed-up iMovie clips

Andy Milder (aka Dean Hodes on Showtime’s Weeds), sends this question:

While filming Weeds last year, I borrowed a Flip recorder to record my makeup transformation into a Black man (African-American doesn’t seem to fit…who knows what I was…). I wanted to edit it and then speed it up, so you could see me go from lily-white to much darker in mere seconds. One problem: I have no idea how to do it. Help?

iMovie ’09 can do the job. Like so:

Plug your Flip camcorder into your Mac. By default iPhoto will launch and the Flip camcorder will be selected. (The FlipShare software may also launch but choose iPhoto instead.) Select the clip you want to import and click the Import Selected button. The clip will import into iPhoto.

Now launch iMovie ’09. In the Event Library area select iPhoto Videos. Your Flip clip should appear in the iPhotos Videos section at the bottom of the window. Select the clip and drag it up into the Project pane.

Double-click the clip in the Project pane and in the Clip tab of the Inspector window that appears, click the Convert Entire Clip button. (You have to do this before you’re allowed to adjust the speed of a Flip camcorder’s clips.) When iMovie finishes converting your clip the Inspector will show a speed control slider in the Clip tab. You can drag this as high as 800-percent.

However, you can make the clip even faster than that simply by entering a higher value in the Speed field. Optionally, you can tell iMovie how long you’d like the clip to play by entering a value in the Duration field below the Speed field—2:00, for example, if you’d like the clip to last 2 minutes.

Now just export your project using a command in the Share menu and you’re good to go.

Loved the drawer bit with Kevin Nealon, btw.

Bugs & Fixes: Magic Mouse loses its way

I am now on my second Magic Mouse (Get Best Current Price), having returned the first one within days of getting it. It looks as if I will soon be returning the second one. Why? Because of two irritating symptoms.

First, the mouse’s tracking speed periodically drops down to a snail’s pace. There are occasions when I can move the mouse across the entire width of my desk and the cursor will move less than an inch. This makes the mouse almost impossible to use at these times.

Increasing the Tracking speed in the Mouse System Preferences pane is of no help. Installing MouseZoom (as suggested in a Mac Observer article) may lead to some slight improvement, but is not a cure. The tracking surface appears to have no effect on the speed; for example, whether or not I use a mouse pad is irrelevant.

The second symptom is much worse: the mouse will occasionally drop its connection altogether. When this happens, a “Connection Lost” message briefly pops up on the display. This can occur even while the mouse is sitting idle. Typically, the mouse re-establishes a connection on its own, but there is no telling how long this will take. The lost connection may last a few seconds or several minutes. While the connection is lost, unless you have a second mouse available, there is pretty much nothing you can do to get things working again except wait.

A MacFixIt article on this subject offers several possible software-based cures, such as reinstalling the latest Magic Mouse update and/or re-pairing the device. I’ve tried them all. None has worked.

Perhaps you are thinking that the problem could be with the Bluetooth hardware in the Mac (a 2009 Mac Pro in my case) rather than the mouse. Doubtful. I also have a wireless Mighty Mouse (Get Best Current Price), Apple’s previous Bluetooth model. I have never had these symptoms with the older mouse. In fact, I can have both mice active at the same time. When doing this, the Mighty Mouse continues to work just fine even while the Magic Mouse drops its connection.

On the theory that I wound up with a fluke defective mouse, I returned my first one and got a second. They both have the same symptoms.

Based on feedback I have received, not all Magic Mouse owners have these symptoms. It remains possible that the symptoms are due to some interaction between the mouse and certain Mac models (such as my Mac Pro). Still, the evidence indicates an inherent problem with the Magic Mouse. Perhaps it will be fixable via an update to the mouse software. I hope so, because I don’t see the mouse as amenable to hardware fixes. Until this is resolved, if you buy a Magic Mouse and have these symptoms, I recommend returning the device before your 14-day grace period expires.

Shifting large media libraries

Reader Remo seeks a way to store media files in a location other than a user’s Home folder. He writes:

My brother’s family 24-inch iMac has a hard drive of 500GB and it’s filling up pretty fast with pictures, movies, music, etc. Usually I would just replace the hard drive in a computer with a larger one, but we would be voiding the warranty on his computer, which isn’t something we want to do.

I want to have their home directory or certain folders on their iMac to serve as a representation to where these files are actually being saved to, which is an external hard drive. I have been a long time Mac user, but I don’t see an easy way of doing this. Is there a way within MacOS X (10.6) to accomplish this?

I see several ways to approach this one.

If all you’re after is a larger startup drive for storing files, just use an external hard drive as your boot drive. Find a fast FireWire drive, clone the contents of the internal drive to it using a tool such as Bombich Software’s donation-ware Carbon Copy Cloner (making the external drive bootable in the process), and designate that external drive as the startup drive. Done.

Or, if you simply want to store media files on the external drive, this can be easily done as well. For pictures, copy the iPhoto Library file from your brother’s Pictures folder (found inside his user folder) to the external hard drive. Hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto. A dialog box will appear that asks “What Photo Library Do You Want iPhoto to Use?” Choose the copy of the iPhoto Library file you just copied and click the Choose button. iPhoto will now read and write to this iPhoto Library rather than the one on the internal drive.

For the music and movies that iTunes uses, dig down into your brother’s Music folder (also inside his user folder), open the iTunes folder, and copy the iTunes Music folder to the external drive. Launch iTunes, choose Preferences, click the Advanced tab, and click the Change button in the iTunes Media Folder Location area. Also enable the Copy Files to iTunes Media Folder When Adding to Library option. iTunes will now use this folder as well as add new media to it.

Or, you can place your brother’s user folder on the external drive. My colleague, Dan Frakes, explains how to do that in this tip from Mac OS X Hints. (Note that you no longer need to use -rsrc to do this.)

Power and the international Mac

Internationalist Paul Carpenter asks a question commonly posed by modern border-crossers. He writes:

I’m a teacher who decided to take off and teach internationally; thus I had to forfeit the beloved MacBook issued by my previous school. I’m now in Indonesia and considering purchasing a Mac mini or a MacBook. If I travel back and forth to the US and Indonesia (and elsewhere), would I be able to buy a power cord for 120V American-style outlets and a power cord for 220V Indonesian style outlets and just use the appropriate one in each country? Or is the power processing within computers customized based on where they are sold?

This one routinely confuses people who take their Macs abroad. Macs and their power adapters are—and have been for as long as I can remember—built to support 110 – 240 Volts. So, out of the box, you can jack your Mac mini or MacBook into just about any outlet you come across without fear of melting the thing. Where the country-of-purchase makes a difference is in the kind of plug that appears at the end of that power adapter. And that’s what you need to change.

Apple sells the $39 Apple World Travel Adapter Kit. This contains six power adapters that slip on to a MagSafe power adapter and older USB iPhone and iPod power adapters. If you don’t want to go the Apple route, you can find power adapters that allow you to convert the power plug from Country X to a plug that fits the outlets in Country Y. These aren’t converters. They're simply adapters to change Plug A to Plug B because, again, the Mac can handle voltages from around the world.

Note, however, that if you also take peripherals along with you that require power, you'll want to examine them very carefully to see if they're as world savvy as your Mac. If not, purchase a transformer appropriate for your destination.

Bugs & Fixes: Snow Leopard's Spelling Ignore button is ignored

After updating to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), I noticed an odd quirk in the Spelling Checker built into Mac OS X. This is the checker used by applications such as TextEdit and Stickies. Namely, the Ignore button in the Spelling and Grammar dialog is itself ignored. That is, when a word is flagged as potentially incorrect and I click the Ignore button (indicating that I want the word to be treated as correct going forward), the word continues to pop up as incorrect for the remainder of the document. This never happened to me under Mac OS X 10.5. This bug may not show up on all Macs running Snow Leopard, but it showed up on all three of mine.

After some investigation, I determined the cause: the Automatic by Language option. You’ll find it in the popup menu at the bottom of the Spelling and Grammar dialog. It’s the default selection. This is a new option in Mac OS X 10.6, replacing 10.5’s Multilingual item. Automatic by Language determines what language you are using and automatically shifts to the the appropriate spelling dictionary. For whatever reason, it also appears to cause the Ignore bug. If I switched from Automatic by Language to U.S. English, for example, the Ignore function worked as expected.

A easily-solved related problem was that, each time I quit and relaunched an application such as TextEdit, the selection reverted back to the Automatic by Language default. To fix this, go to the Language & Text System Preferences pane. From the Text tab, access the Spelling pop-up menu and select U.S. English. This makes your selection the new default. Now the Ignore bug should be gone for good.

The remaining problem is: What should you do if you really want to use Automatic by Language? In that case, you’ll either have to wait for a Mac OS X Update that fixes the bug or learn to live with being ignored by Ignore.

How to provide tech support for your family

I’m the tech support person for my extended family. My guess is that because you’re reading this blog, you fill that same role.

My mother has been having problems with her iMac—the onset of horizontal lines on the monitor after running the computer for an hour or so, which strongly hints at a hardware problem. I helped with the purchase of that computer and, dutiful son that I am, told her that AppleCare was a must.

So, two years in, and the iMac gets funky. “No problem,” I tell her. “Just call Apple and they’ll take care of you. You’re far enough away from an Apple Store that they’ll surely send you a shipping box for its trip back to the repair depot.”

But no. It was off to the Apple Authorized Dealer a few towns away. Fair enough.

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Upgrading a MacBook Pro's hard drive

Reader Tim Phillips faces a common upgrade dilemma. He writes:

Is it possible to upgrade a MacBook Pro hard drive without having to reinstall all the applications I have on my current hard drive?

Sure. What confuses most people about this is the fact that in one hand you have a laptop, complete with drive, and, in the other, a raw drive with seemingly no way to move data to it without jacking it into the laptop.

The solution is to simply provide the missing piece—the means for moving data from the laptop to the raw drive. For these sorts of situations I rely on Newer Technology’s $35 USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter. Compatible with ATA and SATA drives, you just plug one end of the adapter into the raw hard drive and the other into the MacBook Pro’s USB port.

Alternatively, you can purchase a cheap drive enclosure and fling the drive into it. (The advantage of the enclosure is that you can put your old hard drive into it and use it for other purposes.) At that point you can use a tool such as Bombich Software’s Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the current drive to the one you’ll replace it with.

When the job is done, open the laptop and… what, you say you’re not sure how to do that? iFixit, in addition to ripping apart every bit of cool technology that crosses its desk, provides solid instructions for upgrading Macs and other gear. If you prefer video, check out Other World Computing’s Install Videos page.

Bugs & Fixes: Font duplicate misadventures

Troubleshooting fonts is among my least favorite Mac tasks. Understanding precisely what is going on and what fix is needed too often seems a bit above my pay grade. Case in point: I recently launched Font Book for the first time since upgrading to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). I was surprised to find 16 “duplicate font” warnings. These had not been present when I had last opened Font Bonk in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5).

Now, as I see it, duplicate fonts are not necessarily much of a problem. Actually, if they truly are exact duplicates of the same font, they should be no problem at all—other than the waste of drive space. Where a problem can occur is if the duplicates are variations of the same font, perhaps in different font formats or created by different font designers. Even here, there are reasons you might want to retain both versions. (Read this PDF of an Extensis article for more on this point). However, especially if you work on documents where minor differences in fonts can have a significant effect on page layouts, you may have a clear preference for one of a duplicate pair. In such cases, you’ll want to deactivate the undesired duplicate.

If I had not launched Font Book, I would probably have never discovered the duplicates and would have continued in my blissful ignorance. But now that I knew about them, I felt obligated to address the matter.

After some investigating, I discovered the single source of all of the duplicates: One font of each pair had been installed as part of Microsoft Office (and was located in /Library/Fonts/Microsoft); the other had been installed by Snow Leopard and was in the /Library/Fonts folder. That’s why the duplicates didn’t show up until after I had upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6.

For no particular reason, other than that the Snow Leopard versions were newer and from Apple, I decided to deactivate the Microsoft versions of the fonts. This turned out to be a bit easier said than done.

Font Book does include a Resolve Duplicates command. Using it, I could select all the relevant fonts and deactivate one of each pair of the duplicates in one step. Unfortunately, this command gives you no control over which version of the font is deactivated. Font Book decides on its own. In my case, Font Book decided to deactivate the Snow Leopard versions—the opposite of my preference.

I tried another font utility, FontDoctor. It had similar problems. Actually, it alerted me to even more duplicates, because FontDoctor checks the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts folder, which Font Book does not. I decided to ignore these for now. I had enough on my plate with the Microsoft duplicates.

Rather than continuing a search for a better utility, I shifted to a more blunt object assault: I removed the entire Microsoft folder from my Fonts folder. Sure, I was removing numerous unique fonts as well as the duplicates. But I had looked over the list and none of the fonts were ones that I used or needed. Or so I naively thought.

It turns out that Microsoft uses some of these fonts all on its own. I became aware of this on my next visit to Microsoft Word’s Style menu. The names of many of the styles were now an unintelligible string of symbols. This was because Word wanted to display the names in the now missing Eurostile font. When it could not find Eurostile, it shifted to “Type Embellishments One LET” instead.

So much for the blunt object assault. I returned the Microsoft folder to the Fonts folder and relaunched Font Book. I selected Show Font Info from the Preview menu. After selecting each duplicate font, I checked the Location line to determine which version it was. If it was the Microsoft version, I deactivated it (using the Disable command in the Edit menu). It was a bit tedious but, so far, this has worked without any negative side effects. Now about those Adobe font duplicates…

Caching iPod touch driving directions

Reader Stephen Good has a good question about driving with an iPod touch. He writes:

What is the best way to download driving directions onto an iPod touch? It seems so last century to print out directions in 2009. Google Maps remembers the last set of directions searched on Wi-Fi, but displays it only as a list. Maps can’t accept multiple stop directions, reverse the route, nor be redirected without a Wi-Fi connection. Suggestions?

At the risk of offending you right out of the gate, I’m afraid you’re mistaken about Maps maintaining only list directions after it’s lost a Wi-Fi connection. But there’s a trick to it.

Before venturing out into the world and while still connected to Wi-Fi, enter your directions. Now tap the dog-ear icon in the bottom right of the display and tap Satellite so that view loads. Tap dog-ear again, tap Hybrid so that view loads. Dog-ear one more time and tap Map to ensure that view is cached as well. Now take off.

When you return to Maps while on the road, it may appear that your directions aren’t saved. But they are. If the Map view doesn’t appear, tap the Start button in the upper-right corner of the display. This should provide you with the first leg of your journey. Tap the left-pointing arrow on this screen and the Map view should load—this time with a map actually on it. If you tap the dog-ear icon, you should be able to also load the Satellite, Hybrid, and List views. I’ve tested this on two 2G iPod touches and it works, even if you shut down and restart the iPod.

Reverse directions doesn’t work, however. You’re stuck with exactly what was saved when you last used Maps when connected to Wi-Fi. So, what to do? Put the iPod’s screen capture feature to good use.

While connected to Wi-Fi, map out your reverse journey (and stops along the way and alterate routes, if you like) and simultaneously press the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons to take screen shots of any important steps in your journey. When you’re ready for your return trip, call up those directions within the Photos app.

Not as slick as using a GPS or iPhone, granted. But it’s free. And free ain’t bad.

Move Finder items more efficiently

Reader Henry Francis provides the fodder for some intriguing group participation. He writes:

In the Finder, what is the easiest way to move a file from one location to another? My method is to drag the file to the Desktop, navigate to the new location, and then drag the file from the Desktop into the new location. This seems unnecessarily laborious and old-fashioned, but I cannot find any quicker way.

Interesting question. Here are a few ideas:

Spring-loaded folders Short-time Mac users may be unaware of the spring-loaded folders feature of old and that it still exists today. Click and drag the item you want to move to the volume or folder that contains the eventual destination. Hover the item over this volume or folder and that v or f opens. Drag it to the next folder and hover until that folder opens. Repeat until you reach the destination folder and then let go of the mouse button. The item drops into the folder.

Spring-loaded dock and sidebar items Volumes or folders in the Dock work the same way. Place often used destinations in the Dock and sidebar, drag the item to be moved on top of these things, and, again, you can burrow down to the destination you desire.

Copy and Go Select the item and press Command-C to copy it. Press Shift-Command-G while in the Finder and a Go to the Folder sheet appears in the front-most window. Enter the path to the folder you want to open—~/Music/iTunes, for example—click OK, and the folder opens, ready for you to move the item to it.

Use recent folders Copy the item and from that same Go menu in the Finder you’ll see a Recent Folders entry. Select it with the hope that the folder you want to move to is listed among the 10 recent folders.

Note: The failing of the Copy command is that you now have two copies of the item. If this is a big deal to you, don’t use the copy command. And while we’re on the subject of copying, you understand that you can move (not copy) items from one volume to another by holding down the Command key while dragging the item from place to place, right?

Other And here’s where the group participation comes in. I’m a fan of DragThing and have populated a palette with folders I routinely access—those on my startup drive as well as external and network drives. It’s easy enough to drag items into one of these folders or use DragThing’s spring-loaded feature to burrow in. But I know there are other options.

How about offering a few?