Muskoka Mac User Group

Hi All
If you haven’t seen it previously – take a look at the page on discounts to MMUG members.
That’s a permanent page that you should get into the habit of checking before you make a Mac related on-line purchase. It might save you a couple of bucks some day!

Hi guys… (I’m still checking…)

I upgraded the day it came out of course.

Things I like:
- spotlight – very cool… and fast!
- quicktime7 – I know – not just for Tiger – but WOW. quicktimeHD is amazing also (see apple’s website).
- my computer seems quicker/snappier
- safari is FAST and very nice – though I still prefer the RSS in Firefox.
- Dashboard – yep – very cool – I have the weather for London (where I am today), Toronto and Cincinnati (where I’ll be tomorrow).
- It didn’t kill my mysql databases!! (this is for the programmer in me…) every other upgrade has killed the databases I had been using – I always backed them up and had to reinstall mysql and php. Not this time! (though I did have to reinstall PHP – no biggie)

Things I Don’t like:
- MAIL – YUK! – though I’m still using it – I do like the threaded conversation option, the interface is blah and you can’t have the time as a column anymore (that is important to me)
- Printer support – it killed support for my Brother all in one.
- Potential security holes with Dashboard… please don’t get as bad as Microsoft!!

All in all – a worthy upgrade that is getting good press and reviews.

On a personal note… I’ve been in London ON for a couple of weeks, waiting to have my interview for my visa. That was Monday, I picked up my visa on Tuesday and I’m on my way down to the States tomorrow! Whew! I’ll continue to keep up with you guys – you’re in my RSS List of course!

Rod

This is in reply to Brian’s comments about Tiger:
I am now using Tiger and like it very much. I love Spotlight, which makes the “find” function just about perect. Also love the smooth operation of Dashboard — I can flick it on to check the time and then get on wih my work. The RSS feature lets me get at the newspapers quickly and easily. I am less enthusiasic about Mail, which has a few things missing from Entourage. But with experience i may like it. More time and experience is needed for a definitive statement.
Bill

If you are a Tiger user, you need to do two things.

One – Post a note here about what you think! Give use some feedback!

Two – Read up on the possible security issues surrounding Dashboard widgets. This note here seems to be sensible on the subject. Make sure you read right to the end including the ‘Update’ section…

I’ve recreated this page from the old website and posted here it in the pages section for permanent reference.

I’ve always used the ‘hide’ option (apple H) to get running programs out of my way. The problem is that when you look at the Dock, you can’t see which programs are running without any open windows and which are actually ‘hidden’. The fix is simple. Crack open Terminal.app and type

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool yes

Then hit Apple-Option-Escape all at the same time, click on Finder and hit the ‘relaunch’ button. Now hidden programs are faded out so you can see the difference easily.
To reverse this is you aren’t a fan of the result, just redo as above with ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’

Safari has a hidden ‘debug’ menu. If you are a web developer, or just curious, you can enable the hidden menu using the Terminal program. There are a whole bunch of little tidbits on this menu that are interesting for the technically inclined.

To do this, make sure Safari isn’t running, then open Terminal.app and type

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

That’s all. Open Safari and check out the new menu. The ability to change browser id is the handiest to me.

To reverse the change replace the ‘1′ with a ‘0′

I often run into websites that I want to read one article from, or look at something quickly, only to find out they want me to ’subscribe’ before they will show me anything. The New York Times is a famous example. It’s free, but they still want to get your personal information.

Sometimes I want to subscribe, but sometimes I don’t. I only want one thing, quickly, without the hassle of filling out the form and waiting for the email confirmation etc, etc, etc. I don’t like giving out my email address to everybody either.

The solution is provided by www.bugmenot.com It has thousands of already created accounts for these kinds of websites. To use them, all you need to do is add their ‘bookmarklet’ to your bookmarks bar.

Using Safari (other browsers should work similarly)
- go to http://www.bugmenot.com
- drag the ‘bookmarklet’ link to your bookmark bar (just below the forward/back buttons)
- Call the link ‘bugmenot’ when it asks you for a name

Now every time you hit one of these sites you can just tap the ‘bugmenot’ shortcut and it gives you a username and password for that site!
Quick and easy.

Ever tried to find an email address that isn’t in your
Address Book, but you know you’ve sent or received a mail message from
that person recently?

- In Jaguar look under the Window menu at ‘Address History’
- In Panther look under the Window menu for ‘Previous Recepients’

You can even click on the date column to sort them that way.

Neat little feature many people don’t seem to know about!

Meg has the answer to our iLife prayers. It is the new book by Jim Heid, of Macworld Magazine, entitled “The Macintosh iLife ‘05.” The book is well written with multi illustrations and c overs everything from iTunes, iPhoto, digital photography, iMovie, iDVD and Garageband. Best of all is an enclosed wonderful DVD in which Heid illustrates he “how to do it.” It got me out of a box and solved my problems, quickly and easily. I recommend it.
Bill