Ask TUAW: RAW support, Randomized Playlists, recovering songs from an iPod and more

After a nice break I'm happy to be back. Many thanks to Mike R and Chris for their excellent pinch hitting. This week in Ask TUAW we'll look at camera RAW support, getting the Shuffle into the iPhone, recovering songs from an iPod to a new Mac and more. As always please leave questions for next week in the comments to this post.

Unfortunately we can't always get to all of the questions, but many times your fellow TUAW readers will have insightful advice as well. Now, let's get to it!

stephen asks

I have a friend who hates Macs, and has been predicting their demise for years. Recent increases in hardware sales and market share have shut him up a bit, but he now predicts that OS X will soon run on any hardware, and then people will choose the best software (he acknowledges that, at least) and the most affordable hardware, refusing to be held to ransom by Apple's exorbitant hardware costs! I don't know enough of the technical side to argue. Do you think OS X will eventually be able to be made to run on any hardware?

This question has been hashed out many times, but I think the simple answer is: No, it's not going to happen. The reason is simple: Apple is a hardware company and makes its money from selling hardware. It seems extremely unlikely that Apple would give up its biggest competitive advantage by offering OS X for sale on generic white boxes. As with many Mac things, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has some of the most insightful commentary on this issue, and his reasoning is basically the same.

That said, hackers have gotten OS X to run on generic hardware, but I take it as a near certainty that Apple will not release a retail version of OS X for non-Apple computers.

sixhoursago asks

I recently purchased a new camera that is capable of shooting RAW. The images it takes have a .RAF extension. When I move them to my Mac, I am able to see the image in the preview provided by Finder's column view, but am unable to open the file in Preview.app, iPhoto or Aperture. I'm told by Aperture that the file type is unsupported. Do you know of any way to correct this problem?

You don't say which camera you have, but Apple only officially supports selected models and if your camera isn't on the list then it won't be natively recognized by any of those applications. It's like you can see the preview in the Finder because your camera embeds a JPEG into the RAW file.

That said, if you camera model is close to one of the supported models, you may be able to hack together a work-around. Over at Mac OS X Hints, there's a neat trick for editing the RAW plist to add compatibility for Adobe DNGs converted from cameras not officially supported by Apple. You do first have to convert the RAW files to Adobe's DNG using their free converter, and this will only work if your camera is on Adobe's support list.

If your camera is a popular model you can take hope in the fact that Apple is continually adding new RAW support (including in the most recent 10.4.10 update). So if you're lucky native support will be added soon (I would expect RAW support to be increased in Leopard as well).

Kenny asks

I'm replacing my iPod shuffle with an iPhone, but the iPhone doesn't "shuffle" songs. What i'd like to do is pick a few playlists of music that are always on the phone, my favorite songs, then fill the remaining space with anything else at random... any ideas?

What you need to do is create some cool Smart Playlists and sync those over. Here are just some random ideas to get you started.

Basically, the key idea is just to define a set of music you want select from and then fill the playlist selected by "random." So here's what I would do. Create a music-only playlist as described by Merlin, then define a smart playlist that excludes your playlists you always sync and then includes the music only playlist. You can also specify the size, etc. So in this example, playlists A, B, and C are already synced over and the total size is limited to 2GB. Now just sync that Smart Playlist to your iPhone.

And of course you can continue customizing to your hearts content. If you haven't filled out your metadata you may want to do that as well to give you even more control of your randomized playlist.

Patric asks

My friend synced her 5th Gen iPod to her computer at home in the US. She then moved to Sydney and bought a Macbook there. SO she would like to be able to sync her iPod with her Macbook, but she doesn't want to lose all her music. Obviously not all of it was purchased on iTunes, so asking them to send the downloads to her account again wouldn't work.

There are in fact a variety of utilities that will allow you to copy music back from the iPod to a mac. For donation-ware you could have her check out Senuti ('iTunes' backwards, get it?). For a little bit of cash, PodWorks ($8) is probably the most well-regarded of these tools and has just been updated to version 2.9. So basically using one of these she just needs to copy all of the music over to the MacBook from the iPod.

There's one very important thing to remember when using any of these utilities. When she first plugs her iPod into the new Mac, it will ask her if she wants to sync it with that Mac. Be sure that she selects no, or all of her music will be erased. In addition make sure the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" option is checked on in the iTunes preferences Advanced tab.

Jon asks

Is there a way to get the icons of mountable drives, like iPods or external harddrives, to show up in the same spot of the desktop every time?

Frankly, no there's not. It's a great annoyance of mine as well, but there's no way built into the Finder to do this. You can show the view options for the Desktop (⌘J) and try to use one of the "keep arranged by" options, but that's about it.

This information is provided for your entertainment. Neither TUAW nor this author can be held responsible for any problems arising from the use of the information provided here.

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After a nice break I'm happy to be back. Many thanks to Mike R and Chris for their excellent pinch hitting. This week in Ask TUAW we'll...

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Jim Hummel

Question for next week: I'm a geek for a large company and frequently access various network shares day in and day out. As with most companies, I have a "daily" account for normal access, and an "Admin" account for the tasks that require elevated permissions.

My home drive is normally accessed with my "daily" account but there are times where I need to access the same root of that share with my "Admin" account.

So the actual question is: if I have my home drive auto-mount (via logon items) using my "daily" account, how can I also mount that same root share using my "admin" account, do my thing and then unmount the drive to go back to normal usage. Keychain remembers how I last logged on and I'm not prompted for credentials again.

In Win-doze, I'd have to disconnect and then map again using the "alternate credentials" link in the dialog.

I don't want to open that share with my "Admin" account all the time, instead preferring to use the proper amount of permissions for the task at hand.

What to do?

Many thanks! This is a great posting series and I frequently refer to prior posts as well as forward them along to my other Mac users.

September 28 2007 at 9:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Matteo

I have a question for the next ASK TUAW, or for any other person able to answer before that :-)

I have a HighDefinition video camera. I created a huge video (67 GB...) and stored it on a USB 2.0 external HD. Editing the movie is not at all a problem (in fact I am surprised about how well it works).
The problem is when I "share" it to create a DVD with iDVD (I know it is a downscaling, but that's the best I can currently do).
When I click "share", with iDVD, I get an error (error "0"). The disk is mine, I have all permissions.
I had to copy the "mammoth project" on my MacBook. Once there, the "share" with iDVD worked a breeze.

Am I the only one experiencing this?
iMovie and iDVD seem to handle data stored on an external HD very poorly...

Another error I got was with the music. I tried to put music I purchased on iTunes as a background music. But the music simply didn't play (yes, it was my music and yes, I entered the code when requested and yes, it was made on the same Mac from which I purchased the music).

My main problem however, looking forward in the future, is HOW CAN I share iMovie HD projects with iDVD without having to transfer them on my HD?
Thanks for any answer, workaround or simply sympathy...
(iLife 06)

Mat

July 23 2007 at 5:38 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ball

@Tim

Thanks for the recommendation! MyTunesRSS is pretty awesome. I set it up this morning before work, which is saying a lot since I'm far from a "morning person," and I'm using it right now. Very cool. I'm thinking of registering so I can see the flash-based player, but for now, the unregistered version is definitely doing it for me. Thanks, TUAW!

July 19 2007 at 12:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

TheWirelessWizard

@Ball

SimplifyMedia does exactly what you want. For right now it's free and appears to be functioning perfectly between my desktop Mac and two other "invited" Macs.

Find it here:

http://www.simplifymedia.com/

July 19 2007 at 10:17 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Lokizilla

.RAF files are put out by Fujifilm cameras.

I have the same issue as sixhoursabove with the files from my FinePix S6500fd - they'll show a preview, but nothing more. Only Fuji's 'pro' cameras (i.e. their expensive DSLRs) are readable without conversion by Aperture et al.

While Fuji have an app to convert the RAWs into TIFFs or JPGs, it's still a PowerPC only app, so it's slow on an Intel machine.

Luckily, it appears to be supported by Adobe's DNG converter, so it should be possible to get them converted at some speed.

July 18 2007 at 6:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

cycomachead

Question for next week:I have 2 computers with logged into the same
iTMS account. Is there a simplified solution to making I can get
songs from the Windows box to my MacBook? I keep having to search on
the networked windows machine for.m4p and look through for new things
then copy them to my Mac.

July 18 2007 at 5:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jon Stieglitz

I got an iPhone and am looking to buy an extra cell phone to use when I go to the beach and the like. Which cell phones will work with the SIM card? Can I use any AT&T phone?

July 18 2007 at 4:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tim Luckey

@ ball:

I have used MyTunesRSS by codewave

http://www.codewave.de/

It works pretty good for me....check it out!

July 18 2007 at 4:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ball

Your comments: Question for next week:I have been looking for a way to listen to
music in my iTunes library over the internet, much like the way
iTunes sharing works, but for computers not on the same network. I
haven't seen anything that works like what I might have in mind, so I
was wondering if there was anything out there.My general goal is to be
able to sit down at any computer (with an internet connection, of
course), go to the proper address, and access my home computer's
iTunes through some sort of webUI.I know that I could use VNC to
achieve the same end result, but that requires installing software on
both ends, and provides much more (and not better) features and
functionality than I'm looking for.SO, is there anything out there
that can do this, or do I need to use a workaround?

July 18 2007 at 2:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ball

Question for next week:
I have been looking for a way to listen to music in my iTunes library over the internet, much like the way iTunes sharing works, but for computers not on the same network. I haven't seen anything that works like what I might have in mind, so I was wondering if there was anything out there.
My general goal is to be able to sit down at any computer (with an internet connection, of course), go to the proper address, and access my home computer's iTunes through some sort of webUI.
I know that I could use VNC to achieve the same end result, but that requires installing software on both ends, and provides much more (and not better) features and functionality than I'm looking for.
SO, is there anything out there that can do this, or do I need to use a workaround?

July 18 2007 at 2:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply