Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW
Ask TUAW: Microsoft compatibility problems, iPhone charging, Mail bouncing, syncing, and more
In this riveting episode of Ask TUAW we're catching up a bit on the backlog, so we'll be looking at a couple of problems generated by Microsoft products (Hotmail and Photo Story), charging an iPhone from a sleeping Mac, syncing personal data between two user accounts, using a Mac mini as a backup server, and more.As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!
Andrew asks
I'm running the current version of Leopard on a PowerBook G4 (1.5GHz with 1.25GB memory). I was wondering if there is a way to shut the lid on my laptop while still keeping power to the USB ports. I would like to be able to put my computer to sleep and keep it charging my iPhone..
Unfortunately, no; this is a hardware issue. In fact, Apple recently added this feature to the iMac line. However, according to this thread and this hint the FireWire port is still powered while the computer is asleep. While you can't sync your iPhone over FireWire, you can possibly use that to charge it with a FireWire to Dock connector cable and if indeed if you use this double headed cable ($19) you don't even have to switch (i.e. plug in both at the same time).
pjones asks
When using iChat, I love that the icon bounces in the dock when I receive a new message. Is there a way to assign this same icon "bounce" behavior to the Mail.app dock icon, so that it bounces when I get new mail?
As another reader pointed out this is easily accomplished with a Mail.app rule. Just configure a rule in the Mail.app preferences as follows:
Kyle asks
I have recently switched to a mac mini 1.83Ghz running leopard and now use a .mac e-mail address. Previously I used a windows live hotmail account as my primary e-mail and I am wondering if there is any way to have e-mails to the hotmail account delivered to the "mail" application on my mac?
I have a very short-term solution for you: the Mac OS X HTTP Mail Plugin will allow you to download Hotmail into Mail.app. However, the developer has a note saying that "Microsoft is closing us down" as of June 30, 2008 because they're replacing WebDAV access with a new proprietary (and undocumented) technology called "DeltaSync." Now if you're willing to pay you can get POP3 access with a Hotmail Plus account. Finally, there's also a third-party service called IzyMail that will supposedly allow you to access Hotmail with an IMAP mail client, however I have never used it and cannot comment on its reliability.
My wife had this problem when switching and I finally just switched her over to Gmail. If I were you, I would go ahead and just pull the band aid off switch away from Hotmail. Microsoft's mail service is just not competitive anymore and it's a bear to deal with as you're finding out.
Adam asks
Some time ago, in the not so distant past, I noticed that the .Mac sync icon started to appear on the top menu bar for me. I have a MBP running Leopard. I have never synced anything with .Mac, yet so much as subscribed so I have no clue how this appeared. Now I want to know how to make it disappear, the .Mac button in Settings does not help me out as far as I can tell.
The sync item will also run for the iPhone so that may be how it got there. Anyway you can remove in either of two ways. Just hold down the ⌘ key and drag it off the menubar. Or you'll find the checkbox setting in the Sync tab of the .Mac Preference Pane.
joeyjoe serially asks
I use my MacBook at work and home, so I created two accounts on it. I did this primarily because I need easy access to different applications at work and at home and because I didn't want anyone to accidently stumble onto my personal files at work. This setup, however, has not really worked because I would still like to keep my email, contact, calendar and applications in sync between the work and home accounts. The simple solution I suppose would be to use one account and set up two different docks and desktops, but this isn't even possible with Spaces. What do you suggest?
You could try using one account and keeping all of your personal files in an encrypted FileVault created with Disk Utility. Alternately, you could continue using separate accounts and adopt some kind of syncing solution. The obvious one is .Mac, however, you might also consider using something like IMAP for email and something like Google for calendar and contact information. You can even sync Google's services with iCal using BusySync ($25) or Spanning Sync ($25/year). Address Book syncing is now possible with Syncman ($15) though apparently Address Book syncing is coming to the others as well. Having lots of this kind of data online as other advantages as well, so that might be worth looking into.
I created a Windows Media File using Microsoft's excellent slideshow program, Photo Story, however I cannot view it on my Mac. The WMV file that Photo Story creates cannot be played in anything before Windows Media Player 10, and as far as I can tell, the latest version of Flip for Mac only covers files created for Windows Media Player 7.0 and earlier. I can't find anything to play this thing!
I found this site with some suggestions. Basically, it is a codec problem and so the suggested solutions are converting the file to a QuickTime MOV with the file conversion site Zamzar or (if you have access to Windows) convert the file to a Flip4Mac compatible version with the Windows Media Encoder.
computergeeksjw asks
I have a Rage 128 video card that came with my old iMac. I've looked and looked, but I can't seem to find a driver anywhere. ATI's website only has drivers for Windows. I wanted to set up Extended Desktops but my Mac won't recognize it. Apple Technical Support @ 1-800-My-Apple said to get a driver, but I can't find one:). Any solutions/suggestions?
Unfortunately, I do not think Extended Desktop is possible with the Rage 128. The hack to enable this on older machines is called Screen Spanning Doctor but the Rage 128 is explicitly not supported.
Jason asks
.... My utopian goals for the backup system are 1) to have an automatic system that takes the responsibility out of it as much as possible, 2) have an offsite - preferably, online - backup of my photos and music (because those are virtually irreplaceable - especially the photos), and 3) if possible, have online access to all my personal files for when I travel (a lot).... Is it possible to use the Mini as a backup & Time Machine server (with a huge HDD attached via USB) without having to buy Leopard Server ($500) to expose the external disk?
Yes. Backup to an AFP-shared HFS+ disk mounted on any Leopard computer (Client or Server) is officially supported by Time Machine. What I would do is buy a large external FireWire drive and hook it to the Mac mini. Then, share that drive with AFP and use it with Time Machine and/or SuperDuper!.
Finally as far as accessing file from the road goes there are a number of ways to accomplish this from Back to My Mac and iChat Screen Sharing, to others like iGet ($49). You might also want to check out a little application we posted on before called FarFinder ($35).
Sam asks
If I have a 1st gen iPhone and want to get a 3G one, could I just buy a 3G phone and put my 1st gen sim card in?
You'll probably have to unlock the new phone to get this to work. It's obviously not known yet whether the unlocking tools with work on the 3G iPhone.
Joel asks
I am thinking of an application, but I can't remember it's name, and I can't find it via searching for the life of me! It was talked about on TUAW, and what it does is, it allows you to make a bookmark of a website, and it treats the bookmark like an application that you can open separately, and keep on your dock and stuff.
I'm not 100% sure what application it is you're referring to. I suppose you know that you can just drag a URL to the right side of your Dock (assuming it's on the bottom) and add a spring icon to launch any website.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Eric Wilks said 6:55PM on 5-15-2008
Maybe you've already answered this elsewhere, but I have a MacBook with a Windows/Boot Camp/Parallels partition. Currently, I use Retrospect to back-up the two partitions to an external drive. But, I'm interested in others ways I might back-up: I'm considering using Time Machine (and possibly getting Time Capsule), but I can't figure out if this backs up my Windows partition or not. And what about SuperDuper? What are my options?
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me said 4:19PM on 5-16-2008
Having you heard of Carbon Copy Cloner? Version 3 is out now and I've used it before. If I recall correctly, it will allow you to do backups of your windows partition. Download it here: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Max said 7:04PM on 5-15-2008
From that link, it doesn't appear that you can charge the iPhone with the dual Firewire/USB cable, it's not listed as compatible.
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Joe RIckerby said 7:24PM on 5-15-2008
It says not compatible because most iPods won't sync over firewire. It'll power it fine.
What do people think about plugging it into both firewire and USB at the same time? I'm a bit dubious, are the 5V that come from both connectors shared inside the machine? Otherwise there's potential for current to flow in one and out the other...?
Max said 7:27PM on 5-15-2008
There were several comments to the effect that the firewire would not even work with charging, such as this one: "the 5th generation ipod is not supported by firewire, you have to use the USB cable to transfer and charge it."
Mat Lu said 7:29PM on 5-15-2008
If you'd bother to read the links you'll see several people have reported success charging from the FireWire port.
Max said 7:36PM on 5-15-2008
Apologies, just trying to make sure. I read the first page of
reviews, and they seemed to indicate that newer iPods and iPhones would not be able to charge via Firewire. I have not tried this, so I can't speak from experience, but that seemed to be the consensus. Though you might make a note that(if you can confirm it), even though newer iPods and iPhones aren't on the compatibility list, they still work, since not many people are going to read through several pages of reviews to see that it does, especially when there is one on the front page indicating that it does not.
James said 8:12PM on 5-15-2008
The dual firewire/USB cord uses the firewire connection to charge the ipod and the USB connection for syncing. This is the same setup the original Windows version of the ipod used. The firewire connector was comatible with the wall plug and the USB connector was used for syncing to the computer. The ipod would not charge with only the USB cable connected.
Also, the newer ipods will charge over firewire with the proper cable, they just won't sync.
thethirdmoose said 12:00AM on 5-16-2008
It's funny, because I have an iBook G4 1 GHz and I have no problems charging with the USB port while the lid is shut...
fuzzy said 7:22PM on 5-15-2008
Anyone know an app that replicates the apple tv wall effect. I remember seeing one somewhere, and apple demoed one at last years wwdc, but does anyone know one that actually exists?
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Dbs143 said 7:34PM on 5-15-2008
are you talking about PhotoPresenter? It's trial software, costs $8, and has this really cool Apple TV effect that it can do with your photos.
James C. said 8:27PM on 5-15-2008
In response to Kyle's question. I don't know if this is the solution you are looking for or not, but I'm pretty sure you could set your hotmail account to forward all of your mail to your .mac e-mail address. This may not be the optimal solution if you want to actively use your hotmail account still. But right now I have three e-mail accounts and have 2 of them forwarded to Gmail. This works really well. Especially since Gmail can send E-mails as other accounts (i.e. I can send an email using my school address from the Gmail website)
Hope this helps.
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Wooky said 8:36PM on 5-15-2008
to joeyjoe: I bet you can just create a symlink to the appropriate files or folders (usually in /user/Library/Preferences or /user/Library/Application Support) in the other account. It will work as though you were using a separate set of files but you will just be using one of them. You will have to set permissions so that the other account can read and write to these files. I am not sure you can do all needed stuff from finder, so you will have to play with group, chgrp and chmod from the terminal.
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CajunLuke said 12:37AM on 5-16-2008
If a symlink doesn't work, try a hard link. This may sidestep around the permissions issues. I only have one account on my Mac, so I can't really try it. If you're going to try this, I'd try it on the com.apple.dock.plist preferences file first.
Max said 8:36PM on 5-15-2008
James,
I am aware of this, but the comments indicate that the USB connection is the only functional part of this cable when used with newer iPods/iPhones.
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Byran Newell said 8:48PM on 5-15-2008
Kyle asked about Hotmail, and I just set up my Mail.app to view all my Hotmail messages. It's not a perfect solution, but it works for me.
Forward all your Hotmail messages to your gmail (or any other imap enabled email service like .mac). Make a rule that any item that is from Hotmail gets put in a Hotmail folder. Use subfolders under the Hotmail folder to stay organized.
The only problem might be that you can't reply from your Hotmail account (unless you're using the httpmail plugin, which may or may not work for you depending on the age of your Hotmail account. Even if it does, it will very shortly NOT). I would suggest you get gmail for your main account. Keep the Hotmail for registrations, and other madness, but utilize gmail as your main email.
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Byran Newell said 8:53PM on 5-15-2008
Just realized that James said the same thing... Really should have read the comments, and not just skimmed them, huh?
Kyle Anderson said 8:31AM on 5-17-2008
Hi there Byran thanks for the suggestion but hotmail does not seem to allow me to forward messages to a .mac email or googlemail account. Am I doing something wrong? Any help is much appreciated -Kyle-
Byran Newell said 1:36PM on 5-17-2008
Hotmail forwarding is pretty easy:
Click options on the right hand side. On the new page, under "Manage your account", the third choice is "Forward Mail to another e-mail account".
Hope it works for you.
Alex said 9:02PM on 5-15-2008
Tuaw, it Seems that my iPhone has a hardware issue which will most likely be solved by Apple replacing it, my question is if I should wait until WWDC to go get it looked at, since they may give me an upgrade if I get it replaced after the announcement. The issue is not to pressing, and my warranty doesn't expire until august, so I am not sure if I should wait, to see if I can get an upgrade (I was lucky enough to get an upgrade on my macbook after a lot of failed repairs).
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