Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW
Ask TUAW: Connecting to a System 7 Mac, video management software, Apple's Up-to-Date program and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about Apple Up-to-Date program, non-black LCD monitors, video management software, connecting to an old PowerMac 7200 to salvage files, and more.As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. 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 Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.
Felipe asks
How do I sync videos BACK to the iPhone photo album (camera roll) app? Or is the only way to sync videos back to the iPhone is trough the iPod app ?
Unfortunately, the only way to sync videos back to the iPhone is through iTunes, and when you do they will appear in the iPod app as you suggest.
Matt asks
I'm in the market for an LCD monitor (1920x1080) for an old PC. The PC is hidden out of site and all of my furniture (desk and bookshelves) are white, so a black monitor will look terribly out of place. Apart from the 30" Apple Cinema Display, what are my options for non-black monitors that will accept DVI's full resolution?
Well I can say that you don't want the 30" Apple Cinema Display as the native resolution for that display is 2560 x 1600. If it's for a computer you probably actually want a 1920 x 1200 display (the 1080 height is the 1080p HDTV standard), though can use a 1080p display with a Mac (you just use a DVI to HDMI adapter if the display lacks a DVI port).
Unfortunately, white LCD monitors seem to be rather out of style at the moment, so you're more likely to find a white LCD TV than a straight computer monitor. Furthermore, you can also expect to pay a lot more for a white bezel. Your best bet is probably to do some searches at Google Products. In your position I think I'd try to live with a black or silver bezel if possible.
josh asks
What do you recommend for video management software? I'm looking for something along the lines of iPhoto, but for videos. I've got lots of short videos I've shot at events or on vacations, and would love a way to organize, store, and play them.... What's the best video management software on the Mac?
I'd suggest you have a look at yFlicks (€16.95 ≈ $24) from Many Tricks which we took a look at a couple of years ago. It offers a lot of iApp like organization features including tags and smart groups. It's built on top of QuickTime so you may need to make sure you've got all the relevant codecs installed with something like Perian.
Ted asks
Question about Apple's Up-to-Date program: I just ordered the 10.6 update for my older mini; my sister just bought a new MacBook Pro without 10.6. Can I (of course I can, but should I?) use my copy of 10.6 to upgrade her MacBook so she doesn't have to order the upgrade kit? The terms of the program says she's entitled to the upgrade.
Technically there is no limitation; the Snow Leopard disc will install on your sister's MacBook Pro. Legally, however, I do not think you are entitled to install Snow Leopard without paying the small upgrade fee. If you look on the Apple Up-to-Date site you see it reads: "Covers product plus shipping and handing fee. U.S. customers add appropriate sales tax" implying (to me at least) that there is a free for the product itself and not just the shipping and handling. Of course, it goes without saying that I am not a lawyer and that's just my personal read on the matter.
Genya asks
I'm finally getting a lovely new MacBook Pro. I'd like to start fresh, so I don't want to use the Migration Assistant to copy everything over. The one thing that I would like to keep intact, however, is my iTunes library so that I can continue to sync my 1st-gen iPod touch with its backups still in place. Is there a way to transfer just the library and associated data across? Additionally, what, specifically, does the Migration Assistant allow me to transfer and can I stop it from transferring certain things?
Congrats on the new MacBook Pro! Anyway, if all you want to copy over is your music you can simply copy the ~/Music/iTunes folder over to your new Mac (I'd suggest putting the old Mac into target FireWire mode if possible). However, the iPod touch backup is actually located at ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/. Be sure to check out this Support Doc with much more information on iPod touch / iPhone backups.
That said, the Migration Assistant does offer a remarkable level of customization about what it copies over. As you can see from the screenshot below you can select only to copy over the Music from a given account.
nogreenworld asks
I have an old PowerMac 7200/120MHz (PC compatible), running(?) OS 7.something. i haven't used it in forever. I have a bunch of old files and whatnot stored on that powermac and wanted to pull off some stuff, for nostalgia if nothing else (old clarisworks documents, pictures, etc). Assuming it even boots up, can i do that? and how? ethernet hookup to the MBP? will that mount/be recognizable in today's world. it's like a time capsule (of the analog variety, not the apple product), and i can't resist peeking inside.
Wow, this is a interesting one so I thought I'd make some suggestions but also put it out there for the readers to offer thoughts as well. My first thought was that if the Power Mac doesn't boot the best thing to do would be to rip the hard drive out and connect it to a USB reader. However, when I checked out the official Tech Specs from Apple I saw that the hard drive is a SCSI unit. So that would mean tracking down a relatively rare USB to SCSI adapter.
If the Mac does boot, you should be able to do as you suggest and connect it to your MacBook Pro via ethernet (the easiest way would be to connect both to the same router). Then check out this tutorial to browse the MacBook Pro from the OS 7 Power Mac, allowing you to drag and drop files from the Power Mac into the MacBook Pro. Keep in mind you might need to update the software on the Power Mac using some of the utilities on that same System 7 Today site. Good luck!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
malik said 8:24AM on 9-03-2009
Matt,
BenQ sells white monitors.
http://benq.com/products/LCD/?product=1558&page=specifications
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jadam said 9:00AM on 9-03-2009
nogreenworld,
See if you can find a friend with an older 'workstation'-class machine that has a SCSI adapter. In my case, a friend had an older Linux machine, and attached my old Mac Classic's external 80MB disk. The dd command is very helpful in this case.
dd if=/path/to/scsi/disk of=diskimage.dmg
This command reads all the bits off the disk and writes it to a file. Believe it or not, OS X will read the disk image like any other dmg file! Using this method I was able to recover some truly ancient files.
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Lauram said 9:52AM on 9-03-2009
My dream iPhone app would allow me set up an account to collect and save interesting addresses I find while surfing the web: not just restaurants, but stores, museums, parks, theaters, ice cream stands, whatever. Then later, when I'm out and about -- finding myself with, say, a hour to kill in a particular neighborhood or city -- it would display all the nearby addresses I've collected in a map of the area on my iPhone.
Apps like Yelp and Urban Spoon are great for some purposes, but they're both too specialized *and* too cluttered. They tell me what OTHER people think is interesting in a neighborhood, but not what I think is interesting. I don't need to know about every local bar beloved by college students. But if I happen to read about an unusual spot in another part of town, or in another city, it would be great to be able to save that information in some form more useful than a web browser bookmark.
Does anyone know of an app that can do this?
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pcmofo said 9:54AM on 9-03-2009
Actually if you want to upgrade multiple computers that qualify for the free upgrade then you can do so when you purchase the Snow Leopard up to date disk. There is an option for send one disk but multiple licenses....
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bioadam said 10:10AM on 9-03-2009
Clipstart also looks like a great program to manage short videos. $30 from:
http://www.riverfold.com/software/clipstart/
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SIP said 10:18AM on 9-03-2009
nogreenworld:
If your files are really important, transfer them to 3.5" floppy disks and get a cheap external USB Floppy Drive. I bought a Sony unit about two years ago which I think they still sell.
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Eugene said 11:28AM on 9-03-2009
Our company recently changed the name and domain and now I need to update all my work contacts in Address Book. Is it possible to do something like batch find & replace? For example, changing all email addresses from *@oldname.com to *@newname.com?
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rlaska said 12:26PM on 9-03-2009
Eugene:
Don't have my macbook in front of me right not to tell for sure, but I wonder if you couldn't edit the XML file for address book (or export one if it doesn't create an XML backup by default), do a replace all, then re-import the XML file... or export it as CSV, do the replace all, then re-import it.
Could be messy, make sure to do a time machine backup before so you can quickly restore it.
Just an idea... again, without my macbook in front of me to look at the details, i'll leave it up to you to verify that this might actually work ;)
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Kyle said 1:30PM on 9-03-2009
I have an iPhone 3G with 3.0.1 (7A400). After I upgraded to 3.0 my camera roll page in Photos shows only black thumbnails. I can still view the photos if I click on the black thumbnails, but I'm guessing at what photo I'm selecting. I've searched all over and have found nada. Is there a solution for this issue?
Thanks!
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Götz said 2:57PM on 9-03-2009
The tutorial you mentioned won't work for Snow Leopard since Apple removed all AFP 2.x levels in the SL AFP server component. It only speaks AFP 3 over IP -- which no System 7 machine can speak.
You'll need another AFP server like Netatalk or Jaffer. Or ZIP/MO disks: one drive with SCSI, the other USB based. Works good.
In case of usage of FTP one should be aware of macbinary safe formats like Compact Pro or StuffIt archives.
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nogreenworld said 4:14PM on 9-03-2009
well that isn't at all what i wanted to hear. i was all excited about hooking this up, but i literally just upgraded to SL.
EricW said 2:31PM on 9-03-2009
For next week's Ask Tuaw: I have a late 2008 model 13" aluminum MacBook now running Snow Leopard. I've had this issue carry over from Leopard where waking from sleep does not work (I can Fix Permissions last night, but don't know yet if that fixed that issue), so I have to hold the power down to reboot. I was running Quicken 2006 (requiring Rosetta) and when everything restored, Quicken was frozen and would not accept any input. Normally, I would click its dock icon and it would read Not Responding and I'd Force Quit, but with the new Expose feature, it gave me no indication the app was Not Responding, and the option of just plain Quit didn't do anything. I had to go to the Command bar and select Force Quit from the pull-down menu. If an app is Not Responding, how will I know under Snow Leopard?
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Han said 2:53PM on 9-03-2009
Question:
What is the best way to archive photos without using iPhoto? I have about 100 GB of original photos and I have been saving them on my NetGear ReadyNAS Duo. Sometimes I leave the photos in the folder and just copy it to the NAS or sometimes zip them before I put it in the NAS. What I am worried about is if I zip the folder and somehow the zip file itself gets corrupted, is it harder to recover them? Is it better to just not zip and leave it as a folder then copy it to the NAS? Would really appreciate your opinion!
Thanks,
Han
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mesostinky said 3:12PM on 9-03-2009
Hopefully someone is still reading this page. Anyway for mac video management Picasa works well and is free.
You can manage and play movies just like you do for Photos. You can trim clips, take snapshots, Export to .mov files, and send the clips to youtube. It's free and incredibly easy.
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josh said 3:43PM on 9-03-2009
Thanks mesostinky. I'm the josh who asked the question, and I'm keeping my eye on this page for other user comments like yours. I plan to check out yFlicks and Clipstart as someone else mentioned, but I do like that Picasa is free. I used Picasa for photo management on Windows way back in the day (I think that was before Google acquired it), but haven't touched it in a long time and didn't realize it could handle videos. I'll definitely check it out.
ad6am said 12:56AM on 9-04-2009
@EricW:
Activity Monitor (in your Utilities folder) shows apps that aren't responding, and enables you to Force Quit.
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Brian said 5:00PM on 9-04-2009
I have a question for next week's Ask TUAW:
I'm running Snow Leopard on a mid-2007 13-inch white Macbook. While I was running Leopard, I could choose to send files through Bluetooth by opening a contextual menu from Finder and choosing what device to send the file to. However, this ability disappeared when I upgraded to SL, and I could find nowhere in the Bluetooth preference pane to restore it. While I can get around this by opening Bluetooth File Exchange (in Utilities), and sending files through that application, I would much rather restore the slick contextual menu option I had before, if possible.
Thanks!
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Stephen said 7:06PM on 9-04-2009
I want to upgrade my MBP to Snow Leopard. I also want to get rid of my Windows partition (which I have only booted from once). How is the best way to do this?
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Claire said 7:45PM on 9-04-2009
Question for next week:
This past spring, I bought a 24" Intel iMac (2.93 GHz, OS 10.5.8). I used Migration Assistant to bring files and programs over from my old 17" PowerPC iMac (running OS 10.3). I think I've managed to delete all the programs and preference files that won't run on the Intel system, but I'd like to start with a clean slate when I install Snow Leopard to be sure.
What's the best way to transfer back the files & folders I want to keep? If I backup to an external hard drive using Time Machine before upgrading, will I be able to transfer selected files/folders from there after the upgrade? Or would it be better to save files & folders directly to an external drive & then transfer them back? Or...? I'm concerned about missing stray preference files and the like.
Thanks!
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julian said 5:44PM on 9-07-2009
Question:
I have to read lots of PDFs. Professors love sending their bad scans to students and making them suffer.
To ease the pain I used to have a combination of apps that I used to convert the image PDF into a readable PDF. i don't remember if it was the OMNI-PAGE SE that came with my cannon printer/scanner or if it was an online converter.
Now I am trying to save paper and use the awesome new Snow Leopard Preview's annotation tools but if its an image then it wont let me highlight.
if you know of a way to do this without having to shell out money into Acrobat please enlighten me
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