We're back with another edition of Ask TUAW. This time around we've answering questions about how to resize windows too big for the screen, "compulsive" updating, booting from an SD card, Open GL in Snow Leopard, 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.

Steph asks:

I recently switched from an iMac to a MacBook Pro and now many of my windows are sized to big for the screen of my laptop. I can't reach the corner to resize them and clicking the "Plus" sign in the corner doesn't help. What can I do?

Fortunately, this is very easy to fix. Instead of clicking on the "Plus" sign (the green button) in the top left corner of the window you are trying to resize, Option-click it and the window will fill your new screen size instead.

John asks:

I realize there's a method for updating Mac OSX all the time and sometimes I get the window popping up saying I have updates. Should I always update immedietly when it tells me I have some?

After canning Seinfeld, Microsoft is now starting stage two (planned all along, they say) of their campaign with a new series of I'm a PC ads by the Crispin, Porter + Bogusky ad agency. As is clear from the John Hodgman look-alike at the start of the ads, they're supposed to be a direct response to Apple's Get a Mac campaign that's been running since 2006.

It almost goes without saying that it's rather sad for one of the richest companies in the world to stoop to this level of reaction. But I think one of things that's interesting here is the difference between the central motifs of the respective ad campaigns. What Get a Mac suggests is that your Mac is your kinda cool, but laid-back and easy-going friend that'll help you get things done. In other words, your Mac is your friend, not who you yourself are.

On the other hand, the I'm a PC ads say exactly that: you (the user) are a PC. Who the heck would want to be that? What they're trying to maintain is that PC users are unfairly being stereotyped as besuited, boring, glasses-wearing losers. But with the repeated exclamation "I'm a PC," the ads actually suggest a kind of Borg-like insistence that I as a user have to be assimilated into my computer.

In short, Microsoft and its ad agency still don't get it. We Mac-heads don't see ourselves as all being Justin Long (or, heaven forbid, wanting to be Justin Long). I can proudly say I'm not a Mac, and I'm not really planning to become one either. Or to put it another way: I use a Mac in no small part because I don't want to be a computer (Mac or PC).

What's your take?

(The three ads can be seen on YouTube: Pride, Not Alone, and Stereotype.)

For the second time in so many months, Apple has offered MobileMe subscribers a free extension of their current subscription. Earlier today, an email was delivered to customers stating that they'd receive a 60-day extension of their MobileMe subscription, in addition to the 30 days offered in July.

"We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of," the message reads. "We know that MobileMe's launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around."

Thanks, Apple! Three months of free service is definitely a decent compensation. And for those of you spooked by the recent MobileMe-themed phishing scam, we assure you that the link in the email is legit.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

A three-alarm blaze drew 60 firefighters to Apple's Cupertino campus on Tuesday night. Specifically, it was in building Valley Green Six at 20705 Valley Green Drive. San Francisco's ABC 7 television news has some video.

Investigators suggested that an air conditioning unit could have been the culprit. Fortunately, all employees escaped unharmed. No word on how much damage was done to the building, although some reports say the smoke damage was substantial.

We're very glad that no one was hurt, and hope the damage isn't too bad.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

When the App Store went live on the 10th, I went a little nuts and downloaded a bunch of apps. Some I fell in love with. Some I launched once. Others lingered a for a few days while I decided their fate.

Now it's nearly two weeks later, and I've identified the keepers. Here I'll list each one as well as why and how I use them. As a bonus, I'll identify the three that have made the cut to my main screen -- what I'm calling my "front page apps."

Read the list after the jump.

Today, as you are all aware, is iPhone 3G day. All across the land eager fans are waiting patiently in lines waiting for their chance to drop their hard-earned cash for a shiny new iPhone. Of course, I was one of them. Braving the wee hours and heading to my local Apple Store of choice, Sherman Oaks Fashion Square, I arrived around 6AM for an 8AM store opening.

When I arrived there were about 50 people in front of me already waiting -- some with folding chairs and one or two even with sleeping bags. So, I got into line and waited. As time went on the line behind me got longer and longer and after about an hour they decided to move us all inside the mall to wait. That's where the real fun began.

Once inside, we waited for another hour and finally, to thunderous applause, the store opened and the first thirty people in line went in. As they did, a blue-shirted Apple employee went along the line telling us it should be about 15 minutes a person when inside the store to buy an iPhone and go through the activation process. Sadly, his estimate was a bit on the optimistic side.

It took almost 45 minutes for the first person who had gone in the store to exit with a new iPhone. So, my time inside the mall stretched on and on. Finally, after another hour, around 10AM at this point, I was let inside. Once inside, the process went relatively smoothly and I got my iPhone, opened it and connected it to a Mac with iTunes open for the "final" step of activation. At that point I felt my iPhone 3G saga would finally be at an end and I would be enjoying all the 3G goodness in just a few moments. Sadly, I was still to be denied.

Activation via iTunes at the Apple store failed. And then failed again. And again. Finally, after about seven or eight attempts, a manager come over and told me just to take the iPhone home and connect it there. So, after about four hours total from arriving and getting in line to leaving the store, I still didn't actually have a working iPhone.

That was about 30 minutes ago. I've attempted activation at least three more times since arriving home and still no love from AT&T. So, for the moment, my brand new iPhone 3G is a relatively expensive paperweight. Perhaps AT&T will get its act together soon and this will all be over and my iPhone will actually work? I won't hold my breath.

Update: After another hour or so my iPhone got a text message from AT&T saying it had been activated. After that, the "activation" via iTunes went all the way through. Next. I was able to restore everything and the iPhone seems to be working fine now.

Couple other points: You will have to set up your voicemail again after activation completes, so hopefully you remember your password. I didn't. Fortunately, it can be reset at the AT&T website once you log in to your accout. And, it seems I don't have very good 3G coverage at my house, so I don't even know how well that works yet. More on that as I test out the iPhone.

Yes, the iPhone is today's "it girl." Everyone wants to see and be seen with her. But life with the iPhone isn't all champagne and bon-bons.

Here are our Top 5 iPhone Gripes. If yours isn't on the list, please let us know.

5. No multimedia text messages

My parents live in Florida, because they're in their 60s and that's the rule. Recently, they purchased fancy-dancy cell phones with cameras. Even more exciting is that they know out how to use them, and constantly send me pictures of manatees, their kitchen and so on.

At least, they try.

My iPhone beeps and displays a message which says, "I sent you a multimedia message. You can view my message w/in the next 7 days via the web at viewmymessage.com using MSG ID [Obscure ID] Password [Obscure Password]."

Clicking on the link launches Mobile Safari which produces a web page asking for Obscure ID and Obscure Password. Since each is a collection of upper- and lower-case letters plus numbers, it's difficult to remember. So, I must return to the text message, write Obscure ID and Obscure Password on a piece of paper, go back to the web page, type Obscure ID and Obscure Password on the tiny keyboard and wait for the teeny, tiny pictures to load.

So that's fun.

Read more gripes after the jump.

In addition to the boatload of tips we've gotten about iPhone activation being down, we have also seen a number of reports from folks buying iPhones at AT&T stores. It would seem that since activation is down AT&T is selling people iPhones and telling them to activate them at home. Very interesting, considering AT&T told us the iPhone 3G activation was going to be in store only in no uncertain terms.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

As was previously pointed out here at TUAW, the 2.0 firmware update for current iPhone and iPod Touch users has leaked out a bit early. Some have already taken the plunge and installed it. Still others are waiting for the "official" version from Apple to be released before going ahead and installing it. I'm not one of those people.

In the interest of doing something so readers of TUAW won't have to take the chance of a bricked iPhone, I downloaded and installed the new firmware this morning as soon as it was available. The update process went smoothly and, as expected, all of the media was erased from my iPhone. Fortunately, once the iPhone restarted and began its first sync after the update, all of my previous media (music, podcasts, video) was restored and able to be used again.

At first glance, some of the changes included in the new iPhone interface in iTunes 7.7 include an 'Applications' tab and a button to set up your iPhone to work with Apple's new MobileMe service which, as of this moment, isn't actually up and running yet. Also, after downloading several apps from the new App Store including AIM, Facebook, Google and Twitterific Premium, the iPhone was able to use those new applications without issue.


I also downloaded and installed other applications such as Salesforce Mobile, Net News Wire and Remote but so far, have not tested those. Also, and this particular change in the iPhone 2.0 interface made me very happy, there is now a dedicated 'Contacts' button allowing you to reach your contacts without having to go through the 'Phone' button first.

So, it appears that, at least in my case, the iPhone 2.0 firmware is a success. As the day progresses I'll let you know what else I find. Meantime, if you have questions, feel free to drop them in the comments.

Update: As pointed out by commenters, this update is for the iPhone only. The iPod touch update will be a paid download from the iTunes store for $9.95 and will include the January Update apps, as Robert noted earlier today.

Apple has posted to KB articles that might be of some interest to the iPhone crazed out there: Syncing Applications from the App Store and Troubleshooting applications purchased from the App Store (which basically says you should delete the troublesome app and re-install it).

The syncing article details how you get apps that you download from iTunes onto your iPhone (it functions in much the same way as syncing podcasts or music, you tell iTunes which apps, some or all, and there you go!). It also tells us what happens when you purchase an app directly on an iPhone and then sync to iTunes. The above message will pop up and ask if you want to transfer the apps to iTunes. If you do it will put them in the new Applications section of iTunes. Interestingly, if you sync your iPhone with an instance of iTunes that is not authorized with the same account as the one you used to buy an app, and you transfer said app to this unauthorized iTunes library the app transfers to iTunes but is deleted from the iPhone.

Yesterday, we noticed that the .Mac status page listed a MobileMe launch date and time of July 9th between 6 p.m. until 12 a.m. PT. Tonight, there seems to have been a change.

As of this writing, the .Mac status page says, "MobileMe Launch: 7/9/2008, 8pm-2am PT -- As part of the MobileMe launch, www.mac.com will be taken offline at 8pm PT on Wednesday, July 9th."

So, we've got to wait two more hours? Oh, no! Actually, we'd rather the folks at Apple take the time necessary to do things right. Oh, who are we kidding ... we want MobileMe!

Stay tuned here for the latest information on this transition.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

With all the current hype surrounding the imminent release of both the upgrade to Apple's .Mac service, now to be forever known as MobileMe, and Friday's launch of the new, improved iPhone version 2.0, let's not forget that Apple also makes other types of hardware that seems to be selling pretty well these days. In fact, according to a recent article up over at AppleInsider, Apple is apparently poised to ship 2.5 Million Macs in the Spring -- thanks, in some measure, to the poor reception of Microsoft's Windows Vista.

According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman, Apple's potentially strong quarter, which ends in June, can be attributed to several factors. Among them, user dissatisfaction with Vista. "Thus far, user satisfaction ratings for Vista have been weak, and startup times for Vista have been known to be much slower than the Mac OS X," Bachman said in the article. "Thus, more than 50% of recent customers buying Macs in Apple retail stores are first-time buyers."

In addition, the analyst added that this problem could help Apple's bottom line well into 2009 and could potentially improve the company's current world market share, raising it to 3.9% or higher. This is good news for those of us who remember the time, not so long ago, when most in the press and analysts like Bachman predicted Apple's certain demise. Still, even with this good news, we still need to hope Apple doesn't do something to hurt itself -- like bungle the .Mac to MobileMe transition or run out of shiny new iPhones at 8:30AM on Friday. That would not be a good thing.

Yesterday, I was reading through our sister site TV Squad and saw this post about Broadcast Flags that prevent PCs from recording shows. Broadcast flags, which are signals sent in a digital TV data stream, indicate whether shows should or should not be recorded by third party equipment such as PVRs. Curious, I shot off an email to Nick Freeman of Elgato to see whether my Mac-based EyeTV would block flagged recordings.

Turns out that my Macintosh is a libertarian. I can continue recording any shows I receive. Phew.

Not only did Nick get right back to me, he put up this handy info page about Elgato's position on broadcast flags: EyeTV doesn't restrict recording. EyeTV (and Elgato's software in general) ignores voluntary DRM, the kind that asks you to shoot yourself in your own foot if you don't mind thankyouverymuch.

I was blissfully ignorant of these flags until yesterday. In a world of product placement and in-screen logos, does it really make sense to keep people away from watching your shows? It's not as though I don't get the concept -- a return to appointment television where people go to the bathroom during commercial breaks instead of fast forwarding -- but it just struck me as so incredibly brain-dead in its execution.

What a pity that Microsoft chose to support this silliness with Media Center. And bravo to Elgato for deciding not to. What kinds of voluntary DRM can you think up? Let us know in the comments. Mine is broadcast-approved earplugs. Stick them in whenever you encounter sounds that might be copyright.

Applications on the Mac give you this warm, fuzzy feeling when you download and unpack their .dmg (or .zip) files. "Make Your Own Mac Mix" hopes to make this feeling even better by offering deals in the form of discount tiers for buying Mac applications.

You will be able to choose between 27 "high quality" Mac applications (similar to those being offered by MacHeist). Prices will be based on the following tier system:

• 10% off of any one app
• 30% off any 3
  
• 40% off any 5
  
• 50% off any 7
  
• 60% off any 9
• 70% off any 12

Just as there are no details on specific applications, there is also no set date; but the creators are claiming this will be an amazing deal on Mac applications. This deal is set to go live this month. This deal and details will soon be made available on the MacMix Promo website.