More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice users.

Every so often, stumbling around the Mac OS you find something clever and wish everyone knew it. As I was about to do a CD burn on my internal optical drive on my Mac Pro, I was wondering how fast that Apple stock drive was. Yes, I could have checked the specs on the Apple website, but while playing with System Profiler I found something interesting. (To get to System Profiler select the Apple logo at the top left of your screen, choose About This Mac, then click More Info. You can also find it in your Applications/Utilities folder.)

If you select Disc Burning in the left hand column you'll get a list of your internal and external drives. If you put a disc in (new or already burned) the profiler will tell you what write speeds are supported after you 'refresh' the data from the profiler View Menu or just by doing a 'command-R'.


Quite nifty. My Pioneer internal burns a CD at 32x and a DVD at 12x. Who knew? Try it, if you have a use for the info. Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I'm hoping this tip will be useful to some of our readers.

If you make your living with words, and some of us around here at TUAW do, then a good dictionary is what you need.

The mother of all dictionaries, the Oxford, is now available for Macs (PPC and Intel) on CD with half a million words, and the ability to trace word usage through more than 2 million quotations. This version 4 edition CD has the full text of the OED 2nd edition, plus supplementary volumes, full text search, options to customize the entry display, and a variety of ways to display the results.

The Dictionary is designed to be copied to your hard drive, and requires at least a G4 processor with 867MHz or greater or an Intel Core Duo 2.13GHz or faster. The dictionary can run on either OS X 10.4x for 10.5x.

If memory serves the OED hasn't been on the Mac since version 1, and this is a welcome return. The CD is pricey, US$295.00, but buying the printed version is more than $900.00 and takes 20 volumes. Amazon has the CD version for $212.40.

You're probably saying "hold it -- my Mac has the Oxford Dictionary built in!" You'd be right, but it is a cut down version, with about 2/3 of the definitions missing, and for U.S. users, we get the Oxford American Dictionary, not the English Dictionary.

The CD release is not perfect. It has no way to save searches or info out for later research, and the dictionary does not integrate into the existing dictionary on Leopard, so the two don't talk to each other. The GUI is ugly and not Mac like. If you are looking for the last word in dictionaries, however, this is it.

Apple has released Migration and DVD/CD Sharing Update 1.1. While Software Update states that the update is recommended for all users, the support page lists the MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) and MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008) as the affected machines.

According to Apple, this update "... provides enhanced customization capabilities and improved performance for migration over FireWire, ethernet, and wireless networks."

This update is 11.1MB in Software Update. If you experience any trouble after installation, let us know.

I have a mountain of CDs and DVDs in my office. Some of them are in sleeves, others are stacked on spindles. For the most part, my disc labeling consists of grabbing a Sharpie ultra-fine-point marker and scrawling something right on the top of the disc. I've tried sticky labels before, but stopped after I had a few CDs that wouldn't come out of my iMac's SuperDrive slot.

Dymo, the labeling company, is now shipping the DiscPainter. It's a single-duty printer designed for one thing; printing directly onto inkjet-printable CD and DVD media.

Size, Installation, and Setup

The first thing that hit me when I opened the DiscPainter box was how big it is. Given that it is a single-tasker, it takes up a lot of room on a desktop (roughly 5.75" x 10"). For those with limited space available, this may be a reason not to buy the DiscPainter.

Following the included Quick Start Guide (yes, I RTFM), I removed the usual tape and plastic cruft encasing the DiscPainter, popped in the single ink cartridge, and connected the power cable. The initial user experience is excellent.

Read on for the full review

Size, Installation, and Setup (continued)

The DiscPainter comes with a Mac OS X / Windows installation CD that installs drivers and Discus for Dymo, an application that helps you to the design the disc image. After plugging in the USB cable and restarting your Mac, the instructions take you through making your first disc.

Software

I was underwhelmed by the Discus for Dymo software, which despite a 2007 copyright date appears to have been written while Mac OS X 10.2 was still all the rage. It has a cheesy, Aqua-like interface (see below) that looks very unprofessional and is obviously a port done by Windows programmers. My first thought was that I needed to update the software. No, version 1.1.1 IS the latest version.


Discus for Dymo does its job, but is uses many Mac OS X features incorrectly. For example, I wanted to use a picture from my iPhoto Library as a backdrop on a CD so I clicked on the Photo button expecting the standard Apple media browser to appear immediately. Instead, I had to navigate to my Photos folder before the media browser appeared.

Software (continued)

Likewise, trying to pick the "TUAW Green" for the text on the label, I thoroughly expected to see the standard Apple color picker so I could use the little magnifier tool to go for the green. No such luck. I finally figured out that I could option-click one of the custom colors to make the color picker appear (see below).

Conclusion

Reviewer Rating: 3 out of 5 possible

Should you buy one? If you need to do a lot of CD/DVD labeling and money isn't an object, yes. However, if you need a new printer anyway, the HP Photosmart C5280 all-in-one gives you a disc and paper printer, copier, scanner, and more, all in one box that costs less than half the price of the DiscPainter. You can also buy HP LightScribe external drives for much less, but the media is quite expensive.

If you DO buy one, remember to include the cost of BeLight Disc Cover to replace the Discus for Dymo software.

Pros

• Fast high-resolution printing
• Very quiet
• Does the job it is designed for, despite software shortcomings
• Does excellent job of printing directly on CD/DVD media

Cons

• Software isn't very Mac-like
  
• Printer footprint larger than it needs to be
• No power switch, can't turn it fully off without unplugging
• Very Expensive ($279.95 MSRP, about $250 online)

Be sure to check out the Gallery below for more pictures of the Dymo DiscPainter.

Moments before our Macworld 2008 interview with Paul Kafasis he told me about the unique way the demo CDs they were giving out worked. What's the main problem with software on CDs? Those apps are suspended in amber, frozen in time, and many other overused metaphors. The fine folks at Rogue Amoeba make living, breathing code. They don't stop updating it for a second, and they wanted to make sure that the app you installed off of that CD was the most up to date version available.

Impossible, you say. Piffle! Not for Rogue Amoeba (that one celled organism is a determined little guy). They looked at the problem and thought of LiveDisc. LiveDisc is an application that is burnt onto the CD. This application points to the most recent versions of the actual app that you want the user to install (an Internet connection is required). A simple solution to a highly specific problem, which is why I like it so much.

Rogue Amoeba is now sharing LiveDisc with other devs in the form of LiveDiscKit, an open source plugin for Interface Builder. Simply tweak a few settings, point it at the right places, and you're set to press a large number of CDs which will never go out of date (CD pressing functionality is not included with LiveDiscKit), that is assuming CDs stick around for much longer.

Welcome to another Mac 101 here at TUAW. Mac 101 is our recurring feature where we point out some tips and tricks for folks new to the Mac. Remember, if you're a Mac expert this post isn't for you.

Have you ever tried to unmount a disc in Mac OS X, but it simply wouldn't come out of your Mac's drive? Here are three ways of removing discs from your Mac's drive. If your Mac is currently using the disc you won't be able to eject it, so make sure that isn't the case first. If the disc isn't in use and you still can't eject it, give these a try.

Step 1: Drag the disc to the trash can
Find the disc on the desktop and drag its icon to the Mac OS X trash can. As you start dragging it towards the trash, the icon will change to an eject button, release the mouse button when the disc's icon is directly over the eject button.

Step 2: Try some command line goodness
If you have tried to eject the disc by dragging its icon over the trash bin, then why not try a simple Terminal command to eject the disc. Open Terminal.app (found in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app; or use Command + Shift + U to in any Finder window to move to the Utilities folder).

Once you have Terminal opened, type (or copy/paste) the following command: drutil eject

Step 3: Restart your Mac while holding mouse button down
If you've tried the other steps to no avail, then why not reboot your Mac while holding down the mouse button. Upon loading the Apple boot screen, your disc should be ejected.

Please note that if you have a disc that is actually physically stuck in the drive, this will not help. Stuck discs may need the assistance of an Apple Genius or certified Apple repair professional.

Avery Office Products, the purveyor of labels, blank business cards, binder dividers, greeting cards, and iron-on t-shirt transfers, has released a free application called Design Pro for Mac.

This software was demoed at Macworld Expo in January and is now available for download (registration required) from the Avery website. Design Pro contains over 2,000 clip art and photo images, as well as over 1,300 pre-designed templates for various projects. It is integrated with iPhoto as well, so you can use all of your own photos to create CD/DVD labels, birthday cards, and other fun projects. If you're burning your own music CDs, Design Pro can grab playlist or tune information from iTunes, and it's also able to use your Address Book for doing mail merges.

Avery Design Pro for Mac requires Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5. Be aware - the download is 262MB in size!

[via Macworld]

The guys at Touch Arcade are at it again -- this time, ZodTTD has ported temper, a TurboGrafx-16 emulator, to the iPhone, and as you can see above, this means something amazing: Bonk on the touchscreen. Sounds like the audio has a few little glitches, but seems like the controls and graphics are working as well as could be asked -- even in the slower Landscape mode (with the controls overlaid on the graphics), he says it was pulling about 50FPS.

There's even an emulator for the TurboGrafx-16 CD PC Engine, as long as you do a little tweaking (and nab the bios from somewhere that may or may not be legal -- same for the ROMs). temper4iPhone is still in beta, and just like all of these other emulators and jailbreak apps, we have no clue at all whether we'll ever get the chance to see them on the (rapidly approaching) App Store. Still, it's awesome to see -- we've definitely come a long way from the NES emulator way back when.

[Via MacBytes.com]

With three other software updates out the door today already, you could have forgiven Apple for not providing a fourth. However, Apple has also released an updated Firmware Restoration CD (version 1.6) for for a number of Mac models:

• Xserve (Early 2008)
  
• MacBook (13-inch Late 2007)
• iMac (20-inch Mid 2007)
• iMac (24-inch Mid 2007)

The Firmware Restoration CD is used to bring the firmware on an Intel-based Macintosh back to factory condition in case of an emergency (such as an interrupted firmware install). Apple makes a note that you cannot use this CD to restore the firmware that has already been successfully applied to your system; this is used only for systems that did not successfully get a firmware update applied.

You can download the Firmware Restoration CD from the Apple Support downloads website for your specific Mac. These CDs are great to keep around in case of firmware install issues (especially if you only have one Mac).


Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Yesterday, Apple released an updated Firmware Restoration CD (version 1.5) for all Intel Mac models. The Firmware Restoration CD is used to restore the firmware on an Intel-based Macintosh in case of an emergency (such as an interrupted firmware install).

You can download the Firmware Restoration CD from the Apple Support downloads website for your specific Mac. These CDs are great to keep around in case of firmware install issues (especially if you only have one Mac).

Apple makes a note that you cannot use this CD to restore the firmware that has already been successfully applied to your system; this is used only for systems that did not successfully get a firmware update applied.

This is probably one of the coolest freeware applications on the Mac that I've seen in a while. Have you ever placed a disc in your Mac's drive, only to shut it down with the disc still in there? I know I have a couple of times. Now you will never do that again, thanks to DiscTop. When you load a CD or DVD into your Mac, DiscTop displays a disc-like icon on the desktop, letting you know that you currently have a disc inserted. When you eject the disc, the icon zooms off the screen.

The coolest thing about DiscTop is that when you insert a known DVD (say, The Simpsons Movie) you can set the artwork via an Amazon search and display it over top of the DVD icon. DiscTop even asks you what type of Mac you use and then positions the disc accordingly. For instance, I have an iMac Core Duo (early 2006 model), so when I use that profile DiscTop will make sure the disc's icon is positioned where the optical drive is located. Very cool!

If you want to give DiscTop a spin it's freeware and available at the developers website.

Remember when Apple ditched the clamshell iBooks and created the sleeker "icebook" form factor? My wife calls them Chiclets. Well we have 3 of them: a 500 MHz G3 from 2001 with a 10GB drive, a 800MHz G4 with a 60GB drive but a busted optical drive, and a 1.2GHz G4 with a 30GB drive but working CDR/DVD drive. The 800MHz machine is still my old personal machine, although between hacks and apps and data overload it is very slow. The other two have found new life.

The oldest iBook actually has the best build quality, I think. The keyboard feels good, and none of the keys have rubbed off. It is fast and solid. However, since it is so old, I decided to use OS 9 as the primary OS. We inherited a bunch of old educational CD's from the 90's and the iBook plays almost all of them better than the PPC-based Mac mini in the den. Perhaps the biggest drawback? The smell of burning plastic that is emitted from the possibly-not-covered-by-recall motherboard. Oops.

The newest iBook is zippy enough to handle video from apps like VLC (for the playlists) without a hitch, so we're using it as a video jukebox of sorts. Connected to the network I can either stream or move videos to it for the kids, plus it runs all the OS X educational software we've got. Oh, and TuxPaint, which also runs on my personal machine in case they both want to draw at the same time. The working optical drive on the 1.2GHz came in handy at the beach recently, when the TV in the kids room didn't work. So we used the iBook as a DVD player.

Of course, if you work in primary education this is probably a snoozefest to you. Apple sold quite a few (though not nearly enough) iBooks to the educational markets back in the day. So it should come as no surprise that my wife and I recycle our old work machines as kid machines. What makes the iBook so special is the ability to run OS 9 natively and the form factor. Sure, iMacs are great, but you can't take them on vacation. The old clamshells are OK as well, but a little bulky. Then again, maybe I just can't bear to throw anything away.

UPDATE: Added a gallery.