Today two articles of mine were referenced in Yahoo answers. When I went to look at the links on Yahoo, I was forwarded to a screen that said that the question violated the Community guidelines. Interesting. I wonder what they referenced on my site?

So I was thinking that I should probably share where most of my readership is from. It seems that the bulk of people who visit are just looking for macintosh related answers. Fair enough since that is the main purpose of this site. However increasing as I have focused on non macintosh content, I have gotten traffic from that as well. In fact, my highest rated day was on a non macintosh topic. I am not chasing views, but just sharing what happens.

I was thinking that almost every community of the internet, probably violates some other  communities guidelines of conduct. As a rule, I don’t feature illegal content since that doesn’t help anyone. I will link to sites that talk about things like hackintoshing which to my admittedly non-legal training, seems like a gray area. There are many gray areas in technology where what the company claims in writing and what it says are two different things.

Which is frustrating for everyone. In hackintoshing, mac software is put on Windows computers that it wasn’t designed for. The problem here is that, if you buy the Mac OS software, and you own the pc hardware it seems silly that you can’t hack this. I like that Apple is clear that they only support Mac software on mac machines. The problem is that because of the way the software works, it works in many other configurations. When someone asks me if its legal to do this, I tell them no. However that does not stop people, and perhaps it shouldn’t.

The history of computing, were people hacking the software. Some would argue that Apple still continues to hack other companies software and hardware. Apple uses the open source model and contributes back, and both sides have benefited. To me, things like hacking seem much like open-source. It allows alternative uses, that can decrease Apples profitability, but Apple has also gained much from open source software. I think that to fund development of open source is the future of any successful platform, and to encourage innovation is more helpful than limiting it.

I get it Apple. I get that controlling things has made you the star you are today. We all enjoy the positive things from the wise decisions that have made in the past. However, life is about balance. Now that Apple is no longer in danger of closing, doesn’t it seem the reins can be loosened a bit for everyone? Besides hackintoshing, what about alternative payment models in iTunes, all content allowed not just what you consider acceptable, and a willingness to properly compensate small time developers when you lift their ideas? You do most things so well, why not consider some of the social consequences of your policies? Perhaps you don’t need a “do no evil” model, but more of a “how can this benefit Apple and everyone else?” thinking.

I was helping a client today who used his scanner connected to his mac and used Image Capture to save the scan. He then copied the file over to his pc to make it work with his corporate system. When he was on his Windows 7 computer, there didn’t seem to be a default or installed utility that would open up .jp2 files. After some research it turns out that Photoshop, Infranview, XnView can open them on the PC.

Its a times like these with simple cross platform struggles, that I wish that Microsoft and Apple would combine forces.

Intel: Ultrabooks Offer More Choice, Better Value Than MacBook Air or iPad | PCWorld – StumbleUpon. This is an interesting discussion with an Intel representative. They say that the Ultrabooks do more than Apple and its about choice. Then in the next breath they talk about Windows and how its a better system and cheaper. I have seen that companies that are nervous about their product tend to talk about their price.

Server-based rules versus On My Computer rules. So there were two work arounds for this. To use the Outlook Web App, or Outlook for Windows. The mac is still a second class citizen with Windows Applications.

Finder right click \. Baltwo has the solution. I have never seen this solution before. Great work.

FWIW, there’s a com.apple.LaunchServices.plist in my user’s Preferences folder.

Launch the Terminal app in /Applications/Utilities/, copy & paste in this one-liner, hit the return key, quit Terminal, and restart:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

The Tyee. I think so. It is a distinct pleasure to use. I never felt good using Windows or any other operating system. It probably was because of my early Apple experience.

To me, Apple rethought things and I valued that. I still do. If Apple ever becomes a dominant player I will probably switch to another underdog. I don’t think that a monopoly on material things is helpful. I would love to see the human spirit have a monopoly on generosity, truth and kindness.

Rebuild the Outlook for Mac 2011 database to resolve problems. I had a friend who had this problem and his Option key wasn’t working to hold when you would start Outlook. So this article mentions another way to do this. Nice work!

Adobe Warns of Critical Zero-Day Vulnerability in Reader and Acrobat Products | SecurityWeek.Com. I’m coming to the conclusion that the less Adobe you have the more secure your computer is. I bet they have as many security vulnerabilities as Windows. Perhaps they need a Trusted Computing Initiative of their own?

Comparison of operating systems – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – StumbleUpon. Some useful information. Really there are only two OS that I can see will survive in the future. Mac and Unix. It seems clear that Windows is too expensive for average people to maintain.

Outlook 2010: Recall A Sent Email Message. Nice to know. Now I just need someone to recall a message to. Don’t you wish you could do this with Bill payments? Oops, your service doesn’t work. Sorry I have to take the money back.

Bugs & Fixes: Microsoft Outlook annoyances | E-Mail & Internet | Mac 911 | Macworld. This is a nice summary of the faults and benefits of email programs on the Mac. If you are considering what is the best supported Exchange compatible client for Mac, you will want to read this.

Outlook 2011 – Hide On My Computer Folders | Computer Boffins. Nicely done! I had a friend who was really bothered by that.

I don’t know about you, but I peak in remembering about 5 different passwords. After that they all seem to get fuzzy when and where I should use them.

So I spend some time at websites resetting my password to the newest password that I am using. In the decade of using passwords, I have about 50 different passwords that I have used. However I mostly use 5 passwords and that is sometimes due to the silly nature of website authentication.

Isn’t passwords on the Internet a mess? The bank that I use won’t allow punctuation or special symbols. Isn’t that silly? So I must have a unique password for them. Another website requires 12 digits, so I have an extra password for them. Most sites require 8 digits with a mix of upper/lower and punctuation. Those are normal. One site required a 16 digit password. I rarely visit them. I can’t remember the site because I always had to reset the password.

I have tried systems like OpenID and using Yahoo/Twitter/Facebook login. Those help but still are a terrible way to authenticate. Generally when you do that, you give those places rights to tweet or communicate in your name and give up some privacy. Not worth it to me, so I normally create an original account. What makes authentication worse is when sites have enforced usernames that are all upper case or lowercase. Why not give people the most flexibility instead of being so proprietary.

The older I get the less I am tolerant of proprietary formats and processes. I think the growth of open source has made people more sensitive to vendor lock in, and push against that. It is strange therefore, that we seem to embrace vendor lock-in with Apple. Clearly they have clever products, but is that enough to safeguard our choices and liberty? I do not think so.

So what do passwords protect us from? A cynic would say unemployment. By using them, we ensure we have a job. However the real truth seem to be that since passwords can be cracked, they are a poor security choice. Passwords would be great if people’s memories were better. However since most people use the same password for everything, it becomes more of a security risk than less of one.

“While some IT departments will say they are a ‘Windows shop’, and Apple does not support the enterprise. Organizations need to recognize that there are soft benefits in a device of this type in the quest to improve recruitment and retention. Technology is not always about productivity.”

Gartner Fellow Stephen Prentice discussing why enterprises should evaluate and support Apple’s iPad. (Gartner)

via Say What? Top Five IT Quotes of the Week – InternetNews..

Review: Computer and Registry Cleaners. The winner in my opinion of this list is CCleaner. It normally only takes 10 minutes for an average computer. Everyone who I have used it with has said that they enjoy the enhanced performance after a reboot of using this.

Is mackeeper necessary: Apple Support Communities. I tried it and it caused problems for me. I had to reinstall after I ran it. Here is another opinion that is fairly standard from that thread.

You are smart to inquire. Mackeeper is not necessary at all. In fact, most people complain that it is a disaster. Such software is NOT needed for Mac OS.  The market for such software seems to stem from former Windows owners. Don’t get it, I say.

charlie

 

muCommander: a cross-platform file manager. If you work in IT, or deal with external drives or are a photographer, this is a very helpful tool to let you mange permissions. Nice work people!

Boot Camp: MacBook Pro built-in keyboard mapping in Windows. You don’t have to buy a Windows USB keyboard to use those keys on the Mac. I didn’t know these keys, but I don’t use Boot Camp often. It seems silly when everything I need I can do in a VM environment.

Outlook 2011 to Mail in Lion: Apple Support Communities. Easy instructions. Very little data loss. This is probably good enough for most people. Thanks Bob Christensen.

The simple answer.

Mail can import mbox files. Outlook will export mbox files but only if the export is accomplished by dragging an Outlook mailbox into a new folder outside of Outlook. In my case, I dragged the entire Outlook Inbox into a new folder on the Desktop name “received”. I then used the Mail “File/Import Mailboxes/files in mbox format” command to locate the file insdie the “received” folder, which was an mbox file of all the messages inside the Outlook Inbox.

Interestingly, the effort lost 7 messages out of 2100 in the Inbox and 4 out of 700 in the Sent folder.

 

Thanks Ernie Stamper.

Quit Mail, and in the Finder open Home/Library/Mail/Mailboxes and locate the Outbox.mbox folder. Is there one? If you open it, does the Messages folder within it have any content?

Drag the Outbox.mbox folder from its location to the Desktop. Relaunch Mail, and attempt to send. Then in the Finder again, check to see if Mail has created a new Outbox.mbox folder, and to learn if this new message was in fact sent?

via Sending from Mail: Apple Support Communities.

Looks like tinoberlin found the solution. Another suggestion is to rebuild the mailbox.

Alright, editing the .emlx file in the directory /Users/Username/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes using TextEdit seems to be the only way to remove attachments from any email. You open the email, delete everything below your message, save it, close Mail, re-launch Mail, and the attachment has gone.

via Remove attachments in Mail: Apple Support Communities.

The user found his own solution. Great work! Many people give up when they have their Macs in a business environment.

Hmm – found a solution.

Deleted all references to the printer and the Windows Print Server in the Keychain – and i works?

Looks like there is a problem overwriting some stored keys???

via Printing to Windows Printer – Needs…: Apple Support Communities.

Dual Boot Sabertooth X58 Hackintosh Guide – i7-950 + GTX-460 [UPDATE x5] | JeffSprotberry.com. I am always surprised at the dedication the Hackintosh community has. I can respect their limited financial situation, but I don’t think I will ever do that. If Apple comes out with a way to run it on Windows hardware, I don’t think I still would do it. I haven’t seen much windows hardware that I wanted to use long-term.

Heisencoder: Fixing up the Mac Key Bindings for Windows Users. Are you looking for Hackintosh Keyboard shortcuts? I had a user of this site do a search for that here and it didn’t find any items. Just as a general rule, if you can’t find something or think that I should have something, just send a quick note in any comment box and I will respond to it. I want to be as useful as possible for my readers.

SugarSync Review: Online Backup Solution. I am currently testing SugarSync so far and I like it. It has 3 GB more than DropBox with the free edition, and is easier for non-technical users to find useful. So far the only question in my mind is if it caused my kernel panic or if that was caused by DropBox not being uninstalled but off.

His review is fairly balanced with a nice pro’s and con’s list. It seems that most of the cons are on the Windows side, so for Mac users, you may not see an issue. I will update this if SugarSync has issues. So far so good.

Using BCC to email people in bulk? Shame on you. – Entrepreneur. Instead of trying to shoehorn Outlook or Entourage into doing something it’s not great at, read the article above. It gives some reasons why this is a dangerous practice. It also is a silly one. For less than 2,000 people MailChimp does it for free. What a deal!

Five Best Email Clients – Lifehacker. This is a nice list of e-mail software. If you master one of these you will probably be very happy. Outlook 2011 for Mac review sometimes looses data, but generally works well.

How to Retrieve Password From Browser ~ Hack Illusion – StumbleUpon. This is helpful for people who have lots of passwords. It is hard for some people to remember their passwords.

LastPass Pasword Service Hacked – Slashdot. Well cross this off the list if you want to save your password. I don’t use any password services. Some things you just have to remember manually. I hated Keychain on the Mac for this same problem. You hack one password and you get lots more. Doesn’t seem like a good security thing to me.

This same problem has been reported since 2005 See below https://discussions.apple.com/message/1256738?messageID=1256738 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081214155444AAnQfKm http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/68397/ http://www.ehmac.ca/all-ios-iphone-ipad-ipod-touch-apple-tv-itunes/86457-itunes-mutes-itself.html https://discussions.apple.com/message/12058842?messageID=12058842 My setup is as following Windows XP 2002 SP3 i … Read More

via

Nicely done. What made you choose a mac for SQL?

1. Download file from http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RPostgreSQL/index.html to ~/Downloads 2. From ~/Downloads, enter the following in the terminal: tar xvzf RPostgreSQL_0.1-7.tar.gz 3. Create a symbolic link to the pg_config file: sudo ln -s /Library/PostgreSQL/9.0/bin/pg_config /usr/local/bin 4. Edit the configure file in the ~/Downloads/RPostgreSQL directory to add the path to libpq-fe.h. In particular, add /Library/PostgreSQL/9.0/incl … Read More

via iangow

Due to broken mac and cost, man switches to Windows. Understandable. I had to use Windows machines at many companies due to cost.

Going to the Apple store is a pretty different experience, now that my primary computer is no longer a Mac (more on that in a minute). I used to go there and ooh and aw over the latest toys,  the slickly packaged programs, and  the incredibly synergistic vibe of the entire affair, from the nigh-seamless integration between i-everything and Mac, to the almost seamless integration of the sales and support folks and the pricey products that they sel … Read More

via C.C. and the Beans

I tried it and they give you suggested programs to install. So one of them was IE 7. I installed that but I couldn’t browse with it. In addition the program caused X11 to fail. I would say that this is not ready for prime time.

How to add commands to the OS X. Brillant way to get right-click functionality. If you are used to the Windows way of doing things this will help you acclimate.

I get some strange search terms that people use to find my website, and one of them today was “poem comparing windows and macintosh”. So I said why not? I can write a poem for that. So ah hem *clears throat* here is my attempt.

Ode to a critical exploration of Mac vs. PC

A PC is cheap and costs a few bucks,

While a Mac is more expensive-new you might find one for a grand with some luck.

A PC gives you adventures with malware and junk,

While a Mac surfs the Internet like a ‘roided up hunk.

A PC can play games if you choose to pirate and download,

While A Mac games selections are like kissing a frog or a toad.

A PC gives you options to use all kinds of parts,

While a Mac gives you style that sometimes breaks hearts.

A PC is practical, common and easy,

While a Mac is like riding a unicycle, juggling balls and sometimes makes you queasy.

A PC can be installed with Linux or BSD,

While a Mac can use those too if you can wrestle it to its knees.

A PC lets you use websites that require IE,

While a Mac is currently going an operation to become flash-free.

A PC gives you the chance to be part of a monoculture that is vast,

While a Mac was created with a Pirates Cast.

A PC gives you choice to buy from many suppliers,

While a Mac says just one dealer-although we are happy to let you kick the tires.

A PC says that style isn’t the reason I buy a thing,

While a Mac says it never hurts to have a little bling.

A PC gives you a reason for the failure of your work-the computers down you only have to say,

A Mac can fail and ruin your work-so in the end its the same kind of way.

A PC gives you some great features,

A Mac gives you some interesting teachers.

Your choice is up to you,

It doesn’t matter what you do.

I don’t miss Windows at all, and installing this version has only reminded me of that. How did I ever work with such an unfriendly and messy thing before? It’s nice and fun to have though. And being so convenient and safe, why not? I’m installing it right now, and it’s just like some program I have installed on the Mac. It’s on a virtual machine called VMware and I have it backedup. If anything goes wrong inside the Windows - okay, when something … Read More

via aiAna

I am sharing this because I look at both sides of the issue, even when I don’t agree with it. To me, tools like computers are an investment of time/energy and it seems that I always spent more energy dealing with Windows than Apple. If other people find Windows more efficient, more power to them. Maybe its just a way of thinking, not that one is inherently better than the other.

First of all, I’m a PC user, and my hate of the Mac interface will influence my judgment when drawing these criticisms. I haven’t thoroughly investigated the interface of any Apple interface save from the iPhone and iPod, so my analysis will be fairly limited. Anyhow, here are my thoughts: Advantages of Apple: -          More applications preinstalled to edit and modify -          Pretty interface Disadvantages of Apple: -          Lack of shell … Read More

via The Poyntz Blog

How To: Add contact information to your Macs login screen. Nice instructions for Onyx, and also for a second program mentioned in the comments. This might be a nice way to help protect your investment. Another way to modify your startup screen to login with Active Directory is here.

My experience has been that developers who have a Mac universally love it compared to having had a Windows machine to develop with in the past. I think they appreciate the fact that they can use many open source tools locally and not depend on other people for a development enviroment.

Can you imagine the following scenario.  You have spent most of your life working on the windows platform. The ability to move folders, delete directories and start services is a skill in which you have acquired from repetition and years of usage. An opportunity to learn new skills have come upon you.  Granted the years in which you have devoted to the field from certifications, degrees and employment run by greed and stupidity can only get you a … Read More

via Code Dungeon

I recently played Sim Tower but used DosBox and a Windows version of Sim Tower. It was a bit more technical to setup, but not hard. Anyone who used dos in the past would find it straightforward. Nice to see we have options isn’t it?

So, I recently found a copy of Sim Tower (CD-ROM) laying around. Nostalgia jackpot. I remembered playing this game on Windows 3.1 & Windows 95 back in the day. Turns out, if you have the disk, you can get everything else for free (and legally, with the exception of 1 Apple license agreement violation, but not where you think.) But how to play it on my OS X machine? I found out that the Sim Tower CD ROM was made compatible for both Mac and Win … Read More

 

via mangosquash