My Noisy Fan from Brent Spore on Vimeo.

3 years of owning my Mac with no major issues. JUST after it’s AppleCare expires, it decides to start freaking out.

I have a powerbook G4, info below, and wanted to see if there was something I’m doing wrong to cause my battery problems. I bought a new battery because I thought the last one was getting old and causing the symptoms: no matter how many times I calibrate, it won’t charge past 43 or so percent. So, I’m having the exact same issues with the new battery. I’ve tried to reset the pram and the power management thing, but no luck.

Any ideas???

Thanks for any help.

Model Name: PowerBook G4 12″
Model Identifier: PowerBook6,8
Processor Name: PowerPC G4 (1.2)
Processor Speed: 1.5 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 1
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1.25 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.9.0f0
Serial Number: 4H5151A2RJ7

Sudden Motion Sensor:

State: Enabled
Version: 1.0

Battery Information:

Charge Information:

Charge remaining (mAh): 1576
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4209

Health Information:

Cycle count: 2
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1296
Voltage (mV): 11661

System Power Settings:

AC Power:

System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 30
Dynamic Power Step: Yes
Reduce Processor Speed: No
Automatic Restart On Power Loss: No
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake On LAN: Yes
Wake On Modem Ring: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes

Battery Power:

System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 5
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 1
Dynamic Power Step: No
Reduce Processor Speed: Yes
Automatic Restart On Power Loss: No
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake On Modem Ring: No
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Reduce Brightness: Yes

Hardware Configuration:

Clamshell Closed: No
UPS Installed: No

AC Charger Information:

AC Charger (Watts): 0
Connected: No
Charging: No

I figured this was a good one for the mega iBAM community mind to tackle. Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions?

Thanks in advance

- Brent

So, I bought my iMac *maybe* 4 months ago. The day after I got it, the SuperDrive crapped out on me. I bought it refurbished, but they guaranteed it to be like new. Anyways, my question is this: I fixed it about 4 times after a disc kept getting stuck in there. It was a DVD. Brand new each time. I cannot afford to be without my Mac and cannot send it in. I have an external CD/DVD drive that was originally built for PC but it’s runs on my Mac. I would like to know what would be an affordable Mac friendly external drive that would play DVDs too. I don’t want to buy a SuperDrive for fear it will do the same thing again. Any help would be fantastic!

This one’s out of my league so I thought I’d throw it up the greater minds out on the tubes. Anyone out there got some advice for our pal John? I’m sure he as well as I and most likely many others will be eternally grateful. As always, I thank you in advance.

Brent

Hi! I just bought an Imac and am having difficulty transferring my itunes
library from my pc to my mac. I am transferring from Itunes to an external
hard drive using the add to library link in itunes and dragging to
applications. I am copying the library using the export function from the
pc. I seem to only be copying empty folders so no music is being transferred
although the process takes a long time. HELP!!
Also can I use yahoo as the server for mail on my mac. I seem to be having
trouble with the outgoing mail server.

Thank you, Sarah

When transferrirng iTunes libraries, it’s much simpler to just transfer the iTunes folder itself. Exporting the library does not always transfer the media files, but the structure of the library.

As far as using any mail account with Mail.app, your email provider must enable POP or IMAP access. Yahoo only offers POP access to it’s premium customers. If you want a dedicated Yahoo Mail app for your mac, try using Fluid – It is a web browser made specifically for web apps. It enables dock badges, so you’ll be able to see your unread email count on your dock icon just as you would on Mail.app.

Special Thanks to Tyler Hurst for assistance in answering these questions.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

I’ve been getting used to iPhoto as I’m used to just browsing for pictures in Windows Explorer. Anyway, I let iPhoto copy my images to the iPhoto library. But unlike the iTunes library function which very logically puts music in Artist – Album folders. But the iPhoto library seems to hide my photos so I can’t access them through Finder. I’m just curious what the “Mac” way would be to for example, open a photo to edit in photoshop.

There’s two ways of approaching this problem, one of which is if you just want to edit photos using an external photo editor. The other way is to access the actual photo files in the Finder. The explanations for each are below.

To Access via External Editor

If all you want to do is just be able to edit your photos using Photoshop, you can simply change the iPhoto preferences. You just need to open up your Preferences, click the selection that says “Edit Photo” and then choose the application that you want to edit your photos with. Then, when you click the edit button in iPhoto, your pictures will open up in the external editor.

To access the File Hierarchy

On the other hand, if you want to access your photos in a folder hiearchy, simillar to the iTunes folder system, you just have to do some right-click action. First, you should navigate to the Photos Folder, then right click on the iPhoto Library file, and choose “Show Package Contents”.

“Do you guys know if a Mac user with an iPhone can access their iDisk?
Of is that just from a Mac computer?”

This is  a really great question, but it also falls into the “yes and no” category of answers.  You can access your iDisk through Safari (http://idisk.mac.com/username) on the iPhone, but all you can do from there is see the list of files that are there.  You can’t download or do anything else with them. 

However, I did come across one solution which was just released and that is the A.I. Disk application for the iPhone.  From the developers site:

A.I.Disk is an elegant solution to access files on your MobileMe iDisk, save them to the iPhone or iPod Touch, read on the go and even email to friends. Besides MobileMe iDisk the application can connect to any WebDAV enabled online file storage like Box.Net or MyDisk.se.

A.I.Disk has built-in file viever that supports number of formats including MS Office and iWork documents, PDF, TXT, HTML and others. Just tap on a file to copy it to your iPhone or iPod Touch file storage device and enjoy reading it anywhere!

The app is $7.99 and can be found in the App Store in iTunes.  Although I haven’t had a chance to personally try it out, it sounds like the only solution thus far. 

“I love iMovie 08 and have been surfing the net about it after having
completed one video project so far. Read one article on your site that had
an initial review, but… is there any new info on add-ons for iMovie 08? I
would just like more transitions, ANY video (special) effects, etc. Is it
possible to use add-ons (special effects,etc.) that worked with old versions
of iMovie? If so, how do I go about it?”

This is a great question, many of the iMovie purists think that iMovie 06HD was so much better, and that is not truly the case. iMovie 08 is much more different. Unfortunately plugins are not supported in iMovie 08; however as an owner of iMovie 08, you are entitled to download iMovie 6 HD for free. That can be downloaded here,

If you go that route, you can get some iMovie 6 plugins . I have found a pretty good list here or here.

Making your own movies is always fun, and I find it interesting to go back to the movies I first made, and see the progress that I have made. Hope this has helped.

Good luck

I’ve found that quite often when I “cut and paste” from a document on my Mac to say, a job-posting site, there always seem to be weird characters in the “target” document.

What am I doing wrong?

Cheryl Colan responds:

This is not a Mac-specific problem. It tends to happen when pasting text from a word-processing application into a HTML document. Microsoft Word is especially notorious for this problem, but other applications are guilty as well.

You aren’t doing anything wrong. What’s happening is that you’re composing text in a program designed for output to a printer. Certain characters, such as apostrophes, curly quotes, dashes and alternate letter forms, and special formatting like bold, italic, or colored text are specially coded by your word processor so that your printer represents them properly. This printer encoding travels with your copy/pasted text. But these special printer characters have no direct web translation, so when they are published in HTML format, they look like gibberish.

The easiest way to deal with the problem is to cut and paste into a “dumber” text editing application before pasting into a target document destined for the web. On your Mac, the TextEdit application is the way to go, but with one caveat. You need to set up TextEdit to work in Plain text mode, not Rich text mode. Here’s how:

• Go to your Applications folder and launch TextEdit
• From the menu bar, choose TextEdit > Preferences
• On the New Document tab choose the Plain text radio button
• Close the Preferences pane
• Quit TextEdit

When you relaunch TextEdit, new documents will open in Plain text mode.

Now just copy and paste from whatever application you use to prepare your document into a blank TextEdit document. TextEdit’s Plain text mode should strip out any odd print characters that have been slipping into your HTML. Give it a once over to make sure all your characters appear the way you expect. Then you can reselect your text and paste it into your web document.

You could also try copy/pasting into Postable instead of using TextEdit.

If you want to get really geeky, you can also hand-code any of the characters that are giving you trouble. Just look up the problematic character in this handy chart: http://www.natural-innovations.com/wa/doc-charset.html. Replace the character with the HTML equivalent listed in the Entity column.

Photo Credit: DSCN6654.JPG by basictheory on Flickr

The “Ask iBAM” crew got this email a couple days ago from Wes:

I recently broke my headphone cord off in the headphone jack of my macbook. I heard an imic would work by plugging it into the usb jack, but when I tried to order the imic it was on back order. I really really want to be able to listen to music with my computer because that is what I use it for the most and I’m pretty upset right now. I was wondering if there is another product that does the same thing the imic does? Please answer my question asap because I really need to start making some music. Thanks in advance.

The iBoughtAMac staff batted the question around a bit and came up with the following:

Cheryl Colan responded with a focus on repair:

My advice would be to take the laptop over to an Apple Store (especially if you have an Apple Care Protection Plan) or certified Mac repair shop. A simple search revealed some people with this issue are told they have to replace the whole logic board, but others get the repair done cheap or even free.

If you feel the repair is too costly, there are a few methods for getting the broken piece of jack out, hopefully without damaging your MacBook (repeat my search and read results for details):

• You should not try a magnet. Usually the jack isn’t magnetic, like brass. Magnets aren’t especially good around hard drives.
• Several people reported success cutting off the end of a cotton swab and using that to snag and remove the broken jack tip.
• Others have used a toothpick and a tiny dot of superglue. Only attempt with a steady hand, and give the glue plenty of time to bond with the jack tip before attempting to pull it out.
• You can try a removal tool like splinter forceps or any number of cell phone repair tools. I’d take the battery out before inserting metal forceps into your headphone jack to prevent shorting anything in your computer.

Ted Byars had the following suggestion for replacement of lost function:

To my knowlege, unless you buy a usb audio interface, there isn’t much on the market for a mac. Back in the bluberry imac days there was a company making a thumb drive looking interface w/ a 1/8 in jack. You might be able to find one on ebay.

Of course you should always take utmost care in attempting a repair, and when in doubt, let the professionals handle it.

How about you, readers? Do you have further suggestions for Wes? Let us know in the comments!