Last night, I decided to replace my hard drive. I had recently done it on my wife’s 13″ MacBook and it was super simple so I figured that my 17″ (late 2006 model) would be easy as well. Boy, was I surprised when I downloaded the how-to guide. It was minor surgery and a bit unnerving to say the least. Nevertheless with extreme care and meticulous attention to detail, the deed was done and I now have a brand new 500gb hard drive in my machine. I wouldn’t recommend doing this yourself if your macbook is still in warranty because I have heard this will void it. Mine is just out of warranty and been operated on several times by the Apple care crew so I figured I would take the risk. If yours is as well and you have the intestinal fortitude to operate on your Mac, it’s not too bad. Just make sure you have the right tools, follow the guide and it doesn’t hurt to pray. Happy tinkering!

I also use this site a lot: CopyPasteCharacter

This has turned out to be a help post as well as a help me post. I’ll deal with the help part first since it’s the easiest.

Have you tried to update your OS X to the latest version (10.5.6) through system update and found yourself staring at a non-moving progress bar forever? Many have had the same issue, me being one of them. There’s an easy fix (for most). Just download the Combo Pack and run it locally. Works like a charm (again, like I said… for most).

This brings me to the second part of this post…

After performing the previously mentioned task (twice, in one attempt to fix the issue below), I find myself with a fully updated MBP that has convinced itself that I have seven (7) displays attached. Now, not only do I not have any connected nor did I have any at the time of upgrade, but I can’t even think of how I would attach 7 displays to this thing. As cool as this looks, it’s not the case and I want it to go away. My system is creepy slow now. There’s gotta be something I can do. Any help? Everyone I have connected with tonight says a resounding “wow, I’ve never even heard of that before” … Well, now you have. What do I do?

Thanks 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.

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”.

While I was out at NME this year, I started playing with an idea to attempt to get at least “some” of my tracking back. The idea isn’t perfect (yet) but it at least gets me one step closer to the track feature. At least until Twitter turns it back on (hint, hint… please guys!!) So here’s what I did:

1. Set up a new Twitter account just for me
2. Created a power search on search.twitter.com
3. Loaded that feed into TwitterFeed
4. Set TwitterFeed to send updates to my “new account”
5. Follow my “new account” and turned on those notifications

Now this (as I said before) isn’t perfect and not nearly as frequent as I would like but not being a coder or Twitter API-ologist, this was the only thing I could think of. So, until someone makes a nifty app for this (or helps me do one), this is my solution. Who knows, maybe you can one-up me? Bring it! I want my tracking back! Post your tips in the comments, I’m all ears!

Have fun & happy tracking!

Welcome back to Exploring Quicksilver! In this segment, we look at creating a simple solution for managing a to-do list, as well as an easy iTunes trigger. If you haven’t already, please be sure to watch Part 1, where I go over the basic setup and overview of quicksilver.

Special thanks to Merlin Mann for the idea related to the To-Do List. You can find Merlin at 43 Folders.

One of the first questions that I get asked by new Mac users is “how do I delete unwanted programs?” The answer can be a little tricky. Most programs can be dragged to the trash can to be removed, because the Mac operating system has nothing like the windows registry to clean up; however, doing an uninstall this way can leave you with orphaned preference files.

So what is the Macintosh equivalent to the Windows Add/Remove Programs solution? The answer is there are quite a few choices. There is App Zapper at $12.95 US with free updates for life. App Zapper works very well and is fairly cheap. The next application that I tried was AppDelete. Even though the site calls it donation ware, after a fixed number of uninstalls it will force you to pay for the application. (That is shareware if you ask me.) Even though the minimum donation is $5.00 US, that is a cheap price to pay for a pretty good application. The last one that I will discuss is AppTrap. AppTrap is a free, open source application, that installs into your System Preferences tool panel, and you start the service, it is easy as that. When you delete an application by dragging it to the trash can, AppTrap checks to see if there are any files associated with it and gives you the opportunity to delete them too.

So there you have it. Three very good (yet inexpensive) applications to remove unwanted programs. 

If you’ve been using the Mac for awhile, you’ve probably heard of Quicksilver, by Blacktree Software. Quicksilver is an amazingly powerful application, yet provides a really intimidating interface, and setup. I’m here to make it a little easier, and introduce you to one program you will instantly integrate into your workflow.

First things first, what is Quicksilver? Well, Quicksilver allows you to search through your hard drives, libraries, and such to locate and open applications, files, and so forth. It’s greatest strength however is to take the files you find and transmit commands with them. To get a good feel of what I’m talking about – be sure to watch the video above.

“Hotkeys” – Keyboard shortcuts allowing you to shortcut to the desired action. For example, I used a hotkey in the video above to go straight to searching my iTunes library.

Useful Links:

Blacktree.com: Quicksilver Download
Quicksilver Setup Guide: http://vjarmy.com/archives/2004/03/quicksilver_a_b.php

The second link will take you through the installation process and setup of quicksilver, I have installed all the plugins possible – and I encourage you to do the same. I’ve setup special hotkeys, and be on the lookout for a tutorial on how to do these yourself. Please play around with Quicksilver, and until next time, thanks for watching!

Be sure to come back soon, for more Quicksilver tips!