flop ya mac out

As someone who is gearing up to head overseas, I’ve put my laptop into somewhat of a lock-down mode, password protecting everything to make sure that it can’t be molested if it falls into the wrong hands abroad.

However, the drawback of such tight security is that (with the omission of physical labelling), if my laptop falls into the right hands, there’s no way the finder can figure out who the laptop actually belongs to.

Enter this handy hint, sourced from Apple’s own Leopard Security Configuration Guide. The hack allows you to place a custom phrase in the OS X Leopard Login Screen, just above the user name and password.

Crank up the terminal, and enter the following:

su [your admin username]
sudo -s
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText “This laptop belongs to Jason Deacon, and you don’t.”

Of course, you may want to garnish your welcome message with maybe a contact phone number, email address or more impressive message than the example here.

The beauty of this hack is that as your contact details change when you travel, updating them is a simple as re-entering this into terminal. No more re-printing labels on the road, and you’re able to enter much more information here, too.

The Apple Security Guide is a good read, which I thoroughly recommend if you’ve got an eye for that sort of thing. We’ll explore more security tips in time!

So if you ever have a problem with Soundtrack Pro 2 like i did (not being able to open or close the left, right or bottom panes), then i suggest just deleting the program and re-installing. I couldn’t find any solution to the problem i was having.

I tried trashing the permissions business - didn’t help. So i literally just deleted only the Soundtrack Pro application file and re-installed it from the discs. Which took over 5 hours (and it estimated it would take over 12 hours! Had the installation lived up to it’s estimation, I would have screamed a little).

Installing the full Final Cut Studio takes at least a whole day of swapping between 6 or more DVD’s - craaaazy shit - and re-installing just one program really didn’t take a proportionally shorter amount of time! It still asked for each of the DVD’s to be loaded - even though only one is labeled Soundtrack something.

Soundtrack Pro has been such a stable audio editing solution that i edit fymo and bwym on, so this was rather dissappointing. It delayed me getting out ep 22 of fymo, and killed my cat.

Pro-Tools M-Powered i find easier to use as far as the actual editing goes, but you have to have an m-audio hardware interface plugged in, along with the Pro-Tools USB dongle… Then there’s the random crashes and problems with opening the bloody thing to begin with… And i can’t dedicate a machine to just Pro-Tools alone…

Soundtrack Pro means that i can truly have a portable, cable/dongle free editing solution on my laptop that gives me the option to export to an MP3 without having to fork out more money, ala Pro-Tools cockfag style.

So with Soundtrack Pro, if there’s a “next time” - which there better not be (’cause i’ve forked out good money on these programs) - i’ll just be trying a Time Machined version of the app… But hang on a sec… Mother f.. To save space on my smallish Time Machine HDD, i don’t back up applications.

Sounds like this could well be a good argument to spend more money.

When iTunes 7.5 came out i eagerly downloaded it, as i have so many times before with all other Mac software updates. But for the first time, this one bit me in the arse.

I probably shouldn’t have thrown caution to the wind and updated, simply ’cause i’m running an unlocked, jail-breaked 1.1.1 iPhone as my main phone and organiser.

It turnes out iTunes 7.5 didn’t like to play with my iPhone, as when i connected them together in marriage, i got an error message (pictured) and was not able to access my iPhone - it simply didn’t come up in the side bar of iTunes.

So i searched for a way to downgrade back to iTunes 7.4.2 (which i was able to download), but couldn’t find a definitive guide or an answer to other people asking the same thing in threads.

So i decided to venture into risky territory and fix this via trial and error, as it was getting really irritating not being able to sync up new podcasts or contacts etc..

Firstly i sync-ed my iPhone’s contacts and calendar to my old PowerBook which was thankfully still running 7.4.2, just in case anything went wrong (so i could retain all the new info i’d entered into my iPhone’s calendar!)

I then copied iTunes.app to my desktop, as well as my “iTunes Library” and “iTunes Music Library.xml” so i could stick them back, in case they got written over with new old/new installation.

I then installed the 7.4.2 version and it went totally smoothly and totally worked! Fantastic.

Now i’ve just gotta remember not to update iTunes, as could easily be done via the software update without really realising, if you’re a little absent minded at the time.

But now what for the future? No iTunes updates for me and my hacked iPhone, forever? Perhaps!

Does 7.5 accidentally/on purpose now deny syncing with hacked iPhones, just like 1.1.1 stopped some jail-broken iPhones running at all?

Is this problem i had widespread enough that hackers are working on an iTunes fix?

Something else i wonder is if i was to update to 1.1.2, would iTunes 7.5 play nice with my iPhone?

Let us know your experiences or comments below.

One the features of Leopard i was most looking forward to was Time Machine. Still am. I’m still looking forward to time machine.

But i’ve installed Leopard, how could this be? What’s going on here? Why don’t i know the joys of bringing deleted files back from the dead and forgoing the dread of file loss? 

Because Time Machine is being real… a real fuck stick really! Twice it has almost backed up my HDD completely, but then come up with some error.

The last two times it’s started to backup, it says it can’t find the drive. Great.

Well i’m glad that in that wasted time my laptop’s hard drive hasn’t packed it in! Or i’d be rooted! (Well, i do have that other back up i made for when i installed Leopard, but not the point!) 

What a let down. I’d just been complaining to Jase a few days ago that every backup program i’d used had crashed on me, and so Time Machine was to be my saviour. But now i’m going to be the one to try and do the saving. To save me. 

In fairness, it could be that my ext hard drive is about to pack it in. Better now than a month down the road too! I ran ‘Repair Disk’ and i got this wonderful message from the OS X gods… 

Do ya see that? What i named my ext hdd?… Geddit? Clever hey! I bet there have been a number of geeks patting themselves on their backs for that one. Comment us if you’re another great mind that thought alike…

So what do two Mac geeks do with themselves on a Friday at 6pm? Any other day it might be repairing permissions or polishing their iPhone screens, but today the flop ya mac out-ers took a drive to get some of Apple’s latest OS X offerings, otherwise known as Leopard.

Geared up for the long waiting line at the Apple store, along with the patented Apple buzz and anticipation, Daniel and Jason were in for something rather different…

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I’m one of those 1.0.2 users who’ve been waiting waiting waiting for a ‘re-virginise’ method to come up, so i could re-lock my sim-unlocked 1.0.2 iPhone, to allow me to upgrade to 1.1.1 safely. And then sim-lock again.

And thank the lord for the iPhone Elite team! This week they came up with a method to re-virginise sim-unlocked 1.0.2, and further more, rather than users having to screw ’round in the terminal they put together an automated process(es) which makes the whole ordeal rather damn simple!

And even better, i can attest to the fact that it works! So if you indulge in some re-virginising goodness, be sure to donate some moola to these fine folks, allowing international peoples like mwa to enjoy the benefits of 1.1.1, and use of the iPhone as just that, a phone.

After i’d revirginised, i then followed this guide where it details upgrading from a re-virginised 1.0.2 iPhone to 1.1.1, and further more unlocking your updated iPhone. Thanks so much to the iPhone Dev Team for that beautiful solution, anySIM.

For those interested, i’ve posted some photo’s from my re-virginising escapades…

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My Dad made a comment the other day about the iPhone’s google maps application.

He commented that it’s all good that it shows you when and where to make turns to get to your destination, but you’re still going to be fiddling around with your phone (no doubt whilst still driving) to check out the next turn you’ve got to make. Such a distraction whilst driving will likely render you and your car dead or at least really really awake, sooner or later (as happened to me the other day!!.. Another story for our next podcast).

So it makes a lot of sense to have your iPhone read your directions out aloud to you. The iPhone runs some form of OS X doesn’t it? And OS X on our computers contains the Speech function doesn’t it?

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I really don’t like doing things. Things that i have to do. It’s that whole ‘rebelling against what you’re told’ to do (even though at some stage i’ve chosen to do these things). And so i make lists. Lists of dread. I’ve tried a few programs that allow you to ‘tick off’ things once you’ve completed them, buuuuut, they’re were sorta crap or god forbid, cost money, so i ended up just making a list on text edit. Then i heard about Taskpaper by Hog Bay Software.

It’s looks like a simple version of text edit, with a column on the left where you ‘tick off’ items you’ve listed. That’s it! Simple. But good simple.

I think i may just use Taskpaper instead of Text Edit from now on. Especially when copying text from a source for use in a html document, etc - as it doesn’t use Rich Text Formatting which seems to be the annoying default of Text Edit. There is of course the great BBedit for all those basic html things, but hey, whatever opens quicker is what i’ll use!

I think i’ve found a new friend.

So in my Apple-loving excitement, I bought the new iLife ‘08 suite the day it became available to me in Australia.

Installed with no probs, but then I tried opening the new and cool looking iMovie (I’d watched the keynote presentation - so I was a pro operator already) and it opened… And then a spinny thing went spin spin, annnnnnnnnd then CRASH.

Cool. Very cool. And it wouldn’t (and still won’t) open at all. Maybe I’ll try restarting my computer and all that crap, but that was a bit of a doozy!

At least iPhoto worked flawlessly. I must say, with the new ’skimming’ feature and ‘Events’ management of the photo’s, they have made a worthy update (so far, so good). Check it out ’skimming’ of ‘Events’ in action here.

I opened iWeb - templates look really cool - but that’s as far as I went. Back to working on this wordpress installation!

And welcome! To the new mac website/blog/one-day-to-be-a-podcast.

And just so we get off on the right foot, I love you.

Update

Hoorah! The update to iMovie ‘08 fixed my crashing woes. But damn! When you import new footage into the new iMovie, you have to wait for what to me is too long, for the program to prepare the ability to ’skim’ the thumbnail of the footage. Sorta takes half the magic out of the whole process.

“Here! Let me turn your water and flour into a wonderful loaf of bread! Just gimme an hour or two.”

If Jesus had pulled a stunt like that when providing fishes and shit for the people (”Has anyone got a fishing rod?? Anyone!?”) he would have been eaten instead! Apple has a little way to go before i consider bowing to the east every half hour in honor of their products…