TIVGGMF April 2007 issue #6
Monthly Newsletter from EmiratesMac User Group
Open Source Applications on Mac OS X Reviews: > iBank > Belkin TuneTalk > Scrivener > Cult Of Mac
Experiences of an Apple Fan in Dubai
MySQL on Mac Part 2
Contents A Word from the Editor SmorgasDashBord Comic corner Blackberry and Mac What’s new in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Emiratesmac.com tips and tricks Hint: Apple’s Backup Mac911: Solutions to your most vexing Mac problems Open Source Applications on Mac OS X Apple seed Experiences of an Apple Fan in Dubai Hint: Network Utility Google’s tools for web masters Kaboose.com: a family-oriented web site Recipe: Apple Coffee Cake MySQL on Mac Part 2 EmiratesMac.com’s One Year Anniversary Review: Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture Review: iBank Review: Scrivener Review: iPod video 5.5G and iPod shuffle 2G Review: Belkin TuneTalk for iPod Review: DevonThink Pro Office Review: The Cult of Mac Review: BoomWave iPod nano skins Join EMUG
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Graphical design and layout of shuffle is done by Latifa Al Shamsi.
Shuffle is sponsored by:
For more information go to www.appleme.ae
Editorial
A Word from the Editor
About shuffle Shuffle is the newsletter of EmiratesMac User Group (EMUG). It is an independent publication containing news, commentary, tips and tricks, reviews, tutorials, and more, covering the world of Mac, iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, and anything else Apple, with a focus on the UAE. Shuffle is also the official publication of EMUG detailing information about the user group and its activities. Editor in chief is Magnus Nystedt (emiratesmac@mac.com). You can send submissions to shuffle to emiratesmac@ mac.com. We do not promise we will publish what you send us, and we will at all times retain total editorial control over anything we publish. There is a discussion forum dedicated to shuffle at EMUG’s web site (www.emiratesmac.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=50). There you can leave comments and suggestions and discuss shuffle with other users. All articles are produced by and copyright EMUG unless noted otherwise. Registered Apple User Groups may use some material for their own newsletters given prior approval from EMUG. Contact EMUG at emiratesmac@mac.com for further details. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the content of this publication, we accept no responsibility for errors, omissions or changes to information printed. Views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of EMUG. You can contact EMUG at mailing address: PO Box 70263, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Phone +971508171164; Fax +97126664289; Email contact@ emiratesmac.com; Web www.emiratesmac.com.
Finally in Print! This is a very special issue of shuffle for many reasons. First, this is the first ever issue of that is being printed and distributed to various locations around the Emirates, which is very exciting. So it’s with strong feelings I write this editorial. On one hand this can mean great things for our user group in terms of getting publicity and signing up new members to our community. On the other hand it also means there is more pressure to keep producing a high-quality newsletter each month. I am convinced that we’re up to the task and increased membership numbers should mean we can share the job of writing articles between more members which would be good. Second, the same day this issue comes out, EmiratesMac User Group is organizing its first major event, the Special AppleTV Event. A lot of work has gone into getting it all arranged and we hope as many people as possible will enjoy it. I would like to extend my sincere thank you to the people who have worked hard on this event and to the sponsors who support us. We hope to be able to make this sort of event into a recurring feature since we believe there is a pent-up demand for Apple-related events of this kind. Third and final, it’s now one year since our web site went live. It was in early April 2006 that EmiratesMac.com first came to life. In that brief period of time, we’ve reached over 700 user registrations on the site, we’re seeing some 12,000 unique visitors per month, and by all accounts, the site is growing all the time. As a good example of how popular the site is, right after Apple had announced the iPhone in January we received an email from a sales executive at one of the largest mobile phone retail chains in the Emirates. The question they had for us was “Can you please let me know your Company Details and the proposed distribution model for the Ipod Phone. Also if you could indicate its availability as well as proposed cost price/selling price it would be helpful in evaluating the opportunity.” And we get similar kind of requests at least a few times per week, I guess showing that we’re having an impact. So we hope you enjoy a printed shuffle, an AppleTV event, and increased activity on the site. And remember, this is just the beginning.
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Want to advertise in shuffle?
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his newsletter is the only publication in the United Arab Emirates that is dedicated to Apple products, such as Macs and iPods. By advertising in shuffle you reach a dedicated audience of Mac and iPod users. We strive to make shuffle a high-quality newsletter that people will want to read because it’s so good. It’s written and produced by EmiratesMac User Group Members. Wouldn’t you want to be associated with that? If you’re interested in sponsoring shuffle, or buying advertising space, contact Crystal at +971508171164 or crystal@emiratesmac. com to request our Media Kit.
Want to write for shuffle?
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f you’re reading this and you’re a member of the EmiratesMac User Group we hope you will consider contributing. We’re looking for any type of articles you would be interested in writing, from something about the history of Apple and their products, reviews of hardware or software, essays, tutorials, or hints and tips. The people who write for shuffle now are users just like yourself. If you would consider writing something for shuffle, send us an email (emiratesmac@ mac.com) or leave a message with your idea at the site (www.emiratesmac. com).
T
he photograph on the back cover is taken by Fatima Sarwar (efatima). Fatima wields her camera as though it were an extension of her eye. Her photos have an easy, natural flow that sometimes cause the viewer to forget that the are looking at a photograph, and not actually at the scene. She is arguably Apple’s biggest fan and supporter in the Mideast. Quite possibly, her home contains more Apple products per square foot than any plot of real estate outside of Cupertino. You can find Fatima online at justfatima.com.
Sm rgasDashB rd by Magnus
Chi Pet The Chi Pet Widget is one of those totally useless widgets that is nonetheless fun and even a bit addictive. Put simply, the only thing you do with this widget is you have to water your Chi Pet at least every three days or it dies. You water it by clicking on the water drop. RANKING: 4 (because it’s simple in all it’s uselessness) Download from: www.novisdesign. net/Widgets/ ?chipet
Sudoku Widget Personally I’m not that into Sudoku but it’s spread across the world just about as fast as the Rubik’s Cube did years ago. Wow, did I just show my age by mentioning Rubik’s Cube? Anyway, this widget is good for a quick game of sudoku. Since it remembers your game between activating Dashboard, you can always settle your Sudoku-craving with a quick F12 keystroke. RANKING: 5 (because it’s just so Sudoku, if you know what I mean) Download from: www.apple.com/
downloads/dashboard/games/sudokuwidget.html
AMEInfo Widgets Whether it’s because their CEO having switched to Mac or not, it seems that AME Info is paying more attention to Mac users lately. Two Dashboard Widgets is a testament to that. The Podcast Widget shows you all their latest podcasts and you can select one episode in a drop down menu and it will play. The Latest News Widget is a pretty basic RSS-feed viewer, made with Dashcode.
iStat Pro IStat Pro must be the swiss army knife of Dashboard Widgets. It displays the status of your Mac with more details that you can ever want. It covers hard drive space, network activity, uptime, battery status, and much more. And it does it all in a very nice interface.
RANKING: 5 (because it’s just so useful and pretty to look at) Download from: www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=7
RANKING: Podcast: 5 (because it’s really cool) Latest News: 3 (because it’s just okay) Download from: www.ameinfo.com/ toolbar/
A “smorgasbord” is a Swedish term for a buffet with any variety of different dishes on it. “Smorgas” means sandwich and “bord” means table, so “sandwich table”. We felt that this article series, which will
present a selection of Dashboard Widgets every month, is like a “smorgasbord”, hence the title. For more information see en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Smorgasbord.
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Comic Corner
Comic corner Blaugh.com has generously given their permission for EMUG to reprint their comic strip in our newsletter. Go to www.blaugh. com to see a new comic strip every day. Use the code “blaugh� when you shop at www. Godaddy.com to get 10% off your purchase.
Geekculture.com has generously given their permission for EMUG to reprint their comic strip in our newsletter. Go to www.geekcul-
ture.com/joyoftech/ to see a new comic strip every day.
Make sure you also check out all the other features on the Geekculture.com web site.
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Blackberry and Mac by Magnus You’ve probably heard of Blackberry and perhaps you wonder what the big deal is. Perhaps you also wonder how it would work with your Mac. In this article I’ll try to straighten some of those question marks. Push email
What arguably turned Blackberry devices into such a big hit was push email. It basically means that emails are “pushed” to the mobile device from the server as soon as it arrives there, the device doesn’t have to check for email every number of minutes. Other devices are doing the same thing now, but I would argue Blackberry still does it better than others. The other thing that contributed to Blackberry’s success was good keyboards. Sure they are small but you can thumb-type pretty fast on them, and in my view they’re better than on the other devices I’ve tried. Cheap Blackberry on Souq.com
I wanted to see what the big deal was with Blackberry and I found a cheap, older model on Souq.com for 265Dhs. It’s a model that’s not sold new anymore but it was not much money so I thought I’d try it out. Around the same time Etisalat opened up Blackberry connections for individuals. It was previously only available for businesses. Blackberry and Mac
Perhaps it surprises you to know that the sync software that links Blackberry with a Mac is available for free and it’s
pretty good. You can find more information about PocketMac for Blackberry and download a copy (www.pocketmac.net/ products/pmblackberry). The software syncs contacts, calendar, bookmarks, notes, and more. You can sync with Entourage, iCal, Addressbook, Stickies, Now Contact/Up To Date, as well as Safari. I sync with iCal and Addressbook primarily, for calendar and contacts, and Stickies for notes. Syncing has so far worked effortlessly without problems. I’ve actually had less problems with syncing the Blackberry than I’ve had with most other devices I’ve owned. Email
So what about the push email, Blackberry’s claim to fame? I entered my .Mac account name in the setup wizard and it picked up all the details right away. I added my password and about 10 minutes later I started getting getting emails on the Blackberry. Since .Mac’s email is IMAP all emails are stored on the server, which means that emails I’ve received on the Blackberry are still available to me from my Mac. And it also shows what I’ve read and not read, which is really helpful. Getting your regular email “pushed” to you like this really makes you realize how much email you do get, which can be both a good and a bad thing. Wrapping up
So far I’m very happy with my Blackberry. The keyboard is great for typing, it does email on the go, and even some web browsing even though the screen is tiny. I follow my RSS feeds with Google Reader on the Blackberry. And the synchronization with Mac has been a pleasant surprise, both in terms of calen-
dar and contacts, but also for email. More recent Blackberry devices than mine have more features and I’ll consider upgrading at some points, I’m sure. For now I’m very happy with my Blackberry and how well it works with my Mac. Mark|Space has just released a beta version of Missing Sync for Blackberry. You can download a copy from www.
markspace.com/missingsync_ blackberry.php. In the January 2007 issue of shuffle we reviewed Missing Sync for Palm.
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What’s new in Adobe Photoshop CS3 by Zaid Al Hilali I couldn’t believe it when Adobe released a public beta of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Bridge CS3 last December. This application was and still is Adobe’s crown jewell of all their popular products. Timing of this public release was crucial for Apple Macintosh and Windows Vista users who were having trouble running CS2 applications on new technology. Such move was an excellent public relations coup from Adobe. I have used Photoshop CS3 Beta version for some time now and thought of listing some of the new features in Photoshop CS3 and try to explain each feature. Download and try it Surely the easiest way to see what’s new in Adobe Photoshop CS3 on your own is to download the beast (labs.adobe. com/technologies/photoshopcs3). You need a licensed copy of Photoshop CS2 to be able to try the beta. Once installed you choose Window > Workspace > What’s New in CS3 and all new or enhanced features will then be highlighted in light blue colour in top menus. I will choose some of the interesting one to share it with you here. Photomerge Photomerge found under File > Automate is really an old Photoshop feature, but it’s been enhanced in CS3. Photomerge is an automated photo stitching process to create a panoramic scene when sequence of camera shots taken side by side to any large area. Zoomify found under File > Export means no more hard thinking of
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it. There is no need to select and isolate areas any more prior to applying this feature. Merge to HDR Merge to HDR found under File > Automate. Some enhanced controls for the resulted 32 bit per channel picture. Now more filters, adjustment commands can be applied on the amazing final image. High Dynamic Range images are created from two or more snapshots of the same scene, each shot is taken with different “f ” stop by changing camera’s aperture setting. When Photoshop merge all images of how much to downsize an image for the internet. Designers could keep large images as they are and export them through Zoomify and place them on the net. Result would be a number of slices of exported image, html file and zoomify (swf ) engine to view within internet browser quickly without the need to download full image. Black and White Conversion Black and White conversion found under Image > Adjustments. I have yet to see anything so clear and easy to use in any other computer application. Open a colour image, select the Black & White function then point with the mouse on any part of the image, hold the mouse button down and drag to the right to lighten that area, or left to darken
same scene, you will end up with amazing details in shadows and highlight areas that cannot be achieved with other methods. Quick Selection Tool What used to be fast, now is faster with this easy–to–use tool. Basically run the pointer over any area of your image that you desire to select, just try to be within area’s borders and see how smooth your selection is. As if this tool is not silly easy to use, Adobe has even added Auto Enhance and Refine Edge features to make a novice user select like a pro. Conclusion There is much that is new in Photoshop CS3 public beta. Of course we know Adobe will surely add more before the final version is released. And let’s not forget what’s arguably the biggest new feature of all, that Photoshop is now Universal Binary, meaning it runs full speed on Intel Macs.
Tips and tricks
> www.emiratesmac.com
Emiratesmac.com tips and tricks by Magnus
We continue our series of tips and tricks for how to do certain things at Emiratesmac.com. The intent is to tell our users about some of the perhaps less well known features and functions on the site in order to make their experience with the site a bit better.
> Hint
Quick links One way to find your way around the site fast is by the Quick Links menu. You find Quick Links in every navigation bar present in the Forums section of the site. You get one-click access to the posts that have been made during the day, you can edit your signature, profile, and options, you can check your private messages as well as subscribed threads. Link to latest post I’m sure you know that the ten most recent posts are shown on the site’s home page in the “Recent Threads” box. You can click on the thread title to go the thread. Did you know you can go straight to the latest post in that
thread? You do that by clicking on the little blue icon with a right-pointing arrow on it. That takes you straight to the last post made in that thread. Avatars An avatar on the internet is simply a little picture that is a user’s representation of himself or herself. It’s a common feature on forums and blogs, where you after you set up an account can choose a picture that shows up as a small thumbnail usually besides the posts you make. In addition to your signature the avatar is possibly the best way to let your personality come out in your activities on the site. This feature is also available on EmiratesMac.com. You change your avatar from the User CP > Edit Avatar. Recently we uploaded a number of ready made avatars that you can just choose from. There is as before the option as well where you can upload your own picture. As of now you can choose from hundreds of avatars in the categories of iPod, Newton, Mac, and original Mac icons.
Apple’s Backup by Magnus
If you have a .Mac account you also have access to a pretty good backup utility appropriately named Backup. You can download it from www.mac.com/1/solutions/backup.html. There is a choice of a number of ready-made backup plans, like backup all your iLife files, but you can also create your own plan. With a custom-made plan you can backup only your selection of files and folders. For most users, one of the templates will probably suffice. Your backup can go to another location on your Mac’s hard drive, an external hard drive, a network location, or be burned to a CD or DVD.
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Mac 911
Mac911: Solutions to your most vexing Mac problems by Christopher Breen Put together your PDFs
How do I combine two or more PDF files?--Wally Eater You can do this with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard-and spend $299 for the privilege-but there are less-expensive alternatives. If you’re the do-it-yourself type, you can accomplish this with Automator. If you’d prefer a ready-made solution with more options, pick up a copy of Monkeybread Software’s free Combine PDFs 2.1. Just launch the utility and plop the PDF files you’d like to combine onto its main window. You can drag the documents up or down the list to position them in the resulting file. When you’re done, click on Merge PDFs. Note that if you mix landscape- and portrait-oriented PDFs, you’re asking for trouble-- when you print, parts of the PDFs will be cut off. If possible, reformat your files so they all print the same way.
Dealing with duplicates
How do I find out which iTunes playlists contain a certain song?--Joe Feil In recent versions of Apple’s iTunes, control-click on a track and, from the contextual menu that appears, select Show In Playlist. The resulting submenu will list all the playlists that include that track. You can use a smart playlist to help you locate songs that appear in multiple playlists. For example, create a smart playlist (File: New Smart Playlist), set it to Match All The Following Conditions, and then add these conditions: Playlist Is 90’s Music, Playlist Is Not Beatles, Playlist Is 30GB 5G Selection. The resulting playlist would display only tracks found in all three of those playlists. If you want to
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take a sterner approach toward duplicates, choose Edit: Show Duplicate Songs. In the list that appears, you can then weed through the tracks and remove any you deem unnecessary. Note that some aren’t really duplicates--one track may be a live recording of a particular tune, while another may be the studio version. Take a gander at the Album column to see if it’s actually a different track. Another option is Doug Adams and Charlie Strauss’s Corral iTunes Dupes 1.0 (free). It’s able tell the difference between a studio and a live track, among other things, and tosses duplicates into a Dupes playlist for you to sort through. Mac 911’s shortest answer ever I would like to use my older, smaller iMac keyboard with my new Power Mac because I lack desk space. The problem is that there’s no way to open the SuperDrive door because there isn’t an Eject key on the iMac numeric keypad. I know I can click on a disc already in the SuperDrive and drag and drop it into the Trash, hold down the mouse button when booting, and so on. But what if there is no disc already present in the drive? Is there a workaround?--Larry Kidd Press and hold the F12 key. iPhoto fixation How can I find and fix or delete corrupt image files in my iPhoto library?--Rene Linda Lopez Let’s start by locating your files. By default, iPhoto 6 stores your pictures here: your user folder/ Pictures/iPhoto Library/ Originals/year/roll number. The year is the year you imported the photos, and the roll number is the number iPhoto assigned to the roll--Roll 143, for example. If you’ve edited any images, you’ll find the edited versions in your user
folder/Pictures/ iPhoto Library/Modified/year/roll number. However, with iPhoto 6, pictures need not be stored this way. Go to iPhoto: Preferences and click on Advanced. Here you can choose to disable the Copy Files To iPhoto Library Folder When Adding To Library option. Do so, and your pictures will stay where they are, in the structure you’ve created. In previous versions of iPhoto, you’ll find your pictures by following this path: your user folder/ Pictures/iPhoto Library/ year/month/day, where year/ month/day would be something along the lines of 2006/05/28 (representing pictures created on May 28, 2006), for example. If you’ve edited any images created that day, you’ll find the edited versions in the date folder and the original images in a folder called Originals. Now that you know where the files are, let’s look at those that may be corrupt. If luck is on your side, the corrupt image is one you’ve edited. In such a case, you can select the corrupt image in iPhoto and choose Photos: Revert To Original. If iPhoto fails, you can try re-importing the original image from the folder that houses it. But before tossing images that won’t behave, I attempt to open them in a different application. For example, some JPEG files I work with refuse to open in Apple’s Preview but will open in Adobe Photoshop. If you can successfully open the image in another application, put the Save As command to good use and create a fresh copy. Even if the image won’t open for love or money, you’re not completely out of luck. You still have a tiny copy of it--the thumbnail. In iPhoto 6 you can find it here: your user folder/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Data/ year/roll number. In earlier versions of iPhoto, thumbnails are in the date folder’s Thumbs folder. This picture is small consolation, I know, but in cases where you’ve lost a shot that you treasure, it may be better than nothing. Still not satisfied? If you’re a pack rat who doesn’t take a lot
Mac 911 of pictures, check your media cards to see whether you left a copy of the image there. Or if you’ve got a video iPod, perhaps you’ve stored a copy on it. Count yourself blessed if you’ve enabled the Include FullResolution Photos option in the Photos portion of the iPod preference pane. If you have, just rummage around in the iPod’s Photos folder to find your image. If you haven’t enabled this option, you can use Echo One Software’s File Juicer ($9) to extract lower-resolution images from a color iPod. A more colorful TextEdit I use Apple’s TextEdit to write long blocks of text for e-mail messages and for forum comments. My eyes are getting a bit older, and I find that the bright white background makes them sore. Is there a way to change the background color to something less glaring?--Jack Howard Choose Format: Fonts: Show Fonts. In the resulting Font palette, click on the fourth icon from the left at the top of the window (the one with the small page icon). This pops up the Colors palette, where you can then choose a new background color. Choosing a startup volume In the February 2006 Mac 911, under Ready for the Worst, you speak of using a FireWire drive to boot a Mac. How do I select that drive if I can’t boot the Mac?-Dick Larson When you start up the Mac, hold down (and keep holding down) the option key. When you do, a mauve Startup Manager screen appears, displaying icons of all the bootable volumes attached to your Mac. Your FireWire drive will be one of them (assuming, of course, that you’ve installed OS X on that drive). There can then be a longish delay while the OS scours your Mac for bootable volumes. When your Mac lets you, click on that drive and click on the right-arrow icon; the Mac will boot from the FireWire drive. (This feature was introduced with the iMac [slot loading], iBook, PowerBook [FireWire], Power Mac G4 [AGP graphics], and Power Mac G4 Cube, so this technique works only with these and later Mac models.)
More on iPhoto libraries My iPhoto library has become overburdened with 3,000-plus photos from my digital life documentary. What I really want to do is remove groups of photos and put them on my backup drive or a CD. Can you give me a safe method for doing this?--Via the Internet The trick to doing this is using a smart album. To begin, find some way to identify the pictures you want to archive and then delete from your library. If you’d like to archive older pictures, this is a cinch. Just select File: New Smart Album, and configure the resulting sheet to read Date Is Before X, where X is the date you’ve determined as the dividing line between the photos you want to keep on your Mac and the ones you want to archive. iPhoto will create a smart album that contains the photos you’ll archive. If you want to archive photos by content, you’ll have to find another way to sort them. One way is to use ratings, and another is to use keywords. To assign ratings to a group of photos, select the photos that will be archived and then control-click and choose the rating you want from the My Rating command in the contextual menu. (This is not a good way to go if you routinely rate your pictures, as some you don’t want archived will likely end up in the mix.) To assign keywords to a batch of photos, select those photos, click on the Keyword icon (the small key icon) at the bottom left of the iPhoto window, and drag the photos to the keyword you wish to assign. If there’s no appropriate keyword there, make one of your own by choosing iPhoto: Preferences, clicking on the Keywords tab in the resulting window, clicking on the plus sign (+), and then typing a keyword. Now create a smart album based on that keyword or rating. With the photos in the smart album, select that album and choose Share: Burn (called Burn Disc in versions of iPhoto prior to
version 6). You’ll be prompted for a blank disc. Click on Burn when you’re ready to go, and iPhoto will burn your photos to the blank disc or discs. If these photos are precious to you, I’d suggest backing them up more than once--and to media other than CD-R or DVD-R. The Export command in the Share menu allows you to save your files to a hard drive. I don’t believe CD-R and DVD-R are the “forever” media some claim. With your photos safely archived, you can now delete them from your iPhoto library. To do so, select all the photos in your smart folder and choose Photos: Move To Trash. Your photos will be placed in iPhoto’s Trash. To delete them from your drive (and you’re really, really sure that you’ve backed them up properly, yes?), controlclick on iPhoto’s Trash entry in the Source list and choose Empty Trash. Tip of the month When people visit VersionTracker. com or MacUpdate.com in search of software updates, they often wait for the home page to load, type the keyword, wait for the hits page to show, click on the desired hit, and then arrive at the update they want. A much quicker approach is to do your search in Safari’s Google search field. Just type your keyword plus versiontracker or macupdate --for example, handbrake versiontracker . When you press return, Google shows you the hits. The first link is usually the one that you’re looking for. Click on it for the update.--Gabriel Dorado
Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of Secrets of the iPod and iTunes, fifth edition, and The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (both Peachpit Press, 2005). Find Chris’ books at www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com.
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Apple Core
Open Source Applications on Mac OS X apple
core
by Dandantheitman
The Scene
This month’s article was inspired by an incident that occurred in early February this year at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue, New York. It’s also inspired by a post I made on EmiratesMac.com, regarding Apple taking on Microsoft on the desktop. Now it occurred to me whilst reading the article that the line regarding sales figures and who owns what has become very blurry. I know a lot of guys who own Apple hardware but run Linux or BSD on top of it. I even know know one guy who uses Apple hardware for Windows XP only. A prime example of a company that helps blur the line is Terra Soft Solutions with their Yellow Dog Linux (www.ydl.net). For years Terra Soft has made a Red Hat derivative purely for Apple Macs using the PPC architecture. Likewise, not all PCs sold by vendors such as Dell and HP ultimately run Windows. Sure, 99% of them are Windows by default, but chances are when a Linux or BSD user gets their hands on the computer the Windows OS will not even be given the chance to boot, let alone register.
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It was early February and I had just arrived in New York. I was flying out to Jordan and I had five hours till my flight was due to leave. Then my PowerBook decided that it had had enough. Fours hours left till my flight was due to leave and I was scheduled to be in Jordan and Iraq for almost five weeks. Five weeks without Mac OS X = bad news. I went down to 5th Ave. store with the broken PowerBook in hand. The Genius at the Apple Store confirmed it was DOA (dead on arrival), probably the motherboard. So I headed over to a one of the sales guys and pointed at a 15-inch MacBook Pro and said “I want one of those, with the noneglossy screen, a USB modem, 3GB of RAM, and 2.16GHz should be just fine”. He rang it up and I was done. Whilst I was walking away a new Mac user approached Dave, my sales guy, and said she had just converted to Apple, but couldn’t open any of her Office documents, and couldn’t afford MS Office, was there something she could use instead? Dave said sorry, but if she was a student she could try and get a discount on the Apple version of Office for Mac. Not wanting to see a fellow Mac user in trouble I said “How about Open Office?” Both Dave and the new Apple convert turned around and looked at me very puzzled. I
explained what Open Office was, how I had used it for over three years on FreeBSD, Linux, and Mac OS X, and had had no problems thus far. I also spoke about a few other open source applications that I liked and that she should consider. Dave left happy, the co-ed left with a list of web sites where she could turn her Mac into an open source power house and I headed for the sales counter to go grab and pay for my new MacBook Pro.
Open source applications So what does the situation for open source application look like on Mac OS X? Are there applications that you should be using, or even Mac OS X specific open source applications that you should consider using? Or do you just want to turn your Apple Mac into “Castle open source”, like mine? Also see “What is open source?”.
Open Office Open Office is an open source office suite based on Star Office by SUN Microsystems. Apple recently released X11 for Mac OS X (www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11). It’s the X Windows System that allows developers to build graphical Unix/Linux -based applications and is based on the XFree86 project. While you may not be a programmer, knowing how to install X11 on your system can allow you to run the hundreds of applications available under X11. One of the most important, with regards to usage, is probably Open Office.
Apple Core
Open Office is available for download from www.openoffice.org and is freely distributed under the GPL. Open Office has 100% compatibility with Microsoft’s Office suite both from an opening and saving perspective. The developer community has also kept a lot of the Microsoft hot key functionality so for those of you who are making a direct move from Microsoft’s Office suite you will not be disappointed by the look, feel, and usage of the product. In addition Open Office provides built in export functionality for the portable document format (PDF).
E-Mail Clients Microsoft Entourage, Novell Groupwise, and Lotus Notes all are available for Mac OS X. However none of these are open source. Apple does of course provide its own Mail application, which also is not open source. For people looking to connect to corporate groupware solutions such as Groupwise and Exchange then there is really only one choice for an open source email application and that is Evolution (forge.novell.com). Evolution is the default email client for Novell’s corporate desktop SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Red Hat’s corporate desktop Red hat Workstation. For an email solution where you need only POP or IMAP email, then your choices are limited. GNUmail (www. collaboration-world.com/gnumail) is an open source version of the default Mail.app. It is currently in its 1.x release cycle and development is going strong, especially on the GNU/Openstep OS. As far as applications go, it still looks pretty rough around the edges but give it a few more release cycles and I have no doubt it will be a serious contender to the Apple Mail app. The second, and quite possibly my favourite email app, is Mozilla Thunderbird. It runs on Windows,
Linux and Mac OS X and it uses the mbox mail format so mail can easily be shifted between any of the above mentioned platforms and can be transferred to proprietary email solutions such as Entourage. Thunderbird has various themes which can be enabled to give it a different look. There is a Mail theme so it appears like Mail.app, as well as an Outlook theme so that it appears like Outlook. Thunderbird, like Evolution, also has its own built-in anti spam filter which uses an adaptive learning process.
Web Browsing There are many open source web browsing alternatives to Safari, the default web browser shipped with Mac OS X. By far the most popular is Mozilla Firefox. It is based on the original Netscape engine and has achieved a massive adoption rate since its release. It is now the default web browser of almost all of the major open source operating systems, including those from Novell, Red Hat, Canonical, as well as Mandriva.
Music and DVDs I am sure that most Apple users are quite happy with iTunes, but should you desire to take a dip into the open source world of music and video playback then the player of choice is Mplayer (www.mplayerhq. hu). Mplayer has a huge developer fol-
lowing, has hundreds of video and audio codecs. Unfortunately it won’t play your DRM encrypted music or video downloads from iTunes but it will
play pretty much anything else under the sun. The player also has a variety of skins which allow it to appear as anything from Microsoft’s Windows Media Player to AMP or even iTunes.
Picture Editing and Touch up Perhaps the de-facto standard on Macs for picture and graphical manipulation is Adobe Photoshop. The Gnu Image Manipulation Program or GIMP for short (www.gimp.org) is attempting to take a bite out of its market dominance. GIMP, like the other applications that I have mentioned here, is open source and is the default image manipulation program of all of the commercial Linux vendors. Running the GIMP on Mac OS X requires the user to implement the X11 framework, as mentioned in the Open Office section. Novell has a dedicated section to the GIMP in their cool solutions website (www.novell.com/coolsolutions). You can even get GIMP looking like Adobe Photoshop with the same menus and shortcuts with GIMPShop (www.gimpshop.net).
Instant Messaging Spending a lot of time on the Internet and having to support a lot of different customer sites to support, I tend to do a lot of instant messaging and it has become a business tool more than
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Apple Core
anything else. Of course everyone that I have to help and provide support to won’t use the same messaging app. I need to maintain Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Jabber, iChat and ICQ user accounts. If you are in a similar situation, or maybe you just have multiple friends/family that all insist on using different messaging networks then you will understand this scenario. To remove the headache of having to run an application for each network I use Adium (www.adiumx.com). Adium is an open source app that allows me to log on to all of my required networks, and more through a single application. One interface to manage six messaging solutions, and as it is designed to be used on Mac OS X, it has that slick Apple feel which we all know and love.
The terminal Now this may not pertain to some of you. Initially one of my biggest gripes from moving over from Linux to Mac OS X as my primary desktop was the lack of tabs for my terminal screens. When I first started using Mac OS X I had as many as seven or eight different terminal screens open at one time! As I was logged into that many boxes, my desktop became massive, and me and Expose became very close friends. At this point I went hunting and starting looking for a terminal application that allow me to use tabs. I found iTerm (iterm.sourceforge.net) and I was hooked. Iterm was written for Mac OS X using Cocoa and gave me all of the tabbed terminal functionality that I was looking for and more.
There’s plenty more There are many more open source apps for Mac OS X that deserve a mention, but the list is to large for me to even begin to scratch the surface of here. The open source stack on Mac OS X is however not a topic I am finished with, and I look forward to returning to this topic in the very near future.
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Apple seed by Dandantheitman So you have just upgraded to the latest video iPod and you are left wondering what you should do with the 20GB iPod Photo that you bought just over a year ago and are about to retire. Sure you could give it to your younger sibling, place it (like I often do) in the IT gear dumping ground, a large but not quite so cunningly hidden box in my home office, or try something innovative and maybe put it to use. Straight away it could function as a 20GB external storage device, but that seems somewhat beneath the world’s best selling digital music player. How about you install Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on your iPod and use it as an emergency boot device? Let’s do that! Step one: Plug your iPod in to your Mac and start up Disk Utility (located in the Applications>Utilities folder). Now re-partition your iPod, the file system choice should be “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and please label the drive as iPod (you will see why later). Performing this operation will wipe the contents of your iPod so make sure you have synced it with your iTunes before hand. Now insert the Mac OS X install disc one into your DVD ROM drive and double click the “Install Mac OS X” icon. You will have to go through the language and license section first before you reach the choose destination volume. Now when you are looking at the choose destination screen you should have several choices. One will be your Mac hard disk, the other will be your iPod. Select the iPod and continue on as normal. Apple will now install Mac OS X on the iPod. Please be aware that an install will take longer than a conventional installation of Mac OS X. Once the installation is complete, fire up your Terminal (in Applications>Utilities) and type the following : sudo bless -verbose -folder “/Volumes/ipod/System/ Library/CoreServices -bootinfo” This will make the iPod a bootable device. Once this is complete, put your iPod in a safe place, preferably somewhere in your laptop bag. Now at some point of time or another your Apple Mac OS X is going to crash on you and it will refuse to boot, and of course it will be when you needed that file you had stored on it the most, which is always the way it works. Like my laptop failing on me five hours before an extended trip to the Middle East. Now grab that 20GB iPod and plug it in to the laptop and turn your Mac on. As you have two bootable hard disks your Mac will ask you which one you should boot from. Select the one labeled iPod (remember what I said about the name earlier?), and hey presto! You now have a working copy of Mac OS X and have access to all of your data.
Experiences of an Apple Fan in Dubai by Senthil Like me, most of you would have moved to Dubai from various parts of the world, I’m sure. Some of you would have moved in from the “Apple – Developed market” and some of you from the “Apple – Developing market”. I assumed when I moved to Dubai that I am coming to an “Apple – Developed market”. You must be wondering what am I talking about so let me take the pleasure of elaborating this point since the crux of this article lies in these two key terms. Developed or Developing What I mean by “Apple – Developed market” is when the below mentioned criteria are met. If the criteria are not met then it’s a “Apple – Developing market”. 1. 2. 3. . 5. 6. 7.
Apple has a direct presence in the market. Apple Store is a Pilgrimage centre for Apple fans. Apple has multiple distributors and resellers. All Apple products are available. All Apple compatible and Apple related life style products are available. Active and Passionate Apple user groups exist. Active secondary market.
In a “Apple – Developing market”, you obviously would not have Apple directly present but is represented by an IMC (Independent Marketing Company) which means no multiple distributors and the available products are probably only those which have a high profit margin and one that pays a hefty premium for the life style products. Lastly there would likely not be a secondary market for customers wanting to upgrade
their beloved Apples. Now where does UAE stand, it’s for all the readers to guess.
Apple fan, not sure if I qualify to write about experiences in Dubai, etc.
My experience My experiences moving to Dubai as a Apple fan is something which I want to share with all Apple lovers. Why do I want to share? Let’s say like all Apple Fans, I am keen on showing off that I am an Apple Fan, like to share, and also on the side show how creative I am. Isn’t that what Apple Fans are perceived as? If not then that’s the way we should be perceived. What do you think would be the experiences of an Apple fan in Dubai? Positive or negative? Let me guess, some of you have already slotted your experience as positive and some as negative. Could there be any other feeling? Apple fans are used to extremes. Extremely positive or extremely negative. There is nothing in-between for an Apple fan. He or she mostly falls in love with all Apple products and universally hates all the products of the Wintel world. But then we are not talking about Apple products and Wintel Products, are we? We are talking about my experience in Dubai. Immediately you must be thinking, why should I be bothered about his experience in Dubai? You are not sure if I am an
Introductions and First Experience Without further ado, let me introduce myself as “The greatest Apple Fan on earth”. Simple, isn’t it to qualify as a Apple fan and since I moved to Dubai recently and penning down my experience, it is automatically qualified “Experiences of an Apple Fan in Dubai”. Good. All introductions and necessary justifications given about me qualifying as a Apple Fan and also qualifying to write about my experience. Finally the real stuff rather than all that rambling. Once you are settled with the mundane job of setting up your house, your Mac, iPod and other stuff, you start the first thing any Apple fan does - hunting for all things Mac. What does one come across? Surprise! Apple is present in UAE. Did we hear that right? Conclusions This is the start of a series of articles on this subject, that I intend to present to my fellow Apple fans in the UAE. In this part I laid some of the groundwork in terms of my assumptions and a brief introduction. The next part will be all about Apple’s presence here.
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Network Utility by Magnus In your Applications>Utilities folder resides an application that rarely gets the exposure or usage it really deserves. It’s called the Network Utility and it can do all sorts of network-related things. It’s main role is in helping you troubleshoot problematic network connections. With the Network Utility you can, for example, Trace your connection to some other machine on the internet. The results of that trace can tell you where the problem is, if the connection is slow or unreliable. You can also send a Ping to another computer, to see if it responds and how fast it responds, again helping you find problems with a connection. With Whois you can look up who has registered a domain name. Netstat also shows you detailed information about the network interfaces on your Mac and their status. So the next time you are having networking problems, perhaps Network Utility can help.
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Google’s tools for web masters by Magnus
In the January issue of shuffle we published an article called “What Google has to offer a Mac user” in which we covered some of the things that a Mac user can take advantage of in what Google offers. This time we’ll turn our attention to what Google can offer web masters, or more correctly anyone that designs and publishes web sites. These tools are not particular to Macs, in fact they all work on any platform. What we do know is that many EMUG members publish on the web which means Google’s tools are of great interest. Tools for anyone First let’s make it clear that these tools are not just for professionals. Obviously you’re probably not that interested in advertising on the web just for your own holiday snapshots, but the other services are of value to you at any level of web publishing. There are analysis tools with which you can see who has accessed your site, tools for placing ads on your pages and make some money, and much more. Webmasters’ Tools A good starting point is Google’s Website Central and the Webmasters’ Tools (www. google.com/webmasters/tools). These tools include Google Sitemap which can be an invaluable tool to help figure out how Google indexes your site. In a sense it shows you what Google sees of your site
and it can help you diagnose problems. In essence you help Google to see your site in the way you want the search engine to see it. Some say that this means limiting Google’s indexing of a web site, which may be true. I say that the sitemap feature is still worth checking out. You can also control how often Google will crawl your
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site. If you don’t update the content on your site very often you can tell Google to visit it less often, thereby saving on bandwidth. That can be important if you have limited bandwidth. Google also offers a blog focused on their services for webmasters (googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. com). Tools for advertising If you want to advertise on the web, Adwords is one of the more popular services you can use. Adwords (adwords. google.com), is a service with which you can essentially buy certain keywords that when people search for them your ad will be displayed in Google’s search listing or other web sites. Different key words will cost you different amounts per click, and there are various ways you can decide how much you will spend, including a daily budget limit. The basic principle is that you pay more for clicks on popular keywords on popular sites. Look at Adsense as the opposite of Adwords meaning it’s for you to display Google ads on your site. Set up your account (www.google. com/adsense) and select what types of ad you want, what the colors should be, and Google will give you a piece of Javascript code that you paste into your pages where you want the ads to appear. Then the
ads will be displayed automatically and targeted at what your site is all about, depending on how Google interprets the content. If other users click on the ads on your site then you get a certain payment. Webmasters’ Tools: www.google. com/webmasters/tools/ Adwords: adwords.google.com/ Adsense: www.google.com/adsense/ Analytics: www.google.com/analytics/ Co-op: www.google.com/coop/
Different ads pay different amounts, and you can play around with different settings to try to maximize the reward. Once your earnings have reached a certain amount, which you can control, Google will send you a check. But don’t think that just sticking some Google ads on your site will turn you into a millionaire. Analyze your traffic Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics), has many tools that can help you analyze your web site’s traffic. It can tell
you how many visits it gets, from where people are connecting, if they are new or returning visitors, and much more. It displays the traffic in different kinds of charts and graphs and gives you a quick overview of how your site is doing. You can monitor many sites with Analytics and all you have to do is put a small piece of Javascript code in your web pages and set up the details on the Analytics site. If it sounds complicated it really isn’t. One of the more interesting functions in Analytics is Site Overlay. With it you see a view of your actual web site, and for each link on a particular page, Analytics displays how many clicks that link has received. You can use this as a way to analyze your site’s navigation, e.g. what links you have and where they are located. Build your own search engine Finally we’ll cover Google Co-op. You can use Google Co-op (www.google. com/coop) to build your own version of Google’s search engine. You can control which sites are included in the search results, and a number of other parameters. The customization also includes including Google’s results in your own layout and design, so it looks entirely like your own search engine. We use it on a number of sites, including www.middleeastmac. com and www.emiratesblogs.com. Ever expanding toolbox Google offer us a seemingly ever expanding box of tricks and sometimes it feels like it hard to keep up. What is clear is that they have much to offer regular users as well as those who publish on the web. There’s bound to be something in Google’s arsenal that is of interest to you. If you find something of particular use, please tell us all about it at EmiratesMac.com.
There are various Dashboard Widgets that connects to Google’s services. One that I can recommend is Stats for Adsense (www.tigerwidgets.co.uk/statsforadsense/index. html). It displays statistics from your Adsense account covering the last week. It makes for an easy way to keep up with your progress to making the first million.
Kaboose.com: a familyoriented web site by Crystal
Kaboose.com (www.kaboose.com) is a website that the whole family can enjoy. Here you will find help and ideas on just about anything. The children will enjoy the different games (they have a section on computer games for the Mac), crafts, and clip art. Parents will enjoy the message boards, tips on health, recipes, crafts, party ideas, and much more. Moms even have a special section. Each day Kaboose has something new for children and parents. In the Healthy Kids section you will find loads of information from a healthy home to how handle the cold and flu season. Here you will also find information on fitness for Mothers and children. Have you ever had a unhappy child that wanted to do something fun, and you had no ideas about what to do? This site has loads of ideas and suggestions. How about making homemade play dough, or any other of the many ideas that they have? Each section has message boards, so if you do not find what you are looking for, you can ask.
Now to the fun stuff - games for the computer, and better yet for your Mac. They have a list of many games and you will find them by age group or by type of game. With this section you and your child can have many hours of fun. They also have many games that you can play online. One such game is called Planet Pursuit, where they send you to different planets to get a probe. You need to collect five different probes and you have to battle your way to the planet, by blasting the rocks and other things coming your way. Once you are on the planet you have to find your probe and then go through a maze to answer the question for you to be able to retrieve the probe. I had a lot of fun playing the game and I think your 7-10 year-old will enjoy this game as well. You learn a lot about our solar system and other planets. Just an added note, this game played very well in Safari, so it’s a good online game to play on your Mac. So check out Kaboose and start getting ideas.
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Recipe: Apple Coffee Cake by Crystal This month’s recipe is an easy, but delicious coffee cake. So if you need a special recipe for that morning staff breakfast, or for that special afternoon friend, this is the prefect Apple Coffee Cake recipe. Just on a side note you will use all the batter, so get ready to scrape that bowl. All the sugar you sprinkle on the top will make a perfect crunchy topping. Also bake the coffee cake until the apples starts bubbling around the sides, this way you make sure that are cooked through. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we have, this is a keeper. This recipe serves 6 and it comes from Simply Recipes (www.simplyrecipes.com). Crystal is the founder and editor of EmiratesBaby.com. She writes about various kinds of issues of interest to parents in the UAE. Crystal will be bringing us a new recipie based on apples in each edition of the newsletter. She promises it will be an exciting and mouth-watering mix of dessert, main courses, snacks, and more.
Ingredients 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
5 1/2 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature 1 egg, beaten 1/2 cup whole milk 1 medium Cortland or other baking apple, peeled and sliced
Instructions 1. Set the oven to 170C. Grease a square baking dish (around 20x20cm) with or pie pan a 4cup capacity.
remaining 1/2 cup sugar. Beat in the egg until blended. Add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk, beating until just combined.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt. 3. In a bowl, combine 1/2 a cup of the sugar with the cinnamon, set aside.
5. Spread half the batter in the baking dish. Lay the apple slices on the batter so they just cover the batter (you may have to overlap some slices). Sprinkle the apples with half of the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Spread the rest of the batter over the
4. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter with the
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apples. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon-sugar on top. 6. Bake the cake for 25 minutes or until it is golden brown and apples start to bubble at the edges.
MySQL on Mac Part 2 by Magnus We’re continuing the MySQL series with the steps involved in creating tables and fields. In the first part (see the March issue of shuffle), we looked at logging into a MySQL database server running on a Mac, as well as how to see what databases are available, and how to create a database. Create and Select Database You learned this in part one of this series, so I’d like you to go ahead and log in to your MySQL server, and create a new database called “emug”, and select it for use. Tables, Fields and Field types Each table has a number of fields. Think about a table that should hold information about EMUG members, for example. It should hold information about a member’s membership number, their name, their mobile, and their email address. You also need to decide what type of data would be entered into each field. For example, membership number is a number, so only digits. Their name is obviously characters, etc. Finally you need to decide on a primary key. The primary key is a field that makes one record unique from all other records. In our example, membership number is what makes one member unique from all other members, in the database’s eyes. Create Table Our next step is to create our table, “member”, and set what fields goes into the table. When you create a table you also create the fields. You can later add, delete, and edit fields, but it’s a good idea to try to get it as correct as possible from the
start. We’re now going to create a new table called “member”, with the fields “membershipnumber”, “name”, “mobile”, and “email” in it.
key field has to contain a unique number for each record. Entering the same number for both members would not work. Wrapping Up That concludes our second part of the three part MySQL series. We covered how to create a table, set what fields should go into the table, and what data should go into each field. We also entered a little bit of data. In the next issue we will see how we can get some data out of a table. Obviously we don’t just want to put data into the database, we also want to get data out.
CREATE TABLE member (membershipnumber INT PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(100), mobile VARCHAR(11), email VARCHAR(50));
This creates a table called member with four fields in it. The “membershipnumber” field can contain just digits (“INT”) and it’s the primary key. The other fields can contain characters and digits of various lengths (“VARCHAR”). You can now type “SHOW TABLES;” to see that MySQL did indeed create the new table. Enter Data So now we have a table, with fields, but we still don’t have any data in the table. And the whole idea of a database is to work with data, so how do we get some data into the table? Try this:
MySQL AB recently released the 1.0 version of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) tools (dev. mysql.com/downloads/guitools/5.0.html). With them you can administer and work with MySQL databases through a point-andclick interface. We will get back to these tools in a future issue of shuffle.
INSERT INTO member (membershipnumber, name, mobile, email) VALUES (1, ‘Michael Jackson’, ‘050-1231234’, ‘michael@jackson.com’); INSERT INTO member (membershipnumber, name, mobile, email) VALUES (2, ‘John McEnroe’, ‘050-1234321’, ‘john@mcenroe.com’);
This creates two records in the table. Notice how we made the membership numbers different (1 and 2)? That’s because the primary
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EmiratesMac.com’s One Year Anniversary by Magnus On this the one year anniversary of EmiratesMac.com, we celebrate by having an Apple TV Special Event as well as our first issue of shuffle in print. It’s an exciting time in our brief history and we thought we’d look back to be able to gaze into the future.
Starting the User Group It was actually not until August 2006 that we heard back from Apple and got registered as an Apple User Group. We’re still the only Apple User Group in the UAE, registered or not, and one of very few registered groups in the Middle East. Our first meeting was August 8th 2006 in Abu Dhabi and a total of four people attended. Around the same time we published a preview of Arabic Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which again got the site a lot of interest from all over the world. That post is still the most read post on the site, and probably will remain so for a long time. Started as a blog EmiratesMac started as my personal blog in October 2005 when we had just moved to the UAE. We wanted to buy a Mac mini and it was hard to find information online and elsewhere about where to buy one, what the prices where, etc. In frustration with that I started a blog which still lives on today (emiratesmac.wordpress. com) although it’s not updated for about a year now. Over time some people started visiting the site again and again and a small community formed around the blog. In early 2006 I thought we should do more with EmiratesMac so we bought the domain and web hosting and then the site you know today was born. You can see what the first version of the site looked like in the picture.
First big hits We went through some serious growing pains over the first few months, and we installed various systems to manage our site. Eventually we settled on what we’re currently running and things were in many ways easier after that. During the first few months the site had some terrific spikes in traffic when we reported on the upcoming opening of a MacStore in Abu Dhabi, and when we covered the actual opening of the store. This established us after just a few months in search engines and got us some much needed traffic from the UAE, the Middle East, and beyond. Summer started to set in and some of us thought about establishing an Apple User Group. We actually submitted all the paperwork to Apple in May, but it took a lot longer than we thought to get any response from them.
End of 2006 and 2007 so far The rest of 2006 and early 2007 saw a steady climb in the interest for the site. We had a few smaller spikes in interest, for example when we published the timeline for the Arabic localization of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. We’re hoping that with the new things we’ve announced and some things we’re still working on, that more people want to sign up on the site, become user group members, and join our community. Congratulations Congratulations are in order for everyone who has worked hard on EmiratesMac.com and everyone who has visited us since we started. We’re nothing without your help and support, and we’re looking forward to a successful future.
Peel The Apple
Get answers to your Apple tech support questions. Email tech.support@royalstepcomputers.com In the next issue of shuffle we’ll start a new feature. Apple certified technicians working for Royal Step Computers in Dubai will answer readers’ Apple-related techn support questions. Just send an email to tech.support@royalstepcomputers.com and get your question answered in an upcoming issue of shuffle. These guys are certified at various types of Apple technologies, so take advantage of this unique opportunity to get some help. Look out for some real “Peel The Apple” in our next issue.
DEGREES | DIPLOMAS | CERTIFICATES
Mackie DXB Console
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Film shoot room
Review
Review: Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture
Review: iBank by Magnus
by Magnus The Aperture title by Orlando Luna and Ben Long is a part of Peachpit’s Apple Pro Training Series. We’ve come to expect a lot from titles in this series and once again it doesn’t let us down. This title is about 500 pages and full of step by step instructions on how to operate Aperture. It has easy to follow directions with plenty of screenshots and sample photographs to help you see what’s going on. This is a book you sit down with at the computer and work with step by step, it’s not so much of a reference book that you can come back to later. There is also a a DVD with all the exercise files on it, so you won’t have to recreate everything from scratch just to follow the instructions. The Apple Pro Training Series of books are meant to take you to a level where you can take an Apple Certification Exam. As far as I know there are still no Certification for Aperture so from that point of view this book is a bit misplaced, but that’s not something we can blame the authors or PeachPit for, I think. The book seem to cover all the basics but it also goes into more depth, for example there is a section on how to automate Aperture with Automator. I think if you’ve used Aperture quite a bit you probably won’t benefit much from this title. However, if you’re just getting started with Aperture, this is a good choice for you. Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture sell in the US for around $40 and you can find it at www.peachpit.com/bookstore/ product.asp?isbn=0321422767. PeachPit provided the copy of the book for this review. We will raffle off the book at a future EMUG meeting so make sure you attend.
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For anyone wanting to organize their personal finances with their Mac, the main choice has been Quicken (quicken.intuit. com). Recently some other choices have appeared, including iBank from Igg Software. Your financial manager IBank is designed to manage your bank accounts and credit cards, your retirement investment and your loans, analyze your income as well as expenses. You can see how you’re doing financially in charts, reports, and use the knowledge to better plan you future. That’s the far-reaching implication of using something like iBank but it has important effects in your everyday life too. It can print checks, integrate with iCal to schedule payments, and backup your financial data to a .Mac account. A true Mac app It’s clear from when you first start iBank that it’s a true Mac app. What that means is hard to define but you generally know it when you see it. Setting up financial accounts is a breeze with the setup assistant, and in a matter of minutes you’re ready to start sorting out your finances. The key to be successful with something like iBank is to categorize your income and expenditures. Whenever you enter a receipt, it should be categorized; whenever you’re paid something, it should likewise be categorized. Fortunately, this everyday activity is something iBank shines at making simple. No connection to banks One of the main attractions of using a personal finance software is to be able to connect it to your bank’s system to download statements, and other financial information. That makes it easier to keep the information on your computer synchronized with your bank’s information. Whether that functionality is at all offered by any UAE bank, I don’t know. I do know that iBank does currently not offer this functionality, which is arguably its chief drawback.
Smart import You can however import financial data in QIF format (Quicken Interchange Format), so if you can export the details from your bank’s web site, then you can get it into iBank. In that import process, iBank’s Smart Import Rules, can help a lot. Think Smart Playlists in iTunes and you get the idea. You match up the fields and transaction details and categories can be automatically assigned, something that saves a lot of time. It means during import, recurring transactions become a little more automated. Information is knowledge What you get out of iBank is obviously of great importance. You can create charts that show all kinds of information. This is where I feel iBank is lacking something. A chart wizard would help users in the beginning, for example. Conclusion For the price, iBank is a bargain. That is if you use it regularly and do the input well. Software like this can only help you along the way, not do all the work for you. If you want to get your finances in order, give iBank a try.
You can download iBank from www.iggsoftware. com/ibank. It’s free to try, if you want to keep using it it’s $39.99. Igg Software provided a license of iBank for this review. We have raffled off that license at a previous EMUG meeting.
for all folders that I imported. A Mac OS X application should know better than that. But that’s a minor point. Bottom line is, if you’re a writer, regardless of what you write, Scrivener may be a tool for you. Try it out, with it you could end up writing the next great novel.
Review: Scrivener by Magnus Scrivener is a writer’s tool. It is not a layout program, nor is it a word processor. On Scrivener’s web site it is described as a “project management tool for writers” which I think just about as good a description as any. If you write a lot, whether it is a book, articles for magazines, a blog, academic papers, or whatever else, you need some structure and organization. You need to be able to quickly jot down ideas for various topics, and attach them to articles or subjects. Then you need to synthesize those ideas into finished text. Scrivener will help you with that organizational side of the writing process but also with the actual writing. No it won’t write for you but it helps by getting out of the way of the writing. One example is a full-screen mode which only shows your text, no menu bar, desktop, Dock, and other potentially distracting elements. This is something that seems to be in fashion lately is full-screen modes for applications and Scrivener delivers one of the better ones I’ve seen. I really like Scrivener’s corkboard. On the corkboard you can stick notes (like post-it notes) for the articles you’re working on. There’s also an outliner in which you can organize your work, perhaps write an outline of your book so you know what to work on. Scrivener can import individual files or files in a folder structure, and it can export to various formats, including HTML. One little annoying thing I found was that Scrivener imported .DS_Store files
Scrivener sells for $34.99. You can download a fully-functional 30 day trial copy and see if you like it. Keith at Scrivener provided a copy of the software for this review.
Review: iPod video 5.5G and iPod shuffle 2G by Magnus In September 2006, Apple announced the 2G iPod shuffle as well as the updated 5G iPod video, which some refer to as the 5.5G. Someone have called it the sixth generation although most people see to hold off on that label for the “true”, fullscreen, video iPod. With this we complete the look at Apple’s latest lineup of iPods. For a review of the iPod nano 2G, check out the February 2007 issue of shuffle.
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iPod video 5.5G To sum up the updated iPod video, you get more for less. More storage, more battery life, more functionality, all for less money. First, let’s deal with battery life. Apple claims the new iPods play music up to 20 hours and video up to 6.5 hours. Although we cannot confirm those claims, during our use of the iPod video it seems to be about right. Battery life seem to have increased considerably from the previous versions, and you should now be able to enjoy several movies during a long-haul flight without running out of battery. While improving battery life it seems Apple have also made the iPod’s screen brighter, by up to 60 percent according to Apple. It’s noticeably brighter which makes movies much more enjoyable to watch. Perhaps the most obvious difference with the updated iPod is that the top model now has an 80GB hard drive up from the previous 60GB. This obviously means more music, more video, and more data. Concerning software news, for the real music fans gapless playback must be the most important new feature. Longer dance mixes can be broken up in individual song-files and classical pieces can be enjoyed without annoying gaps of silence. Apple also enhanced other parts of the iPod’s software. You can search for tunes through the same interface we covered in our previous iPod nano review. If you have a lot of media on your iPod that can certainly help, although personally I don’t find it very useful. With the 5.5G iPod video Apple introduced some enhanced games. The games can also be played on the 5G iPod. This is good since games is probably going to become an increasingly important aspect of the future iPod models. So while we wait for the 6G “true” iPod video with touch-scren a la the iPhone, if you want maximum storage space, watch video, and play games, the 5.5G iPod video is the device for you. iPod shuffle 2nd generation Screenless, just like its predecessor, this MP3 player is minute. I guess you could say it’s the size of a thumbnail but you’d have to have pretty big hands for that to be true. So it’s bigger than a thumbnail but it’s still small enough to be worn almost anywhere and still not be noticed because of weight or size. Steve Jobs said it was the smallest MP3 player in the world. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s certainly possible. So the shuffle is of a much smaller size but what else is new? Not much actually. It now comes only in a 1GB version and I guess it makes little sense to manufacture a 512MB version anymore. Battery life according to Apple is 12 hours on a single charge and I would say that’s probably true and you may even get more out of it. The control for locking the shuffle has shrunk in line with the whole device, and is now harder
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to get to if you have the device somewhere like in a pocket. Apple has also made it harder to see what the shuffle is doing since they put all the indications in one light and it’s really tiny making it hard to see sometimes. In January 2007 Apple updated the shuffle again and it now comes in five colors. Everything else stayed the same however. One thing I find a bit disappointing, is that it no longer has a regular USB port. You have to connect it to the docking station, which in turn connects to your Mac. I carry around a 1st generation shuffle at work and I can stick it into any computer and it doubles very conveniently as a USB flash drive to store files on. But I guess Apple didn’t consider that a very likely use of the new shuffle. Another thing that may disappoint some music lovers is that the shuffle does not support Apple lossless audio format, a format that is popular among those who want only the best quality audio. The main selling point of the shuffle is clearly the small size and low price. It’s the perfect compliment to other iPods, because you can take it anywhere and you don’t have to worry about screen scratches like on other models. Everyone should have a shuffle, I think. The iPod shuffle sell at MacStores for AED399, the iPod 30GB for AED1099, and the iPod 80GB for AED1499. Apple IMC ME provided the iPods for this review.
Review: Belkin TuneTalk for iPod by Magnus Apple’s iPod is a device for listening to music and other types of digital audio, that much is clear. But pretty much since it was first launched many iPod owners have wanted to get digital audio into the audio, not just out of it. Unfortunately for them, Apple severely limited the recording functions in earlier iPods to 8KHz mono, making it almost useless as a mobile recording device. With the recent models of iPods that has changed and they are now much more capable. Now you can record in CD-quality at 44.1KHz, 16-bit and stereo, making possible for really high-quality mobile recordings. What’s needed though is a microphone and that’s where the Belkin TuneTalk for the iPod video comes in. Link to iTunes You attach the TuneTalk to the bottom of the iPod. It snaps in to the dock connection. On the TuneTalk is a Record button and pressing it launches the Voice Memo function on the iPod. It’s built into all 5th generation iPods and you don’t even need to install any drivers or other software. When recording the iPod will display a timer telling you how long you’ve been recording. After recording, when you connect the iPod to your Mac with iTunes, iTunes can transfer your voice memos to the Mac. From there you can convert them into MP3 or AAC format to save space or edit them with some application.
Mics The internal omnidirectional microphones, although there are two of them, seem to have limited stereo functionality. That’s not surprising since they sit very close together. They do record true stereo though, but when listening closely to the recording they pick up pretty much the same sound, due to their close proximity. Also they seem to pick up the iPods hard drive noise at times. You can however connect an external microphone via the 3.5mm stereo connection. If you’re concerned with getting the best possible quality recording, you will do well with spending some money on an external microphone. Automatic gain On the bottom of the TuneTalk is an Autogain switch. You can set it to on and the TuneTalk will then automatically control the gain (audio level) of the recording, or you can set it to off and it will record exactly what it “hears” without making adjustments. It seems to be a bit of a hit and miss game whether you set Autogain to on or not. You have to experiment a bit since some situations call for it to be on, while in others the recording sounds better with Autogain off. Limited recording formats The main drawback with the TuneTalk that I can find is that it limits recording to WAV format. WAV is lossless, meaning it’s not compressed, so the full quality of the recording is intact, but the file size is also very large. Somewhere in the region of 10MB per minute of recording is needed. It would be nice to be able to pick some compressed formats for recording, including MP3. Conclusion The TuneTalk is a small but impressive product. Somewhat limited recording formats and extra drain on the iPods battery are among the drawbacks. It has excellent recording quality, especially with an external mic, and it’s easy to operate. The integration with iTunes makes it a delight to use, and I highly recommend the TuneTalk to anyone who needs to record audio with their iPod video. The TuneTalk sells for $70.
Review: DevonThink Pro Office by Magnus
In the December 2006 issue of shuffle we reviewed DevonThink Pro and Devon Agent. Now we’re taking a look at the Office version. Since the Office version has everything in the Pro version with some added functionality, we’ll focus on what’s special in the Office version.
Database manager
Whether Office or Pro version, DevonThink is at its heart a database manager in which you can stick all your documents to make them searchable and retrievable for later use. What the Office version adds is (www.devon-technologies.com/ products/devonthink/comparison.html): Email archive, Scanner including Fujitsu ScanSnap support, Optical character recognition, and Web sharing. The Office version a whopper of a download weighing in at 88MB. Once installed you can open databases created with the Pro version, it’s totally compatible across versions. The Email archive feature is helpful if you have a lot of email and you want the emails collected with the rest of your data in one place. DevonThink Pro Office can import email from most common email programs. Scanner and OCR support are necessities if you’re going to use this software to create the paperless office. Is it a utopian dream or actually possible? You decide. Perhaps with DevonThink Pro Office it’s at least a bit more feasible.
Web sharing
The feature that definitely interested me the most was the web sharing. In effect it turns in DevonThink Pro Office running on one Mac into a server, which shares its database across a network. A few clicks and the server is running. From Safari you will see the DevonThink Pro Office servers running on your network under Bonjour. Double click, give username and password, and you’re connected. After that it works like your own localized Google search engine. You type in what you’re looking for, it searches through the database and displays what it finds. In the browser you can click on a hit to download a file and it will download, just like it does on the web.
Devon Database is a package As an interesting tidbit, DevonThink databases are really Mac OS X packages. You can see inside the package by right clicking on it and selecting “Show package content”. In there is a folder “Files” and inside it are all the files in the database. I guess this means you could copy files from the database, but I don’t think it means you can copy files into the database this way.
Limitations
The main limitation I see is with the web sharing. I would prefer it if I could open a remote database with DevonThink Pro Office, and not just search through it with a web interface. The web search is a nice feature but only goes so far to making this into a multi-user system, which is where I think the real power would lie. Imagine you’re an office of ten people. You constantly share documents, search for documents, create documents, etc. Sure a shared folder will do some of that, but it’s limited. That’s what I would like to see DevonThink Pro Office be. As of now it doesn’t seem to reach that far in functionality.
Conclusion
DevonThink Pro Office is hard application to classify. If you need to keep track of lots of information in one place, search through it and retrieve documents, it’s a good choice. And if
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you then need to make that information available to others on your network, the web sharing comes in very handy. OCR and scanner support are convenient if you intend to scan documents a lot. Whether all this is worth $150 is a different issue, and probably depends on how committed you are to really using the software.
Review: BoomWave iPod nano skins by Magnus
You can find DevonThink Pro Office at www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html. It sells for $150 and you can download and purchase it from their site. The copy for this review was provided by Devon Technologies.
Review: The Cult of Mac by Magnus
Not so long ago I asked on the site whether we Apple users could be considered a cult (www.emiratesmac. com/forums/showthread.php?t=2229). And I should really say Mac users because that’s what it is all about. There may be people obsessed with iPods but as a whole, Apple culture is about the Mac. Leander Kahney, in this book, goes through all facets of Apple and Mac culture, covering the whole scale from users that think Macs are just simply better computers, to the obsessive fans, and everything in between. This is a funny book to read, and at times you can’t help but go “do people “To Mac users, Apple represents really do that?” at everything that Microsoft isn’t. something you Apple innovates; Microsoft copies. read, even if you’re Apple puts out solid products; the most dediMicrosoft puts out buggy ones. cated Apple fan. It Apple represents creativity and seems no matter individuality; Microsoft represents how much you’re business and conformity. Apple is into Apple, there’s the scrappy underdog; Microsoft always someone is the big, predatory monopoly.” else who is even more so. Take the examples of tattoos and haircuts in various Apple themes. Kahney has dedicated an entire chapter to this particular issue. The Cult of Mac is a book that any self-respecting Apple fan should have in their collection. It’s more about entertaining the the already convicted than trying to explain to those who don’t already believe.
The Cult of Mac sells in the US for around $30. Leander Kahney keeps a blog with the same name as his book (www.cultofmac.com). He has also published The Cult of iPod.
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Your iPod may be one of your more valuable possessions, so it makes sense you want to protect it, right? The iPod has also become a fashion accessory, and protecting it with a case or a skin may be as much about making a statement as it is about actual protection. And what a statement BoomWave’s skins for iPod nano makes. They are quite possibly the cutest skins available. The two skins we tested were both red but one looks like a devil, and one looks like an angel. Both skins have very excellent details with the angel having little wings and the devil a little tail. They’re made out of silicon rubber, which has a very smooth surface. In spite of the smooth case, it’s a little tricky getting the nano into the skin, but with some patience it works. You won’t be wanting to take your nano out of the skin and put it back very often though. The skins come with a little metal dog tag with what I presume is a unique serial number on it, as well as a lanyard, a screen protector, and a cute collector’s card with information about the character your particular skin is. For example, the angel is called “Flamebear” and its tag-line is “Am I hot, or am I HOT?”. The only really negative thing I have to say about these skins is that their particular style is not going to suit everyone. If you want a skin that doesn’t draw attention, this is not for you. The BoomWave iPod skins are distributed in the UAE by 4th Dimension in Dubai and you can find them in select stores around the UAE, including Jumbo and CompuME. They retail for Dh55. You can find more information about these cases at www.theboomwave.com. 4th Dimension provided the BoomWave skins for this review. We’ll raffle off BoomWave skins at future EMUG meetings so make sure you attend.
EmiratesMac.com
EmiratesMac Training Courses
Starting in April, EmiratesMac User Group will offer short training courses in cooperation with SAE Institute in Dubai. As a User Group we feel we’re in a unique position to offer some introductory training for Mac. What? Our course offerings start off with Introduction to Mac OS X and iLife. In the Mac OS X course you will learn the basics of how to log in and get going with your Mac, find your way around the interface, open and save files, do some simple maintenance, get online, and more. In the iLife course we cover how to manage and edit photos, create movies, burn DVDs, create web pages, and put together a music masterpiece, all with the various iLife applications. When? The first two days of courses will be April 14 and April 28. Each time we offer the Mac OS X Introduction course at 1114 and the Introduction to iLife course at 15-18. You will find the most
pay online get in touch with us and we will make alternative arrangements (mobile 050-8171164 or email crystal@emiratesmac. com). http://www.sae-dubai.com/
up to date training schedule at http://www.emiratesmac.com/index.php?page=training.
How do I sign up? You sign up our site at http:// www.emiratesmac.com/index. php?page=training. You have to be a registered user of EmiratesMac. com to be able to sign up for a course. Registering for an account on the site is free.
What does it cost? We charge 250Dhs for each threehour course, which includes a one-year membership in EmiratesMac User Group. If you To sign up: are already a member you pay 100Dhs per course. www.emiratesmac.com/inYou can pay online with dex.php?page=training a credit card. Instructions will be given to you once you have registered. If you cannot
Date 14/4 14/4 28/4 28/4
Time 1100-1400 1500-1800 1100-1400 1500-1800
Course Introduction to Mac OS X Introduction to iLife Introduction to Mac OS X Introduction to iLife
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Join EMUG • Want to meet other Apple users? • Want to learn more about your Mac, iPod, Apple TV or iPhone? • Want to help others with their problems? • Want to have some fun? • Want to save some money on your Apple purchases?
To Join: www.emiratesmac.com/index.php?page=usergroup
EmiratesMac User Group is a non-profit, community organization which aims to spread knowledge about Apple products in the United Arab Emirates, and increase the knowledge and skills of its members. Presently, membership in EmiratesMac User Group is 150 Dirhams per year. Membership benefits and special offers are subject to change at any time and will be reviewed annually by EmiratesMac and participating businesses. To see the latest details, go to www. emiratesmac.com/index. phppage=usergroup. Memberships are renewed on an annual basis and the membership period is January to Decemeber. New membership cards will be issued each January for members who wish to remain in EMUG. After applying and paying for a membership, you can pick up your membership card at an EMUG meeting or other event.
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Membership Benefits • The right to come to EMUG meetings. • The right to participate in members-only events, and discounts at select EmiratesMac-organized events. • Access to a dedicated discussion forum on www. EmiratesMac.com where you can interact with other members, ask questions, and put in suggestions for activities and anything else about what we do. • The right to submit articles for publication in this newsletter. • At MacStores in the UAE, EMUG-members get the following discount: Mac Pro/MacBook Pro 6%, iMac/ MacBook/MacMini 4%, iPods 2%, and Accessories 7%. Limit to one purchase per month. • At participating Salam Studio & Stores in UAE, members can get special offers and sign up for a customer loyalty program. • 5% discount on any finished goods product, e.g. Macintosh computers, at Computer Direct Access (CDA) in the UAE. This offer does not apply to accessories, iPods, or software.