Bye PC, Mac Got Me

I’ve finally decided that it’s about time to start using the Time Machine system that is built into Mac OS X. I’ve heard  a lot of great things about it, but haven’t really had the time or desire to play with it up until this point. When I began looking into the options for setting up Time Machine, I realized that the supported options were fairly slim. I could:

1. Purchase a Time Capsule from the Mac store that would cost me in excess of $400
2. Purchase an external hard drive that could be plugged into my MacBook Pro

Though both of these options would work, and would be ready to go “out-of-the-box”, neither of these situation was going to accomplish what I was looking to do.  Which brings me to my third option: Setup a dedicated drive on my Windows PC that could be used as a Mac Time Capsule through my Mac OS X software. This is basically going to be the best option for me because there will be no out of pocket expense; I already have a PC that has an extra 250GB drive installed. The trouble is going to bee getting Mac OS X and the Time Machine software to recognize the drive on my Windows PC as a supported network drive.

I had a friend of mine ask me, “Why would you even want to do that [Use Apple's Time Machine] anyway?”. And the answer is really simple… Just in case. Just in case what? Just in case anything ever happens to my MacBook, to my data, to my music, to my documents, to my applications, etc.

The Time Machine software creates an entire backup of your system the first time it runs, then ongoing, it creates incremental backups every hour, and every week. The beauty of incremental backups is that they don’t take up nearly as much space as full backups do, yet you get the same security and piece of mind.

Let’s say for instance that I start my backup and I have my wedding album in my iPhoto library. 2 months go by and everything is fine and good, but then I somehow accidentally delete my wedding album from my iPhoto library on July 30, 2009. All Time Machine backups going forward will not contain a link to my wedding album, however if I go to any Time Machine backup prior to July 30, 2009 I’ll be able to retrieve a complete copy of my iPhoto wedding album. Pretty cool right?

Well stay posted as I start my journey to create a Windows PC that acts as a Time Capsule to be used with the Time Machine software on my MacBook Pro.

written by Brady

Now that Starbucks has finally begun to offer WiFi access to iPhone customers, it was only a matter of time before those iPhone customers started to look for a way to make the iPhone access work on laptop computers, such as the MacBook or MacBook Pro (this should also work for PC’s). With a little tweaking and configuration, you’ll be able to “trick” the Starbucks wifi network into thinking that your laptop is actually an iPhone.

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. Select attwifi from the available networks list.
2. Open your web browser, it should redirect you to an AT&T page.
3. Enter your 10 digit mobile phone number.
4. You will receive a text message from AT&T (the text is free) with a secure link to the AT&T wifi hotspot.
5. Type this link into the web browser on your laptop and you’re good to go.
6. Enjoy your free wifi.

written by Brady \\ tags: AT&T, free wifi, iPhone, Starbucks, wifi

I’m a huge fan of online documents, and love the ever-changing and ever-growing feature set of Google Docs, so it should come with no surprise that I am a big fan of Precipitate.

Precipitate lets you search for and launch the information you have stored in the cloud from within Spotlight or Google Desktop for Mac. It currently supports the following services:

• Google Bookmarks
• Google Docs

Precipitate works by creating files on your machine that are imported by Spotlight, then periodically checking in with the server and updating the local files to reflect any changes. Note that changes may take up to an hour to be visible in local searches.

written by Brady \\ tags: Google, Google Docs, must haves, spotlight

I just read a post about the new MacBook trackpad gestures that will be implemented in Firefox 3.1, and I started to wonder if my MacBook Pro supports any gestures. I quickly found that it supports 2 finger gestures, such as vertical and horizontal scroll. However, upon trying more of the newly supported gestures, I found that I cannot use the “Pinch” gesture as with the iPhone, and I cannot use the “Rotate” gesture, and I cannot use the 3 finger swipe gesture.

So, on my old MacBook Pro, here’s what I’m looking at:

Works like a charm!

Does not seem to work on old generation MacBooks

written by Brady \\ tags: Apple, gestures, MacBook, MacBook Pro, trackpad

Having been a PC user all of my life, one of my biggest concerns in switching from a PC to a Mac was whether I’d be able to learn and navigate OSX. How’s the old adage go???

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but I was unsure if I’d be able to have any sort of productivity while learning an entirely new operating system. Let’s be honest, can I really make an adjustment from Start Menu at the bottom left, to the Apple logo at the upper left?

To be completely honest, the change thus far has been relatively smooth. I’ve been able to adapt to some of the subtle differences between the two operating systems, but as a whole, the two OS’s are now pretty similar in terms of navigation, functionality and ease of use. As a switcher, the 2 biggest things that I’ve been having a hard time getting used to is the always stationary menu bar (or menubar as I’ve seen it referred to on many other blogs), and the other issue really isn’t an operating system issue, but more of a keyboard shortcut issue. The Apple Command key being located right next to the spacebar is a big difference from the Control key on the PC being at the far left edge. This has made common tasks like Copy/Paste become more hunt and peck.

Stationary Menu Bar
I’m sure that this is probably one of the toughest things to overcome for all users. The fact that the menu bar changes state based on whichever program is open in the foreground has taken me a little time to get used to. Don’t get me wrong, it makes perfect sense, but having been a PC user for the past 10+ years, I have gotten very used to the fact that each program had its own menu bar and set of actions internally and attached to the program itself, whereas on the Mac, the main menu bar acts as the starting location for all actions for all programs.

Command Click vs. Control Click
I’m dealing with it. I don’t necessarily like it, but I’m learning to deal with it. I feel like I need a little nub sixth finger between my thumb and my index finger in order to successfully use the Command button. I’ll have to become an Apple alien.

The Best Features of OSX
This list is based on my limited experience with the OSX operating system this far.

• Expose - this feature is irreplaceable, I don’t know how I’ve lived without this on a PC for so long, maybe because of the fact that windows always keeps a huge listing of all open programs in the taskbar.
• Hot Corners – being able to throw your mouse into any corner of your screen to complete any common action is a very useful feature. I have my computer automatically lock when my screensaver comes on, so prior to leaving my computer, I always just throw my mouse into the corner that activates my screensaver.
• Quick Look – This is a great feature that Windows could/should learn from. Quick Look allows you to open nearly any type of file (at least common file types) by clicking on the space bar.

Features that I have yet to explore, but will most likely become familiar with them sometime in the future:

• Spaces - This sounds like it might be very useful for me since I primarily use my MacBook Pro as a personal computer, but will occassionally use it for work. It sounds like spaces will allow me to setup desktops for each “life”.
• Boot Camp – Dual boot Windows and Mac OSX on my MacBook Pro, this will definitely come in handy.
• Time Machine – I haven’t yet used this as I typically do all of my own backups, however this will most likely be something that I setup for my wifes computer.

written by Brady \\ tags: boot camp, Expose, Hot Corners, menu bar, menubar, operating system, OSX, PC, Quick Look, spaces, start menu, task bar, taskbar, Time Machine

When I purhcased my Mac, I didn’t really even consider what it’d take to get my iTunes library setup on both the PC and the Mac. I currently have a shared drive on my network where all of my music files reside. When I setup iPhoto, I noticed that it copied all of my pictures to my MacBook, but I already have all my pictures on my network drive as well as an external backup disk, so I definitely didn’t want to have copies of all my music files created on my Mac. My solution to this was to navigate to my network server:

Once connected to my home network server, I navigated to the directory that contained all of my music files. Rather than clicking into the directory, I just selected the directory and pressed Cmd + L. Cmd + L is the keyboard shortcut for “Make Alias”. To the best of my knowledge, an “Alias” folder on the Mac, works similarly to how a “Shortcut” works on a PC.

Once you’ve created an Alias for the Music directory on your network drive, you’ll want to open Finder and navigate to your Home directory. From your Home directory, select Music, then select iTunes. Within the iTunes folder, there will be a folder called iTunes Music. We are going to be replacing this iTunes Music folder with our alias folder, so make sure that there is nothing in it. In my case, the folder was empty because I keep all of my music on a networked server, so I just deleted the iTunes Music folder. With the iTunes Music folder deleted, find your Alias folder on your network drive and drag it to your iTunes folder. Select the Alias folder, then click it again to rename it. Rename it to iTunes Music to replace the folder that we deleted earlier.

Now your networked drive is referenced for iTunes to use. Next time you open iTunes, all of your music will be available. I don’t know if there is a better, or more efficient way to share music from a networked PC to a Mac, but I’m very open to suggestions being that I’m still very new to OSX.

So far, this solution seems to have worked for me, if anybody has a different option that might work better, I’d love to hear it – please post it below in the comments.

written by Brady \\ tags: alias, iTunes, MP3, music library, network, share

	Command/Apple key (like Control on a PC)
	Control Key (Control + Click = Right Click)
	Option Key (alt / option)

Most Used Keyboard Shortcuts:

• Cut: Cmd + X (Same as Ctrl + X on the PC)
• Copy: Cmd + C (Same as Ctrl + C on the PC)
• Paste: Cmd + V (Same as Ctrl + V on the PC)
• Window Switching: Cmd + Tab (Cmd + Shift + Tab to scroll the opposite direction)
• Force Quit: Cmd + Option + Esc (Similar to Ctrl + Alt + Del on the PC)
• Right Mouse Click: Ctrl + Click (Unless you have a 2 button mouse plugged in)

written by Brady \\ tags: keyboard, shortcuts

As Microsoft has been releasing newer server operating systems, many of the machines in my company have been updated from Windows Server 2003. I am now finding myself running into the problem of not being able to connect to Windows Server 2008 machines using CoRD (Cocoa Remote Desktop) – which worked perfectly for connectiong to Windows Server 2003 machines.

Has anyone found a solution for connecting to Windows Server 2008 machines via remote desktop from a Mac?

written by Brady \\ tags: CoRD, Microsoft, remote desktop, Windows Server