Again, full credit for this tip must go to the great folks at Maclife.com This simple tip allows you to pull a widget out of dashboard and place it on your desktop, which is really kind of cool.

To make it happen, open a Terminal window and enter this command

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

You will have to logout and log back in or restart your Mac to make the change active.  Then activate Dashboard and click/drag the widget you want, and then exit Dashboard without releasing the click on the widget.  The default key is F12, but you’ll want to make sure you know what it is on your system.  On mine with the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard and Logitech’s Control Center to make the Performance Mouse MX work properly it is Command-F12, so again check your system settings in System Preferences just to be sure.  You can also send the widget back by selecting it and then invoking dashboard.  To disable this feature use the same command replacing YES with NO.  Logout and back in as before to make the state change effective.

Dashboard widgets moved to the desk work the same as they did in the Dashboard.  The only caveat is that if you use Spaces, the widgets you have dragged out of Dashboard will appear on every space.

FUN

Full credit for this tip goes to the team at maclife.com who published it in their August issue.  If you don’t subscribe, you want to think about it.

To enable xray view in Quicklook open a Terminal window and enter the following command;

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders -boolean YES

Now when you Quicklook a folder you’ll representations of the icons of what is in the folder.  It’s a little thing and definitely geeky but kinda cool.  If you get tired of it, turn it off using the same command, just replacing YES with NO

Recommended

I’m a big user of Spaces in OS X.  I’ve set certain apps to open on certain spaces and because I use dual monitors even set where I want the windows to appear.  Surprisingly I use Spaces more where I have more screen real estate than on a smaller display.

But there were things that were just a pain.  On one of the MacHeist promos, I got as part of the bundle a little app called Hyperspaces and to my own failure, didn’t take a good look at it until a month ago.  Hyperspaces simply gives you richer control over OS X spaces without breaking anything.

I wanted to use different HDR photos for each space.  I also wanted to be able to see at a glance which space name I was on.  Hyperspaces does this simply and without a ton of system overhead.  The only time I’ve ever had a gotcha is when the Drobo with my Aperture library failed to come up after a long system shutdown and I ended up with plain colours.  Once the Drobo was back up, a relaunch of Hyperspaces and all was well.

You can download a trial of Hyperspaces from the CocoaBots and customize up to three spaces for free.  If you like Hyperspaces and you probably will, and want more Spaces and you probably will, you can buy a license at the site for $12.95 USD which to my mind is a good deal for the power and simplicity these folks deliver.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

When I bought my current Mac Pro, it came with nVidia’s GT8800 that I ordered as a factory upgrade from whatever was stock at the time.  The upgrade was inexpensive and got me a better GPU and more memory.  The card also supported Dual Link DVI to two displays and I have to say that I got over two years of excellent service from it.

But as I embark ever more deeply into video editing, I discovered that likely through my own ineptitude and lack of proper training, I was able to strain the capability of the GT8800 so I started researching alternatives.  There was the ATI Radeon HD 4870  on the Apple Store that had a faster GPU but no more video memory, there was the nVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for nearly $2,300 (argh, choke) and the EVGA GeForce GTX 285.  I was not aware of the GTX 285 or of EVGA for that matter so I went over to my local Canada Computers and talked to John and Samuel.  Canada Computers is a retail chain that deals in all manner of kit but this store at least, attracts some seriously hardcore gamers and gamers as we know tend to beat on video cards pretty hard.  Both Samuel and John admitted to no familiarity with the Mac Pro platform but did share that they had enjoyed a lot of customer success with EVGA cards and with the Windows release of the GTX 285.  They did tell me that the GTX 285 had been superseded by the GTX 295 on the Windows platform and also advised that there was a hack out in the internet on making one work in a Mac Pro.  As I depend on the Mac Pro for work every day, i chose not to go that route and had them order me the Mac version of the GTX 285.  With no disrespect to Apple or Apple resellers, I saved at least 10% off the price of the card by getting it from these folks.

Installation was straight forward once I disconnected the web of cables from the Mac Pro and pulled its mass out from under the desk and into the kitchen where I could work on it without crippling myself.  I did learn some tips that might be useful for anyone else.

1. When EVGA says read the instructions first, do it.  If you are not running a current build of Snow Leopard, be absolutely sure you follow the instructions about installing the display drivers BEFORE you take things apart to install the card.  I found that on my machine, running 10.6.3 at time of install, the drivers had already been provided in an Apple update.  If you find this too, well you’ve burned a whole minute, but if you didn’t have the drivers installed and tried to power up the Mac with the new card and no drivers you’d be seeing a black screen and the only fix would be to pull the new card, put in the old card, load the drivers…You get the point.

2.  The PCI-e slots on the Mac Pro have little card locking clips that you engage when removing a card.  Using a flashlight helps you see them and helps you cut down on the cursing when you cannot figure out why the stock card will not come free of the slot.

3. The GT8800 has only one power cable.  The GTX285 has two.  Disconnect the one from the GT8800 before you try to remove the card as you’re going to need it in a minute.  The GTX285 comes with two new power cables, so you could use both new ones of course.  I did.

4.  The motherboard location of the two power ports you will be using is best accessed if you have 14″ long rubber fingers that are impervious to cuts and scrapes.  If you are not Mr. Fantastic, take the time to do the motherboard connections before you install the new video card.  If you don’t, you will just have to pull it out to get the cables connected, and if that happens, remember point #1.

5.  Did I mention that making those connections can be challenging?  I found that a pair of bent nose hemostats worked fine.  Connecting the upper slot first makes things easier as well.

6.  Once the cables are connected and latched onto the motherboard (check that the latching mechanisms on the power connectors have engaged), place the card into the slot.  Slot 1 is best because like most other high end video cards, the GTX 285 is a double-wide.

7.  Replace the card slot locking bar, put all the other pieces back together, connect your cables and fire it up.

At boot time and in normal operations, frankly you won’t see much of a difference.  If you use iStat and watch temps very closely, you might find the system runs a bit cooler.  Or not.  The new card really comes into it’s own when you are doing some intense editing in Final Cut Studio or Premiere Pro or Logic Studio.  Screen draws are faster in Aperture, and Photoshop seems snappier.  I’m not a gamer but I did speak to a guy who uses Steam on the Mac and he says this card is better than what I had for gaming.

In summary, if you need more video horsepower, can handle the expense, and are willing to read the instructions you will like the EVGA GeForce GTX285 Mac Edition.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

GarageBand has a built in function to help you build ringtones for your iPhone from music in your library. Since GB comes with every new Mac and is part of iLife, free is a good price. However, folks who haven’t experience with audio recording apps or who want to make a specific ringtone for everyone of their friends, as does my daughter, (perhaps not THAT many), often find that while GarageBand works, it doesn’t “just work”. Pocket Mac, who gained notoriety building software to sync Macs to a variety of smartphones, build a utility called Ringtone Studio that makes the process of making your own ringtones incredibly simple.

The UI is user friendly and super easy. Just drag the sound file, video file or iTunes file onto the “iPhone” and then using the sliders select the portion of the clip you want for your ringtone. Ringtones should be kept short, about 8 seconds before it starts looping is a good place to start.

The only real downside to the app that I have found is the price. Frankly $20 USD is a lot to pay for what this thing does, but I see other apps in similar price ranges that do much less. One that remains unnamed inserts ringtones onto your phone. That’s it. So I suppose Ringtone Studio isn’t completely out of line, but I think that these folks would sell a lot more copies if they brought the price below $10.

The net of things is that it works. You drag your file on, you select the region for the ringtone, save it (goes to iTunes directly – or at least it did for me) then sync your iPhone, adding the ringtones you’ve created via the Ringtone tab on the sync page in iTunes. I’m not sure it could get much easier.

There are people who just burn up when your phone sounds like anything but a phone, but if you want it to sound like “you” this can work pretty darn well. Of course tastes vary so just because the ringtone was easy to make, doesn’t make it “good”.

RECOMMENDED

It may have happened to you that over time you have run out of space on your Time Machine volume, but did not want to lost the older backups it contained.  Or you’ve received one of the Time Machine errors that it can no longer back up to your Time Machine volume and all the fixes focus on you erasing the volume and starting over, and this option doesn’t fill you with joy.  With full credit to the staff at MacWorld, here’s a great tip.

Connect your older Time Machine volume to your Mac by whichever connectivity suits the volume and your Mac.  Then without disconnecting your current Time Machine, Option Click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar.  If the icon isn’t there, you can make it visible in the Time Machine pane in System Preferences.  When you option click, you’ll get the option you see in the graphic above, to Browse Other Time Machine Disks.  Select it and point to the older volume.  Now you’ll be able to go even further back in time to retrieve that critical file.

There are a lot of these option click options in Snow Leopard for menu bar icons, this one happens to be really useful.

Five days in and I have to say that the upgrade to 10.6.4 has been pretty darn seamless. I upgraded the MBP 17, the MBAir, K’s MBP 13, D’s MB 13, the Mac Pro octal and the little Dell Hackintosh. Every one when completely smoothly using software update except for the Dell which uses the combo updater and the good graces of Meklort’s tools.

I love the new reader function in Safari and the extension capability having installed the adblock and instapaper extensions. I was also glad to see that ClickToFlash also works in the new release. The extensions will prove more manageable than the old plugin model I can see already.

There were changes in Mail that broke most of the add-ons initially but Letterbox has been updated as has Dockstar since the first update.

iCal was also updated but in fairness I haven’t looked at it as I love the amazing BusyCal and use it by default.

All of the utilities I autolaunch work just fine (Launchbar, Textxpander, Hyperspaces amongst others). This is usually where an OS X update causes me the most grief, but not his time. In the past I have seen the dreaded bsod on update but this one was flawless. One tip I strongly recommend is to disconnect all your external devices during an OS X update. Apple notes this in their docs but not everyone is zealously reading them.

I don’t think the new release is any faster in my workflows but given the security fixes and the updates to Apple utilities it’s worth your time to do. Of course, be sure that you have a recoverable backup before making any major system changes.

While when buying Blu Ray movies I always look for packages containing digital downloads, they don’t always exist and this makes things tougher to get my purchased content onto my iPad and AppleTV.  Blu Ray rip tools have been on the PC for a while and I’ve had opportunity to test out three different ones for the Mac.  MakeMKV also rated highly but the current price was more than I was willing to pay for a tool I will use very rarely.  Rarely because I will only rip movies I have paid for and I don’t buy a lot of movies as I use renting as my crap screen.  Unfortunately, the crap screen needs a lot of cleaning.

So when I decided to buy software after evaluating, I bought MacBluray Ripper Pro.  It sells for $19.95 USD through the Avangate secure web store.

As you can see from the screen grab, the interface is simple.  Insert disc in drive.  Once recognized set in Preferences where you want the rip stored and click RIP.  Eject when done.  The little app is very fast and so far (six rips – told you I don’t buy a lot of movies) has performed flawlessly.   Transferring to iTunes has been more problematic as I wanted to use my Turbo 264 HD but it depends on the paid version of Flip4Mac and as I use Windows media pretty much never, this ticked me off, so I went back to the old faithful Handbrake.

Hasn’t let me down yet, although it would be cool if it used the coprocessor in the Turbo 264 HD stick.

Like they say, there’s always a catch.  You need a Blu Ray drive and Apple doesn’t offer this as an option.  I bought a LaCIE external Blu Ray recorder about a year ago so I could dump my video and audio working files onto 50GB rewritable disks.  I leave a disk mounted pretty much all the time and it’s worked out pretty well.  The LaCIE drive is overpriced and I have shied away from their products after losing several of their external drives well before MTBF, but this one has, knock wood, been reliable.

You’ll also need drivers for the drives and to make the media available.  As I have been a Roxio Toast Titanium customer for a long while, I bought V10 with the added Blu Ray support and the drive works great with media appearing on the desktop nice and quick.

MacBluray Ripper Pro comes from blumac software – more info at http://www.macblurayripperpro.com/ It’s a good product and worth the $20 if making digital copies of movies you’ve bought is important to you.  I have to admit, I’m not nuts about their use case to timeshift rented movies as this opens the door for potential theft, but to each their own.  Don’t steal movies or music.  Please.

RECOMMENDED

I recently discovered to my chagrin that Apple Mail on my MacBook Air would no longer start. This was part of a much larger set of problems that this machine was starting to demonstrate including slowdowns, application lockups and other issues.

In doing some research on how to fix this problem, I discovered a series of threads I wanted to share with you. Many Mail issues can be resolved through rebuilding the index for Mail. Here’s how.

1. Open ~/Library/Mail where the ~ represents your user home folder
2. Drag the file called Envelope Index to your desktop
3. Make sure this file no longer shows in the Mail folder
4. Relaunch Mail
5. Accept the prompt to import messages
6. Review any messages telling you that your machine is out of sync with MobileMe and make the decision that best suits your data.
7. You’re done

If this doesn’t work for you completely, you’ve got a bigger problem, but it does solve a number of issues.

Day one with the new printer is done and overall I’m very pleased. While I bought the printer from my local Apple reseller, TRG in Aurora, it was delivered direct from Xerox by Purolator. The driver got the box to the front hall and I took it from there. The printer weighs about 60 pounds so once it was on the stand it was simply connecting power and Ethernet. Then I loaded the wax ink blocks into the proper trays (impossible to mess this up) and fired it up. I then put the install CD in the Mac Pro and launched the installer. It discovered the printer on the network without issue and installed the drivers and configured the connection. The test print failed from the installer software but one launched from the print queue directly worked perfectly. I then ran Apple’s Software Update and it fed me new drivers automatically.

The printer is nearly silent unless printing and consumes little power at idle. It generates a bit of heat because it keeps the wax liquid, but no worse than a colour laser. Print quality is incredible, better than any colour laser I’ve seen using toner and nearly as tight as a photographic inkjet printer. Paper handling so far has been trouble free.

What is amazing is how fast this thing is. I have been using an older Minolta QMS Magicolor 2210 for a few years and while it’s been a good unit it’s starting to go through parts. I was becoming frustrated with it because graphics rich PDFs or Keynote presentations were taking a long time to print. I ran a 20 page analyst report, double sided, through the Xerox and had beautiful rich output in under a minute. The colours are bright and snappy, the tables are sharp and the charts just pop.

The unit uses wax blocks with excellent longevity in four colours, black, cyan, magenta and yellow. You buy block kits like toner. The colour kits include 3 blocks and the black kit comes with six blocks. Each kit is about $140 from Xerox (cheaper from Amazon) and delivers several thousand pages. Xerox posts all in prices per page of from 2.9 cents for a business letter to 25 cents for a full blown graphics page. Their models include all the consumables not just the ink, so a fairly accurate overall costing in my opinion. Prints last well but could fade in sunlight according to my research.

The only issue I ran into with the unit had to do with the Windows 7 driver install. I tried the install both from the CD and from Xerox’s Web site. It took a really long time to discover the printer and when it installed the management console something caused the printer to freeze. Since this happened more than once and only when I tried to get the Windows 7 drivers working, I think that the problem is related to the driver. I’ll try again without installing the console since it seems of little use anyway. It’s not a big deal for me because we’re finally all Mac here at the castle, except for the test machines needed for Windows and Linux.

This is only the first day so stay tuned for further updates, but so far I’m very pleased.