Maclord's Blog

The Problem

I’ve had a problem using Apple Magic Mouse on a 64-bit Windows 7 on my new iMac‘s Bootcamp partition. It was that I couldn’t use the Magic Mouse in Windows installed on iMac. As a matter of fact the magic mouse was not even showing up in Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers in the beginning. In my case I’m using Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) and Windows 7 (x64) Ultimate on the Bootcamp partition.

In Windows 7, to add a Bluetooth device, you simply click Add a Device  and then Windows should automatically recognize the device and show an icon representing it in the Devices window then allowing you to select it to be installed (i.e. its drivers).

I also have an Apple Wireless Keyboard which functions just fine on Windows 7, but the Magic Mouse used not to until I figured out the following:

Somehow when the Apple Magic Mouse is paired with your Mac first, it may become impossible to make it usable with Windows 7 on the same machine when started up from the Bootcamp partition. Even if you manage to locate it in devices and select it for installation, you may see a message like “Connecting to the device…” forever, but no progress.

The Solution

If you are suffering the same problem of not being able to use your Apple Magic Mouse in Windows (Bootcamp) on your Mac follow these steps: Read the rest of this entry »

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You got your new iPhone or new iPad, then a time came when you wanted to have some extra-ordinary file on your PC or your android device to be opened up on your other device and it turned out that iTunes will not sync it or you just don’t wanna bother transferring the file first to iTunes and then whatever.

Dropbox comes to the rescue. Thanks to Dropbox, once you put any file in it whether you are on your computer, or your mobile device, it will store them in the cloud and sync it to all of your devices such as your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch even devices running on Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry and  Linux. What’s more, you can use Dropbox not only for personal synchronization needs, but also for sharing files with others and collaboration in real-time. Dropbox offers both free and paid services.

Why DropBox?

There are dozens of other applications either as SaaS or PaaS and all claiming to get the same job done. Among all, Dropbox was and still the best and painless (even Apple attempted to buy Dropbox before their iCloud venture – an argument for another post) I’ve ever used. It’s fast, easy-to-use, practical – the only downside of it is on mobile devices where it doesn’t push the content unlike iCloud, you need to be connected to Internet to access all your files except for the one or two which once you access it on your mobile device is/are cached for offline viewing.

Dropbox replaces

• Emailing file attachments to yourself and other people
• Using USB drives to move files between computers
• Renaming files to keep a history of previous versions
• Complicated backup software and hardware

How Dropbox works

Here’s a short video explaining how it works:

How do I get Dropbox for free?

For a starter you can sign up for a free 2 GB account (if you use my referral code, you will get an additional 250 MB)

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Apple announces the new iPad HD aka iPad 3 on March 7th along with which an update for iOS 5 is also expected.

Apple, the world’s now most valuable company, will hold a product event on March 7 in San Francisco, where it’s said to be releasing the third generation of its best-selling iPad tablet computer.

“We have something you really have to see. And touch,”

Apple said today in an invitation, which features a picture of an iPad 3 HD screen.

- "Moses, meet Steve. He's gonna upgrade your tablets"

After pioneering the tablet market two years ago, Apple is counting on the new model to beat back competition from newer devices running Google Inc.’s Android software. The company has sold more than 55 million iPads, generating at least $US34.5 billion in revenue. Amazon.’s Kindle Fire, which uses Android, emerged as the iPad’s biggest rival over the holiday shopping season last year.

What to expect from iPad HD / iPad3

The iPad 3 comes with the long-awaited Retina display with an increased resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, a better (8-megapixel) camera, 4G LTE and an A6 or A5X chip. My personal opinion is that Siri will be among the highlighted features of the new iPad HD although there are also rumors that Siri could be made available to all iOS devices capable of running iOS 5.

Apple has something we really have to see... and touch!

Although people have an idea of what to expect in the iPad HD (iPad3)  already, and there have been rumors floating around for quite some time now, it is always nice to see design concepts from creative developers around the globe. One such design concept has been showcased by Aatma Studio, and many are saying it is one of the best ever seen.

iPad 3 concept design

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If you’re a heavy user of Apple Mail.app, you may find that over time the program takes longer and longer to open, and operates more and more sluggishly.

There’s a trick to making things faster, one that never fails to work. Open Terminal and run the following command:

sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum

This command basically cleans old and discarded crud out of the database that Mail
uses to keep track of messages. When old messages are deleted, Mail unfortunately
keeps some information about them around, and that’s what you’re nuking from orbit.
Here’s an example on my machine that shows the before and after

$ cd ~/Library/Mail
$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 maclord staff 61M Feb 15 23:14 Envelope Index
$ sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum
$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 maclord staff 33M Feb 16 18:35 Envelope Index

If you would run it often on the Terminal, make an alias for it, either in .bashrc or
.bash_aliases

alias vacuummail=‘sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum’

If you’re really feeling ambitious, you could create an Automator action that would shut
down Mail, run the command, and start Mail back up. You could even make it an iCal Alarm and set it to
run once a week, and you will guarantee that Mail runs lean and mean. Or, if you don’t
like Automator, use a tool like Lingon to run the command for you at a set time.

P.S. These methods have been tested with Mac OS X (10.6) Snow Leopard – untested with Lion (OS X 10.7)

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One of my favorite things on the Mac was having a recent version of Java and a Java Development Kit (JDK) pre-installed on Mac OS X until the release of version 10.7 Lion. On Snow Leopard, the 64-bit version of Java 6 came already installed.

With MacOS X Lion, however, Java does not come out-of-the-box and you have to download and install it manually (or via the Apple Software Update) – except in rare cases where you upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

The first package of Java 6 for Mac OS X Lion for download & manual installation can be found on the following link: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1421
The download size is about 62.5 MB and gets you Java SE version 1.6.0_26 (64-bit of course). Although this one is not be the most up-to-date version, once you have it on your system, you would be prompted to upgrade automatically next time Apple Software Update is run.

As for JDK 7 for Mac, it will be available directly from Oracle, maybe even through the App Store – no official announcement on the latter, though, so far, but stay tuned for good news!

If you are a Java developer who wants to do Java development on Mac OS X 10.7, here are a few not-so-tricky steps to follow to get going:
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Advanced-level Mail.app users of Mac OS X must have noticed that as of Mac OS X Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) the feature of “bouncing messages back to sender” is gone!

There are ongoing debates whether this feature was useful (so as to help fight spam) or not – even totally unnecessary (since many spammers do not use real or valid e-mail addresses, there’s no address to bounce back the junk mail) – the latter probably being Apple’s motive to remove the feature.

For those of you, who need to restore this functionality, there’s good news for intermediate to advanced Mac OS X users who can manage to create an Automator service that will feature an AppleScript to run — at least by following a short simple series of instructions. (See also the screen recording video tutorial below)

Here are the step by step instructions to do so:

1. Launch Automator from your Applications folder
2. Create a new service.
3. At the top of the editing (workflow) pane, select “no input” pull-down menu item just following the label “Service receives”, and select “Mail.app” from the second pull-down menu. The setting should appear like “Service receives no input in Mail.app”
4. Locate “Get Selected Mail items” from the actions list on the left, and then drag it to the editing pane (that is the Workflow)
5. Locate “Run AppleScript” from the actions, and drag it to the workflow.
6. Edit the script so as to look as the following:
   on run {input, parameters}
   tell application "Mail"
      repeat with eachMessage in input
         bounce eachMessage
         delete eachMessage
      end repeat
   end tell
end run
7.  Save your Automator workflow with a name like “Bounce Mail”
8. In Mail(.app) select the message(s) you want to bounce, then under the “Mail” application menu, select “Services > Bounce Mail (or whatever you named when saving the service) menu item

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Manomio a mobile software developer company with the motto “in retro we trust” has come up with a Commodore Amiga Emulator for iOS which will enable users of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch to play Commodore 64 and Amiga games on their iOS devices.

Manomio is in the course of some legal procedures to license the required intellectual property and is also working with individual developers to bring popular Amiga titles to Apple’s App Store.
The following demonstration video shows a collection of 10 classic Amiga games such as Defender of the Crown, Battle Squadron, International Karate Plus, R-Type, R-Type II, Speedball, Stunt Car Racer, Shadow of the Beast, Virus, and Xenon 2: Megablast:

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iPhone works with MobileMe, Microsoft Exchange, and many of the most popular email systems. MobileMe and Microsoft Exchange provide not only email, but contact and calendar information that can be synced to iPhone automatically, over the air. MobileMe can also sync your bookmarks on iPhone with Safari on a Mac, or with Safari or Microsoft Internet Explorer on a PC. You set up MobileMe, Exchange, and other email accounts directly on iPhone.

iPhone uses the Exchange ActiveSync protocol to sync email, calendars, and contacts with the following versions of Microsoft Exchange:

• Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2
• Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1

For many popular email accounts, iPhone automatically enters most of the settings for you.

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If you ever run into a disk image in .daa format, and you need to access its contents on Mac OS X, DAA Converter for Mac OS X is what you need.

DAA Converter for Mac OS X is a free utility for converting DAA & GBI disk images to ISO format so they can be accessed on your Mac.

DAA Converter is a native GUI application which wraps the command-line tool, DAA2ISO / GBI 2 ISO, by Luigi Auriemma.
It runs on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther or later. I have tested it on Mac OS X Leopard which works just fine on 10.5, too.

Just drag the icon of any .daa or .gib disk image onto the application’s icon, and the conversion process will instantly take place – an .iso version of the disk image will be instantly created on the same directory as the source image file.

You can download DAA Converter for Mac OS X (155) here or visit the downloads page.

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Popular among Windows PC users .Uif is an alternative disk image format to others like .iso, .img and .bin-.cue couples.

You can open and convert UIF disk images on Mac OS X using one of the following disk image utilities:

1. Uif2iso which is a cross-platform command-line tool developed by Luigi Auriemma.
2. Uif2iso4mac a GUI application by Torsten Curdt . Uif2iso4mac is built upon  Luigi Auriemma’s uif2iso command line utility with a Mac graphic user interface adding basic functionalities of a real Mac app like drag-and-drop and a menu bar i.e. choosing an image using the File > Open menu.

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