Ten ways OS X rocks

Smashing Magazine does a good old-fashioned “why OS X is so much better” piece — ok, well they’re not that blatant (it’s actually focused on the “top ten usability highs”), but with all of the iPhone/App Store news going around, it’s kind of refreshing to see some nice, traditional Mac praise.

So why is OS X better than other (*cough*Windows*cough) operating systems? Metaphors play a huge part — when you use a Mac, you’re not just browsing through files or using plugins, you’re flipping through what look like album covers, or pulling up a “Dashboard.” And everything is extremely intuitive — it’s clear upon first look at the screen what does what or where to find certain features of the operating system.

Every system has problems, and OS X is no exception. But using it day to day, OS X definitely gives out all kinds of “wait, it was that easy?” and “just works” moments. And that’s why we’re such big fans of it in the first place. [Smashingmagazine]

Popularity: 8% [?]

PPPoE, SSH, Exposé, Wake on LAN, importing DAT tapes and more

This time in Ask we’ll be looking at getting rid of a PPPoE menubar item, assigning keys to Exposé, activating Wake on LAN, importing 32MHz DAT tapes, changing the iTunes Library location, learning SSH and more.

As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you’re running and which version of OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we’ll assume you’re running Leopard if you don’t specify). And now, on to the questions!π asks..

In my menu bar I have an icon resembling a ethernet icon. apon clicking on it the text appears:

No PPPoE configurations were found (In gray)
Open Network Preferences (in black)

I’m trying to clean out my menu bar, but I can’t find where to get rid of it. Please help me!

It’s in the Network Preference Pane. You have a PPPoE interface set up. To get rid of the menubar item just uncheck “Show PPPoE status in menu bar.” If you don’t actually ever use the PPPoE interface you can also probably just delete it.

Tim asks

Does anyone know how to setup and ssh connection between mac/mac and mac/pc to use for VNC? I’ve googled it and haven’t come up with any easy answers.

We recently posted on a series at Apple Matters about SSH so you might want to start there. Check out Devanshu  Mehta’s Part I and Part II of Using SSH: Secure Tunnels for the Common Man.

ooscow asks

Is there a way to disable Expose just for certain programs? Final Cut and Avid have keyboard shortcuts on the F keys that I use and it would be nice to be able to disable Expose when these programs are running. Could this be done with Spaces? Maybe with a new user?

There is no convenient way to do this. I’d just suggest an alternative: reassign the Exposé keys to something that those applications don’t use. In the Exposé & Spaces Preference Pane you can choose whatever you want. You can also add modifier keys by holding down the appropriate key. So for instance if you want to use ⌘F9 rather than just F9, merely select the drop down box and press the command key.

andrew asks

Is there a way to remote wake my macbook from sleep? Not an alarm clock. Just thinking here of a time where I’m away, realize I need a file (using apple script and mail rules), but can’t activate those rules without the macbook away.

Your Mac supports wake on LAN in the Energy Saver Preference Pane, which will wake your Mac up if a special “magic packet” is sent to it over the network. You can use a tool like Wake550 to do this. However, the trick is how you’re going to get the special “magic packet” to your Mac from a remote computer. Your router will have to support directed broadcast if your MacBook is connected through a router. Furthermore, this will only work with wired ethernet and will not work through Airport. All in all, I think it would probably be easier just to set the MacBook not to go to sleep if you think you might need this.

JoshK asks

I currently have all of my iTunes library on one external hard drive (besides my iPods) and I’m worried at it’s age it could fail now. I’d like to get a new hard drive and move all my music files to there. How can I move my files without having to tell iTunes where each song is located? Thank you for your help.

This isn’t a problem. Just copy over your iTunes Library to a new drive then go into the iTunes Preferences > Advanced and change the location of your library to the new disk.

caleb asks

When you highlight text on your Mac, it’s possible to use your mouse to cut and paste by grabbing it and dragging and dropping the text where you want it. Sometimes however, it starts re-highlighting using the starting point where you’ve clicked. I’ve been fighting with my Mac for weeks now trying to out smart it or at least figure out how it decides when to do which. I realize there are other ways to copy paste, but I just want to understand how to get this method to work when I want it to.

The trick is how long you hold down the mouse button. In order to do what you want you’ll need to hold the mouse button until the cursor changes from the insertion point ‘I’ to an arrow. Then you should be able to drag and drop your text snippet.

Adam asks

I just found that front row actually works on my mac allowing me to watch videos in fullscreen (unlike Quicktime) and as such I’ve been thinking of trying to link all my media thats on my external firewire into front row. My main issue is with TV. I have a bunch of divx TV shows that I want to show up in the TV section of front row, rather than the movies section is it currently is. anyone know how to do this? hope this makes sense.

To get something to appear in the TV section it need to be an MP4 file with the TV show tag set. You can set this tag with Meta X but I don’t think this will work for the divx files unless you re-encode them. Incidentally, QuickTime Player should allow you to watch videos full screen with ⌘F.

Update: several comments indicate this is possible without re-encoding the file by saving it with QuickTime Pro.

Brooklynguy asks

Hi, I’m here a little late in the game, but I saw the comments on TOSLINK and figure there are some digital audio experts here who might know the answer to this: what are my options for importing 32mHz digital content from DAT tape (Fostex D-5 DAT deck, TOSLINK cable going into MacBook Pro 8 months old)? The MBP soundcard apparently won’t accept a digital sampling rate for anything less than 44.1 and I need a workaround-hardware or software. My old tapes need converting to mp3s.

If there MacBook will not accept the signal directly I believe you can use a USB audio capture device like the Roland EDIROL UA-1D. According to the owners manual it will accept a 32 MHz sampling rate for input and should be automatically recognized as an audio device by OS X. Then it is only a question of selecting it as the audio input device in the Sound Preference Pane and then recording the audio with an application like Audio Hijack Pro ($32) or WireTap Studio ($69).

Popularity: 19% [?]

Native Orb App Brings Live TV to Your iPhone

The OrbLive streaming media app is for everyone who is sick of waiting for a Sling Mobile client on their iPhone. As you may (or may not) know, Orb pulls files off your PC and streams them to any device with an app or web browser capable of accessing the Orb interface. From there you can stream music, video files, and if you have a TV tuner card, live TV. While Orb was previously accessible via Safari, this new, official app is supposed to be an easier, more intuitive way to get your media on the go. It does require a jailbroken iPhone, however. Check out the video of the client in action.

[Orb via Register Hardware]

Popularity: 13% [?]

Handwriting recognition software in iPhone 2.0 beta

If you remember a while back, I wrote about a third party app that allows for handwriting recognition on the iPhone called HWPen. Now, according to recent reports, build number 5A258f of the iPhone 2.0 beta software supports a handwriting recognition interface that currently allows only Chinese character input.  A translated page of the website of the man who is reporting about this, Kenneth, goes into detail about the interface and contains tons of screenshots.

This app works by suggesting four character possibilities on the right hand side of the screen as the user begins to write the symbol.  AppleInsider also points out that a recent patent filing by Apple suggested a next generation multi-touch surface that would allow for this and many more touch operations.  All this handwriting news brings back the good old days of the Newton.  Let’s hope it gets a little better of a reputation if it does appear on the iPhone.  Would you like to see this on the next iPhone software update?

Popularity: 12% [?]

Beta beat: Silverflow Quicksilver interface

Julius Eckert has made splashes at TUAW before, namely for his Bezel HUD and Showcase interfaces for Quicksilver. Now he’s released a beta of his much-anticipated Silverflow interface (inspired by designer Jono). The Cover Flow thing may be played out for some, but I’m finding this interface to be both elegant and useful.

I’ll admit that I’ve gone from a die-hard user to watching Quicksilver from the sidelines, mostly due to crashes I was experiencing with it since upgrading to Leopard. I’ll also admit that I had high hopes for further development when the developers made it open source and have been a little disappointed. But Silverflow has rekindled my interest and after loading Quicksilver back up to try it out, I quickly remembered all of the extra reasons I had for preferring it to Spotlight. Whether you’re a current Quicksilver user or you’re in my boat as a previously rabid fan, this beta is worth checking out. Do note, though, that it is a beta and has some missing functionality and known (and possibly unknown) issues. I’m pretty enamored, nonetheless.

Popularity: 7% [?]