Articles posted in January, 2010

Mac hardware: Quality control issues?

Friday, January 22nd, 2010 • 7:10 pm

As a lone blogger in southwest Nova Scotia, I obviously only have anecdotal evidence. But as a Mac tech support person, I am consulted and hired by a number of local Mac users to provide help and advice, notably on their purchase of new machines. And here is what I have observed just in the […]

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Editing graphics in Word documents: Maddening

Thursday, January 21st, 2010 • 2:05 pm

Most of the time, when I have to work on a Word document sent to me by a client, I open it in Apple’s Pages, save it as a Pages document, work on it, and, in the end, I export the Pages document back in Word format and send that to my client (after checking […]

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Mac OS X’s Mail: More on message filing

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 • 12:52 pm

Following my recent posts about message filing issues in Mac OS X’s Mail and the feedback I have received by e-mail, I have a couple of additional comments to make. One is about the third-party MsgFiler plug-in for Mail. In my previous post on this topic, I wrote: Unlike LaunchBar, as far as I can […]

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Mac OS X’s Mail: MsgFiler for moving messages around

Friday, January 15th, 2010 • 4:19 pm

After reading my post on spring-loading and scrolling in Mail’s mailbox drawer, a couple of Betalogue readers wrote to suggest that I use a Mail plug-in called MsgFiler. Unlike AppleScript scripts or Mail-Act On rules, MsgFiler can be used to move messages to any mailbox in your mailbox drawer. The idea is that you define […]

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Mac OS X’s Mail: Spring-loading and scrolling in mailbox drawer

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 • 12:35 pm

There is something slightly annoying about the way the mailbox drawer in Mac OS X’s Mail responds to user actions when the user tries to drag a message or a selection of a messages to a specific mailbox folder nested somewhere within his mailbox folder hierarchy. Here’s the situation as I encounter it on a […]

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2009 Mac Pro (Nehalem): Audio causes CPU temperature rise

Monday, January 11th, 2010 • 4:24 pm

I first read about this a few days ago, over at MacInTouch. I was able to confirm this myself, so I thought I should report on it and add to the chorus of voices asking for a fix. I bought a new Mac Pro (2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon) with a few bells […]

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Mac OS X’s Finder (10.6): Option-click on ‘More Info…’ opens inspector

Thursday, January 7th, 2010 • 7:12 pm

It is one of those small details that help restore one’s faith in Apple’s on-going ability and willingness to fine-tune its user interface in the name of consistency and usability. In the Finder, in column view, when a file preview is displayed in the last column on the right because a file is selected in […]

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Mac OS X’s Finder: Now saves open windows in real time?

Thursday, January 7th, 2010 • 3:45 pm

It used to be that Mac OS X’s Finder application would only save its current status—i.e. its currently open windows, along with each window’s size and position—when quit. Since Mac OS X’s Finder does not have a “Quit Finder” command in its application window, the only way to quit it is to go through the […]

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Elgato Video Capture: Decent hardware, glitchy software

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 • 7:40 pm

Last year, I took advantage of a promotional offer at Mostly Digital to purchase a USB device called the Elgato Video Capture. I have a stash of old VHS tapes (mostly Prince-related stuff) that I have been meaning to convert to a digital format for years and it seemed that this particular device would be […]

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