Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Arthur Cantu prefers to access all his iPhone’s audio files from a single app. He writes:
I know some people thought the previous version of iOS’s Music app was a little bloated, but I liked being able to listen to podcasts within it. Now it seems that I have to use Apple’s Podcasts app, which I don’t like very much. Is there any way for me to put podcasts into the new Music app?
There is, but what I'm about to offer is not an ideal solution. You have to meet a number of conditions for this to work. As follows:
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
A reader who wishes to remain anonymous has some difficulty maintaing a holiday spirit throughout the year. He writes:
It’s the time of year when we like to play the holiday music that’s in my iTunes library. The difficulty is that at other times of the year I use iTunes’ genius feature to create mixes. Although that music is clearly labeled “holiday,” it still creeps into these mixes. Is the genius feature not clever enough to know to exclude such music at other times of the year?
The term “genius” shouldn’t be taken literally in this case. If the feature really had that kind of intellectual power it would automatically delete the copy of Perry Como’s Greatest Christmas Songs (that you’ve retitled “Krunkin’ Krismiss” so as to not be embarrassed when someone spies the album title via home sharing) and revoke your iTunes purchasing privileges until well after the holiday season concludes.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Jeff Adelson scratches his head over a FireWire issue. He writes:
I recently purchased a MacBook Air. After setting it up I decided to migrate my data from an older MacBook Pro. I purchased Apple’s Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter but it doesn’t seem to work with Migration Assistant. The two computers won’t connect. What’s going on?
The connector does work, but not in the way you expect from a wired connection. If you sling a standard FireWire cable between two Macs that have FireWire ports, Migration Assistant does what it should. You choose one Mac to copy the data from and the other to copy it to. The “host” Mac (the one that will import data from the other) issues a code to the “guest” Mac and the two of them make the exchange once you’ve selected the data you want.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Richard Patterson finds his way blocked when trying to launch a favorite application. He writes:
I have been using the Onyx utility for years to tweak the Mac OS. I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion and downloaded a compatible version of Onyx. While I was able to download it I’m told that I can’t open it because I didn’t get it from the Mac App Store. What’s going on?
Though you’re unaware of it, you’ve just shaken hands with Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper feature. It works this way:
When writing up bug reports for this column, I prefer to have guaranteed solutions to offer. However, a few problems are so frustrating and mysterious that I’ll cover them even without a known reliable fix. That’s the situation today.
A few weeks ago, I sent several SMS text messages to a friend via the Messages app on my iPhone 5. They went unanswered. I eventually learned that he had never received the messages. Not only that, he had sent me a couple of messages during the same time period that I never received. When we finally sat down together to figure out what was going on, we confirmed the obvious: we could neither send nor receive text messages between our two smartphones.
Here’s where things gets weirder. My friend is the only person I cannot text. Ditto in reverse for my friend. Not only that, we have been exchanging texts for years without any difficulty. It’s only in the past few weeks that we’ve had this difficulty. He is using the same smartphone (not an iPhone) and same carrier he’s had for the past two years. The only apparent change that might be linked to when the symptom first popped up was on my end: I upgraded to an iPhone 5 and iOS 6 around the time the texts started to fail (although I can’t confirm that the failures began immediately after the upgrade).
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Will Dawes would like to have a foot in two worlds. He writes:
I have an iMac that’s a couple of years old on which I run Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I’ve stuck with Snow Leopard because I need to run a couple of old PowerPC applications on it that don’t work under Lion or Mountain Lion. But now I find myself in a position where I also need to run Mountain Lion for a job I’m working on. Is there a way to run each on a single Mac?
Yes, at least two ways. The first is to purchase an external hard drive, format it for your Mac, and install Mountain Lion on it. When you need to swap between operating systems, simply launch System Preferences, select the Startup Disk preference, and choose the disk that contains the operating system you need.
Chris has covered technology and media since the latter days of the Reagan Administration. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, he's a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Christopher Breen
Reader Dwayne Ahern has a question about the strength of his Wi-Fi network. He writes:
I have an AirPort Extreme Base Station in my home office, and I’m not sure I’ve positioned it in the best place for good reception around the house. As I walk around with my MacBook Air, I see the Wi-Fi fan in the menu bar drop a bit in some places, but that seems like a pretty rough estimate. Is there a way I can get a better idea of how strong the signal is?
