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 Sally Everhart would like to stay in touch with her Mac from afar. She writes:
Our office has a couple of shared Macs along with the computers at our desks. There are times when I’m working on my MacBook in my office but want to work with a document that’s on that shared Mac (where I have an account). The problem is that someone else is usually using that Mac with an account of their own. Is there some way, other than asking that person to log out, for me to access my account on this computer? We’re all using Mountain Lion.
As you’re likely aware, both Lion and Mountain Lion have screen sharing built in. This means that if the screen sharing option has been switched on in the Sharing system preference for the Mac you want to share and the computers are on the same network, you can request permission to view another Mac’s screen as well as control it remotely.
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 Steven Lange loves his new MacBook Air except for one little thing. He writes:
I just purchased a MacBook Air and really like it, but I still need to occasionally use DVDs for installing software and watching movies. What options do I have?
The easiest option is to simply purchase an external USB DVD drive. Apple makes such a thing in the form of its $79 USB SuperDrive. Just jack it into your MacBook’s USB port and shove your discs into it as needed. With it you can play DVD movies, play and rip CDs with iTunes, and install software if it’s compatible with your Mac.
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 Adam Spelbring is unsure of exactly what limitations the Lightning connector places on iOS devices, particularly in their relationship to iTunes. He writes:
I’ve heard that the Lightning connector doesn’t carry a video signal to external devices. Does that also mean you cannot play video from your iPhone 5 when connected to your Mac using iTunes?
Let’s take a step back and clear up a tiny bit of confusion. When the Lightning connector was first announced, some reported that the connector didn’t support video output. My colleague Dan Frakes cleared that up, confirming with Apple that the connector could indeed handle both audio and video. However, to make this happen, Apple has to release video adapters, which it says it plans to do in the coming months.
With iPhones running iOS 6, some users are unable to change their default ringtone selection. To see if you have this bug, start by going to Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtone. From the list that appears, tap the name of the ringtone you want to be the default. A checkmark now appears after the selected tone. The next time you receive a phone call, your selected ringtone should play. If it does, all is good.
If you instead hear the Marimba ringtone, you have the bug. Marimba is the iPhone’s “built-in” default ringtone, indicated by the word “Default” in parentheses after its name. If you have the default ringtone bug, any changes you make to the default selection do not stick. Even though a checkmark may appear next to some other tone, Marimba is still the one that plays.
One exception: If you set a custom ringtone for a particular person in your Contacts list, as done by editing the entry in Contacts, the chosen tone should play as expected—whether you have the bug or not. It’s only if the selection remains “Default” that you always get the Marimba tone.
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
Brian Hamilton, a reader who reads, is frustrated by what he perceives to be a Kindle limitation. He writes:
I have the Kindle app on my iPad as well as a “real” Kindle e-reader. While the books I purchase from Amazon stay in sync, I sometimes add books to the two devices that I got somewhere other than Amazon (Project Gutenberg, for example). These books don’t stay in sync. Is there any way to make them behave like Amazon’s ebooks?
As some are so fond of saying, “You’re loading it wrong.” It’s like this: Ebooks sold by Amazon are in the Mobi format. These books contain a particular bit of metadata that tells the Kindle reader that page syncing can be carried out with this particular piece of literature. Books that have been converted to Mobi format often lack this metadata. So while you can read them, they won’t sync page information between devices unless you load them in the correct way.
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 Amy Campbell has all the right reasons for extracting data from an iPhone. She writes:
A Mac-using relative recently passed away, and there are some SMS and voicemail messages on her phone that we’d like to have copies of. I don’t see any way to extract those things. Is this possible?
It is, and if you have access to her Mac, you can do better still. Here’s how:
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 Lanier has a Windows issue—no, not that issue, but rather one involving size. He writes:
I’m running Windows 7 in a Boot Camp partition on my MacBook Pro. When I first configured Boot Camp I underestimated how much I’d use Windows and I’m now running out of space. How can I expand the size of the Boot Camp partition?
Let’s start by taking a look at a couple of tools that provide the means to a larger partition.
