Latest Posts in Mac 911

Bugs & Fixes: Font problems in Snow Leopard

Did the spacing between characters of certain fonts in at least some of your documents change after updating to Snow Leopard? If so, you’re not alone. A thread on this topic in Apple’s Discussions Boards currently has more than 8,000 views and 135 replies, all more or less confirming the problem. Other Apple Discussions threads report similar findings.

If this reflowing symptom happens in a precisely formatted document, such as a Keynote presentation, the new spacings will likely be most unwelcome. One application where this symptom has been especially common is QuarkXPress. Dan Logan, product manager for QuarkXPress, replied on this topic in a Quark Forums posting:

We believe it’s isolated to Type 1 fonts used in documents created on Tiger or Leopard, then opened in Snow Leopard. The root cause is in a Mac OS API that we use to read the font’s metrics. This issue is not new to QuarkXPress 8.1, it’s new to Mac OS 10.6 and also affects QuarkXPress 7. Apple is aware of it and we expect a fix is forthcoming.

Mr. Logan goes on to add:

A few of the issues may also have to do with a runaround problem we just discovered in QuarkXPress 8.1. When runaround is used in conjunction with tabs or lock to baseline, in some cases it can cause reflow in documents opened in 8.1. As a result we’re going to release an update to 8.1 shortly. Keep in mind this release won’t resolve the Snow Leopard issue, but will resolve similar issues for anyone who’s experiencing them on Tiger or Leopard.

The promised update, QuarkXpress 8.12, was indeed released on September 15.

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Solutions for synchronizing folders

Reader (and student) Ross Wehner, would like his homework to be in two places at once. He writes:

I am curious if it is possible to make a folder that is like a shortcut to a folder, except that rather than being a shortcut, this new folder actually has copies of the files in it. I have my school home folder mapped as a network drive to my computer. I would like to have a folder on my network drive that automatically creates copies with my homework files in it. Is this possible?

What you’re after is not some kind of shortcut but rather synchronized folders. The idea being that when you drop something in one folder, the other folder is automatically updated with the contents of the first. There are a number of ways to do this. All of them depend on you having control of the Macs you’re working with and being able to establish some kind of connection between the two Macs. If the source folder is on a school Mac that’s firewalled to within an inch of its life, talk to the school’s IT department about your options.

Assuming you have control of those Macs, let’s start with a free way.

Create the two folders and make sure your Mac can access both of them. Go to the source folder—the one where you’ll first place a file—Control-click on it, and choose Automator from the More command in the menu that appears. When Automator launches create a workflow that looks like the one in the figure below.

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Combining PDF pages in Snow Leopard

Reader Jamie Stone is perplexed by a Preview behavior changed in Snow Leopard. He writes:

Since upgrading to Snow Leopard, I can no longer combine PDFs like I could in Leopard with Preview. Any suggestions?

You can still combine PDFs, it just works a bit differently than it once did.

Under Leopard, you drag thumbnails from a PDF document open in Preview into the sidebar of another PDF document. A red line appears beneath the page thumbnail of the file you’re dragging to, indicating where the dragged page will be inserted. Save the file and you’re done.

Snow Leopard works a bit differently in that if you drag thumbnails from one PDF window to another, place them below the other document’s thumbnails, and save, you wind up with a document that contains just the pages you dragged into the sidebar.

The trick is to drag thumbnails on top of a thumbnail in the document you’re dragging to. This combines the pages. If you want to rearrange the pages, just drag them where you like—they’ll stay within the combined document. Save your document and you’re done.

If you’ve opened two PDF files at the same time and therefore find both documents in the sidebar, the technique is similar. Expand the document you want to move pages from by clicking the left-pointing arrow and drag the pages you want to copy on top of the icon of the other document in the sidebar. Reposition as you like. When you’re done, choose Save All from the File menu.

Searching notes in Calendar and Contact apps

Thailand reader, Suwat, finds that Spotlight searching on his iPhone isn’t as thorough as he’d like. He writes:

I make journal notes in iCal’s Notes field. One minor problem is that the iPhone’s Spotlight doesn’t search this field. Is there a way to do this?

Regrettably, the iPhone’s Spotlight isn’t spot on when it comes to searching all the nooks and crannies of your data. In addition to missing this field, it also fails to track the contents of the Notes field in Contact entries.

There’s no way to force Spotlight to do what you want (though you might want to offer Apple some gentle feedback that you’d like Spotlight to be as thorough on your phone as it is on your Mac). But there are a few workarounds.

The first is to not use this field and, instead, enter your notes in an event’s Location field. For very short notes you can use the Company field in contacts. Clumsy, yes, but Spotlight will search these fields.

For contacts you could also use a different application. For example, Andrea Vettori’s $4.99 ABContacts lets you search a contact’s Notes field from within that application (it doesn’t bring that ability to Spotlight, however). Regrettably, I haven’t found a third-party calendar app that can use the Calendar app’s data yet search the Notes field. (If anyone has a clue, I’m all ears.)

Finally, depending on how desperate you are for a solution, you can jailbreak your iPhone and, using Cydia (the application for third-party apps not found/allowed at the App Store), install Positron Software’s free Searcher app. Unlike Spotlight, Searcher will search the Notes fields of events and contacts.

Easily adding e-mail addresses

Reader Frank Wu is interested in expanding the contents of Address Book. He writes:

If I get an e-mail message with lots of recipients, is it possible to add all of them to Address Book at once?

Not with the tools included with Mail. However, a solution is just a download away. That download is Andreas Amann’s donation-please Mail Scripts 2.9.1. As its name hints, this is a collection of AppleScripts that perform wondrous feats with Apple’s Mail and Address Book applications.

The specific script you’re looking for is aptly named Add Addresses. Run it and you’ll be offered the option to add to Address Book any and all of the addresses found in the From, To, Cc, and Reply-To fields of selected messages.

While we’re on the subject, allow me to point out that this tool illustrates why it’s a very poor idea to create messages with loads of recipients in the To and Cc fields. Do so, and someone receiving your message could easily use a tool such as this to harvest those addresses and use them for evil purposes. Far better to add addresses to the Bcc field, where no one but you can see them, and fill the To field with your own address.

For more on this and other niceties of e-mail, see my E-mail Etiquette from earlier this year.

Bugs & Fixes: Too many iPhone notes in Mail?

New in iPhone OS 3.x, you can sync notes from the Notes app on your iPhone back to your Mac. To turn this on, select “Sync notes” from the Notes section of the Info tab for your iPhone in iTunes.

Where will you find these Notes on your Mac? Not where you might think at first. They will be in the Mail application—in the new Notes section under the Reminders category.

One minor problem. You may unexpectedly find duplicate copies of your Notes in other locations: In the Inbox listings for each of your mail accounts (such as Gmail or Comcast). You probably have no interest in maintaining these duplicates. So how do you get rid of them? It’s easy:

Go to Mail’s Preferences window. From the left column of the Accounts section, select the first account that is showing duplicates. Next select Mailbox Behaviors from the row of buttons. At the top of the window, you should now see an item that states: “Notes: Show notes in Inbox.” Make sure that this option is disabled/unchecked. Repeat this for each mail account that displays duplicates. Done.

Bugs & Fixes: Snow Leopard grab bag

Hot on the heels of the initial release of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), Apple has delivered Mac OS X 10.6.1. The changes from Apple are coming with such fury right now, that it’s been hard to keep up. But we’re doing our best.

64 bit compatibility

As I noted in a column posted elsewhere, the biggest problem you are likely to encounter with Snow Leopard, whether 10.6 or 10.6.1, is third-party software that won’t work because it is 32-bit and is attempting to interact with the 64-bit programs that ship with the new OS. Happily, developers are working aggressively to update their software to address this matter.

Here’s a sampling of recent notable upgrades (in alphabetical order), with caveats as appropriate:

• 1Password 3: A new version of 1Password, still in beta, works with Snow Leopard. The prior version (1Password 2) will also work in Snow Leopard for all browsers except Safari. For Safari, 1Password 2 can work if you are willing to run Safari in 32-bit mode (by enabling the option in Safari’s Get Info window).
• Ambrosia: Ambrosia Software has updated its WireTap and Snapz Pro X utilities for Snow Leopard.
• Dymo Label: Dymo’s site claims that you need to wait for the forthcoming Dymo Label 8.2 to get Snow Leopard compatibility. However, I am using the current 8.1.0.784 version in Snow Leopard and have had no problems.
• Flip4Mac WMV Player: A beta build of this program is 64-bit and works in Snow Leopard. However, you can only use it with QuickTime 7, not the new Mac OS X 10.6 QuickTime X. QuickTime X does not work with any of the old QuickTime plug-ins.
• Rogue Amoeba: The entire line of this company’s audio software, including the popular Audio Hijack Pro, is now “Snow Leopard compatible.” But see this note for a possibly required work-around when using the programs with 64-bit software.
• Smart Scroll: The latest beta version of this utility offers partial Snow Leopard compatibility. It reportedly works for all variations of hardware and software—except for 32-bit applications running on the latest 64-bit Macs.

Mac OS X 10.6.1-specific fixes

The main function of Mac OS X 10.6.1 is to squash a variety of bugs, as described here. Among the most notable fixes:

Mac OS X 10.6.1 installs the latest 10.0.32.18 version of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in version. This remedies an issue with security vulnerabilities in the prior version of the plug-in, the version that is installed as part of Snow Leopard 10.6.

If you had a problem sending e-mail in 10.6, the one where you get an alert stating “Error 54: Connection Reset By Peer,” Mac OS X 10.6.1 should eliminate it. This means you no longer need the more convoluted work-around that Apple had previously recommended.

Mac OS X 10.6.1 addresses an issue where some printer drivers did not appear in the Add Printer window. Separate updates, offered by Apple around the same time as 10.6.1, provide the latest printer drivers for HP, Canon and Brother printers.

Double-clicking documents in Finder

It’s a feature, not a bug! Here’s one more Snow Leopard caution: Suppose you create a new document in some third-party application, such as a text document in Bare Bone Software’s TextWrangler. When you later double-click the document icon in the Finder, you expect it to open in TextWrangler, right? Of course you do. That’s the way it’s worked in every version of Mac OS X—until Snow Leopard.

Try the same thing in Snow Leopard, and the document will open instead in TextEdit by default. The reason for this has to do with changes in how Snow Leopard treats creator codes, as explained in detail in this TidBits article.

Bugs & Fixes: iTunes 9 and Safari mix it up

After installing iTunes 9, you may find that the updated version refuses to connect to the iTunes Store.

The cause turns out to be a direct link between the iTunes Store and Safari. Specifically, you need to be running Safari 4.0.3 or later to access the Store within iTunes 9. If not, you’ll be greeted with a message informing you that you cannot “use the iTunes Store within iTunes.” You heard correctly: you may need Safari installed on your Mac, in order to use the iTunes Store, even if you otherwise never use Safari.

However, at least based on my testing, you don’t need the actual Safari application for iTunes Store access. For example, I deleted the application from my drive and the iTunes Store worked just fine. My guess is that there is some installed component of Safari, located in a Library folder (WebKit framework?), that is the true requirement. It is this that needs to be the proper version. Unfortunately, I have not yet determined anything more specific.

Reinstall Snow Leopard?

For some users, the news was even worse. They were getting the Safari warning message even though they had Safari 4.0.3 already installed. Based on threads posted in Apple Discussions, most of these users appear to have been running pre-release versions of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).

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Get an Ethernet-networked printer working in Snow Leopard

If you have an older Ethernet-networked printer, you may find that, after upgrading to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), the printer no longer responds to your Mac’s Print requests. That’s what happened with my trusty old HP LaserJet 4000N (circa 1998). If this happens to you, don’t despair. It’s almost certain your printer and your Mac can be friends again. Here’s what you need to know:

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Resurrecting the MacBook's number pad

Reader Timothy Barrett has a new MacBook Pro and old habits. He writes:

I recently upgraded from an old 15-inch MacBook Pro to a new unibody MacBook Pro. I love my new laptop but miss being able to press the Fn key and use the J, K, L, U, I, O, 7, 8, 9 keys for a number pad as I could with my old laptop. Is there any way to make that work with new Apple laptops?

There is. Download a copy of Takayama Fumihiko’s free KeyRemap4MacBook. This is a PreferencePane that lets you remap the Mac’s keyboard in interesting ways.

In order to bring the MacBook’s number pad functions back from the dead you need do nothing more than install KeyRemap4MacBook and restart your Mac. If you’re running Snow Leopard you don’t have to remap anything or even open the Preference Pane. Just hold down Fn plus the letters you mentioned and your laptop will cheerfully produce numbers as did your old one.

If you’re running Leopard you must open KeyRemap4MacBook in System Preferences, flip down the triangle next to Remap Fn Key, and enable the Fn to Fn (with NumLock) option. Your Leopard-running laptop will now have a functional number pad.

Updated with Leopard information.