Fresh Apple: The Apple Blog (8 сообщений)

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The Apple Blog
The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
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Custom Stacks Icons

Anyone else tired of a Dock’d Applications folder that seems to be a link to Address Book?

I’m hearing a lot of complaints in various forums and reviews about the icons of stacks in the dock, and not much in the way of solutions, so I thought I’d suggest the one that’s working for me. (There is a bigger post upcoming with a lot of tricks to Leopard, but I wanted to get this one out first, so that at least some people might be happier.)

The problem is simple: Stacks in the Dock show a pile of icons, with the topmost one being the one most recently accessed, or first in the alphabet, or whatever. This is frustrating a lot of people who have custom icons for the folders in their docks, as instead of the custom icon, the stack icon is a changeable picture, usually of the object that starts with A. Many are grumbling about bad UI design with this, as we are used to the icons that we had representing the folders that were plainly used so much that we thought they deserved a place in the dock. And yes, in my opinion, it is a design flaw. There’s a reason for distinctive icons in the Dock - they’re a mnemonic toy, and a representation of everything under that icon. (I know I’m not alone in thinking that Address Book, which I hardly ever use, is not a good symbol for my applications folder.)

The simple fix? First, find that icon that you liked so much before. Now, rename it. Try something like “_ Proper Applications Icon” - anything with a non-alphanumeric character should do. When you put that icon in the stacked folder, so long as your stack is set to sort by name (command-click on the stack, and choose ‘Sort by’), that icon will stay on the top of the stack. To illustrate my point, to the left is my Dock, after I added a better icon to the Utilities stack, and to the right is a snip of my Applications stack’s grid view after I put an icon in there. There’s still the slight aberration of the other icons sticking out from behind the folder in the Dock, true, but it’s much better than staring at Address Book.

Icons from David Lanham’s Agua set.
custom, stacks, ui

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/stacks-icons/#comments
A Half-Hearted Jab?
So Leopard finally launched last Friday at 6pm. It’s great, it’s lame - no matter your stance, it’s here. And in case you were unaware, it’s at least a little better (and dare I say, technically advanced?) than Microsoft’s Vista which hasn’t received the warmest of welcomes since it dropped earlier this year.

In recent weeks there was an article in the New York Times which essentially got after Apple for not capitalizing on the so-called flop of Vista and the cold-shoudler it’s received from the tech industry. So now that Apple’s latest iteration of OS X (that’s ‘10′, for those new to the game) is on shelves, let the comparisons and true winners and losers be determined. (Or do what I do and just use it because you love it and ignore all the hoopla - your choice of course.)

But as Microsoft ultimately struggles to regain some respect and dedication to their operating system offering(s), it seems they may be taking the ambiguous shot across the bow if you pay attention. Background: Apparently one night long past - most likely hopped-up on Barq’s with caffeine - I signed up for email updates for Microsoft’s Office for Mac progress. Yeah, I know… Anyway, Friday evening came around, and there was an email in my box with the subject-line, “Exploring Windows: Make 6:00PM Your Time Again.”

Now maybe it was just dumb luck (I’ll leave that to your judgement), but getting an email from Microsoft on the day of Apple’s OS launch, offering to make 6pm my time again?? May I remind you that 6pm was the launch time of Leopard. It’s very likely it’s just the super-nerd in me that’s reading too much into a chance email, but the timing and wording seemed like too much of a reference to an opposing operating system.

Did you get this email? What’s your take on it - coincidence, or directed marketing?
leopard, marketing, microsoft

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/a-half-hearted-jab/#comments
Missing emails after installing Leopard?
This past Friday, after my little FedEx experience, I promptly backed up my hard drive and then did an Erase & Install of Leopard.

Once Leopard was installed I began moving over necessary files, including my Mail files.

To get your new version of Mail to recognize your old mail (so you don’t have to recreate all of your accounts), you need to move over the following files and directories:
- ```
~/Library/Mail/
```
- ```
~/Library/Mail Downloads/
```
- ```
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
```
I did this and about an hour later realized that when I searched for previous emails I was only getting results from the past 10 days or so and emails that were still sitting in my Inbox before the install were now missing.

So…how did I fix this? It’s actually really simple.

After moving your Mail files over, you basically need to force Mail to re-index your mail files. To do this, simply select each mailbox and folder, one at a time, and go to Mailbox > Rebuild in the menu. Depending on the number of emails in those accounts/folders, it could take up to a minute or two to rebuild it. After that all of your previous emails should be accounted for!
leopard, mail, rebuild

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/missing-emails-after-installing-leopard/#comments
Mail.app Stationery Pack
In the new Mail.app that is packaged with Leopard, there are a few dozen email templates to spice up what you send out.

Now you can have over 100 of them to choose from.

Equinux has released their first stationery pack with over 100 new templates to add to your emailing arsenal.

There are 7 different categories of templates including Business, Sports, Feelings, and others. It’s somewhat a given that in a collection this large of generic templates, not all of them are going to be great. There are certainly quite a few good ones but along with those are some that were obviously a bit of an afterthought just to reach the “100″ mark.

The entire collection will cost you around $30.
mail, stationery, templates

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/mailapp-stationery-pack/#comments
Say goodbye to the transparent menu bar

One of the biggest complaints made by new Leopard users is the semi-transparent menu bar. Depending on what wallpaper you have set on your monitor, it can get pretty funky up there.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but barely 3 days after Leopard’s release we now have a simple app that changes the menu bar to solid white.

OpaqueMenuBar from Eternal Storms seems to just simply put a white bar over the menu bar. The only negative thing I found was that on dual-monitors it puts the white bar across both monitors instead of just the “master” monitor that has the menu bar.

OpaqueMenuBar is free for the taking.
hack, leopard, menu bar, ui

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/say-goodbye-to-the-transparent-menu-bar/#comments
Holidays in iCal
Since I switched from Firebird to iCal a little while ago as part of an effort to try this ‘integration’ thing Apple’s been proposing for the last ten years, I’ve been frustrated by one thing.

…Where are my holidays?

I always look at iCal - or any calendar - in month view, so one of the big things I use it for is holidays. What week, exactly, does Columbus Day fall in again? I could understand, intellectually, why Apple chose not to put holidays in iCal, given regional differences, but it never ceased to annoy. It got to be too much, so I used my ever-formidable google-fu and found two sites offering calendars to which holiday-needing users could subscribe.

One of them, unfortunately, seems to have been eaten by Apple’s New Features in Leopard page. “www.apple.com/ical” now redirects there, and I can’t find the old page - which was mostly about new iCal features in Tiger, but also had the links to calendars, including various holidays and sports teams. (Just one more reason for me to like Apple - subscribable Red Sox game times.)

The other, though, is iCalWorld. They have many more calendars, including user-submitted ones. So add holidays to your iCal, just in time for winter holidays!
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Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/holidays-in-ical/#comments
Time Machine isn't perfect
One of the most highly touted features new to Leopard is Time Machine, the “always on” backup system that takes the effort and guesswork out of backing up important data. But, to the chagrin of many (or at least myself), Time Machine does not backup to AirDisks. I have not personally tried it, but when I was installing Leopard yesterday, I had the option to migrate data from a Time Machine backup stored on an AirDisk. So if Time Machine supports restore from AirDisk, why is backup to AirDisk unsupported?
AirDisk, leopard, Time Machine

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/29/time-machine-isnt-perfect/#comments
Community Activity: October 29, 2007
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Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/29/community-activity-october-29-2007/#comments