Mixing landscape and portrait layouts in Apple Pages
December 21, 2010 at 11:08 am | Posted in iWork, Software | 1 CommentTags: iWork, landscape, layout, Pages 09, Pages 4, portrait
Incredibly, Pages ’09 does not seem to support mixing landscape and portrait-oriented pages in the same document, even when using layout breaks. The best workaround I could find is to insert a text box and then rotate it 270°. If you need the landscape-oriented text to span multiple pages, you can link text boxes across pages (select the first text box and then click on the blue arrow below the rotated text box to add the next text box). One drawback of this approach is that the text in a full-page, rotated text box is difficult to edit without first rotating the text box back to its original orientation.
Tiny print from TextEdit
December 31, 2009 at 11:27 am | Posted in Mac OS X | Leave a commentTags: TextEdit, font size, printing
Have you printed a document in TextEdit only to find the printout practically unreadable? If so, your document may have a long line that TextEdit is trying to fit to one line on the printout. TextEdit does this by shrinking the font size until the line fits, which can result in super tiny print. The fix is to tell TextEdit to wrap lines to the page instead of the window. From TextEdit Help:
You can have TextEdit fit the text to the document margins, instead of to the window, so that the lines of text will remain at a fixed width and the font size in the printed document will match the font size on the screen. To use the same font size in printed and onscreen documents: Choose Format > “Wrap to Page.” A rectangle shows the margins of the document in the window.
You can set this as the default for new documents by checking “Wrap to page” in TextEdit’s preferences window. For more details, see the discussion at Tiny Print from TextEdit.
Combining PDFs with Preview in Snow Leopard
October 27, 2009 at 10:55 am | Posted in Mac OS X | 2 CommentsTags: 10.6, combining, editing, merging, PDF, PDF files, Preview, Snow Leopard, usability, user interface
It used to be so easy to combine PDF files in Mac OS X. You’d open the first PDF file in Preview, click the “Sidebar” button to view the page thumbnails, and drag the additional PDF files into the sidebar.
No longer. Preview in Snow Leopard uses the sidebar for both files and pages. So if you drag a PDF file into the sidebar, Preview assumes you simply want to open the file. To combine PDFs, you have to do the following:
- Open the first PDF file in Preview.
- Click the “Sidebar” button.
- If the PDF file contains multiple pages and the thumbnails for the individual pages are not displayed, position your mouse over the thumbnail with the spiral-edge binding and click on the left arrow that appears. This will “open” the multi-page PDF.
- Drag the additional PDF files onto the thumbnail for the first file.
- Use “File->Save As…” to save the new PDF file.
Not terribly intuitive, is it? Frankly, I’m amazed this change made it past Apple’s usability experts. It clearly violates a fundamental principle of the Macintosh user interface: individual files are represented by individual windows. The previous version of Preview, which did represent files as windows and reserved the sidebar for pages within files, was much more intuitive.
Incidentally, there is a preference for choosing how Preview should behave when opening files. However, this preference does not rectify the problem of the sidebar being used for both files and pages within files. Moreover, the default value is inconsistent with the Macintosh user interface.
Further evidence of the discrepancy between the behavior of the new Preview and the Macintosh user interface is noticeable from the unusual title bar text. After opening two documents, for example, the title bar reads “document2.pdf (1 page) (2 documents, 3 total pages)”. If you make a change and then quit without saving changes, you’ll see another non-standard alert.
CNQL1212_ClassicNotSeize.kext was installed improperly
October 25, 2009 at 10:00 am | Posted in Mac OS X | 1 CommentTags: 10.6, Canon, printer drivers, Snow Leopard
After installing Snow Leopard and the HP printer drivers software update, the following warning message appeared:
The system extension “/System/Library/Extensions/CNQL1212_ClassicNotSeize.kext” was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try reinstalling it, or contact the product’s vendor for an update.
According to this thread on the Apple discussion boards, CNQL1212_ClassicNotSeize is an old kernel extension for Canon printers that is no longer compatible with—or needed for—Mac OS X. Since deleting the file, I haven’t seen the warning message again.
Apple Mail says “Checking account connections”
July 19, 2009 at 9:22 pm | Posted in Mac OS X | 2 CommentsTags: 10.5.7, Apple Mail 3.6, Checking account, Checking connection to mail server, hostedemail, Leopard, OpenSRS, outgoing mail, secure outgoing mail, setting up accounts, SMTP, SSL
After setting up an e-mail account on a new Mac, I ran into a curious problem. Incoming mail worked fine, but outgoing mail refused to go. Often this is a sign that the ISP is blocking port 25 (see Mail 3.0 Help: If the connection to the server on port 25 times out), but this time that wasn’t the case.
The first sign that something wasn’t right appeared during the account setup process when I entered the information on the outgoing mail server. Mail displayed a spinning gray spokes graphic next to the message “Checking connection to mail server servername“. It continued to do this until I clicked the “Cancel” button, at which point Mail allowed me to continue with the account setup.
Now when I tried sending an e-mail message, the message remained in the “Sending…” mailbox until I quit and relaunched Mail, at which point the message moved to “Outbox”. When I went into Mail preferences and clicked on “Accounts”, I saw the message “Checking account: Connecting to server…” displayed in Mail’s Activity window. When I opened Mail’s Connection Doctor, the message “SMTP connection to servername failed” appeared after a long delay.
After much experimenting, I found a solution, which is to set up the account as follows (I first removed all Mail preferences and files so as to start with a clean slate):
- During account setup, enter the outgoing mail server information, but click “Cancel” when Mail keeps saying “Checking connection to mail server servername“. Then click “Continue”.
- Bring up the Activity viewer by choosing “Activity” from the “Window” menu.
- Open Mail preferences, click on Accounts, and select the account in question. In the popup menu to the right of Outgoing Mail Server, choose “Edit Server List…”.
- In the server list window, select the problem account.
- Click the “Advanced” tab.
- Click the red stop sign icon next to “Checking account: Connecting to server…” in the Activity window.
- Select “Use custom port” and enter 465 (for SSL) and leave “Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)” checked.
- Click “OK”.
- The popup menu should now display “servername (Offline)”.
- Choose “Edit Server List…” from the popup menu again.
- In the server list window, select the problem account.
- Click the “Advanced” tab. The password field will now be blank.
- Click the red stop sign icon next to “Checking account: Connecting to server…” in the Activity window.
- Enter your mail account password.
- Click “OK”.
- The Activity window should briefly show that Mail is checking the connection and then the message should disappear.
Why all the fuss? I’m not certain, but I speculate that it’s due to the mail server in question accepting only unencrypted connections on ports 25 and 587 and only SSL connections on port 465. Mail seems to think that if an outgoing mail server supports SSL it should support SSL on all ports on which it accepts connections. Adding to the confusion is a bug in Mail that seems to prevent changes to the outgoing mail server configuration when the “Checking account” process is active.
iLife 09 hangs on install
July 2, 2009 at 2:57 pm | Posted in Mac OS X, Software | 5 CommentsTags: 10.5.7, hangs, iLife, iLife 09, install, installation, installer, restart, won't restart
Installed iLife ’09 on two Macs today, and both hung at the end of the installation process. The iLife installer reported that installation was successful, but clicking the “Restart” button failed to reboot the computer; instead, the Installer window closed, the menu bar disappeared, and all that remained was a non-functional Dock. None of the usual tricks (e.g., Force Quit) would work, so I had to resort to powering off by holding in the power button. The system log showed the following:
LaunchServices/5123589: coreservicesd is running an unsupported version, 0 ( we are 10500000 ), so we cannot talk to it.
— last message repeated 153 times —
Very annoying. I suspect the iLife ’09 installer isn’t completely compatible with the most recent Mac OS X (10.5.7).
Software update hangs at “Configuring installation”
December 19, 2008 at 1:08 pm | Posted in Mac OS X | Leave a commentTags: 10.5, 10.5.5, 10.5.6, hangs, Leopard, Software Update
When upgrading from Mac OS X 10.5.5 to Mac OS X 10.5.6, you may find that Software Update hangs at “Configuring Installation”. This is apparently due to an incomplete download of the update. Apple has posted instructions for fixing this if it should happen to you.
Personally, I didn’t encounter the above when upgrading. However, on one of my Macs I did run into a problem starting the update. Basically, I clicked the “Install” button and then Software Update hung with the spinning colored disk.
Fortunately, I was able to quit all other applications and log out (partially, at least) before I had to hold down the power button to shut down. After rebooting, I was prompted to download the update again and this time it worked without a hitch. Perhaps Apple’s update servers are a bit overwhelmed by the size of the 10.5.6 update?
iChat video freezes
October 18, 2008 at 6:36 pm | Posted in A/V, Mac OS X | Leave a commentTags: 10.5, 10.5.5, freezes, freezing, iChat, Leopard, video
Lately, I’ve found that the video in iChat tends to freeze partway into a conversation. Curiously, audio is unaffected. Once the video has frozen, I can no longer access the iChat menus (clicking on a menu produces the spinning colored ball). However, I can continue conversing with the other party until I am ready to end the conversation, at which point I have to force quit iChat.
There are several active discussions on this topic on the Apple Support discussion board (see, for example, iChat freezes after 10.5.5 update). The resolution that has worked for me so far is the following:
- In the QuickTime System Preferences, click on the “Streaming” tab and then choose “1 Mbps Cable” for the streaming speed.
- In the Audio/Video iChat Preferences, choose “500 kbps” for the bandwidth limit.
- Relaunch iChat
You’ll notice that the size and quality of the video are reduced, but at least it works!
Is Apple’s iDisk secure?
July 22, 2008 at 5:38 pm | Posted in MobileMe | 2 CommentsTags: encryption, iDisk, Mac, MobileMe, security, WebDAV
When Apple replaced its aging .Mac service with MobileMe this month, it doubled the amount of storage from 10GB to 20GB per individual account. Coupled with iDisk Sync, which promises the speed of local storage with the convenience of remote storage, this greatly added to the appeal of iDisk for accessing files from multiple Macs.
But is the new iDisk secure? Sadly, a message from Apple support reveals that it is not:
When you connect to your iDisk, the authentication of your MobileMe member name and password is done via Digest Authentication. This is a common, secure way to handle authentication for many HTTP-based services (such as webpages) or WebDAV servers (such as iDisk). For more information about Digest Authentication, you can search for the term in your favorite search engine.
Once you are connected to the iDisk and after the authentication process, the actual transfer of data is not encrypted. This includes publishing pages or photocasts with iWeb or iPhoto, using Backup, syncing with iDisk Syncing, publishing calendars with iCal, or simply copying a file manually to your iDisk.
This is unacceptable. Since iDisk stores and retrieves files in the clear, a local or wireless network eavesdropper could easily capture sensitive files as they are read from or written to iDisk. This is particularly egregious since Mac OS X already supports WebDAV over HTTPS, which could easily provide the needed encryption.
As a workaround, Apple suggests first saving sensitive files to an encrypted disk image, but this negates the convenience of iDisk Sync. It is also unreasonable to expect novices, presumably the intended users of MobileMe and iDisk, to anticipate the need for—not to mention possess the ability to—create encrypted disk images.
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