DaugBytes

I copy this entire article found at My Mac Blog because I don’t want to lose the information. I am going to try this on my iBook G4 1.42. I need the assurance and comfort of having a back out tutorial.

From what I have read, this is a pretty safe hack. And it can be reversed. But I do caution everyone. This is on you if it goes awry.

Other than a stern warning, it looks pretty promising.

Posted November 24th, 2005 at 2:43 am by Dennis Metzcher
Screen spanning, which is the ability for your computer to span it’s screen across two displays, is one of the things that separates Apple’s line of professional Macs from the consumer line. If you have a PowerBook, you can use screen spanning without an issue. Open your “Displays” panel in System Preferences, and, if you have two displays hooked up, you will find a tab in the middle called “Arrangement”. If you own an iBook, iMac, or eMac, you are, however, out of luck. Well, really you were out of luck. Now, with Screen Spanning Doctor, you can turn on screen spanning, and a couple of other video-related features as well.

The first thing that you are thinking might be what I thought: “How is this possible? Don’t the consumer Macs have ‘lesser’ video cards in them that can’t do this?” The answer is “no”. The cards support screen spanning. Apple has chosen, however, to turn this feature off in open firmware in an effort to get buyers to think about purchasing a professional level product, as opposed to one from the consumer line. Screen Spanning Doctor comes to your rescue by modifying open firmware such that this feature is turned on. When you run the app, you will be asked if you want to turn on screen spanning. Tell the app yes, and you will be told whether or not it was successful, and then asked to restart your Mac (you’ll also be asked something else, but I’m saving this for the iBook users). After you log back in, open up System Preferences and click on the “Displays” preference panel. There will be that “Arrangement” tab that I mentioned earlier. Click it, and you can control the display across the two displays (hint: you have to have another display plugged into your Mac in order to see the Arrangement tab, so do this first).

But wait, there’s more. Not only does Screen Spanning Doctor turn on screen spanning, it also activates the higher resolutions available with your video card. For example, when I turned on screen spanning late last night to test it out, I was able to set the resolution on my iBook to only 1024×768. This is as high as the screen on the iBook can go, so it’s all that’s available to me (if your iMac or eMac screen can display at a higher resolution, you should be able to use this software to gain access above the 1024×768 limit Apple has set for you). However, my 21″ Sony monitor can go much, much higher, and those resolutions were available to me.

There’s still more though. If you are an iBook user, and you want to be able to close your screen but not put your computer to sleep, you can let Screen Spanning Doctor make this happen for you as well. You’ll be asked after you choose to turn on screen spanning if you also want to activate this feature. Frankly, with an iBook, I’ve read that this is definitely not a good idea, so I clicked the No button. iBooks use their keyboards to expel heat, and if you’ve ever felt the left side of the palm rest, you know it can get very hot. This could potentially damage your iBook and/or its screen. In fact, the readme file that comes with Screen Spanning Doctor warns against this feature.

If you want to revert back to your previous settings, you can run Screen Spanning Doctor again and just tell it to disable spanning. This will put things back the way they were. Alternatively, you can reset your Mac’s NVRAM to get things back to normal.

Regarding the Macintosh models supported, this seems to work with all the newer iBooks, but many of the older ones (all the non-white models, for example) are not supported and the developer’s Web site warns you that, in some cases, you can damage your iBook, especially if it uses the Rage Mobility video card. For a list of supported models, visit the developer’s Web site (see below).

So, if you are looking to use two displays with your iBook, iMac, or eMac, Screen Spanning Doctor can make this happen for you. It’s donationware, so if you feel that it makes your life better, you can donate to the developer via link on the Web site.

More Information
To get Screen Spanning Doctor, visit http://macparts.de/ibook/.
Visit Macworld for information about their test with an iMac G5 and Screen Spanning Doctor.

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Have you ever seen that cool remote control on the new iMacs? Have you seen the iHome product up close? It is impressive. Not perfect, but impressive. More an experience of things to come. A consolidation of your media collection and access to media delivered via the web. If you see a 20″ iMac dishing up high definition movie trailers, you begin to understand that this is a new experience. It is impressive. Not perfect.

But some of us have functioning older machines. Where is our iHome? How do experience the potential? How do we dream about the potential without touching it? Where is iHome for the rest of us?

Introducing…. ‘MediaCentral’

MediaCentral is a freeware product from Equinox that mirrors the iHome functionality and adds a few new treats such as WebTV. Apparently you can buy remote controls, that work much as the little control shipped with the new macs. Or you can just use your keyboard.

And it has flexibility..

MediaCentral plays DVDs, Video_TS files and much more including: quicktime H.264 with AAC (excluding FairPlay protected files) and AVIs. MediaCentral also supports:
• AVI
• DivX
• DV Files
• Xvid
• MP3
• AC3 codecs
• MPEG1
• MPEG2
• MPEG4

And it has a pretty slick interface. And it seems a little more responsive than iHome.

And did I mention it was a freeware product?

Is it perfect? No… Is it impressive? Yes.

Would I recommend you download it and give it a try. Absolutely. We are again living in interesting times.

Take a look at MediaCentral.

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I wonder why I include this little testimony. Am I pushing the platform? Selling Apple without a commission? Participating in the assurance of my own decision to live Apple? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a community thing. It is nice to welcome another soul that has found sanity in the midst of chaos. Yes, there is a vision. And it is greater than any self centered interests I may have. We add another spark of life and intelligence to the community. Another voice. We all benefit.

Posted at www.robhyndman.com

Week One on the Mac

March 24, 2006 at 19:09 | 0 comments »
It’s now coming to the end of my first week as an OS switcher, and it’s been a very good week. Things have happened quickly, but the more I use it, the more pleased I am with the MacBook Pro and OSX. When day 2 of the switch started earlier this week I thought I would be running the laptop and my desktop PC in tandem for a while, and so as my thoughts turned to sync issues I got busy installing Foldershare and the like to make sure the machines played well together. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Mac: I started exploring OSX software, and after a few early discoveries (thanks again to everyone who very generously left software tips in the comments or in my inbox - please keep them coming) began to truly understand realize why Mac fans are so dedicated to this box.

Macs are a joy to use. This machine is a profoundly compelling mixture of design and engineering creativity - software feels the way it should. Hardware is a pleasure to use. Put together, this system is smart, fast, beautiful, creative, and, particularly in the design of the software, relentless about challenging preconceived ideas about how software should work and what it should do. There is artistry here. And passion, too. This isn’t a computer - it’s a cult. Thank god.

So, after only a few days, it’s obvious to me now that I’m here to stay. And I’m no longer thinking of sync - now, the plan is migration.

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It sure didn’t take very long. You just knew someone could figure this out without breaking a sweat. Not that I really understand the process described in order to install XP, but it looks like it will be real doable in the near future when someone writes a script, or a loader of some kind.

The next question will be… Would I load XP anyway??

I’m not sure what the answer to that question will be. Just to say I can ? After watching several of my friends struggle with the beast in all its confusion, I wonder why I might waste my time. But just in case I change my mind, I am posting the link that begins the madness by documenting the process. For the adventurous, have at it. Report back from the front on your successes. May the “force” be with you.

Find article here…

For those unaware, a website titled Windows XP on Mac has been collecting a pool of donations for anyone who could successfully boot Windows XP on an unmodified Intel Mac. The pool grew slowly at first, but as the news of the contest spread, it passed the US$13,000 mark. The first hint that “narf” may have figured it out came in the form of a set of photos on Flickr that seemed to show Windows XP on an iMac of some sort. Next came the videos and an acknowledgement from the contest administrators that a solution had been submitted. And finally, this morning, onmac.net announced that a proposed solution had been found and had been tested successfully. The contest had been won, and it looks like “narf” is about to almost US$14,000 richer.

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This is an interesting bit of information to salt away. I pulled this from an OWC email. I couldn’t find this information on their site so I posted it here. The new MacIntels offer an adventure. Some things we might take for granted are changing. This is an FYI post.

One of the biggest changes to the new Intel based Macs concerns bootability. Up until now, any partition with Apple OS X installed could be booted on ANY Mac that had support for that OS X version. For example, one FireWire Drive with OS X installed could be carried around and used on ANY Apple model with FireWire boot support. As Apple releases new systems, they have supported them for the OS X version current when the system was released. I don’t want you thinking that I am referring to booting OS X 10.2.x Jaguar on a PowerMac G5 that came out in 2005. But… Lets take a FireWire drive with 10.4.3 or later installed on it. That single drive will boot OS X on ANY iBook, iMac, PowerMac with a G3, G4, or G5 processor made since a about 2001 when FW bootability was standard across.

The rules change with the Intel based Macs. Apple has adopted Intel’s Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) to replace Open Firmware and the Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table (GPT) replaces the Apple Partition Map(APM) scheme for boot device formatting. The short of all that techno babble is that a drive set up to boot on a PPC Mac is not bootable on an Intel based Mac and vice versa.

Accessing data from external drives is a different story. The new Intel Macs have no issue at all with mounting, reading/writing data to APM drives. In fact, by default APM is used by the new Intel Macs when you go to initialize an external device. If you want to make an external boot volume for your Intel Mac, you must manually select to use the GPT scheme. An important note about GPT - in addition to not being bootable on non-Intel Macs, GPT formatted devices also will only be recognized on Macs using OS X 10.4 or later.

Another big change is that the new Intel Macs offer USB2 boot support. While FireWire 400 still offers superior performance versus USB2, this does open up the possibility to a far wider array of devices the Intel Macs will let you boot with.

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Symantic has posted a description of this new malware threat and documented a removal procedure. I will post an excerpt below.

1. Delete the infected file

At the time of writing, the file infected by this worm has the following file name:

lastestpics

Delete this file. If this file has not been executed, no further action should be necessary.

2. Delete any associated files and restart the compromised computer

If the infected file has been executed, delete the following file:

/Users/[CURRENT USER]/Library/InputManagers/apphook.bundle

The compromised computer must then be restarted to remove the infection from memory.

Note:

[CURRENT USER] is the name of the user who was logged in when the infected file was executed.
The worm may infect other applications. If you suspect that an application has been compromised, it should be replaced from a clean backup copy.

It is also interesting to note their assessment of risk. for all the attention it got. If I read this right, less than two site infections were actually found. Could that be true?

Wild

Number of infections: 0 - 49
Number of sites: 0 - 2
Geographical distribution: Low
Threat containment: Easy
Removal: Easy

Maybe I don’t read these things right. But it looks pretty minimal. However, that does not minimize the potential..

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There is quite an uproar on web today. The first Mac virus ! or Trojan ! or Malware ! Nobody seems to know what to really call it.

Whatever you call it, it is a call for caution. There is a good overview and analysis over on the Ambrosia forums. I will provide a few excerpts here for your convenience. For a fairly thorough examination, go to Ambrosia.

You cannot be infected by this unless you do all of the following:

1) Are somehow sent (via email, iChat, etc.) or download the “latestpics.tgz” file

2) Double-click on the file to decompress it

3) Double-click on the resulting file to “open” it

…and then for non-Admin users, it fails to infect most applications.

You cannot simply “catch” the virus. Even if someone does send you the “latestpics.tgz” file, you cannot be infected unless you unarchive the file, and then open it.

A few important points

– This should probably be classified as a Trojan, not a virus, because it doesn’t self-propagate externally (though it could arguably be called a very non-virulent virus)

– It does not exploit any security holes; rather it uses “social engineering” to get the user to launch it on their system

– If you’re not running as an admin user, it will silently fail to infect most applications

– It doesn’t actually do anything other than attempt to propagate itself via iChat

– It has a bug in the code that prevents it from working as intended, which has the side-effect of preventing infected applications from launching

– It’s not particularly sophisticated

A good rule of thumb is: if your user account allows you to install an application without entering your password, then this trojan/virus can modify (infect) that application without you entering a password. Regardless, it can install the “apphook” InputManager portion of its payload no matter what type of user account you have (admin or non-admin).

I think this last paragraph has to be looked at closely. It is safest to not allow your user account to install programs without a password. Back in the old days, as an OS9 user, I was the super user. There were no user accounts to speak of. On OSX, it is best to be a plain user and reserve the admin account for admin functions. I know… I know… I do it too. My user account is the admin account. But not for long. It is measurably safer to be a user and reserve the admin account for admin.

And now for the obvious…

DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR RUN THIS FILE

When unarchived (it is a gzip-compressed tar file), which can be done by simply double-clicking on the file, it appears to be a JPEG file because someone pasted the image of a JPEG file onto the file.

After it’s been unzipped, tar will tell you there are two files in the archive:

._latestpics
latestpics

…the ._latestpics is just the resource fork of the file, which contains the pasted in custom icon meant to fool people into double-clicking on it to (in theory) open the JPEG file for viewing. In actuality, double-clicking on it will launch an executable file.

This would lead me to believe that that if I used spotlight to look for a file called latestpics, I might be able to determine whether or not I was infected. My machine seems to run clean.

Although considered relatively inert, this malware product is not to be taken lightly. This is a virus that must trick you into executing it. Historically, I have been fairly smug about the Mac and its fortress like identity. This malware product does not shake my confidence to the core, because it can’t attack me unless I cooperate. However, I see the beauty in abandoning my practice of running as the the admin for everyday operations. Even then, a tricky and properly constructed malware program may catch me someday. A good backup begins to sound like a necessity. But then, it was always a necessity. Many of us have ignored this fact all too frequently.

Bottom line: Check your machines. Consider moving to a user account. If you find that you have been hit, let us know. If you find a way to remove it without paying the virus companies, let us know.

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The storm this last weekend seemed to result in the death of my very reliable G3 iMac 500. It was an odd circumstance of powering on as the power crashed suddenly. The poor beautiful blue iMac would not fire up. I loved this little iMac. It had five user accounts on it and I had upgraded the hard drive to accommodate the increased storage needs. Yes, it ran Tiger, sluggishly. But it worked. I have three students in the house and they all used Word and Powerpoint successfully and compatibly with their classmates. It was hard to justify a new iMac when there was no perceptible suffering at the hands of yesterday’s technology.

So it died. Should I investigate? The ethernet port had been damaged in last summers storm. It ran on an airport card to connect to the internet out of necessity. Hmmm…. It was a wounded machine. Was its death a sign?

Hmmmm…. Sure it was….

I had justified the purchase of a new iMac. The MacIntel. Believe me when I say that it makes me squeamish. I am anxious that once again we may be venturing into the unknown. And after my first couple hours with the machine, I do believe we are in for a bit of an adventure.

My first problem - The iMac quickly recognized the old HP 810c and tried to print to it. Though unsuccessfully. It was all over the place. Different products having different bizarre output. I read on MacFixit that this is a common complaint. Some folks solved their printer problems by downloading fresh printer drivers from the manufacturer. Hmmm… I downloaded the drivers from HP. They were posted in May of last year. How could that solve my problem?

It then occurred to me that the problem may not be so exotic. A fresh install most likely would enforce the correct permissions for the drivers. Could it be that an out of the box iMac already has permissions issues?? The answer is– Yes. I ran repair permissions and a hundred or so items were fixed. Unfortunately, I had installed the drivers before I ran the fix permissions. So, I can’t pinpoint one or the other as the problem specifically. (sorry Neil) What I do know. Run repair permissions and download the drivers. All things started to print smoothly.

Although there may be other print issues lurking, at least there is reasonable confidence in printing again. Whew! My daughter was looking at me cross eyed this morning. “Dad, I need a printed copy of my paper.” Oh, the pressure of being a family IT manager.

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Apple has posted a special iMac Core Duo Support Page.
This page provides support for the new iMac Core Duo. Apple is calling this first MacIntel to ship, the iMac (Early 2006).

Go to page..

Apple has also posted a listing of Universal Applications for PowerPC and Intel CPUs.
This page provides a listing of all known Universal Applications, i.e. those that run on the new Intel CPUs and PowerPC CPUs. There are 650 records as of publication time.

Go to page…

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Ok, here is another post mainly because I like the logo. Isn’t it cool? Their site is nice as well. So….what is FireAnt ? Just another video tool similar to iTunes? Well, not so similar. Is it an RSS news aggregator? Well, not really. It is sort of a blend. An RSS video aggregator… kind of.

But why not use iTunes? Because iTunes just isn’t the right name for a video delivery product. You might think iVideo would be better. Or maybe… FireAnt. Yes, that sends a clear signal. FireAnt! no.. we must shout it….FireAnt ! Now that is clearly better.

FireAnt is your personal connection to the online media universe!

FireAnt delivers a rich media experience through a simple to use, unified viewer that lets you watch all types of content without having to worry about which format it is (Quicktime, Windows Media, Real, Flash, MP3, and more).

FireAnt was created by the pioneers of Videoblogging

We are actively involved in the Videoblogging community (What is a Videoblog?) and founded a thriving Mailing List dedicated to to spreading the word and educating people about personal video creation and Videoblogs. We encourage you to get involved and Be The Media.

ok… I’m just getting used to the idea of podcasting…and then blogging…and the new photocasting…and now it’s videocasting… oh I mean videoblogging…

Jiminy Cricket ! Somebody, slow down the train!

And FireAnt is Windows compatible as well. Does it seem to you that there is a merging of the universe. It’s trembling…shaking even… To hell with the established media ! Let’s be the media !

Take a look at all the fuss here…

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