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Things to prepare before upgrading your Mac to Snow Leopard

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:07:32 +0000

Don’t judge the book by the cover. That statement might be the perfect analogy of what I feel after upgrading to the latest OS from Apple – Snow Leopard. At first glance, everything looks the same as the previous Leopard – as beautiful, but nothing new. (And honestly, I was expecting a little bit drama here). But the more I use it, the more “wow moments” I get – starting from the bumping number of my remaining hard drive space to the tidy-organized look of Exposé effect. (I am on the treasure hunting mode now trying to find tiny gems scattered all over the place.)

Being the techie-geek that I am, I jumped out at the first chance of upgrading my Mac system from Leopard (10.5) to Snow Leopard (10.6), but everyday Mac users might not be as eager as me. So, if you are still considering on whether you should add the snow to the leopard, here are few things to help you make the decision.

To upgrade or not to upgrade

This is a simple question to answer: upgrade! All of the improvements should be good enough reasons to do so, but Apple has made the decision making even easier by pricing the new operating system at a ridiculously US$29.

But there are some caveats here: Snow Leopard is designed for Mac Intel only, so if your system is still PowerPC based, you are out of luck. (Maybe now it’s the perfect time to go Intel?) Apple also made it clear that the US$ 29 upgrade is only for Leopard, while Tiger (10.4) users should go with the US$ 169 Mac Box Set (iLife ‘09 and iWork ‘09 included).

While the higher price of Mac Box Set is justified by iLife and iWork, please note that Tiger users has other option because many Mac users has confirmed that the US$29 Snow Leopard will upgrade any Intel Mac.

Preparing Your System

If you’ve decided to take the chance, there are few things to do prior upgrading to Snow Leopard.

1. Check for incompatible applications

As with any OS upgrade, there are always issues of incompatibilies. To give you a headstart of what might happen to your softwares after Snow Leopard upgrade, Apple has released a list of incompatible software which will be moved to a folder called – well – Incompatible Software.

You might also want to check other Snow Leopard compatibility list on this Wikidot page.

2. Do some spring cleaning

It’s also a good idea to clean up your system a little bit before doing the upgrade. You can do this by uninstalling unused applications – using uninstaller like AppTrap, and by doing some system maintenance – using something like Onyx. Both apps are free and ironically, both haven’t had Snow Leopard-compatible version – yet.

3. Back up your data

There are just too many examples about how important backing up your data is that I don’t have to do restate it again here. Beside Apple’s Time Machine, another free alternative to back up utilities is CarbonCopyCloner.

4. Make a bootable back up system

If you have an unused extra external hard drive and if you are really paranoid, you could copy a bootable system of your current Mac before installing Snow Leopard. You can use the free trial of SuperDuper for this purpose.

The Upgrading Process

And finally, the upgrade. You may say this is like an anticlimax to the whole story, but the upgrade process itself is a snap. You just:

insert the Snow Leopard Install DVD,
reboot the system,
hold down the Alt/Option key during rebooting to make the booting option appears. (Or not. I need to hold the Alt/Option during my upgrade, but some users report that they don’t have to).
Choose the install DVD to boot,
Follow the instruction on the screen (and for those who want to do clean install: choose Disk Utility from Utility menu at the welcome screen, and do some formatting and repartitioning the disk. Warning: not for the faint hearted!)
Go get something to drink while waiting.

With the system upgraded to Snow Leopard, it’d be perfect to look at all of the improvements the new OS brings. So, please save that thought for our next discussion.

Have you upgraded your system to Snow Leopard? Or will you? Share your thoughts, opinions, upgrading tips and tricks, using the comment below.

Things to prepare before upgrading your Mac to Snow Leopard originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

2 Ways to Batch Rename Files in OS X

Miles — Sat, 16 May 2009 12:45:15 +0000

Whether it’s changing file names of pictures from “IMG_XXXX.jpg” to organizing your MP3s, batch file renaming can both save you time and reduce frustration. Here are two free and easy ways to rename large groups of files in OS X.

Automator

Batch renaming in Automator is quite simple, even if you’ve never used it before.

1. Open Automator, choose “Custom” when the screen prompts you to select a starting point.
2. Drag the Automator action “Get Specified Finder Items” to the right-hand window pane.
3. Drag the Automator action “Rename Finder Items” to the right-hand window pane.

Note: You will be prompted to add a “Copy Finder Items” action. If you want to be safe you could add this as well, but I usually don’t.

With Automator you can change the file name in the following ways:

Date/Time
Text
Change Case
Make Sequential
Replace Text
Name Single Item

The options are fairly self-explanatory, but there are some limitations.

Date/Time- you can only add a date or a time stamp, but not both. The stamp can only be added at the beginning or end of the file name.

Text- You can only add text at the beginning or end of the file name.

Change Case- You can only change the entire file name or extension at once. You can’t, for example, change moscow.jpg to Moscow.jpg.

Make Sequential- You can only add a sequence at the beginning or end of a file name.

Replace Text- This is where I think Automator really falls short. You can only replace a specific string, meaning the file name has to contain what you want to replace in order for Automator to do anything. What if I wanted to remove the last 3 characters from a file name and replace it with “xyz”? Not in Automator.

Name Single Item- I don’t know why you wouldn’t just change the name of the file in Finder without launching Automator, but for completeness the feature is included. You can change the base name (file name without extension), full name (file name with extension), or extension only.

- Choose which action you want and adjust the parameters of the action to suit your needs.

- Drag the Finder items to be renamed into the proper Window.
(Note: with “Get Specified Finder Items“, Automator will not distinguish between directories and files when running. If you want to drag a folder into Automator and have it work on the folder’s contents, use “Get Folder Contents.”)

- Press “Run.”

Automator is included with OS X and is located in the Applications directory by default.

Name Mangler

Name Mangler picks up where Automator falls short. While Automator has a wealth of other actions that you might find useful, Name Mangler does one thing and does it well.

To rename files, drag them into the left-hand window pane. The list of files pops up, and you can select filters (Folders, Folder Contents, Files) to dictate what gets renamed. This also means you can just drag a Folder into NM to rename the contents.

NM offers the following default options:

Find and Replace- includes regular expression matching and an option to preserve extensions and ignore case.
Number Sequentially- Allows you to number in steps other than one, set a prefix and suffix, keep or remove the original name and extension. Unlike Automator, NM allows you to define a prefix or suffix to the sequence.
Change Case- Allows Capitalization, all capitals, or all lowercase. Allows similar preservation or changing of extensions.
Set Extension- fairly self-explanatory.
Add Prefix/Suffix- again, self-explanatory.
Remove/Insert Characters- this is where NM really has an advantage over Automator. You can remove any number of characters from a file name and specify an index to start with. So for example if you had a series of files named
Lyrics_ACT01_Maria.txt
Lyrics_ACT01_Tonight.txt
Lyrics_ACT02_TheRumble.txt
Lyrics_ACT02_Somewhere.txt

You could remove the “ACTXX” characters very easily by defining the number of characters to be removed (5) and the index to start removing at (8- the 8th character from the beginning, starting at 1). Furthermore, you can replace those same characters by inserting text at a specified index. Instead of “ACTXX” I might want “WestSideStory.” To make things even more customizable, you can specify whether the index should count from the beginning or the end of the file name.

But perhaps the most powerful feature included with Name Mangler is the ability to thread together multiple functions in the “Advanced” window. It’s name conversion description language allows you to write pseudo-scripts to tailor your file names to what you want. It might seem a little daunting, but it’s actually very easy for even a beginner with no programming knowledge to pick up the basics after reading the documentation.

Finally, Name Mangler allows you to save your settings as droplets so you can just drag and drop a collection of files to be renamed without actually launching the program.

I use Name Mangler almost exclusively at this point and haven’t found anything that even begins to compare. Do you know of other free batch renaming utilities?

2 Ways to Batch Rename Files in OS X originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Change Sidebar Categories in Finder and iTunes

Miles — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:36:00 +0000

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the steps you need in order to change various strings in OS X’s Finder and iTunes. The same process can be applied to pretty much any other applications.

I find Leopard’s sidebar to be a very handy place to store my most frequently used folders and as a way to access any external or USB drives I have plugged in at the moment. What I can’t stand, however, are the obnoxious capitalized categories (DEVICES, PLACES, etc.) that Apple forces upon us. Let’s change those to normal capitalization.

Before going any further, I must warn you that while this particular example is very easy, in general you should not change files in the System Folder. While working through this tutorial, pay attention to what you can and cannot change. Keep backups of the original files before editing them. Do not add carriage returns (pressing the “enter” key in the middle of a line), delete or add any type of special character (any of the following: % ^ ; / = * ), or change spacing. MakeTechEasier is not responsible for any damage you do to your system.

To begin, log in to the administrator account on your Mac and navigate to

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj

either by clicking through the hierarchy** or pressing Command + Shift + G and copying the path from above. If you navigate manually, once you find the Finder in /System/Library/CoreServices you’ll need to right click and “Show Package Contents.”

Locate the file called LocalizableCore.strings, and make a copy of this file before you do any editing. Store it in a place you can remember (like the Desktop).

Open LocalizableCore.strings in your favorite text editor. I use BBEdit, but TextEdit (included with OS X) or TextWrangler (BBEdit’s little brother, free) will work just fine.

You’re presented with a list in which each line has two entries in quotes separated by an equals sign. On the left are the variable names used by the system. DO NOT TOUCH THESE. On the right are the strings that those variables pass to the user interface. These are what we’ll be editing.

Find the line

"SD5" = "DEVICES";

(It’s line 50)

You can change “DEVICES” to whatever you want. I chose “Devices.” You can do the same thing to SD6-SD8, but remember not to change any values on the left-hand side of the equal sign.

Save your changes and enter your administrator password when prompted. You need to Relaunch Finder for the changes to take effect; Hold down Option and right-click on Finder in Dock and choose “Relaunch” or launch Terminal.app and type in

killall Finder

followed by the enter key.

¡Viola! You now have unobtrusive sidebar categories in Finder.

Now let’s change the sidebar categories in iTunes.

Navigate to

/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj

(Note: if you have moved iTunes to a different directory besides /Applications/ you’ll need to put in the correct path.)

Make a copy of Localizable.strings before doing anything.

Open Localizable.strings in a text editor.

The sidebar category strings are located in the lines with variable names 135.011-135.014 (file lines 189-192). Again I changed mine so they looked less obnoxious, but you’re free to put in whatever you want.

Save your changes and relaunch iTunes for the changes to take effect.

I could not figure out how to change the sidebar capitalization in Apple Mail. If anyone knows how, let me know and I’ll update the tutorial (as well as be eternally grateful).

Change Sidebar Categories in Finder and iTunes originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Turn Your Ubuntu Hardy to Mac OSX Leopard

Damien — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:21:16 +0000

Updated: The updated version of this tutorial for Ubuntu Intrepid can be found at Turn Ubuntu Intrepid into Mac Leopard.

You can’t really turn a Linux system to a Mac, but you definitely can make your Ubuntu Hardy looks like a Mac OSX Leopard.

If you want to change this

into

, follow the steps below.

Before we start…

First, create a folder in your Home and name it Mac_files. Download the following files to the Mac_files folder.

Using Archive manager, extract the ~~three Mac4Lin zip files~~ Modified Mac4Lin theme and Mac4Lin wallpaper to the Mac_files folder.

Apply Mac OSX Leopard Theme

Go to System->Preferences->Appearance.

Select Install and select the Mac4Lin GTK theme (/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GTK Metacity Theme/Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4.tar.gz).

Next, click Install again and select the Mac4Lin icon theme. (~~/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_Icons_Part2_v0.4.tar.gz~~ /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_Icons_modified.tar.gz). When prompted, select “Apply new themes“.

Click Install again and select the Mac4Lin mouse cursor theme. (/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GTK Cursor Theme/Mac4Lin_Cursors_v0.4.tar.gz). Select “Apply new themes” when prompted.

Click ‘customize’ and choose Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4. Go to the “Window border” tab, choose Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4. Click Close.

On the top, go to the Background tab. Click Add and select the Leopard wallpaper. (/home/username/Mac_files/Wallpapers/Leopard.jpg). Click Close to terminate the Appearance window

Install the Dock (Avant Window Navigator)

Open a terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) and type

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and add the following lines to the end of the file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu hardy main

Save and close the file. In your terminal, type

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk

Go to System->Preferences->AWN manager. On the left, click on the Theme. On the right, click Add and navigate to the Mac_files folder. Select the Elegant_glass.tgz file. Check the bullet beside the Elegant glass theme and click Apply.

Next on the left, click on the Applet icon. On the right, scroll down to the stack Applet. Highlight it, then click Activate. This will add the Mac Leopard stack to your dock.

Before you launch the AWN, remove the bottom panel from the desktop first. Right click on the bottom panel and select “delete this panel”. Open AWN via Applications->Accessories->Avant Window Navigator. Once it is activated, you can simply drag and drop the applications into the dock.

Install OSX Fonts

Open a terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

This will Install the Microsoft core fonts.

Next, copy the OSX fonts to the fonts folder

cd /usr/share/fonts
sudo tar xvzf /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/Fonts/OSX_Fonts.tar.gz

Configure the fonts:

cd/
sudo tar xvjpf /home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/Fonts/fontconfig.tbz -C /etc/fonts

Open the Appearance window (System->Preferences->Appearance) and select Fonts tab. Select the following fonts according to the image below. Click Close.

Change the traffic light window control to the left

In the terminal, type

gconf-editor

This will bring up the gconf-editor window. Scroll down to App->Metacity->general. On the right, double click on the button_layout and change the content to ‘close,minimize,maximize:menu’ (without the quote). Click Ok and close the gconf-editor.

Change the menubar

Remove all the icon and applications on the left side of the top panel. Right-click on the icon and select ‘Remove from panel‘. You will left with something like this:

On the right of the top panel, remove the logout icon. Still on the right hand side of the top panel, right click and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Search for files‘. This will add the spotlight icon to the panel.

On the extreme left, right-click and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Main Menu‘. This will add the apple icon on the left. You can now log out and shut down from the Apple dropdown menu (same as Mac OSX).

Next, we are going to install globalmenu so as to display the menubar for each application. In your terminal,

cd Mac_files
wget http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/files/gnome-globalmenu-0.4-svn964.tar.gz
tar zxvf gnome-globalmenu-0.4-svn964.tar.gz
cd globalmenu
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

If you have any errors when installing the package, try

sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite *.deb

If you are having some installation problems with the gnome-globalmenu-applet, try

sudo apt-get install -f

Once finished, right click on the top panel and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Global Menu Applet‘.

You might not see anything initially. Log out and log in again, you should now see the menubar for each application showing on the panel.

If your globalmenu is of a different shade of grey from the rest of the panel (as shown in the image below), right click on any empty space on the panel and select ‘Properties‘. Go to Background tab and select ‘Background image’. Under the selection, go to /home/username/.themes/Mac4Lin_GTK_v0.4/gtk-2.0/Panel and select panel-bg.png. Click OK. (Updated: If you can’t find the .themes folder, right-click and select ‘show hidden files‘.)

Drag the globalmenu to the left just beside the Apple icon. Right click on the globalmenu and select ‘Preferences’. Tick the box beside ‘Display the title of the current application‘ and put maximum width 100. Select the font to be Lucida Grande Bold. Click Apply and OK. You should now have a desktop that resemble Mac Leopard.

Configuring the Login screen

Click on the Apple icon, go to System->Administration->Login Window. On the Local tab, click Add. Navigate to the path /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GDM Theme and select the file Mac4Lin_GDM_v0.4.tar.gz. Check the box beside the newly installed theme to activate it.

Underneath, there is a color selection field, select it and key in the number E5E5E5 into the color code field.

Click Ok. Log out. You should see the login screen as the diagram below.

Configure usplash screen

usplash is the screen that you see when your computer is booting up. We are going to change it to show the white apple screen. In your terminal,

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

Go to System->Administration->Start-Up Manager Go to Appearance tab. Click on the ‘Manage bootloader theme‘. Click Add and navigate to the file /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/GRUB Splash/appleblack.xpm.gz. Check the box “Use background image for bootloader menu” and select ‘appleblack”.

Next, click “Manage usplash theme”. Click Add and add the file /filesystem/home/username/Mac_files/Mac4Lin_v0.4/USplash Theme/osx-splash.so. Click OK. Select OSX-splash from the dropdown box.

Now reboot. You should see the following images:

Creating Dashboard effect

We will use a combination of screenlets and Compiz widget plugin to achieve the dashboard effect.

Install Screenlets

sudo apt-get install screenlets compizconfig-settings-manager

Go to System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effect Setting. On the Left, click on Desktop. On the right, put a check beside ‘Widget layer’

Go to Accessories->Screenlets. Activate the widgets that you want to display. Right click on the widget and select ‘Properties’. Go to Options tab and select ‘Treat as widget’. Do this for all the widgets that you have activated.

You can now see your dashboard in action by pressing F9.

Done. You have completed the transformation of your Ubuntu desktop to Mac OSX Leopard.

Some screenshots:

Turn Your Ubuntu Hardy to Mac OSX Leopard originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)