Ask TUAW: Address Book Smart Groups, printer problems, Saft, and more

As I mentioned on Wednesday, the September 12 Ask TUAW prompted an avalanche of questions--too many to address in one post. So as a special this week, we present Ask TUAW, round II. This time around we'll be covering questions about FairPlay in podcasts, a Company Smart Group in Address Book, sharing an internet connection, migrating from PC to Mac, trying to fix printer problems, and more.

Next week we'll return to our regular Wednesday schedule. As always, you're welcome to leave suggestions and/or questions for next week in the comments below.

Sam asks

Are the free podcasts available via iTunes wrapped in the same FairPlay DRM as music purchased from the iTMS?

Generally speaking, no they are not. Since many of the podcasts are MP3s and FairPlay is an extension of the AAC format, then clearly most podcasts don't have DRM (including, for that matter, AAC podcasts). Plus, Apple hasn't licensed FairPlay to anyone, so the only files you will find FairPlay on are from Apple.

Kevin asks

I use Safari and when clicking links on TUAW or any other website I like them to open in Tabs instead of new windows. I know of two was to make this happen first is Command-Click and the second is to Control-Click-Open in new Tab. However, I would like a way for Safari to automatically and always open links that pop in a new tab instead of a window. Do you know if there is a way to do this ?

I have to admit that I'm not quite following your question. But I think the essential Safari extension Saft ($12) may do what you want. As you can see above it includes a "Always open browser window in tab" option. Saft has a variety of other great features as well, so I highly recommend it.

Josh asks

Every time I open Safari or Firefox and I visit a website with Java or even youtube, I get the broken Quicktime symbol over the location that can't be displayed. I'v deleted quicktime, reinstalled it, made sure I have all updates, checked plugins (i think I have them all that are specific to my needs), but it never works. I wouldn't mind not seeing another Java ad again, but not having youtube is a big problem. Even when I try to upload a picture in facebook or myspace, I can't because of the broken Quicktime symbol (Quicktime symbol with a question mark in the middle of it). Somebody please come to the rescue. Thank you for your help.

We've covered this in a previous Ask TUAW. Basically you just need to make sure the Flash media checkbox in the MIME Settings... sheet of the Advanced tab of the QuickTime Preference Pane is unchecked.

Ryan asks

Is there a way to sort contacts in Address Book by Company only? Contacts can be entered as a company (by checking the box below the entry name), and are given a city type icon vs. the vcard icon; but I want to view only those company entries to narrow my search from the personal contacts. Couldn't seem to make it happen, even with the Smart Group sorting option. Oh wait...I guess I could just throw them all into a regular Group...seems too basic & cumbersome, but works. Any other ideas?

You can set a Smart Group to show only companies. In Address Book just create a new Smart Group with the criterion: Companies is set (as below).

Lee asks

I have a two-mac set-up - one MacMini, which acts as a server-like machine (both printers and three external hdds attached) and the other is a MacBook Pro. Both connect to my (crappy, service-provider-supplied) WIFI router for internet access, but are also wired with an ethernet cable for data access (ie for accessing the Mini drives on my MBP). I always seem to have a problem with printer sharing though. Most of the time, my two printers show up twice each - one reachable through WIFI and one reachable through Ethernet. Because of my work, I'm often printing large image-heavy documents and printing over WIFI often just doesn't print at all or takes forever because of the transfer rate. The problem is, when choosing a printer it's impossible to see which is the WIFI connected one and which is the ethernet connected one! You can't even name them differently. Is there an application or setting I can tweak to only allow printer sharing over ethernet? Is my setup a bit daft?

Hmm, this is an interesting problem. I'm not aware of a way to allow printer sharing only over ethernet, but I do have a suggestion. Instead of allowing the MacBook Pro to connect directly to the wifi router, instead turn on Internet Sharing on the Mac mini (as we've described here). In other words, share the internet from wifi to ethernet on the Mac mini (which itself will continue to be connected to the router by wifi), but turn off wifi on your MacBook Pro and depend on the Mac mini to access the internet through ethernet. If you set it up this way the MacBook Pro will only be able to see the printers over ethernet.

Mike asks

In the coming weeks I will be selling my (custom-built by myself) PC and buying an iMac. There are various reasons for this, but I won't go into them. Now, even though I've used OS X quite extensively, I still have a a couple questions I'd like answered.

First is moving my iTunes library. It's currently stored on a seperate harddrive, and iTunes Music Library.xml refers to D:\Music several times (and is also defined to be the location of the music folder), however every guide I can find on doing this just involves replacing an existing but empty library with a copy of the old one. Normally, I wouldn't be concerned about this, but I have 30 GB music and I use star ratings extensively, and I'd rather not lose them. As well, I've ripped several of my DVD box sets and labeled them as TV Shows (lot of work putting in all the episode titles and such), which doesn't seem to be a property of the MP4 files, but just entries in the library, again something I'd like to not lose.

The question isn't entirely clear, but I guess you're asking how to migrate an iTunes library from a PC to a Mac. I don't have a PC so I can't really vouch for this, but there is a great tutorial at Lifehacker that covers this exact thing. As far as the library.xml file, you apparently just need to open the file replace the PC format paths with Mac (Unix) format paths.

Second question, I will definitely be running VMware Fusion (the ability to run the Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine is incredibly attractive), but I'm curious if I'll be able to use hardware that doesn't work in OS X but works in XP (the hardware in question is my Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector)?

From the release notes for Fusion: "Even devices that do not have drivers for Mac OS X will work in a virtual machine." As far as that particular connector, I have no idea. But why exactly do you want to use the Nintendo connector? From what I can tell the Nintendo connector is just a modified USB wifi dongle so why not just share your Mac's internet with the Wii or DS as mentioned above.

The Airport Extreme Base Stations are looking quite good, especially with AirTunes. Except it doesn't seem that the Extreme base stations support AirTunes, only the cheaper, lower-end AirPort Express do. Is this just some kind of information I'm missing or is this actually the case? It seems quite counter-intuitive for the high-end hardware to lack features, especially one as useful as AirTunes.

There are two different products here: it seems like the Airport Express is designed primarily to support AirTunes, while the Airport Extreme is Apple's main router. In other words, while the Express can function as a router, it looks like Apple intends that as a subsidiary function primarily as a travel router when you're on the road. In other words, if you want AirTunes you get an Express; if you want a router get the Extreme.

Greg asks

I have 2 identical HP Photosmart 3180 All-In-One printers- one at home and one at work. Both are connected via USB cable. But once I print with one, the other no longer recognizes the driver. I have to delete and then reinstall it for the other printer to work...and so it goes each time I change printers. What's up with that?

Well needless to say it shouldn't be doing that. I don't know exactly what the problem is, but I do have a suggestion. I would suggest checking out Printer Setup Repair ($29.95). Fortunately, there's a 7 day demo to see if it'll help with your particular situation.