DoSomethingWhen
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Ask TUAW: AirPort Extreme bridge, iTunes smart playlists, USB drive backup, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column! This time we've got questions on using an AirPort Extreme as a wireless to ethernet bridge, automatically backing up a USB flash drive, building smart playlists in iTunes, migrating an iTunes Library and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.
Ask TUAW: Windows Printing, AutoFill, FireWire HDs, MacBook power adapters and more
It's time again for Ask TUAW, our weekly feature where you ask the questions and we make up the answers... er, I mean carefully research and determine the optimal solution. This week we'll be tackling questions about printing from OS X to a printer connected to a Windows box, AutoFill in Safari, problems with a FireWire hard drive, using a MacBook Pro power adapter with a MacBook, and more.As always readers' suggested answers are most welcome! Please leave your questions for next week in the comments.
TUAW Tip: The easy way to backup on mount
Sometimes you have to suffer through the hard way once or twice just to find out... there's an easier way. I've posted recently about commercial backup applications that trigger a backup when you connect a target drive; I've posted on roll-your-own scripts that do the same thing. Over at MacOSXHints, an enterprising soul took the scripts from post #2 and enhanced/extended them. Great effort, everyone!Then, along comes a comment to the scripting hint: "Hey, why not just use Do Something When?" Gosh, never heard of that, let's check it out... gadzooks! A preference pane that launches an application or document when a drive is mounted! Why, with that plus SuperDuper!, or Automator, or even rsync/rsnapshot and Platypus -- you'd be a backup machine.So, the way to trigger backups on mount can be summed up thusly: Create your backup script in your tool of choice and save as a document or applet. Trigger that script when your drive is mounted, using DSW. There is no step three. There's no step 3! See additional notes and caveats after the jump.
