Ask TUAW: Sharing iPhoto and iTunes between users, seeing who's connected, scrubbing Sercices, and more
This week in Ask TUAW we have questions about sharing iPhoto and iTunes between different users on the same Mac, seeing who's connected to your wireless network, cleaning up the Services menu, installing applications, the nature of open source software and more. Remember new Mac users and Switchers who are enjoying our Mac 101 series should feel very welcome to post questions for Ask TUAW; we're happy to have them. As always, please submit your questions for next week by commenting to this post.
Jose asks
Do you guys know how to share Libraries between users of the same computer? I would like to share my iTunes and iPhoto Library with my brother and parents as we all use the same computer at home.
The easiest way to do this is just to turn on sharing in the iTunes and iPhoto preferences and always keep yourself logged in. When your brother and parents log in with fast user switching, your libraries will appear in their source list as shared libraries. As you can see to the right, I'm sharing here between accounts, with "source" account logged in and iTunes and iPhoto running.
If you don't want to keep your account logged in at all times, then you will have to move the actual music and picture files to the /Users/Shared directory and then create aliases in each account along with changing the Access Control Lists as described here. You might also try the shareware program ShareAlike ($4.95) which purports to do this. Keep in mind, I have not used any of these methods and so cannot recommend them from personal experience.
Cinda asks
Is there a way to see who/what has tapped into a secure wireless network? I set up a secure network at work, but am convinced the Sprint store next door has tapped into my network more than once. When I asked them if they used a wireless network, the response was that no, they didn't even have a way to access one-besides, the only networks in the building were mine, the dentist's and one other no one can identify....So...is there a way to see who's been poking around in our airspace?
The best way to do this is probably on your router. You don't say which router you have, but most of them have some page in the browser-based administration (i.e. what you get to if you point your web-browser to the router address, often 192.168.1.1 or similar) which lists connected devices. You can look on there and compare the MAC addresses it lists to what you know should be connected to your router.
There are some rather advanced tools out there that you might be able to use to look at network traffic (depending on your configuration) like kismac, MacSniffer, and if you're really ambitious Ethereal in X-Windows. Nonetheless, this is probably more trouble than it's worth. I would suggest just looking through your router's administration pages for the connected devices page.
Mo asks
Is there an easy way (besides editing plist files), such as some kind of handy utility, for modifying the keyboard shortcuts for items in the Services menu?
Yes, you want the donationware Service Scrubber which we last mentioned a while back. It will allow you to change the keyboard shortcuts, and even to remove Services you don't want. You can also restructure the Services menu to get to looking more to your liking.
Rob asks
I want to autolaunch an application when I install it. Many programs in the Windows world have a simple checkbox that says 'run when install is complete'. Checking that checkbox will start the program after it has installed. I want this feature on my Mac. It is very cumbersome to drag the file into the application folder and then go find it. I know that if I hold the dragged file over the application folder, the folder will 'open up' and I will be able to see the applications in there. Well, I have a lot of apps and I still have to scroll down to my application that I just installed and launch it.
Well you need to keep in mind that it's not quite the same thing. On the Windows side, the installer itself is a little program that then starts up the newly installed application at the end of the process. With the Mac, for the most part you don't use installer programs (though some applications do require them), so there's no possible equivalent to do the actual starting up.
Now I suppose you might be able to do what you want with a little AppleScript droplet application, unfortunately a little AppleScript is a lot more AppleScript than I have. I agree that this process is annoying, which is why I use Quicksilver to launch. For instance, when I download a new program (and mount the DMG if there is one), I then drag the application to my /Applications folder (which is in my Finder sidebar). Then I just invoke Quicksilver, type the name of the application, and it's generally there (though you might occasionally need to do a manual refresh if you're too quick). It might also help to know that if you're looking at a long list of applications in the Finder, you can skip down pretty close to the one you're looking for by hitting the first letter of the application's name. Dear TUAW readers, do you have any better suggestions?
Graham asks
I have always wondered how open source programs work? Who programs them? Who decides new features? It it usually someones job to look after everything?
Well this is generally not the kind of question we answer, but I'll try to give you some quick answers. For the most part, these are volunteer projects. Some coder will generally feel the need for some application, etc. and set out to fill it (often spoken of as "eating your own dogfood"). If he's successful, he then might recruit others to join the project. Most open source projects are small time affairs with only one or two developers. However, some very successful projects (e.g. Adium ) will attract more volunteers. Generally speaking, whoever starts the project (and registers with SourceForge or Google Code, etc. for hosting) is in control. Since it's open source, however, other can easily "fork" the code, changing or adding things if they disagree with the project lead. As far as how features get set, it's pretty much a result of the community that surrounds the project that making requests and the developers' willingness to accommodate those requests.
That said, there are some open source projects that are actually contributed to by for-profit companies. For example, the UNIX BSD foundation for OS X is actually an open source project called Darwin. Another famous commercially supported open source project is OpenOffice which is spear-headed by Sun Microsystems.
Juano asks
...worse than the speed is that I find that sometimes my wifi connection ramdomly gets disconnected. I also have this problem if I ran emule through parallels. Am I missing a configuration? and also, can I get my computer to automatically reconnect to my network?
There's not really enough information here for me to make an educated guess. However, if you're using WPA encryption, you might want to check out this post from last year that details some suggestions from Apple.
shannon asks
I just received a verizon motorola slvr lc7. It is preloaded to work only with XP. A cingular version of this same phone does work with iTunes/Mac. Is there any way to switch my XP WinMeia Player phone software to iTunes? thank you for your help.
Frankly I seriously doubt it, but I simply don't know not being that familiar with this phone. However, I do have a suggestion. Does the phone allow you to access MP3s stored on microSD card? If so, you could just mount the microSD card in a USB reader and then use the same iTuneMyWalkman which we recommended last week.
Okay, that's it for this week. Keep the questions and comments coming!
This information is provided for your entertainment. Neither TUAW nor this author can be held responsible for any problems arising from the use of the information provided here.
