Ask TUAW: CUPS, Leopard Boot Camp, iPhone visual voicemail and more
Recovering somewhat from our two separate editions of Ask TUAW last week this week we tackle a number of questions we've covered before, as well as new questions on CUPS, Boot Camp in Leopard, changing the default application associated with a file type, disappearing visual voicemail, and much more.
As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. And now on to the show!
Eddie asks
I recently started using Little Snitch for my traffic watching. Tonight, I tried to print something from Photoshop CS3, not thinking that Little Snitch had mentioned Photoshop wanted to connect to an IP address on port 631. Since I didn't think PS had a reason to connect out, I denied it. When I tried to print, however, I found myself unable. I saved the file to a PSD on my desktop and opened it in Preview, which upon printing, asked to connect to the same IP over the same port. I quickly realized that all my prints were trying to connect to the same IP, including two new apps to me; PrinterProxy and makequeues. Is this normal? Why would a USB printer be spooling through a server elsewhere? The printer is a Canon MX310. Thanks!
According to this thread on MacOSXHints, this is a standard feature of CUPS the underlying system that OS X (like other Unix platforms) uses for printing. This is nothing to worry about; the "server" in question is actually your local machine.
mark asks
What is the easiest way to replicate with Macs the Remote Desktop functionality of Windows XP? I'd like to be able to control my home iMac from a traveling MacBook Pro. I've seen some services like LogMeIn, but wondered if there was a more direct method.
We've covered a similar question before. LogMeIn probably is the easiest solution, but setting up a VNC connection is really not that difficult.
Pat asks
I have a dumb question. How do I set a program as the default for a file type? I know you can do it for individual files, but can I do it for all files?
Not a problem! Just select a file of the type you want in the Finder and "Show Info" ( ⌘I).
Then select your preferred application in the "Open with:" section and click the "Change All..." button.
Now all files of that same type should open in that application. So here you see I've changed the default application for Word documents to Pages.
Matt asks
I'm getting a MacBook sometime around December-January time. Would I be better getting it in December or January? I have only recently started watching Apple's pricing and don't know when the best time to buy is, if there even is a 'best time'.
The answer to questions like this is pretty much always: get it when you need it. That said, Macworld San Francisco will occur from January 14-18, 2008 so if you can wait until then it can't hurt.
Anthony asks
I have recently discovered the joy of making my own podcasts on rare occasion. Is there a way to make my own audiobook that will show up as such in iTunes or my iPod which I can then share for free (no protection)?
An audiobook in iTunes is just an AAC file with the .m4b file extension. So to turn any audio file into an audiobook you just need first to convert it to an AAC (if it's not one already), then manually change the file extension to .m4b and (re-)import it into iTunes. Playlist has more detailed instructions here.
k asks
i know this is a little weird, but how do i convert an mp3/aac into a wma? i want to be able to have music ringtones on my cell phone, but for whatever reason the phone can't use mp3s for ringtones. it will use wma. what i need is something like easywma, but in reverse.
As we covered here you need Flip4Mac WMV Studio ($49) to export WMA files on your Mac. It would probably be easier to do this Windows Media Player on a PC (or through Boot Camp, Parallels, or Fusion).
Frank asks
what happened to my visual voicemail?? earlier this past week, i realized that my original voicemail message was gone (a victim of a recent iphone upgrade?), so i touched on the "greeting" button and went to make a new one, which took me to AT&T (!), and a tedious old-phone "touch 1 for this, 2 for this" type of process. once the voicemail was recorded, i thought everything would be back to normal, but it seems that now whenever i get voicemail and i touch the voicemail icon, my phone immediately dials AT&T, and my visual voicemail queue is gone! i really really really HATE listening to voicemail at AT&T in chronological order! any idea what happened? is anyone else experiencing this all of the sudden?
This thread over at MacRumors suggests others are having a similar problem. The upshot seems to be: make sure you're connected to the internet through EDGE. According to this AT&T Support article Visual Voicemail will not work over the wifi connection.
Sam asks
i'm considering getting boot camp on my mbp and installing vista business. i have read however, that support will be gone for boot camp under tiger at the end of this year. if i boot camped and put vista on, then upgraded to leopard, would boot camp still function and would i still be able to get to vista? i hope this doesn't come off as too complex, because as of right now, boot camp is a beta, and in leopard its an actual product. i just don't want to put dual boot capabilities on my mac and find out i can't access my windows partition.
This should not be a problem; obviously Apple is going to provide some kind of upgrade path for folks going from the Boot Camp beta with Tiger to the Boot Camp in Leopard. I assume you're referring to the rumor that Apple will charge Tiger users for Boot Camp once Leopard ships (in something of the way they did for iChat AV back in the transition from Jaguar to Panther). Even if that's the case, however, it won't be a problem for Leopard users; I simply wouldn't worry about this.
Chimera asks
I have a question. Is there a free/open source program that will convert .avi videos to watch on my PSP (will be replaced with iPod touch later on)? I used PSP video 9 on Windows and that was perfect but I've failed to find anything for Mac after I switched. Well I did see VisualHub but thats not free (is it worth it?)
I think VisualHub ($23.32) is absolutely worth it. However, the actual behind-the-scenes heavy lifting in VisualHub is actually done by the open source tool ffmpeg. So in principle you could compile that and use it from the command-line, but unless you're insanely geeky VisualHub is absolutely worth the price for its ease of use. I have myself used it to convert xvid avi files to mp4 files for use on my PSP
wsnoble asks
What is the best RAID1 setup to use plugged into a GigE AEBS? I have the newer AEBS and have 2 MacBooks in the house. I want a device that can plug into the AEBS (10/100/1000 or USB) that is RAID1 (2 disks inside device). What have folks found to work well? My understanding is that I need a ext device that presents itself as RAID1 (read int. controller) to the AEBS, so I can have RAID1 in this setup. So short version: 2 MacBooks, 1 AEBS-GE, and I want a RAID1 solution that plugs into AEBS, so I can have wireless centralized backup point, as well as be ready for "TimeMachine" and maybe a shared wireless iTunes Lib.
This Apple Support article explains that the Airport Extreme does not support RAID on the external disk unless "the disk is a self-contained RAID that presents itself to a computer as a single volume requiring no software support." In other words, you could have an external device with built-in mirroring so long as it presents itself to the Airport Extreme as a single USB Mass storage device. By far the easiest solution for this would probably be a Drobo ($499) which takes care of all the disk mirroring and manipulation for you and appears to the Airport Extreme like a single huge disk. In fact the guys at Data Robotics have an article up on doing exactly this.