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Ask TUAW: DJ software, concatenated RAIDs, Migration Assistant, Remote Desktop Connection and more

mat lu
Updated ·5 min read

This time in Ask TUAW we're looking at DJ software, catenated RAIDs, Spaces, Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection Client, tab options in Safari, Spaces, and more.

As always, your suggestions are most welcome, and 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, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!

Howard asks.

is there any way to mimic turntables with my mackbook without buying cd turntables or the like? I would just like to control most everything through my mac but have the full functionality to make my own mixes and to beat match. What would be good to get for this?

howiegroove adds

Is there a program that would work with an external piece of hardware for crossfading and pitch adjustment?

This is one area in which I have no personal experience. Looking around a bit, however, I found quite a few applications for DJ-ing on a Mac. It's a couple of years old, but you might start with this overview at Ars Technica. His recommendation was TRAKTOR DJ Studio which just happens to be 50% off right now for $119. TRAKTOR does support external controllers. However, there are many other DJ applications out there, some of which don't appear in the review. If you don't want to pay for TRAKTOR I would have a look at MacUpdate, though I can't really offer any concrete recommendations.


Michael asks

I am running 10.5.3 on a latest gen mac mini. I have my iTunes library sitting on an external firewire 750GB Western Digital Mybook. The external hard drive seems to getting filled up quite fast. I would like to be able to purchase another firewire drive and combine the storage with my existing drive, without losing the data. A RAID0 configuration would not be ideal, as I don't want to stripe the data, just combine the storage. If I go with the Concatenated RAID, will the data be lost during the build? Also, if one drive fails, will I lose all of the data? I would think not, since the data is not striped amongst the drives, but my research has lead me to believe otherwise.

From what I can tell it would probably be a bad idea to set up a concatenated RAID. If you use Disk Utility it will erase the disk contents. There may be a way to do it with the command line diskutil. However, to answer your other question, yes, a concatenated set will completely fail even if only one of the drive fails. My recommendation is not to do it. Your best bet would probably be something like a Drobo; unfortunately they're not cheap (though, the first gen Drobo is on clearance right now for $350).


smartfather muses

I would love to switch to Safari if I could get an easy, free way to sync my bookmarks. Hmm, maybe someday.

If you have access to a FTP server you might have a look at SafariDepot as a free Safari sync tool.


Alan asks

I'm finally gonna switch over to Leopard pretty soon. I've got a 500GB external USB drive, which has a clone of my Macbook's drive on it, courtesy of Carbon Copy Cloner. I plan on doing a wipe and install for Leopard, as I've installed a lot of junk on here. My question is, do you have any tips on what applications I should export my data from, to make the clean install easier? I understand that Migration Assistant does not work on external USB drives, only Firewire.

Migration Assistant can read user accounts off of USB drives on Intel Macs. I think that might have been a limitation at one time, but I have successfully used Migration Assistant on a USB drive (containing a SuperDuper! clone).


Caitlin asks

Anyone know a good tool to get Spaces to loop through the first space with the last space? I have three spaces in one column.

The best way to do this is put the three spaces in one row. Then it will loop back if you use the arrow keys.


Stephen asks

Will purchased apps from the App Store be licensed for a single iPhone or for a single iTunes account? My family has 2 phones running on 1 iTunes account, and I was wondering if both of us could use a copy of the same app without having to pay for it twice.

While I have no means for testing this for myself, several folks have reported that applications purchased from the App Store are licensed for the iTunes account and not the individual device. So you can download applications to multiple iPhones linked to the same iTunes account.


Adam asks

Is there a simple program that lets me on my MacBook Pro connect to my Grandfathers Windows XP machine across the country like you can do with iChat Screen Sharing when you have two Macs connected?

Yes, Microsoft offers a free Remote Desktop Connection Client. You can also run VNC, but there's not really much reason to do that.


David asks

How do I set Safari to open new pages in new tabs? That is, where is the equivalent to this feature from Firefox?

Okay, if I understand you correctly you want to force Safari to open all links to open a new tab and not a new window. Check out this hidden feature we posted on a while back.