AdventuresInMacOS

Mac OS X has a handy feature designed for the visually impaired. Called VoiceOver, it basically speaks what you’re mouse is point at. So it’ll say things like “TweetDeck Window TweetDeck” when you hover over TweetDeck for example. It also tells you keyboard commands for interacting with the desktop.

It’s a great little feature, but not when it randomly comes on!

This recently happened to a client of mine, who proceeded to call me with the welcome line “HELP! My computer is talking to me!”

No panic though, turning voiceover on and off is simply a matter of pressing Apple and F5 together.

If you want more control over your VoiceOver, such as the voice it uses, and how much it tells you, you can do it from System Preferences…

1. Click the Apple logo
2. Click “System Preferences”
3. Click “Speech”
4. If necessary, click on the “Text to Speech” tab.

You can then adjust settings as required.

Wikidot has a very handy Snow Leopard Compatability List.

If you’ve been listening to MacBreak Weekly (specifically this episode), you’ll know that Leo and many others have had lots of compatability issues with the upgrade. Most of these relate to legacy APIs which Apple has removed from the OS in it’s drive to speed up and slim down the software.

If you’re thinking of installing Snow Leopard, this list is well worth a look before you take the plunge!

You can view the Wiki here.

I just did a requested Skype update (now running 2.8.0.722) and when it had finished and tried to log me back in, I got an error…

Unable to mount database

I checked in the MacOS X board on the Skype Community for possible answers. Although nothing worked, I thought one was worth reposting here, as well as my eventual solution.

(if you look at the board, ignore the one about reinstalling the Mac. That’s just crazy!)

The most effective solution on the board (given the amount of people sayin thank you!) seems to be do delete your Skype preferences. To do that… Continue reading »

I got confirmation from Amazon today that my copy of Snow Leopard has been shipped.

For those in the dark, Snow Leopard is the new version of Mac OS X. It’s leaner, meaner and MUCH smaller - ie, it takes up much less disk space.

Most of the changes are “under the hood”, so you won’t notice much change. But reports suggest that the new version is more of a service pack. Lots of fixes and improvements, not many new features.

That’s causing some people to suggest it’s a bit cheeky of Apple to be charging for what basically amounts to a service pack, but for 30quid, I’m willing to give it a go.

I will however reserve judgement until I get my copy installed. Full report soon.

@TakingTech just asked on Twitter how to do a right-click on a MacBook.

It’s dead simple, but I thought it might be worth mentioning as it’s not immediately obvious to switchers from Windows.

Anyway, to right click on MacBook (or any Mac with a sinle button mouse), simply hold down the Apple key and click.

Easy peasy!

Apple today release version 3.0 of it’s iPhone / iPod Touch operating system which was announced at WWDC last week.

New iPhone features include…

• Lanscape keyboard (yay!)
• Peer-to-peer gaming (linking 2 iPods/iPhones over wifi for network games)
• Buy stuff from the iTunes store over WIFI (I thought you could already?)

In addition, iPod Touch users also get the following…

• Shake to Shuffle
• Parental Controls (so you can lock your parents out, presumably?)
• Automatic WIFI login
• Push Notifications even when apps aren’t running
• iTunes Store account creation

There’s even more, as you can see by visiting http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

Sadly, the update costs $9.99 or (£5.99 in the UK) - not too bad, but free would have been better! Definitely worth the update in my opinion.

UPDATE Great article - “iPhone 3.0 Update - 10 Hidden Features“

I’ve recently got really into Twitter, the social media phenomenon. I use TweetDeck, which gives me a great overview of what my followers are up to, who’s talking about me, Musoswire, etc.

One thing that Twitter does allow is hash tags. Hash tags allow you to tag a tweet (a Twitter message) with a phrase, allowing other to search for all tweets relating to a certain topic. Examples of popular hash tags include #followfriday, #blogmonday and #startrek.

But you may have noticed… there is no # key on the Mac keyboard!! So how to do you use hash tags? Well…. the # can be found by holding ALT and pressing 3 on the top row of the keyboard (pressing 3 on the numeric keypad doesn’t work).

It’s a small thing, but I’m really glad to have # back in my life….

Last night a friend of mine was asking how to forcibly remove a CD from his mac drive, cos apparently it had got stuck and wouldn’t come out. I Google’d (as you do), and gave him some answers which I thought I would share with you all in case you’re ever in a similar predicament.

First of all, always try the usual methods. If you’re mac has an eject key on a keyboard, press that and hold it down for a couple of seconds, until you see the eject graphic on-screen. The second method is to drag the CD icon on the desktop into the Trash. Both of these methods should eject the disc.

Continue reading »

The MacOS X operating system is generally pretty stable, but ocassionally things go awry. One element that seems reasonably tempremental are Widgets. Luckily, they’re quite easy to restart…

1. Click on the widget that’s dying on you to give it “focus”
2. Hold the APPLE key and press R
3. The widget will do a little an animation, and should be back working within 30 seconds

And that’s it!

OK, so I’m a bit late on this one! Forgive me, it’s been a busy month…

The annual keynote from Steve Jobs @ the MacWorld Expo is usually something to get very excited about. There’s always something very new and very cool announced, and there’s always a big buzz.

This year was the first time I’d followed the buzz via Twitter (we cancelled Sky TV, so I couldn’t watch it on CNBC or anything..). It was quite incredible to watch the volume of Tweets coming through solely regarding MacWorld. “super cool” as Jobs might say.

Unfortunately, Steve didn’t say anything. He pulled out due to his health (get well Steve!) and was replaced by Phil Schillier, who is (apparently) the “Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing”. Nice.

Let’s just say… he’s not Steve Jobs.

Although to be fair, he didn’t really have anything to be Jobs-y about - no real new products, no visions, no slam dunking of the opposition. In fact, the best he had to work with was new version of iLife and iWork. Not exactly the iPhone, really, is it?

Maybe I’m being too hard. It’s not Phil’s fault Apple had nothing cool to show us. All we can do is look forward to MacWorld 2010, and hopefully the return of Steve Jobs!

You can watch Phil’s Keynote speech here.