Connecting to Windows machines on network after upgrading to Leopard

After upgrading my MacBook Pro from  Tiger (10.4) to Leopard (10.5.8), I was no longer able to see the other Windows machines on my network.  What appeared to  work  is  to select Sharing from the System  Preferences, clicking the  Options button and turning on Share files and folders using SMB. Then in the Finder menu selecting Go…Connect to Server… and entering smb://ComputerName for each. This doesn’t seem to be permanent between reboots however.

Here is a thread discussing this issue.

One suggestion from the thread is to go System Preferences…Network and select Assist Me at the bottom.  Trying to setup a connection sets some values (DHCP?) which may fix things.

Connecting to Mac File Sharing from Vista PC

I've been befuddled by Vista, unable to connect to my MacBook Pro from my Vista laptop.  I could always connect from the MacBook to my Vista laptop, though.  Connection issues has been a source of pain for me ever since I started using Vista.

I searched and came across this tip that solved all my problems!  Thanks Matt!

1. “Click Windows Visa Start Orb
2. In search box, type “regedit” and return
3. Once regedit opens, click File -> export to make a backup copy
4. Navigate to Computer HKEYLOCALMACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control Lsa.
5. In the right pane, right-click the “LmCompatibilityLevel” key and select “modify”
6. Change the value from 3 to 1
7. Exit regedit and you should now be able to properly authenticate to your Mac OS X (or other Samba) share.”

Copy a file path to the clipboard on a Mac

The Mac does not support copying a file or folder’s path to the clipboard; weird.  Get Info separates the path from the filename and doesn’t allow you to select either.  There are various workarounds.  This thread discusses some.  I went with this solution which offered a "workflow" file download which I opened in Automater and saved it as a context menu for Finder.

It was suggested that you can drag and drop into a terminal window and then copy paste the path that displays.  You can do this with any program that offers an editbox control.  For example open TextEdit, do File…Save As and drag and drop to the filename EditBox which you can then copy to clipboard from.

BTW, if you ever need to drag & drop into a widget, start dragging then hit F12 to switch to the widgets screen.

Update:  Today an article came out in MacWorld on this subject.  Their first suggestion using Finder Services didn’t work for me.  I just get an icon of a folder or file and when I put TextEdit into plain text mode I get nothing.  Also, the workflow solution I linked to above gives a HFS (colon separated) path,  whereas the article has an example of a script generating a "POSIX" path.  You can download the POSIX version here (thanks Scott) and copy it to ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/.

Pixen: A Free image editor for Mac

I am using Pixen for image editing on the Mac.  Like others that have written, I was surprised that no such program was included in the Mac OS.  I’ve just barely started using it but it so far it does what I need.  I was particularly impressed with the getting started wizard that took you through an overview of the program and  allowed you to set some program settings at the same time!  I model of what all programs should offer.  The only think I would recommend is showing a Page X of Y on each wizard page to let the user know how long it is.

Archives in Cocoa

If you need to save and load data from files, and you don’t mind creating binary files (don’t need to read or edit them), then Archives are the simplest way to go.

Load contents of file into an NSArray:

    NSArray* m_ProcessedFiles = [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithFile:destPath];

Save contents of array to file:

    [NSKeyedArchiver archiveRootObject:m_ProcessedFiles toFile:srcPath];       

Shortcut for renaming a file in Finder

Incredibly, it’s taken me until now to learn the equivalent of F2 in Windows to put a filename in "edit" mode in Finder.  You simply press the <Enter> key with the appropriate file highlighted.  Good Grief.

Listing folders first in Finder column view

I have to agree with this thread regarding the order of folders/files in Finder.  I much prefer seeing a list of folders at the top followed by the files.  I like the idea someone posted of preceeding folder names with an underscore to force them to the top. I may do that.

General Mac tips

Managing desktop

Use Expose to help access open windows: System Preferences…Dashboard & Expose.  I use the upper left corner of the screen to show all windows and the lower left corner to view desktop.

Keyboard shortcuts

<fn><delete> will do a forward delete
<fn><option><delete> deletes word to right of cursor
<Left Arrow>/<Right Arrow> to open/close folders in finder
Cmd+[, Cmd+] to move backward and forward in finder history

Locked up Application on the Mac

Jane experienced her first locked up Mac application.  The mail program was  "continously beachballing" as they say.  She asked what the equivalent of

<Ctrl><Alt><Delete> was and I didn’t know.  Now I do:

A mini-guide to Mac OS X for new Mini owners.

If you have an unresponsive application (e.g., continuous beachballing), you can kill it with the combination of Command-Option-Escape. That will bring up a list of running programs from which you will be able to select the offending applications and force-quit it. You can also kill an application from the Dock, by clicking, holding down the mouse key, and selecting Force Quit. On rare occasions, neither of those methods will work, but you can still kill it by opening up Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities), running top to find its process ID, and then typing kill -9 .

Problems importing Address Book to the Mac

After Internet Access and Mail, the next important item in moving Jane from Windows to the Mac is importing her Address Book.  This did not go smoothly.  I exported her contacts in a comma separated values file (.CSV) as instructed and sent it to the Mac.  During importing of this file the Address Book program did nothing when OK was pressed.  Not even a message.   Checking the Apple Support site, It was obvious that others were having the same problem.  I did not see a response from an Apple Representative in the discussion forums, but did find various complicated workarounds.  One person hinted at what the problem was:

I opened the txt file in AppleWorks spreadsheet and there were new line characters at the beginning of every record. I did a search and replaced them with nothing. Another wrinkle was the insertion of paragraph EOL by the source application into the address fields for the second line of the address. So I had to manually adjust those records. (I don’t know where it came from since a buddy sent it). Saved a text file from AppleWorks and the import worked.

Seems the Address Book Importer is not very robust.  I hold Apple to a higher standard because
that’s what they demand.  How could they have dropped the ball on such a basic function?

The source of our .CSV file was Outlook Express 6.0.  It did not offer any other export format.  I ended up importing the .CSV on a computer that had Outlook installed and exporting them as VCARDs which I then emailed as attachments (all 240 of them) to our Mac Mini.  The Address Book was able to import the VCARD files without any problem.

Score: Computers 2 Joe User 0

Latest cool feature Jane will love on her Mac:  Stickies Widget.