Apple stuff - Mac, iPad, iphone

[The Nr Fairy]

Two schools of thought here. First is to reinstall everything from scratch on the new laptop and migrate only the data across.

Second is to use the Migration Assistant. Worked for me with a whole bunch of software including VMware and some more esoteric stuff.

[ZEEBEE]

I have a 3 year old MBP 17" which I want to swap for the latest model.

Does anyone know if I restore from Timemachine backups whether my Parallels 5 + WINDOWS + MS Office applications will be restored perfectly? What about the Mac MS Office programs?

Yep, worked perfectly for me.

But you have to boot from the Mac OSX disks that came with the machine, I'm assuming you were using Mac OSX 10.6 before.
Then select utilities when the system disks boot up on your new machine.
Then select RESTORE from there.
I do that between my IMac 24 and my MacBook Pro whenever there's a big change between the two (happens when I go away).

Time machine has saved me months of time and both my computers are absolutely synched.
If you use the method above your Windows programs carry on as if nothing happened.

[Bell_Flyer]

Time Machine

Thanks Nr Fairy and ZEEBEE.

Timemachine is a godsend indeed!

[Sprogget]

i-keptthereceipt

Seems all is not well with the ipad...

iPad launch marred by technical glitches - Times Online

Not anti Apple in particular, although I do think their gear is horrendously overpriced, but it does add weight to the argument that being an early adopter is a risky thing to do...

[Ancient Observer]

Yup. When I worked in the IT world, our CIO was very keen not to be on the bleeding edge. His head of development loved the bleeding edge, but loved his bonus even more.

On the pricing issue, Apple i-whatevers seem to have created a new "aspirational pricing ceiling", to which all the other bl**dy manufacturers aspire. Top-end Nokias used to be not too far over UKP100, now they are up there with bl**dy Apple.

They've also learnt from Mont Blanc, and trips to Sin and Hkg don't yield much cheaper prices, unless one is happy with the knock-offs.

[Simonta]

Apple are losing it...

I've had a Mac Book for some time and have almost stopped using it. I've come to find Windows 7 just easier to use, especially when dealing with a lot of file operations. OSX has always had, and still has, all kinds of annoying bugs and one that gets me often is it's habit of barfing over a single file in a large copy or move operation then ditching the entire process. Have to drop to a terminal prompt! Safari is simply a dog in most respects and iTunes is a terrible piece of software IMHO.

Then Mrs T got an iPhone. Seems to be riddled with bugs also (it's a 3G 2.2 firmware). In three days of usage:

• The email inbox has screwed up showing just a black screen with none of the buttons operational - needs a soft reset
• The SIM contact import simply doesn't work - it says "importing" for about 2 seconds then stops with no message or feedback and no contacts copied from the SIM
• Auto-redirect on web pages doesn't work at all
• Safari has crashed several times
• On O2, have had to switch to Edge and back to 3G once to get HSPDA

My next phone will probably be HTC running Android and I won't be hurrying to spend a lot of pennies on another Mac PC....

[Simonta]

To expand on the horrendously overpriced hardware topic, I'm mulling over buying Snow Leopard to run on a standard PC. I have seen many conflicting statements on the legality of this but the majority concur that it's verboten.

Can anyone comment authoritatively? If I buy a full retail copy of Snow Leopard, can I run it on my own hardware?

Thanks for any insights.

[mcdhu]

Help please chaps.

Got the nice new iMac sitting on the desk here so I thought I'd set about transferring all the iTunes music so put all 20Gbs on a big 30Gb iPod from the Windows PC iTunes and had a look at iTunes on the Mac expecting the library to be blank. Yup, you 'Macficionados' will already know - it was already there!! How did it do that?

The setup is the Win Xp SP3 PC hard wired to a Netgear Wireless Modem Router with all the family iTunes music on it (circa 20GBs)

The iMac has connected to the wireless network. PC and Mac on iTunes 9.1.
The Mac has the library but not the playlists. Is there any way I can 'import' the playlist structure to save me redoing them on the mac. Home sharing?

Any help is gratefully received.

Cheers
mcdhu

[Jet II]

Originally Posted by Simonta

To expand on the horrendously overpriced hardware topic, I'm mulling over buying Snow Leopard to run on a standard PC. I have seen many conflicting statements on the legality of this but the majority concur that it's verboten.

Can anyone comment authoritatively? If I buy a full retail copy of Snow Leopard, can I run it on my own hardware?

Thanks for any insights.

You can run it - I loaded Snow Leopard onto a Dell Mini for travel - But by doing so you violate the End User Licence Agreement (EULA), which everyone installing Leopard is supposed to read and accept, says:

"This Licence allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."

I actually have an Apple logo sticker on the Dell - although I'm not sure that this is what Apple had in mind when they talk about an 'Apple-labeled computer'

[Simonta]

Jet II, thanks for the definitive reply.

[Aspen20]

MAC Excel

Just got myself a Macbook air. I have office mac 2008 installed. My logbook is a excel spreadsheet, which is now converted to an xls.x file. The file can't be opened on a windows based pc now. Anyone with any idea how the file can be reconverted to a xls file for windows to open. thanks in advance

[Senior Pilot]

Either update your PC Excel, or save your Excel files in .xls format: the same will apply to Word docs and Powerpoint. Office:Mac will default to the .xlsx, .docx and .pptx file format.

Go to Preferences for each programme, 'Save' tab, then change the preferred "Save .... files as" to the 97-2004 option.

Resave your logbook file and it should now be in .xls format.

[Bushfiva]

Microsoft has a compatibility pack that will let older versions of Office open the new file formats. Google will find it: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

[Aspen20]

Mac Software

None of my airbus CBT discs work on the Mac. I don't know what language the discs are written in.

My only option at this stage is to make the mac a dual boot system. Are there any better ideas out there?. Thanks in advance.

[AppleMacster]

Aspen 20,

You could try using Crossover. It may or may not work. However, there's a free trial before you buy it, so give it a go and see what happens. It lets you run Windows applications without having to install Windows. A cleaner, leaner way of running Windows applications.

Applemacster

[ZEEBEE]

Aspen20

It may or may not work with CrossOver (probably not).

However, I'll take a bet and say that it will definitely work with Parallels5
You can download a fully working trial copy and run it for a month. I believe they have a special going at the moment for about $69.

For what it does, it represents awesome value. Lets you run any of the Windows OS's and in many cases gives you more control over the Win programs than a native Windows installation.

I try to use the Mac OS for as much as is possible, but when I have to soil my hands with Win32 software (as is inevitable) then Parallels5 makes it do-able.
There's no doubt that there must be some programs that won't run under it (Geosoft Montaj V7 is supposed not to, but I have found a way to do it and it's not difficult) but there's often a solution even then.

[Jet II]

I use Parallels to run my CBT programs - works like a charm

[Mac the Knife]

Parallels requires a true-blue copy of Windows which it runs in a virtual machine on the Mac.

CrossOver does NOT require a copy of Windows but seeks to emulate the Windows environment that programs expect.

They are thus very different animals.

Parallels will pretty much run any Windows program (as expected)

CrossOver (and Wine) is getting better and better, and a lot of Windows programs will run under it, some more successfully than others.

But MS keeps moving their proprietary goalposts so CrossOver/Wine will always be a few steps behind in terms of compatibility.

Mac

[Aspen20]

I think here is a case of serious finger trouble. Parallels 5 seems to be loaded. Cant find the cd rom with the CBT disc in. Other times I get the following message. Can't open 16 bit programme. I have windows 7 installed

[ZEEBEE]

Aspen

It's possible that the CDRom drive isn't allocated to your virtual machine.

You should select "Devices" from the parallels menu and ensure that the CDROM is ticked.

Also, if you haven't done so, please ensure that Guest Services are installed under your virtual machine.

It provides a much greater access to the system resources than those without.

Good luck...Z