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Apple iTunes Tutorial

For users who prefer to learn Apple Leopard 10.5 visually we have a range of video tutorials, this method of training greatly enhances learning and allows beginners to master Apple Leopard 10.5 at their own pace.
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Beginners iTunes Tutorial

Getting More Out of iTunes

iTunes is a powerful application for managing your audio and video files, and Apple wants you to know it. They’ve made it the heart of all media playback on the Mac, and as long as you’re using an iPod and you buy songs only from the iTunes Music Store, you really shouldn’t have problems.

But if you’re like the rest of us, and you have a bunch of random music files you’ve collected over the years, or if you use a non-Apple MP3 player, or if you just feel like iTunes gets in your way as much as it helps you, this is the tutorial for you.

Part I: Reclaim Control of Your Files

Changing the Default Application

When OS X sees an MP3 file on your computer, it assumes you want iTunes to open it by default. In many scenarios, it’s not a bad choice. iTunes’ specialty is handling large amounts of properly labeled music files and making them easy to find and play. But there are many cases in which iTunes is overkill. If you’ve downloaded a small song clip, a recording of a speech, or any number of audio files that wouldn’t fit in your media library, you need an intermediate solution.

Whether you’d rather use Quicktime or the freeware VLC Media Player (which has the advantage of supporting nearly all audio and video formats), you can change the default application for opening a file by right-clicking (or Ctrl+clicking) and selecting Get Info. Near the bottom of the menu that appears, the “Open with” section allows you to pick the program of your choice from a drop-down list. Click the “Change All” button to make your choice the default application for all MP3 files.

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Now you can quickly play downloaded audio files without launching iTunes and having them automatically added to your library. Best of all, you can still import them if you want to by dragging the files over the iTunes icon in the dock or into an open iTunes window.

Adjusting iTunes Import Settings

There are a few features you can change within iTunes to maximize compatibility with other computers and non-iPod portable players. The first thing you’ll want to change is the CD Import settings. Open the iTunes dropdown from the menu bar and select Preferences. In the General tab of the Preferences menu, click the button for Import Settings.

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These are the default settings for ripping an audio CD into your iTunes library. Apple, naturally, wants you to rip your songs into their proprietary AAC format. It offers a good file size for its quality, but it ultimately limits your playback options to Apple solutions. Click the dropdown menu for “Import Using” and select MP3 Encoder to rip your songs in the most flexible format. Choosing Higher Quality (192 kbps) from the Setting dropdown offers a good compromise between file size and sound quality.

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You should make these two easy adjustments to any new iTunes installation. Apple has made the default settings what they are for business reasons, not functionality. But now you know the first step for put iTunes in its place, handling your permanent music collection and not taking control of every little audio file on your computer.

In the next tutorial, you will learn how to optimize hidden settings and features.

Add comment December 17, 2008

Mac 10.5 Leopard Tutorials – Right Click Mouse

How to Enable Right Click on a Apple Leopard 10.5

Enable Your Apple Two-Button Mouse in OS X 10.5

Every mouse that Apple currently ships has two buttons. They just act like they don’t want you to know about it.

Since first introducing the mouse to home computer users with the original Macintosh in 1984, Apple has had a strong attachment to the one-button mouse, even as many PC manufacturers switched to a two-button design in the years to follow. Apple defenders claimed that the one-button design was originally chosen because of its ease of use and aesthetic simplicity, and, while that may have been true at one point, the argument is now moot.

In 2005, Apple released the Mighty Mouse, a smooth white optical mouse that resembled its one-piece predecessors but had an additional hidden trigger for a right-click underneath the plastic shell. It was the company’s way of giving in to people wanting a real right-click while sticking to their original one-button look. It’s now the standard mouse for all new Mac desktops, coming in both a wired and wireless version.

The problem is that the right button is disabled by default. To fix this oversight and get the most out of your Mighty Mouse, we need to open the System Preferences menu, located in your Applications folder or the Apple menu in the taskbar at the top left corner of your screen.

Once in System Preferences, go to Keyboard & Mouse settings.

From here, you have many options to customize the way your buttons and scrolling work, but to enable right-clicking, simply click on the dropdown menu marked for the right button and change the setting from “Primary Button” to “Secondary Button” and leave everything else as it is.

If you want to pretend that you still have only one button (or if you’re a Mac user stuck with a one-button mouse), you can still hold down the Ctrl key while performing a normal click, and it will register as a right-click.

Add comment November 17, 2008

Leopard Tutorial – Installing PHP Mac 10.5

Installing PHP 5 on Apple Leopard 10.5

These short PHP tutorials will help users correctly install PHP on Apple 10.5 Leopard using the default Apache server configuration that ships with Leopard.

Really this tutorial is not about installing PHP on Leopard 10.5, and that’s because it’s already installed, all you need to do is make a few small changes and you will unleash the full power of the Apache 2 web server and a full working version of PHP 5, here’s how.

First you need either a copy of BBEdit or TextWrangler, either one of these programs will allow us access to the hidden system files that we need to change in order to set up PHP 5. BBEdit is a paid product whereas TextWrangler is a lite, free version of BBEdit, the directions are the same for both programs:-

Launch BBEdit or TW, Select File > Open Hidden.

this will open a Finder Window, at the bottom of the window select “All Files” from the Enable drop-down box.

Now we need to open the httpd.config file, this should be located inside your Macintosh HD private:etc:apache2:httpd.conf , once you have found this file click open, the file will open but editing of this file is prohibited since it’s a system file, no worries, to enable editing just click the red diagonal red line located in the top left of the BBEdit / TW title bar.

You will get a warning that the Apache httpd.conf file is owned by root and do want to alter this file.

A word of warning you are now playing with an hidden system file and under normal circumstances you should first make a back-up, and you can if you wish to, however Apple have already anticipate this and a back-up copy of this and all the other Apache system files exist in the Original folder inside the Apache2 directory.

Now on to making the changes to the http.conf file, scroll down until you see the line of code that starts #LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so ( around line 114 ).

Uncomment the line by removing the preceding # , it should now read:
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
We have now made PHP 5 active, save the file, since the file is a system file you will have to type your administrator password before the file will save, that’s it, PHP is now running, you could stop and this point and all should work, but it is better if we create the php.ini file is we can make custom changes to the standard PHP configuration later if we need to.
The php.ini file on the Mac
PHP 5 on the Mac does not install a php.ini file, but one does exist on the system, we only have to make a few small changes to make it active, unlike the httpd.conf file we can’t use BBEdit or TW to open the file, we have to use the terminal.

Open the terminal ( located in the Application > Utilities folder ) and enter the following command ( press the enter key after each line)

cd /private/etc
sudo cp php.ini.default php.ini

After the last command you will be asked for you administrator password, enter it, hit return and we are nearly done.

Turn on Web Sharing
Go to System Preferences > Internet & Network and select Sharing, this should start Apache, but it’s always a good idea to restart your system too.

When your Mac restarts we can test to make sure PHP is enabled :
open up BBEdit and type the following

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Save this as test.php in Macintosh HD:Library:WebServer:Documents

Now open up your browser and type
http://localhost/test.php/

If you see details about your php installation give yourself a big pat on the back

The working php.ini file as now been copied to Macintosh HD:private:etc , like the httpd.conf file, this file can in the future be edited with BBEdit or TW.

Add comment November 6, 2008

Apple Mac 10.5 Leopard Tutorial – Show Hidden Files

Show Hidden Files on Mac 10.5 Leopard

As any Mac user knows his system is full of hidden files, most of the time this is fine and we care not that the underlying OS is not showing us everything, but every once in a while we need to edit a file that the system decides we should not see, sure at this point I could tell you how to open the terminal, type a few commands and give the system a good kick and force it to show all, but some users don’t like the terminal, to some it’s like the place their parents warned them never to go to, it’s scary.
Another way to force your Mac to share it’s secrets would be to purchase one of the many applications that will unlock the secrets of all your files, but no we’re going to make our own , using Automator.
For those users who don’t know Automator is kind of a GUI, drag-n-drop quick builder of AppleScript commands and can be used by people who don’t want to learn AppleScript.
Lets get started creating a action that will allow you to switch the visibility of hidden files on and off at a whim.

1/ Open your Applications and look for Automator, launch it.

2/ On the left column select “Automator” and then click on Run Shell Script.

Paste the following code into the Run Shell Script Window :-

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

3/ Here comes the really cool part. Select File > Save As Plugin and select the Finder as the Applicaton, give it a descriptive name like “ShowHiddenFiles”

That’s our Show Hidden Files taken care of, but what if we want to hide them again, just carry out the action again, but change the TRUE in the script to read FALSE and save this using the same procedure under the descriptive name “Hide Files”, to access this command just right click and select your action from the contextual menu.

No longer can your Mac hide those hidden files.

A word of warning, hidden files are hidden for a reason, if you don’t fully understand what a file does LEAVE IT ALONE.

Add comment November 5, 2008

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