MacDirectory Magazine

Winter-Spring 2012

MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.

Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/56665

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DEPARTMENT BEEBE > MACDIRECTORY'S TECH GODDESS Q>I hate DVD Player in Lion. There is no eject button on the full screen controller, half the time the fast forward and rewind arrows don't work when you hold the mouse button down (even though the rollover is working) and the video always freezes for a second when switching between full and fill screen modes. – Flora S., Tennessee A>Not a problem…well, sort of. Actually, it is a bit of a headache. Neither TinkerTool, Onyx nor any other utility or tech note I have come across addresses this problem. The new version is "required by OS X" and you cannot move it from your Applications folder without restarting from a different startup volume. You can put a copy of the older version on your machine, though, and it will indeed work, but not without a minor hassle. If you prefer not to bury the new version, drag a copy of the older version of DVD Player onto your desktop and change its name slightly, to something like DVD Player 5.2 (the latest version before Lion), then drag it into your applications folder. When you insert a DVD, wait for the newer version to launch and then quit it. Launch the older version and it will find and play the DVD without a problem. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't allow you to use System Preferences to designate the older version as the preferred DVD player. I'm sure there must be an easier fix out there somewhere. If anyone encounters a better solution, please let me know. Q>I really miss the "save as" function in TextEdit…. – Bryson O., Georgia A>I'm getting a lot of this kind of stuff these days. Fortunately, TextEdit switch works better than DVD Player, but as with DVD Player, you can't delete the newer version without restarting from another startup volume. Drag a copy of the older version to your drive and rename it to something like Text Edit 1.6 (the Snow Leopard version). Find a text document, right click on it and select Get Info. At the bottom of the Get Info window in the Open With popup to select the older version (not 1.7) and click on the Change All button to apply this to all similar documents. Do the same with a RTF file and you are done. In case you are wondering, you can't use this trick with DVD Player because the older version is grayed out. And nobody ask me about reverting to the older version of Apple Mail. I have a headache. Note to Apple: Lion is like a marvelous feast that includes a mandatory serving of Brussels sprouts. Just because grandma likes 'em, this doesn't mean we all do. It's nice to have options. Q>I have to use a lot of accented letters with all the bilingual stuff I do. How do I find the keystrokes? – Greg S., Alabama A>With Apple text apps in Lion you just type the letter, hold the key down and a selection of accented versions will pop up like in iOS. This only works if you have the key repeat setting set to off. If you use Apple's standard fonts utility, such as with Text Edit (command-t), click on the gear icon at the bottom, choose Characters and select Latin from the left pane. You can then scroll through the entire font and double-click on the desired character to automatically paste it into your document. If you would like a cheat sheet to show you the proper keystrokes (e.g., command-e followed by an I to get í), go to Q>I heard a rumor about Carl Sagan hating Macs. What was that about? – Shannon A., Illinois A>Apple once had an item under development with the code name Carl Sagan. When Sagan heard about this he was incensed and insisted that his name be removed. Apple then changed the code name to Butthead Astronomer. Fire up the water coolers…. 26 MacDirectory w . s k e y b o a r d s 2 w . w a p . f o r ln a g . w s u . e d u / h e l p /

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