Personal IT Experiences » Macintosh

iTunes Authorization FAQ

ptsnorth — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 17:44:51 +0000

Songs purchased on the iTunes Store can be copied to an unlimited number of computers. However, only five computers at a time can play your iTunes DRM-protected music*.

You can enable a computer to play your purchased music by authorizing it. You can remove a computer from the authorization list by deauthorizing it. Deauthorizing your computer does not erase your music files; it simply prevents your purchased music from playing until you authorize that computer again.

Apple – Support – iTunes Store – Authorization FAQ

Mac OS X – Encrypt Private Files and Folders

ptsnorth — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:22:17 +0000

Windows and Linux users have a third party solution for creating and mounting virtual encrypted disks with the utility TrueCrypt. While the developers of TrueCrypt indicate a planned Mac OSX version, it doesn’t appear they’re testing one right now.

As the owner of a spanking new 24″ iMac, I wondered what other encryption utilities were available for the Mac. Guess what? You don’t need a third party utility – you have the ability right now to create encrypted disk images using the OS’s built in utility Disk Utility. Matt at Mac OS X Tips has an excellent step-by-step process.

Encrypt and Hide your Private Files | Finder | Mac OS X Tips

Prevent .DS_Store file creation on network volumes

ptsnorth — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 18:43:22 +0000

Article explains how to prevent OS X from creating new .DS_Store files when opening folders on remote volumes mounted using SMB/CIFS, AFP, NFS, and WebDAV. The creation of .DS_Store files (and more so, ._AppleDouble files which are not covered in this hint) is frequently the source of complaints against Mac users, who often leave a trail of these files scattered throughout the file system when “visiting” a Windows computer. Even with this hint in place, the .DS_Store files will continue to be created on local Mac volumes (which is a good thing).

To prevent the creation of these files, open the Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

It may be necessary to log out and back in, or even to restart the computer (which is what the article states), for the change to take effect.

macosxhints.com – Prevent .DS_Store file creation on network volumes

Lighthouse

ptsnorth — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:48:25 +0000

Networking isn’t always as easy as it should be: Ever tried to let a colleague connect to an HTTP or SSH server running on your Mac when you’re in your home network behind your NAT router? Or to work together on a document in SubEthaEdit? Or get good download rates in your favorite BitTorrent client?

Without port forwarding, it just won’t work, but static port mappings that you can set up in your router are cumbersome to use, only work with static IP addresses and are lost when you buy a new router.

Not so with Lighthouse. Being a dynamic port forwarding utility, starting and stopping port mappings is just a click away. Or even better, let Lighthouse start a port forwarding automatically when you launch an application!

Mac OS 10.4

codelaide software » Lighthouse