Macs

Magic Mice and Menu Bars

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Finally caught a Magic Mouse which is as good as anticipated. I did not have a problem with the old [W:Apple Mighty Mouse] although a lot of people complained about them. I have a Logitech wireless mouse that I used with the old Mac but never got around to setting it up with the new Mac – the Mighty Mouse that came with it has done the job.

I did add Magic Prefs but have not really needed the extra pinches or swipes as yet – but will experiment with configuring it for flying X Plane. Magic Prefs added yet another icon to the ever leftward expansion across the menu bar so here is a quick check of what they are (admittedly some could be removed as they are never used and I have no idea why they are there 😉 )….
menu bar

From the left….

    Magic Prefs – adds extra controls to the Magic Mouse
    Spam Sweep – Within minutes of launching the demo Spam vanished… purchased minutes later.
    Library Books – Monitirs your library account and reminds you when stuff is due back.
    Savvy Clipboard – expands the usefulness of the clipboard.
    BwanaDik – any software named after a Zappa song must be good.
    Scribblet Рfuss-free aide-m̩moires. Updated to Version 2 today.
    Weather Dock – Saves having to look out of the window 😉
    Growl – pops up and tells you what you are listening to on Spotify, or when you have email, or when NetNewsWire has just refreshed etc. etc.
    Caffeine – Keeps your Mac awake.
    iStat Menus – Monitors the system if you enjoy watching that kind of thing. Who doesn’t? 😉
    Universal access – some of the other stuff needs some of this stuff to be on so they can do their thing.
    AppleScripts – Tweak you Mac to do what you want, when you want, how you want it done.
    Bluetooth – Lets Magic Mice talk to Macs
    Spaces – multi desktops thingy
    Spell Catcher – monitors your typing and corrects your spilling milkshakes.
    Time Machine – auto back up and then some.
    AirPort – wifi monitor
    Date & Time – this is why you buy a Mac 🙂
    User Account switch – what it says.
    SpotLight – search everything everywhere.

Spell catcher: At last the Snow Leopard update

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Apple’s Snow Leopard update of Mac OS X was first announced on 9th June 2008. It was released on 28th August 2009. Some companies took a day or two to release an update to their own software so it was better integrated with the new OS. Some took a week or so. Rainmaker released an update to their excellent Spell Catcher X software on 13th January 2010. Is this a record?

All I need now, for a complete set, is FinderPop but I can wait for a full recovery first.

Snow Leopard / Time Capsule Working!

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Having added a Time Capsule to the mix of Macs it was somewhat frustrating to find my Snow Leopardified Mac was not working while ye olde iBooks running Leopard were purring away backing up flawlessly. I was stuck in the never ending “Making Backup Disk Available” bit. A seemingly common problem.

But today it started working and I am now backing up with the rest of them. So what changed? It would be nice to think that the return of Steve Jobs had something to do with it. Maybe installing iTunes 9 triggered something. But it was probably dropping the wireless network down to the b/g setting from the b/g/n option that made it happier. The slower setting is strangely the stronger faster setting for me.