I just purchased the new Quicken Essentials for mac to run on my MSI Wind Macbook Nano only to find out that the icon is marked with an strikeout.

When you double click the icon your told
“You cannot use this version of the application Quicken Essentials.app with this version of Mac OS X.

The Quicken Essentials requirements say Leopard or Snow Leopard. So is it possible Intuit has actually hard coded “Atom=False” to prevent Atom users from running the app?

FIX

I’ve found the issue and the fix.The minimum requirements are 10.5.8 and I’m running to 10.5.7.  So here’s the fix:

1. Right click Quicken Essentials.app
2. Click “Show Package Contents”
3. Open the “Contents” folder
4. Open the info.plist
5. Look for “Minimum system version”
6. It will have a value of “10.5.8″.  Change that to “10.5.7″.

That’s it.  The icon still has the slash across it, but it opens and works fine on my 10.5.7 Macbook Wind.  You could probably change it to 1o.5.6 or whatever, but I havn’t tested that.

Quicken Essentials on a Macbook Nano originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on March 9, 2010.

Filed under: OS, Software, Odds and ends

From time to time we have shared hidden settings in applications which can be used to “tweak” an app’s behavior, such as forcing Snow Leopard’s dictionary to reuse the same window or make the print dialog expanded by default. These settings are normally changed using the Terminal.app which can be daunting to some.

Secrets is a (free!) preference panel which has collected a bunch of these settings and made changing them as simple as checking a box or choosing from a drop-down panel of possible choices. It includes settings for about 40 different applications, from Apple applications such as Mail, iCal, iChat, Finder, Front Row, Keynote, DVD Player (and more) to third-party applications including Adium, Audio Hijack Pro, BBedit, EyeTV, VMware Fusion, and TextMate (just to name a few). Some applications have a lot of hidden settings, and some have only one or two.

If you see a setting but don’t know what it does, click it and Secrets will show a brief explanation (these are also available on the Secrets website, but they are easier to read in the preference panel). If you change a setting which requires you to restart the application, Secrets will tell you, and even give you a “Quit This” button. (It’s usually best to make these changes when the app isn’t running.)

Unfortunately at least one of the secret settings from 10.5 doesn’t seem to work in 10.6. That is, the setting to turn HelpViewer into a regular (instead of floating) window. There may be others.

I’m off to explore and see what new goodies Alcor (the developer of Secrets, who you may also know as the creator of Quicksilver) has uncovered.

Thanks to the recently-revived Hawk Wings site for bringing this to my attention. If you use Apple’s Mail.app, Hawk Wings is a great site for tips and information.

Update: We seem to have taken down the Secrets website (oops!) but you can download the preference panel from a mirror (zip) (166kb).

TUAWSecrets preference panel updated for Snow Leopard originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Secrets preference panel updated for Snow Leopard originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 12, 2009.

Filed under: OS Updates, Hardware, Apple

According to OSXDaily, Apple’s next scheduled update to Snow Leopard, OS X 10.6.2, doesn’t support Intel Atom processors. This is no problem for anyone on Apple hardware, because no Mac product runs an Atom. If you’re on a hacked netbook, though, it looks like this is the end of the line for your OS X updates.

Although it’s not confirmed, rumor has it that next update to Apple’s previous Leopard OS (10.5.9) will also knock out Atom support. Until a workaround pops up from netbook hacker circles, Atom machines running 10.6.1 and 10.5.8 should probably avoid upgrading. Is Apple sending a message to users running its software on third-party machines? It seems likely, but it also doesn’t seem like it will do much to stop determined netbook enthusiasts.

Apple breaks Atom Hackintoshes with upcoming OS X 10.6.2 update originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple – Operating system – Mac OS X – Intel Atom – Download Squad

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Apple breaks Atom Hackintoshes with upcoming OS X 10.6.2 update originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 5, 2009.

Most people rarely ever have to rename a whole lot of files at once. Let’s face it — batch file renaming isn’t UNIX kernel reprogramming, but it’s one of those irritating tasks that can be a surprising amount of trouble for casual or even more experienced users without the right tools. As a web designer and developer, I find myself having to numerically rename images a lot or add “_tb” suffixes for thumbnails, for example.

Luckily for Leopard users, there’s Name Mangler 2.0, a donationware app by Mac developer Many Tricks that does all the stuff you might need a batch file renamer to do: change case or extension, prefix or suffix a file name, remove characters, the works. You can even store renaming configurations as droplets that you can drop files or folders on to.

Unfortunately, Name Mangler is Leopard-only. Many Tricks has an earlier app, File List (direct download link), that apparently does the same thing for pre-Leopard systems; another alternative app is File Wrangler, which resides on my 10.4.9-running MacBook Pro quite happily, or the venerable and powerful A Better Finder Rename.

[via Lifehacker]

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Name Mangler: batch rename your files originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 26, 2009.

Most people rarely ever have to rename a whole lot of files at once. Let’s face it — batch file renaming isn’t UNIX kernel reprogramming, but it’s one of those irritating tasks that can be a surprising amount of trouble for casual or even more experienced users without the right tools. As a web designer and developer, I find myself having to numerically rename images a lot or add “_tb” suffixes for thumbnails, for example.

Luckily for Leopard users, there’s Name Mangler 2.0, a donationware app by Mac developer Many Tricks that does all the stuff you might need a batch file renamer to do: change case or extension, prefix or suffix a file name, remove characters, the works. You can even store renaming configurations as droplets that you can drop files or folders on to.

Unfortunately, Name Mangler is Leopard-only. Many Tricks has an earlier app, File List (direct download link), that apparently does the same thing for pre-Leopard systems; another alternative app is File Wrangler, which resides on my 10.4.9-running MacBook Pro quite happily, or the venerable and powerful A Better Finder Rename.

[via Lifehacker]

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Name Mangler: batch rename your files originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 26, 2009.

Filed under: Hacks, Mods, Snow Leopard

Psystar, that pesky little thorn in Apple’s side, has released Rebel EFI. According to Psystar, the app, available for $49.99 through the company’s site, “allows for the easy installation of multiple operating systems,” including Mac OS X, on a vanilla PC. Besides bypassing EFI requirements, Rebel EFI can also detect for Mac OS X compatible and incompatible hardware, and automatically download appropriate drivers. Skeptical? No worries: the app is free to try (as an ISO download), with a two hour time limit.

To each their own, and if running Mac OS X on non-Apple specified hardware floats your boat, then you should also be aware of the risks involved. In other words, back up your data if you are attempting such a thing. Second, and more importantly, there’s the issue of licensing: Apple prohibits the installation of Mac OS X on non Apple-branded machines.

Psystar giveth and Psystar must also taketh. One wonders how Psystar will react when people illegally use Rebel EFI, just like Psystar is allegedly misusing Mac OS X, as pirated versions inevitably circulate around the Interwebs.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

[via The Loop]

TUAWWith a rebel Dell, Psystar tries more, more, more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With a rebel Dell, Psystar tries more, more, more originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 22, 2009.

Most people who have designed websites or apps in Photoshop will, at one point or another, have had issues trying to match colors in images to colors generated by HTML, CSS or code. This article aims to solve those problems once and for all.

Color Management to Match Colors Across Multiple Devices

In the print world, color management typically involves calibrating your entire workflow, from scanner or digital camera to computer display to hard proofs to the final press output. This can be quite a tall order, especially when the devices use different color spaces — matching RGB and CMYK devices is notoriously hard.

When designing or editing for TV, calibrating the main editing display and using a broadcast monitor are common; these show real-time proof of how the image will look on a typical TV in a viewer’s home. In such a scenario, color management offers many benefits and is highly recommended.

When building Web and application interfaces, the situation is a little different. The final output is the same device that you’re using to create the artwork: a computer display (putting aside for now differences in gamma between Windows, Mac OS X prior to 10.6 and the iPhone, which we’ll cover later.)

There is a catch, though. Even though you’re creating the Web or app interface on the same device that the final product will be shown on, the colors will have various sources: images (typically PNG, GIF and JPEG), style markup (CSS) and code (JavaScript, HTML, Objective-C, etc). Getting them all to match can be tricky.

The Goal

When designing websites or app interfaces, we want to perfectly match the colors that are displayed on screen in Photoshop and that are saved in files with what’s displayed in other applications, including Firefox, Safari and the iPhone Simulator. Not only do we want the colors to look the same, but we want the actual values saved in the files to perfectly match the colors we have defined in Photoshop. Colors should not shift or appear to shift in any way, under any circumstance.

Why Is This So Difficult?

Photoshop applies its color management to images displayed within its windows and to the files it saves. This is a bad thing if you’re working exclusively with RGB images for Web or on-screen user interfaces. With the default Photoshop settings, #FF0000 will actually display as #FB0018, and #BB95FF will display as #BA98FD. The differences are subtle but definitely there.

How Does Photoshop Differ From OS X And Windows?

OS X’s color management is applied to the entire display at the very end of the processing chain, after the main buffer in video ram. This means that although color management is applied, the software utilities that measure color on screen (like /Utilities/DigitalColor Meter) will report the same values that you have saved in the file or entered as your code. I believe the color management in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (Windows Color System) works in a similar fashion.

Photoshop’s color management is applied only to the image portion of its windows and to the files it saves. This color correction happens as Photoshop draws the image on screen, so software utilities that measure color on screen often report different colors from the ones you have specified. It’s worth noting that OS X’s color management is applied on top of Photoshop’s.

The best solution I’ve found is to disable Photoshop’s color management for RGB documents as much as possible. Doing so forces the RGB colors that are on screen and saved to the file to match the actual color value. If you need to calibrate your monitor for Web and app design work, then you would best be served by changing it at the OS level.

Disabling color management used to be quite easy in Photoshop CS2 and all versions prior, but it now requires a little more skill.

Disabling Photoshop’s RGB Color Management

These instructions are for Photoshop CS4 on Mac and Windows. Setting up CS3 is very similar.

Step 1: Go to Edit ? Color Settings and set the working space for RGB to Monitor RGB.

Step 2: Open a document and go to Edit ? Assign Profile, then set it to Working RGB. This must be done for every single document you work on.

Step 3: Ensure View ? Proof Colors is turned off.

Step 4: When saving files with Save for Web & Devices, ensure that Convert to sRGB is turned off. If you’re saving a JPEG file, then also turn off Embed Color Profile (you may want this turned on for certain photos, but chances are you’ll want it off for interface elements and icons).

Difference Between “Assign Profile” And “Convert To Profile”

Now would be a good time to mention the difference between Assign Profile and Convert to Profile, so that you know which to use when.

Each Photoshop document contains a color profile that’s separate from the actual color data stored for each pixel. Assign Profile simply changes the profile in the document, without affecting any of the color data. It’s a non-destructive action: you can assign a new color profile to your documents as often as you like without doing any damage. Assigning a new profile may change the way your document appears on screen, but the data contained in the file will remain unaltered.

Convert to Profile is quite different. Not only does it assign a color profile to the document, but it tries to keep your image looking the same on screen. It does this by processing the color data contained in the file for each pixel. Converting to a new profile will more likely preserve a document’s color on screen, but the data contained in the file will be permanently altered. Use with caution.

If you’re copying layers from one Photoshop document to another, you will want to ensure that the documents have been assigned the same color profile.

Illustrator Is The Same As Photoshop

If you would like images saved in Illustrator or imported from Illustrator to Photoshop to match as well, then follow the steps below. These instructions are for Illustrator CS4 on Mac and Windows. Setting up Illustrator CS3 is very similar.

Step 1: Go to Edit ? Color Settings, and set the working space for RGB to Monitor RGB.

Step 2: Open the document and go to Edit ? Assign Profile. Then set it to Working RGB. This must be done for every single document you work on.

Step 3: Ensure that View ? Proof Colors is turned off.

Step 4: When saving files with Save for Web & Devices, ensure that Convert to sRGB is turned off. If you’re saving a JPEG file, then also turn off Embed Color Profile (again, you may want this turned on for certain photos, but chances are you’ll want it off for interface elements and icons).

Gamma Differences

Windows has used a gamma of 2.2 since its introduction. Mac OS X has used a gamma of 1.8 for all versions except Snow Leopard (the latest release), which uses 2.2. What does this mean? Prior to Snow Leopard, Web pages looked darker on Windows. Thankfully, both operating systems are now in sync, so a Web page should look very similar on a Mac and PC that use the same monitor.

Information about the iPhone’s gamma is a little hard to come by; I couldn’t ascertain whether it is 1.8 or 2.2. This is another reason to test your interface on an iPhone.

Final Check For iPhone UI

Your iPhone or iPod’s screen and calibration will likely be different from your Mac or PC’s screen and calibration. I often import full-screen images of the UI into iPhoto and sync them with an iPhone to see exactly how the final interface will look on the device (on Windows, you can sync photos using iTunes). This gives you another chance to make adjustments before slicing up images or committing anything to code.

This article explains how to handle the problem that while testing some landscape iPhone app interface mocks, they seem blurrier than they appear in Photoshop.

Please note: For some bizarre reason, the Photos app on the iPhone doesn’t display landscape images at 1:1. Instead, it scales them slightly or shifts them to a sub-pixel position, making the images blurrier than they should be. To avoid any issues, always save images in portrait mode (320 pixels wide by 480 pixels high) to test your user interface mockups (read more about this issue).

On Mac, moving colors between Photoshop and code can be made easier with Developer Picker, Hex Color Picker and Colors (all free).

Conclusion

Now, you’re able to move bitmap and vector images between Photoshop and Illustrator without any color shifts at all, and using any method. You’re also able to grab a color using the color picker in Photoshop, and then use the same HEX color value in your CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Flash or Objective-C code, and it will match your images perfectly. I hope this article has helped. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below.

Related posts

You may be interesting in the following related posts:

• 20 Time-Saving Tips to Improve Designer’s Workflow
• Clever PNG Optimization Techniques
• PNG Optimization Guide: More Clever Techniques
• Clever JPEG Optimization Techniques

(al)

© Marc Edwards for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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Post tags: cmyk, photoshop, rgb, workflow

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Setting Up Photoshop For Web, App and iPhone Development originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 17, 2009.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, Hardware, OS

Apple and Psystar have been embroiled in litigation for quite a while now. At the core of the dispute: Psystar modifies Apple’s operating system software so that it can run on its clone machines. It then sells its computers with Mac OS installed to, well, anybody who wants one. As you can imagine, this does not make Apple happy.

Anybody familiar with The Great Clone Crackdown of 1997 will tell you that Apple likes to keep a very tight grip on any device that presumes to run its software. Apple points out that Windows machines are a mishmash of often conflicting hardware and suffer from quirks and errors and incompatibilities that such a set up can bring.

So Apple’s cadre of lawyers descended quickly on Psystar. In July of last year, the company sued Psystar for copyright and software licensing violations, quickly amending its lawsuit to additionally charge Psystar with violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

And there was much lawyering.

More than a year later, now that discovery has been completed, the two parties have each filed for summary judgment, which, in effect, asks the judge to rule in favor of the filing party because enough evidence has been shown that either makes or breaks the lawsuit.

Psystar’s argument, and the one covered in its motion, somewhat relies on the “first sale doctrine” which says that any purchaser of a copyrighted product can then take that lawfully-made copy and sell it, so long as no additional copies can be made. For its part, Apple says that when one “purchases” its OS, you are only purchasing a license to use the product. Its Software Licensing Agreement (SLA) quite clearly states [PDF link to Snow Leopard SLA] that the user cannot modify the software to run on a non-Apple system.

The idea that what you are purchasing is a license to use the product is pretty commonplace among software manufacturers, because, the argument runs, you can cut any software company’s profits off at the knees if every purchaser became an owner with free rein to redistribute the software. Apple states that no software company in its right mind would put the money into research and development of any software product at all if that were the end result of bringing its product to market. Groklaw suggests this could have ramifications for FOSS and and the GPL.

Continue reading Psystar, Apple file motions for summary judgment

TUAWPsystar, Apple file motions for summary judgment originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Psystar, Apple file motions for summary judgment originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 17, 2009.

We last covered Mac Pilot when version 2 dropped several years ago and now Koingo Software is back with a Mac Pilot 3 which adds hundreds of new features bringing the total to over 600. Fully compatible with Leopard, Mac Pilot provides a convenient GUI interface for modifying tons of hidden settings that are generally only available through the terminal.

Mac Pilot is $19.95 ($9.95 upgrade) and demo is available.
[via MacNN]

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Mac Pilot 3.0 adds 200 new features originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on September 23, 2009.

Filed under: Software, Odds and ends

Yeah, it seems like YAGTDA (Yet Another Getting Things Done App), but Dejumble actually caught my attention. Thinking Code recently created this Leopard-only application as an unobtrusive way to keep track of your to-do list, and the latest released version does the job very well. Dejumble lives in the Menu bar as an extra, so a quick click of the icon brings up a clean, organized window for entering those things that you must get done.

The 1.1.1 update includes a pile ‘o new features, including:

• Ability to view daily events from iCal
• Hotkey access to the application
• Additional filter and sorting options
• Dejumble window themes (three of ‘em, including the black theme in the screenshot)
• URLs in tasks
• Colorize groups
• Redesigned settings window
• Extended free trial period from 5 to 30 days

Thinking Code notes that they are working on iPhone and BlackBerry versions of Dejumble, both of which will sync with the Mac version.

This may be a “keeper” for me. I like the fact that Dejumble is out of the way and easy to get to, simple to add new tasks to, and that it will soon work with my iPhone. Download the 30-day free trial, and then post your comments about your favorite GTD app. If that favorite app is Dejumble, it’s available for just $19.

[via prMac]

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Dejumble 1.1.1 provides another way to get things done originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on September 23, 2009.