Apple fixed some issues in 10.4 concerning the fax functionality. However, one problem is still not resolved: you want received faxes to be mailed to an email account. This only works if you work inside a network enviroment with host names and domain names, and run your own mailserver. Otherwise the fax appears to come from FaxNotify@your.machine, and many ISPs will reject such mail as it comes from an invalid address.
FaxEmailHelper was a great solution for Panther. The current version does not work with Tiger, though. But if you want the fax-to-email-feature, there is an easy way that worked for me. You have to have the Developer Tools (XCode) installed. Here's how:
Duplicate (copy) the file com.apple.print.FaxPrefs.plist" in the top-level /Library/Preferences folder as a backup -- just in case you screw up.
Open the software Property List Editor (in /Developer -> Applications -> Utilities).
Open the file "com.apple.print.FaxPrefs.plist" after backing it up in step one.
Hit "New Sibling" to add the line EmailSender of type String with name@mailserver.com as the value, and it should be the email adresss you send mail from.
Hit "New Sibling" to add the line SMTP of type String with smtp.mailserver.com as the value, and it should be set to your SMTP server address.
Hit "New Sibling" to add the line smtpAuthorization of type String and a value of Password -- important: type Password and not your actual password. The last line is needed if your ISP wants you to authenticate before sending.
Save the file, quit the editor, and then check "Receive Fax" option in the Print&Fax section of System Preferences, and make sure you've enabled the Email to option as well.
This works for me until the Tiger version of FaxEmailHelper comes out...
I was having a nasty time trying to get my Apple Mail signatures to synchronize on my .Mac account. The same Conflict Resolver message would come up over and over again, with the same message:
There is one conflict involving Mail Rules, Signatures, and Smart Mailboxes. Select the correct com.apple.mail.SignaturesOwner information below
It didn't matter whether I chose the Mail or .Mac choice, the Conflict Resolver would come back momentarily with another selection.
As it turns out, the problem is that the conflict cannot be resolved while Apple Mail is running. It seems obvious now, but you'd think Apple could have put something into the program to shut down Apple Mail when a conflict arose. Very frustrating!
After upgrading to Tiger 10.4, I opened Mail and saw no messages. I could see all my accounts and folders but no messages and I could not check for new mail. Furthermore, quitting Mail would not work, though the application did not hang.
I decided that the third-party plugin HTTPMail Plug-In (for checking Hotmail accounts) might be the culprit. Sure enough, when I upgraded to the latest Tiger-safe version and force-restarted Mail, a window immediately came up telling me that Mail would convert my mailboxes to the new 2.0 format.
[robg adds: As a general rule, disable all plug-ins when doing a major upgrade such as this -- Safari, iPhoto, and Mail all have a number of plug-ins available, for instance. If you don't have a known Tiger-safe version, disable them prior to installing 10.4 via an Upgrade install.]
Two short hints here to improve life with swap files. The first is for the paranoid (aka, security-conscious) types, who should be sure to enable encrypted swap. It's enabled simply by going into System Preferences -> Security, then checking 'Use secure virtual memory.' You'll need to reboot for this to take effect.
The second is an easy method to see how much swap is in use. Within Terminal, run this command:
sysctl vm.swapusage
This will simply show how much is allocated (which should agree with the files in /private/var/vm), how much is currently used, and if you have encrypted swap enabled.
Mac OS 10.4 added a great feature to the Displays panel (for most users): the ability to rotate the display 90º, 180º, or 270º, which is great for the use of portrait monitors that can rotate, or just for fun.
For those of us with Powerbooks, this option is not available -- at least not at first. Obviously, this is turned off on PowerBooks for a reason: we have fixed displays, but it's still fun to play around with, and here's how. Open the System Preferences program, then hold down Option while clicking the Displays panel. When it opens, you'll see the Rotate button. You now have the ability to rotate your display! Have fun ... but if you only have a trackpad, it can get tricky to navigate.
[robg adds: This trick works only with ATI-equipped PowerBooks, so the 12" model (along with some older PowerBooks, I think) won't be able to use it. Note too, that this was mentioned in the comments to this hint, but I felt it was worth calling it out specifically regarding PowerBooks.]
To let iSync recognize the Motorola A835 phone, you have to modify this file: /Applications/ iSync.app/ Contents/ PlugIns/ ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/ Contents/ PlugIns/ PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/ Contents/ Resources/ MetaClasses.plist. Open it using TextEdit, and just below this section:
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
And immediately above the first <key>, add in this new code. Save the file, activate Bluetooth on A835 and on Mac, and launch iSync. Choose "Add device" from the "Devices" menu, and iSync should now recognize the phone. I've even created an A835 icon if you want to use that, too. It has to be copied into the same folder as the MetaClasses.plist file.
If you have the desire to create a Raw Query for a Smart Folder that uses dates, here is how to do it. From the first drop down menu in the Smart Folder window, choose Other, then choose Raw Query, or whatever the appropriate tag is (check "Add to Favorites" if you use this a lot). Now enter an expression that compares a date metadata field to $time.today. For example:
kMDItemAttributeChangeDate >= $time.today(-7)
This will return all things whose attributes were created or changed in the last week (7 days). You could use this to create a Smart Folder which only shows files you've downloaded in the past seven days, as kMDItemAttributeChangeDate reflects when the file was added to the Spotlight database.
If you want to use a specific date, you need to do it in format that Spotlight understands. I would recommend first creating a Smart Folder with Last Opened, Exactly, and then put your date there. Save your folder and then open it in Text Edit. To do this, run Text Edit, then drag the folder to Text Edit's icon in the Dock. You can then search for the string RawQuery and browse through the line. You will see something like:
These are the system times on either end of the day you entered in the Smart Folder. You want to copy these to the Raw Query field, and edit them to reflect the attributes you wish to search on. The HTML entities need to be replaced, too:
>=; becomes >=
&& becomes &&
<=; becomes <=
You can play around with looking at other auto-generated queries in Text Edit, and then modify them using the Finder's interface to make custom queries.
All the hints for geeky complicated UNIX searches aside, a nice little feature of the pre-Tiger launcher applications was the ability to search with shortcuts. For example, typing "MW" would locate Microsoft Word in a search, or "QT" for QuickTime. Well, this functionality can be achieved in Spotlight.
By placing your desired shortcuts into the Spotlight Comment field in the Get Info dialog box of any application (or folder, or document, or EXIF data in pictures... you get the point), Spotlight will locate these items!
[robg adds: While this will definitely work, you will have to spend some time adding your shortcuts to each application. Personally, I'm quite happy that Butler works in Tiger (I presume QuickSilver and LaunchBar do too, but I haven't tested them). I use Butler to launch stuff, and Spotlight (grudgingly) when I need to find something in the Finder. Spotlight is a pretty good search engine, but, the launchers are much better at launching programs and opening documents quickly.]
I used to run Anacron on my laptop in 10.3, so that I could run the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance tasks at appropriate intervals, but without having to have the laptop awake at any specific time. Anacron allows you to specify that specific tasks run every N days, and every time it runs, it checks each job to see if it's been long enough since the last run, and runs it if appropriate. This worked out quite well -- I had Anacron tasks set up to run the daily script every day, the weekly every seven days, and the monthly every 30 days. I had cron set to fire up Anacron every 15 minutes, and all was well.
Until 10.4, anyway. 10.4 introduced launchd, which replaces cron, and Apple no longer started cron as part of the boot process [Editor's aside: See the comments; cron is installed and running, but differently]. I had a lot of maintenance tasks that I was running with Anacron via cron, though. While it would have been easy enough to make an old-style StartupItem to launch cron, I wanted to do the right thing.
Anyway, after experimenting with plutil and launchctl a bit, I figured out how to get launchd to run Anacron every 15 minutes. It isn't all that complicated, if you're familiar with XML, but in the interest of sparing other people the hassle, I'm documenting it in my blog -- the details are also in the remainder of this hint...