How to change your login photo to one of your choice-not the Mac's!

Have you noticed that your Mac assigned a picture other than your smiling face as your ID picture on the log-in screen? Do you want to change the icon? Do you want your own face up there? Do you want a picture from the Internet as your ID picture?

This article will walk you through the steps necessary to change the ID picture to the one you want.

Step One. Where is the picture in the first place? You'll find it in the Users & Groups preference pane in System Preferences. (Figure 1)

So go to System Preferences. It looks like a gearbox in versions 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8.

Double-click on System Preferences and choose Users & Groups in 10.7 and 10.8, and Accounts in 10.6. Whatever the name, the icon of several heads in silhouette is the one you want. (Figure 2)

Step Three. Double-click on Users & Groups/Accounts and you'll see this window. (Figure 6). Notice the picture well. You'll use this to change the picture.

Step Four. Place your mouse/pointing device pointer on the picture well. Do Not Click on Anything. Note that a small downward facing arrow appears in the lower right-hand corner. (Figure 4)

Step Five. Now you can click on the arrow in the lower right-hand corner. The following box should pop up in 10.8. You'll see similar in 10.7 and 10.6. You see a grid of icons to use as your ID photo under "Defaults". You can scroll this grid of icons up and down. (Figure 5)

You also see "Recents" to let you choose a recently taken photo. Finally, you see "Camera" which lets you use your iSight or Web cam to take your picture.

Step Six. I assume you want "Camera" Double-click on it. You get a preview of your picture-yes, it's video, so stay still-And an icon of a camera (Figure 6). Click on the camera icon and remain still. You'll see a 3-2-1 countdown and your screen will flash white to act as a flashbulb.

Now you've got your picture. If satisfied, click on "Done" and the picture goes into the picture well.

Step Seven. If you want a picture from another source-your high school graduation picture, snapshots from the beach or a picture taken from the Internet-you get the picture onto your Mac as a .PNG or .JPEG file. If it's huge, I'd use Preview's Tools > Adjust Size…to shrink the picture down to 320 x 240 pixels. Save it under another name!

Step Eight. Now open up the Users & Groups preference pane and drag your picture into the picture well. It should take it and you have a new ID photo when logging in.

Thomas Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley UG

Let's Get Ready to Rumble!

Apple knows how to do a publicity striptease. There’s no doubt about it. They just issue a press invitation for next Tuesday, 10/23/2012, telling us as little as possible; and the press of all sorts goes into a “what if?” frenzy. Everyone from the Reader’s Digest to Glamour to Macworld speculates on what they’ll bring on to the stage. I’ll point you to some speculation at MSNBC that seems to hitMSNBC that seemsto hit the high points.

All we at MacValley will say is “Don’t buy a 13” MacBookPro or MacBook Air until next Tuesday. Don’t buy an iMac until next Tuesday. Don’t buy a Mac Mini until next Tuesday.”

And try to remember that this new hardware won’t make you write better or create a better movie. If you want a product that can improve your looks immediately, invest in some Spanx underwear.

And as for the other item of today…was it deliberate on Micro$oft’s part to announce pricing on its Surface tablet today and then do an about-face, or is their marketing department just that bad?

Apparently they won’t try to compete with the Nexus 7 and the low-end Kindle’s at $199. No, they’re a “serious” tablet, which entitles them to charge $499 and more for the combination of cover and keyboard. See, it’s got a kickstand!

They better have plenty of apps and media available at launch for the Surface, or these things will appear at Big Lots! after Christmas for $50 with cover. They’ll get a certain amount of purchases from technology early adopters who just have to have whatever’s new and from people who wanted a tablet, but have an anti-Apple bias. After that, waddaya got that the iPad hasn’t got?

I’ll leave you with some good news for Windows 8. Stardock, a small software company that makes customization options for Windows, has a free beta version of its Start8 menu for Windows 8 Preview. The final version will cost $5. PC World predicts Stardock will make a small fortune from people relieved to find a solution to Windows 8 user interface that they can’t figure out.

Apple versus Microsoft next week

Microsoft promised it would finally deliver on Windows 8 on October 26th. This presented a fat, juicy target for Apple to swing at.

So it seems that Apple will introduce the long-anticipated “iPad Mini” along with the Retina 13” MacBookPro and the new and improved iMac.

Maybe a new and improved Mac Mini, too.

As for Windows 8, is it really better than Windows 7? We here at Macvalley Labs don’t intend to upgrade to Windows 8 unless M$ offers us a lot of money.

Anyway, Microsoft won’t offer DVD playback in Windows 8. They’ll probably say, “What! You don’t have an Xbox?” If you want DVD playback on your new Windows 8 desktop/laptop; you have the options of learning how to use VLC 2.x. VLC is an all-in-one media player that’s been around for years. It has versions for Linux, OS X, and Windows. In fact, if you bought an external DVD back in the day for your Mac (which only had a CD drive); VLC was pretty much your only option for playing a movie from it.

So, the short version is that VLC works and works well. You’ll need a guide to learn how to use it and PCWorld.com has it right here.

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley UG

Moving from Classic OS to Mountain Lion as painlessly as possible.r

Every November I return to this topic of moving a Mac user’s data from Classic OS formats to the latest version of OS X. Last year, a conversation with a fellow MacValley user sparked this. This year, it’s working with a Macvalley member with their two vintage Macs running 10.4 and a letter to MacLife from a Classic OS user deciding not to renew his subscription due to its emphasis on OS X.

If you use Classic OS for all or part of your workflow, please be aware of the excellent site Low End Mac. They have a lot of information on getting the most of your older hardware and software.

If you want to move your Appleworks word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, bitmap paintings, vector drawings, and databases into contemporary formats, I shall give you tips on how to do this in the next section. After that, I’ll cover what to do if you want to run Appleworks under Mountain Lion.

Moving the Word Processing, Spreadsheets, and Presentations

You can use Apple’s iWorks office suite to convert Appleworks word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations into formats you can share with others, including your boss who only uses Windows.

The word processing program Pages ’09 will read your Appleworks 6 text documents. You can save them in these formats: .pages, .rtf, .doc, .pdf, and .epub.

The spreadsheet program Numbers ’09 will read your Appleworks 6 spreadsheets. You can save them in these formats: .pdf, .xls, and .csv (comma-separated-values).

The presentation program Keynote can read your Appleworks 6 presentations. You can save them in these formats: Quicktime movie, Powerpoint .ppt, .pdf, separate image files of each slide, an HTML document that you can open in Safari or another Web browser, or as a movie for your iTunes library that you can play on your iPod.

Apple charges $19.99 for each of these programs. You get them in the Mac App Store which comes with Mountain Lion. They don’t offer a trial version like they used to.

Online Resources for Appleworks to iWorks conversion

The longstanding Appleworks User Group is now the Appleworks/iWork Users Group. You can reach them at www.awug.org.

Well, what about the graphics formats?

What about the Painting and Drawing formats?

You can save Paintings in a variety of formats that OS X Preview will open, such as PNG, JPEG, and Windows BMP. So Painting formats are no problem.

Appleworks Drawing, though, is another matter. For that, you need Dekorra Optics’ EazyDraw or Purgatory Design’s Intaglio 3.4.1.

You can’t use the version of Eazy Draw that you get from the Mac App Store to directly open Appleworks Drawings: Let me quote from the Web Site:

EazyDraw version 4 no longer supports import of MacDraw, MacDrawII, MacDrawPro, ClarisDraw or AppleWorks drawings. To import these drawings a retro-version of EazyDraw is provided. This version of EazyDraw still supports these retro-drawings and the import and coversion of PICT vector images. The "retro-version" runs on OS X 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7 (current Lion release), imported drawings are then saved in EazyDraw graphic format (or SVG, PDF, ... ) for use on the current OS X technology and EazyDraw version 4. The retro-version is provided on CD with the CD and Boxed versions of EazyDraw.

I also found this retro version of Eazy Draw on the support page of their Web site.

You’ll need a license from Eazy Draw to use the program:

We'll have you downloaded, licensed, and drawing in no time with our 9 month license ($20) or single user license available at our secure online store .

Our $20 trial license is a very popular option. You get a full use license, no limits or constraints, with free updates for 9 months. You may apply the $20 license fee toward the purchase of EazyDraw (download or CD) anytime within the first 2 months.

You got that? Go to http://www.eazydraw.com, download Eazydraw Retro from their support page and convert those Appleworks drawings!

What About Databases?

Let me steal unabashedly and admiringly from Chris Breen here:

Open the Appleworks database and choose Organize->Show All Records.

Select a layout that displays every field, select all, and copy the text to the clipboard.

You could also export the database as ASCII text. If you export the database data to an Appleworks spreadsheet and then move it to FileMaker, some odd characters might appear.

Anyway, open a new spreadsheet document. This can be Appleworks’ own spreadsheet component or an Excel document (Ed. I just tried Numbers from iWork ‘09 and it worked great)

Paste the text into the spreadsheet.

In all likelihood your data won’t contain field headings-Address and Phone Number, for example. When pasting your text, be sure to plunk that text down a couple of rows, leaving room to enter the field heading titles in the first row of the spreadsheet.

Save the spreadsheet as delimited ASCII text. Numbers only exports comma separated values, while Excel 2008 exports both comma separated vales and tab separated values.

Open that file in Filemaker Pro (or another database that imports delimited ASCII text, such as Bento 4).

The data will appear in a spreadsheet layout, meaning you’ll have to recreate the original database’s layout. No, your forms and reports do not copy over from Appleworks.

What if I have to run Appleworks? What are the extreme options?

Your extreme options come down to this:

You can keep Appleworks on a separate machine running Snow Leopard 10.6 or lower. This will work.

As for running a hacked version of Snow Leopard in a virtual machine, or the even more experimental Sheepshaver program for emulating Classic OS on an Intel machine; you’re on your own.

If you’re thinking about hacking, consider this. What does your job pay you hourly? Is it worth the frustration, or would you stay saner if you just went on-line to powermax.com to price something to run Appleworks?

Yeah, just dedicate your old Mac for running stuff you can’t replace. You’ll have to get a new Mac to run Mountain Lion, anyway.

Thomas Briant

Editor and Media Manager.

More fun links for you-courtesy of Arnold Woodworth

Here are links to articles about Apple and other Apple-related topics.

This first one recounts Walt Mossberg’s conversations with Steve Jobs at various times.

This next one is a side-by-side comparison of the New Yorker’s famous Saul Steinberg cover “View from 9th Avenue” in the original and now done with the help of Apple Maps.

Even Apple must have smiled at that one. Now get back to work and fix those maps. (And thank God I still have my old hardcopy Thomas Brothers maps for Southern California!)

Hour long audio:

Steve Jobs describes the iPad -- in 1983 -- that's before the first Macintosh was sold!!

11 minutes into the audio, he talks about "portable computers with radio links" that, someday, people will be able to retrieve E-mail anywhere in the USA.  Some people consider this the prophecy of the iPad.

25 minutes into the audio, he describes his vision of what we call a laptop computer today.

Once again, thank you Arnold!

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley UG

Anton Anderson of ProConsult featured at MacValley’s October 3rd Meeting

Our Wednesday evening meeting featured Anton Anderson of ProConsult. Anton is a member of the Apple Consultants Network, FMDiSC (FileMaker Developers in Southern California). He’s written a number of articles for developers and consultants in ‘FileMaker Advisor’. 

Anton presented FileMaker’s personal database, ‘Bento’. Those who attended our meeting now know just how versatile and colorful and useful a personal database like Bento can be. From organizing medical information, to volunteer groups info, to lists of favorite wines and beers and even pizza parlors, Bento is absolutely the best database program out there. 

Anton showed us just how easy it is to use Bento’s templates and all its drag-and-drop features to personalize each database. Bento also imports photos and website pages, and its many backgrounds are well designed and colorful. 

Thanks Anton for giving our MacValley members such an unforgettable presentation. 

Cristael Bengtson

President, MacValley UG

The Presentation on Bento on 10/03/2012

Anton Anderson gave a wonderful presentation Wednesday night, 10/03/2012. You must see him give his presentation on Bento.

To sum up his points:

Filemaker (a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, Inc) wrote Bento specifically for the Mac, taking advantage of the Core technologies built into OS X. Many Windows users envy Bento and wish they had it for their Windows machines. No such luck.

Bento is a personal database. It’s not designed for multi-user use in an office. If you work as a sole proprietor, Bento would work well for you. If you have several employees who all need access to the database, invest in FileMaker. FileMaker can easily handle large numbers of users.

Users can get started quickly with Bento due to its templates. Bento comes with a large stock of templates. You can get more through the on-line Template Exchange, where users submit templates they created for their personal use.

You can get Bento for the Mac and for your iPhone and your iPad. Bento costs $49 for the Mac, $9.99 for the iPad, and $4.99 for the iPhone.

As I said, Bento does not dump you into designing your own database from scratch. You could design your own database from scratch if you’re so inclined. A lot of users, though, will stick with the prewritten templates or just modify an existing template to their needs.

Bento proves useful in business situations where you need to isolate data from the main database. Anton gave the example of a real-estate office where the owner wanted to use the existing Filemaker database for his son’s bar mitzvah. It proved somewhat difficult to integrate the data for the bar mitzvah into the real estate database.

So when the time came for the owner’s daughter’s bat mitzvah, Anton said, “We’ll just take the basic data from the Filemaker database, put it into a Bento database and go from there.” Items such as food preferences for the guests fit easily into a separate Bento database, while the main Filemaker database hummed along with just real estate sales information.

You can store more than just numbers in Bento. You could, if you wanted, set up a database of videos. Anton gave the example of a vocal coach who takes videos of clients at various stages of progress and keeps them in, well, a Filemaker database. But Bento would work just as well. Record your children playing sports or musical instruments and put it into a Bento database, noting their progress over time.

You could store pictures, too; although Bento does not provide for the image editing found in iPhoto or Aperture. If you want to record an inventory of personal possessions, though, you can easily include a photo of these objects.

In summary, Bento provides an easy to use database for personal use. It exploits the features of OS X and complements the iWork office suite.