The Mac Experience in Business & Home: Help, Tips, Discussion & Radio Show Notes

Apple has a site that answers this, and presents options:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107657

Eddie asked “is there a way to sync the birthdays in my iPhone contacts with the calendar?”

You have to go to iCal prefs and select show birthday calendars and then resync the iPhone. Then in iTunes, you’ll have the Birthdays calendar available to check off. Resync and you’re in business. Screen shots included below.

1. Check off show birthdays calendar under ical>preferences.

2. Sync Your iPhone.

3. You will now have a Birthdays calendar to choose in iTunes under info.

4. Now just sync the phone again and you are all set.

So you’ve changed ISPs, tested out multiple email hosting services, and have finally settled into a small series of email addresses that you are going to stick with for awhile. Apple’s Mail.app stores all the SMTP servers you’ve used in the past in your preference file and asks what server you want to use for sending email when the default server is unavailable. This is great except for one thing - you’ve got 10 old servers that are useless for sending email still stored in the memories of the software. You’ve long since deleted the old accounts and can’t find discover where these old servers are lurking around. Here are three solutions:

Joan, thanks for calling in. Here are the links we discussed on the air tonight:

Syncing photos to your iPod from your Windows PC

How to restore an iPod to its factory settings

Updating your iPod’s software

Also, the iPod assistant is worth a shot if none of these help out:

http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/

Let us know how it’s going!

Prior to installing sync software, prior to various software updates, prior to troubleshooting any problems with your email software, your techs may be, should be! recommending you backup your mail.

A free way to do this with Mail.app in Apple’s OS X 10.4 is here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301239#mail

An almost free way to do it ($10), and do it automatically, scheduled, with Apple Mail as well as Entourage and Thunderbird, is here:

http://homepage.mac.com/minge/emailbackuppro/index.html

This is for users of OnDeckTech’s Zimbra hosting services, however, it also explains how to configure Eudora more generally for other users, who will have to substitute their settings where appropriate.

1. Click on Eudora in the menu bar at the top of the screen then click preferences.
2. Then click “Getting Started” at the left hand side of the screen



3. Change the Mail Server to macsuite.com
4. Change the SMTP server to mail.macsuite.com:587
5. Click “Checking Mail” on the left hand side
   
6. Make sure the mail server reads macsuite.com
7. Make sure “save password” is also selected

We had a listener write in with a problem that sounds like it could be solved by a download and update from Apple:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbooksmcfirmwareupdate11

This updates the firmware of MacBooks to version 1.1, solving a heat and freeze issue.

Safe Boot (aka “Safe Mode”) allows you to start up your Mac with a simplified operating system, helpful for identifying and circumventing minor corruptions to startup items, extensions and fonts. Here’s info from Apple’s website on Safe Mode on the Mac, since it was discussed, too, press Shift during start up to enter safe mode on Mac OS X:

Everyone’s talking about the iPhone (although no one is talking with it yet), and while this article is about communication, this is the last sentence that will mention the iPhone. For the moment, pass on, you hordes of latest gadget-lovers! We have other fish to fry. Last Website Wednesday Night we had a caller bring up the question of video conferencing between Macintosh OS X and Windows XP. In the past we’ve promised we’d share at least one way to make this work, and today is that day.

This show, on WGN AM 720 broadcast from the Tribune tower in downtown Chicago is, for tonight, dedicated to novice computer users! We’re spending time talking about the basics, thinking many people in the audience may have just received computers over the holidays, remembering a short dozen years ago how Steve and Johnnie left their computer in the box for months before working up the courage to open it…

For those of you who’ve just gotten your Macs, you may want to visit Apple’s web page devoted to first-time users, Mac 101: http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ .

Given he has already taken the somewhat drastic step of reinstalling his OS (clean install), and Shawn is still experiencing freezes on his Mac OS X 10.3.9 G4 tower, it’s looking more likely he has some sort of a hardware problem. Things to check: