Apple

Does your Mac graphics card have enough video memory?

Graphics info from System Information utility

While many people pay attention to the speed of their computer’s CPU (central processing unit) and how much RAM (random-access memory) their applications need, the video card (also called the graphics card) is getting more attention as image-editing, video-editing, and game applications increasingly rely on it. In addition, today’s desktop displays are larger than ever, and a new wave of high resolution monitors such as the Apple Retina display have a dramatically increased pixel density (pixels per inch resolution) that has also increased the number of screen pixels that need to be managed for a given screen size. All of these changes add to the work that a video card has to do.

(Note: This article covers how graphics hardware works on Macs using Intel processors. Macs using Apple Silicon processors work differently, and that is not covered here. I may cover that after I gain a better understanding of the differences.)

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Where did that software put my photos?

If you’ve always managed photos in folders on your computer desktop, you may feel a bit disoriented when working in applications such as Lightroom, Aperture, or iPhoto that seem to impose their own organization on your images. In this article, I’ll first talk about how to find your photos on your computer even when they’re organized differently in a photo application, and I’ll also talk about why spending your time on the desktop may not be the best or fastest way for a photographer to find images.

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Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Will Adobe apps and other software work?

Lion iconIf you’ve got a fast Internet connection, a recent Mac, and US$29, what’s stopping you from downloading the just-released 10.7 Lion upgrade to Mac OS X? For many people, what stops them is being unsure whether the software they have is still going to work. In this article I’ve collected various reports I’ve run into around the web.

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Photoshop CS5: Keyboard shortcut issue fixed by Mac OS X 10.6.7

Photoshop + Software Update = happy

Have you found that some keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop CS5 (Mac) haven’t been working? Or are some tools acting strangely, as if the Option or Shift keys were pressed? It turns out that Mac OS X 10.6.5 introduced a bug where modifier keys might stick; for example, you might always see the Hand tool, as if the spacebar was pressed, and you might be unable to switch away from the Hand tool. One way I experienced it was when I tried to press the Command and Spacebar keys to get the temporary Zoom tool, but nothing would happen.

The bug was also in Mac OS X 10.6.6, but Adobe reports that Apple finally fixed the problem in the Mac OS X 10.6.7 update. So while there have been various workarounds that involve tracking down software conflicts, now that Mac OS X 10.6.7 is out, the fastest and simplest solution is to download and install the Apple update. As usual, you can run Software Update to get the new version, or you can download the Combo installer from the link above.

While the problem isn’t mentioned in Apple’s release notes for 10.6.7, this issue is related to a change that Apple made to an API in Mac OS X 10.6.5, as explained in this forum post. A number of Mac applications were affected, but Photoshop was the most prominent one, and there are several threads discussing it on the Adobe User-to-User Forum for Photoshop.

Update: OpenType issues introduced with Mac OS X 10.6.7

Upgrading to 10.6.7 is no longer a no-brainer. Apple has apparently introduced a new bug related to OpenType fonts in PDF files generated by Mac OS X 10.6.7, so if you use OpenType fonts (and who wouldn’t, since they’re modern and cross-platform) you may have problems printing or rendering from them in 10.6.7. I suppose it comes down to whether it’s more important to you to have your keyboard shortcuts working in programs like Photoshop (in which case you’d upgrade to 10.6.7), or whether you need reliable handling of OpenType fonts (in which case you’d stick with 10.6.6).

(Update to this update: Apple has fixed this OpenType issue in the Snow Leopard Font Update, so make sure you run that update after updating to 10.6.7.)

iPhone asks for unknown voicemail password

iPhone voicemail password request

Has your iPhone all of a sudden started asking you for your voicemail password? Is it not letting you in even though you’re sure you entered the right voicemail password? Or have you completely forgotten the password?

When this started happening to me, I ran a search on Twitter and found a lot of people complaining about the same thing. Which means it might have been an AT&T system glitch and nothing we users did wrong on our phones. People have proposed various solutions out there, everything from calling AT&T customer service to having the phone send you a new temporary password via SMS. But what worked for me was a lot simpler and I didn’t have to use a different password.

My fix. I used my iPhone to dial my own phone number, which answers by putting me directly into my voicemail account. I then followed the voicemail menu to where you can change your password, and get this: it didn’t ask me for the old password before entering the new one. How convenient. I entered the password I wanted, and the next time AT&T voicemail asked me for my password, I entered that one and it worked.

When you get to the AT&T voicemail menu, here’s the sequence (or just listen to the menus if they changed them around):

  1. Press 4 for personal options.
  2. Press 2 for administrative options.
  3. Press 1 to manage passwords.
  4. Press 1 to change the password.
  5. When the system asks you to enter the password you want, do it.
  6. When the system lets you know the new password is set, press * to back out of the menus until the system says “Goodbye!”

The next time the Voicemail screen asks you for your password, the one you just set up should work. And all of your saved voicemails should show up again. That’s what happened to me, anyway; if it isn’t working for you I really don’t know what to do next except maybe contact AT&T.

OK, that was easy. But if there was a kung-fu film called Enter the Password, at this point its hero might say, looking around with suspicion, “…that was too easy.”

Security concern. While it was convenient to be able to change my password without having to know whatever mystery password AT&T was expecting before, security-minded readers may see this as a security hole. It means that if your iPhone is in the wrong hands for less than a minute, they could easily lock you out of your own voicemail by changing your password. Just another reason why every smartphone user should use the feature that locks your phone when you don’t use it for a couple of minutes, requiring a passcode to get back in. Yes, a phone passcode is a hassle, but there’s just too much personal information on these phones now and too much access to key parts of your life to allow a smartphone to be unsecured.