A few months ago I bought a Mac Mini. I enjoy OS X, and wasn’t really inexperienced when I switched over to it. But I have a few random questions, some of which probably don’t have good answers. I don’t believe that they’re questions which have already been done to death: if that’s not the case, please inform me and bury this.
How do I get rid of old preference pane stuff?
[list=a]
[li]Specifically, the Yahoo! Widgits crap. I uninstalled it, but there’s still a button.[/li] [/list]
I kinda prefer spatial file browsing, with the Aqua Finder windows. How do I keep the brushed metal Finder browser window from coming up when I:
[list=a]
[li]Drag files onto a folder and hold, waiting for a folder to pop up[/li] [li]Open a new disk image[/li] [li]Is there a way to get rid of brushed metal Finder view forever? I don’t mean get rid of the texture - I mean the actual browser view, so that it never comes up again (this is probably my chief question here)[/li] [/list]
Is there a “spatially-oriented” FTP client? That remembers directory windows’ sizes and shapes, through separate sessions? I believe Windows Explorer works rather like that.
Is there any way to optimize speed for resizing windows? I tend to resize a lot and it can stutter, especially when I’m hooked up to a 1280x1024 screen.
[list=a][li]Especially stuff like iCal when drawers are open[/list][/li]5) Are there any other music players besides iTunes?
6)Is there any good way to back up calendar stuff besides .mac?
[list=a][li]I have ftp space through school; is there any way to automate the backup and ftp transfer ritual?[/li]
7) Is there any good iCalendar viewer/editor for Windows?
Transmit’s pretty cool. Its synchronization features are very nifty, and probably one of the things I’m looking for. Can’t really afford to shell out the bucks for it, though, especially since I have a complimentary copy of Fetch. And in any event, it’s not exactly what I’m looking for - I’d like (but am no means requiring) an FTP client with an icon view, where I can reposition files in the window, which represents each directory by its own window, and which remembers all positions.
I doubt such a thing exists, though. In spatial mode, I think Windows Explorer may do some or all of those things, if it’s any sort of baseline.
Actually (slapping my head) there’s a much better example of the kind of thing I’m looking for out of an FTP client: Gnome’s Nautilus, which I used before I switched over to OS X. Now there is a perfect application, if a little thin on features. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a native OS X port.
Forgive me, but I’m going to bump this just once, in case someone knows how to get rid of Finder’s browser view for good and was distracted by all my other questions. (Probably should have refined this and posted in GQ. Sorry!)
They hang out in only two places: /Library/PreferencePanes, and ~/Library/PreferencePanes. Go into those folders and nuke the unwanted.
Yes: NetFinder. Unless you mean displaying files in Icon View and actually having it remember the x, y coodinates to which you have dragged individual file icons (it doesn’t do that). But you can drag a window to a location on-screen and size it to your satisfaction, close it, reopen it, and it is as you left it. Open a different FTP site and it remembers a different size and location, etc. And each directory is extremely Finder-like in appearance and behavior.
[QUOTE=jackelopeAs long as we’re asking Mac questions, what is this “Disk Image” thing? I have the impression that it’s something important I should know about.[/QUOTE]
A diskimage is actually a file (generally bearing extensions “.img” or “.dmg”) but when you double-click one of them, an obscure faceless app that comes with the OS launches invisibly and mounts the diskimage on your Desktop as if you’d inserted a floppy or a CD or a DVD. And the OS subsequently treats it as a mounted volume.
They are used extensively to distribute OS X software.
So what’s it an image of? Is this when I download an app and double-click to install, and a little window pops up with the file in it that I then drag to my Applications folder?
Moreover, I read somewhere about “creating a disk image before you do such-and-such.” Is this important, like backing up one’s system on a PC? And how do I do it?
You can think of a disk image as a CD or DVD, but instead of physically inserting a CD or DVD into your computer, you just double click on the file and the computer more or less pretends you’ve inserted a real CD or DVD. Or external hard drive, for that matter. A disk image can be identified both by its distinctive icon, and also it’s extension, which will be .dmg.
On preview, I see AHunter3 is already on the case.
You’re gonna hate me for this, but…it’s an image of a disk
Seriously, not just the files that constitute the disk contents, but the format thereof (FAT32, HFS+, etc). And permissions where appropriate.
Hard to know re: the other question without knowing what “such-and-such” you’re referring to. Making a diskimage of something can be a useful step in several procedures. I would not normally make a diskimage of my entire HD as a means of doing a backup though, if only because there are other methods of doing a backup that I like better. Guess you could do it that way though.
Its synchronization features are very nifty, and probably one of the things I’m looking for. Can’t really afford to shell out the bucks for it, though, especially since I have a complimentary copy of Fetch. And in any event, it’s not exactly what I’m looking for - I’d like (but am no means requiring) an FTP client with an icon view, where I can reposition files in the window, which represents each directory by its own window, and which remembers all positions.