Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Are you looking for a Mac Pro under $3,000 that’s still eligible for AppleCare? Well, you’re in luck. We have two refurbished Mac Pros and two demo Mac Pros that are a spectacular price at $2,999.99. Plus, all are within the one-year warranty, so they’re eligible for AppleCare, extending the full warranty to three years.

Grab ’em while you can–there are only four, so quantities are extremely limited.

“*Buy AppleCare here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Apple/AppleCare/Mac_Pro/
“*Buy RAM here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=ECC+DIMM+1333MHz+DDR3

Apple released OS 5.1 last week, which contains improvements and bug fixes. Of course, Apple also released a new iPad, Apple TV and software last week as well–for all of that coverage, “*click here*”:http://blog.smalldog.com to check out our blog. “*Click here*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Apple/iPad/iPad_3rd_Gen/ to jump straight to the new iPad!

An overview of iOS 5.1 from Apple:

* Japanese language support for Siri (availability may be limited during initial rollout)
* Photos can now be deleted from Photo Stream
* Camera shortcut now always visible on Lock Screen for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone * 3GS and iPod touch (4th generation)
* Camera face detection now highlights all detected faces
* Redesigned Camera app for iPad
* Genius Mixes and Genius playlists for iTunes Match subscribers
* Audio for TV shows and movies on iPad optimized to sound louder and clearer
* Podcast controls for playback speed and a 30 second rewind for iPad
* Updated AT&T network indicator
* Addresses bugs affecting battery life
* Fixes an issue that occasionally caused audio to drop for outgoing calls

More information on the security content of this update can be found “*here.*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

To read about how to update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, “*click here.*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4623

When you burn a disc in iPhoto or iTunes do you end up with the annoying “Untitled CD/DVD” in the sidebar of your Finder window? How do you remove it? There are several ways to address the issue.

First of all, by default, the sidebar of a Finder window and the elements contained therein are not permanent. Since the beginning of OS X, you could alter the order and contents of the sidebar by drag and drop. If you want your home folder to be first, drag it to the top of the list; if you want Applications first, same thing. If you want to remove these items, you should be able to simply drag them out of the sidebar, and like an icon from the dock, they should disappear in a cloud of smoke.

When the drag and drop does not work, maybe altering the Finder window and sidebar in Finder preferences is the way to go. In Finder Preferences, Sidebar, alterations are completed by checking or unchecking boxes.

Lastly, when these methods do not work, you can attempt to manually alter the preference list for the sidebar. (Warning–this is not for the squeamish!) In your Home folder, in the Library (hidden in Lion), there is a folder called Preferences. While there are 100s, if not 1000s, of individual plist files in the preferences, the one you want is called com.apple.sidebarlists.plist.

When opening the sidebar plist in TextEdit, each of the items, including the multiple disk aliases, has a discrete entry. Starting with the position line, OBB, ORR, etc., I carefully deleted each reference to the ‘Untitled Disk (number)’ from the plist file. After deleting the lines of information, I saved the document and restarted the computer. When next I opened a fresh Finder window, the offending entries were gone.

A few months ago, Intuit announced that they would be updating Quicken 2007 for Mac to support Lion. Quicken 2007 for Mac remains one of the top reasons people will not upgrade to OS X 10.7–it was written for PowerPC systems, and Apple dropped Rosetta support.

Responses to this announcement were mixed–many were hopeful that it would finally allow them to upgrade to Lion and not lose their finance package, but a lot of people thought it was a stupid move on Intuit’s part to upgrade a four-year-old program and not add any new features.

Last Thursday, Intuit made this “new” version available for $14.99, either through download or disc delivery. So far, most of the feedback falls into two camps: there are the people who scream “FAIL” because Intuit has once again dropped the ball on Mac users by releasing five-year-old software and calling it “new,” and then there are those who call this “too little too late,” as they have already moved on to other solutions. The main reason people held out hope for Quicken 2007 is that it contains many features unavailable in other programs, including Intuit’s intended replacement, Quicken Essentials.

Intuit has suggested that this upgrade is intended for people who were already running Quicken 2007 for Mac. People should not look to this as a new program, nor should they see this as a continuation of the “old” Quicken series of applications. Intuit plans to continue with Quicken Essentials, as well as the online versions of Quicken that are not OS specific.

I’ve seen some postings from people who were unable to find the upgrade on Intuit’s web site. If it doesn’t come up in a search, the page can be found “here.”:http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance-software/quicken-2007-osx-lion.jsp

Here at Small Dog we are gearing up for the next version of the iPad. I have been thinking of whether or not I would want to get one for myself, and what I would use it for if I did get one.

I think that it would be great to have one with me so that I could show all the people I meet the awesome pictures of me and my cats. I know that the nice lady who rings me out at the grocery would love to see pictures of me on the roller coaster with my cat, or even screaming our heads off on the Demon Drop. There are so many other uses for an iPad that I can think of!

I would love to be able to keep track of my social schedule, appointments, and even the occasional game for my kitty to play. He loves the Fruit Ninja game; I bet that he pretends the fruit is actually mice, but who knows…

You may notice that we’re changing up how we feature specials down below–we plan to highlight a great used/refurbished or demo deal (or two)–let us know what you think! Look for new accessories and information about the new iPad below as well.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on what you would like to see in future issues of Tech Tails.

Thanks for reading!

-Cee Lo Green- Jason (with my cat, Purrfect)
“*jasonl@smalldog.com*”:mailto:jasonl@smalldog.com

“__Image Source__”:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/cee-lo-cat-purrfect_n_1339471.html