March 09, 2010

Magic Mouse in Boot Camp

I had trouble getting my Magic Mouse working in Boot Camp, and found this Apple Support Article saying you may need to re-pair the mouse in Mac OS before it can pair properly in Windows. That still didn't work, but I found these steps that did (plus a reboot):

This is easiest to do when you have another mouse already working with the system...

1. Install your bluetooth support and service packs for XP
2. Go to Bluetooth devices from your control panel or system tray
3. Connect the Magic Mouse and wait until the machine settles down.
4. Click Add..
5. Check my device is set up and ready to be found
6. Click Next
7. Click the device from the list - it should appear as the address of the mouse (looks like a Mac address)
8. Click Next
9. Don't use a passkey
10. Wait until the bubble appears saying to click here because a device is requesting your attention (or whatever it says)
11. Pass key is 0000
12. Click Next
13. Click Finish
14. Go back to Bluetooth devices
15. Click on the device from the list
16. Click Properties
17. Give the device a reasonable name (like Magic Mouse?)
18. Click Services tab
19. Check drivers for keyboard, mice, etc (HID)
20. Click Ok.

In my case I had to reboot before it would et me select the keyboard services.


February 27, 2010

History of the Apple Startup Sound

From TUAW.com:
...the creators of the Dutch site onemorething.nl have posted their interview with Apple sound designer Jim Reekes (who also appears in Welcome To Macintosh). They met up with Reekes while at Macworld in San Francisco a little while back -- he's the guy that programmed most of the sound in the early days, including the famous Mac startup chime and the legendary "sosumi" chime.



January 01, 2010

iMovie 09 Project Lost

We went on a family trip to Las Vegas recently and shot some video and pics that I edited together into a nice piece to remember the trip. It even had a funny ending where it showed different people and made-up stories about their escapades in Sin City (yeah, I know whatever happens in Vegas, etc.).

After I had posted the video to YouTube, I wanted to export the project to iTunes so we could see it on our AppleTV. The project no longer showed up in iMovie. It was there in Finder, but even double clicking on it directly didn't help.

I wasn't able to recover the project, but since I had uploaded it to YouTube, the exported 720p file still existed. It wasn't a complete loss, and I reminded myself to back up more often.

To get to the exported file, I selected the project, right-clicked and picked 'Show Package Contents' (iMovie projects are actually special folders called 'packages'). Inside there's a folder called Movies which has the exported version(s).

FWIW, I checked out the project file itself, and it was full of the same character. The file appears to be a binary format, but normally there's something recognizable like a clip name. In this case it looks like iMovie decided to nuke the data. Too bad.

So, in addition to backing up I'm going through each of my projects and exporting the highest resolution possible to the Media Browser. That makes the files visible to other iLife programs and still gives me the option to export a separate file later.