As usual, I've gotten a good bit of response to my articles, and
many of the respondents offer helpful insight or good follow-up
questions. I've selected those that I believe are beneficial to a
larger audience to respond to here.
New Year's Hopes
Received in response to Five
Things I Hope to See in 2006
Alvin writes (1/5):
I'm not sure people who have so many PC peripherals and
softwares like businesses will switch even if Macintel can run
them. Simplification is what every business also desires. Unless
OS X Leopard is bundled and that you could transparently run
Linux and Windows programs on top of OS X ala OS X
Classic (which would not be an emulation) then they will
switch.
I think that's precisely why they will launch the Mac mini
Macintel for business first and of course I feel they will launch
Leopard at the same time to demonstrate exactly this. I see Apple
being No. 1 in hardware and software and media distribution. I see
an Apple box with that remote that only searches for media on a new
Apple Channel on cable. I think the iMac FrontRow is the most
perfect all-in-one, but it's too much to be a boxtop. People will
need it to be simpler and cheaper: an Apple box, a remote, choose
what you like at their channel, press play.
My response:
I agree that a machine that can run any/all OSes
will be popular and may even succeed at the business level.
However, Apple has made it clear that, while they won't cripple
their machines from a dual- or multi-boot setup, they will not
supply anything beyond the Mac OS.
As far as the Apple media machine, I think you
have some innovative ideas. I agree that FrontRow offers a lot of
promise, and I think future generations of it will probably include
more full-functioned options like you've described. An Apple
Channel? Who knows? But one thing is for certain: Apple is far from
finished with its foray into the media world.
Keeping in Touch with Address Book
Responses to Replacing
Entourage: Apple's Address Book More Powerful Than You Might
Think:
RR Aranda writes (1/19):
One suggestion on third party software - the freeware Address
Book tab-delimited exporter works quite well, and may be useful
your readers.
Steve writes (1/19):
Although you may have run across this program, I'd like to give
you a heads up on it. It's called "Contacts". Its an open source
item I grabbed with Fink. For those who are productive in the
command line, this program opens up options with Apple's Address
Book.
Tim Gaden writes (1/22):
Many people speak highly of a
Swiss website that offers great conversions from [Address Book]
to Thunderbird and Gmail.
My response:
Thanks, everyone, for the recommendations! These
are great additions to the growing list of helpful add-ons and
plugins. (By the way, check out Tim Gaden's blog, Hawk Wings, which
highlights many excellent additions to Address Book, Mail, and
iCal.)
Burt McCormick writes (1/20):
I just read your very informative article about Address Book.
Thank you for bringing all those powerful features to my attention.
I still have some questions however. At one point you mention that
"Address Book's print dialog is sufficient for many people's needs:
Printing envelopes, mailing labels, and basic address lists is very
easy. An option for printing pocket address books is also
included". I couldn't figure out how to do any of these.
I also noticed that I have no Smart Group button in the upper
left corner as is pictured in your article. I'm using OS X
10.3.9 and Address Book 3.1.2 (v321). Are these Tiger only
features, or is there a way to get this functionality with my set
up? Thanks again for a very helpful article.
My response:
Burt, you're right - you won't find these options available in
versions of Address Book prior to version 4.x. These were added
with v.4.x, which accompanies Tiger (OS X 10.4.x). However,
the utility
Address Book Reports, which I mentioned in my article, will
bring these and other printer formatting options to your pre-Tiger
Address Book (OS X 10.3 or later).
Unfortunately, Smart Groups are too closely tied to Tiger's
Spotlight search technology and cannot be easily mimicked by
third-party applications. There are some programs that will perform
specialized searches, however, such as the utility
Birthday Reminder that I mentioned in my article.
Scott Kaiser writes (1/23):
What I am looking for are plugins that would allow me to sync
it with Yahoo! and/or Plaxo. If you know of any, and could include
them in your next article, that would be great.
My response:
Scott, I mentioned Plaxo in the follow-up article, but at
that time there were no OS X plugins for it - unless you use
Thunderbird (which obviously doesn't fit in an article about
Address Book!). However, a new beta version of a Plaxo Address Book
plug-in has just been released! (Thanks to Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings
for pointing this out.) I've installed it, and it works great. And,
it's compatible with OS X 10.3 and later, so users of some
older versions of Address Book will find it useful, too. You can
find
a link to this plug-in at Tim's Hawk Wings blog.
Editor's note: The plug-in works nicely. Quit Address Book, run
the installer, and the next time you launch Address Book it will
ask for your Plaxo ID and password. Then it synchs things. You'll
want to run through your Address Book for duplicate entries, but
this works quite smoothly. dk
Address Book Round Two
Reflections on Replacing
Entourage: Mac Address Book Integrates Nicely with Non-Apple Apps
and Services:
Dan Knight writes (1/26):
Hmmmm, Plaxo overwrites my
notes - not cool. Otherwise it looks promising.
My response:
Dan, I've found that Plaxo will overwrite notes
that are after the "tag" that it inserts into the Notes section,
but not those before the tag. So, if you simply place your notes
before the "PLAXO-VERSION 1.0" tag, they will remain. (This doesn't
help you recover the notes that are already overwritten! But
hopefully will prevent future mishaps.) Or install the new plug-in;
my guess is that it will prevent such problems.
Dennis Brockman writes (1/27):
I am not sure if you noticed, but GroupCal does not work with
Tiger. We have been waiting for a long time for this, and Snerdware
is terrible in communicating what they are doing. Still they are
the only game in town, and so we wait.
My response:
Dennis, thanks very much for bringing this to my
attention. I was not aware of this holdup, but I'm sure the readers
will appreciate the warning.
Klaus Buchheim writes (1/29):
I also started to use Address Book very recently but discovered
a major issue/bug/oversight or potential user error with it (using
Mac OS X 10.4.4): When I have a card with a name, a private
address, and work address, and I want to print the work address
label, Address Book does not print the company name on the label.
It prints the name and address but not the company name. So I was
wondering if you have observed the same and if you have any idea
and/or solution to this? This could very well be a user error.
My response:
Good catch, Klaus. This is a problem, and it shows
up when printing envelopes, too. Similarly, when you have a card
listed as a business (but with a particular contact under the
business's name), it will not print the contact at that business,
only the name of the business.
I have two suggestions for working around this:
First, the previously mentioned Address Book Reports will, in fact,
handle the information as you prefer. Secondly, you might take
advantage of Pages 2.0's ability to perform merge functions and set
up your printing needs in a Pages document. Unfortunately, neither
of these solutions fixes what should be there - the otherwise very
easy-to-use and nicely implemented envelope and label printing
functions in Address Book.
Willis B. Smith writes (2/1):
I appreciate your pieces about the merits of Address Book. I am
having difficulty exporting Entourage contacts into Address Book.
Could you help?
My response:
My memory is that I simply chose "Select All" from
my contacts list in Entourage and dragged them to Address Book. If
that doesn't work, however, you should be able to export contacts
from Entourage as a Tab-Delimited Values file or as a
Comma-Separated Values file. Either of these should be able to
import into Address Book through the "Import" command in the File
menu. Select "File - >Import - >Text File..." and choose the
export file you created with Entourage.
Yojimbo Review
Responses to Yojimbo: A
Powerful, Easy to Use Information Management Tool:
Dennis Smith writes (2/9):
I have had Macs for years and have done a terrible job of
keeping my data organized. On my current G4 hard drive I have
folders of data copied from multiple hard drives, but almost every
folder has some unique data. Is there a program/utility for
OS X 10.3 that will search my hard drive for documents and
identify duplicates so I can eliminate them and consolidate my
data? Then I can have a reliable backup strategy and know I am
backing up everything from the single source folder.
My response:
Dennis, what you're looking for is available in
several forms. One that I have used is Ambriel Software's Duplicate Catcher.
[Editor's note: Ambriel Software seems to have vanished.] I've also
heard good things about Modesitt Software's DupeFinder. Both of
these are shareware. You might find them similarly helpful.
Bare Bones software writes (2/12):
The single-user license allows installation for one person on
multiple machines, not on a single computer. The family license
provides for use by up to five people living at the same
residential address, each with multiple machines. The educational
license, as discussed [in your article], was designed with students
in mind, or I suppose faculty and staff, who are operating on a
single machine.
My response:
Thanks for the correction, and thanks for a great
program. I think many Efficient Mac Users will benefit from your
efforts!
Two More Things
Readers who have been following this column since around
Thanksgiving/Christmas will remember my articles on Consumer
Reports' lousy comparison of Macs to Windows PCs, Consumer Reports Just Doesn't Get
Macs and How Consumer
Reports Could Compare Macs Fairly. Well - the latest
version of CR is out, and I'm pleased to report that they did a
slightly better job in several areas. The service comparisons
compared Macs directly to PCs. And, there was a very respectable
article highlighting, among other things, the new Macs and what
they offer. They still have a ways to go, but any improvement is
welcome.
Also, other correspondence with Bare Bones software makes clear
that, by far, the predominant focus on their part has been creating
an "effortless experience" in Yojimbo. This explains some of the
things that I pointed out as "missing pieces" in my review: lack of
AppleScript support, some of the leaner elements of metadata, and
the limits on things like labels and Smart Collections. Thanks for
clearing that up, Bare Bones.
That's all for this edition of the Efficient Mac User Mailbag.
Check in with us in the next few weeks when I resume my "Replacing
Entourage" series, this time looking at iCal, time and task
management, and project planning and management. 
