Software
Whenever I see an update to a program or app I get excited and want to try it out. This is not always a wise thing to do.
When I found out about the MobileMe Calendar beta update I eagerly signed up and did not think of the consequences. I was approved to try out the beta and pressed the little update button.
The result was that my entire iCal on my iMac was “wiped out” and replaced with the new MobileMe Calendar beta.
From what I understand, the MobileMe Calendar beta moves the local iCal information from your local Mac and stores it on the MobileMe “cloud” or server. So everything you enter on your iCal is stored online and no where else. All updates are sent to your other iOS devices. And when you update info on your iPad or iPhone this is sent to the “cloud” and then down to all other iOS devices. In this way everything is kept up to date and in sync.
Unfortunately iCal is no longer automatically backed up on your hard drive or Time Machine. You have to manually back up your individual calendars in order to have any sort of backup that’s not on the MobileMe server.
So when I updated to MobileMe beta and synced my Todo iPad and iPhone apps, there was no longer any iCal info on my computer and all the info was wiped clean from my Todo apps.
Of course this was very upsetting since I no longer had any of my Todo’s on my iPhone and iPad. Also at this time iCal does not sync it’s todo list feature with any other iOS device (which is still very annoying).
The good news was that I was able to “downgrade” my MobileMe calendar server back to the pre-beta mode which restored my calendar as it was before I updated to the beta. Any changes made after I updated to the beta was lost.
And when I re-synced my Todo apps on the iPhone and iPad I got all my info back! So everything is back to the way it was before I got myself into this mess.
The good folks at Appigo and “Todo” are going to look into this and hopefully come up with a workable fix. If not, I’m worried that when this new MobileMe calendar beta becomes the only option, my Todo apps may become useless.
If you have an iPhone, iMac, iPad or any other iThingy, Dropbox is an incredibly easy way to sync a file from your computer to other computers or devices. It’s only a matter of opening an account with Dropbox online, adding an app to any of your iDevices and dropping a file or two or even more into the “box”. In an instant that file is available for viewing on all linked devices.
Dropbox allows you to view documents, spreadsheets, photos, videos and presentations. A neat feature is that you can snap a photo with your iPhone and save it to your Dropbox direct. You don’t even need a MobileMe account.
And the great thing is a Dropbox account is free and comes with 2 GB of storage space. For most people that’s quite a lot of space. If you have a lot of heavy duty files you can purchase a Pro plan up to 100GB. I am not an affiliate of Dropbox but I do find it worth looking into if you haven’t already installed it on your iStuff. Dropbox is also available for non-Apple-ites, who use Windows or Linux.
And why I spent $300 total to do so. I’ve had the most difficult time. Turns out Intuit does not support QuickBooks Pro for the PC running in a virtual Windows environment on your Mac. Who knew? Much online research did not point this out to me.
I was using an early 2009 iMac 24″, the latest VMfusion 3, Windows 7 Pro and QuickBooks Pro 2010. All new, all up to date, all SLOW. And a frequent problem was that often QuickBooks refused to email or print invoices. It all has something to do with QuickBooks PDF Converter 2.0. Windows seems to insist that this is the default printer when operating in QuickBooks. Deleting it or switching default printers does not help. There are a few fixes that don’t necessarily work. Sometimes downloading and using “Cute PDF Converter” works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
I had the same problem using QuickBooks Pro 2009 in Windows XP. Which is why I upgraded to 2010 and Windows 7. That was an expensive lesson.
Out of frustration I tried and have since purchased QuickBooks 2010 for Mac. And what do you know. It works. Every time. It’s too bad I can’t return my copy of QuickBooks Pro to Staples as I’ve already opened and used it. And Intuit won’t take it back since I bought it from Staples. They did offer a 20% discount for the Mac version but, again, Staples was cheaper.
So the lesson of this story is if you run a Mac, use QuickBooks for Mac. It’s a much nicer and more reliable experience. Switching over my merchant account was also easy. Intuit was very helpful with this. Whether it works or not remains to be seen. I’m waiting for my next charge customer. Need a website, logo or business card design? Have any questions on my QuickBooks experience? Just call 310-791-5803.
Talk about complicated. Luckily I’m only running QuickBooks Pro 2010 on my Windows OS.
Through much trial and error and online research I will tell you what I discovered in a few easy steps.
1. Install VMware Fusion 3 on your Mac OS Snow Leopard. That’s fairly easy.
2. Set up a new Virtual Machine. If you have Windows XP in one Virtual Machine you can leave it there. You don’t have to back up your files or wipe your “virtual disk” clean. I’m not sure if this is approved by Windows but it works.
3. Create a new Virtual Machine and install a clean (new) version of Windows 7, not an “Upgrade”. When asked for your key, do not use your upgrade key because it won’t be accepted. Leave it blank.
4. When Windows 7 is up and running, put the Windows 7 disk back in and this time click “Upgrade”. It will see the existing Windows OS and will accept the upgrade key.
5. When installed you have to get your system activated within 30 days. And then you’re done. It worked for me and I hope it works for you.
You can get greater details by doing a little searching online. It is assumed that you have a legal version of Windows XP on your system or in your possession.
Photoshop CS4 is not playing nice with my Snow Leopard. If you’ve been having font issues and quitting issues it may be because your Photoshop is running in Rosetta. A little research showed that running an older Epson scanner caused my copy of Photoshop to run in Rosetta.
Sounds pretty, but suddenly I could no longer double click on a PSD file and have it open in Photoshop. Saving files sometimes caused the program to crash. And Photoshop never quit. Always had to force quit.
So if you go to “Get Info” on your Photoshop icon you will see the Running in Rosetta option checked. Uncheck it and with any luck your Photoshop will be running like it’s supposed to.
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