The model I got my hands on is for the 17-in MacBook Pro. Inside the box, you will find the plastic base along with the following cables: Ethernet, FireWire 800, USB Extenders (3) and audio (2). Not included are a MagSafe power adapter or a DisplayPort cable. You can order DisplayPort extenders and adapters from the Henge Docks site that are guaranteed to have enough slack for the dock. I would recommend buying another power adapter since removing the one used in the dock becomes rather tedious if you do it frequently. Assembly is a little tricky, but the ability to choose which ports you want to extend is worth it. It took about a half hour to assemble everything and the end result seems pretty secure.

I started by feeding the wires through with the dock laying on its side. After about half the connectors were hooked up, I flipped everything up to its normal position and hooked up the remaining connectors.

One thing that was confusing is why the audio connectors are shaped to fit into a particular slot on the dock but the other end of the cables aren’t marked as to which is headphone or line-in. Just remember which you feed through which hole.

The hardest part was getting the DisplayPort to VGA adapter to fit. I would recommend purchasing one of the official Henge Docks adapters or at least their DisplayPort extender, it will save you some trouble.

When it’s all put together, it works rather well. The manual states that you should never rock or carry the dock around with a MacBook docked. You’ll notice right away that it can be top-heavy, so place it on secure surface that doesn’t wobble to avoid accidents.

The only real drawbacks to the Henge Docks system are that you can’t access the power button or the FaceTime camera. If you accidentally shutdown the MacBook, you’ll have to un-dock the computer to open it up and power it back on. Since running the MacBook in clamshell mode is the whole point of a dock, you’ll have to get yourself an external USB webcam if you want to be able to do video chat.

With limited options for docking stations, the Henge Dock does everything it claims to. If you want to pretty up your desk, and you frequently switch between desktop and portable configurations with your MacBook, the Henge Dock is an idea companion that will save you many unpleasant plugging and unplugging rituals.

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If you are going to attempt this, you will need a few things, including a turntable that outputs line level output instead of the traditional phono level output. If your turntable does not have this, you can also purchase a phono preamp that will achieve this. You’re also going to need a copy of Audacity which you can download for free.

First thing we have to do is set up our Line Input on our Mac to run at 24bit 96kHz. Launch Audio Midi Setup in the Utilities folder. Select the Built-in Line Input and change the format to 96000.0 Hz and 2ch-24bit.

Now go ahead and launch Audacity and go to the Preferences. I am using Audacity 1.3.12, so if you’re using a different version, your screens may look slightly different. In the first section we need to tell Audacity to record 2-channel stereo.

Now click on Recording in the left menu. I select the Software Playthrough option so I can hear the music through my Mac while I’m recording. This is an optional step, and it won’t harm anything if you don’t enable it.

Click on the Quality option in the left column now. Here we have to set Audacity to sample at 96kHz (or 48kHz if you’re ripping for use on iOS devices).

Now we need to do some actual recording. Get your record ready and make sure it’s very clean. This will help you to avoid additional noise in your recordings. Now we need to do is set our recording level in Audacity. To accomplish this, start playing a loud section on your record, hit Record in Audacity and adjust the Input Level Slider until you’re not clipping the sound. It is better to record a little quiet instead, since clipping will ruin your recording. This first screenshot shows a recording that’s clipping.

This screen shot shows a proper input level and the sound is no longer clipping.

Now that our recording level is set, let’s delete our test track and capture Side A of our LP.

Hit the Record button in Audacity and start playing your album. When the record is done, stop the recording. Select the needle drop at the beginning and the silence at the end of the recording and delete them. Now we need to add some labels which will help Audacity export the songs individually. Click the Skip to Start button and then press ⌘+B to add a label. Here is where you enter the name of the track. Click at the beginning of the next track and create a label there as well. Do this at the beginning of every individual track.

Once you have labeled every song, we have to normalize the track to make sure the volume is at an acceptable level. Hit ⌘+A to select the entire track. Click the Effects menu at the top and select Normalize in the drop-down menu.

Click OK to accept the Normalize effect’s default settings.

After the file has been normalized, we need to export the files. Click on the File menu and select Export Multiple. When the Export window comes up, select Other uncompressed files and then click the Options button.

In the options window we want to select AIFF as the Header and Signed 24 bit PCM as the Encoding. This will create our 24-bit 96kHz AIFF audio files.

After you click OK you will be brought back to the Export window. You can now click the Export button. This will bring up the Edit metadata window where you can see the track name and number has been automatically populated by our track labels. Just click OK since we can set the artist and album data in iTunes later.

Now we wait and when the export is done, we should have our individual tracks ready to be copied to iTunes.

Launch iTunes and go to the Preferences. Click on the Import Settings button.

Select Apple Lossless Encoder from the drop-down.

Open the AIFF files in iTunes. Once they are copied to the library, select them all, right-click and choose Get Info to set the artist and album data, click OK when you’re done.

Now right-click on all the files again except this time choose Create Apple Lossless Version.

When iTunes is done, you can right-click and get the info of a track to verify that you now have a 24bit 96kHz (or 48kHz depending on your choice) Apple Lossless file.

You can now delete the original AIFF versions out of iTunes. As I mentioned, 96kHz Apple Lossless files will not play on any iOS devices so if you desire, you can go back into iTunes preferences and set the import settings to be AAC and iTunes Plus. You can then right-click on your lossless files and create an AAC file that will play on your iOS devices.

Like I said in the beginning, this is one of a million ways to rip your vinyl collection. Is creating a 24bit 96kHz lossless file overkill? For some it may be, but for vinyl collectors and audiophiles it’s worth the effort.

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Adobe now has its own tool for creating deployment packages of its CS5 products for OS X computers. The Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAM) may be a mouthful, but it’s a blessing to those of us who have been waiting for such a tool to arrive. It allows you to create a custom install package file using your CS5 media. Not only that; it will allow you to bundle updates into the install or create a separate update package. I’ll walk through both of these operations.

Creating a Custom Package Install

First thing you need to do is download AAM from Adobe’s site. Once installed, insert your CS5 media and run the AAM program. The first screen will present you with the option to create an Installation Package or an Update Package.

1. First, we’re going to do an Installation Package, so select that option. Next, we need to give our package a name, which will become the file name in the end. We need to give it a save location, too, and also pont it to the install media.



2. On the next screen, give it your serial number and click Next.
3. You then can disable any products you don’t want in the package or just let it install everything.
4. Now we get to the heart of it. We have the ability to disable all the different options that are a pain to deal with when deploying a product like CS5. The default settings are good, but I also like to check the “Disable Air…” box also. Updates are shut off so users won’t be constantly bothered by update dialogs.
5. Now we come to the update portion. Unfortunately, the program won’t go out and grab all the available updates for you. They have to be downloaded by hand and added to this window. It’s easy enough though, head over to Adobe’s update site and grab whatever updates pertain to your install. Just click the Add Update button and point it to the DMG files you’ve downloaded.
6. Click Build and go take a break.

When the build is finished, you’ll have a customized PKG file that you can either use to install CS5 remotely using Apple Remote Desktop, or run by hand.

Creating an Update Package

After you’ve created your install package, you should also create an Update Package that you can also run through Apple Remote Desktop to remotely update any existing CS5 installation.

1. Re-launch AAM, and this, time click the Update Package button. Give it a name and a Save To location.
2. Hopefully ,you still have the updates you downloaded earlier when you built the Installation package. Otherwise, head over to Adobe’s update site and grab the updates you want to include. Click the Add Update button, and select the DMG files you want to be a part of this.
3. Click Build, and it should complete itself rather quickly.

That’s all there is to it. I hope Adobe stays on this track and continue to provide tools that make it easy for us admins to deploy its products in the future. Even if you just want to create a custom installer for yourself in case you ever lose your original install media, this is a great way to do it.

CNN

The quality of music has, for the most part, been the same since CDs debuted in 1982: 16-bit, 44.1 kHz PCM encoded files. A few audiophile formats such as SACD and DVD-Audio have come out, but those have only really been niche products. While the SACD format offers higher-quality audio and features such as surround sound, the general public never took to it. You can get 24-bit lossless files directly from some bands such as The Beatles and Nine Inch Nails, but this is the exception, not the rule.

The arguments over whether or not people can actually hear the difference between all these different audio formats will never end. My opinion is that not all music needs to be delivered in 5.1 lossless high quality. It all depends on the listener’s taste and the quality of the musicians involved. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon on a 5.1 SACD is a treat, while Britney Spears latest effort would probably suffer from such high quality recording. The fact is that some people really love music and are willing to pay premium prices for audio gear, speakers and the best version of the music they love. Right now, CDs, not iTunes, have the highest quality unless you can find what you’re looking for on SACD or DVD-Audio.

Why would Apple care about offering its catalog at a higher quality when only audiophiles will appreciate it? For one, I believe Steve Jobs is a true music lover at heart. It must be difficult for him knowing that he gets better quality from buying a CD and ripping it to an Apple Lossless file then he does downloading it from his own store. Apple has a reputation as the best of the best when it comes to hardware; its music offerings should be no different. It doesn’t hurt that being able to market iTunes tracks as “HD-quality audio” would help further differentiate Apple’s music store from those of its competitors. Maybe all that server space at the new NC data centre is at least partially earmarked for larger-sized iTunes tracks.

Of course, this assumes a switch to a lossless format, which may not be in the cards yet. But would 24-bit AAC compressed files sound any different when compared to the current 16-bit ones? Probably not, but besides hard drive space, what’s the harm? The music industry needs a boost, and higher-quality music files might be one answer. Apple shouldn’t be trying to convince the labels it’s a good idea, as they’re reported to be doing; it should be the other way around.

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The just-released Postbox 2.0 introduces a handful of new features that include Quick Moves, a Focus Pane, Quick Replies and better Conversation Views.

The threaded Conversation View is pretty well done with quick reply buttons readily available to respond to any particular email within the chain. I also really like the Inspector Pane that gives you some shortcuts, including all the links contained within the email thread.

The Focus Pane is all about organization. Quickly navigate to emails that match a date or topic, or are unread. If you want to deal with an email later, drag it to the “Later” topic and come back to it or click on “Today” to see emails only from today. The idea is that if organize your mail better, you’ll save time and be free of distractions.

Speaking of distractions, you can post directly to Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed from the menu bar also.

Pros:

Conversation View is very well done, with quick navigation, and the Inspector Pane could be very useful for link-happy users. Organizing mail into topics is accomplished quickly by dragging and dropping. The Focus Pane drills down to what’s really important. Keyboard shortcuts are a time saver for those who like to keep it old school.

Cons:

It’s $40, and the free Apple Mail works well enough for most. Organizing mail into topics requires commitment, and not all users care that much. There’s also no Exchange support. This is disappointing, considering Apple Mail has it built-in and business users can be notoriously organized when it comes to email.

Summary:

Postbox 2.0 supports POP and IMAP protocols, but has no Exchange support. There’s a 30-day trial, and it’s $40 if you want to keep it after that. If Apple’s Mail isn’t quite delivering and you need more organization, Postbox is probably the solution for you.

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I grabbed my iPad, fired up the YouTube app and did a search. Nothing.  Now I was getting mad. I went to Google on the iPad and did a search. I found the YouTube video on a dozen or so sites but YouTube didn’t have an Apple-friendly version available. Other sites had their own videos but they were all flash versions.

I’m now about 45 minutes into this and I’m loosing it. I use DownloadHelper and Firefox to grab a mp4 version of the trailer off of YouTube and save it to my desktop. I open it up in QuickTime and created an Apple TV version. I then synced it to my iPad in iTunes. After finally being able to show my wife the trailer I throw my Apple friendly version up on YouTube.Why didn’t I just sit her down at my desktop to watch it? Well, I don’t have external speakers and it’s not as casual as watching it on a big TV or an iPad.

[inline-ad]This seems to happen to me quite a bit on the iPad. I see a video at work, I want to show it to someone when I get home, only to find out I can’t, without using a desktop or notebook. If I could just watch flash videos, 90 percent of these issues would be avoided. I usually try the TiVo route first but that’s only because it’s connected to the big screen. With all the different gadgets I own, I still have to use my Mac Pro to watch a simple flash video. There has to be a better way.

This got me to thinking about what I really want in an Apple TV. If Apple would make its device just a 1080p video unit that could have videos thrown to it using an iPad or iPhone as the remote, that would be a good start. Next, give me flash video. I don’t want games or flashy website intros, just flash-based videos. I fear Apple is too proud to ever back-peddle on this and that may force me to seriously look into Google TV. HTML 5 may be the future but I’m stuck here with my device in my hand, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

I’ll go through how to open the iMac up, just enough to replace the hard drive. There is risk involved with this but if you take your time, you should be just fine. If you want to transfer your data to the new drive before you begin, I recommend using a USB drive adapter such as this one by Apricorn and Carbon Copy Cloner.

Parts Needed

Suction cups: I am using suction cups from our server room floating floor but you can use any kind of suction cups you find at your local store.

Phillips Screwdriver: This is to remove the memory door on the bottom.

T8 Torx Screwdriver: The internal screws require this bit.

Canned Air: This is to remove any dust that may settle on the screen before you reassemble it.

Disassembly

1. The glass is held in by magnets so use your suction cups to pull the glass off the iMac.
   
   
2. Remove the memory door on the bottom of the iMac.
   
3. Remove the Torx screws that are holding the metal case on.
   
4. Pull the metal case off by starting at the top. You will see a connection by the iSight that you need to disconnect. After that, the case will slide right off.
   
5. Now the remove the screws on the sides of the actual LCD screen.
   
6. Gently rock the LCD screen forward from the top and you will see the hard drive behind it. You may need to disconnect the two wires running to the LCD.
   
7. Pull on the back plastic bar  on the left side and it will swing out.
   
8. Remove the heat sensor by pulling off the foam and sensor carefully. Set the foam aside so we can use it to re-attach the sensor to the new drive.
   
9. The drive is ready to be come out by rocking the top out of the frame and then pulling it up.
   
10. Once out, we need to transfer the Torx screws to the new drive.
    

To reassemble, just follow the same steps in reverse. Go slowly and don’t force anything. All the pieces should slide back together without much effort. Some people like to take the LCD screen all the way off and that’s fine. You will need a T7 bit to disconnect the LCD screen from the board and just remember where each connector goes. Before you put the glass back on, use some canned air to blow off any dusk that may have settled on the LCD screen.

Enable SSH

If SSH isn’t enabled on your target machine, send this command through Apple Remote Desktop as root.

/sbin/service ssh start

This will enable SSH until the machine is rebooted.

Start an SSH session

Open up Terminal and make a connection to the target machine using its IP address.

ssh 10.0.0.1

If you’re in an Active Directory environment like me, enter the password that matches your current username you’re logged in with. Otherwise your SSH command will need to pass along a username that exists on the target computer. Something similar to the following.

ssh 10.0.0.1 -l admin

Explore the hard drive

Once you’ve successfully made your connection, check out the disk space with the following command.

df

For our situation, the disk0s2 is what we’re looking at. The HDD is getting pretty full.

In my situation, I know that the most space is probably being wasted in the Users directories so lets head there and get an idea of what’s going on.

cd /Users/

Now let’s run the DU command and see what users have the biggest folder.

sudo du -sh *

You will be prompted for your password, and it may seem to go slowly, but you will get a nice list showing you the size of everyone’s Home folder.

Looks like we’ve found some Home folders that need to be purged. This is also easy to do using Finder but sometimes you can’t disturb the machine and Terminal is perfect for that.

iMovie, on the other hand, does have a stabilization feature built in so I hatched a plan: I’d use iMovie for the clips that need to be stabilized. Here’s the process of taking a clip from Final Cut Express and using iMovie to stabilize it.

Export the Clip from Final Cut Express

Find the shaky clip in your Final Cut Express timeline and set the in and out point around it. To do this, go to the start of the clip and press I to mark the in point. Then go to the end of that clip and press O to mark the out point.

Go to the File menu and Export the clip as a QuickTime Movie…

I titled mine “BeforeStabilization.”

Stabilize the Clip in iMovie

Launch iMovie and create a New Project.

Now go to the File menu and Import the clip.

I unchecked Optimize video in an attempt to keep the file from being converted too many times.

After the clip is imported into your Event Library, Right-click on the video and select Video Adjustments.

The Inspector window will come up. Click on the Clip tab and then the Analyze Entire Clip button.

Wait for iMovie to analyze the clip.

Now the Inspector window can be closed.

Now drag your clip to your project and watch the clip to confirm iMovie did its job.

Export from iMovie

Now we need to export the clip out to bring it back into Final Cut Express. Click on the Share menu and select Export Using QuickTime.

You want to try to use the same settings as the files currently in your Final Cut Express timeline. I’m using a 1440×1080 Apple Intermediate Codec timeline so my export settings mirror that.

Give this new file a location and a name to save with.

Import the Clip into Final Cut Express

Use the File menu to import the stabilized clip.

Add the new clip over the original to see how they compare.

Conclusion

These are a lot of steps to go, but if Final Cut Express & iMovie are all you have, they will work. The stabilized image is noticeably softer than the original but it’s worth it to have shake-free footage. I’ve also stabilized this clip in Final Cut Pro using the SmoothCam filter and I think it looks cleaner than iMovie’s attempt.

Use a tripod or monopod for your videos and you shouldn’t have to go this process too often. I’ve included my sample clip below with the before and after clips so you can get an idea of the results.

The problem is that your credentials aren’t passed along properly and this causes an annoying pop-up window to appear.

The “Remember this password” check box does nothing to help, either. I use DeployStudio a lot around our campus and they have a free utility called ksmbprintd which alleviates this problem. Their utility passes your credentials along with the print job and you no longer get the error window above. Here’s how to easily change your printer to make this all work.

1. Download and install ksmbprintd. When the install is finished, it will want you to log out and then back in to startup the utility.
   
2. You can modify the printer URL through the terminal, but I like to use the CUPS web interface instead. To do this, goto http://localhost:631.
   
3. Click on the Administration tab and then the Manage Printers button.
   
4. Click the printer you want to edit. On the next screen, select Modify Printer from the drop down menu.
   
5. Now this is where we modify the printer’s URL. Copy the original URL at the top of the page. Then click the button next to Windows Printer via SAMBA with kerberos support v1.0.
   
   
6. Paste the original URL in the Connection: box and add a k to the front of it so it says ksmb.
   
7. Continue through the other two windows quickly since nothing should need changing. Click the Modify Printer button to save the changes.
   

Now you should be able to print without having to enter your Active Directory credentials every time. This can be really useful if you are charging for prints. Trying to make people retype in their credentials when ever they print is not very acceptable in our environment. I thank DeployStudio for making such a nice little app that saves us a lot of headaches.