Apple news blog

If you previously maintained your GMail contacts in sync with some application like A2G or whatever, enabling 10.5.3 Google contacts sync (in Address Book) may end in endless conflict resolution requests and duplicated contacts.

So it is a good idea to delete all your Gmail contacts before syncing. The problem is that GMail does not authorize more than 20 deletes at a time, so this can take all night if you have thousands of contacts. The solution is to use the old Gmail version, which is still available — then you can select all your contacts and hit Delete and be done with it.

[robg adds: There’s some confusion over this new feature in 10.5.3, as it doesn’t show up (in Address Book’s preferences) for all users. It seems it’s only available for those with an iPod or iPhone, and that the contacts are only synched w…

I had a client ask how to set the zoom for new and existing documents to something larger than 100% in Excel 2008 because he finds it too difficult to read at the default size. While my vision may be a tad better, I still find the Mac version of Excel to be on the small side. Sure, the preferences allow for the setting of a default font and size for new documents, but this will alter printouts and returns us to our problem. The “simple” answer I came up with is an AppleScript “assistant” for zooming that runs in the background and quits when it senses Excel is not running.

You can also drop files on it as a replacement for the Excel icon in your Dock! You can either download the script [24KB], or read the rest of this hint to view the source.

[robg adds: I’ve also provided an alternative solution that’s not nearly as elegant, but which works for me, in the re…

If you’re like me, you tend to install several updates and/or software packages at once. When through, I like to eject all my mounted disk images with a simple
AppleScript:

tell application “Finder”to eject (every disk whose ejectable is true and local volume is true and physical size < 1.0E+9)

Technically, this doesn’t look for mounted DMGs but rather for ejectable, local (ie, non-network) disks with a size less than about 1GB. For most purposes, this will do the job. Copy and paste the above into Script Editor and save the resulting script in ~/Library/Scripts, then access it from the Scripts menu. Alternatively, add it to your tool bar, side bar, or assign it a hot key (with a third party hot key program), etc.

[robg adds: As this script only checks for size and ejectable status, it may have unintended results depending on your system configuration. When I ran it, it ejected one (but not both) of my mounted CDs, but didn’t eject the T…

While I was within Safari, I was showing someone what the expand gesture was like for iPhoto, and discovered that the new trackpads resize the page font using that same gesture. Further investigation found that Mail does the same thing, and Preview resizes the whole page/photo.

[robg adds: According to a friend with a new laptop, the Preview zoom feature is shown in one of the how-to-use videos for gestures, but the font resizing functions are not. If this turns out to be clearly documented somewhere, please let me know and I’ll remove the hint…]

Apple’s .Mac (”dotmac”) service is a $99/year set of online tools that provides customers with email (@mac), web hosting, iDisk, backup and sync services. .Mac services are tightly integrated with Apple’s existing iLife suite, allowing you to publis…

Apple’s .Mac (”dotmac”) service is a $99/year set of online tools that provides customers with email (@mac), web hosting, iDisk, backup and sync services. .Mac services are tightly integrated with Apple’s existing iLife suite, allowing you to publis…

AFP server directory traversal, Apache updates, AppKit memory corruption, Apple Pixlet Video multiple memory corruptions, Apple Type Services PDF printing fonts memory corruption, SSL information leak, multiple vulnerabilities in …

Remember rumors last year that Apple’s .Mac was about to get a Google overhaul? It’s back with a bullet thanks to the latest 10.5.3 Leopard update. That iCal code snippet above replaces “.Mac” with the “%@” variable which Apple can …

Apple Mac OS X Leopard mega-update includes security fixes.

Apple’s 24-hour flagship 5th Avenue retail store in Manhattan is in the process of shutting down for the night. An unusual move for the 24-hour store. Apple’s retail page reflects the temporary shutdown:

Please note we will b…