Articles by Ric Getter
Ric Getter is a frequent contributor to MacDirectory. He started out working in media in the early 70’s when nothing could out-gun a motor drive Nikon and a bandolier of Tri-X film. Life in Silicon Valley paid off in early 1984 when a Mac 128 landed on his desk and he’s been in love with the platform from that day on. He has since retreated to Portland, Oregon with his Mac-loving wife where he writes about computers, works in education technology and still obstinately refuses to completely leave the television business.
Punching Up Screen Grabs With Preview
June 7, 2012
When creating documentation, one of my more time-consuming tasks used to be punching up screen shots with labels, arrows, highlights and whatever. With its ability to mix vector (scalable text, lines and shapes) and bitmap graphics, Adobe’s Fireworks was my favorite tool, though it bordered on software overkill. Recently, I was in a rush to get something wrapped up and posted on a deadline and was nowhere near a copy of Fireworks.
Untangling iOS Wireless Problems
April 27, 2012
Not long ago, the wireless authentication system at the college where I worked was having issues. It wasn’t a “secure” network per se, but you did need to enter a student or staff login to use it. With the rapid proliferation of handheld devices, it was getting, to say the least, temperamental. Adding to the confusion was a spate of traveling I did that brought my iPhone and me through a variety of airports and hotels that required some form of login to gain access to their public wireless system.
Speed Up Safari: Lose the Previews
April 23, 2012
One of the first things most of us learned back when Safari 4 appeared was how to turn off the “Top Sites” feature (via the General tab of Safari’s Preferences) and return to our normal home page. Safari does a lot of work to collect those cute little thumbnails of the web pages, store them in a hard-to-find folder and organize them in a way they can be quickly retrieved. In fact, if you click over to the History view in the Top Sites window, you’ll see that Safari has industriously captured a thumbnail image of seemingly every page you ever visited.
How to Remotely Connect to Windows PCs
May 7, 2007
If you have a shiny, new Intel Mac, there are all kinds of ways to run Windows while keeping the friendly environs of OS X close at hand. However, there are times when you may need to hop back and forth between the two systems and you have a non-Intel Mac or your Windows PC is in a separate box (and possibly in a different part of town). Microsoft has a very slick (and free) solution that isn’t very well known: Microsoft Remote Desktop for OS X.
How to Listen to Internet Radio Stations
April 12, 2007
Much has been made recently of podcasts – the prerecorded audio and video shows that are freely available for download on the Internet and through the iTunes Music Store. We’re big fans of podcasts! But there are times when we want to listen to live, streaming music and radio shows. That’s when we fire up iTunes and tune into an Internet radio station. You see, there are literally thousands of radio stations broadcasting over the Internet.
Mac Backup Basics
March 5, 2007
It was years ago, but I still remember it. It started out as one of those odd little crashes. A completely empty dialog box appears and then everything freezes. Okay. It happens. The keyboard is frozen as well, so I reach down and cycle the power button on the CPU. The friendly thrum of the startup chime comes from the speakers and a few moments later, the flashing question mark of the mystery disk icon appears at the center of the otherwise empty screen.
An Absolute Beginner's Guide to the Terminal
February 12, 2007
Sitting discreetly in Utilities folder (nestled nearly unnoticed amid your applications) is one of the most powerful tools ever created for the Mac. It is simple and elegant, yet can be intimidating (if not terrifying) and has the power to cure some of your computer’s most puzzling ills. It also possesses the fearsome ability to wreak unimaginable havoc on your system. We are talking, of course, about the Terminal, that magnificent gateway to the hidden underpinnings of the Mac OS.
A Guide to Great Mac Books
January 29, 2007
We’re not going to do any conjecturing as to why, but it seems like some of the best computer books you can buy are written about the Mac. We’d like to think that the platform simply attracts the most talented and creative writers. Here’s a brief guide to some of the Mac’s most popular authors and publishers. Not Really For Dummies You may not see these books displayed prominently on your local computer guru’s bookshelf, but we bet if you look closely you’ll find a few.