Archive for January, 2009

Share external hard drives between Windows and Mac OS X

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

When you are between the two worlds of Windows and Mac OS X, you will come across some technology issues.

One of them is the harddisk that are not “talking” the same language…

Windows will use FAT16 (old), FAT32 and NTFS format.
Mac OS X will use HFS

So, how can we share a disk between these two worlds?

If Windows can read and write only his format, Mac OS X can also read and write on FAT16 and FAT32 and it can reads nativly on NTFS disk.

So you can choose FAT32 to share a disk between all your computer. There is only one problem, Windows XP will not want to format a disk in FAT32 format if it’s over 32GB… why? ask Microsoft! You can use Mac OS X to format it instead and you are in business. Ironic no?

But as many of the windows disk are now in NTFS, it could be really nice to read *and* write on this kind of drive. It’s now possible by installing 2 little software and a reboot.

*** These softwares are not supported anymore, you can have a look at commercial solutions like Paragon NTFS for Mac (20$) or Tuxera (~33$) ***

1. Install MacFuse from Google

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

2. Install NTFS-3G

http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

3. Reboot the computer

I use it on all my Mac computer and my friends computer without any issue. You can even leave the 2 files in your NTFS disk as all Mac computer can nativly read this kind of disk.

Be careful with the filenames as some characters are not allowed in Windows world and vice-versa.

French Canadian Keyboard Layout / Clavier Canadien-Français

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

Update: You can get the latest version here: https://github.com/ergosteur/cf-keylayout

As I said, I’m a French Canadian… that means that I write with some accents… éàèì… not ì but ho well… you get the point.

Also, that doesn’t means that we use the azerty keyboard… so we have the qwerty keyboard with a some different layout on some keys. The problem with standard… is that they do everything so there is as many as possible!

The one I like and that many people are using is the one that Apple don’t provide. The one that you first press the accent then the vowel (except for the é).

so ^e = ê, ¨e=ë , ¸c=ç, etc.

That keyboard exist on the web… really hard to find, in fact the keyboard layout was created by Sébastien Guillemette but his website doesn’t exist anymore… So I provide you this file here and I also give you a link of another website that provide that wonderful little keyboard so I don’t become crazy.

I use it on Mac OS X 10.5 and it works perfectly.

French Canadian keyboard layout (not the Canadian – CSA keyboard layout) for Mac OS X (10.2+).
This keyboard layout is the one we mostly use in the french divide of Canada (Quebec).

Uncompress the ZIP file and copy the cf.keylayout file in

/Library/Keyboard Layouts
or
~/Library/Keyboard Layouts

Then Logoff and Login again (or reboot), you have now the keyboard in your list.

Mac OS X keyboard layout (French Canadian)

With some other explanation…
http://i.never.nu/flagless-canadian-keyboards-for-os-x/

From Windows to Mac OS X

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

Welcome to mac.i-manu.com

In this site I will put some of the differents softwares and tools that I like to use in my Mac computers.
As I also work on Windows a lot (I’m currently writing this post on my PC >< ) I will provide some useful tools to help people who wants to switch from Windows to Mac OS X.

Forget about Mac OS 9 or less… It was nice to use it but really… I was missing so much of the power that Mac OS X is now providing! I began with Mac OS 7.2 on a PowerPC 7200… not my best memories.

I’m French Canadian, so some of the posts may be also in French and obviously (well maybe) some of the comments will also. I invite you also to subscribe to this blog to write some posts or propose some tools that you know. This site is not for advertising in any kind… so I’ll check that it will stay as is.

Enjoy!

Emmanuel