A bunch of queries from a PC to Mac switcher

[Audiodrome]

Dear All,

I've accumulated a number of questions that perhaps a forum such as this might be able to help with. Here they are:

1. How to multi-session, drag and drop, backup on the fly to CDRW disks?
2. How to play Mime type files/sites, eg "Chord House", where onscreen piano chords can be created online and played back?
3. Defragging the hard disk - is there a built in or freeware utility?
4. How to cleanly uninstall applications where they don't have an unistaller?

Regards, K

 

[yellow5]

I jump right to the easy one...

4."Uninstalling" on a mac is really easy. You just need to drag the application (.app file) into the trash can, and then empty it. It;s really that simple. You might find some .plist files scattered in various folders if you do a splotlight search, but those are small in file size. The reason this is so easy is because the .app file is actually a folder on the mac instead of just an .exe file which runs the program in windows. If you really want to see all the guts of the program, do a ctrl+click on the .app file and select "display contents..."

 

[cjc343]

I'll answer what I can, and some of it may be wrong.

1. How to multi-session, drag and drop, backup on the fly to CDRW disks?

Last I knew, the process for creating multi-session CDs was fairly complicated, and prevented them from being used on Windows machines. This could have changed since I last needed to burn one, but from what I recall, it must be done through Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/). The files you want burned, must be contained in a DMG file (which can be made in Disk Utility). Either with nothing selected, or with the dmg you wish to burn selected, click the burn button at the top of the window. When it brings up the confirmation screen, click the "extended options" arrow and check "Leave disc appendable" before burning. If there's an easier way, I'm sure someone else will cover it.

Drag and drop, last I knew, did not support multi-session burning, but can be done. In 10.4.x, you can prepare the data beforehand using "Burn Folders" or you can just move items to the CD.

I don't know about backing up to CDs, I've never needed to do it.


2. How to play Mime type files/sites, eg "Chord House", where onscreen piano chords can be created online and played back?

Can't help you there.


3. Defragging the hard disk - is there a built in or freeware utility?

Defragging the disk isn't extremely necessary, and if there is a freeware utility out there that does it, I would not use it. Disk Warrior can defrag disks, but it takes a long time, and is not something that can be done as a background process. No matter what anyone else says, the "Optimizing..." process at the end of installs is NOT OS X defragging the volume. It is in no way related to defragging.


4. How to cleanly uninstall applications where they don't have an unistaller?

Delete the .app will generally take care of most of it. Doing a search for the name of the application, or the company that makes it often turns up preference files, or support files in your user library. (Example: Say, for some reason, you wish to delete Firefox after installing it and using it for a while. Deleting /Applications/Firefox will pretty much uninstall it, but you might also want to remove /Users/~User/Library/Application Support/Firefox/ which contains user profiles, and /Users/~User/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist which contains preferences.)

I hope I answered at least some of your questions...