I’ve occasionally had an error when installing software that goes something like “The update could not be saved… You do not have appropriate access privileges.” I’ve tried deleting the software update caches, fixing permissions, etc., all to no avail.

Well, this Apple discussion thread had the answer. You just have to delete a folder with the same name as your update from /Library/Updates. Or just delete everything, I suppose.

I had to delete the offending folder from the terminal using “sudo” for some reason. I guess it was set as root-owned or something. Weird.

Personally, I despise DRM, and therefore despise the iTunes Store (formerly the iTunes Music Store). Not only is it overpriced and DRM-laden, but the quality leaves much to be desired. You can get better quality audio and video with a CD or a TiVo and a simple analog->digital bridge (I have a little Dazzle-branded box) and a copy of Handbrake.

And so, in honor of iTunes 7’s release, I will be posting a few articles about how to get your content into iTunes, so that it works as well as (or better than) what’s already in there. Read the whole series!

First up: Video.

iTunes has decent video support, and it’s much better in the latest version. But here’s the thing, you may prefer to encode your video in DivX, XviD, 3viX, Windows Video (WMV) or some other format which iTunes and Front Row won’t accept. (The same is true of most video you can download elsewhere on the ‘net, legally and otherwise.)

So how do you get these oddball formats into iTunes (and, by extension, Front Row) without having to buy your videos all over again from the iTunes store?

I’m a long time fan of Little Snitch, which is a nifty application from Objective Development that lets you monitor and restrict which applications and processes can access the internet. This gives maximum protection from spyware and other malicious software which “phones home” for any reason.

On the Mac, Little Snitch has been without competition for quite a while. But it looks like things are heating up.

GlowWorm FW Lite is a new freeware utility which does much the same thing. Like Little Snitch, you can create fairly complex rules (such as allow an application access to only certain destination hosts, or allow a program access over a single port to any host or various other combinations). I haven’t tested it in detail, but it appears to work quite well, and the price is hard to beat.

I’ve heard a number of complaints from “switchers” and Windows users about the Mac’s command+tab application switching behavior. The complaint is always the same: It only shows applications, how can I get to the exact window that I want?

Now, I’m a cross-platform-dresser, myself, and am equally (or nearly so) expert in both Windows and the Mac. In fact, I use Windows every day, probably for more time than I use my Mac. But the thing is, the alt+tab application switcher does show all the windows and documents, but I find it more frustrating than useful.

I suspect the reason why I find it so frustrating, is that I tend to open a large number of documents in the same program. To the alt+tab switching window, one Excel file looks like another, so if I have five or six spreadsheets open, I have to scrub through each one to see what the filename is.

What I tend to do is just switch to Excel and then select the document I want from the list of open windows. Pretty much the same as I do on the Mac.

But there are time, I’ll admit, when picking exactly the right window would be a time saver, so I went looking for the solution. I found it in Witch by Peter Maurer (creator of Butler and many other fine Macintosh utilities).

ss64.com hosts this awesome reference to every single command line program and option available in MacOS X, Linux (Bash), Windows and (ugh) Oracle.

Wonderful reference and a great companion to Apple’s shell scripting primer.

Visor, the new application from Blacktree, creates a half-screen terminal window that pops up with the press of a hot key. This terminal is persistent, so when it’s in the background, it just keeps on going and going and going.

Very clever little hack, and extremely useful if you’re prone to bouncing between the terminal and your desktop.

The only problem I’ve had with it is that it’s only one window. So I invoke screen as soon as it starts up, and that pretty much takes care of it.

Thanks, Blacktree!

I’m pretty sure this isn’t covered under warranty, but it sure is fun to watch.

Watch the video: Really Expensive Cat Toy