A couple weeks ago, my laptop died. Once I got the replacement in, I used the Migration Assistant in Mac OS to restore my Time Machine backup.

Restoring from Time Machine should be done when formatting the computer, but in my case I am working remotely, didn’t have the Apple installer CD, and the laptop was up to date with the exception of my files, applications, etc. So Migration Assistant was my only real option without driving to the Apple Store and spending money I don’t need to spend.

Migration Assistant did a great job, but there are some oddities after migrating, since some aspects of your user environment are tied to your account name and the directory structure under /Users. And because I was essentially importing a previous admin account into a laptop that already had an admin account, I had to rename the account I was importing. This resulted in directory structure changes which Adobe Air and/or TweetDeck didn’t like.

After Migration Assistant completed, I logged out of the laptop’s new admin account and logged into my old laptop’s admin account, which is where all my files and other data are stored. The user environment looked fine, all my apps ran fine, etc. But TweetDeck balked. TweetDeck loaded but wouldn’t log into Twitter or display my settings.

Here is what finally fixed TweetDeck for me.

Go to this directory on all user accounts on your Mac OS computer:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/

Delete this file:
eulaAccepted

Go to this directory on all user accounts on your Mac OS computer:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/ELS/

Delete the folder named something like this:
TweetDeckFast.F9107117265DB7542C1A806C8DB837742CE14C21.1

Only after deleting these files on all user accounts did TweetDeck reset and let me log into Twitter. Happily enough, the settings for each of my TweetDeck columns was retained.

Hope this helps some other Mac OS / TweetDeck users. If this information helped you, please let me know.

Print to your iPhone with Fliq

Here’s a great way to use Fliq for the Mac and Fliq Docs to “print” a document to your iPhone for viewing on the go. This is especially useful for documents and files that the iPhone can’t normally display, such as iWork ‘09 documents, RTFs, PhotoShop files, and Delicious Library lists. It’s easy to do.First, set it up:

1) Create an alias of “Fliq” in your Applications folder

2) Rename it “Fliq PDF to iPhone”

3) Open the “Library” folder (in your home folder)

4) Open the “PDF Services” folder (in the Library folder)

5) Drag “Fliq PDF to iPhone” into the “PDF Services” folder

That’s it! You’re all set.

When you want to print to your iPhone:

1) Launch Fliq on your Mac and Fliq Docs on your iPhone.

2) From any application, choose “Print…”

3) In the print window, select “Fliq PDF to iPhone” from the “PDF” menu (pictured at right)

1-2-3… a PDF is sent to your iPhone into Fliq Docs! By the way, this is also a great way to print or Fliq files and documents to someone else’s iPhone.

Go to Format –> Show Colors

Select a message in your inbox, then click a color in the Colors palette.

You can’t sort based on the colors, but at least you can do more than just mark as flagged, read/unread, or by priority to quickly find something in your inbox.

At first glance, there are some minor cosmetic changes to the interface. But starting to surf with Safari 4.0, I immediately appreciated just how fast it has become.

If Apple applies the same level of refinements to the OS as they have with this recent update, then 10.6 Snow Leopard is going to be amazing even without any major new features.

Occasionally in Mac OS, I’ll get an e-mail with a .dat file extension. .dat is pretty generic, but typically this is from an older Microsoft e-mail program bundling the message and one or more attachments into the .dat. The Microsoft program knows what’s there, but the Mac doesn’t.

In the event I receive a .dat file, I fire up TNEF’s Enough, a freeware application from JoshJacob.com

Save the .dat file out of the e-mail, then drag and drop it on top of TNEF’s Enough. This great little utility makes extracting attachments from .dat files quick and easy.

I’ve been using Gmail Notifier for a couple weeks now, and it is growing on me. The default value for checking for new mail is something like 4 minutes, much too long when I’m in the middle of a busy day and have people counting on me to be on top of my e-mail.

You can change the interval using this little trick: hold down the Command (aka Apple or propeller) key and the Option key, then select Preferences… from the Gmail Notifier menu in the menu bar.

A new window will pop up. Enter the values shown:

Click Set, then close the window. 

Thanks to macosxhints.com for showing the way.

Fortunately, managing the icons in the upper right menubar is pretty easy, with a non-intuitive keyboard / click-and-drag combo.

Hold down the Apple key — also called the Command key or the propeller — then click on the MobileMe icon in the menubar and drag it off the menubar. You should see the icon change to semi-transparent as you drag it off the menu bar, then disappear in the puff of smoke when you release the mouse button.

You can use this same Apple+drag trick to rearrange most of the other icons in the menubar. 

Some people subscribe to MobileMe and love it, but that isn’t a service I am using, and there is no reason it should be on my screen all the time.

What are your favorite MacOS tricks?