Thread: Okay Mac geeks...Need help here, please!

I'm having issues.

Just bought a new Mac Mini to incorporate into my home entertainment cabinet.

First off, the top rail of the desktop is cut off in the display. Is there any way to size the desktop appropriately so that I can see the top menu?

Also, I'm having issues figuring out how to get into iTunes preferences. On my windows PC, when I open iTunes, I have "FILE EDIT VIEW CONTROLS" etc along the top edge of the window. No such luck on the Mac. How do I get to view those so I can edit my preferences in iTunes?

Assistance, PLEASE and ASAP.

Gracias.

How are you connected to the television? If you are connected via HDMI, you should be able to select a television standard (1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i, perhaps... I don't have a Mac in front of me, so can't be sure) in the Displays pane of the System Preferences. As part of either the regular or advanced options of choosing one of these types of formats, you should be able to select "Overscan" in a checkbox. That will shrink the picture, so the menu bar will also appear in your display.

Post again if this doesn't apply, or if you're still having problems. I'll check back here occasionally.

Sweet. That brings it all into view. Thanks...

Now, I'm having another issue with iTunes. I need to figure out the best way to get the cache of music to be useable by myself under my login and my wife under hers so that we can both listen to it AND copy it to our iPhones. I tried this:

iTunes: How to share music between different accounts on a single computer

But what it does is sets up a library under my name that she can access, but while playing back through iTunes it "buffers" every fifteen as if it's streaming. Makes it unlistenable.

Do I actually have to have music in her separate iTunes folder as well as in mine? That would take up a lot of space.

Originally Posted by FBJ

Sweet. That brings it all into view. Thanks...

Now, I'm having another issue with iTunes. I need to figure out the best way to get the cache of music to be useable by myself under my login and my wife under hers so that we can both listen to it AND copy it to our iPhones. I tried this:

iTunes: How to share music between different accounts on a single computer

But what it does is sets up a library under my name that she can access, but while playing back through iTunes it "buffers" every fifteen as if it's streaming. Makes it unlistenable.

Do I actually have to have music in her separate iTunes folder as well as in mine? That would take up a lot of space.

Where did you store the music? It doesn't seem like you should have this problem even if you were sharing across the network. Although it may mess with the tidiness of your entertainment center, you may want to consider an external hard drive to use as a music drive. That would be easily accessible by both. The only pain is that when one or the other adds something to the collection, the account that did not originally import the music will now have to manually import.

I'll take a closer look at the recommendations in the link shortly.

I did as it said and moved the folder to the public one in my user folder.

Then I tried putting it into the "USERS" "SHARED" folder. No luck. My iTunes finds it no problem. Hers doesn't, except under "shared" and then I have the buffering issue.

I'm not a total goofball (built every single PC I ever owned myself for over twenty years), but this Mac learning curve is steeper than I figured it's be. Got the iPads and iPhones and they're comparatively simple. Can't wait to get my iMac in a couple weeks.

Thanks for the help.

This concept described is basically the same as my suggestion of using an external drive. You're trying to put the music in a place accessible to both users. I may have suggested making a new folder on the top level of the hard drive instead, but the "/Users/Shared" folder should work fine. If you have created another folder inside that one to use as your shared music folder (which I do recommend), you may also need to set the permissions of the folder so it will be accessible to both of you.

To set the permissions, select the folder and then Get Info by pressing Command-i; or selecting "Get Info" from the "File" menu; or by right-clicking or control-clicking on the folder icon and selecting "Get Info" from the resulting contextual pop-up menu. Now look at the bottom of the resulting info window that opens. There should be a tab that says "Sharing & Permissions." Set them all to "Read & Write." Now all users on the computer can read and write in this folder. Both users should now be able to use this folder.

Oops. Duh. The folder you should change the permissions for is the iTunes Media folder you moved. Sorry. I made a new post instead of editing, because it's clearer, hopefully. Forget what I said about creating a new folder. The iTunes Media or iTunes Music folder you moved is the only one you should need.

Also, I'm not sure if it's clear from the article, but if one or the other of you adds something to his or her iTunes Library (i.e. you rip a CD), the other (i.e. your wife in our example), will not have immediate access to that media. She will have to manually add it to her iTunes Library either by using "Add to Library" (command-o) or by drag-and-drop onto the open iTunes playlist.

Permissions are set as you describe it.

We can LISTEN to the music, but we cannot load the music onto either iPhone from iTunes on the Mac mini. When we try to drag and drop, the selected file just floats back to where we dragged it from.

Pissing.

Me.

Off.

Seriously.