The only thing that marred the experience was a nasty and undying popup for installing Rosetta so it could run NotificationExec. Click Not Now and it just comes back a few seconds later. Truly annoying!

A couple minutes on Google yielded this form post on MacRumors.

The answer for me was to navigate to /Library/Driver Support/ and to trash the NotificationExec.app in between the popups.

So, the steps are:

1. Navigate to: /Library/Driver Support/   – you should see NotificationExec.app in that folder
2. Go to Force Quit (Apple menu) and make sure there aren’t any instances of the popup hanging out
3. Wait for the popup and click:  “Not Now”
4. Then trash:  NotificationExec.app
5. You may have to enter your admin password so you can change Finder
6. Empty trash and resume life!

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Byron

Once you’ve experienced bookmarking, it’s really hard to listen to a book that you ripped from CD’s and it comes out with 50 or more files.  I’ve even had some that had tracs every 2 or 3 minutes.  When they do that, you can get 100′s of files on a long book.  Nobody can keep track of where they left off like that.  The answer is to convert them from MP3 or AAC (depending on your importing preference) to the Audiobook format (.m4b).

Converting MP3 or AAC to Audiobook Format

If you’re on a Mac, Doug Scripts provides a free application that uses AppleScript, iTunes, and QuickTime to join your files and convert them to Audiobook format.  It absolutely rocks.  Here are the simple steps:

1. Make sure you’re up to date with the latest versions of iTunes and QuickTime.
   • Use System Preferences -> Software Update to check
2. Download Join Together by DougScripts and follow the install directions (drag file to Applications folder just like most Mac apps)
3. Consider breaking your audiobook into 2 or 3 big sections.  Audible.com does this to make your downloads go smoother, but there might also be some issues in playing back huge files.  So sections that would represent 5 or 6 discs of audio are best.
   • To break a book into sections, create Playlists and move in the tracks that you want in that section
   • The order is important, so keep them straight.
4. Select the playlist in iTunes (you’ll repeat from this step forward for each section you break your book into)
5. Open Join Together and click Get Tracks from iTunes.  This will pull in the track names that you have in your playlist.
6. Choose the settings you want for your final file:
   1. Name – give it a name for the track
   2. Artist and Album are optional like the rest of the tags, but they are good ones to fill in
   3. Genre:  Audiobooks
   4. Check “Remember playback position”
   5. Track Number: 1 of 1
   6. Disc number: optional
   7. Data Rate:  64kbps  is pretty good for audiobooks
   8. Channels:  Stereo
   9. Sample Rate:  44.100 kHz
   10. Save as:  .m4b  (this is an important one…it distinguishes an Audiobook in iTunes)
   11. Chapterize:  check it
   12. “Use artwork in chapter list”: optional
   13. Save work files:  leave unchecked.
7. Click Proceed and sit back.
8. Repeat from step 4 for each section you broke you book into…selecting the next section playlist each time

First, Join Together will open up all of the tracks in QuickTime and start copying them into a single track.  Next it will start exporting the final track.  This can take a long time…maybe an hour or two depending on how many tracks and how fast your machine.

After it’s done, you will see your new book in the Audiobooks tab in iTunes.  It’s not a hard process, and it doesn’t take a lot of work your part.  It can take a lot of processing time, but it’s really worth it in the end.

Three cheers to DougScripts for the fantastic Join Together app that makes this so easy!

Byron

Apple, yesterday, updated its beta of Boot Camp to include support for Windows Vista. Boot Camp allows you to install Windows XP and now Windows Vista on an Intel based Mac, including the MacBook and the MacBook Pro.

There were many problems with drivers in Vista when using the old version of Boot Camp. That’s not surprising since the old version of Boot Camp was released well before Vista. Here’s what was wrong with the Vista drivers on my MacBook Pro:

• No sound…at all
• When you closed the lid and Vista went to sleep, it was gone. You had to do a restart to get it back, losing any unsaved data, etc
• Time/clock was wrong until Windows connected to net and updated it
• Just getting the old Boot Camp drivers was a huge trick, involving much Googling and wading through forums

“So, was the upgrade easy?” you ask.

Yes! Sooooo easy! Here’s how to upgrade an old installation of Vista/Boot Camp (if you’re doing a new installation, be sure to read their full installation guide…including updating your system through Software Update):

1. Download the new version of Boot Camp here. It’s big (138M), but worth it!
2. Unpack it and run the install to upgrade to the new version
3. Run BootCamp Assistant
4. DO NOT partition your drive (this instruction if for the Upgrade only)
5. Burn the disc to get the new Drivers (it’s a menu selection…and the only one you’ll need to do)
6. Exit Boot Camp
7. Eject your disc
8. Restart your Computer into Windows (holding option key, yada yada)
9. Insert your new drivers disc
10. Give it permissions to run and sit back
11. When it’s done, you’ll restart your computer into Windows (option key at start-up, etc)…you should get Sound, etc.

Don’t be too worried just yet if your Wi-fi doesn’t come online right off. I had to click the pop-up in the system tray to Connect to Network. It worked fine after that. Sleep was fixed, sound is there. It’s all good…and quite easy!