One thing that can take down applications in Mac OS X is bad preferences, and Final Cut Pro is just as susceptible to this problem as any Mac application. Here are tips to protect against corrupt preference problems.

First, once FCP has been tweaked to your satisfaction, back up FCP’s preferences. Mac application preferences are stored either in the /LIbrary/Preferences folder or in the /Users/”your_user_name_here”/Library/Preferences folder. Final Cut Pro’s preferences consist of the com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist file and the Final Cut User Data folder, both stored in the /Library/Preferences/ in your home folder. Simply copy the plist file and the Final Cut Pro User Data folder to another hard drive or burn it to a CD (you might as well copy the plist files for all the other FCP Studio applications to keep them safe too). Then if FCP’s preferences ever become corrupt, replace them with the back up copy. By backing up the Final Cut Pro User Data folder all of the custom button bars, window, column, and track layouts are also preserved.

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Apple’s website detailing a new shop they have opened within PC World at Enfield, Middlesex, UK. My previous experiences with buying Apple kit from a PC World has left a lot to be desired, so this news is very welcome. The page on the Apple website explains how the full range of desktops and laptops are on display, with regular demonstrations of the kit and related software. Good move, let us hope this helps to spread the word.

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A podcast about all things Macintosh. For Mac geeks, by Mac geeks. Show 190. Safari for Windows. Popular, but risky? The “truth” revealed on Apple Gaming. Last minute iPhone details. New Apple iTunes Ad with Sir Paul McCartney. ZFS in Leopard? Well… kind of iMercedes, Apple GPS system? My thoughts on 3rd party iPhone apps using Web 2.0. Question and tips for recovering iPhoto Library. Some other cool iPhoto tricks. Dynamic Port Forwarding with Lighthouse. Printing to unsupported printers in OS X

New music, Forever For Now by Cat Jahnke

Woo! All right! We’re being invaded! — The Last Starfighter (1984)

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Bing Gorden co-founder of Electronic Arts announced that they want to and are going to be in the Mac game(no pun intended). This is what I’m talking about and what some of you said in the comments section on my previous article.

EA is answering the call by releasing at the same time in July Command and Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed: Carbon, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix(believe it or not, but it looks pretty good). Bing also announced that they would also be releasing simultaneously their Madden and Tiger Woods games to the Mac.

ID founder John Carmack also made an appearance to show off some new technology they are going to be implementing into their new games which will be shown off at E3, it would be a safe bet to say it will have an OSX release, only what is it, plus the fact that they are at the conference gets me all excited.

So a huge announcement from EA saying they are going to give us Mac gamers what we want, and making it a timely release. Now we have to show them that we want this by supporting them, and purchasing the games.

What do you think about these new developments?

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A full rundown of all the announcements from the WWDC 2007 keynote. MacBook Pro Updates. iPhone gets a birth-date. Movie rentals on iTunes? BootCamp 1.3 Beta released. Doh! Zune does AAC. Extract audio from Quicktime and put it on your iPod. Help with the System Preferences and other OS X crashes.

New music, Creepy by John Hoskinson

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A podcast about all things Macintosh. For Mac geeks, by Mac geeks. A brief special episode following the WWDC 2007 Keynote. A full new episode of the Maccast is on the way, but I wanted to get out a quick show summarizing what Steve Jobs talked about in the keynote this morning. Lots of good stuff in here including, games on the Mac, highlights on 10 out of the 300 new fetaures in Leopard, a BIG (Vista-sized actually) announcement for Safari, and news on developing iPhone apps. Fun stuff.

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Three new Apple iPhone ads were released over the weekend, and there’s a little more information they provide for all of us that can’t get enough iPhone in our diet. You can view the new ads on Apple’s website, or embedded below from YouTube.

Each ad gives us a little more of the iPhone interface and a few built-in apps in action:

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Who knows whether you MacCast readers will even see this before the actual Apple World Wide Developers Conference Keynote happens, but a few of us on the MacCast crew thought we’d take a shot at some (harebrained?) predictions for what we might see (or at least hope to see) tomorrow at WWDC.

Live Maccast Chat: If you are reading this before or during the keynote and want to chat about it live join us on iChat/AIM in the room: maccast. To access it using iChat:

1) Launch iChat
2) Go to: File–>Go to Chat… and enter ‘maccast’m as the chat name.

See you there.
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Listener Guido just sent me these images of the construction site for the new Apple Store at Rosenstasse 1 in Munich, Germany. You can likely tell from the images, but he says the building that was in place at the site has been completely torn down. The construction zone has now been completely branded Apple, with a huge iPod banner on the building adjacent to the construction pit. The store is said to be a large 4-story design and will be the first of four sites set to open in Germany. Early rumors have the Munich store opening sometime around mid-2008.

Now that Final Cut Studio 2 is shipping (I should have my copy soon) here is our first tip for Final Cut Pro 6. I know that many of you are itching to dive in and install the new Final Cut Studio applications and start playing with all those really cool new features, but before you do, take a deep breath, count to ten, and wait.

Why you might ask? Because this is brand spanking new software and although Apple does a pretty thorough job of testing, they can’t possible cover every possible configuration users might have. So a few glitches could appear when FCS2 is installed on your Mac. The last thing you need is to redo a project from scratch because upgrading nuked the previous project files or a filter no longer does what you expect.

It helps to follow these two basic rules:
1. Never, EVER, upgrade software in the middle of a production.
2. Don’t upgrade your primary editing station until the new software has been tested on a non-critical editing station (i.e. the Mac) in a non-critical situation.

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