Ask TUAW: Vintage Macs, cross-platform keyboards, sharing iPhoto and more

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, where you ask the questions and we provide the answers. As always, please leave your questions for next week in the comments. This week, we'll also be doing a live version of Ask TUAW during our weekly talkcast, Thursday at 9:30 pm ET (otherwise known as "Stump the Band") — be sure to call in and bring your tough Mac troubleshooting problems! Read on for the questions...Jamie asks:

I have a problem with XCode project files. Ever since my OS reinstall, all .xcodeproj look like directories, not bundles. Anyone know how to go about fixing this?

That's a pretty weird situation, to be sure. My first suggestion would be to reinstall the current Xcode, just to be certain that you aren't missing any key bits since reinstalling your system (note that the Developer Tools/Xcode are not part of the default system install, as last week's commenters pointed out). Failing that, second step would be to check for any corrupted preference files (I like Applejack for this, as it does lots of other cleaning along the way). I'm not sure which .plist holds the stash of file extensions that are supposed to show as bundles, but my money is on com.apple.finder.plist it's probably Launch Services, per our comments — might try moving that out of /Library/Preferences, then logging out and back in. I'll see if we can come up with other suggestions for Thursday night's live troubleshooting talkcast.

Zeromaru wonders:

I'm a Windows/Linux user, however I really like the new Apple Keyboard, especially the wireless version. My computer has Bluetooth, and I'd like to get the keyboard but I need to find out whether it'll be recognized as a standard HID keyboard (the alternate controls on the F keys are unnecessary) before I get one.

I think you're in luck, ZeroM — Apple's keyboards generally do show up as valid HID devices, as all Boot Camp XP users know. I'd suggest ordering your wireless keyboard from an online store with a generous returns policy just in case, but I believe you'll be OK. As a more thorough test, if your PC is a laptop, you might haul it over to your nearest Apple retail store to test the keyboard directly (but be careful: those places are dangerous to your checking account).

Jacob asks:

Is there a way to install multiple versions of iMovie on the same MacBook Pro? I have tons of plug ins for iMovie that work with '06, but I'd like to install '08 as well.......any help or guidance would be awesome!

The fine folks at Apple are way ahead of you on this one, Jacob. As we noted last week, there's a clear understanding that iMovie pére and fils are two completely different apps, so if you want to try out the new hotness and still use your existing plugin library you can download and install iMovie '06 alongside '08 with no known bad interactions. Do be sure to back up your project files, just in case!

Tom is troubled:

What's the absolute best way to have multiple users on the same machine share the same iPhoto and iTunes library? So far, I've hacked things together using symbolic links and /Users/Shared/, but I run into issues. Using iTunes option for changing the directory for a library works okay, but I think there's issues having music that one user added to the library showing up in the other user's library. As for iPhoto, my symbolic links into /Users/Shared work okay, until it's time to start putting photos on iPods and iPhones — when I click on the appropriate tab in iTunes, it crashes. We can't be the only husband-and-wife who want separate accounts, but shared photos and music. Ideas?

Tom, I feel your pain, and you are not the only spousal set with this on the "honey do" list; I worked on this same issue with my friends J & N and their combined libraries. As it turns out, per the well-documented 2005 walkthrough at Mac OS X Hints, the one true way to do this trick involves running 10.4 Tiger and the magic of ACLs. Once you enable Access Control Lists on your drive (the hint tells you how to use Terminal, but personally I like Sandbox), you can get all granular with the permissions and allow his & hers editing rights to both read and update the iTunes and iPhoto libraries. One word of warning, if you use Fast User Switching: it's best to make sure only one of you is actually using the iApps at the same time. Just like those monogrammed towels.

Adam asks:

I have been a Windows user all my life, though as I head off to college I have decided to finally go Mac since I think they have turned the company around and created both great hardware and software (now only if they would ship my MBP). Anyways, as a Windows user, before I would ever connect a new PC to the Internet I would always make sure that my computer had up-to-date virus protection. I know that Macs are supposedly less susceptible to viruses, though I also know they certainly are not immune. Should I install an antivirus client on my new Mac, and if so, what do you recommend?

Short answer: Probably not necessary at this juncture. Turn on your firewall and enjoy the Mac OS X life.
Long answer: If you're planning to share files with your PC-using friends (or with your own virtual or Boot Camp XP environment), it's neighborly to run some kind of AV so you can avoid passing along the nasties, even if they don't affect your Mac OS X environment directly. Symantec, Sophos and Intego all make passable AV for the Mac, but you might as well start off free and open: ClamXav, the OS X packaged version of the popular ClamAV tool, is a good place to begin.

Jeremy wants to know:

I have an old Performa 5200CD which is running OS 8, I believe. There is a decent amount of data on the machine which I would like to salvage, but with everything being legacy I don't know a good way of getting the data off it. I tried removing the hard disk and putting it in a USB external enclosure, but any Apple computer running OS X will not recognize the drive. The amount of data isn't too large, as the disk is either 750MB or 1GB, but I don't want to have to turn this into a 5 hour process with a 1.44MB floppy disk. Any suggestions?

Interesting challenge here, as the 5200CD does not have an Ethernet port onboard (which would make this a very quick answer). I'm actually surprised that the internal IDE drive does not mount on another machine, as it should be formatted HFS and I'd expect it to work. You might verify the jumper settings on the drive against those specified by the USB enclosure (it may be set to Master instead of Cable Select, for example). Alternatively, you might try mounting the drive on a machine running OS 9, if there's one handy. Next steps after that? Check eBay or Craigslist for a SCSI Zip drive or CD burner and some media, which will be a lot faster than archiving to floppy.

That's all for this week! Be sure to join us Thursday night for the next TUAW talkcast; we'll be taking your troubleshooting questions live, which will either be highly entertaining or deeply embarrassing; possibly even both.