bradstrickland.com - Web Design, Development and Apple. » OS X Leopard

Revealing Mac OS X’s Hidden Single-Application Mode

brad_strickland — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:27:35 +0000

I love command line tweets to customize my macs UI. Here is a article about single application mode. This was last seen in the OS X Beta.

Having returned from an archeological dig into the dark history of Mac OS X, I’ve unearthed a feature that could change the way you interact with your applications, enabling you to focus on one or two more easily than in the past.

Read the article over at tidbits.com

10.6.1 is Out

brad_strickland — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:15:25 +0000

10.6.1 is now available through software update. So if you were waiting for the first update to adopt Apples latest big cat. The wait is over.

10.5.5 update is available through “software update”

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:28:04 +0000

Apple has released 10.5.5 through “software update”

Here is the complete list of fixes.

EFiX Talks About its Hackless Hackintosh

admin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:06:07 +0000

MacLife.com has a nice article on the EFiX. The EFiX is a dongle solution that allows you to turn that PC at home into a hackintosh!

For as long as Mac devotees have been flaunting desktop superiority over their Windows counterparts, users on both sides of the fence have clamored for a way to install Mac OS X on a PC. On Monday, the wait may be over.

Dubbed ‚Äúthe best solution for running Mac OS X on PCs‚Äù and consisting of a device that is ‚Äúneither a memory stick nor a thumb drive,‚Äù EFiX allows non-Mac users ‚Äúto install Mac OS X straight from the original DVD without having to worry about patches, replacing files and anything like that‚Äù is poised to free the PC world from the shackles of Vista.

Unfortunately, you won‚Äôt find one in any U.S. store. But the idea is intriguing nonetheless.

Looks like I’ll be scouting e-bay for this one.

Check out the article at MacLife.com

It’s Official Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” is Intel only.

admin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:18:23 +0000

MacNN is reporting this morning that 10.6 “Snow Leopard” is Intel only. This is the moment our Power PC brethren have been fearing. The beginning of the end of OS X Power PC support. Can Universal Binary support be far behind? Time to pony the cash for a new Intel Mac my friends.

Some of the other system requirements include:

Intel processor
An internal, external, or shared DVD drive
At least 512 MB of RAM (more is recommended for development)
A built-in display or display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
At least 9GB of disk space available, or 12GB of disk space if you install the developer tools.

Safari 4.0 appears at WWDC

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:56:48 +0000

WWDC has bared more mac application fruit. In the form of Safari 4.0 that has been seeded to developers.

Check out some screenshots at worldofapple.com

Snow leopard Mac OS X 10.6 screenshots online

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:48:37 +0000

Snow leopard is the development name of Apple’s next OS X major update. When mentioned at WWDC, it was described as a update focusing on security and stability.

Check out the screenshots at orchardspy.com

iMacs get speed bump!

admin — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:28:45 +0000

The iMacs have been updated to the as high as 3ghz
Woo Hoo! With these new configurations, the iMacs are great production workhorses:

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB memory, 250GB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB memory

2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory, 320GB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory

2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory, 320GB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory

3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory, 500GB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB memory

Super Duper to the Rescue!

admin — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:46:28 +0000

During the time you have your Mac there will be times that things will go wrong. Sometimes you’ll cause it, like say repartitioning your hard drive with Boot Camp. Apple’s application for taking a section of your Macs internal hard drive and installing Microsoft Windows on it. Say your in the middle of the process and your Mac kernel panics. For those who haven’t seen this happen it’s a lovely process where in a dark translucent curtain falls over your macs desktop and a large restart button appears on the middle of the screen with instructions saying that well “Your Screwed!” Please Reboot.

Now in most cases of a kernel panic you would just lose the unsaved data in open applications. But in my case the computer was in the middle of a process that effects how the hard drive stores my data. Making all the data inaccessible.

There is an old geek saying

There are two kinds of people:
1. Those who have lost data.
2. Those who haven’t lost data yet.

Enter Super Duper! from Shirt Pocket Software.

Super Duper does one thing very well, it makes a bootable image of your hard drive. Before my Boot Camp mishap, I had remembered Andy Ihnatko talking about this program. So I happened to download it and make a disk image to an external drive. In it’s unregistered mode you can take a snap shot of your hard drive and if things go wrong and you have to reinstall your system. You can mount the image and drag the information over to your home directory for free. Its real timesaving power is when you purchase the software. Registered you can transfer the image back to your hard drive. It’s like nothing ever happened. Your documents, applications and settings all restored. I don’t know, you may like rebuilding you computer. Installing your software from CD, downloading shareware from the net and re-entering usernames and passwords. Now if all that sounds good to you. You have way to much free time. If your like me and earn money with your computer and have clients that expect results at broadband speed. Super Duper will sound good to you and when you actually need it. You will think that it was the fire Prometheus stole from the Gods and gave to Mac users.

Some of its other features include “Smart Update” Which is ability to update the disc image with only the changed files cutting down backup times.

The interface is simple. When the application is working it tells you what is happening in plan english.

In closing. I have to say that it was the best $27.95 i’ve ever spent. In time lost, in peace of mind. I don’t think you can beat it.

Super Duper! is available from Shirt Pocket Software for $27.95

Shining Spotlight problems in Leopard – Updated

admin — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:34:40 +0000

Spotlight is the search technology introduced in OS X Tiger 10.4. Apple has said that they have made major improvements in Spotlight, with the companies latest OS release OS X Leopard or 10.5. And it does in fact work better than in the previous release. It does its searches by indexing your hard drives files so that when you use the little magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Spotlight can give you email, folders, docs and pdf’s that have relevant data in them. This is a very handy feature and requires no effort by the end user to start.All things being equal, this is a great way to do this type of technology. But all things are never or in the best of times seldom equal. When I hook my very large and very full external hard drives to my notebook the bog down beginnings. When the drives are plugged in it makes something as simple as web browsing in Safari, a painful experience. I’m talking Spinning Beach Balls of Death O’Plenty. So my first reaction is “I’ll cut it off for a while and back on after my work is done.” No can do! It has no scheduling interface or OFF SWITCH. Spotlight is dragging my 2ghz macbook pro “with 2 gigs of ram” to a crawl. It always seems to be running like now as I type this blog posting. Even though the drive are not plugged in and it said is finished indexing 10 minutes ago. I’ve thought maybe it was a disk error forcing it to act this way. But it still persists after a hard drive format “Zeroing the data” and 2 system installs. Some sort of interface needs to be developed to give the user the ability to schedule or at the least suspend aka snooze the indexing process. So that people with lots of storage and earn money with there macs like myself will keep our hair and sanity intact.

Update: After experimenting with the Hard Drives. I’ve discover the best way “short of apple fixing the issue” is to hook your drives up one at a time. Let spotlight build it’s database and then hook the next one up. While it maybe a slow and really isn’t a fix. It does work and cuts down on the painfully stalls that seem to¬†accompany¬†this indexing process. Thanks to those who wrote in about their similar experiences.