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Wine and Crossover broken in Mac OSX 10.7.5 and 10.8.2
edited by on September 22nd 2012, at 12:08
With the release of Mac OSX 10.7.5 and 10.8.2, Apple has made some changes to the X11/XQuartz implementation, effectively breaking OpenGL support in applications that use it. In particular, Wine, Crossover, and all other derivates (accept Cider).

Apple and the Wine development team are currently working on fixing the issue, but it's unlikely that the fix will come from Apple. Luckily, certain patches were already made available in the last few days, fixing the issue for at least a few versions of the Wine engine.

XQuartz, the alternative X11 for Mac, has a new release available which fixes the issue: http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/X112.7.4.

Wineskin has released version 2.5.8, fi  ...
 
XMeeting, a working SIP client for Mac OSX
edited by on June 22nd 2012, at 16:14
Free (as in "beer") SIP clients are very scarse on the Mac OSX platform. Most clients are too far outdated and only work on old versions and on PowerPC. Other, more recent clients start up but they lack proper quality and functionality to be even remotely usable.

Luckily, there is a client available. Originally designed as meeting software using the H.323 protocol, it also implements SIP and can be used with any SIP provider, including Asterisk. The client is called XMeeting, and while it's no longer actively maintained, it still runs on Mac OSX up to 10.7 (Lion).

http://xmeeting.sourceforge.net/


I've tested it out at work on our Asterisk server and it works flawle  ...
 
Tweaking Launchpad
edited by on March 8th 2012, at 23:42

By default, Lion's new Launchpad application is what it is: it contains all the applications installed on your Mac. With Launchpad-Control you can configure which applications are shown and in which order. It's a very neat and handy tool to configure Launchpad just the way you want it.

http://chaosspace.de/launchpad-control/

 
Creating ISO's on a Mac
edited by on February 23rd 2012, at 13:43
Create a folder with the contents you want on your ISO.

Open Disk Utility and use the New Image from Folder menu item to create an image. Ensure it is uncompressed and use the CD/DVD master option.

In my experience this creates HFS+ masters which are no good in Windows.

Open the Terminal

Assuming your new image is called ~/Desktop/Master.cdr (the file is on your desktop and called Master.cdr) type:

cd ~/Desktophdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o Master.iso Master.cdr

This will create an ISO/Joliet .iso file.

Notice
When converting a DVD, be sure to use the option -udf instead of "joliet" to generate an UDF filesystem. This is particularly important with DVD video master  ...
 
Clearing DNS cache on Mac
edited by on December 13th 2011, at 12:54

You can clear the DNS cache on a Mac by using these commands (depending on the version of OSX you're running):

  • Tiger (10.4): lookupd -flushcache
  • Leopard and later (10.5+): dscacheutil -flushcache
 
Configure iCloud in your e-mail client
edited by on November 14th 2011, at 14:52
While unsupported, iCloud still allows access to your e-mail via IMAP, and sending via SMTP. Apple has published the necessary parameters for manually configuring your e-mail client to use the iCloud service.

Server name: imap.mail.me.com

SSL required: yes

Port: 993 (is set by default)

Username: example@me.com (use your @me.com address from your iCloud account)

Password: Your iCloud password

Server name: smtp.mail.me.com

SSL required: yes

Port: 587

SMTP authentication required: Yes

Username: example@me.com (use your @me.com address from your iCloud account)

Password: Your iCloud password

SSL is required for both IMAP and SMTP. POP3 is not supported.

Source: http://support.apple.  ...
 
Additional libraries in iPhoto
edited by on May 20th 2011, at 11:20

It is possible to have multiple iPhoto libraries, and not just one. To create a new library, hold down the Option (⌥) key while starting iPhoto. This will prompt you to create a new library or open an existing one.

Alternatively, you can also use iPhoto Buddy, which allows you to easily select libraries from a nice GUI.

 
Create a permanent link to a share in OS X
edited by on April 19th 2011, at 15:40
By default (and if turned on in Finder), Mac OS X only shows network shares on the desktop when they are connected. If you want to have a link to the share, even when it's not connected, you can create an alias to that share to have it always shown on the desktop. This way, you will always have it available, and moreover, double-clicking the alias will automatically connect the share, and, if required, prompt for a password.

To quickly create a share, connect it like you normally would. While staying in the root of that share, drag its icon in the title bar of the Finder window to your desktop while holding the Option (alt) and Command keys. This will create a permanent alias on your   ...
 
Avast Mac Edition RC (v3.11)
edited by on March 11th 2011, at 12:01

Currently, the official Avast for Mac Edition available for download is still at version 2.74, released somewhere in 2007.
This version still has many annoyances and bugs that have not yet been resolved (one of these issues is the ability to run automatically in the background, without the main window popping up at start up each time).

Luckily, the Avast Forum has a post, providing a new release candidate is available for download for some time now. The build is also a bit outdated but has at least many fixes that aren't present in the official release.

The direct download link is: http://public.avast.com/~cimbal/avast.3.11.zip.

 
Invoking the Apple Hardware Test
edited by on October 21st 2010, at 12:19
If you're having trouble with your Mac and think the cause could be hardware-related, you can run the Apple Hardware Test. It's a set of tools by Apple which perform basic and extensive tests on your hardware to see whether they are still okay. These tools are available for anyone with a Mac, and are either preinstalled on your system, or available through your OS'es installation discs.

Applies usually to older models of Mac.

You can download the AHT disc images for a number of older Mac models through here: http://www.info.apple.com/support/aht.html.

Insert the Apple Hardware Test disc into the CD drive.

Upon starting/restarting your Mac, immediately press and hold C on your keyboard. K  ...
 
MPlayer OSX Extended
edited by on September 6th 2010, at 13:39
MPlayer OSX Extended, the Mac OSX port of the well-known linux media player MPlayer.

MPlayer was originally ported a while back, and has then been superseded by this version, and is considered the official Mac port by the original developers.

From the official website
MPlayer OSX Extended is the future of MPlayer OSX. Leveraging the power of the MPlayer and FFmpeg open source projects, MPlayer OSX Extended aims to deliver a powerful, functional and no frills video player for OSX.

MPlayer OSX Extended is based on the original MPlayer OSX project but has since undergone fundamental changes, making it a modern and easy to use video player. Thanks to multithreading and 64bit archi  ...
 
Wine for Mac OSX
edited by on March 24th 2010, at 14:51

Wine now also has precompiled binaries available. Together with WineBottler (an application to prepare and pack Windows applications for redistribution with Wine), it is available here: http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/.

Wine is an application which allows to run Windows application on linux, BSD or Mac OSX. Rather than full emulation, it acts as a compatibility layer between the application and the OS.
Wine is not entirely foolproof just yet; there is still much to be done, but with each passing release, more and more applications are getting supported.

 
Seamless compression with Squeeze
edited by on March 1st 2010, at 22:45
Seamless file compression has found its way to Mac OSX 10.6 with Squeeze.
The application is a system applet, implementing the new HFS compression technology to transparently compress folders you configure to be compressed. Each folder added with Squeeze will be compressed in the background. To the user, they are just regular files, but they will take up less disk space.

Using Squeeze is easy: just select the folders you want to get compressed, and it will silently work in the background to compress the contents of those folders. Whenever you use any of the files, it will be read like any other file, just like that. Compression occurs completely transparently.
Additionally, Squeeze keep  ...
 
Take screenshots on Mac OSX
edited by on January 19th 2010, at 21:16
Taking screenshots in Mac OSX uses Preview.
Inside Preview, you can use the menu to capture screens, but that's not very handy when you're working in other programs.

Luckily, there are some global shortcuts available that implement every way of capturing. As I always forget what they are, and I'm sure others forget this all the time as well, here's a short list.

Cmd + Shift + 3 Capture the entire desktop, and save in on the desktop as PNG. Cmd + Shift + Control + 3 Capture the entire desktop, and place it on the clipboard (instead of saved to the desktop). Cmd + Shift + 4 Captures a portion of the desktop  ...
 
MacOSX: unlocking locked files
edited by on October 28th 2009, at 15:50
Ran into an issue where I could not unlock files that were copied from a network location to local disk. The files were marked as being locked, but I was unable to unlock them (through Finder), even though I had all proper rights. Additionally, chmod as root (= user with the highest privileges) did not work either.

The solution to my issue was to manually override the locked flag of those files, from within a Terminal.

sudo chflags -R nouchg my-problem-file-or-dir

Additionally, I found that it sometimes is easier to completely reset/clear an ACL, and start over, rather than trying to fix the ACL. This can also be done in a Terminal.

sudo chmod -R -N my-problem-file-or-dir

This completel  ...
 
Set up VNC in Mac OSX
edited by on September 7th 2009, at 20:34
Did you know that since version 10.4, Mac OSX has a VNC server built in? It was originally implemented to have remote control and management. Since 10.5 (where Apple Remote Desktop was implemented for remote managing), they have renamed it to screen sharing, but the principal remains the same.

To enable it, follow the instructions below.

The following guidelines are for Mac OSX 10.6, but they are roughly the same for other versions.

Open System Preferences.



Find the icon that says Sharing.



In the list of services at the left, select and enable Screen Sharing by ticking its checkbox.



By default, no authentication is set, and so, you cannot yet use VNC. To set the password, click o  ...
 
[Mac] Memory stick not empty after deleting files
edited by on June 24th 2007, at 20:24

A friend of mine had this problem with her camera storage thingy. If you're a MacOSX user, you might want to read up on the symptoms and solution on her blog.
Extra thanks go to Heidi for this.

 
Script to remove local cache for Remote Desktop Manager Mac
by on January 1st 1970, at 01:00

Remote Desktop Manager Mac sometimes has issues with stale cache, especially after an update. Below is a simple one-liner/script I like to use for deleting all the cache files in a Remote Desktop Manager Mac installation.

#!/bin/bash
find "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.devolutions.remotedesktopmanager" -iname "*.mcdf2" -type f -delete
 
How to fix slow and unresponsive Steam on Mac
by on January 1st 1970, at 01:00
A slow and unresponsive Steam app on Mac is a rather common issue. Symptoms are intermittent display freezing of the app, sluggish and delayed reaction to user input (i.e. clicking on items) and slow animations in the various screens. The issues may not appear straight away after starting Steam but may build up over time, causing Steam to run increasingly slower. However, the problems are only related to the Steam app, as games themselves run normally.

This is a known (but undocumented) issue with GPU acceleration, which luckily can be turned off rather easily:

With the Steam app active, in the main menu, click Steam → Preferences.

On the left, click Interface.

Look for Enable GPU a  ...
 
Create bootable Debian USB on Mac
by on January 1st 1970, at 01:00
While there are a lot of ways and tools to write bootable ISOs to USB on a Mac, the most easiest is in fact by using the "linux" method, a perfectly valid option using internal command-line tools:

You'll need an USB device that's large enough. For netinst, 1 GB would be sufficient. Make sure that the contents are kept safe if needed, as the USB device will be wiped.

If you haven't done so already, you can download the proper ISO file for Debian from this page: https://www.debian.org/distrib/. Download only from a legitimate mirror.

Insert the USB device and open up Terminal. We need to verify the device identifier of the USB device as we will need this later. This will be in the  ...
 
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showing posts tagged with 'mac'
 
 
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« Debating Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac is pointless: they all have their merits and flaws, and it ultimately comes to down to personal preference. »
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