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Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Move your Mac even further ahead

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A

amrihua

Member
Nothing about 10.9 yet? When was it when Apple announced 10.8 last year?

10.8 brought more iOS features to OS X and I ended up using them daily I can't remember how I went without them before.

Apple can do two things, bring Siri and Maps to OS X, and with public APIs so that it can be integrated into OS X apps.

I keep my notes and files (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) in sync thru iCloud, thing is my TextEdit files are only synced between my Macs. I want to use TextEdit more but now I'm using it less because it doesn't sync with my iPhone and iPad. You never know when genius strikes and sometimes you need to check, read and re-read what you have already written.

Ken Masters said:
That was my favorite feature of 10.8, and sadly my 13" 2010 MBP didn't make the cut for that feature
Click to expand...

Neither did my (then) top of the line full specced 2010 15" MBP. Oh well...
 
M

Mr. Wonderful

Member
amrihua said:
Nothing about 10.9 yet? When was it when Apple announced 10.8 last year?

10.8 brought more iOS features to OS X and I ended up using them daily I can't remember how I went without them before.

Apple can do two things, bring Siri and Maps to OS X, and with public APIs so that it can be integrated into OS X apps.

I keep my notes and files (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) in sync thru iCloud, thing is my TextEdit files are only synced between my Macs. I want to use TextEdit more but now I'm using it less because it doesn't sync with my iPhone and iPad. You never know when genius strikes and sometimes you need to check, read and re-read what you have already written.



Neither did my (then) top of the line full specced 2010 15" MBP. Oh well...
Click to expand...
The one good thing about bringing Maps and Siri to the Mac is that it would be yet another source for crowd-sourcing data.

That and a vastly improved voice-command-based Siri on Mac would be awesome.
 
J

Jubern

Member
Jubern said:
I finally installed Bootcamp on my 2012 MBA 13". Made a 30 gigs partition on which I only intended to install Windows and Phantasy Star Online 2.

The problem is that after installing Windows and updating it, I'm left with less than 2 gigs of hard drive space! Is that really normal?

Checking the partition with Daisy, I realized there were two HUGE hidden system files (pagefile.sys, 8.5 gigs and hiberfil.sys, 6,4 gigs), and find it hard to believe they should be that big after hearing several times than 30 gigs for bootcamp was "okay"...
Click to expand...

Sorry to insist, but I'm quoting for the new page...
 
N

Number45

Member
Jubern said:
Sorry to insist, but I'm quoting for the new page...
Click to expand...
Pagefile size is created relative to your system memory. The hibernation file is what your system status gets written to when you hibernate Windows - you should be able to disable hibernation and reclaim that space.

You can manually tweak the size of the pagefile, but it may impact performance.
 
S

Sanjuro

Member
You're going to have to format and re-install realistically. Disable those other processes as mentioned, but you're going to want to allocate a bit more space than that.
 
J

Jubern

Member
Number45 said:
Pagefile size is created relative to your system memory. The hibernation file is what your system status gets written to when you hibernate Windows - you should be able to disable hibernation and reclaim that space.

You can manually tweak the size of the pagefile, but it may impact performance.
Click to expand...

To be quite honest, I'm not sure I understand how to do any of that. Having 8 gigs of RAM, I'm not sure why pagefile is so big. Unless it's supposed to be as huge as your physical memory of course. And I don't care much about the hibernation files as long as it frees that much needed space on the bootcamp partition...

Sorry to be such a bootcamp noob :/

I understand that 30 gigs is too small, but having an iPhone, I find myself still needing quite a bit of space on OSX for iTunes and backup of my device. After creating that 30 gigs partition, I'm only left with 15 gigs on OSX, despite having just a single game (Football Manager 2013, 5 gigs).
Unless there's a way to transfer to files to my external drive of course.
 
O

oatmeal

Banned
I downgraded to Lion awhile ago on my MBP because it was such a battery drain.

Did they ever figure that out? I miss some features of ML.
 
N

Number45

Member
Jubern said:
Sorry to be such a bootcamp noob :/

I understand that 30 gigs is too small, but having an iPhone, I find myself still needing quite a bit of space on OSX for iTunes and backup of my device. After creating that 30 gigs partition, I'm only left with 15 gigs on OSX, despite having just a single game (Football Manager 2013, 5 gigs).
Unless there's a way to transfer to files to my external drive of course.
Click to expand...
It's not a bootcamp thing it's a Windows thing. You'd have the same problem if you tried to install Windows itself onto a drive/partition of that size.

Some light reading about the pagefile:

http://lifehacker.com/5426041/understanding-the-windows-pagefile-and-why-you-shouldnt-disable-it

As has been said, realistically you're going to need a bigger partition. I have Windows 7 (32-bit) installed on my laptop in a virtual environment and it's only using 9GB, but that's without the hibernate feature enabled and only 512MB of RAM assigned. If I was to match your specs and enable hibernate it would be near enough 30GB as well.

So with that spec, and given you're talking about installing a game on it, I'd say 50GB would be a better benchmark. Or get it on the Vita. :p

EDIT: You can potentially transfer some files to an external drive, but obviously not anything system required unless that drive is guaranteed to be connected at all times.
 
C

chiQ

Member
Jubern said:
Checking the partition with Daisy, I realized there were two HUGE hidden system files (pagefile.sys, 8.5 gigs and hiberfil.sys, 6,4 gigs), and find it hard to believe they should be that big after hearing several times than 30 gigs for bootcamp was "okay"...
Click to expand...

Page file size can be set, but the general guide for efficiency (no fragmentation) is it should be fixed min/max at around physical memory size, so if you have 8 GB of RAM you should probably leave it as it is. I have no idea what hiberfil is, sorry.
 
T

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
hyberfil is probably where Windows stores RAM contents when the computer goes to sleep.

On OS X things are a bit different. There's a single sleepimage file that takes up the exact size of your RAM that's used for Sleep and smaller page files that start at 64MB and go all the way up to and including 2GB/4GB (In sizes of Po2) and are created or deleted as the system needs them. (i.e. if you run out of free RAM.)

You used to be able to disable the sleepimage in OS X which would simply mean you'd lose all RAM contents if the laptop or computer ever ran out of battery/power and would need to boot back up. But one of ML's recent updates made it so the file is always required. Not sure why. It was nice to save myself 8GB of space that would never be needed since my laptop never runs all the way down to 0% battery, and even if it did, OS X and many apps are designed to restart where they left off anyway. Kinda sad they broke this feature.

But of course that has nothing to do with Windows, but is still relevant since you have two OS' that both have large memory cache files that take up a pretty large chunk of your drive all together.
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
The Real Abed said:
hyberfil is probably where Windows stores RAM contents when the computer goes to sleep.

On OS X things are a bit different. There's a single sleepimage file that takes up the exact size of your RAM that's used for Sleep and smaller page files that start at 64MB and go all the way up to and including 2GB/4GB (In sizes of Po2) and are created or deleted as the system needs them. (i.e. if you run out of free RAM.)

You used to be able to disable the sleepimage in OS X which would simply mean you'd lose all RAM contents if the laptop or computer ever ran out of battery/power and would need to boot back up. But one of ML's recent updates made it so the file is always required. Not sure why. It was nice to save myself 8GB of space that would never be needed since my laptop never runs all the way down to 0% battery, and even if it did, OS X and many apps are designed to restart where they left off anyway. Kinda sad they broke this feature.

But of course that has nothing to do with Windows, but is still relevant since you have two OS' that both have large memory cache files that take up a pretty large chunk of your drive all together.
Click to expand...

Can't you still toggle the sleepmode via terminal? I've migrated my Mac thorugh all OS since 10.3, and back then the default mode was to insta-sleep, no RAM sleepimage writeout. When it became default to write the sleepimage when sleeping on intel Macs, I hated it for the lag in sleep time, so I switched it off via terminal command pmset.

I also turned it off not because of HD space, but writing out 6GB every time you sleep seems like unnecessary HD usage/wear, especially if you hardly ever let it run out of battery.

Pretty sure I don't write out the sleep image and my sleep time remains instant, even on Mountain Lion.
 
T

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
mrkgoo said:
Can't you still toggle the sleepmode via terminal? I've migrated my Mac thorugh all OS since 10.3, and back then the default mode was to insta-sleep, no RAM sleepimage writeout. When it became default to write the sleepimage when sleeping on intel Macs, I hated it for the lag in sleep time, so I switched it off via terminal command pmset.

I also turned it off not because of HD space, but writing out 6GB every time you sleep seems like unnecessary HD usage/wear, especially if you hardly ever let it run out of battery.

Pretty sure I don't write out the sleep image and my sleep time remains instant, even on Mountain Lion.
Click to expand...
The commands no longer work correctly. Or at least OS X no longer abides by the setting. Last I tested it, OS X would recreate the 8GB sleepimage every time I rebooted, even if I set sleep mode to "not save RAM contents" and deleted the sleepimage file. It would keep getting created.

Up until an update a few months ago it worked fine where turning that mode on and deleting the sleepimage would never make it come back. I noticed it reappear one day and started playing around to no avail. They had broken something. I decided to stop fucking around with it in case they changed something that made the OS require it now. Maybe it is a bug and will be fixed and I'll be able to delete the file again at some point because it really is useless in this age of session saving and never losing changes and 30-day batteries when asleep.

At least this is my current experience. I also disabled it because of the reading and writing being unnecessary and wearing on an SSD. I miss having it on.. er off.
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
The Real Abed said:
The commands no longer work correctly. Or at least OS X no longer abides by the setting. Last I tested it, OS X would recreate the 8GB sleepimage every time I rebooted, even if I set sleep mode to "not save RAM contents" and deleted the sleepimage file. It would keep getting created.

Up until an update a few months ago it worked fine where turning that mode on and deleting the sleepimage would never make it come back. I noticed it reappear one day and started playing around to no avail. They had broken something. I decided to stop fucking around with it in case they changed something that made the OS require it now. Maybe it is a bug and will be fixed and I'll be able to delete the file again at some point because it really is useless in this age of session saving and never losing changes and 30-day batteries when asleep.

At least this is my current experience. I also disabled it because of the reading and writing being unnecessary and wearing on an SSD. I miss having it on.. er off.
Click to expand...

I don't think I have a sleep image and mine doesn't write one.

Which hibernate mode do you use?
Or WOULD you use?
 
T

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
mrkgoo said:
I don't think I have a sleep image and mine doesn't write one.

Which hibernate mode do you use?
Or WOULD you use?
Click to expand...
These are the instructions I've followed for years, and the ones that no longer work:
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_remove_diskhogging_sleepimage_file_your_mac

Basically:
Code: 
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
Is supposed to disable writing contents to disk. For me it no longer does. And started not working a few months ago after an update came out.

I'll try it again right now and see if it's still happening just for the fun of it. Step 1, find out what my mode is currently set to...

3. Which means contents are written to disk. I have now changed it to 0.

Now to remove the sleepimage:

Code: 
sudo rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage

Done. 8GB regained.

I shall now reboot and see if it worked... BRB...

Edit: Nope. It has come back. It seems that setting hibernatemode to 0 doesn't prevent it from coming back anymore. It gets recreated immediately upon login.
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
The Real Abed said:
These are the instructions I've followed for years, and the ones that no longer work:
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_remove_diskhogging_sleepimage_file_your_mac

Basically:
Code: 
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
Is supposed to disable writing contents to disk. For me it no longer does. And started not working a few months ago after an update came out.

I'll try it again right now and see if it's still happening just for the fun of it. Step 1, find out what my mode is currently set to...

3. Which means contents are written to disk. I have now changed it to 0.

Now to remove the sleepimage:

Code: 
sudo rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage

Done. 8GB regained.

I shall now reboot and see if it worked... BRB...

Edit: Nope. It has come back. It seems that setting hibernatemode to 0 doesn't prevent it from coming back anymore. It gets recreated immediately upon login.
Click to expand...

I'm on hibernate mode and rebooting doesn't recreate sleep image file for me. (At least last I checked and that wasn't that long ago, like maybe within last couple weeks).

After some research looks like some if the newer macs that have had efi firmware updates write a sleep image regardless. Do you have a retina MacBook?

People gave been using workaround a like making a dummy file that us immutable, or writing to an area that us discarded. Weird.
 
J

Jubern

Member
Thanks for the explanations about how this all works. I'll give up since there isn't really a way I'm allowing more than 30 gigs for Windows... Get I should just get a Vita if I want to play PSO 2 again ahah.
 
M

Mindwipe

Member
Jubern said:
Thanks for the explanations about how this all works. I'll give up since there isn't really a way I'm allowing more than 30 gigs for Windows... Get I should just get a Vita if I want to play PSO 2 again ahah.
Click to expand...

You'd probably be best shunting Windows off onto a small, cheap external drive, and connecting via Thunderbolt or USB 3.
 
G

Got the Shakes

Member
Jubern said:
Thanks for the explanations about how this all works. I'll give up since there isn't really a way I'm allowing more than 30 gigs for Windows... Get I should just get a Vita if I want to play PSO 2 again ahah.
Click to expand...

I've been running Windows 7 on my rMBP on a 30 gig partition since June and I have run into 0 problems. Granted, I use it only for gaming and I keep Steam, Origin, and all of my games on an external USB 3.0 hard drive. The only thing stored locally on the internal partition are the Windows system files. I also haven't had any sorts of performance issues running my games off the external drive.
 
T

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
mrkgoo said:
I'm on hibernate mode and rebooting doesn't recreate sleep image file for me. (At least last I checked and that wasn't that long ago, like maybe within last couple weeks).

After some research looks like some if the newer macs that have had efi firmware updates write a sleep image regardless. Do you have a retina MacBook?

People gave been using workaround a like making a dummy file that us immutable, or writing to an area that us discarded. Weird.
Click to expand...
Nope. 2012 MacBook Air.
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
POWERSPHERE said:
Their OSes are only getting worse. They really need to do something.
Click to expand...
Like not go for new features every year? Maybe putting out more than 2-3 point releases to stabilize the current version?

The "release early, release often" model is overrated. Sure, you wait longer for shiny new stuff, but at some level an OS has to be solid.
 
J

Jubern

Member
Mindwipe said:
You'd probably be best shunting Windows off onto a small, cheap external drive, and connecting via Thunderbolt or USB 3.
Click to expand...

Wait, how does that work? I thought you couldn't install bootcamp on an external partition?

Got the Shakes said:
I've been running Windows 7 on my rMBP on a 30 gig partition since June and I have run into 0 problems. Granted, I use it only for gaming and I keep Steam, Origin, and all of my games on an external USB 3.0 hard drive. The only thing stored locally on the internal partition are the Windows system files. I also haven't had any sorts of performance issues running my games off the external drive.
Click to expand...

Like I explained, I'm only left with two gigs of space after the install and various updates of Windows. Can't really do anything with that, especially considering the only game I'm really interested in playing (PSO2) apparently won't let me download the client on my external drive.
 
J

Jubern

Member
Quick update: After reading a few things on different boards, I decided to try to disable hibernation and reduce the pagination file. It was unexpectedly easy, and freed like 15 gigs. I'll see if it works well enough!
 
H

hirokazu

Member
Mr. Wonderful said:
The one good thing about bringing Maps and Siri to the Mac is that it would be yet another source for crowd-sourcing data.

That and a vastly improved voice-command-based Siri on Mac would be awesome.
Click to expand...
I don't hat Maps as much as the overreacting internet did, but Apple can fuck off with Maps. You're dreaming if you think expanding it to Mac will result in more crowd sourcing and more accurate data.

I had been reporting errors since the iOS 6 betas, some of them multiple times in the months following and not a single one has been fixed. Same with people on the MacRumors forums. On the other hand, Apple fixed similar errors almost immediately when the media gets wind of them.

It's like nobody is actually handling the error reports users submit. I wanted to help them fix up errors, but not any more.
 
M

Mindwipe

Member
hirokazu said:
Interesting. If this works for FireWire, I might move Windows onto an external drive. Though Apple doesn't officially support Windows 8 yet, do they? I wonder if they ever will.
Click to expand...

Rumoured to be coming with the release of new Boot Camp drivers for 10.8.3.

Which would at least explain why 10.8.3 is so bloody late, given yet another beta that seems to have made no changes whatsoever.
 
R

RukusProvider

Banned
RANT TIME:

Having MS products on a MAC fuckin BLOWS. Mac for Office is a shit version of the Windows counter part. Outlook being the worst. Want to see multiple calendars? EAT A DICK! Not gonna happen. That alone cripples outlook. The other apps have all sorts of quirks also.

All that aside, there's yet a worse product. Lync for Mac. Holy SHIT! this thing sucks. Connects when it feels like it. It's hit n miss what functions you can use and then most importantly, it'll just lock up.

You can't close the app. You have to go into activity monitor and do a force quit which will then lag the shit out of the MAC so now I'm typing from a high powered machine that is lagging and will need a reboot. No way around it.

I laid into our MS rep for this also and his response was "I'll check with the BU" meaning go fuck yourself in sales talk.
 
S

snacknuts

we all knew her
RukusProvider said:
RANT TIME:

Having MS products on a MAC fuckin BLOWS. Mac for Office is a shit version of the Windows counter part. Outlook being the worst. Want to see multiple calendars? EAT A DICK! Not gonna happen. That alone cripples outlook. The other apps have all sorts of quirks also.

All that aside, there's yet a worse product. Lync for Mac. Holy SHIT! this thing sucks. Connects when it feels like it. It's hit n miss what functions you can use and then most importantly, it'll just lock up.

You can't close the app. You have to go into activity monitor and do a force quit which will then lag the shit out of the MAC so now I'm typing from a high powered machine that is lagging and will need a reboot. No way around it.

I laid into our MS rep for this also and his response was "I'll check with the BU" meaning go fuck yourself in sales talk.
Click to expand...

Office for Mac is god awful. I ended up installing the Windows version in my Parallels installation and I use that most of the time. It's too bad that iWork is completely non-viable as a replacement.
 
A

Arcteryx

Member
RukusProvider said:
RANT TIME:

Having MS products on a MAC fuckin BLOWS. Mac for Office is a shit version of the Windows counter part. Outlook being the worst. Want to see multiple calendars? EAT A DICK! Not gonna happen. That alone cripples outlook. The other apps have all sorts of quirks also.

All that aside, there's yet a worse product. Lync for Mac. Holy SHIT! this thing sucks. Connects when it feels like it. It's hit n miss what functions you can use and then most importantly, it'll just lock up.

You can't close the app. You have to go into activity monitor and do a force quit which will then lag the shit out of the MAC so now I'm typing from a high powered machine that is lagging and will need a reboot. No way around it.

I laid into our MS rep for this also and his response was "I'll check with the BU" meaning go fuck yourself in sales talk.
Click to expand...

Yea Office is pretty much shit on OSX. It takes FORFUCKINGEVER to boot for me.
 
B

buhdeh

Member
I don't understand why the default zoom for Office 2011 is so god damn small. I can barely read the text on it and adjusting zoom every time I open a Word doc is annoying as hell.

I almost always just end up back in Windows when I have to get work done and it's disappointing. Office 2013 is really good. Wish they could just port it exactly as it is on Windows.
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
iRAWRasaurus said:
Just got a mac and been a XP user my whole life until now, any tips for the switch over?
Click to expand...

Don't fight the OS. There are lots of thing that are different, neither better nor worse, just different. I find it easier to actually just get used to the differences rather than go find solutions to make it more like windows.
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
I stayed with Office 2004 for as long as possible, and now I'm on 2008 which isn't as good but still does the job and at least opens without rosetta.
 
S

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
Hitokage said:
I stayed with Office 2004 for as long as possible, and now I'm on 2008 which isn't as good but still does the job and at least opens without rosetta.
Click to expand...
At least you got actual .docx support without conversion when you upgraded :/
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
sc0la said:
At least you got actual .docx support without conversion when you upgraded :/
Click to expand...
But annoyingly does not support equations in documents made in Word 2007!

Also, that whole business of not being able to change equation font color in Powerpoint without paying more for an addon. Come on, now, Microsoft. You've been in business for decades yet haven't made this native yet?
 
T

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Sean said:
Drag the apps folder to your Dock, and then right click on it and set it as "List view", this will kind of replicate the Start menu if you're used to that.
Click to expand...
Better yet, if you have a Magic Trackpad, get used to the LaunchPad gesture. (I also have it set to F12 and there's a key on your keyboard that does it by default too.) Better yet yet, do the gesture and type the first few characters of the app you want and BOOM, open it. Or, another awesome thing, get used to pressing Command+Space and typing. I launch apps all the time with three methods. LaunchPad, Spotlight and a hotkey I have set in BTT (Download that too) for most used apps like Chrome, iTunes, Mail and Sublime Text 2.

I came from Windows 98SE to OS 9 to OS X 10.0. All three of which were drastically different from each other.
 
I

iRAWRasaurus

Banned
Gotcha thanks! slowly getting used to my mac. ha sorry if this is a noob question but when i dl firefox and reboot my mac, it always to find the dled installer or soemthing? anyone know what I am talking about or should I just upload some pictures.

But I am enjoying my mac :)
 
T

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
iRAWRasaurus said:
Gotcha thanks! slowly getting used to my mac. ha sorry if this is a noob question but when i dl firefox and reboot my mac, it always to find the dled installer or soemthing? anyone know what I am talking about or should I just upload some pictures.

But I am enjoying my mac :)
Click to expand...
Mount the DMG Firefox came in.

Drag the application to your Applications folder (In the hard drive)

Boom. It's installed. You can unmount the image and delete the DMG.

That's how you install a large percentage of Mac apps. The tiny rest of them use actual installers. They will always say "install" on them. The rest are installed via drag and drop.
 
J

Jake.

Member
had my mac for about a month now and love it - i was going to get office but you all just said its garbage. what's a good alternative? (all i have so far is pages, but i need excel and powerpoint or whatever the alternatives are).
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
Jake. said:
had my mac for about a month now and love it - i was going to get office but you all just said its garbage. what's a good alternative? (all i have so far is pages, but i need excel and powerpoint or whatever the alternatives are).
Click to expand...

I generally don't have problems with mac versions of office. I'm still using 2008.

I guess iWork is probably ok to use, but I find it generally better to be native to the file format when I can.
 
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