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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

Firestorm said:
8GB isn't necessary. Even my desktop (and most of PC-Gaming GAF's desktops) only has 4GB. I do video and photo work fine on it.
depends on what you're doing.

I do print-grade work regularly. 2 or 3 PSD's open at any given time @ 1GB+ per file. And don't let one of them be a poster.

Serious video editing can consume even more than that.
 

btkadams

Member
Firestorm said:
8GB isn't necessary. Even my desktop (and most of PC-Gaming GAF's desktops) only has 4GB. I do video and photo work fine on it.
I have 4gb and my computer doesn't have enough to do the stuff I want to do in Ableton Live. No one should be recommended 4gb at this point. The fact its the lowest choice in building computers these days shows you're going to want to upgrade to 8 in a year anyways.
 
btkadams said:
I have 4gb and my computer doesn't have enough to do the stuff I want to do in Ableton Live. No one should be recommended 4gb at this point. The fact its the lowest choice in building computers these days shows you're going to want to upgrade to 8 in a year anyways.
I agree.

I picked up a second 4GB stick last month for $75 from Amazon. just don't buy the shit from Apple and you'll be gravy.
 

jts

...hate me...
I've actually downgraded my MBP RAM, which came with 4GB.

Since I bought a Mac mini with just 1GB of RAM (1x1GB), I simply swapped its RAM stick with one from my MBP, leaving it with 2GB and the MBP with 3GB.

It has been good so far, seriously.

But then again I don't do heavy work. Skype, Word, Chrome, iTunes are my most used applications (hence also why a C2D is a good enough processor for me).
 

kaskade

Member
I think I may go with 8 gb. Like mentioned it'll save me money in the long run if I wanted to upgrade again in the future. I just find that some things make my computer sluggish whether I'm using aperture or whatever. I'm not really in dire need to upgrade so I'll just put some money towards it for a couple of weeks.
 
2r2w555.png


Hyperdock now officially on my shit list.
 
Anticitizen One said:
The one thing I don't like about Mac's is that their main web browser (safari) doesn't open into a fullscreen window. Whats the deal with that?
Easily fixed with BTT snapping, but that will likely be fixed in Lion. On my 21.5" iMac, I see no reason to browse full-screen, that's just too much lost screen real estate, but I can see it being useful on a smaller screen. Still, it's an easy fix and an official Apple solution is likely coming with Lion.
 
thewesker said:
Easily fixed with BTT snapping, but that will likely be fixed in Lion. On my 21.5" iMac, I see no reason to browse full-screen, that's just too much lost screen real estate, but I can see it being useful on a smaller screen. Still, it's an easy fix and an official Apple solution is likely coming with Lion.

Yeah when I was using Windows I had to have everything full screen all the time but I on OS X I just have the windows use half the screen or so.
 

btkadams

Member
Anticitizen One said:
The one thing I don't like about Mac's is that their main web browser (safari) doesn't open into a fullscreen window. Whats the deal with that?
huh? my safari opens up in the last size i had it. my safari windows always open taking up 90% of my 15" mbp screen. why don't you just pull it to full screen? that way itll always stay that way.
 
@ JeffDowns, that's what I said too. HyperDock can kiss my ass for that. That's an epic memory leak for a program of this sort and size. All it does is show little pop-ups n' shit. So why are you hogging 300MB+ of *real* memory? GTFO.


@ bionic77, at one point yesterday, Firefox was using a cool 1.2GB of RAM. Safari can probably pull that same trick too. so now I'm just resolved to restarting either browser a couple of times a day. a small inconvenience.
 
Firestorm said:
8GB isn't necessary. Even my desktop (and most of PC-Gaming GAF's desktops) only has 4GB. I do video and photo work fine on it.

Ehh? So everyone elses situation is applicatable to everyone else??

8GB is good and fine it it utilises over 4GB at the moment. I'll be getting 8GB as all the shit I run from VMs, to Photoshop to PS3Media server and all sorts of programs keeping that nice free and inactive % on the pie chart slim
 

MCX

Banned
Dreams-Visions said:
eh. I didn't. I don't see the necessity, really. but if it makes you feel better, knock yourself out.
Alrighty, thanks. Since it worked fine for you I'll just overwrite 09. I wasn't sure if it'd cause complications with the current suite.
 

Mastgrr

Member
MCX said:
Alrighty, thanks. Since it worked fine for you I'll just overwrite 09. I wasn't sure if it'd cause complications with the current suite.
Absolutely not. It only upgrades what's necessary and installs what's needed. It's a smart installer.
 

X-Frame

Member
Can someone help me?

I have an External 1 TB HDD where 250 GB of it is dedicated to Time Machine back-ups. I only have about 25 GB of space left but Time Machine won't update .. says there's not enough space.

I thought that TM auto-deletes the oldest entry? Well it's not working.

What should I do? Do I need to do into Disk Utility and just highlight my TM Partition and erase it then start over? There's nothing on it that I need.
 

AcridMeat

Banned
Hello everyone, I recently picked up a MBP 13'' and had a question. I ordered a monoprice hdmi to mini dvi (I think) so I could hook it up to my TV. I stupidly didn't read the bold text saying that it doesn't send the audio as well, which leads me to my question.

I have a y-cable for RCA, but because I can only get video via HDMI, does that mean I can't actually get the TV's audio as well through RCA?

I have some good logitech usb speakers from a garage sale but I wanted to know if it's possible to not have to resort to using them.

Cheers :D
 

AlexMogil

Member
X-Frame said:
Can someone help me?

I have an External 1 TB HDD where 250 GB of it is dedicated to Time Machine back-ups. I only have about 25 GB of space left but Time Machine won't update .. says there's not enough space.

I thought that TM auto-deletes the oldest entry? Well it's not working.

What should I do? Do I need to do into Disk Utility and just highlight my TM Partition and erase it then start over? There's nothing on it that I need.


Can you resize your partitions?

Also consider: http://db.tidbits.com/article/9597 Deleteing some of the older chunky files you don't need that are continuously getting backed up.
 

X-Frame

Member
AlexMogil said:
Can you resize your partitions?

Also consider: http://db.tidbits.com/article/9597 Deleteing some of the older chunky files you don't need that are continuously getting backed up.

Thanks for the response!

That GrandPerspective hack seems like a good idea .. and I'd look into that but I have about 220 GB of space taken up already only after about 10 back-ups saved since last March. I really don't need the older ones.

I'd also like to keep TM with 250 GB .. the other 750 GB is where I put my DVD's, home movies, music, etc. Don't want to touch that.

Basically wondering if it's save to use Disk Utility to simply erase the 250 GB TM partition and then start over with a fresh TM back-up?
 

skrew

Banned
So my 11" air will slowly get all the way over to Afghanistan hopefully around 2 weeks. So far I have already downloaded these programs.

Adium
Firefox & Chrome
Caffeine
BetterTouchTool
Skype
Growl
HyperDock
Transmission

Any other suggestions? Also is quicksilver the best launcher application or is there something better? What is the best mail client? & Office 2011 or iWork for school work (mostly writing papers and a few presentation)?
 
skrew said:
So my 11" air will slowly get all the way over to Afghanistan hopefully around 2 weeks. So far I have already downloaded these programs.

Adium
Firefox & Chrome
Caffeine
BetterTouchTool
Skype
Growl
HyperDock
Transmission

Any other suggestions? Also is quicksilver the best launcher application or is there something better? What is the best mail client? & Office 2011 or iWork for school work (mostly writing papers and a few presentation)?

if you use gmail you should check sparrow
 

upandaway

Member
upandaway said:
There are a few crazy things I wanna do with my desktop wallpaper, but I haven't found a way to do them. Can someone help?
I will be fine with either of them, but if I could get them both at the same time, that would be awesome.

- Wallpaper that changes based on the time of day, each wallpaper assigned a specific time slot
- Wallpaper randomized at startup

Both at the same time would be impossible right? It would mean that only if a specific one is drawn out, THEN it would start listening to time slots.
Just to update, I managed to randomize a wallpaper at startup. Thanks for suggesting the Automator Sean, it's SUPER easy to use. I seriously didn't expect it to be so beginner friendly.

The workflow:
fceoz.png


Afterwards I just set the application to open at login.

I downloaded the Limit thing from here.

I dunno if I'll be able to get the first thing I wanted to work alongside with this, but I'm happy with this.
This Automator thing is godly. I'm in love.
 

upandaway

Member
I know of how it can randomize a wallapaper every set amount of time, but not just once after startup. You sure? Kinda embarrassing for me if it does have it.
 

Ashhong

Member
upandaway said:
I know of how it can randomize a wallapaper every set amount of time, but not just once after startup. Kinda embarrassing for me if it does have it.

oooh ok, i see what youre doing. in the desktop settings menu, you can choose "change picture" and then set the frequency to "when logging in" or "when waking from sleep" :)
 

upandaway

Member
Oh damn you're right. Whoops.

Well nevermind then! I got to use Automator a little anyway.

I still need to find out how to do the other thing I want.
 

Ashhong

Member
upandaway said:
Oh damn you're right. Whoops.

Well nevermind then! I got to use Automator a little anyway.

I still need to find out how to do the other thing I want.

dont know, but on another note,

n6OUa.gif
gby006.gif


I just thought it was funny. How much nobody ever uses Charmeleon
 

Firestorm

Member
Charmeleon got banned =)

Urgh. I can't find my retail Snow Leopard DVD. Can I use the Snow Leopard DVD that came with my 2010 MacBook Pro on a 2007 MacBook?

Edit: Answer to this is no.
 

NumberTwo

Paper or plastic?
Just have to say, I've been using my 21.5 iMac for about a month now and its been a (more or less) flawless experience. OSX just so buttery smooth and cohesive. I don't miss XP, though I would wager 7 users would say the same. I'm a convert.
 

Chris R

Member
So OSX related, anyone know why my iPod Touch will not play audio while charging off a CHARGING ONLY USB cable but plays just fine when using a data/charging cable?

The charging only cable is great for charging anywhere and is 3x the length of my data cable, but having no audio out of the speaker or headphones means I can't use it at work :(
 

White Man

Member
Question (prolly been asked before):

I want to do a clean reinstall of 10.6. Will doing so screw up my Boot Camp partition? It's a separate partition, so I know the actual Win7 install will be fine, but will reinstalling OSX screw with the bootloader or remove OSX's ability to read the bootcamp partition from within the os.
 
White Man said:
Question (prolly been asked before):

I want to do a clean reinstall of 10.6. Will doing so screw up my Boot Camp partition? It's a separate partition, so I know the actual Win7 install will be fine, but will reinstalling OSX screw with the bootloader or remove OSX's ability to read the bootcamp partition from within the os.
It won't bother the Boot Camp partition at all, and will recognize it with the new OS X install.
 
Topher said:
Just have to say, I've been using my 21.5 iMac for about a month now and its been a (more or less) flawless experience. OSX just so buttery smooth and cohesive. I don't miss XP, though I would wager 7 users would say the same. I'm a convert.
Agreed. I'm in the same boat. Really I doubt I'll ever need bootcamp for anything, but I keep it just in case.

BTW, what are the specs of your iMac?
 
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