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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

Bboy AJ

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
JeffDowns said:
1. The SSD will help a bit in this area. But for Parallells you need as much RAM as you can come by. That 2GB ain't gonna cut it. Can you upgrade the RAM in the new airs?
Click to expand...
The ram is soldered onto the board.
 
P

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
Firestorm said:
No. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/windows-7-libraries-–-and-why-you-want-them/
Click to expand...

Sounds like symlinks.



mrklaw said:
dropbox on OSX creates a new folder, so it encourages you to put docs etc folders underneath that one.
Click to expand...


You can make symlinks. It's how I have my whole documents folder synched to dropbox, without actually moving the folder.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2001110610290643



EDIT

It looks like there are some apps that add symlink into your contextual menus for those that don't want to bother with the terminal.


http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10433/symboliclinker



There may be more, but I haven't really looked too extensively
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
iphoto question.

I've been using iphoto since '08 and these days its getting a little unwieldy, with tons of events. I like the organisation and its easy for the family to browse photos so I don't particularly want to change how I organise, but are there basic housekeeping recommendations - eg should I be importing photos separately somewhere, and then importing to iphoto just for viewing? (currently I'm importing through iphoto and also editing - using PS elements)

don't particularly want to spend a ton of money on aperture/lightroom unless absolutely necessary.
 
V

Vyer

Member
Anyone had this problem with Skype on Snow Leopard recently?


Basically when trying to sign in it just keeps trying and eventually times out.

I've used it on this system before, but just recently installed a new hard drive on this mac. Everything else tests fine.

I have a Windows 7 machine and an iPhone with Skype on it and both are connecting just fine on the same wifi network.

grrrr

EDIT: Derp. nevermind. looks like it's pretty widespread
 
U

UtadaBarkley

Member
Vyer said:
Anyone had this problem with Skype on Snow Leopard recently?


Basically when trying to sign in it just keeps trying and eventually times out.

I've used it on this system before, but just recently installed a new hard drive on this mac. Everything else tests fine.

I have a Windows 7 machine and an iPhone with Skype on it and both are connecting just fine on the same wifi network.

grrrr

EDIT: Derp. nevermind. looks like it's pretty widespread
Click to expand...

I just came here to ask this.
 
Z

Zaraki_Kenpachi

Member
Is there any way to get the apple remote to work in Windows 7 bootcamp? I was wondering if I can use it for powerpoint and stuff like in OSX or not. I can turn the volume up and down on my macbook pro with it but that's literally all it does right now. :/
 
D

Dreams-Visions

Member
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
Is there any way to get the apple remote to work in Windows 7 bootcamp? I was wondering if I can use it for powerpoint and stuff like in OSX or not. I can turn the volume up and down on my macbook pro with it but that's literally all it does right now. :/
Click to expand...
I believe volume control is all it does. maybe someone has made some drivers that extend its functionality, but I doubt it.
 
U

UtadaBarkley

Member
Just upgraded to an i3 iMac. I have a feeling this will be my main machine for the next few years. At least I won't need a memory upgrade anytime soon.

14Pd.Screen%20shot%202010-10-27%20at%2000%3A10%3A01.png
 
N

NumberTwo

Paper or plastic?
JeffDowns said:
Just upgraded to an i3 iMac. I have a feeling this will be my main machine for the next few years. At least I won't need a memory upgrade anytime soon.

14Pd.Screen%20shot%202010-10-27%20at%2000%3A10%3A01.png
Click to expand...
Just thinking about doing the same thing you did. I'll probably put two 4GB modules in before years end. What made you settle for the i3 as well?
 
Bboy AJ

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
JeffDowns said:
Just upgraded to an i3 iMac. I have a feeling this will be my main machine for the next few years. At least I won't need a memory upgrade anytime soon.

http://files.droplr.com/files/185680350/14Pd.Screen%20shot%202010-10-27%20at%2000%3A10%3A01.png[/IG][/QUOTE]
What'd you do with the mini? How much did it sell for?
Click to expand...
 
U

UtadaBarkley

Member
Bboy AJ said:
What'd you do with the mini? How much did it sell for?
Click to expand...
Sold it this morning. Took a little bit of a loss on it, but oh well. I shouldn't have bought it in the first place. The iMac is much nicer with its integrated graphics, and snappy i3, even though I do miss the speed of the SSD. I'm a bit hesitant to crack this baby open and install an SSD considering you have to remove the glass and all that Jazz. I think I may just settle for the 7200RPM drive for a while. :-/

One thing of note is that I do like the wireless keyboard more than I thought I would. I think I even prefer it to the full size keyboard. I was under the impression that there would be a lot of compromise with the small size, but I can type just as well on the small keyboard as I could with the full size. I do miss the numerical pad though, but I think it was worth the sacrifice to get rid of that nasty wire.

Another interesting thing is that the Magic Mouse that came with the iMac is much more responsive that the one I purchased solo. Very odd.
 
M

Mr. Wonderful

Member
JeffDowns said:
Just upgraded to an i3 iMac. I have a feeling this will be my main machine for the next few years. At least I won't need a memory upgrade anytime soon.

14Pd.Screen%20shot%202010-10-27%20at%2000%3A10%3A01.png
Click to expand...
Why did you compromise on the un-upgradable processor and then almost max out your RAM?
 
U

UtadaBarkley

Member
Mr. Wonderful said:
Why did you compromise on the un-upgradable processor and then almost max out your RAM?
Click to expand...

Because I'm not doing anything that's overly processor intensive, and don't foresee ever doing so. However, I do use a lot of programs simultaneously. I'm an insane multitasker, hence the amount of RAM. I couldn't justify dropping $400 more on something I probably wouldn't use anyway. To me, it's a point of diminishing returns. And besides, I could always sell this iMac in the future and pay for more than half of a new iMac.

The i3 has been proven in benchmarks to be pretty competent in comparison with its big brothers.

Oh, and Parallels. :lol
 
M

Mecha_Infantry

Banned
Infact a better idea is for me to blank out the CD-ROM drive with this from OWC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyuQJE-Z9cQ

Pop in a 60GB SSD and install Snow Leopard on there, my applications and let it read from my internal. It'll be a stupid 5400RPM disk but I'll upgrade that later next year.
I just need a faster from boot/sleep reaction. My start up is about 1m.30s even though I have a few apps on startup and about 100GB free

Jeeez!
 
L

LCfiner

Member
JeffDowns said:
This is what I'm talking about. Look at Parallels.

SQRI.Screen%20shot%202010-10-27%20at%2010%3A33%3A16.png


Lots of RAM is a necessity if you wanna run VM competently.
Click to expand...


speaking from experience, parallels was the app that most visibly benefited from the move from 4 to 8 GB of RAM on my iMac.

the reduction in swapping makes starting up and closing the VM so much faster.

and with 12 GB, you could dedicate around 4GB to the VM and not have to sweat it.
 
B

Blackhead

Redarse
Mecha_Infantry said:
I think it was someone in this thread that was using an ssd in their expresscard slot to boot Os X. How did it work out?
Click to expand...
I did. Performance wise it's a great improvement over the internal harddrive. The only downside is that it gets hot. The SSD is quiet of course but I think the fans run a lot more often which is very irritating to be honest. I like the having two drives but I would have gone for one small SSD if I had anticipated the noise problem.
 
A

Ashhong

Member
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
You should be able to use what I linked before or you could use

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001KUL012/?tag=neogaf0e-20

That's DDR 1033, I don't know if that's a deal but that's about what I paid a year ago. It's not really expensive right now to buy ram. 4GB(2x2GB) is about $75, I'm not sure how cheap you're looking for.
Click to expand...

Pretty expensive. 4gb last year was about 50 bucks after rebate at certain times. i knew i should have upgraded then.
 
X

X-Frame

Member
Can someone tell me if there's a way to manually modify the "Date Modified" date on a file?

I have these overlay "Drawers" for my folders that make it look like the contents of my Movies, Docs, Downloads, etc are in a drawer but the drawers will only be in front if the Date Modified is obviously the newest.

I DL'ed these when Leopard first came out and they were "hacked" I guess to say October 26th, 2010. Well, yesterday is over so now my Drawers are in the middle of the folders.

Can someone help?
 
Z

Zaraki_Kenpachi

Member
When I open a powerpoint file in Keynote and then play it as a slideshow, it doesn't fill the whole screen and instead takes up a small square in the middle. Anyone know why it would do that?
 
D

Doytch

Member
X-Frame said:
Can someone tell me if there's a way to manually modify the "Date Modified" date on a file?

I have these overlay "Drawers" for my folders that make it look like the contents of my Movies, Docs, Downloads, etc are in a drawer but the drawers will only be in front if the Date Modified is obviously the newest.

I DL'ed these when Leopard first came out and they were "hacked" I guess to say October 26th, 2010. Well, yesterday is over so now my Drawers are in the middle of the folders.

Can someone help?
Click to expand...
You could write a script that runs the 'touch' terminal command on the files. Not sure how often you need it, could you just have it run on log-in or something?

Something like:
Code: 
#! /bin/sh

touch LOC_OF_MOVIES
touch LOC_OF_DOCS
touch LOC_OF_DOWNLOADS
 
C

cooljeanius

Member
Ashhong said:
Pretty expensive. 4gb last year was about 50 bucks after rebate at certain times. i knew i should have upgraded then.
Click to expand...
OK, if you were paying that much, I wonder how Apple gets away with charging the prices for RAM they charge... I was looking up the cost for upgrading my 2009 MacBook Pro to 8GB of RAM, an they were listing $600...
 
X

X-Frame

Member
Doytch said:
You could write a script that runs the 'touch' terminal command on the files. Not sure how often you need it, could you just have it run on log-in or something?

Something like:
Code: 
#! /bin/sh

touch LOC_OF_MOVIES
touch LOC_OF_DOCS
touch LOC_OF_DOWNLOADS
Click to expand...

Not really familiar with Terminal but I could give it a shot.

I only need to do this once. Just alter the Date Modified of my Drawers to like 2099 or something. Will never have to worry about that again. Lol.
 
U

UtadaBarkley

Member
cooljeanius said:
OK, if you were paying that much, I wonder how Apple gets away with charging the prices for RAM they charge... I was looking up the cost for upgrading my 2009 MacBook Pro to 8GB of RAM, an they were listing $600...
Click to expand...
Because they know a few people will buy it.

It's crazy, because it's not like it's even Apple's RAM to begin with. Most of the time you'll find a Samsung sticker on the stick.
 
D

Doytch

Member
X-Frame said:
Not really familiar with Terminal but I could give it a shot.

I only need to do this once. Just alter the Date Modified of my Drawers to like 2099 or something. Will never have to worry about that again. Lol.
Click to expand...
Actually, there's a better way than what I said. Run this command in the terminal (for each file):
Code: 
touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] FILENAME
Replacing FILENAME obv, and the square brackets mean that the fields are optional. So,
Code: 
touch -t 209901311234 FILENAME
Would set 2099, 31 January, 12:34. Should do the trick.
 
P

Pachimari

Member
Im heading out to buy an external hard drive for my Mac Mini in a hour.
Am I right in saying that it only supports FAT32 formatted hard drives if I want to be able to write to it and not just have it readable?
 
S

SnakeXs

about the same metal capacity as a cucumber
Anastacio said:
Im heading out to buy an external hard drive for my Mac Mini in a hour.
Am I right in saying that it only supports FAT32 formatted hard drives if I want to be able to write to it and not just have it readable?
Click to expand...

No. FAT32 is the only format that both major OSs can read/write to natively, but if it's for your Mac you're gonna wanna format it in Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).
 
P

Pachimari

Member
SnakeXs said:
No. FAT32 is the only format that both major OSs can read/write to natively, but if it's for your Mac you're gonna wanna format it in Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).
Click to expand...
So if I head out buying a WD 1TB FAT32 hard drive will I have to format it with MAC OSX Extended (Journaled) and what is that? Software on my Mac?
 
S

SnakeXs

about the same metal capacity as a cucumber
Anastacio said:
So if I head out buying a WD 1TB FAT32 hard drive will I have to format it with MAC OSX Extended (Journaled) and what is that? Software on my Mac?
Click to expand...

Yes, you open Disk Utility, pick the drive in question on the left, go to the Erase tab, name it, and off you go. Takes minutes, if that.
 
A

Ashhong

Member
cooljeanius said:
OK, if you were paying that much, I wonder how Apple gets away with charging the prices for RAM they charge... I was looking up the cost for upgrading my 2009 MacBook Pro to 8GB of RAM, an they were listing $600...
Click to expand...

Back when that 4gb was only about 50$ or so, Apple was only charging about 100$ for the upgrade. Thats a lot by our standards, but its not too bad compared to their usual markup. Nevertheless, I cant buy ram unless it gets back down to that price lol

Anastacio said:
Im heading out to buy an external hard drive for my Mac Mini in a hour.
Am I right in saying that it only supports FAT32 formatted hard drives if I want to be able to write to it and not just have it readable?
Click to expand...

If its an external harddrive, wouldnt u want to keep it at FAT32 so that a Windows PC can read/write to it too? Otherwise you need special OSX reading software on your PC. If you dont care about Windows then forget this..
 
P

Pachimari

Member
Ashhong said:
Back when that 4gb was only about 50$ or so, Apple was only charging about 100$ for the upgrade. Thats a lot by our standards, but its not too bad compared to their usual markup. Nevertheless, I cant buy ram unless it gets back down to that price lol



If its an external harddrive, wouldnt u want to keep it at FAT32 so that a Windows PC can read/write to it too? Otherwise you need special OSX reading software on your PC. If you dont care about Windows then forget this..
Click to expand...
Oh, so if it's already FAT32 then I shouldn't do the Disk Utility right? I want the external hard disk to read/write on both OSX and Windows.
 
A

Ashhong

Member
Anastacio said:
Oh, so if it's already FAT32 then I shouldn't do the Disk Utility right? I want the external hard disk to read/write on both OSX and Windows.
Click to expand...

Then you definitely shouldn't do Disk Utility. However if its NTFS, you can stick it into Disk Utility and format it into FAT32 iirc. If not you can download fat32format for windows.
 
R

Rei_Toei

Fclvat sbe Pnanqn, ru?
Question: I dislike the Leopard dock effect. One way of removing it and returning to the '2D' look in Terminal with the line defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

A different approach is described here:

Go toHardrive, System, Library, Core Services. Right Click on Dock icon. Show Package Contents.Then open Contents and then Resources. View from Menubar on top. View as list. Then click kind on top of window and view by file type. Select all the .png files. Right click and say Move to Trash. Restart the computer and see it. If I remove the 3d effect it looks ugly. But with 3d dock on it looks cool. Almost blending in like there is no dock at all.

I tried the above and voila, clean-looking dock. However... the blue spheres that indicate an app is running disappear too with this method. I've been looking through the files that are deleted with this method, but I couldn't pinpoint how to get a totally 'clean' dock but with the blue dots indicating open apps. Anybody able to figure this out?
 
H

hirokazu

Member
Rei_Toei said:
Question: I dislike the Leopard dock effect. One way of removing it and returning to the '2D' look in Terminal with the line defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

A different approach is described here:

Go toHardrive, System, Library, Core Services. Right Click on Dock icon. Show Package Contents.Then open Contents and then Resources. View from Menubar on top. View as list. Then click kind on top of window and view by file type. Select all the .png files. Right click and say Move to Trash. Restart the computer and see it. If I remove the 3d effect it looks ugly. But with 3d dock on it looks cool. Almost blending in like there is no dock at all.

I tried the above and voila, clean-looking dock. However... the blue spheres that indicate an app is running disappear too with this method. I've been looking through the files that are deleted with this method, but I couldn't pinpoint how to get a totally 'clean' dock but with the blue dots indicating open apps. Anybody able to figure this out?
Click to expand...
Uh, that's rather heavy-handed and really not a good idea unless you've made backups.

Why not just delete the 3D dock image assets instead of all of them? Deleting all of them also removes image assets used for Stacks, Exposé, Dashboard and other things that the Dock app handles. Unless you wanted to do that...

But if you insist on doing this, the indicator_*.png files are the ones that handle the blue running app lights.

EDIT: Restart the computer? Yeah, don't listen to that guy, seriously. Open Terminal and type "killall Dock" for the same effect.
 
R

Rei_Toei

Fclvat sbe Pnanqn, ru?
^ to be fair some other source where I found that command line mentioned the kill all command.

Just deleting the 3D dock effect parts sounds good but it's kinda hard to figure out which are part of it and which are not.

What I'd like is just the icons and the indicators, and no mirror effects, no borders, etc. I tried out the second method, of course backed up everything first, but indeed, dashboard, expose etc look like shit afterwards. So I was wondering if it's possible to minimize the effect in the dock while maintaining a normal look elsewhere (dashboard etc).
 
H

hirokazu

Member
Rei_Toei said:
^ to be fair some other source where I found that command line mentioned the kill all command.

Just deleting the 3D dock effect parts sounds good but it's kinda hard to figure out which are part of it and which are not.

What I'd like is just the icons and the indicators, and no mirror effects, no borders, etc. I tried out the second method, of course backed up everything first, but indeed, dashboard, expose etc look like shit afterwards. So I was wondering if it's possible to minimize the effect in the dock while maintaining a normal look elsewhere (dashboard etc).
Click to expand...
Hmm, if you don't like that reflection, you probably want to use the defaults write command to switch to the 2D dock, delete (or rename) all the bottom*.png files (numbered 1 to 5) and separatorstraight.png, then do the "killall Dock" command to reload it with the changes.
 
R

Rei_Toei

Fclvat sbe Pnanqn, ru?
hirokazu said:
Hmm, if you don't like that reflection, you probably want to use the defaults write command to switch to the 2D dock, delete (or rename) all the bottom*.png files (numbered 1 to 5) and separatorstraight.png, then do the "killall Dock" command to reload it with the changes.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I tried this and it's getting pretty close. The only thing remaining now is the black, box-shaped 'shade' - the white outlining is gone but the semi-transparant box remains. I'm trying to figure out which file is responsible for that part.
 
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