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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

L

LCfiner

Member
Pyrokai said:
Super noob question, but I've never really been able to find a good method of capturing screens on OS X. What do you guys use to capture your screen? Grab, imo, kinda sucks and is cumbersome to use. I also know the keyboard shortcut (Cmd+Shift+3). But what's the best way to get a window captured? A loooong time ago I had an app that would take pictures and upload them to the Internet automatically for easy sharing. The way I do it now is upload them to Photobucket. Slow process.


Another question: Where can I find a tutorial for Automator? I've never used it but I know a lot of people love it. I don't even know entirely what it does, to be honest.
Click to expand...

skitch or little snapper. they both have online components built in.

there are also free dashboard widgets that simplify the window or screen grabbing process (it's not faster, but you don't need to remember the keyboard shortcut - just click)
 
S

SnakeXs

about the same metal capacity as a cucumber
New Safari update made things a lot snappier. Not rendering, but overall performance, searching the history which sometimes used to hang a little bit while working. Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm liking it.
 
E

Echoes

Member
Hmm.. changed my mind on the Air, and thinking about the iMac now. Main reason is that my usage is desktop-like (almost never turn off the device, Photoshop, audio editing) so that may make the Air suffer a bit with me. I'm still in love with it, but I don't wanna make hasty decisions.

As always, I'm seeking guidance from you guys.

I'm still undecided about whether I need a 21.5 or 27. I want the 27, but I have to see it in person and decide whether it would fit nicely in my room. But let's say I decided on the 27.

- I'll upgrade the RAM later by myself. But what about the HDD? Since the 27 lets you have 2 drives, is it advised to go with the 1TB + 256 SSD configuration (750$ more), or buy an external SSD and let it be my bootable drive?

- Is it worth it to upgrade the processor from 2.8Ghz i5 to 2.9Ghz i7? (200$ more) I heard there's a noticeable difference between i3 and i5, but no idea about i7.
 
P

Pyrokai

Member
Also, my iMac screen is incredibly dark. I have the brightness set all the way up, but for anything that's dark--like a movie or game--it's nearly impossible to see anything going on. It's really aggravating and I don't know what to do. Is it the contrast? Can I even adjust the contrast? Is it age? I don't QUITE remember ALWAYS having this problem. My iMac is going on 3 years old.....it couldn't be age already, could it?
 
wolfmat

wolfmat

Confirmed Asshole
Pyrokai said:
Also, my iMac screen is incredibly dark. I have the brightness set all the way up, but for anything that's dark--like a movie or game--it's nearly impossible to see anything going on. It's really aggravating and I don't know what to do. Is it the contrast? Can I even adjust the contrast? Is it age? I don't QUITE remember ALWAYS having this problem. My iMac is going on 3 years old.....it couldn't be age already, could it?
Click to expand...
Well, it could be the backlight in theory. If it's really just games and movies though, it might be some weird setting for accelerated content.

Generally, you should be able to calibrate your monitor. To get overall brightness up, there's really just the brightness setting. To accentuate (or even blow out) lighter areas though, you can adjust gamma correction. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3712?viewlocale=en_US
 
P

Pyrokai

Member
Well, it's not necessarily movie files at least. It happens when watching videos online like through YouTube and stuff, too. I tried the gamma thing and created a profile. It was kinda weird for me and I didn't really know what I was doing, so I have no idea how accurate the colors are now. It was somewhat lighter but not entirely where I think it should be....
 
wolfmat

wolfmat

Confirmed Asshole
Calibrating monitors isn't easy. Make sure to not overwrite the default profile.

Flash videos are often very dark. See Gametrailers, for instance.
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
Is there any way to get the Finder's "Open With" menu to ignore external HD's? I have two Western Digital Essentials drives, and if you own them, you know they like to go to sleep after about 5 minutes. Requiring about 10-15 seconds of "wake up" time whenever anything tries to access them.

This causes annoying pauses in two apps that I've seen so far, maybe more. DragThing which for some reason (Even James Thompson can't seem to stop it) freezes when I try to open a Dock after not using it for a while while it spins up the drives. James said it has something to do with the Trashes. Even though I don't use DT's Trash features.

I had thought adding all the drives to Spotlight's exclude list would do it but apparently not. There's no reason for it to check them since they're just backup drives that include the exact same apps. It's just wasting time.

I don't know whether to blame Apple or Western Digital for not allowing me to turn the sleep mode off.
 
A

Android18a

Member
I tried to Bootcamp Windows onto my newish Mac recently, but it can't partition the drive. It says some files can't be moved. Is this because I have a VMware virtual machine at all?

And is there anyway I can do this without needing a big external drive to back all my stuff up onto with time machine?
 
L

Liu Kang Baking A Pie

Member
Android18a said:
I tried to Bootcamp Windows onto my newish Mac recently, but it can't partition the drive. It says some files can't be moved. Is this because I have a VMware virtual machine at all?

And is there anyway I can do this without needing a big external drive to back all my stuff up onto with time machine?
Click to expand...
Macs defrag everything all the time except files larger than 4 GB. Boot Camp doesn't defrag to make the necessary contiguous space. You have files larger than 4 GB that are blocking the partition. Try to delete your giant files or move them off the computer temporarily and see if it works. GrandPerspective is a good application for quickly finding the big files on your drive.
 
A

Android18a

Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Macs defrag everything all the time except files larger than 4 GB. Boot Camp doesn't defrag to make the necessary contiguous space. You have files larger than 4 GB that are blocking the partition. Try to delete your giant files or move them off the computer temporarily and see if it works. GrandPerspective is a good application for quickly finding the big files on your drive.
Click to expand...

*runs Grandperspective*

Ah ok, yeah. It's just my virtual machine that's huge. Nothing else is more than about 2gb.

I wonder how I'd delete it.

Ohh done.

But it still says some can't be moved. I dunno now. It says "Back up the disc and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extrended (journaled) volume. Restore information to the disc and try using boot camp assistant again".

That's totally beyond me. Nothing to back up to for a start. I don't even have a printer to print the guide either. I think I should give up on this :(
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
Most of my most fragmented files are under 4GB. My most fragmented file is a video file with 2099 fragments that's only 800MB. If it defrag's automatically, it's not doing the job it should.
 
H

hirokazu

Member
Jasoco said:
Is there any way to get the Finder's "Open With" menu to ignore external HD's? I have two Western Digital Essentials drives, and if you own them, you know they like to go to sleep after about 5 minutes. Requiring about 10-15 seconds of "wake up" time whenever anything tries to access them.
Click to expand...
I hate that so much! The WD drives are sooo slow to spin up too. Spotlight -> Whhiiiiirrrr -> ... -> ...

So annoying!
 
H

hirokazu

Member
Android18a said:
*runs Grandperspective*

Ah ok, yeah. It's just my virtual machine that's huge. Nothing else is more than about 2gb.

I wonder how I'd delete it.

Ohh done.

But it still says some can't be moved. I dunno now. It says "Back up the disc and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extrended (journaled) volume. Restore information to the disc and try using boot camp assistant again".

That's totally beyond me. Nothing to back up to for a start. I don't even have a printer to print the guide either. I think I should give up on this :(
Click to expand...
If you don't have anything to backup to, look for a defragging app that let's you do a proper defrag in trial mode (or buy it), and choose a defragging mode that moves files to the start of the disk.
 
D

dudeguy24

Member
So I was trying to do a backup with Time Machine to my external hard drive but the USB connection was somehow interrupted during the transfer and now whenever I try to do a backup it'll only back up to 17gb even though it says a full backup is 23gb. Is this normal?
 
dream

dream

Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Macs defrag everything all the time except files larger than 4 GB. Boot Camp doesn't defrag to make the necessary contiguous space. You have files larger than 4 GB that are blocking the partition. Try to delete your giant files or move them off the computer temporarily and see if it works. GrandPerspective is a good application for quickly finding the big files on your drive.
Click to expand...
Is that new? I always thought HFS only automatically defragged files under 50MB.
 
P

Pyrokai

Member
What's a good, light program to capture and easily save video (multiple formats) from the iSight camera? Seriously, iMovie is NOT my idea of an ideal program to capture a quick webcam clip.
 
L

LCfiner

Member
Pyrokai said:
What's a good, light program to capture and easily save video (multiple formats) from the iSight camera? Seriously, iMovie is NOT my idea of an ideal program to capture a quick webcam clip.
Click to expand...

the free, included quicktime player will do it if you select new recording.
 
S

Splash Wave

Member
Can someone tell me why my recently purchased Panasonic 1080p display won't output at 1080p when I have my laptop plugged in through VGA? I've had another TV do this just fine, but my Mac won't let me set the resolution higher than 1400x1050. The higher options are there, but it always just reverts back to that resolution. Fuck.
 
P

Pyrokai

Member
LCfiner said:
the free, included quicktime player will do it if you select new recording.
Click to expand...

Sweet! Never even thought of Quicktime. It seems to only let me save the files as .mov, though. Is that correct? Not a huge deal because I have a video converting program, but it'd be nice to know if it could. I'm assuming it can't because, well, .mov IS Quicktime's file format, correct?
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
Pyrokai said:
Sweet! Never even thought of Quicktime. It seems to only let me save the files as .mov, though. Is that correct? Not a huge deal because I have a video converting program, but it'd be nice to know if it could. I'm assuming it can't because, well, .mov IS Quicktime's file format, correct?
Click to expand...
Photo Booth does too. If you need to do silly effects to the video like warping or riding a rollercoaster.
 
B

Bowser

Member
So, I've had my Envy for about a week and long story short...I'm thinking of returning it and springing for a 13" MBA :lol There is one crucial piece of information I need to know though. Since I've been syncing my iPhone with my PC, if I get a MBA and try to sync with OSX, will I still be able to keep my personal data (I'm not worried about Contacts/Apps, more like SMS messages and...well mainly, SMS messages)?
 
N

numble

Member
Bowser said:
So, I've had my Envy for about a week and long story short...I'm thinking of returning it and springing for a 13" MBA :lol There is one crucial piece of information I need to know though. Since I've been syncing my iPhone with my PC, if I get a MBA and try to sync with OSX, will I still be able to keep my personal data (I'm not worried about Contacts/Apps, more like SMS messages and...well mainly, SMS messages)?
Click to expand...
You can copy your whole iTunes library (including backups) over I think.
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
Warranty question:

I was upgrading the RAM in my mid-2010 MacBook Pro yesterday and I lost one of the screws. It fell on the floor and literally disappeared. I do not know where it went.

Since the RAM is user-serviceable, will this screw me over if I have to get it fixed? Or can I take it to the store and have the screw replaced? It's just one of 10 screws on the bottom plate.

Edit: Found it. But I'd still like to know the answer just in case.
 
U

Ulairi

Banned
Is there a reason why if I watch a movie I downloaded in iTunes the volume is so much lower than if I'm playing a DVD movie? I have the volume set to the highest level and through iTunes the movie is a whole lot softer.
 
M

Mobius 1

Member
Jasoco said:
Warranty question:

I was upgrading the RAM in my mid-2010 MacBook Pro yesterday and I lost one of the screws. It fell on the floor and literally disappeared. I do not know where it went.

Since the RAM is user-serviceable, will this screw me over if I have to get it fixed? Or can I take it to the store and have the screw replaced? It's just one of 10 screws on the bottom plate.

Edit: Found it. But I'd still like to know the answer just in case.
Click to expand...


I don't think they would care. In fact, they'd probably just give you one if you explained what happened.
 
S

SnakeXs

about the same metal capacity as a cucumber
Dreams-Visions said:
ugh. something just added an extra 9 seconds to my boot time. dunno what. I hate when this happens.
Click to expand...

What do you do to hunt down and exterminate the offender? :p
 
M

MustacheBandit_

Member
Hey guys, I just have a real quick noob question.

I have a macbook (blackbook) and it has about 512 MB of RAM. It has been running super slow lately and I want to increase the speed of it. How much ram should I get and what would you recommend for the cheapest price? I'm going to put it on my Christmas list. :D

Thanks guys!
 
K

Kraftwerk

Member
KingOfKong said:
Hey guys, I just have a real quick noob question.

I have a macbook (blackbook) and it has about 512 MB of RAM. It has been running super slow lately and I want to increase the speed of it. How much ram should I get and what would you recommend for the cheapest price? I'm going to put it on my Christmas list. :D

Thanks guys!
Click to expand...

Depends what you want to do.

2gb = for light gaming,streaming video,and running most apps.
4gb = for more heavy apps ,running multiple apps at the same time and whatnot

i have 2gb myself with an ssd hard rive and haven't had problems lately and can run everything smoothly.
 
M

MustacheBandit_

Member
Kraftwerk said:
Depends what you want to do.

2gb = for light gaming,streaming video,and running most apps.
4gb = for more heavy apps ,running multiple apps at the same time and whatnot

i have 2gb myself with an ssd hard rive and haven't had problems lately and can run everything smoothly.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was probably going to lean more toward 2GB because I don't really do much-mostly word processing/internet. So would I have to take out the 512 stick and get 2 1GB sticks? What kind would you recommend? I'm at a total loss with this stuff. Thanks for your help.
 
M

MustacheBandit_

Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
A Blackbook can only use up to 2 GB of RAM anyway, I think.

Yeah get a set with 2x 1GB sticks.
Click to expand...

Does it matter what kind? I don't know what all this DDR2 stuff means. I went on Newegg and there are so many different kinds! haha What is just the basic, most simple kind I can get?
 
K

Kraftwerk

Member
KingOfKong said:
Yeah, I was probably going to lean more toward 2GB because I don't really do much-mostly word processing/internet. So would I have to take out the 512 stick and get 2 1GB sticks? What kind would you recommend? I'm at a total loss with this stuff. Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

I just did some reading and it looks like the blackbook supports 3.3 gb of ram.With the black friday/christmas deals i highly recommend just getting 2x 2gb sticks and be done with it.I was just looking at some prices and you would save maybe $20 per stick or something max.So again i highly recommend just going all out and having 4gb.
 
V

VNZ

Member
Battersea Power Station said:
I'm using iTunes for the first time. I want to queue 3 albums to play in succession. Can I do this in a few simple clicks, without making a playlist, etc.?
Click to expand...
Well, not that I know of, but making a playlist with a couple of albums is really a few simple clicks; cmd+click to select the albums, drag into sidebar, play.
 
L

Liu Kang Baking A Pie

Member
KingOfKong said:
Does it matter what kind? I don't know what all this DDR2 stuff means. I went on Newegg and there are so many different kinds! haha What is just the basic, most simple kind I can get?
Click to expand...
Go to About My Mac in the top left, in there it should tell you exactly what kind of memory you have. Just get the same thing in 2 GB. Brand isn't important, but the top brands are Corsair, Crucial, and Kingston has a good "value" line.

I think for a Blackbook it will be PC2-5300 DDR2 667 MHz.
 
M

Mairu

Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
I don't think they've ever had a good one. $50 off computers, 10% off iPods. Really standard crap.
Click to expand...
:(

I wish Amazon offered the new MBA with a 4GB memory configuration. It seems like their Airs are cheaper than Apple's even with edu discount, and there's no tax! But I need that 4GB memory :(
 
B

Blackhead

Redarse
Kraftwerk said:
Just saw this:
Macmail has up to $400 off on macbooks and whatnot.Pretty good deals i would say.
Link
Click to expand...
They have best prices but they use rebates and I hear their customer service isn't the best. I'm also waiting for Black Friday, hoping that against all odds Apple will offer some great savings this year.

Macprices.net is the site to find the best reseller.
 
G

Gaaraz

Member
Installed Firefox onto my gf's laptop, but it shows up like some kind of weird virtual drive thing? I mean it works, but it works really oddly... what am I doing wrong? :S Thanks
 
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