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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

H

hoverX

Member
My mom's old boss recently passed away. He had a series of mac computers that they now need to gain access too. (Not for any illegal reasons) If they don't know his passwords what are their options? Can they remove the HDD and then access it from another computer? I think they just need to get some files off it. info about clients etc.
 
S

Splash Wave

Member
I have a Macbook Pro from about two years ago, and I'd like to upgrade the RAM. It's starting to feel a little slow. Where's the best/cheapest place to get RAM for the Macbook Pro?
 
wolfmat

wolfmat

Confirmed Asshole
hoverX said:
My mom's old boss recently passed away. He had a series of mac computers that they now need to gain access too. (Not for any illegal reasons) If they don't know his passwords what are their options? Can they remove the HDD and then access it from another computer? I think they just need to get some files off it. info about clients etc.
Click to expand...
As long as the files are not encrypted, they can just throw the HDDs into another box, yes. The computer you plug them into obviously has to know the filesystem.
 
M

Mairu

Member
Jimmy Stav said:
I have a Macbook Pro from about two years ago, and I'd like to upgrade the RAM. It's starting to feel a little slow. Where's the best/cheapest place to get RAM for the Macbook Pro?
Click to expand...
newegg
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
Jimmy Stav said:
I have a Macbook Pro from about two years ago, and I'd like to upgrade the RAM. It's starting to feel a little slow. Where's the best/cheapest place to get RAM for the Macbook Pro?
Click to expand...
crucial.com
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
Alright got a big problem here with both my iMac's. My brothers 2008 24" and my Late 2009 27". It happened on the 24" then and it's started to happen to mine.

Basically Finder just keeps coming up as (Not Responding) in the Activity Monitor and it beach balls over and over. The 24" I did the repair permissions and that went through fine and then I tried to both the boot from the Mac OS X disk repair disk and the single user mode and no joy on that. I'm currently doing the 27" repair disk from the install DVD but it's looking like the exact same problem.

Any ideas?

The 24" Mac just won't work at all properly now and the screen cracked itself yesterday so it's just going back to Apple (under AppleCare), I'm hoping my 27" isn't fucked. (It's on Apple Care too).

Both are Bootcamped and Windows works fine.
 
U

Unlimited4s

Member
I'm looking to replace my aging MBP (santa rosa, bought in 2007) with either a 27" iMac (with an i5) or a 15" MBP. Is the speed difference really big between those two? I'm a graphic designer who also does some video editing from time to time so speed is important to me.
(I know the iMac should be way faster but I rather get some confirmation on this before I spend that kind of money)

EDIT: playing games like l4d2 should be fine on either machines, right?
 
B

bionic77

Member
Unlimited4s said:
I'm looking to replace my aging MBP (santa rosa, bought in 2007) with either a 27" iMac (with an i5) or a 15" MBP. Is the speed difference really big between those two? I'm a graphic designer who also does some video editing from time to time so speed is important to me.
(I know the iMac should be way faster but I rather get some confirmation on this before I spend that kind of money)
Click to expand...
Yes the difference is speed is ginormous between the two. i5 is a new generation of processors and your computer will likely come with more ram (which is faster to begin with).

But to be honest, it isn't like a 2007 MBP is unusable. Macs seem to age very well. I bought a MBP in 2010 and 2006 and I still use the eff out of both of them.
 
U

Unlimited4s

Member
bionic77 said:
Yes the difference is speed is ginormous between the two. i5 is a new generation of processors and your computer will likely come with more ram (which is faster to begin with).

But to be honest, it isn't like a 2007 MBP is unusable. Macs seem to age very well. I bought a MBP in 2010 and 2006 and I still use the eff out of both of them.
Click to expand...
Yes, but I'm also looking at the i5 equiped mbp :).

For most basic things this mbp is still fast enough (I put 4gb of ram in here), but for some heavy duty stuff it's starting to show its age. Big psd files and 20mp raw files are bringing this thing to a crawl.
I will still use this for travelling, though.
 
L

Liu Kang Baking A Pie

Member
VOOK said:
Alright got a big problem here with both my iMac's. My brothers 2008 24" and my Late 2009 27". It happened on the 24" then and it's started to happen to mine.

Basically Finder just keeps coming up as (Not Responding) in the Activity Monitor and it beach balls over and over. The 24" I did the repair permissions and that went through fine and then I tried to both the boot from the Mac OS X disk repair disk and the single user mode and no joy on that. I'm currently doing the 27" repair disk from the install DVD but it's looking like the exact same problem.

Any ideas?

The 24" Mac just won't work at all properly now and the screen cracked itself yesterday so it's just going back to Apple (under AppleCare), I'm hoping my 27" isn't fucked. (It's on Apple Care too).

Both are Bootcamped and Windows works fine.
Click to expand...
A broken plug-in. Are you using any Finder add-ons?
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
Ashhong said:
whaaaaat? wrong.

newegg. is it a unibody macbook?
Click to expand...
What? Crucial is cheaper! Have you checked it out? $20+ less for 4GB and $30+ less for 8GB. I use NewEgg for everything, but RAM is just muuuuuch cheaper on Crucial!
 
T

th3dude

Member
Hey everyone, I have a question. On my mid 2010 13" MBP maybe half the time when I attempt to shut down, osx closes everything and removes everything from the screen but the computer will hang indefinitely with an empty screen showing only the background. At that point I am forced to force a shutdown.

Googling shows that many have this problem on a range of machines. Any fix for this?
 
S

Splash Wave

Member
Thanks for the links everyone.

Should I be using Time Machine, or is it a resource hog? I'm not sure whether I should just be doing my backups manually or not.
 
O

Oyashiro

Member
Hey guys, I've got two questions:

How hard is it to install Windows 7 on my MacBook?

And...

Is there a free program that allows me to unzip 7zip files? I've got The Unarchiver or whatever but apparently it can't unzip 7zip files :/ Lame.
 
J

Jal

Member
sn1pes said:
Hey everyone, I have a question. On my mid 2010 13" MBP maybe half the time when I attempt to shut down, osx closes everything and removes everything from the screen but the computer will hang indefinitely with an empty screen showing only the background. At that point I am forced to force a shutdown.

Googling shows that many have this problem on a range of machines. Any fix for this?
Click to expand...

I had this when i first got mine, i think one of the point updates fixed it though.
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
B

Blackhead

Redarse


What Does it Do?

ReTweetie is a SIMBL plugin for Mac that makes Tweetie use Twitter’s native Retweeting functionality. No longer do you get a “RT @username: ” tweet, but instead a real #NewTwitter Retweet. Just Retweet your tweet as usual, and let ReTweetie handle the rest.
Click to expand...

you need SIMBL...
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
A broken plug-in. Are you using any Finder add-ons?
Click to expand...

Not that I know of, the only thing I've recently installed that might have changed things is Dropbox and LogMeIn.
 
A

Ashhong

Member
Jasoco said:
What? Crucial is cheaper! Have you checked it out? $20+ less for 4GB and $30+ less for 8GB. I use NewEgg for everything, but RAM is just muuuuuch cheaper on Crucial!
Click to expand...

Yea I havent looked in the past month or so...but whenever I looked Crucial is always expensive. But then again, I compare their prices to "deals" on Newegg. For example, 2x2gb of DDR3 notebook ram was only like 60 recently, and like 50 on black friday. Never buy ram if its not on some kind of sale..
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
Ashhong said:
Yea I havent looked in the past month or so...but whenever I looked Crucial is always expensive. But then again, I compare their prices to "deals" on Newegg. For example, 2x2gb of DDR3 notebook ram was only like 60 recently, and like 50 on black friday. Never buy ram if its not on some kind of sale..
Click to expand...
Nah, I was wrong. Dreams-Visions was right with the link he posted. For some reason that one didn't show up in NewEgg when I went directly to their Mac Memory page. I've used both companies for all my computer parts as well as Amazon. Just go with whatever is cheapest at the time.
 
R

r1chard

Member
Jimmy Stav said:
Should I be using Time Machine, or is it a resource hog? I'm not sure whether I should just be doing my backups manually or not.
Click to expand...
I'd like to know this too. I've just updated my WD ShareSpace and it now has Time Machine compatibility. I'm considering using it instead of CCC since CCC needs to have the target disk manually mounted which is a pain in the ass.
 
D

Dreams-Visions

Member
Jasoco said:
My mistake. NewEgg lists items by featured. Also, I didn't even see that one in the list when I went to search.
Click to expand...
oh, I understand. there's an industry-wide scam going on to steal money from Mac owners by labeling some RAM as "Mac Compatible". It's always the same fucking ram as any other RAM, but it's often times 20% higher or more. Just because they think Mac owners will pay it (and we probably do on the whole). As long as the timings and speed are right (or faster...faster RAM is okay too; your computer will just run it at a lower speed) chances are highly likely that the RAM will play in your computer just like it will on any other computer.

I remember when I bought my first 4GB stick for my MBP...picked it up for maybe $130 at the time. the "Mac-branded" version was over $200. Same timings. Same size. Same speed. Same ram.
 
jts

jts

...hate me...
r1chard said:
I'd like to know this too. I've just updated my WD ShareSpace and it now has Time Machine compatibility. I'm considering using it instead of CCC since CCC needs to have the target disk manually mounted which is a pain in the ass.
Click to expand...
You can make an AppleScript and have it automatically mounted upon login.
 
R

RS4-

Member
Any recommendations on the best irc app? For some reason, Colloquy "lags" for me in a way that I don't see messages until 3 minutes later or so, even my own. Happens in both vmware and 10.6.5 and the current Colloquy. While mibbit posts and shows messages instantly.

From what I've gathered, in terms of paid apps, it's either snak or xchat? What are free alternatives besides mibbit and colloquy?

Oh and I only stick to one channel and don't do any filesharing either.
 
G

giga

Member
RS4- said:
Any recommendations on the best irc app? For some reason, Colloquy "lags" for me in a way that I don't see messages until 3 minutes later or so, even my own. Happens in both vmware and 10.6.5 and the current Colloquy. While mibbit posts and shows messages instantly.

From what I've gathered, in terms of paid apps, it's either snak or xchat? What are free alternatives besides mibbit and colloquy?

Oh and I only stick to one channel and don't do any filesharing either.
Click to expand...
http://limechat.net/mac/
 
R

r1chard

Member
jts said:
You can make an AppleScript and have it automatically mounted upon login.
Click to expand...
Both myself and the other user of the NAS have very similar usage: we rarely, if ever, log out :) Usually we just suspend / wake, and there's only about a 30% chance that when I wake my laptop it's on the NAS's network.
 
M

MCX

Banned
My MBP's been beachballing a lot lately, especially when using Firefox. Should I repair disk permissions or repair the disk?
 
jts

jts

...hate me...
Jasoco said:
No. Just use Bonjour Mounter to automatically mount and unmount any shared drive when they appear or disappear.

http://bonjourmounter.gestosoft.com/en/

Also, NO, CCC does NOT need the drive mounted. It uses SSH and happens in the background. It does NOT need to mount it.
Click to expand...
Wow! That's great dude. I'm probably switching to that method on my Mac Mini HT. AppleScript works, but if by some reason the NAS drive gets unmount, it's a PIA to get it mounted again, especially on a keyboardless/mouseless Mac.

Also, that's excellent for the Macbook, because on that, an AppleScript (at least, the one I wrote) was definitely not a choice, since it's a computer that's obviously not always on the same network.

Many thanks <3
 
M

Mecha_Infantry

Banned
Hey all. Is anyone using Hazel?

Im running a few scripts to keep my downloads folder nice and neat and Hazel is excellent for thus, but I feel a bit of a newb by doing this and wanted to dive inside AppleScript instead.

Is anyone here a skilful script writer?
 
B

Blackhead

Redarse
giga said:
Bah, I’m not installing simbl again.
Click to expand...
Would you be down with Cydia on the Mac?

iPhone jailbreaker set to bring Cydia to Mac OS X

Cydia is somewhat of jailbreak equivalent of the App Store for iOS devices. It enables users to find and install open source packages as well as buy special modifications made for jailbroken phones—often with features not approved by Apple. Cydia creator Jay "saurik" Freeman has now announced that he is also building a version of Cydia for Mac OS X, called, appropriately enough, Mac Cydia.

Cydia is generally installed either automatically or as a recommended first step after jailbreaking an iOS device. It was originally one of the first sources of installable packages for jailbreakers, including apps and command line tools, but later offered developers a way to sell software that would otherwise be impossible to distribute via Apple's official App Store. Freeman told Ars in 2008 that he named Cydia after the Latin name for a moth larva that is thought of as "stereotypical apple worm."

While it is common to think of Cydia as a direct jailbreak alternative to the App Store, Freeman told Ars that it exists primarily to distribute modifications for iOS and third-party apps. "There are maybe four actual apps available via Cydia," he said.

The modifications are based on a framework called MobileSubstrate, which makes it relatively easy to install and update such modifications. For instance, Winterboard—its name a clever twist on the iOS launcher called "Springboard"—allows users to change wallpapers, icons, and other system graphics. SBSettings allows users to swipe the status bar to pull up an Android-esque drop-down panel, which can quickly turn on or off certain settings like WiFi or Bluetooth. And unlocking a phone from a specific carrier requires modifying a background daemon called Commcenter.

Freeman created a new version of MobileSubstrate which he dubbed "CydiaSubstrate." This new version can run on both iOS as well as Mac OS X on the desktop. "Just like you can make all these modifications on the iPhone, you can make these same modifications on the desktop," Freeman said. "Until now, there has never been a way to easily install modifications to the system or third-party applications, as well as keep them updated."

Such hacks are technically possible via command line tools, hex editing, or other techniques. But such hacks can be difficult to maintain, and generally require some programming knowledge to keep from breaking.

Developers who want to offer users some way to change how Mac OS X behaves—such as adding menu bars on more than one monitor, for instance—could use CydiaSubstrate to build the mod and distribute the resulting software via Mac Cydia.

CydiaSubstrate-based modifications can also target a particular application for modification, as well. "For instance, users that have jailbroken iPhones would like to have a modified version of iTunes that does not ask to update iOS when the device is plugged in, since the update might overwrite jailbreak modifications," Freeman said. "Or perhaps you want to change the frequency that TimeMachine performs backups to something other than the stock settings. CydiaSubstrate makes this possible in an easy way that average users could install and update them."

Freeman was quick to point out that Mac Cydia won't be an alternative for the Mac App Store—a common misconception. "I started planning Mac Cydia long before Apple announced the Mac App Store," he explained. "Like the iOS App Store, the Mac App Store sells apps, not system modifications. If apps are what you want to sell, Mac Cydia is not the way to do it."

Freeman gave a technical demonstration of CydiaSubstrate to Mac OS X developers at the 360MacDev conference in Denver this past weekend. Mac Cydia should be up and running within a few weeks, he said during the conference.
Click to expand...

I like Cydia on iOS. There isn't anything comparable on other platforms, besides Preware on webOS which isn't quite to the same standard. My little experience with the Android market, where apps and system mods are lumped together, suggests to me that having two separate stores is the way to go.
 
O

Oyashiro

Member
Ugh, I cannot figure out how the hell to install W7 on my MacBook and it's driving me insane. I opened up Boot Camp and followed directions. It asked me to make a partition, and about half way through the progress bar, my laptop froze. I waited 2 hours and it stayed frozen. I had to reboot and try again. Then it told me that the volume was corrupt. I had to search for my SL install disk for like 3 hours, repair the volume, and try again. Next time I tried it told me there was an error and that I needed to create a partition using Disk Utility. I did that. Tried again. Then it told me that it couldn't install it in a volume that had more than one partition... or something like that. What. The. Fuck. I need to get this shit installed ASAP :( Please help me, oh masters of the OSX.
 
C

cooljeanius

Member
Charred Greyface said:
Would you be down with Cydia on the Mac?

iPhone jailbreaker set to bring Cydia to Mac OS X



I like Cydia on iOS. There isn't anything comparable on other platforms, besides Preware on webOS which isn't quite to the same standard. My little experience with the Android market, where apps and system mods are lumped together, suggests to me that having two separate stores is the way to go.
Click to expand...
I don't think OSX really needs it. System mods are already easy enough to get.
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
cooljeanius said:
I don't think OSX really needs it. System mods are already easy enough to get.
Click to expand...
I think it's just the point of having a Mac App store that doesn't have restrictions. As opposed to Apple's store that won't let people use demos or other stuff. So I say bring it on. It'll be nice to have both.

Edit: An iTunes update came out today and fucked up my iTunes install. Now I have to download and reinstall it. WTF?
 
M

MCX

Banned
I don't know what's suddenly up with my Mac. I can no longer drag and drop files into the trashcan, or for that matter choose "Move to Trash" without the computer asking me to confirm permanent file deletion. When I choose to move to trash, it won't instantly send the file(s) to the bin with a confirmation sound like it used to only a day ago. Does anybody know a fix for this, maybe there's a setting that reset when I performed a disk permissions fix?

j5Del.jpg
 
jts

jts

...hate me...
MCX said:
I don't know what's suddenly up with my Mac. I can no longer drag and drop files into the trashcan, or for that matter choose "Move to Trash" without the computer asking me to confirm permanent file deletion. When I choose to move to trash, it won't instantly send the file(s) to the bin with a confirmation sound like it used to only a day ago. Does anybody know a fix for this, maybe there's a setting that reset when I performed a disk permissions fix?

j5Del.jpg
Click to expand...
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10357452-263.html
 
jts

jts

...hate me...
Also, my Mac now shows me again a list of preferences when I alt click on it, even if "preferences" is not running.

I had an issue with it not doing that a couple of weeks ago. I brought it up here.

I should know better than trying to fix that by myself. OSX has this auto-fixing feature and I'm fine with it.

(no srsly I have no clue of what happened here, but whatever)

sorry for the dp
 
K

Ken Masters

Banned
I'm getting a Macbook pro for xmas and I was wondering what's the best software to transfer my songs/playlists from my ipod to the macbook?
 
D

Dreams-Visions

Member
Ken Masters said:
I'm getting a Macbook pro for xmas and I was wondering what's the best software to transfer my songs/playlists from my ipod to the macbook?
Click to expand...
I don't know that there is any "best software". they kinda all do the same thing. :lol

I've used several in the past (just grabbed them randomly when needed) and they all worked without issue.
 
K

Ken Masters

Banned
Dreams-Visions said:
I don't know that there is any "best software". they kinda all do the same thing. :lol

I've used several in the past (just grabbed them randomly when needed) and they all worked without issue.
Click to expand...


which program did you use?
 
wolfmat

wolfmat

Confirmed Asshole
What the fuck? Use iTunes. Why is this even being asked? Am I missing something? Second time someone doesn't get the iTunes route. Wtf.
 
wolfmat

wolfmat

Confirmed Asshole
Ken Masters said:
I should use itunes to transfer music from my ipod to a macbook?
Click to expand...
You sync your library. That's what it does. It copies music from your MacBook to your iPod and music from your iPod to your MacBook.
 
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