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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs
- Thread starter koam
- Start date
Sofo said:
yeah, I also use it for when Im booted into Windows but then the default white mouse cursor stands out as being super bright. so I gotta change the Windows cursor to something black
more apps (but these aint free)
Reeder. new RSS client. very polished and lots of gesture support. very fast, too.
Omnifocus. task manager that has way more power than many need but is very versatile and has the best OTA syncing solution with the iOS clients (well, till everyone starts using iCloud data sync, I guess)
Fantastical. menu bar iCal replacement. really well done natural language text parser for adding events.
and one more freebie
Simple Comic. for reading your digital comics
I Big JG I
Banned
Question:
I am Thinking of Buying 8GB of Ram & a 480gb 3G SSD from OWC (Other World Computing)
1st off is this a reputable company?
The next thing is this:
I currently have OSX SL and Win 7 installed on bootcamp.
is there a direct clone i can do of both OS or should i just Reinstall both from scratch? and restore OSX SL from time machine?
Just want to make the transition fast a possible
I have a 15" Late 2010 MBP for reference. Any suggestions are appreciated.
I am Thinking of Buying 8GB of Ram & a 480gb 3G SSD from OWC (Other World Computing)
1st off is this a reputable company?
The next thing is this:
I currently have OSX SL and Win 7 installed on bootcamp.
is there a direct clone i can do of both OS or should i just Reinstall both from scratch? and restore OSX SL from time machine?
Just want to make the transition fast a possible
I have a 15" Late 2010 MBP for reference. Any suggestions are appreciated.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Clone OS X with CarbonCopyCloner
Clone Windows 7 with WinClone with the following preferences:
OWC is good, yes.
Clone Windows 7 with WinClone with the following preferences:
OWC is good, yes.
I buy from OWC occasionally. They are well known as NewEgg and Amazon and even Crucial. Just buy from whichever one of them has the lowest price.
OS X will clone easily. Not sure about Windows. Use CCC for OS X, not Time Machine. It's slower to use Time Machine and not always reliable. Cloning with CCC will give you an exact copy of where you left off. As long as you have a case to put the old drive in. Or boot from another backup drive. Best part about booting from a clone is you can use the machine while it copies the files.
OS X will clone easily. Not sure about Windows. Use CCC for OS X, not Time Machine. It's slower to use Time Machine and not always reliable. Cloning with CCC will give you an exact copy of where you left off. As long as you have a case to put the old drive in. Or boot from another backup drive. Best part about booting from a clone is you can use the machine while it copies the files.
I Big JG I
Banned
good to know thank you both.
can you boot from a FW 400 drive or does it have to FW 800?
can you boot from a FW 400 drive or does it have to FW 800?
I can't see why not as long as you have the adapter. Give it a try. Clone to it then try to reboot. I don't see why they'd remove the ability, but hey, it is Apple. They will remove technology if they feel its no longer needed.
Hopefully they didn't.
I wish the 5 external HD's I had connected to my Mac mini were FireWire. They're all USB. Slooooow USB. But I've already invested so much into them to replace them all now. Plus the FireWire versions are always so much more expensive and harder to get. I prefer the look of the Western Digital Elements drives. 3 of the 5 I have are Elements. The other two are old MyBook's from before they went Firmware crazy on the MyBook line. (When will HD companies learn NO ONE LIKES PROPRIETARY FIRMMARE SHIT ON THEIR HD'S!) Thankfully the Elements do not have it. Yet.
Hopefully they didn't.
I wish the 5 external HD's I had connected to my Mac mini were FireWire. They're all USB. Slooooow USB. But I've already invested so much into them to replace them all now. Plus the FireWire versions are always so much more expensive and harder to get. I prefer the look of the Western Digital Elements drives. 3 of the 5 I have are Elements. The other two are old MyBook's from before they went Firmware crazy on the MyBook line. (When will HD companies learn NO ONE LIKES PROPRIETARY FIRMMARE SHIT ON THEIR HD'S!) Thankfully the Elements do not have it. Yet.
Particle Physicist
between a quark and a baryon
I Big JG I said:
I can't answer your other questions, but yes OWC is reputable, and I believe that their stuff is Apple certified.
I use superduper for cloning osx, but lots recommend CCC. Its so seamless that I have my mini backing up to an attached USB drive once a month. About twice now I've noticed something odd about my mini - usually my plex library doesn't seem as up to date as usual. What had happened was my mini drive had failed to mount for some reason on startup, and the mini had booted off my usb drive instead. I couldn't tell the difference.
cloning is for speed getting back up and running. Time machine is for version control on docs etc. Both are useful for different things.
If you're slick, you could use a HDD compatible with your computer (imac/MBP etc), in a USB caddy. Then if your drive fails, not only can you boot from the backup while you wait for a new HDD replacement, but you could pull it out of the caddy and install it and be completely up and running. Then when your replacement drive comes, use that as the backup.
cloning is for speed getting back up and running. Time machine is for version control on docs etc. Both are useful for different things.
If you're slick, you could use a HDD compatible with your computer (imac/MBP etc), in a USB caddy. Then if your drive fails, not only can you boot from the backup while you wait for a new HDD replacement, but you could pull it out of the caddy and install it and be completely up and running. Then when your replacement drive comes, use that as the backup.
I have my CCC backups set up to perform network clones every 2 hours. They backup to my Mac mini. Then on the mini side, there are daily backups of all the backups and media I have. So I have at least 2 copies of all my data. 3 for most of it.
SuperDuper! is the same thing as CCC except not as elegant and more expensive. CCC is donationware. You don't have to pay, but you can donate whatever you want if you want. SuperDuper! costs $28. SD requires a purchase to unlock all the stuff you can do in CCC for free.
If you haven't paid for SuperDuper! already, I recommend switching to CCC, donate $5 and get a much better program for much less money.
SuperDuper! is the same thing as CCC except not as elegant and more expensive. CCC is donationware. You don't have to pay, but you can donate whatever you want if you want. SuperDuper! costs $28. SD requires a purchase to unlock all the stuff you can do in CCC for free.
If you haven't paid for SuperDuper! already, I recommend switching to CCC, donate $5 and get a much better program for much less money.
It copies the files from my MacBook Pro to my Mac mini.hirokazu said:
It's very simple to set up. You need to use the Credentials installer it creates for you and install it on both machines in the order it tells you to. After that you simply select the folder on the target (Whatever the drive name is under the /Volumes/ folder) and choose Remote Macintosh from the target list. It will copy the files to the location on the networked computer.
Make sure you run your initial backup locally or else you'll be waiting forever for it to copy your entire HDD over the network.
Yeah. It doesn't seem to work well with a drive that doesn't have Mac OS running on it. Which is why I use a mini. Plus it's my media server and media player and all around do everything machine. A workhorse. Well worth the $700 I paid for it.
It's a shame CCC, or something else can't install their daemons on the Time Capsule or Airport Extreme.
It's a shame CCC, or something else can't install their daemons on the Time Capsule or Airport Extreme.
infiniteloop
Member
I'm trying to back up a Mac with Time Machine. The back up gets to the end then gives me the error:
"The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to backup disk.
This problem may be temporary."
I've tried erasing the backup drive, repairing the permissions on both drives but I still get the error.
Any ideas?
Edit: Figured it out, print driver package on the desktop was being weird.
"The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to backup disk.
This problem may be temporary."
I've tried erasing the backup drive, repairing the permissions on both drives but I still get the error.
Any ideas?
Edit: Figured it out, print driver package on the desktop was being weird.
Hello, I just bought a macbook pro and everything seems to be working but when I open my quicktime it pops open on the dock but no window opens. Can someone please tell me what im doing wrong? Also how should I go about playing .avi, .mov, and .wmp, files in quicktime? I saw this perian codec pack but I wasnt sure if that is what I need. or should i just use another media player?
edit: nvm thanks haribo!
edit: nvm thanks haribo!
Dreams-Visions
Member
Newbie protip: drag the files you want to open on top of the application you want them to launch with. It'll open the app and the file.Banglish said:
Example: want to watch Star_Trek.mp4 in Quicktime. Click and drag the mp4 on top of the QuickTime icon in the dock, then release drag. Quick time will open along with a window for Star Trek.
One of the many things I wish Windows did as well. It's SO convenient.
Better pro-tip: Install and use VLC or MPlayerX instead of QuickTime. Both are more feature-filled and robust.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Thanks for the tip, but it only works on some things.scorcho said:
IE, it does not work with Word documents, it appears. It says "Pin to Word" instead of "Open with".
Dreams-Visions
Member
Random: I just noticed I've been up for 24 days, 6 hours and 50 minutes. I haven't restarted the machine in all that time...and all is well.
<3 my laptop and OS X. I just wish Flash would make a better player for it.
<3 my laptop and OS X. I just wish Flash would make a better player for it.
Ok, I've been away for a bit, and I'm normally loathe to ask, but I have a major issue at the moment with Mac OS X, and specifically, Time Machine and restoring.
Ok, so here's the gist:
I have two laptops, a MacBookPro, and a MacBook. They are both dwindling in HD capacity, so I thought, great, time to upgrade their internal hard drives. I purchased appropriately large HDs for each.
So I've used Super Duper in the past for a block cloning to upgrade my computer, but last time I did that, I had major issues with some software looking for old UUID on the HD. So my thought was, that it was messy at best - why not try the 'official' method of using Time Machine?
I used it previously for my sister's MacBook, and it seemed to work like a charm. Here's the process:
Take the new internal HD, and install it straight into the Mac.
Boot the Mac from the Snow Leopard DVD (holding opt), and use Disk Utility to format the new internal HD (GUID, Mac OS Extended, journaled).
Then plug in the Time Machine drive and do a restore from the Utilities menu.
After it's done, do the usual repair permissions, and reset PRAM etc.
No prob.
So here's how my MacBook Pro went:
I had recently transferred some old Time Machine backups to a new external drive. I had everything updated to as much as possible and then did the Time Machine transfer.
AFter the restore, the first weird thing I noticed was that some files (photos) were missing from a recent import. Weird. Checking the original internal drive, they are there - they simply don't exist on ANY of the Time Machine backups.
That was the only niggle I could find, and it seemed my computer ran fine otherwise.
Then I tried upgrading the other MacBook with the same technique.
updated the system to 10.6.7, and other updates, transferred old Time Machine backups to a new external, refreshed Time Machine, changed internal HD, restored.
First thing - it wouldn't boot. Hung on the white screen with the grey logo and spinning circle. On inspection, what is the issue? Apparently there's a little security package that hangs out in:
/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security
that for what ever reason was NOT updated in Time Machine, thus never transferred to the new internal drive, and it's required for booting correctly. Strangely, it seemed to be fine on my other MacBook Pro. Transferring that package is the only thing that I could do to get the MAcBook to boot.
After booting, I figured, if that file is messed up, other files are probably older versions too. And indeed they are.
So I thought, hey, maybe I should run the 10.6.7 Combo updater to fix the old files. Ran it, and it does everything it requires to install EXCEPT move the files in place correctly, instead getting an "Installation Failed: The installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail."
Uh oh.
So maybe the Combo updater doesn't like the current version? Well, running out of good ideas, I reinstalled Mac OS X from the SNow Leopard DVD, reverting it to 10.6.0. That's gotta clear the junk out, right? So it installed fine, back to 10.6.0, Safari reverts, and a bunch of other apps no longer work (as expected), and a gaping hole where the Mac Appstore should be. That's fine.
Then tried running the combo updater. NOpe, no go. Something is seriously messed up with Time Machine at the moment, making it so that some restores are worthless. Files not updated? Restores not complete? Unable to update from fresh reinstall?
I know some stuff around 10.6.6 was changed in Time Machine - for example, it now requires Admin passwords to even restore single files. And somewhere down the line (I think SL), it allowed to transfer a train of backups to a new drive.
So anyone have any ideas? I'm a bit loathe to go the CCC or SuperDuper route due to the UUID messing with my software (namely, it royally screwed up my Aperture Library of 40,000 files and time stamps -that was days of work to fix).
Maybe I should try a Time Machine backup that WASN'T transferred to a new drive?
Ok, so here's the gist:
I have two laptops, a MacBookPro, and a MacBook. They are both dwindling in HD capacity, so I thought, great, time to upgrade their internal hard drives. I purchased appropriately large HDs for each.
So I've used Super Duper in the past for a block cloning to upgrade my computer, but last time I did that, I had major issues with some software looking for old UUID on the HD. So my thought was, that it was messy at best - why not try the 'official' method of using Time Machine?
I used it previously for my sister's MacBook, and it seemed to work like a charm. Here's the process:
Take the new internal HD, and install it straight into the Mac.
Boot the Mac from the Snow Leopard DVD (holding opt), and use Disk Utility to format the new internal HD (GUID, Mac OS Extended, journaled).
Then plug in the Time Machine drive and do a restore from the Utilities menu.
After it's done, do the usual repair permissions, and reset PRAM etc.
No prob.
So here's how my MacBook Pro went:
I had recently transferred some old Time Machine backups to a new external drive. I had everything updated to as much as possible and then did the Time Machine transfer.
AFter the restore, the first weird thing I noticed was that some files (photos) were missing from a recent import. Weird. Checking the original internal drive, they are there - they simply don't exist on ANY of the Time Machine backups.
That was the only niggle I could find, and it seemed my computer ran fine otherwise.
Then I tried upgrading the other MacBook with the same technique.
updated the system to 10.6.7, and other updates, transferred old Time Machine backups to a new external, refreshed Time Machine, changed internal HD, restored.
First thing - it wouldn't boot. Hung on the white screen with the grey logo and spinning circle. On inspection, what is the issue? Apparently there's a little security package that hangs out in:
/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security
that for what ever reason was NOT updated in Time Machine, thus never transferred to the new internal drive, and it's required for booting correctly. Strangely, it seemed to be fine on my other MacBook Pro. Transferring that package is the only thing that I could do to get the MAcBook to boot.
After booting, I figured, if that file is messed up, other files are probably older versions too. And indeed they are.
So I thought, hey, maybe I should run the 10.6.7 Combo updater to fix the old files. Ran it, and it does everything it requires to install EXCEPT move the files in place correctly, instead getting an "Installation Failed: The installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail."
Uh oh.
So maybe the Combo updater doesn't like the current version? Well, running out of good ideas, I reinstalled Mac OS X from the SNow Leopard DVD, reverting it to 10.6.0. That's gotta clear the junk out, right? So it installed fine, back to 10.6.0, Safari reverts, and a bunch of other apps no longer work (as expected), and a gaping hole where the Mac Appstore should be. That's fine.
Then tried running the combo updater. NOpe, no go. Something is seriously messed up with Time Machine at the moment, making it so that some restores are worthless. Files not updated? Restores not complete? Unable to update from fresh reinstall?
I know some stuff around 10.6.6 was changed in Time Machine - for example, it now requires Admin passwords to even restore single files. And somewhere down the line (I think SL), it allowed to transfer a train of backups to a new drive.
So anyone have any ideas? I'm a bit loathe to go the CCC or SuperDuper route due to the UUID messing with my software (namely, it royally screwed up my Aperture Library of 40,000 files and time stamps -that was days of work to fix).
Maybe I should try a Time Machine backup that WASN'T transferred to a new drive?
Squire Felix said:
Sometimes you want files associated with a particular application, but check them with another. You can right-click or drag. The point is click and drag is really strong on Mac OS X. I click and drag everything.
You can click and drag selected text to copy and paste for example.
Or drag images from the web to download them.
Or drag a file into the terminal to copy the full path.
Anyway, back to my Time Machine woes, on careful inspection, as it turns out TIme Machine restore appears to have randomly changed the flags of some files. A hidden folder became visible, and a bunch of other files became immutable.
I had to issue a sudo chflags -R nouchg / to find them all to be able to actually install my updates.
I'm getting a bit weary of Time Machine now. Worked great up until when it needed to! :/
I don't know. This is why I don't trust Time Machine for backup. It is strictly version control for me when I actually use it.mrkgoo said:
I use CCC full time and never have a problem with other drives. I don't know what Aperture requires for the UUID. That seems silly that it would attach itself to a certain drive by its UUID. I mean what if the drive dies? The UUID changes. So it's not a good idea to attach files to a certain drive. As far as the software's concerned, if the files are in the same place and the drive is booted from it should treat them exactly the same.
It wasn't,t so much Aperture it self - I had it reference files from my iphoto library. When I changed drives, it no longer could find the iphoto libraries because the uuid had changed. It was supposed to be easy to just relinking to the new drive, thus updating the uuid in the database, but at the time there was a bug preventing pointing to a new iphoto library.Jasoco said:
I think that's fixed now, though.
That said, I'm not positive, but I bet the hd uuid changes even with a time machine restore, but most stuff is associated with mac uuid.
Anyway, I guess i'm going to try live with my current restore, as apart from a few weird things that seem to be fixed now, it's going ok. Just to be safe, i'm going to reinstall mac OS sand reupdate. Lion out soon anyway!
So what do I do about Rosetta stuff?
Jasoco said:
Hmm.
just a quick check:
BNUpdate (I guess battlenet for my old StarCraft 1 installation?), plus some StarCraft files.
Some random Microsoft office little apps (I guess part of 2008?)
Lol, iPod Features Guide - an app (which opens a document in preview) for my old 5th gen iPod.
Plus my old Spyder 2.2 color profile calibrator (I have a 3 now).
I guess I'll be OK.
Yeah, eventually all the PPC stuff I used either got updated to Intel or became outdated that I stopped using them. There may be a few remaining PPC apps on my system that I seldom use, but this if you still rely on them, now'a probably a good time to look for alternatives.
Worst case scenario install a Rosetta-capable OS X virtual machine in Parallels or VMware for those legacy apps.
Worst case scenario install a Rosetta-capable OS X virtual machine in Parallels or VMware for those legacy apps.
QueenOfThorns
Member
The magic track pad is awesome. I don't know how I got by without it now. I was expecting to be disappointed with it as the last trackpad type thing I used was a PowerBook G4's, and wow, they've really gotten a lot better.
QUESTION: What would be the best way to back everything up so that I can do a fresh install by the time Lion comes around? Would Time Machine restore all the files and application settings, or would I have to start from scratch? I'd want to start fresh with everything except 1password, so I guess I could just backup all the files and just copy it over.
QUESTION: What would be the best way to back everything up so that I can do a fresh install by the time Lion comes around? Would Time Machine restore all the files and application settings, or would I have to start from scratch? I'd want to start fresh with everything except 1password, so I guess I could just backup all the files and just copy it over.
cooljeanius
Member
For me, there's:Jasoco said:
Starcraft and related files (which I doubt is getting updated - this is actually mostly what's going to keep me from upgrading to Lion)
Warcraft III's world editor
A bunch of other old games (DROD games, fl0w, Jason Rohrer games, a few other things)
Internet Explorer (I've learned to change the user agent on the browsers I actually use now, so I don't really need this any more)
Norton AntiVirus and related files (Upgrading to Snow Leopard broke it anyway, so I don't really need to worry about breaking it a second time. I also use ClamXav now anyway.)
A citation program I use for school
Folding@Home
Some printer software
A few other various random programs and utilities
Overall, I have 115 programs that System Profiler marks as PPC. Beyond that, I even have some (16) programs that are still marked as "Classic"...
Mr. Wonderful
Member
I hope Lion comes before or shortly after the Portal 2 DLC. Really looking forward the potential performance advantages OpenGL 3.2 is going to bring.
notworksafe
Member
Is there a way to sync bookmarks between Chrome and my iPhone? I know the iPhone pulls its bookmarks from Safari, but I use Chrome much more often than Safari. I could just keep deleting/importing my bookmarks into Safari every so often as I add more, but that is a bit of a hassle.
BuggyDClown
Member
Mr. Wonderful said:
Tell me more?
I just got the new iMac with the 2GB Radeon 6970. I should be able to run games pretty well right now. Awesome to hear it's only going to be better!
QueenOfThorns
Member
Thanks.Jasoco said:
hirokazu said:
Yeah, that sounds asinine. If Folding isn't ported to Mac x86 (which I highly doubt it's not) they don't need your processing time. Needing to waste time for instruction translation for a process that is so intense it uses a global distributed computing network is just incredibly stupid, if they haven't updated the binary they are not serious about their goals. IMO.
Hadn't been messing around with it for a while but I'm still kinda at a loss with iMovie and how it compresses video. I've got a .avi file of about 5 minutes, 560 Mb, shot with a digital photo camera. I add a song with iMovie. First I tried export with QuickTime. There's a couple of options probably related to compression/size, but formulated in bandwith. So I guessed 'intranet/LAN' should yield the best results. WRONG! It's still compressed really shitty to a 50 Mb sized file with very notable quality loss.
Another option is to just 'export movie' where it offers a couple of resolutions (with HD not being an option/greyed out but the footage isn't HD anyway so no problem I guess) I picked the highest possible (large) and the result is a 140 Mb file with the colors still washed out like hell. What can I do to prevent this? It's starting to look like it's impossible to maintain the quality of the footage :|
Edit: when using the 'export using QuickTime' option there's a lot of possibilities (Movie to AVI, movie to MPEG-4, and about a dozen others). The original is .avi. With each option there's also a load of options - especially with the 'movie to MPEG-4) - I guess this is were the magic happens?
Another option is to just 'export movie' where it offers a couple of resolutions (with HD not being an option/greyed out but the footage isn't HD anyway so no problem I guess) I picked the highest possible (large) and the result is a 140 Mb file with the colors still washed out like hell. What can I do to prevent this? It's starting to look like it's impossible to maintain the quality of the footage :|
Edit: when using the 'export using QuickTime' option there's a lot of possibilities (Movie to AVI, movie to MPEG-4, and about a dozen others). The original is .avi. With each option there's also a load of options - especially with the 'movie to MPEG-4) - I guess this is were the magic happens?
I just purchased this from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002QEBMCI/?tag=neogaf0e-20
This will work fine with Time Machine, right?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002QEBMCI/?tag=neogaf0e-20
This will work fine with Time Machine, right?
cooljeanius
Member
It's not my fault, I was forced to get it for school to get in their VPN.hirokazu said: