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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

Samyy

Member
Thanks for the replies everyone, guess I'll have to dish out the extra for excel (business student), also anyone know any good quality cases/ companies to buy cases from.
 
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
For bibliography I use noodle tools and citation was never really a problem for me.
I used to use NoodleTools, too, but then I left high school and lost access to my school's subscription to them. Now I go to college and my college subscribes to RefWorks, but it's still nice to have the tools directly available within the application. (I know EndNote has a plugin for iWork that lets you do citations directly within it, but my trial of iWork expired before I tried EndNote, so I only got to try EndNote's plugins for Word, which aren't that much better than the citation tools built directly into Word).
 

Muskweeto

Member
I'm using DarwiinRemote to connect my Wii remote to my Mac mini and while it connects just fine and can register mouse movements and all, I can't seem to get it to be recognized as a controller input for games. Does anyone have any experience with this program that can tell me what I'm doing wrong? Or maybe someone knows of another program that can do the same thing.

Edit: I found a nice YouTube video explaining it, I guess it's just not what I'm looking for. I just want a program that will connect my Wii remote through Bluetooth and act as though I plugged a USB controller in.
 

Jasoco

Banned
Anyone heard of Text Expansion? Apps that will let you type snippet abbreviations and they'll automatically be expanded to whatever you want. Save time typing by having it type for you? Well, I found on LifeHacker that TypeIt4Me is on sale on the Mac App Store for 75% off. Normally $20, it's currently $5. Not sure how long it'll be that price, but I'm trying the demo out and it's pretty useful. I might just splurge and spend the $5.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/typeit4me/id412141729?mt=12

Get the 30-day demo here or watch the screencast:
http://www.ettoresoftware.com/products/typeit4me/video/

I wouldn't pay $20. But $5 is nothing.

I'm already customizing it for my workflow. I set it up for Chrome when I type _spoiler inserts spoiler tags and places the cursor between the tags. In fact, it just did when I typed that because I forgot it was going to. lol
 

Flo

Member
I just bought a Macbook Pro, I already have an iMac. Now I want to load three email addresses in the mail of my Pro. But it uploads all the emails I've ever sent with the addresses, 22339 and maybe even more.. It takes forever and I don't want to sort that out.

So I copied all the mail folders from my iMac to the Pro, they were all there, but a little weird (inbox mails were missing). Plus, mail still wanted to go get all those 22339 mails.

Is there a simple trick to do this right?
 
Is there a media player for Mac with comparable quality to Media Player Classic in terms of subtitle rendering for anime? VLC's subtitles are just as bad on Mac as they are on Windows, Perian for some reason can't play anime for me, or many .mkv's for that matter, and Movist is terribly buggy and re-renders subtitles completely (which is good for .srt's but not .ass files).
Is there anything?
 

falconzss

Member
I should be doing hw said:
Is there a media player for Mac with comparable quality to Media Player Classic in terms of subtitle rendering for anime? VLC's subtitles are just as bad on Mac as they are on Windows, Perian for some reason can't play anime for me, or many .mkv's for that matter, and Movist is terribly buggy and re-renders subtitles completely (which is good for .srt's but not .ass files).
Is there anything?

MPlayer OSX Extended. VLC is totally useless if you want to watch anime content.

Edit: You will still need Perian Silly me.
 

falconzss

Member
I should be doing hw said:
Thank you!
Do I need to install those 'Binary Codecs' as well if I have Perian?

Perian is basically just a plugin to play different formats using Quicktime. Just install the player and you are good to go. I can't remember installing those Binary Codecs and i had no problems with MPlayer OSX Extended so far.
 

barnone

Member
I need some advice for switching up my iPhone's sync computer.

Currently, I sync to the iMac at my home away from college. I want to move my phone syncing over to my personal Windows desktop so I can sync when I go back to school after the summer. What is the best way to make this happen (so that I can carry over my personal playlists/music from the family iMac)? I am an OS X noob so commence the hand holding =)
 
I'm having an issue with the Keychain. Originally when connecting to my PC 'server', it would require a username and a password. I selected 'Remember this' and worked fine. Now I want to go back to it requiring the password prompt. I went to Keychain and found references to the PC server e.g. IP address, and deleted the password.
 

X-Frame

Member
I have a question regarding Handbrake ..

Is there any way for me to drag and drop multiple files at once into Handbrake for it to encode? I can't find any way .. and the only way I see now to get files in is to add 1 file individually via the Source button.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
I was wondering if there was a way to make the menu bar act like the Windows 7 "Notification Area Icons" and stack menu bar items under a drop down menu? I'm using quite a few and they'll disappear at times.

Basically, something like this:
ibHHEm.png
 

r1chard

Member
Just thought I'd share this bizarro situation I found myself in.

A few months ago I found I could no longer update software - not even updating OS X releases. The installer would barf saying that the packages retrieved were untrusted. The logs said something about "OCSP service unavailable."

I created a temporary Admin account and was able to install the updates.

Nothing useful came up trying to google the problem.

I did that another couple of times but yesterday I decided, after the update, to switch to Safari because I thought maybe Chrome was slowing down my laptop too much.

Safari said it couldn't trust mail.google.com. Wha??! Looking into it some more I saw the same "OCSP service unavailable" error. Bugger. But then I tried googling that error in conjunction with "safari" and lo I found an obscure blogger talking about some new feature that had been added to the Keychain.

Specifically, in Keychain Access, under Preferences -> Certificates, there's stuff about OCSP. On my laptop, the first and second lines were set to "Require for all Certs". I switched that to "Best Attempt" and voila! Things work now! Interestingly I can't re-select "Require for all Certs". No idea how it'd been selected in the first place.

Obscure and frustrating, but now fixed.
 

Talon

Member
r1chard, that story reminds me of the time I had to troubleshoot a friend's computer that couldn't connect to the internet.

Turns out Norton and Windows Defender were working against each other (or together) to block the wifi card from working. Computers - making up issues since 19XX.
 

Jasoco

Banned
Does anyone know how to get Parallels to stop creating a "Windows 7 Applications" folder in my Applications folder every time I launch it and populating it with all the Windows apps I will never want to launch from OS X? I have deleted it. I've tried symlinking it. Now it mocks me with 80 applications in my Lion LaunchPad that I had to throw into THREE folders to get them out of the way.

Screen%20Shot%202011-07-20%20at%2011.40.11%20PM.PNG


There's 80 of them! And most of them are just EXE's that no one would ever want to run! I can't find a preference in Parallels to turn it off. At least not a well labeled one.
 

Tf53

Member
I'll join the Lion talk when I get back from work and see if my wife botched the install or not, but for the time being, I have another question:

Is it possible to share an external monitor between two computers (a Mac Pro & MBP) in a way that I don't have to switch between inputs?

Here's my setup:

MBP | Monitor | MacPro with monitor

I would like to create a shared workspace on the external monitor that I could drag application windows from either Mac into.

Any chances?
 

wolfmat

Confirmed Asshole
There is no such application, or at least not one that is as trivially designed as you're implying. While it's a nice thing in theory, in practice, it turns out noone needs such a thing; and the implementation of it would be rather hard to get right.

Remote SSH sessions with X11 applications can give you a GUI on the client that's actually running on a remote X server. In that case, the window on your client is basically a dynamic texture, and clicks and stuff are sent over to the server to the remotely running application. You could hypothetically start a bunch of those sessions on one machine with the server running on the other. You should make sure that your network can handle the workload though.
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
You know what would be dope? ATV and airplay from Macs. That would be the holy grail.
If I could just buy an ATV and then carry around my Mac beaming video to different displays.. wish spaces and mission control and fullsreen apps you computer would be like a server, just beaming apps to different screens.
 

Jasoco

Banned
Blu_LED said:
Okay, pretty stupid question, but I can't figure this out for the life of me. How do I get my computer to boot directly into the login screen?
Turn off "Automatic Login" in System Preferences.app > Users > Login Options. Currently it's set to your user. Turn it Off.

Anyone on my problem with Parallels being a drive cluttering jerk?
 
cooljeanius said:
I used to use NoodleTools, too, but then I left high school and lost access to my school's subscription to them. Now I go to college and my college subscribes to RefWorks, but it's still nice to have the tools directly available within the application. (I know EndNote has a plugin for iWork that lets you do citations directly within it, but my trial of iWork expired before I tried EndNote, so I only got to try EndNote's plugins for Word, which aren't that much better than the citation tools built directly into Word).

Noodle tools you just have to make a free account if you just want to do a bibliography.
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
Jasoco said:
I'm already customizing it for my workflow. I set it up for Chrome when I type _spoiler inserts spoiler tags and places the cursor between the tags. In fact, it just did when I typed that because I forgot it was going to. lol
Thats really quite excellent thanks for the tip. Anything that makes keeping my hands on the keyboard easier is the best.
 
cooljeanius said:
So I got my replacement external hard drive I sent away for back in the mail the other day, and it's still not working properly. It's in a little better position than it was last time, as I can hear it spinning now, and my system can tell that it's connected by USB (Hardware Growler shows a notification for it, and I can see it in the Developer applications USB Prober and IORegistryExplorer, as well as in System Profiler), but I can't get it to mount as a disk image (it doesn't show up in Finder, Disk Utility, CCC, or Iomega QuikSync). Any idea what's going on here or what I can do to get it to work? I don't want to send away for another replacement again... (my external hard drive is a 500GB Iomega eGo USB portable hard drive, btw)
An update on my hard drive situation: I tried plugging it in to my parents' MacBook, and that was able to mount it perfectly fine, so I formatted it using their Disk Utility according to the manual, but then when I plugged it back in to my computer, it still wouldn't mount. So basically I've now found out it's a problem with my computer and not a problem with the hard drive... any idea what I might have messed up?

Wallach said:
I have had my MBP since late March, but I just discovered the "Tap to Click" setting. So much better.
I've found this leads to too many accidental clicks for me, so I have it disabled on mine.
 
Question about transferring data from one Mac to another. Lets say I want to get all my music, photos and videos off my my old Mac and put them on my new Macbook Pro. What exactly would be the easiest way to do this? And yes, I do have an external HDD.
 

edgefusion

Member
Jasoco said:
Turn off "Automatic Login" in System Preferences.app > Users > Login Options. Currently it's set to your user. Turn it Off.

Anyone on my problem with Parallels being a drive cluttering jerk?

I installed Parallels on my mums MacBook for a work application she needs and it did the same thing. I could not fix it so I removed parallels. That didn't fix it either.
 

jts

...hate me...
Blu_LED said:
Question about transferring data from one Mac to another. Lets say I want to get all my music, photos and videos off my my old Mac and put them on my new Macbook Pro. What exactly would be the easiest way to do this? And yes, I do have an external HDD.
Migration Assistant. It guides you through all the process and I think you can use your home network, firewire cable, ethernet cable etc.
 

Jasoco

Banned
cooljeanius said:
I've found this leads to too many accidental clicks for me, so I have it disabled on mine.
Me too. Though everyone I know with a trackpad uses it in Windows and the first time they all tried to use my computer they could not for the life of them figure out why it wasn't working. And could not comprehend me saying "No, actually press down on the trackpad". When they finally realized the trackpad WAS THE BUTTON, they were amazed. I really can't live without my Magic Trackpad. When my Dad gets my Pro in a few months, I can't wait to teach him about it. He said "I need my mouse! I can't use a Track Pad!" I said "You will use this one. Trust me." When I show him all the gestures he can do, I hope he leaves his tiny portable mouse on the shelf from then on. (He's a Windows user finally ready to switch. And I'm a Pro owner totally waiting to buy an Air.)

edgefusion said:
I installed Parallels on my mums MacBook for a work application she needs and it did the same thing. I could not fix it so I removed parallels. That didn't fix it either.
My problem is the Windows 7 Applications folder it creates every time I boot Windows on Parallels. I love Parallels and how I can run Windows if I need to occasionally, but I hate that it creates that folder. And I can't figure out how to turn it off. Though I have never tried turning off the "Share Windows/Mac apps with Mac/Windows" options because I thought it might remove my ability to use Windows seamlessly, so I'm going to try playing around with it. I'll delete the folder AGAIN and try booting Windows with those two features turned off. I guess it means I won't see Mac apps in my Windows Start Menu anymore too. Not that I ever needed them there. Though it says if I turn off Windows App sharing, it also removes Crystal Mode. And I'm not sure I want to lose Crystal...

jts said:
Blu_LED said:
Question about transferring data from one Mac to another. Lets say I want to get all my music, photos and videos off my my old Mac and put them on my new Macbook Pro. What exactly would be the easiest way to do this? And yes, I do have an external HDD.
Migration Assistant. It guides you through all the process and I think you can use your home network, firewire cable, ethernet cable etc.
I'll clarify. Migration Assistant is amazing. It can migrate your data from anywhere via almost any form of transfer possible. It can migrate from:

Windows - By installing a utility on a Windows machine, you can allow OS X to pull your files from your personal document folders like music, photos and more (Email and bookmarks too I presume) onto your new machine. Useful for moving from Windows to Mac.

Another Mac - Via one of these methods:

Network - Either wired or wirelessly. By running the Migration Assistant on the other Mac, it does the same thing as Windows above, except also copies settings and other stuff Mac related to your user

External Disk - Either via Target Disk (Connect the other Mac directly) or Clone. (Created via CCC or the like, this is the method I use) It can pull all your settings and personal data for one or more users and import them directly into your new machine's HDD/SSD.

Time Machine - Self explanatory. Imports the same way as above.

Bottom line, if it has a user and is Windows or OS X, you can import it as long as you have their login information. Migration Assistant has worked flawlessly for me for the past few OS X installs. It has never missed a single setting or file. Always works 100% with no problems. I perform a Migration instead of an Upgrade. It makes sure OS X only pulls stuff that the OS needs, and nothing that might cause conflicts with the new version. Perfect track record so far.
 

hirokazu

Member
Jasoco said:
My problem is the Windows 7 Applications folder it creates every time I boot Windows on Parallels. I love Parallels and how I can run Windows if I need to occasionally, but I hate that it creates that folder. And I can't figure out how to turn it off. Though I have never tried turning off the "Share Windows/Mac apps with Mac/Windows" options because I thought it might remove my ability to use Windows seamlessly, so I'm going to try playing around with it. I'll delete the folder AGAIN and try booting Windows with those two features turned off. I guess it means I won't see Mac apps in my Windows Start Menu anymore too. Not that I ever needed them there. Though it says if I turn off Windows App sharing, it also removes Crystal Mode. And I'm not sure I want to lose Crystal...
Do you mean in the Dock, in ~/Applications (and therefore in Launchpad), or just doing it in general?

I don't really care about Parallels creating the files, and the latest update makes it not appear in Launchpad any more, so I'm happy. But yeah, if you mean in general, you're gonna have to give up Crystal and Windows programs in the Dock since they depend on those files.
 
So guys, next week I'll have my MBP. But I want to install an SSD drive in it. I also want to put 8GB into it, since it's a lot cheaper if I do it myself.

Any recommendations on what I should order? And on what website? (Newegg?)

It's the 15" high end model.
 

Pachimari

Member
As I got a refund for my iMac 27" 2011-model, I am looking to buy the next iMac 27" in 2012.

In the meantime I would like to build an "Apple environment" in the home. I already have a Mac Mini 2010 connected to my HDTV, but I would like a "central station", a NAS to store all datas (movies, documents, photos etc.) and back ups for the Mac Mini 2010, iMac 27" 2012, an Apple TV and probably a MacBook Air as well.

What is the best method to have everything stored on one location letting it out to all devices? A Synology perhaps?

I would imagine a Time Capsule would be too small with just 2TB.
 
Anastacio said:
As I got a refund for my iMac 27" 2011-model, I am looking to buy the next iMac 27" in 2012.

In the meantime I would like to build an "Apple environment" in the home. I already have a Mac Mini 2010 connected to my HDTV, but I would like a "central station", a NAS to store all datas (movies, documents, photos etc.) and back ups for the Mac Mini 2010, iMac 27" 2012, an Apple TV and probably a MacBook Air as well.

What is the best method to have everything stored on one location letting it out to all devices? A Synology perhaps?

I would imagine a Time Capsule would be too small with just 2TB.
yes, of course.

4-bay FTW. Assuming you want to be sure you don't lose any data.
 
Wonder if anyone here knows of a workaround to install new GPU drivers in Windows via Bootcamp? My iMac has a Radeon 6770m, but the driver for that card steadfastly refuses to install, so I'm stuck with the official Bootcamp one, last updated in January...It worked on my previous (2010) IMac with the mobility version of the 5670 (I can't remember what that's called off the top of my head), and I know stuff like The Witcher 2 really benefits from the newer driver...
 
TheDrowningMan said:
Wonder if anyone here knows of a workaround to install new GPU drivers in Windows via Bootcamp? My iMac has a Radeon 6770m, but the driver for that card steadfastly refuses to install, so I'm stuck with the official Bootcamp one, last updated in January...It worked on my previous IMac, and I know stuff like The Witcher 2 really benefits from the newer driver...
try

http://www.mediafire.com/?vx79ied226cl6er
 

Kunai

Member
Jasoco said:
Does anyone know how to get Parallels to stop creating a "Windows 7 Applications" folder in my Applications folder every time I launch it and populating it with all the Windows apps I will never want to launch from OS X? I have deleted it. I've tried symlinking it. Now it mocks me with 80 applications in my Lion LaunchPad that I had to throw into THREE folders to get them out of the way.

There's 80 of them! And most of them are just EXE's that no one would ever want to run! I can't find a preference in Parallels to turn it off. At least not a well labeled one.

There's an update for Parallels that fix this bug.
 

Jasoco

Banned
hirokazu said:
Do you mean in the Dock, in ~/Applications (and therefore in Launchpad), or just doing it in general?

I don't really care about Parallels creating the files, and the latest update makes it not appear in Launchpad any more, so I'm happy. But yeah, if you mean in general, you're gonna have to give up Crystal and Windows programs in the Dock since they depend on those files.
LaunchPad only shows apps in your Applications folder(s). And Parallels puts them in there. So LaunchPad picks them up and places them all in. I don't even remember what Crystal means. But I'd hate to lose the icons in the Dock. But I guess I see now why they'd be required since OS X's Dock needs to have something to launch to show the icon in the Dock.

I deleted the folder and the icons disappeared immediately from LaunchPad surprisingly. But now Coherence mode is less awesome with no icons in the Dock... but I will live with it just to not have the icons in my Applications folder or my Launch Pad. Maybe. I dunno. I now miss having the ability to send Command+Q to Windows to quit an app.

I'll figure something out even if I have to just let the apps sit in their folders in LaunchPad. My complaint though is that it places EVERY EXE in that folder. Even ones that no one would ever run. All I need in there is Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, etc. Any apps that I would actually run. Not ones I never will.

A better solution for Parallels would be if they instead placed those Windows Apps in a folder outside the Applications folder now that Lion is out. Maybe they'll do something about it like offer an option or something over time.

Edit: Maybe Kunai is right. It hasn't put the folder back yet and I switched to Coherence Crystal right now and there's currently no sign.
 

Pachimari

Member
I'm thinking about connecting everything in the house with Apple products. How could I do that? I'm thinking along the lines of this:

Synergy 4TB:
Would be the center of it all. Store all data, medias and back ups.
Should it be connected to my router, so that it wirelessly can send out data to the other devices?

Mac Mini:
Located in my room, connected to a 46" HDTV. It's only function is to act like a media player or moreso movie theater, thus the Synergy streaming my movie to the Mac Mini.

Apple TV:
Having it connected to the 42" HDTV in the living room downstair, I would be able to show photos to guests while streaming iTunes. Could even watch movies with family members or visitors.

iMac:
In my room, acting as the powerful machine for editing of videos, web pages and photos.

MacBook Air:
Would be the one I'll have all my documents on and taking work with me around.

Could I do a setup like this? Would the Synergy recognise if I have edited a Pages document on-the-go, come home and store the latest version on the NAS?
 
I'm trying to get in on the Up-to-date programme for 10.7; new Mini (2010 model, alas) arrived at work today, and I've set up an Apple account for my work email and secured a code to redeem on the Mac App store. Mac App Store won't let me sign in, saying I need to update my security settings, and opens Safari to load a page that never does.

Anyone else have any trouble getting https://appleid.apple.com open? I don't think it's DNS, it resolves to the same address on my server in California as on my Mac(s) in Nova Scotia.

EDIT: Nevermind, it's back up now.
 
Okay, I'm new to using the Mac and I feel like an idiot for asking this but here goes.

I've been messing around with rails and I've installed it using RVM from terminal. RVM is installed to the '$HOME/.rvm/' path, however when I go to the home directory in finder I can't see the '.rvm' folder. I can navigate to it using terminal and access files that way but not in finder. Am I not getting something here?

Thanks.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Anastacio said:
I'm thinking about connecting everything in the house with Apple products. How could I do that? I'm thinking along the lines of this:

Synergy 4TB:
Would be the center of it all. Store all data, medias and back ups.
Should it be connected to my router, so that it wirelessly can send out data to the other devices?

Mac Mini:
Located in my room, connected to a 46" HDTV. It's only function is to act like a media player or moreso movie theater, thus the Synergy streaming my movie to the Mac Mini.

Apple TV:
Having it connected to the 42" HDTV in the living room downstair, I would be able to show photos to guests while streaming iTunes. Could even watch movies with family members or visitors.

iMac:
In my room, acting as the powerful machine for editing of videos, web pages and photos.

MacBook Air:
Would be the one I'll have all my documents on and taking work with me around.

Could I do a setup like this? Would the Synergy recognise if I have edited a Pages document on-the-go, come home and store the latest version on the NAS?

yes, sounds great. If you have something like plea on the mac mini, you can use that to serve your videos etc to the appleTV too, so the interface will look like a 'mini plex' and it'll sync up your watched/unwatched TV shows etc.
 

Wallach

Member
Samyy said:
getting my first mac in 12 days, the base MBP model ( 2.3GHz i5, intel hd 3000, 4 gigs ram) :D. Now I have a couple questions that I couldn't really find the answers to around the internet.

3) How is the battery life on these things? I know they say it runs 7 hours but does it actually?
I'm hoping for a good 5 hours between charges, I don't plan on watching too many videos/ playing games, just mostly internet and word documents/presentations.

Congrats, you'll love it. That same model has been my first Mac (I bought it back in March) and it's pretty bad ass.

I can't answer the other two really since I'm still kind of a Mac noob, but on that one, they're quite accurate with the battery life. You'll easily get five hours on a charge with that kind of usage.
 

LeleSocho

Banned
Mac-Gaf I have a simple question for you...
The MacBookPros from Mid2010 until now (if you have the newest please answer you too) when it runs a Youtube video (480p or 720p) the fan make a lot of noise? or they are silent?
thx in advance
 

Pachimari

Member
mrklaw said:
yes, sounds great. If you have something like plea on the mac mini, you can use that to serve your videos etc to the appleTV too, so the interface will look like a 'mini plex' and it'll sync up your watched/unwatched TV shows etc.
Yea I'm having Plex on my Mac Mini and plan to install an HDTV and an Apple TV with Plex in my bedroom, so I can watch a movie every night. =)

What hard drives do I need for the Synergy and which Synergy?
 

Wallach

Member
LeleSocho said:
Mac-Gaf I have a simple question for you...
The MacBookPros from Mid2010 until now (if you have the newest please answer you too) when it runs a Youtube video (480p or 720p) the fan make a lot of noise? or they are silent?
thx in advance

My fans don't kick on watching a 720p Youtube video at all (2011 MBP 13"). It's on my lap right now and it doesn't even really warm up looping the Skyrim trailer in fullscreen.
 
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