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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

Pachimari

Member
I got some basic questions:

01) Why is it, that some of my apps gives me this pop up box when I open them? (Now looking at the screenshot I took, should I just click on the box that says "Don't warn me..." ?

4cHpg.png


02) Why do I have 2 iPhoto icons in my Launcher? How do I get rid of one of them? And which one?

LGTfgl.jpg


03) When I have a .dmg file or something in Finder>Download and erase it, then my app don't work any longer. Fine, but where do you guys store your Download files then?
 
I got some basic questions:

01) Why is it, that some of my apps gives me this pop up box when I open them? (Now looking at the screenshot I took, should I just click on the box that says "Don't warn me..." ?

http://i.imgur.com/4cHpg.png

02) Why do I have 2 iPhoto icons in my Launcher? How do I get rid of one of them? And which one?

http://i.imgur.com/LGTfgl.jpg

03) When I have a .dmg file or something in Finder>Download and erase it, then my app don't work any longer. Fine, but where do you guys store your Download files then?
1. OS X always prompts you when opening apps downloaded from the internet. Yes you should check the box :p Otherwise it will keep asking you every time you open the app.

Not sure about 2

3. Er you shouldn't be opening apps from dmg files. You should be copying them from the mounted dmgs to your Applications folder, then deleting the dmg files. Think of dmgs as zip files that you can mount.
 

Pachimari

Member
1. OS X always prompts you when opening apps downloaded from the internet. Yes you should check the box :p Otherwise it will keep asking you every time you open the app.

Not sure about 2

3. Er you shouldn't be opening apps from dmg files. You should be copying them from the mounted dmgs to your Applications folder, then deleting the dmg files. Think of dmgs as zip files that you can mount.

03) Oh wow, never knew that! Thanks! :)

Anyone know the answer to #2?

EDIT
Another thing is, I have 2 Dropbox's at the left side of Finder, but I have erased one of them from the NAS (shared folder), but it's still there in Finder, why is that? =/

0OdmZl.png
 

mrkgoo

Member
03) Oh wow, never knew that! Thanks! :)

Anyone know the answer to #2?

EDIT
Another thing is, I have 2 Dropbox's at the left side of Finder, but I have erased one of them from the NAS (shared folder), but it's still there in Finder, why is that? =/

0OdmZl.png

At a guess, your launchpad database is messed up a little with a double entry.

As for your Dropbox, I'm guessing it's just a residual shortcut. Remove the one you don't want (or remove both and put back the one you want).
 

Pachimari

Member
At a guess, your launchpad database is messed up a little with a double entry.

As for your Dropbox, I'm guessing it's just a residual shortcut. Remove the one you don't want (or remove both and put back the one you want).

How do I remove the Dropbox? I can't right click on it.

Where do I see the launch pad database so I can fix it?
I know of the Applications folder but there's only one iPhoto, weird.
 

mrkgoo

Member
How do I remove the Dropbox? I can't right click on it.

Where do I see the launch pad database so I can fix it?
I know of the Applications folder but there's only one iPhoto, weird.

Can you click and drag the drop box icons off the sidebar? I forgt how it works, but good ol' click and drag is normally what I would try.

As for launchpad database, I'm not sure. It's each, there won't be another iPhoto. You have one app, and two entries in the launchpad. Google may help. You probably could delete iPhoto and reinstall it, but that depends if you have a source to reinstall from. Heck, you COULD try deleting it and restoring from Time Machine,or maybe just copying it to an external. Not sure if it will work, so don't take my word for it, just throwing ideas out there.
 

Tabris

Member
Hey guys. I am really tempted to switch to Mac and had the following questions so I can do my own research:

1) What's the best corresponding application on Mac to replace the following (and confirmation that I can for sure replace the following):

Home Related
- Steam - Any issues with Mac version to be aware of?
- Media Player Classic/VLC Player + K-Lite Codec Pack
- uTorrent - Is the Mac version good enough?

Work Related
- Cisco VPN Client - Any issues with Mac version to be aware of?
- Remote Desktop - I saw this is included with Mac Office, any differences?
- Notepad++ - Brilliant application
- Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2010 - Not a big deal if this isn't possible as I can do that on work PC but would be nice

2) What's a good NAS storage device (1GB speed) for 2-3TB that can support both AFP and SMB file sharing as I have a HTPC which is Windows and will have a Mac, so I need to have a hard drive that can be read by both.
 
Hey guys. I am really tempted to switch to Mac and had the following questions so I can do my own research:

1) What's the best corresponding application on Mac to replace the following (and confirmation that I can for sure replace the following):

Home Related
- Steam - Any issues with Mac version to be aware of?
- Media Player Classic/VLC Player + K-Lite Codec Pack
- uTorrent - Is the Mac version good enough?

Work Related
- Cisco VPN Client - Any issues with Mac version to be aware of?
- Remote Desktop - I saw this is included with Mac Office, any differences?
- Notepad++ - Brilliant application
- Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2010 - Not a big deal if this isn't possible as I can do that on work PC but would be nice

2) What's a good NAS storage device (1GB speed) for 2-3TB that can support both AFP and SMB file sharing as I have a HTPC which is Windows and will have a Mac, so I need to have a hard drive that can be read by both.

home related:

steam - only mac games are compatible (obviously), the rest are all windows so you'll have to either run parallels/vmware or boot camp to play them.
vlc player + perian - plays pretty much everything i have (mkv, ts, avi, mp4, etc).
transmission - utorrent osx doesnt have feature party with the windows version, and plus, transmission looks a lot better and is much faster for me. dont get me wrong - i still prefer utorrent on windows :)

work related:

-no issues with the cisco vpn client that i can think of
-i use CoRD and it works fine (open source too!). the built in version that comes with office is perfectly fine as well.
-notepad++ - try subethaedit and cssedit.
-dont know any replacements for visual studio 2010. you might have to virtualize or boot camp windows for it.

a good NAS? no idea :( i just have a media server (running windows 7 x64) and im able to copy/read/write files back and forth from my 15" mbp (HFS) to it (NTFS) just fine.

tried to do the best i can - extremely sleepy haha!
 

Tabris

Member
Well maybe to help on the NAS.

My HTPC uses XBMC and I need to be able to read from the NAS from this machine and write to it from my MacBook Air (well future Air). I currently have my XBMC reading from SMB on my Windows PC but I know Macs don't play well with SMB.
 
1) What's the best corresponding application on Mac to replace the following (and confirmation that I can for sure replace the following):

Home Related
- Steam - Any issues with Mac version to be aware of?
Nothing serious, just general jankiness and non-nativeness. Be sure to use a mouse with it, as it doesn't handle trackpad scrolling very well.

Work Related
- Cisco VPN Client - Any issues with Mac version to be aware of?
It comes with kexts and other such stuff that goes various places in the filesystem, be sure not to delete any of those. Also be sure that you're actually connected to the network your VPN is on when using the client.
- Notepad++ - Brilliant application
OS X has plenty of great text editors, from Smultron/Fraise to TextWrangler to TextMate for OS X native ones. Some *Nix editors also have decent ports to the OS X gui, such as Emacs, Vim, and Gedit.
- Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2010 - Not a big deal if this isn't possible as I can do that on work PC but would be nice
Xcode is a great IDE. If it's C# you need to develop, there's MonoDevelop.
 

Doikor

Member
home related:
-notepad++ - try subethaedit and cssedit.
-dont know any replacements for visual studio 2010. you might have to virtualize or boot camp windows for it.
I use Sublime Text 2 as my replacement for notepad++ and IDEs (visual studio/eclipse) on os x and have gotten so used to it that i started using it on my windows pc too. I only use visual studio (on a windows machine) for the stuff that requires it (.NET/WPF/Silverlight). Though i mostly do javascript stuff in the browser these days so i get to do my debugging there so no real need for an IDE. But you can get syntax checks and static code analysis tools (jslint/jshint) for it so it's enough for my needs
 

Pachimari

Member
Can you click and drag the drop box icons off the sidebar? I forgt how it works, but good ol' click and drag is normally what I would try.

As for launchpad database, I'm not sure. It's each, there won't be another iPhoto. You have one app, and two entries in the launchpad. Google may help. You probably could delete iPhoto and reinstall it, but that depends if you have a source to reinstall from. Heck, you COULD try deleting it and restoring from Time Machine,or maybe just copying it to an external. Not sure if it will work, so don't take my word for it, just throwing ideas out there.

I just tried dragging and dropping the Dropbox. While I can drag it, I can't put it in trash.

Am I f*cked? =(
 

snacknuts

we all knew her
Do we have any idea when a new version of Keynote is going to be released? I am hesitant to spend any money on Keynote '09 when it feels like an updated version should be released soon.
 
Work Related
- Cisco VPN Client - Any issues with Mac version to be aware of?
- Remote Desktop - I saw this is included with Mac Office, any differences?
- Notepad++ - Brilliant application

Cisco VPN:
I would seriously consider using the client that's already on your Mac. Cisco has had pretty lousy Mac support in the past and I don't trust them. Have used this to connect to a bunch of different Cisco routers for various people with no problems. If someone supplies you with a 'connection profile' you have to do a little work to get the information out of it: open it in a text editor; copy and paste an encoded string into a web page to get a cleartext; copy and paste it and four other fields into the config screen for the tunnel. Done.

Remote Desktop
MS's RDP works great. Free download on their site. 'option' maps to 'alt'.

If you need VNC, I've found that the built-in client doesn't work really well with Windows 7 over a WAN. I use Chicken of the VNC for Windows 7 PCs that are in other offices. To use the built-in VNC client, just enter vnc://hostname in a browser or "open vnc://hostname" in a Terminal. You can also fuck around in the network browser in the Finder, but pffft.

Text Editors
As cooljeanius said, there is a huge number of fantastic ones. I just use Vim in the Terminal unless I need to do multifile regex substitution, which I use TextWrangler for (sure it's possible in Vim, but I don't have the merit badge yet).
 
Since I updated to Lion Firefox and Safari have the problem that facebook- and twitter-links can't be opened. I just get a blank page in both browsers. Sometimes it works if I click the url and hit enter, but it's quite weird and I couldn't find a solution to it or even a reference to the problem itself.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Apple added the 'command' requirement in 10.7.

Interesting. Probably too many accidental click and drags.


I'm aiding a switcher at the moment. You know, the usual. Opening apps from dmgs, why is something in/not in the dock, how do I cut and paste a file etc.

It's fun. Sometimes in all my madness, I forget that a lot of stuff is actually very different from other operating systems...neither necessarily being any more intuitive, just different.
 
Interesting. Probably too many accidental click and drags.

It's funny, I probably accidentally added stuff far more often than accidentally removed something.

Sometimes in all my madness, I forget that a lot of stuff is actually very different from other operating systems...neither necessarily being any more intuitive, just different.

Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of the intuitiveness of the 'classic' Mac OS was lost in smearing a Mac-like veneer on NeXT. It gets better every release, but some things are still a bit silly.
 

mrkgoo

Member
It's funny, I probably accidentally added stuff far more often than accidentally removed something.



Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of the intuitiveness of the 'classic' Mac OS was lost in smearing a Mac-like veneer on NeXT. It gets better every release, but some things are still a bit silly.

I for one think Lion, while fixing a lot of things, is a sort of step back in usability. Just as Steve Jobs said, the iPad fits in between a mobile phone and a laptop/desktop, and thus they have differing use case scenarios. Therefore, it would only seem logical that the OS be different, and should differentiate, not unify in some areas.

I agree it makes sense in some ways. I applaud full screen, and launchpad, for example. Finder incrementally gets better (incidentally, does anyone else get a weird bug in finder where the file type heading in column view is shown as a folder instead?). And I do appreciate some of the more ios like features, such as resume and such.

Meh, I guess I just loathe the new mission control. I live in fullscreen now, but whethere that's because it's awesome, or because mission control sucks is hard to ascertain.
 
I never use Launchpad (in order, I use Spotlight, Dock and /Applications instead), but for me Mission Control works very well. I like the way Spaces work now, but preferred the old everything-Exposé mode.

I haven't quite mastered invoking desktop-Exposé instead of it when I want on my MBA with gestures.
 

mrkgoo

Member
I never use Launchpad (in order, I use Spotlight, Dock and /Applications instead), but for me Mission Control works very well. I like the way Spaces work now, but preferred the old everything-Exposé mode.

I haven't quite mastered invoking desktop-Exposé instead of it when I want on my MBA with gestures.

I've found myself using launchpad more, surprisingly. Probably helps that I use and iPad, and I use the same gesture to go to my home screen. And I removed the applications folder from the dock.

My order is Dock apps, spotlight, launchpad, /Applications.

I used to use expose a lot in SL, and hardly touched spaces. I now use mostly fullscreen. Still don't really use multiple desktops, though. With my main apps all in full screen (safari, mail, iTunes), there,s not that much need for mission control for me. Oh yeah, I love dashboard over my screen, but there's no way to get there with a gesture, so i now use it as a separate space.

I find the 4 finger pinch in/out to be fairly good now.
 
I now use mostly fullscreen. Still don't really use multiple desktops, though. With my main apps all in full screen (safari, mail, iTunes), there,s not that much need for mission control for me.

I can't abide by Mail being modal in Fullscreen Mode, but I like it by itself, so I have it taking up the entirety of its own space.


Is there anything TimeMachine will not backup?

Aside from what you tell it to skip, no.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Is there anything TimeMachine will not backup?

Yeah, loads of stuff.

Some caches, for example, are not backed up, such as thumbnail caches in Aperture (and iPhoto, I assume) libraries. At least these were not around when I did a restore once. They are generated again by Aperture, and I don't think they exist in my TM backups.

SOme other user stuff, I've noted from the Time Machine .plist is listed as excluded (calendar cache, some mail metadata database files etc.).

And of course what you tell it to skip.
 

mrkgoo

Member
I can't abide by Mail being modal in Fullscreen Mode, but I like it by itself, so I have it taking up the entirety of its own space.

I love the new mail, and the new view - because it gives a maximum space for the mail conversation pane, and vertically. It's on a fullscreen on another page, so it's just a 4-fonger swipe away. Love it!

Aside from what you tell it to skip, no.

Not true. See above.
 
I love using TextEdit, but is it just me, or does this thing crash every thirty minutes or so? It saves constantly so it's never been a problem for me yet, however I do not want this to continue. I've noticed it happens during autocorrect--is there anything one can do to fix this?
 
I love the new mail, and the new view

I love it too, but I frequently refer to multiple messages when composing something, or have to reply to one email before finishing another, and the full screen make that harder. Having it on its own Space is the best of both worlds - a swipe away (except on the Mac at work with no trackpad).

Not true. See above.
I didn't know that, but I was still thinking along the lines of 'will turning on Time Machine and trusting it prove disasterous'. Have never used it for restoring Aperture stuff. One of the three ways I have things backed up, the other two do get everything I indicate.
 

mrkgoo

Member
I love it too, but I frequently refer to multiple messages when composing something, or have to reply to one email before finishing another, and the full screen make that harder. Having it on its own Space is the best of both worlds - a swipe away (except on the Mac at work with no trackpad).
Yeah, this actually kinda sucks. Not deal breaker, but close.

Fullscreen in general is a bit weird, esp when you have multiple monitors.

I didn't know that, but I was still thinking along the lines of 'will turning on Time Machine and trusting it prove disasterous'. Have never used it for restoring Aperture stuff. One of the three ways I have things backed up, the other two do get everything I indicate.

I've studied Time Machine for quite some time. I did a Time Machine restore once, and some files from a certain date onwards were non existent. Namely, pictures from within iPhoto. I'm certain it had to do with a timezone change. Also, after a particular restore, certain files were locked, and I remember something going nasty and having to do system wide change of permissions.

And in anohter instance, a bug that I assumed affected everyone - if you did a Disk Utility check, and DIDN'T restart, Time Machine would not backup....but say that it did.

It's not infallible..

edit: I keep a log of my backups and investigations. I looked back, that's right, I was installing new hard drives and restoring from Time Machine. The problem was the last Time Machine backup failed to copy over a particular security file...rendering the computer unable to boot. It hadn't backed up for nearly a year, and that file was critical to the version of the software. It had an old version.
Also, Time Machine had messed up when transferring a set of backups to a new drive. It locked certain files that prevented software updates from installing. It was royal messup.
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
My imac just broke:


Does anybody have an idea what could be broken? I cant see/hear anything from the mac after startup (except for that pixelated mess) - savemode won't change a thing.
:'(
 

Pachimari

Member
Oh yea, just got reminded of another question I were going to ask.

Is there any way I can be my documents/pics/files line up perfectly in a folder or on the desktop (anywhere) ? Because when I drag them I have to manually place them where I want, but it would be nice if it could help me a little and line it up precisely.
 
Oh yea, just got reminded of another question I were going to ask.

Is there any way I can be my documents/pics/files line up perfectly in a folder or on the desktop (anywhere) ? Because when I drag them I have to manually place them where I want, but it would be nice if it could help me a little and line it up precisely.
&#8984;J should open up the view options for the folder you're in, then you can change "Sort By" to "Snap to Grid", and if you want that to be the default for all folders you can select Use as Defaults.
 

Pachimari

Member
&#8984;J should open up the view options for the folder you're in, then you can change "Sort By" to "Snap to Grid", and if you want that to be the default for all folders you can select Use as Defaults.

Thanks!

My files doesn't snap to the grid, so I guess I'll just remove them from the folder and put them back in.


02) Why do I have 2 iPhoto icons in my Launcher? How do I get rid of one of them? And which one?

LGTfgl.jpg

Do anyone know about this?
 

Timan

Developer
Thanks!

My files doesn't snap to the grid, so I guess I'll just remove them from the folder and put them back in.




Do anyone know about this?

You can try this terminal command, it should "reset" launchpad, might mess up any sorting you've done tho.

[ -e ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db ] && rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db
 

wolfmat

Confirmed Asshole
What does that command do? Some sort of pattern matching/regex? Google is proving useless (I know what && and rm do).

[ -e SOMETHING ] is bash-slang. You check whether a file exists with that. If it exists, the command after && is executed.

See CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS in the bash man page.
 
Since I updated to Lion Firefox and Safari have the problem that facebook- and twitter-links can't be opened. I just get a blank page in both browsers. Sometimes it works if I click the url and hit enter, but it's quite weird and I couldn't find a solution to it or even a reference to the problem itself.


Anyone?
 
See CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS in the bash man page.

Cool, thanks! I suspected it was bash related, since it's been a few years since OS X used tcsh by default.


Since I updated to Lion Firefox and Safari have the problem that facebook- and twitter-links can't be opened. I just get a blank page in both browsers. Sometimes it works if I click the url and hit enter, but it's quite weird and I couldn't find a solution to it or even a reference to the problem itself.

You turn off cookies? Safari on my partner's iPad/iPhone display this behaviour since she has cookies off.
 
But you can navigate to the sites from bookmarks or by typing the URL? Does it work equally poorly with different ISP or DNS settings?

Safari and Firefox don't share an awful lot, so I'm assuming it's something lower down the network stack on your Mac or to do with your Router/ISP/DNS.
 

Pachimari

Member
You can try this terminal command, it should "reset" launchpad, might mess up any sorting you've done tho.

[ -e ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db ] && rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db

I just tried this. I don't think it did anything?

I copy and pasted that line into Terminal and pressed Enter and then it just gave me the name of my computer.

Did I do anything wrong?
 

Tunesmith

formerly "chigiri"
Thanks!

My files doesn't snap to the grid, so I guess I'll just remove them from the folder and put them back in.




Do anyone know about this?


I had that happen with Skype once after an update. Turned out it was two Skype apps in my Applications folder. Deleted one of them and that sorted it out.
 
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