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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

B

Blackhead

Redarse
hirokazu said:
If you want full power control, you need to look into RCDefaultApps preference pane. It works fine on 10.5, but it doesn't seem to have been updated for a while, so it's 32-bit only. And it seems to crash often on Snow Leopard, though it still does it's job.
Click to expand...
This wasn't directed at my post the app is exactly what I was looking for. And an update Has been released for Snow Leopard
 
C

Captain Nemo

Member
Short of making a manual playlist, is it possible to differentiate between full albums and scattered tracks in iTunes?

I've been wanting to view which albums I have in full, but the single tracks I have scattered around get in the way.
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
Captain Nemo said:
Short of making a manual playlist, is it possible to differentiate between full albums and scattered tracks in iTunes?

I've been wanting to view which albums I have in full, but the single tracks I have scattered around get in the way.
Click to expand...
Smart playlists? Like, can you make a playlist that contains albums that have more than 1 song?
 
C

Captain Nemo

Member
mrkgoo said:
Smart playlists? Like, can you make a playlist that contains albums that have more than 1 song?
Click to expand...

Ideally, but I can't figure out the rules to use in such a playlist (if it's possible). There is a lot of flexibility in choosing what particular songs you want, but not particular albums.
 
S

StrikerObi

Member
mrkgoo said:
Smart playlists? Like, can you make a playlist that contains albums that have more than 1 song?
Click to expand...

Captain Nemo said:
Ideally, but I can't figure out the rules to use in such a playlist (if it's possible). There is a lot of flexibility in choosing what particular songs you want, but not particular albums.
Click to expand...

The problem is that Smart Playlists are based pretty much entirely on ID3 tags. ID3 tags are song-level. There's no such thing as an album-wide ID3 tag.

This will pull back all the tracks with an "Total Tracks" tag that indicates there are not 0 or 1 total tracks on the album. Whether you have all the tracks in that album in your library is another story. This would work for me because I don't keep singles in my iTunes library. If I get a song I get the whole album. Might not work for you though.

Total number of Tracks != 0
Total number of Tracks != 1
Total number of Tracks != NULL

Short of that, you could just manually append "full album" into the comments field and search off of that. That's less than ideal though, since you'd need to manually add the tag to all the songs that need it.
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
StrikerObi said:
The problem is that Smart Playlists are based pretty much entirely on ID3 tags. ID3 tags are song-level. There's no such thing as an album-wide ID3 tag.

This will pull back all the tracks with an "Total Tracks" tag that indicates there are not 0 or 1 total tracks on the album. Whether you have all the tracks in that album in your library is another story. This would work for me because I don't keep singles in my iTunes library. If I get a song I get the whole album. Might not work for you though.

Total number of Tracks != 0
Total number of Tracks != 1
Total number of Tracks != NULL

Short of that, you could just manually append "full album" into the comments field and search off of that. That's less than ideal though, since you'd need to manually add the tag to all the songs that need it.
Click to expand...
I guess you could otherwise label a single track as single an search against that.
 
C

Captain Nemo

Member
StrikerObi said:
This will pull back all the tracks with an "Total Tracks" tag that indicates there are not 0 or 1 total tracks on the album. Whether you have all the tracks in that album in your library is another story. This would work for me because I don't keep singles in my iTunes library. If I get a song I get the whole album. Might not work for you though.

Total number of Tracks != 0
Total number of Tracks != 1
Total number of Tracks != NULL
Click to expand...

There doesn't seem to be a "Total Tracks" property on the left-hand side--only "Track Number". This sounds like it would be useful to work off of but yeah, probably won't work for my situation.

StrikerObi said:
Short of that, you could just manually append "full album" into the comments field and search off of that. That's less than ideal though, since you'd need to manually add the tag to all the songs that need it.
Click to expand...

mrkgoo said:
I guess you could otherwise label a single track as single an search against that.
Click to expand...

If there isn't a more elegant solution, I think I'll just give in and spend some time to create a "Full Album" playlist. I'll leave the ID3 tags unchanged in case I either complete an album--or remove songs from an album--in the future.
 
G

GodfatherX

Member
so is it normal for the battery to not hit 100% on my MBP?

I has been hanging around 98%, but today it is at 96%, it stays plugged in

also some apps I have gotten that other noobs may want to check out:
Adium - chat client
Hulu Desktop - awesomeness
Caffeine - a program that turns off auto sleep mode with a click
Bowtie
Skitch
Dropzone - lets you drop files into the icon and then easily choose to upload them/email/ect
CoverStream - a light weight iTunes controller with cover flow interface
DropDMG - lets you create DMG file by dragging files to the icon
 
M

Mar

Member
Has anyone got a good alternative to Quicktunes? Basically, I want an app that shows what song is currently playing in the menu bar.

Quicktunes is driving me crazy with a system log full of crashes. 99% of those crashes just trying to start the damn app. I have to click on it about 7 times before it finally loads.
 
B

Bii

Member
I have a question regarding a movie I ripped from my DVD using Handbrake. I plan on getting an Apple TV and was making a test rip from my Casino Royale DVD. I ripped the main feature but the first 40 seconds wasn't extracted correctly. Now, what's the best way to go about editing the video (it's in H.264 format) by clipping the first 40 seconds, maintaining the picture quality and also keeping the chapter markers that I made for the video? I have Adobe Premier Pro but haven't used it yet. Or should I just try ripping it again using Handbrake (I don't think the disc had any scratches)?
 
J

Jasoco

Banned
GodfatherX said:
so is it normal for the battery to not hit 100% on my MBP?

I has been hanging around 98%, but today it is at 96%, it stays plugged in
Click to expand...
Sometimes mine only goes to 99%. It just happens. It might go to 100% next time. Or maybe not. Right now mine's also 96%.
 
J

Jet Grind Radio!

Banned
Another quick Noob question, how do I change the icons on either my dock or HDD on my desktop. I don't mean changing out the application, I mean changing the icon to another one? What kinda files work? Do I need a program to "skin" Snow Leopard?
 
S

SnakeXs

about the same metal capacity as a cucumber
Jet Grind Radio! said:
Another quick Noob question, how do I change the icons on either my dock or HDD on my desktop. I don't mean changing out the application, I mean changing the icon to another one? What kinda files work? Do I need a program to "skin" Snow Leopard?
Click to expand...

You can go to the app in question, right click it, go to show package contents, go to Resources, and there should be an appname.icns, but more "permanent" or feature rich/app driven ways exist.
 
C

CTLance

Member
Jet Grind Radio!: What you can try to do is using the Apple+I shortcut (or rightclick->"show information").

You can drag and drop icons to the upmost area from other "Preview" areas of other info windows. You can also just drag a png/jpg/icns/... files there. It's a touch quicker than the "show package contents" way.

Edit: Bah, I can't describe it correctly. Read this.
 
M

Mr. Spinnington

Banned
Battersea Power Station said:
By the way, how many of you here are using a Hackintosh? I'm surprised there isn't a dedicated thread (what many call an official thread) for that. I'm in the middle of putting together the parts from the Lifehacker build, and wondering what I should do for WiFi.
Click to expand...
i am and it rules. here's a screen from the desktop thread:

1haws5.jpg


insanelymac forums will be your guiding light
 
E

EmSeta

Member
I have a strange issue in Safari 4 (64-bits SL) that recently popped up:

Text sizes on some sites are suddenly a little too small, by like 1 point. I've made sure that any text zoom is off (actual size) and compared it to Firefox.

Left is FF and right is Safari.

veqjvd.png


WTF? I have Glims and Glimmerblocker installed. Tried disabling them, no difference.
 
D

deleted

Member
Ok I have a very strange problem with my mac where I can´t really find any help.
I recently got Snow Leopard. Before that I made a clean install and had some problems with my normal leopard installation. HD Videos are constantly stuttering. Flash Videos are unwatchable in HD and mkvs too.
I have a MacBook Pro 2,4 Ghz with 3 GBRam.
Then I installed Snow Leopard and suddenly everything was fine. It was running great, but DivX wouldn´t work with Safari4. Downloaded it again, installed it but that didn´t work.
Read that I have to set Safari to 32 bit and tadaa. That worked.
But suddenly the stuttering with HD movies is back. Quicktime still plays HD, but VLC, Mplayer OSX and Sarafi all have Problems. Set Safari back to 64 bit, deinstalled DivX but it all doesn´t help.
Sooo, I didn´t have timemachine working when I made the changes. Any other way to set my laptop back to yesterday?
Do I have to make a clean install?
 
H

hirokazu

Member
xyla said:
Ok I have a very strange problem with my mac where I can´t really find any help.
I recently got Snow Leopard. Before that I made a clean install and had some problems with my normal leopard installation. HD Videos are constantly stuttering. Flash Videos are unwatchable in HD and mkvs too.
I have a MacBook Pro 2,4 Ghz with 3 GBRam.
Then I installed Snow Leopard and suddenly everything was fine. It was running great, but DivX wouldn´t work with Safari4. Downloaded it again, installed it but that didn´t work.
Read that I have to set Safari to 32 bit and tadaa. That worked.
But suddenly the stuttering with HD movies is back. Quicktime still plays HD, but VLC, Mplayer OSX and Sarafi all have Problems. Set Safari back to 64 bit, deinstalled DivX but it all doesn´t help.
Sooo, I didn´t have timemachine working when I made the changes. Any other way to set my laptop back to yesterday?
Do I have to make a clean install?
Click to expand...
Sounds like something else is gobbling up your CPU cycles. Check with Activity Monitor and report back?
 
P

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
Not sure where else to ask, but:

I will be getting a 15" Macbook Pro soon, and I was wondering if I should go with glossy or with matte. I tried looking at them in the store, but I am still not sure which would be better for normal use. What is the general consensus? Is the reflection really that bad? The colors do look better on the glossy.

:/

Oh yes, I will also be using bootcamp on the laptop, mainly for gaming. if i get the 320GB hard-drive, how much do you guys suggest partitioning for windows?
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
quadriplegicjon said:
Not sure where else to ask, but:

I will be getting a 15" Macbook Pro soon, and I was wondering if I should go with glossy or with matte. I tried looking at them in the store, but I am still not sure which would be better for normal use. What is the general consensus? Is the reflection really that bad? The colors do look better on the glossy.

:/

Oh yes, I will also be using bootcamp on the laptop, mainly for gaming. if i get the 320GB hard-drive, how much do you guys suggest partitioning for windows?
Click to expand...

Colours and the design look nicer on the glossy. The glass screen is meant to be an illusion that it goes right to the edge, an effect utilised by the iMac and the iPhone. Matte has less glare. I may be in the market for a new Laptop if they update them significantly in Feb. If they still offer a matte, there's no way I'm going glossy. Though I do like the glossy design better, I think I actually have to put functionality ahead in this case - and the matte doesn't look that bad - kind of like a MacBook Air.
 
P

Pctx

Banned
A part of me must be daft.... is WiFi N an update with Snow Leopard or is it part of the airport update a while back?

I just noticed I had it after my SL update last night. :lol
 
Z

Zaraki_Kenpachi

Member
quadriplegicjon said:
Not sure where else to ask, but:

I will be getting a 15" Macbook Pro soon, and I was wondering if I should go with glossy or with matte. I tried looking at them in the store, but I am still not sure which would be better for normal use. What is the general consensus? Is the reflection really that bad? The colors do look better on the glossy.

:/

Oh yes, I will also be using bootcamp on the laptop, mainly for gaming. if i get the 320GB hard-drive, how much do you guys suggest partitioning for windows?
Click to expand...

I much prefer the non glossy since you don't have to tilt it at a certain angle to see it. If you can't notice a difference in the store then I guess get the glossy but if you look at it from different angles you can see the matte from pretty much any angle. When I was there I was working on one and then looking the other style from where I was standing and seeing how much reflection it had. It's more a personal preference than anything else. I do 15Gb for windows but I don't really do anything on it. It's only for ms office and other programs I can't run on mac. It depends on how many games you want installed at a time, etc. Depending on your habits it may be worth it for 50-50 or if you only play a game or two at a time then obviously less.
 
V

VGChampion

Member
I'm really starting to regret installing Snow Leopard. I'm going to do a clean install later today but I've just had so many errors, bugs, problems, it's really annoying. Wish I could take the new Quicktime look with the functionality of the old Quicktime and the extra hard drive space, and go back to Leopard. Nothing but problems. Luckily, on my computer they are mainly just annoyances, but on my friends, he can't burn cd's or anything. Wish I waited awhile.
 
L

liquid_gears

Banned
Which web browser are most people using?

I tried Safari and although it renders pages very fast, it beach balls continuously when opening new tabs and performing other common tasks. A lot of functionality is also missing imo. It's too frustrating to use regularly.

Firefox is similar to Safari, it renders pages well but isn't polished enough to use on a regular basis.

Opera seems to be the opposite. It comes last in most of the benchmarks for rendering web pages, but it is very functional, customizable and it doesn't hang and seems to be well polished for OS X.

I'm going to try Flock but Opera seems to be the best choice at the moment.
 
L

LCfiner

Member
liquid_gears said:
Which web browser are most people using?

I tried Safari and although it renders pages very fast, it beach balls continuously when opening new tabs and performing other common tasks. A lot of functionality is also missing imo. It's too frustrating to use regularly.

Firefox is similar to Safari, it renders pages well but isn't polished enough to use on a regular basis.

Opera seems to be the opposite. It comes last in most of the benchmarks for rendering web pages, but it is very functional, customizable and it doesn't hang and seems to be well polished for OS X.

I'm going to try Flock but Opera seems to be the best choice at the moment.
Click to expand...


I think the majority of Mac users use safari but, of the ones you haven’t mentioned, Camino is pretty decent. firefox-like rendering speed but a native Mac UI.

also, I think the developer builds of Google chrome are kinda nice, too.

nether of those have the customization of firefox, of course, but they’re both quite nice.
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
VGChampion said:
I'm really starting to regret installing Snow Leopard. I'm going to do a clean install later today but I've just had so many errors, bugs, problems, it's really annoying. Wish I could take the new Quicktime look with the functionality of the old Quicktime and the extra hard drive space, and go back to Leopard. Nothing but problems. Luckily, on my computer they are mainly just annoyances, but on my friends, he can't burn cd's or anything. Wish I waited awhile.
Click to expand...

Same story with every new OS. There are a bunch of niggles, but mostly preferential things that I end up getting used to. In time, they will shift towards something solid.

I haven't tried burning a CD in so long - it's possible I have such a bug.

I'm more disappointed in 3.1 iPhone.

liquid_gears: I'm using safari. The only real functionalist I need is browsing and tabs. I have never used firefox extensively and not a huge guy on customisation. Safari rarely beachballs on me.
 
D

DeathbyVolcano

Banned
I still use Safari, but I have that same issue with the beachballing whenever I open new tabs. It's in-fucking-furiating, and I hope they fix that soon. I'm gonna switch over to the beta version of Chrome for right now.
 
L

liquid_gears

Banned
BrandNew said:
I still use Safari, but I have that same issue with the beachballing whenever I open new tabs. It's in-fucking-furiating, and I hope they fix that soon. I'm gonna switch over to the beta version of Chrome for right now.
Click to expand...

This was my main reason for switching. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll check out Camino, Chrome (pre)beta and Webkit Nightly. I think I'll just stick with Opera for the time being though.
 
P

Pctx

Banned
Tried Safari, don't like it.
Tried Camino, liked it, hated not having plug ins.
Tried Chrome on OS X, okay, but not like Chrome on Windows.

Firefox is tired and true no matter how many people bitch and complain about it being slower. It has add-ons and that my friends is what makes the user experience the best IMO.
 
G

giga

Member
If your Safari is beachballing, reset it from the Safari menu and then zap pram. I had the same problem and it seemed to have fixed it.
 
D

deleted

Member
hirokazu said:
Sounds like something else is gobbling up your CPU cycles. Check with Activity Monitor and report back?
Click to expand...

Ok, the problem only appears if I had flash running. If I start a HD videos before that, the problem is nearly gone. If I had flash running, even if I shut it down (uses over 80% cpu btw) all vids are stuttering. I tried to delete flash and then reinstalled it, but that didn´t fix the problem.
Also tried to delete safari and reinstall it but if I download Safari 4 it keeps telling me that my OS X version is too low and that it cannot be installed.
 
Burger

Burger

Member
BrandNew said:
I still use Safari, but I have that same issue with the beachballing whenever I open new tabs. It's in-fucking-furiating, and I hope they fix that soon. I'm gonna switch over to the beta version of Chrome for right now.
Click to expand...

You know what it does that shit ? Because of that ass feature, 'Top Sites'. Sure, it's a nice feature, but it keeps breaking your freakin browser every time you want to open a new tab. What a piece of ass.
 
P

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
Burger said:
You know what it does that shit ? Because of that ass feature, 'Top Sites'. Sure, it's a nice feature, but it keeps breaking your freakin browser every time you want to open a new tab. What a piece of ass.
Click to expand...
I have mine set to open safari to the top sites, but new tabs to a blank page. Or you can turn off top sites all together
 
G

GodfatherX

Member
Jal said:
Anyone tried Stainless it's a lot like chrome, pretty snappy.
Click to expand...
looks interesting, i'll wait on opinions before i get it though

also on that note, when is Chrome for mac going to be made public?

also anyone here using geektool? im completely lost, although i know exactly what i want to do I can't figure out the commands
 
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