• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs

G

GodfatherX

Member
anyone using the Chrome for mac beta? if so how is it

and are there any hackintosh users here? I decided to go with a hackintosh instead of getting a mini display to hdmi adapter to hook to my hdtv, and I have a few questions about hackintosh in general
 
Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station

Member
GodfatherX said:
anyone using the Chrome for mac beta? if so how is it

and are there any hackintosh users here? I decided to go with a hackintosh instead of getting a mini display to hdmi adapter to hook to my hdtv, and I have a few questions about hackintosh in general
Click to expand...
I used Chrome beta for Mac, and there are some annoyances. It screws up on some flash items (flash is pretty annoying, but it's required for certain sites), I can't drag/drop my bookmarks in the bar to reorder them, I can't pin tabs or sync bookmarks, and some other things. So I switched to Firefox with a Chrome-like skin.

I'm using a Hackintosh built according to that Lifehacker guide and it's working smooth as butter. However, since I followed their idiot-proof guide to the t, I don't have a lot of experience with screwing around. For the few questions I had, I asked them at insanelymac.com and they were pretty nice about answering them.
 
G

GodfatherX

Member
thanks, I'm being very picky with this build, trying to do it on the cheap+build it in a compact case because its going in my entertainment center, and I definitely want a compatible micro atx board

I also want to use this as a HTPC and curious if anyone has a preference of Plex, Boxee or XBMC..or if I should just run XBMC in windows as I plan on dual booting this machine anyway
 
G

giga

Member
White Man said:
Looks like I'm going back to Leopard on this MBP (at least on this machine). Oddly enough, my experience with Snow Leopard is reminiscent of my experience with Leopard in its first month.
Click to expand...
You did apply Performance Update 1.0 right? (assuming you have a unibody MBP)
 
W

White Man

Member
giga said:
You did apply Performance Update 1.0 right? (assuming you have a unibody MBP)
Click to expand...


Yeah, no luck with that. From the looks of things, it didn't help quite a few of the people experiencing this or similar issues. I've also cleared the PRAM, reset the smc, cleared caches with multiple program, verified permissions and the hard drive, looked in activity monitor when it happens, checked the console, been all over it with tech tool, and just about all the osx troubleshooting maneuvers I know.

I've been removing files from library and rebooting to see if I can isolate a problem with something, but no luck so far.

There was nothing in the console, btw. No freezing events appear to correlate with any log entries.

I need to take a break before I get back to this. Any insight is appreciated.

edit: someone on one of the forums I was at said that 10.6.2 would be out soon (even in the next week or two), so I'm hoping that fixes this.

edit2: my MacBook Air, Mac Pro, and MacBook, all on 10.6, do not share the problem, either. They're all 100% fine.
 
B

Blackhead

Redarse
What are the keyboard shortcuts for switching between buttons in those yes/no, continue/cancel dialog boxes? I thought it was Tab but that doesn't seem to work in Snow Leopard...
 
S

SnakeXs

about the same metal capacity as a cucumber
Charred Greyface said:
What are the keyboard shortcuts for switching between buttons in those yes/no, continue/cancel dialog boxes? I thought it was Tab but that doesn't seem to work in Snow Leopard...
Click to expand...

Uh, it's tab alright. Space will interact with what's highlighted in a blue circle, and Enter will with whatever's plain ol' blue.

c54ec


*tab*

df5c6
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
goomba said:
LOl i dont see any 'X's or a task bar.

That 1998 Acorn was also 32 Bit, not 16 like the Amigas of the time.

So what was so great about the Amiga GUI?. Apple an Xerox had it first, there were versionos of Riscos before 1998 , but that was the year of the first 32 bit home computer.
Click to expand...
OK, the X was more like [.] but it was working the same :p I must remember taskbar kind of thing as some 3rd party utility I had, but there was contextual right click and many other common things from UIs that are still being used. It also had real pre-emptive multitasking, something Mac OS didn't have until OSX, I think. More than anything however, it was just so well optimized and with clean, simple system file structure and configuration files.
 
Diseased Yak

Diseased Yak

Gold Member
Hey GAF, Mac Newb here. My wife won a MacBook Air in a contest and I've been hooked on it ever since. Everything's so clean and nice! Very confusing though in the beginning on how to install stuff and generally just get around in the OS. I'm learning, though.

My situation: I want to set up the Air for my wife to use as a home office computer when she's not carrying it around the house. I hooked up an external monitor to it, which works fine, but my problem comes in the fact that you MUST keep the Air open to use it. If you close the thing, it goes into sleep mode automatically.

So basically, you are forced to use a dual monitor or an extended desktop. I'd like to treat it like a PC laptop where you dock it, closed, and use a monitor, keyboard, mouse.

Does anyone have a good way of doing this, or should I just get used to a dual monitor setup?

Also, I've ordered Snow Leopard (it came with just Leopard) from the Apple Sto and will be upgrading soon, that'll be fun. I'm gonna add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, probably from Apple. If anyone has any better alternatives for either of those, let me know.

Thanks for the help!
 
B

btkadams

Member
im absolutely pissed. my stupid fucking cat lunged at my macbook pro while i was using it and ripped out 2 keys. now i need to fucking replace the keyboard because the keys wont go back in. should i buy from ifixit? has anybody replaced a mbp keyboard before? the guide looks ridiculous ugh.
 
P

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
Diseased Yak said:
Hey GAF, Mac Newb here. My wife won a MacBook Air in a contest and I've been hooked on it ever since. Everything's so clean and nice! Very confusing though in the beginning on how to install stuff and generally just get around in the OS. I'm learning, though.

My situation: I want to set up the Air for my wife to use as a home office computer when she's not carrying it around the house. I hooked up an external monitor to it, which works fine, but my problem comes in the fact that you MUST keep the Air open to use it. If you close the thing, it goes into sleep mode automatically.

So basically, you are forced to use a dual monitor or an extended desktop. I'd like to treat it like a PC laptop where you dock it, closed, and use a monitor, keyboard, mouse.

Does anyone have a good way of doing this, or should I just get used to a dual monitor setup?

Also, I've ordered Snow Leopard (it came with just Leopard) from the Apple Sto and will be upgrading soon, that'll be fun. I'm gonna add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, probably from Apple. If anyone has any better alternatives for either of those, let me know.

Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

Either hook up a USB mouse and move/click after it goes to sleep.. or i believe you can also slightly open the case and tap the keyboard.. Make sure it is hooked up to the monitor at this point.
 
A

abq

Member
Diseased Yak said:
My situation: I want to set up the Air for my wife to use as a home office computer when she's not carrying it around the house. I hooked up an external monitor to it, which works fine, but my problem comes in the fact that you MUST keep the Air open to use it. If you close the thing, it goes into sleep mode automatically.

So basically, you are forced to use a dual monitor or an extended desktop. I'd like to treat it like a PC laptop where you dock it, closed, and use a monitor, keyboard, mouse.

Does anyone have a good way of doing this, or should I just get used to a dual monitor setup?
Click to expand...
I believe you can close the lid and then wake it with an external keyboard or mouse.
 
M

Mar

Member
Diseased Yak said:
Hey GAF, Mac Newb here. My wife won a MacBook Air in a contest and I've been hooked on it ever since. Everything's so clean and nice! Very confusing though in the beginning on how to install stuff and generally just get around in the OS. I'm learning, though.

My situation: I want to set up the Air for my wife to use as a home office computer when she's not carrying it around the house. I hooked up an external monitor to it, which works fine, but my problem comes in the fact that you MUST keep the Air open to use it. If you close the thing, it goes into sleep mode automatically.

So basically, you are forced to use a dual monitor or an extended desktop. I'd like to treat it like a PC laptop where you dock it, closed, and use a monitor, keyboard, mouse.

Does anyone have a good way of doing this, or should I just get used to a dual monitor setup?

Also, I've ordered Snow Leopard (it came with just Leopard) from the Apple Sto and will be upgrading soon, that'll be fun. I'm gonna add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, probably from Apple. If anyone has any better alternatives for either of those, let me know.

Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

You can set up the external monitor to clone the macbook display instead of extending the desktop by going into the display settings and changing something in there.
 
S

scorcho

testicles on a cold fall morning
for anyone that has a macbook pro and updated to snow leopard

just got a new laptop for work and whenever it triggers to sleep on its own the system will lock up - the system light remains steady, fans whirl but the screen is dead black. i have to force the laptop off and turn it on again to do anything productive. if i automatically trigger sleep the system does just that and it works as supposed to.

i've looked online and found some posts alluding to the problem, but no firm solution.
 
B

btkadams

Member
scorcho said:
for anyone that has a macbook pro and updated to snow leopard

just got a new laptop for work and whenever it triggers to sleep on its own the system will lock up - the system light remains steady, fans whirl but the screen is dead black. i have to force the laptop off and turn it on again to do anything productive. if i automatically trigger sleep the system does just that and it works as supposed to.

i've looked online and found some posts alluding to the problem, but no firm solution.
Click to expand...
i can confirm that my early 2008 macbook pro does not have this problem. the battery does say service battery though and it's far before it should be replaced. thats also an issue that is seeming to be very common. apple fucked up majorly with snow leopard.
 
S

scorcho

testicles on a cold fall morning
yeah. SL works great on my home machine, but the laptop bugs me since i lost quite a bit of work because of the hard restarts. me and the IT guy (who knows shit about macs) decided to just disable sleep altogether.

it's odd - i was almost convinced after playing with it at an Apple store that it would be my next laptop. it wasn't until i used it in earnest for work that i'm not having second thoughts. the engineering is fantab, but the weight, soft-keyboard and default glass screen just irks me to no end.
 
U

UnluckyKate

Member
Ok GAF, I'm pretty much screwed here and I need some help.

My little bro got his book ready to apply an art school. He had like 10gb of Photoshop and other arts on a SD card. I was fooling on his mac and decide to configure Time Machine on the SD card, as external device but when I realise it was going to erase everything on the SD, I cancel everything. But it seems I didn't cancel... And everything is gone.

Yeah, I erase 2 years of his work in a single click. He had no back up or anything. Is there a way to get back those file on the SD ? Or did Time Machine erase everything for good ?
 
U

UnluckyKate

Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Smart kid.
Click to expand...

I know. Who would put all his work on an external device, and then, erasing all his original file from the HDD ?

I'm pissed because of me having done something stupid and because of him, having done something even more stupid.
 
L

liquid_gears

Banned
Can Time Machine back up external devices?

Also, is there anyway to automatically dump my photos from my ipod/camera/sd card into the pictures folder when I connect them. I don't want to use iPhoto, I've only just got the hang of letting itunes manage my music collection :lol




I just want to mention a few programs that I've been using and that I haven't heard mentioned here before.

Skim - The best PDF reader/annotator on any OS. It's lightweight, fast and very powerful, perfect for pouring over notes/journals. It's freeware too.

Xee - Picture viewer similar to the built in one in Windows. If you have just come from Windows and want to view pictures in a folder, without importing them into iphoto, then this is the perfect program. Again, it's lightweight and free.

Bookends - The best bibliography program that I've ever used. It manages thousands of citations/references very well. Excellent program. It also looks up sources like PubMed automatically. $69 for a student license, but it's well worth it.

Papers - A great journal manager. This, with bookends, Skim and Microsoft Word make reading/writing journals much easier. $42 for a student license, but it's worth it.
 
W

Woodsy

Banned
liquid_gears said:
Can Time Machine back up external devices?

Also, is there anyway to automatically dump my photos from my ipod/camera/sd card into the pictures folder when I connect them. I don't want to use iPhoto, I've only just got the hang of letting itunes manage my music collection :lol




I just want to mention a few programs that I've been using and that I haven't heard mentioned here before.

Skim - The best PDF reader/annotator on any OS. It's lightweight, fast and very powerful, perfect for pouring over notes/journals. It's freeware too.

Xee - Picture viewer similar to the built in one in Windows. If you have just come from Windows and want to view pictures in a folder, without importing them into iphoto, then this is the perfect program. Again, it's lightweight and free.

Bookends - The best bibliography program that I've ever used. It manages thousands of citations/references very well. Excellent program. It also looks up sources like PubMed automatically. $69 for a student license, but it's well worth it.

Papers - A great journal manager. This, with bookends, Skim and Microsoft Word make reading/writing journals much easier. $42 for a student license, but it's worth it.
Click to expand...

I don't think you can so it without clicking on something, but you might be able to make an Automator script.
 
B

BlueWord

Member
UnluckyKate said:
Ok GAF, I'm pretty much screwed here and I need some help.

My little bro got his book ready to apply an art school. He had like 10gb of Photoshop and other arts on a SD card. I was fooling on his mac and decide to configure Time Machine on the SD card, as external device but when I realise it was going to erase everything on the SD, I cancel everything. But it seems I didn't cancel... And everything is gone.

Yeah, I erase 2 years of his work in a single click. He had no back up or anything. Is there a way to get back those file on the SD ? Or did Time Machine erase everything for good ?
Click to expand...

UnluckyKate
Member
(Today, 07:09 AM)
Reply | Quote

Couldn't resist. I think it might be possible to use a file recovery program to retrieve the deleted files, though I'm not sure what the best options would be in OS X.
 
H

hiro4

Member
scorcho said:
for anyone that has a macbook pro and updated to snow leopard

just got a new laptop for work and whenever it triggers to sleep on its own the system will lock up - the system light remains steady, fans whirl but the screen is dead black. i have to force the laptop off and turn it on again to do anything productive. if i automatically trigger sleep the system does just that and it works as supposed to.

i've looked online and found some posts alluding to the problem, but no firm solution.
Click to expand...

No problems here with SL on my Rev C end 2006 MBP.
I've only got some problems with software not working on SL.
Also no battery issues, but that is because I just gotten a brand new battery from apple since my previous one blew up like a balloon. Hooray for Apple Care.
 
P

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
scorcho said:
yeah. SL works great on my home machine, but the laptop bugs me since i lost quite a bit of work because of the hard restarts. me and the IT guy (who knows shit about macs) decided to just disable sleep altogether.

it's odd - i was almost convinced after playing with it at an Apple store that it would be my next laptop. it wasn't until i used it in earnest for work that i'm not having second thoughts. the engineering is fantab, but the weight, soft-keyboard and default glass screen just irks me to no end.
Click to expand...

you can get matte screens...
 
K

kennah

Member
liquid_gears said:
Can Time Machine back up external devices?

Also, is there anyway to automatically dump my photos from my ipod/camera/sd card into the pictures folder when I connect them. I don't want to use iPhoto, I've only just got the hang of letting itunes manage my music collection :lol




I just want to mention a few programs that I've been using and that I haven't heard mentioned here before.

Skim - The best PDF reader/annotator on any OS. It's lightweight, fast and very powerful, perfect for pouring over notes/journals. It's freeware too.

Xee - Picture viewer similar to the built in one in Windows. If you have just come from Windows and want to view pictures in a folder, without importing them into iphoto, then this is the perfect program. Again, it's lightweight and free.

Bookends - The best bibliography program that I've ever used. It manages thousands of citations/references very well. Excellent program. It also looks up sources like PubMed automatically. $69 for a student license, but it's well worth it.

Papers - A great journal manager. This, with bookends, Skim and Microsoft Word make reading/writing journals much easier. $42 for a student license, but it's worth it.
Click to expand...
The first two programs you mentioned are built into OSX as "spacebar"
 
B

btkadams

Member
liquid_gears said:
Can Time Machine back up external devices?

Also, is there anyway to automatically dump my photos from my ipod/camera/sd card into the pictures folder when I connect them. I don't want to use iPhoto, I've only just got the hang of letting itunes manage my music collection :lol




I just want to mention a few programs that I've been using and that I haven't heard mentioned here before.

Skim - The best PDF reader/annotator on any OS. It's lightweight, fast and very powerful, perfect for pouring over notes/journals. It's freeware too.

Xee - Picture viewer similar to the built in one in Windows. If you have just come from Windows and want to view pictures in a folder, without importing them into iphoto, then this is the perfect program. Again, it's lightweight and free.

Bookends - The best bibliography program that I've ever used. It manages thousands of citations/references very well. Excellent program. It also looks up sources like PubMed automatically. $69 for a student license, but it's well worth it.

Papers - A great journal manager. This, with bookends, Skim and Microsoft Word make reading/writing journals much easier. $42 for a student license, but it's worth it.
Click to expand...
what forms of referencing/citation does bookends do?

itd be nice for me if it did MLA, APA, and AMA.
 
U

UnluckyKate

Member
BlueWord said:
UnluckyKate
Member
(Today, 07:09 AM)
Reply | Quote

Couldn't resist. I think it might be possible to use a file recovery program to retrieve the deleted files, though I'm not sure what the best options would be in OS X.
Click to expand...

I get that one everyday on Gaf... Don't worry :D

I used Recue Image 3 but it keeps crashing after it found 144 images. So I manualy stopped it at 143 and he was able to save 141 images...

I used another program that found 166 images but it was asking $40 to save the images. Fuck it.

I guess I'm - a bit - controlling the situation now...
 
B

btkadams

Member
UnluckyKate said:
I get that one everyday on Gaf... Don't worry :D

I used Recue Image 3 but it keeps crashing after it found 144 images. So I manualy stopped it at 143 and he was able to save 141 images...

I used another program that found 166 images but it was asking $40 to save the images. Fuck it.

I guess I'm - a bit - controlling the situation now...
Click to expand...
if its your brothers portfolio, i would pay the 40 bucks if i were you.
 
U

UnluckyKate

Member
btkadams said:
if its your brothers portfolio, i would pay the 40 bucks if i were you.
Click to expand...

I wish, but I'm trying Image Rescue 4 right now, and it's not finding any images at all... While the previous version seemed to worked almost fine.
 
L

liquid_gears

Banned
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Sure.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I just checked. It's even better than I thought. Does anybody use it to back up a Windows partition too? Maybe that's a step too far because of the different file systems though.
Woodsy said:
I don't think you can so it without clicking on something, but you might be able to make an Automator script.
Click to expand...

It's easy to import using Image Capture. I'm still getting used to the basics so I haven't used anything as complec as Automator scripts yet but I'll definantly look into that.

kennah said:
The first two programs you mentioned are built into OSX as "spacebar"
Click to expand...

'spacebar' will only get you so far though, the same is true for 'preview'.

Quick look is excellent for just that, taking a quick look at different files without opening them. I couldn't use Quick Look or Preview to read journals and annotate them, they're just not powerful enough. If you have to read hundreds of PDF journals/articles then Preview is horrendous.

The main reason that I use Xee instead of preview is because I can't (to my knowledge) open an image in a folder and then scroll through to other images in the same folder. The only way to do this is to highlight which images that you want to open in Preview which is a pain.

A dedicated program for PDF's (skim) and images (Xee) works much better.

btkadams said:
what forms of referencing/citation does bookends do?

itd be nice for me if it did MLA, APA, and AMA.
Click to expand...

I just checked and it seems to have all of those formats available. It's easy to create your own formats though too.
 
B

btkadams

Member
liquid_gears said:
Yeah, I just checked. It's even better than I thought. Does anybody use it to back up a Windows partition too? Maybe that's a step too far because of the different file systems though.


It's easy to import using Image Capture. I'm still getting used to the basics so I haven't used anything as complec as Automator scripts yet but I'll definantly look into that.



'spacebar' will only get you so far though, the same is true for 'preview'.

Quick look is excellent for just that, taking a quick look at different files without opening them. I couldn't use Quick Look or Preview to read journals and annotate them, they're just not versatile enough.

The main reason that I use Xee instead of preview is because I can't (to my knowledge) open an image in a folder and then scroll through to other images n the same folder. The only way to do this is to highlight which images that you want to open in Preview which is a pain.

A dedicated program for PDF's (skim) and images (Xee) works much better imo.



I just checked and it seems to have all of those formats available. It's easy to create your own formats though too.
Click to expand...
first, press spacebar over a picture in a folder. then use the arrow keys to go through the other ones in quicklook. but i'm pretty sure you're right in that you cant read journals and annotate them.

and it has all those formats? thank you so much for posting it, i am sooo checking it out.
 
J

Jal

Member
btkadams said:
first, press spacebar over a picture in a folder. then use the arrow keys to go through the other ones in quicklook.
Click to expand...

FUUUUU.. I didnt know you could do that, it really annoys me in preview.
 
G

Google

Member
Just installed Windows 7 (64bit) on my '09 whitebook.

For some reason, windows is not registering my trackpad, or apple keyboard, or any of that stuff, and everything I've read on the internets suggests that this is not the norm.

Apparantly Windows 7 has no issues with the trackpad, and responds to finger scrolling, two finger tap, etc.

However, it's not working for me.

Any ideas?
 
L

liquid_gears

Banned
mrkgoo said:
What annoys you in preview?
Click to expand...

Say you have 50 pictures in a folder. When you open one of them in preview, it's impossible to 'scroll' through the entire folders contents and go from one picture to the next and so forth.

You have to open all the pictures at once. Does anybody know a way to force preview to scroll through pictures like Windows Gallery does?

I didn't know that you could do this in quicklook either so thanks a lot for that tip :D
 
C

Chris R

Member
Had to format my 16gb USB drive with NTFS due to the fact that I was transferring large files. I wish Microsoft would open up exFAT as it seems that it would be a better file system for the USB drive as I use it on both Windows and Mac machines. Going to try to get the NTFS drive working in OSX now :| There is a free app to do that right? So far all I've found are paid apps.
 
M

mrkgoo

Member
liquid_gears said:
Say you have 50 pictures in a folder. When you open one of them in preview, it's impossible to 'scroll' through the entire folders contents and go from one picture to the next and so forth.

You have to open all the pictures at once. Does anybody know a way to force preview to scroll through pictures like Windows Gallery does?

I didn't know that you could do this in quicklook either so thanks a lot for that tip :D
Click to expand...

Ah yes, I know what you mean.

Yeah, I tend to either just use quicklook, or just select them all and open all at once. I guess it would be annoying, but I just work around it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

INSIDE APPLE'S MASSIVE PUSH TO TRANSFORM THE MAC INTO A GAMING PARADISE
2 3 4
151
17K
RoboFu replied
The Mac vs PC War is back on (sprawling newsletter article by Tom Warren about Windows & Arm)
2 3
142
8K
GHG replied
Finally got around to setting up GFN on my tv..,,,,
14
1K
Jesb replied
Should I buy a gaming PC?
2
67
3K
David B replied
[Verge] Windows on Arm isn’t ready for gaming
22
2K
LordOfChaos replied
Top Bottom