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Mac OSX Noob thread of OSX noobs
- Thread starter koam
- Start date
Mecha_Infantry
Banned
mrkgoo said:
First of the month, I do it twice a month.. (are my stats bad
?)even though my general browser of choice is Firefox (i can't function in life without keyboard browsing), the Mac version of Chrome is shaping up to be a very, very excellent browser. the interface is sparse and fits with OSX, very speedy, and already has a third-party extension that can load adblock plus blocklists.
use Chromatic to download/update the latest nightly builds - http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/32856
ABP for Chrome is here - http://www.chromeextensions.org/appearance-functioning/adblock/
use Chromatic to download/update the latest nightly builds - http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/32856
ABP for Chrome is here - http://www.chromeextensions.org/appearance-functioning/adblock/
I do agree, Chrome is nice and very fast. But I hate that intrusive Google Updater shit that gets installed with all Google software on Mac. Could they not just check for updates when the application is launched? It doesn't tell you anything, it downloads updates without telling you anything, it updates the apps without telling you anything. And there's no easy option to disable it. If you remove it manually, it gets reinstalled whenever a Google application that uses it is launched again.scorcho said:
That's far too intrusive for me, and dare I say, evil.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
It's how everything should be. Why do I give a shit that something is downloading a new version when I'm not using my bandwidth, and why do I need to see a progress meter when it can just update in the background?hirokazu said:
If you don't trust your software, don't use it. It makes no sense to trust a browser to work as a browser and keep you safe but then distrust its updating mechanism.
Mecha_Infantry said:First of the month, I do it twice a month.. (are my stats bad
No they sound 'too good'.
I would think battery health would be less than 97% after 160 cycles (unless you have the new 5 year battery).
I find calibration doesn't work every time - you have to charge, deplete and charge - sometimes it calibrates sometimes it doesn't - supposedly the deplete should be for several hours on sleep.
Mine's at 370 cycles, and while it says a health of 60%, I think it's less than that (if that percentage even means anything). I get maybe 1-1.5 hours on a full charge, and anywhere near 20% it could either warn me, go to sleep, or just shut off. I calibrate once a month or so, but I found the calibration can 'not work' if it's already miscalibrated sometimes and just shuts off.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Something that is bothering me. I notice when I open the Finder I see something under "shared":
Does this simply show that there is another computer around the area with a wireless or what?
Does this simply show that there is another computer around the area with a wireless or what?
As far as I know you'll only see that if someone has enabled sharing on their computer. Of course, I can't tell if that's a Mac or a PC you're seeing shared, but regardless I think they'd have to actually be on your network if you're seeing it there. You're sure you have your network secured properly, or aren't inadvertently connecting to the wrong network?
Particle Physicist
between a quark and a baryon
^^^^ do you have a windows machine on your network?
if you don't, someone is on your wireless, and you should change the password.
if you don't, someone is on your wireless, and you should change the password.
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
quadriplegicjon said:
Well my router is connected to a Windows machine.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Vista and newer and OSX do not allow you access to destroying a system in an auto-update. Unless you're seeing a password prompt, the worst an application with an automatic updater can do is destroy itself.fireside said:
Like I said, if you guys don't trust applications, why use them? I'm not speaking about Chrome, but every application in general. They are all capable of doing many automatic things just as potentially devastating or untrustworthy as an auto-update. I don't see how being able to see a progress meter fill up can give you such a sense of security.
It's definitely a windows machine (the icon is an old crt and bsod, quicklook it). On your windows machine, try right-clicking My Computer and pick Properties. You should see the name of your windows machine and hopefully it matches the one in your screenshot.Flying_Phoenix said:
It's not that seeing a progress meter fill up gives you a sense of security it's the fact that only you get to decide when to install the update that gives you the sense of security. I generally wait a week or so before installing any updates to major applications or the system in case there is a bad bug. For example, Nintendo recently released a Wii update that broke the system. By not immediately installing it I prevented the risk of it breaking my console. I can't avoid this risk if everything decides to update itself without my permission.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Having Chrome update itself without you knowing is neat I guess but I'm not sure the average user will be happy when he wakes up one day and all of his bookmarks are gone or the application simply doesn't start and he has no idea why. Or if iPhoto updates itself and there's a bug that deletes his entire iPhoto library. Things like that are rare but it's foolish to think that they'll never happen.
Mecha_Infantry
Banned
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
If you can not see why stealth updates are a bad thing, then you aren't opening your eyes. Secondly Googles stats/info collection is extremly scary. Thirdly, as I found out on Windows, Chrome circumvents the usual administrator O/S security and further more fucks up the use of different profiles leaves Chrome on the outskirts for me.
On OSX I use Firefox and sometimes Safari for websites that don't render in FF properly. If you tweak FF then it's a wonder. Limit your add ons, don't keep tonnes of flash based tabs open and it will be excellent. I've only had to restart my machine today due to an update, but normally I sleep my MBP and FF still has it's tabs open for maybe about 1-2 weeks and I have NO problems. I don't ever think since I tweaked it that it's crashed on me!
As for my battery I am running it down now, until about this evening (Sunday over here in the UK), so I can get a true understanding of the battery life
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
abq said:
Thanks.
It just says "owner" not "owner-kcl9hwb"...I assume that it doesn't matter right?
Schrade said:
Yep, it's the same one.
Thanks for the help guys!
Mecha_Infantry
Banned
My battery stats
Mad Hatter
Member
hirokazu said:
Actually, I find the opposite is true. Firefox 3.6b, while not as fast as Safari, is pretty efficient with memory. It consistently stays around 180-300mb with about 7-14 tabs open, while Safari will bloat to over 500mb very fast. I've had Firefox open for several hours tonight with 7 tabs open and it's hovering around 220mb.
I have no idea what kind of memory usage Chrome gets on OS X- I'd be interested in hearing anyone's experiences.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
I'm sure we'll all have a great story to tell about the day Chrome irreparably broke half of the world's computers.fireside said:
I know what you're saying, but my point still stands that if you don't trust software, why are you using any? I can't get into the sort of paranoia or control freak sort of mindset where I would have to postpone updating or check to make sure everything's okay with what's happening because I couldn't trust my software to be exactly what I thought it would be when I started using it. I have computers because they accomplish certain tasks, so I can't get into the act of task managing the tools for my tasks.
It reminds me of people that have Firefox locked down with Adblock, NoScript, CookieSafe, proxies, etc. They love the Internet so much that they're willing to manually intercept transmissions from it to make sure it's okay instead of trusting that a browser used by a large portion of the world's online population is probably going to handle things just fine on its own.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
It doesn't matter how much memory is being used. You want your memory being used. It's why you have so much. What matters is how gracefully the application handles sharing memory with other applications or just generally not being a slow bastard about what it has. Firefox fails in this regard compared to the other browsers.Mad Hatter said:
Mecha_Infantry
Banned
Shiggie said:Is it too late to calibrate?
woah, any idea why it has the black boarder?
You can calibrate whenever, it just determines your battery's true life. As for the boarder it's normally when you save a .png as a jpeg
BecauseLiu Kang Baking A Pie said:
a) in my country, we have bandwidth caps, so I don't like software automatically downloading shit
b) I should at least be given a choice of whether to use auto update, or when to apply an update
c) I should be told when software install daemons and be given an easy way to remove them
d) Pretty much everyone else writing software on the Mac does it on app launch. Why the hell do you need to install a daemon to dial home for updates? Google software isn't that important, so they shouldn't try to make themselves feel they are.
How about if everybody decided they should also have the privelige to do it the way Google does? A dozen or two daemons doing nothing useful but ringing home to check for updates, no proper notice of their installation, and continuing to run after the apps that installed them have been removed. No wait, this is all OK, because these things, like, autoupdate your apps, man! >_>
And no, apart from giving them a test runs, I don't use Chrome or whatever other Google Desktop app ever since they started bundling the Updater. It's not all about trust. They can offer the feature to folks like you for all I care, but it's not really asking to much to have the OPTION to choose the update mechanism and the OPTION to uninstall the update mechanism.
Ooh thanks for that recommendation, I didn't have CookieSafe installed yet.Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Forget trust for a minute here, it's also about control. Would you give up the option to determine what gets installed on your computer and let some software pick what gets added whenever it wants?
liquid_gears
Banned
Is anybody having any of these problems? They only seem to have appeared after the last update.
1. - Applications like Firefox, Microsoft Office and a few others are constantly asking if I should allow them access to the internet. I've checked and they all have a green light behind the firewall.
2. - I have a Windows machine named 'desktop' connected. It appears under the 'shared' section of finder. I download a lot of files such as images, PDFs, Videos etc to my desktop. Every web browser that I've tried has automatically started downloading these files to my desktop on the Windows machine, and not to my desktop on the mac. It's really annoying becuase it's hard to tell the difference between the locations in a small finder window. Has anybody had this issue before? I'll change the name of the windows machine and see if that fixed the problem.
1. - Applications like Firefox, Microsoft Office and a few others are constantly asking if I should allow them access to the internet. I've checked and they all have a green light behind the firewall.
2. - I have a Windows machine named 'desktop' connected. It appears under the 'shared' section of finder. I download a lot of files such as images, PDFs, Videos etc to my desktop. Every web browser that I've tried has automatically started downloading these files to my desktop on the Windows machine, and not to my desktop on the mac. It's really annoying becuase it's hard to tell the difference between the locations in a small finder window. Has anybody had this issue before? I'll change the name of the windows machine and see if that fixed the problem.
This probably isn't the right thread but I'll give it a go:
So I have a mac, and an iPhone, and I am in a language program that uses REALLY old video in mov format(probably sorenson, but who knows). Anyway, I want to rip the audio from these videos into mp3 and put them on my iPhone so I can listen to them.
I have tried all the logical ways of doing it, I tried converting in quicktime player, but that only results in crashes. I have imported it into itunes, which it will play, but the convert to mp3 section is greyed out. I have searched the internet, and downloaded the program max, but it will not take the files.
Please, can I get some advise on how to convert these files to mp3.
Thanks.
So I have a mac, and an iPhone, and I am in a language program that uses REALLY old video in mov format(probably sorenson, but who knows). Anyway, I want to rip the audio from these videos into mp3 and put them on my iPhone so I can listen to them.
I have tried all the logical ways of doing it, I tried converting in quicktime player, but that only results in crashes. I have imported it into itunes, which it will play, but the convert to mp3 section is greyed out. I have searched the internet, and downloaded the program max, but it will not take the files.
Please, can I get some advise on how to convert these files to mp3.
Thanks.
Mecha_Infantry
Banned
Oh, and here is my lame attempt at being a Youtube techie!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vXql_JOf4A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vXql_JOf4A
Flash 10.1 preview release available.
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
It doesn't feature hardware acceleration like the PC version does, but it will reduce your CPU usage pretty dramatically. Reports say that it's cut from 75% to 25%.
Don't forget to uninstall the old version of Flash before installing this.
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
It doesn't feature hardware acceleration like the PC version does, but it will reduce your CPU usage pretty dramatically. Reports say that it's cut from 75% to 25%.
Don't forget to uninstall the old version of Flash before installing this.
Mr. Wonderful
Member
Is acceleration planned for 10.1 on OS X, or is Adobe just not doing it at all? Because I'm really starting to get sick of this Mac BS.Burai said:
I don't think I want to install 10.1 just yet. Flash isn't stable enough as it is, let alone in a pre-release state. I'll still check it out though.
In their release notes, they state that the H.264 acceleration API isn't open. Seems odd, as you can definitely hook into Quicktime X, but I suspect there might be some sort of hitch between a QTMovie played through Flash Player.
Otherwise though it's been fine for me. One can finally scroll in flash using your mouse/trackpad.
Otherwise though it's been fine for me. One can finally scroll in flash using your mouse/trackpad.
lunarworks
Member
This. I'm assuming I have both installed, now, or something.LCfiner said:
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
I would have been happy with just this, really.giga said:
Does it still steal your mouse clicks and browser keyboard shortcuts? I'm not installing this on my work computer.
Ad Infinitum
Member
I have no idea what you guys are on about with calibrating batteries. I want in on the fun.
Ad Infinitum said:
first, charge up the battery, remove it from the mac and place it on a kitchen scale.
record the weight.
then, put it back in the mac, deplete the battery fully (this can be done in around 45 minutes by viewing some flash videos).
once the battery is empty, take it out and weigh the battery again
record the new weight.
take the difference in weight between the fully charged and empty batteries and divide by the mAh capacity of the battery. now take this value and multiply by 100 and assign it to the z-axis.
this value is your calibration vector. write it down and keep it in your wallet
And you're done.
Diseased Yak
Gold Member
The Chosen One said:
I have a MacBook Air, and have used the Remote Disc shared off my W7 machine just fine. I've never watched a DVD from it, though, but I dont' see why it wouldn't work, seeing as how I installed Show Leopard via that way and it worked great.
Particle Physicist
between a quark and a baryon
LCfiner said:
:lol that reminded me of Look Around You.