I had some really weird stuff start happening. First Class (two versions) would take 2 minutes to launch. Excel would lock up when quitting, if I had text on the clipboard. I could not figure it out! I was not sure if they were related, so I deleted all of the FC prefs, reinstalled, nothing helped.
Then I tried a second user with Excel. Same problem. Ok so it wasn’t my user preferences.
Then I tried word. Same problem, but it put up a “Connecting to the printer…” dialog! Whoa!
So I checked and yep, I had a remote printer set up (the only one), that server was off and Mac OS X was very unhappy. In fact, I could not delete it or anything.
So, Print Center Repair 3.01 to the rescue! I used the button on the “Print Center & System Files” tab named “Reset Print Center” and now my Mac launches all applications quickly, Excel quits fine and First class launches quickly.
I also noticed I had printer sharing turned on my laptop (oops) so that is now off too. The two of these issues must have combined to really confuse CUPS, the OS X printer sharing software.
Be sure to keep Print Center Repair on any Mac you use!
This hotel I stayed in has 802.11b. I had bought a Linksys card for my TiBook and it works, but only 2 bars, so NO WAY the airport would have worked. They told me it was not Mac compatible. I said “Give me the PC instructions” All I needed was the SSID. Then it worked. They said “What do Mac users need to do?” I said “Choose Other Network from the Airport Menu and enter the SSID” They said “That’s all?” I said, yep. ROFL
The PC instructions were 5 pages of getting to prefs and setting up a new network connection. LOL
I wanted better airport/802.11b reception so I looked into third party antennas. Then I found I could get a Macsense 802.11b card for $99 but nobody had them. So on a lark I bought a Linksys 802.11b/g card for $80 from CompUSA and was going to find some third party drivers or hacks to make it work.
Well lo and behold I read that as of Airport 3.1, Apple now supports some of the more popular cards, such as those based on the Broadcom chips! My linksys is, so I plugged it in….
Next I had four airports listed, oops heh. So I pulled out my airport card. Now I had just the one. For some reason the linksys won’t auto log into my hidden WEP network, so once I use the Airport menu to type in the network name/password, it works!
I did a quick test and where I used to get 1-2 bars, and virtually lost connection, I now get 3-4 bars, depending on how I sit. Once I go to the living room, I am 4 bars no matter what (whereas before, I used to be able to drop connection by sitting wrong)
Thanks Apple for supporting third party cards, after you dorked up the tibook with no reception! And hey, now I am ready for 802.11g, and can move this card to another laptop at will!
A friend installed this shareware hack onto his 15″ imac, rebooted, got a blinking question mark. After 2 days, it went back to Apple and was reported to have a bad logic board. Beware of this low level hack!
On Monday I was trying to use iChat AV and the video was SO SLOW I could not move windows, type, nothing! I thought it was my DV cam vs. my 500 TiBook.
Then I logged out and back in today, and tried it again with my brother, and the speed was great! Then while we were chatting, he launched SnapzPro and his 933 went to hell performance wise. It took him over a minute to get logged out.
Then I recalled that I had launched SnapsPro on Monday to take a screenshot in the morning, so it had been running already.
Thus, we seem to think that SnapzPro does not like iChat AV, or vice versa.
iPhoto 2 now writes an XML file titled “AlbumData.xml” every time you make a change to a photo. This file contains all of your image references, your comments, titles and keywords.
As iPhoto rewrites the entire file on every change, you can safely add this file to your .Mac backup list.
The file can be found in your iPhoto Library folder.
So it’s been a week since I entered technological hell. Cashed my bad karma chips in. Wanted to get into gardening. Why?
Last Sunday my IBM Travelstar 48GB drive I had put into my PowerBook G4/500 died. It died a year ago and was replaced by IBM, but now it was dying again. It had failed to spin up twice in three days post sleep, so I knew it was not in good shape.
So Sunday it fails for a final time. I check out my backup LaCie 60GB firewire drive and oops, I have not backed up since October! Well, ok, I had all of my source online and other places. The source was encrypted, which then hit me, I never wrote down the key! I called DriveSavers and was quoted between $500 and $2700. Ouch.
So I let it set for a few hours and booted off my LaCie. Sure enough, the IBM was back alive! So I unmounted the LaCie and plugged the laptop into my G4 tower. I rebooted the powerbook in target disk mode and proceeded to use Apple’s Backup app to back up 28 GB to 7 DVD-Rs. This took over 8 hours.
I then started a Carbon Copy Clone to the LaCie (now that I had a backup) I woke up Monday around noon and the copy had failed due to lack of disk space. ugh. So I looked around and found a hidden Trash folder that the Finder didn’t see. The trash had 8GB of data in it so I did a rm -rf on the trash and re-did the carbon copy clone of the drive.
I called IBM and they put me over to Hitachi who had bought the IBM disk division. They sent me to the web site to get an RMA. I tried that, but it told me I already had an RMA. I tried to look up the RMA from the serial number, but it could not be found! Turns out this is the RMA from last year. It was now too late to call Hitachi, so that had to wait until Tuesday.
So I then proceed to wipe my 48GB of all f the data three times to ensure it is clean.
Now it is tuesday and I am running off the LaCie since it has all of my data, and I hear a clunking sound. Clunk, Clunk, Clunk and OS X locks up. Sigh. I reboot, fsck kicks in, clunk, clink. My backup drive was now dying!
So I think “Screw this” and head to Frys. They had some Western Digital Special Edition 80s on sale for $90 after rebate, so I picked up two of those. I put one into the LaCie enclosure (since LaCie said the drive is dead and not worth repairing) and proceeded to use .Mac backup on the G4 to restore from my DVD-Rs.
Well crap, the restore failed. It could not find file “0-0-0-0-1.html” then 2, then 3, etc, etc, etc. Ok fine, my laptop is running, I’ll manually copy the files off the DVD-Rs as backup keeps the files in clear text. I copy “My Applications” over to the drive and try to open my excel spreadsheet that has my passwords on it. OS X tells me it cannot find Excel. Well ok maybe the Finder is hosed.
I open My Applications, then Microsoft Office. No applications! I start checking and none, none of my applications were backed up by Backup! Only documents! How lame is this? Nothing in the read me, the help file, the Backup application states that it only backs up documents. I was really pissed at some engineer. Ya know, if I drag a folder into your backup app, back it up, or at least give me a dialog alerting me that not everything will be backed up!
Well this sucked. I own all of my apps, but I had a ton of installers I had made that now apparently existed nowhere. I let everything set for awhile, then put the Quantum 60gb (the dead one) inside of the G4 itself and it booted!
Happy I had miracle number two for the week, I carbon copy cloned the 60gb to the new WD 80 and finally had a full backup. I then put the second 80 inside the G4 and backed up the 60gb a second time. Now I had two backups.
Once that was done, I put the original 20gb back into the powerbook and got it updated from 10.1.4 to 10.2.4. I then copied my apps and important documents to the laptop.
Now that Simeon has found iBeeZe for me that lets me tell my G4 to wake up at 3am, I am going to get my Onstream tapes back into rotation. If Dantz will support my Pioneer A-105 I’ll make a DVD-R backup as well. I think a firesafe is in order.
And for the files I have stored remotely, the password is now hard to guess but rememberable.
It just goes to show, you can’t ever have enough backups.
It is clear as we move into a more wireless world that we are going to need more regulation over the frequencies so these devices no longer step on each other’s toes…
This is something that has been bugging me in all OS X apps and I would like your feedback.
Lets say I open a new email message in Mail and start typing along. The default font is Helvetica 12 I think. Then I paste something in from, say, Script Editor. The font is Geneva with colors and such.
Now, I want to go back to the default font, but there is no way to do this other than to go and try and figure out what font/size/color/style the default text is in and reset every property by hand.
Mail’s “Make Plain Text” clears the font attributes for the entire email. I realize that the introduction of font data other than the default will make Mail send RTF text vs. plain text, but this is a UI issue with Text Edit, etc.
Anyone have any thoughts?
(I just noticed Mail’s Copy/Paste style from the Edit menu (which is nowhere near the Format menu, but this is not consistent from one OS X app to another. Time for HIG to step up?)
Happy New Years from Apple! iCal and iSync have both received updates. You must download them from the site, no Software Update is available as of this entry.
For iSync, new additions include supporting the web accessed address book. YAY! This will go live after Jobs’ keynote next Tuesday. Also improved (but not tested) is the palm conduit setup. I will test the palm conduit when I return home.
iCal launches about 20 times faster now. Nice work, team! It remembers the window size! And better yet, it remembers a different window size for each viewing mode (day, week, month)
Events still overlay other events oddly, instead of showing them side by side (two events for the exact same time frame. Think multiple tracks of classes)
iCal is much zippier now. I have not tried importing, etc.
Thanks, Apple! Congratulations on the great progress!
If you use Jaguar, download Keychain First Aid The link is to the version tracker page.
KFA found four problems with my keychain - I had been experiencing the “.mac password forgotten” issue now and then. Hopefully with 10.2.2 and a fixed keychain, we’re good to go!
Apple’s Mac OS X 10.2 email client, Mail, has a very easy to use junk spam mail system. When email comes in that is spam, you simply select the email, click the “Junk” button and now Mail knows a little more about the spam you get.
You continue to train Mail until it is marking the spam for you on it’s own. Now you can put Mail into Automatic mode, which means when junk mail comes in, Mail automatally moves the spam to your Junk folder.
Automatic mode has another interesting side effect which actually bit me subconsciously.
I was noticing that more and more of my good email was showing up in the junk folder. “Hmm, I doubt Mail is screwing up this often, let’s watch my habits,” I thought to myself. After awhile I noticed I was marking good email that I no longer wanted as Junk!
“Why am I doing this?” I wondered. So a little more paying attention and I figured it out. In Automatic mode, if a spam comes in that mail does not think is spam, when you select it and mark it as junk, the mail immediately moves into the Junk folder. This has the same visual effect as being deleted.
I get plenty of spam, so I guess after awhile my brain merged deleting spam and deleting normal email and I started using the Junk button to delete all email!
This may just be conincidence, but I seem to have lost a couple of emails from a friend. In other words, I never received them. I had not emailed this person until the day 10.2.2 came out, so it may just be conincendental.
However, if you have emailed me and I have not responded, please email me again.
Microsoft Office may be too damned expensive and come from the evil empire, but the latest update to Office X (10.1.2) has improved application launch significantly!
So congratulations to the team!
Now, can you go beat on the Windows Media Player folks, please? Please?
