Loading Bars - Filed under 'mac os x'

November 19, 2009

Camino 2.0

It's finally out. Camino 2.0 has tab overview which is like Exposé but for browser tabs, it warns you of phishing sites and sites with malware, you can rearrange the tabs, has growl support, has pop-up and flash blockers, and it also supports Keychain.

It's my preferred browser after Safari.

Download Camino 2 here

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Filed under // browser camino mac os x

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October 21, 2009

App Store Expense Monitor

Evan alerted me to this nifty app earlier which I should have noticed even earlier since Macworld US wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. It's a menu item called App Store Expense Monitor. What it does is it gives you a list of all the iPhone apps you've ever purchased based on the iTunes Media folder in your computer and it also tells you how much you've spent.

If you have purchased apps using different iTunes Store accounts, it will display them separately although it can only display in one currency. It uses the currency setting inside the System Preferences under Language & Text in Mac OS X Snow Leopard or under International in Leopard. This means if you use accounts with multiple countries that use different currency symbols, it will only show your primary currency.

It's handy because it lets you keep track of what you've bought and how much you've spent. You can also export the list into one text file that can be imported into a spreadsheet.

It's not without several issues though:

1. It looks up current app prices on the App Store to determine how much you've spent.

It doesn't help if you got the apps at different prices or even for free during promo periods. If you did, you'll have to manually enter the actual price you paid. If you've spent money by purchasing for items directly from inside an application, this app won't know anything about it.

2. It's a menu item app

It could have been a proper application that sits on the Dock but the developer decided to make it a menu item. I can see why it's useful up there but it should have been an option like with Skitch. There is precious little real estate on the menu bar when you're not using a 2000 pixel wide monitor.

3. The app stays on top

Even dialog boxes would step back when you switch to a different app. This thing stays on top even when it's not the active window, obscuring whatever windows you have open underneath.

4. No secondary click option

It would have been more useful had it had a contextual menu when you control+click on each of the app listed

Regardless of those shortcomings, this app is undoubtedly useful. Arguably, buying apps using iTunes Gift Cards would be a better way to control your spending if that option available in your country. At the moment, there is no iTunes Cards for the App Stores in South East Asia.

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Filed under // app store apple apps budget iphone mac os x money

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October 8, 2009

How to open a locked Time Machine drive

The other day I had the opportunity to troubleshoot two issues on an iMac using iChat's Screen Sharing feature. While the screen sharing itself isn't new, it's been around for ages via various VNC software and was made easier in Mac OS X when Leopard came out in 2007, the actual use of it makes you feel like you're working in the future.

iMac can't boot properly

The first problem was that the iMac wouldn't boot into the system. It would display the Apple logo and just stays there for hours. This is unsolvable using screen sharing since the iMac wouldn't boot so we went via text chat.

Get the original Install DVD from the box the iMac came in. If you don't have this DVD or something similar, you're basically screwed until you can get yourself one or you go to an Apple Service Provider to fix your problem.. Don't lose this DVD. If you do, you need to have a Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard DVD that you can buy from any Apple Reseller.

Insert the DVD, follow along as if you were to install the OS but once you see the menu bar on top, select Utilities from the menu bar and choose Disk Utility. Select the hard drive of the Mac and choose Repair Permissions. Once it's done, it doesn't hurt to click on Repair Disk.

Once you do that, restart the computer.

If the hard drive is not detected by Disk Utility then your problem is more serious than that. You need to take it to an Apple Service Provider.

Locked Time Machine drive

The second problem I faced while troubleshooting that iMac was that it had a Time machine backup drive, presumably a Time Capsule, which was inaccessible.

Once the iMac restarted successfully, the backup drive appeared with a padlock image on its icon indicating that the user account is unable to access it. It turns out none of the administrator account could access that drive.

Until I found this solution on Apple's discussion board.

1. Open Terminal

2. Enter the following lines:

sudo chflags nouchg /Volumes/"TM drive name"

followed by

sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/"TM drive name"

This command needs a password.

Note that you have to have a password set for an administrator account. When you enter the first command, you'll be prompted for a password. This is the password for the administrator account. If you set up your account without a password, go to System Preferences > Accounts > and change the password. You can replace the password with a blank one after this is done if you don't want to use one.

How do you know you use or have an administrator account? Go to the Accounts pane in System Preferences and see the label underneath your account name.

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Filed under // apple backup guide leopard mac os x screen sharing snow leopard terminal time capsule time machine tip

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October 3, 2009

Solving the Mystery of Disk Utility's Failure to Erase USB Drives

The excerpt below is from www.tidbits.com

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Solving the Mystery of Disk Utility's Failure to Erase USB Drives

…After 45 minutes of Googling and cursing, I finally realized that the Iomega enclosure had both FireWire 400 and USB 2 interfaces. I dug out a FireWire cable, plugged it in, and all was golden. I was able to erase and partition at will. (An unrelated issue also widely discussed was that you might need to change the partition type from Apple Partition Map in the Partition section's Options dialog; GUID Partition Table is generally the right choice since Tiger.)

I later found some additional background advice on this topic from other users: there's clearly some incompatibility introduced in Leopard that prevents Mac OS X from talking over certain USB drive interfaces.

Based on comments and discussions all over Mac sites dating back to the release of 10.5 Leopard, you have three choices:

Switch to FireWire. That only works, of course, if there's a FireWire interface.
Boot off a 10.4 Tiger installation disk, and use Disk Utility while booted. That's a slightly tedious but nifty option, although it won't work for machines too new to allow a Tiger book.
Remove the drive and put it into another enclosure, preferably one with a FireWire interface.

Sent from my iPhone

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Filed under // apple bug FireWire leopard mac mac os x snow leopard USB

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September 28, 2009

Tweetie 2.0 coming very soon

via news.atebits.com

The excellent Tweetie apps on both iPhone and Mac will have version 2.0 coming real soon. Loren Brichter, the developer, will submit the app to Ap Store this week and the Mac version will follow soon after.

It looks like a heck of a lot of work was put into making this one as it now looks like a completely brand new app (well, Brichter did say it's a new app). There is an insane amount of changes and new implementations in the iPhone version of Tweetie 2.0, which will be available for $2.99, and unfortunately owners of Tweetie 1.x will have to buy it again but it's going to be worth it.

Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone will require OS 3.0 and best used on iPhone 3GS but older iPhones are good for it too, they just won't be able to take advantage of some of its more advanced features.

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Filed under // apple apps developer iphone mac mac os x tweetie twitter

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September 22, 2009

Mac's Snow Leopard Is One Cool Cat

Upgrading the operating system of a personal computer is something most people are afraid to do. When it comes to things they don’t fully understand, they’d rather take the conservative approach and stick with what they know will work.

That’s why you see most computers running on software that’s eight years old instead of something released just two years ago, for example.

New operating systems also tend to require better hardware specifications, take up more space and will generally render your old, or even not-so-old machine either obsolete or less useful than before.

Businesses don’t like things that are out of their comfort zone either. Unless there is a significant incentive to upgrade, you’re not going to see companies adopt new technologies or systems, let alone rush in to embrace them.

Then there’s the little matter of cost. Buying a new operating system means parting with some hard-earned cash. Paying to have possible new problems dumped on you while you haven’t even figured out how to fix the old ones, is not a terribly exciting prospect.

With Mac OS X 10.6, which goes by the name Snow Leopard, Apple is attempting to address all of the above.

Snow Leopard pricing in Indonesia (with a surprise)

As we all know by now Apple's next Mac OS X version, Snow Leopard, will be available from tomorrow, Friday, August 28 2009. It's available for Intel Macs only (bye bye Power PC Macs).

In the US, Snow Leopard costs $29 or for a family pack with a license for five computers $49. Mac owners who bought a new Mac since June 8, 2009 can order Snow Leopard by mail for a shipping cost of $9.95.

In Indonesia's Apple Online Store, Snow Leopard costs Rp 379,000 ($38) or Rp 679 000 ($67) for family pack. Qualified users can order it for Rp 119,000 ($11)

If your Intel Mac is running Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) Apple makes Snow Leopard available via the Mac Box Set which includes iLife '09 and iWork '09. It retails for Rp 2.1 million ($210) on the Indonesian Apple Online Store ($169 in the US). The family pack of this Mac Box Set is Rp 2.8 million ($280; $199 in the US).

A bit expensive? Possibly. Some ratios: $280/$199 is 1.41, $210/$169 is 1.24, $67/$49 is 1.367, $38/$29 is 1.310, $11/$10 is 1.1. As you can see the ratio generally increases as the price goes up. Granted, the tax component is missing from the US price because each US state has its own tax rates which is why you hardly ever see the final prices on US e-commerce sites.

As for the surprise component, we at Macworld Indonesia found out while playing around with the new cat that it turns out you can install Snow Leopard on a blank drive from the supposedly upgrade-only DVD.

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Filed under // apple mac os x pricing retail snow leopard

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August 19, 2009

Invalid node structure under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

"When you do a Google search, some sites suggest using the command line utility fsck_hfs with the -y option (assume Yes to every question.. if you run an fsck on a damaged filesystem you’ll usually see why this is a good idea). That didn’t work for me, it would just crap out again the same way Disk Utility had. What DID work was the following.. (after a sudo su -)

# fsck_hfs -rf /dev/disk1s3"

From Devlab

My 250GB Freecom external drive suddenly won't mount this morning. Just so happens it housed both my Time Machine backups and my iTunes library. I can deal with losing the backups but the library consisted of songs and videos I've collected since almost ten years ago. The iTunes library is actually also backed up in another hard drive but apparently that drive is failing, so it was imperative that I save this library at least until I can buy another drive.

Disk Utility diagnosed the failure as being, "Invalid node structure," which essentially means it's not necessarily physically damaged, it just has a busted file structure . Generally a reformat would fix it. My problem was it needed to be backed up while at the same time the drive volume wasn't mounting.

After leaving the drive unplugged for 10-15 minutes, I reconnected it using its built in Firewire cable and suddenly it sprang to life. Except it became read-only. I couldn't change anything inside but it didn't matter because I was going to transfer the contents out, not modifying it.

Luckily I had an empty identical drive sitting around at the office. Using a USB cable, I plugged that in and used it to temporarily store the contents of my failed drive. Didn't occur to me to use CarbonCopyCloner until I was halfway through the backup even though I had it ready. It would have made things a lot easier. Disk Warrior would also have helped except the CD was at home.

I ended up copying everything except the Time Machine backups to the second Freecom drive, reformatted the damaged drive, then putting all the previous contents back in to it. Not sure how it got damaged but the last thing I did was stop a Time Machine backup from completing. Something I've done many times before without any negative side effect.

The above excerpt from Devlab might have also helped had I found it before I went through all this trouble. Hope it's useful to you.

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Filed under // apple crash hard drive macosx troubleshooting

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April 29, 2009

WWDC Sold out

For the second time in history, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is sold out. This time however it was sold out barely four weeks after it was first announced at the end of March. Half the time it took last year.

No doubt iPhone OS 3.0, Mac OS X 10.6, and the near certainty of the unveiling of the next iPhone fueled the surge.

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Filed under // apple developer iphone mac os x snow leopard wwdc

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