Tag: Macintosh

At PMUG last night we talked about calibrating your laptop battery. I mentioned using the ‘yes’ unix application to run the battery down, but it appears at OS X now sleeps even though yes is running. Apple’s instructions just state to use the machine until the battery is dead, but if you want the battery… Continue reading Calibrating your laptop battery

You can find the firmware here Likely, this issue won’t affect you unless you have one of the very expensive, fast solid state drives (SSDs). Most of you don’t.

Panic is having a sale on Transmit, Coda, Candybar and Unison, all 50% off for 3 days only. If you need an excellent FTP program, check out Transmit. If you need a newsreader, Unison is good. I don’t use Coda nor Candybar, but I hear good things about them.

According to this report by Landon Fuller, the Java that ships with Mac OS X contains a vulnerability that allows any website to excecute code on your Macintosh via Java. This is a fairly serious issue and so I am recommending you disable Java. For Safari users: Open Preferences under the Safari menu Click the… Continue reading Java Security Issue – Disable Java

Apple’s response to those awful Microsoft “I’m a PC” ads like “Lauren” is out. Watch it here before the spoilers below: [qt:http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/getamac/2009/apple-mvp-elimination-us-20090512_480x272.mov 480 272] The ad starts off by implying some PCs are slow. Some Macs are slower than other Macs, but ok, the MS ads did say that some of them wanted performance for… Continue reading I’m a Steve

This is a first! Software Update failed to download 10.5.7 due to an invalid digital signature. Oops. Someone at Apple made a boo boo. I guess we wait for a fixed updated!

Apple has released 10.5.7 of Mac OS X Leopard. Details can be found here but include: Additional Information What’s included? General Includes latest security fixes. Includes additional RAW image support for several third-party cameras. Improves performance of video playback and cursor movements for recent Macs with NVIDIA graphics. Resolves an issue with Dvorak keyboard layout… Continue reading 10.5.7 is released

Some friends and I were discussing about the inability to open the Downloads folder from the Stack on the dock, when the stack is fanned. I don’t like the grid view (I have one, it is called the Finder) so I use fanned, sorted with newest at the bottom. You can open the Downloads folder’s… Continue reading Showing an item in a fanned stack

I was discussing the Safari 4’s “Tabs on Top” with friends at MacCamp this weekend. By 24 hours, my Wife had given up on it. Another friend actually liked it. Most didn’t like it at all. I did surmise, as I have before, that Apple is preparing “Tabs on Top” for all Cocoa applications. You… Continue reading Thoughts on Safari 4’s “Tabs on Top”

The Santa Rosa MacBook Pro, a replacement for the one that caught fire, started acting up last month. Apple said they could not do anything until it failed more often, which it started doing this week and is now in the shop for a new display shell, to replace the inverter. Braun, over at the… Continue reading Back to the shop she goes! Santa Rosa takes trip #3

There has been a lot of controversy over MacHeist. I’ve purchased a heist in the past, mainly for ChaChing, and I never use the application because it just doesn’t do what I need it to do. So, Lukas Mathis asks if the heists hurt the developers who are not in the bundle. I can’t speak… Continue reading Regarding MacHeist

I have one bank whose statements, while they show in a window as PDF, are embedded in HTML document so when you save the page, you get a useless, empty HTML document. So I simply would choose print and “Save as PDF…” from the PDF button. That worked fine, I thought. While I was entering… Continue reading Printing Statements – Beware their size!

This morning my Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 came through! The lamp on my Mits DLP TV had died after two years of service so I needed all of my warranty paperwork. I searched for “Mitsubishi” in Spotlight and bam! Top hit, the one document with all of my receipts, extended warranty paperwork, all nicely scanned and… Continue reading ScanSnap for the win!

Agile Web Solutions has released a public beta of 1Password for Safari 4. Kudos on the quick work! To get this release, open your 1Password Preferences, click on Updates and then check the “include Beta versions” checkbox. Click “Check Now” and install the beta 2.9.9.

It was 24 years and 10 months ago when I got my first Mac. Here is my story: My First Macintosh I’ll never forget it. I had seen a Lisa in January of 1983 at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. The graphics were fantastic, unlike anything I had seen before. The Lisa… Continue reading My First Mac – Happy Anniversary, Macintosh!

I wanted to see what was up with Quicken for Mac so I went to the Intuit site. After playing around with the free Quicken Online, I gave up and went back to the client side of the site. Intuit asked me a number of questions about what I want to do with my finances… Continue reading Sigh Intuit

I’ve been going to MacWorld Expos since before they were MacWorld Expos. As both an Apple fan and as an exhibitor, I’ve been to around 15 expos. MacWorld Expo 2009 is the last Apple will attend. To make it even worse, Phil Schiller will be giving the keynote, not Steve. I like Phil, but he… Continue reading So long, MacWorld Expo

It appears that Mail.app is still creating (AddressBookSync) zombies. Boo. You should keep quitting Mail.app every hour or so just to ensure your process count does not get too high……… This is my process list from running Mail.app for about 16 hours: ps -awx | grep “(AddressBookSync)” 1299 ?? 0:00.00 (AddressBookSync) 1303 ?? 0:00.00 (AddressBookSync)… Continue reading 10.5.6 does not fix Mail.app zombies

Before 10.5.6, having MobileMe set to automatic syncing usually meant much grief. The syncing process was slow and the entire computer would slow to a crawl. As of 10.5.6, if you change data of a Address Book record, the sync starts almost instantly and lasts for only a few seconds. Within 30 seconds, the change… Continue reading 10.5.6 dramatically improves MobileMe syncing

Check your software update! Things are a bit slow right now as the ever-growing Apple Horde downloads the latest and greatest from Apple, Inc. According to the release notes, the following changes were made: What’s new in this update? Address Book Improves reliability of Address Book syncing with iPhone and other devices and applications. AirPort… Continue reading Apple releases Mac OS X 10.5.6