I love using VMWare Fusion on Mac, it’s perfect as I can run everything I need on one machine, and minimise my exposure to windows. However, sometimes things go astray – windows “goes to sleep” and won’t come back to allow me to restart or shutdown the virtual machine. How do you fix this? Hold [...]
If you need to convert a total number of seconds into specific components (days, hours, minutes and seconds) in Objective-C, you can use this code snippet. You can probably do this a million other ways, but this works beautifully for me: NSNumber *valueForDisplay = [NSNumber numberWithDouble: [self valueForDisplay:clockName]]; NSNumber *totalDays = [NSNumber numberWithDouble: [...]
I’ve come across a problem – my main computer (a MacBook Pro) has all my music on it, and is hooked up to my iPhone. But I’ve just got a nice big flat screen TV and its connected to my stereo. So I want to be able to play music/movies I buy on iTunes through [...]
In Mac Mail, I like to file all emails out of inbox when processed. But I have a huge folder tree to traverse to find where to move a messg to. I liked the right-click Move To menu, but its not fast enough. My newly discovered solution: 1. Select message(s) to move 2. Click on [...]
Recently I’ve had a problem with Quicktime throwing up the following error when trying to play a video: “An invalid public movie atom was found in the movie.” I’ve searched everywhere for a solution, and couldn’t find one in forums or tech hint sites. However I think i’ve just solved it – for me atleast. [...]
If you have zipped up a directory from a Mac OSX machine and unzipped it on a linux box, chances are you have heaps of hidden files that look like ._myfile and ._mydirectory – these are files that OSX uses to keep track of additional information about your files. To remove these, do the following [...]
I’m always on the lookout for great open source mac applications, and now there is a site that summarises the best open source applications available for Mac OSX: www.opensourcemac.org It’s a simple and easy to view list of all the best open source (free) applications for Mac OSX. I found a few new ones I [...]
Accessing Windows machines from your Mac can be really important. It provides you the ability to quickly access Microsoft products and functions without the need for virtualisation. Microsoft Confusion Microsoft provides a tool called Remote Desktop Client for Mac which provides this functionality. Unfortunately, this is still in beta and the current version has expired [...]
AppleInsider has reported that Apple has released Mac OS X 10.5.3 to Beta-Testers. This update will be the third for the Leopard operating system since its release, and includes a number of fixes around 75 bugs and a variety of security fixes as well. More information is at the AppleInsider site.
I have been lucky enough to get a hold of one of the new MacBook Pro’s that have just been released by Apple (Feb 2008). I’ve only just installed Boot Camp/Windows XP on it as I’ve been busy using VMWare Fusion – however now it’s time to play some games, and VMWare is no good [...]
Finally someone has worked out how to use Time Machine with a Network Drive. Hooray! Point your browser here for instructions on how to set it up: http://smangal.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/time-machine-with-network-drive/ Now if only Apple would make this a ‘feature’ of Time Machine, rather than forcing us to by the Time Capsule…
You can connect two Mac’s together via a firewire cable to maximise transfer speed between them. Say you have a really large file on Mac 1 (source) and you want to copy it to Mac 2 (destination). Do the following: Ensure the source Mac is turned off, and the destination Mac is turned on. Connect [...]
Apple have just released Safari 3.1 which includes a host of new features and blisteringly fast Javascript. From Ajaxian: JavaScript performance improvements Standards: Adds support for CSS 3 web fonts Standards: Adds support for CSS transforms and transitions Standards: Adds support for HTML 5 <video> and <audio> elements Standards: Adds support for offline storage for [...]
I’ll admit I’m a recently reformed windows user, as I’ve really only been using a Mac for the part 8 months. One thing I really missed as a developer when switching to the Mac was a nice integrated SVN client like TortoiseSVN. Thankfully, there is SCPlugin – a Finder plugin for Mac OS X which [...]
Recently I upgraded to a new Mac. I like to install applications from scratch when I upgrade, as it allows me to clean out all the garbage that I didn’t need in the first place. So I’ve compiled a list of all the best free applications I like to have installed on my Mac. Must [...]
I’ve just discovered a fantastic weather widget for Australian residents called TheBom Weather Widget. It utilises detailed information from the Bureau of Meteorology to provide relevant and up to date Australian weather information and looks great:
Recently we found that the drivers for our Scanner (Epson LP-A500) are either not supported on Leopard or don’t work. So we set about trying to work out how we could scan directly from our Mac (instead of running a windows server/VM to do the job). The answer is SANE – Scanner Access Now Easy. [...]
digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/How_To_Setup_3G_USB_Modem_for_Mac_OS_X_Leopard’; I’ve been trying to get my USB Broadband Modem to work with Leopard for the past few days. Unfortunately the instructions that come with the modem from 3 (my network provider in australia) are out-of-date and don’t work. So here are the steps to get the modem working: 1. Ignore the instructions [...]