Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with MacOS

Help keep my old Powerbook G4 on WiFi. (Technical Mac Question.)

Mid — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:57:25 -0800

Help keep my old Powerbook G4 on WiFi. (Technical Mac Question.) I have an older Powerbook G4 that has seen better days. At some point, the internal Airport card stopped working (I think because the internal antenna broke after a fall). I then popped an external wireless card into the PC slot (the Morotola WN825G) and it worked like a charm for 2+ years. Suddenly, however, the external card is dead. None of the LEDs light up and the computer does not detect it in any program or profiler. I bought a new card (they're only $20) and got the same result. I have done about every kind of reset there is -- battery and power out overnight, reset-nvram in the firmware, control-apple-PR, etc and there is no change. When I look at "Console," nothing happens when I put the card in and pull it out -- i.e., the computer is not registering that a card is in the slot as far as I can tell.

Here are my questions:

1. I have not done any software re-installs. Is it worth it to start re-installing the OS? This seems more like a hardware problem, no? If I re-install, do I need to wipe the drive and start over? Or can I just re-install the system on existing drive?

2. I have not done anything with drivers. I'm pretty sure the Mac does not need a driver to operate this card because the card uses the same chipset as the orginal Airport card.

3. Assuming this is a hardware issue, should I just junk the machine? I feel like anything over $250 is wasted in a machine that is already pretty beat up.

Thanks for your thoughts and guesses.

Why won't all my DVDs play as they should?

hippybear — Sun, 03 May 2009 11:29:37 -0800

How do I burn VIDEO_TS folders to DVD Video discs that work on standalone players? I'm using an iMac, Leopard 10.5.6, internal SuperDrive for DVD burning. These are not copies of for-sale DVDs; they are fan-generated content or abandonware porting of 1970s quadraphonic recordings to modern surround systems.

I found a Terminal command line using hdiutil which is supposed to work... [hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name VOLNAME \ -o MY_DVD.iso /Volumes/File/Location]. I've tried using both BURN and Disk Utility to burn the resulting disk image. This doesn't seem to be doing the job, however.

I've tried using Disk Utility to make disk image DVD/CD Master of the VIDEO_TS folder and burning that, doesn't work...

The confusing thing is, the disks seem to be recognized by the iMac's DVD Player software and will boot that up and run just fine, but the discs won't play in my standalone Panasonic DMR-EZ17.

Even more confusing -- sometimes the DVDs I make using the above methods play in the standalone, sometimes not. This seems to be based on the VIDEO_TS folder I am using, as if I cannot get it to convert / burn / play under one system, it is unlikely I will get it to work at all.

(Complicating this even more, ALL of the VIDEO_TS folders that I mount using the File -> Open DVD Media... menu selection inside DVD Player work. This seems to have no bearing on whether the files will burn into a standalone DVD Video disk.)

Does anyone have any suggestions for me, short of $pending to get Toast or some other non-free solution?

Help me administer Mac OSX Mail Server

rkent — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:18:40 -0800

Help me administer a mail server on OS X. Some friends and I have run a small web / database / email server for several years. Originally it was Linux, which I'm relatively familiar with; a while back we moved to OS X (Server) at the behest of one of the guys. Now for various reasons his availability for server admin duties is severely curtailed, and I'd like to pick up the slack rather than pestering him with questions.

Most pressing is the email server. I have no idea how to run it. I've tracked down pages like this, and I'll continue to search the Apple website, but any third-party FAQs or HOWTOs would be very appreciated. Even the really basic stuff, like: what is the name of the mail server process / executable(s), and where are their config files? What logs should I check when there are errors? Basically, help me approach the OSX server utilities with my Linux-based brain.

An additional level of difficulty is presented by the fact that I'll be doing any admin 100% at the command line; I don't have a Mac and so I lack the GUI server tools.

Quicktime movies won't delete!

musofire — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:03:55 -0800

(Mac OS 10.5) Is Quicktime hiding files from me? When Quicktime plays a movie file for me, it shows up as a "Recent" file in the Quicktime menu. But even if I throw the file in the trash, and delete the trash, it is still somehow able to play the movie. I can't find the file by searching for its name. But yet, there it is.

Where are these files hiding, and how can I find and delete them?

How to move contents of 3 iPods back onto my Mac?

rubadub — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:53:47 -0800

How do I transfer the contents of 3 iPods (2G, 3G, 4G) back onto a hard drive? I'm using Mac OS 10.4.4. There are tons of programs, which do I use? The entirety of my CD collection and about 75% of my vinyl collection was stored on a 500GB LaCie "BigDisk" hard drive which failed when we lost power in the hurricane remnants on Sunday. I typically back this stuff up periodically, but my backup drive failed a few months ago, so now I'm up a creek.

Most of my vinyl encodes are hard to find on CD, and I still have the vinyl, but ripping it is horribly time-consuming. The best of it is loaded onto these three iPods in question and I'd like to get it back onto my Mac with tags intact, and (hopefully) sorted by artist/album like it used to be.

I might be able to revive the hard drive but it's not mounting currently and I've had problems getting data off failed hard drives in the past, so I'm assuming for the moment that it's totally dead. If you know of a common way to fix this sorta drive, or repair the tree, etc. then please give me a heads up. I have a bad feeling that it may have been ruined by the power glitching on and off before it went out entirely.

I have no problem paying for shareware or a commercial program to do the iPod transfer, but there are so many of 'em out there, with such mixed results, that I don't know where to start.

Any suggestions?

Is there a Vista equivalent for Office 2004 Mac's "Notebook Layout View"?

zooropa — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:45:38 -0800

A friend of mine is a schoolteacher with the Chicago Public Schools. On his Mac, he uses Office 2004. He was showing me a feature in the Office 2004 version of Word that I really like. It allows you to open up a document in something called "Notebook Layout View" (I think) that simulates a page of ruled notebook paper as if you were writing in a spiral notebook. It even allows you to format a title and heading and other features. Anyone know if there is a Vista equivalent for Office 2007? I tried looking through the templates (both what's included with 2007 and at Microsoft Online) and I can't seem to find anything similar. (and please, no flames or exhortations to "get a Mac!" I'm stuck with I have and there's no changing for the time being) Thanks!

Give me that old time Photoshop key command

ardgedee — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:23:03 -0800

How do I switch windows in Photoshop CS3/Mac? Photoshop does not switch between windows by hitting cmd-`, the standard Apple keystroke for 'switch between windows'.

It was at one time a standard behavior in Photoshop, and later nonstandard but could be enabled through the "Keyboard Shortcuts and Menus" item. And now it doesn't appear to be an available option. Is there a way to impose this behavior back on Photoshop?

Excluding Enterprise, What's the Mac's Market Share?

dinger — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:15:34 -0800

When people are spending their own money, what percentage buy macs? There's never a mystery as to Apple's share of the personal computer market…it seemed to bottom out at about 3 percent of the market early in this decade, and by most accounts has since risen to the high single digits, usually reported as about 8 percent (and growing) at the present. However, when I see people using laptops in public (say, at coffee shops or airports), the percentage of macs seems to be significantly higher, about one in three or four. Also, the mac's presence in the online community just seems to be significantly higher than one in ten, based on the volume of mac questions, software discussions, anticipated hardware releases, etc.

Trying to reconcile these seeming contradictions led me to a eureka moment: when mac vs. pc market share is published, it's usually in the form of total system sales. Of course, sales of PC's include the thousands and thousands of cheap desktops and dumb terminals that inhabit the world's cubicle farms, call centers, and data processing hubs, while institutional sales account for a much smaller percentage of the total mac output, probably confined mostly to schools.

Googling for info on sales to individuals turns up very little; the best I could come up with is this article from CNET News which seems to indicate that, as of last December, about 3 out of 10 people anticipated that their next computer purchace would be a mac (surprisingly close to my own observations).

So, here's the question: When people are spending their own money, what percentage by macs? In other words, what's the mac share of the personal personal computer market?

Disclaimer: not looking to start a Mac vs. PC war here; just wondering what individuals spend their hard-earned moola on.

Need help with an old-ish iMac and iMovie

Nick Verstayne — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:58:34 -0800

Help me with my outdated iMac and editing HD digital video - it doesn't recognize HD, so what do I need to do? I'm using an early "dome" iMac (you know, the one with the roundy bottom). It runs OS X 10.2.8 and has the 800 MHz PowerPC G4 processor. The thing was probably obsolete a few months after I bought it, but that's never been a concern before now. Recently, however, I purchased a camcorder that records in HD. The iMac doesn't recognize the HD. It recognizes video shot in "normal" digital tape, just not the HD ones.

I know I probably have to upgrade the OS, and possibly iMovie too - I'm running iMovie 3.0.3

Any help greatly appreciated.

How can I get my password from flickr uploadr

sid — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:40:14 -0800

Help me hack into my own flickr account AskMeFi, this is a hard one. I have a long-dormant flickr account that I desperately need access to. I have tried the usual password-retrieval methods, but naturally, I had given them fake answers to the security questions.

The only method I have to access my account is through flickruploadr (version 2.2) on my venerable iBook G4. I can still use this to upload photos, but when I try to go to the site it asks for my Yahoo login and password which I no longer remember. The password is somewhere on my iBook. There is a file called com.flickr.uploadr.plist that has a string called my account name, but the value is gobbledygook. I am thinking this might be my password? How can I unscramble it? Is there some other way to get this password? I guess I also need my Yahoo ID (I no longer remember it, and it's not the same as my flickr username) - this must be somewhere on my iBook too.

I would really like control of this account back! There are pictures on there that I no longer want the whole world to see.

Any tips you have would be greatly appreciated.

Dam you firefox, why can't you be more like Safari?

doctor.dan — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:09:51 -0800

I love Firefox. I love using the Fox. I love the warm and fuzzy feeling I get from using opensource software. But, I am drawn to Safari, and for only one feature. I love the way Safari handles PDFs. I like how it opens them in the blink of an eye, letting me view the PDF and then save it with the click of a button (overlay? whatever). What I'm wondering is, is there any way to get the same behaviour in Firefox. I'm relatively new to Macs (soon to be 1 year), so I'm not too familiar with all the ins and outs, but I assume it is somehow connected to Preview.app. There was an earlier attempt at doing something similar on ask.MeFi, but that didn't really lead anywhere. Google searching doesn't help either. In case you are wondering, I like this because I deal with a lot of PDF files (journal articles, woo). I'd consider switching to Safari as a main browser if it wasn't for the little differences (FF3's address bar, Command+1/2/3/4/etc, copious amount of extensions).

After installing 10.5, can no longer boot into WinXP via Boot Camp!

Ekim Neems — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:51:41 -0800

After doing a clean install of MacOS X Leopard, while leaving my previous Boot Camp partition in tact, I'm getting a blue-screen when attempting to boot directly into XP via Boot Camp... ... I can, however, run the Boot Camp partition in a Parallels VM just fine. The blue screen of death is mentioning a driver "ati2dvag.dll" or something similar. It appears that I need to update the drivers from the Leopard install DVD. The problem is, I can't get into Windows to do that.

I'm able to get into Safe Mode, but I cannot run the Boot Camp installation because the Windows Installer service is not running. I've tried to start it manually but to no avail. From within Safe Mode, I've also attempted to perform installs on the individual drivers from within the Leopard DVD, but they will not load either.

And since Parallels has its own configuration with separate drivers, I cannot update the drivers from within Parallels - it appears that will only mess up my Parallels VM. Any suggestions how I can get in to update those drivers somehow, or am I doomed to reformat and reinstall XP?

Old Kids' Games for G3 iMac?

ZakDaddy — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:33:01 -0800

Help me find old Macintosh games for the kids. Specs and ages inside. I have inherited a functional, Indigo iMac from the CRT era and have decided to use it as a kids' computer, in order to keep them off my laptop / wife's desktop. Here's what I've ended up with:

G3/350 MHz
320MB RAM
8MB VRAM
Mac OS X 10.3.9

I've scanned Google and this site, and have a couple of ideas, but I'd like to see if I'm the only looney who wants to keep a 6 (almost 7!) year old computer viable. I've tried some of the Flash sites for kids out there, and the performance is abysmal, so it's probably going to have to be local install for anything that's at all interactive.

Thanks in advance. Happy New Year!

-Zak-

encrypted IMAP storage?

about_time — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 06:05:09 -0800

Almost all my incoming mail messages are unencrypted. I use IMAP and access my mail from multiple macintoshes (using Mail.app). I want to store all my mail on my IMAP server encrypted so that my admins can't read it. So, is there a simple plugin to mail.app that will store each mail encrypted and decrypt on the fly and show the original attachments? I can program well, but haven't written a bundle for mail.app.

Other FYIs: I have an account on the IMAP server which is unix. I don't have root on that computer, but there is a procmail hook on it. I have root on another machine that has IMAP running on it, but there are other users of that IMAP server.

A long time ago i used to encrypt all incoming messages with a PGP key in my procmail script. But this made receiving attachments impossible since you can't do attachments recursively (i.e., pic inside the s/mime encryption); can you? In any case, I wasn't using Mail.app at the time, and I don't believe mail.app will unencrypt and then look for attachments inside what it decrypted.

One solution is that I could set up all my mail to be IMAPed to an encrypted disk on my always on mac desktop. ButcCan you think of something where I don't have to set up and manage my own IMAP server? I'm hoping for something that allows me to use the admin support I have on my existing IMAP server --- I don't have a lot of time at my job to adminstrate my own services.

One last clarification: I don't think the admins are reading my mail. More precisely, i don't like my old mail appearing on backups for eternity, and I worry about recent hacks/breakins on our IMAP server. So I'm ok with a solution that leaves new mail in plaintext for short periods of time (say 12 hours).

How do I completely erase my Thunderbird installation on Mac OS?

nessahead — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:14:07 -0800

After installing, uninstalling and reinstalling, there are ghosts of my old (now deleted) IMAP folders. How the heck do I get rid of them? I installed Thunderbird a few months ago and set up my IMAP (Exchange) mail account. After I was done checking it out, I uninstalled it.

Fast forward to now, I want to switch back. After installing and running, it still lists all my old IMAP folders (now deleted from the server) and I can't figure out how to get rid of these 'ghosts'.

Googling various combinations of 'uninstall', 'Thunderbird', 'remove', and 'profile' yields some information but not enough to actually get rid of those damn ghost folders.

Help!

Mac-friendly Online Broker

travis vocino — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 06:26:18 -0800

I'm searching for a Mac-friendly online trade broker. Something with great tools that I can use for up-to-the-soonaspossible statistics and whatnot. Any recommendations? I used e*trade a long time ago and they had a win32 app that you could download that had graphs, stats, and everything. When I think about having really good stats on all my trades and movements up on dual monitors on the G5 or at the airport on my MacBook I get really excited.

Advanced web apps are ok too, as long as they will work on Macs. Also, the normal recommendation variables (price, time, etc.) still apply.

Why can't our Macs and PCs get along together?

clarkie666 — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:01:28 -0800

Our PC based network sucks for Mac and unfortunately I do not think that our IT support (external) is up to the job, despite their assurances. Should setting up a reliable network really be that hard? I would like to find out generally if people who are connecting multiple Mac OS machines (using OS9/ OS10) to Microsoft Server 2003 are having as many problems - is this PC/Mac network stuff really that flakey.

Generally we have problems with connecting to Microsoft volumes, problems with files being locked (cannot be renamed or moved) for 36 hours or so, problems renaming files - IT have recently installed 'Dave' on the Macs which seems to have solved some problems, is this the ideal solution?

Sorry for being light on specfics - more general feedback is appreciated if you have it - thanks

Firefox hogging RAM

sindark — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 01:10:53 -0800

Peeking into Activity Monitor in Mac OS 10.3, I am noticing that Firefox is using more than 130 of my 512 megabytes of RAM, along with more than 450 megs of virtual memory. This is with one window open with three tabs (this page, a blog, and GMail). Do I have some setting set incorrectly or is Firefox a shamless RAM hog? Is there another browser that might leave me with more memory for Word, Excel, Entourage, Photoshop, iTunes, etc?

Arthur Murray, where are you?

eschatfische — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 15:55:25 -0800

Samba and the Mac OS X Finder are driving me crazy. I'm running Samba 3.0.10 on a Gentoo 2005.0 box, and it's working great -- in everything but the Mac OS X Finder. Note that I specify the Finder -- I can cp to it from the Mac OS X Terminal or have other Mac OS applications read to or write from it without the slightest hint of a problem. I can connect to it from a Windows XP box and use it just fine. I *only* have problems using the Samba share in the Finder itself.

The share appears and is browsable in the Finder -- but I can't write to it without an error. I don't think it's a permissions issue -- I can write to the share from everything else, including non-Finder apps on the same Mac. But when I do try to copy a file to it, I get the error:

"The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items."

The kicker -- even with the error, the file has been successfully written to the Samba share. I just can't write multiple files at once, because the Finder copy fails. (I can, as above, go to terminal, run a cp * /Volumes/WORKGROUP;SHARE/, and that works just fine.)

I've Googled and Googled, but I can only find people having the same problem, with no apparent solution. If anyone knows of the solution, please let me know.

Best Way to Install Mac OS X Tiger

odinsdream — Tue, 03 May 2005 18:18:34 -0800

What's the best way to install Mac OS X Tiger? Best, in this case, meaning least painful. In one hand, I have a box with an OS X Tiger Installation DVD. In my other hand, I have abject fear of screwing up my computer and being out of commission for several days while I fix it.

From reading about it, it looks like Archive and Install is the way to go. Is this true? I can't really figure out -what- it does, though. If someone who has done this could share their experience, I'd greatly appreciate it.

My worries: I have many many Stickies notes that are important. I have Mail.app messages, and many many applications set up. What does Archive and Install actually carry forward? If only the stuff in my home directory is preserved, this isn't enough. I have some directories in the root that should come over, should I move these in to my home directory?

What happens to applications, the dock, mail.app messages, Adium buddy lists, address book entries, safari and firefox bookmarks.

Put my mind at ease please! Should I wait until Best Buy is open again and purchase an external firewire disk to actually back up all these files first? I'm sure this would be a good idea anyway, but I'd like to avoid doing -extra- work if the fine folks at Apple already have me taken care of with Archive and Install. Is there any reason to consider a full Erase?

Using Mac OS X Application Services

odinsdream — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 21:35:12 -0800

How do Application Services work in Mac OS X? Where are they installed/configured/uninstalled, and why are all of them disabled in my menus? If you pull down an application's menu (the same place where you'd get About Application and Preferences), there's a Services submenu with about a dozen or so items in it. Right now, absolutely none of the menu options or sub-options are enabled. Even if I select a block of text in Firefox, the options dealing with Selection aren't enabled. Even the ones that I think should be enabled, like Speech and Grab, don't let me pick anything within them.

I have a rudimentary understanding of what these are. I would assume, for example, it's a quick way to do common tasks. For instance, if I wanted to get a screen shot of Firefox right now, I'd go to the Services menu and do Grab > Window. But, Window is disabled, as are all the other things under Grab. Why? How do I enable these?

Also, there are things in this menu that I'll never, ever use.... like View in JavaBrowser, or HexEditor > Open File. Assuming I can actually get some of these to work at all, I'd like to clean up this menu and remove the cruft. How do I do this?

MySQL and Tiger

delfuego — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 16:11:32 -0800

I'm looking to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) when it's released next week, but have one fear that's holding me back from doing it as soon as my delivery arrives: does anyone know if Tiger and the current releases of MySQL 4.0 play well together? I did a bit of Google-hunting today without any clear answer; the only page I could find was MySQL's "supported platforms" page that shows that it's fully supported but doesn't state any version numbers. My fear is that versions 5.0 and/or 4.1 might be fully supported, but 4.0 might not be; has anyone installed 4.0.24 on Tiger and run into troubles?

External USB Hard Drive FAT32 corruption via Mac OS 9!

loquacious — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 14:55:33 -0800

External USB Hard Drive FAT32 corruption via Mac OS 9! Help me Obi-Wan Kenobe! (More inside) I have an 80gb AcomData HD which has - until now - worked flawlessly. The other night I mounted it on a Mac OS 9 machine to transfer some graphics files, and now it no longer is even recognizable or moubtable to any of my Windows machines. (98/2K/XP). I'm thinking my mistake was dragging the mounted drive to the trash to unmount it rather than just yanking the cable or shutting it down like you're not supposed to.

Are there any Windows disk utilities that can repair the FAT without losing the data even though I can't even properly mount the damn thing?

(And despite this, I still recommend AcomData. The web support requires an account/login, but the call-in support was excellent. I got a sharp fellow who abandoned any scripted solution the instant I began articulating my problem in detail and my troubleshooting procedures thus far. That's wonderfully refreshing these days.)

Thanks in advance! (Wanders off to try to mount it in knoppix)

Playing Windows Media video under OSX

inksyndicate — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:51:18 -0800

Best way to play the latest Windows Media movies under OS X? I've tried the latest version of MPlayer, but it only plays the sound, not the video, of WMV movies.

I don't even know if playing Daily Show WMVs embedded into comedycentral.com is in the cards...but I'd just like to be able to play downloaded Windows Media movies reliably, at least, since it seems to be such a hot format.

Can it be done without some fancy open source re-compile of my Mplayer?