Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mac and osx

Linux need not apply.

hal_c_on — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:11:05 -0800

Will Apple Care if I'm using Linux? I have been using Macs now for almost 10 years. I know the ins and outs of working with Apple when I need their help. I have learned to always get a computer with AppleCare because the few extra bucks are worth the attention they give you when you have a problem. For some people, thats not a big deal, but for someone who doesn't want ANYTHING wrong with his computer, its worth it. So I'm well versed in what to say and more importantly "not say" when dealing with the "Geniuses" at the store or their reps on the phone.

NOW...

This is the only question remaining before I make the move to a full linux system from a os x/linux system.

What happens if I have a computer, its covered by applecare...and my only OS is a type of linux? Will they say its not covered since linux controls the hardware differently than OS X? I'm not talking about "My pixels are dying" or "my keys are loose", I'm talking "My computer is dead issues".

I can reasonably guess...but I do not know for sure.

Does anybody have experience regarding this? Like I said, I can make a reasonable guess, but I DO NOT KNOW FOR SURE.

Any help?

Ugly OSX Snow Leopard Freeze - at a loss.

Towelie — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:54:29 -0800

Bizarre OSX Snow leopard problem. MBP unibody, 3.06 core2 duo. 8 GB ram. 500 Gig 5400 RPM drive. OSX 10.6.2 Starting about four weeks ago, my system slowly spins out of control - dock/finder/force quit become some of the first apps to fall. This ends in a freeze - UI responsive (mouse, some window movement) with the eventual need to force restart (holding down the power button) It's so bad that I'm constantly running the Console and Activity Monitor to see if I can find some clues. It has been intermittent - with no fixed pattern of Apps running. It seems to take at least 3-4 hours for it to occur - but has gone longer than 19 at least one.

Initially, a some of the restarts resulted in the system thinking it needed a firmware update. This hasn't continued, but it was a very strange symptom.

I ran Techtool's full set of tests: Ram, drive integrity, Smart status. Passed.
Big obvious things: Permissions, Disk Util, Disk Warrior. FSCK. Onyx (and cleared all the major caches.) Font book's font check and Keychain's first aid.

When I took my system to my local dealer, we pulled my drive (as they give me a replacement.) The problems happened on the replacement system (with my drive in it.)

The dealer ran Apple's full suite of tests (including a couple of overnight tests) and still nothing; We added my HD back and it still passed all Apple tests.

OS Repairs that have failed:
I've tried a combo update.
I've done an Archive & Install.
I've tried a Clean install and moved over key parts of my user- documents, music and photos. *I added back my preferences & some key Application support items.* I star this because it leads me to believe that it's related to my specific user.

We replaced my HD: and I did a time machine restore. Since none of the above system updates made a difference - I felt it was better to work on my full system.

Things I've removed:
Orbicule/Undercover, VMWare/Fusion, Glims, Little Snitch.
Jumpcut, evernote
Blueharvest, Pinpoint, Mouse Locator.

I think it's specific to my user - but I can't really be sure; the problem is very much intermittent. Just creating another user won't necessarily show the problem - the system has run over 19 hours without a crash. I'm really resistant to this because it doesn't show where the problem came from - and I'm concerned that if I reload everything that it'll just occur again.

I thought it might be related to iTunes, my iPhone, Adium, Safari or Sleep, as each of these seem to have triggered it.

I thought it might be temperature related and ran iStat Server - while occasionally the temperatures have been high; all are in spec.

I pulled corrupt extensions (that Onyx wouldn't read) and items that mdimporter (spotlight) had trouble with (mostly some IMAP attachments)

I've spent all day running/quitting/sleeping the machine trying to CAUSE the problem. I can't seem to - and I'm at a complete loss.

Spontaneous volume-change and program-launch in OSX

Cucurbit — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:53:51 -0800

Spontaneous volume-change and program-launch in OSX. MacBook Pro, OSX 10.5.8. I was using iTunes to put some stuff on my iPod (I think the only other programs I had pen were Firefox and maybe Preview) when all of a sudden my computer's volume started to increase and decrease spontaneously (complete with the speaker image and volume level indicator on the screen and accompanied by the click sound), and then Front Row opened and closed a couple times. I turned off AirPort, disconnecting from the Internet, but again my volume spontaneously changed. I restarted my computer, keeping it offline, and the same things happened again. Any ideas what's going on? I'm really freaked out. I can't think what it might be; a few people were watching movie trailers on a mac in the same room while it was happening, but I guess that couldn't be relevant, since stuff happened after I disconnected from the network...

It's like a tech question and a bad sitcom plot in one!

Navelgazer — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:51:47 -0800

How do I either recover my Mac OS X password or else get around needing it? Several years ago, my then-girlfriend's father bought a family pack of OS_X Leopard, and gave one of them to me. A year later, she and I were broken up. About six months after that, my computer crashed, and the genius bar had to replace the hard drive and reinstall everything. This means that the update password was lost from memory, and I never knew it and can't easily find out what it might have been (ex's dad installed Leopard himself).

So now I've gone a year without updating and it's starting to drive me crazy. Not only can I not update OS_X, but I can't install any number of things I'd like to either.

Does anyone know how I can either recover what this password might have been, or work around it so that I don't need a password to update?

Much Thanks, and Happy Christmas/Hannuka/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus/Holidays to you.

I'll wipe my ass with a roll of Intel X-25 SSD drives!

melorama — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:48:04 -0800

I need semi-definitive opinions regarding the real-world lifespan of an Intel X-25M Solid State Drive running in a Macbook Pro. I just couldn't pass up a $214 Black Friday deal on an 80GB Intel X25-M (2nd generation) SSD, and am excited to install it into my "early-2008" Macbook Pro (pre-unibody) w/4GB of RAM. My plan is to replace the current system drive (a 500GB 7200RPM Seagate Momentus) with the SSD, and physically relocate the Seagate drive to the Superdrive bay, using the MCE OptiBay kit.

The original plan was to install just the base OS (Mac OS X 10.6.2) to the SSD, then relocate my home folder to the larger Seagate drive. But then I got to thinking I might actually want to have everything in my ~/Library and ~/Library/Application Support/ folders to live on the SSD instead. Because I am a neurotic multitasker (I generally have over 50+ tabs open in Firefox at any given moment, just as a general reference point), my logic tells me that I would see a performance benefit from having the ~/Library folder on the SSD, since all my running applications are constantly reading and writing to this folder. So my new plan is to just leave my homefolder on the SSD, and relocate my iTunes Library, videos, pictures, etc on the Seagate drive.

But as astute followers of SSD technology know, MLC-based SSDs will burn out faster the more often you write to them. I've done a lot of searching, and have found conflicting opinions on whether or not it's a good idea to leave oft-written to system files such as the OS page/swapfile on the SSD drive, because of the accelerated wear this would cause. Because of this, many Windows users simply disable the pagefile (despite recommendations from Microsoft to keep it enabled on an SSD), but this is not a viable option under OS X. Another concern with OS X and SSDs is Spotlight indexing, the disabling of which is simply not something I'm willing to do, given how useful Spotlight is.

So the question is, just how quickly will an SSD (specifically the X25) "burn out" if I keep my Mac's swapfiles, ~/Library/* files, Mail.app mailboxes on it, with Spotlight enabled? I also run Crashplan online backup, which does realtime block-level, encrypted incremental backups of my drives up to the cloud.

Additionally, will the lack of TRIM support in OS X cause a significant slowdown in overall performance (i.e. near spinning-platter speeds) if I run my SSD in this manner?

I don't really expect this 80GB X25 SSD to be a long-term thing. I fully expect the sizes of SSDs to significantly increase in the next 12-18 months, at inversely lower prices, at which point I will almost certainly feel no remorse in buying a new SSD, regardless of the level of wear on my current X25. But if my X25 burns out in 6-10 months, that won't be worth it, either.

What say you, Mac SSD-heads?

TOSLINK USB surround sound adapter + Mac OS X?

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:57:24 -0800

What is a good, working surround sound USB adapter for a Mac mini in a home theatre setup, which uses a TOSLINK connector? (I would be using this with DVD Player, iTunes, VLC, QuickTime Player, etc. if that matters for software support.)

Help me recover a deleted MySQL database on osx

special-k — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:19:16 -0800

Where does MySQL store actual data in Snow Leopard? How would I retrieve a deleted database from a Time Machine backup? MySQL was crashing repeatedly on my Snow Leopard. On the advice of an Apple genius, I nuked the existing install and all its associated directories. I didn't worry much because I do database stuff on my work computer and only keep copies on my laptop.

Turns out that there was one particular database [now nuked] that I spent a whole week cleaning up on my laptop. The desktop only has a really old version of this particular database.

I have regular time machine backups. How do I pluck this database out and restore it?
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get to the data without going through mysql. Someone suggested looking in /usr/local/mysql/data

I can get to the mysql directory but have no permission to enter the data directory. I could recreate much of this work but it will take forever and I'd rather not. Can someone help?

Unless he's keylogging me, in which case he gets what he deserves, the Grinch. ;)

kathrineg — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:51:45 -0800

I need a way to keep a browser state with tabs, cookies, passwords, forms all saved but password-protected and inaccessible. I have Mac OS 10.5.7 and I usually use Firefox, kinda hate Safari. This would be somewhat like Firefox's "Private Browsing" but instead of erasing my settings when I go out of the password-protected browser, it would keep everything ready and waiting.

So it would be like when you go from "private browsing" back to regular browsing, and Firefox restores everything automatically. Except that all the data associated with it would need to be password protected/hidden. No one should be able to access anything by clicking through folders, searching the drives, etc.

Switching logins is too onerous. I have some password protected documents but it's getting really old to move stuff from my browser to there, remember to close the document, etc.

I don't need anything with a force password, or anything completely invisible. It's okay if you can see the program/plugin and tell that I'm keeping something secret. It just needs a password so I can foil a certain Santa-hating member of my household who is adept with computer stuff, without going nuts trying to erase my tracks.

Writer meets arthritis

grumblebee — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:18:40 -0800

Mac voice-recognition software for a writer with arthritis. My father's arthritis is making it more and more difficult for him to type. This is hard for him, because he's been a writer for decades (over 25 books and countless articles). He is considering switching to voice-recognition software.

Here are some things to note:

- He is originally from England but has lived in the US since the 1950s. He is a very clear speaker, but his accent is a mix of British (cockney originally) and American.

- He owns a Mac.

- He is not highly computer literate, but he lives in a university town and could find people to help him set things up if necessary. He probably will have trouble if the voice-recognition software itself is overly complicated to use.

I am looking for any advice and experiences with this. What is the state of the art these days? What's available for the Mac? What is the experience like for people who are heavy users?

Looking for a Simple HTML Dingus

interrobang — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:59:11 -0800

Is there a very simple, free, standalone OSX application like the HTML Post Opera widget? A dashboard widget would be fine, too; I mostly just want it to run on its own on a PPC computer.

WinXP OEM on a Mac

jrchaplin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:25:10 -0800

I've a WinXP Professional OEM install disc that I'd like to (and tried to) install on VMWare Fusion on my 24-inch iMac (running OS X 10.5). But so far, it's a no-go. Is there some kind of restriction on installing OEM versions of Windows in a virtual environment and/or on a Mac? So far my Google-fu has failed me on this question, but what happens is when I get to the activation key box during install, the key is rejected as invalid. What's weird about this is that attempting to install this same XP Pro disc on an old (circa 2004-05) home-built Windows box works flawlessly.

I bought the disc on Ebay, from a seller who exchanged the first disc I bought from him (It would not load/install on any machine) with a new copy. At first I thought that I got hosed by the seller of the disc; but the subsequent ability to install on a Windows box has me wondering if the problem lies elsewhere.

I had hoped to use the WinXP install on my iMac simply for web development testing; not crazy about spending $200 for Win 7, plus another $40 to upgrade my VMware Fusion install to handle Win 7. I know I could use the old box to do the same, but space is at a premium and I was gonna wipe the old box and donate it to a local non-profit.

Seagate Hard drive Mac

yegga — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:10:15 -0800

How to get a Seagate FreeAgent Desk external hard drive to work with my Mac? I have this model: Link.

The drive came without any installation disks. Apparently compatible only with Windows.

How do I get this working with Mac OSX? Help!

Formatting Differences in MS Word on Windows vs Mac

spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:35:47 -0800

How consistent is MS Office between Windows and OSX? Will using MS Office on my Mac solve this formatting problem I'm having? I'm have a MacBook Pro running Leopard,and I've been using Open Office to write my papers. It's great. I love Open Office (and love that it's free). When I need to turn something in, I just save it in PDF format, e-mail it to myself, then go to a computer lab, check my e-mail, and print off the PDF document. Perfect.

The problem is that I have a professor who needs some documents turned in via e-mail, and they use MS Word. I can save an Open Office document as a Word file (.doc or .docx), and for plain text formatting that's fine, but as soon as an outline or numbered list is created, things look crazy. It seems fine when I save it in Open Office, and it's fine when I then open that document using Open Office, but if the document is opened with MS Word, the formatting is horrible.

I can buy the MS Office suite for Mac at school using my student discount (it's around $35 I think). If I install that, and use Word to create these documents, will they appear the same when my professor opens them using Word, on her Windows computer?

If there will still be differences then I'll skip the $35 and just keep going to the computer lab to tweak things.

If I save a document in MS Word on a Mac and send it to a person using MS Word on a PC, are there formatting differences?

Help with a Mac whose apps all go non-responsive?

mark7570 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:50:54 -0800

Once a week or so, all the applications running on my Mac go into "not responding" mode, one after another. The only way I can recover is to turn off the Mac using the power button. Any ideas? It always happens the same way - a usually well-behaved app, say Mail, stops responding - just shows a spinning beach ball. I force quit, but the app doesn't disappear. The beach ball keeps spinning. Then I switch to another app and it starts spinning. And so on. At that point, here's a screenshot showing what I see when I try to force quit.

This is on a MacPro (the big desktop tower), just a few months old, running 10.5.8. As you can see from the screenshot, there aren't any strange apps being run.

Anyone seen this before, or have suggestions for how to prevent this from happening? It's a really bummer when it occurs.

OS X: How to track down and kill a cron job. Or something.

al_fresco — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:09:39 -0800

OS X Unix filter: Please help me find and delete an obsolete cron job on an iMac running Leopard. I'm doing tech support for a small office. A previous provider setup a cron job or something to create an rsync backup to a MacMini server every day at the same time. The backup configuration has changed, but this one job keeps trying to run. I can't find the script to delete it and am getting a bit frustrated.

I've tried

crontab -e - which shows an empty crontab.

I've looked in StartupItems, looked in /usr/bin/, usr/sbin/ for a compiled script, looked in the logs to see if I could see the source of the job, but it doesn't log to system.log or console.log. I did find the log that was set up for the backup, but it doesn't say the path of the original script. I know it's running because it was set up to also send an email to the office administrator. She gets a failure message daily.

I'm pretty sure it's not a LaunchDaemon, as the job was set up by someone who was using old-style tools, and all of the LaunchDaemons I could find were stock OS X.

Any idea how I can track this thing down and kill it for good?

Thanks!

What's the deal with Flash video on OSX? I can't click the play button!

Glum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:12:28 -0800

Why do Youtube (and other flash videos) become unresponsive on my Mac when they are embedded in other sites? [iMac and MacBook Pro, Snow Leopard (and previous OS), Firefox & Safari]

Often, when I come across an embedded YouTube clip (and sometimes videos from other services like Vimeo) on my RSS feed or in a website I am visiting I am unable to click on it successfully. Trying to access the controls (play, pause etc) becomes almost impossible. I have found that if I right click to pull up the Flash menu, but then deselect it, I do then get one chance to click on the Flash object (with it going white in the process).

These objects almost always work perectly if I click through to watch them in their original location.

My browsers have been doing this for several versions, over the last two versions of the OS and the last three versions of Flash, on both my Macs. I have the most recent versions of all software.

I've read that Flash is very unreliable on OSX - with memory leaks etc. - but this doesn't seem to be that (although, of course, I don't actually know what it is).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best video codec for embedding into PowerPoint?

limon — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:51:55 -0800

I'd like to embed video clips in a PowerPoint presentation. It would need to play correctly on both Windows and OS X. What codec is ideal? My first attempt won't play on Macs.

A real Apple TV.

malaprohibita — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:14:10 -0800

Is it crazy and/or overkill to consider getting a 27 inch imac to replace my tv? I have a 10 year old 27 inch Sony CRT that still works well, but I'm running into its limits for adding peripherals (DVD player, xbox, etc.). I know I can probably get a mac mini or other small form factor pc plus an HDTV for less, but I'm really intrigued by the imac's possibilities. What little tv watching I do is usually Hulu, streaming Netflix, and dvds. I am not interested in Blu-Ray capabilities, as I see the format becoming obsolete sooner rather than later.

Pros:
--2560 x 1440 resolution led lcd.
--can add a tv tuner via usb if I really wanted to.
--a built-in computer and dvd player (convergence!)

Cons:
--may not be able to connect the xbox without some kind of adapter voodoo (although Crossover+Steam is possible).
--there are some issues reported regarding flash playback( = Hulu problems), which may be indicative of other system issues.
--diy repairs and upgrades may be difficult.

I don't really need a bigger display. My wife and I will be sitting > 8ft away, but not by much, and any HD resolution will be better than what I have now.

I'm looking forward to your pros, cons, and even any alternatives you might have.

How do I start using OS X Mail?

Junior687 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:46:45 -0800

How can I start using OS X .Mail App when I'm so in love with Gmail on the web? I recently purchased a Mac and I'm really interested in using OS X's Mail program. The only problem is Gmail is my bread and butter. It has a lot of different features and I love the labeling system. Is there a way to integrate labels, IMAP, and some other Gmail features with Mail? Will it hurt my current setup on the iPhone? What are the pros and cons? Thanks!

e-mailing multiple addresses within one Entourage Contact.

jmd82 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:43:21 -0800

Using Entourage to send to multiple e-mail addresses with one Contact. Staff members are using Entourage for e-mailing groups. These groups often contain people with multiple e-mail addresses, and for various reasons, all these e-mail addresses must be contacted. So Jon Doe will have a home and work e-mail. However, when sending to a Contact with a Group (or even individually), it will only send to their default address instead of all listed, like Outlook would.

So my question is: Is there a way to send to all e-mail addresses within one contact by default? Some users have hundreds of contacts, each with multiple e-mail addresses listed, in their distribution groups, and we'd rather avoid having to go back and modify all their groups.

Backing up a messed up older Mac?

southvie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:59:51 -0800

Best method/software for efficient, non-annoying backup for a slightly older Mac (G4 running 10.3.9)? Trying to back up a ton of Pro Tools sessions and other audio junk from an older G4 running OS X 10.3.9 onto a newish LaCie external drive. From several years of misuse, mismanagement and abuse, there are a lot of duplicate and corrupt files. Simply dragging and dropping the folders in Finder is getting annoying, because every time it encounters a corrupt or wonky file I have to start over and be super-diligent to ensure every single possible file is copied. Trying to get about 200G copied this way is becoming annoying and wasting lots of time.

Is there a better method or application I could use (ideally, free or cheap) to let this run for hours and have it automatically skip, check or even fix any messed up files -- and just have it done?

I just want my stupid games to be silent

NoraReed — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:00:55 -0800

OSXFilter: Is there a way to mute individual programs in OS X? Vista allows you to adjust the volume of specific programs in its volume control. I switched to Mac but that's one of the features from Vista that I really miss. (If it matters, I'm using Leopard.) I want to listen to my music, not my games/browser, dang it!

Options for a small & cheap Mac laptop?

attercoppe — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:01:07 -0800

What are my options for a cheap, small Mac laptop? I'm on a tight budget, but would love to get a laptop. I've been looking at netbooks because I love the light weight and small size. However, I may be about to get a job at my school, which basically is an Apple campus, so now I'm considering a Mac instead. I'd still like to find something cheap, small and light, and with some serious battery life. Of course one option is to buy a used or refurbed Mac (maybe an Air?). Could I also buy a netbook and install OS X? Or install some *nix - how compatible (not look and feel but interoperability) would this be?

P.S. I could probably do some research and get some good info, but I thought I'd see what ya'll can tell me first. I've read other questions here, and they seem to be either out of date or about desktops (or both).

How do I rescue files from an internal drive when OS X won't boot?

wheat — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:26:26 -0800

OS X won't boot. Time Machine stopped working at noon. How can I nab some files before I reinstall Leopard? Due, I think, to my son playing with the power strip one too many times, my iMac will not boot. I can boot from the Leopard system disc, and I've run Disk Utility. It repaired problems, but it still won't boot.

I run Time Machine, so I'm willing to restore from that and/or reinstall Leopard. But I got a lot done today and would like to copy some PDFs I crated today. The last Time Machine backup was at noon. But I worked until five. I don't know why Time Machine stopped backing up.

When I use the "burn" option in Disk Utility, I can see the files I created, including the ones that are not in the most recent Time Machine backup. Is there a way to get them? This is my only Mac, so target disk mode isn't an option. What should I try?

Trying to print Word documents with a specific preset from the Finder. Impossible?

bigmusic — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:22:04 -0800

OS X (10.5) Printing difficulties: Trying to print Word documents with a specific preset from the Finder. Impossible? I hate clicking documents open to print and then having to close them. I have to print up about 20 word documents in a folder multiple times every week - those documents should be printed with a 4x4 layout - single sided. (n-up 4 in CUPs speak) - I'm switching from Windows and in windows I had two printers installed (actually the same printer) with different layout options, so all I had to do was make sure the default printer was the one with right layout options. However, on OS X presets seem to be ignored if you print from the finder [Finder |File |Print], it goes with the "Standard" preset no matter how I try it, from the automator, the terminal, applescript. If I open it directly in Word, the correct preset always shows up as the default preset.

Things I've tried:
I've located the PPD file and didn't see an option to set up the N-Up 4x4 as an option anywhere.

I've option clicked the print button with the correct preset.

I've tried switching the printer preset in the terminal.

I've tried using the automator, with the supplied word 2008 actions.

I've looked at the cups documentation, and see that there is an option for using the 4x4, I'm just not sure how I would go about setting that option for a specific printer instance, or how I would print to to that specific printer instance - any clues?