Category Archives: MacBook / OS X

OS X Mountain Lion breaks everything

Posted by on February 20, 2012 No comments

Perhaps a bit dramatic on the “breaking”-part – OS X Mountain Lion has some really awesome features, but only lasted 2 days on my laptop.

OS X Mountain Lion breaks VMWare

I love being on the bleeding edge of technology, and boy did I bleed this time. In the past I had no issue, running an OS X Developer Preview on my MacBook Pro as the primary OS. Having had no issues with OS X Lion, I thought the cougar variant would be no worse.

Installation went quick once the 4,5GB download was there and the new features of iMessage, cloud services and the welcome arrival of entering search text into the Safari URL field were welcome additions to an otherwise already great OS.

The first alarm bell went off, when Little Snitch refused to work – this was okay and did not bother me too much. More alarming was VMWare’s (as well as VirtualBox and Parallels) refusal to run. Sadly I had to do a restore from my previous backup and a reinstall of OS X Lion.

The OS X Lion reinstall took about 30 minutes on my SSD drive and the restore from TimeMachine another 2 hours. VMWare started and Little Snitch was happy – just a tiny problem – neither OS X Mail or iChat wanted to start.

TimeMachine must have backed up libraries from my OS X Mountain Lion install and then restored those onto OS X Lion, rendering some applications useless. Even reinstalling the latest combo-update denied me success.

Eventually I used Pacifist and restored the iLifeMediaBrowser.framework as libraries within it were reported incompatible (yes, I did try and reinstall iLife which also did not work) and this fixed the problem at last.



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Gelaskin your MacBook Pro

Posted by on February 5, 2012 No comments

Gelaskins have been scarce in South Africa for several months and even during my recent trip to New York, I was not able to find any.

We eventually decided to order several skins from the Canadian based company. The gallery of pre-made skins is huge and covers pretty much any laptop model and size. More intriguing is the “Create Your Own”-feature which allows you to upload any image (provided that it is of good quality) and customize your skin on Gelaskins’ website.

There is no limit in imagination, and the final product (using high-grade 3M vinyl adhesive sheet) is excellent:

Gelaskin for MacBook Pro

Creating a custom skin was as easy as uploading images and then using the web-based layout tool to arrange/resize the images for the chosen device. You are able to use transparent images to overlay images and arrange images in the layout editor.

My initial order had issues as the cut-out for the skin was not done properly and I could not detach the skin without the danger of tearing the skin. When I contacted Gelaskins, they were concerned about it and promptly offered to re-ship the faulty skins at no extra cost.

Shipping from Gelaskins was quick, but I did alert them about my horrible shipping experience with UPS to South Africa and I strongly urge you to only order from Gelaskins if you can pick an alternative to UPS. If it was not for UPS screwing up my delivery, the Gelaskins purchase would have been an awesome experience from start to end, but UPS did manage to leave a bitter taste behind.

Unfortunately this is out of Gelaskins control and the did provide feedback that my delivery issue has been escalated to their local UPS office.

Applying the Gelaskin is however really easy:

  • Clean your MacBook Pro with antistatic foam to get rid of any dirt and make sure the surface is completely dry
  • Remove the Gelaskin from the sleeve and from the sheet
  • Align the skin on your laptop without pressing the skin down. The adhesive on the skin does not really stick and the skin can be peeled off at any time. You are able to adjust the skin without much trouble.
  • Once the skin is aligned, take a soft cloth and push out any bubbles. It is common that bubbles will form, but gently pushing them with a soft cloth to the edges will remove them.

 

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Review – Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD in MacBook Pro

Posted by on February 3, 2012 3 comments

There are very compelling reasons to upgrade your current MacBook Pro. While my MacBook Pro is still a 2011 model with 8GB of RAM I always felt that it could be a bit faster. Even with the 7200RPM Toshiba drive fitted, IO operations felt sluggish (even more so after installing the OWC) and I wanted to see if a SSD would make a big difference.

The 30-day return promise from OWC made the choice of the Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD 480 GB drive an easy choice. When it comes to SSD options, not many companies provide reasonable pricing and like OWC a 5 year warranty on their products – pricing is steep at USD 1,000.00 but the results are overwhelming and worth it.

Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD 480GB

My MacBook Pro supports 6GB SATA out of the box, and although the System Profiler does not show TRIM support, this is not an issue, as the OWC SSDs have TRIM support built-in.

Installation of the drive is as simple as:

  • Taking a backup of your current system via TimeMachine
  • Removing the bottom cover and the factory installed Toshiba drive
  • Attaching the mounting screws of the original hard-drive to the OWC
  • Restoring from TimeMachine (I chose a new install of OS X Lion and then a restore of my data

The performance of the OWC is simply mind-blowing. A cold-boot to the desktop takes roughly 10 seconds whereas a shutdown takes about 3 seconds.

Application performance has drastically improved – OS X mail opens instantly and displays all messages. Microsoft Office 2011 applications open within 2 seconds. MyEclipseIDE opens in 15 seconds and booting a VMWare image from suspend mode takes about 7 seconds.

Disk operations typically average at 200MB/sec although I have seen peaks in the 400MB/sec range:

Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD transfer speeds

OWC’s customer- and sales support is truly amazing – my order was shipped via Fedex and arrived within 3 business days in South Africa.

TimeMachine backups (typically around 20-40GB per backup operation) average at 200MB/sec read speed and are now pretty much limited by the network speed of my Airport Express.

The installation and booting into the BootCamp partition is natively supported by the drive and booting natively into Windows takes about 20 seconds. Game performance under Windows (Skyrim) and OS X (Civilization) show a tremendous improvement in performance and load time. At times it feels that the Mac Book Pro is struggling to process the data fast enough.

Another positive side-effect is the loading of Safari (which was typically sluggish) and browsing speed (I attribute this to faster read- and access-time retrieving cached fragments from the browser cache).

The MacBook Pro does run slightly hotter and the fans kick in more frequently, especially when resting the laptop on my lap – I only noticed this behavior during TimeMachine backups or more intensive disk-operations.

In conclusion, the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD is a must-have upgrade for any gadgeteer.

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Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 for Mac killing my Mac

Posted by on February 1, 2012 3 comments

Ever since I switched to OS X, I have never really paid much attention to viruses or trojans, but one can not overlook at times the feeling of “uneasiness” by not having antivirus installed.

I tried out the latest version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 for Mac on my MacBook Pro (2011 with 8GB RAM) and although I did not find any malware, trojans or viruses, the biggest “virus” for me was Kaspersky itself.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Mac does not shutdown

In order to scan for viruses, Kaspersky installs kernel extensions and I found that after installing the application, my MacBook (running a 480GB SSD drive) would not shutdown at all. Deleting Kaspersky (which then invokes CleanMyMac to delete preferences) by moving it into the trash, also did not resolve the problem.

I found today, that the only way to completely remove Kaspersky (and it’s kernel extensions which have been the cause of OS X not shutting down) is to remount the install DMG and then select the uninstall option.

This completely resolved the problem and my MacBook Pro now shuts down in 3 seconds as I was accustomed to.

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SSH tunnel on OS X

Posted by on April 16, 2010 No comments

Many companies nowadays provide a SSH tunnel to connect remotely into servers. This is a great feature as you will have your internet connectivity wherever you are and still enjoy the benefit of select tunnels.

On OS X and Linux this is really straight forward. The example below establishes a SSH tunnel via tunnel.company.co.za into an Oracle server hosted on the network at 10.0.0.10:

ssh -C -p 22 -l myuserid -N -o ConnectTimeout=5 -o TCPKeepAlive=yes -o NumberOfPasswordPrompts=1 -o ControlMaster=no -o PreferredAuthentications=publickey -i /Users/Me/.ssh/id_rsa -L 15211:10.0.0.10:1521 tunnel.company.co.za

Explanation of the above:

  • -C: Uses compression over SSH
  • -l myuserid: Connects via userid “myuserid”
  • -o ControlMaster=no: disables the reuse of connections. Setting it to “auto” increases performance as it allows multiplexing, but might introduce problems. I play safe here.
  • -o PreferredAuthentications=publickey -i /Users/Me/.ssh/id_rsa: connect to SSH via certificate
  • -L 15211:10.0.0.10:1521: tunnels from local-port 15211 into remote port 1521 at 10.0.0.10

There are different opinions on ControlMaster (read some experience here). Some users say, that setting it to “auto” is reliable and will improve speed significantly. If you want to use it, do the following:

  1. Create a directory: mkdir ~/.ssh/cm_socket
  2. Add -o ControlPath ~/.ssh/cm_socket/%r@%h:%p to the arguments
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MacUpdate: Get $429 worth of software for $49.99

Posted by on March 20, 2010 No comments

MacUpdate has launched its Spring Software Bundle, headlined by Parallels Desktop 5. Just buying the bundle for Parallels 5 (which retails at USD 80) is worth it. The $50 bundle would normally sell for almost $400. It includes 10 applications, with an eleventh available for the first 10,000 purchasers — they are currently approaching 3800 bundles in day one of the sale. Parallels Desktop 5 ($80) runs virtualizations of Windows and Linux on the Mac.

Other application in the bundle include Bee Docs Timeline 3D ($65), which creates full motion 3D Timelines that can be sent to Apple’s iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, or Keynote presentation software, and Spell Catcher X ($40), a global spell-check utility. Hydra ($80) is a high-dynamic-range photo tool that combines multiple images at different exposures, using the image best detail from each to provide one image with detail across the exposure range.

Back-In-Time ($30) allows easy access to Time Machine data while ForeverSave ($15) saves revisions of documents to prevent any loss. Hyperspaces ($13) adds hot keys and customizations to Apple’s Spaces, Web Snapper ($15) captures web pages in a single click, saving them as a PDF or image file and MacDVDRipper Pro ($10) copies DVDs to the Mac. Mac Scan ($30) rounds out the bundle — it identifies and removes malware, spyware and other malicious files.

For the first 20,000 purchases, DVDRemaster Pro 6 ($50) will be added — It allows users to compress a DVD for burning to a single-layer disk or convert a DVD to one of many video formats, supporting H.264 compression.

MacUpdate is also including an option for six months of its MacUpdate Desktop service ($20/year) for $4. The bundle runs for 15 days, beginning today.

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Technet subscription for USD 269

Posted by on November 7, 2009 No comments

I am normally not promoting Microsoft or Windows, since it stinks. But if you are dependent on it, then make the most out of it with getting a cool discount on the Technet subscription (note: this is download only).

Think about it for a second, Windows 7 is already on the download area. So is Windows Server 2008 R2. Exchange 20101 just RTM’d and will be there soon. Office 2010 and many others are on the way. So what better way to get access to all of the technologies and build a strong project plan? There isn’t one.

Oh wait, it gets better. Use my US TMSAM07 promotion code for a 25% discount off the new subscription price.

The link to sign up is here.

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OS X: SanDisk Cruzer Micro U3 removal tool

Posted by on September 21, 2009 1 comment

SanDisk sells their Cruzer USB sticks with that pesky U3 tool, which mounts itself as a CD-drive on a Windows computer. Something you typically don’t see when running a Mac. There is an easy way to removing it, by downloading the U3 removal tool for Mac.

Start the U3 Removal tool and then remount the USB stick. The format will took on my 16GB stick about 30 seconds and that pesky CD drive is gone for good now.

For additional support or questions, visit the this forum.

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OS X: Snow Leopard breaks screen capture to clipboard

Posted by on September 7, 2009 6 comments

A couple of kinks in SL, but the most frustrating one for me was that I was not able to do a screen-shot via CTRL + Shift + Cmd + 4 and then paste the screenshot into Mail or any other application. Strangely enough this worked fine before the upgrade and after upgrading to SL, I was only able to paste into a few select applications.

The fix is quite easy, you just need to delete one preference file and then log-out/log-in:
Delete the plist-file from /User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist

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OS X: Upgrade to Snow Leopard

Posted by on September 5, 2009 No comments

I managed to source a copy of Snow Leopard and upgraded my MacBook Air. I am always on the wild and reckless side and shoved in the DVD and upgraded without a recent backup – something I would not attempt with Windows.

The upgrade process takes about 60 minutes and after reboot all applications still work (one exception was an outdated 3G driver which I installed once, but never used). Unlike with Windows 7, where the UI is completely revamped, you will struggle to find something new in 10.6 (most obvious is the wireless drop-down, a revamped Quicktime Player and the seamless inclusion of Exchange support).

The OS boots up / shuts down faster and feels generally slightly faster. The Exchange support works well (bye bye Entourage) and Apple managed not to break anything. Awesome release – especially considering it only costs R 325,00.

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