Category Archives: MacBook / OS X

Review – Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD in MacBook Pro

Posted by on February 3, 2012 No 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 1 comment

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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OS X: Snow Leopard is coming – get it for USD 30

Posted by on August 26, 2009 No comments

Head over to MacMall.com before 28th August and get Snow Leopard for USD 24.99 (with shipping to South Africa for USD 30.05).

Snow Leopard will be released on 28th August and currently there is no official word from Core (the South African Apple distributor) when Snow Leopard will be available and how much it will cost. Rumors indicate a local release around middle of September and you will certainly not be able to get your copy for under ZAR 250,00.

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Office:Mac 2008 12.2.0 Update

Posted by on July 21, 2009 1 comment

Microsoft released the latest Office:Mac update. It includes a number of improvements (especially speed and stability) for Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

The horrible Exchange client, Entourage, is still not capable of properly managing calendaring and synchronizing events with an Exchange server. This will be probably my last update to Office:Mac as come September, Snow Leopard will support Exchange out of the box and therefore will allow me to also switch over to iWork ’09 which pretty much does everything M$ does, but just cheaper.

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