Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
Sunday, November 11th, 2007 |
Even though Applehave said that they have made the Leopard GUI unified, there are still a few things which are lacking. For example the scrollbars in Finder are not as nice as in iTunes.
I stumbled over this Italian blog which describes how to change the look of the scrollbars in Finder.
It’s in Italian which I do not understand but the Extras.zip which is for download on the website, have a readme.rtf which also have the instructions in English.
But the easy way of doing it is;
1) download file
2) extract the file
3) copy Extras.rsrc (PowerPC) or Extras2.rsrc (MacIntel) to /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/
Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources
4) make sure that root:wheels is the owner of the file (#sudo chown root:wheel Extras2.rsrc)
5) restart Finder (#sudo killall Finder)
And then the Finder windows will have a nice scrollbar.
Now, next step is to figure out how to do that for all Applications….
technorati tags: Apple, Finder, iTunes
Posted in apple, howto, osx | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 11th, 2007 |
So we finally got a build in backup tool in OSX – that is in Leopard. Well get your hands down again (well there have been a lot of talk about this since Leopard was released). The tool is Time Machine, and it kind of does not really do much…. except for having a nice interface for restoring files.
My annoyances with Time Machine are:
a) It is really really slow, using ‘rsync’ is faster…..
b) When it does a backup iTunes stutters once in a while which is annoying, especially as Time Machine runs every hour (in automatic mode).
c) If one runs Time Machine from the command line, it will go into restore mode (crap!)
d) You have to have Time Machine in the Dock if you want to run it in manual mode (crap!)
e) Per default it does not work with network drives (there is a hack for that).
f) It not possible to limit the amount of disk space it uses, you will have to create a partition for Time Machine only (crap!)
g) …
For e) there is a solution here and here, problem is that if it does not work when you actually need that backup you cannot call Apple for help:-(
Time Machine is great for what it is, but it is a very simple tool, and a power user will just get annoyed with it. Go get something else if you need something which you can customize…..
Thank you Apple for giving us something which almost works…..
Update – 2007.11.12
Looks like there is a way. According to MacOSXHints, in this hint , it is mentions that right clicking on the TimeMachine disk allows one to do a manual backup.
technorati tags: backup tool, Time Machine, Apple OSX
Posted in apple, osx | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 |
There have been some writing the last couple of days after a data recovery company have said that all 2.5″ Seagate harddrives made in China used in Apple Macbook and Macbook Pro’s can crash due to a hardware failure.
The thing is that a manufacture can be unlucky and release a batch of “faulty” drives into the wild, and people using them can (will) loose data. The good thing is that if this happens Apple will replace the harddrive (that is why we have warrenty), and probably with one which does not have any faults. In the mean time, remember to backup you data.
Now the funny thing is this (not the loosing data part) is that at work I’ve had 4 computers from Dell which all of them came with 2 Maxtor harddrives. And of these 8 harddrives I’ve had 6 of them replaced due the a crash, and the amount of data lost on this is more than I want to think about. But Dell knew about this issues, and everyone who got a computer from Dell would have a catastrophic failure and data loss at some point. But there was no recall or no big writing on the wall for that reason.
technorati tags: Seagate, Apple Macbook, Apple Macbook Pro
Posted in apple, computers, hardware | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 |
I’m using Google Reader for my rss feeds (that way I can read them everywhere), and now they (well been able to for a while), allow you to share things on a public page.
When you see items you would like other people to see (actually people can also subscribe to it) you can share the item (at the bottom of the reader item window), and it becomes available on your public page.
Also you can put a link to it on you page:
Kind of cool….
My shared page is here.
technorati tags: Google Reader
Posted in internet, software, technology | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 |
One of the things I was looking forward for Apple to add of the “new” things in Leopard was proper sorting of folders in Finder.
I’ve always used the following sort order 1) Folders, 2) everything else in alphabetic order by type, and it seams like Apple do know how to do this, and it really anoyes me as it makes finding what I’m looking for a time consuming thing – especially when one have a few hundred files in a folder.
At least there is a way to make sure that folders always are first (or last), if one modify the /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/
InfoPlist.string by following this howto.
But it still only sort on one column.
How can it be that iTunes can sort on multiple columns when Finder can’t?
Maybe Mr. Jobs only have one kind of content in his folders……
Also it looks like the sorting by name is broken in Leopard; in Tiger one could choose to sort by Kind, and then the rest would be sorted by Name (or that is my assumption), but in Leopard it looks like if one choose to sort by Kind the non Folder items will be sorted randomly. Just have a look at your Applications Folder, choose to sort by Kind and the first items will be more or less random.
Just have a look at this
This is my Applications folder Arrange By Kind, humm…..
technorati tags: Apple, Finder
Posted in apple, osx | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 2nd, 2007 |
For years the harddrive vendors have had a small notice on their harddrive stating that they think 1GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes and not 1,073,741,824 bytes, it does not really look as much but it is approximately 7% in difference, and for a 100GB disk it’s 7GB. Now do the calculation on a 500GB disk, and it comes to about 35GB…..
Some time ago, Michael Lazar and Sarah Cho filed a lawsuit against Seagate (read more here) , and they won.
Seagate is going to give customers money back, or they some backup software if they can prove purchase of a harddisk between March 22, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2006.
I do not live in the US, and therefor I cannot get anything, but at least we might get lucky and get the real numbers on the harddrives. That is 1 byte is 8 bit and not 10 bit.
There are 10 kinds of people how know binary……
technorati tags: harddrive, Seagate
Posted in computers, hardware, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 |
It finally happened, someone got around to write an trojan horse for OSX, we have been lucky so far, and as it is, this trojan horse is not really that clever. Or as one could say the people who actually get infected are not that clever, as it requires them to do two manual things;
1) download a file (.dmg – file image)
2) install it – which actually requires a password (administrator)
There is a good article about it on Macworld, which also talks about how to remove it (which is quite simple), and also funny enough how to see if you have been infected.
Also the only place one can get only this thing from a porn site, which means that the people who get infected probably will not talk to loudly about it:-)
technorati tags: trojan horse, OSX
Posted in apple, osx | 1 Comment »