So I’m sitting in my office, waiting for the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard update to show up in my Software Update, and it just isn’t happening. And at some point I realize, “Hey, maybe it just hasn’t been downloaded to our Software Update Server yet.” Yes, we run our very own Software Update Server [...]
So there’s an incredibly annoying and puzzling behavior in Mac OS X with regards to duplicate computer names on the LAN. Most Mac Admins probably know what I’m talking about. Here’s the deal: Let’s say you have a Mac Pro on your home network named Spanky and it has an IP address of 192.168.1.25. Let’s [...]
The new Safari 3 is out for both Leopard and Tiger (it’s included in Mac OS X v.10.4.11). It’s pretty nice, I have to say. It now works with Blogger’s HTML editor dealio, which is excellent (though slightly buggy at present). The find function now kicks some serious — and, more importantly, some Firefox — [...]
There’s been no shortage of commentary on Leopard’s 3D Dock, mostly because it’s just ugly as Hell. But that’s fixable. There’s been almost as much bitching about two other new visual changes in Leopard. The first is the menubar, which is now translucent. I’m ambivalent about this one. On the one hand, I understand that, [...]
Google Desktop, the Google-made search utility for your computer, is finally out for the Mac. I’ve been playing around with it, putting it through its paces, and comparing it to Spotlight. Here’s what I’ve found so far: Google Desktop is much, much faster at searching than Spotlight. Spotlight took nearly a full minute to search [...]
Rarely have I seen an interface or feature as useless or just downright broken as Smart Folders in the Mac OS X 10.4 Finder. Thought they might be handy, so I tried to make one. Here’s what happened. My goal was to create a Smart Folder that contained all my Final Cut Pro project files [...]
For those who don’t already know, the Inspector is a variation on the “Get Info” window that appears when you select a file and choose “Get Info” from the File menu (or press “command-i”). To call the Inspector, add the “option” key to the Get Info call — in File->Get Info, holding “option” will cause [...]
Someone recently commented that my script to disable Spotlight was no longer functioning in v. 10.4.5 of Tiger. When I went to check on the functionality of the old script, I realized I’d been working on a new and improved version awhile back, and that I’d intended to post it, but completely forgot to. So [...]
MacFixit just reported about troubles the new Intel-based Macs are having with network speeds, particularly AFP connections to, of all things, other Macs. The solution, they report, is to set the delayed_ack property to 0. In order for this change to survive a reboot, however, they recommend editing /etc/rc. The problem with this is that, [...]
Last semester we had a lot of problems in the lab. Our main problems were due to two things: the migration to Tiger, and problems with our home account server. Our Tiger problems have largely gone away with the latest releases, and we’ve replaced our home account server with another machine, and, aside from a [...]