macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

surrender posted:

I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the iOS apps thread, but for some reason, the existing reminders on my MBP's iCal (upgraded to 10.7.2 already) aren't syncing to my iPhone and iCloud.com. Is this intended behavior?

By the looks of it (and I've only experimented for 2 minutes), they have to be in the right calendar to synch. If those reminders are in some local calendar, they won't go into iCloud (unless I've missed some setting � which is entirely possible � that mirrors entries across multiple calendars).

So with a bit of bad luck, you will basically have to migrate all of your entries rather than keep them where they are. ~~Time~~ poking around will tell.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 23:43

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:13

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Krakkles posted:

How do you save Automator workflow documents as applications now? The help file still says to use "Save As", but under Lion, it's only got Save A Version (no "Export").

�Duplicate To�� and then you pick Application as the new document type.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2011 22:25

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Rubiks Pubes posted:

Does Lion still install a poo poo ton of printer drivers like the older versions of OSX did?

It comes with an optional install package for a poo poo-ton of printers, but it only seems like it install maybe a poo poo-kilo of them by default.

japtor posted:

I think Omni makes some app specifically for fancy charts and graphs so look them up.

To follow up on this, OmniGraph Sketcher does this for charts, although it's more geared towards you designing graphs than feeding data into them (but it can do that too). It's very quick and easy if you have a specific graph in mind that you want to display but don't have the data or equation to generate it. It's really an illustration program that is highly focus on graphs, rather than a data grapher the likes of which you'll find in Excel or Numbers.

Even for what it does, though, it's fairly rudimentary. For more advanced stuff (still more design-oriented than actually data-driven), OmniGraffle will probably do it. Both are available in the Mac (and iPad) App store.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2012 04:38

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Speaking of iWork, does anyone know if there is a way to disable the �Press Alt to shift to cell selection mode� functionality in Numbers '09?

The issue is this: whenever I press Alt while editing a cell, the program thinks it's my intention to arrow-key my way to a different cell to add that to the formula and thus immediately stop doing whatever is contextually sensible and inserts this little grey oval that will be filled with a row/column reference�

�except that pressing Alt is what I need to do on my Swedish keyboard to get a $ sign. So if I try to manually type in absolute references, Numbers won't let me do that and instead breaks the formula, tries to detect references that I'm not interested in and haven't actually finished writing, and enters an utterly irrelevant edit mode. Its attempts of automagically detecting cell references and grouping them breaks down completely at this point.

Example:

I want to insert a simple
=A$1

What happens is that, as soon as I try to type that $ sign, since I have to press Alt to do it, the program thinks that I've finished one reference and that I'm now trying to enter a new one. The result is

=[A]$1

�where [A] is an automatically generated reference that is created when I press Alt, and $1 is interpreted as just some random text since I didn't give the program any �proper� input in the �select a cell� mode it entered when I pressed Alt. At this point, the program immediately starts crying because what I entered is obviously not a proper formula.

Exactly how (un)intelligent it is about this varies with the context. Trying to enter

=$A1 + $A$2 + A$3

�yields:

=[$A1] + [$A]$2 + [A]$3

It's basically that middle $ sign that completely baffles the automation. All of it could be solved if I could just make the darn thing not react in any way to the Alt key, but how would I do that? :bang:

# ¿ Jan 30, 2012 23:04

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

gggiiimmmppp posted:

I guess what I'm asking is, if I do the thing where I can use the windows install as a VM or boot it directly, does booting directly actually run natively on the hardware or is it still virtualized? Can I just install a proper windows install to another partition and then run that in a VM? This is confusing to me .

What you do is that you install windows as a bootcamped partition, and if you like, you can restart the machine and be in a normal, native windows environment. If you then import that partition into vmware, you're still running it as a virtual environment with all the limitations this entail. The only difference is that the data on your VM and the data on your bootcamped windows are the same: anything you do in the VM is reflected in the bootcamped windows (for the simple reason that you're running the exact same instance of windows). The key part that makes the whole thing work is the VMware tools that essentially tell windows that �yes, yes, this is completely different hardware compared to what you saw 3 minutes ago � it's fine, stop bitching.�

This gives you the option of simply starting the VM if you want some of VMWare's integration with your OSX desktop, but if you need the extra oomph of running directly on the hardware, you can do that as well without needing to synch up two different installs.

In short: VMware will still work just like VMware; bootcamp will still work just like bootcamp; both just happen to use the same windows installation.

Tippis fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 8, 2012

# ¿ Feb 8, 2012 20:55

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

vikingstrike posted:

Do other browsers do that auto-trim stuff you're referring to? I've never seen it and would only think it comes through an extension.

Opera lets you set history to 0 (or 50,000� or pretty much anything in-between although only 5 or so standard values are available in the drop-downs if you don't want to dive into the really nerdy config modes). At zero, it just doesn't record your addresses; at anything else, it just removes the oldest entry as soon as a new one is added.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2012 14:42

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Olivil posted:

I'd recommend Alfred too, switched from quicksilver when it was still in beta and I've yet to be disappointed.

I never came across any compelling reason to go for Alfred over Quicksilver � what tipped you over?

# ¿ Feb 26, 2012 04:07

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

pipes! posted:

TotalFinder always and forever.

It's ok � I just wish it lived up to its name a bit better and pretty much completely duplicated TotalCommander, in particular regarding how TC completely removes the need for a mouse, and how it lets you do massive regex batch file jobs with very little effort.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2012 19:04

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Pff� I still prefer Quicksilver.

⌘⌘ ftw!

# ¿ Apr 14, 2012 04:15

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Bob Morales posted:

Did they ever give a reason for it?

"Just store your poo poo in the cloud, plebes"

Probably the same reason they eschewed putting blueray support in the Macs: �Sun | Oracle | Sony | Panasonic | [whomever we hate today] are a bag of dicks��

# ¿ Apr 17, 2012 15:30

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Bob Morales posted:

Neurophonic posted:
10.7.4 just dropped with this little doozy:
It also inverted my display brightness and keyboard lighting.

It also made Steam spaz out� but that's pretty much Steam's default behaviour so I'm not sure I want to entirely burden .4 with that�

# ¿ May 10, 2012 02:35

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Raptor1033 posted:

I'm trying to use my PS3 controller on my wife's MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.6.8.

I can get it to show up in the bluetooth menu and have downloaded Enjoy to map the buttons to keyboard functions for use in games. Despite the controller being recognized I can't push any buttons on it. The four lights on the top of the controller continue flashing.

How do I get this thing working?

I got mine to work by simply connecting them via USB the first time (same as you would when tying it to the PS3 the first time you took it out of the package). After that, I could just turn the controller on and have it connect automagically to the Mac.

No idea whether Enjoy alters this process any�

# ¿ May 31, 2012 14:25

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

kapalama posted:

Somehow I updates my Opera to the latest version which caused problems, so I had to use TimeMachine to roll back to Opera 11.64 and now my window rotating CMD+~ no longer functions in Opera.

Any ideas?

If I were to guess, Opera 12 gave you a new set of keyboard shortcuts, one of which took over that particular combination, and when you TM:ed back to 11.64, you only did it on the app, not the settings files? You can try wading through the keyboard shortcut settings and search for ~ to see if it's attached to something.

By the way, if you haven't already, make sure to turn off auto-update (Preferences > Advanced > Security), or it'll revert to v12 at a drop of a hat, and as you noticed, that version isn't quiiiiite ready for prime-time just yet.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2012 12:44

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Stare-Out posted:

Are the notifications of the App Store version of Twitter meant to not work?
I have everything checked in the settings like this:

Yet the only thing that works is Growl. When something happens the Dock icon gets the red star icon only for an instant before it disappears, and the menu bar icon never changes. Having to use Growl's rollup stinks for seeing what I've missed.

Just speculation but�

�what happens if you deselect Growl? I've had a couple of instances where growl picking up notifications and displaying them has made a program think that the notification has been received and dismissed, and they have then cancelled their other notification types.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2012 15:06

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

ufarn posted:

Is there a particular process that goes nuts like this? I've discovered that Opera is effectively useless in ML.

If you're running Opera 12, chances are that you'll find the source of the problem there, rather than in ML.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2012 12:32

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

pupdive posted:

What happens when you take the app to a computer that does not have internet access?

Nothing special.

Individual apps might have some kind of �call home� features, but that's some silliness the developer has decided on in that case, and not something that has anything to do with the app store. Sure, you can't update the apps without internet, but then that's hardly surprising for a digital distribution service� or, hell, it wouldn't be surprising even in the case of physical software distribution � when was the last time you got an update delivered on any kind of physical media rather than download it from the publisher's site?

# ¿ Aug 9, 2012 21:54

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Arivia posted:

Has anyone tried OmniFocus? It looks good, but it's $40(!)

It's pretty much the GTD ^{(getting things done)} app.

If you follow that strategy/philosophy/whathaveyou, it's the app you want (and there's a neat iOS version as well that lets you synch the two rather effortlessly). If all you want is a reminders/time management app, then it's still very good, if maybe a bit quirky since it assumes you'll want to do certain things with your tasks.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2012 16:19

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

bevis of nazereth posted:

Just a quick question. Any recommendations for a decent mouse to get for an imac?

This "magic" freakin mouse is an exercise in frustration to use, its best magic tricks are alternating between thhe bluetoothe connection dropping out, right clicks only registering if I channel Ronald Reagan, middle scroll functionality pretty much devalues my skinny rear end fingers and im on the borderline of a seizure if I try and be audacious enough to program a 2 fingered swipe to the left or right to control itunes.

Ive the apple trackpad and it works well, i just want a mouse that works

Any old Logitech will do. Personally, I've developed a long-lasting fondness for M510s, but your mileage will vary. If you have a trackpad and can do all the gesturing you want on that one, all you need is something with two (or more) buttons and a wheel.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2012 01:54

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

empty baggie posted:

10.6 is only required if purchasing through the app store. Technically, if someone were to make a DMG copy, it wouldn't really matter as long as the machine meets the minimum requirements.

^^ That. There might still be some issues, but mainly because a fair selection of the hardware that was around for 10.5 (and even more so if they were upgraded from 10.4 before that) will be incompatible with 10.8. So the OS version might still be a signal of inability to upgrade, but that inability will not be due to the actual OS version itself.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2012 02:02

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

eddiewalker posted:

Arrsync is a pretty good free Mac GUI for rsync, despite its pirate theme.

�Despite�? Pff� because of its name. :pirate:

# ¿ Oct 11, 2012 22:30

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

beefnoodle posted:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/new-itunes/

See Bonus Features.

�now if they could only get it to not reset itself and lose all data if for some reason it can't locate the volume with all the files on at this very instant. :bang:

Hell, just throwing up a �sorry, can't find it guv'� warning instead of guessing that complete data destruction is probably the best cause of action would be a vast improvement.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2012 20:23

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Boris Galerkin posted:

e2:

Seriously? I just purchased and downloaded Keynote today from the App Store. Keynote, one of Apple's major apps, isn't even up to date with their own services?

It should be � mine certainly is. Most likely, they've just not pre-packaged the store version with the updates that replace iWork with iCloud (an explanation that would raise a question or two of its own).

# ¿ Nov 11, 2012 18:55

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

The Macaroni posted:

What's the current preferred program/method for ripping .flv files from YouTube? Permute used to do it beautifully, and had a great trial version, but just as I was about to buy it they transitioned the program to the App Store and removed the YouTube ripping feature. I contacted the devs and literally offered them money to buy the non-disabled version, and they said no.

I don't know if it qualifies as �preferred�, but MacTubes has pretty consistently worked well enough for me. It will occasionally break as Youtube change their embedding code but the developer is usually decently quick at getting out updates to match any such changes.

The UI is a very bare-bones � it's essentially a front-end for youtube searches with its own player window and download option, so you kind of need to know your google-fu to get to what you want (or you can just copy-paste page links into the player to find stuff directly).

# ¿ Dec 18, 2012 08:25

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

bonzaisushi posted:

If anyone is a fan of total finder or was looking for a program that gives finder tabbed browsing i highly recommend checking this out. Its free and it feels quite a bit smoother and bug free than total finder does.

http://www.trankynam.com/xtrafinder/

All I want is something that pretty much exactly replicates the functionality of Total Commander, in particular in that it makes using a mouse completely meaningless and inefficient. :eng99:

# ¿ Jan 1, 2013 13:46

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Dr Rotcod posted:

What's the good project/time management software these days? Just need to categorize my projects and tasks. Maybe schedule people and meetings? I'm a post supervisor and things have been getting real serious around here. Should come coupled with an iPhone app that syncs to cloud.

OmniFocus? At least for time management, it's a good choice, even more so if you're using some Getting Things Done-style methodology. If you want a full(ish) project management app, the same company makes OmniPlan, which is decent enough for not-insanely-complex projects.

Tippis fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jan 5, 2013

# ¿ Jan 5, 2013 02:48

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

deep square leg posted:

Is speed the main issue with spotlight for people? I don't do any searching so I set spotlight to do nothing but index the Applications folder and use it as a launcher only.

Nah. The main issue with spotlight it's that it's only a launcher� whereas QS is an object manipulation app that, just as it happens, allows you to search for an object that is an app, and then lets you launch it as one of the possible actions for that object.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2013 12:56

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

benisntfunny posted:

PRADA SLUT posted:
What kind of adaptor do I need to connect the new iMac to a TV via HDMI? TB > HDMI?

Yep. They're pretty cheap too on Amazon ($9) or about $30 at Fruitstore.

I think the important question is whether the iMac can/will send sound via TB/HDMI, because beyond that, a modern TV is no different than any other kind of external monitor.

# ¿ May 14, 2013 18:39

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

SRQ posted:

What does that even mean?

I think he's referring to the heresy of wanting to alter what St. Steve and his holy acolyte Sir Ive have given to this Earth, so now it's off to the Gulag with you.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 03:45

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

SRQ posted:

I've been a windows baby my whole life I only got in last year, boy was that an improvement.
This is all literally magic. Compared to OSX it's like Windows is still just Windows 98SE with better graphics.

I'd argue that in Win8, it's actually with worse graphics since they've somehow managed to go backwards in usability and full-featuredness.

That said, it's still a bit sad that many of OSX's really fancy UI trickery is as unintuitive and obscure as it is.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2013 12:36

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Bonobos posted:

Not sure if I should ask here or in the mouse thread, but since we are talking software...how is the logitech software for OSX? I know a few years ago the consensus was to just use STEETMOUSE or similar, but supposedly their drivers / software has gotten better?

Or is it still a buggy mess? Mouse is a G500S btw.

The main question is, what do you (think you) need it for?

It's much better than it used to be, but generalist input managers still fare a bit better. Even so, most of the time you just don't need any of it unless the software you're using is clunky to begin with and/or doesn't handle function binding properly innately.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2013 18:44

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

SRQ posted:

How does in place OSX updating work?
I want to install 10.9 beta on my shiny new retina 15'', but I don't want to have to reinstall everything I just installed. I assume it keeps the apps and I won't have weird driver problems?
I've always been shy of in place updating since it was a clusterfuck with 90s windows.

Usually, it retains pretty much everything as far as programs and settings go. Depending on how it has been implemented, you may occasionally have to re-enter your registration info for some third-party software (older Adobe suites have been notoriously horrible in this regard, so if you have any of those installed, you're probably better off wiping it and re-installing after the upgrade anyway). Your Library and any settings inside it will be retained in full with some of Apple's own setting files being replaced to match new OS components. If it discovers anything in the process that it deems incompatible, it will also be saved in a special �incompatible software� directory, so you can go through it manually and figure out if any of it can be replaced or updated.

�but that's for full releases. I have no idea how much a beta might screw you over.

Either way, I'm sure that, for absolutely best performance and stability, clean installs are the best way to go for OSX as well, but I have machines that I have done in-place upgrades on, all the way from Tiger up to Mountain Lion, without any appreciable ill effects.

Tippis fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Aug 29, 2013

# ¿ Aug 29, 2013 20:20

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Ashex posted:

This is driving me insane, I'm running mountain lion on my MBP and even though I set computer sleep to never via energy saver the laptop still goes into idle sleep when plugged into power.

There any way to completely disable sleep when plugged into power? I searched around online and was only finding little utilities to run that would completely disable it.

What does it say if you use pmset -g in the terminal with and without the charger plugged in?

# ¿ Aug 31, 2013 12:53

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Stare-Out posted:

Anyone have issues with Growl in ML not showing notifications after a while? I use it for Twitter notifications and after a certain time it just flat-out won't show any notifications unless restarted.

I've had some problems along those lines. Most of the time, though, it has simply been that Growl has quietly crashed or that the startup order is wrong. Some programs seem to have problems detecting Grown if it's already running, so if they crash, I have to restart Growl as well. I have no idea what's actually causing it though, so it might not be all that helpful, but those two might be good places to start looking.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2013 19:29

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Ashex posted:

On Power:

code:

 standbydelay         4200
 standby              1
 sleep                0 (sleep prevented by 602)
 hibernatemode        3

Hmm, these would be the main suspects.

Iirc, this means that it will hibernate after just over an hour (which it is allowed to do due to the combination of standby = 1 and hibernatemode = 3) and that process 602 is interfering with its normal sleeping behaviour. Presumably, this is one of the utilities you're talking about?

You could try using sudo pmset -c standbydelay 14400 and see if this at least delays the behaviour � that should set the hibernate timer to 4 hours rather than the 1:10 you have right now. Or, hell, just jack it up to 86400 and see if you can go a whole day without it doing anything funny.

�or just nuke /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist and start again, as suggested earlier.

Tippis fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Sep 1, 2013

# ¿ Sep 1, 2013 01:20

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

door Door door posted:

In a similar vein, I'm taking a statistics class that requires a graphing calculator. Are there any good/free graphing calculator apps for the mac? Will Grapher pretty much do anything I need?

It's hard to tell without knowing what will be in the class. Grapher can be made to do some pretty spectacular things, and if you dig around in the examples, you should be able to get a sense of what functions and solvers it has to offer.

�if nothing else, it will probably look better than what any kind of graphing calculator has to offer.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2013 22:30

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

wdarkk posted:

It might just be not enough VRAM, multi-monitor setups are vram hungry and apple is notoriously stingy.

I think that depends a lot on how you spec it up and what size you pick. I haven't checked the current MBA line, but in the past, both the chip and the memory allocation has depended both on what size you picked and what your base CPU you selected during the first step of the order setup. Mine says this:

�and that should be plenty to run pretty much anything you can plug into the poor thing.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 12:47

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

eddiewalker posted:

Have you tried XLD? I don't have a .caf file to try it with, but it's a pretty Swiss Army-like converter and will work on full folders.

^^ Anything using libsndfile should be able to read and convert .caf:s, so the main question is really what apps there are that do this and also provide good scripting abilities, either using automator actions or command-line parameters. Good old Audacity, for instance, should be another option.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2013 02:03

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Ashex posted:

The screensaver keeps activating when I'm playing games This happens with Borderlands 2 and Bioshock Infinity in fullscreen when I'm using a gamepad (PS3 controller over bluetooth). Is there a fix aside from disabling the screensaver?

Do you have hot corners enabled? Specifically one that triggers the screen saver?

# ¿ Sep 29, 2013 13:25

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Ashex posted:

Don't have one that triggers the screensaver and a gamepad won't trigger them. It would activate every 15 minutes which is what the screensaver timeout is set to, increasing to 60 minutes just makes it activate every 60 minutes.

Ok. Then it's probably something along the line that the gamepad doesn't generate any kind of input that the screen saver picks up and resets itself on. The reason I was asking about hot corners is that, in some games, the mouse position is still transmitted to the OS layer that handles those activators, even if there is no actual cursor being used. So in an FPS, you can try to look up and left (or wherever) and suddenly trigger the hot corner action.

But yes, it sounds like you need something along the lines of Caffeine to just temporarily disable screen saver and sleep mode, or possibly figure out some way for the gamepad to send input that the screen (and energy) saver detects as �activity�.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2013 21:29

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:13

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Oh My Science posted:

No, although youtube is acting up. That could just be youtube though.

How is it acting up? Because it's doing weird things here too�

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 18:56

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > macOS and Mac Software: We still exist!

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