Prevent SkyMACMate from locking up on Intel Macs
May 09, '07 07:30:00AM
Contributed by: qwerqwer
If you purchase any Yealink product and use it with, say, Skype on your Mac, you must install a program called SkyMACMAte. At the time of this writing, this program is compiled for PowerPC only (version 1.0.0.12), and has been the cause of my Mac locking up reliably every couple of days. I have emailed Yealink several times about it, but only get Japanese replies.
From lots of testing, searching, and reading, I have learned that some people believe the program locks up because of a problem with dual-core CPUs, while others think it is a bug in the code that if it runs for longer that 24 hours at a time, it dies. Either way, it kills my system.
With the combination of some Automator and AppleScript scripts, and a little help from cron and iCal, we can minimize how often this thing locks up our machine. I say minimize, because I have only been testing it for a couple of days.
There are several ways to implement the following ... I am going to take a simplistic approach, one that does not require the user to edit cron jobs, etc.
- Create a new Automator script with the following steps:
- Insert an AppleScript script into it, and add the following code: tell application "SkyMACMate" to quit
- Add a five second pause.
- Add another AppleScript: tell application "Skype" to quit
Save this as an application named CloseSkype
- Create a second Automator script:
- Add an action to launch an application: Skype
- Add a 10 second pause
- Add an action to launch an application: SkyMACMAte
Save this as an application named OpenSkype.
- In iCal, create a repeating event that runs every day at some late hour that you will be sleeping (I chose 11pm). Turn on an alarm, and tell it to run a program. Select your program CloseSkype.
- Create another repeating event in iCal at an early time before you wake up. (I set mine for 6am). Set it to repeat every day, and set an alarm, and run the application OpenSkype.
That's it! With some luck, your system won't lock up anymore. I am still running some tests, but so far so good!
Some forseen problems/options: You don't have to close out Skype in your scripts. I chose to do so. Also, if you are on a call at 11pm, your call will end when the iCal event fires. Someday maybe I'll write some script to determine if you are on a call in Skype. For now, this is all I did.
I hope this helps the many of you out there who are tired of waiting for Yealink to fix this bug in their application.
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070507065945410