MacFixIt's OS X Page published a tip today for saving "unsavable" QuickTime movies. QuickTime content producers have the option of indicating that a certain clip should not be savable, which disables the "Save" option normally available within QuickTime Pro. MacFixIt details the steps necessary to save a movie from IE using only GUI tools. Give it a read if you'd like a GUI method for saving QT clips.
On the other hand, you can also use the Terminal to accomplish the same result in fewer steps (although it can be argued whether it's easier or harder than the GUI method!). If you'd like to know how, read the rest of this article. NOTE: You'll need the Developer Tools installed for this to work.
normally with ssh you can run (on the command line) 'ssh machine command' to run a command on a remote machine. so put a compiled applescript called 'testscript' in your home directory and try and run it from a remote (or even the local) machine:
ssh yourmac testscript
and it will run that applescript. however, while that applescript shows up in the dock, it seems to have no access to running processes.
A Co-worker noticed that the idea of having a link to buy MacOS X software right there in the Apple menu was very "Microsoftish", so he tracked down where it was located and I figured out how to get rid of the menu item altogether. (I know there are other links out there to customize (in a way) the Apple menu. This simply tells how to get rid of that menu item in X 10.1.)
Warning: If you're not comfy in the Terminal and/or vi, this might not be for you. An unsuccessful attempt at this has the nasty side-effect of not allowing you to run the Finder... (yes, you'd have to ssh/telnet into the machine to fix it if you mess this up somehow.)
[Editor's caution: I have not tried this myself, and it's quite possible that a mix-up in the editing will render your Finder unusable. Please proceed with caution if you're going to attempt this modification! Read the rest of the article for the how-to.]
If you have an unsupported, networked, non-PostScript printer, the instructions and files in this package MAY give you the ability to use it under OS X 10.1. The package walks you through some background on the Mac OS X printing system, the Darwin printing system, and installing GhostScript to get your non-PostScript printers working on your network. With a little bit of your own investigating, this package will potentially allow you to support your SERIAL printers, and possibly unsupported USB printers!
The hints and tips here will have potential applicability to any myriad of printing problems under OS X 10.1.
At present, Mac OS X does not accelerate the video on ATI Rage Pro chipsets. However, it appears the 10.1 CD contains at least a preliminary solution to the problem. On the MacFixIt Tips and Hints board, the RagePro Fix thread contains "Sysadmin's" hack for enabling ATI Rage Pro support. Basically, the hack involves taking some drivers that are on the 10.1 update CD and placing them on your boot partition.
If you have a Rage Pro machine (I don't, otherwise I'd try this for sure!) and would like to try this out, respond here with a comment as to the success or failure of the experiment. Obviously, you should have a good backup going in, because I would guess that Apple did NOT enable these drivers for a reason! However, the fact that they are even there is good news for Rage Pro owners -- it appears support is coming, at some point.
Although I've previously published an article on Turbocharging Your Mouse", the method described in that article had problems - it didn't stick after a screensaver or USB hub switch, for example.
Carsten Klapp has addressed the problem in a much lower-level manner, by creating the AppleUSBMouse Turbo Edition kernel extension. Carsten modified the Darwin source code to greatly speed up the mouse tracking. His page details how he did this, and provides enough information for you to hack the file yourself, if you're so inclined and have the Dev Tools installed. The nice thing about the low-level solution is that it changes the actual default "slow" speed ... so even though I still have the problem of the mouse speed getting reset when I use my switchbox, it actually gets reset to a HIGHER speed than where I left it!
I'll probably tweak the driver a bit for my own tastes; the method of increasing the speed (by lowering the resolution) seems to make the mouse a bit jumpy. Still, this is a GREAT improvement over the stock settings. For fun, set your mouse speed slider all the way to the right and jump from screen edge to screen edge by just thinking about it!
This is a kernel extension, and theretically could do Bad Things to your computer. However, it doesn't replace any Apple parts, it merely sits on top of them. Also, I've been running it for a few days with no ill effects (other than a reset of my 'uptime' after the first install - you have to restart to get the new extension to load over the default one). If you do have a problem, simply delete the installed extension and reboot (instructions are on Carsten's page).
The beauty of open-source -- if you don't like something and you've got the skills, you can change it!
There has been reported problems with second hard drives (e.g. Maxtor) that repeatedly spin down and then freeze the system for >5 - 6 seconds before they come back to life. This is very annoying. However, it is easy to work around this by creating a "cron job". This will keep your drive up and alive (i.e.no sleep).
If you'd like to learn how to use 'cron' to keep your second drive occupied and awake, read the rest of this article.
This article states that you cannot reinstall OS X 10.1 over an existing installation if the security update has been installed. Instead you must reformat the hard drive before reinstalling OS X 10.1! There's a reader report on MacFixIt that claims success in reinstalling 5G64 (the pre-security-fix build) over 5L14, but it's unconfirmed by anyone else at this point.
I have to agree with the majority here - this is amazingly bad. It used to be that an easy way to fix an unfixable OS X problem was to re-run the installer; it would repair the existing installation without touching anything. Now, instead, it appears we have to reformat our drives in order to reinstall. I, for one, would not be happy about having to backup and restore some of the more 'deeply rooted' programs I've installed such as mySQL and SAMBA. So instead of a quick "install in place", I'd be looking at the time loss from not only backing up and restoring my normal user and applications folders, but also reinstalling and configuring all of my more complex UNIX installations ... some of which took considerable time to get working.
Tired of the boring black and white menubar icons for AirPort, monitors, sound, etc? You can customize the colors by using a combination of Photoshop and Preview -- this thread on the MacNN forums has a general overview of the process.
Basically you need to edit the icons in Photoshop, save them in Photoshop format, then open and convert to TIFF files in Preview. Replace back into the application bundle for the particular menubar item, and you should get a colored version the next time you drag it to the menubar.
Update: In the spirit of keeping everything in one thread, here's a relocated article on the airport menubar icon...
I guess I spend too much time customizing my Mac OS X system, but turning the AirPort Menu Item to all orange was a dead give away for me :) All the images representing the various states of the AirPort network have been modified to be a light or dark orange.
If you'd like to colorize your Airport menubar icon, read the rest of the article...
I guess I spend too much time customizing my Mac OS X system, but turning the AirPort Menu Item to all orange was a dead give away for me :) All the images representing the various states of the AirPort network have been modified to be a light or dark orange.
