I’m no OS X expert, so I was a bit befuddled to find Google Chrome began crashing on startup a few days ago. Was it some evil Apple plot to lock Google out of the Mac?
All the grisly details from the automated report are below… it’s not the most readable of reports.
The fix: What I did was to download Chrome again and re-install. That seems to have fixed it for now.
We’ve got a used Mac coming to our house. I haven’t owned a Mac before (though I have used one a bit).
It’s a 2008 era Mac Pro, bought through my sister’s work, and the I’m told the spec is:
MacPro3,1 – 2 x Xeon 2.8 GHz (8 Core), 4GB Memory, 300GB Storage, OS 10.6
So despite being 4 years old, should be pretty quick I reckon.
It’s coming without keyboard and mouse, so I’ve gone and bought a cheap Microsoft Desktop 600 pack (corded USB keyboard and mouse) because I discovered I had not a single USB keyboard in the house. (I have an intense dislike of the feel of Apple the keyboard and mouse.)
My plan is to upgrade it to the latest OSX (A$20.99 on the Mac App Store; and Harvey Norman has a special of 2 x $20 iTunes cards for A$30 at the moment), install a new big hard drive (I’m thinking 2 terabytes — it looks like the Western Digital Caviar Blacks should be compatible with it, and cost about A$190) and use Boot Camp to get Windows 7 running on it alongside OSX.
Some more memory would be good, too.
Standby for updates and desperate pleas for advice as we figure it out and set it up.
A friend on Twitter says it’s fine — it would fall into the usual 5 devices per iTunes account thing.
I didn’t even think of this. Only DVI connections out of this beast — my old monitors are all VGA.
It’s Sunday afternoon, so my options for an adapter were Officeworks ($30) or Dick Smith ($25). Dick Smith wins.
The beast fired up and asked for my initial account information… then sat there for about 15 minutes “Connecting to Apple”. Eventually it got there.
It’s got OSX 10.6 on it… went to run Software Update, but it had a problem with the download (possible corruption) and decided it wanted to have another go. Odd.
Had to update to 10.6.8 to get the Mac App Store, then with $2.25 left on my iTunes account from previously and a $20 iTunes card added, I’ve bought Mountain Lion (10.8). Almost 2 hours to download it, mind you… this had better be worth it.
It was only after buying and starting to download that I read an interesting article suggesting that actually Snow Leopard (10.6) is the ultimate in stable useable OSX versions for older Macs. D’oh. Oh well. (Some interesting other stuff on lowendmac.com as well.
After installing 10.8, I’m rather impressed that all but 10Gb still appears to be available on the disk. Very impressive. Actually it hasn’t installed… now it says it’s still downloading. Will investigate.
Slightly disappointed though that GarageBand and iMovie aren’t free anymore. $15.99 each on iTunes, won’t break the bank (especially if bought with discounted iTunes cards).
OK, now it’s installed. Took a little longer than expected, but it’s very nice. Will take a little getting used to, of course. Seems quite responsive.
The startup chime is stupidly loud. I’ve “fixed” it by muting the internal speaker — since generally we’ll use this beast with external speakers, so having the internal one silent won’t be any loss.
There are software solutions to this, but many of them don’t work in OSX after 10.6. Apparently this one: StartNinja, should work.
I’d intended using Bootcamp to run Windows 7, but it was suggested to me that I should check out Parallels (or VM Fusion, in Chris’s awesome set of tips below).
This article compares Parallels and Bootcamp(taking into account that Parallels has recently had a big upgrade in performance, though just in the last week or two there’s been another new version). This probably sums it up: “while Parallels is an incredible technical achievement, the Windows power user will notice a drop in performance.”
The article goes on to say that basically it depends on whether you’re primarily going to use Windows (in which case go Bootcamp) or you genuinely want to use them side-by-side (in which case Parallels may be the go).
This article compares VM Fusion and Parallels, and concludes that the former is slightly better, but it depends on your priorities.
Some diehard Mac users say they don’t need anti-virus. I’m not so sure — while it seems unlikely, there are some around, and it might be better to be safe than sorry.
Sophos’s free antivirus for home sounds pretty good. Anybody tried it? Seems to get good reviews.
I usually use Windows, but I’ve been using Mac OSX a little bit, on a new iMac in the office of an organisation I do some work for. It’s nice, lovely design, though I think it’s pretty funny that it’s so damn streamlined that the On/Off button is hidden away at the back, so consequently there’s a PostIt note on the front of it to help people find it.
I’ve got used to having to go to the menu to properly shut a program. I’m not really clear on why clicking the red dot on the window doesn’t do it. But that’s okay — another PostIt note reminds us Windows people of that.
So far there are two main things I can’t get used to on the Mac (apart from the lack of tactile response from the keyboard and the feel of the mouse):
Command-Tab switches applications, but not windows. I can’t figure out how to get around the various open windows of an application without using the Window menu, which is cumbersome.
Differences with navigation around a document, at least how it appears to me so far… maybe someone knows better.
| PC | Mac | |
|---|---|---|
| Go to start or end of document | Ctrl-Home or Ctrl-End | Home or End |
| Go to start or end of line | Home or End | Command Left or Right |
| Go up/down a page | Page Up or Page Down | Page Up or Page Down |
| Go forward or back a word | Ctrl-Right or Ctrl-Left | Option-Right or Option-Left |
But the thing that really keeps catching me out is that Home/End/PgUp and PgDown move you around, but don’t move the cursor. So you think you’re at the end of the document, but you start typing and it jumps to back where you were. At least, that’s what it does in Apple Mail. Very irritating; seems you have to click at the end to tell it you want to start typing at the end.
Is there a better/quicker/easier way?
It had to happen, right? Mac OS Snow Leopard is out today. It’s the first version which doesn’t run on PowerPC Macs.
“Snow Leopard is an upgrade for Leopard users and requires a Mac with an Intel processor.” — Apple Store
I suppose it’s been about three years since Apple stopped selling PowerPCs. I wonder how many 3rd party software vendors are also abandoning them. I know my sister has a PowerPC Mac laptop from circa 2004, but I wonder how many others are still out there in regular use. Perhaps the more significant issue will be how long patches for newly discovered vulnerabilities will be supplied.
Perhaps it’s no biggie, but I’m just imagining the fuss that would be made if Microsoft made a new operating system that didn’t work with four-year-old PCs.
My sister is fuming because she got an iPod Nano for Christmas, and apparently it won't work with her 3 year old PowerPC MacBook, which runs MacOSX 10.3. Sure enough, the Nano specs say it needs 10.4.8 or higher. She's got no real interest in paying and installing for an OS upgrade to get around the problem, so she'll ask a friend to load her iPod for her.
Basically it means that Apple is saying you can't have a new
iPod if you run a version of OSX from before April 2005 (with the appropriate free updates).
Whereas it does run happily on Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Vista. So you need to have a version of Windows from no earlier than before October 2001 (with the appropriate free updates).
How does Apple get away with treating its customers like that?
Feel safe using Firefox and/or Mac OS X? Don’t. This article discusses recent research showing both are subject to a number of vulnerabilities. Not as many as poor ol’ Windows users using IE, but still enough that it’s wise to be wary.
Not to mention the issues in the various media players.
Blogger Russell Beattie stirs up a hornet’s nest by declaring he’s thinking of switching back from Mac to Windows.
Reports are coming in that the new very groovy iPod Nano’s screen scratches rather too easily, so bad in some cases that the images get distorted.
Hot on the heels of the flawed (badly, for some people) iTunes 5.0, Apple has released iTunes 5.0.1.
Here’s a couple of things I’d like to see for Dashboard in future release, at least as an option:
I have to say, though, that with new widgets being coded all the time, I am loving it more and more (it was a bit boring with just the default ones after the initial ‘wow’ factor of the desktop graphics)
Here’s a brief look at some widgets which will be of more use to the geeks / techies.
I mentioned in a previous post that clicking on the ‘More Widgets’ button on the dashboard screen prompts for a username and passowrd. No more. Apple’s Widget site is now open.
At time of writing there appear to be 109 widgets from various authors.
I’ve just downloaded an ‘Air Traffic Control’ widget which scans for nearby AirPort (ie 802.11) sources, and reports on their type and signal strength. It’s a breeze to install – just click on the title, it downloads a zip file which unpacks itself and automatically adds itself to the Dashboard screen. Simply click on the icon and it’s there.
Time to go hunting for some more interesting widgets.
Having reinstalled Norton Antivirus 9.0, I tried booting it up last night and it still came up with an error, although it doesn’t appear to stop it from working.
iSync, on the other hand, had no problem re-syncing to my Palm PDA. I had read reports that one should synchronise the PDA to the Mac before upgrading to Tiger, otherwise the contents of the PDA can be wiped upon trying to sync for the first time under Tiger. No problem for me. I actually sync three machines to my PDA: my work PC, my G4 and my iBook, so I’m pretty synchronised!
I read a blog entry asking who really needs to upgrade to Tiger. It’s all very well stating that there are over 200 new features, but is that enough for the average user to want or need to upgrade?
It got me thinking about who is the most likely to “early adopt” Tiger:
Low-end users: those with lower-spec machines, possibly less money, and with few if any life- or business-critical data on their Mac, will probably not be in a hurry to upgrade, wanting to hold out for as long as possible before upgrading to the new system. They may not even be using 10.3 (or even X of any flavour). I was one of these once: very low-end Mac and no money.
High-end users: those with high-spec machines, probably more money (or business money), who use Macs and their applications as a critical part of their life or business: graphic designers, artists, musicians, publishers – the usual Mac fare. These too may be reluctant to early adopt, for whilst they may have the capital, they cannot afford to take the time or the risk installing a new system which may have idiosyncrasies (bugs) not yet spotted and fixed by a large user base. Whereas downtime for the hobbyist may be annoying, but acceptable, for the business/power-user, it could mean lost business and revenue.
Middle-spec users: Probably quite a diverse bunch of users – so not average – with medium- to high-end equipment and software, financially well-off, and willing to experiment and take technical risks. These are the most likely candidates for investing early in a new operating system release. There is a certain excitement in being among the first people to test new software, even if it carries a risk that things might not work quite the way they did before. They may, or may not, have backup plans if things really go wrong.
I’ll stick my neck out and say that there may be more early adopter types in the Apple Mac camp than in the Windows camp, traditionally because of the types of people more likely to use Macs, because of the ‘mentality’ of a Mac-zealot, that is oft written about, and because we expect Apple (despite some famous cock-ups) to provide good and efficient service to its users.
If there are bugs in Tiger (which there surely are) then you can bet Apple are working with early adopters on finding and fixing them.
Andy’s adventures with Mac OS 10.4 Tiger
Introduction: For what it’s worth, this section will be Andy’s ramblings on being an ‘early adopter’ of Apple’s latest Macintosh operating system. I’ve already written about the London launch, and the fun I had installing Tiger on my DVD. What next?
I don’t consider myself a power user by any means. I have a G3/800 iBook and a G4/775 desktop. The power user would consider them both candidates for ditching and upgrading, but they’re serving me well. Thankfully, Apple are still officially supporting G3s with Tiger, so long as they have FireWire port (I’m not quite sure why this is – I suspect it’s just an easy way to test how old a machine is, though I would’ve though they could use some other aspect of the machine, given that Firewire is only required for some aspects of iChat video conferencing that won’t run on a G3 or low-end G4 in any case.)
I do digital music, digital photography, web design, coding, a few games, general office stuff.
Anyway…
Virus Protection: Since installing Tiger, my Norton Antivirus has thrown up an error every time on startup – however it appears to continue functioning, does LiveUpdates, and I presume it is protecting my system. Dangerous…
Anyway, I’ve reinstalled the software on my G4 so I’ll find out tonight if it is behaving itself now.
Dashboard: Could be seen as a gimmick, but the widgets are quite useful as they stand, and hopefully a lot more, including ones not so geared for the US market, will become available.
Clicking on the ‘More Widgets’ button prompts for a username and password at the Apple site. Not sure if I should have that password? I’m on the lookout for new widgets. Will report them here.
The ‘cool ripple effect’ demonstrated at the launch event I suspect only works on high end Macs with above-average graphics cards. The ‘information flip’ graphic transition works well, but no ripples on my G3 or G4. Ahh well, it still looks darn cool. It is a bit sluggish when it first starts up, possibly owing to the number of Internet sites it tries to connect to in order to get the latest info.