Category: osx

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Mac App Store and multiple Macs

I was planning on buying Apple’s Aperture 3 as I saw it was about 62 euros in the new Mac App Store (comes with Mac OS X 10.6.6) and after reading some reviews which showed it to be at least in par with Adobe Lightroom 3 (better speed, better for Mac users, mostly only lacking the lens correction features). I just needed something more than iPhoto, but Photoshop is expensive and Gimp is messy. I have about 15,000 photos in iPhoto so the automated move to Aperture was really appealing.

The funny thing is that stand alone Aperture 3 sells for 199 euros in retail stores and in online Apple Store. How can it be only 62 euros in the Mac App store? Maybe it can only be installed on one machine, and for the second one you need to pay another 62 euros? That would have made sense. However, after installing Aperture on my MacBook, it seems to install fine also in the living room on my Mac Mini. Just went to the Mac App Store’s “purchased” view and clicked “re-install”. Cool.

Yes, it installed and runs fine. The only difference is that I had to find it from Applications and then tick “keep in dock”, while on my MacBook (the first purchase) it installed directly to the dock. That is on the borderlines of even mentioning, but I did.

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Garmin Colorado and Mac OS X

I guess I need to share this with others that may face the same problem. I was really annoyed when my Garmin Colorado 300 started to get stuck in the “Loading Maps…” screen forever, after starting up the device. I tried to hard reset the device, I updated the firmware, I downgraded the firmware, I tried different maps and different GPX files. Nothing helped. I could switch the power off when it was stuck and then on again, but I was not happy with that. Sometimes not all geocaches loaded, etc.

Well.. After spending roughly two evenings with the issue, I finally found the problem. It is because I had started to use my Mac OS X laptop with the Colorado. Mac OS X infects whatever external drive you connect with its funny hidden folders, like .Spotlight-V100, .Trashes, etc. Those are of course not visible in finder (the GUI file manager of Mac OS X). After figuring out how to remove those before disconnecting the Colorado, I don’t have the problem any more…

Here is a script I use, simply copy it to e.g. “garminumount.sh”, run “chmod 755 garminumount.sh”, and every time after you have connected your Garmin (Colorado) to your Mac, simply run “./garminumount.sh”, and then disconnect the cable. You may need to change the volume names to match your device and its SD card, but you got the idea. Enjoy.


#!/bin/sh

# Clean Spotlight
mdutil -i off /Volumes/GARMIN
mdutil -i off /Volumes/GARMIN_SD
mdutil -E /Volumes/GARMIN
mdutil -E /Volumes/GARMIN_SD
rm -rf /Volumes/GARMIN/.Spotlight-V100
rm -rf /Volumes/GARMIN_SD/.Spotlight-V100

# Clean other Mac OS specific stuff
rm -rf /Volumes/GARMIN/.Trashes
rm -rf /Volumes/GARMIN_SD/.Trashes
rm -rf /Volumes/GARMIN/.fseventsd
rm -rf /Volumes/GARMIN_SD/.fseventsd

find /Volumes/GARMIN -name ._* | xargs rm -rf
find /Volumes/GARMIN_SD -name ._* | xargs rm -rf

# Unmount volumes
umount /Volumes/GARMIN
umount /Volumes/GARMIN_SD

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The new era…

After seeing many professionals choosing to use Macs instead of Windows or Linux, I had started to think that there must be something good about it. I also got very bored of worrying about updating and configuring stuff all the time in Linux and in Vista, so I started to consider buying myself a Mac. I thought about it for a few weeks and then I eventually decided to buy a Macbook.

It is the cheapest aluminium Macbook (13.3 inch display, 2 GHz, 2 GB ram, 160 GB hard disk). I didn’t really find it necessary to upgrade CPU, as 2.4 GHz is not that much faster. And I don’t run too much 100% loads anyway. Any laptop gets too hot with that kind of use. Then the memory and hard disk upgrades would have been more expensive than doing it myself. So I will do it later if needed. A 500 GB hard disk is about 100 dollars or less. At least on the day I will buy one.

So far I have been quite happy. The only software causing problems is iPhoto. I imported 10,500 photos and now it often refuses to quit. I hope a future update will fix the problem. Otherwise no major regrets, yet… I am also happy to see that a lot of software that has been available for Windows only is now available also for OS X, even if it is not for Linux. For example the software from Garmin and TomTom are also for OS X. Google Earth, Picasa uploader, OpenOffice, are also nice…

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