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News & Opinion
Tech Trends
Software
News & Opinion
Create an Emergency Diagnostic Drive for Your
Mac
mac.tutsplus.com's Jordan Merrick cites several good reasons why
having a diagnostic drive available is something that we all should
have (in addition to a good backup strategy, of course). In his new
tutorial, Merrick walks us through setting up an old external USB drive
with the necessary software to allow users to boot, fix, and reinstall
software on a Mac.
A diagnostic drive is essentially an external hard drive that you
set up so that you can recover from different scenarios in the fairly
unlikely event of serious software problems on your Mac, such as:
- A software update crashing, leaving your Mac unbootable
- You installed a new driver and now your Mac kernel panics when you
try to log in.
- Forgotten administrator password.
- Or in some cases tangential to hardware problems, such as when the
internal hard drive is reporting errors and you need to recover your
data - fast.
Once set up, the diagnostic drive will contain the following:
- A full installer for OS X Mountain Lion so that if you ever need to
perform a reinstall and don't have Internet access, you can.
- A standard installation of OS X Mountain Lion.
- Some simple but useful utilities to resurrect a troublesome
Mac.
Publisher's note: Always a good idea, no matter which version of the
Mac OS you use. In many cases, you can get by with a USB flash drive. A
second-best option (it won't work if your drive crashes) is to create a
small emergency partition on your hard drive that you can boot from as
needed. I've been doing that for years, and I've rarely had reason to
resort to an external drive or CD/DVD instead of using that partition.
Regardless, be prepared. dk
Link: How to Create an
Awesome Diagnostic Drive for Your Mac
OS News' Thom Holwerda Buys a New iMac
Netherlands-based OS News columnist Thom Holwerda reports that he
bought a brand new iMac on Tuesday, noting that he bought his first Mac
- an iMac G4 - sometime
in 2004, and since then, has purchased several other Macs, new and
used.
Holwerda says he didn't like Windows XP, liked Linux, but at the
time (2002/03) it still had a while to go before it reached a state
where he could rely on it, so he ended up in Apple's arms and became an
instant fan of both OS X
10.3 Panther and 10.4
Tiger. He's virtually always owned a Mac since then, except for the
last 12 months or so, explaining that he doesn't like the iOSification
of Mac OS X, and in the meantime, Windows had made huge strides,
culminating in Windows 7, which he finds a very good operating
system.
However, some life and career changes made a new computer necessary,
and he says this tine instead of just wanting the cheapest and fastest
machine possible, he's had to take things like service and proximity of
authorized repair points into account, and "the cold and harsh truth"
is that Apple bests every other player in this business when it comes
to that.
Holwerda also notes that Windows 8 played a role in his decision,
because in his estimation the UI formerly known as Metro just plain
sucks and has absolutely no place on desktops and workstations. While
OS X still has enough that annoys him (he says his eyes still burn
whenever he looks at crap like Address Book or iCal), at least it's
still a proper desktop operating system.
Link: Buying an
iMac
Save As Fixed Yet Again with OS X Mountain
Lion
Cult of Mac's Rob LeFebvre notes that back in July, he showed how to
add an Application shortcut to the Mountain Lion Edit menu and
then create a keyboard shortcut to invoke it, the problem being that it
modified both the original file and the newly saved file if you've
changed stuff before invoking the Save As function.
He notes that you can fix this behavior with OS X 10.8.2, and it's
easy to do.
Link: Fix Save As
Yet Again with OS X Mountain Lion
Do You Need OS X Server?
MacFixIt's Topher Kessler says Apple's Server package for OS X could
provide the capabilities you need for your home or office network,
noting that OS X comes with several servers installed, including those
for network services like screen sharing, printer sharing, and file
sharing, and also those for local application support such as the
window "server" that draws windows and interface elements on the
screen, plus several hidden and unused server packages such as the FTP
server that have been replaced with more secure or faster options, but
which can be configured for use if needed, and can be used to turn an
OS X client into a rudimentary server of sorts.
With OS X Server, on the other hand, you get a bunch of services and
enhanced configuration programs to the existing OS X installation that
give you far greater ability to provide network services and that
change these services' capabilities with the facility to dynamically
switch between standard client and server configurations as is
needed.
OS X Server can also act as an email server on which you create your
own email accounts.
Link: Do You Need OS X
Server?
Tech Trends
Helium Shortage Could Impact WD's Drive Technology
Breakthrough
Having been aware of a looming global shortage of helium gas for
some time, I was wondering how Western Digital was planning to finesse
acquisition of industrial quantities of helium when it announced it is
developing a new helium-filled hard drive technology that WD claims
will substantially reduce internal friction and commensurately lower
power consumption by 23% while increasing capacity by 40%.
Computerworld's Lucas Mearian notes that even though helium is the
second most abundant element in the universe, helium reserves in the
US, which supplies 75% of world's annual demand, are at an all-time
low, with the largest US reserve projected to last another five to six
years unless additional supplies are brought on line.
However, he reports that WD's HGST has told Computerworld that the
new drive tech would not make WD a big consumer of helium, and its
requirements will have little incremental impact on the overall
worldwide demand for helium.
The article also includes a fascinating backgrounder on helium
production and the policy issues related to its conservation.
Link: Helium Gas
Shortage Risks Popping WD's Drive Plans
Software
Mountain Tweaks for OS X Released
PR:
Fredrik Wiker says that after the success with Lion Tweaks, helping
hundreds of thousands of users in OS X Lion, Mountain Tweaks is set to
do the same with Mountain Lion. The release focuses on a user friendly
user-interface, even more tweaks and the ability to do simple
maintenance on your Mac.
Key Features
- Small app, but extremely powerful
- Brand new tweaks
- Works with both Lion and Mountain Lion
Available Tweaks
- Show/Hide the user Library folder.
- Change to a 2D or 3D dock.
- Enable/Disable system window animation.
- Enable/Disable mail reply animation.
- Remove/Add Reading List Icon in Safari.
- Enable/Disable Spelling Correction.
- Enable/Disable repeating keys.
- Enable/Disable permanent scrollbars.
- Show Hidden Files.
- Disable Crash Dialog Pop-Up.
- Get a new Stack List View.
- Highlight Stack items on mouseover.
- Change iCal leather interface to aluminium
- Change Address Book leather interface to aluminium
- Disable resume for a single app
- Enable the hidden FTP-server
- Customize Launchpad folder background
- Disable local Time Machine Backups
- Enable Airdrop on old hardware
- Enable colours in the Finder sidebar
- Enable iTunes Dock Animation
- Enable TRIM support in Lion
- Enable secret iCal debug-menu
- Remove Spotlight icon
- Disable gatekeeper
- Highlight non-retina images
- Remove leather from Contacts (ML)
- Remove leather from Calendar (ML)
- Select text in Quiclook
- Change the Notification Center background
- Disable the new automatic app termination
- Disable smooth scrolling
- Disable rubber band when scrolling
- Disable default iCloud save location
- Display framerate for Cover Flow
- Disable Go to Folder in Finder
- Restore function should now be more stable
- New in version 1.0.4:
- Disable default iCloud save location.
- Display framerate for Cover Flow.
- Disable "Go to Folder" in Finder.
- Restore function should now be more stable.
More tweaks coming soon.
Link: Mountain Tweaks
Leopard WebKit Updates Leopard Safari
leopard-webkit builds of current WebKit frameworks for Mac OS X 10.5
(PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, Intel)
The goal of this project is to provide builds of current WebKit
sources for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
for both PowerPC and Intel (PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, Intel).
The necessary patches are available for download as well.
The built product comes with no support and is provided only for
testing purposes.
The dmg image is based on the last officially available PowerPC
nightly (r89812).
System requirements:
- PPC or Intel
- Mac OS X 10.5 only
Link: Leopard WebKit
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