Here goes your discussion of Mac OSX software.

Today i installed Nullriver's Medialink. Its a DLNA media server. It works freaking amazing with my PS3. Much better somehow than TVersity does off my PC. All the media (itunes, photo albums, movies, specific folder) are nicely organized, show thumbnail icons, and best of all, serve really fast and nice over wifi. I don't know if its the MBP or the software, but for the first time i can stream movies really nicely over wifi. Before i'd always have to move the computer (which sucks w/ the ext HD) to the router and hook it up w/ a network cable. This sort of hassle frustrates the gf and makes her hate technology. NO MORE!

10/27/2008 5:16:32 PM

So I'm still working my way into macdom. I installed Quicksilver, but still haven't started using it. I'm waiting until i feel like i need it. As it is now, I'm finding Spotlight to be very handy. Apple-Space, and boom my app, mp3, or file is there and launched.

What are some of the more advanced features of Spotlight?

Also I upgraded the mem to 4gigs yesterday. NOW this puppy is working. Aperture is much happier, and of course so is VMWare.

10/27/2008 5:19:35 PM

Quicksilver is something you have to force yourself to use, or you'll never use it. but once you get to where you automatically invoke quicksilver to perform tasks, you can't live without it.

10/27/2008 5:20:43 PM

Quicksilver FTW

I just downloaded the Alpha of Boxxee, which looks to be a promising start for a comprehensive media center, with integration for lots of online services like hulu, youtube, comedy central, cnn, etc http://www.boxee.tv/

VMWare Fusion, of course, for running Windows

You need something like AppCleaner to really uninstall programs

10/27/2008 5:31:24 PM

I just don't like to add layers of complexity w/o needing them. I'd like more specifics on Spotlight. I'll do some more research later, but i'm about to head out.

^word, i don't have any app cleaners so i'll look into that today. Yeh that sort of stuff is blowing up lately it seems. the PS3 got a Flash update and now can play hulu and all the major network sites. Too bad it only works in the US.

I'm also going to back up some crap off my NTFS ext HD and format it to HFS+ today. *gulp*

[Edited on October 27, 2008 at 5:42 PM. Reason : dff]

10/27/2008 5:41:39 PM

Uhh... why was my post deleted from this thread?

10/27/2008 5:49:50 PM

This is a new thread w/ a fixed title. the old one was deleted.

10/27/2008 8:20:29 PM

The Disk Utility is pretty handy. I just used it to rip some software CDs to ISOs

10/27/2008 8:57:55 PM

got the beta for Espresso today from Macrabbit. they made CSSEdit which was pretty awesome by itself. looking forward to seeing how it fleshes out compared to Coda

10/27/2008 11:28:47 PM

I use:

Office 2008
VMWare Fusion
xPad (good for taking notes during customer phone call)
Adium (IM)
Skitch (screen caps)
JumpCut (better cut/paste)
Shimo (VPN wrapper)
Handbrake (rip DVDs)
Chicken of the VNC (remote desktop)

I'm sure there are more I just can't think of all of them right now

10/28/2008 12:13:58 AM

Quote :

"JumpCut (better cut/paste)"

lol

10/28/2008 12:15:29 AM

I primarily use:

Coda
iWork 08 (I love pages)
Transmit
VMware w/Vista Ultimate + Office 2007
Omnigraffle
Adium
File Magnet
Eavesdrop (packet sniffer - does TCP sniffing on wireless)
iStumbler
AppZapper
Toast
Cisco VPN Client
ZTerm for serial connections to network equipment
Office for Mac 2008
Mac The Ripper (but Im not in to ripping DVDs - especially since I dont have a DVR.



I havent used Quicksilver but I suppose I can give it a shot.

I also hate that people sell the fucking theme packs for iWork (Pages and Keynote). Those bitches should be free just like MSFT does for its office templates and themed documents. On that note, anyone know where I can get them for *cough* free?

[Edited on October 28, 2008 at 1:11 AM. Reason : .]

10/28/2008 1:09:58 AM

My gf has Office 2007 for PC and Office 2004 for Mac at work that i can use. I was running a boot camped WinXP, but i just deleted it. I don't really play games so i wasn't using it for much. I do have VMware Fusion 2 setup w/ WinXP as well.

Think i should bother messing w/ Mac Office '04 or just run PC Office '07 in a VM or possibly bootcamp?

I'm looking into AppZapper and AppDelete but neither are free. Any ideas for free ones?

I've been using Transmission, and indeed, it is nice and clean and simple. quite nice.

10/28/2008 2:13:44 AM

fucking balls. I'm trying to transfer all my media off my NTFS external harddrive. every 5-6 files gets a copy error saying that the file is in use. It is not in use, wtf. Everytime this happens Finder crashes and i have to Force Quit it. Also if i'm copying like 4000 files and it crashes, i have no idea where the hell it left off. How fucking frustrating.

Is my data corrupt or is something amiss? How are files flagged as in use? can i reset it somehow?

10/28/2008 2:28:13 AM

Just get Office 2008 for Mac. Hell if you dont need Entourage (basically outlook), Just go get iWork which comes with Pages (Word & Publisher combined but much cleaner and nicer), Keynote (pwns powerpoint), and Numbers ) not as powerful as Excel but gets the job done).

It doesnt make sense to switch back and forth in to a VM for office documents, and Office 08 is far superior to 04.

If you buy Coda and Transmission you get a discount.

Omnigraffle freggin PWNS for any type of Visio or Gant Chart application.

10/28/2008 2:29:03 AM

^^^
http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner/index.php

I have AppZapper, but free AppCleaner is just as good if not better. I used to have both and compared the results side-by-side for a while.

10/28/2008 3:34:51 AM

I just bought an external HD to backup my music/videos/pics/papers. Is Time Machine worth using or is there an app i can DL that will be easier to use?

10/28/2008 6:40:02 AM

From what i gather Time Machine does a really good job. I just got my HD squared away and my first back up backed up. The only prob is that this drive isnt wireless so it'll only be able to backup when i feel like hooking it up. Better than nothing, though.

I also got a little WD passport thats USB2 and FW400. its pretty slick. Its currently HFS+ but i'm thinking i'll format it FAT32 so it'll be PC and Mac compatible since it is intended to be portable and multipurpose and all.

10/28/2008 7:49:05 AM

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/10/27/codeweavers-says-cheap-gas-free-software-tomorrow/


codeweavers giving away free software.

10/28/2008 8:00:13 AM

ATTN: ALL VMWARE FUSION AND PARALLELS USERS

http://down.codeweavers.com/

giving away their product for free TODAY ONLY! grab a serial key while you can. The site is overloaded so all you can do is submit your name for a s/n and they will email it to you in a few days. and you can download the product. I have never used it or even heard of them so I am going to give it a try! can't beat free.

10/28/2008 2:33:14 PM

It's WINE based, so all the apps you would use have to be ported first, right?

so not as good a solution as ||s or fusion.

but you can't beat free..

10/28/2008 2:55:10 PM

^not sure about that because their main site is down so I couldn't read more about it...figured I'd grab a s/n just in case that is not the case.

10/28/2008 3:31:06 PM

^ their product is to help you run windows games (IIRC), and its not nearly as good as using VMware

10/28/2008 3:56:10 PM

If anyone wants to replicate the functionality of Medialink for free, install Fink, enable unstable packages, and install "mediatomb". If youre running Leopard, there's a special version of X11 that has to be installed seperately.

10/28/2008 4:47:40 PM

awesome, i got the codeweavers stuff, thanks.

I don't get why i need the Key.. i've installed the software and there doesnt seem to be any way to register it. Maybe before they put up direct d/l links you needed the key to d/l it at all?

btw, the first time i "Entered the Time Machine" i literally said "whoa" out loud.

[Edited on October 28, 2008 at 9:51 PM. Reason : sas]

10/28/2008 9:49:35 PM

I'm looking for a piece of software, or something built in already, that will show me all of the non-standard processes that load up at login/boot. Similar to what Ccleaner does in windows, it shows all of the registry items that are called to load crap processes at startup. Any ideas? I feel there are too many items loading at login/boot that I don't need. There is some google processes I'd like to not load at startup, etc. I know I have probably installed other software to make these happen, but I'd like to get it under control. It is really just the half-dozen google processes that I'd like to have not load at startup that take up memory.

10/28/2008 10:22:56 PM

as far as I know, System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items should show you just about everything (non-system related) that starts at bootup or login time.

If you see ones you don't need, just select it and hit the minus button

Quote :

"btw, the first time i "Entered the Time Machine" i literally said "whoa" out loud. "

something that is kind of overlooked is that Time Machine makes backing up your files "fun". The interface is completely over the top, unnecessary, and not even functionally as useful or powerful as it could/should be, but it does make backing up your files "sexy", and therefore something you're more likely to do, which is something no other backup software has ever managed.

[Edited on October 28, 2008 at 10:27 PM. Reason : .]

10/28/2008 10:25:24 PM

I have 3 items there right now and none of them seem related to the processes that show up in the Activity Monitor. I'm actually googling right now to see how to remove some of these extra google processes

10/28/2008 10:28:25 PM

oh, you mean they're Google processes.....
do you have Google Desktop installed (not necessary, with Spotlight/Quicksilver + Dashboard)?
Or the Google Updater tool? I think the Google Updater tool allows you to completely unistall Google Apps too

10/28/2008 10:32:01 PM

Anyone use MacFUSE+3G-NTFS to read/write to an NTFS drive?

Somehow my old external harddrive was screwed up. Some of the files were flagged 'in use' and i couldnt copy them over. So i installed the above and then the drive wouldn't mount at all. So i uninstalled the above, remounted read only, and salvaged what i could. I then formatted the drive HFS+ and its now working fine as a Time Machine and media storage drive. I ran "verify" and all is in order. Hopefully the drive will stay ok. I don't think i was having a corrupt data/failing drive issue before, i think the 'in use' flags were just all screwed up from windows crashing and not ejecting properly with the old computer.

Anyway, so now i have another external HD. A WD Passport thats FW400 and USB2. I'm trying to figure out how to format it to make it a universal as possible. Obviously this means no HSF+. FAT32 might be annoying with the filesize limitations. I have some videos bigger than 4gigs, etc. So maybe i'll format it NTFS and rely on MacFUSE+3G-NTFS to read/write in MacOS. I've been searching for pros/cons of this but havent found a whole lot. Any experiences w/ it or input on the matter?

10/28/2008 11:15:51 PM

Other than retail stores...

anyone know where I can get additional keynote themes?

10/29/2008 12:40:29 AM

I have a few things guys.

1st a new mac browser (Cruz) is apparently making some noise: http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Cruz%3A_New_Mac_Browser_Off_to_an_Impressive_Start

What do you guys think about that




MORE IMPORTANTLY

Is there software on the Mac that allows you to view DWG files?

If so what is it, how much does it cost, and where can I *ahem* get it?

10/29/2008 5:20:14 PM

^Illustrator opens them, but not natively, it translates it into vector format similar to an .eps, but it can read them just fine.

Otherwise if you can get it in .dwf format there's - http://www.macdwf.com/ which is free

and Microsoft's DWG viewer:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/imaging_3d/microspotdwgviewer.html

[Edited on October 29, 2008 at 5:34 PM. Reason : ,]

10/29/2008 5:32:56 PM

Will the application be able to read the data in the DWG documents? That would help me out tremendously!

10/29/2008 5:33:54 PM

^see my edit

10/29/2008 5:34:57 PM

Checking them both out!

Thanks!

10/29/2008 5:37:54 PM

^Don't forget the eDrawings viewer. It will view Autocad and SolidWorks files.

http://www.edrawingsviewer.com/MAC_Viewer.html

Cost: $Free

[Edited on October 29, 2008 at 10:01 PM. Reason : Forgot link.]

10/29/2008 9:59:48 PM

so long as it views the layers its what I need.

10/30/2008 1:11:50 AM

i'm still at 10.3.9

10/31/2008 1:19:32 PM

^ :facepalm:

Dude get leopard. Hell Ill even get it for you with the student discount. Shit man, just meet up with me at the local apple store and give me the cash.


Anyway, does anyone use iWork? I LOVE Pages and use it to write nearly all my papers. Im still learning how to make my own templates and learn how to structure the documents with page breaks, etc... just playing with the capabilities. Ive never been in to desktop publishing but I have to admit its cool as fuck!

In fact I wrote a 20 page MPLS paper (has a few pictures lol) with it and I am thoroughly hooked on it.

11/1/2008 3:19:15 PM

Quote :

"Other than retail stores... anyone know where I can get additional keynote themes? "

http://macserialjunkie.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=52866
http://macserialjunkie.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=68579

i really liked using keynote because it provided a welcomed, different look than the powerpoint presentations that we've seen since 1995. however, powerpoint 2007 is awesome now and has the capability to produce some attractive presentations now with very little effort a la keynote

11/1/2008 3:33:07 PM

^ Dude I could so hump your leg right now.

11/1/2008 3:34:35 PM

^^^ my wife uses iWork (Pages, Numbers) regularly for her HS teaching job. Her job has a lot of forms that teacher fill out on paper - i.e. make printouts and fillout on paper, then file in the "permanent file", or just file with the department. Since the files are generally not shared electronically, it doesn't really matter what format they're in. So she's taken a whole lot of standardized forms that generally look like shit, and recreated them in Pages, then redistributed PDFs to the rest of the department. The other teachers in her department think she's a tech-wizard because of the files and forms she crates in Pages with very, very minimal effort.

11/1/2008 9:30:29 PM

MultiClutch is a prefpane that lets you map gestures to keyboard shortcuts. I used to to enabled Forward/Backwards 3finger swiping in firefox. works great.

11/2/2008 2:16:32 AM

How do you install the customer Pages themes from the keynotepro site? Thoze themes dont have an installer, its just a zipped folder...

11/2/2008 8:39:11 AM

It could be coincidence, but ever since i installed Multiclutch things have been flakey. The computer froze up during the night last night forcing a reboot in the morning. wtf. Is there a log or something i might check?

So i uninstalled multiclutch and i'll see how things go.

I've since got Mozilla MineField 3.1b2 which is supports all the multitouch gestures natively. It pinch zoom, swipe f/b, and using the rotate gesture to cycle through tabs. works pretty good.

11/2/2008 7:55:33 PM

^ Console in your Utilities folder will give you all the important logs on your system.

11/2/2008 8:07:36 PM

^ah, perfect. Indeed i was getting multiclutch errors and warnings all night long. We'll see how it goes now.

11/2/2008 8:23:12 PM

sweet! just stumbled upon a neat shortcut that I Wasn't aware of until now. If you hold down "option" and scroll left or right with your scroll wheel it's the shortcut for back and forward in your browser.

11/10/2008 4:55:46 PM

anyone using Parallels? gonna upgrade to v4?
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/11/11/parallels-desktop-4-0-gets-a-50-percent-speed-boost-over-3-0

11/11/2008 9:09:17 AM