Leopard Problems, Leopard makes Vista look great!

ok, I recently bought a Macbook '15 Pro. I should really have 4Gigs of Ram for virtualization but only have 2Gigs right now. It would cost me an arm and a leg to get it through the mac store. Plus spending $3500 for a machine, well...it hurt. I recently upgraded the OSX, from Tiger to the new Leopard.

  Firstly let me say that I really didn't notice that much of a difference in the new features. The only ones that are really handy right now are the Quick Preview, Cover flow and Spaces. The reason they are really handy is because I can preview a document, and most of the time they are Windows Documents, like word or excel files and it's nice to peak at the contents without really open the application. It's great! sometimes that's all I need, preview the document. Spaces is great in that I can have a Parallel Machine running on another space and I can switch back and forth as I need to. Coherence View in parallel doesn't really interest me as much as there are little bugs here and there that are annoying but not serious. 

 

  After all the hype let me tell you, I am extremely disappointed! Let's talk about the 200 or so features. I haven't even noticed these so called features. They don't seem to add to my experience, I haven't really noticed them. Let me tell you what I have noticed, IChat is supposed to be this great new feature. It's supposed to have great video chat capabilities. Well, I still haven't gotten it to work with another mac. It always tells me that there is a communication error from the other computer. The problem is that both ends of the conversation tell you that it's the others fault! I checked for firewalls and nothing seems to be an issue, just that IChat does not connect. Talking with other mac users, they say the same thing, it's hit and miss with IChat. I though this was a home grow application I could bank on. 

  Adium which is way better than MSN messenger is freezing up on me, at random times. I wrote a blog post about the issue.

   this is funny. Half way through writing this post right now, my Safari browser crashed and had to relaunch. No word of a lie! Thank goodness this blog site auto saves drafts. 

So there is a temporary fix for Adium and I am willing to understand that this is not Apple's fault or Leopard's fault and it's more Adium. But I did expect more.

   Earlier today a bunch of my applications were not running, I got error: 10810 which, after some googling, I found out it has something to do with too many applications running at once. I had 2 applications running, which means, at some point none of the processes underneath were terminated properly. What the HELL!! this is the great new Leopard OSX???

 

  The newest issue and it's why I was prompted to write this blog was my problem with Parallels. Parallel's for those of you who don't know runs windows operating systems virtually. It is Mac's version of Virtual PC's. It used to run great with minimal hiccups, but now it wont run. I get an error that says, that there is not enough memory for my Parallel to run. I thought it was odd. I had been using Parallels all day, for work. So I lowered the memory settings on the parallel machine and I got the equivalent of Vista's "BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH" which is called "GREY SCREEN OF DEATH". I'll give mac credit, it did look pretty cool, like my computer was dying! 

      This Operating system upgrade is making Vista look Great! I really feel like throwing my Mac against the wall! I really do. Maybe my next blog entry will be through  my piece of crap windows machine. Will someone create a superior product please! I though I had already bought it, I guess I was wrong.

 I guess now I'm just venting.

   any thoughts??

  Juan 

   

Use Quicksilver to access Hidden files (Adium temporary fix)

I recently upgraded from Mac OSX Tiger to Leopard. I was having trouble with Adium not being able to sign into MSN accounts. It turns out that Adium has a bug and can not resolve the hotmail DNS very well, it's a hit and miss.

After checking out some blogs the quick-fix was to add the IP and hotmail domain name to the Host file. I had made modifications to the host file on Tiger with NetInfo Manager but Leopard did away with NetInfo Manager and there does not appear to be an application that easily modifies the host file. For those of you that have tried to access hidden files through Finder know that it is not a simple task to access hidden files. 

USING FINDER:

To access hidden files with Finder: (you have to set a AppleShowAllFiles switch to True)

 1) open a Terminal Window. Located in Applications/Utilities/Terminal

 2) Type , 'defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true' without the quotes.

 3) Hit enter and in order to see the changes take effect, log out or restart your computer and relaunch Finder. 

       Now you can access the host file by the path , Macintosh HD/Private/etc/hosts.  Make sure that you have access to write to it (right click on the file and select Get Info to adjust access)

  You might be asking, why don't you just use command prompt or Terminal to change the host file?  You can do that too, but I wanted to add and remove to the Host file manually.

USING TERMINAL:

    To use the terminal to change host file do:

 1) access the Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal)

 2) Type: sudo su

 3) Hit Enter,  then enter your password

 4) then type: 

      cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.bak

      echo 65.54.239.20 messenger.hotmail.com >> /etc/hosts

      echo 6554.179.216 nexus.passport.com >> /etc/hosts

      echo 65.54.183.203 login.live.com >> /etc/hosts

      exit

This is the TEMPORARY Adium fix. You can actually enter those IP's and DNS to fix the login issues with hotmail accounts. 

   To revert back after Adium fixes the the issue. Use the Terminal command prompt to change things back again.

   1) Access the Terminal.

   2) type: sudo su

   3) hit Enter, and enter your password

  4) cp /etc/hosts.bak /etc/hosts

  

  5) exit

  This will change back your settings.

The Reason I didn't want to use the Terminal to add and delete to Host file was that I wasn't sure what was going to be deleted I reverted back, or changed the host file to it's original state.

 This long drawn out Blog entry is to show that you can access hidden files with QuickSilver, this is how.

USING QUICKSILVER:

   1) Access QuickSilver. Start entering Mac and one of the top options is Macintosh HD

   2) Select Macintosh HD but before opening it up with the action 'Open', enter "Alt - /" . This will give you access to all the hidden files in that Folder. 

    3) now you can use QuickSilver to access the host file, Macintosh HD/Private/etc/hosts

   By entering "?" you can move up a level if you get to the hosts file but want to access 'etc' folder to change the 'read/write' security settings of the host file.

These are different ways to do the same, I suggest using QuickSilver to access the hidden file, 'private/etc/hosts' to access the host file and making the modifications you need manually.

Best Regards,

  Juan