Tag archive for ‘Mac’ at bioneural.net

Tag archive for 'Mac'

Find which application is using a file

Published by Bruce on March 13, 2010 in Mac. 1 response

Not infrequently during my use of Apple's OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) I have been seeing a dialogue upon emptying the Trash telling me that 'This operation can't be completed because the item "xxx" is in use'. The culprit has been Mail.app, and the scenario seems to occur when I attempt to delete a file after having sent it as an attachment (and some time after the event at that).
Continue reading 'Find which application is using a file'

Air Sharing between iPhone and Mac

Published by Bruce on December 31, 2009 in Mac. 4 responses

Air Sharing is a fab app for iPhone that lets you mount a file store on the device to the desktop as a wireless share. You can browse your files using any decent web browser, and even upload files to the phone—albeit one file at a time. This limitation can be overcome by mounting the iPhone as a network drive (on Mac from the Finder Go > Connect to Server... and enter the server address). Rather than have to visit this menu each time, wouldn't it be nice if there were a one-click way to mount iPhone? There's a app for that.
Continue reading 'Air Sharing between iPhone and Mac'

Apple silence and secrecy

Published by Bruce on August 5, 2009 in Quicklinks. 0 responses

This Dilbert strip may shed some light on why Apple engineers won't publicly acknowledge a defect that causes the 7200rpm Seagate drive upgrades in June 2009 MacBook Pros to make clicking and beeping noises associated with pauses in system responsiveness. Apple's cloak of corporate silence is becoming notorious, with the recent disclosure of an exploding iPod-related gagging order. Google returns many hits relating to Apple's culture of secrecy. It seems like a sure-fire way to alienate the traditionally loyal customer base.

The MacBeep Pause

Published by Bruce on July 15, 2009 in Rant. 10 responses

Potential buyers of Apple's new (June 2009) MacBook Pro should be cautious about specifying a configure-to-order faster and larger hard drive 'upgrade'. The drive supplied by Apple, a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (model number ST9500420ASG) appears to be operating improperly, with some users experiencing random pauses in disk activity associated with disturbing clicks and beeps. Apple are telling some of us that their top-of-the-line laptop is supposed to lock up frequently, and that the beep is normal too (so I guess my previous Macs were all defective as they lacked such 'features').
Continue reading 'The MacBeep Pause'

PhotoLinker evolves geotagging on Mac

Published by Bruce on July 1, 2009 in Mac. 4 responses

PhotoLinker 2.0 ($US50, 30 day trial) is described by its developer as a 'pro geotagging and annotation tool'. Geotaggers who were familiar with GPSPhotoLinker will recognize the family resemblance, but will also appreciate the magnitude of changes this new app brings. It's no longer dependent upon use of a GPS track logger for a start, as integrated mapping now supports a manual geotagging mode (hence the dropping of 'GPS' from the name). There are improvements to workflow, a map viewer, a facility for track and waypoint management, and the pièce de résistance—EXIF metadata annotation. And yet it retains the incredible flexibility and the same precise control over automatic geotagging parameters that I appreciated in my review of GPSPhotoLonker. This post takes you on a visual walkthrough of the many new and refined features.
Continue reading 'PhotoLinker evolves geotagging on Mac'

The dark art of AirPort networking

Published by Bruce on April 5, 2009 in Mac. 7 responses

Until recently I was using the dodgy BeBox supplied by my Internet access provider as both a DSL modem and wireless router. The ST585v6 could create a wireless distribution system (WDS) to extend my home LAN to the attic iMac, but only over insecure WEP. So we bought a new dual-band (2.4 and 5GHz, 802.11b/g/n) Apple Time Capsule, thinking it would simplify connecting to an AirPort Express and at the same time provide wireless Time Machine backups with shared network-attached storage (NAS). In the event fully integrating this new device consumed hours, with victory arriving only after the discovery of occult keystroke trickery—not at all the Apple experience I have come to expect.
Continue reading 'The dark art of AirPort networking'