Finder crashing when using contextual menu

I was having this bizarre, intermittent Finder crash when control-clicking to bring up a contextual menu. It turns out that the StuffitCM was the problem.

MacFixItForums:

Stuffit contextual menu plugins are known to cause problems like this. Go to /Library/Contextual Menu Items and move any Stuffit plugins to the desktop. If the problem is solved, trash the plugin. If you don't have any Stuffit plugins, experiment with the ones that are there.

And later on that page, I found a fixed plugin:

ftp://ftp.smithmicro.com/stuffit/stuffitcm.plugin.zip

MS continues its anti-competitive practices

MacNN | Mac users pay more, MS blames security:

Microsoft has ensured that Mac owners will pay a premium for using its Vista operating system in a virtualized environment -- such as Parallels Desktop -- due to a portion of the Redmond-based company's license agreement forbidding such action.

Does this garbage really surprise anyone? So Macs can now run Windows, huh? Well, you should have known M$ would find a way to dig under the hood and make it tough. The goal? To harm the rival it always steals ideas from, of course. What "security" problems could Macs possibly pose to WIndows, and vice-versa?

Need more proof on M$ plans to take over the electronic world? Check this TechWeb article on Yahoo!:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20070225/tc_cmp/197008516

In a direct challenge to Adobe, Microsoft Corp. said on Friday that three major news publishers -- Associated Newspapers Ltd., Forbes Inc. and Hearst Corp. -- are planning to develop their own digital reader applications using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) display technology.

MS emails show jealousy over OS X Tiger

Apparently, Microsoft KNOWS how pathetically behind Apple they ALWAYS are in terms of innovation. Check this link to see what I mean:

Emails show MS experienced OS X Tiger envy

For my other views on Micro-sloth, check these previous posts:

Vista fashizzle

Steve Balmer

M$ laptop giveaway

Window's chief: "I'd buy a Mac..."

Vista ain't the fashizzle

Here we have an article where Bill Gates (a.k.a. Damien) attempts to actually convince his sheep that the OS X-look-alike, Vista, is safer than OS X:

"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine," Gates claims.

The full load of BS from the MS founder can be read here at MSNBC. I'm sure his nose grew about 12 feet by the time he left the interview.

Then comes the truth, of course. The Mac is making inroads against Microsoft, gaining a few percentage points of market share. Bill Gates would normally never address Apple; now he has to, because Apple has become a threat. Computer users are more savvy these days, and they're aware of the open plagiarizing M$ has perpetrated against Apple; OS X has had these "new, innovative features" for years, but true to form, M$ slaps its label on the technology and acts like it just "innovated" all the new, wonderful technologies. Fortunately, M$ always leaves out one key component when photocopying...quality is an afterthought. Apparently, that's still the case. Read on.

And even more truth. A Mac user bought and installed Vista and seemingly regretted that decision:

The online sale went fine and I was issued a license key for my second machine. The problem was that the key didn't work. I re-entered and double-checked it at length with no luck. Time to go to support. In the email I received it had a web link to follow if you need help, so I clicked. It goes to a non-existant page at microsoft.com, and still does today.

Steve Ballmer is an idiot

Continuing in his usual path of lying, copycat, bumble-fumble stupidity, Microsoft douche bag Steve Balmer came out officially against an Apple product--the new iPhone. No, say it ain't so! This doofus wouldn't have a product if Apple hadn't been there for him to pirate in the early days of M$ Windows. As a matter of fact, M$ hates every Apple product that they openly plagiarize.

And for a company that sells Windbloze for as much as his does, he has a lot of room to talk about the iPhone in terms of price. The fact he leaves out in his interview is that the iPhone is MORE than just a phone, so it's going to sell great! I'm sure he isn't going to be happy about it, since Apple is out-innovating Microsoft any day of the week.

How easy is it to hack into someone's Mac?

As it turns out, it's entirely possible to hack into a VERY secured Mac, even if it has an open firmware password established. However, it would take an extremely savvy thief to know about this. Best thing to do is STILL use OFPW, and be certain to secure your Mac physically too!

Tech Press » How to Hack a Tiger Admin Account:

If the person has PHYSICAL access to the machine, then an open-firmware password will do little to prevent them from gaining access — you can disable the open-firmware password by adding/removing a significant amount of RAM, then immediately zapping the PRAM upon the next boot. That procedure removes the open-firmware password.

The machine needs to be locked down physically as well as have software security measures in place in order to thwart potential malicious users.

iPhone: iPod going bye-bye?

Once the storage comes up a bit on the new iPhone, why would anyone pay basically the same for an iPod when they can have all that’s in the iPhone and still retain iPod functionality? Apple was very smart to do this. Everyone is hooked on iPods, and folks will now see this as the next step towards being rid of separate PDAs, phones, mp3 players, etc.

I think you’re going to see other phone service providers (i.e., Alltel, Sprint, etc.) start tap dancing soon for a piece of this, or I think their business will be hurt if they don’t.

The first lawsuit has already been filed!

We'll see what happens with the new AppleTV product; I've been saying this would happen for years (i.e., the amalgamation of all "tele-" products in one unit). Soon, the TV, receiver, computer, phone, video, etc. will all be part of one unit, or at least networked and interoperable in the home. Visits to the video store (or even renting through Netflix) will be a thing of the past; video purchases and rentals will all be done "on-line" much the same way music is now bought. This is really already happening on a small scale.

Mail.app suddenly crashing on open

A bizarre, inexplicable problem hit me this morning. I suddenly had no Mail.app. Everything appeared fine, and I even managed to answer one email. The rest of my emails gave me some message about needing to be downloaded from the server (something I have never seen before). I did some digging and found this awesome trick to use when encountering similar Mail.app problems.

Basically, find:

~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index

Rename it to:

~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index.bak

Restart Mail and let it reload your messages. All was fine after that!

M$ Laptop Giveaway - Bribery or Feedback?

Microsoft Says No Favorable Coverage Expected In Laptop Giveaway:

Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices sent expensive laptops as gifts to select bloggers who review technology as part of an effort to solicit "valuable feedback" from the influential writers in the blogosphere, not to encourage favorable coverage, Microsoft says.

If that's true then why not give the laptops to Vista beta testers? Simple. Because bloggers have more influence on public opinion. If Microsoft would just make a quality (original) OS, they wouldn't need to rely on bribery for positive press.

The dichotomy of iTune's success

Clearly, Apple has garnered many enemies over the last several years. At one time (around 1996 or 97), Apple was written off as a company soon to perish. However, Steve Jobs regained control of the company he founded and turned it around. Out were the old beige systems and in came the colorful iMacs--a great-selling hit. Then came the innovative OS X, grounded in the UNIX-based NeXT OS that Jobs once touted as the NeXT CEO. Daring, new systems and laptops appeared--some bombed and some took off. Then came the iPod, which together with iTunes (and its eventual sidekick, iTMS) revolutionized the way consumers bought music, regardless of the bitterness expressed by the old-guard, clueless record corporations.

Microsoft and others were left reeling; no longer could the competition continue to merely copy Apple, because the innovations were coming as fast as lightening-quick sucker punches. Vista is already being described as a bomb; and surprise, its graphics borrow heavily from the GUI of OS X, which has been around since 2000. Microsoft is truly an example of a giant that went to sleep after it made good business decisions; it has never made good technology decisions.

A few weeks ago, several news articles appeared that described "plummeting" sales on iTMS. The press has long had this obsession with harming Apple (link: Apple Death Knell Counter), for some reason:

Apple iTunes Sales Take a Nose Dive

Apple iTunes sales plummet 65%

Apple ITunes Sales Slid in First Half, Forrester Says

Apple responded immediately:

Apple Dismisses 'iTunes Slump' as Silly Claims

Now (as I can personally attest to the Christmas day sluggishness), we see this story:

Holiday demand overwhelms iTunes' ability to download

So which is it, media? The press has its enemies, and its tech enemy is Apple for some bizarre reason.

Windows chief: 'I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft'

Windows development chief: 'I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft':

Longtime Windows development chief James Allchin wrote in a January 2004 e-mail to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and company co-founder Bill Gates that the software vendor had "lost sight" of customers' needs and said he would buy a Mac if he wasn't working for Microsoft.

In the same article, Allchin tells MS employees to dump incriminating emails. This proves what Mac users have known about MS all along: it's a monopolistic giant that seeks to bury competition instead of compete on the basis of product strength. They can't compete on product strength, because their products suck. Even this senior MS chief here wants a MACINTOSH!!!

See what the Installer will install

Macworld has a great tip on how to see what a developer installs on your system if they use the Apple installer.

Quite simply, just hit Command-I at the main dialog to see a list, or use the File menu.

Good Blogger troubleshooting stuff...

Every now and then, something weird will happen to my blog. For instance, the other day I added a post to a blog and the sidebar immediately dropped to the bottom of the page. This sort of thing has transpired before, but the fixes I had previously identified were ineffective.

So I did some digging around through Blogger's Help function and found some great resources that helped me solve the problem.

The Google Group for Blogger Help is really great. This group led me to another great help site -> The Real Blogger Status.

Open Unix manual pages in OS X 10.4's Preview

Here's a neat article on opening up man pages using the Preview application.

Make auto-login somewhat secure

Here's a great security tip for those who enjoy auto-login on their Mac. Use the screen saver password feature in a new way.

Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Make auto-login somewhat secure

A nice, tight font panel

A nice and tight font panel is a blog entry that gave me a simple piece of information I had lacked on making the font panel smaller for your work space.

Password Autocomplete Always On!

It's really quite annoying that some web sites circumvent Safari's integrated (very secure) access to encrypted keychains. What I'm specifically referring to is the tactic of preventing your browser from remembering web site login information and entering it the next time for you automatically, provided the keychain itself is unlocked.

It makes sense not to store your login information for banking and credit card sites, but even this doesn't really make much sense if you're a Mac user and enjoy the encrypted goodness of your keychain using Keychain Access--which lets you access tons of password and other critical information with ONE password.

However, certain sites, such as Yahoo, shouldn't have this ridiculous block. It's frustrating and annoying.

There is a way around it in most cases, though I have one particular site I visit that is extremely annoying (http://nextcat.com - is a social networking site) in its method of preventing one from storing login information. All the work-arounds I've looked at so far are ineffective for this site, so they must be using another method of blocking.

Autocomplete Always On! is a little Applescript application that will do some hacking for you of the Webcore engine, allowing you to store login information for MOST sites (except sites like Nextcat). You can handle this hack yourself using the instructions here, but I chose to use the AAO app above. Make sure you back up your Webcore too with the Applescript, just in case (you won't really need to, but I'm a worry-wart).

There are some other methods for doing this, using a Python script run through Pith Helmet's Machete function. One must remember to save the script as a plain text file with the ".py" extension and then make it executable, which can be done simply through the Terminal using instructions here.

But the method described earlier using the AAO Applescript seemed like a quick, global fix for my personal situation.

Slow keyboard performance when using Word 2004 for Mac

If you experience slow keyboard response in Word 2004, here is a potential fix for you to nix the sluggishness. It worked for me!

1. Start Word 2004.
2. Click Tools, point to Macros, and then click Macros.
3. In the Macro name box, type ToolsAdvancedSettings.
4. Click Run.

Note: If Run remains unavailable, click Word Commands in the Macros in list.

5. In the Advanced Settings dialog box, click Microsoft Word in the Categories list.
6. In the Option box, type CACHESIZE.

Note: Make sure that you type CACHESIZE in all capital letters because this setting is case sensitive.

7. In the Setting box, type 1024.
8. Click Set.
9. Click OK.
10. Quit and then restart Word 2004.

Applejack: Getting New Features

Applejack, the command line troubleshooting utility for Mac OS X, is undergoing prerelease testing now for version 1.4.3rc3, which adds a new experimental expert mode. From the read me:

+ Experimental expert mode exists, but is currently hidden until it can be tested further. (see Appendix B). The only well-tested options at this point are the memory test using the included Memtest utility, and the option to disable auto login.

This is great, because among other neat features, it adds the memtest utility as well, which will save you the $1 download charge from its developer.

Memtest and Applejack are must-have utilities, IMHO. Memtest saved my butt on bad memory (via the GUI version in the form of rembr), whereas Tech Tool Pro told me my memory was fine. Wrong! Changed it out and my numerous problems went bye-bye!

Nix Yojimbo: Journler plus Keychain Access

Yojim-blows:

I tried to make Yojimbo work for me, but there were just too many problems with .Mac syncing. So, I moved all passwords and secure notes to Keychain Access that comes with OS X. I started a new keychain to store my stuff, and it syncs perfectly with .Mac since Tiger.

For everything else (i.e., PDFs, notes, scribbles, pictures, etc.), I went with Journler...a great, free (donation-ware) application that can also be used for your blogging needs in many instances. I gave the developer $10 for his work--very much worth every penny. It still has some problems, bugs, glitches, and quirks, but it's hard to beat the price.

Now, Journler has no .Mac syncing function. However, it's easy to use an Applescript or syncing application to keep your Journler items synced between computers, and it has a lot of features that Yojim-blow lacks. I'm sure the developer will add .Mac syncing later.