This was a new one for me. Double-clicking a VISE Installer application opened the Script Editor. I did a quick Google search and found this Mac NN:
None of their suggestions worked for me, but I discovered something simple. I just added the extension ".app" to the file using Get Info from the Finder! Problem solved.
AOL Offers 5 GB of Free Storage - Yahoo! News:
AOL is going to offer 5 GB of free online storage to anyone with an AOL screenname as part of its move towards an ad-supported business model. This is good news for us normal folk!
MacNN | Apple's .Mac outages anger users:
Apple's .Mac suite of internet/Web services has been suffering several outages recently, and some users have began to lash out against Apple. According to CNET News.com, users are claiming these outages are unacceptable"
Follow up on my own .Mac syncing problems as of 8/2/06:
With the release of OS 10.4.7, my .Mac syncing woes mostly went away. Bookmarks finally started syncing as intended--about 5 months after I joined and paid for dotmac. Apple graciously granted me extra iDisk space in return for my trouble, which I accepted. However, every now and then something will stop syncing and I'll have to do a reset to get it back. It's not perfect, but I'm happier than when I started with my paid service. As you can see by the article above, I haven't been the only one upset with Apple over dotmac.
If you discover the Finder crashing when you type in the little search box in the upper right corner of any Finder dialog box, it likely means you need to rebuild your Launch Services database, which is separate for each user. In most cases, Spotlight still functions, but Finder finding doesn't.
Notice lines 2-5 in the crash report:
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x70586e60
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x90b99530 CSStoreGetUnit + 56
1 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x91936754 _LSBindingListGetEntryWithClass + 44
2 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x9193667c _UTTypeSearchConformsToTypesCore + 92
3 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x919365ec _UTTypeSearchConformsToTypes + 64
4 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x91936588 _UTTypeConformsTo + 56
5 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x9193ee80 UTTypeConformsTo + 228
6 com.apple.finder 0x002734fc dyld_stub_OpenADefaultComponent + 504460
7 com.apple.finder 0x001c9398 0x1000 + 1868696
8 com.apple.finder 0x001cab64 0x1000 + 1874788
It's really important to treat a DamagedFiles folder that shows up after a crash and disk repair with respect. Research what each file or folder is by using the symlink to go to its original. Replace those files from a backup and repair permissions! There has been data loss.
Macworld: News: Inside Mac OS X 10.4.2:
More info can be found here as well."Next, the new Disk Management repair code creates a folder named DamagedFiles at the root level of the disk in question, and creates a real Unix symbolic link (not a Mac OS alias of any kind) for each of the affected files, named with the original CNID and the file name. In our example, if your Safari Bookmarks file had the file ID 45892 and the picture that overlapped an extent with it had file ID 81834, the DamagedFiles folder would contain two symbolic links, one named "45892 Bookmarks.plist" and one named something like "81834 DSCN0001.JPG", depending on the image's original filename. As noted, only one of these files can even possibly contain correct data, and they may both be corrupted. Thanks to the symbolic links, you can easily find them, and determine which newly untangled files to keep and which to replace.
Utilities like DiskWarrior have long repaired overlapping extents with similar procedures, but it's great to have this built into the operating system, if for no other reason than that Mac OS X uses this code to verify and repair your file system during startup when the computer wasn't properly shut down. If you see a DamagedFiles directory show up on the root level of your hard drive, stop what you're doing and look at the files within it. See which of the files are damaged, and either replace them from backup or recreate them. Then run DiskWarrior if you have it, or boot into single-user mode and run fsck so it can verify there are no more problems with your disk. (You can boot from your Tiger installation disk and run Disk Utility, but since it doesn't contain the Mac OS X 10.4.2 version of this code, it won't do as well with overlapping extents, so we recommend single-user mode first.)"
Also keep in mind you might see orphaned files stuck in a folder at the root called "lost+found":
If you find a Recovered Files folder in your trash when starting up, Apple has the explanation here. Basically, OS X is cleaning up after applications that either crashed or did bad housekeeping:MacDevCenter.com -- Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks: "lost+foundThis directory stores orphaned files discovered by fsck."
Mac OS X 10.4 Help: A folder called Recovered Files appears in my Trash: "One or more Recovered Files folder may appear in your Trash after restarting your computer."
I've started seeing this message:
Jul 27 17:45:09 localhost kernel[0]: ApplePMU::PMU forced
shutdown, cause = -122
I'd like to think it's a faux pas, but I think I'm reaching the physical and technical limits of what my old G4 can do. Tiger will be the last OS installment on this machine until I can replace it.
I've added a new video card (that powers 2 monitors), several hard drives, an firewire audio interface, a USB 2.0 card, and a processor upgrade. So I'm not surprised to see all these problems cropping up.
I'm also having a lot more kernel panics, freezes, and various application crashes. Not sure what to do next.Macworld UK - iPods have 4-year life, says Apple: "
Macworld Daily News Thursday - July 27, 2006 By Macworld staffThis is frustrating for me personally. I have two iPods, and this means one is nearing its life-expectancy. I know stuff can't last forever, but dang it...iPods and computers aren't cheap. They need to last longer than 4 years! My G4 (where I'm typing this) is still strong after 6 years now!Though some iPods do develop faults, Apple builds them to last at least four years, the company claims. A Chicago Tribune report weighs up the cacophony of complaints regarding Apple's music players"
Update 7/29/06 - now, they're backtracking with claims of being misquoted, which I wouldn't put past the media:
MacNN | Apple clarifies: iPod lasts "for years" The report quoted Kerris as saying that Apple's iPod is designed to last "four years," but Kerris said she told the reporter that the iPod was designed to last "for years."
AlphaBaby lets even infants and toddlers have fun playing with the computer. My kids love to play with the computer. Unfortunately, they also have the habit of renaming my hard drive to 'axlfkaj'. So, I wrote AlphaBaby so they could safely use the Mac without inflicting too much damage! Every time a key is pressed or the mouse is clicked, a letter or shape is drawn. Sounds can be played every time something is drawn.
Your own sounds and pictures can also be used. AlphaBaby helps kids to learn letters, plus provides a s"
This seems like a great idea for you Mac folks out there with a baby or toddler (like I have) who is dying to play with your computer!Macworld UK - iPods have 4-year life, says Apple: "
Though some iPods do develop faults, Apple builds them to last at least four years, the company claims. A Chicago Tribune report weighs up the cacophony of complaints regarding Apple's music players"
This is frustrating for me personally. I have two iPods, and this means one is nearing its life-expectancy. I know stuff can't last forever, but dang it...iPods and computers aren't cheap. They need to last longer than 4 years! My G4 (where I'm typing this) is still strong after 6 years now!Update 7/29/06 - now, they're backtracking with claims of being misquoted, which I wouldn't put past the media:
MacNN | Apple clarifies: iPod lasts "for years" The report quoted Kerris as saying that Apple's iPod is designed to last "four years," but Kerris said she told the reporter that the iPod was designed to last "for years."
Luckily I had a backup of the file:
~/Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist You are backing up daily, right? Anyway, restoring this file quickly restored my login items.
Of all the things I love about OS X and Tiger (and the list is great), I can't say I'm very fond of the syncing architecture. It's fairly lame damn it. I recently bought a .Mac membership ($99 annually) to take care of my email, web hosting, and syncing for multiple Macs. The only problem is that the syncing part is stynking. And considering I'm not getting what I paid for, it's really ticking me off!
.Mac Support has been working on my bookmark syncing problems since April 24, 2006--it's now May 15, 2006; their most recent response to my latest inquiry was:
Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.
.Mac Support engineers are still hard at work seeking a resolution for the issue you have reported. Currently, they are reviewing the logs and your account configuration. We appreciate your patience as we strive to make your experience with .Mac a more enjoyable one. Rest assured we have flagged your request for follow up and will contact you immediately once we have more information for you.
So I've tried some other 'fixits' while I wait for their lightning-fast customer support; You can view the entire procedure here at the Apple Discussion forums. Here's my summary:
1. I unregistered all my computers via Sys Prefs.
2. I turned off sync via the web interface for Address Book and Bookmarks. Then I deleted all the Contacts and Bookmark (the generic Apple bookmarks) entries via the web interface.
3. I deleted all .Mac keychain entries from the Keychain app.
4. Deleted "PendingNotifications.plist" and "conflicts" via my /Library/Application Support/ directory. I left "clientdata" alone this time (I tried deleting it last time and it didn't do anything).
5. I reset my phone and resynced it via iSync. My calendars came across, but for some reason my contacts won't go over now (on the phone).
6. Before syncing with .Mac, I went to my iDisk and checked the Bookmark.xml file. It was still there at 84 KB. I could actually open it with BBEdit and see that it's still the generic Apple URLs. I couldn't delete the file though.
7. I went to Sys Prefs at the Sync tab and turned on just Bookmarks. It was already set to "Manually" sync. When given the option, I selected "Replace data on .Mac". It seemed to sync and gave the green check mark, but then it gave me the "There was a problem with the sync operation. .Mac login failed." message. I went ahead and resynced the bookmarks again without error this time.
8. I went back to mac.com and turned on bookmark syncing and selected merge. Now my bookmarks are completely empty again online - at least the generic Apple bookmarks are gone. I went to Sys Prefs and selected reset sync data to try again. The bookmark.xml file on my iDisk is now 1 KB in size.
9. So I went ahead and tried syncing everything else again. My online contacts will not sync now. Don't know why. I'm assuming this means nothing else is syncing.
So I lost my online contacts and my phone contacts--very important--more so than bookmarks on .Mac! So I found this online solution thanks to Josh Blander. I just deleted my entire ~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices directory and restarted. My phone was back and my .Mac contacts synced again after that. My bookmarks, however, were still in the toilet--no syncing permitted. I have no clue why they won't sync. They'll sync if I create a new OS X account and add a trial .Mac account. But not with my PAID account.
The other day, my Mac Mini beeped three times and refused to start. Following the advice of others on the net, I tried reseating the memory card, but that didn’t do the trick. It’s dead and has to go back to Apple.
This is the first Apple product I’ve had to send back in 13 years of using Apple stuff.
I just purchased my first .Mac membership. The marketing all sounds great, but it has some problems.
1. Mail continues to show up in my “Draft” mailbox after I’ve already sent it. Very weird.
2. My bookmarks won’t sync no matter what. I’m stuck with the default Apple bookmarks that come with Safari. Everything else seems to sync okay.
3. Using iDisk through the Finder is impossibly slow. Don’t even try it. Get Transmit instead.
If you’re like me and use sparseimage files for backing up your hard drive, you’ll notice that the disk can expand and shrink. But the cost is that, while the content on the image shrinks, the sparseimage file itself doesn’t, and you’re left with an ever-expanding image file.
The solution is to use hdiutil compact in the Terminal to reclaim the empty space:
localuser$ hdiutil compact /Volumes/HardDiskName/DiskFileName.sparseimage
Better yet, set up a script that runs as a cron job to do this automatically for you periodically!