mac os x and ipod troubleshooting, support, and help - macfixit
mac os x and ipod troubleshooting, support, and help - macfixit
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updated tuesday, november 13 2007 @ 10:09 am pst
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today's featured article
late-breakers
a leopard miscellany
here are some miscellaneous leopard issues we're watching:
we've received confirmation from readers that, in leopard, ical email alarms are not being sent. there's a long thread about this over on apple discussions as well. there is speculation that this is one of the things that will be fixed in the eagerly awaited 10.5.1 leopard update (coming "real soon now", we hope).
it definitely appears to be the case that, as we asked readers to confirm, if you use x11 with multiple monitors, you can't drag a window onto most of the second monitor. it's as if the second monitor were a fraction of its actual size.
also missing in leopard is the sms feature in address book (allowing messages to be sent out through your bluetooth phone). an apple discussion thread on this topic has been locked. there appears to be consensus that users looking for this feature will have resort to a different application, such as bluephoneelite.
apple continues to scramble to post information about what to do if you're having difficulty installing or starting up leopard. this knowledge base article acts as a jumping-off point to various others.
users continue to report trouble in leopard with various printers.
one reader noted that if you do an upgrade install and old ppds or pdfs are left lying around in the /library/printers folder, this can cause crashing when trying to add a new printer to the list.
another reader says that rips from fiery don't work properly in leopard.
another reader notes that "desktop printers", a familiar feature from the old system 7 days, have made a return in leopard (to create one, just drag a printer icon from the printers list to the desktop) - except that he couldn't get them to work. and remote printers are not working for some users either:
cannot access remote printing under leopard. running imac dual core and 12 inch g4 powerbook with leopard, and 800 mhz imac w/ os10.3.9 acting primarily as a print server using an airport. imac dual core and 12 inch g4 cannot access remote printers. worked fine under tiger. 12 inch g4 powerbook & 800 mhz imac can access a remote printer attached by usb to imac dual core.
continuing with coverage of quicktime 7.3, messages have appeared over on macintouch.com suggesting that an important form of audio compression, qualcomm purevoice, is no longer working. the symptom is that movies whose soundtrack is created in quicktime 7.3 using this form of compression won't play. however, we couldn't reproduce the problem on our own machine, so perhaps something more is going on.
and the tale of the disappearing selection indicators in quicktime player continues to add layers of complexity. a reader now tells us that he sees the selection indicators when editing a .wmv movie (handled by flip4mac) but not when editing a .mov movie.
the freezes continue on latest-generation imacs. several readers have definitely reported taking the imac back to the store, being given a new one as a replacement, and having it work just fine. on the other hand, one reader says that this did not help, so the issue remains open. one reader reports getting an email from steve jobs suggesting that a software release later this week should fix the problem!
readers continue to report that a wireless keyboard doesn't work in boot camp. reader charles describes the symptoms:
i can add the keyboard using the wizard, but it zips past the key entry without allowing any input, then says it is connected and working, but it does not. a few moments later it will indicate that it is disconnected.
readers continue to confirm that various fundamental tricks we often recommend really do work now and then to cure problems.
one user mysteriously found after installing the login and keyboard update that the functionality of his caps lock and num lock keys were reversed - the computer typed in capitals when the caps lock key was not lit, and typed normally when the caps lock key was lit. restarting in safe boot mode (holding down command-s) fixed this.
in a case where the computer was starting up spontaneously, even when the lid was closed, zapping the pram solved the problem.
a mysterious crash when accessing the screen saver preference pane was cured by doing a clean install.
a bizarre failure of the tab and return keys to work after updating to leopard was fixed by reinstalling, doing an archive and install without preserving users.
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6 comments most recent post: 11/13 08:24pm by brianmarsh
late-breakers
official word from roxio: toast updater is coming
we've received the following note from roxio that we wanted to pass along:
i am the pr manager at roxio and wanted to follow-up on monday’s posting titled “leopard: incompatible third-party software and hardware (part 2).” just wanted to let you know that over the last few months, roxio’s mac team has been testing our products with beta versions of apple’s leopard version of mac os x. we have identified some compatibility issues between leopard and toast 7 which we plan to release updaters to address. we hope to complete the final test and release the updaters to registered users early next week. thank you for your patience as we work to ensure our products run well on apple’s exciting new mac os x release.
update it appears, however, that this note from roxio may have been misleadingly phrased. reading it, you might be forgiven for thinking that roxio is intending to help users who have leopard incompatibility problems with toast 7 by updating toast 7. this does not seem to be the case. one reader reports getting this note from roxio: "although an update for toast 7 will be released in the near future, it will not be fully compatible with leopard and it will not be supported. we recommend you contact us to find out what your upgrade options are. there are a number of attractive pricing packages for our current product - toast 8." this accords with our previous impression that only toast 8 will ever be leopard-compatible.
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2 comments most recent post: 11/13 04:43pm by panarech28
late-breakers
using your apple remote as a "startup key"
having trouble getting your computer to hear signals from your aluminum keyboard during the boot process? here's a curious hint from a reader about restoring one bit of functionality by using your apple remote instead:
i recently purchased an apple aluminum wired keyboard to use with my intel imac. it failed to launch my bootcamp partition of windows xp by using the option key on boot. it would boot into osx 10.5 as though i hadn't held the option key down as the imac was booting. after several attempts with the same result i called apple. i was told that the keyboard update was suppose to address that issue but that it hadn't. apple sent me another keyboard but it was no different. after searching the apple discussions board it seems to be a common issue.
there is a workaround, however. it seems that if the menu key is held down on the apple remote during the boot process it will act as though the option key was held down. apple obviously needs to issue a fix but in the mean time your readers may want to know about using the apple remote to select the bootcamp partition or any other alternate partition on their hard drive.
who knew? what other interesting things does an apple remote do during startup? tell us!
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late-breakers
various leopard wireless connectivity suggestions from readers
here's a collection of various suggestions from our readers about how to cure troubles with an airport network on leopard. while we're waiting for leopard system update 10.5.1 (any day now, we hope!), which may contain fixes for this and other problems, you might like to try some of these approaches, in your copious free time.
some users are having trouble logging on to a network that has a wep password. for example:
after installing leopard, i've been unable to log into my home network. i have a snow airport base station, but when i try to join the network, i get a window that says my network requires a wep password. typing in my password results in a message that says "incompatible security". no go. but i can go to system preferences, select "network", select airport, click on "assist me", and run the diagnostics. six or eight keystrokes later, i'm online.
notice that in that case, logging on is possible through the assist me dialog.
another reader suggests that wep connection problems can be ameliorated by changing the password, and in particular, by changing it to a 128-bit hex key:
we are an isp and have many different wireless dsl modems out in the field. we have had problems since leopard with trying to connect to certain of the routers that were using wep rather than wpa. this happens when there is an old pc in the house and it doesn't support wpa, so we have to go with wep. we have generally gone with 64 bit wep (10 chars) as with windows you have to type it in twice, and getting people to type in 10 chars the same twice is a challenge. 128 bit wep requires 26 chars, and getting anybody to type that in twice correctly is almost impossible.
however - it appears that we will have to do go to 128. after hours of troubleshooting on my own and with apple, it appears that with certain dsl modems, there is a problem with using less than 128 bit hex keys. i have confirmed this on the zoom x6 modem, yet the actiontec modems work fine with the 64 bit keys.
just so you know - both of these modems work fine with tiger.
if the wireless connection works but is not reestablished properly after waking from sleep, a solution might be as simple as toggling the airport card off and then on again. on my own machine, i have found this a useful approach. the only problems i'm currently having are centered around bonjour: the two computers on my network will not see each other after one of them has been sleeping. i use the button in the network preference pane (not the little icon in the menu bar) to turn the airport card off and then on, and this seems to be a reliable cure. the text in the network preference pane describing whether i'm connected to the internet does not always update properly, so i just ignore it.
one reader who completely lost connection with his airport base station was able to solve the problem by reinstalling leopard, doing a clean install.
after upgrading to leopard i cannot get my airport extreme to mount nor can i get into the airport utility to make changes or record the data from the airport utility. i can still access the internet on airport from my tower on the other side of the house.
the same reader later reported that reinstalling leopard fixed that.
another idea that comes up now and then is to edit your network preferences, rendering your current airport service inactive and making a new airport service, or even making a completely new location.
i found a solution (someone posted it to the apple discussions
previously and i found it with a google search on the error message i
was receiving in the console log):
go to network in system preferences.
select airport and under the gear dropdown choose make service inactive.
hit the plus and add a new airport service (airport 2 or whatever).
in the advanced tab add the name of the wireless network you wish to join.
hit apply.
after a few moments, the new service found my network. i deleted
the "original" airport service and renamed the new one to airport."
this basically worked for me, although what i did was duplicate the
airport service, because making a new one didn't work. i then
rebooted, deleted the original airport service, and rebooted again,
and then it all was fine.
and it is certainly true that in the past, i have found simply making a new location often solves airport connection problems.
when using the above solution (making a new airport service or a new location), consider (or reconsider) two things: (1) what are your dns settings, and are they working okay? and (2) is it better to use dhcp, or might a static ip number be worth trying?
part of the trouble here (and i particularly want to emphasize this) is that the computer can give misleading symptoms: it will act as if the router signal is weak (you'll see less than the usual number of "bars" in the airport menu icon, or the connection will work but will drop out now and then) when what is really going on is that it's having trouble with dns.
one reader writes:
i had the leopard / airport problem. i kept losing my airport connection and many times my airport extreme didn't even show up. i tried every fix i could find to no avail. then i read a post on the apple discussions board where someone noticed his ip dns numbers were missing. he replaced them and success!
so here's what i did:
opened network preferences: airport: advanced button
clicked on the dns tab. yes, my dns server numbers had vanished after the leopard install.
clicked on the proxies tab. choose manually configure proxies. there was a long number in the bypass proxy settings field.
i deleted the number and clicked ok.
my airport has worked perfectly ever since, so far.
now, there are really several things going on here. there was evidently an incorrect value in the proxies tab. deleting this caused dns to start working correctly. making a new airport service or a new location would have had the same effect, starting over without whatever cruft is causing trouble in the network settings.
if you are using dhcp, you will know that dns is working properly because the dns values from your router will automatically be mirrored into the dns pane of your airport advanced settings on the computer.
still, if your router permits it, setting up a static ip number might work better than dhcp. (also, in my own setup, i have other reasons for wanting to use static ip numbers: it's so that, if necessary, on occasion, i can punch a hole in the router's firewall and use port forwarding.) be certain to configure the router to do dhcp in a range that is different from the static ip number you intend to assign the computer; if you give the computer a static ip number that's within the router's dhcp range, there will be trouble.
one reader writes:
i ran my airport network with static ip addresses and it has always been rock solid. when installing leopard, i decided to change to dynamic addressing and i began to see the problematic behaviour that others are reporting. two days ago i decided to change back to static addressing and so far the network has been problem-free again, even with large file transfers (time machine backups).
my network consists of a sitecom router (that provided the dhcp), an airport extreme for 802.11n, and a flying saucer airport for 802.11g, plus several computers and network printers. two hard disks are connected to the airport extreme.
a slight problem when setting up a static ip address is what dns numbers to enter for the computer. i've tried various approaches; at the moment, on my leopard machine, i've put in the same dns values that are used by the router, and that seems to be working very well. i was using the router's ip address as my dns server value, and this was not working so well. your results may differ from mine.
is your router's firmware up to date? one reader suggests that solving connection problems can be as simple as updating firmware:
i was getting a "connection timeout" error, preventing me from connecting to my wireless lan after upgrading to leopard. i tried all the suggestions for wireless troubleshooting, but nothing worked. i finally thought of updating the firmware on the gateway. after updating the firmware on my verizon gateway everything worked fine. i now get a good connection, perhaps even better than before.
of course, this assumes that you can update your router's firmware. i've tried valiantly to update the firmware on my linksys router, but it always fails halfway through the process. a router is a touchy little thing; it's effectively a computer in and of itself, with all the complexities that this implies.
speaking of the router, it might help to fiddle with some of its settings. one reader says that just changing his base station name solved his problems:
i had problems seeing my 802.11g airport extreme base station with a
clean, updated leopard install on an external firewire drive attached
to my ibook g4. once i changed the base station name to remove all
spaces, i was able to connect right away. i've had no trouble with
dropped connections, or slow transfers either.
the base station is using wep 128 bit encryption, is a closed network,
uses the minimal multicast rate (6 mbps) and interference robustness.
the only change i made was to the name to get it to work. also, after
an archive and install on the ibook itself, i've had no troubles.
or you might try messing with the router password, or the channel it's using, or both - as one reader did. he had to use the airport admin utility from a tiger machine in order to make the changes:
since installing leopard, i have experienced (along with a throng of others) a plethora of problems with my graphite base station wireless connectivity in leopard.
here is some history:
upgraded a brand-new 24" imac with leopard. no airport problems until i unplugged the machine and moved it to a different room. once i did, i would get "connection failed" or "incompatible security" error messages when trying to access my base station.
upgraded an original 17" powerbook g4. no problems initially.
upgraded a 17" macbook pro. no problems.
upgraded a macbook. no problems initially.
iphone never lost connectivity.
i noticed that while airport setup utility from my old powerbook could reconfigure the base station, the network control panel never seemed to "remember" the password settings. i also discovered that my old password (which was greater than five characters) had been converted to a hexadecimal equivalent. changing the base station password then caused all of the leopard macs to cease airport connections, despite re-entry of the password. (meanwhile my iphone never missed a beat.) i could run airport setup utility on the ppc machine and get airport to connect, but this had to be done every time the computer woke from sleep or was re-booted.
after hours (even days!) of troubleshooting (i have tried everything that i have seen in your forums so far and then some) i finally stumbled upon a fix. since the airport admin utility could not be run in leopard, and the airport utility in leopard will not work with the graphite base station, i booted from a tiger partition, ran airport admin utility 4.2 and changed my airport password back to what the leopard machines originally were connected with. i also changed the base station channel from 1 to 11. viola! now all of my leopard machines have full use of my wireless network again.
one reader suggests something as simple as turning off interference robustness:
the trick is to go to airport admin and configure the base station to disable interface robustness. the interface robustness option disappeared from the card's config params in leopard, but you can still disable it on the base station (i have it set for 802.11g only, no interface robustness, maximum multicast speed). signal is 100% and all's well.
another simple suggestion involves just unplugging the router for a while, to let it recycle (or whatever magic it is that happens when you unplug it). one reader tells us that this solved his problems connecting to an airport disk:
recently i had problems with connecting wirelessly to my hard disk, which is connected to airport extreme. if i would double click on the drive's icon in the side pane finder's window, i would get an error message, like "connection failed..." i called apple's tech support and technician asked me to disconnect the power cable from airport extreme, then reconnect it again. that fixed the problem.
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1 comments most recent post: 11/13 03:10pm by rubberchicken
late-breakers
more about aac encoding in leopard
following up on our earlier report about aac encoding not giving the expected results in itunes, it now appears (thanks to a helpful reader email) that this neither a bug in quicktime nor a bug in itunes; in fact, it's not a bug. what's happened is that the meaning of the choices you make in itunes has changed (without, as usual, any explanation or notice from apple).
here's how things used to work. in (let's say) itunes 7.1.1 with quicktime 7.1.6 on tiger, when you tell itunes in its advanced > importing preferences that you don't want to use vbr (variable bit rate) encoding, you get cbr (constant bit rate) encoding.
but using itunes 7.5 with quicktime 7.3 on leopard, the very same setting in advanced > importing has changed its meaning. it gives you abr (average bit rate) encoding, not cbr.
according to a thread over on hydrogenaudio.org, quicktime 7.3, the aac encoder has been improved. as part of that improvement, there are now four encoding modes:
cbr.
abr. this is new in leopard, and is what you now get in itunes when you uncheck the vbr checkbox.
vbr_constrained, a form of variable bit rate where the variation in bit rate is limited. this is what you now get, and apparently have always gotten, in itunes when you check the vbr checkbox.
vbr. this unconstrained, low-complexity form of vbr is actually new in leopard.
so the confusion here is caused mostly by the failure of the itunes interface. there is no itunes interface for obtaining cbr aac compression any longer, but the interface does not make this fact clear. and to add to the confusion, itunes is not (and never really has been) very good about telling you the specifications of an aac file after you've created it.
to obtain cbr aac encoding, by the way, you can now use the afconvert command-line tool in the terminal. for example, this might work (though not thoroughly tested here):
afconvert -f 'm4af' -d 'aac ' -s 0 -b 128000 mysoundfile.aiff
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16 comments most recent post: 11/13 01:06pm by dsmit614
late-breakers
a spaces glitch
there have been some indications that spaces might misbehave when you switch from one space to another. the phenomena can be difficult to reproduce. thanks to hints and clues from various readers, i was able to spot a spaces misbehavior in action and make some guesses as to the circumstances in which the misbehavior occurs, though reproducing it later has remained difficult.
whether you see spaces misbehavior might depend on what application's windows you're working with. i don't want to cast any blame on any particular application (since it surely should not be an application's fault that spaces has come along and fiddled with the underlying window management model), so let's call the application that i used "application x". so here's what i did:
i switched to space 1 and launched application x, opening two document windows.
i switched to space 2 and launched safari, opening two document windows.
i switched between spaces 1 and 2 using the control-1 and control-2 shortcuts and saw nothing amiss.
but when i used command-tab to change from safari to application x - thereby also switching secondarily from space 2 to space 1, since all of application x's windows were in space 1 - the wrong application x window was in front.
unfortunately this phenomenon repeated itself only two or three times, and after that it proved difficult to reproduce. however, when repeatedly command-tabbing back and forth between safari and application x, there remained a secondary glitch:
when switching to safari, space 2 and safari's windows would just appear.
but when switching to application x, space 1 would appear, and the wrong application x window would be in front for a fraction of a second and then the other application x window would come to the front, causing a slight flash.
from this one might conjecture that some applications respond to being brought frontmost through the command-tab mechanism in a way that spaces does not deal with properly. it remains to be seen whether apple can correct this problem, but in the meantime, an apparent workaround is this: if you're using spaces, do all your switching between spaces explicitly (by switching from one space to another with the control-number or control-arrow keys or the spaces menu) rather than implicitly (by switching between applications). this is not a very satisfactory workaround, since spaces ought to be smoothly integrated into other aspects of the windowing and application layering system; but it might provide temporary relief if spaces is misbehaving in a way that gives you trouble (so that you don't have to give up and stop using spaces altogether, as some readers report they are doing). anyhow, you might try it and see how you go.
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10 comments most recent post: 11/13 06:06pm by hawiken1
late-breakers
how to change the group id of files and folders
the problem since upgrading to leopard, many users have been experiencing permissions problems. some of these are connected with group access to their files. a typical symptom is this: you select a file in the finder and choose file > get info to examine its permissions. permissions are listed at the bottom of the get info window, under "sharing and permissions". the group here is listed as "unknown". and then, possibly, when you click the lock (to authorize) and then try to change the group setting, the finder crashes.
files and folder with the "unknown" group are causing other problems as well. there is some evidence that spotlight might not index them correctly, and perhaps time machine may not even back them up properly. and these incorrect groups might be at least partly to blame for the slowness of repair permissions on some people's machines. it isn't entirely clear what all the ramifications are.
nor is it obvious why having an "unknown" group should make much difference. groups is unix are not usually a big deal. the usual way in which groups come into place is when you're the admin user; this fact is expressed by your being a member of the admin group, and it is that that gives you write access to the top-level applications folder, whose owner is root (which is not you) but whose group is admin (of which you're a member, and so the read-write group permissions on the applications folder apply to you).
funny things happen with groups all the time, and you never even notice. for example, in tiger, when i save a new textedit file to my desktop, it has gid 501, which is correct, but when i create a file with preview (by copying a selection from an existing preview window and choosing file > new from clipboard) and save it to my desktop, it has gid 0, which is wrong. so mac os x itself assigns things the wrong group quite frequently. this has no ill effects, though.
but it seems that an incorrect group such as this "unknown" group which people are seeing does make a difference in leopard. why would this be? quite honestly, that isn't clear. perhaps it has something to do with the new implementation of the file sharing system, which depends very heavily on groups. for example, on my leopard machine, my user is a member of the com.apple.access_screensharing group, because i've got screen sharing turned on for that user, and of the com.apple.access_ssh group, because i've got remote login turned on for that user. that's a completely new mechanism for marking who gets what kind of shared access to the computer, so perhaps that's why leopard is so touchy about groups, in a way that mac os x never was before.
the cause where are these "unknown" group settings coming from? in a sense, the answer is very clear: it's that between tiger and leopard, apple has changed its group policy for users.
in tiger, a user was associated primarily with a group with the same name and number as the user. to see this, in tiger, give the id command in the terminal. what you'll see will start something like this:
uid=501(cooluser) gid=501(cooluser) groups=501(cooluser)
in leopard, a user is associated primarily with the "staff" group. to see this, in leopard, give the id command in the terminal. what you'll see will start something like this:
uid=501(cooluser) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff)
("uid" means user id; "gid" means group id. the id has both a number and a name.)
and there is one other point, which is equally important:
in leopard, for some people at least, there is no 501 group (or whatever your old group number might be).
it's the combination of these two things - the 501 user used to be a member of the 501 group, but in leopard there is no 501 group - that is causing a file or folder with group id 501 to have its group described as "unknown".
another part of the cause is that, for some people at least, the leopard installation process is not compensating for this change. it should be. changing group values is not all that uncommon; it happens all the time. it happens, for instance, when a file or folder is copied from one user to another. for example, when i use file sharing to connect my tiger machine to my leopard machine and copy a file from the one to the other, the file has uid 501 and gid 501 on tiger, but when it is copied to leopard it takes on uid 501 and gid 20. in other words, the system compensates for the fact that group 501 doesn't exist on the leopard machine; the target user on the leopard machine has group 20, so the copied file is assigned group 20.
the trouble is that this is not happening for some users during the upgrade process, and so there are a lot of files and folders hanging around whose group id is 501. since there is no leopard group whose gid is 501, leopard calls this group "unknown".
fixing the group id, the finder way some readers have found that they can correct permissions on a migrated folder merely by copying it (not moving it) to the deskop, and then moving it back into place, replacing the troublesome copy of the folder.
perhaps that technique would have come in handy during the upgrade to leopard. for example, let's say you did an archive and install where your old stuff has ended up the previous systems folder. when you move a folder of your old stuff back into place, it might make a difference whether you move it or copy it (by holding down the option key). using the latter technique might cause group ids to be changed properly. that point is tentative, though, and probably needs further investigation.
fixing the group id, the unix way. using a simple unix command in the terminal, you can correct the group id of all the files and folders within your home directory, changing only those group ids that are specifically incorrect. (we're going to stay inside the home directory because messing with permissions outside it is a completely different kettle of fish, and is not recommended unless you really know what you're doing.) if you want to try this, you should be aware that things could backfire very seriously, so make sure you've got a backup before doing anything else, and make sure you mentally sign the macfixit total indemnification form in advance. (having said that, i did run this on my machine before telling you about it, and it did work.)
use the spotlight preference pane to exclude your entire hard disk from spotlight. the reason is that you are about to make a lot of changes, and while you are making them, you don't want spotlight to be running along behind you, trying to note them all down. this will slow down the whole process considerably. so effectively you want to turn spotlight off temporarily.
for the same reason, turn off time machine temporarily. oh, by the way, every file whose gid gets changed by this process is going to count as a changed file, so it is going to get copied the next time you perform a time machine backup. that could be a long, large backup.
next, make sure that your group id is 20. the id command in the terminal, as shown above, should demonstrate this. if your group id is not 20 you're going to need to change it. to do so, use the accounts system preference pane. click the lock (to authorize yourself) and then control-click on your user account in the list of accounts and choose advanced options. in the resulting dialog, if your group id isn't 20, make it so and dismiss with ok.
now, in terminal, you need to know the number of the gid that is wrong. so first, find yourself a file or folder whose group is showing up as "unknown" in the finder's get info window, and navigate to its containing folder. in the terminal, type
ls -aln
followed by a space, and then drag the folder containing the problematic file or folder right from the finder into the terminal window, and hit return in the terminal. you'll see something like this:
drwx------ [number] 501 501 [number] [date] myfolder
the key thing is that pair of numbers in the middle, which i've shown as 501 501. the first is the uid of this item; the second is the gid of this item. it is the second number, here 501, that should be changed to 20.
okay, i'm going to pretend that the troublesome group number is in fact 501. then, in the terminal, do this. first, type
cd
followed by return. that's to bring you into your home folder. now, very very carefully, triple-checking everything before you dare to hit return, type
sudo find . -group 501 -exec chgrp 20 {} \;
because of the pesky cms used here at macfixit, i can't be sure how that is going to come out on your machine, so i'm going to recite it in words: "sudo", space, "find", space, dot, space, hyphen-"group", space, "501", space, hyphen-"exec", space, "chgrp", space, "20", open-curly-brace-close-curly-brace, space, backslash-semicolon. i'm particularly worried about that backslash.
to explain all of that:
"sudo" means "let me do this even if permissions would normally stop me."
"find" means "locate the files matching the following description and perform the following operation on them."
dot means "start in the folder where we are now," which is your home folder because of the previous cd command.
"-group 501" means "look for files and folders whose group id is 501." if your troublesome group id is different (e.g. 502), the number here will need to be different.
"-exec" means "and here's what i want you to do when you find one."
"chgrp 20" means "change its group id to 20".
{} means "when i say 'it', i mean the file or folder you just found."
backslash-semicolon means "that's the end of what i want you to do."
if you're happy with all that, press return. this command is going to take quite a long time to execute, so don't be discouraged. don't do anything with the computer, either. just let it run. there isn't going to be any feedback until it's all over, at which time your prompt will appear in the terminal (and, if you computer is like mine, your fans will spin back down!).
you can now use ls -al in the terminal, or use the finder's get info window, to check that things went as expected. when you're satisfied, restart the computer (just for luck), and remove the hard disk from the spotlight excluded items. spotlight will reindex the hard drive. when that's all over, you can turn time machine back on and resign yourself to a large backup next time it runs.
conclusions the change between tiger and leopard where a user's group number is now 20 instead of a number matching the original user number is a big change, and it seems that apple didn't prepare for it as well as it might have. and pulling the rug out from under users by invalidating the previously existing 501 group is really not very nice. however, what's most distressing about the current situation is, as usual, the lack of information and the lack of tools.
apple gave no warning that this change was coming.
apple has never, since the dawn of mac os x, supplied a decent gui utility for fully dealing with unix ownership and permissions.
apple has never provided clear information on what the correct ownership and permissions for various files and folders should be.
there is thus a tendency on apple's part to obscurity verging on silence when it comes to technical matters, even when those technical matters are quite important. this might be to some extent denial ("mac os, it just works") and partly a desire not to burden users with technical concerns. but when you're knee-deep in the frustration of the situation that the leopard installation has left you with, apple's attitude may feel more like plain arrogance. in any case, the irony is this: thanks to the lack of decent official gui tools and information, users are burdened with those technical concerns anyway, and have no recourse but to grapple with the underlying unix data in the terminal, and are left to a combination of deduction and guesswork to figure out what the goal is and how to achieve it.
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21 comments most recent post: 11/13 07:10am by mctoast
late-breakers
miscellaneous reader queries
here are some items from our readers that we're watching. they aren't widespread enough (to judge from the email we've received) to count as big issues, but we'd like to get a sense of how big they really are. if you've noticed any of these phenomena or have some idea about them, could you let us know? thanks!
how are you getting on with freezing on your aluminum imac? a recent appleinsider article suggests that the problem is hardware, and that replacing the graphics chip, not recent software updates, is the fix. this seems a very reasonable conclusion. and a recent note from a graphics software developer suggests that the graphics chips in the new imacs are a big step backwards:
vertex shaders working perfectly on the last white imacs, on my new 2.4 20'' just refuse to show anything. plus vbo (vertex buffer objects) completely crash my machine. for a test, try to download secondlife (www.secondlife.com) and enable vbo support in preferences. the result will be a total crash of the application with mouse frozen inside it. vbo and secondlife work perfectly on the old imacs granting a speed improvement of about 40%.
are alarms in ical in leopard failing to work for you? they seem fine to me, but my tests have been rather limited, and some users are reporting that they don't work, especially emailed alerts.
do you have wake-from-sleep issues, where the computer refuses to awaken, or awakens but the trackpad then doesn't work properly? these problems seem to affect particularly macbook pro machines, but this apple discussion group thread suggests a wider range.
if you're using spaces extensively in leopard, is it misbehaving? are applications disabling themselves, or when you return to a space, is the wrong window frontmost? we're seeing complaints of this sort; the problem is that no one has provided instructions for reproducing these issues. it may be that spaces just doesn't cooperate will with applications that put up their windows in an odd way: for example, we've heard from one reader that photoshop cs3 misbehaves when you switch to another space and then switch back. also, a reader tells us that if you assign mail to a fixed space, then when mail receives mail in the background, the computer automatically rockets you out of the space you're currently working in and switches to mail's space.
have you upgraded to the new version of retrospect, and if so, can you back up to dvd with it? one reader is telling us that backing up to dvd-r no longer works (in version 6.1.138), and that reverting to 6.1.126 fixes the problem instantly.
do you use boot camp with a wireless keyboard? two readers are reporting that even with the mac drivers installed, when they boot into windows, the wireless keyboard doesn't work.
do you use x11 with multiple monitors? if so, is this working properly? we've a report from a reader saying that it isn't: windows can't be placed on most of the second monitor.
how are things going with your airport usb disk? we still get reports that these aren't working. if this happens to you, can you fix it by reformatting the disk? one reader has told us that this fixed his airport disk troubles.
remember our article a few days ago where some users were reporting loss of ability to select a portion of a movie, for editing, even though they have quicktime pro? now we are getting some indication that the problem might be the new version of the quicktime player application - not the quicktime 7.3 upgrade as a whole. if you're seeing this issue, try using an earlier version of quicktime player if you have one (multiple versions of quicktime player can co-exist on your machine without difficulty). does that fix it?
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11 comments most recent post: 11/13 01:27pm by machound
late-breakers
apple knowledge base: trouble installing leopard, trouble starting up afterwards
two recently updated apple knowledge base articles warn of leftover files from the past which, if still present when you upgrade to leopard, can cause an inability to start up properly:
if the finder doesn't fully load, the problem may be the divxnetworks.prev file in your /library/application support folder. the article provides instructions for removing it.
old apogee firewire audio drivers can prevent the computer from starting up. the problem resides in an extension file called applefwaudio.kext. the article explains how to remove it.
another article covers a case we've heard of from readers where a leopard installation goes awry and after that the only option offered by the installer is to perform an erase and install, which would involve loss of your data unless you've a backup on another partition. the article offers three explanations: you might have a techtool pro edrive on that volume, which can be removed; there may be problems with the disk at the file system level, which can perhaps be fixed with disk utility; or the partition type might be incorrect (in which case you're going to be erasing the disk anyway).
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late-breakers
little snitch 2 released
objective development has released version 2 of its little snitch utility.
little snitch is an absolutely essential utility that we here at macfixit wouldn't be without. what does it do? well, you probably know that mac os x comes with a software firewall, and if you're using a router as part of the network that connects you to the internet, you're probably also behind a hardware firewall. and you probably know that this has something to do with security. the idea is that if your computer is connected to the internet, then other computers elsewhere on the internet can potentially see your computer and can do things to it. the firewall prevents this sort of intrusion from the outside. (a good recent discussion is this tidbits article.)
on the other hand, the whole idea of a firewall is that it assumes that network traffic from inside your computer is good. for example, let's say you use your browser to navigate to www.macfixit.com. your computer sends out a signal to macfixit's server, saying, "i'd like to see your front page, please." and macfixit's server obligingly sends a signal to your computer, providing the data for the macfixit front page that you see in your browser. how did that signal get past your firewall? well, to put it simply, the firewall "knows" that you asked for the information in the first place. it lets the signal come in because all this started when you sent a signal out.
thus, a firewall doesn't do anything about filtering signals to the network that emanate from inside your computer. but not all signals from inside your computer are good. how do you know that some application isn't reading your name and phone number from your address book - or some even more sensitive information - and sending that information out to a waiting server on the internet? that sort of trick is how certain kinds of malware do their stuff.
if you are at all concerned with malware, therefore, or even if you are merely curious to know what signals are being sent out to the network by what processes on your computer, you need a filter that tracks outbound network traffic. and that's exactly what little snitch is. it intercepts all outbound network traffic and either passes it (because you've already told it that this kind of outgoing signal from such-and-such an application is okay) or blocks it (because it you've told it that this kind of outgoing signal from such-and-such an application is not okay) or alerts you (because it needs you to pass judgement on this signal). in the alert, you can permit the outgoing signal or deny it; if you permit it, you can do so on a one-time basis, or just while the sending application continues to run, or you can create a rule for all time that will allow this kind of signal from this application.
little snitch starts out by being suspicious, essentially, of all outgoing signals except for certain types of signal sent by certain applications on your computer. for example, by default, all purely local network signals that don't reach the internet (such as bonjour) are okay; ichat signals are okay; and the main types of signal sent by mail and safari are okay. but apart from these and a handful of further built-in rules, little snitch's stance is to be suspicious and to alert you to all outgoing traffic. for example, if you use a different browser, the first time you try to view a web page in that browser, little snitch will alert you. you can then say, yes, this sort of signal (e.g. a tcp connection on port 80) from this application (e.g. firefox) is okay from now on. that is an expected signal, but you might also encounter some unexpected signals, such as an application trying to "phone home" when you didn't know that it did that sort of thing. you might be surprised at what you learn!
this version of little snitch brings many improvements. besides being compatible with leopard, it has many technical improvements, along with a much easier, more pleasant interface than the previous version. also, little snitch is no longer a preference pane and a login item; instead, it uses the launchd mechanism and files installed in /library/launchdaemons and /library/launchagents to automatically start up a daemon process (lsd) and two background-only applications, plus there's a normal application that provides a gui for your configuration rules and preferences. (if you want a utility to track your launchd agents and daemons, you need lingon.) an optional menu status item lets you summon a window that monitors all your network traffic, as well as giving access to the configuration application. all of this makes little snitch slicker, clearer, and more fun to use than ever before.
you can try little snitch for free; a license is $24.95 (or $12.95 to upgrade from the previous version).
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5 comments most recent post: 11/13 12:02pm by machound
late-breakers
time machine: small troubles and the big picture
here's some more time machine news. if you're seeing any of these phenomena, take heart: you're not alone.
lacie usb drives we're hearing of cases where an external lacie drive, although seen by the finder, is not seen by time machine. lacie is giving the same advice we gave earlier: repartition the drive. but some users are reporting that this isn't helping. in some cases there seems to be a difference between usb and firewire; for example, time machine might not back up to the drive when it is connected via usb, but will do so when the very same drive is connected via firewire.
battery power a thread over on apple's discussion boards suggests that some people are finding time machine won't perform an automatic backup from a portable computer if the portable is running on battery power (though it will perform a manual backup when requested to via the time machine dock menu). this could be deliberate; perhaps time machine would prefer not to initiate a time-consuming, sleep-preventing activity and risk draining the battery.
recurring dialog a reader is reporting that every external drive newly hooked up to the computer triggers the time machine dialog where it asks whether to use this drive as the backup. it's not hard to see how this annoyance could get old real fast.
in addition, recall our earlier notes about problems with time machine remarked upon by apple themselves, in the knowledge base:
time machine may not change the backup destination when requested, unless you log out and log back in.
time machine may not show past backups if your computer's name (from the sharing preferences) contains characters outside the basic a-z, 0-9 range.
time machine might refuse to back up files past a certain point unless you have repartitioned the backup drive to remove any master boot record. only apple partition map and guid partitioning is acceptable.
all of these problems are a great pity, especially since they needn't have occurred in the first place. the main trouble here seems to be haste. there are signs that some of the functionality intended for time machine (such as the ability to back up across a network) was removed more or less at the last minute, in order to get time machine out the door in time for leopard to ship by the end of october. in the rush, we may conjecture, apple failed to provide users with some elementary gui feedback that would have taken care of many issues we're now seeing. for example, it's very strange that time machine can't make a backup if it doesn't like your computer's name, but this wouldn't really be a problem, if time machine would just put up a dialog, saying, "sorry, i can't make a backup, i'm having trouble with your computer's name; would you mind changing it?" instead, time machine just fails silently. that's the real problem, as things stand.
in a recent article in computerworld, a lacie representative takes time machine to task for the master boot record problem and the computer name problem: apple seems to have failed to test sufficiently, he says, and is only now discovering these things, after the release of leopard. perhaps, but these are relatively minor issues; there are simple workarounds, and apple has told us what they are. making a big deal of this in public might be a sleight-of-hand on lacie's part. people who are having trouble with lacie drives not being seen by time machine are saying that they have okay computer names and that they have repartitioned the drive; so in these cases, something else is apparently going on, and it might be going on at lacie's end of the equation. it would presumably be in lacie's interest to keep the attention focused on apple's end.
time machine may be very simple, perhaps too simple, in its interface and in its abilities; but the fact remains that for most people, with one computer and one external drive hooked up to it, it's working great. think how many times you've deleted something and later wished you hadn't. think how many times you've installed a system update and wished you hadn't! think how many times you've been scolded, or have scolded yourself, for not having a backup of something. time machine offers a simple solution. already we've had reports of people installing something, discovering ill effects, and going "back in time" to restore the computer to an earlier state. that's what time machine is all about! time machine stands to eliminate, all by itself, a large percentage of the woes with which readers have filled macfixit's pages in the past.
so, we continue to recommend that you use time machine, and use it with confidence. this is one of the major features of leopard, and not to take advantage of it is to miss out on something valuable and important. your habits don't have to change; any time your computer and your backup drive are both switched on and connected, time machine will chug away automatically. the one habit that does need to change is that before performing any major installation, you should make sure you've got a backup of the computer's most recent state, so you can easily restore if there's a problem. to make a manual backup, choose back up now from time machine's dock icon. you can monitor the backup's progress in time machine's system preference pane. when the backup is complete, you're ready to install confidently, knowing you can reverse the process easily.
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24 comments most recent post: 11/12 04:45am by emn
late-breakers
thoughts on permissions
reports of permissions problems have been ongoing since people started upgrading to leopard, and even though we just gave some advice on this matter a couple of days ago, we'd like to try to sum up the situation.
symptoms permissions have to do with the ability of certain users to make certain kinds of change. thus, if you can't make a certain change and you think you should be able to, that sounds like a permissions problem. for example, users have complained that changes made in preferences of an application or a preference pane do not "stick"; the next time they log in, the change has reverted to what it was previously. that sounds like a permissions problem: the user isn't able to modify the file into which the preferences settings are written. (a problem like this doesn't reveal itself until you log out and log in again, because initially the change is held in memory and so continues to work. permissions are about accessing things on disk.) similarly, the finder might challenge you in an unusual way when you try to rename or move a file.
permissions repair the basic locus of automatic permissions repair is the repair permissions button in disk utility. unfortunately, this is not a panacea. for some system-related areas of the computer, and for certain items that were placed on your disk through the installer, repair permissions knows what the permissions should be. but it won't alter the permissions of things inside your home folder, for instance.
a disappointing aspect of repair permissions in leopard is that it does not deal with acls (access control lists), a secondary layer of permissions control laid on top of standard unix permissions, tentatively introduced in tiger and actually used for the first time in leopard. repair permissions will announce that it is surprised to discover that a certain folder has an unexpected acl setting, but it won't do anything about it (in other words, it won't repair that kind of permissions).
(acl settings can be viewed and altered only through the terminal, using tools like ls and chmod. these tools are not hard to use, but they are unlikely to be every user's cup of tea. can you say "third-party opportunity"? it probably won't be long before someone releases a nice gui app that can help users manage acls.)
repair permissions will also refuse to fix certain other permissions, and will tell you so. the most common example experienced by leopard users so far is this message: warning: suid file "system/library/coreservices/remotemanagement/ardagent.app/contents/macos/ardagent" has been modified and will not be repaired. macfixit has been advising readers who write to us with concerns about this, and it has now been confirmed by apple, that this message is not a problem and may be safely ignored. but the experience raises the question of whether repair permissions is as user-friendly as it might be.
nonetheless, repair permissions does repair some permissions. one reader reports that he was getting the problem where adobe updater would refuse to run because it wanted administrator rights, and where every change to the applications folder was requiring a password, even though he was the administrator. that sounds like a permissions problem! sure enough, using the finder's get info window on the applications folder revealed that it had a bad group ("unknown"). but, alas, trying to fix this in the get info window just caused the finder to crash. repair permissions did fix the problem, though.
some users reported initially after installing leopard that running permissions repair takes a very long time. it is probably safe to conclude that this should not be the case. the change in permissions repair's interface from tiger to leopard, where in tiger it would show you its progress as it passes over the hard disk, but in leopard you just see a spinning barber pole that gives no sense of how things are progressing, is disappointing. but on my machine, holding 51gb of data, repair permissions takes less than two minutes. if you're finding that even after half an hour the process is going nowhere, something further is wrong.
the login and keychain update if repair permissions is taking too long, what can you do about it? well, remember the login and keychain update 1.0? this update is advertised by apple as fixing some login and wireless network connection problems, but perhaps the problems that it fixes run deeper, because one user informs us that his troubles with repair permissions taking a long time went away after he installed the update. it's hard to say why this would be; the login and keychain update replaces some very basic frameworks and extensions whose function is a little opaque. but if you're having permissions problems and you haven't tried installing this update, you might give it a go.
an odd thing about the login and keychain update is that, on my machine it least, it does not advertise itself through software update. apple states that this update "is recommended for all leopard installations", but how are users supposed to take advantage of it if they don't know about it? the material in the login and keychain update will undoubtedly be rolled into the 10.5.1 system update that is probably being prepared even as we speak, but that doesn't help users who may be having problems right now.
drop back and punt if all else fails, we'd like to suggest, at some risk of sounding like a broken record (if you're old enough to remember what those are), that you reinstall leopard, more cleanly this time. if you did a simple update (the default), this time, don't. if you did an archive and install and you checked "preserve users", this time, don't. try an archive and install where you don't check "preserve users", as discussed in our tutorial on this topic. all your stuff will be saved under previous systems, but the system and user you'll be starting with will be absolutely clean, and should have correct permissions. the idea here is to satisfy yourself, before doing anything else, that the computer is now working well. that is a very comforting situation to be in! you can then migrate your stuff gradually from previous systems (or fetch it out of your time machine backup); this migration sounds like a lot of work, but it needn't take longer than an hour or two. (but what we advise against is doing an automatic migration; this runs the risk of reintroducing whatever was causing the problem in the first place.) we are regularly excoriated by doubters for this recommendation, but offsetting this is the sizable number of users who report to us, privately, that it works.
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17 comments most recent post: 11/13 03:38pm by machound
late-breakers
tinkertool updated
marcel bresink's tinkertool, one of our favorite system utilities, has been updated to version 3.8. tinkertool is basically a gui interface to "secret" system preference settings, letting you customize some aspects of the computer that are indeed customizable but to which apple provides no direct access. these settings are all things you could do yourself with some simple twiddling in the terminal, assuming you knew the correct defaults write commands; but they are a lot easier to make with tinkertool!
among the changes in this version are: leopard compatibility; ability to disabled the reflective shelf appearence of the dock in leopard; and ability to change the destination folder for screenshots.
you can download tinkertool here. it's free. bresink offers a number of other great utilities we're fond of, so you might also like to check the products page.
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late-breakers
recently updated knowledge base articles from apple
here are some recently modified knowledge base articles from apple.
ichat system requirements provides tables of requirements for audio and video conferencing, 1-to-1 and 4-way, and the various video qualities you can expect depending on your bandwidth and hardware, along with features such as photobooth effects, backdrop effects, screen sharing, av recording, and ichat theater. the take-home message: just because you saw steve do it in the keynote doesn't mean you can do it. (hmm, this could explain why i couldn't get "side-by-side" view to work.)
time machine not changing backup destination when requested this is evidently a known minor bug, but the workaround is simply to log out and log back in.
problems logging in, administrator user changing to standard user there are several interrelated articles here. three deal with what to do if, after upgrading to leopard, you can't log in to an already existing account to which no password was ever assigned (not a recommended situation, apparently); if, after upgrading to leopard, your existing password is rejected; or if, after upgrading to leopard, your recent imac stalls at the blue screen or login window.
there is also an article on what to do if your administrator account reverts to a normal, non-admin account. it's never a good idea for the computer to have no admin account; you don't have to log in as admin all the time (and some people work most of the time in a non-admin account, though they do need to know the admin name and password for installing software and similar). apple says that this can be fixed by logging in as root and setting up the account as admin again.
a note on this second issue comes from a reader, who informs us that just because you have not been hit by this problem, that doesn't mean you won't be. he says he used leopard for two weeks and then all of a sudden found that his admin account had been changed to a standard account. he then restored from the time machine backup and all was well for about a day, whereupon the admin account again changed to a standard account. this is surprising news and one wonders what could be lurking under the hood that could trigger such a change after such a delay.
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late-breakers
apple hard drive update 1.0 released
apple has released a hard drive update 1.0 for imac core 2 duo and mac pro machines running mac os x 10.4.7 or later. this is a firmware update, with the usual slightly elaborate installation procedure. there is no word from apple on precisely what "bug fixes and important updates" are involved.
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late-breakers
quicktime 7.3: a trickle of troubles
as usual after a quicktime update, our readers are reporting a variety of things that they say were working before the update but are not working after it. here are some examples.
web movies once again, movies viewed on the web stop working for some people. aside from the fixes we suggested earlier, one reader says that while removing ~/library/com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist did not work, removing quicktime plugin.plugin (presumably from /library/internet plugins) did. that solution is a little puzzling, though: this is one of the key files placed by the quicktime installer, and if the quicktime plugin is not showing these movies, what is? it might be better to search for conflicting, third-party plugins and remove them instead. remember, you can always use pacifist to discover what is placed by the installer and what (by process of elimination) is not.
broken applications one reader reports that roxio's popcorn 3 has stopped working, and performed some rather careful testing to confirm that the qt update was the cause:
hello, it appears roxio's popcorn 3 is broken with the latest quicktime 7.3 update under leopard. the applications bounces in the dock and then quits without warning, no crash log either. i've trashed all the prefs and reinstalled the software to no avail. i double checked on another computer that popcorn was working fine with qt 7.2. then i ran software update, installed qt 7.3, reboot and now the same thing is happening on both computers. the application icon bounces and aborts almost immediately. popcorn 2.0.1 still seems to work but it doesn't have the iphone export options i need.
humble daisy's profcast is officially broken by this update. a reader sent in a copy of a note from the developers:
yesterday apple released quicktime 7.3, an update to its quicktime software. apple has made some fundamental changes to quicktime and to the underlying coreaudio technologies in this new release of quicktime (these changes are also evident in leopard). if you have not upgraded to quicktime 7.3, please wait to do so. we are working on providing a resolution to these fun new updates as quickly as we can!
loss of editing two readers have told us that although they are quicktime pro users (for example, they can use save as in quicktime player), the selection indicators have vanished from their quicktime controller, so they can't select a stretch of movie for copying or cutting:
i am now unable to find, much less use, the selection indicators in any movie -- they have just disappeared and do not appear when i move the cursor over the relevant portion of the playback controls. this means i cannot edit or otherwise select any portion of a movie.
and another:
after happily using qt 7.1.3 for a long time, i just upgraded my ppc running osx 10.3.9 (panther) to qt 7.3. i also run leopard on my ppc powerbook, and upgraded that to qt 7.3 as well. now i find that the selection triangles (which i use constantly to edit small movies) have suddenly disappeared from most of the movies i have... and new small movies in mpg or mov format don't have the triangles visible. i have thousands of these movies (small theatre and performance clips), and am so frustrated that i may have to revert to an earlier version of quicktime. i have a registered copy of quicktime pro 7. i have downloaded a few new small qt movies, and there are no selection triangles visible on these as well. although some of the movies i have, with looping points already set, have retained their visibility. it almost seems as if the triangles have disappeared from movies who have not previously had loop points set, but i have not confirmed this as consistent. even more odd is that i can set the in and out points using keyboard commands or the "o" and "i" keys. the movie will loop, but the triangles are still invisibile.
bluetooth trouble one user reports that bluetooth pairing has stopped working, so that he can't use his wireless keyboard with this computer:
after downloading today's quicktime and itunes updates, a re-boot is required. upon rebooting, i discovered that my bluetooth apple keyboard was no longer paired with my g5 running mac os 10.5. despite over an hour attempting to re-pair the keyboard and the g5, i have been unsuccessful - the keyboard is identified but refuses to pair after inputting the pairing code sequence. i've replaced the batteries and tried a second bluetooth apple keyboard to no avail. both keyboards quickly and successfully pair with my wife's g5 imac - i have refrained from installing the quicktime and itunes updates as i have only a single backup wired keyboard.
that is the sort of problem for which one would usually resort to goat-sacrifice voodoo, such as zapping the pram.
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13 comments most recent post: 11/13 02:05pm by wdickson
late-breakers
itunes 7.3 and quicktime 7.3 okay so far, sort of
itunes 7.5 and quicktime 7.3 are working fine, in general, for us on our leopard machine, so if you're having trouble, take heart: they should work. one reader write to us that the itunes mini-window (the thing you get when you click the zoom button in itunes window) was not working properly - its buttons were not operating - but then he did a permissions repair with disk utility and things were fine after that. so, do take the usual steps if trouble seems to have resulted from this installation.
if itunes won't open at all, apple has some recommendations for you: rebuild your itunes library, and remove any third-party add-ons (itunes plug-ins).
we're getting some rather odd reports that aac encoding is not behaving correctly. it's hard to say whether this is an itunes problem or a quicktime problem: the latter would probably be the case, since even if you do the encoding in itunes, quicktime is what does the actual work - though it could be itunes failing to inform quicktime correctly of what you want to do. one reader says:
i’ve found out that you can no longer encode an aac file at full 320 kbit under tiger. i first noticed the problem under itunes 7.4.2 , i then tested under itunes 7.3.2 and finally under the new 7.5 update. i ran up to 200 trials but none of them gave a 320kbit file. what i’ve got was some weird vbr values such as 303kbit, 351kbit. most of the encoded files were between 201 and 315 kbit. the vbr checkbox was of course unchecked. when i tried the same itunes versions on a machine with tiger they all came out fine as 320 kbit.
and another:
i have been installing leopard on my two computers, both with powerpc chips. i encountered the following problem on both machines: i'm unable to convert cds at 160 kbps aac with consistent bitrates. if i choose 128 or 160 kbps aac without vbr, the bitrates are all over the place, as if some kind of vbr is being used. on the other hand, if i do choose to use vbr with aac, the variable bitrates are a little bit higher than those made without vbr. for example if i try to convert audio in 128 kbps aac without vbr, the bitrates still vary from 107 to 130 kbps. they are not 128 kbps as they should be with this setting. but with 128 kbps aac vbr setting, the resulting bitrates varies from 114 to 139 kbps.
so the main issue here is that the command to use cbr (constant bitrate) is not being obeyed; vbr (variable bitrate) is being used instead.
one very clear itunes bug, reported to us by a reader and completely reproducible here, is that when you open for editing the rules of a smart playlist, and if that smart playlist has more than one rule, joined by "match all" or "match any", the pop-up will switch to "match all" even if you saved it last time with "match any". the workaround is to change the pop-up again before saving again, but it's easy to forget to do so.
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11 comments most recent post: 11/11 11:18am by froggies
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macfixit poll:
did your system have problems after installing the mac os x 10.5 (leopard)?
no, seems to be working fine
yes, minor issues (quirks and minor deficiencies)
yes, major issues (cannot boot, loss of data etc.)
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827 votes | 21 comments
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reports & extras:
error (-50) when connecting to smb shares (#2): more fixes
fixing isync issues
bluetooth device-related kernel panics
fix for mac os x 10.4.9 file sharing troubles
the rise and fall of canvas for mac
mac os x update won't install with "volume does not meet requirements" message
performance tip: keep the desktop clutter-free (#2)
adobe cs3 install can disable mac os x firewall
controlling the maximum number of items tracked in safari's history
finder crashes: delete .ds_store files
the case of the moving desktop
more recent reports
link to macfixitadvertise on macfixit
tutorials:
tutorial: screen sharing in leopard: how it works and how it doesn'thow to clone the leopard install dvd to an external firewire drivephilosophical and practical notes on installing leopardinstalling leopard to an external firewire drivespecial report: preparing for mac os x 10.5 (leopard) installation -- avoiding issues before and after updatingmore tutorials
mac musings:
mac.column.ted: what you won't find in leopardmac.column.ted: the first coming of iphonemac.column.ted: an alternative faq for apple tvmac.column.ted: second look: the new airport extreme base stationmac.column.ted: first look: the new airport extreme base stationmore mac musings
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