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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Mac’ Category

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Affordable MacBook Air physical USB ethernet adapter

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/13

DealExtreme product #34691: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle

A big drawback from a MacBook Air is that it only have wireless LAN/WiFi (in the form of Integrated AirPort Extreme 802.11 a/b/n/n), no physical ethernet.

Transferring large amounts of data over any WiFi is can be a pain (being slow, suffer from signal quality) and for the MacBook Air: it makes the built-in fan swirl like crazy.

Since the MacBook Air does not have USB 3.0, I went looking for a 100 Mbps USB Ethernet dongle for it, and fone the DealExtreme product #34691: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle.

At a price of about USD 7 including shipping, it comes in an Apple compatible shiny white color too, nicely fitting the 4 port USB hub (DealExtreme # 45773) on the right  :)

Even better: it works like a charm!

Note that first need to download and install the ASIX AX88772B drivers first. Choose the Apple Mac OSX 10.4 to 10.7 Driver for x86 and Power PC download package labelled “For Apple x86/Power PC, 32-bit/64-bit platforms”.

The install tells you to reboot at the end, but no need for that: as soon as the install finishes, the USB Ethernet dongle works. And it is fast too: 12 megabyte/second over a 100 megabit cable is fast!

In the readme of those drivers, it also mentions the AX88178, which is capable of gigabit (there is a separate AX88178 driver download page and Mac OS X download package).

NB: the cool thing about both these ASIX chipsets is that they are supported on a broad range of platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows CE, Windows 7/Vista/XP/2003/2000) and bit sizes (32-bit and 64-bit).

For even faster transfers, I might try the DealExtreme product #15336: Arkview USB 2.0 1000Mbs Gigabit Ethernet LAN Network Adapter.

It is slightly less than USD 20, and  user Janipro indicates it is based on the ASIX AX88178 chip at the DealExtreme forum.

On the other hand: I might not, as for more than twice the price, user cyberic mentions in the same forum thread it is only about twice as fast: 23 megabytes per second, about half the maximum USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps. And it is not Apple white :)

–jeroen

Via: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle – Free Shipping – DealExtreme.

Posted in Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Resetting the SMC solved my MacBook Air Fan Noise With Lion problem

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/09

This might have been caused by my MacBook Air haning itself one time during resume: I manually turned it off keeping the on/off switch pressed for 5+ seconds, then rebooted.

Anyway: over time I observed that the fan was running fast without much CPU/GPU/memory/disk activity.

Resetting the SMC like the answer below, followed by resetting the PRAM and NVRAM solved my issue.

I had exactly these issues with my new Macbook Air 13.  Having read this forum I downloaded istat pro and discovered that my fan was always running at over 4000 rpm and the top left part of my case was quite warm.  I then followed the instructions here…resetting the SMC and after this the problem was fixed!

–jeroen

via MacBook Air Fan Noise With Lion: Apple Support Communities.

Posted in Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, Power User | 1 Comment »

After restoring fresh HDD from Time Machine Backup: No results from Spotlight

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/02

My Mac Mini Server had its’ primary HDD failure. It got replaced by the iAmStore service center, but contrary to what they promised, they didn’t put the Snow Leopard Server image on it.

So I grabbed an external USB DVD player, booted from the Snow Leopard Server install DVD, and restored the Time Machine backup from my external USB HDD.

Somehow, after the restore, Spotlight wouldn’t work: only the search bar was visible, but nothing else.

I tried various tips all having to do with erasing Spotlight for my root volume (so it would be automatically be reindexed), or many-part steps including killing SystemUIServer, Clearing Caches and Rebooting.

In the end the most simple one worked: just “turn Spotlight indexing on”.

My assumption is that Spotlight information is not backed up, and during restore Spotlight is turned off because continuously reindexing during restore will make the restore slower.

If someone can confirm this (or deny and explain the real reason), please post a comment.

This was what user nkt00 had posted as solution on the Apple forum:

I figured it out. In the man page for “mdutil” (type: “man mdutil” at the terminal shell prompt), it describes the option “-i”, which turns indexing on or off for the specified volume. I just typed:

sudo mdutil -i on /

and away it went

This was the screen output:

Last login: Mon Oct 31 19:31:01 on ttys000
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$ mdutil -s /
/:
No index.
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$ sudo mdutil -i on /
Password:
/:
Indexing enabled.
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$

Now I’m happily using my Mac Mini Server again.

--jeroen

via No results from Spotlight: Apple Support Communities.

Posted in Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, Power User, SpotLight | 1 Comment »

VMware KB: Sharing a folder from your Mac to a virtual machine

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/23

Note that Sharing a Mac folder through VMware Fusion to a Windows VM works, but is:

  1. not fast
  2. eats a lot of Mac resources
    (it would get the fan of my MacBook Air running like mad when copying about 1Gigabyte of files – about 20-thousand files total; a robocopy /mir sync when nothing is changes takes a whopping 5 minutes)

This is how you do it:

To configure a shared folder in a Windows virtual machine:

  1. Launch VMware Fusion.
  2. Power on the virtual machine.
  3. Click Virtual Machine > Settings.
  4. Click Sharing.
  5. Select Share folders on your Mac.
  6. Click the + button.
  7. Browse to the folder on the Mac that will be shared with the virtual machine and click Add.

Shared folders can be accessed via the VMware Shared Folders shortcut on the Windows desktop or the mapped network drive Z:.

–jeroen

via VMware KB: Sharing a folder from your Mac to a virtual machine.

Posted in Fusion, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, Power User, VMware, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

VMware fusion on MacBook Air with OS X Lion seems to hang when getting back from sleep – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/14

If you have reactions on the question below, please add them to the SuperUser.com thread when possible.

Every once in a while, my MacBook Air becomes unresponsive when it is sleeping and I open the lid.

It seems to only happen in these circumstances:

  • the MacBook air got into sleep modus because of closing the lid
  • VMware Fusion 4 (4.0.2 build 491587) is running full screen
  • The guest OS has a blank screen screen saver

When opening the lid, the backlight goes on, but the MacBook Air does not react on any key-combinations I tried.

I tried these, but to no avail:

  • press the Touchpad
  • press Control + Command
  • press Control + Command + Enter
  • press Command + Tab

The only thing that works is to press the Power button for 5+ seconds (forcing a hard power off) then reboot.

Two questions:

  • For anyone having seen similar bahviour: what circumstances did you have?
  • Any solution to this apart from first suspending the guest VM?

–jeroen

via: VMware fusion on MacBook Air with OS X Lion seems to hang when getting back from sleep – Super User.

Posted in Apple, Fusion, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, Power User, VMware | 2 Comments »

Mac practical joke: How to Invert Colors on a Mac – wikiHow

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/10

Press Ctrl–Option–Command–8 in your colleagues keyboard and watch them getting their inverted colours back :)

It is like the 3-finger salute on Windows, but much much nicer, as the inversion is all done on the GPU hardware :)

–jeroen

Via: How to Invert Colors on a Mac – wikiHow.

Posted in Apple, Fun, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, LifeHacker, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »

MacBook (or -Pro; -Air): Disable the default “fn key” behaviour and enable the normal Function-keys by default

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/03

In their infinite wisdom Apple has chosen to cripple the Apple keyboards on the MacBook (and -Pro and -Air) to default the top-row keys to not behave as function keys.

Apparently they expect people to use those keys more often for changing screen brightness, multi media playing, sound volume, than as function keys.

Maybe it is their 1 Infinite Loop address, but out there in the real world, people appreciate the function keys by default to behave, well like they are meant for: Function Keys and not having to press the fn key to use them.

Actually, some people at Apple were smart enough to make this configurable, but it is well hidden behind the phrase “Use F1-F12 keys to control software features” as the MacRumors Forums 2007 post titled “View Single Post – How To F Lock?” points out.

In the mean time however, the Mac OS X System Preferences to reorganized quite a bit, and “Keyboard & Mouse” are now to separate entries. So the steps are now these:

  1. Press Command-Space to start the Spotlight Window
    (yes, the Command Key still is marked as ⌘ for consistency, but for how long?)
  2. Type “Keyboard” (without double quotes ;-)
  3. Choose the “Keyboard” entry under “System Preferences”
  4. Put a checkmark in front of the “Use all F1, F2, etc. jeys as standard function keys”
    When this option is selected, press the Fn key to us ethe special features printed on each key”
    (note that on a MacBook Air, the key is not “Fn”, but “fn”: so far for consistency again)
  5. Done.

There even seem to be some answers on the Apple discussion forums seem to hint on this, but – at the time of writing – they all conveniently show up as “We’ll be back soon” for some time now, thereby redefining the term “shortly” in the same pass:

We will be back soon.

Being in this mode, it would be soooooo nice if actually they marked the option key with the same character as they refer to it from the menus: ⌥.
They used to on older versions of the option key (even on old MacBook Pro machines). Now that would be consistent user experience…

Now people have to find the right Apple documentation on keyboard shortcuts to find out what the symbols mean.

But – though often famed for consistency –  I don’t think it is one of Apple strengths.

–jeroen

via: MacRumors Forums – View Single Post – How To F Lock?.

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, MacBook, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, Power User | 2 Comments »

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