Filed under: Snow Leopard

In the hustle and the bustle of last week's full-court press press, there was a bit of Mac news worthy of mention: the indispensable AppleJack single-user utility has been updated for compatibility with Snow Leopard. If you never need AppleJack, you'll be happier, but if and when you do need it there's no doubt it can save your sanity (and your Mac).

Developed by Kristofer Widholm with an assist from Steve Anthony, the AppleJack utility can only be run when you boot your Mac into single-user mode (by holding down the S and Command keys during startup). It will allow you to clean caches, run repairs and generally happy-make your unhappy Mac. The tool is open-source and free, so go get it.

[hat tip to TidBITS]

Head on over to Software Update to find the latest OS X dot release.10.6.4 is now available -- and in addition to the usual split between delta and combo updates, and regular/server versions, there's another wrinkle here: the Mac mini released today gets its very own flavor of the 10.6.4 update, presumably because of late changes that couldn't be tracked back into the trunk version of the OS.

The size of the update may vary if you pick it up via Software Update -- we saw 315 MB on a MacBook Pro running 10.6.3. The combo update for all 10.6 systems weighs in at a bandwidth-hogging 887.4 MB.

Here's Apple's write-up on the matter:

The 10.6.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It includes Safari 5 and general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes that:

• resolve an issue that causes the keyboard or trackpad to become unresponsive
• resolve an issue that may prevent some Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications from opening
• address issues copying, renaming, or deleting files on SMB file servers
• improve reliability of VPN connections
• resolve a playback issue in DVD Player when using Good Quality deinterlacing
• resolve an issue editing photos with iPhoto or Aperture in full screen view
• improve compatibility with some braille displays

For overall details look here, or find security information here.

The other night I needed to change Wi-Fi networks on a computer that I was connected to via ssh. Just about every page that I found via Google led me to try the exact same thing (type "airport -A") with one minor problem: it didn't work.

Let's back up a little bit. You may know that there is a commandline tool called "airport" which is buried fairly deeply in the filesystem:

System » Library » PrivateFrameworks » Apple80211.framework » Versions » Current » Resources » airport

Not the usual place to find a commandline utility. Translation? "This is here for Apple to use, but it's not something you ought to rely on." But of course that's not going to stop us.

Read on for more...

iPhoneinCanada is reporting that Apple has seeded a new build of Mac OS X 10.6.3. The build, numbered 10D571, weighs in around 700MB and focuses on Graphics Drivers, iChat, QuickTime, Fonts. The build also fixes:

• Compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications
• Performance improvements for 64-bit Logic
• Changes to QuickTime X that increase reliability and improve compatibility and security
• Printing reliability and compatibility with third party printers
• Issues resolved that prevented files from copying to Windows shares
• Issues resolved with recurring events in iCal when connected to an Exchange server
• Issues resolved that prevented files with the "#" or "&" symbols in their names from opening in Rosetta
• Issues addressed that caused background message colors to display incorrectly in Mail when scrolling
• Issue resolved that caused machines using BTMM and the Bonjour Sleep Proxy to wake unexpectedly

There is one known issue in this build: Safari 4.0.5 will be re-offered by Software Update after upgrading to 10D571 from a previous seed. It has been over five months since Snow Leopard has been updated. 10.6 was released on August 28, 2009 followed less than two weeks later by 10.6.1. On November 9, 2009, Apple released 10.6.2.

Let's face it: unless you're just casually surfing the Internet or playing a game, chances are pretty good that your hands are on the keyboard most of the time when you're at the computer. Sure, the mouse is only a few inches away, but wouldn't it just be easier if you didn't have to keep going back and forth from the mouse to the keyboard?

Enter the world of keyboard shortcuts. A keyboard shortcut is exactly what the name implies: a way of using the keys on your keyboard to quickly perform tasks that typically would require multiple steps using a mouse. Before we dive in to the magic keystrokes, let's take a quick look at how shortcuts work on the Mac.

Mac OS X 10.6.3 Build 10D561 has been released to developers less than a week after the previous build. Not a great deal has changed since the last build -- iPhoneinCanada has the specific details on this latest build, which include refinements to OpenGL and 64-bit logic. Since this sixth 10.6.3 build follows so quickly after the last one, it's a good indication that an official release of 10.6.3 is imminent.

10.6.2 arrived on November 9, 2009, and, like the forthcoming 10.6.3, was primarily a bug fix update for Snow Leopard. 10.6.3 should be out any day now in Software Update complete with those always-informative release notes, including my favorite: "increases reliability and improves compatibility and security."

[Via MacRumors]

One of the more questionable changes that was introduced in 10.6 Snow Leopard was a soft, blue glow that appears around application windows when using Exposé. Previously, in 10.5 Leopard, the entire Window was highlighted blue; now, however, the Exposé window previews are able to update their contents on the fly and obfuscating them with a blue highlight negatively affects the user experience.

Unfortunately, the blue glow that Apple's designers have chosen to overcome this gap is somewhat garish and just plain lacking in style. In response, creativebits has posted a tip for changing that glow into something a little more eye-catching and a little less flashy.

The process is fairly simple and involves replacing two PNG image files within the Dock application. Creativebits has the full explanation as well as a sample set of replacement files that work pretty well and look very tasteful. Follow the break for a preview of the tip in action and decide for yourself whether the difference is worth the effort.

I didn't even have dust on the box yet, but Aperture 3 has scored an update within a few days of its release. The update, according to Apple, "...addresses an issue affecting the playback of video clips used in Aperture 3 slideshows on Snow Leopard."

The update is 65.2 megs to download. If it hasn't popped up for you yet, you can force it from the Apple Menu by selecting 'Software Update.'

I can't tell you it's a great fix because I haven't tried any video in my slideshows yet, but Apple suggests all users get the update.

I other words, be there, or be square.

[Thanks to Andrew for the tip]

Gee, I love stuff like this, and I wish I would have known about it a long time ago. The tip comes from OSXhelp.com and it's a great one.

Need a quick definition of a word in Safari or an email? Yes, you probably already knew you could right-click on a highlighted word and bring up the OS X dictionary, but how about this? Press Command+Control+D while hovering over any word, and up pops the definition almost immediately. If you continue to hold down those keys you can slide your mouse over any other word and get a definition as well. Let go of the keys, and click somewhere else and the dictionary vanishes.

This little feature doesn't work everywhere. It requires you be in a Cocoa application, like Safari or Mail. It works in Pages, but not in MS Word because it was based on Carbon. Sadly, it doesn't work in Firefox. In fact, you can't right-click in Firefox and get a definition in the 'normal' Apple way.

If you want even more information than the little definition, click on the word 'more' at the lower right of the pop-up, and you'll get a lot more stuff from the Apple dictionary app, including usage suggestions and the origins of the word.

A couple of notes: If you are using a macro program like QuicKeys, make sure you aren't mapping the key combination you need to activate this feature, or re-map it to something else. If you click on the word 'dictionary' you can bring up the thesaurus, and if you launch the Apple dictionary application you can get into preferences and change the order of display, so you get the thesaurus as a default. You can also change your right-click behavior to open the concise panel instead of the larger definition page. Once I memorized the command key sequence I find myself using this all the time. It's quick and dirty. Let us know if you like it.

Thanks to OS X Help for all the little tips they regularly come up with, and to my fellow blogger Erica Sadun for testing this feature with QuicKeys. Sharp eyed readers will note we've covered this tip before here and here but I think it bears repeating.

A new "hack" for Finder is in the works, and it's pretty darn cool. TotalFinder adds tabs, Visor-like functionality and a few other goodies (with more on the way) to your plain, vanilla Finder setup. If you're skittish, though, don't jump just yet. TotalFinder is alpha, and not in that way that developers label software just to be safe. It's really, really alpha. TotalFinder runs as a SIMBL plugin, too, which can (in some cases) cause some system instability in and of itself. However, if you've got the apples for it, it's a very cool new way to soup up your Finder.

In its current state, it does a few simple -- yet amazingly useful -- things, starting with adding tabs to Finder. Honestly, we got tabs in Terminal before Finder? This catches us up a little bit. The Visor feature (which is optional), assigns a hotkey that makes your tabbed Finder window slide onto the screen and disappear when you're not using it. It's take-or-leave for me at this point; it's cool, but it takes a lot of getting used to, especially for window-to-window file dragging within Finder. You can't currently drop files onto other tabs, so some problems arise in that situation. The other features include preventing .DS_Store file creation and sorting file listings with folders grouped on top.

For now, I'm sticking with Path Finder for my souped-up Finder needs, but TotalFinder has the potential to bring Finder into its own after years of relatively few improvements. You can grab a copy to try out (for free) at BinaryAge, and note that it comes with an uninstall script that will wipe it clean off your system if you don't like it.

[via Smoking Apples]

News is bouncing around today that the current test version of Mac OS X 10.6.3 has OpenGL 3.0 installed in it, and while it's not completely working yet, developers are hopeful that this means Apple is pushing to have full OpenGL 3.0 support in place as soon as possible. What does that mean for us mere users? Better, faster graphics, and the ability to push the hardware we've already paid for to where it's supposed to be. Most of the hardware sold in modern Macs actually has the ability to make use of OpenGL 3.0 (in fact, the current version is actually 3.2, and 3.0 was released back in 2008), but Apple's never included it in the software.

It's a strange thing, this hesitance Apple has to really push the graphics ability on these machines to the limit. They've kept things slower than they could be in other ways as well, for reasons we're not entirely sure of. It just doesn't seem like faster 3D is a priority for them -- we'll leave it up to you to decide whether that's good or bad.

As we wait on the threshold of 10.6.3, there are still some hiccups and interesting issues in Snow Leopard that might make your life a bit more difficult (as Aron mentioned recently). In particular, getting your Apple Remote to behave properly with all the apps that it's supposed to control may be an exercise in frustration.

In the case of my unibody MacBook Pro, I couldn't get the machine to recognize any remote commands at all - even after verifying that the batteries were fresh (by looking for infrared flashes via the iSight camera) and trying to pair/unpair the remote. I wasn't alone; there's a five-page thread on Apple's discussion boards detailing a litany of woes with 10.6.x and remote use, with many reports of Front Row overriding remote commands destined for other apps like EyeTV.

Good news, though: even if the upcoming OS update doesn't clear up the remote issues, there's a fine & free solution right now. The Candelair driver, provided by the developers of Remote Buddy, installs simply and works like a charm. You can disable/enable the driver via the provided preference pane, or activate a legacy compatibility mode to help old apps behave as expected. For me, I'm just happy that my remote is working again.

The release of Mac OS 10.6.3 moves closer as Apple has begun widespread testing of build 10D522. According to AppleInsider, this update focuses on stability and core components like AppKit, CoreMedia, Desktop Services, FileSync, Fonts, HIToolbox and more. The current build is 665.7MB in size.

Reports indicate that nearly 60 crash-happy bugs have been squashed across more than 90 components with this update, like printing issues with iCal, Mail and PhotoBooth (fortunately I haven't experienced those). Additionally, 10.6.3 includes native support for the Magic Mouse.

Apple began limited testing in December, and has released several builds since. Now that testing has become more widespread and the fixes increase, we move closer to release.

I recently wrote about Ross Carter's Snow Leopard Creater Code discoveries and his solution, LaunchCodes. It turns out there were a few issues with the initial implementation, such as Apple Events not being passed along. Normally when you find a file in Spotlight, a PDF for example, opening it launches Preview and the query that was used to locate the file shows up in the search field in Preview. This was no longer working in LaunchCodes, though Ross says he's working on that right now. In the meantime, Michel Fortin has produced Magic Launch, and it solves the majority of the issues that have been presented.

Magic Launch installs as a System Preferences pane, and you can drag and drop applications to it to register their file type. Then, you can choose a default application, but optionally specify that it should launch in it the application which created it, when possible. Probably the coolest feature, though, is the rule handling. Similar to rules in Mail.app, you can set up a series of criteria to determine when a different app should open the file. You can have multiple rules, and each rule can check things like file location, file name or extension, text contents, hex contents and/or ASCII contents. That's pretty nifty, and goes beyond the default functionality that was available before we even needed apps like this.

Magic Launch is free to try out, and costs $14US for a license. If you're still finding documents annoyingly launching the wrong applications, go download it and give it a try.

We're well into 2010 (OK, 4 days), but there's still a few more lists and "top tens" of the last decade to clean up. One of the more interesting Apple-related wrapups is this list by Fraser Spiers, showing off Apple's best technical feats of the past decade. There's certainly tons of technical innovations by Apple in "the naughties" to choose from -- it was the decade of the iPod and the iPhone. But Spiers' list actually avoids direct mention of either of those, instead choosing to highlight some more Mac-based technical feats. Bonjour is in there, as is the great Time Machine and Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch system. Webkit is probably an obvious choice, given all the places it's shown up in Apple's various releases.

And there are some more interesting picks on the list as well, including Aperture, the underrated Exposé, and even the unibody laptop design. Some might argue that a few of these aren't necessarily Apple's innovations (I wouldn't necessarily credit them with DVD burning and encoding in the 2000s), but it's true that all of these were brought into a widespread, acclaimed form by Apple. If nothing else, a list like this shows just how much Apple has done for personal computing in the last ten years -- we tend to think first, these days, of their handheld accomplishments, but they've had plenty of other technical feats as well.

[via Michael Tsai]