Mac OS X: plist man

A nice forum entry about plist files and editors.

I still don't think I should install all of xcode to have the settings file easily accessible.

TextWrangler is a nice looking tool, have not used it before, but if it can open binary plist files without converting and then actually saving it back as binary, that's definitely worth something.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5278/how-do-i-open-a-plist-file

some more details on plist:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20093292-263/lockfiles-and-other-plist-file-subtypes-in-os-x-lion/

***
not read as of yet:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10344627-263.html?tag=mfiredir

Mac OS X: How to get F4 to open Lauchpad on old wireless keyboards, apple makes it very hard for us

I really don't like to install another software to do what the OS is supposed to be doing. So instead of using the 2 links at the bottom which indicate I have to install functionflip and then define what key to use, I prefer the method suggested here by Kentzo.

This is how I had to accomplish it, still to complicated to be of any use:

• Use the plist editor of choice, which was for me PlistEditPro and choose to open a file.
• In Finder choose GoTo and enter Library (this should take you to your users Library, otherwise use tilde/Library), then select Preferences

file://localhost/Users/patrick/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist

• Drag the file com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist onto the the open dialog of PlistEditPro, wouldn't let me go to my Library folder.
• Then look for 160, open it, 
• change enabled to YES,
• change parameter 2 to 130
• Save the file
• Log out and in again, and voila!!!

Next step is to really get rid of the plist editor, I mean it should be part of the OS no? (a GUI tool, not command line etc).

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/24352/unmodified-f4-no-longer-summons-launchpad

Here are 2 links that refer to FunctionFlip etc.:


http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/22/make-your-pre-lion-keyboard-work-with-launchpad/

http://josh-asch.net/2011/07/22/remap-the-dashboard-key-to-launchpad/

iSync: How to remove the iSync notification icon from the menu bar

Very annoying, always have had the iSync next to the Time Machine icon and never actually used it.

Finally found out that you just hold CMD and drag the icon of the bar to remove it!

Mac OS X: Automator image resize trap

Beware of the hidden traps of using the automator to batch resize images.

Instead of resizing a few pictures by hand I thought I be intelligent and use the automator to resize the pictures. So I spent a few minutes to find some documentation about 10.5 and preview functionality being available as automator workflow tasks.

All done in a few minutes and it felt great. So I continued to upload the pictures and only saw much later that the quality of the pics is far worse than manually clicking in preview -> tools - > adjust size and only modify the height to 550.

It really looks that OS X 10.8 is not using the preview functionality but something else, or slightly different settings maybe.

Now I have to manually resize the images and be sure that the quality is a expected.

Mac OS X: Access ftp site for beginners

The more you think you know the more complicate things get.

On Mac OS X, if you need to access an ftp site, just use

CMD+K and
type the ftp://sitename.site and
you'll be asked to provide username and credentials and the site appears in your finder.

I'm so used to actually only use filezilla and or filezilla server, that something as easy as this for down and upload does not even come to mind.

page that describes this nicely:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/02/07/ftp-from-mac/

Use with caution on massive up- or downloads, as the connection to the server disconnected quite often and the OS X had trouble to reestablish and work through it, so actually: FileZilla rules!!

Update2: Even after more than 10 minutes after trying to disconnect all open connections and clicking stop on the copy dialog box, the thing is still there and displaying stopping... while FileZilla has finished downloading files and directories (1200 files in 20 directories), why do the easy things not just work out of the box.

Mac OS X: iTunes keep an extra copy in addition to time machine (Updated 2014-11-29)

Actually this was a good idea, but it takes a millennia to start to copy actually something.

rsync -avr --delete /Volumes/Toshiba/iPhoto\ Library/ /Volumes/LACIE/iPhoto\ Library/

Then I had to copy two backups and was fed up about the rsync never actually to start copying for hours.

I found this article

http://blog.brettalton.com/2013/08/05/how-to-speed-up-rsync-on-your-mac-and-stop-the-dreaded-building-file-list/

and installed homebrew and then the new rsync and am using the following command now:

rsync -a --info=progress2 /Volumes/WD_2TB/ /Volumes/Toshiba/

Now there is some action, but disappointingly it crawls and I don't know why. Is it because there are gazillions of small files or is something else broken?

Let's wait and see.

Don't know but I feel more comfortable with this command as it actually does go ahead for now (still don't understand enough about the processing):

rsync -aP /Volumes/WD_2TB/ /Volumes/Toshiba/

and this with rsync 3.1.1

Mac OS X: Lion install USB or Disk. Restore does not work anymore! 2nd attempt

Now using carbon copy cloner.

This works perfectly.


Download Carbon Copy Cloner
Install it as it says you should
Right Click Install Mac OS X Lion and select show package contents
Go to Contents->Shared Support and select InstallESD.dmg
Drag InstallESD.dmg out on your desktop or whereever you'll be able to select it from again in CCC .
Start disk utility and select USB stick or disk and select parition, choose 1 partition and under Options... select GUID. Then hit apply.
Start CCC and select as source InstallESD.dmg
Select USB stick (>4GB) or USB Disk and hit clone.

This worked fine for both (stick and disk) and you can still try to use the Lion Disk Installer for USB Sticks less than or equal 4GB. In the blog he removes some packages that are not critical.

Have fun.

OS X: Snow leopard - assign application to a specific desktop

I find myself working more and more with fullscreen applications on OS X and use the 4 finger gesture to switch between them. Some applications don't let themselves use in this mode and used to overlay all other applications.

Then you start again thinking, wouldn't it be nice to always have that application on it's on desktop, where you can just switch over?

Using missing control move the application to the desktop (drag and drop) of choice and then select the application from the dock and right click->Options->Assign to This Desktop and you're done.

PDF: online PDF creation from webpages

Have used multiple services from the iPad and desktop but have not made use of them lately. Why?

Because on OS X this is built in. They made one of the most usable PDF viewer/modifier (no real editor) but they also crippled it's functionality again.


http://blog.nitropdf.com/2008/01/free-online-web-services-to-create-view-share-and-edit-pdf-files/

Bookmark management iCloud, Xmarks, Chrome Sync, Firefox ** Update 2014-10 ** Mac OS X Yosemite, iOS 8.0 all ok

Update2:
It looks like things are getting way out of hand lately. Good thing that Xmarks has a recovery function I use it almost daily now as I'm not ready to do what would be the right thing:

The right thing to do is:

• Do not use icloud for windows and enable sync, that breaks the bookmarks all the time
• Do not use firefox bookmark sync, although it looks like many times it would work
• Do not use Chrome bookmark sync, although it works many times
• Do not use iCloud bookmark sync on iOS devices, it breaks all, generates duplicates and more.

You won't believe how many times I tried to correct the bookmarks on all platforms and somehow it got destroyed again. The main platform that I use is Chrome on Windows and the process below worked just fine for a little while. Then when working on one of the OS X machines the bookmarks get destroyed. And I don't want to disable iCloud Bookmark sync just now.

What I do is restore the known last bookmark set via my.xmarks.com and then try to continue as if nothing happened.

If it continues to be like that, I might investigate but for now I make do.

Update 1:

Welcome to 2014: You still have safari, chrome and firefox and the bookmark sync is still not solved (same as with messaging, right?).

Good news is that with Xmarks and the process described below you will be syncing fine.

OS X 10.10, iOS 8 and the new browser still have some quirks and they have bookmark sync, i.e. safari, chrome and firefox have their own mechanism.

I have enabled safari (iCloud) and Chrome. And it looks like it's working. Apple introduced something like the reading list, which is sometimes visibly synced to Xmarks and also to Chrome but I leave it untouched and after a couple of manipulations (see below) it is not shown but it is still showing up correctly on all Mac OS X and iOS 8 Devices.

Important is to know that xmarks keeps a history. So make sure you start slowly and check that you have a good state on xmarks. After setting everything up like it should be some machine, some browser updated my bookmarks on chrome and xmarks to be wrong, safari was still ok. Since I knew that I had a good copy on xmarks and from when I restored that and downloaded to chrome and that was it! Very important.

Original Post:

For a very long time I used xmarks sync to be able to sync my bookmarks from office and private in multiple browsers. Most of the time I work on firefox and chrome, but sometimes on IE and safari.

Xmarks did a good job, since it has a backup and restore functionality, all for free. Also I like the deduplication tools that are accessible on the web page. But this is mainly due to the fact that I started using chrome sync at some time and now more recently iCloud, which may cause havoc and have cause havoc on my bookmarks.

How to manage bookmarks on iCloud?

Some propose to disable on all devices the bookmark iCloud sync, but I could not deactivate it on all devices. Somehow I did not find all devices and when I enabled the iCloud bookmark sync I had back my 6000+ bookmarks (1800 unique).

• (optional) If necessary use xmarks and upload all bookmarks to server (advanced upload), so you have a chance at some point to get a start set, use the my.xmarks.com page and use tools, to remove duplicates from the bookmark lists, also remove empty folders, then display it and save it to a .html file.
• Let all the devices be connected and sync bookmarks with iCloud. 
• Use safari on OS X to manage bookmarks, i.e. start deleting all bookmarks. As I had some strange experience, I deleted only about 1/3 of all bookmarks and then waited at least 10 minutes and then continued two times more to get rid of all.
• Wait another 10 minutes or so and then start accessing the bookmarks from all your iDevices. Most of them should be empty by now. Except my iPhone, which had some bookmarks that look to be inserted by my provider! I don't know why but I have deleted them twice and they reappeared and I'm sure that I never added manually.
• Now use the import functionality on safari to get some version of a bookmark set in or start from scratch.
• Wait a minute or 2 and access the bookmarks on the iDevices and they will list all new ones.

Perfect!

How to work with iCloud bookmarks and Xmarks?

• So far I had great experience by just letting Xmarks running automatically, even adding some things from a windows chrome machine to the bookmark bar worked flawlessly. But I would refrain from heaving tinkering on the different browser bookmark managers.

What problems remain?

• Chrome sync is problematic, the last time I used it I had all duplicates even without using Xmarks. But alas, this can be easily unchecked now.
• Creating a bookmark and then renaming it, seems to break the sync to iCloud. I never managed to get on all iDevices and connected browser to display the correct bookmark after a rename!

So far so good and I'm happy that I can have the same set everywhere.

Why did I have to clear the bookmarks and not just work with Xmarks and download from server? Somehow iCloud sync is just to fast. i.e. While deleting all bookmarks and not waiting or not deleting partial data and wait and continue. When I did it any other way as described above I had always iCloud somehow mingling with the bookmarks.

Keeping bookmarks in sync is not always easy.

MAC OS X: eject dvd disc

open terminal

drutil eject

This works for me most of the time, disk utility usually does not work for me.

osx: screenshots/screen captures via preview, grab or terminal

use preview(vorschau), grab(bildschirmfoto) application to take screenshots or use terminal.

From terminal use command screencapture.

Solved: How to get rid of Quicktime opening PDFs in Safari!!

Verified solution:

Set WebPluginTypeEnabled to NO for application/pdf in plist file ~/Library/com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist

Only problem so far, was that I need some utility to edit the plist file and a trick to access the ~/Library folder.

Program: PlistEditPro (unregistered, was able to install and use it for this purpose)
Access ~/Library: Many options available, but I preferred the finder go to and then drag the icon of the parent to the left side of finder. From there the application could access it. (I did not want to unhide the folder per se.)


I actually want a solution that I can rerun on any computer without having to install a tool, but I was not able to do this with the command defaults as it is a dictionary in a dictionary within a key and I have no clue if defaults could modify values and not only add or completely overwrite.


Some background info:

I run into this issue quite often and I did not really care, as most systems that the issue appears are not really my production systems. But now I got really fed up.

Quicktime Plug-in opens PDF but only shows 1st page, no scrolling etc. -> Very annoying!

I just spent a good 2 hours on trying to solve this problem. The internet is not what I would like it to be. I had to read about 40 webpages until I found the right solution.

I really don't know when this change came and why only some systems are affected, but alas I have found the right way to get rid of it!

defaults read com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist