mac os x

Give your App in OSX More Power sudo renice -20 ProcessIDHere Adjust a Mac Apps CPU Priority

Posted on by Kay Urbach

Give your App in OSX More Power sudo renice -20 ProcessIDHere Adjust a Mac Apps CPU Priority

You need to launch Activity Monitor and note the Process ID for FCP. Then launch Terminal and type “sudo renice -20 ProcessIDHere”. In the above example you’d put the Process ID for FCP in the obvious spot. The “-20” is the highest priority you can g

GROWL… a 2.1.1 build and install guide for OSX Lion and above

Posted on by Kay Urbach

This should be a quick howto for building growl 2.1.1 from source on Mountain Lion. (it was a real longer list, but tumblr ate my drafts, because they don’t autosave… meh, good for you, it’s shorter, and better sorted, I guess)

Required time: Download, installs, configuration and build should be done in less than an hour, depending on your connection speed. 

Skills: medium (Terminal usage, clipboard)

You need to have an apple ID and a developer account and do NOT download anything from the app store. You do not want to create an apple-ID/developer account? Fine. Below you’ll find an alternate source from github but the two Xcode tools must be downloaded from the apple sites.

1a. download the following (external): 

1b: My github, but I won’t update versions, since I don’t have the time to test them each time a new one gets released. When you’re not version-manic, get the ones that are known to work. If you already use git, just

git clone clone https://github.com/erdnuesse/build-tools.git

If you don’t use git, choose the zip download option here: github project page. No worries, git is still included. 

CHECK the files for VIRUSES and MD5, since I don’t know about the security on github/filedropper/share4web.

The corresponding command in terminal is (run inside your downloads folder)

md5 *

If your downloads folder has too many files, just replace the * with each downloaded filename. To make it easier, remember, <TAB> completes the filenames of the folder you’re in.

The results should be:

MD5 (build-tools-master.zip) = 2fd4e4268a77ca87f2307979793ecba6

Single files inside the archive:

MD5 (Mercurial-2.7.1-py2.7-macosx10.8.zip) = 75309c856349a0ea1125521e59bdf119
MD5 (README.md) = 77fa89b85c30851aaf4b70fed56c86a3
MD5 (git-1.8.3.2-intel-universal-snow-leopard.dmg) = 946c23e4906d942d9b994ceb886e1066
MD5 (subversion-1.8.3.tar.bz2) = 7d7bd97347a4491e1ffb529563ce2e9e
MD5 (xcode44auxtools6938114a.dmg) = b8f28bb4f631d21ebd10fc0f30ca6161

The two remaining from apple:

MD5 (xcode4630916281a.dmg) = c5088782d9742314835af1c3ba3fe8e7
MD5 (xcode462_cltools_10_86938259a.dmg) = 90c5db99a589c269efa542ff0272fc28

2. Install the prerequisites (except svn, which gets compiled from source)

  • Install Xcode
  • Install Mercurial 
  • Install Git
  • Install the command line tools for Xcode
  • decompress the SVN sources

3. Configure your system

Open the Auxiliary Tools dmg, and run the following command in Terminal:

sudo cp /Volumes/Auxiliary Tools/PackageMaker.app/Contents/MacOS/PackageMaker /usr/bin/

You now no longer need the auxtools dmg.

Run:

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

Install SVN; run inside the SVN source directory:

./configure
make
make install

 4. Now, Growl itself:

Run the following to get the growl sources:

cd ~
hg clone https://code.google.com/p/growl/

Now we want to know what we got:

hg tags | sort
If you want to see only relevant lines use this:
hg tags | sort | grep Growl.app
Use the following to set the version you want as active, by the time of the creation of this guide it was 2.1.1:
hg update "Growl.app 2.1.1"
Choose the newest, if applicable.
This should be everything (I am doing it out of my head right now) and we’re good to go for the compile run. 
NOTE: Forget about a compile run like mentioned on some sites, with the command xcodebuild. It won’t work. Instead use for 2.1.1: 
cd ~/growl/Release
VERSION=2.1.1 rake setup
VERSION=2.1.1 rake build:growl
There will most likely be some errors: 
A. You’re missing a certificate – Create one. The details:  Keychain Access.app -> application’s name menu -> certificate assistant -> create a certificate. 
Name: 3rd Party Mac Developer Application: The Growl Project, LLC
Identity Type: Self Signed Root
Certificate Type: Code Signing
CAUTION: Be sure to use the same prefix as the certificate that you are receiving errors about.
 
B. You’ll have to agree to a license agreement. (Read, quit, type “agree” and <enter>)
But now everything should run just fine.
Your growl.app should be in your home directory under growl/Release/distribution/build/growl/Release, just drag and drop it into your application folder. After your first run, you’ll enter a mini-setup.
After that you can enjoy your (maybe first) compiled app, and your saved $4.99.
image

Please, when I missed something, or helped you, please comment. Thank you.

Why Mac OSX sucks #1137

Posted on by Kay Urbach

People say it’s easy to create screenshots in MacOS, well in short, here’s the deal: If I told anyone a secret cheat code like, “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start” he or she will most likely remember it for a week, after first using it – or maybe longer. 

Everybody I find on the internet writes it’s quite easy to create a screenshot even though there’s no PrtScr key on a Mac.

I found a neat table with the keys only in german, but you’ll get the point.

image

What the hell? I was pressing one button on Windows, or maybe a combination of two. but what is the last one? FOUR keys at once, and then the space bar? SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK? – If you thought it was over after that combination – it’s not. After that you have to click on the window you want to capture, which is even a click more.

I own a Macbook for three years now and I still have to look it up, or trial and error for sometimes minutes, to finally get a f***ing screenshot, and yet still, I have not seen anyone complain. 

Mac users have a tendency to have a distorted image of reality. A key combination of four keys, then another key, and then a click can not be considered as easy. Not even for a tech enthusiast like me. Period.

Worse though, It would have been a longer, but still easier combination, if it was : Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + Option(Alt) + 4, then Space. Why – you might ask, well, it is simply every fucking modifier with which you can make key combinations, without having to guess which button has to be left out for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t say that MS Windows is the holy grail, but OSX is it neither, or sometimes even worse.

Cracking or popping sound vie Bluetooth in Max OSX 10.8 Mountain lion

Posted on by Kay Urbach

Many people have problems with their bluetooth sound after upgrading to Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion.

The solution is not as complicated as it looks, you have to set the minimum bitrate for your bluetooth audio higher. You have two options on how to do so:

Edit following file (e.g. with textwrangler):
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent

And set “Apple Bitpool Min” to 50

or (even easier) run in Terminal (without the “$”):
$ defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent “Apple Bitpool Min (editable)” 50

If you don’t already know the terminal: Press <cmd> + <Space> and type in: Terminal <Enter>

Values range from 0 to 58:
30 – Low audio quality
40 – Medium audio quality
48 – High audio quality
58 – Excellent audio quality