The default OS X install has always annoyed me with it’s security holes. Since I did a fresh install of OS X 10.5 Leopard it was necessary for me to go through and change those settings. Here’s what I changed. Under security preferences I enable requiring a logon when returning from sleep or screen saver and disable automatic logon. It’s a minor inconvenience but if my Mac is ever stolen it will prevent them from logging on and using the Mac as me. It also makes it harder to get [...] Read the rest »
Perfect Apple Apps
I have to admit an unhealthy admiration for two apps that come free with OS X. Both received upgrades with Leopard which makes me happy. Unlike their closest counterparts in Windows these are truly useful apps that approach perfection. A perfect app is one that does what it’s designed to do quickly and efficiently. Best of all they come with OS X 10.5 Leopard so there’s Leopard compatibility issues. TextEdit The first is TextEdit. Coming from Windows I saw this as a notepad clone. In the beginning I only used [...] Read the rest »
Housekeeping and Horn Blowing
Housekeeping: I updated my Leopard compatibility post to include a short line about any of the apps I’ve already used. The short version – no major issues for the apps that were expected to be compatible. Thumbs down to Apple for not releasing the final build to developers before the 26th. They gave it to reviewers early. It still appeared on P2P networks before the 26th. Horn Blowing: The OS Quest had it’s best single day yet for views. About 50% above the previous record. But more important to me [...] Read the rest »
Leopard: Time Machine Annoyance
Just as Time Machine was beginning to grow on me as a viable backup option I ran into my first annoyance. And it is annoying. Until now Time Machine ran almost unnoticed by me. But tonight I had a Parallels VM open for several hours. The good news is that Time Machine didn’t seem to be bothered by this. But then I shut down the VM and Time Machine’s hourly backup time rolled around. Time Machine had 12.9GB to back up, almost all of it was that VM. I was [...] Read the rest »
Leopard Upgrade: Parallels VMs Restored
Due to the time and hassle of rebuilding my Parallels Desktop(aff) VMs I wanted to use the VMs I had already created. This was simple to accomplish. I didn’t do anything special to prepare but all my VMs were shut down the last time I used them, not just suspended. I also didn’t have any snapshots to be saved. I did a complete erase and fresh install of Leopard. I’d cloned my disk so I’d be using the clone as a backup to restore from. After installing Leopard I installed [...] Read the rest »
The OS Quest Trail Log #12: Leopard
This week on the quest was almost all about Leopard. Certainly this weekend was all Leopard. I chose to do a complete erase and rebuild, installing all my apps one by one. While time consuming I like this method for any OS upgrade. With Windows it was almost a requirement. One reason I like it is there’s little risk while installing the OS, especially for OS X with all peripherals disconnected. If Apple (or anyone) can’t install a OS on hardware they also designed it would be a slam dunk [...] Read the rest »
Leopard Login & Keychain Update
Apple has already released a Leopard update called Login & Keychain Update. it addresses issues with: Logging in with an account originally created in Mac OS X 10.1 or earlier that has a password of 8 or more characters. Connecting to some 802.11b/g wireless networks. Changing the password of a FileVault-protected account. It has the distinction of being the first Leopard only update. It requires a reboot. It’s available through software update (4.8MB for me) or as a 10MB standalone download. Read the rest »
Leopard & MacMozy Backup
After getting Leopard set up and most software installed it was time to set up Mozy again. I’m backing up about 30GB to Mozy and if all the files had to be sent again it would take days at my upload speed. Even though I was doing a complete re-install of everything I’d be restoring the bulk of my data to the same locations and they should appear unchanged to Mozy. Some data would be unchanged but be in new locations. Since I was re-installing all software the settings would [...] Read the rest »
The First Real Problems
I’ve finally encountered my first real upgrade problems. I installed Windows XP Pro SP2 under Boot Camp. Then I installed Parallels 3 and told it to use my Boot Camp partition for a virtual machine. Then the problems began. Parallels hangs up when starting the VM and Boot Camp no longer boots because it looks for the non-existent Parallels HAL. When I boot the VM under Parallels in safe-mode it hangs up after the mup.sys. It appears the next driver – NDIS.SYS – is the problem. It’s not an original [...] Read the rest »
Leopard Upgrade: Executing the Plan – Part 2
I got Leopard installed and running in good time and without any problems. So it was time to start installing the apps. So far the app installations have gone fine although a few minor Leopard problems have cropped up. The first thing I installed was Yojimbo because I keep all my configuration info, serial numbers and passwords in it. Yojimbo syncs with .Mac so after installation I reconfigured it to sync with .Mac and did a manual sync. When prompted I told .Mac to replace everything on the computer (Yojimbo [...] Read the rest »
