Two simple tricks for your audiobooks

If you are used to listed audiobooks on your iPhone or iPod, you may encounter a couple of annoying issues with some of them.

If your audiobook comes as a set of mp3 files and not in m4b files, sometimes files restart from the beginning. There is also 15 seconds skip option missing, as well as possibility to change speed to x2 or to x0.5.

You can actually fix all these problems easily.

First, right click on your book in iTunes and choose "show info". Then go to Options tab and mark your media type as audiobook (default is music). Then also mark "Remember playback position" checkbox.

Sync your device again, and there you go.

Mind, books will no longer be shown as albums. You have to go to audiobooks menu on your iPhone/iPod. Same for iTunes, they will be listed under Books menu.

How to spoof MAC address on WiFi (airport) interface

I was stuck between the planes this weekend, for a long time.

In airports there are some free WiFi networks that allow you to surf Internet for free half an hour (hello Munich airport) or a bit more (hello Frankfurt airport). Once you have used all your free time, if you try to register again, you will be kicked out. That is because the system remembers your MAC address and does not let you in for free anymore. Luckily, with Apple computers, there is a way around this issue.

First, you need to check which interface is used for WiFi. Run ifconfig on terminal window to see which one is connected. Usually it is en0 or en1.

Once you know, thank, you need to do the following:

1. disassociate airport with the following command:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -z

On this step you will be disconnected from WiFI

2. spoof the MAC address:

sudo ifconfig en1 ether 00:11:22:33:44:55

Now you are ready to re-connect to WiFi again, with a new MAC address. Remember, this does not survive reboot.

Happy surfing

Mavericks - old tricks are still working

Every time I upgrade OSX there is a concern about something stop working on the new version. Fortunately, it is not the case with Mavericks.

Both FTP server and iMovie + NAS workarounds are fine with 10.9.

So if you guys were concerned about that, move forward and upgrade. 

VMware Fusion 6.0 installation crash - how to fix

I have got my VMware Fusion updated to 6.0 today. Unfortunately, Fusion was crashing every time I was trying to start it. If you have the same, the solution is not so hard:

sudo rm /Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion/license.fusion.site.6.0.200*

Official reference from VMware is here

Enabling use of NAS with iMovie

Once one starts playing with iMovie, the main problem is about free space. It runs out very quickly. Too quickly, I would say. And the main issue is that you cannot put your projects on NAS. iMovie by default only allows you to use directly attached storage devices or your local drive.

Luckily there is a way. To enable NAS with iMovie, open Terminal application and run defaults write -app iMovie allowNV -bool true command.

Restart iMovie, now you are able to store and work with your project using NAS.

Tested with OSX 10.8.4 and bellow.

Changing hibernate mode

When you switch close your laptop or just leave it for a long time, it may go to hibernation mode. That usually means your memory space is copied to HDD/SSD for safe-keeping. RAM is also suspended, so it should keep its content, but not for too long.

When you start it again after a long pause, it may take some time to read RAM data from your drive. Some people are always in a hurry, so they may want to change the default settings to keep RAM suspended but not to write/read on the disk.

If you one of these people, please be advised it is not safe to run hibernation with RAM only, because you may run out of battery and memory status will be gone. Said that, this is how to deal with hibernation mode.

To check the current settings, run pmset -g | grep hibernatemode

The output usually 3, if you have a laptop. That means "suspend to disk + RAM (default on laptops)"

If you have a desktop, the default is 0: "suspend to RAM only"

To change from one mode to another, use the following command:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode <0 or 3>

Cisco MeetingPlace does not like retina screens

I was preparing a remote demo for a customer today.

Our company is using Cisco MeetingPlace for such things.

During some trials I have realised that if one shares retina screen through MeetingPlace tool, it is not properly shown to other participants. In fact, it does not matter which resolution you set, as far as it is retina, remote users can only see 1/4 of your shared screen, application or window.

XBMC on Mac: Frodo is not good (yet)

I have Mac mini working as HTPC with XBMC on it. For more than a year I was using XBMC 11.0 a.k.a. Eden.

The new version, XBMC 12.0 Frodo is supposed to be great. The main feature I was missing is Ariplay. I have an external application serving Airplay server, but having it as part of XBMC is so much nicer. So as soon as Frodo has been release, I have upgraded.

All was working fine, but on some movies there was a green line at the bottom of the screen. I have started digging. As reported in the issue log, it is caused by HW acceleration. I have disabled it, as XBMC has recommended.

Then some movies have started showing distortions. It was so annoying I have rolled back to version 11. But the issue was still there. HW acceleration, disabled or enabled, seemed not to work properly. I have re-installed. Same damn thing.

Finally I had to remove ~Library/Application Support/XBMC files for XBMC to start working as before the upgrade.

My personal recommendation: if you are running XBMC on your Mac, wait till the developers fix the acceleration bug. Anyhow, the app is great, I am a big fan.

A phrase that crashes your OSX apps

There is a new OSX bug reported recently. If you are typing the following phrase: 'File:///' (without quotes), your application crashes.

I have checked it, and it's true for TextEdit, Chrome and some other apps.

Take care, guys.

Changing icons on Mac

In my last post I was complaining about an ugly icon of Google Chrome on Mac. Luckily one can easy change that.

First, you need a picture. I have found plenty of icons for Google Chrome on Internet. Get one you like, download it as a file, open in Preview, choose Edit / Select All and copy it to clipboard.

To change an icon of your application, folder or a specific file, right-click on it and choose Get Info. In our case it was Google Chrome app. Click on the icon in the upper left corner and press cmd + v to paste the image. Voila!

To show you the difference, this was before

and this was after the facelift

Google neglecting Mac lately?

Chrome is my default browser for year. It is light, minimalistic, it has lots of important add-on.

But lately I am quite unhappy with it. It is still 32 bit, that means it's not supporting the latest Java package. And its icon is not update to support retina screen. Look, how ugly it is now.

Google, are you neglecting Mac?

Using external drives between Mac and Windows: NTFS or ExFAT

This is a challenge a beginner faces when trying to copy data between Mac and Windows. Some of your USB drives may appear on Mac as read-only system. These are NTFS formatted disks.

Although Mac can natively write NTFS, this requires a system hack. It is also quite dangerous, as the drive can be easily corrupted. There are two options to use your USB hard disks between Mac and Windows:

1. Format your drive as ExFAT. This file system is supported on both Mac and Windows 7/8, it is fast and reliable. The only problem is that on Windows XP ExFAT requires installation of an additional software.

2. Use NTFS drive with an additional driver. There are multiple choices. If you are looking for software free of charge, you can try OSXFUSE or NTFS 3G. I personally would recommend the first one. If you do not mind spending money for MS file system support, you may try Paragon NTFS ($19.90) or Tuxera NTFS (EUR 25.00). Both paid options provide you a trial period to see if you really need that piece of software.

Personally, I have used to run some NTFS support, but eventually started to use ExFAT only. That would be my sincere recommendation, leave NTFS to Microsoft fans.

How to see free HD space on Mountain Lion

I have never thought I would need that, but found myself explaining the thing to my daughter the other day.

So here is an idea. By default on Mountain Lion there is no indication of drive's free space. If you area used to have it, open Finder / View and click to "Show Status Bar", as shown on the picture.

Now, carry on.

Incorrect free space indication in Finder

Apparently there is an unpleasant bug in Finder with Lion and Mountain Lion. Sometimes Finder status bar shows you much more free space than you actually have. 

To be sure, compare Disk Utility indication and Finder indication. Disk Utility is always correct. 

If you see that the numbers do not match, don't panic. It is actually fixable. There can be two reasons for Finder lying.

1. HD is corrupt. Try to repare it with Disk Utility, you may require reboot in Recovery mode to do that. To do that, press CMD + R when rebooting. Choose Disk Utility from the Recovery menu and go from there. Sometimes (happened to me) one iteration is not enough. It took me tree attempts to fix my SSD corruption. Sometimes you cannot recover the drive. I hope you have your Time Machine backups to restore from them. If not, boot, try to backup all you can and re-install.

2. If your drive is OK, but Finder still shows you ridiculous amount of free space, that might be Time Machine to blame.

In my case, when Time Machine automatic backups are enabled, Finder begins to lie. It seems that it add backup sizes to the free space, even if Time Machine drive is an external one. To fix this annoying issue, unmount Time machine drive, turn automate backups off and re-launch Finder. To restart Finder, do ALT + two finger click (right click with a mouse) and choose Relaunch. 

Enabling FTP on with Mountain Lion

If you have Lion or Mountain Lion, you may mention that FTP option is gone from Sharing options.

No worries, FTP server is still there, even if it is a regular installation and not Server one.

No enable FTP server, run from Terminal.app

sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

To disable, do unload instead of load.

FTP home directory is a users's home one.

How to see hidden files in Finder

By default Finder does not show you the hidden files. If you ever need to see them there, do the following.

1. Open terminal and type in:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

2. Restart Finder app by holding ‘alt’ on the keyboard and right click on the Finder icon. Click on Relaunch.

If you need to revert to the previous state, do
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
and then re-launch Finder again.

Hello world

I have decided to start a different blog about my Mac experience. I will be documenting here findings, tricks and gotchas, just for myself.