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.