Category Archives: OS X

Note to self, OS X, Windows 8

VmWare Fusion 6 cursor not visible in Windows 8.1

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I had this very annoying problem with VmWare Fusion 6. Running Windows 8.1 as a guest, the cursor was not visible. When I drag the mac cursor towards the Windows 8.1 window, it disappeared. If I pressed ctrl + cmd I found the location, but could not click on any icons within Windows 8.

This seams to be a problem for us VmWare customer since at least version 5. After reading forums I found this link and I did the following:

  1. Repaired the VmWare tools
  2. In the .VMX file added the following row: mks.noHostCursor = “TRUE”
  3. Upgraded to VMWare Fusion 6.0.5
  4. Put VmWare Fusion -> Preferences -> General -> Gaming set to “Never optimize mouse for gaming”.

Now it works from time to time. If i’m not interacting with the Windows environment for sometime the cursor is not visible anymore. Then I have to shut down the Windows VM and kill VmWare Fusion and start over.

I’m running Mac OS X 10.9.5 on a MacBook Pro 15″ i7 early 2011 and VmWare Fusion Version 6.0.5 (2209127).

 

Apple, OS X

Upgrade of Lion to Mountain Lion

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I finally decided to upgrade my Mac Mini from OS X 10.7 Lion to 10.8.2 Mountain Lion. I waited a service release and read the reviews. This is my first major update of a OS X system. Before this I only had minor upgrades.

It was easy to upgrade and it went well.

These where the few simple steps:

  1. First a bootable copy of my system disk was created with Carbon Copy Cloner.
  2. Downloaded the Moutain Lion installer from App Store. The price was 149 SEK.
  3. When the app with a picture of a big cat appeared, I made a copy of the 4.4 GB large installer file. Otherwise it would have been deleted after the installation was completed.
  4. Press continue and wait for a long long time.
  5. Done!
iOS, OS X, Windows 8

Taking screenshots in OS X, iOS and Windows

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Writing documentation, blogpost or other activities that requires taking screenshots is something I do a lot. Using several operating systems one sometimes forget how to do it. This little blog post is one of those “note to self”.

Mac OS X

Press Command + Shift + 4 for selecting part of the screen.

Press Command + Shift + 3 for fullscreen.

Press Command + Shift + 4 and hit spacebar for  screenshot of an open window.

Link to a tutorial with step by step instructions.

iOS

To take a screenshot with your iPhone, just press the home button and the sleep button. The camera click sound is heard and the screenshot is placed in the camera roll .

Windows 7 and 8

I use the built in app Snipping tool. It works great. Finding the Snipping tool in Windows 8 could be a little problematic.

 

Apple, OS X

Backup your OS X boot drive with CCC

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Yesterday I bought a license for Bombich Softwares Carbon Copy Cloner version 3.5.2. I wanted one to be able to make a bootable copy of my OS X boot disk, with OS X 10.7. The purchase went well, and got the license key in the mail.

I took an old 250 GB USB 2 drive and used Disk Utility to make a Mac OS Extended(journaled) partition. Important to select GUID Partition table, found by pressing the Options button.

A nice feature with CCC is that it can clone the Recovery HD volume found on OS X Lion and later. The Recovery HD offer a method of reinstalling OS X(Apple no longer distributes the installer on DVD). You can find more about the procedure on Bombichs site.

I’ve got a mid 2011 Mac mini with 500 GB disk but trying to keep it “clean”. About 140 GB of data took ages to copy.

Rebooting the mac and pressing the options button, I was presented with the which disk i want to boot from. I selected my small 250 GB TrekStore disk and continued with the booting. It humming for a some time before I could log on.

Mission accomplished. A Bootable backup of my main system drive was created.

I now have 3 ways I do backups.

  • Time machine
  • CCC backup to a virtual Windows box
  • CCC bootable backup.
OS X

Safari can’t connect but ping works

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This rather cryptical titel is one of my “note to self” post. Without the help from Google and people posting their trouble i would’nt find the solution to my OS X Lion 10.7.5 network trouble.

My problem was that i could’nt connect to internet with Safari or Google Chrome. With Networkutility i could do ping, netstat. RDP to my Windows 7 box worked. So what was the problem? I don’t know but, I followed the this thread and found the answer.

What I did was as follows:
Open: System Preferences>>Network

Marked the Wi-fi and removed it with the – sign and added it again with the + sign.

Simple but strange.

 

OS X

Extracting RAR on OS X

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What tool should i use for extracting rar files? That was a interesting question I was asking myself and Google. I like to google with google. Sometimes I google with Bing.

In the Windows world I used to use WinRAR but a few years back i switched to the very nice and competent program 7zip.

I have on my Mac a program called UNRAR. It worked and I think i’m going to use it for a while. I have not tried 7zip for Mac.

OS X

Remote Desktop Client for OS X Lion

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I’m a new Mac user since november 2011. I’m over all a very satisfied customer. Since i’m working with technology and development i have a Hyper-V server standing in my house, running a few virtual instances of Microsoft Windows 7 and Server 2008.

Making RDP connections with them using Microsofts own RDP client for OS X have been a poor experience. Profiles where lost and connections where disconnected frequently and by random.

I found the free open source client CoRD. It’s working nice with almost no errors.