Barkings! | The Small Dog Apple Blog

I received of my least favorite types of emails yesterday. One of our customers purchased an upgrade to Snow Leopard for his Intel-based Mac running 10.5. He spent some time discussing his current setup with the sales associate in our store and it sounded like the upgrade was appropriate. Unfortunately, after installing Snow Leopard, the customer realized that his copy of Tech Tools does not work with 10.6, and his copy of CS2 asked him to reinstall.

The answer? Well, there are plenty of alternatives to Tech Tools, including the opportunity to download a newer version right from Apple’s website. However, while CS2 may run in 10.6, it’s known to be a bit buggy and Adobe does not have public plans to upgrade it any time soon since they’re up to CS4 at this point. This news did not make my customer happy.

Since there is a wide range of computer users and not everyone is tech-savvy, we try to stay informed on compatibility issues and we try to ask our customers the right questions before selling them new software and upgrades. Unfortunately, we’re not perfect (but man, do we try to be!). There are some important steps that even the most technophobic can take to try to ensure a smooth upgrade process.

First off, know what you have! The idea of “tech specs” or “system requirements” often makes people shudder, but it’s really just about comparing apples to apples. Start by knowing about your computer. Go to the Apple logo on the top left of the screen and select “About This Mac”. This will bring up some very useful information right off the bat. Under “Mac OS X” a version number is displayed (i.e. 10.6.2). This version is your operating system. Next, you’ll see the processor speed (i.e. 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo); this lets your know what type of processor you have and how fast it is. Below that is “Memory”, aka RAM (i.e. 8GB 1067 Mhz DDR3); this lets you know how much RAM is installed on your computer and what type of RAM it is. So, we already have three pieces that are vital to know about before upgrading or buying new software: Operating System, Processor and RAM.

Now, click the “More Info…” button. This opens System Profiler, which gives you more than you will ever need to know about your Mac. Let’s look at the really important parts. On the left-hand column, under “Hardware”, click on “Memory”. This shows the breakdown of your individual pieces of RAM. On my MacBook Pro, for example, I have two slots with 4GBs each. If you see that a bank is empty, that’s a good way to know that you have an opportunity to upgrade the RAM.

If you have an Intel-based Mac and head to “Serial-ATA”, this will display information about your hard drive and optical drive. On a PowerPC laptop or older desktop the hard drive can be found under “ATA”. For the hard drive, you can find out the capacity of the drive, how much space is used and how much is available; the latter is very important when purchasing new software. If you’re looking to purchase a computer game or graphics intensive application, it’s also important to check “Graphics” to see what video card you have (i.e. NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT). Take some time to play around in System Profiler to see the many other bits of information you can glean about your computer.

The last step is to consider the applications you use. Click on your Finder icon in the Dock (the smiling blue face) and that will open a Finder window. Now, click on Applications and take some time to scroll through your applications and make a list of the applications that are really important to you. Right-click and select “Get Info” on the important applications and make sure you also write down what version number they are.

Now that you know your operating system, RAM, processor speed, video card, hard drive space and a list of important applications, you’re ready to check your compatibility options. First off, go to the webpage for the software that you want to purchase. For example, if I want to purchase Snow Leopard I would go to the Snow Leopard upgrade page on our website. or to Apple’s webpages with spec info. Now look for “tech specs” or “system requirements”. In this section, you should find requirements for operating system, RAM, processor, hard drive space and potentially, video card. Depending on what type of software it is, there may be additional requirements as well. Now take that list and match it to the list you made of your computer’s specs; does your computer meet or exceed the specifications? Great!

It should be noted that if you’re looking at old software (for example, a piece of software that says it’s compatible with 10.3.9 or later), you might still want to check if it will actually run in the much newer operating system that you most likely have. If you cannot find this on the manufacturer’s website, Google is your friend!

If you are looking to upgrade the operating system, the last step is to now look at your list of important applications. Go to the websites for each of those applications and make sure that they’re compatible with the operating system you’re looking to upgrade to. I always suggest getting this information directly from the manufacturer/developer so you can see the clearest picture: either it’s certified to work or it isn’t.

Once you do start Googling, you’ll most likely end up with a grey-er answer and that’s when you really have to weigh your options; is it worth the risk or not? In the example I used with the customer above, he’s a photographer and CS2 is vital for his business. CS2 is unsupported by Adobe in 10.6, but, as Google will tell you, it does technically run—but it’s also technically buggy. For this photographer, “buggy” is not an acceptable potential outcome, but for an average consumer or hobbyist it might be.

Hopefully, this article has helped demystify the idea of compatibility and system requirements. I hope you all feel empowered to learn more about the specifications of your system. We’re also always here if you need advice and it’s incredibly helpful if you are able to bring us specific information about your system and the applications you use. We can help you make an informed decision as to what software and upgrade options are right for you!Know Before You Upgrade

One of the things that makes the Mac OS intuitive is Apple’s use of universal symbols. Apple also extends these symbols to most of their software titles, creating a cohesive environment. The most common examples are Apple’s use of ‘+’ and ‘-’ symbols for adding and deleting, magnifying glass icon for searching and the gear icon for changes or additional options.

While the use of these universal symbols adds to the usability of the OS, they are sometimes overlooked. The symbol that I find is most commonly overlooked is the magnification slider found in Finder and in iPhoto. Just yesterday a customer emailed support with a screenshot of iPhoto. It appeared that he was looking at single large image, and he was writing because he couldn’t get himself into “thumbnail view” despite having clicked on ‘Photos’. I immediately looked at the lower right of the screenshot and saw that his magnification slider was slid all the way to the right, which is the highest magnification. He was in thumbnail view; his thumbnails had just been blown up to the full window size. By dragging the slider back towards the left, he was able to view the pictures in a more traditional thumbnail size.

This slider can come in pretty handy, though! Not only is it nice to temporarily blow thumbnails up to a more viewable size, or scale them down to a mini-size if you have a ton of photos and want to scroll through them quickly, but it can also easily be used in Finder when viewing a Finder window in icon view.

Try it out! Open a new Finder window by clicking on the smiling blue Mac-face in your dock (or, if you love menus, you can go to the Finder and to File > New Finder Window). Now navigate to a folder with many documents or pictures in it; it’s much more fun with pictures! Get yourself into icon view by selecting the icon that looks like four squares on the top left of the Finder window. You should now see the slider on the bottom right and you can play around by dragging the slider to the left and right and watch your icons grow and shrink.

Being able to resize photos and documents on the fly makes it even easier to find the item you want quickly. If you’re rocking Leopard or Snow Leopard, check out the Quicklook feature (select a document or picture in Finder and press the space bar) which helps fine-tune the process even further. Play around with it and have fun!

Being one of the few people left in America without a DVR, I’ve had my eye on an EyeTV for quite a while now but have not had a hands-on experience with one. Last week, one of our buyers came to me with an open-box EyeTV Hybrid to try out; I jumped at the chance! Now, I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest television fan. Along with not having a DVR, I also don’t own an HDTV. Luckily, the EyeTV Hybrid works just fine in Standard Definition so keep in mind while reading this article that no testing was done of the HD functions of the product.

As soon as I got home I plugged the EyeTV Hybrid into the back of my Mac Mini Server, which I use as a media center. I realized there were several ways to hook up EyeTV to my television and cable. The EyeTV Hybrid comes with a coax jack built right in for use with cable or an antenna. It also comes with an optional “video cable” to attach to an alternate video source. My Mac Mini is already connected to my television with S-Video and an optical audio cable, so all I needed to hook up was the cable line. However, I was already running into some confusion and the vague directions were of no help. I have digital cable that routes through a cable box and to my television. It seemed that the most logical thing to do would be to unplug the cable to my television and plug it into the EyeTV; thinking that I needed my programmed Digital Cable box to get access to all of the channels.

I fired up the software and after install was immediately told that my software was out of date and I needed to upgrade; this is not unusual. Often times when one tries to install software from the disk that came with the product that disk is actually out of date. So, I downloaded. Two more downloads and a driver update later and finally my software was ready to use…or so I thought. In going through the setup assistant I was told the EyeTV had to scan for channels. This reminded me of setting up an old TV for the first time. It took over thirty minutes for the EyeTV to scan and once it was through I was told I only had three channels. Sure enough, since I had routed through the cable box, the only real channel that displayed was the one for the box itself. That meant that I could still control the channel by using my cable remote, but I couldn’t see the program list on EyeTV or tell it what to record. It was basically defeating the whole point of the EyeTV.

Then I wised up, plugged the cable line from the wall directly into the EyeTV, waited the thirty minutes for the channels to refresh and, voila, I finally had a program list and was able to control the EyeTV via my computer. The next step was getting the EyeTV remote working. To my chagrin, I found that the remote works with an IR receiver directly on the EyeTV. I have to say, that is a poor design considering the EyeTV is made in the form of a USB stick and is intended to plug in to the back of a computer. IR requires line-of-site so the remote was completely unresponsive until I used the included USB extension cable and propped the EyeTV Hybrid above my Mac Mini (creating an eye-sore in the process). Now I could at least get the remote working, about two thirds of the time. Let’s talk about this “remote” for a moment. This is potentially the cheapest looking and feeling remote I’ve ever seen. Aside from the giant letters reminding me it was “Made in China”, there wasn’t much of a description to it. Several of the buttons are not labeled in any real recognizable fashion. There’s no included manual (either physically with the EyeTV or within the program itself) to explain what the functions of the non-labeled buttons are and for the most part many of the buttons just plain don’t seem to do anything. The remote is also so intermittently responsive, that I ended up jamming buttons in frustration and occasionally yelling at my computer like a nut-job.

Aside from the cons, the EyeTV does the minimum that I asked for. It recorded the programs that I told it to and it allowed me to watch television through my computer. The program guide is fairly cohesive with a decent interface. I was disappointed that it was unable to record two programs at once. I also noticed that if I was watching a program that I was also recording it would occasionally hiccup; like watching a streaming video online without enough of a buffer. Overall, though, the quality was about the same that I get through my cable box.

I think this would be a great product for someone who does not have a television and is looking for an affordable DVR solution or just wants to watch TV on their Mac. The remote issues and setup time aside, the product performed consistently and it’s low-profile is convenient. I’d be curious to hear from those using the HD functions of the EyeTV Hybrid. Have you had a positive, negative or neutral experience with the EyeTV? Shoot me a line, I’d be curious to hear about it!

Two weeks ago, one of our long-term customers returned a late 2008 Xserve to us stating it was not recognizing PCI cards in either slot. I jumped at the chance to take a look at it since we don’t see many broken Xserves coming back in. Xserves are traditionally easy machines to work on. Many of the components are user-installable and the whole thing can be stripped down in about five minutes.

Thinking that I was either going to find a failed PCI slot or Main Logic Board (more likely since both slots supposedly were non-functional), I grabbed a PCI card for testing and powered on the Xserve; it booted to a Kernel Panic while loading the kernel (the part of the boot process where the grey Apple logo is on screen). This was not what I was anticipating. Still going along the lines of a potential issue with the PCI slots, I removed both PCI cards and reboot the machine; Kernel Panic (KP). Ok, time to go back to basic troubleshooting.

First I attempted to boot to the 10.5 Server Install DVD, it KP’d to that as well as an external hard drive with a known good boot volume. Then, I swapped the RAM, which yielded no change. I then manually ran the EFI Firmware Update for that Xserve, but it wouldn’t accept it. Traditionally, with desktop Macs and Xserves if the machine is experiencing Kernel Panics while loading the kernel and both operating system and RAM have been ruled out the issue is with the processor. Luckily, we had an identical Xserve in the shop that I was able to borrow some parts from. I swapped out the processor, but still no change. I was able to then successfully run Apple’s Service Diagnostics in EFI, which told me everything passed. Logically speaking, the issue should be a Main Logic Board at this point, so I ordered one up and let it go for the day.

The next day, Jon, another great SDE tech, installed the replacement logic board and to his chagrin he was greeted with a lovely Kernel Panic on boot. Ugh. He let it sit and the next day I was back in the office and I started scouring the service manual for tips. All status lights were displaying their normal state, with the exception of the System Identifier Light which blinked to let me know that I had the top cover removed. Next step, minimal system! I disconnected everything except for MLB, processor/heat sink, power supply and distribution board, RAM, fan array and video card. I attempted to boot to my known-good external hard drive and still received a KP in return. For my next trick, I replaced all of the minimal system components with the parts from the identical Xserve that we had with the exception of the replacement logic board and processor; still nada!

Just to be thorough (read: stubborn), I then proceeded to replace every component aside from the replacement logic board with the parts from the identical Xserve. My thought was to then work backwards eliminating one component at a time until I found the piece of hardware that was causing the issue. I never got that far. Even with all of the good components in place the same issue still occurred. At this point it was just about comical, and from being in situations like this before I felt it had to be something really simple that I was missing; but what?!

I called in two other techs and talked them through my process. We all stared at the machine for a bit and scratched our heads, but no ideas were generated. Then, an even more bizarre issue occurred. The external hard drive that I was using for testing has three partitions; two 10.5 and one 10.4 boot. During one last attempt at booting the machine the power button was pressed, but none of us bothered holding down the option key to get to the EFI boot manager. I turned around and realized the machine had successfully boot to the 10.4 partition and was functioning. This should not be possible; a late 2008 Xserve should not be able to boot into Tiger! At least from here I was able to verify that the firmware was up to date, but now I was even more confused.

It was time to call in the big guns. Feeling a little defeated, I picked up the phone and dialed Apple Enterprise Support; Apple’s tech line for help with servers and enterprise software. I explained my process and issue to the tech, who also seemed stumped. I’ll admit that my first call wasn’t terribly productive. The tech seemed to have trouble following my triage process and he ended up telling me to reinstall 10.5 Server on the internal hard drive and/or to try the firmware update again. Despite knowing neither should resolve the issue, I did them and then called back when that didn’t work. The second time I called I got a tech who seemed really interested in the case. He ended up putting me on hold while he “asked the room” for advice. The one unanimous answer was that Tiger should not boot on that model Xserve and they suggested that I order yet another logic board, thinking the one I had received was defective.

Ok, one day of waiting for another board. It arrived, and I did the replacement this time. I was not surprised at all when I had yet another Kernel Panic staring back at me on boot. At this point I had the broken Xserve right across from the known-good Xserve that I was using as a parts-donor and after stepping back for a moment, I saw the problem. At first, I didn’t believe it. Even while I was then “fixing” the broken Xserve I was grumbling about how stupid it was. When I boot the Xserve and it happily booted to its internal hard drive without a hitch, I was relieved, annoyed and a little embarrassed all at the same time. So, what did I notice?

Well, there are two slots for the processor; since they can be configured with one or two processors. The good Xserve properly had the processor in CPU A. The defective Xserve had the processor in CPU B. Of course it was panicking on boot! I suppose the only silver lining is it is interesting to know that a late 2008 Xserve is able to boot into Tiger if its processor is in the wrong slot, but I can’t say that’s very useful information. After speaking with the customer, it was confirmed that they had a tech there who had upgraded the Xserve himself to two processors and he accidentally removed the wrong one before shipping the machine back to us. Since it’s incredibly uncommon for a customer to rearrange the processor configuration it hadn’t dawned on me (or the three other techs looking over my shoulder) that the processor was in the wrong place.

The good news is that the original issue—the two non-working PCI-slots—was resolved by replacing the logic board. The machine is once again a happy, functioning Xserve and I have been re-taught the lesson that if a problem seems that convoluted there’s probably a simple solution that’s being overlooked.

Tags: mac, repair, xserve

For all the wonders of the iLife suite, occasionally I run into bizarre quirks that don’t seem to have any easy solutions. This week, the newest quirk I discovered was in iWeb. Now, I have to say that I love iWeb. I know it bugs the heck out of some people that it’s impossible to directly edit the html, so it’s not nearly as robust as most site-creating applications, but it has some really amazing user-friendly features that have really gotten me hooked.

For example, I needed a quick, clean, professional site for my home business and iWeb helped me create and maintain it in just a few hours. While I still get the itch to fire up BBEdit and get my hands dirty in the code, it’s really not necessary for my needs.

Something that is necessary, however, is being able to edit my site on multiple computers or to access the files for my site if I somehow lose my local copy. This was the issue I ran into this week when one of my clients called up our support line to say that he needed to “re-download” his iWeb-site from his iDisk. His hard drive crashed, and, due to some extenuating circumstances, he also lost the backup he had on his Time Machine.

However, he’s a MobileMe member and the latest edits to his site had been uploaded to his iDisk, so he, logically, assumed that he could just import the site from his iDisk back into his iWeb program. Wrong!

After doing a little research, I found that there is no way to reimport an iWeb-made website into iWeb. Just for reference, the iWeb files are kept in your user folder in Library/Application Support/iWeb. In there you’ll find a Domain file that is a package created by the iWeb program.

At first I was hoping that I could just take the site folder from MobileMe and create a package with those contents, but if you actually view the package contents of an iWeb domain (select Domain -> Right Click -> Show Package Contents) you’ll see that it’s not laid out like a site folder at all. Frustration!!

What’s the solution? Well, make multiple backups of that iWeb domain file (see this Apple Support article for more details). If you’re a MobileMe member you might want to consider manually backing up the iWeb Domain file to your iDisk so even if your computer and external hard drive fail there’s another copy of your Domain off in cyber-space that you can easily re-download.

Also, if you feel like editing your site on multiple computers just be sure to transfer that Domain file to the Application Support folder of the user account on your other machine. Launch iWeb and it’s all gravy from there. For now, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that some swanky Apple-programmer out in Cupertino finds a way to make importing a site into iWeb just as easy as exporting one.