Posts Tagged ‘os x’

How to Treat Painfully Slow DNS Lookups in OS X

I’m not really sure what made this suddenly appear, but I’ve noticed over the past few days that my initial connections to websites have started taking longer and longer. Today, it became painful as the browser would say it was “Looking up example.com” for a good 3-4 seconds (if not longer) before loading the page. Once the lookup completed, the site usually came down pretty fast. Thanks to a (not so quick) Google search, I ran across this forum thread. It turns out, disabling IPv6 in OS X speeds things up quite a bit. To disable, go to System Preferences -> select the network interface you’re using (probably Airport) -> click Advanced.

Then, in the TCP/IP tab, change the drop down next to “Configure IPv6″ to “Off” instead of “Automatic”.

This worked for me. My browser and other various apps no longer take several seconds before loading pages on the web!

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Filed under How-Tos / Tips : Comments (0) : Apr 15th, 2010

The Difference Between an Apple and Microsoft Upgrade

Like a good little Apple fan, I went out and purchased a copy of the new Snow Leopard OS from my local Mac store yesterday. I got it home, popped open the box, popped the DVD into my MacBook, told it to upgrade and in 45 minutes or so I was playing with the new features of Snow Leopard. This really was my first operating system upgrade as an Apple fan and I have to say I was impressed. I was an Apple fan before the Leopard release, but I didn’t do an in-place upgrade for other reasons at the time.

Why is this cool or even worth noting? Because that was all I did. I didn’t look at some chart to see which copy of Snow Leopard was right for my computer. I didn’t have to double-check that I was running the 32-bit version instead of 64-bit. I didn’t run my computer and peripherals through some software to make sure they were compatible. All I cared about was that I had a MacBook running Leopard, so I purchased Snow Leopard and popped the DVD in the drive. And guess what? My computer now runs faster! In fact, I am now using something like 6 GB less disk space than before.

The other cool part was that I didn’t reinstall any software, nor did I re-activate anything. Unlike doing an upgrade with Microsoft software involved, I wasn’t treated like a pirate and required to jump through hoops to use my software again. I just loaded it again. The user experience from the store to upgrade complete was very smooth and straight-forward.

While it’s certainly true that the upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard was far less of a jump than Windows XP to Vista or even Vista to 7, but it really doesn’t matter. I had to put far less care into the upgrade and just did it. And that (among a few other things) is why I do, and will continue to do for the foreseeable future, recommend Apple products to those who ask me their opinion on what computer to buy.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (4) : Aug 29th, 2009

Five Reasons I Would Switch (Exclusively) to Linux

Yesterday I took a look at some of the applications that I’d miss if I decided to switch away from Mac OS X to using Linux exclusively. I felt that wasn’t quite fair as there are some really compelling reasons to switch to Linux and I really didn’t give it much chance (publicly that is). Here’s five reasons I do want to make the switch.

Aptitude
Good package management is absolutely critical on any OS that one is going to be developing or serving data off of. Sure, you can download and install packages as needed, but if those packages aren’t bundled up nicely (as often happens with open source software ported to OS X or Windows), installing those packages become a pain. Need to install an application with its dependencies? No problem! Just do an apt-get install (or use yum or yast, etc. pick your poison). Sure, there’s projects like Macports, but let’s face it, you can’t beat a good native package manager.

Usable OpenOffice.org
Yes, I know that OpenOffice.org runs on Mac OS X. However, every time I’ve seen it run on OS X it’s much slower than running it in Linux on slower hardware. Even using the NeoOffice product, it seems like it just isn’t as responsive or load nearly as fast as running OOo on Linux.

Gnome / KDE (i.e. choice)
One could argue that the Linux desktop managers offer too many options, but being able to theme (nicely, not like those lame underwater themes everyone ran on Windows 98) and tweak everything is definitely a bonus. One Linux box can look exactly the same or dramatically different than the next. The important thing is, it’s all up to the user. OS X looks beautiful, but freedom is worth something as well.

Hardware Freedom
I don’t violate the EULA by installing Linux on standard PC hardware. That’s a pretty compelling argument for Linux right there. I will agree that the Mac hardware is pretty dang slick and nice, but having the freedom to run my OS on the machine of my choice is a very important deciding factor in choosing which OS I will use. I also only have to mention virtualization and Apple loses out big-time there as it won’t allow OS X to be licensed to run in a virtualized environment (except for the server).

Native X11
I know that you can run X11-based applications on OS X, but what a pain in the butt. They’re slow to start, the keyboard options change and the window management is terrible. Seriously, run GIMP on a Mac and then use it on Linux. You won’t go back.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jul 31st, 2009

Five Apps That Are Keeping Me On OS X

I’ve been a Linux and OS X user for some time. Recently I’ve considered switching exclusively to Linux (Ubuntu specifically), but there’s a few applications that I need that are going to prevent me from doing so. If you’re a Mac user, be sure to check these applications out if you haven’t used them before as I find them invaluable.

Spotlight
Yes, I know that there are other multi-purpose search tools for Linux that have much more functionality, but none seem to be as fast or slick. Spotlight also integrates into other applications on my machine making it easy to search for applications, text in a document, text in an email, or even my web history very quickly and from one place.

Evernote
You can access Evernote in the browser, but it’s just not the same. The client in OS X does a great job of integrating with the iSight and
no matter how good the web app has gotten, it still can’t beat the thick client for speed and usability. The thick client also integrates with Spotlight (see above :) ) which adds an even better experience with both applications.

1Password
I’d hate to see what would happen if I tried to survive without 1Password. Just having my saved logins accessible to multiple browsers is enough to make it worth buying this little app. If you’re using an iPhone or iPod Touch the deal gets even sweeter with syncing to your device as well, but I don’t have that luxury.

iChat
On the surface it’s just a Jabber client, but iChat goes beyond that to offer a slick screen and file sharing capability that is second to none. Sure, there’s other products out there that work ok, but none seem to be nearly as easy or convenient.

iPhoto
When it comes to photo management for consumers, iPhoto can’t be beaten. The application looks great and has the features you’d expect from any photo management software. It can manage events, albums, etc.. However, the integration with other applications in the iLife suite as well as a few new features in iPhoto make it unbeatable. With iPhoto 09, Apple introduced its face recognition technology to allow you to search through photos for pictures of an individual person. It also allows direct uploads to Facebook and Flickr, making it much easier to publish photos online for free.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jul 30th, 2009

Native Zimbra Syncing to OS X Snow Leopard, But Not The Way We All Thought

One of the biggest features that Apple is touting of the new version of OS X is native Exchange integration. Native Exchange integration is a great feature for Apple since not even Windows offers it. Being a Zimbra fan, I was hoping that Snow Leopard had implemented this via ActiveSync rather than Exchange’s Web Services. It turns out that this is not the case, but it looks like we may still get native syncing just not the way we all thought.

According to a Zimbra forum thread, this will likely happen via CardDAV and CalDAV. Zimbra has CardDAV support slated for version 6.01 which is supposedly scheduled around the same time as Snow Leopard. One of the new, not-so-hyped features of Snow Leopard is the use of CardDAV for Address Book Server along with (of course) support for CardDAV on the client side. OS X as well as Zimbra have supported CalDav for some time so calendar syncing. While it’s not quite as simple as we would have liked, it appears we’re still getting the native syncing that we were hoping for, just not the way that seemed obvious from the beginning.

Update: As @thebitnix points out, it’s not a bad thing that native sync with Zimbra isn’t happening via the Exchange protocols. It was just unexpected that it would happen via different methods.

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Filed under News : Comments (1) : Jun 19th, 2009

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