My MacOS X

After update up 10.6.2 I’ve noticed that my menu bar had all of it’s icons missing, including clock, istat, etc. Re-downloaded the update from Apple  is not helps…

The problem in spotlight fix – If you are disabled the spotlight icon by modifying the Search.bundle in /System/Library/CoreServices

Here  instructions how to fix it:

• Replace Search.bundle from your backup in  /System/Library/CoreServices ( click here to download a default version ).
  Note: Maybe you have to delete a current file and then copy a new one.

  Launch Activity Monitor and kill the SystemUIServer.
  

• MacOS 10.6.2 Menu Bar is working again
  

Apple today released Mac OS X 10.6.2, the second maintenance update for Snow Leopard, via Software Update. The update brings several bug fixes, reportedly including one for a serious issue involving Guest accounts that has caused some users to lose all data from their primary user accounts.

The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:

- an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
- a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites
- Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
- a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user
- issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers
- the reliability of menu extras
- an issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture
- an issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server
- Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing
- a problem adding images to contacts in Address Book
- an issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet
- Safari plug-in reliability
- general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
- an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3874.
For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

One of the oddities of my computer use style is that I don’t like to have my system go into screensaver or lock automatically very quickly. When I leave the keyboard, I like to be able to activate the screensaver/lock manually. Since I’m also not a fan of active screen corners, I want to be able to do so by keystroke.

Annoyingly, OS X doesn’t let me bind a key to activate the screensaver. There used to be a couple utilities that enabled this, but they haven’t been updated since 10.3.

The screensaver engine itself is an application, but we still need a convenient wayto activate it. Enter Quicksilver. Quicksilver’s Triggers let us bind Quicksilver actions (including, conveniently, opening Applications) to keypresses.

So, to create a key to activate your screensaver or lock your system with Quicksilver, follow these simple steps:

1. Create a Quicksilver trigger to open the screensaver engine. The engine is /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/
Versions/A/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app
   

   QuickSilver Trigger Window

2. Bring up the Trigger’s info pane.
3. Set a key shortcut for the trigger. The combination of options I’ve got selected mean that the trigger only goes off if I hold the keys down for three seconds, and Quicksilver brings up a display window to let me know that I’m activating a trigger. Very handy!  Mine’s set to cmd-alt-ctrl-L)



4.  Don’t forget go to Leopard -> System Preferences -> Security -> General. And check the “require password” checkbox.

You can reveal the location of a recently-used item by holding down the Command key while looking at the Apple menu’s Recent Items menu. With the Command key held down, the wording of the menu items (for Applications and Documents) changes from some item to Show “some item” in Finder.

source: osxdaily

The seed is said to contain dozens of minor bug fixes and performance improvements in these areas:

Address Book, AppleScript, AppleScriptObjC, ATS, ColorSync, Component Manager, Core Animation, Core Audio, Core Chinese Engine, Core Data, Core Graphics, Core Text, File Manager, Garbage Collection, Graphic drivers, Help Viewer, ImageKit, IOHIDFamily, Networking, NS Image, OpenCL, OpenGL, OSA, QT Kit, Speech Recognition, Sync Services, and Xtype.

The seed notes reportedly include a caution that there is a known issue with optical drives: that they may not be recognized and the eject key may not eject the media, and that DVD Player may hang. As a result, not all developers may choose to install this build.
Note: Mac OS X 10.6.1 was released September 10.

Quick Look has a hidden feature that is not enabled by default, and can only be enabled through Terminal. Essentially, when ‘X-Ray mode’ is turned on, Quick Looking a folder will show, in a way, the contents of the folder.

Instead of just seeing the regular folder icon in Quick Look, the folder icon will be semi-transparent, with previews of the folder’s contents visible in the Quick Look window, as seen in the image at right. What’s more, the preview images will rotate automatically, moving through each item in the folder (click the image to see a movie of the animation).

To turn this on, quit the Finder (using Activity Monitor, Terminal, etc.), then open Terminal and enter this command:

$ defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1

Relaunch the Finder, and enjoy the new folder X-Ray mode in Quick Look. If you ever want to disable it again, quit the Finder, then repeat the above Terminal command, but change the 1 to a 0.

Source: Macosxhints

If you want to quickly change your sound input device, simply Option-Click the Sound menu at the top of your screen to enable an alternate menu pulldown list of input devices.
This trick is much faster than launching into the System Preferences and adjusting from microphone to line-in audio source. As far as I know this is new to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

In Snow Leopard’s PDF Preview,

if you click Control – or Right-click on a PDF preview and change the display option (e.g. from Single Page Continuous to Two Pages), this setting does not stick between launches. The next time you open a PDF, Preview reverts back to the original display setting.

However, if you change the display setting from the menu (View » PDF Display) the setting does stick, and becomes the new default for viewing PDFs in Preview.

Run the following command in Terminal to see exactly how many of OS X’s extensions are 64-bit and how many are still 32-bit and shows ppc kexts as well.

file /System/Library/Extensions/*.kext/Contents/MacOS/* | perl -nle 'print $1 if /\((.*)\)/' | sort | uniq -c

Above  command will take a few seconds to run.

Comparison between 10.5.8 and 10.6.0.
10.5.8

109 for architecture i386
106 for architecture ppc
3 for architecture ppc7400


10.6.0

135 for architecture i386
38 for architecture ppc
127 for architecture x86_64


You can also look at “Extensions” in the “Software” section of the System Profiler utility. (Select Apple Menu->About This Mac and then click “More Info”). One of the columns shows whether the .kext is 64-bit capable. Only those extensions that are not 64-bit will show up with a “No” in that column.

Users who want to run the new 64-bit kernel on late-model Macs (pretty much anything released after early 2008) can do so by booting with the 6 and 4 keys held down. If you’re wondering whether your Mac has a 64-bit EFI firmware, you can type this command in Terminal:

# ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

The response will identify the machine as either having 32-bit or 64-bit EFI.

To boot 64-bit kernel every time you boot machine:

1. Print nvram settings

# sudo nvram -p

2. Set boot-args to use 64 bit kernel

# sudo nvram boot-args="arch=x86_64"

Don’t forget to add in your existing boot-args to the command above. Using nvram means you don’t need to have to remember to hold down 6 or 4 during booting each time. To go back to the 32 bit kernel, just set the boot-args using nvram without the arch=x86_64 option.

Apple released the first dot update of Snow Leopard on Thursday. The 75.1MB update fixes a few minor issues mostly related to the functionality of Mac OS. Here is a complete list of included fixes.

• Improves compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
• Addresses an issue in which some printer compatibility drivers might not appear properly in the Add Printer browser
• Addresses an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
• Addresses an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
• Resolves an issue in which the Command-Option-T keyboard shortcut would sometimes bring up the special characters menu in applications such as Mail and TextEdit
• Addresses instances in which auto account setup in Mail might not work
• Resolves issues when sending mail with certain SMTP servers
• Addresses an issue in which Motion 4 could become unresponsive
• Includes an update to Adobe Flash Player plug-in version 10.0.32.18

This update addresses an important security issue, the update to Flash Player 10.0.32.18. Snow Leopard had been recently criticized for shipping with and out-of-date and vulnerable version on Flash Player.