Tag Archives: 10.7 Lion

tip : play some Plants vs Zombies on your Mac for free

Posted on by
Reply

Question :

I wanted to play the Plants vs Zombies game on my PowerPC (G4/G5) Mac, so I downloaded the demo from the PopCap-website. It installs okay, but when I try to play, nothing happens…

What can I do ?

Answer :

Even though the Plants vs Zombies game is compatible with MacOSX 10.4.11 “Tiger” and newer, it is only compatible with Intel-Macs… so you cannot play the demo, nor the full game on any PowerPC (G4/G5) Mac…

but…

even with a G4 & G5 PPC Macs running OSX 10.5 Leopard you can play the online version…

just use your web browser, and play online from PopCap’s official Plants vs Zombies website :

Plants vs Zombies Chrome (also runs in Safari 5) :

http://chrome.plantsvszombies.com/

fixed : 10.7.5 refusing to see the Atheros AR9280

Posted on by
Reply

I must admit the title might be a little misleading, since I have not had anyone claiming problems like the “WiFi: no hardware installed”-error with the Atheros AR9280 AirPort-card and MacOSX 10.7.5 yet, but still…

…that is probably due to the fact that the MacOSX 10.7.5 updater doesn’t overwrite the IO80211Family.kext system extension. So if you are upgrading from an earlier version of MacOSX 10.7 “Lion” which you had already ‘patched’ for use with the Atheros AR9280, you won’t get any (new) issues…

Anyway…

If you do get the “WiFi: no hardware installed”-error after upgrading to MacOSX 10.7.5 (e.g. from MacOSX 10.6 “Snow Leopard” or earlier), you can just do the same ‘patch’ of reinstalling the old IO80211Family.kext system extension. Instructions for doing so can be found here :

https://macmanusnl.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/1074_refuses_to_see_atheros_ar9280/

Enjoy !

Donate Button (all)

fixed : add sound to Screen Sharing

Posted on by
8

Question :

I am using OSX’s built-in Screen Sharing option to control the Mac in our living room, when I am in another room with my MacBook – it’s great !

But sometimes I would like to listen to a video or a music track that I’m playing on my ‘living room Mac’ and Screen Sharing doesn’t support that…

What can I do ?

 

Answer :

There’s a simple and FREE utility that will help you out on this one : Soundfly

Just download and install Soundfly on both Macs and then run “Soundfly” on the ‘sound sending Mac’, and “Soundfly Receiver” on the ‘listening Mac’… it’s that simple…

You can download Soundfly here :

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26855/soundfly

UPDATE : the latest version can be downloaded here :

http://www.abyssoft.com/software/soundfly/

 

Thanks to Graham Johnstone for this updated link 😉

fixed : iCloud Photo Stream from business iPhone to family Mac

Posted on by
4

Question :

My iPhone is a business device, so I want to sync my ‘business life’ including Contacts, Calendars, Mail, Documents & Data, etc to my MacBook Pro… but I want my upload/sync the photo’s I’ve made with this ‘business’ iPhone to our shared ‘family’ Mac which holds our family’s entire iPhoto-database. iCloud doesn’t seem to enable me to do so… what can I do ?

Answer :

Even though you can setup a secondary iCloud account on your iPhone, you cannot do what you would like to do, because :

1- Photostream is only supported for your primary iCloud account (*)

(*) UPDATE d.d. September 20th 2012: only when running iPhoto 9.4 or newer on OSX 10.8.2 or newer, you have the option to subscribe to a ‘Shared’ Photo Stream besides your primary iCloud account’s Photo Stream

If you want to this ‘Shared Photo Stream’ feature on an older, officially unsupported Intel-Mac, you could consider installing a patched version of OSX 10.8 – for more info, look here :

fixed : install OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion on unsupported Macs

 

2- Documents & Data syncing is only supported for your primary iCloud account

…so using iCloud you will never be able to make the logical split between Documents & Data sync (which is strictly ‘business’) and Photostream (which is mainly ‘family’)…

The only solution at this moment is to find an alternative to Photostream… and I’ve found (only) one : Eye-Fi does the trick !

And… Eye-Fi is free (free account, free iOS-app & free Mac-app ; by SanDisk)

download it here for OSX :

http://support.eye.fi/downloads/center/

and download the iOS-app here :

http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/eye-fi/id306011124?mt=8

the only thing you need to beware of is that the Eye-Fi App needs to be running/open on your iPhone/iPad and on your Mac both Eye-Fi Center and iPhoto need to be running/open…

…so it still feels a little more ‘manual’ than iCloud Photostream, since you need not forget to open the Eye-Fi App…

…but that’s a small price to pay, since you get 3 things that iCloud doesn’t give you :

– auto-transfer of your video recordings into iPhoto

– a free online gallery (like the one we lost when ‘upgrading’ from MobileMe to iCloud)

– separation of your ‘photostream’ from your primary iCloud-account

Note :

even though using DropBox might seem to be a valid alternative to iCloud’s Photostream also, since it does auto-upload of iPad/iPhone pictures to ‘the cloud’… it is not really useful in the end, as it does not provide auto-import into iPhoto…

info : are you ready for Mountain Lion ?

Posted on by
5

Apple is getting everything in place for the release of OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” due later this month.

The names of the Macs that will be able to run OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” have been published on the Apple website :

http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

From eldest to newest these Macs are :

– iMac “mid 2007” or newer (so any “Aluminum” iMac)

– MacBook Pro “mid/late 2007” or newer (so any MacBook Pro with an NVIDIA graphics card)

– Mac Pro “early 2008” or newer (so any Mac Pro with the Xeon 5400 “Harpertown” processors or newer)

– MacBook Air “late 2008” or newer (so any MacBook Air with Thunderbolt or MiniDisplayPort)

– MacBook “Aluminum” = “late 2008″ (so the 13” MacBook Pro look-alike)

– MacBook “White – early 2009” or newer (so only the ‘original’ white polycarbonate design versions that have an NVIDIA graphics card)

– Xserve “early 2009” (so only the latest generation with Xeon 5500 “Gainestown” processors)

– Mac mini “early 2009 & late 2009” (so only the original Mac mini design that have an NVIDIA graphics card)

– Mac mini “Aluminum” = “mid 2010” or newer (so any Mac mini of the extra flat redesign)

…that’s the bad news (for some  – those of us with older Macs…)

and the good news is :

you don’t need to have MacOSX 10.7 “Lion” installed to upgrade, you only need MacOSX 10.6 “Snow Leopard” with the “Mac App Store” application (since OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” is only available from the Mac App Store…)

info : setting up Back To My Mac through a TG712 modem-router

Posted on by
Reply

Question :

How do I setup my Thomson TG712 modem-router to allow me to use the the Back To My Mac function of my Macs ?

Answer :

Here’s how to turn on Back To My Mac when you have a TG712 modem-router :

– on your Mac, go to Apple —> System Preferences —> iCloud

– then put a check mark at “Back To My Mac” to turn the service on

– if there’s a “More…”-botton click it, just for your information ; if a warning is listed, read it, keep it in mind, and don’t bother…

– then open Safari (or any other internet browser) on your Mac, and type the web based control panel’s IP-address of your router-modem as the URL ; for the TG712 router- modem, the IP-address is 192.168.1.254

– in the web based control panel, go to “Toolbox” (in the menu on the left) –> “Games & Apps Sharing” (in the menu on the left)

– then in the middle of the page, at the bottom, from the “Choose a task…” list, click on “Add a game or application to a local networking device” (the first link in the list)

– in the page that opens, put check marks both at “Use UPnP:” and “Use extended security:”

– and set the “Game or App”-dial (the one that is initially at “ABC (Another Bittorent Client)”) to “Back To My Mac”

– set the “Device”-dial to your Mac (which is the Mac that you would like to use with Back To My Mac, so probably your Mac-server or desktop-Mac)

– just to be able to trace possible errors, put a check mark at “Logging”

– then click on the “Add”-button

– wait for the router-modem to restart

– logout by closing the browser-page with the web based control panel on it

Now you should be able to log into your (home) Mac, when being at a remote location (if there’s internet connection there…)

Donate Button (all)

tip : quickly switching your AirPort Guest Network ON or OFF from your iPhone, iPad or Mac

Posted on by
1

Question :

I have an AirPort Guest Network setup on my WiFi network, but most of the time I don’t need it… is there a way to temporarily switch it OFF ?

Answer :

Yes, you can do that quickly using the AirPort Utility app on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Here’s how to :

– make sure you have the AirPort Utility app installed (on your Mac it’s pre-installed), for your iPhone or iPad, you can download it here :

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/airport-utility/id427276530?mt=8

– open the AirPort Utility

– click on the picture of your AirPort Base Station (or Time Capsule)

– if you’re asked to type your password, type the password you’ve set on access of your AirPort Base Station hardware (note : that is something else than your WiFi / AirPort password)

– in the page (on your Mac it’s a popup window) that opens, click the EDIT-button

– on the page that opens in iOS, select your Guest Network and on the next page switch Guest Network OFF and click on DONE, then DONE again on the next page and UPDATE in the popup panel

– on your Mac you should select the “Wireless”-tab and uncheck the check mark in front of Guest Network and click UPDATE

– then wait for the AirPort Base Station (or Time Capsule) to restart, and then exit the AirPort Utility app

– Done !

To switch the Guest Network back on, just use the same procedure, but put the Guest Network to ON (in stead of OFF).