Tag Archives: 10.8 Mountain Lion

fixed : use unsupported scanner in OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion

Posted on by
111

UPDATE : a list of supported scanners for OSX 10.9 Mavericks can be found here

UPDATE : Mattias Ellert has now updated the TWAIN SANE drivers, so there is a new version for OSX 10.9 Mavericks (and OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion), more on this can be found here

———————————

Question :

I have a Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 that used to work perfectly in MacOSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. But now I’ve bought a new Mac which runs OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion, I can’t seem to install it, since Canon doesn’t update the drivers anymore.

What can I do ?

Answer :

In OSX 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion any TWAIN-supporting scanner can be used without any additional software :

– connect your scanner directly to your Mac using a USB-cable

– open the System Preferences

– then click on “Print & Scan”

– then, just below in the list of printers on the left, click on the “+”-sign

– that will bring up the “Add”-window, which enables you to add a new printer or scanner

– if your scanner is TWAIN-supporting, it will show up there, and you just need to select it and click on the “Add”-button

– then it will be listed in the previous (“Print & Scan”) System Preferences window, and if you select it (and you put a piece of paper or a photo in the scanner), a Scanning Preview window will show up, allowing you to scan your document to file or eMail or something else…

but…

…some for some printers, like the Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 and LiDE 30, the TWAIN-drivers are not included in OSX. In that case, you will need to install some generic (FREE) TWAIN-drivers :

– for OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion, download and install these files (in this same order) and restart your Mac after doing so, then your scanner will also show up in the “Print & Scan” System Preferences :

libusb.pkg.tar.gz

sane-backends.pkg.tar.gz

SANE-Preference-Pane.pkg.tar.gz

TWAIN-SANE-Interface.pkg.tar.gz

– for MacOSX 10.7 Lion, download and install these files (in this same order) and restart your Mac after doing so, then your scanner will also show up in the “Print & Scan” System Preferences :

libusb.pkg.tar.gz

sane-backends.pkg.tar.gz

SANE-Preference-Pane.pkg.tar.gz

TWAIN-SANE-Interface.pkg.tar.gz

– if these files do not turn into regular .pkg-files when you click on them, you need unTAR-software like this :

The Unarchiver

– if you get an error-message telling you you can’t install this software (these drivers) since the are not from Apple-appoved developers, you need to :

– open the System Preferences

– then click on “Security & Privacy”

– then make sure the “General”-tab is selected

– click the padlock in the lower left corner and provide an Administrator name & password to unlock the padlock

– then at “Allow applications downloaded from:” select “Anywhere”

– and exit the System Preferences to make this setting stick

Note #1 :

TWAIN-supporting drivers (like SANE and the ones that come with OSX) will enable you to directly scan from within various applications like Photoshop, MS Word, GraphicConverter, OmniPage and OSX’s built-in Image Capture.

Note #2 :

when using the SANE drivers, you will probably not be able to use the ‘one click’-buttons that are on the scanner itself…

Note #3 :

if your scanner lets you scan the first time, but after shut-down and restart scanning seems impossible because OSX can’t find the scanner, just plug-out the scanner’s USB-cable and plug it back in and everything should work again…

Note #4 :

if the “Scan”-button remains grayed-out, make sure that you have selected an area to scan… (put differently : if “Selection:” is set to “Off”, you will need to select an area to scan before the “Scan”-button will be ready to use…)

Note #5 :

if you get a distorted scan when scanning in landscape view (or any other rotated view), just scan normally in portrait view and rotate the scanned image afterwards (in Preview app or another image editing program, like Photoshop or Graphic Converter)

Note #6 :

if you are not able to scan as a JPEG (.jpg-flie), just scan as a TIFF (.tif-file) and convert the scanned image afterwards (in Preview app or another image editing program, like Photoshop or Graphic Converter)

Credits :

Matias Ellert and the Open Source developers of the SANE project

Donate Button (all)

fixed : setup a LaCie Wireless Space WiFi-drive as a TimeCapsule alternative

Posted on by
Reply

Question :

I wanted to get wireless backup for my Mac using Time Machine, but since I’m on a rather tight budget, I searched for an alternative for the TimeCapsule…

I bought the LaCie Wireless Space, which is advertised as ‘wireless backup’ and ‘Time Machine compatible’ on the box, and the salesman even called it ‘a good Time Capsule alternative’…

…since it is advertised as such, I was hoping that the setup would be as ‘plug and play’ as the TimeCapsule, but even after a few tries, I’ve still not managed to get it working…

What should I do ?

Answer :

It’s true that the LaCie Wireless Space can be used as an alternative to the TimeCapsule (but for ease-of-use I would still prefer Apple’s own TimeCapsule, and the price difference is not that extreme as it used to be).

But setting it up can be quite a hassle, especially if you don’t get it right the first time.

The most straight-forward use would be to have the LaCie Wireless Space connected to your Internet-modem/WiFi-router using an Ethernet-cable. To get that setup (in the end), you need to first instruct the controller-software that’s on the LaCie to enable this. Here’s how to :

1- download the Wireless Space Setup software from the LaCie website :

http://www.lacie.com/us/support/drivers/driver.htm?id=10207

2- disconnect your Mac from the internet (both Ethernet and WiFi/AirPort) and quit all applications that use internet-connection (so quitting all other applications is a good thing to do)

3- plug the LaCie Wireless into the wall-power, and push the power-button to switch it on (the light at the front will turn on to indicate that the LaCie is on, during the setup-process the color may vary from blue to green to read (and back))

4- then copy the Wireless Space Setup software to your Applications folder and run it

5- in the screen that opens, select your Language, and click “Continue” in the next screen

6- on the following screen, select “Enable Wi-Fi” and click “Continue”

7- on the next screen, select “NAS Extender Wi-Fi” and click “Continue” (note that the naming and additional texts on this page are very confusing to most, but the pictures will shed some light on their meanings)

8- connect one of the LAN-ports (so NOT the internet-port) on the LaCie Wireless Space to your Mac using an Ethernet/UTP/LAN-cable (note that the orange light next to the ethernet connector will light up)

9- then click “Continue” in the Wireless Space Setup software, and wait for the LaCie Wireless Space to be found and listed

10- the click “Continue” again

11- on the next screen you will be asked for the info of your existing WiFi/AirPort-network, so type your Network’s Name, select WPA2 (the default Security Protocol for current WiFi/AirPort-networks ; if you have a very old WiFi/AirPort-network you might have to choose WEP or WPA, but those are not recommended), and type and re-typeyour WiFi/AirPort-password

12- then click “Commit” and wait for the LaCie Wireless Space to restart (the front-light will turn blue when ready)

13- now disconnect the Ethernet/UTP/LAN-cable from your Mac, and connect it to one of the regular LAN-ports on your internet-modem/WiFi-router (to do so, you will probably have to unplug the LaCie from power, move it toward your modem/router and reconnect and switch it on again there)

14- then reconnect your Mac to the internet (by reconnecting to the WiFi/AiPort-network, or by plugging the network-cable (an Ethernet/UTP/LAN-cable also) back into your Mac)

15- now, on your Mac, open a Finder-window and see if the LaCie Wireless Space is listed there (in the bottom right corner, under the “Devices” chapter) ; you will probably see it listed twice : once as “LaCie Wireless Space (My Space)” and once as “LaCie Wireless Space (Open Space)”

16- then, open the Time Machine application on your Mac

17- click the “Select Disk” button, and in the list select “LaCie Wireless Space (My Space)”

18- then switch the slider on the left to ON

…and go get yourself a drink, a meal, or a good night’s sleep until your first TimeMachine backup is being done

(note that the first TimeMachine backup might take hours to complete… that is normal…)

That’s it 😉

Donate Button (MacManusNL)

FYI : the manual for the LaCie Wireless Space NAS / WiFi-drive can be found here :

http://www.manualowl.com/m/Lacie/Wireless-Space/Manual/

fixed : FREE application for cloning a Mac HD

Posted on by
Reply

Question :

I need to make an exact (bootable) copy of my secondary Mac’s startup-HD. Someone suggested me to use an application called Carbon Copy Cloner, but since I am running OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion on my primary Mac, I would need to use Carbon Copy Cloner version 3.5 or newer, but that’s not free software any longer…

As I only need to do this once, I’m not willing to pay more than €5 to be able to do so. What’s the best alternative ?

Answer :

The best alternative for making a bootable clone version of a Mac startup-HD is what you already have : Disk Utility …and best of all : it’s completely FREE.

Here’s how to do so :

– connect both HDs to your Mac (using USB or FireWire for example)

– on your Mac, open the Disk Utilities application (which can be found inside the folder called Utilities which is in the Applications folder)

– you will now see both HDs appear on the left side of the Disk Utility window (they will be listed as the disk size followed by the manufacturer name and some additional info, directly below them the name of the partitions on it are listed – on Macs there’s normally only one partition per HD)

– on the rest of the page (middle & right), you will see 5 chapter buttons : “First Aid”, “Erase”, “Partition”, “RAID” and “Restore”

– click on the “Restore”-chapter button

– now put the cursor in the white area behind “Source:” and then click on the partition you want to copy in the menu on the left

– then put the cursor in the white area behind “Destination:” and in the menu on the left, click on the HD (or on the partition) you want to copy to (or drag & drop it from there onto the

– if for some reason your chosen Source or Destination now lists something else than what you would like, just try again

– then click on the “Restore” button that’s bottom right

– …now all you have to do is wait (using USB 2.0, about 10GB of used disk space will be cloned in about 10 minutes)

– when the cloning is finished, both HD’s will have the same name, and therefore might not properly mount at the same time, so only one will be visible on your Desktop

– use the ‘drag disk to Trash’ procedure (or the eject-icon next to the HD’s listing), and unmount both HDs

– then plug just one HD back in to make it visible on your Desktop, and check if the cloning went okay (by browsing though it in the Finder)

– then eject the first HD, and check the second HD the same way

– that’s it !

Donate Button (MacManusNL)

Note :

You can quickly check if the HD you’ve cloned is bootable, by connecting it to your Mac using a USB cable and then restarting your Mac with the ALT-key pressed

…that will enable you to choose any connected HD as the startup drive

if the cloned HD turns out not to be bootable, plug it into your Mac again, and use Disk Utility to check if the Partition Map Scheme is ‘GUID’ (it should not be ‘Apple’ !), if it’s not, re-partition the HD and do the cloning process again

fixed : select photos of only one camera in iPhoto

Posted on by
Reply

Question :

I have imported various new photos from my digital camera into iPhoto some days ago. Today I found out that I had forgotten to adjust the daylight savings time on the camera. I would now like to select the photos of this particular camera only, and adjust the time stamp (a.k.a. EFIX data). But there’s no option to do so in iPhoto…

How do I do that ?

Answer :

Even though there’s no option in iPhoto to select photos based on included info about the camera that took them (a.k.a. based on “Camera Data”), it’s not too hard to do so anyway by creating a Smart Album.

– in iPhoto, go to “File” in the top menu bar, then select “New Smart Album” from the pulldown menu

– in the drop down panel that appears, start by typing a name for the new Smart Album (e.g. “Camera X photos”)

– then set the following using the three multiplechoice-buttons “Camera Model” “is” “[your camera X model]”

– if you want to only filter out photos that were made after a certain date, you should set another rule to do so

– then click on the “OK”-button

– an album folder icon accompanied by a gear-wheel (a.k.a. “sprocket”) will now appear on the left menu, click on it to open it

– then select one of the photos in that folder and press [CMD]+[A] to select all photos in that folder

– then go to “Photos” in the top menu bar, and select “Adjust Date And Time” from the pulldown-menu

– in the drop down panel that appears, type the time that you want to change the first photo’s time to in the field behind “Adjusted:” ; the exact same time change that you set here for the first photo will be implemented to all selected photos

– I would suggest putting a checkmark in front of “Modify original files”, but this is not essential

– then click on the “Adjust”-button

– to clean up, right-click (or CTRL-click) on the Smart Album folder in the left menu and select “Delete Album” from the popup list [this will delete the Smart Album, but the individual photos will remain in their original location]

– that’s it…

tip : easily make FREE screen recordings in MacOSX

Posted on by
Reply

“Screen Recording” means making a video of your screen (i.e. your MacOSX Desktop) while you are using it.

This is a way to make tutorial video’s which you can use to send or give to others, just like the ones you find on YouTube.

(…or you can use this to record online video’s that you can not download)

“Screen Recording” used to be something that would require rather expensive software, but with the introduction of QuickTime X Player in OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard, it’s a simple and completely FREE feature included in MacOSX !

Here’s how to :

– open the “QuickTime Player” application (or maybe it’s called “QuickTime X Player” in your case)

– go to “File” and select “New Screen Recording” from the pulldown menu – or use the key-combo [SHIFT]+[CMD]+[N]

– in the small (shaded) screen that appears, you will see a record-button (with a red dot) in the middle and a grey triangle button on the right

– click on the grey triangle button and you can select your audio input source (e.g. a microphone you’ll be using for your voice-over comments), output video quality and whether you want record your mouse movements and clicks in the video also

– then click on the red-dotted record-button to start recording, but when you do so you will get the option to either select a (static) part of the screen [by dragging the cursor over the area you want to select for recording] or the entire screen [by clicking anywhere on the screen]

– recording will start right away after you’ve made your choice (so do not forget to start talking if you want a voice-over)

– to stop recording, go back to the record-button (which now shows a small black square) and click it

– the recording will stop and it will take a few moments for QuickTime X Player to process it (the longer your recorded, the more time the processing will take)

– the recording will be visible in a QuickTime X Player window right away

– to Save or Share your screen recording, go “File” and choose one of the following :

option 1. “Export” (= normal Save) for saving as a QuickTime .mov-file [you can set the video quality from the “Format” pulldown menu ; either (general) Movie, 480p, 720p or iPhone/iPad/AppleTV ready

option 2. “Export to” to directly upload to a website, import into iTunes or edit in iMovie

option 3. “Share” to directly share your screen recording with your friends through eMail, iMessage (= Apple SMS), AirDrop (= Apple WiFi-filesharing), Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo or Flickr

That’s it ; this might seem rather complicated from these instructions, but it’s actually really simple once you try 😉

fixed : “Service Battery” warning

Posted on by
2

Question :

When I started up my Mac today, and looked at the battery indicator in the top menu bar, I noticed that there was something unusual… so when I clicked on it, the pull down menu did not show the usual battery info. It showed a warning saying “Service Battery”.

As I do not believe my battery is dead, this looks like a bug to me… is it ? And what can I do about it ?

Answer :

The “Service Battery” message (a.k.a. warning) just indicated that your battery has not been calibrated for a long time… this might occur when you have not once fully used your battery ; you have not used your fully charged battery until it was completely empty once in the last three months… this is noting serious, you just need to do so again.

More on this can be found on Apple’s website :

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

In short, for any MacBook or MacBook Pro that has a removable battery, the battery calibration routine is :

1- plug in the power cord and charge until the battery is fully loaded (so until the LED-light in the connector stays green) [ during this you can still use your Mac ]

2- leave the power cord connected for at least 2 more hours [ during this you can still use your Mac also ]

3- unplug the power cord and leave your MacBook (MacBook Pro) running until the battery is empty [ during this you can also keep using your Mac, but remember to save all your open work when you get a warning that your battery is nearly empty ]

4- when your MacBook (MacBook Pro) goes to sleep when the battery is completely empty, just let it.

5- then let your MacBook (MacBook Pro) ‘rest’ for at least 5 hours

6- when the 5 hours are over, reconnect the power cord and fully charge your battery again [ during this you can use your Mac, in a normal, modest way, just don’t exaggerate : use as little applications at the same time as possible and shut down any non-vital applications that are running in the background ]

That should be it, but if it doesn’t work for you, you might want to try this :

Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

More info on doing so, can be found on Apple’s website :

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

And if that doesn’t help either, you will probably have a non-original Apple battery, or if you do have an original Apple-battery, it is probably broken due to falling or shock.

Either way, you’ll probably need to buy a new battery… [ note : from experience, I can tell that an original Apple-battery is better value-for-money even though the price is high ; imitation batteries usually start out right, but then suddenly die within about one year… ]

fixed : Time Machine backup error “sparsebundle in use”

Posted on by
2

Question :

When Time Machine tried to backup today, it returned an error saying “Time Machine Error. The Backup disk image ….sparsebundle is already in use”. As I am the only one using this backup, I hoped that just trying to do the Time Machine backup manually would help… but it didn’t… it returned the same error…

Restarting my Mac didn’t help either…

How can I fix this ?

Answer :

The “sparsebundle already in use”-error occurs if something went wrong during the last backup (which could be because your Mac froze during the Time Machine backup). In that case your Mac did not properly disconnect from the Time Machine backup, so you will have to do so manually.

Fixing this is rather simple :

If you still have ‘the old’ Airport Utility 5.6 on your Mac (more info on this can be found here : https://macmanus.nl/2012/02/02/airport-utility-6-lost-the-option-to-configure-connected-printers/ ), you should do this :

–  open Airport Utility 5.6 (which is in the Utilities folder inside your Applications folder)

– select your Time Machine backup drive on the left (e.g. your Time Capsule)

– click on the “Manual” button

– then select the “Disks” icon

– and click on the “Disconnect All Users…” button

– then exit AirPort Utility 5.6 and run Time Machine normally

– …and do not forget to check in the time Machine Preferences if Time Machine is switched ‘ON’

if you do not have AirPort Utility 5.6 (since your Mac has OSX 10.8 “Mountain Lion” in stalled, which only has the stripped-down AirPort Utility 6 without the “Disconnect All Users”-option), you could either download and install AirPort Utility version 5.6 (directly from Apple : http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482 ), or you should try this :

– shut down your Time Capsule a.k.a. “pull the power plug” (or other Time Machine backup drive)… and leave it disconnected for about 5 minutes or so

– restart your Mac

– power up your Time Capsule a.k.a. “plug the power cord back in” (or if you have some other sort of Time Machine backup drive, turn it back on)

– go to the Time Machine icon in the Finder’s top menu bar and click “Back Up Now”

– …and do not forget to check in the time Machine Preferences if Time Machine is switched ‘ON’

That’s it !

Donate Button (all)