Category Archives: Mac OS X

Prevent OS X from ejecting a FireWire drive when logging out

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We had a problem at work in which a shared FireWire drive would unmount when logging out of a user account. This is unfortunately the default behavior under OS X, and there is no easy preference to turn it off. This default behavior is intended to prevent inexperienced users from unplugging a device after they log out, naively thinking it is safe to do so. However, in a network setting when you want a drive to remain mounted persistently, because it is a shared resource, this presents obvious problems. If someone logs out on the computer with the FireWire drive, all network connections are terminated, and anyone trying to read or write to the drive will be rudely cut off, possibly resulting in data loss.

I was happy to find a workaround, and it is pretty simple. Open the Terminal application (in the Utilities folder), and type all on one line (no line breaks): Continue reading →

EGW CD-ROM via Darwine on OS X — It’s Fast!

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The Ellen G. White Estate has not released a Mac application for searching Ellen White’s published writings for many years. In fact, they have never released one that runs natively under OS X. And because newer Macs no longer ship with OS 9 emulation, this means new Mac users (and probably most users in general these days) are left out in the cold.

Of course, using Apple’s Boot Camp, it is possible to install Windows on a Mac, and run the EGW software that way. But this involves tedious rebooting each time you want to switch to Windows. Or it is possible to run the EGW software under a virtual environment such as VMware Fusion or Parallels. And that is what I had been doing; it works, but it’s slow (open VMware, wait for Windows to awake, start the EGW software, which then runs a bit slow in the virtual environment).

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22 Very Useful Free Apps for Mac Users

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A number of my friends and coworkers have recently purchased Mac computers, and so I thought it would be appropriate to share a little guidance to help them get started. Below is a list of free applications and other goodies that will enhance your Mac experience. Of course, it’s a good idea to install only the things you think you will need or use.

Some of these are applications you would not use every day, but are nonetheless good to have around for special situations or needs.

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Free Weather Updates in iCal

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If you would like free weather reports in Apple’s iCal (which can be synced to your iPhone or iPod Touch), there’s good news: Weather Underground supports the iCal .ics format as a subscription format. (It also offers RSS.) And unlike the shareware application WeatherCal (which provides the same service), it is free.

What this means is that you can subscribe to weather reports for any city, and have the forecast appear within iCal. The 7-day forecast will display as a series of all-day events in the calendar. (All-day events appear as headers at the top of each day.) Weather details older than one day are automatically deleted, which is nice; it doesn’t fill up your calendar.

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