Tag Archives: Mac

Mac OS X Mavericks: Mouse Right-Click Stopped Working

Not sure how many people still use Mac OS X Mavericks, but anyway. I had just had the issue that the right-click had stopped working, on the mouse as well as the trackpad. There are many posts on the subject, so it seems a not too uncommon problem. The one that helped me suggested to simply turn the mouse off and on. Strangely enough, this fixed it for both, mouse and trackpad. Thanks!

Mac: Auto-Mounting Network Shares

Admittedly, on the Mac I have always been a pure end-user only. So it is no surprise that I had never looked at Automator, which in hindsight is a real pity. When searching for an easy way to automatically mount CIFS shares from my NAS, I came across a post on Stackoverflow that suggested Automator as one possible way.

I have followed the steps there (adding “Get Specified Servers” first and then “Connect to Servers”) and it works like a charm. The only difference is that I did not use AFP as protocol but SMB. But syntax basically stays the same, so I ended up with

smb://user@server/share

What I did differently, though, was the method to invoke my Automator-based application. Instead of adding it to my login items, I chose to have it executed by ControlPlane, whenever the latter detected a connection to my local network. This way, whenever I open my MacBook it automatically re-connects.

VMware Fusion 4 on OS X Mavericks

Having upgraded to OS X Mavericks just recently, one of the main questions for me was, whether I would need to upgrade from VMware Fusion 4 to the current version (which is Fusion 7). Initially the thought had not really occurred to me, but after the second crash of my MacBook I started to look around. The majority of content I found was about the support status and some people had gotten really agitated during the discussion. But little was said about the technical side of things, i.e. whether the stuff was working or not.

What I can say today is that for me VMware Fusion 4.1.4 works nicely and without issues so far. I use it almost exclusively to run a company-provided Java development environment on Windows 7 64 bit. So no 3D graphics, USB drives, or other “fancy” things.

The crashes were most like caused by an old version of the keyboard remapping tool Karabiner (formerly KeyRemap4MacBook). Once I had upgraded to the appropriate version, the crashes were gone.

AirPlay with AirPort Express, MacOS X Lion and iTunes

Just recently I purchased an AirPort Epress from Apple to connect it to my stereo and enjoy music in a better quality than from the built-in speakers of the MacBook. The inital setup went fine but iTunes was not able to connect (iPhone just worked). After trying various things it turned out that IPv6 was responsible for this. Unfortunately it is not possible to turn IPv6 off in the GUI (brilliant idea, folks!). But it can be achieved via the command line. So here are the steps I had to take

  • Open terminal
  • Run: networksetup -listallnetworkservices
  • Your wireless network probably shows up as “Wi-Fi“. Please adjust the following line accordingly, if your system uses a different name
  • Run: sudo networksetup -setv6off "Wi-Fi"

With those steps things worked immediately.

My New Toy: Mac Mini

Having been a very happy iPod user for more than six years, I finally got myself a Mac Mini as a kind of New Year’s present. And I must admit that it totally blew me away! The overall usability and the many tiny details that show the degree of thinking that was put into the product are awesome. And of course the design is so much beyond any computer I ever had before.

My only problem now is to find and play with all those nice tools that make one’s life even better. What I already installed are of course Emacs, Eclipse, and a few more. Once I have gained enough experience there will probably be a separate post on what I consider useful.