by WebKeyDesign | Aug 22, 2005 | Mac OS X
If you bought OS X Tiger thinking that Apple’s new Quartz 2D Extreme would accelerate your Powerbook, you were surely disappointed when you found out that Apple had shipped Tiger with Quartz 2D Extreme disabled!
Perhaps some day in a future 10.4 update Apple will eventually enable it, but for now, even if I enable it, the accelerated video only lasts a few minutes and then my Powerbook locks up solid. However, I did try a different form of video acceleration that does work. If you have an ATI video card, you can try overclocking it with ATIcceleratorII.
I have tried it on both my Powerbook and G4 desktop and the results are very stable and the boosted video speed helps with almost every application, including the Mac OS X Finder, which is very much needed.
Since this is a form of overclocking, you will want to make sure that you overclock only in small increments and that your computer is adequately cooled and not operating in high-temperature environment.
ATIcceleratorII can adjust both video memory and gpu speeds. You can find multiple user reports on Xlr8yourmac.com.
by WebKeyDesign | Aug 2, 2005 | Mac OS X
Mac OS X 10.4 users have plenty of options for viewing Google’s PageRank. Here are three very colorful widgets for keeping tabs of your site’s PageRank:
The first widget is from Ran Aroussi. Entitled simply Google PageRank, Aroussi’s Dashboard widget allows you to enter any url and receive instant PageRank status.
But if you want to monitor multiple sites at once, you should install Konfabulator and download PageRank.
This Konfabulator widget also works on Windows and Mac OS X 10.3.
Then there is DigitalPoint.com’s PageRank Toolbar which is a Macintosh only widget for Konfabulator.
Unlike the previous two widgets which require user input, this widget automatically checks what site is loaded in Safari and displays the PageRank.
by WebKeyDesign | Jul 11, 2005 | Mac OS X
Here is a good tip for Mac OS X computers trying to connect to a local Windows2003 Server that has ActiveDirectory running.
First go to Microsoft’s site and download the User Authentication Module, otherwise known as UAM for short. Install this for Mac OS X, and then you will need to make one change on the Windows2003 Server.
You will need to login as administrator and go to Administrative Tools and open Domain Controller Security Settings. From here go to Local Policies then Security Options. Scroll down to find the entry:
Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (always).
Set this to Disabled, so it looks like this. Then from a cmd prompt type: gpupdate and once that completes, reboot the server.
From the Mac client station, use the Go menu and choose Network. You should now be able to login via UAM with a domain account and mount the shares from Windows2003 Server on your Mac OS X desktop.
Apparantly the Connect To Server option defaults to Apple Authentication and will still not work with 2003 Server.
by WebKeyDesign | Jun 22, 2005 | Safari
Over the weekend I noticed that browsing in Safari and in Firefox was significantly slower than normal and since I had upgraded my Powerbook to Mac OS X Tiger, I figured it was probably a bug and Apple would fix it in 10.4.2 or some other update. However I started to look at it and see if I could fix it myself.
Apparantly some OS X Tiger users have been recommending that you disable IP6 in your Network Preferences, which does seem to work, but I’m not sure how long this lasts or if it is the actual fix or not.
I decided to spend some time tightening up my Netgear wireless router and noticed that the router setup did not have my ISP DNS server ip addresses. I corrected that and then in OS X Network Preferences I put the ip address for my router and that seemed to fix things and now browsing is back to normal.
The bug must be with the DNS settings, it must some how not be sending them through the router correctly, like it use to on Mac OS 10.3. Hopefully Apple will fix it soon.
by WebKeyDesign | Jun 13, 2005 | Safari
Obsessive Compulsive Development has written a hack that they call Taboo. This hack enables warning dialog when you try to close out of Safari and there are multiple tabs open. This feature resembles the one in Firefox. Taboo’s other function is that you can disable the warning dialog that now appears when opening a download file automatically. Many users find this feature annoying in Mac OS X Tiger, even though it provides extra security.
For more Safari hacks and addons check out PimpMySafari.com who has the best catalog of Safari addons. There is now even adblocking similar to Firefox’s AdBlock extenstion!