wissel.net

Category Mac
Yeah, Macs don't crash. Macs are easy, you don't need to worry. System updates are reliable. Yesterday my Mac Mini's software update prompted me to install the system upgrade that would add MobileMe support. So routinely I clicked yes. This morning when I booted the Mac I was greeted after login with "The application FileSyncAgent quit unexpectedly." and very ironic below "Mac OS X and other applications are not affected".
Bah humbug! The crashing file sync agent takes down the top menu, so I even can't access the preferences to switch off Sync. Also opening Finder or any application wouldn't work. So basically the Mac is dead. I guess the Mac of SWMBO will not get that upgrade any time soon.

Update: I reinstalled the Mac, but I mixed up the install DVDs. It is now happily running on OpenSuse 11.0.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 10:30 AM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Mac
A few weeks ago the old Acer laptop died and the gentlemen and she-who-must-be-obeyed demanded a new machine. So I went and had a very close look at Microsoft Vista. As a result we added a Mac Mini to our IT zoo. Microsoft nicely provides a keyboard driver for the Mac, to all the keys of the multimedia keyboard. First things first I installed Notes7, Firefox and Neo-Office and accounts for all family members. Using iSync all my phones/gadgets are in sync (Notes address book sync pending). The kids adopted iTunes and iPhoto and Comic Maker. So far so good. However some stuff (my aging Quickbooks, Domino Designer etc.) still requires Windows. So I got a copy of Parallels Desktop for the Mac. Just one week after I bought it Parallels released version 3.0. Fifty bucks for an upgrade for a software that is just one week old seemed a bit steep to me. Since I had registered my copy I decided to wait for the "Invitation to upgrade" email with a discount code. Nothing happened. So I send a short email and asked their support what they can do. Here is the reply:

Hello Stephen, writing Stephen instead of Stephan happens quite often with US correspondence

Here's your activation key for 3.0 version:
*****************************

--
Best regards,
Diana
Parallels Customer Service
http://www.parallels.com

@Diana: Thanx a lot, that is excellent service!

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 1:42 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (4) |