iMac Chronicles

What happened to BUILD_STYLE?

yOOrek — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:38:36 +0000

I know this might be a little bit cryptic to some of you but if you were relying on the environment variable BUILD_STYLE in your run script build phase in XCode 3 to distinguish between build styles, you have to use CONFIGURATION environment variable in XCode4. Hope this will help someone that uses Sparkle framework and wants to automate the process of updating their appcast files.

BTW how is this for the development box?

New hardware shipped yesterday

yOOrek — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:53:29 +0000

I am awaiting my new Mac – MacPro, 3.33GHz, 6 core Westmere processor, with 32GB RAM, 8.2TB internal storage (4 x 2TB HDD + 240GB SSD), two 27″ Apple LED Cinema displays, and 10TB of external eSATA storage. I’ve been spending a lot of time over at Macintosh Performance Guide, reading all about hardware, performance and such. This configuration is the result. I’ll post some some results once I get it configured and burnt-in. Until now I have discovered that the internal HDD of my 2008 iMac is quite slow. Even the external FW800 drive is faster. External HDD gives me 67MB/sec transfers whereas internal HDD is only god for 51MB/sec or so. I will not mention USB and Time Capsule transfers. They disappoint even more. Let’s just say they are slower than 30MB/sec. To put it all into perspective, it took just under 8 hours to clone my iMac boot drive (630GB of data).

So, once the new Mac arrives, I’ll have to put in all the goodies (HDDs, RAM, SSD), do some stress testing on the RAM and CPU, test various RAID configurations for the internal drives to get the highest transfer rate. Once this works, I’ll move my data and I should be ready to go.

I have enjoyed the iMac very much, but I have outgrown it with all the photos I am taking and such. More to follow…

What a big difference a small change makes

yOOrek — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 18:02:57 +0000

I’ve upgraded the memory in my 8.1 iMac to the maximum allowed 6Gb (even though officially 4Gb is the limit 6Gb works. See here for details).

Everything works perfectly OK. And I experience no paging at all when working in Lightroom. Bliss. Bear in mind that newer iMacs will take up to 16Gb of RAM without any problems.

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Without wax,
yOOrek

Getting into the real estate business

yOOrek — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:58:38 +0000

Thinking of increasing my working space with the Apple LED cinema display. This way I will have 2x 24″ to play with my photos.
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Without wax,
yOOrek

Remember to clean your iMac

yOOrek — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:42:56 +0000

To cut the long story short – clean all the air vents on your iMac to avoid overheating. There are three of them at the bottom of the casing. After close to two years of uninterrupted use my iMac started to to run a little hot. Especially so when doing some intensive photo processing in Lightroom. At first I blamed it on a hot weather we have here in Switzerland. Then I thought it might be caused by new features in Lightroom 3 (lens profiles). But the situation was getting progressively worse. To the point that I could no longer export any photos. CPU was reaching 80 degrees centigrade, HDD bay was getting towards 70. I was getting more and more warnings from the temperature monitor. Then it dawned on me that I have not done any cleaning since I bought it. All it took was a simple swipe with my hand to realize how much dust has accumulated on the vents. After the thorough cleaning with the vacuum cleaner all is back to normal. Exported close to four hundred shots in one go and the CPU has not gone over sixty five degrees. One more vent is to be found just over the mains plug. Do not forget about that one. I think it must be for the CPU but I am not sure.
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Without wax,
yOOrek

Mozy is working again

yOOrek — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:21:23 +0000

In addition to TimeMachine backups I use Mozy to backup my photos. Over last couple of months it was a real PITA to use. It had some problems connecting to servers, backups were not really finishing properly. I found that turning TimeMachine off for the duration of backup helped. However this was not very practical.

Well, I am happy to report that the new version is out (1.6.0). It looks like the issues are gone.
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Without wax,
yOOrek

Look what the cat brought in

yOOrek — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:57:54 +0000

This turned up today. I know, I know, this is a Microsoft product, some people have to use it however. Still prefer the Apple suite.

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Without wax,
yOOrek

iMovie09 Update

yOOrek — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:30:18 +0000

This just came through the software update -

iMovie09 Software Update

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Without wax,
yOOrek

Hardware day

yOOrek — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:46:19 +0000

My daughter started complaining that her iPod touch does not respond to the volume controls and to the power button. After making sure that she is not doing something totally stupid, and that the device is still covered by the warranty, I took it to the local Apple Store.

As the genius bar was quite busy, I had to wait for about one hour and a half for my appointment but as the Apple store is located in a big shopping centre, I had no reason to complain. Went for a cup of coffee, and while drinking it had a chance to use Twitterrific on my iPhone. When my time came up I went to the Genius Bar, and after describing the symptoms, the genius decided that I will get the replacement. That means a new iPod. How nice of Apple.

Now my daughter has a brand new iPod touch, still under warranty. After bringing it home I upgraded the OS to 3.0. Costs 11CHF, here in Switzerland.
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Without wax,
yOOrek

iPhone battery indicator

yOOrek — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:52:44 +0000

While playing with my new iPhone 3G S, I have discovered something I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else.

By going to your Settings » General » Usage screen you can see a new option for battery percentage.

iPhone usage settings screen

This is what you’ll get when you set it to ON -

iPhone screen showing remaining battery percentage

Unfortunately users of older iPhones do not get to see this option.

Enjoy,
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Without wax,
yOOrek