Archive for category ‘Mac’

When I first updated to Snow Leopard I was using a Logitech mouse. But I kept having problems with it. Some of the time it would read my single clicks as double clicks. So if I was selecting a bunch of files to be deleted, it would then open them all up. It became very annoying. So I started using the Mighty Mouse until the Magic Mouse came out. I use the Magic Mouse exclusively now.

I have to say the Magic Mouse is almost the best mouse I have ever had. I say almost because with both the Logitech mouse and Mighty Mouse, I had a way to do application Exposé without touching the keyboard. For most people, this isn’t a big deal. But I spend a lot of time on the computer. Shortcuts like that really help.

I’m pretty sure Apple is working on updating the Magic Muse driver to do it now, but in the mean time, you can use BetterTouchTool. I have it set right now to three finger click opens up Exposé. I can easily change it to a two, three, four, or five finger click, or tap, or swipe. It’s a pretty nice little program. If you gave a Magic Mouse, I recommend you try it out.

Even if you don’t have a Magic Mouse, you can still use it on multitouch touchpads on the Macbook and Macbook Pro.

[Update Jan. 11th, 2009] There is also MagicPrefs which looks like it does the same thing. I haven’t tried it because BTT is working great for me.

Compliments of xkcd

I went to an office Christmas party today. When I got back from the party, my Safari icon was done. The Safari application wasn’t gone because I could still open Safari and go to websites.  The icon was just transparent.

I removed it from the dock and put it back in thinking that would do the trick. It didn’t.

So I tried the official Windows fix and restarted. The icon was still in the dock at this time. That still didn’t fix the problem. So I removed the icon from the dock again and then put it back in the dock and it started showing up again.

I assume restarting the computer then adding the icon back in the dock solved the issue but I can’t be sure because the icon is displaying now and I don’t know how to make the ico transparent again.

A while back I posted a way to show/hide hidden files in Leopard. Now that I am using Snow Leopard and needed to see the hidden files, I went in search of a more elegant way to accomplish this. Read this blog post. It’s pretty much the same steps. It also includes optional steps to add a keyboard shortcut so that you don’t have to go to the services menu to toggle the hidden files.

This time, in Snow Leopard, when you toggle the hidden files, it is much quicker and it doesn’t close out all of your open Finder windows. It relocates them to the last Space but at least it’s not closing them.

I was having problems with my mouse. I have a Logitech MX 620 Cordless Laser Mouse on my home Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard MacBook Pro that was upgraded from Leopard.

Many times, when I single left click, it decides to double click instead. The double click happens instantly like it sees my single click as a double click. This double click doesn’t happen all of the time. I checked all of the preferences and even deleted all Logitech preference files from the /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preference/ folder that started with “com.Logitech” and that didn’t help. So far the only thing that seemed to help was replacing the batteries. I’m still having the problem but not to the extent that I was before.

I did a quick Google search and it turns out I’m not the only one havinng this problem. There was something posted to the Logitech Forums which just says they are having a problem. No resolutions so far. There is also a lengthy discussion on MacRumors which has shown that Leopard is not having this issue, only Snow Leopard. It also ruled out users who upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard. It also ruled out, then ruled back in, a Logitech driver issue.

So far, like I said, changing the batteries seems to work. I don’t know what the batteries have to do with the single vs. double click though. Sounds like a driver issue though. If it is an Apple issue, hopefully the 10.6.2 build will fix this. If it is a Logitech issue, I have my Logitech Control Center set to automatically update so now it is just a waiting game.

[Update 10/19/2009 @7:24 PST] Changing the batteries didn’t help for very long. It worked for maybe a day then went back to double clicking everything. I’ve been using my Mighty Mouse and it’s been working like a champ. So it looks like it is a Logitech driver issue.