Mac OS X is weird sometimes
Over the last two days a bug in OS X Lion has been driving me crazy:
My 2011 Mac mini simply wouldn’t go to sleep.
I tried everything: Pressing the power button on its back, clicking the sleep item on the -menu and pressing ⌘+⌥+⏏. Nothing worked.
Then I hit the internet and started searching for solutions, this is what I tried:
- Is some kind of sharing function was switched on? — No.
- Where any apps preventing it it from sleeping? — Not that I could see.
- Any weird events in the system log? — Nope.
- Does one of my USB drives malfunction and keep it awake? — No, again.
- Are there any network connections open that might stop it from sleeping? — No.
- Bluetooth issues? — Nope.
I even performed a PMU and a SMC reset, with no effect.
Essentially I didn’t know what was going on and I decided to call the Apple’s support hotline: After answering all the questions by the very nice representative I was still left with no solution.
I gave the internet one last try, stumbling on the pmset -g terminal command, which prints out a log of settings for hibernation and errors if any occurred. Nothing.
Then I remembered that earlier that day I had read that someone turned screen sharing on and off again to find out if it had any effect.
I turned on screen sharing in the sharing preference pane and hit ⌘+⌥+⏏, eyes closed… The Mac mini went to sleep immediately.
I turned it off again and the mini still went to sleep as ordered.
This is one weird bug, where not having any kind of sharing functionality turned on causes the Mac to not go to sleep. Oh boy.
Optimised “liking Tumblr posts” workflow in Reeder for Mac
Reeder for Mac makes it easy to quickly “like” (or “heart”) Tumblr posts on subscribed blogs:
While viewing an article, open the Tumblr page by either pressing ’v’ on the keyboard, clicking the title of the article, or performing a three finger swipe to the right on a multitouch trackpad.
Clicking the heart icon on a tumblr post will “like” the post, close the website and bring you back to the article view in Reeder.
Daring Fireball: Wolf!
Debunking FUD one year at a time, without writing more than one word yourself. Impressive.
Service: Download files from URLs
Neat little time saver:
If you don’t keep a browser open all the time and receive an download URL from someone, you don’t need to start your browser of choice. Simply follow the instructions in the linked Mac OS X Hints post and create a service in Automator that lets you quickly download a file from an URL.
Junecloud, a quick shout-out
I just got an email from Mike Piontek over at Junecloud, whom I’ve sent a question earlier today concerning difficulties I had setting up a few Automator actions he provides as a download (among those a service to easily create SymLinks!).
He provides these and other great little pieces software for free and was still willing to reply very fast with the solution. Great service.
If you’re getting a nagging feeling in the back of your head right now, it’s probably because you’ve come across this company before; they make the great Delivery Status Dashboard widget that most Mac users know and love.
For me the nagging feeling resulted in finally purchasing the iPhone equivalent of the widget, which offers a lot more functionality and is highly recommendable to anyone who wants to know exactly when those Christmas presents will arrive.
A suggestion for Mac OS X Lion: since the team is trying to integrate the menubar into the desktop a bit more, to make it less prominent - the translucent menubar was an attempt at just this - why not go all the way and make it black? This way, it’ll blend into the bezel of (most) new Macs. Black menus are already all over iLife ’11, and it would be another step toward unifying the look of iOS and Mac OS.
Yes, this change would break many Mac apps if they didn’t update to support it. Apple’s no stranger to that, though.
I’d love to use this.
Keyboard Shortcut to 'Save to PDF...' on OSX
I do a fair amount of saving to PDF for electronic receipts, designs, etc. and have disliked the extra clicks that it takes to save as PDF on Mac OSX. Here’s a great way to set up a keyboard shortcut to simplify the process.
Nice handy tip — getting rid of those few extra steps adds up.
Very useful tip, I set this up immediately.
A few additional pointers:
- Users of Mac OS X Leopard and later will find this under the preference pane “Keyboard”.
- Be sure to name the shortcut exactly like the menu item, otherwise this won’t work. This is especially important if you use a language other than English.
- If you’re using a German keyboard layout: The three dots in the name of the menu item “Save as PDF…” are not three separate periods, but an ellipsis, which you get by pressing “ALT+.” on any standard Apple keyboard.
