OS X Leopard Walk-through

[noel]

USB Overdrive works great for fixing additional buttons. I've been running it for a while and had no problems with it.

Also if you like the iTunes interface, you might (because it's you) like ComicBookLover. It has some limitations, and it might be a huge pain in the ass for you to move your shit over from Vista (moving the shit over is actually dirt simple, but doing up the equivalent of ID3 tags might not be worth the trouble for you), but I recently moved my comics over and tried several apps on the Mac. Comical is a fucking buggy piece of shit, but ComicBookLover is really good.

Also for your DC++ needs, ShakesPeer is the way to go.

[Winnow]

Thanks for the suggestions Noel. There are some nice apps for OSX out there to try.

I've got the mouse button thing fixed.

On a shitty note, I lost a 750GB hard drive last night. It was one of my data drives and had 200K+ files on it, all multimedia. Mostly it had images on it.

Both Leopard and Vista won't recognize it and say it needs to be formatted. I searched all over for NTFS partition recovery software but found nothing.

I used some data recovery software on the drive and it finds all the files and can create a directory tree for data recovery.

Funny that this particular drive bombed because it gets the least work. My Vista HD is the workhorse, constantly churning and burning thousands of files. If I recover the files, I can try reformatting this 750 GB drive but I can't really trust the drive again after this even if it does reformat.

I guess the good news is that there's nothing critical on the drive. It has some Acronis backups and some TV series episodes.

[Fash]

I tried the Kalyway 10.5.1 on my system... I hit F8 and typed vanilla. It rebooted before getting to the gray screen.

I tried again, this time just using whatever the default is. Kernel panic on the gray screen within a minute.

note! after these 2 boots, getting nowhere near access to the disk utility for partitioning, my NTFS C: partition was corrupted!(acronis true image ftw) so don't count that drive out, winnow. send it my way

[Winnow]

I tried the Kalyway 10.5.1 on my system... I hit F8 and typed vanilla. It rebooted before getting to the gray screen.

I tried again, this time just using whatever the default is. Kernel panic on the gray screen within a minute.

note! after these 2 boots, getting nowhere near access to the disk utility for partitioning, my NTFS C: partition was corrupted!(acronis true image ftw) so don't count that drive out, winnow. send it my way

Sucks Leopard OSX86 is working for you yet.

I couldn't find anything that would recover the partition so I quick formated it and it appears to be OK for use.

I'm now deep scanning it and am going to recover a few of the files. I couldn't find anything that would rebuild the partition table.

I have Leopard installed on another 750GB hard drive. I might copy that over to a 300GB hard drive and use the 750 to recover the bad 750. Not sure yet! 1TB drives are almost reasonable now.

[Xatrei]

Comical is buggy, but that's mainly because it's in a pre-release state (0.8 release is the most recent). I actually like its design (simple / clean) and features, but it still needs a lot of bug fixes and refinement to get on par with some of the other readers. Unfortunately, I think the project has been withering on the vine, so to speak. It's been nearly two years since the latest beta version was released, and the project doesn't show many signs of life.

It's a pity that ComicBookLover is Mac only. It looks pretty damned nice.

[noel]

Comical is buggy, but that's mainly because it's in a pre-release state (0.8 release is the most recent). I actually like its design (simple / clean) and features, but it still needs a lot of bug fixes and refinement to get on par with some of the other readers. Unfortunately, I think the project has been withering on the vine, so to speak. It's been nearly two years since the latest beta version was released, and the project doesn't show many signs of life.

It's a pity that ComicBookLover is Mac only. It looks pretty damned nice.

I couldn't look at more than two books in a row with Comical without it crashing. ComicBookLover has yet to crash. I will say that your time with ComicBookLover will be easier depending on how the files are titled. I'm speaking specifically of how you'll tag the files which of course will lead to better organization. My personal finding is that if the files are in the following format: /Foldername/Filename issue# (year) you'll be set. Thank god for flexible renamer.

[Winnow]

Thank god for flexible renamer.

I find myself using Flexible Renamer a lot. I even posted about it on the comics forum awhile back. The one thing it doesn't do is handle asian characters. Once in awhile, I'll get a series of images with Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc names and Flexible Renamer won't recognize the files so I can't change their name. Faststone Image viewer won't recognize Asian characters either so the only thing that I can view the series with is Vista's built in viewer.

It took over three hours to deep scan my 750GB HD. (it's about half full) I'm using "Data Recovery Wizard Professional" as it's the best app I could find a hack for on the newsgroups. (don't know if there's anything better out there) It's now trying to build a raw file tree and I don't know how long that will take as the estimated time keeps going up. It has 287,960 files to build from. What a mess.

As for comic readers, I mostly use the updated CDisplay app. I seem to work better using Copernic to find my comics. I know it would be nice to have them tagged with authors, artists, etc but I don't see myself taking the time to tag them all.

For Windows, the Comic Rack is still being actively developed. There have been four new releases already in January according to the news updates. I'm partial to the Comic Rack as he used the flash tutorial I made up for it back in the beginning stages of its development. It's looking good. Might have to check it out again. I know he was working on an ID3 type tagging system for comics.

Edit: I just checked my defrag schedule for Vista and it's every Wednesday at 2:00am. I think I yanked the hard drive out of the drive bay while it was actively defragging. The timeline makes sense as I was switcing back and forth between Leopard and Vista around that time last night. I couldn't recover any of my files...can't say couldn't but it was going on six hours and it was still trying to build the raw directory tree. The HD sees healthy so I hope it was my own mistake. It only cost me 50-100 hours of my time and lost files and a monster chunk of wasted bandwidth.

[noel]

I finished tagging all of my Avengers and Captain America comics last night. It's over 1200 comics and took about 3 hours. >< That's actually the bulk of my comics. I'm not doing dates (though I might add them in the future). The main things missing from ComicBookLover imho:
*quick way to move to the next comic in a list/playlist without having to close the one you just finished and then select the next one
*an equivalent to the genre/album/artist drop down search tool in iTunes
*some form of 'coverflow' -- you get that in the OS itself, so the app should support it as well.
*a few things that are missing in the bulk tagging functionality
*the ability to modify the actual filename while tagging -- as it is, for some of the files I'll have to 1) delete them from the library, 2) open the containing directory, 3) modify the filename, 4) re-import them, 5) re-tag them. Kind of a pain in the ass. This isn't a necessity, because within the app itself, you can have the book title be whatever you want. Where this becomes important is if you ever have to re-import all of your comics. Because there's no standard tagging for the books (lets face it, there's never going to be a true tagging standard for CBR or CBZ files because the publishers will never support it), if you ever had to move the files to another app, it would make it easier. Currently, the tagging data only has meaning within the ComicBookLover app. (sorry if that didn't all make sense).

If it had those things it would be perfect. ComicBookLover is basically ComicRack for the Mac with an iTunes interface and a lack of 'coverflow'. As a reader it's better than ComicRack, but not as light and simple as CDisplay, but it does a lot more.

Note: I have over 50GB of music that is completely tagged with album artwork for every song/album. Once you've there, iTunes is one of the best apps on the planet for doing what it's supposed to do-- organizing/browsing your music collection. I'd love to get my comics to the same place.

[Winnow]

I really want to like Leopard but for each cool thing I discover, I find one or more frustrating things to counter it.

Some of the software has some outstanding features. Unison, for example, is a newsreader, primarily for binaries but OK for reading as well. It's ability to group images into folders and basically view them online if you want to is a great feature. It's grouped "files" mode is also outstanding for grouping binaries for downloading. It's highly impressive until you start to use it like a power user would. You then find that the keyboard commands (and mouse) are severely lacking. While the ability to group images into folders and then view them with a built in image viewer is nice, the UI totally fails as the only way to get back to the main view of all the grouped thumbnail folders is to click a minuscule button at the bottom of the app. It completely slows you down. There is no keyboard shortcut to return to the grouped thumbnail view. There's also no way to move to the files view from the image view. Also, while the grouped thumbnail view is nice, it's hard to see the names of the actual files that way, defeating the purpose. You can expand groups in files mode but if you select an image to view, it doesn't continue viewing images in sequence in that mode...and when you double click to return, it takes you to thumbnail view instead of files view which defeats the purpose of working your way down a sorted list of grouped files in files view. (you also can't open a file directly which I like to do to with sample AVI files while movie browsing.

Anyway, not sure if that makes much sense but the bottom line is Unison could be an awesome newsreader. It's got best in class features in several categories but then becomes unusable for a power user with the horrible UI. If the programmer would at least give the option of keyboard commands, I could program my mouse to take advantage but as it stands, the only way to do a few things is to click the button on the screen.

I can't find a good forum, like Newsleecher has, to voice my opinion on the UI. It seems Mac people are so used to doing things the hard way, they don't even notice. (making the user click a mini button to return to a highly used screen with no alternative keyboard command is nuts) I would be in love with this app with just a few common sense features.

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Some other issues that drive me nuts are permissions. Christ. Permissions seems to screw up quite often. It was a mistake to migrate my account as everything resets and you need to enter license info again. Beyond that, I switched accounts in order to use the migrated apps but then my Vista VMware image was locked, I figured out how to set permissions but could find no way to set an admin override that would allow me to use all files created by the other user. There may be a way but setting access privs on the user folder doesn't cut it. I had to work my way down to the file I wanted, setting each folder and file's access rights so I could use the Vista VMware Image. I have "repaired permission" once or twice using the disk utility app.

Access rights seem to be fleeting. I've had to go back and reset access rights on my Vista Image, I had VMware Fusion crap out on me (would no longer work) I checked the net and others had the same problem with reinstalling temporarily fixing the issue.

This is a Kensington mouse issue but it's a coin flip as to whether the Leopard Kensington mouse driver recognizes the mouse each time I boot into Leopard...it's no different for USB Overdrive or Steermouse. Sometimes they see the mouse and sometimes they don't.

Ignoring my mouse and permissions issues as I can't fault leopard for those not knowing if it's a hackentosh problem, the most frustrating part of Leopard is a lack of flexibility. Unison is a prime example....well, besides me having to move across two screens to access the menus because using Unison in my portrait monitor is perfect with the inline image viewer...if I accidentally click the desktop, I have to go all the way back to the fucking app to select it and back to the god damned menu on the upper left corner of the left monitor....so fucking retarded it drives me nuts.

As "sleek" as Leopard is, it's actually a very clumsy operating system. You shouldn't have to be a power user to hate this OS for being so restrictive. It kills even the mom and pop user when it comes to efficiency. Poor old granny has to locate the little button to move back to the main screen? Crazy.

In summary, I want to like Leopard and appreciate a few of the features that are implemented better than in Windows..but damn. Leopard = the Blob and Windows = Flash when it comes to actually getting things done efficiently.

Leopard isn't far off from being a usable OS but they need to break ties with the 80's and update their OS. The problem is that Apple doesn't do it better. Windows is better across the board in UI. Menus, the way windows are handled, closing an app, actually closing the app (minimize button is for minimizing, I don't want to go all the way to the fucking upper left part of my screen to close an app or use command-q, just let the red button quit the app...why they have two buttons that basically minimize the app to the dock is beyond me and then have a button that arbitrarily sizes the window instead of maximizing it. None of that is more helpful. It doesn't help anything to have this setup. All MS Window features are clearly better and more useful. It's not "a different way of doing things", it's a lack of useful features and a worse way to do things or at minimum, a restrictive way of doing things which should infuriate any business that would think of running Leopard over Windows.

[noel]

Most of what you just listed isn't really an OS issue, but a 'not quite there' application issue. A huge part of the problem is that there just isn't the user community for the Mac like there is for the PC, so in a lot of cases the software you're using was written by some guy who liked the Mac but was missing an app he needed. Reading comic books is actually a good example of this. Comical is an utter piece of shit, but if you google for 'Mac OS X comic book reading' it's going to be the first thing that comes up. If you install it and run it, you're going to think CBRing on the Mac is shit. I literally downloaded and installed 5 different apps before I found the one I like and even then it's missing shit (I just submitted a nice feedback email to them so I'll let you know how that goes). The more specific apps like that (stuff that the average user uses web browsing/email/office apps/etc. is fine) can be a pain in the ass on the Mac. That's why I always post the ones that are good here.

Remember that if you get something like Fink or (can't remember the name of the other open source app manager... (the one I'm actually using ) you can run a shitload of open source apps as well. The Linux community for all their faults have a lot of apps available and a more active dev community than I think the Mac community does.

As far as the buttons in the top... I rarely use them. Command-Q, Command-H are what I use most of all.

[Winnow]

I'll check out the Fink thing.

Leopard would be a great VMware app to pop open for a few specialty things. I can't wait for VMware to release a version that will run Leopard. As soon as it's possible without going through too many hoops, I'll post here on how to go about doing it. (which hackentosh version works, etc)

Windows as the main OS with Leopard running in VMware, with Fink running in Leopard might be the best setup if/when it can be done. PCs are becoming powerful enough to handle it.

[Fash]

Keep me posted on the VMware+Leopard front... I'm going to forget about this whole thing until then.

Why is VMWare on the Mac so much better than on the PC? I want applications to come up in native windows like I saw you do with Newsleecher

[Winnow]

Keep me posted on the VMware+Leopard front... I'm going to forget about this whole thing until then.

Someone managed to do it two days ago:

I have now successfully installed and booted iAKTOS 1.0i R2 on VMware Workstation 6, using Dell D620 and Windows XP as host. I will write the details up in a new thread and ask if it can be stickied.

I'm curious to see if it's 32 or 64 bit Windows. It's not a straight install so hopefully he posts the details soon. I'm sticking with Vista 32 so we'll see.

[Winnow]

In anticipation of a Leopard OSX86 release that works in VMWare, I grabbed 2 more GB of ram.

The same quality 2X1GB of ram that cost me ~$220.00 when I first put my current system together cost me $58.00 today at Fry's. Seems stable, although not overclocked atm. Memory is depreciating faster than Ben Roethlisberger's rookie card.

The current Leopard configuration that works in VMware (duo core systems) requires swapping out the kernel in the ISO and doing some other -sudo stuff I don't want to do. I'm guessing within a day or two there will be a patched iso posted somewhere.

[Winnow]

I successfully installed JaS OSC 10.4.8 in Vista with VMWare 6.0.

This guide works very well if you follow it exactly and also note the possible fixes to issues.

http://pcwizcomputer.com/software/vmwareosx86.htm

I don't think Leopard's going to work well though. VM Tools aren't available for OSX so I'm stuck at 1024x768 res and choppy sound. What a bummer. It's pretty useless as slow as it is, unlike Vista in Leopard because of the VM Tools.

Cool that it worked though.

Some screens:



The nice thing about the JaS 10.4.8 release is that it has a lot of driver options to help get OSX up and running.