Mac OS X

After installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard, some people may notice that Activity Monitor reports a smaller amount of RAM than what is installed in the system. For instance, my MacBook Pro has 4GB of RAM installed, but Activity Monitor reports that it has 3.75GB in Snow Leopard whereas in Leopard it reported the full 4GB.

According to Apple, this difference is because on these systems the GPU is using shared system RAM as video memory, resulting in a decreased amount being available for the rest of the system. The integrated GeForce 9400M on my system uses up to … Read more

Adobe's beta version of Flash 10.1 player let you test out hardware accelerated video decoding on your Mac. Despite a few bugs, the beta version provided a notable decrease in CPU use when watching Flash videos. With its latest security update, Adobe adds hardware accelerated video decoding to the release version of Flash 10.1 player.

While Adobe usually reserves major feature additions for a full version update, the company must have felt it was too good of a feature to keep from users. Despite Flash now supporting hardware accelerated video decoding, it only works on recent Macs … Read more

Focused on security and stability, Microsoft has released updates to its Office 2004 and 2008 suite of productivity applications for Mac.

The update to Office 2008, now version 12.2.6, plugs a security hole that would allow potential hackers to access your Mac's data by overwriting memory with malicious code. The update is recommended for all users of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (Home and Student Edition, Special Media Edition, Student and Teacher Edition, and Business Edition).

The update for Office 2004 also provides security upgrades as well as continued stability improvements. It is recommended for all users … Read more

There are many times when in troubleshooting your Mac, it is useful to see what files on the system are being modified. For instance, if you are having difficulty with some system preferences and know what preference files are being used to store the system settings, you can further troubleshoot the problem by manually editing the files or removing them. The problem with doing this is that sometimes you can't easily find the files that are being modified.

Though you can use the Finder to search for and sort files by modification date, this is only useful for visible … Read more

Dell has published a back-to-school chart comparing its Studio laptops with Apple MacBooks--all very favorable to Dell, mind you. So, what's accurate, and what's missing?

First, the chart in all of its stark Dell-Apple price gap glory, which Dell shows as $1,249 per model:

A couple of things need to be pointed out quickly: The 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros are made from metal, and the Dell Studio is mostly plastic. This can translate into a significant aesthetic and durability difference for some consumers.

Also, graphics chips are not specified. The MacBooks come with Nvidia GeForce GT 330M discrete graphics, switchable with Intel Core i series graphics. The Dell Studio is spec'd mostly with Intel graphics (both older Core 2 and new Core i series graphics). At the upper end of the Studio 15 lineup, Dell uses the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics chip and an ATI chip for the high-end Studio 17. It may be the case that these higher-performance ATI chips are used in the Studio 15 and 17 shown in the chart, as they are both pricier configurations shown with 1GB of graphics memory. (Dell did not respond immediately for comment.)

Clarifications aside, the chart says more about Apple than Dell. "This is a classic Apple story," said… Read more

Over at MacOSXHints there is a new tip on fixing problems with application services that do not appear properly in the Services section of the foremost application menu. Sometimes the services will not appear, show multiple of the same service, or at other times the menu may show a "Building..." status and never make the services available.

When services stop working in this manner, you can force the system to refresh them by running the following command in the Terminal:

/System/Library/CoreServices/pbs

The "pbs" service is provided by Apple to rescan the available services … Read more

When trying to access the MobileMe iDisk in the Finder, you may run into a problem in which the disk will not mount and will give an error stating "Your iDisk is unavailable." This problem may crop up after applying software updates or reinstalling the system, but it may also happen after syncing with new mobile devices or computers, or even seem to happen randomly.

If this happens, there are a couple of things you can try to fix the problem:

Reboot

Sometimes a basic restart of the system will be enough to fix the problem. Usually just … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week, we have questions about Bluetooth suddenly not being available on a Mac when it was previously, whether or not it is possible to change the BSD device node ID for a drive, and tackling Safari Extensions not working.… Read more

There are numerous instances of things going wrong when installing new programs, especially if the program requires a more in-depth installation than a simple drag and drop to the Applications folder. Sometimes missing or corrupt system components will not properly check out with the installation utility, or you may be using a package that is not built for your computer's architecture (running PPC or Intel-only applications on the opposite platform). Other times, however, the problems people experience are not caused by the operating system or application software at all.

We were contacted by a new iMac owner "Allan&… Read more