Comments on: Funambol on Mac OS X, part 1

By: Lyle

Lyle — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:00:43 +0000

I guess Apple support also said the fix for your Samsung was to buy an iPod!
“rebuild mailbox” fixes most of our Mail.app crashes. That’s assuming Mail is only crashing and not triggering a KP (which I’ve never seen).

All the best,
Lyle

By: Stef

Stef — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:06:19 +0000

The kernel crashes happened regularly only with 10.5.1, when I inserted my Samsung mp3 player. The player works perfectly with 10.4 and on all other systems. I reported the bug to Apple, they said it’s a ‘know issue’. Later upgrades fixed the crash when the reader was inserted, but the reader is still not usable with 10.5. I had only a few kernel crashes after that. Mail keeps crashing often, though.

By: Lyle

Lyle — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:54:27 +0000

I should mention Applejack 1.5. It’s free, clears your caches, and includes memtest as an optional install.

-Lyle

By: Lyle

Lyle — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:49:26 +0000

Please don’t mistake me for a Mac fanboy. I agree on all counts. I’m also not a big fan of removing my fingers from the keyboard. The day I realized I could use Ctrl-F2 to activate the menus brought me great joy (once activated, you can nav the menus with direct-jump-by-alpha, or by arrow keys).

What’s really vexing is the crashing problem you mention. I’m sure you’re well aware of the causes of kernel panics. I’ve found the handful of MacBooks I deployed to be fairly KP free.

One exception turned out to be some bad RAM. If you have the time to run memtest overnight to rule that out, it would be a good start. Run it in single user mode to make sure you have access to as much RAM as possible.

I’ve also noticed an increase in KPs overall in departments that have been shifted to Leopard. I traced most of these issues to an outdated kextcache. This isn’t necessarily Leopard’s fault, more our upgrade process. Trashing the contents of /System/Library/Cache/ and /Library/Cache/ could help (followed by a reboot, of course).

My guess would be that you’ve already tried these steps, but it doesn’t hurt to check. It’s a good thing this is your own site; I’m way off topic!

Cheers,
Lyle

By: Stef

Stef — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:29:44 +0000

I’m using Exposè, but it is so much less convenient than alt-tab: try this on a laptop and follow carefully how much your hands have to move away from the keyboard.

I try to avoid installing third-party apps that modify the default behaviour of key elements as the Finder because they add instability (and this machine already crashed too many times). Let alone pay $15 for something that should be there for free. No, thanks: I’ve already paid extra bucks to get a Mac (not me, the company).

By: Lyle

Lyle — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:40:36 +0000

Ooh, tough one. You could use F10 in Exposé (runs in Tiger and Leopard Finder by default). Once you hit F10, all the windows for the current application fan out. Then you can use either the mouse, or the arrow keys (followed by return to select) to pick which window you wish to bring to the foreground.
There’s also a $15 app… LiteSwitch X, which significantly enhances command-tab.
Hope that helps you think a little more highly of Finder!

Cheers,
Lyle

By: Stef

Stef — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:12:58 +0000

Thank you for the hints Lyle. Some simple things of OS X are well hidden, I have to say. Now, if I only managed to convince the Finder that I want Command-Tab to cycle through open ‘documents’ not ‘applications’ I’d stop considering the system poorly designed

By: Lyle

Lyle — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:31:12 +0000

“Since I couldn’t find a way to make Finder show the hidden directories”

Use ‘command-shift-g’ to force the Finder to display any directory to which you have permission to view. If you pause while typing in the “go to folder” dialog box, it will attempt to auto-complete the directory name. So, “/A” should auto-complete to /Applications.

If you wish to show all file system invisibles, enter in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowAllFiles TRUE

Restart the Finder whichever way you prefer to see the change.

Thanks for the Funambol info.

-Lyle

By: Stef

Stef — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:36:09 +0000

Hi Patrick, that’s terrific news, congratulations. I’m going to test 0.8 in the next days and I’ll let you know.

By: Patrick Ohly

Patrick Ohly — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:49:12 +0000

I just released 0.8 beta 1 and also compiled the Mac OS X binary: http://www.estamos.de/download/syncevolution/mac/

When using 0.8, a single command is sufficient to setup SyncEvolution: “syncevolution –configure funambol”. Afterwards sync with “syncevolution funambol”. For more information about further command line options, see the README. This blog post explains the background: http://www.estamos.de/blog/2007/12/29/redesign-of-syncevolution-config-handling/

This version also sets the device ID, something which had to be done manually with the previous release when using multiple instances of SyncEvolution.