Macenstein

Is Panther Apple’s most stable OS?

Last night, faithful Macenstein reader TheWarpedOne wrote us asking what to call that gray screen that appears when a Mac running OS X crashes – you know, the one that appears like a descending curtain, telling you in no uncertain terms (and in a half dozen languages) that you’re screwed, and now have to reboot your computer. He called it the Gray Screen of Death, an homage to Window’s Blue Screen of Death, but I knew there had to be an Apple Fanboy term for... Read More

10.5.1 and still no fix for the ATi X1900 MacPro display issues

Time to once again exploit our readers for help on an issue I am having… One of the things I was personally most looking forward to in the 1st Leopard update was a fix for a seemingly widespread display issue affecting MacPro owners, myself included. The two screenshots below show my symptoms (odd tearing lines across windows), which seem to be similar to those experienced by other Mac Pro users, as outlined in the Apple Discussions Forum. Above: Click to embiggen. Above:... Read More

When is “Actual Size” not Actual Size?: Leopard’s Blurry Preview Pt 2

My earlier post on Leopard’s seemingly soft Preview led many of our faithful readers to question my methodology, and rightly so. At Macenstein, we’ve never been the type to do “quality” experiments, and “good enough is our very best” has long been our motto. However, I decided to devote one last ounce of my precious energy to the blurry Preview issue, and the results of the test actually led to more questions than answers. (Oh, and then to... Read More

Time Machine doesn’t like apostrophes

Faithful Macenstein reader Jon Rosen writes us with a bizarre Time Machine issue he was experiencing. “I’ve been having a bizarre problem with Time Machine. It makes 2 backups in a row every time it does a backup. The second backup is a much smaller one. It took me about 90 minutes to get to the proper person at Apple Tech Support. Apparently, it’s a known issue. It has to do with there being an apostrophe in my computer’s name under Sharing. Apparently,... Read More

Pic: Leopard’s blurry Preview

Not to get all down on Leopard here, but in addition to the 2 recent reader-submitted Leopard gripes, (see Aperture problem and Mail issue), I thought I might throw my own issue with Leopard into the mix. Last night I was going through some photos in Preview on my new Leopard-equipped MacBook, and I noticed that everything looked just a bit softer than usual. Preview had never been the “sharpest” tool in the shed under past OS X’s, but Leopard’s Preview... Read More

Seeing double in Mail

Faithful Macenstein reader Brian, inspired by our recent “double your fun” Aperture glitch wrote in with his own weird Leopard issue, this time a problem with Mail 3. I saw the post about the Aperture/Desktop glitch and the double up of the Aperture Library reminded me of a glitch I’ve had in Mail 3 in Leopard. When I imported archived mailboxes from my Tiger backup into Leopard Mail after a clean install I got two of everything. If I deleted one mailbox both... Read More

Leopard’s weird Aperture/desktop glitch

Faithful Macenstein reader Logan Williams has alerted us to an odd problem Aperture users might be experiencing when they upgade to Leopard. “I found a bug in Leopard, as have several others. It’s really annoying. If you have Aperture, you can’t set a folder in System Prefs for desktop backgrounds – it duplicates your Aperture projects folder and starts acting strange. When you press the disclosure triangle for the duplicate, the original unfolds and it... Read More