• Final Cut Server,  Mac OS X

    Completely Reinstall Final Cut In OS X

    I’ve seen a few instances where an upgrade caused Final Cut to run kinda’ strangely. To resolve, I’ve just been doing a quick reinstall of Final Cut. To do so: First move the Final Cut application to the trash (it’s in the /Applications folder). From your home folder, go to ~/Library/Application Support and move the Final Cut folder in there into the trash. From Library/Preferences in your home folder, put com.apple.FinalCut.plist, com.apple.FinalCut.LSSharedFileList and com.apple.FinalCut.UserDestinations.plist in the trash. Finally, trash com.apple.FinalCut directory from ~/Library/Caches. Once done, go back to the Mac App Store and reinstall Final Cut and open it. Those folders you just tossed out will get re-created. Your toolbars and other customizations…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Using The Software Update Service In Yosemite Server

    The software patching configuration built into most operating systems is configured so all that a user has to do is open a box at home, join the network and start using the computer right away. As environments grow from homes to small offices and then small offices grow into enterprises, at some point software updates and patches need to be managed centrally. Yosemite Server (OS X Server 3), as with its OS X Server predecessors has a Software Update service. The service in the Server app is known as Software Update and from the command line is known as swupdate. The Software Update service, by default, stores each update in the /var/db/swupd directory. The…

  • iPhone

    iPhone 4: Where is My FaceTime?

    I am almost embarrassed how long this took me to figure out. FaceTime was missing on my iPhone 4. Apparently, if you upgrade from 3 to 4 it doesn’t automatically show up. Instead you need to go to Settings and then tap on the Phone settings. Right there, staring back at you is a screen that says FaceTime and it gives you the ability to turn it ON or OFF. Tap ON and it should reappear in your apps (required me to reboot to show up).

  • Mac OS X

    Address Book File Locations

    Address Book.app stores its preferences in the following property list files in ~/Library/Preferences: com.apple.AddressBook.abd.plist com.apple.AddressBook.plist The Address Book data itself is stored in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook, Here you will find: The SQL Lite database (*.abcddb). Any images associated with addresses are located in the Images folder in that directory Any contacts synchronized (ie – from Address Book services of Mac OS X Server to the local computer are synchronized into the Sources directory (into the .abcddb file located there) Any metadata associated with the contacts in the Metadata directory The MailRecents-v4 file, which contains a cache of the most recently used email addresses A Configuration.plist property list that has the settings for…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Mac: Setting Screen Saver from the CLI

    Earlier today I posted on how to activate the screen saver from the command line.  But I hadn’t yet mentioned how to set it up.  Before I do, let’s look at the /System/Library/Screen Savers directory.  Here you should see a number of bundles, such as RSS Visualizer.qtz, Paper Shadow.slideSaver, Flurry.saver, Arabesque.qtz and any third party screen savers you may have installed.  These are the paths to your screen savers. In order to set which screen saver you would like to use from the command line, you’re going to use the defaults command along with the com.apple.screensaver domain.  First let’s read the settings there: defaults -currentHost read com.apple.screensaver Which will provide…

  • Mac OS X

    Script to Clear the SideBar Prefs

    Here’s a quick little script you can push out to a system having SideBar issues, to clear the prefs.  Alternately you can throw the rm command itself into ARD as a support mechanism… #!/bin/bash rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist exit 0