OS X – Page 3 – Walt-O-Matic

Uninstalling Intego Software

I’d rather eat an orange then brush my teeth with peppermint toothpaste than deal with cleaning up my system after using Intego’s software. If anything can bring the Windows reboot experience, coupled with the leaving of software cruft, to the Mac platform, this software does it in my opinion. Here’s how I finally got rid of it all. I hope.

I recently purchased a Mac bundle with software and it included software from Intego, consisting of the Personal Antispam and Personal Backup applications. I installed them, and from that point forward it was an experience I’ve regretted and have been trying to undo. Only now do I think I’ve made some progress toward that goal.

Frankly, I didn’t get what the backup software did for me over many of the free solutions out there, and while the personal antispam look intriguing, it was intrusive as well and I decided to fall back to Apple’s spam filter included in Mail.

Even if a product doesn’t make it into my main line of recommendations, I often will keep it around in the event I suddenly have use for it. This, for example, is how TypeIt4Me eventually won me over.

Intego went out of their way to annoy me straight from the start. How so? Every time I went to install a package from them, they felt the need to do what appeared to be a gratuitous reboot. It was like being on frickin’ Windows. And they had to install their own update manager, which had to take a glory spot in the menu bar. And it had to do updates, which required even more reboots. I was done with them at that point, but don’t even get me started on the subscription scheme that rode on top of the atrocity.

So I wrote to them asking them how to uninstall their software. Here’s the reply I got:

Proper removal of the software package requires using the Installer package located in your software bundle or disc. If you have manually attempted to remove the software, you will need to first, reinstall the software again, then use the same Installer package to properly remove the applications.

If you need to, you can re-download the installer for Internet Security Barrier X6 using the link below:

http://www.integodownload.com/en/isbx6.html

Open the installer and select to uninstall all software. Restart your computer.

Great, another reboot. Lucky for me, I hadn’t tried to go off on my own path, plus I had the original installation utility. I tried it, and it appeared to work.

Notice I said appeared?

One week later, LittleSnitch pops up and reports my system is spontaneously trying to access Intego’s update service for the very set of applications that, for all evidence I could tell, I removed and forgot about. Apparently, no so.

LittleSnitch also reveals it’s TaskManagerDaemon who’s trying to deal with Intego’s NetUpdate buried in /Library/Intego. Thank you LittleSnitch, curse you Intego.

Intego leaves cruft. Running cruft. Seems this isn’t new of them, according to Apple archives.

Part of the Mac culture is being a good citizen. In my opinion, I feel they aren’t.

After uninstalling the software in exactly the manner they prescribe, enter this this command at your terminal:
sudo find / -name Intego -print

I suspect you’ll develop a similar facial tick as it starts returning output after scanning your disk.

Go grab a root shell, you’re gonna wanna also wipe out:

/Library/Intego and everything below it.
/Library/Application Support/Intego and everything below it.
/Library/Preferences/Intego and everything below it.
/Users/wls/Library/Application Support/Intego and everything below it.

Oh, and you’ll want to Reboot as well.

…it’s not like I had other applications up or was doing anything important.

After the reboot, you’ll notice tons of console messages from launchd. Now you need to do this.
$ launchctl
launchd% remove com.intego.task.manager.notifier
launchd% remove com.intego.netupdate.agent
launchd% exit

And, you’ll need to remove some .plist files:
$ sudo rm -v /Library/LaunchAgents/*intego*
$ sudo rm -v /Library/LaunchDaemons/*intego*

And preferences, frameworks, keychains, and widgets:
$ sudo rm -vrf /Library/PreferencePanes/NetUpdate.prefPane
$ sudo rm -vrf /Library/Frameworks/IntegoiCalFramework.framework/
$ sudo rm -v /Library/Keychains/Intego.keychain
$ sudo rm -vrf /Library/Widgets/Intego\ Status.wdgt/

Reboot again.

UPDATE (12-Dec-2010): I’ve been in contact with Intego Support, support@intego.com, and they were kind enough to provide this extra information:

If there is anything left on your computer, you can remove it manually.

Can you please go into the following areas on the computer and delete any traces of Intego or VirusBarrier:

/Macintosh HD/Library/Intego
/Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchAgents
/Macintosh HD/Applications
/Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences
/Macintosh HD/Library/Logs
/Macintosh HD/Library/Receipts
/Macintosh HD/Library/Startupitems
/Macintosh HD/Library/Widgets

Home Folder:

~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Preferences

They were right, there’s logs, too.
$ sudo rm -rf /Library/Logs/NetUpdate/

Review: Walt gives Intego software installation TWO thumbs down. The reasons are obvious.

Competitors?

An opinion piece: are Apple and Microsoft competitors? This line of reasoning says no.

Who made the spoon that you used to eat your breakfast cereal this morning?

Every once in a while I’ll hear people talking about how Microsoft and Apple are competitors. As someone who’s technology agnostic, I don’t see the world in such shades of black and white. Here’s my reasoning as an outsider comparing the two.

Apple is a hardware company, their goal is selling as many units of whatever as possible, whether it be computers or mp3 players. With a focus on design and user experience, backwards compatibility takes a back seat to form and functionality. They excel at elegance and minimalism. They aim sharply at the home user. Disposability is ok. The next big thing is the future.

Microsoft is an operating system and business application vendor, their goal is to put that software on to as many pieces of hardware as possible. They are an industry leader in office applications and software development environments. They aim sharply at business and government. Backwards compatibility is highly important. They’d run on toasters if they could.

Is there overlap between the two? Sure, some. Is it a make or break difference? Not really, much is a matter of preference and familiarity.

I twitch anytime I hear someone say OS X is more “intuitive” than Windows; the word they’re looking for is consistent. Coarse application design is more similar, meaning once you get over the learning curve, subsequent new challenges have a ring of familiarity.

But more importantly, are the two environments mutually exclusive? Not at all. That’s why platform agnostics run both systems. Some things are just easier to do in some environments than others.

The operating systems wars and the phone wars are about luring people toward purchasing something from that camp. But look closer. MS-Office runs on OS X, and quite nicely. Safari and QuickTime run on Windows, and quite nicely. Once you’ve made the purchase of their crown jewel, the fighting appears to stop.

Users, on the whole, don’t care (and often don’t understand) about the underlying system. They just have a problem they want to solve, learn how to do it once and without change, and any tool that gets the job done will do.

Just like my spoon.

Bang for Buck

Think that extended trial periods hurt sales? Think again.

There’s a wonderful application for the Mac called TypeIt4Me that does instant macro expansions as one types. I first learned about it at a No Fluff Just Stuff technical conference when some of the presenters were using it to give some slick presentations.

I’m a big believer in try-before-you-buy, and have long advocated using the 30/30/30 model for generating sales.

Here’s evidence that my bang-for-buck ratio was pretty low:

The problem? At the time, I just couldn’t find just the right need for it within my own workflow. But you can see, I kept it around.

However, because the software didn’t shutdown and lock me out, which would have gotten it deleted, it was there the moment I had need. And, Ettore Software got a sale.

Camera is in use by another application

Trying to video conference with Skype and getting a message saying the camera is in use by another application with no video feed sent out? Try this.

Recently I was attempting to use Skype, but it reported that “Your camera is in use by another application” and I couldn’t get any video feed, though the camera turned on.

Then I found this post which suggested removing the file
/Library/QuickTime/CamCamX5.component from the system, although I found it’s possible just to move it out of that directory.

Restarting Skype, the video conference worked perfectly.

Yahoo concurs. Here’s more on CamCamX. And here’s another thread saying to remove it.

Operating System: OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

NTFS on OS X

Trying to write to an NTFS volume on OS X, and all you find are third party packages and complicated config file manipulations asking you to reboot? Do this….

Every once in a while someone brings over an external NTFS formatted drive and plugs it into my Mac to exchange some large data sets. While the Mac can easily read NTFS, it doesn’t appear to have the capability to write to that file system.

Appears is the operative phrase.

If you search for a solution in the open, you’ll find companies selling commercial products, drivers, and mounters. Some people have posted complicated looking instructions telling instructing you to mess with low level system files, that may or may not exist, ending in a full system reboot that typically solves the problem for that lone drive.

Here’s the generic no-software required solution.

First connect your NTFS drive to the Mac, it’ll mount with some name like “My Disk.”

Open a Terminal window and enter the command:
$ mount

The mount command will tell you what drives are listed. Find the one that has your drive name listed in it and copy the device name:
/dev/disk1s2 on /Volumes/My Disk (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners, mounted by me)

Now eject the drive, but don’t disconnect it from the machine.

Go manually create the directory (shown in bold above); this is where the mount point will be:
$ cd /Volumes
$ mkdir My\ Disk

NOTE: The backslash escapes the next character, in this case allowing a space in the directory name.

Now, mount the drive as read-write using this command:
$ sudo mount -o rw -t ntfs /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/My\ Disk

Make sure that you’ve used the same device location you copied down the the prior steps.

At this point your drive should appear on the desktop, and you ought to be able to read and write to it just fine. No rebooting necessary!

Note that you can get to it from the Terminal as well:
$ cd /Volumes/My\ Disk
$ ls

Note that sometimes Finder may act a little wonky with timing problems and a huge file. Apparently the underlying Unix system has no problem. You can copy a big file to the drive:
$ rsync –progress SuperBigFile.zip /Volumes/My\ Disk

Or a whole directory:
$ rsync -r –progress LargeDeepDirectory /Volumes/My\ Disk

When done, make sure you are not running any programs that are accessing the drive or have their current directory set to the drive:
$ cd /Volumes

Then, eject the drive normally, or unmount it from the command line — your choice.
$ sudo umount /Volumes/My\ Disk

Full disclosure and warnings: This was tested on OS X 10.6.5, though support has been around to do this for a while. And, any time you’re doing something that deals with questionable file system access, make sure there’s nothing on the drive you don’t mind losing. Have a backup. There’s always a slight risk, but it’s very close to zero — why state all this? Because I assume no responsibility if something goes wrong.

WebCams on OS X

Lots of cool software exists for webcams on OS X.

OS X is capable of using USB and Firewire cameras, with perhaps the most famous being the iSight, second to the Built-in iSight of Apple’s laptops.

Use other cameras!
But it turns out you can use a lot of third party cameras using the Macam driver.

Use multiple cameras!
If you’re using multiple cameras at once, say for security monitoring, you’re going to want to take a look at SecuritySpy, which has motion detection, time lapse, and the ability to view from a remote browser, plus many other features.

Barcode Reader!
EvoBarcode will let you use your camera as a bar code reader.

Web Streaming!
EvoCam will let you stream multiple cameras and push images to servers.

Stop Motion Photographer!
iStopMotion will help you make your own stop motion movies.

Real-time Special Effects!
iGlasses will enhance and alter your video feeds.

Drag’n’Drop Problems with Parallels 4

Since installing Snow Leopard, I can no longer Drag’n’Drop files from Windows to the hosting OS X environment, though the inverse works just fine. Is anyone else having this problem, because I’m not seeing much about it on the Parallel’s forums. I think the bug is real.

To say that I’m distrusting of Microsoft Windows’ security is putting things lightly. And when I’m in a situation where Microsoft’s anti-open standards force Microsoft as a necessity, I tend to use a virtual machine to sandbox its activities.

On Mac OS X, I use a wonderful product called Parallels, which has the added bonus of being able to drag’n’drop files and directories between the guest operating system (Windows) and the host operating system (OS X).

After installing the latest Snow Leopard (10.6), I found that while I could drag files into Windows from OS X, the reverse was no longer true. Dragging something from the Windows desktop out to the OS X desktop, which used to work in Leopard (10.5), simply results in nothing happening.

Parallels 4.x Shared Services Drag'n'Drop

Now, I’m aware that Apple did some pretty big changes under the hood in Snow Leopard. And, I’m aware that even the Finder got a fairly intensive overhaul. And, I’m even willing to accept that there might be bumps during the transition process, as the good folks at Parallels update their product to address little tidbits like this.

However, I’m kinda surprised that this kind of thing snuck past testing. Even more to my surprise is that I don’t hear many people talking about it. Such conclusions lead me to think that perhaps I have a local configuration issue.

But then I heard from another user of Parallels that updated to Snow Leopard. He ran into the same problem: Drag’n’Drop worked only in one direction now.

Most of the Snow Leopard fuss currently centers on the fact that Parallels 2.x and 3.x no longer work under Snow Leopard. Parallels made such a good and stable product that early users saw no need to update as it met their needs. However, Apple’s approach to operating systems is far more progressive than Microsoft’s, as they are willing to sacrifice backwards compatibility in software and hardware, if the technology is substantially old and the new benefits far outweigh the trouble. Thus, Apples tends to fix problems, rather than bandaid-ing workarounds; in the long haul everyone benefits with faster, smaller, more featured applications instead of bloatware.

However, I’m riding the Parallels 4.x wave on the bleeding edge. I’ve got the Parallels Tools installed. I’ve got the Enable Drag’n’Drop checked in the Shared Services config. Still, nothing.

I did a little digging around and found one user, Jamie Daniel, who was experiencing the same problem. As his question went unanswered, I tried myself.

I wrote an entry in the Parallels forum entitled Drag files from Guest to Host no longer working, detailing the problem.

And, while I was luckier than Jamie and got an answer, it was fairly clear someone gave a cursory glance and cut’n’pasted a response without reading what I was asking. In short that I did not want Windows to be able to read or write to any OS X drives. For, should Windows get a virus, I didn’t want it having free reign of the OS X filesystem to corrupt. Thus only I, via Drag’n’Drop, should be able to marshal content between the two environments.

Willing to accept the fact that I may have a configuration problem, despite being a power user of Parallels since day one, I am also willing to accept that this is simply a Snow Leopard compatibility issue that Parallels will soon be addressing. Problem is, I can’t seem to raise the issue to a level where someone can confirm or deny it.

Worse yet, I can’t seem to be able to login to Windows via the Finder anymore to mouse a Windows disk within OS X, where as I used to be able to do that as well. While workarounds, from using a USB disk (which mounts in both environments), DropBox, and using the Windows Guest account’s Parallel’s mount point, I’d really like the old capability back.

So, I ask, Parallels 4.x users that are using Snow Leopard, are you no longer able to drag from Windows to the OS X desktop?

If you can, how are you doing it?

If you can’t, please head over to the Parallels forum and let them know it’s broken for you as well. This is not an attack Parallels request, they’re good people — this is just to raise awareness to let them know the issue is real so they can look into it.

UPDATE 14-Sep-2009: Found a work around, but I’m not happy about it. What I don’t like about it is that it appears to expose Windows disks to OS X. While I trust OS X, the inverse does not appear to be necessary to perform a Drag’n’Drop from OS X to Windows. I’d expect the Enable Drag-and-Drop to be enough.

If you turn on the Share All Disks with OS X, then Drag’n’Drop from the Windows desktop to OS X Desktop works.

Snow Leopard: That Doesn’t Sound Like Apple

Had a very strange experience in the Apple Store in Reston, VA where I learned three very disturbing things. Snow Leopard purchasers beware. Hardware purchases, stop in your tracks.

I went to the Apple Store today with a friend that was looking at buying a MacMini and another friend that was picking up a copy of Snow Leopard, which sells for $29. That is, unless you’d like a copy for $25.

Apple’s policy toward operating systems has historically been a good one. There is no home, business, professional, expert, business, yadda-yadda-yadda flavors. There is no upgrade or full version. There is no pricing tier. Everything is one low price, you can upgrade or install fresh at any time.

And, if you buy a machine at the Apple Store it comes with the latest-and-greatest software, and if a new product on it comes out within 30-days, simply come back and pick up your updated version for either free or a very steeply discounted price. This is how it’s been at the Tyson’s Store for years. It shines of Apple customer service.

We went to the new Apple Store in Reston, VA and had the most disturbing news presented by Apple blue-shirt, John.

Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing at this time if what he told us is fact, fiction, or fallacy. So don’t take what you read here as gospel, but rather use it as guideline for formulating solid questions when you deal with Apple for the next few months.

#1) Apple had on display a Mac Box Set (OS X Snow Leopard, iLife ’09, and iWork ’09) for $169. My friend having iLife ’08 and iWork ’08 asked, “is it worth the cost to upgrade?” The Apple guy looked at us and said straight faced, “honestly, no… the features are minimal, just get Snow Leopard.” Now, I appreciate his honesty and opinion, and that alone commanded enough respect for me to retain trust in Apple — much like Macy’s sending people to Gimbel’s. However, I suspect we got lucky and that was not the Apple corporate line. Nor would pointing out you can get it for much less at about $114.

#2) We noticed the word “upgrade” all over the box and asked, “do you have to have Leopard installed to install this?” The answer, surprisingly, was yes. This was an upgrade and not a regular OS X disc like Apple historically has done. We were told that the real OS wasn’t coming out until December. Yes, December. When asked about machine recovery, he confessed they had a special version in the back they could use under dire emergencies. This begs the question if $29 is an upgrade price, with the ‘full’ OS will be the normal $120 later.

Update 31-Aug-2009: An Apple employee in BestBuy also confirmed what’s out now is an upgrade path. Although according to him, if you buy a new machine (with Leopard on it) you get the Snow Leopard update for free, which sounds like the Steve Jobs’s Apple policy we’re used to.

#3) When we asked about the MacMini, we were told that it had Leopard on it and that if we wanted Snow Leopard, we’d have to buy that for an additional $29. However, the electronic Apple Store online was selling MacMini’s with Snow Leopard already installed, without the extra cost. I probed deeply about this. Did the machines really have Leopard, and not Snow Leopard? Yes, the excuse was that they hadn’t moved inventory with the old OS on it. I asked if one simply got the upgrade for free like Tyson’s always used to do. Again, no. When I pointed out that buying online was the-cost-of-Snow-Leopard cheaper, I was met by an indifferent shrug.

All three of these things were very non-Apple.

Again, I don’t know if it was the sales person, the store in general, or Apple taking a page from the Microsoft book of marketing. But suffice it to say there was an abrupt halt on major purchases today.

Customers expect two things from a business, common sense and consistency. Price is often a very distance third.

A Side Note: Customer service plays a big role, and I have another Apple story which illustrates going above and beyond. In BestBuy, when we went to go get a copy of Snow Leopard, they were out of stock. However, while browsing another part of the store, the Apple employee came up and handed over a copy of Snow Leopard. Apparently, a FedEx shipment had just arrived, so he pulled one out of the box, and then hunted down our party in the whole store, on the off chance we hadn’t left yet. That’s service. You know that BestBuy’s floor staff would not have done that.

Printing in Parallels

Using Parallels virtualization, I got this pretty scary error message: pstopdffilter/pstocupsraster failed with err number -31000. I’m almost ashamed to tell you what the solution is to get past it.

Parallels is a virtualization package for the Macintosh that primarily is used for running Microsoft Windows in a virtualized environment on OS X.

At some point you’re going to run into the problem of wanting to print something from the guest OS. Do not try to install a Windows XP print driver for the device that’s connected directly to your Apple. That’s not how it works.

You have a virtual machine. Surprise, you have a virtual printer too.

To set it up is trivial:

Stop your Windows VM if it’s running.
Open VM Configuration Editor (Parallels Desktop menu – Edit – Virtual Machine)
Add Parallel Port Printer to the VM Configuration: click “Add” – select “Parallel Port”, hit “Next” – select “Use a printer” – select the printer you have available in the Mac OS.
Make sure that you are able to print using that printer from the Mac OS side.
Start Windows and try printing some document using “HP Color LaserJet 8500 PS” (it’s generic driver that’s being used for printing from the Virtual Machine to any Mac OS compatible printer).

—Source: Parallels Knowledge Base #5036

This creates a HP Color LaserJet 8500 PS printer, which then gets redirected to the host operating system’s default printer. Printing then works normally, queuing and all.

Now, I did run into this problem using Microsoft Office on Windows XP with a HP DeskJet 6980 connected wirelessly through an Apple AirPort Extreme in bridge mode:

pstopdffilter/pstocupsraster failed with err number -31000

Here’s how I solved it.
I deleted the print queue on the host operating system, then I turned the power off and back on again on the printer, and tried again.

Seriously. I power cycled the printer. That’s all that was required. Second time through, it worked like a champ.

Big scary error message, itty-bitty solution.

NOTE: You will want to scan through your document if you’re using exotic fonts. In my case apostrophes were coming out as Ã.

Safari Problems Downloading .DMG Files

A number of users are reporting that Safari 4 is no longer downloading .dmg files. Here’s how I fixed the problem when it started happening to me.

A while back I started having problems with Safari 4 being able to download files. Normally when one clicks on a .dmg or .zip file, Safari downloads it.

Recently, it stopped working, either doing absolutely nothing or trying to load the file into the browser itself for display. It was as if the MIME type wasn’t properly being handled.

Here’s how I fixed it.

It appears that Speed Download‘s broswer plugin is to blame. While it works amazingly well with Safari 3, it doesn’t seem to work quite right with Safari 4.0.3.

Quit completely out of Safari.
Go to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins directory and locate the file SpeedDownload Browser Plugin.plugin and move it out of that folder.
Restart Safari.