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This week’s episode of the MacBreak Weekly turned me onto a great app called Monolingual. For those of you who don’t know, Monolingual is a small app which allows you to remove language files from your OS X install. In case my description isn’t good enough, here’s how the Monolingual website describes their software:

Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. It requires at least Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) and also works on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).

I don’t know about you, but I use my computer in only one (human) language — English. And I’m willing to bet that you do too, albeit perhaps not English. So why do you have a bunch of localization files for the Mac OS X operating system filling up your hard drive? Enter Monolingual — a handy utility for reclaiming your space for more useful things… like international mp3 files, email or whatever you like.

The great thing about Monolingual has to do with the fact that it allows you to recapture a couple Gigabytes worth of disk space simply by removing language resources that you aren’t going to use! In my case, I was able to save ~1.9G worth of disk space by removing all language resources other then English and English (United States).

Word of caution: This app does remove files off of your machine so you should use it at your own risk. If I were you, I wouldn’t use the Architectures feature in Monolingual since it will remove files which are necessary to run Rosetta. Here’s a snip taken out Monolingual’s FAQ:

Q. Should I remove the non-Intel architectures on my Intel based Mac?

A. You can use Monolingual to remove non-Intel architectures for your installed applications (even if some of the applications are PowerPC-only; Monolingual is smart enough not to remove PPC forks if those are the only ones in the universal binary). However, you should not strip the System frameworks if you want to use Rosetta. Rosetta needs the PowerPC code for all frameworks used by the emulated application and if it can’t find it, you may see messages such as the following in the console:
/System/Library/Frameworks/Cocoa.framework/Versions/A/Cocoa:
mach-o, but wrong architecture

Default Screen:

Disk Space Before:

Removing Languages:

Monolingual Finished:

Disk Space After:

Update 02/22/07: Loweded Wookie was kind enough to reply to this post and provide me with a explanation as to why this issue exists. Apparently, the Finder writes out a file named .DS_Store in each directory that it touches. According to this site, the .DS_Store file serves the following purpose:

The .DS_Store files are created by the Finder during its normal course of operation but they are invisible by default. The Finder will automatically put a .DS_Store file into every folder you have opened. These files are used to save the positions of icons, the size of the respective Finder window, the window’s background, and many more view options. While professional users consider the .DS_Store files to be a design flaw of the Mac OS X Finder, a mechanism like this is necessary when opening Finder windows for exchangeable disk media to give former users of the classic Mac OS the same user experience they had in previous operating system versions. If you don’t like to see the .DS_Store files, replace the Finder by a better file management application

This explains why I am unable to open a file if other files are being copied into the same directory. I really appreciate the fact that Loweded took some time out of his day to research this issue with me. It truly was driving me nuts. I don’t necessarily agree with how OS X does this however, at least now I understand why I received the error mentioned below.

Just today I noticed that OS X doesn’t seem let me open a file that I just copied if there are more files that still need to be copied. For example, I tried to copy ~ 280 Megs worth of videos off of my computer upstairs.

When I tried to open one of the files which was already copied I received the following error:

Am I doing something wrong or has Apple just not figured this one out?

Update 2/19/07: Somebody over at digg didn’t believe me that this was a problem so I decided to try it out again when I got home from work. As you can see from these screenshots it is a problem. When I tried and open an image which already had a thumbnail generated for it, OS X told me it couldn’t access the file. This is driving me nuts. Am I doing something wrong?

For this test I copied six JPEGs:

I then tried to open one of the JPEGs which already had a thumbnail generated for it:

On top of being a super geek, one of my other well known characteristics is that I am a bit anal when it comes to the quality of the products I buy. I’m hardly ever happy with a sub-par product. Even the littlest imperfection drives me nuts. So, needless to say, I was extremely irritated when I noticed that my brand new MacBook had started to discolor or look dirty. The discoloration had occurred in the palm rest area and it was driving me nuts. Some people would be able to look past this however, it really had me irritated.

When I first noticed the discolortaion, I immediately assumed that it was the same problem that several people had reported with earlier versions of the MacBook. Back when the MacBook first came out there were a number complaints about the MacBook discoloring in the palm rest area. Even though Apple has supposedly fixed this problem, I immediately assumed that my MacBook was suffering from the same problem.

Since I was concerned that my MacBook was discoloring due to a defect in my laptop, I went ahead and called Apple care. The individual that I spoke with told me that I had two options. #1, I could ship my MacBook back and have the palm rest replaced or #2, I could send my MacBook back and have an entirely new one sent to me. Since I haven’t spent a ton of time getting things setup, I decided to choose option #2. While on the phone, I was a little concerned because the product specialist that I spoke with told me that this problem no longer exists and that he hasn’t received a complaint like this in a long time.

Upon getting off the phone I started to wonder if the replacement MacBook would have the same problem. From what I understand, Apple changed the material that they use in their palm rests long before I purchased my laptop. So, by getting a new laptop I wasn’t sure that the problem that I was having would go away. Like a good geek, I headed over to the Apple discussion forums where I posted a question in which I asked if the replacement laptop that I was about to receive would have the same problem as my current laptop. One of the replies that I received suggested that maybe I should try and clean my laptop and that it may just be dirty. In order to clean it, the commenter suggested that I try and use a Mr. Clean Eraser. Since I had nothing to loose, I went to Wal-Mart and picked up two magic erasers.

After just a couple of swipes (don’t do it too hard) of the eraser my MacBook started to look new once again! I guess my problem wasn’t as severe as I initially thought it was. Since my MacBook now looks as good as new, I decided to cancel the exchange and keep my existing MacBook. In order to prevent this problem from happening again, I’ve gone ahead and purchaseed a Macpad from Macstyles.com. Hopefully this will protect the palm rest and help to keep my MacBook clean and looking good.

To be honest, I’m a little surprised that my MacBook looked dirty after having it for < 1 month. I would have thought that Apple would have figured out how to produce plastic that isn’t so susceptible to getting dirty. After all, when I spend $1400 on a laptop, I don’t expect it to look dirty after three weeks of use. Come on Apple, you can do better then this :).

If your MacBook is starting to look a little dingy, I recommend that you try out the Mister clean eraser. It really made my dirty MacBook look clean again.

Update (2/17/07):  I pretty much have given up on trying to do this.  Even when I copy the library locally I can’t open it up.  I think it has something to do with the fact that I am trying to open up a library that was created by my Windows PC.  If anybody has any further information for me please let me know.  I really did think this would have worked out fo the box….

I think I’ve encountered the first issue that I’ve had with my Mac that I haven’t been able to solve with a simple Google search. Recently, I decided that I wanted to try and access my iTunes library which is stored on my PC in the office upstairs. iTunes 7 introduced the ability to manage multiple libraries simply by holding down the option key when iTunes is launched (see screen-shot below).

In theory, this feature should allow me to load my PC’s iTunes library however, this solution isn’t working for me. When I click on “Choose Library…” and I browse to my PC’s iTunes library, I am unable to load the library. For some reason the library is grayed-out and I am not able to select it (see screen shot below).

At first I thought it was an issue with permissions however, when I browse to my iTunes folder via the Finder, I am able to create, edit and delete files so I really don’t think it has anything to do with permissions (see screen shot below). For the life of me I can’t figure this problem out. In reality it’s not that big of a deal since I can just listen to my music using the built in iTunes sharing capability however, I’d like to be able to access my library directly so that I can make changes to it. Any help would be greatly appreciated….

I think it’s kind of neat how Photo Booth can take a therma picture using my laptop’s iSight. Here’s a picture that I took while sitting next to the fire. Notice how one side of my faces is warmer then the other.

In just a little over a week I’ve already learned a lot about my Mac. Other then a couple of quirky things, I really like OS X and how it works. In this short amount of time I’ve come up with the following observations:

Installing New Apps Is Easy: All you need to do is download a .dmg file, double click on it and drop the .app file into your Applications folder. That’s it! Some applications bring up an installer when you double click on the .app file however, for the most part all you need to do is drag and drop the app in the applications folder.

AppZapper is your friend: Uninstalling apps on the Mac isn’t as easy as installing them. Yes, you can delete the app out of the Applications folder however, more then likely there will still be extraneous files that are left on your system after you delete the app.

This is why you need AppZapper. AppZapper allows you to delete an application and all of its’ extraneous files so that you don’t have anything left behind when you delete the app.

This is especially great for me since I’m trying out new apps on a daily basis. I don’t know why Apple hasn’t included a similar app with OS X. In any case, AppZapper only costs $12.95 and it includes lifetime upgrades for free! Not a bad deal IMHO…

You can right-click but it is a pain: This has been one of my biggest annoyances with my new Mac. In the world of Windows you pretty much always have a two button and right clicking is easy to do. On my Mac, I only have a one button trackpad so when I want to right click I have to hold down the CTRL key. This really is annoying for me however, I’m starting to get use to it. You can plugin a two button usb mouse and that provides you with a right click however, when I’m using my laptop I don’t always want to use a secondary mouse. Why doesn’t Apple believe in the two button mouse? Isn’t it more inntuiative to have two buttons instead of having to hold down CTRL? Just my .02…

Apple-Tab Isn’t The Same as Alt-Tab: Apple-Tab kind of works like Alt-Tab on Windows however, instead of switching between all open windows it switches between all open applications. I’m not sure I like how this works so I downloaded an application called Witch. This application allows you to switch between windows similar to how XP does it. I’m not saying that the OS X way is wrong all I’m saying is that it’s different. As of right now, I like the Windows way better.

Samba is great on the Mac: Thanks to Samba, connecting to my Windows file server was super easy. In fact, I was extremely suprised with how well it worked. I’ve used Samba before on linux and it didn’t seem to work as well as it does on the Mac.

That’s pretty much it for now.  I’m sure I’ll have more to say as time goes on…..