Disabling Spotlight in Leopard (10.5.x)

There are a ton of guides out there for this already, but this is just for me personally so I don't have to search Google. Also, most of the guides are specific to Tiger. The ones that are specific for Leopard are incomplete.

Disable Spotlight...
Edit /etc/hostconfig and replace

SPOTLIGHT=-YES-

with

SPOTLIGHT=-NO-

Delete the Spotlight indexes...
Execute

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo mdutil -E /

Remove Spotlight from the menubar...

sudo chmod 0000 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

To reverse the process.

Enable Spotlight...
Edit /etc/hostconfig and replace

SPOTLIGHT=-NO-

with

SPOTLIGHT=-YES-

Turn on the indexes...

sudo mdutil -i on /

Restore Spotlight in the menubar...

sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

OS X Leopard Woes

(Image plucked from Google Images)

I've been talking about getting Mac for a long time. I'm kind of tired of tweaking, configuring and sometimes battling Linux. I just want a simple home computer (mostly for Aimee and her new iPod) that "just works."

And that's Mac's big schtick (sp?) right? They just work. Ask anyone who uses ones and they'll tell you... they'll never go back to the broken PC/Windows world. It seems like Mac/OS X is so awesome, that converts don't just become fans... they become fanbois (that's super extreme fanboys).

Well, I finally picked up a Mac Mini with OS X Leopard... here's my take on it.

Home/end/pgup/pgdown keys don't work as expected.
Home and end take the cursor to the beginning and end of a line respectively in EVERY F-ING OS IN EXISTANCE... except for OS X. And that's fine... I'll just learn the Mac way to move the cursor to the end of the line. Well guess fucking what... it's different for different applications!! Here's a sample of what the keystrokes are for beginning /end of a line for different OS X apps. Most OS X programs: command+left / command+right Terminal: ctrl-a / ctrl-e Firefox: who fucking knows / command+right

Massive security issue.
The first day I had the machine, I had to reinstall the entire f-ing OS because for some god knows reason, it was starting every program as root (administrator for you Windows people). There is a long thread about it that ended with the guy throwing in the towel and reinstalling OS X, just like I had to.

Sluggish and hiccups.
Sometimes when I'm typing, the cursor will just freeze for a sec and then when it unfreezes, all the characters come out all at once. Also, minor hiccups (slight delays) when choosing menu items, sending instant messages, or closing apps. There is a thread on Apple's support site about it.

The mouse acceleration is crappy and non adjustable.
Wtf is Apple such a pretentious piece of shit that they force their users to buy a $20 shareware app to adjust something that should have been adjustable in the first place?

Answer: because Apple isn't about choice or freedom... iTunes + iPod.
iTunes -> iPod is a one way street. There is no way to get songs on your iPod back into iTunes (say, in the case of reinstalling the OS like I had to do the first night I had the machine). Also, imagine this... You happily use iTunes and your iPod with your home computer, but then you take your iPod to work and decide you want to download a song and put it on your iPod to listen to at the gym on your way home from work. Think again, asshole. Can't do it without erasing all the songs already on your iPod.

No focus follows mouse policy.
This is just a personal gripe. If you're a seasoned Unix user, you might understand.

Doesn't reconnect to wireless network after waking up.
Aimee loves this one. Almost everytime she wakes up the computer, she has to connect and enter in our WEP password manually to reestablish the internet connection. I think I've tracked this down to a Keychain Access issue, but it's still not resolved 100%... and it pisses me off because....

I thought Macs "just worked."

Apple Innovation: Stacks and Spaces

This is just a rant that started as an IM conversation with a friend. Understand that this is just a lighthearted rant and I'm an Apple fan with a recently acquired Mac Mini with a possibility of buying a MacBook in the near future.

Apple is starting to pull Microsoft's bs marketing crap now... "Look how innovative we are. We created this incredible UI paradigm called Stacks." Are they kidding? That's called dragging a folder to the task bar in KDE and it's been around since the 90's (or earlier?). In fact, it's such a basic concept in any Linux desktop GUI, that it took me a while to even grasp what Stacks was because I thought it was something "new".

Same deal with Spaces. It's called multiple desktops, again a basic concept in Unix as far back as I can remember. "Oh, but Apple was the first to make a cool UI for managing them." Wrong. Compiz/Beryl/CompizFusion was around well before Leopard.

Biggest Apple Rip Off Yet

I was reading (and agreeing with) someone's gripe over Apple putting a combo drive in their "low end" MacBook when I realized that offence is nothing in comparison to their memory prices.

Recently, Apple quietly upgraded their MacBook lineup, which included officially extending the maximum supported memory to 4 gb. Great! The more the better, especially since I would be using VMware Fusion to run Windows and Linux along side OS X.

Here's the kicker, configuring a MacBook through Apple's online store will cost you $850 for 3 gb of memory. Yes, that's eight hundred and f-ing fifty dollars for a mere 3 gb of memory (remember, the 1st gb is including in the base price).

Let me put this in perspective. You can buy 4 gb of Patriot memory, specifically made for Mac notebooks, from Newegg for only $189. Yes, that's one full gb more for approximately $650 less than what Apple is charging.

Am I the only one outraged?

Is a Mac really worth it?

I've been toying with the idea of getting a Mac for a while now. I'd like both a MacBook as well as a Mac Mini. I'm not a normal computer user, so these would be the upgrades I'd get for each of them:

• 2 gb memory
• 7200 rpm hard drive
• Superdrive (aka a dvd burner)

Both the MacBook and the Mac Mini come with 1 gb of memory via two 512 mb sticks. Guess how many memory slots each one has? You guessed it! If you want to upgrade to 2 gb, you can't reuse any of the memory that originally came with the machines.

You cannot add a Superdrive a la carte. You must order the higher end model of each machine to get it.

The 7200 rpm hard drive is about a $100 aftermarket upgrade.

So all said and done, that $500 Mac Mini is looking more like $800 and that $1100 MacBook is looking like $1500.

Now I can upgrade my current computer to have a much faster Core 2 Duo processor than either of those Macs, along with a video card that easily beats them, for a grand total of $400.

"Yeah, but OS X has the best, most badass, eye candy interface ever!" Ehh. Check out this video of what is going to be included in the default installation of (K)ubuntu Linux (released in 10 days).

So now I gotta ask myself... is TextMate really worth $400 to $1100?