domenica 29 aprile 2007

Can't install Mac OS onto your Macintosh?

Every Macintosh computer comes with its own version of the operating system out of the box.

Some people, for any reason, want to have different versions of the Mac OS on the same computer.

This is possible only if you install a later version of the OS.

For example. Your Mac came with Mac OS X (Panther) 10.3.7.
Well, on that Mac you can neither install Mac OS X 10.3.6 nor any previous versions.
But, you can install any version of Mac OS X that came out after 10.3.7 without any trouble.

See this technical document for reference.

lunedì 9 aprile 2007

Diacritical mark on Italian Mac keyboard layout

Every keyboard layout contains just a bunch of letters pertaining to the corresponding alphabet that a particular keyboard was made for.

For example, on the Macintosh Italian keyboard there are the most used accented letters in Italian words such as à, è, é, ì, ò, ù.
But from time to time it is necessary to use some other letters such as the Germanic ü.
Without switching the keyboard layout in System Preferences panel, is easy to obtain those letters, using dead keys.

A dead key produces no output when it is pressed, but modifies the output of the next key pressed after it.

Here you can see how is simple to get the most used character in Western country alphabets.

The option key is the key labelled with "alt". These key combinations are intended for Italian keyboard only.

´ option-8 (á, é, í, ó, ú)
` option-9 (à, è, ì, ò, ù)
¨ option-u (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ)
^ option-^ (â, ê, î, ô, û)
~ option-n (ã, õ, ñ)

which is then followed by the letter the accent is intended for.
To obtain ñ press option plus the n key, release them, then press the n key again. In Mac OS X, pressing one of these key combinations creates the accent and hi-lights it, then produces the finalized character when a supported character is pressed, otherwise it leaves the accent remaining.

See Wikipedia for an exhaustive explanation.

domenica 8 aprile 2007

Error authenticating Tiger clients against SMB server

After upgrading a PowerMac from Mac OS X Jaguar to Mac OS X Tiger, this client couldn't access a remote folder hosted on a Sun server running Samba services.

I did not have access at the Sun server so I needed a solution for the client and fortunately I found it browsing the web.

The problem is that the Sun server expected the password from the client in clear text.

The following is a link to Apple knowledge base about this issue.