Mac OS X and Lotus Notes

It’s interesting that there doesn’t seem to be that much information about Notes and Mac OS X since this site now seems to attract a lot of visitors from Google because of this post about gripes with Lotus Notes on OS X maybe I’ll slowly build up a resource page for things related to Notes.

So anyway todays problem with notes is that when you open a zip and expand it all works fine – only problem is I have no idea where it has downloaded to. It’s not Desktop – default for most programmes. It’s not Downloads – the new default for Tiger and 10.5 systems.

Lotus Notes stores temporary files on a hidden temp folder when you double click on attached file : /private/var/folders so to find it you need to use terminal to show hidden files see this post on how to show finder hidden files or you can press Command+Shift+G when in finder to open the “Go to folder” menu item, and manually type the path to /private/var/folders/

Simple eh? Grrrr

Apple pushes anti-virus for Macs

For the first time, Apple is recommending the use of anti-virus tools to protect Mac systems.
I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner in all honesty. Apple systems are becoming more and more popular and as such they will become a target for the virus makers.

The BBC website and The Register site both have more on the story. In the meantime I’d recommend ClamXav if you are running Mac OS X it’s free and frequently updated.

Windows SP3 on macbook with bootcamp

Looks like the SP3 update wasn’t tested on MacBook’s. I had a few excrutiating attempts to install and always being told I was 4MB short despite having 20GB free.

There is not enough disk space on C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$ to install Service Pack 3 Setup requires an additional 4 megabytes of free space or if you also want to archive the files for uninstallation,Setup requires 4 additional megabytes of free space. Free additional space on your hard disk and then try again.

Thankfully I found a helpful guide at windowsreference.com which is an easy registry hack and seemed to do the business with no problems.

Apple Finder tips

By default, Mac OS X’s Finder keeps system files – which generally start with a dot, like .trash – out of your sight.

But that makes editing these files extremely difficult or if you want to find one really hard.

In the Terminal type:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder