Steps of upgrading MBP mid 2012 with Samsung Evo 840 SSD 500gb drive

I did some research in term of speed, reliability, warranty, and price intention to upgrade my getting slower and slower i7 MacBook Pro mid 2012. I did quite some search on the net hoping to get my mavericks runs faster but end up upgrading the HDD to SSD is the best option I could have.

Cut this story short, I got my SSD somehow... the best deal is Samsung EVO 840. I got it delivered to my door. And I waste no time, put it to transfer all my stuff from the HDD (320GB worth of data) to my new SSD while sleeping at night. Next morning, just swap the SSD into the MBP SATA bay and it just works!

Tools you need:

1) USB 2.0 or 3.0 HDD enclosure. After did some review search, I bought this one. Not very cheapskate looks although its cheapskate a bit.

Product info: http://nl.transcend-info.com/Products/No-617

2) Philips #0 screwdriver
3) MacOS X Mavericks installer app (get it from app store).
4) Chameleon SSD optimizer (http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.it/index.php)

Procedure: 

1) Download MacOS X installer if you do not have it ready. Just run App Store and you can download it free.

While downloading, 

2) Open up the enclosure

3) Connects the SSD onto the SATA connector of the enclosure PCB board

4) Connects the USB port of the enclosure and the Mac USB port

5) It should prompt you to format, or if it doesn't then launch Disk Utility and format the drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

After the MacOS finished download, it should be at Application folder. 

6) Head to Application folder and copy the installer app elsewhere out from Application folder... 

7) Run Mavericks installer and choose install destination to the SSD drive (yes while still hooked on the USB port)

8) Follow on screen instructions on the installations until it reboots from the SSD (yes still on USB)

9) You will then ask you to do setup as new. Just simply SKIP whatever you can here because we are going to migrate whatever apps, doc, system settings from the HDD. Setup as new and reinstall apps, reconfigure mailbox, calendar, contacts is a waste of time and precious internet bandwidth.

10) After got into the finder, launch Migration Assistant app in Application folder\utilities\ folder.

11) Choose transfer data from OLD Drive. Pretty much easy to understand what the app will do. Just leave it for a night, and it will be goes to sleep after everything is transferred.

12) When wake up in the morning, shut down the MBP. Flip it over and loosen the screws that hold the cover. And its pretty much straight forward how to get it replace. Google youtube you will get tons of it.

13) Then continue to use the Mac as usual. The only difference is the responds and speed are so much  faster, and its fun to use!

14) Now point to http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.it/index.php to download Chameleon SSD optimizer. MacOS X does not automatically set 3rd party SSD to trim enable. Hence, without it... SSD wear and tear sooner. Run this app to turn on TRIM. Remember, whenever you run upgrade on the OS, the TRIM will be disabled. So run this app again to enable it back. It will stay until you update OS again. Please do donation to the programmer. They spend their time to work on the program and UI to ease ordinary people like us to make configuration. Without this app, we actually can activates the same thing via terminal command. Which requires a lot more google to achieve it.

If you are curious of my settings... here is my preference:

TRIM: Enable
SUDDEN MOTION SENSOR : Off
NOATIME : On
SET SLEEP MODE : A
DISABLE SLEEP IMAGE : Off 

Copy file path on maverick with Automator

I recently register to COPY cloud service and collaborate some folders with my colleagues. So that everyone has a sync copy in their local hard drive. After I have update a file in it, I don't have to email the physical file but to inform him/her the file that I need them to look at.

How to tell them which file that I need them to look for? The file sometimes stores inside a very deep folder, so without them wasting time searching for the file, I have to get the file path and send it to them. But to get full path of that file, I can press command-i to get info that file and copy the path from there. Which involve a few mouse click and text copy paste which is a bit inconvenient. I am very lazy person, so I want shortcut to accomplish my task. 

Here is a easier way to get the path of a file. MacOS Maverick does not have this feature, so we make one for our need. 

End result is to right click the file and get its path.

Here is how we are gonna do it.

Step 1
Launch Automator

Step 2
In choose a type for your document window, select SERVICE then click Choose button.

Step 3
Drag Copy to Clipboard from second column from left, to the right side workflow space.
In the Service receives selected drop down menu, select files or folder;
Then in drop down menu, select finder.app.

Step 4

Save it and put a service name

Thats it, you are done. Its so simple even I myself did not believe. Now just go to finder and right click any file to try out. 

Maybe you are curious where is the file we just created stores in. 
This workflow file is stored in your home folder/Library/Services/Copy filepath.workflow. If want to delete the service, just drag the file into trash. (I haven't try it, I presume it work that way)

Method to remove / delete printer driver from Mavericks

Ok this is a problem with Mac OS. Its easy to remove or uninstall apps by dragging apps into the trash. But when it comes to printer drivers, its still use the same method. 

We normally download printer drivers off from the printer manufacturing websites. And the printer drivers often comes with a package that requires to install into the Mac. But it mostly do not bundle with an uninstaller.

What Apple support shows here http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13875 was to remove the printer from system, but the printer driver is still remain in the system.

Here is the a problem when the printer driver is not compatible, or corrupt... without uninstallers like windows, how do we get rid of the spoiled driver from you Mac?

I personally don't like utility softwares. I don't know... I just don't feels like using it. So I did some research and below is the method on how to get rid of it.

Step 1
Remove the printer from your system by going into system preference > printers and scanners.

Step 2
Select the printer you want to remove, then click "-" button below the list of printers.

Step 3
Close the system preference window.

Step 4
Open up your hard drive that contains your boot system. Normally it names "Macintosh HD".

Step 5
Go to Library > Printers > PPDs > Contents > Resources. A list of the printer drivers on your Mac appears.

Step 6

Click and drag the name of your printer model's driver into the trash.

Step 7
Press and hold the "Control" button on your keyboard while clicking the trash can icon in the dock, or without holding "Control" key and right click you mouse to select "Empty Trash."

Step 8
A password prompt pops out and you will need to key in your Mac login password to remove them to the trash. 

Fix facebook video on MacOS 10.5.8

Got a friend call me all the way from singapore. Complain that his niece macbook unable to play video on facebook. After getting more info from him, found out that she has a old mid 2007 macbook with only 1 gig ram and running on 10.5.8.

Looks like new flash player was not compatible with the OS. Hence ask him to download chrome and play facebook video. Then he told me new chrome unable to run on it either.

After do some search with my friend google, too bad older version of chrome is no where to be found. So I decide to dig the last workable version of flash player for 10.5.8.

Here is the link


http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/




This forum discussed where all the version of adobe flash player being archive and where to get it.

Remove the flashplayer from /library/internet plug-ins. Then run flashplayer installer. Relaunch safari and wolla!

Once again, mission accomplished. Thanks adobe for keeping the old software handy with them.

Enable Remote Disc (Drive Sharing) On Any Mac

I was checking out on a friend's macmini, found an interesting feature on it. It has a remote disk in device section on left side of finder window. And my MacBookPro doesn't has. So I did a search on google on how to hack it to display on my MBP too. And I found this blog how to tweak it to display on my MBP.

http://www.mactricksandtips.com/2009/09/enable-remote-disc-drive-sharing-on-any-mac.html

Why not all mac just display the remote disc on the finder window? Reason is simple, because my MBP has a super drive built in. Apple really hide unnecessary stuff from user to avoid confusion. But since this feature is built in, why not just leave it there. Users may need it just in case the built in drive broken.

Manage a group of email address on Maverick mail

I always like to forward emails to a group of friends. We shares alot of emails that contains jokes, nice pictures, videos, politics, thoughts etc. I have been doing it years ago when I work for a company and use outlook as our email client. All the contacts stays in outlook.

After I resigned from the company, I no longer use outlook. I find very hard to maintain my habit to forward these emails to friends because my iPhone doesn't allow me to do just what I did on outlook. Until recently I upgrade to use a mac, it comes with mavericks. And it also doesn't works like outlook.

But today I found a better way to do it. I doesn't care the recipient names so I just interested in their email addresses.

Here is the steps:

1) fires up textedit.app
2) paste email addresses separated by a comma without space. So it will be 1 long line of string.
3) select / highlight the long line with the email address by tripleclick on it
4) drag the highlighted long line of email addresses to desktop

---> Then it will create a file with extension .mailtoloc. I would call it xxx.mailtoloc

5) select this xxx.mailtoloc and right click it and select get info
6) rename the extensions from xxx.mailtoloc to xxx.mailloc. Then close the info window.
7) now, double click the xxx.mailloc it will automatically open up a new email message, with all the email address in the TO column. It saves a lot of select and typing there.

MacOS X manually remove apps and associated files

Today I was trying to compare Appzapper vs Appcleaner and see which app removes unwanted app and its associated files better. After some reading and I found that the best method is still removing them manually. But how do you know which files specifically in used by the app you intended to get rid of? Here is a method I found posted by GGJstudios in MacRumors forum that will come handy if we really need to look into it.

Here is the link : To manually remove an application and all associated files