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OS X is admirably stable, but unfortunately not all programs that run in it are. For example, there is one particular utility, that I use regularly, that is recalcitrant about quitting. If it is running, which it usually is, when I select the Logout, Restart, or Shutdown commands, I get a dialog box informing me that "[Application X] has canceled the log out" or some such. Then of course, there are those instances where an application to just hangs up that refuses to respond. Fortunately, OS X offers several ways to dismiss misbehaving programs, none of which will upset the system's stability the way force quits do in the Classic Mac OS, usually necessitating a restart, and possibly the heartbreak of lost, unsaved data. To force quit a program in OS X, you can: • Control - click on its icon in the Dock (or just click and hold the mouse button). A pop-up dialog will appear. Press Option, and the "Quit" menu selection in the dialog will change to "Force Quit." Select that, and the program should quit. • Another way is to press the Option > Command > Escape key combo -- a holdover from the Classic Mac OS, or just choose Force Quit from the Apple Menu. The Force Quit Applications dialog will appear, showing a list of running applications. Highlight the miscreant and click the Force Quit button. • Some programs, including the Dock, don't show up in the Force Quit dialog. If the one you want to get rid of doesn't appear on that list, you can resort to be Process Viewer, which can be found in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. The Process Viewer window displays everything that is currently running, including a lot of stuff that will likely be as inscrutible to you as it is to me. Scroll through the list till you find the one you're looking for, double click on it, and it should force quit. You can also highlight the application or process in the list and choose Quit Process from the Process menu. • If you are into command lines, you can also use "kill" in the Terminal, but if you're up for that, you don't need to be reading this article. Index-free content search tools Search with Sherlock?! Sherlock version? On killing the Classic Mac OS or How to Blow Ones Own Horn? The "Removing The Script Menu Responses (Many) Possible Mac OSX Virus? -- Or Not From Michael Koren Hi Charles The past week I've seen an unbelievable number of emails come my way with little attachments that have '.scr' at the end of the name. Today I received a message I sent out months ago with my name and my id just before the '@' but some other isp after the '@' which is something I've noticed from a number of emails from names I know but ISP's that are no right. With that '.scr' at the end of the attachment name. Anyhow, immediately after I opened the message with MY NAME on it (!), weird things started happening. Mouse presses anywhere began to act like double clicking. So windows go crazy, scroll bars make no sense. Even the menus (when selected) start acting like lights in an old-style move marquie. If I depress the mouse to create a selection rectangle - what out whatever is in the way! Like icons on the desk top opening all files and the selection rectangle constantly breaking down along the way! This is not the first time I've recently seen this behaviour. I've seen it on occassion for the past few weeks. Normally, once it starts, with diligent effort to select 'shut down' I can reboot without seeing it again. For days. Except today :-( Today I've rebooted 5 times so far and the problem refuses to go away. So it feels like I have a slightly more virulent version of whatever my computer has had before. Yes it feels like my OSX 10.1.5 is stricken with a virus. And I'm starting to wonder, based on the lack of info on the net and the comments in version tracker than nobody ever finds viruses, AM I ALONE? Michael Koren
Later:
Sounds like this may be a known issue since the Apple dealer tech picked up on it. Did the mouse used to work fine for some time prior to the wonky Finder behavior manifesting? If so, perhaps the mouse is defective. Several years ago, a customer brought my Mac tech son a Performa (model similar to a Power Mac 6100) that was behaving badly. He worked on it for a couple of days, cleaned up the HD, reinstalled the OS, etc. Couldn't reproduce the behavior the customer had complained about. However, when the customer came to pick up the machine and Tristan booted it up to demonstrate how well it was working, the malfunction had returned. The difference? When he worked on the Mac, he had plugged in one of our ADB mice, but for the demo, the customer's own mouse was plugged in. Substituting another mouse cured the problem again. Charles Index-free content search tools From Duncan Macdonald Dear Charles, In addition to Speedsearch there is another excellent content-search tool available for OSX: Easyfind by Christian Grunenberg (www.grunenberg.net). My impression is that this is faster than Speedsearch and in addition offers the option of Boolean searches (AND or OR) and wildcards. It does not return any context, but if your files are text and you have set them to open in Textedit then they will open instantly and the search terms passed to the Textedit find dialogue. You can also specify the extensions of the files that Easyfind will search; useful if as I found I had some text files that had been given a .doc extension. Overall I prefer this to Speedsearch. The author has also written a number of other useful applications that like Easyfind are installed as Services in /library/services and so are available to other Cocoa apps via the Apple/Services menu. Calcservice adds simple calculator functions within a document, and Wordservice adds around 30 conversion, formatting and other functions. In my experience these are stable and reliable. These are all elegant apps, are free to download from the author's site and deserve recognition. Also BBEdit has excellent fast search across file functions that returns a list of hits with context. Best regards Duncan
Hi Duncan;
Yes, I reviewed EasyFind in OS X Odyssey 110, and liked it. I expect that when I eventually switch to OS X for production work, I'll experiment with EasyFind some more.
I do like SpeedSearch, and the fact that it works pretty much identically in both OS X and OS 9 is a big plus for me.
Charles From Darren Varner In Jaguar, open the Finder. Fill in what you are searching for. It will find it in a few seconds. Easy. Free. (Or hit Apple Key F and it will give you a search box.) This is Jaguar....not OS 9.
Cheers.
Hi Darren;
It is OS X 10.1.4 ;-). Your note sent me digging through John Siracusa's exhaustive review of Jaguar on Ars Technica, and he did note that:
"The Finder's 'Find' command no longer launches the (slow, bloated) Sherlock search tool. Instead, it now brings up a blessedly simplified (and therefore quick to appear) dialog that is actually focused on finding files."
He didn't say whether or not the hard drive still has to be indexed for find by content, which is one of my biggest objections to Sherlock. Does it?
Charles From Larry Duffy What version of Sherlock are you using anyway? Looks like an old one. OSX 10.2.1 Sherlock doesn't even have those icons at the top. And, it doesn't access the hard drive. That is done with the command F combo. Sooo, what version are you running? Larry
Hi Larry;
See my reply to Darren above. I'm using OS X 10.1.4.
Charles On killing the Classic Mac OS or How to Blow Ones Own Horn? From dxtr Hi Charles, Just finished reading todays installment of OS X Odyssey. The letter from Martin A. Totusek caught my attention so I followed the link to http://www.wormintheapple.gr/. What a nasty little site. Upon a little further investigation it seems that Martin is a contributor to this little corner of the cyber dung heap. The article lamenting the demise of Audio Production in X submitted by him in June 2001 entitled "Tunes in the X key: Mac OS X and music software" is as well written piece of totally biased journalism as I have ever seen. The site does not identify who owns it but claim to be professional writers?? This is a quote from their news section "It's been a while since we had the time to update the web site. This is partly because we are so lazy, partly because of the hard drive disaster in January, and partly because we have been writing articles nonstop for various magazines since the start of the year." Posted on June 2. Must have been a heck of a hard drive disaster!! How many of those various magazines are not ezines with limited subscriptions or windoze centered? If these people hate Apple and Apple products so much then why are they still using them? I have not always been happy with the changes Apple has made to various Software/Hardware over the years but to take the time to devote a site to griping about it is a little much. On top of that to use a respected site and columnist to promote traffic to that site under the guise of defending that columnists views?? Hummm... I think Martin better hop on over to that new GateWay Store and get a big dose of Bills brand of computer, then he will really have something to gripe about.
seeya
The "Removing The Script Menu Responses (Many) Thanks to everyone who wrote in response to James Song's query. That's what this forum is for. :-)CM Removing the Script Menu! From Terry Devlin Hi Charles James Song wants to know how to get rid of his AppleScript Menu - easy as pie: Hold down the apple key and drag it from the menu bar.
Terry Devlin
Re: Removing Script Menu from Jaguar From Mike Vicente Mr. Moore, Regarding James Song's question, simply command-click and drag the menu icon off the menubar. A satisfying "Poof!" will let you know it's done. Keep up the good work. Mike PS Perhaps another reason for you to try Jaguar. If you try a screen capture with command-shift-4, click the space bar. The cursor changes and you can take a picture of a window (or menu). Slowly but surely, old features return.
Hi Mike;
Thanks, and good news about the screen capture enhancement.
Charles Removing Script Menu from Jaguar (how to) From John Hollinger Hello Charles, Most of the items in the menu bar can be removed by holding down the command (apple) key and dragging the item to the trash. Hope this helps. John Hollinger Moving an icon from the Menu Bar
From Anonymous by request
You can remove an icon from the Jaguar menu bar by command-dragging it off. Removing menus from Jaguar
From anonymous
Somebody "rading this will?" Anyway, yes I'm reading it, and yes there is a simple solution. Hold down the command key when you click on a menu created by .menu files, like the sound menu, and clock menu and drag it off the menubar as you would drag an icon off the dock. To add an item to the menubar, find your .menu files and just command-drag the menu to the menubar. Command-drag also works to rearrange menuitems order. Say you don't like the clock menu being to the right of the battery menu, you can drag the clock menu to the left of the battery menu holding down the command key.
Sincerely,
Re: OS X Odyssey 180 - removing script menu From Jonathan Boyd Hey Charles, been reading the Odyssey for quite a while, enjoying the everyman approach to evaluating it and hope this will be of help - any of the little menu widgets installed on the right hand side of the menu bar can be rearranged by command dragging or removed by command dragging to the trash - the same as the process for moving menu items about in Cocoa apps. Hope this helps.
Jonathan Boyd
Odyssey 180 - removing Script Menu From Todd Wachob Hi Charles, James Song was wondering how to remove the Script Menu from the menu bar. On 10.1, command-click while dragging them off of the menu bar causes them to go "poof". Of course this may no longer work for 10.2, but that seems unlikely. Todd Odyssey 180 - response for James Song From Jonathan Tyzack Hi Charles, you'll probably get tens of messages saying the same thing, but just in case... To remove a menu bar item, press command and drag it off the menubar, release the icon and it will disappear in a puff of smoke. You can also rearrange items this way (command-click, then drag and drop at the new location). Cheers, Jonathan In Response James Song From Thompson James Song had difficulty with the menu item... Like all menu items, they are not processes, but instead a glimpse at the underlying architecture. Anyway, as with all menu items since 10.0 came out you just have to hold the Command key, click the menu item with the mouse and drag the item away from the menu bar...it's that simple. Christopher Thompson
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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