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With OS X memory-monitoring utilities, Classic Mode shows up as a single process, regardless of how many Classic applications you have running. However, OS X has a built-in feature that allows you to keep tabs on how memory is being used in Classic Mode. Just open the Classic pane in system preferences, and check on the Memory/Version tab. In the window you will see an analog of the information that displays in the Classic OS Apple Menu under "About This Mac. " 
The Memory/Applications tab also has a "Show Background Processes" checkbox that will, when selected, show items that are running in the background in Classic Mode. 
To adjust memory allocations for Classic applications, click the application icon, open the Get Info window, and check the "Memory" flippy triangle. Rebooting Rebooting And Apps A different re-booting problem A couple comments on your Odyssey re: FTP in OS X / Mac GPS Panther Musings Odyssey 368 Disappearing Input Menu OSX From Michael L Johnson Charles You mentioned a problem with "I discovered that the Finder keyboard configuration selector icon had disappeared, which has started happening after reboots since I upgraded to OS 10.2.6. ". I assume you refer to the Input Menu in the Menubar. I have had this happen to me as well with no explanation under OSX 10.2.4. On restart or reboot the Input Menu is gone. I am using GrammarianX, SpellCatcher X, and TypeIt4MeX. You probably don't have to reinstall TypeIt4MeX. Try the following.
The solution which works for me is to:
For me at this point GrammarianX, SpellCatcherX, and TypeIt4MeX would display there all checked as they should be.
3) Just uncheck any one of the Input Menu tools you may have installed (GrammarianX, SpellCatcherX, and/or TypeIt4MeX)
For me, the Input Menu would be back on the Menubar, most often with just the American Flag (I use the US Keyboard layout only) icon showing. 6) then choose one of my tools from the Input Menu icon in menubar, (for me SpellCatcher X usually) and all is well. I have no idea what is causing the occasional Input Menu disappearance. It happens intermittently (a few times a month) on a restart, reboot, and sometimes (rarely)a game which takes over entire screen. ======== Applelinks is my favorite Mac site! I have been following your OSX Odyssey with great interest as it is mirroring my own move to OSX. Keep up the good work! Enjoy Canadian perspectives and your religious foundations/perspectives discussions. How do you manage to leave your Macs powered on many days at time? I live in Ohio USA with no UPS (uninteruptable Power supply) and with the many severe thunderstorms almost daily this July, the possibility of power outages, spikes, surges, etc. require me to turn my Macs off for safety and peace of mind overnight and when not in expected use for many hours. I also still have annoying problem of Eudora 5.2 (and 4.3) will not remember any previously open windows if any Input Menu tools are installed and active (like GrammarianX, SpellCatcherX, and TypeIt4MeX). Curiously, if I run Eudora in a ad mode (unregistered ie NOT PAID mode) this Input Menu bug does not arrise. Mike Johnson
Hi Mike;
Thanks for the tip about the Input Menu disappearace fix. I had forgotten about (if it had ever registered) the Inout Menu tab in the International preference pane.
Delighted to hear that you enjoy Applelinks.
My production Macs are an iBook and a PowerBook, both with internal battery power. The issues you cite (power interruptions and thunderstorms) are one of the reasons I prefer to use portables rather than Desktop machines. If the power goes out, I can just keep working for another four hours or so. If electrical storms are forecast, my practise has been to unplug the power adapters and modems. Unfortunately, due to OS X's lame power management, the machines will drain their batteries overnight if unplugged. However, I don't think my Pismo has been shut down in about five months, although it's been rebooted a number of times in that interval.
I just put them to sleep when they're not in use.
I've always used the ad-supported mode in Eudora 4.3 and later, so I gues that's why I haven't encountered the glitch you describe.
Charles
From David Oakley Charles, I'm actually a bit envious that you feel safe leaving your computer on for extended periods of time without supervision. I live in a village in the central US (NE Kansas), and the power goes down at least once, sometimes twice a month (usually for less than an hour), due to high winds or storms of some sort. Also, I've seen enough lightning strikes within a few miles of the house that I would never dare trust any commercial surge protector to keep my Mac from frying. So everything gets shut down every night before I go to bed, and earlier if the weather seems threatening. David Oakley
Hi David;
As I noted in my reply to Mike immediately above, these are compelling reasons to own a PowerBook or iBook, although the overnight battery drain in OS X makes them somewhat less compelling than they were in OS 9, in which you can leave a 'Book sleeping and unplugged for literally weeks at a time.
Charles From Constance Graves Hi, Charles: Anent your dislike of rebooting (I won't comment on that) and the fact you have so many apps open all the time. Why not put them into your Log-in Items under System Preferences so that whenever you *do* reboot they'll be started up automatically?
Just a thought.
Hi Constance;
I don't really mind clicking the icons in the Dock or Tigerlaunch to get them going. What I can't stand is waiting for them and Classic Mode to start up and for the system to shut down and reboot.
The little beta memory management app I'm testing this week informed me that I had 11 active swapfiles and 63 open applications & system processes running last evening. Yikes!
Charles A different re-booting problem From Eric MacKnight Hi Charles, I have a different re-booting problem. My iMac 500 has, since at least OS X 10.2, frozen up every time I leave it on overnight. In the morning, the computer makes an intermittent electronic chirping noise, kind of like a cricket. If I try to do anything--including force-quit an application -- I just get the spinning ball. The only solution is to force a shut-down by holding down the power button, and then re-starting. This despite repairing permissions, and using MacJanitor. My iBook SE 466, treated just the same and running the same OS's, has never done this, which might suggest a hardware problem... but my search of the Knowledge Base and discussion forums has not helped. If you or any of your readers can help, I would be very grateful. Eric MacKnight
Hi Eric;
That's an odd one. It would appear that it is something unique to that computer. Does the same phenomenon manifest if you boot into OS 9 and leave it on overnight?
Anybody else ever encounter something like this?
Charles
A couple comments on your Odyssey From Bryan Dyck Hi Charles.. I've been reading the recent spate of emails on the subject of OS X vs. OS 9 with interest, and noticed a couple things recently that I'd like to comment on: Craig mentioned that you can delete swap files in /private/var/vm other than swapfile0 - to the best of my knowledge, this is not possible (well, OS X might allow root to do this, but then, root can also delete the entire filesystem) or recommended if it is. OS X automatically allocates/deallocates swap space as it is needed, and if there is more than one swap file present in /private/var/vm, it is safe to consider it "in use". The OS will try to consolidate these files if it can; if it can't, they will remain allocated whether the entire 80 MB chunk is needed or not. You also have to keep in mind that VM usage fluctuates over time, so if you happen to see two swap files in /private/var/vm one day, and three or four a few days later, it's not usually something to get worried about. If you're really annoyed by the presence of several swapfiles, logging out and back in can sometimes reduce that number as that will quit any tasks that you were previously running, thus freeing up memory; the ultimate reduction method of course is to reboot. :) On the subject of system monitoring utilities, I find iPulse from the venerable IconFactory folks to be a great visual system monitoring tool that also makes use of some innovative information display techniques. More importantly, its' memory monitor is divided up amongst wired/active/inactive/free regions, which will give you a more accurate picture of what your system is doing than say, PTHCPUMonitor's memory graph. It also displays CPU usage and paging activity (in/out), among others. More info here: <http://www.iconfactory.com/ip_home.asp>.
Cheers,
Hi Bryan;
How about eleven swap files, which is what I got up to this time before my latest reboot? ;-)
I reviewed iPulse in OS X Odyssey 310. Nice little application. I've also used several other monitor apps such as MemoryStick and Memory Usage Gettter. PTHCPUMonitor is just the most recent one I've tried.
Charles From Mark Rushton Hello Charles, long time no iChat :) Matt Schultz mentioned the use of the OS X Finder for FTP via the "Connect to Server" menu item. He's correct, but only one-way. You can receive from an FTP server which appears as a desktop volume, but thus far I have not been able to make uploads work. A shame, really, as it would make my life much easier, with the various websites I manage... ---- ALSO: Any Mac GPS users out there who work in OS X? We recently picked up a Garmin eTrex Legend unit, bought the OS X version of MacGPSpro, and were lucky enough to receive a USB->Serial adapter (StarTech, unfortunately, not Keyspan, but hey - it was free). The darn thing won't work. The Garmin tell us to "check wiring" and MacGPSpro offers up a variety of options, none of which cut it. The installer disk came with a driver for OS X 10.1, but not much happens in Jaguar. Perhaps your vast readership might weigh in on this one?
cheers,
Good to hear from you. Are you familiar with GPSy, which is one of the most mature GPS software applications for teh Mac. GPSy's principal Karen Nakamura was on of the original NeXT developers, so knows here way around OX X. Ther is a ton of useful general info on the GPSy site.
You can check it out at:
Charles From David Chilstrom I've been reading through numerous reports of Panther features and performance as reported by users of the Panther beta on various Mac forums. One tidbit that would be of interest to you is that along with the highly touted Places sidebar and search as you type, the Panther Finder apparently behaves more consistently when used in "Classic" mode (i.e. with toolbar and Places sidebar tucked in.) While reports that the fully spatial Finder are back may be premature, it does seem that Apple is working on refining existing features of the current Finder as well as implementing new ones. For someone who almost exclusively uses the Finder in single window browser mode, the search as you type and Places sidebar are killer features for me. I've never been happy with the Favorites menu as implemented in either OS 9 or OS X file dialogs. It's a three step process for me, pause to think for a moment whether the folder I want might be in the favorites menu, then click the menu, then select the item or go looking for it if its not in my favorites after all. The Places sidebar eliminates the guessing game and will get a lot of use by me, for both persistent favorite folders and temporary project folders. While I like the changes to Panther's file dialogs a lot, I hope that Apple is working towards making them even more mini-Finder like in a future rev of OS X. If I only had a dime for every time I was browsing in a file dialog and wanted to be able to delete or rename a file. Since we're borrowing from our Windows brethren with shameless abandon these days, lets nab this one too! There's no evidence that the Panther Finder will provide a mechanism for saved searches via "smart" folders or even a popdown menu as the much maligned Sherlock offered. Another thing I'd like is for the Finder to smarten up a bit and pay attention to the cowpaths I'm beating through the file system. Just as iTunes already knows my frequently played songs by keeping a tally, so the Finder can keep track of my "Frequents" by noting the files and folders I visit often. Why should I have to tell the Finder my favorites when it could easily determine them by just paying a little attention. Keeping files indexed for the Finder's search by content feature is painless in OS X, but the search results provided would be much more useful if they offered a little context from the found documents ala web search results. These are all fairly superficial ideas that I'm sure have been batted around many times by the OS team at Apple. ExposeZ sounds wonderful, but I'm also quite intrigued by the possibilities of fast user switching. You've often griped, with good reason, about the impositions of a multi-user OS in a scenario where a computer has only one user. Still, I can think of many uses for alternate user accounts if only logging out of everything I have open weren't such a hassle. Keeping my personal world of email, finances, etc. completely separate from my work world is important for me. Designers who do web and print work might want to have separate work spaces for the different tools, etc. that those similar but different jobs demand. Even a writer, such as yourself, might want to partition off your Mac writing world from your boat world, etc. One account I plan on will be called "Limbo" where all trial and demo software will be sent off to before it is permitted a place in my Application folder. And, of course, it's always good to have a "Snow White" account for troubleshooting when things get seriously messed up and you have to determine if the problem is with your primary user account or a system wide issue. I currently have a testing account called "Classic" where I have foresworn my evil single window file browsing ways and where I can experiment with the trials and tribulations of using the Finder in the traditional way under OS X. My first discovery in this experiment is that the OS X Finder does permit a tacky kind of tab windows in the Finder. Here's the recipe for "Tacky Tabs" in the Finder. 
1. Create a folder to place aliases of folders where you regularly would drag and drop files. 2. The least tacky and most useful place for your Tacky Tab is to drag its title bar so that the smallest bit peaks out from the lower right or left edge of your screen next to the Dock. Most of the window will be off screen and it should be sized large enough so that any folders within it clear the Dock when the window pops up. The attached Picture shows what this should look like. 3. Confirm that "Spring-loaded" folders is turned on in your Finder preferences. When a file or selected clipping is dragged to your Tacky Tab corner a window slides up and out from the corner where you can drop your file or clipping into its appropriate folder. It's important that your Tacky Tab have destination folders where a file or clip is to be dropped, otherwise it won't slide back into its corner. The main Tacky Tab window will gracefully slide back leaving your final destination folder open. While Tacky Tabs are no replacement for the real thing, they do qualify as a pretty neat stupid Finder trick. Getting back to Panther, there are changes to many applications in 10.3, besides the new Font Book, iChat AV and Preview. Also, performance is getting a substantial boost as reported by users of machines that are marginal performers in Jaguar. My two biggest speed bumps are the turgid response of popup menus from docked folders and the glacial appearance and performance of Help. These two speed bumps and many more are reportedly much smoother. All in all, Panther looks to be a very substantial update to OS X.
Regards,
Hi David;
Thanks for the Panther musings and ruminations on workspace organization. A fast switch would be great. Due to constantly overlapping deadlines I tend to be working on several projects at once. For example, which I was preparing my slate of Applelinks news stories Tuesday morning I was also clicking in and out of an article on Bluefin Tuna quotas that I was writing for a commercial fishing application. I do have alternate user accounts set up on both my 'Books, but it's too much hassle to log out and log in again unless there's a really compelling reason to do so.
I tend to just work on everything in separate Tex Edit Plus documents, of which I often have a dozen or more open and windowshaded at a time.
Charles
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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