Technology Insights

Mac OSX – Make Specific App Default File Opener

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I have been meaning for a long time to set some configuration parameters for specific file types including which applications open them by default. I deal with a lot of different file types and I am typically having to scroll through a long list of Mac applications to select the one that I want to open the file. Since its not easy to do this in one spot on Mac OSX Mountain Lion without adding a third party application I started looking around to see what was available and ended up with Default Apps by Rubicode. Below I describe installing Default Apps and how it works.

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Connect To Fortinet VPN On OSX, Download FortiClient SSL VPN For OSX

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Not sure if Fortinet makes it impossible to find the FortiClient SSL VPN application for Mac OSX on purpose or not but it appears to be free for the simple client version so I wanted to provide a location to download the client easily. On Windows you can bring up Internet Explorer and make a SSL VPN connection easily but since IE is not available on OSX it is necessary to have the stand alone FortiClient SSL VPN application. Be careful if you are going to download the Fortinet FortiClient elsewhere as if it is anything other than the simple SSL VPN client it is really bloated.

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Install Prolific USB To Serial Adapter Drivers On OSX Lion, PL-2303 Mac Drivers

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Tonight I needed to console into a old Cisco 2900 switch to test a couple password related items and it was the first time that I would be using  USB to Serial adapter on my Macbook. Previously there had been a lot of issues with the adapter I have, which is a PL-2303, and getting the right drivers installed on Windows 7 64-bit so I was thinking there might not even be drivers available for OSX Lion. After a little research I cam across an article that purehate had written on QD however after following the instructions in the article the USB to Serial adapter still was not working. Below is information on installing newer drivers that will work on OSX Lion.

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Clean Macintosh iTunes Library By Batch Removing Dead Tracks

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A friend asked me to help him clean up his iTunes library on his iMac the other night so I asked him to bring it by. When he did I realized what had happened which is he had moved the location of his iTunes folder from his computer to an external drive. After moving the folder he imported all of his music again which caused iTunes to think his 8,000 MP3’s had become 16,000 MP3’s. Half of the tracks had red exclamation points by them because iTunes had information about them but could no longer locate the file since he had moved all of the music to a new folder in a different location. I found an easy solution to resolve this problem on a Mac which I describe in detail below.

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Create A .IPSW File Using The .DMG Files Extracted From A .ZIP Direct iPhone Firmware Download

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If you are in process of downgrading your iPhone or iPod Touch you will more than likely be downloading the older firmware directly from apple.com. When you download this firmware it is provided as a zip file with a .zip file ending such as iPhone2,1_3.1_7C144_Restore.zip. If you unpack this file it will include a couple directories and numerous files as listed below.