question for Mac OSX users

[joker454]

Hey guys, I have a question for those familiar with Mac OSX. I'll admit I'm far more used to Windows 8 and find OSX to be quite alien, so I'm probably missing something obvious here but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to do this. I use my Mac Air with Windows 8, and I plug it into a 30" display when I use it in the office. I leave the Mac Air open for best ventilation but I've set Windows to turn off the display on the Mac Air and I just use the 30" for all my work. This is simple to do in Windows 8, just turn off the second display and the Air's display goes silent. Perfect.

Try as I might I just can't figure out how to do this when I boot my Air in OSX. The closest thing I can get is to set both displays as "mirrored" so that at least I can work on my main 30" monitor, but then the Air's display stays on the entire time which I don't want, I want to have it's display stay off. Is there any way to do this? I'm sure I'm missing something obvious and simple here, but as mentioned I've always found OSX to be tricky to use for whatever reason and I'm sure the answer will be embarrassingly easy Can anyone clue me in on how to do this, basically I want to keep the Air open for best ventilation and have it's display off, and only have it display on the 30" monitor that is plugged into it. Thanks guys!

 

[Pressure]

3 ways to do it without 3rd party software and they are going to sound embarrassingly awkward.

• 1st: Put a small magnet on the hinge of the screen, like the one you use on your fridge to keep notes on it. This will turn off the internal screen.
  
• 2nd: Go into System Preferences and Mission Control, pick Hot Corners (choose whichever corner you like) and select "Put Display to Sleep".
  
• 3rd: This is if you really like the geeky nature of it and requires Terminal.
  
  Type the following in the Terminal window and type your password when prompted and restart.
  

  sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"

  It is really important you have connected your external screen beforehand!
  
  When you want to use the internal screen again, type the following in Terminal and restart, then you can disconnect the external screen.
  

  sudo nvram -d boot-args

  
  Failing to follow these directions you need to reset PRAM to regain access to your internal screen again.
  
  Spoiler

  Hold down ALT+COMMAND+P+R right after you hear the DONG booting sound.

Hope it works out for you.

 

[Grall]

...But-but-but, OSX is the most advanced desktop OS in the world!



(Sorry...)

 

[Arwin]

OS/X is still struggling to catch up with iOS if you ask me ...

 

[joker454]

• 1st: Put a small magnet on the hinge of the screen, like the one you use on your fridge to keep notes on it. This will turn off the internal screen.
  
• 2nd: Go into System Preferences and Mission Control, pick Hot Corners (choose whichever corner you like) and select "Put Display to Sleep".

• 
  
  Well funky I'd have though it was just a simple os setting that it would remember, go figure. Ok thanks, I'll try #1 or #2, probably skip on suggestion #3 just in case.

 

[pcchen]

...But-but-but, OSX is the most advanced desktop OS in the world!



(Sorry...)

OS X's multi-screen support is quite bad. For example, the new fullscreen mode, which is very good, does not work for a multi-screen set up (it ends up with a fullscreen window on one monitor and another monitor with some sort of grey background). Fortunately this is finally fixed in Maverick.

 

[Alexko]

Silly question, but why don't you just use the MBA display as an extended desktop? Sure, a 30" monitor is great, but you can never have too much screen real estate.

 

[Pressure]

OS X's multi-screen support is quite bad. For example, the new fullscreen mode, which is very good, does not work for a multi-screen set up (it ends up with a fullscreen window on one monitor and another monitor with some sort of grey background). Fortunately this is finally fixed in Maverick.

Fixed in Mavericks 10.9 which is due in less than two weeks, so we can finally cross that one off the list.

And new OpenGL driver which brings near 100% performance improvement!

 

[joker454]

Silly question, but why don't you just use the MBA display as an extended desktop? Sure, a 30" monitor is great, but you can never have too much screen real estate.

The mba is off to the side a few feet away and it's screen is obstructed, it's not actually on my desk. I just plug 3 cables to it (display port, usb 3.0 hub, power) and use it as my office pc now basically. Long story short, I wanted to simplify my setup and life in the process. I've started working more mobile, rather than be stuck in the office all the time I wanted to be able to work anywhere be it with my feet in the sand at the beach, at a coffee shop, on my couch or hammock, etc, so I went back to a single display to see how that would be. It's actually been ok, the single 30" for the most part works fine. I used two displays in most of my previous professional life which was for more hardcore coding work but I don't do that anymore so I think one display will be ok. To be honest in some ways it's actually less of a distraction, having just the one screen. It also makes the transition going back to just using the mba directly easier since it's going from one display back to one display again.

 

[Arwin]

I just turned on my (intended for iOS development) mac for the first time in a long time, and one of the things I discovered was that Maverick is out, OS/X 10.9. This features much improved dual screen support, and some big performance improvements under the hood, especially in terms of memory management and power usage. You may want to check it it - it's installing now, and as my Mac Mini is from 2009 or so, it seems like this will be a good update for me as well.

 

[Pressure]

And it's free!

I updated without hesitation this time around and all my software still works sans issues.

 

[Arwin]

The OS bar on top now has transparancy ...

 

[Grall]

And there's less of that triple cursed linen texture background you used to get on some screens... My old version of Xee needs updating though as when viewing images in fullscreen mode the menu bar area sometimes sticks when flipping between images.

By the way, my filesystem has borked itself. When I run diskcheck it says I need to restart and run diskcheck from the UEFI menu, but when I do that it doesn't find any errors...

Anyone know of a good disk repair tool for OSX?

 

[joker454]

I updated to Mavericks as well but haven't really tried it much yet. I also have osx with the intent of porting my games to it and/or ios but still haven't gotten around to doing that. Anyways I'll test their multi monitor support one day, hopefully it will now allow the laptop display to be turned off.

 

[Arwin]

I updated to Mavericks as well but haven't really tried it much yet. I also have osx with the intent of porting my games to it and/or ios but still haven't gotten around to doing that. Anyways I'll test their multi monitor support one day, hopefully it will now allow the laptop display to be turned off.

I've been testing a little bit, and am quite happy to see there's a new version of Garageband that's a little bit more like the iPad version, with a lot of good quality virtual drumkits and here even virtual drummers to play them (though still a bit more limited it seems in how to create the drumloop, which I still slightly prefer on the iPad). They also apparently work together better now, though I haven't tried it yet. The virtual drummer can even dynamically adjust to for instance your singing input (haven't tested it yet though).

When you install it for free, you can then be asked to upgrade to all available loops and kits for 4,49 ... very good value, and if you ask me, it's becoming more and more of a killer app for musicians.

Some users complain that some functionality is lost, but apparently most is still there, just hidden.

Performance seems to be improved indeed - nice, because my iPad Mini was really at its limit with the 10.8 update.

EDIT: updated X Code to 5.1 as well. Man, the iPhone (3.5") simulator is getting to be slow on my machine. The storyboards are an interesting addition though. Render slow as hell too but they're nice to look at and a good idea. I'd love to make a control that looks and works like that myself (but then a little easier).

 

[joker454]

Well I don't really use OSX much at all so I haven't explored any of the apps, I got it purely for dev related work and website support. I've never had luck with it for whatever reason. Like my OSX install is fresh, and I installed Mavericks on top of that fresh install. In spite of that my OSX setup is already borked even though I've barely used it. For example I can't install XCode, try as I might it won't install and I have no idea why, it forever stays in the "Installing" state no matter how many hours I leave it there. There's a firmware update that will also try and install and reboot a dozen+ times yet it won't install. I guess I might have to wipe out the OSX install and try it again at some point as i seems like it's in a bad state that it can't recover from. I just hope I can do that and not mess up the Windows 8.1 partition.

 

[Davros]

ps:
"Western Digital warns Mavericks users of external hard drive data loss risk

If you own a Western Digital branded external hard drive you might want to be careful about upgrading to Mavericks. The hard disk manufacturer has emailed customers warning of data loss when upgrading to Mavericks if its Drive Manager, Raid Manager or SmartWare applications are installed.

The email to customers comes after the company support forum exploded with users complaining that they experienced data loss after upgrading to Mavericks with the applications installed. The company says if users uninstall all three pieces of software then they are safe to upgrade to the new OS and will not lose their data. If you’ve already upgraded, you should delete the applications right away to be sure your data is safe.

While the software is being fixed, it has been removed from the Western Digital website."