Tag Archives: Mac

java 7 on mountain lion

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I upgraded to Mountain Lion and get Java 6 not found when trying to launch Eclipse or Open Office.  I then tried the command lion and get:

Jeanne-Boyarskys-MacBook-Pro:Applications nyjeanne$ java -version Unable to locate a Java Runtime to invoke.Jeanne-Boyarskys-MacBook-Pro:Applications nyjeanne$ java -version Unable to locate a Java Runtime to invoke.

Really?  I spent a good while getting Java 7 installed on Lion.  And now I get to do it again?  Luckily it wasn’t that problem.

I learned

Java 7 was still there under Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/.  It just wasn’t in my path anymore so the Mac didn’t recognize it.  After letting Apple install Java 6, everything was fine.  My Eclipse JRE pointed to Java 7 and Open Office launched with Java 6.

Conclusion

While this turned out to be a non-issue, I’m still blogging about it because this wasn’t what I expected to happen.

OS X Mountain Lion Kills Parallels 6

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It seems I am unable to perform at least one Mac OS X upgrade without finding some major faults. This morning, Apple released OS X Mountain Lion, and like its predecessors, there was at least one show-stopping problem following installation – namely, that Parallels Desktop 6 no longer works.

Following installation of OS X Mountain Lion, upon startup, Parallels Desktop 6 shows the following message:


The only known solution at this time is to upgrade to Parallels 7 for $50.

Official Response

Parallels has posted a response on their website

A Senior Member of the Parallels team, whose username is YanaYana, has replied in the Parallels forum that although Parallels Desktop 6 will be continued to be supported for years to come, this does not include making it work on OS X Mountain Lion. The Parallels representative also commented that select users were offered a free upgrade to Parallels Desktop 7 for a short period when OS X Lion came out, although many users have commented they were not notified of the offer.

Abandoning Parallels

One user hit the nail on the head when they wrote “Is it worth to pay $50 more for a $20 OS upgrade?”. In fact, I have decided that unless Parallels fixes this issue or offers me an upgrade, I will not be purchasing a Parallels product ever again as a form of protest. After all, there are plenty of alternatives, such as VMware and VirtualBox, which I would rather use.

Update [07/26/2012]: As one user on the forum noticed by reviewing the Google cache, Parallels, Inc recently changed it’s policy to exclude Parallels Desktop 6 from working in OS X Mountain Lion: Knowledgebase article. See if you can spot the difference between the previous and current version of the page:

Before:


After:


Looking at older versions of the article shows that it had been active for months with the Parallels Desktop 6 text. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest a user could have purchased Parallels Desktop 6 in the last year, believing it would work with OS X Mountain Lion. This smells of bait-and-switch tactics. Perhaps it is time for a class action suit?

cropping video fast for dummies on a mac

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Two years ago, I wrote about cropping video fast for dummies on Windows.  I now need to do the basically same thing on the Mac.  This time is a little simpler as I only need one continuous segment cropped.  And I have more experience.  I’ve done it once before 🙂 on a different operating system.  However, I still don’t have any special software.

Where I started

The original video is 2 minutes and 44 seconds.  I want to get a 5 second or so video of the robot shooting a basket.

How I did it

  1. Learned that I do have video editing software – iMovie – that came on the Mac.
  2. Use ClipNabber to download youtube video.  Had to click “clipnabber classic” to get to the download screen as the first screen is about some Mac software to download.  As I don’t do this often, I don’t feel the need to download anything.  This downloaded the clip as an .mp4 file.
  3. Downloaded Squared to convert from mp4 to something iMovie can import.  (Squared beta lets you download directly from youtube, but I’ve already downloaded it.).  Open mp4 in it and choose export to DV>  Conversion took less than a minute.
  4. In iMovie, file > import > movies
  5. iMovie automatically splits the video into short thumbnails.  Drag the one(s) you want to the top.  It’s cool because you can select a range so this serves as a rough cropping.  You can also join clips that way.
  6. Click on point of subclip you want to start and choose split.  Repeat for end of subclip.
  7. Right click video and choose detach audio.  Select the purple audio track and select cut.
  8. Share > Export movie

Converting to Flash

It was requested I provide a Flash version of my 4 seconds of video.  There is software you can download that does this, but I didn’t want to download something (trial version) that I’d only use once.  Another option is to upload it to youtube.  I went with the youtube option.  Then back to ClipNabber to download as flv (flash.)

How did it work?

This process was better than the Windows way (without a real editor.)  iMovie is impressive.

The final product

The completed video does show what I wanted.  It was easier to get rid of the sound this time too which is good because I won’t control the viewer’s machines this time.