This might seem like dumb thing to blog about but I spent an hour or more trying to get this to work. Partly due to my own stubbornness, I resent using driver installation CDs. The driver on them is typically out of date (certainly for graphics cards), and they’re loaded with bloatware crap you don’t need to operate your device / peripheral. Manufacturers love to re-invent the wheel, providing a utility for a service that already exists within the operating system.

So I ran off to the Canon site and grabbed the latest MP620 CUPS driver, thinking this would be a simple install and “Print Test Page”, job done – but nooooooo.

So the bad news, yes you have to insert the Macintosh setup CD. I selected “Custom Install” and selected the driver, the MP Navigator EX software (for scanning) and the Canon IJ Network utility. Despite only wanting to install this printer over a wireless network connection, you must elect to install it via USB first.

Once set up is complete, you’ll have to restart and then be presented with the connection type you’d like to use to communicate with your MP620. Select USB.

At this point it’s probably wise to check your firewall is disabled in OS X (just temporarily), head to System Preferences, click the ‘Security’ icon, select the Firewall tab, and check ‘Allow all incoming connections’ (this turns your firewall off, and potentially lets the bad guys in). This way we won’t run into problems using wireless later.

1. Click ‘Show All’ then ‘Print & Fax’, you should see ‘Canon MP620 series’ in the list.

2. Select your MP620 then click the ‘Open Print Queue…’ button.
3. Click ‘Utility’ on the right hand side of the toolbar.

4. In the window that opens, select ‘Network’ if it’s not already selected.
You should see your MP620 in the list, select it.
5. Click the ‘Network Settings’ button, you should now be able to set your wireless access point, and enter the passphrase.
6. Once you’ve done this, add this printer.
You’ll have two MP620’s but one of them will have a MAC address (e.g. 00:00:85.af.62.f0) in the title or settings, this is the one you want to keep, remove the other printer profile which is the USB connection.
7. You can remove the profile with the ‘-’ button.
8. Unplug your USB cable.
9. On the wireless profile, click the ‘Open Print Queue…’ button and from the Printer menu select ‘Print Test Page’.

Voila! You’re printing wirelessly.

Tuning Eclipse is pretty straight forward, passing the commonly documented command line arguments when running Eclipse on Mac OS X is not. At least not as easy as it would be in Windows. Like Windows shortcuts we have OS X ‘aliases’ but these do not allow us to specify additional arguments.

You can create a bash file to launch Eclipse with the extra parmeters but then we can’t place this on the Dock. Fortunately you can place these settings in the eclipse.ini – but where the hell is it?

Finder will then present a new folder window:

Voila! You can enter your VM args into eclipse.ini

Having recently switched to Mac OS X, I stumbled upon issues when mounting shared folders on my Macbook Pro from our Linux development server. Previously, both Windows Vista and Ubuntu have had no trouble sharing a directory then mounting it from the dev server via smbfs. This enables me (and other developers) to edit files locally which then also appear as a local files to our development server, where we run Apache / MySQL etc.

After sniffing around System Preferences in Leopard, and juggling some account credentials so SMB login details pair up, I could successfully mount my workspace folder. Make sure the appropriate permissions are set on your shared folder, then click options and disable AFP, and enable SMB.

Unfortunately, some minutes later it unmounted itself. After some Googling, I found others with the same issue.

I read (unfortunately I’ve since lost the link) that changing from smbfs to cifs helps remedy this problem. I gave it a shot and it sure enough it cured the dropping issue.

However, when using cifs I would get permissions problems if I ran a script that manipulated / generated files in my workspace. My OS X uid and gid do not match those of the development server (Ubuntu); Mac uids start at 501 and Ubuntu creates users starting above 1000.

Fortunately simply telling the mount to ignore permissions seem to solve the problem. This is the mount entry in the development server’s /etc/fstab:

//192.168.0.1/workspace /home/greg/workspace cifs
      noperm,credentials=/home/greg/workspace.smb,rw 0 0

That should be all on one line but is broken over two for formatting purposes. Of course you substitute 192.168.0.1 with your Macbook’s UNC name or IP address. You should substitute ‘workspace’ with the name of your shared folder and change the mount point on the local server accordingly too.

The username and password specified in your credentials file will have to match your OS X user and password you set up when modifying the sharing options earlier.

If you choose not to sign up for MobileMe, there is no option in preferences to remove the sync icon (which you will never use) from the menu bar.

Fortunately, holding the Command (Apple) key and dragging the icon to the desktop should detach and remove it.

I started writing this post some months ago back in September but never got around to finishing it. At first this post was going to be me singing my praises for Ubuntu and how well Ubuntu supports the Macbook Pro. Unfortunately in that time I’ve now moved to Mac OS X…

I ran Ubuntu on my Macbook Pro seemlessly for just under 3 months before upgrading to Intrepid Ibex. The upgrade went smoothly, except for my office printer no longer working. This lead to Ubuntu’s demise on my MBP. After re-installing the driver 3 times I decided I’d remove CUPS in case there were left over configuration files causing issues. Unfortunately I stupidly marked all CUPS components with ‘remove completely’ via synaptic. I then watched synaptic systematically remove nearly all my system packages… nautilus, firefox, gnome, the lot. My bad.

After 3 days of recovering my data and failed attempts to re-install, and have my Macbook boot Ubuntu without live CD assistance, I gave up and installed Mac OS X. This in itself is no fault of Apple or Ubuntu. Apple never meant for Macbook’s to run Linux.

Two issues arose when I moved from Windows Vista running on Bootcamp to native Ubuntu.

1) Rewind to mid-August, after reading up on hardware compatibility, and how to put Ubuntu on my Macbook Pro, I wiped my Windows Vista and OSX partitions and installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy). That was a whole lot of fun – only realising Apple had crippled my “Superdrive” with a firmware update, I couldn’t read my Mac OSX Leopard DVD (I’m not the only one – £400+ for Apple to fix it, no thanks!) and only able to occasionally read the Ubuntu installation CD.

I managed to overcome these hurdles with a trusty 16GB Rally 2 USB stick and a WD Passport external USB hard drive. I even splashed out on an external DVD-RW to make future re-installs easier.

2) In early September I noticed when running on batteries my Macbook Pro would switch off after only 5 mins. No prompts about low battery, no shutdown sequence, nada. Just power off immediately. At the time I put this down to poor power management by Ubuntu. Just last night however (running OS X) it did exactly the same thing. So it looks like another hardware fault on my £1350 (with academic discount) laptop.

The firmware upgrade happened some months ago, possibly autumn 2007 but having no reason to use the DVD drive for months, I never noticed until I switched operating systems. The instant-power-off-issue-with-no-warming issue has only manifested since August. Co-incidentally just as my 1 yr of Apple Care expired.

So despite it’s low profile form factor and decent performance, I vow never to purchase another Macbook again. It’s a regular PC laptop for me next time…