Showing posts with label macbook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label macbook. Show all posts

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Flash Bridge error when installing new Flash Player on Mac

I hit this one yesterday and I was taken by it for a little while until I figured out how to kill this program to allow me to finish installing Adobe Flash Player 16 on a teacher's Mac.

Here is how the error goes. You are told by a website you need to update flash. You download flash, and start to install it. It gets done downloading and then when it goes to install it says you must stop this program. Flash Bridge-Wrapper-Crossplatform. You check again and all your program running flash are closed that you can tell.

The easy way to do this with out restarting or pulling hair out is to use the activity monitor to kill it the program. These instructions are for 10.9 mavericks but should be about the same on 10.6 and up as of right now.

Open spotlight (spy glass icon in top right on most macs) and search for "activity" (no quotes). Select "activity monitor" and run it. I like to put in abc order by hitting bar above the program name, but you don't need to. Find Flash Bridge and click on it to highlight/select it then hit the button in the top left  of the window that looks like a stop sign. Wait a few seconds for it die and then you should be able to continue to update Flash Player.

I hope this has helped you get thing going back on your Mac and as always thanks for reading I hope I was able to help.

Monday, September 8, 2014

My view on clean up utilites for Mac and Windows.

Hello again;
I got asked this question by a friend the other day and thought I would share what I told him with you.
What clean up program for mac should I use on my Macbook Air? The answer really is you shouldn't need one at all.

For the most part Macs run perfectly. They don't have a lot of problem with getting junk files and what not and really if you do any research most clean up programs for mac are smoke a mirrors. They tell you these wonderful things they do but in reality they only do what any normal person could do any way. There is really only 3 things you can do to speed up a mac and if those don't work sorry to say there is might be a hardware issue if those don't get the results you desire.

Windows on the other hand does need these programs. Windows by is own creation is not a very efficient system. It leaves files around after a uninstall and doesn't delete old registry errors. And if you don't know what you are doing or deleting in a registry you can be asking for some trouble for sure. So by all means there is a need for these programs for Windows.

Thanks being said you do need some sort of antivirus for Mac. You maybe thinking wait that is one of the selling points it doesn't get viruses. This is some what true. Virus are rare on macs but right now its only because they aren't as popular as windows. And you can look it up online if you want and you can see reports made for the rare Mac bugs shall we say.

I am also working on a easy guide for how to maintain your mac for those mac owners and hoping to put that out pretty soon. Only few things you can do but they are kind of hard to get too but easy to do once you find the area you need to be in. Thanks again for reading and stay geeky my friends.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

MobiView from eInstructions Pen Not working

Hello all as I promised something for the more tech inclined people. I wanted to write a short post about a issue I had with a teacher at my campus using the MobiView annotation pad. These things are really cool when used with a projector and our macs they allow a teacher to remotely control the screen as if she had it in her hand. But you most likey know that and why you are reading this is because it is not working and you want it to. Well we had this happen to 2 pens at once from two of our systems. We were on with customer support and after 2 hours they said it must be the pad sorry it out of warranty please send it back and we will charge you to fix it. My director wouldn't tell me how much so it was bad lol.
Long story short in both of them it was the battery in the pen!!!. Its a AAAA battery! Yeah I didn't know they made that size either. What had happened is the had mildly corroded and wouldn't make contact. I noticed that the pen would sometimes charge and then wouldn't when on the charging pad for it.
To get to the battery of the pen you have to push in the tab on it and then slide the back park that connects to the lanyard off  then you will see the electronics part of it. You can take the battery out and either clean it or replace it if you know where to get it. I know ebay sells them. I just cleaned this one with a screwdriver I had to scrape it clean. Put it back in and then plug it into the charging dock and it should start charging if not you have something else going on sorry:(.

I really hope this helps someone this drove the teacher, my director, and I nuts for the better part of 3 days trying to figure this out. Thanks and good luck.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

My view on Mac Books

       Recently at work we have been handed mac books for use with our campus. Being that I am school tech it is important that we start to play with them and understand them because soon all the teachers will have them and we will need to service them. I have always used pc but now I have a mac and and first I didn't know what to think but now its clear.
      Coming from a PC to a Mac can be very intimidating I understand if nothing more than the price difference.  It is truly staggering. A good starter pc cost you 300 bucks while a good mac will be nearly a grand. Why the difference well I think it is because of exclusivity. Mac doesn't give the MAC OS out to anyone. They oversee all the hardware that go into a mac and that is what you get. They don't have to worry about if it will work this or that because they know it will they already designed it to do so. So you have the keep that in mind.
      What do I think about it I love it personally.  It didn't take me long to get a hold of it. A lot of the same principles carry over. The networking is good and easy to use just like pc and wifi it just as easy as well. Also to me to UI is cleaner if that make sense. I can say on one program and look at just about anything while doing so. Most programers are doing programs for macs just as they do for pcs so I am not missing anything. Youtube plays well, my Facebook works just fine. They only internet issue I have ran into is with not having IE's activeX plugin(this plugin helps like flash to run certain internet apps.) but it can be worked around. I have MS Office which is now on mac. I could go on and on but really you just would have to play with one your self to find out what it is like. I would suggest if you can play with one at a apple store or some where that sales them or has them on demo so you can see if you will like it or not.  Also feel free to ask question to the sales people because they might know how to do the things you want it to do and adapting from PC might not be as hard as you think. This has just been a thought of the day but as soon as I save up I will be getting a personal mac for my house soon. Thanks for reading.