Since I have been having some performance issues with Firefox 3.1.2 on my Windows XP laptop, I switched to using Google Chrome experimentally, to see if it was some issues with my hardware or just something I picked up from upgrading to a newer version of Firefox. During the experiment, I grew to love the snappy performance of Google Chrome on my Centrino Dell laptop. It seemed to just start without much hesitation and it would quickly chew through my browsing history as I am typing a URL, without the hiccup that Firefox seems to go through at startup.

Naturally when I went back to using my MacBook running Leopard 10.5.8 I felt that I was missing something. Even though browsing the net with Firefox on the MacBook was generally pretty snappy, I felt a longing for something similar to the Chrome experience on Windows XP. Since I heard that the Chromium team was releasing experimental builds for Chrome on Mac OS X, I thought I would download it and check it out.

I went to the Chromium website and downloaded a zip file containing the latest build of Chromium (version 4.0.223.4 (29381)). I unzipped the file and run it from the folder on the desktop and it asked to be the default browser, so I let it be the default browser. After that, I decided to move it from the desktop to the Application folder and just put a link in the Dock so I can run it without having to search through the folder.

Keeping in mind that this was an experimental build, I was prepared to encounter some bugs and crashes, but so far I have not found any serious ones. The only thing I have noticed is that it makes my MacBook spin the fan hard whenever Flash content was encountered. While this could be a bug in Chromium for Mac OS X, having worked with the Flash player for a while and having witnessed its voracious appetite for system resources on OS X, I am not at all surprised if the bug is in the Flash player itself rather than in the Chromium browser.

All I can say is that this build of Chromium is almost ready for prime time and I have been using it daily for the last four weeks without any major issues. It kind of makes me forget to use Firefox and Stainless for a while. It would be really nice, though, to be able to import all your settings (cookies, bookmarks and all) from Firefox into Chromium.

apple · beta · browser · Chrome · Chromium · OS X · test

I have been somewhat troubled by the inability of my MacBook running 10.4.11 version of OS X to hibernate properly (suspend to disk). It all started when I upgraded the RAM from the standard 1GB to the 4GB it is now. After the upgrade, it could not reliably wake up from hibernation without a crash occuring after using some memory-intensive programs such as some Adobe software and Aptana and such, which would require a forced reboot. Having lived with this issue for sometime (started shutting down instead of hibernating), I decided to try to Google some answers.

After trawling through some forums and blog discussions, I found a Dashboard widget called Deep Sleep which is easy to use (one click) and seems to reliably put the notebook to sleep without wake up crashes (that’s what happens to me when waking up early morning). So if your macbook is a little insomniac like mine, then do give it a try.

apple · hibernate · hibernation · MacBook · notebook · OS X · suspend · tiger

For about 3 months I have been having a problem with my Macbook running OS X Tiger with 3GB of RAM. The problem seems to only occur when I run a resource intensive application such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Final Cut or even Garage Band. What happens is normally when I close those applications then put the notebook to sleep (safe sleep aka hibernation), when I wake it up it goes through the process slowly (slower than normal wake up from hibernation) then it crashes. Because I very rarely shut the notebook down, this seems to happen at least two or three times a day.

Annoying? Well what do you think? The waking up process, which is supposed to be quicker than starting it cold, takes a lot longer and then you have to force the notebook to reboot. This is unacceptably inefficient and not to mention scary. I keep thinking that there is something wrong with the hardware, but it does not get worse, it just seems to happen with any resource-intensive application.

The solution is apparently very simple: just open terminal and type sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage, then enter your password and then if there is no error, you have just deleted the sleepimage file, which is where the content of your RAM gets dumped when the computer goes to sleep. When done, just reboot the machine and all should be fine. I even tried running Photoshop and then putting the Macbook to sleep and it wakes up fine.

So if your MacBook has a crash on wake up (that’s what happens to me in the mornings), then just delete that sleepimage file in /var/rm and it should be recreated afterwards and everything should be fine. It is particularly wise to do this after upgrading your RAM. I upgraded mine from 1GB to 3GB and did not know that I had to do this.

apple · crash · hardware · hibernate · hibernation · MacBook · OS X · safe sleep · sleep · upgrade