HOWTO make readline and history work with irb and rails console on OS X Yosemite

Here’s how to make readline (including control-R reverse search) and command history work with both irb and the Rails console with rbenv and OS X Yosemite (10.10.4). You need to install Readline first, as OS X ships with libedit instead. You also need to make sure rbenv knows where you put readline. 1. Install rbenv …

HOWTO set up IMAP email for Yahoo

A few weeks ago, I was helping my cousins set up their new iMac. Once everything was up and running, she inquired about adding their Yahoo account to Mail. The conventional wisdom says you can’t do this. Yahoo charges for POP access. IMAP? Unavailable. But then she hands me her new iPod touch…with her Yahoo …

Fixing iChat Google Talk login failures

I was helping a friend set up her new iBook MacBook yesterday, and we were unable to get iChat to log in to her Google Talk account. We kept seeing this error: iChat can’t log in to talk.google.com because your login ID or password is incorrect. And this XMPP error was logged to Console: iChatAgent[33567] …

Dear Adobe: please don’t crash while logging

I recently upgraded my copy of Creative Suite to CS5. When you install CS5 Design Premium, you don’t just get Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and the like. You also get a ton of other bits, like Adobe Help (despite the existence of a built-in Help Viewer), Adobe Application Manager and CS5ServiceManager. Many of these strike me …

HOWTO fix Photoshop’s missing Application Support files error

Sometimes you launch Photoshop and get this error: One or more files in the Adobe Application Support folder, necessary for running Photoshop, are missing. Please run the Photoshop installer and re-install Photoshop. This is the dialog of four lies: Lie #1: A file is missing. Lie #2. The file is missing from the Application Support …

Apple’s new PR boilerplate signals change in direction

I just noticed this today, but it happened a couple of months ago. There’s no more “Apple ignited the personal computer revolution,” which had been there since at least 1998. Here’s the new boilerplate, which first appeared on June 28, 2010 in iPhone 4 Sales Top 1.7 Million: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers …

When to buy a refurbished Mac

No, I’m not going to tell you when during the year to buy a Mac (“not the week before WWDC”), but I am going to share a neat trick. Tragedy of the commons, here we go. Apple’s online store has refurbished Macs for sale. These are often a very good deal — today’s selections range from …