MacBook Jerky Bluetooth Mouse and Wifi

Noticed today that my bluetooth mouse connected to my MacBook Pro gets nearly unusable when doing large file transfer to a nearby computer, the cursor is jerky and skips large parts of the hand motion.

This seems to be connected to Wifi vs. Bluetooth antenna interference, the jerkiness is significantly worse when my MacBook is in clamshell mode i.e. lid closed connected to external monitor. As soon as the MacBook lid is open the mouse cursor movements become smooth again. Problem goes away once file transfer is completed too.

Wifi 802.11g
Logitech M555b
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009)
OS X 10.8.1

Fix VNC Screen Sharing after upgrade to OS X Lion

Update: Mountain Lion seems to have fixed all issues I've had connection to the Mac from a Windows VNC client. The solution below has only worked intermittently for me.

After upgrading my MacBookPro to OS X Lion I noticed that none of my Windows, and other non-Apple VNC clients such as TigerVNC, RealVNC or TightVNC could connect to it. Following some instructions in the Apple Support Discussions web site I installed the Onyx utility, used it to delete all the caches under the Cleaning section. After cleanup and reboot, VNC sharing works again, with TigerVNC, with iPad client etc.

Here is the download link to Onyx, I used version 2.4.0b3 which is the 10.3 MB (beta) download. You can skip the S.M.A.R.T. and system volume tests on startup.

http://www.macupdate.com/download/11582/OnyX-Beta.dmg

Good luck, please comment on whether this works for you.

Mac Outlook 2011: Keyboard shortcut to quickly file messages

Trying a switch to Outlook 2011 for Mac I needed a keyboard shortcut to quickly move selected email messages to specific folders. I edited some of the default AppleScripts which appear in Outlook's script menu, ended up with a script per folder I want to move messages to. Next step was to assign a keyboard shortcut to each script e.g. Option-A for File Message to Archive, Option-F for File Message to Follow-Up and so on.

A sample script is below, this is the one I use to move messages to a folder named "Archive", I simply created copies of this script for each folder I want to move messages to from the keyboard. The script is saved under ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Outlook Script Menu Items/File Message to Archive.scptd

*** UPDATE*** Microsoft released an Office 2011 SP2 upgrade on 4/12/2012, in this version of Outlook the scripts are expected to be placed in the folder: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Office/Outlook\ Script\ Menu\ Items/

The keyboard shortcut mapping is done from the OSX > System Preferences > Keyboard panel, just create a new Application shortcut, pick Outlook 2011 as the application and enter the exact name of your script as it appears in the script menu.

(*

 File message to Archive folder

*)

on run {}
 
 tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
  
  -- listSelectedItems : a list of all items selected in Entourage
  set listMessages to current messages
  
  -- Check to make sure items are selected, if not then quit
  if ((count of listMessages) < 1) then return
  
  -- Iterate through selected items
  repeat with objInSelection in listMessages
   
   set listFolders to mail folders
   
   repeat with objFolder in listFolders
    
    if (name of objFolder is "Archive") then
     set gtdFolder to objFolder
    end if
    
   end repeat
   
   if (class of account of objInSelection is not imap account) then
    -- IMAP currently not supported
    move objInSelection to gtdFolder
   end if
   
  end repeat
  
 end tell
 
end run

Fix Juniper Network Connect on Snow Leopard

If you are unable to connect your corporate Juniper SSL VPN with Network Connect after an upgrade to Snow Leopard, enter the commands below in a Terminal window:

sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/juniper/nc/6*
sudo mkdir "/Applications/Network Connect.app/Contents/Frameworks"

Try to connect as usual and this should do it.

Check Point VPN on Mac OS X

I've given up on SecureClient for Mac OS X, currently using Leopard and found that IPSecuritas is a much better replacement. CPU usage when idle is insignificant compared to the 90%+ used by the Check Point client software.

IPSecuritas from Lobotomo Software