OptimaDesign

We just made some updates to Nancy’s Pet Care website:...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 20:15:09 -0400

We just made some updates to Nancy’s Pet Care website: http://www.nancysdogwalkingservice.com

Rough draft logo design for http://ipadebookstore.com. Needs...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:34:56 -0400

Rough draft logo design for http://ipadebookstore.com. Needs some color, maybe?

We finished iPadeBookstore.com’s splash page. Starting...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:16:51 -0500

We finished iPadeBookstore.com’s splash page.

Starting phase 2 of the project next week.

(via iPadeBookstore.com | iPad News, Accessories & iBook Tutorials)

We just updated our projects...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:50:38 -0500

We just updated our projects page: http://www.optimadesignstudio.com/projects/websites

Microsoft is offering free virtual machines for Mac users to...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:01:05 -0500

Microsoft is offering free virtual machines for Mac users to test IE versions with.

IE 7 Vista, IE8-9 Windows7, and IE10 Windows 8 for VMWare Fusion. Also looks like same tools available for VirtualBox.

http://www.modern.ie/virtualization-tools

Very comprehensive list of Coda plugins. (via Coda Plugins)

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:43:34 -0500

Very comprehensive list of Coda plugins. (via Coda Plugins)

Using SlidesJS on a project. Loving the ease of use, quick...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:04:38 -0500

Using SlidesJS on a project. Loving the ease of use, quick customizations. http://slidesjs.com

Small Players Seek an Alternative to the Expense of Pay-Per-Click

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 14:32:07 -0500

Small Players Seek an Alternative to the Expense of Pay-Per-Click:

Interesting article about small businesses and increasing costs of Google Adwords: The heightened competition for keywords has driven up prices and made them harder for small companies to afford.

This guide is how we got our MacPro 1,1 running the retail /...

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 15:36:27 -0400

This guide is how we got our MacPro 1,1 running the retail / golden master of Mountain Lion OSX 10.8.

You may have a different type of unsupported Mac, and our method may work for you. But again, this is how we got Mountain Lion working on a Mac Pro, which is the only unsupported Mac we tried this installation method with.

Required Hardware:

Mountain Lion capable Mac (Macbook Pro 8,2 in our case)
Firewire 800 cable (400 should be fine too)
Our trusty MacPro 1,1. (We updated from 10.6 Snow Leopard.)

*** please note the upgraded graphics card. The Mac Pro will not boot with a 512MB stock card, like Nvidia 7300GT, or ATI X1900XT. We upgraded to ATI Radeon 5770.

What we did was use a capable Mac to install onto the MacPro in target disk mode. There are several other installation methods out there, but they involve working with more files to build your own installer, or using a PC boot-loader. We are lazy and chose Firewire instead.

Everything we learned came from the first 2 posts on this forum for installing Mountain Lion on unsupported Macs. Thank you “dead.xx” and “unrealdtc”. They deserve all of the credit.

Some important notes about the installation / system requirements:

IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WORKING WITH TERMINAL, OR EDITING SYSTEM FILES DO NOT ATTEMPT THE INSTALLATION.

Common sense dictates attempting this install on a different disk than your fully functional Mac environment resides on. Buy a new HD, or make a partition.
Just to be clear on above point, have nothing you care about on this disk. You should backup all of your data before starting as well.
Using a fresh partition for Mountain Lion will make the process easier, and is highly recommended. If the new OS won’t boot, at least you can fall back to an older OS that will function.
Again, you must have an upgraded graphics card for your MacPro. It will not boot with stock 512MB card.
Our install works great, except for iMessages and Facetime which apparently remain broken on Mountain Lion “hacked” installs.
iCloud may require a workaround. More on that later (see end of post).
Cannot choose 10.8 as Startup Disk in System Prefs. Must boot w/ option key to select the desired partition / HD.

Prep Work:

These are fairly basic steps to get the installation prepped.

First thing we need to do is get the Board ID of your Mac Pro. Open up Terminal, enter the command below, and hit enter:
ioreg -p IODeviceTree -r -n / -d 1
Write down the sequence that appears, where:
“board-id” = <”Mac-XXX”>. It might not be a bad idea to copy the ID to a text file on a thumb drive.
You can power off the Mac Pro.
On your capable Mac, copy your “Install OS X Mountain Lion.app” to the desktop, and/or make a backup for safe keeping.
FYI - If the installer runs from its default location in /Applications, it will delete itself.
Next we need the boot.efi patch written by “dead.xx”. Download the file, and keep it handy.

Start the Install:

This is the basic part of the installation.

Connect the Firewire cable from the capable Mac to the Mac Pro.
Power on the Mac Pro, and press the “T” key to boot into Target Disk Mode.
Your Mac Pro monitor should have the Firewire logo floating around on the screen, and the Mac Pro’s HD should be mounted as external disk on your capable Mac.
Go into System Preferences, and select your Mac Pro (firewire’d) drive as the Startup Volume, and choose to Restart.
After restarting, double click the “Install OS X Mountain Lion.app”, and install the new OS onto the target volume. This process works just like any other Mac OS installation, and the computer will restart once complete.
After the re-boot you should be looking at the new Mountain Lion OS. But don’t get too excited yet, cause there is still more work to do.

Finish the Install:

This is the more advanced part of the installation. Go into System Preferences and select the capable Mac’s system (not the newly installed Mountain Lion partition) as startup disk, and then restart. At this point we want to be able to modify files on the Mac Pro without them running.

After re-booting, open up Terminal, and type:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
Hit return, then type:
killall Finder (then hit return)
Navigate to your mounted Mac Pro HD (where we just installed 10.8), and open these 2 folder locations:
/System/Library/CoreService and /usr/standalone/i386
Copy the patched boot.efi file into each of these locations, and overwrite / replace the existing files.
Drag a copy of this file /System/Library/CoreService/PlatformSupport.plist to your desktop (or location of your choice) for editing.
Now edit PlatformSupport.plist to allow our Mac to run Mountain Lion:
Add your Board ID to the very top of the list in the file.

Also add your Mac Pro model identifier to the file. To be safe, the best place is right above the listing for “MacPro 4,1”.
Copy the edited PlatformSupport.plist to its default location above and replace:
/System/Library/CoreService/PlatformSupport.plist
Now to be safe, we should repair file permissions. Open Disk Utility and select your Mountain Lion partition, and “Repair Disk Permissions.”
Before trying to boot up the new OS, we should also zap the PRAM.
Shut down the Mac, then power it back on with Cmnd + Option + P + R keys held down before the grey screen appears. After you hear the chime for a second time, you can let go. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
This should boot you back into your non-Mountain Lion partition.
Now power off the computer one more time.
Turn it back on while holding the Option key, and you should be able to choose a startup volume. Select the Mountain Lion partition.
IT WILL TAKE A WHILE TO BOOT. You should see the apple logo on the screen for several minutes with the spinning wheel. Just let it go, and you should be looking at Mountain Lion after a bit. Be patient.

iCloud:

iCloud may not function right away, so if you would like that OS feature, here’s how to get it working. We learned of this fix for iCloud from HackerWayne’s post at Mac Rumors.

Using a capable Mac with Lion or Mountain Lion, create a new user account with full admin privileges, and iCloud enabled.
Use Migration Assistant to transfer the account over to your Mac Pro.
Once prompted of what you want to transfer, just select this new account. You do not need Applications, computers setting, or anything else. Just the user account.
After the transfer is complete, you should be able to use iCloud on the Mac Pro. You can remove the “dummy” account you just created from both computers.

Bing vs. Google in a side-by-side search off. Which will you...

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:17:08 -0400

Bing vs. Google in a side-by-side search off. Which will you choose? http://binged.it/UuOUPO

Our SEO services work for either search engine.

Flowchart: how to retinafy your website. Thanks alot, Apple.

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 12:18:32 -0400

Flowchart: how to retinafy your website. Thanks alot, Apple.

We recently launched our re-designed website, as shown in the...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:23:00 -0400

We recently launched our re-designed website, as shown in the screenshot of the main menu.

You can visit the whole site Optima Design Studio - San Diego Web Design.

Merry Christmas.

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 20:18:47 -0500

Merry Christmas.

Raven Browser We are really enjoying this new Mac browser. It...

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:09:25 -0500

Raven Browser

We are really enjoying this new Mac browser. It keeps web apps in the side tray for all of your favorite social channels and websites. You download apps from their app store.

An occupy movement worth getting behind. Occupy Flash - The...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:05:01 -0500

An occupy movement worth getting behind. Occupy Flash - The movement to rid the world of the Flash Player plugin.

Colour Lovers Got to take ColourLovers.com for a test drive...

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:33:34 -0400

Colour Lovers

Got to take ColourLovers.com for a test drive today. What a great service for designers.

You can browse color and pattern palettes mixed by others, or create your own, like this one here.

Next version of Firefox web browser might rip off Chrome’s...

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:49:37 -0400

Next version of Firefox web browser might rip off Chrome’s design:

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/08/next-version-of.php

Lola got a McDonalds cone for her birthday today.

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:34:52 -0400

Lola got a McDonalds cone for her birthday today.

Project Complete Just finished off a new project - Nancy’s...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:45:59 -0400

Project Complete

Just finished off a new project - Nancy’s Dog Walking and Pet Care. Website for dog walking service in the Bay Area.

Firefox 5 is now out. Didn’t Firefox 4 just get released...

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:05:08 -0400

Firefox 5 is now out.

Didn’t Firefox 4 just get released like 3 months ago?