If you’re having problems accessing Reason 3.0.5 on an Intel Mac after installation and you’re getting the message “failed to locate reason engine, exiting”, every time you try to launch, the likely reason is that your ReWire folder has been set to read only.

You’ll need to change the permissions on the folder to “Read & Write” in order to launch Reason in ReWire mode.

To do this…

1. Open a Finder window.
2. Browse your hard drive, going to Library > Application Support > Propellerhead Software.
3. Control-Click on the ReWire folder and select “Get Info”.
4. Scroll to the end of the info window and extend the “Ownership & Permissions” (small triangle to the left).
5. Change the permissions in “you can” to “Read & Write”.

If you can’t change permissions, or the box is greyed out, you’ll need to change the owner (or I did anyway). The default is set to ‘system’, click the lock beside the Owner dropdown and select your username from the menu. You’ll see the permissions box is no longer greyed out. Click the lock to prevent further changes on ownership and set the permissions to “Read & Write”.

Go back to wherever you dragged your original Reason Adapted 3 folder to (I stuck mine in Applications) and launch Reason, problem free.

I picked up the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac last week and immediately thought ‘where have you been all my life’.

Connecting to the PC (or any number of PC’s) is a breeze, entering the machine name or IP address on the network, you’re pretty much good to go. The majority of my remote desktop work comes with managing an Apache install on a windows box in the office. Since I upgraded the RAM in my Macbook Pro a few months back I’ve been doing the majority of my office work on the laptop. Yet every time I want to make changes on the server I’m logging into another PC, remoting into the server PC (no physical display unit) and then going back to the Mac.

Not any more says he.

It is a beta product, and it does expire at the end of next March but it does exactly what it says on the tin and means I’m doing less moving around the office to get simple server changes done.

The DMG installer is about 4mb, give it a whirl if you’re a Mac user looking for a remote desktop connection to a Windows based PC.

It looks possible that next week will see the beta release of the long-awaited Windows Vista Service Pack 1. I know I certainly won’t be downloading it anyway as a) my beta copy of Vista kicked the bucket about two weeks ago (or possibly before that, its been a while since I booted into Vista) and b) my experience with Vista to date hasn’t done anything at all to put a smile on my face.

Great detail on ZDNet from Sunday on the Vista SP1 beta launch. It will certainly be “more about fixes than new features”, thats true.

Leopard will be my next upgrade, looking forward to that!

There’s something I wasn’t expecting to see – another update to OSX before the release of Leopard later this year. Not only that but the 50 meg update (10.4.10) brings up version ten of my preferred OS.

There’s improvements made in the handling and mounting of external USB drives, new RAW support for Leica users and those shooting the budget Nikon D40x, the problem with random frames being dropped on a DV cam import is fixed and there’s a few ‘security’ upgrades in there as well. Doesn’t seem all that long ago since 10.4.9 and I would have thought that the next logical step was 10.5 but I guess Apple can do what they like with version numbers – who said they have to stop at 9!

Update to Mac OS X 10.4.10 now.

If you’re an owner of a Sony Vaio UX then you’re in for a treat as the handheld-pocket-fitting device will now run a copy of OSX thanks to some tasty modifications (nothing dangerous).

Not only is it possible, but there’s a full picture-heavy tutorial on how to get the job done as well. Nice one.

Daw mentioned it yesterday in a blog post and I hadn’t heard anything else online until digging about this morning. Disappointingly, Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) has been postponed until October, to coincide with the release of the iPhone.

According to Cellphones etc.

The main reason for the delay is that Apple had to reassign key software personnel from the Leopard to work on the iPhone, an even much-more anticipated product from Apple.

.

Both myself and John have been looking forward to Leopard’s release which I had thought would be fairly soon, or should have been at least, and it will likely be Christmas at this stage before I make the upgrade on the Macbook Pro. At least it isn’t at Microsoft level with the ever increasing delays in OS releases. Should the iPhone and Leopard hit the market on the same day it’ll be a good coup for Apple. Looking forward to the new desktops and upgrades to mail.app.

And so we play the waiting game….