Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Running OSX86 in VMWare Server 2.0

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

For those of you who want to run OSX in a virtual machine, its not terribly difficult to setup if you’ve got the right instructions. If not, it takes a lot of experimenting and guess work to get it working properly. I tried to do it myself with limited success. I could get it to install 100% of the time but only once did I ever get it to reboot into the main OS. I wiped it out (thinking I had it down) so that I could try and fix the booting. I never got it to work on my own again after that.

I was fortunate to find a tutorial that worked perfectly for me the first time. I was then able to upgrade to OS 10.5.7 so that I could install the iPhone 3.0 SDK. Now when there’s a slow day at work I can develop for my phone without having to bring in my personal computer! Woot! The link to the tutorial is below. I’ll copy and paste its contents as well in the event that it ever goes down. My best advice to you is take VM snapshots along the way as you get individual portions working. Also note that you cannot boot the VM without the installation DVD mounted. If you forget to install osx86 tools, you can download it here.

Link to a direct download of the 10.5.7 update from Apple itself. Here are the upgrade instructions I followed.

VMWare configuration instructions courtesy of Bob’s Mental Moshpit. Thanks Bob. Note that this installs “Darwin-64.” You do not need to be running a 64-bit OS for this. It’s working just fine for me on Windows XP 32 Bit.

Installing Mac OS X 10.5.6 under VMware 6.5.2

One of the current “Holy Grails” of virtual machinery is getting a functional installation of Mac OS X into a VMware virtual machine. There’s a lot of Google talk out there about how to do it, but not everybody seems to be successful. I certainly wasn’t for quiet some time. However, I sat down today and decided to give it my best shot again, and this time I succeeded! Not only did I succeed with iDeneb 1.4 (which installs Mac OS X 10.5.6), I successfully upgraded that release to 10.5.7. Cool.

I’m documenting here the steps I followed (many times, just to make sure they worked for me) to achieve a successful Mac OS X 10.5.x install in a VMware Workstation 6.5.2 machine. There is no sound, but there is networking, which is far more important to me. If you find a way to get audio working, you might post it here.

Be aware that these steps worked for me, but YMMV. If you are not successful using them, there’s not much I can do to help you out. I had to experiment over and over to find these working steps; you will probably have to do the same to overcome your problems. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll be using the file “iDeneb_v1.4_10.5.6.iso”.

Here We Go

1. First, of course, you need to grab the iDeneb 1.4 distribution (Mac OS X 10.5.6). Google it, or use your favorite torrent search engine.
2. Mount the iDeneb ISO as a drive (using something like UltraISO or Virtual CloneDrive). Note the drive letter of the DVD.
3. Create a new virtual machine in VMware. The following sequence of screen grabs should show you all the settings you need to create for the new environment:


	Tell VMware that you will install the operating system later:

	For operating system type, Select “Other”, and then “FreeBSD 64-bit”:

	I named it “10.5″ because I will upgrade from the 10.5.6 on the iDeneb 1.4 image to 10.5.7. You can call it whatever you like, of course:

	Choose the number of processors to let the OS use:

	Allocate an amount of memory to use:

	Unless you know what you’re doing, select “Bridged networking”:

	Drive-type settings:

	Set the space available on the disc. The installation will consume 6-7GB, and the update will consume even more. If you need to do more on the drive, increase that size here:

	Don’t power on the machine yet:

4. Edit the machine settings, and set the CD/DVD drive to use the one that you noted earlier where the iDeneb 1.4 image is mounted:

5. Power on the machine. You’ll want to be sure you click in the window immediately so it captures the mouse/keyboard focus. When prompted to press “F8″ for startup options, press it. Then, at the “boot:” prompt, you can enter options you want for starting the installer. I use the following (’-v’ means show diagnostic messages; I recommend entering at least that):

6. Now, if you’re lucky, at this point you should boot into the iDeneb installer. When you get to the installation prompt, you’ll want to go to the “Utilities” menu, and launch “Disk Utility”. From this interface, select the VM disc, and then select the “Partition” tab:

7. Create a single-partition layout, leaving the volume type as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”. This volume type is important: I was unable to get the VM to boot with any other type:

8. Select the “Options” button, and change the disc to use a “Master Boot Record” partition. The other types failed to work for me:

9. “Apply” your partition settings, and exit the “Disk Utility”.
10. Proceed with the installation, selecting your VM disc as the target partition (it will be the only one, if you followed these instructions).
11. When the installation completes, you’ll be prompted to restart. Do so, but when the machine gets back to the boot prompt, “Stop” it immediately (don’t worry, this won’t harm anything) so that you are back to the VMware desktop and the VM is powered off.
12. Change the “CD/DVD” settings of the VM from the specific iDeneb drive back to “Auto”. DO NOT UNMOUNT THE DVD. You’ll want to leave the iDeneb DVD mounted in the operating system, because it seems to be the only way to allow the VM to actually boot correctly.
13. Shut down VMware.
14. Open the .vmx file of the new iDeneb machine (e.g., “Mac OS X 10.5.vmx”), and find the line that starts with “guestOS”. It should contain the entry “freebsd-64″. Change this to “darwin-64″, and save the file.
15. Re-start VMware, and power on the Mac OS X VM. Let the boot screen time out, and if the gods are smiling down upon you, you will boot into Mac OS X 10.5.6.

Post-installation Booting

Of course, things did not go this smoothly for me. It took me a couple of boot attempts to get the operating system to come up (boot-hang-kill-repeat). When it did, I did all the set up stuff, and it took me into the OS X desktop. Once I get everything set up that is boot dependent (like updates and screen resolution), I plan to simply suspend the VM so that I can unmount the iDeneb DVD, and then simply power on the VM whenever I need it.

Screen Resolution

There are two ways to control the screen resolution. You can enter it at the boot prompt (see the previous image), but this is cumbersome, and can typically lead to a failed boot. Or, you can change the com.apple.Boot.plist file to make the resolution permament (my preferred approach). Both approaches require a boot up sequence in order to be successful. You can read about implementing both approaches here.

Good Luck

If you’ve been looking for a successful way to create a portable Macintosh, I hope this approach works for you. Being a software engineer, it’s really fantastic to be able to carry Linux, Mac OS X, and Vista along with me on a single machine when I’m away from home.

iHackintosh Upgrade instructions:

Download AppleDecrypt.kext Click HERE.
Download IntelCPUPMDisabler.kext Click HERE.
Edit : AppleIntelCPUPM Disabler.kexts will be in /Extra

Open the terminal & perform following command’s without quotes.

”sudo –s”

*type password*

”while sleep 1;”

”do rm –rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext;done”

Open 10.5.7 Update Installer.

Run update BUT DO NOT RESTART.

Go back to your terminal and press Control C to end the script.

In terminal type:

”vi /System/InstallAtStartup/scripts/1”

Replace the line Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext with dsmos.kext if any exists.

Don’t restart.

Open osx86tools >>> Check repair permissions >>> Set kext permissions >>> Clear extensions cache >>> Restart.

Boot using -v to see if any errors.

Posted in Programming, Technology | 1 Comment »

JVC KD-HDR50 CD Receiver Pretty Nifty

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

I had some work done on my car a few weeks ago and they disconnected the negative terminal on the battery. This had the ultimate effect of disabling my car stereo. The factory Honda stereo wanted me to put in the activation code. I looked in the door jams, inside and around the glove box and even in the trunk. I couldn’t find this code anywhere. I was going to have to rip the stereo out or have the dealer do the same (the dealer themselves were unable to look up the code by VIN the one time I had dealer service done. Sure wish they would have given me the code when I asked THREE times).

With a thirty minute commute each way, I decided that I needed to do something about this fast. So, I looked around on Crutchfield and found this beauty. Built in HD tuner, USB port in the front and $20 off if I purchased with a Mastercard. It was an easy sell. Crutchfield shipped the receiver the same day that I ordered it and it was in my hot little hands two days later.

The adapter kit that was supplied by Crutchfield worked perfectly. It was color coded and a snap to hook up. I used wire nuts instead of soldering and it took me about 10 minutes to splice them together and triple check my connections.

Thanks to the wonderful engineering at Honda, I had to take out the storage console between the two seats as well as a few screws in the center console to get at the two bolts holding the stereo in place. I didn’t bother to unhook the hazard lights or clock plugs so it took me a few extra minutes to maneuver the old unit out of the console and the new unit in. About 10 minutes later I was reattaching the battery cable to test this thing out.

Here’s a quick overview of my impressions of the stereo. The receiver is amazing. I am able to pick up stations that my factory radio could not. They don’t sound crystal clear but it has opened new options to me. The HD is very nice. Some of my favorite radio stations have talk radio in the morning and their secondary programming is good ol’ fashioned music. The display is easy to read and the 30,000+ color choices look phenomenal. The radio doubles as a charger for my iPhone, and will even play music off a FAT16/32 formatted memory stick or USB hard drive.

Pros:

USB port will charge any USB powered cell phone, even if it can’t play MP3s off of it.
HD reception is amazing. Crystal clear audio with secondary station offerings (My PBS station does NPR on channel 1, classical music on 2 and NWS on 3. Very nice for the crazy Florida weather)
Easy to install
Superior sound quality over factory stereo both from off-the-air sources and my iPhone.
Will play my MP3s off a memory stick, increasing my storage over my iPhone.

Cons:

Does not have preset buttons
Menu navigation is non-intuitive
Pain in the butt to preset hop without the remote (haven’t tried the remote yet)
Auto programming of the presets only does 6 presets at a time and selects the exact same stations when I try to do the next 6 presets
Auto programming of the presets seems to only look for HD stations
Will not play MP3s off my Creative Zen Vision: M. I was hoping to recycle the thing by leaving it in my car.
Crutchfield supplied mount kit is VERY cheap. I’m honestly a little worried about how well it will hold up.
Keeps switching from random songs to normal. Its somewhat awkward to switch back so this drives me INSANE!

Despite some serious cons, I do recommend this car stereo. I couldn’t find any that supported SDHC cards / iPod that did have regular preset buttons.

I’m excited to have music in my car again and I find myself fiddling with all the menu features at stoplights. Don’t worry, I don’t make people wait on me when the light turns green.

*EDIT* The stupid thing keeps taking it off of RANDOM for my ipod/iphone. So I have to turn it back to random probably every 30 minutes or so.

Posted in Automotive, Technology | No Comments »

Eidos is Monitoring Your “Offline” Gameplay / Palm too now?

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

So I was looking through Slashdot today when I found a link to a study done on Tomb Raider Underworld. I was pretty shocked to learn that every time I play any modern Eidos game, they are logging information about how I play their game, even when I am not playing the game through an online match making service. The article says:

The gameplay data, namely game metrics, utilized in this
study were recorded using the EIDOS Metrics Suite software
embedded to the TRU game. The suite is an instrumentation
system which is designed to record game metrics from
EIDOS games in production and post-launch, transmitting
the logged data to an SQL-server via an ETL process.

I was completely amazed. Tomb Raider Underworld is played entirely offline. I would have never expected that they would have any reason to communicate back to their own server. There was no warning of this, no opt out option, or anything like that.

Most people probably would not care to have this information collected but I prefer that no one collects any information on me without at least giving me advanced warning. There is certainly nothing on my Xbox that I would want to hide but who is to say that there couldn’t be malicious use of such a reporting feature on a PC?

Maybe I’m just overreacting but I think uninformed logging is WRONG and if it’s not illegal, it should be. I know that in most US States its illegal for someone to record a telephone conversation without the informed consent of all participants. Why should computer software be any different? Computer software could potentially disclose information that is beyond the scope or anticipation of the end user and its even more imperative that software publishers are very judicial in their use of logging and reporting.

For those of you who wouldl ike to prevent Eidos from gathering such data, you just have to disconnect your Xbox/PS from the network while you play. On a desktop, they may keep a log of information indefinitely, waiting for you to connect up to a network again.

*Edit*

This guy Joey Hess alleges that Palm is going so far as to report GPS positioning as well as applications installed on peoples Palm Pre. If this is true, this is worse than anything Eidos or any other game company has done to my knowledge. If they have done this, and you own a Palm Pre, please do the world a favor and file suit in your local court!

Posted in Rants and Raves, Technology, Video Games | No Comments »

Slipstreaming AHCI drivers, Windows XP/Asus P5K-E wifi

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Ok, I know I was going to hack up my Apple TV but I got a little side tracked. I needed to backup my original drive just in case something went wrong. So, I decided I wanted to be able to boot my linux setup with AHCI and sata in order to get the fastest drive speed possible. The problem was that AHCI mode was causing my Windows XP install to blue screen. So, I decided before I touched my Apple TV, I’d rather get my desktop working the way I wanted it to. After all, I use it more than my Apple TV!

I found several web sites that indicated that I could make some modifications to my current XP install and get it to boot in AHCI mode but none of them seemed to work for me. So, I decided that I needed to slipstream the appropriate drivers into my Windows install. The problem was, I wasn’t sure which drivers were the appropriate choice. Do I use the JMicron jmb363 driver, or something else? None of the websites I found dealt directly with the P5K-E, so I wasn’t having much luck.

Here’s what you need to do. Pop your XP disk into your drive and copy all of it to your hard drive. I made a directory on my C: drive called XPCD. Go into that directory and create a directory called ‘$OEM$’. Inside of that, create the directory ‘$1′. Now create a ‘Drivers’ directory inside of that, and finally create a directory for your AHCI drivers. At this point you should have something like “C:\XPCP\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\AHCI\”.

If you need the drivers, you can download them directly from Intel. At the time of this writing, my driver file was iata87enu.exe. You’ll need to extract them from the command-line using a command like below:

iata87enu.exe -A -P C:\IntelDrivers\

The correct files will then be in “C:\inteldrivers\winall\Driver” or “C:\inteldrivers\winall\Driver64″ for the 64-bit version of XP. You’ll need to copy the files inside that directory into the “C:\XPCP\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\AHCI\” directory.
Next you’ll need to go into your I386 folder (“C:\XPCD\I386″) and modify your TXTSETUP.SIF file so that it knows what PCI device to associate your new driver with. You’ll need to add the following information:

[SourceDisksFiles]
Iastor.sys = 1,,,,,,3_,4,1

[HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2922&CC_0106 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_282A&CC_0104 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2829&CC_0106 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2822&CC_0104 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2821&CC_0106 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2682&CC_0104 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2681&CC_0106 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C3&CC_0104 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C6&CC_0104 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C1&CC_0106 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C5&CC_0106 = “iaStor”
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2653&CC_0106 = “iaStor”

[SCSI.Load]
iaStor = iaStor.sys,4

[SCSI]
iaStor = “Intel(R) ICH9 SATA AHCI Controller (Desktop/Server/Workstation)”

Those headers already exist, so you can just paste in your text below the appropriate file in the SIF file.

After you’ve done that, you’ll need to make a CAB file of the actual driver to put into th I386 folder so that Windows can load it on first boot. Open up the command line and type:

MAKECAB C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\AHCI\iaStor.SYS C:\XPCD\i386\IASTOR.SY_

Now, since you’ve gone through the effort of making a custom Windows XP CD, you might as well make life a little easier on yourself. After all, who wants to have to type in that damn product key every time they install? Create a file called “WINNT.sif” inside of your I386 folder. Inside this file we will A) tell Windows where to find the ICH9 driver to install during setup and B) place our Windows product key for an easier install.

[Data]
AutoPartition=0
UnattendedInstall=”No”
MsDosInitiated=No

[Unattended]
OemPreinstall=Yes
OemPnPDriversPath=”DRIVERS\AHCI”
FileSystem=*

[UserData]
ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Now that you’ve done all of this, you must create a bootable ISO that you can burn to CD. The easiest way to do that is to use the CDIMAGE tool from Microsoft. You can download it here, with a pretty GUI front end.

Once your ISO is created, I recommend that you try to install it using a virtual machine. You can get VMWare server for free now. If it installs there without a hitch, you’re ready to give it a try on your P5K-E motherboard. Good luck.

There are a bunch of other things you can do while you’re at it, too. You can slipstream in the latest Windows service packs, software updates, and even have it install applications for you. There is a very excellent guide called MSFN’s Unattended Windows.

**Note** The links provided above are offered by third parties and not by myself. I do not make any guarantees or warranties about the availability, legality, and functionality of those files. You should always use extreme caution when running executables from unknown and/or untrusted websites. I highly recommend you backup all crucial data before attempting to reinstall your operating system. You follow these instructions at your own risk.

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

Apple TV Hacking

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

I managed to get a great deal on an Apple TV from Craigslist. I decided to pick one up after taking a look at the Apple TV Hacks website. See, I was looking for a really cheap Mac on Craigslist and was not having any luck. I found out that you can actually turn your Apple TV into a full blown Mac OS X box running at a blazing fast 1GHz. The whole motivation behind this is to jailbreak my iPhone 3G.

Anyway, at a price tag of $140, I decided that the Apple TV would be my cheapest entry point into the Mac world. Having acquired Leopard and a 2.5″ external drive enclosure from my vendors, I should be ready to start hacking away as soon as the UPS truck comes today.

I’ll be posting pictures and compiling information here. For instance, I found a handy little page that tells you how to create a backup image of your original Apple TV drive using FOSS tools (from Linux command line).

For safety purposes, I intend to recommision an old 40GB laptop drive that I have laying around. Once I know everything seems to work perfectly, I’ll take the plunge for real and use the 160GB drive that came with my Apple TV. That is, of course, unless I decide to upgrade to a 250GB drive ;o).

(I know that $140 price is ridiculously low for a 160GB Apple TV but I got extremely lucky. No it is NOT stolen. I bought it off a college student whose parents take such good care of him that he didn’t mind selling it at a loss so that he could get the Blu-Ray player that his parents neglected to get for him. I thought it was a 40GB unit until I got it home, though he never said in his posting. He had only used it a few times and saw no real value in it.)

Posted in AppleTV, Technology | 1 Comment »

Thinking of Updating to Leopard? Maybe you should wait

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

So I took the plunge and upgraded to OS X Leopard today. I wish I would have held off. It’s not that there are X11 bugs that keep me from moving my X11 apps onto my second monitor, there just seems to be quite a few UI issues in general. I’ve had issues with Parallels not always going to full screen mode on a second monitor and it is completely incapable of going into coherence mode on a second screen. I’ve also had issues with window focus. That is to say, I command-tab or click on a window and select it, but it does not gain focus and I can’t do anything inside the window. I can’t even close it. At that poitn, the only way to fix it is a force quit.

I’ve also had problems with expose AND the dock. As in, all of the sudden expose stopped working (no error messages or anything). At that same point, I could no longer view the dock, command-tab through windows, or anything like that. I tried to reboot the machine to fix it but it hung on shutdown and I had to cut the power to get it to turn on again.

Performance isn’t that great either. When I click on an application in the dock, it completely pauses everything for a few seconds.

I think the release was rushed out a little too soon. It looks like it has a lot of potential though. We’ll see how long it takes apple to patch all of this up.

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

TorrentSpy Ordered to Log Ram??

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

So if you check out this article on ZDNet you’ll see that a Los Angeles judge has ordered TorrentSpy to start logging all site traffic and to turn over all data stored in RAM on their servers. This is the most absurd thing I have ever heard of. The article on ZDNet likens this to having to save post-it notes but it goes far beyond that. I would liken it to a person having to store every single thought that they had. The brain, like the RAM on a computer, works far faster than a pencil, keyboard, or a hard drive. That means that the brain, like the computer, would be forced to work at the speed of your fingers. Can you imagine having to think at a rate of 50 or even 100 word per minute? Absolutely absurd.

Anyway, if you folks at TorrentSpy are reading this, here are my suggestions for you. First of all, absolutely insist that the MPAA have to provide you with all the hardware and any software needed to log this. Secondly, insist that any software they provide you be open source and that it be peer reviewable on the internet. This is to protect you from having the MPAA do anything malicious or illegal. I’d then also get the judge to allow you to only put this logging on half of your servers. You, in good faith, would not modify your network structure to keep those servers from receiving less connections than they can handle. We all know they won’t get that much traffic anyway, they will be completely bogged down. Finally, to show just how absurd logging RAM is, I’d suggest you turn on encryption for all server traffic. Might as well make the MPAA sort through thousands and thousands of pages of factoring data. This will cause server performance to be so slow that these servers will only get a few hits per hour. It would affect very little of your clientel.

Good luck to you TorrentSpy! While I never condone piracy (I do work in the software industry, after all), I believe that the RIAA and MPAA have gotten themselves into their own mess by churning out complete CRAP for the last 10+ years. If they actually put out a decent work, maybe people would pay to see it in the theater and even pay to have a copy at home? A good movie is worth $10-15. But, ninty-nine percent of the movies produced these days aren’t even worth the cost of the film they are stored on.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

The joys of interlaced video

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

So the world is moving from SD television to HD television. There are now several different video formats available to broadcasters incuding 480p 720p and 1080i. Many people wanted to move away from interlaced video completely and only support progressive scan video. But, our government, in its infinite wisdom, standardized everything at 1080i. I don’t understand that at all. Interlaced video creates all sorts of interesting challenges, espcially in the era of digital content.

I have a problem at work right now that is specific to interlaced video that I cannot figure out how to overcome. My problem is that I need to draw basic primitives to the overlay channel. These primitives aren’t supposed to obstruct or detract from the video but are generated based on user defined areas and the video’s content. These overlays have to be drawn on coax (via NTSC/PAL), or a S/VGA display.

The VGA output is non-interlaced while the coax is interlaced. What this means is that my primitives look absolutely beautiful on VGA but have a very annoying flicker over coax. For those of you unfamiliar with interlaced versus non-interlaced video it is because a VGA monitor draws the entire screen every time it paints. A video monitor (TV, etc) is interlaced and draws every other line and then goes back and draws the lines that it skipped the first time. These two different draw periods are referred to as fields.

This means that if you had a horizontal line that was one pixel wide, it would be drawn in one field and not drawn at all in the next field. This causes the line to disappear, only to be drawn again. That is where the flicker comes in. Just doubling the thickness of the line would likely result in having two lines flickerin on and off right next to each other.

Well, I don’t have a problem with my horizontal lines, but I do with diagonal lines. What I am doing is this. If I am going to turn on pixel (x,y) then I would also turn on (x,y+1). I’d then paint pixels (x,y+2), (x,y+3), (x,y-1) and (x,y-2) with the gradient color. That way every field will have one pixel for the line and one pixel on each side of the line for the gradient color. That combined with the persistence of the phosphors in the previous field should blur everything to the eye and make it look more consistent. At least, that is what I would think.

I’m still getting flicker, however. Not only am I getting flicker, but it also seems to be worse on lines where the slope is greater than 1.

I’m absolutely perplexed by this and I can’t figure out how to resolve my flickering issue. I’ve tried to decrease the intensity of the colors that I am using by half and that makes the flicker less noticable but does not remove it completely.

I’m completely stumped. I’m going to go talk to one of our senior hardware engineers to see if he has any idea. He knows analog video very well. If he has any thoughts, I’ll be sure to share them. Otherwise, please give me any thoughts you have.

Posted in Programming, Technology | 1 Comment »

xargs + sed

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

I always forget how to chain xargs w/ sed. I use it so rarely that I always have to look it up again. Here its an example for future reference. Note that the command is `sed -i single quote single quote` not a double quote.

find . -name Makefile | xargs sed -i ” -e ’s/–parents/-p/’

Posted in Programming, Technology | 2 Comments »

Mac OS X unintelligent when dragging files from removable media

Friday, April 13th, 2007

Last night I wanted to copy some files off of several CDs and burn them onto a single CD. I popped them into my Mac, highlighted the folders I wanted, and dragged them onto a folder in my desktop. Mac OS decided to make shortcuts of those files in the folder. Now, I know that there is some key combination I can use to tell it to move or copy the files instead of create shortcuts, but I can’t remember what it is.

Anyway you slice it though, that seems like the behavior is incorrect. In general, why would I want to make a shortcut to some file on removable media? I know that people sometimes run applications off of a network share but I think that in most cases people are going to want to copy a file in that instance instead of create a shortcut.

Of course, I come from a Windows world where dragging a file like that would result in it being moved, or just copied if it were on removable media. But at the same time, a shortcut to removable media is only useful if that media is attached/inserted.