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User

04.04.2008 04:33:37

Front Row behavior hangs

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

I am having a problem. I have had RB installed for a while. but haven't used it too often. I have just started to use it more and when I activate the Front Row behavior, I can't do anything. The only way I can get out of Front Row is to option-command-esc and kill it. I can't even use the keyboard to control Front Row. I have made sure I have the most up to date version of Remote Buddy and drivers. I am running 10.5.2. I had my remote paired because I have two macs in close proximaty, but I disabled the pairing and still have the same issue.

Anyone have any ideas?

These entries from the FAQ may be relevant to this topic:

Driver

What is the task of the driver and what do I need it for? (FAQ015E0177)
The Setup Wizard already contains a summary on how the driver does help Remote Buddy to provide additional features and hardware support. If that summary was too short, here's some more info on each of the points:
- fix for Apple® Remote driver problems in OS X
  Since OS X 10.4.9 (that includes 10.4.10/10.4.11/10.5.x/..) many users have been experiencing that one button press on their remote does now trigger two reactions - once from any currently running application that supports the Apple® Remote, once the default system action. So, this problem is not specific to Remote Buddy. The driver provides a clean, system conform fix to this problem using only documented APIs.
- enabling of all features of built-in IR receivers
  Only with the Remote Buddy driver do you gain support for arbitrary length button presses for the Play and Menu buttons as well as minimized reaction times for all buttons. While this may sound like unimportant technical details, they actually do have a strong practical impact. If, for example, you want to map a function to the Play or Menu button, that you want to see executed for as long as you press that button, this was previously simply impossible to achieve. This limitation still applies to all other applications. It does not for Remote Buddy with the driver loaded.
- the emulation of a virtual Apple® Remote
  Control applications that have support for and listen to an Apple® Remote - with any remote control of your choice supported by Remote Buddy. And on any Mac®. This allows you to f.ex. use iAlertU side by side with Remote Buddy or accessing special functions and modes inside applications that would otherwise require these apps to have full control over the built-in IR receiver of your Mac® - and that your Mac® actually came with one.
- support for Bluetooth® remotes and external receivers
  It's not possible to reliably operate many Bluetooth® based remotes, like for example the Wii® Remote with a Mac® purely from userspace due to limitations in the operating system. The situation for many external receivers is similiar: some of their features - or the entire device - can only be supported with the help of a driver.

User

04.04.2008 12:44:01

Re: Front Row behavior hangs

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

I'm afraid this actually is a problem with/of Front Row and not Remote
Buddy, which does nothing beyond sending keystrokes in this case.

What happens if you quit Remote Buddy and launch Front Row manually?

Best regards,
Felix Schwarz

User

04.04.2008 15:43:43

Re: Front Row behavior hangs

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

As soon as I quit Remote Buddy, Front Row functions fine. I hit the menu button and Front Row comes up and all the buttons work.

I installed Remote Buddy on a Mac Mini I have running and it actually works fine. I checked the update levels and they all have the same versions of the Front Row/iTunes/iPhoto updates so it seems to be related to the specific computer. The only difference I can see is on the computer that is not working, I have had Remote Buddy installed a while and on the Mac Mini it was a fresh install (not upgrade).

User

04.04.2008 20:18:14

Re: Front Row behavior hangs

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

I'm having Front Row stability issues lately too, but unrelated to Remote Buddy.

However, I *am* having quite a bit of Remote Buddy crashes. I've looked for a crash log but can't find one.

Felix, is there a way to find info like this for application crashes? I'd like to troubleshoot this more for you, but don't know how.

Thanks!

User

05.04.2008 01:18:06

Re: Re: Front Row behavior hangs

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't see, however, how Remote Buddy could cause any hangs of Front
Row where not even the keyboard would work, though. All Remote Buddy
does to control Front Row is emulate key presses using the OS X
"remote desktop" API and that's really it.

Except for the driver, which needs to be in /System/Library/
Extensions/, and which Remote Buddy is taking special care of, Remote
Buddy is self-contained and doesn't modify or install any files in
your system. So upgrading vs. a fresh install shouldn't make any
difference.

The only problem that I can imagine that could make Remote Buddy hang
(but not Front Row) is AppleScript-related. Did you rename any of the
apps installed on that system (like f.ex. iTunes.app to iTunes
7.6.app) or add custom actions containing AppleScript on the computer
you experience the problem with?

It might be worth a try to quit Remote Buddy, move the preferences
files in ~/Library/Preferences/com.iospirit.*emote*uddy* to another
place (=> effectively putting everything back to default settings),
launch Remote Buddy and see if you experience any hangs of Remote
Buddy when entering Front Row after that.

If you experience a hang of Remote Buddy, please use Activity
Monitor.app to make a sample, so I can have a look at what is going on
inside Remote Buddy.

Btw, are you using the latest version of Remote Buddy?

Best regards,
Felix Schwarz

User

05.04.2008 01:20:06

Re: Re: Front Row behavior hangs

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

If Remote Buddy crashes, a log should be written out to

~/Logs/CrashReporter/

I haven't had any other reports of crashes for a long time, so I'm
especially interested in that. Are there any steps you can provide to
reproduce a crash?

Best regards,
Felix Schwarz

User

05.04.2008 18:43:20

Re: Front Row behavior hangs

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Sent you an email, Felix. Thanks for your support!

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