Why Update Rails
Mac OS X Leopard ships with Rails 1.2.6 which was the latest version when the OS released. But the rails team has updated Ruby on Rails to version 2.0 (2.0.2 now to be exact). Version 2 of rails brings many new features, updates and fixes. To get your Mac running the latest version of rails, open the terminal and run the following commands
Commands
$ sudo gem update --system
$ sudo gem install rails
$ sudo gem update rake
$ sudo gem update sqlite3-ruby
You have to run the commands with the sudo prefix to run them as the super user (equivalent of admin) or you will get a the following error
You don’t have write permissions into the /usr/bin directory.
Commands Explained
$ sudo gem update –system - this command updates the ruby gems package manager (this update is required by the latest version of rails)
$ sudo gem install rails - updates and installs the latest version of rails including the dependencies
$ sudo gem update rake - updates the rake tool which is used by rails
$ sudo gem update sqlite3-ruby - updates the ruby sqlite3 bindings, you can skip this command if you don’t use sqlite as your database
Testing
You will get visual updates as the update process goes on but if you still feel like testing the update once you are done, type this command in the terminal
$ rails -v
and to get a list of all the gems currently installed on your mac displayed with their version numbers use the following command
$ gem list
If you have any other suggestions or questions about the update, write a comment.
I had a really bad experience installing Firefox on my Mac so I decided to pen down the detailed instructions along with my experience installing it as a first time Mac user.
Installing Firefox on Mac OS X
Goto Firefox.com, click on the download link and the file should download to your Downloads folder
Open the Downloads folder using Finder and locate the Firefox.2.x.x.x file, double click on it ad you should see this screen
Click accept and in a few moments, the image will be mounted and you will see this window
Now open the Applications folder in another Finder window and drag the Firefox icon from the above screen into the Applications folder
You will see a progress screen for a few moments and you are done installing Firefox
Right click on the Firefox disc image icon on your desktop and Eject
To launch Firefox, double click on the Firefox icon in the Applications folder
For future use, you could drag the Firefox icon from the Applications window onto the dock to create a shortcut
My experience
Installing applications is supposedly a trivial task on a Mac but when I tried to install Firefox (my first non-Apple application) I was clue less about how to install it.
It was my Day 1 with the Mac and I already got the hang of Safari so I decided to try the mighty Firefox for a few reasons -
- First its a damn good browser
- Second I was used to it as a windows user
- Third and most important, Firefox maintains a consistent UI across all platforms
Just like everyone else I downloaded the DMG, double clicked on the DMG and it showed me this screen.
What the heck??? What am I supposed to do with this little window?? What does it mean? I was really frustrated, why can’t they include instructions to install the app? I initially thought it was actually a splash screen. Then after playing with the window for a while, I discovered that the Firefox logo is an icon and by the signs I thought I should drag this icon into the white Applications icon in the window. Didn’t work. Tried some googling with no luck then realized that I could drag the icon into a new Applications finder window. And finally there I had it, Firefox on my Mac.
This was in the past and when I was a Mac noob. Now that I know how to install applications (apps), when I think about my first install experience I feel embarrassed. And I wish Firefox developers designed it in such a way that the Firefox icon could be dragged into the Applications icon in the same disk image window rather than the user opening a new Applications window and then dragging the icon into it.
It was actually my mistake, they had install instructions on the download page which I did not notice and closed.