You might ask me, why am I putting posting about my skiing on the Articles section? Answer is quite simple: I ran into problem, spent an hour try to troubleshoot and as I find a solution, I’d like to share it with you.
So last weekend might not have been best for skiing at the Grouse Mountain due to the cold rainy day, but I couldn’t wait to try my full charged ReconInstruments MOD powered Zeal GPS equipped goggles. For those who don’t know what I am talking about: it is little computer with tiny micro-optics display equipped with GPS inside your goggles which shows your stats in real time right in front of your eyes as you go down the slope. It tracks your distance, speed, vertical and jumps. As you come back home, you can plug in your goggles to the computer and relive the experience in beautifully designed ReconHQ software. It links with Google maps and you can see all your runs overplayed on maps, satellite or terrain views. You can also share your results with others and playback your runs right on your computer.
And that’s exactly what I wanted to do as I came back home all soaking wet but happy and excited to finally view my achievements on the second skiing trip in my life. I was quite disappointed when I tried to launch ReconHQ to no success as it crashed every time. I thought it might be because I updated my OS and now just needed to update ReconHQ software. I headed to Recon Instruments website’s download section only to find out that Flash plugin crashed every time I clicked on Download link. So next logical thing to do is to update Flash Player, right? So I did… Next, after finally managing to download Adobe AIR package, it failed to launch as it “needed newer” version. I put needed newer in quotes because, as I found out after downloading later AIR version from Adobe’s website it needed latest version of AIR as well. Yes, you read it right: Adobe AIR Installer needs newer version of Adobe AIR – ridiculous, right? After another 30 minutes of web search, I finally found logical explanation to ALL my problems. Adobe AIR cannot operate properly when OS X automatic graphics card switch is enabled.
So those of you who made this far in my story and for those who skipped:
If Adobe AIR apps or installer crash and fail to launch, open System Preferences :: Energy Saver and disable “Automatic graphics switching”.