Apple Mac startup/scripting/menu bar (1 Viewer)

[Leo Kerr]

At work, we got a recent (intel) Mac Mini to test and abuse as a possible HD/SD player.

It's quite a nice little machine for basic kiosk-like applications, but we've run into one tinsy little problem.

We have it set to auto-power-on if it "looses" power. Which is good, 'cause we generally control things by a brutal relay somewhere. And after doing this for a week, it still seems a happy little camper. On for an hour, powered off for five minutes, and power being restored.

Where we're having trouble is the menu-bar across the top of the screen. In the ideal world, it will not have a keyboard or mouse plugged into the machine except during programming. On power-on, it runs a script that throws the video file into the player, which is set to play full-screen / auto-repeat.

The menu bar won't go away, 'cause on start-up, the mouse is on the Apple icon on the top left.

Any notions of how to get this to go away, short of installing a relay driven treadmill that'll walk the mouse away from the top of the screen?

Leo

PS - I'm relatively new to the Mac world; I edit on Final Cut Studio, and now I'm moving to trying playback on Minis, but I'm not a deep Mac user - yet.

LK

 

[JohnRice]

By menu bar, do you mean the dock? If so, click on the apple, choose dock and select it to be on the bottom. Maybe you mean DVDPlayer still shows the menu in full screen mode, since the curser is at the top of the window. If so, maybe there is a way to apple script it to move when the computer starts.

 

[Leo Kerr]

No, I may have goofed on the terminology, but I meant the white bar across the top of the screen that starts with the Apple logo (then file, and so on until you hit Searchlight on the right.)

If I can get the mouse pointer away from the top, it'll go away (I'm using Nice Player right now; it behaves "nicely" for my needs, and was cheap.)

If I knew Keynote would do it, we're okay with that, but it's hard to say; the point is so that this will all work unattended without any intervention at all. (In fact, we'd rather not even have a keyboard or mouse plugged into the machine.)

Leo