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I got some cool fan mail for my Sound Switcher... Just a quick note to thank you for creating Sound Switcher. I was so over having to go into the Sound panel in SysPrefs every time I wanted to toggle between my internal speakers and my external DAC. You have made my weekend! |
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I've been an OS X user for about 6 years, and I've noticed a change in the past 6 months or so: Apple software is starting to suck. It's not terrible, definitely more "good" than "bad", but relative to itself a year ago (or longer), Apple software has really taken a turn for the worse. My guess is with increased popularity they've lost focus on what's really important for good software. I think it's the same pattern that affects most musicians who make that transition from "nobody" to "big star" - the first album is amazing and blows people away, the 2nd or 3rd one is alright, then every album after that just plain sucks. Dave Matthews, Sting, Ben Harper. Or maybe it's more of a gentle transition, several albums are great, then somehow everything turns to suck (Paul Simon, Van Halen). Anyway, I think that's happening to Apple now. When I left Windows for OS X in 2002, it wasn't because I could buy TV shows through iTunes. Instead, I was leaving an unstable OS (Windows) with inconsistent UI and insane usability patterns, and moving to a stable, fast OS that was simple, intuitive and powerful. Unfortunately I now have several examples of instability and un-usability across several Apple software products. I think I would have been hard-pressed to come up with a list like this with OS X 10.3 or 10.4, but sadly it took ~10 minutes thanks to Leopard 10.5. I could probably take a little more time and come up with more. It's like Sammy Hagar just joined Apple to replace Steve Jobs. Depressing. |
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I just ran a manual cleanup of non-English language packs from my Applications directory. Removing the additional language junk saved 2.62 gb (yes, gigabytes) of disk space. Update: I ran it on /Library, too (same steps as below, just modify step 2), freed up another 1.1 gb, bringing the total disk space to 3.72gb. Size of "Applications" before: 6.41 gb (6,220,745,877) Note: the following tip will permanently delete non-English language support from everything in your Applications directory. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm just pointing that out. If, for some reason, you need to recover the addtional language support (maybe you're learning Hungarian?), you'll need to re-install the application(s). Here's what to do: 1. Open Terminal window I wrote about this before -- Removing language support from OS X applications (to free up disk space) -- but just re-ran it on my current computer so made another post with current data. |
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I finally got Leopard to mount my home server. Never had any problems with Tiger across multiple machines, but Leopard didn't work. All I want to do is mount the volume... I could connect directly, so I knew everything was accessible: smbclient //1.2.3.4/public Anyway, here's the magic that worked for me, from Terminal: mkdir /Volumes/public The mount prompts for password, you can specify a different user if you need, too. |
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Can't stand the new Dock in Leopard, found this to remove the huge slab of white behind the icons: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES Then either logout, or quit Dock through Activity Monitor. |
After 6+ months of dormancy, I've finally wrapped up the Sound Switcher widget. Functionally, I'm pleased with the results. Cosmetically, that's another story. I would really like to get feedback from anyone who tries it out, likes it, has issues. The core functionality works great (and has since last June!) but the widgety part is questionable. I had been using Dashcode which was helpful, but then it expired and I was forced to hobble along with klunky UI debugging tools, hence the huge lag between now and the start of this project. And yes, I know Dashcode is part of Leopard; no, I'm not on Leopard yet. |
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A co-worker found these guys a while back, L.A. Computer Company Store. They sell AppleCare at discount prices. It's legitimate, too - he bought one, registered with Apple, all is well. All of the options are "web special only", but that's fine. AppleCare for a MacBook Pro is only $225. The same product - purchased directly from Apple - is quite a bit more... L.A. Computer also sells AppleCare for iPods, Apple TV, iPhone, etc. |
I found this a while ago, then forgot about it, then someone asked recently and I thought I'd add it here to help others find it (including me after I've forgotten about it again). The Matrox DualHead2Go will let you connect two external displays to your laptop, although after reading the details more closely it's not quite as great as I thought. The setup is this: More info on their website, but basic details are Mac+Windows compatible, lots of resolution support options, and it costs $229. They also make a 3-display version for $329... Matrox TripleHead2Go |
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I was about to install PocketMac so I could sync my BlackBerry with my Mac, but then I read the release notes... "There is no support for synchronizing over Bluetooth, only synchronizing over USB is supported." "It may be necessary to launch Entourage when synching on Intel Macs. This appears to be an Intel Mac-specific issue." Ugh. Forget it. |
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I bought iWork '08 today and I'm getting to know Numbers. So far, so good. It's really clean and slick, and the editable "print view" is quite cool. I've used AppleWorks to do spreadsheet stuff for about 5 years (coincidentally that's probably when they released the last version), so anything new is a big improvement. I also own Excel, but it's so heavy, bloated and slow that I'd rather use AppleWorks instead. Anyway, Numbers is great. Big props to the iWork team for re-thinking spreadsheets. One cool feature set is "checkboxes and sliders". They let you treat cells as "on" or "off" (checkbox), or allow you to modify the value across a range (slider). Both are simple to set up and use, and right away make your spreadsheet much more dynamic. Here's a video tutorial showing checkboxes and sliders, and another one showing the editable print view. |
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Sweet. Ted Neward just bought a MacBook Pro. |
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I just got a new Mac and wanted to do two things: update Ruby, and install Rails. This post deliberately does not include any information about FastCGI, or Lighttpd, or any other customizations. This gets your Mac from "no rails" to "rails" quickly, and that's all. ;) If you get stuck anywhere, check the following pages, as both of them are far more detailed than mine (and therefore take longer to dig through): http://hivelogic.com/narrative/articles/ruby_rails_lighttpd_mysql_tiger?status=301 http://developer.apple.com/tools/rubyonrails.html 1. Update Ruby You should now have Ruby 1.8.6 installed at # 2. Install "readline" 3. Install RubyGems 4. Install Ruby on Rails |
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Here's a nice follow-up about the iPhone/Duke network issues from Tracy Futhey, Duke’s chief information officer: By now many of you have read news accounts around iPhones and Duke's wireless network. Some of the reports incorrectly made it sound as if our entire wireless network had collapsed. Others made it sound as if the iPhone could not work correctly on our wireless network. Still others seem to imply that Duke's network was deficient in some way because the problem had not been encountered more broadly. The reality is that a particular set of conditions made the Duke wireless network experience some minor and temporary disruptions in service. Those conditions involve our deployment of a very large Cisco-based wireless network that supports multiple network protocols. |
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I've tried to get iChat working with a Windows AIM user, and after some trial and error we found this page which pointed out that AIM 6.0 doesn't work with video, but 5.9 does, and you can get the 5.9 installer from here: |
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Just read Kenny Larkin's recent blog post about his new iPhone, cool stuff from someone who's really using it (and coming from the Blackberry world, too). He's got some good criticisms of it, but also great praise. In particular, I've heard lots of grumbling about the virtual keyboard... is it as fast as the Blackberry keyboard? Kenny says just keep typing on the iPhone, even if you're making mistakes, because the iPhone will figure out the right words and correct you on the fly. Once you get the hang of it, it's apparently faster than the Blackberry keyboard. Anyway, the big juicy bit is that you can activate an iPhone without doing the usual 2-year contract through AT&T. When you enter your social security number, use all 1's (so 111-11-1111). This is a special case number that means "my credit sucks", and AT&T will offer 3 options for activation, one of which is prepaid plan. |
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My friend Justin sent me an alternative to my post about making a Nokia 6133 work with iSync. It's a little bit more involved, but the results are better. I just saw your blog post, wanted to let you know of another way to enable it that actually worked much better that the plugin you linked. The 6133 is the US version of the 6131, which already has a bundled plugin, so just transform that into a 6133 plugin! I found this method, while more cumbersome to implement, supported the phone better than any of the plugins I found for download. |
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I just stumbled upon something rather amusing. I don't know if it's an indication of some not-too-far-off reality or what, but the OS X system info strings are... absurd. There are formatting rules for how to display RAM quantities in megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes, and exabytes. Quick recap: Said differently... I know technology changes quickly, but it seems beyond ridiculous to think that commodity hardware could be anywhere near approaching exabyte (or even petabyte) memory support. On OS X 10.4.x, see /System/Library/CoreServices/Resources/English.lproj/AppleSystemInfo.strings, which contains the following:
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I wrote a utility a few years ago to export the contents of my Address Book as a single vCard file. Why? I wanted to retain Notes on each contact, and the Address Book Group info, too. For example, I might have a contact in a group called "Friends", but normal vCard export loses that info. My utility keeps it, and also woks correctly for contacts that appear in multiple groups. Anyway, I decided I should post it online in case anyone else needs / wants something like this. No bling. Pure function. Check it out: vCard Export |
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I worked on Sound Switcher a little bit last night, probably 50% finished with the widget stuff. I also fixed the bug with setting the output device. Earlier today, I got my first feature request: modify Sound Switcher to support both input and output audio devices. My initial motivation was to build support for output devices only, because that's a pain point for me, but a friend needs this tool for switching input devices, too. In light of the feature request, I made some changes to the Objective-C code to support more generalized audio device stuff. Now it can:
I'm not sure if I want to build one meta-widget that lets you select input+output audio devices, or break it into two separate widgets. Both will use the switcher app underneath to read/write device changes. |
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I spent about 5 hours tonight working on phase 1 of "Sound Switcher", a new widget I'm building to quickly switch sound input devices. The widgety part is going to be pretty straightforward (that's next on the list). The hard stuff is what I worked on tonight: writing a tiny app in Objective-C that talks to CoreAudio. It does three things:
In the end, it's not all that complicated, but it was a bit rough getting started. The doc+examples aren't as useful as you'd like. |
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Here's a shortcut solution to synchronize your phone (or whatever) with your Mac using iSync. It assumes you're already setup for manual sync, such that you would do the following:
To make this a one-step process, open "Script Editor" (Applications > AppleScript > Script Editor), then paste the following: tell application "iSync"
synchronize
repeat while syncing
delay 1
end repeat
quit
end tell
Save the new AppleScript somewhere, and name it something descriptive like "Sync my phone". Also, be sure to choose "File Format" of "application", disable "Startup Screen", and disable "Stay Open". When you're done, you can do a full sync by clicking your AppleScript application, and then it will clean itself up and let you continue doing whatever you were doing before. |
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Note: If the steps on this page don't work for you, check out the alternate method of 6133+iSync setup. I just set up a Nokia 6133 to sync with my Mac over Bluetooth, and the one secret missing ingredient is this file: NOK6133.phoneplugin.zip. Without it, iSync will not allow you to add your phone as a device (and thus, you won't be able to sync the phone with your Mac). I tried this on two different Mac laptops (PowerBook G4, MacBook Pro), and both computers could see the phone, but wouldn't let me add it as a device. Here's what you need to do to get things working:
I didn't spend more than a few minutes digging around and setting this stuff up, and the results are great. |
I just posted vmstat widget which shows a simple, clean snapshot of current system memory usage on your Mac. Check it out. |
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There's a utility included in OS X developer tools called SetFile that lets you set all kinds of attributes about files and directories, including visibility. The visibility attribute is what OS X uses to hide things like If you have developer tools installed, you can run this from a terminal window to hide a file or directory: To show the file again, run the same thing with lowercase "v": If you end up using these a lot, I guess you could create aliases like "hide" and "show" which do the command stuff above, like this in bash: That way you could hide and show files more easily, like this: |
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Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) is boldly claiming that Apple's new iPhone will be a failure (Microsoft's Ballmer having a 'great time'). Wow. If anyone out there actually believes that, here's your wake-up call: Ballmer is nuts. Microsoft's search, MSN, barely squeakes out 10% of overall search traffic (way behind Google and Yahoo), yet somehow Ballmer claims "Microsoft has the most visitors". Hmm... could this be related to www.msn.com set as default start page for most copies of Internet Explorer? And there are millions of Windows users out there who don't how to change the start page? I'm willing to bet the answer is yes. But "default start page" is not "search user". I think what Ballmer meant to say was, "lots of people automatically land on MSN, but for every 10 of those people, 9 of them don't use it and instead go out of their way to use either Google or Yahoo." Microsoft's Zune music player is waaaaaaay behind the iPod (and other music players) in sales, which is understandable because the Zune is an ugly brown hunk of crap with dumb features. The Zune is trying really, really hard to sell 1 million units (not in any specific period of time, just hit the 1 million mark at some point). Meanwhile, Apple sells something like 20 million iPods every quarter. Microsoft's Xbox 360 group lost $315 million in one fiscal quarter. I guess selling the consoles below your production cost isn't such a great idea after all. Ouch. And Microsoft's newest operating system - Windows Vista - is selling so poorly that Dell recently began offering new laptops to customers with Windows XP installed... not Vista. But Windows XP is five years old. Did I leave anything out? I guess I could pick on Microsoft's new Office suite with the "ribbon" that seems to have confused more users than it's helped (there are lots of hacks out there to make your new Office suite look & feel like the old office suite - that is, without the ribbon). Oh right, I almost forgot the constant sharp decrease in Internet Explorer usage. Millions of people are using Firefox, and more are ditching Microsoft's crap browser for something better every single day. Meanwhile, Ballmer swears the iPhone will fail. Given the above examples (certainly there are more), it seems pretty clear that Microsoft isn't a great example of success. In fact, most of what they're doing these days seems pretty terrible. Therefore, we've established that Ballmer's opinions about the iPhone are useless, because he's in charge of a company that's rapidly losing ground on all fronts. Also, Cingular has gauged iPhone interest from ~2 million potential buyers. Hardly sounds like it's going to flop. I know more people who are planning to buy an iPhone than those who own (or plan to own) Vista, Zune, or an Xbox 360 - combined. So what the hell is going on with Ballmer? In part, it's his job to get in front of big media and say stupid things that somehow try to make his company look good. For phones, he must stand up and say Windows Mobile is awesome, etc., despite the fact that it's garbage (I know guys who use Windows Mobile-based phones and they suck - missed calls, lost messages, crappy interface, way too hard to use). But beyond that, I suspect the writing is on the wall at Microsoft. It's not the same place it used to be, and surely Ballmer knows this as well as anyone else. Of course, rather than take it like a man, he's acting like a scared little dog. He's like a scared, threatened little dog, backed into a tight corner, and all he can really do is freak out and bite people. Oh, I also like this lame attack on Google's online applications (like spreadsheets): "[Google has] come out with some of the lowest functionality, lowest capability applications of all time. [Laughter]." -- Steve Ballmer This guy is on another freaking planet! It is precisely because Google's spreadsheet application is simple and clean that people love it! Sadly, I own a copy of Excel but I rarely use it, instead choosing simpler, cleaner alternatives like Google Spreadsheets. Most projects at Google demonstrate a firm understanding of the 80/20 rule - that is, 80% of your users are going to use 20% of your features, so find out the 20% that people need and deliver. Everything else is kinda wasting your time. In fact, lots of additional features can hurt you, because with every extra, unwanted feature you add beyond your 20%, you run a serious risk of complicating your software interface so much that users are confused, so then you spend a ton of time+energy trying to build an entirely new interface paradigm like the "ribbon", which it turns out most users don't understand either. Meanwhile 80% of your users are left banging their heads against your awful application trying to use the 20% of the features that they can't find because they're all buried in a sea of useless functionality. Ugh. Dear Steve Ballmer, |
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Macs have great text-to-speech functionality, but I've only used it for fun. Specifically, if I want to "talk" to someone using my computer. As you might guess, this isn't too important but it sure can be fun. The fastest way I know to make your Mac "talk" is to open a Terminal window and use the
If you run that, you should hear a computer voice read everything after the word "say". If you don't have So that's part 1. Part 2 is to make it easier to keep feeding speakable text. To help, I wrote a small script that will wait for input (from you), send your input to I made a file in my
The full steps are thus....
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I've noticed that my hard drive space decreases by 3 to 5 gb after a clean restart. Why? I didn't know, and decided to do some investigation. What I found is that on MacBook + MacBook Pro laptops, OS X will automatically create and maintain something called a "sleepimage". Basically if your computer loses all power, OS X can recover your system state from the "sleepimage". I guess that's nice, but also a bit unnecessary I think... in 4+ years of using a laptop as my primary computer, I've never lost power completely. From what I found, the sleepimage is a copy of your computer's current system memory, and it's size is directly related to how much ram you've got. If you have 512mb ram, sleepimage will be 512mb. If you have 2gb of ram, your sleepimage will be 2gb. The sleepimage is stored on disk as a physical file, so if you have a 2gb sleepimage, that's 2gb of hard drive space that you cannot use for anything else (applications, files, etc.). I no like. The sleepimage lives under
Here's what it looks like on my MacBook Pro with 2gb ram, showing that my sleepimage consumes 2,048 mb on disk (or 2gb). Yikes. So how do you turn this off? To disable the automatic creation (and update) of sleepimage on your MacBook and permanently free up that disk space, do the following:
Note: this should also speed up the time required to put your computer to sleep. Without this change, each time you sleep your MacBook/MacBook Pro OS X will take a little while to update the sleepimage. Once you've disabled the sleepimage, it will skip that extra work. As a result, your laptop should sleep much more quickly now (5 seconds vs. half a minute). |
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I wrote a blog post last November one week after the Zune player went on the market showing some data about iPods vs. Zune on Amazon.com. I thought it was an interesting comparison, so I'm doing another one as a 4-month follow-up. Here are the current Top 100 Bestsellers at Amazon.com right now, edited to show only iPods and the Zune: 5. Apple 30 GB iPod video Black (5.5 Generation) Oh no! Zune is not in the Top 100 list! Well, we could all see that one coming, right? I wonder which one is selling better right now: the Zune, or Windows Vista. Microsoft has yet to release any actual sales numbers for the Zune, opting instead to make vague statements about sales goals. If I recall correctly, Microsoft said they were trying to sell 1 million Zunes in 2007. Apple sells 10+ million iPods every few months. |
So how do you turn that off? Front Row isn't a regular app, so where do you look? Where's the "Preferences" menu? How the heck is it invoked? It turns out there's a setting (buried under System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts) that will let you disable (or change) the "hide/show Front Row" setting. I'm fine to disable it because the remote still works and that's plenty good for me. |
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There's a shiny, new Apple Store opening this week in Austin. It's at the new shopping center "The Dominion" on Mopac just north of 183. |
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A friend just sent this tip for speeding up the OS X Mail application. Follow these steps to vacuum the sqlite database it uses, which should result in noticeable performance increase.
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As Apple and iTunes Store have increased in popularity over the years, I've heard constant criticism of Apple for not selling their music DRM-free, that way, anybody can play any iTunes-purchased song on any computer, anywere, with any operating system. That's all well and good, but it doesn't take much understanding of the issues to realize that DRM is the choice of the record companies, not Apple. So why does Apple have DRM at all? Without some kind of copyright protection, the big record labels would never have agreed to sell their songs through iTunes Store. Furthermore, Apple is only one of many online stores that sells music with built-in copyright protection. The record labels are so paranoid about this that they've repeatedly tried to produce audio CDs that have built-in copyright protection (think Sony). It's all just big and stupid, because data shows that most consumers are willing to pay for a product, but don't want to be shackled by stupid things like DRM on a CD they legally paid for. Anyway, those crazy Europeans have been complaining more and more about DRM'ed music through iTunes Store, and Steve Jobs just came back with an awesome response: "Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly." |
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According to this New York Times article (Phone Shows Apple's Impact on Consumer Products), the new iPhone will not allow 3rd-party developers to write their own software for it. Yes, the iPhone runs OS X, but nobody outside of Apple will be able to write applications, extensions, add-ons, widgets, or anything else that you can normally do with OS X. Is this a huge problem? Probably not, especially if Apple's bundled applications meet users' needs. But I was personally very excited that non-Apple developers would be able to write little applications for the phone. Over the years, many little utilities, features, and extensions that are part of OS X (or previously Systems 7, 8 and 9) started their lives as a small project written by one person, and over time it caught Apple's attention enough to pull it into the OS. That's not gonna happen with the iPhone. And I know it's not a huge problem, maybe more of a minor bummer? “We define everything that is on the phone,” he [Steve Jobs] said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.” |
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Excellent write-up about Vista this week: Review: Mac OS X Shines In Comparison With Windows Vista ... |
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Microsoft's Zune music player has been on the market for a week or so. When it first showed up on Amazon, it had been somewhere in the Top 10 list of hot items selling in electronics. For a product that's supposed to be serious competition for the iPod, that was good news for Microsoft. But where is the Zune now? It wasn't until the 3rd page that I found the Zune... in 84th spot. Other trivia... Top 100 Bestsellers at Amazon.com right now, stripped out to show only iPods and the Zune:
2. Apple 30 GB iPod video Black (5.5 Generation) 3. Apple 1 GB Shuffle Metal (2nd Generation) 5. Apple 80 GB iPod video Black (5.5 Generation) 6. Apple 4 GB iPod Nano Pink (2nd Generation) 12. Apple 4 GB iPod Nano Black 17. Apple 8 GB iPod Nano Black (2nd Generation) 18. Apple 4 GB iPod Nano Blue (2nd Generation) 23. Apple 4 GB iPod Nano Silver (2nd Generation) 29. Apple 4 GB iPod Nano Green (2nd Generation) 64. Apple 80 GB iPod video White (5.5 Generation) 84. Zune 30 GB Digital Media Player (Black) 97. Apple 4 GB iPod Nano White |
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I know there's a program out there that's supposed to take care of this, but I used it once and it screwed my computer up. I don't know what it actually did under the covers, but I knew what I wanted to do (remove language packs!). Here's what I came up with using Terminal. Applications, utilities, etc., have multiple-language support built in, often for dozens of languages. OS X itself has a ton of these language files, too. The ones I want to keep are for English language only, and I'd like to nuke everything else. Here's how to do it for your Applications folder only:
Translation of Step #2: from your Applications folder, find all things that end in ".lproj" (those are the language translation folders), but exclude "English.lproj" and anything starting with "en" (this catches "en_US.lproj", etc.). For everything that makes it past that filter, delete them immediately ("rm -rf"). I ran this on two Macs at home and freed up 1.1gb on one, and 1.5gb on the other. Don't forget to check your free disk space before you run it so you'll get the satisfaction of seeing how much space is available when it finishes. |
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The Apple's Pro Care website says lots of exciting, enticing things about Pro Care, trying to convince you to sign up. I'm going to try to convince you not to sign up, and keep that $100 in your wallet.
1. Personal Training
2. Yearly Tune-up
3. Fast Track
4. Complete Setup
5. Advance Reservations To find an authorized repair center, go to Apple's service finder page and enter your zip code. For example, there are six authorized repair centers in my zip code (one of those is the Apple Store). And I can pretty much guarantee that you'll get quicker service. It certainly can't be slower than an Apple Store.
6. Works Worldwide Well, I'm done ranting. And you might still think Pro Care is a good deal, or a useful purchase. And if you do, I am totally fine with it. But I think people should be properly informed about what they're spending their money on, not just buying the marketing hype. Apple is generally pretty good about matching their marketing with reality - I've owned many Apple products over the years, and speak from experience. But this Pro Care thing is a joke, and I feel obligated to say something about it. |
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I signed up for Pro Care 4 months ago, and feel pretty strongly that it was a waste of money. If there were any way in hell that I could get a refund, I would do it. Here's why. By the way, if you're wondering why I wrote this post, it's because I feel that Apple deliberately mislead me and sold me a product (Pro Care) that isn't very helpful. I wish someone would have warned me beforehand. If you have a computer problem that needs to be shipped out, Apple customer support will tell you that you have two options: 1) they can overnight a shipping box to your home, and you can send your computer out the next day (free of charge), or 2) you can walk right into any Apple Store and they'll take care of shipping your computer off. It is under this exact scenario that I initially signed up for Pro Care. I had a problem with my PowerBook that required a new motherboard. Still under warranty and all that, so it wouldn't cost me anything, but I still had to send it out. Apple Support told me over the phone that I could simply go into the Apple Store and they would take care of it. So I did that at 2pm on a Saturday. When I arrived at the Apple Store, I was told to wait 3-5 hours before I could talk to someone. I explained that I had already diagnosed everything myself, been on the phone multiple times with Apple Support, and was told to drop my computer off for shipment. I didn't want to talk to anyone, I wanted to hand it someone to put in a box and ship off for repair. The guys in the retail store said it didn't work like that, I had to stand in line with everyone else, behind people who couldn't get their iPods to work with their piece of junk Windows PC, or couldn't figure out how to do something really obvious on their Mac. I had to sit there and wait. Or I could buy this magical thing called Pro Care for $100. I was told that anytime I came into an Apple Store, I would jump right to the front of the line. Instant service. I could buy my way to VIP treatment, and it would last for one full year. Apple's own website says it pretty clearly: "members get next in line, first on the bench service" (this isn't true, by the way) I really didn't want to spend $100 on that, but we were hours away from departing for a week-long trip, and I needed my computer sent off immediately. I was kinda screwed, and ended up paying the $100. It ended up taking about an hour before I was out of there. In the end, the repair guy agreed that there was a serious hardware problem, and sent my computer off for repair. Fast forward to earlier today, four months later. I went in with another basic repair requirement for the same PowerBook. This time, I needed them to fix the keyboard backlight and sleep light that stopped working with my last repair job. Another easy one, guys - take the computer, put it in a box, send it to the repair center, call me when it comes back. Well I went into the store and they said I couldn't talk to anyone today, I would need to schedule an appointment for tomorrow. But why? I bought this fancy Pro Care for $100 so I could cut in line, right in front of everyone else, just like it was explained to me at the time of purchase. But no sir, it doesn't work like that, you can only get immediate service a few specific circumstances. My understanding is that if they already have service scheduled for that day, say 4 hours of work scheduled, and you show up 4 hours before closing time, you will be turned away because they cannot service you and everyone else by closing time. If you show up 4 hours before closing, but there is only 3 hours of work scheduled, you can cut in front with Pro Care and force those other poor bastards to wait even longer to get serviced. So I now have an appointment scheduled next week where I'm expecting to show up, explain to the "genius" that they need to send my computer off for repair, sit there while he spends 10 to 20 minutes verifying what I just told him, then watch him ship it off for repair. |
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I regularly use OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle, and I'm still giddy about OmniDazzle. So I'm excited to hear that the Omni Group is offering a free trial of a new project management application for OS X. It's called OmniPlan. I haven't tried it yet, but they have a great reputation for making useful, intuitive applications, and I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl. |
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I've been using several beta versions of OmniDazzle for a few weeks, but now that version 1.0 is for sale (today? yesterday?), I just bought a license. Although OmniDazzle doesn't do much, it's one of the most useful apps I've seen in a long time. Using the Cutout plug-in (along with Apple's system-wide Command-Shift-4), I'm able to take way more meaningful screenshots than ever before. |
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Everyone rates computers against obvious metrics: speed, power consumption, price. I recently had to carry my PowerMac G5 to/from the office while my PowerBook was in the shop for motherboard repairs. Carrying that monster around made me realize there's another important criteria for computer comparison: physical weight. The weight of a PowerMac G5 computer is somewhere between 44.5 and 48.8 pounds, depending on your configuration choices (according to G5 Technical Specifications). The weight of a Mac Mini (w/Core Duo) weighs a scant 2.9 pounds (according to Mac mini - what's inside). If you have the "lightest" PowerMac G5, you'll save 44.5 - 2.9 = 41.6 pounds with a Mac Mini. The unfortunate experience of lugging a ~45 pound computer to/from the office made me wonder about system performance vs. physical weight. I found the following factoid interesting: Weight-wise, one (1) PowerMac G5 computer is equivalent to fifteen (15) Mac Mini computers. Clearly, it would cost you much more to buy 15 Minis (in total, it would be almost $12,000), so instead, you buy one Mac Mini to get a super-portable machine with pretty decent processing power. And you will easily be able to carry it around without fear of injuring your back. Why not get a laptop? Lower cost, more versatile display options, substantially lighter weight come to mind. One display at home and another at the office would work very nicely for a portable Mini solution (although an obvious problem is that a Mini can't go to sleep at the end of the day, so you'd have to shutdown/restart much more frequently than a laptop). |
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Phew, it's finally over. Beatles label loses apple logo case to iTunes |
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For anyone who uses Terminal in OS X, this tip is golden. It shows you how to select text areas via the keyboard in Terminal. |
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In June 2005, Steve Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford University. It's an interesting speech with practical advise, and most certainly would have been great to see in person. This part just rocks. It certainly describes my attitude toward life. I wish more people would recognize that a huge portion of what they worry/stress/complain/etc about is just a damn waste of time, and not just for them personally but for everyone involved. Just like the old saying goes: if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Life is happening 24 hours a day, and every second spent wallowing or complaining isn't doing anything to help. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Read Steve Jobs' entire commencement address here: You've got to find what you love |
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MacSpeedZone posted this review of the iMac Core Duo, and makes some interesting points about interpreting the speed differences between the G5 iMac and the new iMac Core Duo. Overall, their results differ greatly from MacWorld's results, and show that the new iMac Core Duo is in fact very fast; in many cases much faster than the iMac G5. |
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Reviews are starting to surface for the new iMac Core Duo. Earlier this week, Ars Technica posted this review of the 17" iMac, and then Macworld put an iMac Core Duo in the lab to gather more specific performance data on the new iMac. Both Ars and Macworld reached similar conclusions: the new iMac is fast, but not "2 to 3 times faster" as Apple claims. Macworld says it's about 1.1 to 1.3 times faster. I couldn't find anything specific in Ars' review about actual speed improvements over the PowerPC-based iMac, but the benchmark data was clearly not 2 to 3x over the previous iMac. Update: MacSpeedZone has posted a performance review, which includes a better interpretation of the speed differences between G5 and Intel-based iMacs. |
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I recently found Server Admin Tools 10.4 which allow remove administration of Mac OS X Server. I first read about it somewhere (don't have the url), and they said the tools worked with plain old Mac OS X (not Server). But that's incorrect. Well, partially incorrect. The tools will run on OS X, but cannot do anything useful on OS X. So from what I can see, the Server Admin Tools can only administer OS X Server, not OS X. The tools require OS X 10.4 or higher, and include Server Admin, Workgroup Manager, Server Monitor, System Image Utility, Server Assistant, Gateway Setup Utility, QuickTime Broadcaster, Xgrid Admin, QTSS Publisher, and Documentation. More information (including download link) available here. |
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Levi Strauss has designed a pair of jeans that will have an iPod remote control and docking station in the pockets, and they will also have headphones attached. One pair will cost about $200, and should be available this fall. Is it just me, or does this sound like a really, really dumb idea? |
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This is easily one of the most entertaining product reviews I've ever seen. The guys at Ars Technica got an iPod Nano back in September, and put it through the harshest of conditions, including, but not limited to, driving over the Nano in a car and throwing it out the window while driving 50 mph. Eventually, they did manage to kill the Nano, but it took an enormous beating to get there. The final blow was throwing it 40 feet into the air, landing in a parking lot. This would be equivalent to dropping it from a 3rd or 4th story building. And that's after driving over it in a car and doing a bunch more horrible stuff. Bottom line: the iPod Nano is nearly indestructible. |
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An AppleScript on my system was periodically hanging because it launched a shell script that gets stuck if there are network problems. I don't mind if the shell script takes a while to execute, or hangs altogether (it will eventually time out). But the AppleScript shouldn't hang at all, because I just want it to trigger the shell script and continue doing something else. I found the answer on Technical Note TN2065: do shell script in AppleScript. In your AppleScript, replace this:
with something like this:
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Google Earth for Mac is finally available. |
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While running a headless G5, accessible through vnc and ssh, I realized I didn't know how to open the cd drive. It took a little bit of digging, here's what you do: To open the cd drive: To close the cd drive, type this: " |
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Back in April 2005, Apple's 20" Cinema Display went head-to-head against Dell's UltraSharp 2005FPW. According to the AnandTech reviewers, both the Apple and the Dell use the same display panel made by LG.Philips, so picture quality should be the same. Check out The 20" LCD Shootout: Dell versus Apple for plenty of info. |
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Apple Japan has sold more than a million songs to Japanese consumers through iTunes Music Store since last Thursday. According to Steve Jobs, "iTunes has sold twice as many songs in just four days as all the other online music services in Japan sell in one month. iTunes has become Japan's number one online music store in just four days." Slightly more details available here: iTunes Japan shifts 1m songs in four days |
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For several months, I have been unable to use my iSight with iChat, as all chats resulted in the error "Can't get video from the camera". I finally decided to get to the bottom of this, and a little bit of research revealed a conflict between iChat/iSight and Postgres. The problem is that one cannot run while the other is also running. As a test, I left Postgres running and verified that I could not initiate video chats with iChat. After bringing the db server down, iChat was able to initiate video chats using my iSight. I found several things discussing issues of limited shared memory between iChat and postgres, but none of the suggestions helped me (the first thing I found, which points to a postgres doc about shared memory). Initially, the only solution I found was to shutdown postgres before using iChat with iSight. I did eventually find a way to get my iSight working again with iChat while leaving postgres running, and here's what I did. Looking in postgresql.conf shows these default values for max_connections and shared_buffers: max_connections = 40 I tried descreasing shared_buffers to 80 (the smallest value allowed following the math rule of max_connections*2) and leaving max_connections at its default value, but iChat still failed on video chats. This was logged to console output: 2005-07-17 06:37:13.894 iChat[8259] WARNING: Freeze-frame failed: couldn't get local buffer for layer Local! When I decreased both max_connections and shared_buffers, as below, I found that I could leave postgres running and use iChat with iSight for video chats: max_connections = 20 I suspect that the numbers could be bumped up a little higher than 20 and 40, but I am perfectly content to leave "good enough" alone. |
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After updating to 10.4.1, MailEnhancer (one of the most useful additions to the OS X mail client) stopped working. But it doesn't take much to get it going again:
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Photoshop 7 on OS X has an annoying habit of performing network updates every time you launch or quit the application. Annoying as hell. To disable the Photoshop network checking nonsense, do the following:
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Just enabled the Debug menu in Safari 1.2.4, which introduced a bunch of cool browser options, including the "Open Page With..." menu which listed the other browsers currently installed on my machine (Firefox and Internet Explorer). To enable the Debug menu:
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"Return of the Mac", a cool read by Paul Graham.. All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple's low point in the mid 1990s. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get. |
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I finally found a solution to one of the minor annoyances of using a Mac - the "new message" notification mechanism in Apple's Mail application only reflects messages in your Inbox, and there's no indication of messages that are filtered into subfolders. So MailEnhancer fixes the current message notification scheme to reflect all unread messages on your computer, not just those that are in your Inbox. |
Freshly added to my wishlist, the Air Click wireless iPod remote control... |
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Yesterday, Apple announced all kinds of neato stuff, including iPod Shuffle, the Mac Mini, iWork, and a new version of iLife... (drool)... |
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The folks at "Think Secret" think Apple is going to announce a $500 Mac computer in a few weeks. If true, this would be big news, and would hopefully get more folks using Apple products (something most people would be better off doing). |
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The following is the story behind the Graphing Calculator that shipped on millions of Macintoshes with the release of the PowerPC in 1994. The original story is posted at Pacific Tech's website, but their webserver is pretty much dead right now, thanks to a recent slashdotting. Pacific Tech's Graphing Calculator has a long history. I began the work in 1985 while in school. That became Milo, and later became part of FrameMaker. Over the last twenty years, many people have contributed to it. Graphing Calculator 1.0, which Apple bundled with the original PowerPC computers, originated under unique circumstances. I used to be a contractor for Apple, working on a secret project. Unfortunately, the computer we were building never saw the light of day. The project was so plagued by politics and ego that when the engineers requested technical oversight, our manager hired a psychologist instead. In August 1993, the project was canceled. A year of my work evaporated, my contract ended, and I was unemployed. I was frustrated by all the wasted effort, so I decided to uncancel my small part of the project. I had been paid to do a job, and I wanted to finish it. My electronic badge still opened Apple's doors, so I just kept showing up. Continue reading "Apple Skunkworks: The Graphing Calculator Story" |
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Another milestone for Apple's iTunes Music Store... Apple iTunes sells 200m songs. |
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From "The Secret Behind the iPod's Scrollwheel": There are many reasons to like the iPod, but to me, the most compelling one is the scrollwheel. There's never been anything better for negotiating the prodigious amounts of music that we're lucky enough to be able to fit into our pockets these days. The scrollwheel has been through three iterations. The first one actually rotated; then there was the touch-sensitive one; and finally there's the clickable one found on the iPod Mini and fourth-generation iPod. I'd always assumed that this bit of design genius sprung from Apple's R&D labs, but, in fact, I discovered that a company called Synaptics, which primarily makes touchpads for laptops, actually designed this little piece of navigational heaven, in accordance with Apple's stringent design requirements. |
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PB FixIt has some nice repair tips for various Powerbooks and iBooks. They also sell replacement parts. I imagine I'll give them some of my money when I find myself in need of breathing new life into my Powerbook. |
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Found this article at The Register this morning ("Major labels 'force 70% price hike' on Apple | The Register"). I guess the record executives weren't happy with a sales model that people actually liked, so they thought they'd ruin it by charging a whole lot more. Highlights: Apple has signed agreements with EMI, BMG, Sony, Universal and Warner that will see prices on some songs rise from $0.99 to $1.25. Many albums will remain priced at $9.99, but some will be priced as high $16.99. Update: Follow-up article from The Register reports that an Apple spokeswoman said: "We have multi-year agreements with the record labels and our price remains 99 cents a track." |
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This guy built a battery pack that lets him use two 9-volt batteries along with 2 AA batteries to provide an additional 10 hours of playing time for his iPod. The cool thing is, it does not involve messing with your iPod at all - it's an external battery pack with a built-in FireWire connection, so you just need to plug your iPod into the FireWire port on the battery pack and you're done. |
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According to Apple's download page: "This software update will upgrade your version of GarageBand 1.0 to GarageBand 1.0.1. This update clarifies specific alert dialogs regarding system performance." Hrm, doesn't sound like too much of an update to me. I'm curious why a 21.5mb download is necessary for "clarifying specific alert dialogs". I downloaded and installed it anyway... Get the update now from Apple's website. |
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According to Apple's download page: "This software update will upgrade your version of GarageBand 1.0 to GarageBand 1.0.1. This update clarifies specific alert dialogs regarding system performance." Hrm, doesn't sound like too much of an update to me. I'm curious why a 21.5mb download is necessary for "clarifying specific alert dialogs". I downloaded and installed it anyway... Get the update now from Apple's website. |
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The Register is reporting that Jonathan Ive, designer of the original iMac and the iPod, has been named the most influential person in British culture. |
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I had forgotten that you can easily run the OS X screensaver application as a desktop background, but I found this Matrix-style screensaver and somehow my brain reminded me that it was possible. Once you've got your screensaver settings the way you like, open a Terminal window and run the following commands: cd /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources |
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Are you looking for the Palm Desktop 4.1 for Macintosh? Have you tried visiting Palm's website yourself, eventually finding a "download" page that asked for your name, email, and some other info before allowing you to proceed? And after you entered the required info, you arrived at a page that basically says "check your email, in an hour we'll send you the real download url"? I did all of that, and decided it was a stupid waste of time. So you can skip it and download Palm Desktop 4.1 right now without participating in their time-wasting data gathering. If that link doesn't work, try their real download page. |
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