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NetNewsWire fall down in Panther, go boom

I have been running the WWDC preview release of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther on my TiBook for over a week now, and I’ve noticed an odd problem with NetNewsWire 1.0.3 under this OS. Specifically, it’s crashing/quitting when updating from my friend Michael’s blog. What’s even more odd is that version 1.0.2 of NNW works just fine!

I know Michael’s not doing anything wocky with his RSS feed, as he’s very much a web standards kind of guy. So it makes me think there’s something off in this rev of Panther which will hopefully get fixed as it heads to golden master. All the same, I let Ranchero’s Brent Simmons know.

Any other Panther/NetNewsWire users see similar behavior?

LXG Soundtrack only from Apple

Apple has managed to nab exclusive rights to the soundtrack for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and will release it as a $9.99 download on the iTunes Music Store. No physical CDs will be pressed! (via MacMinute)

ATPM 9.07

The July issue of About This Particular Macintosh has been released. I enjoyed Matt Coates’ column on the Apple iTunes Music Store, new staff member Andrew Kator’s graphics article, and the reviews by Paul and Eric. Great stuff throughout. Stop by and read online or download the PDF of your choice.

Farewell, C & G

The big news in the Mac market today is that longtime software publisher Casady & Greene is closing its doors, with all software reverting back to the individual developers.

Casady & Greene’s tour de force in software publishing was Conflict Catcher, which eased the process of troubleshooting control panel and extension conflicts in OS 9 and below. It was a primary weapon in any Mac troubleshooter’s arsenal, but alas, it has no place in an OS X world. The only other C & G product I’ve used, and continue to use, is Spell Catcher, which will continue in development through its developer, Rainmaker Research.

After Apple bought SoundJam and turned it in to iTunes, and OS X began to dominate the landscape, it was only a matter of time. So we bid Casady & Greene a fond farewell, and thank them for taking the risk on publishing some great software.

Mac OS X 10.3 beta first impressions

So yesterday I installed the WWDC release of 10.3 on a spare G4/933 at the office. It simply flew. It is fast. Wicked fast. Below are some of my observations of it on the 933, as well as my PowerBook G4/500. (ATPM staffers, you’ve seen most of this already.)

Mac OS X 10.3 appears as fast—if not faster—than OS 9 on the same machine…

The system in question is the aforementioned G4/933 single-proc with SuperDrive. Our OS 9-based graphics configuration was loaded on it, but this system hasn’t seen any testing in a while, so it was a perfect candidate for co-opting to test Panther. I loaded the Panther Disc 1 into the SuperDrive, and started the installation. Typical OS X install, began after a restart, pretty boring. I figured that the install would kill the existing OS 9 config, but that’s easily replaced, so it was no big deal.

Filled out the contact info, selected my time zone, and voila!, it brought me to the log-in prompt. First surprise: don’t all previous versions of OS X want to restart at this point? So I logged in, and brought up a Finder window. Second surprise: all of my OS 9 stuff was still there, the Panther install didn’t touch any of it! (The reason for this is that on the Panther developer beta, the default install is to upgrade the existing OS X system, if present. If not, it simply installs it. If you want to wipe the drive for a clean install, you have to tell the installer.)

Eye candy-wise, they haven’t put in any new user pics, desktops, or screen savers just yet.

Regarding the new Finder window: I like it. Yes, it is a little Windowsy, but damn if Apple hasn’t outdone Windows on a Windows feature/interface. I have nearly always used the OS X Finder in column mode anyway, so there was little for me to get used to with the new one. I made that change in my Finder prefs right away, so that all my Finder windows open in column view. And yes, boys and girls, Finder prefs are sticking!

System Preferences have been streamlined. Desktop and Screen Effects are now one and the same, with buttons denoting each to click between. They are not tabs in the sense that they do not look like tabs, but that is how they function.

While I’m not wild about the metal appearance everywhere (it has grown on me through repeated iChat, iTunes, Safari, and Mellel use), I do like the removal of the Aqua stripes from all windows. Most pleasant.

It’s fast. Fast. Wicked fast. Did I mention it was fast?

As usual, there are many subtle interface surprises that you wouldn’t think to look for, but when they happen, they pleasantly surprise you, then you promptly forget about them. Which is why I’m not listing any here right now. :)

Exposé is a very cool feature. Very cool. Wicked cool. (Yes, I like that word.) It’s going to change the way people work in OS X with windows and applications, and I believe it will be a change for the better.

One thing that’s missing thus far: an Internet pref pane. They pulled the .Mac stuff out and gave it its own pref pane, but Internet is AWOL. So no way that I’ve found thus far to determine default browser, default mail, etc. Hey, it’s a developer beta, there’s more to come.

Safari 1.0 is included. IE 5.2.2 is the other web browser of note. I don’t have a FireWire cam to use with iChat AV, but I like the app itself, especially how the typing area at the bottom of a chat window automatically expands as you type. This way, you don’t have to scroll up one line at a time to see exactly what you’ve typed.

Cool switching, Cmd-Tab, brings up an enormous bar with your active apps in the center of the screen, with a semi-transparent background, like with the brightness and sound pop-ups. It also puts the current app at the front of the list, with the app you last used right behind it. For instance, right now I’m switching back and forth between Safari and iChat AV, and I don’t have to go to the Dock and cool-switch through a bunch of other stuff between the two, or use my mouse to click. One Cmd-Tab smoothly switches me back and forth. I think this is going to kill a good portion of the market for Liteswitch.

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten right now. I have yet to encounter one of my apps or little extras that’s breaking under the beta, but then again I haven’t given my systems a total workout with the new OS just yet. I expect that now that this release is in developers’ hands, we’ll begin seeing updates to applications left and right in the coming month or so. More to come.

How pathetic am I?

So I’ve spent part of last night and this morning, off and on, installing Fink, FinkCommander, and X11. Why? Why, to play XGalaga, of course, the open source clone of my favorite childhood video game. Geez, you didn’t think I was going to go through all that trouble to do work or anything, did you? ;-)

Going out of business twice as fast

I’ve got to start reading more from James Lileks. Like with the previously-noted pen comment, he cracks me up:

Today they announce the new machines. From all I hear the new computers go up to 11, so to speak. Dual 2 ghz processors. Of course, this means the company, which is DOOMED, will now go out of business twice as fast as before.

Isn’t technology cool?

1. Buy the Baby Einstein CD set. (Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Bach)
2. Rip all 4 CDs to MP3 with iTunes.
3. Copy all 4 sets of MP3s to your iPod.
4. Now you can use your Aiwa noise-canceling headphones plugged in to the iPod and situated on the wife’s abdomen to let your developing little son listen to the classics, proven to beneficially stimulate neural development.

Microsoft comes full circle with IE

Marc Marshall brings up the excellent point that Microsoft has come full circle with regard to Internet Explorer. His is the last post in Macintouch’s Browser Future report for today:

The bottom line in this situation is this: For the past several years, Microsoft gave away a free browser to kill the competition, and succeeded. Now, they have stopped development of their standalone product, and are giving people exactly three choices to get their “standard” product: 1) Buy Windows. 2) Use MSN for Internet access. 3) Pay them $10/month or $80 per year. No free options, no free upgrades.

The price is higher than Opera or Omni’s paid competition, and you don’t have a free option, and you have an ongoing fee. In fact, if MS starts charging annual licensing for Windows, there will be no lifetime-licence-purchasable version of IE. This sounds like exactly the sort of consumer hostile situation that monopolies create, and governments are supposed to protect us from.

Now that they’ve pretty much saturated the market, Microsoft has been scrambling on how to consistently generate revenue. They have long discussed subscription software licensing, and this situation with IE appears to be the first shot across the bow. Unfortunately, I do not forsee the mass sheep of Windows and IE/Mac users torpedoing the Microsoft Bismarck any time soon.

Mailsmith 2.0 arrives

Bare Bones has released v2.0 of my favorite email client. Major kudos to Michael for getting SpamSieve bundled with all Mailsmith 2.0 purchases (before 31 July 2003).

Speaking of which, SpamSieve 1.3.1 has been released. Seems to be a bit faster to me, and I like the new script addition that sends a piece of mail directly to the Trash when I mark it as spam. (I have the Mailsmith filter that SpamSieve’s script uses set to send spam to the Trash; others have a spam folder, so your mileage may vary.)

If you’re already using both of these products, here’s the kicker regarding Mailsmith 2.0: it features direct integration with SpamSieve! No more scripts or filters! Rock on, Michael! Way to go!

Good riddance, IE, part III

Speaking of the dress-code-aware genius that is Dan Benjamin (is that enough, Dan?), he offers up some delectable food for thought on the discontinuation of standalone IE development for the Mac. I say standalone, because it seems that IE will continue on in MSN for Mac OS X.

Zeldman sums it all up rather well.

From here, as it has for several weeks now, it looks like a period of technological stasis and dormancy yawns ahead. Undoubtedly the less popular browsers will continue to improve. They may even gain in market share. But few of us will be able to take advantage of their sophisticated standards support if most of the market continues to use an unchanged year 2000 browser.

But enough, and enough, and enough. We are glad of the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, Safari, and Omniweb. But on this grey and rainy day, this news of a kind of death brings no warmth. To Tantek and Jimmy and their colleagues on the IE/Mac team: for what you achieved on behalf of web standards and usability, much respect.

When it arrived, IE5/Mac was the standard for web browsers. It shamed Netscape. Complacency and stagnant development, however, have left it behind technologically. Zeldman mentions reasons people switched from IE to Camino or Safari; I switched for all the reasons he discusses, including that it’s one less Microsoft application on my system. There are choices people, and they’re better than the “standard.”

DNS Primer

If you’ve ever been interested in how your email gets from your computer to someone else’s, or how your browser knows how to load up a web site, you need to read Dan Benjamin’s excellent DNS primer at MacDevCenter. It’s geared toward Mac OS X users, but anyone can learn the basics of DNS, IP addresses, routing, and all that other techie stuff that makes the Internet work, boiled down in to simply terms by Mr. Benjamin (of Hivelogic/Hiveware fame).

Oh, and hire this dress-code-aware guy, if you have the need. Too much talent to not be getting paid well by someone, somewhere.

Good riddance, IE, part deux

This morning, Microsoft released a slightly-updated version of IE for Mac OS X, version 5.2.3. While no future development is planned, Microsoft will update this last version of IE as needed.

I hope Ric doesn’t mind my copying this from today’s Macintouch, but he doesn’t provide a permanent link to this story:

Clint McIntosh summarized the issues of Microsoft dropping Internet Explorer development for the Mac (something the company also has done on the Windows platform):

Microsoft is saying that they can’t do as good of a job as Apple of integrating the browser with the MacOS as a a reason they are halting development of Internet Explorer and that Safari is an excellent browser even in this public beta stage. BUT there is a serious problem ahead of us Mac users that deals with browser detection at many sites.

Many sites that rely on security or on compatibility do a browser check when you first try to view their pages. They usually make sure you are running MSIE 5.x or higher or even Netscape 4.x and higher. I’ve found that a lot of site developers don’t even realize that there are many more browsers other than IE and Netscape—either that or they just don’t care.

I’ve already found quite a few sites that don’t work at all with Safari such as my online banking through SouthTrust bank. I’ve written to the webmasters of those sites that aren’t Safari friendly but the standard answer I get back is “Our site only works with Internet explorer and netscape.”

Using iCab’s ability to identify itself as another browser, I’ve found that there is no technical reason for the limitation to IE and Netscape. They just do browser checks and see that you are using something other than IE and Netscape they deny you access. I’m not a fan of Microsoft but I do use IE on those occasions when I just can’t get a page to work with any other browser. Netscape 7 is just too slow and bloated for my liking and it still doesn’t work on a lot of sites where Netscape 4.x works flawlessly.

I’ve tried and compared the features of iCab, Opera, OmniWeb and others. They all have their good points, but Safari wins out overall. If Safari is going to be a suitable replacement for MSIE, Apple is going to have to either change the identifier to pretend it is IE or they are going to have to market the hell out of Safari to get the name known out there as a major player AND they are going to have to beef up a lot of the compatibility issues before they finalize it as a 1.0 release. There’s also the issue of browser plugins, but that’s another story.

Good riddance, IE

No more Internet Explorer for Macintosh. No more standalone Internet Explorer on Windows. I cannot tell you how heart-broken I am to hear this.

7135 first impression

As I stated previously, I went on my lunch break to the nearby Verizon Wireless store to check out the Kyocera 7135 SmartPhone. I was suitably impressed. Yes, it’s a little thicker and bulkier than most phones out there, weighing in at 6.6 ounces. But playing around with it, I didn’t find its size to be a deal-breaker. We are, after all, talking about a phone with a Palm PDA jammed in to it. Personally, I didn’t feel that it was too much bulkier than my current Motorola StarTac, once it’s folded over and in its belt clip/holster.

Decided to do a little checking on the web. Walt Mossberg likes it, but doesn’t like it. Walt’s gripes do not overly concern me, especially the email issue. Call me old-fashioned, but I just haven’t quite grasped the concept yet of checking my email on my phone. I like to stay connected and in touch via email as much as the next guy, but I honestly don’t have the type of professional or personal life that would warrant such immediate need.

Mike Wendland loves his 7135, and has had little problems with it under OS X. Since I’m no longer using iSync, I doubt I would encounter the same issues as Mike. (Said issues may have been fixed with iSync 1.1, but I haven’t come across the post yet on Mike’s site that may say so.) Reading through one forum on Palm Boulevard sounds like there was a lot of pent-up demand for the 7135 from November of last year to just this April. There’s even an entire site devoted to Kyocera SmartPhones.

I’m waiting to hear back from our VZW corporate rep, but I think I’ve found my new phone…

De-iApping

So today I de-iApped a bit. Viz: I had moved all of my contact and calendar info out of Palm Desktop, into OS X’s Address Book and iCal. Then I set up iSync to sync my Palm m505 with my TiBook. The thought was that I could then sync this info with my iPod—which I’ve done once in about six months—and whatever new mobile phone I get when my current contract expires (end of this month).

Seeing as how I’ve never used iSync to sync to my iPod (did it all manually the one time), and now I’ve got my eye on the Kyocera 7135 as my mobile phone replacement, I’ve ditched Address Book and iCal and moved everything back over to Palm Desktop. Syncing is way faster now. I think Apple is doing some really cool stuff, but the iSync Palm conduit just plain sucks. Address Book and iCal are now gone from the Dock.

Yeah, I may opt for another phone, and that might mean that I’m doing all of this again. The m505 actually is provided by my employer, so if I went with the 7135, I’d have my own Palm, with a phone wrapped around it. I’m going to look one over during my lunch break.

iMac no more

So, yeah, maybe I’m just way behind in picking this up, but the CRT iMac, the box that helped bring Apple back, is no more. The only CRT Macintosh still being sold in the Apple Store is the 17” G4-driven eMac. So the flat-panel iMac is now the only iMac. Thanks to Robert for pointing this out.

PowerBook prices lowered

Apple has lowered the prices on the 12” and 15” PowerBooks, in some cases by as much as $300. Does this portend an update for the 15” model and speed bump for the 12”? WWDC is just around the corner…

Oh, stuff it, StuffIt

Erik brings up a good point on using disk images, .dmg, for archival purposes, rather than Aladdin’s DropStuff or StuffIt Deluxe. I haven’t used StuffIt Deluxe in over two years, since I migrated to OS X.

I have the latest version of DropStuff, courtesy of my .Mac account (which will not be renewed later this year), but I’ve only used it once in the past three weeks (and that was to send screenshots to Lee). I cannot recall when I used it beyond that. I could have just as easily used DropDMG for that purpose, and likely will in the future.

As far as archiving goes, just make sure you’re not creating Internet-enabled images, i.e., the .dmg file expands in to a folder, and you should be good to go.

Gruber on Waferbaby

The Waferbaby Corner monkey interviews John Gruber, of Daring Fireball fame. John is his usual, subtle self when refuting the “Cult of Macintosh,” discussing the direction of Apple and the web, and sharing where he spends his time online.

Gruber gives Michael (and his software) a nice plug, as well as one for About This Particular Macintosh, though Waferbaby doesn’t provide a link to the ‘zine.

Good interview, though. John gives some good examples I will have to remember.

Master the Services Menu

My favorite n3rdling has a great primer on MacMerc about getting the most out of OS X’s Services menu. I’ve recently begun relying on the Services menu more myself, and Jon’s article showed me a couple of items I hadn’t thought about using yet. Check it out.

NetNewsWire Feature Ideas

One of the cool things about being an independent Macintosh software developer is that you can have more open and direct communication with your customers. Ranchero’s Brent Simmons is a great believer in this concept, and he has posted a list of possible future features for Ranchero’s flagship application, NetNewsWire.

New Cube?

I’m not one to spread Mac rumors; heck, I wrote an entire column about the dangers of rumor-mongering and how it affects Apple’s bottom line.

I’ll make an exception in this case, however, because should this rumor prove to be true, it will not affect the majority of the Mac population, and thus, will not greatly affect Apple’s bottom line in the here and now.

MacWhispers is reporting the possibility of a revised Mac Cube as the system that commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh at the end of this year, beginning of 2004. (Not to be confused with the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh released during the tenure of Gil Amelio, which celebrated Apple’s 20th anniversary.) I’m sure that like the original TAM, this will be a premium product out of the range of a majority of Mac users, yours truly included.

I adore my G4 Cube, and I’m slowly extending its life a bit at a time. It is maxed out with 1.5 GB of RAM; it enjoys a 100 GB hard drive and a GeForce3 MX vid card. The next upgrade will likely be a new processor card, bumping it to 1 GHz or higher. A SuperDrive is currently available from MCE, but I consider it to be at too high a price point right now, especially when I have access to SuperDrive-equipped Macs at work. I know someone out there may rightly point out how in the long term, I may spend as much on upgrading my Cube as I would on a new Mac, but I don’t believe that to be the case. (Unless I ran out right now and bought the PowerLogix dual-1.2 GHz proc upgrade and aforementioned MCE SuperDrive; but I’m on a budget.)

RAM continues to be relatively cheap, as it was when I maxed out the Cube. The hard drive was purchased on sale, and with a mail-in rebate. The video card was the most expensive upgrade of the three, and it was picked up on sale as well. All told, I would hazard a guess that I’ve spent around $400 on upgrading a system I got a great deal on when Circuit City was blowing out Cube floor models.

It takes up very little space, makes very little noise, and if you weren’t paying attention, you might miss it on my desk, sandwiched between my 15” Apple LCD and the shelf stereo’s right speaker (stereo and left speaker sit to the left of the display).

Though it suffered from a bit of an identity crisis and pricing issues early on, the Cube is one of my favorite all-time Macs, and I’d love to see Apple make an updated version, even as a limited-run, 20th-anniversary special edition. I just hope I can afford one.

Displaying Apache logs in NNW

Brent links to a novel proof-of-concept usage of his flagship application, showing how versatile NetNewsWire can be.

Open in new tab in Safari

Some times, the solution is so simple, we overlook it. Brent Simmons has a quick and dirty tutorial on how to get Safari to open an external links (like from your mail client or NetNewsWire) in a new tab, rather than a new window.

Gigabit Cube!

It appears that Jeff has the only Gigabit Cube in the world. Now if we could just get someone to make the rest of us an upgrade. Too bad Apple won’t sell the leftover Gigabit Ethernet parts from before they EOL‘ed the Cube; Gigabit Ethernet was going to be a build-to-order option.

What a killer little server this box would be, especially after you popped in a processor upgrade.

iTunes music sharing

So I wanted to borrow my buddy Jim’s CD of Seussical the Musical, in light that it’s coming to town this month, and my wife and I want to take in one of the shows.

Jim says it’s loaded in iTunes, just connect to his shared music. Once we figured out that iTunes wants our IP addresses (different subnets here at work), I’m listening to John Williams - Greatest Hits 1969 - 1999 (greatest composer of the latter 20th century?), and Jim’s reconnecting with his teenage years by jamming to Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet on my TiBook.

It’s wicked fast, with no lag. This despite the heavy traffic on our corporate network and the fact that our Macs are both streaming and receiving at the same time. Apple rocks.

One million in one week

Yeah, I know everyone has read how the Apple Music Store has sold more than a million songs in its first week.

But Lee has broken down what that means, and the results are impressive. Better than one-and-a-half songs sold per second. I can’t wait to see Apple’s financials on this as the year progresses. My stock has already gone up about three bucks a share in the past week.

ATPM 9.05

Crikey! I completely forgot to mention that the May issue of About This Particular Macintosh has been published. Doh!

I talked Lee in to interviewing our mutual acquaintance, Jon Gales, a total Mac-head who has an awesome mobile phone site, MobileTracker.net. I’ve been relying heavily on information Jon posts for our upcoming mobile plan/handy switch when our current contract is up at the end of June.

Matthew Coates has a great article on Acrobat, PDFs, and OS X. Lee went to the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Vegas, and offers a Mac-centric perspective. Ellyn offers a fantastic column on the virtues of the Golden Rule and our online lives. The usual assortment of reviews abound.

Synergy vs PTHiTunesNotifier

So Lee asked what made Synergy worth $5 when PTHiTunesNotifier was free and did essentially the same thing. So I decided to run down a quick comparison of the two.

• PTHiTunesNotifier offers more button choices for the button controls in the menu bar (though I prefer Synergy’s choices over PTHiTunesNotifier’s)
• PTHiTunesNotifier offers more control over the layout of the track display window
• Synergy has a few more hot key options for controlling iTunes
• Synergy offers greater control over the menu bar buttons
• Synergy includes recently played tracks in its drop-down menu; it is able to remember up to the last 50 songs played (set in the number in the prefs)
• Synergy includes the Playlist and iTunes submenus (if you don’t want to use hot keys to control iTunes)
• Synergy offers button spacing control (this can be important when you have tons of stuff in your menu bar, like I tend to)

Synergy

Michael turned me on to Synergy, a menu-bar utility for controlling iTunes, and it freaking rocks! Well worth the $5 shareware fee. One feature is the transparent floater that pops up when tracks change. Click on the thumbnail below for detail, then cruise to Wincent’s site, download, and register!

iPod 1.3 software

While I’m very glad Apple provided us old iPod users with a way to sync and listen to AAC-encoded files, the one other feature I’m envious of, in the iPod 2.0 software on the new Pods, has to be the text notes. If I had that, my Palm handheld usage would likely drop off by fifty percent or more.

(Thanks to Lee for the link.)

Apple’s music Fortune

My lovely bride pointed me to this Fortune article on the new iTunes Music Service. Obviously written for publication before the service was officially announced, it provides a great look at Jobs’ vision behind the service, and the inadequacy of the music industry in its previous and current efforts at online distribution.

A few items I’d like to address:

One thing’s for sure: If ever there was an industry in need of transformation, it’s the music business. U.S. music sales plunged 8.2% last year, largely because songs are being distributed free on the Internet through illicit file-sharing destinations like KaZaA.

I take issue with this statement, since it’s impossible to prove that illegal file sharing has had this much impact on the U.S. music biz. There is a ton of physical piracy (blanket CD copying) going on overseas, especially in Asia, that eats in to the music industry more than a bunch of geeks swapping songs online.

I have downloaded a lot of music from peer-to-peer networks, as well as some centralized sites I have access to. Some of it was digital copies of CDs and cassettes I already own. The rest was stuff I wanted to listen to before I went out and bought it. A lot of that got trashed when I realized it wasn’t for me.

I know I’m not the only one who probably spent more on music (albeit looking for sales and good prices online) because I was pulling music off the net.

Second, it seems as though hardly anyone in the music business thinks that the problem with falling sales may be attributed to the product itself. Elsewhere in the article:

For years they have been able to get away with releasing albums with two or three potential hits bundled with ho-hum filler cuts. That has been wonderful for the industry, but it has made a generation of consumers who pay $18.99 for CDs very cynical. “People are sick and tired of that,” says singer-songwriter Seal. “That’s why people are stealing music.”

Amen. That’s it right there. And we see further evidence of the music industry’s slow-to-catch-on attitude:

But MusicNet users still can’t download songs onto portable players. “These devices haven’t caught on yet,” insists MusicNet CEO Alan McGlade. Never mind that U.S. sales of portable MP3 players soared from 724,000 in 2001 to 1.6 million last year.

Hmmm. I would think a better-than-two-times annual growth, in a year, in any segment of the tech economy would be cause for consideration of said segment.

As for the service itself, I think it’s great. I haven’t actually bought and downloaded any music yet, but that’ll change any day. I’ve spent quite a bit of time searching through it and listening to samples. It’s going to change the way I buy music. It’s going to change the music business.

iTunes Music Store pricing

Lee notes David Pogue’s column on the individual song pricing structures at Apple’s new online music store. Good points all around.

No more Safari-ing for me

So after three crashes in a row today, I’ve decided to dump Safari as my main browser. Despite this being v73, aka, Public Beta 2, and fairly rock solid, and despite disabling the cache, known cause of myriad problems, it’s still not stable enough for my liking.

Granted, Safari doesn’t crash every day for me normally. More like once a week or so. It’s just that it chooses to crash at the most inopportune times!

So I downloaded Safari Bookmark Exporter, and got my Safari bookmarks into Camino. I’ve noticed that Camino consumes less RAM than Safari, and doesn’t seem to get bogged down as usage is extended day after day after day. We’ll see where this goes, and wait for Safari 1.0.

Back off, you Rebel scum!

Thanks to Carbon Copy Cloner, my TiBook has gone from four partitions to three, without missing a beat. Well, there was obviously some downtime, but no muss, no fuss!

The new desktop pic is courtesy of my new Canon PowerShot G3.

DropDMG 2.1

Michael has quietly updated DropDMG to version 2.1. Enhancements include the ability to create Internet-enabled disk images, and the ability to encode .dmg images with MacBinary. Numerous other improvements abound.

We do have it good

Bill Palmer offers an excellent summary of why it’s so great to be a Mac user.

Photoshop 7 tip

I’m a complete Photoshop novice, often getting FranX or Lee to walk me through stuff. One observation I thought I would share about Photoshop 7 running in OS X: when working on a JPG (and maybe any file), be sure to not have that file selected in the Finder.

I had clicked on the JPG in question in the Finder (column view), and the Finder was previewing the pic. Photoshop no likee this. As soon as I clicked to another pic in the Finder, Photoshop saved my changes to the JPG.

Slide show screensavers

Looking for a little help from the retrophisch readership (all 3 of you): I’d like to create a slide show-style screensaver, like those that come pre-installed with OS X, but I don’t want to use the .Mac Slides Publisher to do it. I know I can just point the Screen Effects pane to a folder of pics, but it tends to limit the number of pics to five. And I’d like to provide the screen saver as a download to other OS X users.

Of course, I’m looking to do this cheap and easy, so recommendation on products such as iScreensaver Designer, PhotoCircus, or any others would be appreciated.

USB 2.0 already on new Macs?

Hyok Ki Chung thinks so. Quoted on Macintouch, Chung analyzes a Korean news article:

While browsing a Korean Mac magazine site, I found this interesting article. It’s about the USB 2.0 controller chipset on [Power Mac] MDD 1.25 and 1.4 motherboards. According to this article, the controller is made by NEC, model number uPD720101.

The article is in Korean, but basically what it describes is the NEC USB 2.0 controller. It also mentions the driver, saying that Mac version is not available yet.

It looks like we already have USB 2.0 built-in. I guess it’s just matter of time. Hopefully Apple will add the driver to an updater soon.

Obviously, Apple doesn’t want to really push USB 2.0 right now, not when its own FireWire technology is picking up more steam, and the second iteration of that technology, FireWire 800, has hit the market on just-released systems.

Perhaps I have just bought the Apple line, but USB for me is for small peripheral usage: keyboards, mice, my CF card reader, my little Canon scanner that barely gets used. For the “heavy lifting” — my external drives, tape backup, iPod — FireWire is the way to go. Not to mention that you can’t use USB, 1.1 or 2.0, to boot a Mac as an external drive to another Mac, better known as FireWire Target Disk Mode.

UPDATE, 9:50 pm: Ric updated with follow-up from Kevin Purcell:

But examining the Apple Hardware Developer notes [Power Mac G4 Developer Note], you can see that these PowerMacs only expose two USB ports which means the USB 2.0 port in the chip is not connected to any PHY or external connector on the Power Macs. Only the low-speed/full-speed ports are connected. I don’t expect to see a software update. Apple probably just bought these because they meet their spec (an OHCI controller) and they needed a 2 or 3 port USB solution.

So, maybe wishful thinking…

Macintouch does XML

Ric Ford notes that he is experimenting with a XML feed for his renowned Macintouch site. Plug this in to NNW, boys and girls:

http://www.macintouch.com/rss.xml

Tax Day Desktop

Not sure what compelled me to suddenly share what my desktop looks like, but here it is:

Click on the above pic for a full-size image.

That’s Zane, atop one of his former favorite napping places: my 20” CRT, now replaced by a 15” Apple LCD. That shot is about two years old. The PowerBook has four partitions, appropriately named for an avowed Star Wars nut. iTunes is ripping The Elms’ latest to MP3.

The one thing I miss about that incredibly massive Radius CRT, was Zane plopping down on top when I was in the room.

Second Safari public beta

Apple released this morning the second public beta of its Safari web browser. You can download it here.

The official public release of tabbed browsing in Safari, as well as other improvements and additions, this release is v73, for those keeping score at home.

Daring Fireball Double Whammy

Gruber’s last two posts are right on the money. First is his PR-speak to English translation of Quark’s press release about QuarkXPress 6. Of note:

We are plowing full steam ahead under the delusion that our users want to use a print-oriented page-layout program for web design. By placing extra emphasis on these unwanted web features, we hope to distract your attention from a certain upstart page layout application, which is focused squarely and solely on page layout.

He really lays in to John C. Dvorak, though, on Dvorak’s latest rants regarding Apple and Intel.

This point cannot be emphasized strongly enough. Apple is a computer hardware company. Selling hardware is how Apple generates most of its revenue. Their operating system software may well be the best aspect of their computers, but that does not make them a software company. Anyone who claims that Apple could simply switch to being a software company and make up for lost hardware revenue by selling additional software doesn’t understand how the company operates.

During the brief period of time when Apple licensed the Mac OS to other manufacturers, their revenue tanked. Too many people bought cheap clones from PowerComputing and Umax instead of higher-priced Macs from Apple, and the licensing revenue didn’t compensate for the lost hardware revenue. The situation may well have been good for Mac users, but it was terrible for Apple’s bottom line.

No matter how badly people clamor for it, Apple is never going to release a version of Mac OS X that runs on standard Wintel PC hardware. Whether it’s possible or not, it isn’t going to happen. A frequent comment regarding this rumor is something like “I’d love a version of Mac OS X that ran on my PC.” Sure you would, you cheap bastard. Apple’s Switch campaign is an attempt to get PC users to buy thousands of dollars of Apple hardware, not hundreds of dollars of Apple software.

In addition, pay attention to the fact that Microsoft and Apple are indeed separate companies with separate goals, and thus should not be lumped in to the same industry “group” that analysts and reporters always lump the two in to.

Embedded PowerBook

Thanks to Mark for the pointer to this photo gallery of USA Today photography Jack Gruber, who is using his PowerBook G4 12” to send pictures to the main office.

I still want one!

iBox

Wired reports on John Fraser’s attempt to build a new pizza-box, or “headless” Mac, using replacement parts for older systems.

Good luck getting past Apple Legal, John.

ATPM 9.04

The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh has been released. Check out Eric’s review of NetNewsWire, Lee & Darryl’s review of Studio MX, and Bob’s continuing saga on using your Mac to record your vinyl albums to CD.

New BBEdit pricing option

Bare Bones continues to push the envelope of customer service with this new pricing option for their flagship product, BBEdit.

(via Gruber)

Gruber interviews Simmons

John Gruber recently interviewed Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire. “Interview” might be stretching it a tad; it comes off more like the two of them are yakking over a cup of coffee. Great stuff here.

I worked on the Windows version also. I wrote a fair amount of Windows-specific code, even. And I learned that I don’t really like developing for Windows very much.

I suspect that many Mac users are like me, that they’re driven in part by aesthetics. And they want to use software written by people who are driven by aesthetics. Windows is not aesthetic.

Switch of a different sort

So today I completed a switch of my calendar and contact information from Palm Desktop to OS X’s Address Book and iCal. After getting everything kosher in iSync, my Palm m505 is now syncing happily with Address Book and iCal. The only thing I’m still using Palm Desktop for is the Memo Pad feature for my various lists and notes. If anyone knows of a sync-able alternative, I’m all ears.

Why the switch? Well, I just acquired a Newton 2100 (thanks again, Damien!), and there are methods for getting it to sync with that info. I also plan to get a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone in June, when our current contract is up, and would like to be able to sync all of my info with that as well.

Brent’s Birthday

Jon notes that yesterday was Brent Simmons’ birthday, so I’d like to express my best wishes to him as well. NetNewsWire absolutely rocks, I’m becoming a big fan of TigerLaunch (doesn’t hurt its popularity with me that I went to LSU, either), and look forward to trying out Huevos.

Macworld Expo no more?

Well, there won’t be an expo this summer in New York called “Macworld Expo.” Instead, IDG and Apple today announced CREATE. Not that I’m likely to go, even if I’m still employed with VZ…

(via Ric)

Resuming the Safari

So since the weekend, Safari has been giving me major headaches. It seemed to particularly dislike my using Movable Type, and viewing slide shows on anyone’s .Mac homepage. It would crash violently, occasionally taking into oblivion the post I had just completed typing. Said crashes were all dutifully reported to Apple via the Bug button in Safari’s button bar.

It was getting incredibly annoying yesterday afternoon, however, so I took action. First, I manually killed the entire Safari cache folder; using the Empty Cache command just wasn’t cutting it. Next, it was to the preferences file, which was swiftly introduced to the Trash. And just for good measure, I restarted the TiBook.

I should say that I’m not too surprised that the corrupted preferences was obviously contributing to the problem. Ever since the last public beta version of Safari (v60), I’ve used the leaked 62, 64, and now 67 revs. I’m sure something floopy worked its way in at some point.

At any rate, after thorough usage last night and so far today, things seem to be back to normal. I’ve gone in and killed the metal appearance, so that Safari looks like a normal OS X app, with no apparent side effects yet.

Photorescue

Now this is something I could have used last year, when I lost pictures of my grandmother’s visit to Dallas.

WiFi in rural Iowa

Rod Keller documents the external expansion of his home LAN via WiFi. Very cool.

(Thanks, Ric)

Mount.app

Thanks to Jeremy Hedley, I’ve discovered Mount.app, a faster means of mounting disk images than using Disk Copy. Just as Michael’s DropDMG is easier and faster than Disk Copy for making images, Mount.app is faster at mounting them in the Finder. Just goes to prove the adage that not everything that comes with the OS is the best.

Extremely useful iTunes AppleScripts

MacMinute is reporting on a set of three AppleScripts for iTunes released by Trinfinity Software. I’ve downloaded them, used them, and am grateful. Thanks to the folks at Trinfinity.

WeatherPop

One of my favorite pieces of software has been updated. WeatherPop has been revved to version 1.7. The Advance version is only $8 and gets you:

• National Weather Service forecasts for the United States
• my.aol.com and wunderground.com forecasts for US and International users
• 3 to 5 day forecasts depending on your location
• Beautiful color icons and realistic moon phases
• Up to 3 favorite locations in addition to the your main location
• The best darn easy-to-use Mac OS X-savvy interface they could design
• 14-day trial period so you can decide if you like it before you buy

I refer to it often throughout the day, checking out other locales where I have friends and family as well. Great piece of software, so download it, register it, and support a Macintosh developer.

Safari’s wrong typography

John Gruber makes an outstanding case for one of the few things I don’t like about Safari.

One thing that Safari has gotten wrong ever since it debuted is that it applies anti-aliasing to all typefaces, including small monospaced fonts such as 9- and 10-point Monaco.

Yes, yes, the Mac OS X zeitgeist is such that anti-aliasing is everywhere. But small-point monospaced fonts are the exception to the rule, for good reason. Monospaced typefaces are an anachronism, a throw-back to the typewriter era. They are, for most purposes, ugly; their metrics contradict the basic precepts of proper typesetting. With regular (non-monospaced) fonts, small punctuation marks such as commas and apostrophes fit snugly next to adjacent alphabetic characters; punctuation is intended to be subtle. But with a monospaced font, every character consumes the same amount of horizontal space on the line; it’s downright silly that an apostrophe should consume the same space as an “m.”

Downright silly, perhaps, but I find a certain elegance in monospaced fonts. After all, look at my logo and tagline!

I differ with Gruber only in his observation of Geneva in Camino versus Safari: I think Geneva looks better in Safari, though, I admit, at the same point size, it is slightly less readable than in Camino.

NewTen

I’m finding more and more stuff that makes me antsy for my forthcoming MessagePad 2100…

Does it come in desert camou?

Lee notes a Wired story on a lone PowerBook user in the Third Infantry Division, currently operating out of Kuwait.

As someone who almost became one of those military officers, I must take exception with Lee’s “smarter-than-the-average-automaton” crack observation. Despite how they may be portrayed from the Hollywonk perspective, by and large your average military officer is a highly dedicated, smarter-than-the-average-citizen, master’s degree-holding professional who does what he does out of love for his country. Because even the officers aren’t getting a whole of lot of kit in their kaboodle when it comes to pay.

As far as computing choices go within the military, those front-liners have about as much say in the matter as your average Fortune 500 cubicle dweller does within their corporation. Kudos to Major Weed for getting the TiBook cleared through channels.

Safari v64

Yes, another leaked beta version of Safari. Yes, I have a copy. No, I’m not posting it for widespread dissemination; my site runs via Darwin/Apache on a iBook/300 that sits on an AT&T cable connection. Can you say “easy to overload?” Go here.

Jon has posted a quick rundown with screenshots over at MacMerc. Be sure to read the comments; interesting things are afoot.

Camino 0.7

Hot on the heels of the official rename, the Camino crew has released an updated version of the in-beta browser. Highlights to this update include: a new Download Manager, compatibility with URL Manager Pro, global History in the sidebar, dragging of images and links to the desktop and other applications, support for Shockwave Directory content, the use of Rendezvous to show local FTP and web servers, and support for Proxy Auto-config.

Multipage-view Safari

I can’t wait to hear what Michael and Gruber have to say about this really good mock-up.

I’m torn on this idea. As presented, it takes up too much screen real estate. Okay, fine, but it’s like a drawer, you might say. It’s hidden, much like the Safari bookmarks are.

But that takes away the immediacy of getting to multiple sites, which you have with tabs. I know Michael is a little put off by the tab implementation seen in the leaked build of Safari, but to me, the tabs beat this approach. Controls appearance aside, tabbed browsing offers maximum screen real estate with immediate access to multiple pages. The drawer/hidden panel system doesn’t do that.

One poster in the thread mentioned on the mock-up page had a brilliant point: he would like to see the tab implementation extended. That is, make the tabs so they can be renamed, repositioned, and able to be hidden. I would like to see those. Another good idea from the board thread: booklists, i.e., you can bookmark an entire list of pages you have in your pane.

Again, for me, tabbed browsing is the best implementation thus far. It has room for improvement, but nothing right now beats it for real estate savings and immediate action. Flame on, boys!

(props to Michael S. for the link)

Camino lives

It’s official:

03 March 2003: Due to circumstances beyond our control, the project [formerly known as Chimera] has been renamed Camino.

SpyHunter!

MacMinute reports that Aspyr is going to bring the updated version of the arcade classic to the Mac! w00t!

I wasted many a quarter on the full-size, sit-in version of SpyHunter that dominated one side of the arcade at the LSU Student Union when I went to school there. I’m not much of a gamer, but this may be one I pick up.

Apple to revolutionize the music biz?

If this story in the L.A. Times is to be believed, Apple is going to change the way Mac users buy music.

The new service was developed by Apple Computer Inc., sources said Monday, and offers users of Macintoshes and iPod portable music players many of the same capabilities that already are available from services previously endorsed by the labels. But the Apple offering won over music executives because it makes buying and downloading music as simple and non-technical as buying a book from Amazon.com.

“This is exactly what the music industry has been waiting for,” said one person familiar with the negotiations between the Cupertino, Calif., computer maker and the labels. “It’s hip. It’s quick. It’s easy. If people on the Internet are actually interested in buying music, not just stealing it, this is the answer.”

That ease of use has music executives optimistic that the Apple service will be an effective antidote to surging piracy on the Internet, sources said.

[…]

Although no licensing deals have been announced, sources close to the situation say at least four of the five major record companies have committed their music to the Apple service. It could be launched next month.

[…]

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the service Monday, as did representatives from the five major record corporations ? Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment, Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group, AOL Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Music Group, Bertelsmann’s BMG division and EMI Group.

The new service is so important to Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs that he personally demonstrated it to top executives at all five companies, sources said. More than a dozen music executives have visited Apple since last summer and came away enthusiastic.

The executives also like the massive marketing plan designed by Jobs to educate consumers about the service.

[…]

As a result, Mac users may find it easier to make unauthorized, free copies of songs through an online file-sharing service like LimeWire than to buy a copy through a label-sanctioned service. Apple hopes to change that situation with its new service, which is expected to be included in an updated edition of the iLife package of digital music, photo and movie software.

Sources said Apple will make the songs available for sale through a new version of iTunes, its software for managing music files on Macs. Users will be able to buy and download songs with a single click and transfer them automatically to any iPod they’ve registered with Apple.

Rather than make the songs available in the popular MP3 format, Apple plans to use a higher fidelity technology known as Advanced Audio Codec.

That approach allows the songs to be protected by electronic locks that prevent them from being played on more than one computer. Still, sources say, Apple wants to enable buyers to burn songs onto CDs. That feature would effectively remove the locks.

That’s been a sticking point for executives at Sony, sources said. The other four major record companies, however, appear ready to license their music to the new service.

No details were available on the price of the service, although one source said it would be competitive with other services in the market. Pressplay, for example, charges just under $10 a month for unlimited downloads, plus about $1 for each song that can be burned to CD or transferred to a portable device.

Yeah, so I pretty much give you most of the article. Saves you from the pain-in-the-butt registration the L.A.Times thinks it deserves from you. (via MacMinute)

No more Caffeine

Caffeine Software has suspended operations. Bad news for users of TIFFany, Curator, and PixelNhance. While I personally haven’t used any of their products, this is bad news for the Mac world in general, as it means one less Mac developer. (via MacMinute)

ATPM 9.03

The March issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now online. Yours truly has stepped into the Managing Editor’s shoes, so if there’s something you love, something you hate, or something you just have a comment on, email me.

I read with great interest Greg’s review of iView MediaPro, Johann’s review of the 2d edition of The Mac OS X Missing Manual, and Kirk’s review of O’Reilly’s UNIX Power Tools, 3d edition.

Update, 03-03-03: Thanks to Eric for the kind words, and the reminder that this issue features the return of my birthday-sharing paisan, Tom Iovino.

I joined the staff of ATPM in 1998 as a copy editor; Robert Paul Leitao was the Managing Editor then. I’ve also been the Publicity Manager (currently vacant), the Help Jedi (now simply called “Technical” and performed by Evan), and a Contributing Editor.

Eric is one of the few ATPM staffers I’ve actually met in person (two MWNY Expos in a row; will there be a 3d this year?). I met former Managing Editor Daniel Chvatik at MWNY last year, as well as long-time desktop pictures contributor Jens Grabenstein.

TextWrangler

Like Michael, I like Bare Bones’ replacement for BBEdit Lite, though I also wish it included support for AppleScript. Like Jan, while I like TextWrangler, it doesn’t fit into my work habits, since in addition to normal text editing, I need the HTML tools of BBEdit. Still, if you want a hell of a text editor without the need for AppleScriptability or HTML tools, TextWrangler’s the ticket.

If you still want BBEdit Lite, which to me should have been the name they used for TextWrangler, and just gone to a pay model instead of freeware, Lee notes that you can still snag it from Bare Bones’ FTP servers.

Newton still going strong

Yesterday marked the 5th anniversary of Apple’s discontinuing production of the Newton, the forerunner of today’s PDAs. Speaking of today’s PDAs, some are still trying to catch up, in terms of features and speed, to what was offered 5 years ago in the Newton MessagePad 2100. To this day, the Newton’s biggest shortcoming is still its size.

Michael notes how Newton users are continuing to extend the life of the original personal digital assistant. I can’t wait to reacquaint myself with Newton when a 2100 arrives in a couple of weeks, courtesy of a pal in NYC.

Don’t waste your money

Please don’t shell out ten smackers for MacMaid when Erik gives you an AppleScript that’ll do the same thing for free.

iChat logs

I share Michael’s iChat irritation. One of the things I love about Fire is that I can drag a log file onto BBEdit and have it open up in the text editor. iChat logs have to open in iChat, presumably so you can see the pretty word balloons. The solution, obviously, would be the ability to open my iChat chat log in BBEdit and read it in plain text glory, or open it in iChat and get it with the balloons.

From a UI perspective, I prefer iChat over Fire, since most everyone I know uses AIM. Two friends stubbornly cling to MSN (Hi, Wil!). I have accounts with ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger, but with the aforementioned MSN exceptions, everyone I know on the other services also uses AIM, so iChat it is.

Cool new PDF trick

Michael notes Bill Bumgarner’s example on using Mac OS X 10.2.4’s new PDF Workflow feature. I tried out Bill’s example, since it plays into my own web reading habits, and it’s wicked cool. Bill also says:

“But PDF Workflow is even more flexible than that. It isn’t limited to just saving PDF. You can also drop scripts, apps, filters, and other mechanisms into the PDF Services folder. That’d be the Workflow part of the whole thing.”

NetNewsWire + Safari = Power

Ok, I’ve finally used NetNewsWire consistently for a couple of weeks, and now I’m hooked. Like Michael admitted, my vision on NNW’s potential was limited. Like Rands, I’m reading more weblogs, collectively, than any other type of site. Combined with Safari, NetNewsWire is a powerful tool for weblog reading, as well as accessing any other site with an RSS feed, such as ATPM. The two form a potent combo for accessing nearly any info on the web you might need.

Well, Virtual PC is dead…

Microsoft is going to acquire Connectix’s Virtual PC software. Don’t believe for a minute their claim that they’re not buying the software to kill it. Why else would they? And they don’t even have to outright kill it. Just buy it, sell it to end users, and don’t update it. As the Mac OS moves on, just let it die since it would inevitably become less and less compatible with the latest version of the Mac OS. Whenever a company purchases assets from another company, and publicly announce they plan to not kill off a product they are acquiring, it is a sure sign that they will, in fact, kill it.

As Michael said, it’s a sad, sad day for Mac users.

Update (2:55 pm): Apparently, Microsoft acquired the Virtual PC assets from Connectix so it can strengthen its hold in the enterprise server market. Sure, I can buy that. The Virtual Server product is pretty powerful.

Yet let me remind you: we’re still waiting for a Macintosh version of HALO. You remember HALO, don’t you? The kick-butt 3D successor to the Marathon game saga from Bungie, it was going to be a Mac OS-first release, or at the very least, a Mac version was to be released concurrently with a PC version. Then Microsoft stepped in, bought out Bungie, and instead of getting a $49 Mac game, you now have to spring for a $199 Xbox to play it.

Virtual Server may live on in Windows code, but don’t bet on having a copy of Virtual PC to run on your Mac a couple of years from now. I really hope I’m wrong, but judging from past Microsoft history, I’m afraid I won’t be.

PerversionTracker

No, it’s not for porn, you infantile morons.

Via Lee who posted via Michael, someone has decided to begin tracking those totally useless pieces of Mac software that seem to crop up. Truly hysterical reviews.

Camino

Apparently, everyone’s favorite OS X-flavored Gecko-based browser will be renamed to Camino. What’s sad is that Pinkerton knows it stinks, but apparently nothing else has “made it through legal.” Hyatt doesn’t really like it, either. I found this stuff thanks to John Gruber, who does like the name. Like he says, it’s got style. I like it. Though unlike the automobile image it conjures in Hyatt’s mind, I think of a certain planet in a certain Star Wars movie…

Update (9:12pm): The more I think about it, the more I see it, the more I like the name Camino. Definitely better than Chimera.

Finally!

Ric is reporting that Microtech International has finally gotten off their duffs and have posted for download drivers for the USB CameraMate and Zio! Compact Flash readers for OS X 10.2. I own both of these products, which work great, but unfortunately, require a driver to do so. Thankfully, I also have a PC Card CF adapter that I’ve been using with my PowerBook G4/500 to get digital photos from my Nikon (it doesn’t have USB). Besides, the whole drivers for hardware thing should be left to the Windoze drones.

If I were to lose PC Card-ability in the future, say with a 12-inch PowerBook G4, I would have to seriously consider an alternative CF reader, like the Dazzle* 6-in-1 USB reader our artists use. Unlike the Microtech products, it is true plug-and-pray, working flawlessly on every OS X-running Mac (4 different models) I’ve tried it on.

Safari now supports title tag

I just noticed, after adding a new link in the right-side column, that the latest public beta of Safari now supports the title tag. Make sure you have the Status Bar at the bottom of the browser window; View menu, then click on Status Bar to get a check mark beside it. Or you use the keyboard shortcut Cmd-.

Now when you hover on a link that contains a title tag, you’ll see the title text in the Status Bar.

10.2.4 disables PHP?

Lee is reporting that Jon Gales has found that the Mac OS X 10.2.4 update disables PHP; Jon provides the Terminal-based restart sequence.

Free DropStuff via .Mac

If you’re a .Mac subscriber, MacMinute is reporting that Apple is offering Aladdin’s DropStuff as a free download.

As of 9:00 am CST, I’m getting 504 Gateway Timeout errors when trying to connect to .Mac.

Mac OS X 10.2.4

Apple has made rev 10.2.4 available via the Software Update panel.

“The 10.2.4 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications, services and technologies: Address Book, Classic compatibility, Finder, FireWire, Graphics, OpenGL, and Sherlock. It includes AFP and Windows file service improvements, as well as audio, disc recording, graphics, and printing improvements.”

Safari update

Apple has released a Safari beta update, taking the turbo browser to beta v60 (0.8.2).

Get Safari Enhancer

I’m always a little leery of third-party applications which modify or “enhance” another application. I like to live on the bleeding edge, but I also like my system stability. So I’m just getting around to trying Gordon Byrnes’s freeware Safari Enhancer, and my recommendation, if you’re a Safari user, is to download it immediately.

What finally prompted me to give it a whirl was its bookmarking importation abilities, especially from Chimera, my previous browser of choice. Others may have reported problems, but Safari Enhancer pulled off the importing of my Chimera bookmarks perfectly, which is something Safari itself never did right with IE. Now I get to spend some time re-organizing my newly imported bookmarks in my new favorite browser. Hats off to Gordon!

Entourage will be Exchange solution for OS X

Good news for those of us stuck in Exchange server-using corporate environments: Microsoft’s Mac BU has officially announced that Entourage will be updated as the official Exchange client for Mac OS X. (via MacMinute.com)

SpamSieve 1.3

Michael has released SpamSieve 1.3, which is more resilient than ever to spammers’ tricks for obfuscating words. In addition, you can now use e-mail addresses in the system Address Book as a whitelist, so that messages sent from those addresses will never be marked as spam. Michael continues to optimize the app, greatly reducing the overall memory usage as well as launch and quit times. A complete list of changes can be found at the above link.

SpamSieve requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later, and supports Emailer, Entourage, Eudora 5.2, PowerMail, and my personal favorite, Mailsmith. It’s only $20, it’s shareware so you can try before you buy, and it nips my spam problem in the bud. Give it a whirl, and support a shareware developer.

Dude, you’re going to jail!

You know, this explains so much about the persona of “Steven the Dell dude.”

1.2 GHz Cube

Bill Fox fans the flames of my gear lust with his review of the PowerLogix 1.2 GHz single processor upgrade for the G4 Cube.

Updated Xserves, new Xserve RAID

Apple announced today updated Xserves, as well as the new Xserve RAID. The new servers feature up to dual 1.33 GHz processors, up to 720 GB of storage, FireWire 800, dual Gigabit Ethernet, optional 2 GB Fibre Channel, and unlimited client licenses for Mac OS X Server.

The new Xserve RAID is a 3U rack-optimized enclosure that offers up to 2.52 TB — that’s terabytes — of storage, dual 2 GB Fibre Channel ports, full redundancy for continuous uptime, and powerful remote monitoring.

The Xserve base price drops to $2,799, and the Xserve RAID pricing starts at $5,999. Apple is certainly looking to kick some butt in the enterprise market!

MacinTiVo

From Damien comes this encouraging news on the TiVo front.

Transmit 2.3

Panic released an updated version of their FTP client today. Mostly a bug-fix release, it does include an oft-requested feature: a preference that allows the user to define what the app does when a file is double clicked. From my limited beta-testing of this release, it remains solid and adequate for my GUI FTP needs. (I tend to use Terminal most of the time.)

Virex 7.2

My favorite antivirus application has been updated. .Mac subscribers should log in and download the new version, which includes an automatic virus definitions update feature.

Baked PowerBook, anyone?

A colleague just sent me this link to a baked Apple. Please note that there are links at the top of the page to more pictures other than those immediately displayed.

What frickin’ rocks is that the PowerBook still boots and they’ve installed Mac OS X 10.2.

Death of the floppy, redux

Four and a half years after Apple declared the floppy disk was dead with the introduction of the iMac, the rest of the computer industry is finally starting to follow suit. Dell, of course, is “innovating” ahead of the other PC box companies.

I truly love this quote:

“What Dell has done, I expect every major vendor to do in the next 12 months.”

This from Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a technology consulting firm in San Jose. Where was Tim four and a half years ago, when it was Apple announcing it was removing the floppy disk drive from its systems, beginning with the then-new iMac?

You can still nab WordPerfect

If you are one of those folks who just cannot let go of WordPerfect for the Mac, you can download the last version, released free by Corel, here. (Thanks to a Macintouch Reader Report.)

New iMacs

Even though I’m late in the day reporting this, Apple released upgraded iMacs today. The 17” iMac now sports a 1 GHz G4 processor, while the 15” strolls along with an 800 MHz G4; the flat-panel iMacs sell for $1,799 and $1,299 respectively.

The 17” iMac sports a faster system bus, 133 MHz, uses DDR SDRAM memory, a 4x DVD-burning SuperDrive, and a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX video chipset with 64 MB of DDR SDRAM. It is also Airport Extreme- and Bluetooth-ready. The 15” iMac remains compatible with the original Airport, and can use Bluetooth only with a USB adapter.

Void that warranty, yeah!

Thanks to Mike for the link to Kodawarisan Oheya’s step-by-step disassembly of a 12” PowerBook G4.

iLife released

Apple has posted for download iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, and as has been the case, iTunes 3. The full iLife package began shipping earlier this week to those who ordered it to get iDVD 3.

iLife shipping

MacMinute is reporting that iLife is now shipping from Apple. iPhoto 2 and iMovie 3 downloads have yet to be posted online, however.

Microsoft anti-Safari?

A member of the Cube email list reports that he is unable to log in to his Hotmail account with Safari. He does say this “is limited to the browser login check. If you fire up MSN Messenger and click on the Mail icon with Safari set as your default browser, it will take you right in with no problem.”

Another member reports that once he logged in with this roundabout solution, he was able to log in again directly through Safari.

New Apple iron

Apple released new desktops today. Processors ramp up to 1.42 GHz in the high-end model, as well as a new 4x SuperDrive. Like the PowerBooks released at Macworld Expo earlier this month, the new Power Macs either incorporate or are ready for the latest tech: FireWire 800, Bluetooth, and Airport Extreme.

Apple also dropped the price on its 17- and 23-inch LCDs, to $699 and $1,999 respectively, and introduced a new, 20-inch LCD for $1,299.

Good riddance, Opera

Speaking of Mac browsers, Opera’s Jon von Tetzchner whined to CNET about competing with Safari, and losing out on providing the Opera engine to Apple, which chose KHTML to drive Safari instead.

Fellow ATPM staffer Chris Lawson brought the article to our attention, and several interesting comments have been raised, which reflect my own feelings:

Lawson: “…because it sucks and is two versions behind the Windoze version and you keep trying to charge $40 for it. It would be one thing if it were a really fast, slick browser, but it’s not.

“Then again, maybe I’m still bitter about the fact that they announced a Mac browser in 1996 ‘in a few weeks’ and didn’t deliver until late 2001…”

Michael: “I’m more distressed that anyone would print a story like this without checking the facts (like whether Mac Opera is any good). It’s irresponsible of CNet to act as von Tetzchner’s mouthpiece.”

Michael also rightly points out that there is nothing stopping Opera from using open-source alternatives, as Apple chose to do by using KHTML. Michael points to Chuq Von Rospach’s rockin’ analysis, as well as the dead-on commentary from Eric Albert.

So Mr. von Tetzchner, let’s run the down the Mac browser market, shall we?

• Microsoft Internet Explorer, free
• Netscape, free
• Mozilla, free
• Camino Chimera (Navigator), a Mozilla branch, free
• OmniWeb, free trial, $29.95
• iCab, free or $29 for a “Pro” version
• Opera, $39

Quite simply, people do not expect to have to pay for a web browser any more. Just ask Netscape, and thank Microsoft for it. I know there are many people, myself included, who would pay for a wicked fast, slick-looking, web standards-compliant browser. Unfortunately for Opera, their product isn’t any of those things on the Mac. Like Eric says in his post, the Omni Group still believes there’s a market for a commercial browser; why doesn’t Opera?

I’m very happy with Safari, even in its beta form, and I have Camino Chimera to fall back on, and worse case, IE. If Opera wants to plow the same kind of development into their Mac product that they do for Windows, I’ll sit up and take notice. If instead, Opera wants to leave the Mac market, no tears will be shed here.

Safari best Mac browser ever?

Bob Levitus, a.k.a., Dr. Mac, thinks it just may be:

“Safari is wicked fast, with a clean, uncluttered interface and a feature I love — a special field in its toolbar that lets you search the Web via Google without going to the Google Web page first.

“I’ve been using Safari for several weeks, and even though it’s still in beta, it has become my browser of choice. It is much faster than the others, and it may very well be the best browser ever created. Not bad for a program that’s not even done yet.”

Apple Store Knox Street Grand Opening

So I decided to drag my butt out of bed at 6 am Saturday morning to join a friend for the opening of the new Apple Store on Knox Street in Dallas. This is the Dallas area’s second Apple Store, the first being in Plano at Willow Bend.

My pal Michael, and two of his friends, had already arrived at the store by the time I got out of bed, but were kind enough to save a spot for yours truly, who rolled up at 20 after 8. :)

Though I failed to capture the moment on camera, Michael was the first official customer of the Knox Street store, as he picked up a software title for his wife. I did take lots of other photos.

UPDATE (10:45 am): Michael emailed me links to a gallery that features his first purchase, as well as a shot of yours truly checking out the 12” PowerBook G4. A second gallery shows us waiting out front, though my back’s turned, and an open doorway shot of me, in profile, waiting to look at the 12” PowerBook G4. (Hint, I’m wearing a dark LSU cap and brown jacket.)

ClarisWorks History

Michael notes a history of ClarisWorks posted by Bob Hearn, one of the software package’s creators. The quote Michael highlights stands out in my mind as well.

ClarisWorks was partially responsible for my switching to the Mac back in the mid-90s. I began using the Windows version of ClarisWorks while working at CompUSA, and it became my favorite application when I brought home my first Mac. The rebadged AppleWorks that is its successor actually feels more bloated and “heavy,” and I miss the lightweight but powerful ClarisWorks 3 and 4.

These days, I tend to do most of my text editing/word processing in Tex-Edit and BBEdit. Database stuff is done in FileMaker Pro. What little spreadsheet work I have is done in Excel, but that’s just because I have Microsoft Office through my job. Without Excel, I’d likely be in the spreadsheet module of AppleWorks.

Though he hints at it, what Hearn doesn’t come right out and say is how ClarisWorks totally annihilated Microsoft Works on the Mac. It simply ceased to exist. A truly impressive accomplishment, considering Microsoft’s track record both then and now.

New spam filters

Something I know will be of interest to Michael. (SpamSieve uses Bayesian analysis to identify spam.)

(from Lee)

Frank talk on Apple’s free software

I know why Michael links to Steven Frank’s note on Apple’s free software. I agree with Steven, and I hope that developers like Michael and Panic continue to thrive, even with more and more freebies coming out of Cupertino. The old cliché is true: you get what you pay for.

And if Steven keeps it up, he’s going to have me seriously considering a Sidekick when my current mobile phone contract is up in June….

One million Safari downloads

Apple announced that its beta web browser for Mac OS X, Safari, has been downloaded more than a million times in just over 2 weeks time.

(from Stan)

Apple Q1 Results

Apple posted its first quarter results; $8 million net loss. Ouch. I’m sure the stock will drop like a stone as “analysts” and stock “experts” tell clientele to sell, sell, sell.

The loss isn’t really bad news when you take the reasons why into consideration. Why is this important? Because the “analysts” won’t, that’s why.

Apple’s revenues for the quarter were $1.47 billion, up 7 percent from the quarter a year ago. Gross margins were 27.6 percent, down from 30.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. So that explains some of it, right? Apple’s not making as much money per unit sold, even though sales were up.

But here’s the doozy: the “quarter’s results included a $17 million after-tax restructuring charge and a $2 million after-tax accounting transition adjustment. Excluding these non-recurring items, the Company’s net profit for the quarter would have been $11 million, or $.03 per share.” [emphasis added]

So, if Apple hadn’t taken the restructuring charge and the adjustment, it would have shown a profit. And its stock would still go down tomorrow, because Apple can’t win at the stock price game, unlike certain monopolistic computer companies.

Anyway, I don’t look at it as bad news. Apple is making the necessary adjustments it needs to make to stay healthy and competitive while the economy sorts itself out, and if I could afford it, I’d be snapping up more stock tomorrow when the morons dump theirs. Thus concludes this edition of the Retrophisch™ Apple Financial Analysis.

Apple on Photoshop

There’s a bevy of Photoshop tips in the Creative section of Apple.com.

New PowerBook benchmarks

Bare Feats’ Rob Morgan benchmarked the PowerBook G4 17” from the Macworld Expo show floor, and has posted his results, with comparison to current and former Powerportables.

I have to agree with Rob’s assessment of the 12” PowerBook G4; the more I think about it, I love the size, but I really want the power one finds in its 15” and 17” brethren: 1 GHz proc, L3 cache, and faster graphics with more VRAM. I know a PC Card slot is still out of the question, because of its size, but you add in those things, plus the SuperDrive you can get it with now, and it’s a sure-fire winner.

I’m beginning to think that an updated 15” PowerBook G4 with similar specs to the 17” is what I’ll be looking for in the future.

Macally items

Between the new PowerBooks, Safari, and Keynote, amongst other news out of Macworld Expo SF, I failed to notice some of the latest gadgets from Macally.

Now every peripheral manufacturer and their cousin’s mother’s brother’s aunt’s dog’s sister has produced a 4-port USB hub, with a nuclear-arms-size race to build the smallest one. My Dr. Bott gHub is pretty small, and unobtrusive behind my Apple 15” LCD. Macally tops it though, with this minihub that features a built-in USB cable. Twenty bucks U.S.

It was really nice of Apple to include a FireWire cable with my iPod, but it’s kind of a pain to schlepp that cable around in my bag. Macally comes to the rescue with a 5-foot retractable FireWire cable. Like the minihub, twenty bucks U.S.

How small is the 12” PowerBook G4?

PowerBook Central answers that question with this handy chart of small Apple portables. While it’s technically not the smallest when certain individual measurements are compared, the 12” PowerBook G4 is the smallest Mac portable ever by volume. In my technolust over the new ‘Book offerings, I’m still waffling over the 12” PowerBook G4 versus its 17” big brother.

iConquer

If you love(d) Risk, then you have to get iConquer. Sorry, Mac OS X only.

40 GB iPod?!?

As crazy as it sounds now, a 40 GB iPod could be a reality later this year, thanks to 40 GB 1.8-inch drives from Hitachi. (from MacRumors)

Safari first look

If you’re still waffling over whether or not to try Safari, Wei-Meng Lee has a good overview over on O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.

Saving web pages as plain text in Chimera Camino

Like Charles, I hadn’t thought of this remedy.

Bumper Snickers

LEM has some new bumper snickers. The Dell one is my favorite from this batch.

New Safari beta

Some time yesterday, Apple released a new beta of Safari.

Achtung! Safari auf Deutsch!

Für die, die Deutsches sprechen, download Safari hier.

(I hope Babelfish got that right.)

X11 for Mac OS X

Steve didn’t mention it during the keynote, but it’s been generating lots of buzz: Apple released a public beta of X11 for Mac OS X. X11 is the common name for the X Window System, used by Unix developers to create graphical applications. So if you have a graphic-based Unix app that hasn’t been ported to Mac OS X, and you don’t want to fiddle with Fink and XDarwin, like me, then download this installer and get started.

The Hacker FAQ

For clueless managers.

iPod #1

Steve Jobs reported during his keynote that the iPod is the #1 MP3 player in the United States and in the land of consumer electronics, Japan, with a 42% market share in the latter.

I love my iPod; it goes practically everywhere with me. During the 16-hour round-trip drive of our Christmas vacation, my iPod provided more than enough music for us in the Jeep. Now to get my wife to spring for the 20-gig version for my birthday this year. . .

“Come on a Safari with me. . .”

Safari is generating quite a bit of buzz:

Former Mozillian and Chimera inventor Dave Hyatt is part of the Safari team and has several interesting posts regarding his new employer’s browser project.

Chris Sorenson blogs on why Safari is yet another reason to switch. Mark Pilgrim is putting Safari to the grindstone. Zeldman offers his initial impression.

There’s a tip on accessing all of Safari’s keyboard commands over on Mac OS X Hints. Mena Trott, half of the force behind Movable Type, offers her impressions, as well as a pro/con breakdown between Safari and Chimera, her current favorite browser. Speaking of Chimera, waferbaby offers a rudimentary way to get your bookmarks from Chimera into Safari. Folders are not currently supported, but it’s better than nothing.

Finally, if you want to get rid of Safari’s brushed metal look (yes please), and don’t want to use a haxie (just say no to haxies), Michael has detailed instructions. Hmmmm. Now to do this with the other Apple brushed-metal apps. . .

Whew! Too many links for a single post?

Safari breaks download record

MacCentral is reporting that Safari, Apple’s new browser for OS X, has broken Apple’s single day download record.

Wireless PocketMouse

Kensington has announced the PocketMouse Pro Wireless. US $49, pre-orders being taken now. I’m sure this will eventually find its way into my bag for use with my PowerBook.

Too cute

Keegan, a seven year-old hockey player from Canada, has his own iMovie-edited film clip, with some help from his dad. (QuickTime required.)

And just like that. . .

. . .Apple releases iCal 1.0.2. Apparently this is a bug-fix for a problem in 1.0.1 that caused some users “living in time zones 10 hours or more from Greenwich Mean Time to have their calendar data displayed incorrectly.”

ATPM 9.01

About This Particular Macintosh enters its 9th calendar year of publishing with the January issue. Yours truly has a small review in this issue, as does my pal Lee, who reviews the ultracool Earthdesk. Paul examines the keyboard I lust after, and Michael has a great article on archiving email with Mail.app or Eudora.

Read it online or download a PDF of your choosing.

Debug your iPod

Slashdot has a post on accessing the secret debugging tools inside the iPod.

(with a nod to Ric)

iUpdates

Apple announced iCal 1.0.1 and final release of iSync 1.0 today. Each requires Mac OS X 10.2.2.

Microsoft to acquire Macromedia?

Yes, that Macromedia. Of FreeHand, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and most of all, Flash, fame. Does Microsoft plan to kill Java through this acquisition? The monopoly rears its ugly head yet once again. . .

(from Lee)

Santa uses a Mac!

www.santaclaus.com

UPDATE (12/26/02): In case you are seeing this link after December 25th, the above link used to redirect back to Apple’s Santa Switch ads. Now the link is back to its regular page. Santa still uses the easiest, most powerful personal computer on the planet, though. On Dasher, on Comet, on Macintosh. . . !

(Thanks, Lee!)

OS X fresh meat

Open source software site, Freshmeat has opened a new section devoted exclusively to OS X.

Transmit 2.2

What is fast becoming my favorite GUI-based FTP client for OS X has an incremental update. Transmit 2.2 was released today, and is the first FTP client for the Mac to support Rendezvous.

I’m glad I use a Mac

New security bug with Windows XP and Nullsoft’s Wimamp MP3 player. Yet more reasons why I love iTunes and Audion. (Thanks, Eric.)

WebDesktop

Well, isn’t this a kick in the pants?

MacScan

SecureMac has released a beta version of MacScan, their spyware detection and removal software for all Macs, from 68K machines to the latest G4s running OS X.

A product manual worth the read

Grant mentions purchasing a Marathon Deskmount for his G4. I downloaded the Deskmount installation instructions (PDF), and had a good chuckle. These guys have a great sense of humor, and this has to be the funniest product manual I’ve read in a while. Give it a read, it’s only 8 pages and 2 of those are the cover and the legalese.

We had a similar product in use in our graphics lab, but it’s not nearly as elegant as the Marathon Deskmount, though it doesn’t require modification to the G3/G4 case. I decided that I bang my knees into the G4s we do have mounted this way too much for my liking.

SnowSaver

A developer known as “mathew” has released SnowSaver, a freeware snowflake screen saver for OS X. SnowSaver is “modeled on the pretty falling snowflakes animation that Apple has been running on an iMac in the window of the local Apple store. (Theirs is actually a QuickTime movie, and not available to customers. People have asked.)”

Pretty nifty, and despite mathew’s development pains, really shows the power of OpenGL. Well worth the effort, mathew!

Macintouch on IP over FireWire

Dan was asking if I had any experience yet utilizing IP over FireWire. I still haven’t set it up to play with it, but Ric Ford has posted a Reader Report on the issue, and it includes user experience.

IP over FireWire

At 400 megabits per second, FireWire is 40 times faster than 10Base-T Ethernet, and 4 times faster than 100Base-T. The only Ethernet spec faster than FireWire is Gigabit Ethernet (1000Base-T), now standard on all Macs, but still an option for many PCs (like FireWire).

Today, Apple released a preview version of IP over FireWire, useful for networking and clustering solutions. It can even be used for temporary connections to the internet using Internet Sharing. It’s interesting if for no other reason than that of future possibilities in networking.

ATPM 8.12

The December issue of About This Particular Macintosh is out. Nothing in there from me this month <head hung in shame>, but Robert Lewis has what I think is the most comprehensive Mac game gift guide seen in a while. New-to-the-staff Kirk McElhearn reviews a book I keep near my Mac, and publisher/friend Michael Tsai reviews the latest rev of one of our mutual favorite applications, BBEdit.

Switchers you won’t see on TV

More and more PC users are learning how easy it is to switch from Windoze to Macintosh, and OS X is a big reason. For Shoshana Berger of Business 2.0, the new PowerBook G4/1 GHz proved to be a big selling point in her move to Mac, helped along by Detto Technologies’ Move2Mac software.

Command-line developer Tom Yager made a voluntary switch as part of his research for an article in InfoWorld, shelving his ThinkPad for a PowerBook G4/800. After a two-week business trip with only the PowerBook, he’s realized that he switched without even really thinking about it, since most of the work he did under Linux or BSD can be accomplished under OS X.

Infoworld also has an interview with C.J. Rayhill, Chief Operating Office and Excecutive Vice-President of Technology for O’Reilly & Associates, wherein she reveals: “I will share with you that we’re currently in talks with Apple to possibly do a corporate switching program.” C.J. cites that many of O’Reilly’s “heavy technical folks” have moved from having two systems on their desks — some sort of Unix box plus a Windows PC for productivity apps — to using an iBook or PowerBook as their only system. (Anyone notice a trend here with regard to the popularity of the portable Mac?)

Foam PC

Proving they have too much time on their hands, as well as what PCs are really good for, it’s the NeuHausPlatz 200NC. NC stands for “no case.” This is an oldie, but a goodie.

New Mac portables

I can’t believe I forgot to make mention of the new PowerBooks and iBooks that Apple released last week. The new PowerBooks go up to 1 GHz and contain a SuperDrive! Not to mention that with the 60 GB hard drive, it’s actually cheaper than the TiBook/500 I use when that machine was brand new.

And Apple has broken the one-grand barrier with a new entry-level iBook at $999.

Frank TabletPC analysis

Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic Software, has an early analysis on why Microsoft’s new TabletPC initiative is really nothing new, and in many ways, like the Palm OS, is still inferior to the discontinued Newton platform from Apple.

Steven’s point, and one I concur with: since you’re not really getting anything new or innovative, go buy a Newton on eBay and save about three grand.

Chimera 0.6

The latest stable version of Chimera was released a couple of days ago, and I am falling further in love with this browser. Powered by the Gecko rendering engine (of Mozilla fame), it is a Cocoa-based web browser, only for OS X.

It is fast. Wicked fast. Scary fast. It blows IE away in rendering pretty much all of the sites I visit. MacUpdate.com loads blindingly fast. MacMinute appeared instantly. Did I mention it’s fast?

It shares some of my favorite features with its Mozilla brethren, as well. Tabbed browsing is just one of the coolest things to hit web browsers since standards compliance. No more multiple browser windows littering the desktop! And built-in pop-up ad blocking is a godsend.

If you’re running OS X, you owe it to yourself to give Chimera a try.

Transmit 2.1

The fine folks at Panic Software released version 2.1 of their fine FTP client, Transmit today. Hey, Michael, guess what feature got implemented? :)

Like you need another reason to go Mac

Wired has an article on successful tech entrepreneur Doug Humphrey, wherein he discusses his decision to move his company to all Macs. He has an excellent quote:

“We avoid the Windows operating system since it is such a huge security risk,” he explained. “We didn’t want to have viruses blowing up systems that we depend on for navigation and monitoring engines and other systems. And since nothing seems to be able to stop all of these Windows viruses, the best way to win is to just stop using Windows.” (emphasis added)

Character Palette

Instead of hunting up the Key Caps application under Mac OS X 10.2, use the Character Palette instead. Go to System Preferences, click on International, then choose the Input Menu tab. Select Character Palette in the list of layouts, and voila! you now have a new icon in your menu bar that you can consult from any application.

Lapvantage Deluxe Dome

My review of the Lapvantage Deluxe Dome is now online in the November issue of About This Particular Macintosh.

Transmit 2.0

I failed to mention that yesterday Panic Software released Transmit 2.0, their outstanding FTP client. Version 2.0 has been rebuilt from the ground up using the Cocoa APIs, and is Mac OS X-only.

I helped beta-test this release, and it’s been really solid for me. I like how it handles both regular FTP, and SFTP, which is how I connect to my own domains for file transfers. Give it a try, and support future development by registering the software.

DropDMG 2.0

Pal Michael Tsai today released DropDMG 2.0, the latest version of his excellent utility for creating disk images in Mac OS X’s device image (DMG) format.

Why do you want DropDMG when DiskCopy already comes free with OS X? Because DropDMG is both more powerful and easier to use than DiskCopy, that’s why. Gee, Michael, I guess I need to register my copy, don’t I? ;)

iPod turns one

The iPod is one year-old today. On October 23, 2001, Steve Jobs held a special press event to announce that Apple had produced the best digital music player in the world. My own iPod will turn 1 next month (thanks again, sweetie!).
(from MacMinute)

More on the fake Microsoft switcher

John Gruber has uncovered the lies Microsoft is putting forth to cover its previous lie of a Mac user switching to Windows XP.

What’s so hysterical is not that the fake switcher was outed as a publicist working for a Microsoft-hired PR firm, but that she was exposed through examination of a Word document, posted on the original Microsoft switcher page. Yes, “Microsoft’s own crappy file format” is responsible for their being caught in a lie to cover the previous lie. As John says, “Everyone loves a story about people fishing personal data out of Microsoft’s own Word files.” And yet another reason to not use Word for your own, or your company’s, word processing usage. There are alternatives, people. . .

800MHz Cube upgrade

Bill Fox of Macs Only! has concluded testing of the PowerLogix PowerForce G4 Series 100 800MHz upgrade card in his Power Mac G4 Cube, and has posted a full review.

Microsoft switcher lies

Apple comes out with a kick-butt ad campaign called Switch, an ad campaign that utilizes real people who have switched from Windoze-running PCs to Macintosh.

Microsoft sees said ad campaign, notices that Apple keeps bringing out more and more people to appear in its tv ads. So what does Microsoft do?

It comes out with its own switcher story. Hmm, nothing at that link, eh? That’s because since it was exposed as a load of hooey, Microsoft took the page down. Fortunately, for us, Google has it cached, and just in case, here’s a screenshot; and the HTML source. See the nice lady who claims to be a writer that switched from Mac to Windows XP? She’s a model from a stock art collection. Notice on the Microsoft switch page, there is no name for this fictitious writer, either. Note on Apple’s Switch page that there’s a name for every face, and they are all real people. Where are Microsoft’s real people?

I’m not saying that people have not switched from the Mac to Windoze; I’m just saying that apparently none of them want to admit it.

FireWire film scanner

SmartDisk has announced two new film scanners, one of which, the SmartScan 3600, is FireWire based. Now I have something else to add to my wish list as I get more into digital photography.