Tag: os x

Macworld keynote: the Cliff notes

My impressions are the same as everybody else’s, I suppose. So here’s a quick recap.

Yay, movie rentals!

Boo, 24 hours to watch ’em!

Yay, movie rentals and other shit on Apple TV, justifying the money early adopters (including your humble) paid.

Yay, iPhone updates!

Boo, lame iPhone updates!

Yay, MacBook Air!

Yaaaaaaaaay, MacBook Air, although the maximum of 2Gb RAM is a smart move by Apple to prevent it being used for serious work like graphics or photo manip. (I make grandmas buy 2Gb for their Macs.)

Yay, Time Capsule!

Boo, not letting existing Airport Extremes use their Air Disks for Time Machine backups! (Although one can do it with Mac OS X client or server.)

Yay, Manhattans at Jilian’s next door to MacWorld…………!


Eliminate the annoying vibrating clock in iCal

Everytime I do an update to OS X, I have to run these commands in Terminal, because the animated alarm clock in iCal is just obnoxious. (It also pulls precious CPU cycles.)

Taken from this hint at macosxhints.com, these are instructions for 10.4 Tiger:

cd /Applications/iCal.app/Contents/Resources/iCal Helper.app/Contents/Resources/

sudo cp -p alarmclock.mov alarmclock-mov.BAC

sudo echo "" >alarmclock.mov

cd /Applications/iCal.app/Contents/Resources

sudo cp -p alarmclock.mov alarmclock-mov.BAC

sudo echo "" >alarmclock.mov

UPDATE: I posted instructions for 10.5 here at macosxhints.com.

Leap on Leopard?

Even if you have already bought Leopard, or are considering running out this week, please read the following! I promise it will save you time, effort, and headache.

I’m not going to give a review of the system. You can read a really good, thorough one by Ars Technica here. (Ars’ review of 10.4 Tiger was invaluable back in 2005.) What I do want to do here is give you a few quick pointers for upgrading.

This has been a few weeks in coming, but it has been nice finally to get my hands properly dirty in OS X 10.5 “Leopard”. I’ve been needing to see whether I should recommend the upgrade now, or wait until Apple released a major revision with some bug fixes. Now that update 10.5.1 for PowerPC and Intel has been released, I’m ready to say that anyone who is interested — AND whose Mac is NOT in a heavy-workload production environment — should go ahead and grab the next big cat, according to the following:

  1. Have a newer computer. Regardless of Apple’s minimum system requirements, as of this writing I probably won’t recommend installing Leopard on a G4 Mac unless I had a super-good reason, or the machine was a spare toy and I wanted a sandbox.
    G5 and Intel Macs are totally Leopard-happy.

  2. Have at least 2GB memory (RAM). Again, ignore Apple’s specs. G5s and Intel Macs are RAM hungry, and Leopard is too, moreso than Tiger. Note that Apple now sells consumer-level machines with 1GB RAM, and MacBook Pros start at 2GB. That tells us that 1GB is barely adequate for a new system, and 2GB is OK for surfing, emailing, and a little photo work. Anything heavier requires 4GB. (All new Macs like their RAM in even numbers, so avoid 3Gb if your Mac can hold more.) See my previous blog posts here and here for more on this, including where to buy RAM.
  3. Have a good, complete backup. If you don’t have a complete clone of your hard drive before the Leopard install, you’re inviting a world of pain. If something goes wrong during the upgrade — say, the power goes out, or you trip on the cord — your Mac good wind up a paperweight until you finish the installation or restore from the backup.
  4. ARCHIVE AND INSTALL! If you’ve followed the above guidelines, then this is the last step. Insert the Leopard disk (which you bought cheaper from Amazon or someplace, right?), and reboot your Mac holding down the “C” key to make it boot from the DVD. Go through the intro screens until you get to pane where you choose the volume to install on. There, look at the bottom of the window, and click on the Options button. Choose the “Archive and Install” option, leaving on “Preserve Users and Network Settings”.
    Better instructions and Apple’s thoughts on this subject can be found here and here.

That’s it. Click through the subsequent windows to finish the installation, reboot, and you’re soaking in OS X 10.5! Do make sure to run Software Update to grab 10.5.1.

Now, the finer points: As is always the case with the latest Mac OS, Leopard is certainly the best, most secure, and most advanced operating system on the planet. But like any operating system, it ain’t perfect by a long shot. Many programs are yet to be 10.5-compatible — including, just for one example, Acrobat 8 — and if you rely on the Classic environment for OS 9 apps, Leopard will leave you in the cold.

As I mentioned above, if your Mac is expected to be reliable in a production environment, I won’t recommend Leopard until at least version 10.5.2 or 10.5.3. Read up on the applications you use, and keep checking with the developers to see if they have released a compatibility update.

Finally, for what it’s worth, I myself am not putting 10.5 on my 12″ G4 PowerBook. It only has 1.25GB RAM (I can’t give it more), and it has been slowing down of late. A purchase of a new Mac with 4GB RAM and Leopard pre-installed is coming up for me in the next couple of weeks. I am, however, upgrading my Mac mini home media server to OS X Server 10.5 probably this weekend.

End User: Null and void

Published in San Antonio Current, October 3, 2007


Weird warranties: In March of this year, Linux.com and others reported that a Compaq rep had told a woman that the problem she was having with her notebook’s keys sticking and being unresponsive was not covered by the one-year warranty because she had replaced the Windows operating system with a version of Linux. A similar story, this time about a laptop purchased at PC World, appeared in early September; a broken hinge and dead screen pixels were the problem.

In both cases, the inconvenienced consumers eventually received satisfaction. They had been initially misinformed, and PC World and HP (Compaq’s parent company) have clarified their warranties: Hardware defects will be covered by warranty regardless of the OS installed on the computer.

On Linux: Many computer users are still unaware that they have an alternative to Windows or Mac OS X. Linux is an open-source operating system that comes in many different flavors, most of which are freely available for download. One of these flavors — called “distributions” or “distros” — is called Ubuntu, and it is becoming increasingly popular for its uncomplicated installation and configuration. Ubuntu comes with free software, including alternatives to Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, called OpenOffice and Firefox, respectively, both of which are also available for Windows and Mac. In Ubuntu, many users (even non-geeks) have found shelter from the security problems and malware that plague Windows.

le iPHONE: Far more malicious than the misguided Linux advice above is Apple’s September 24 press release about the iPhone software update that they were to release on September 27. “Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty.”

Well, excuse the hell out of me, but I have made my iPhone all the more useful and convenient and entertaining by installing a slew of third-party applications which are now readily and freely downloadable. Now standing in long lines with my 7-year-old daughter is easy and fun with games like blackjack and a Yatzhee-like thing, and neither requires use of the battery-draining internet connection. The latest iPhone update, were I to install it, would delete all of those great programs.

Ironic and disheartening is the lameness of the features added by the update. Like the new iPod touch, the iPhone can now purchase music from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. And double-tapping the space bar “intelligently” types a period where appropriate. Yippee-doodle-do. Where’s my freakin’ copy-paste?

Slashdot posted on September 25 a story that Apple’s prohibition may break the law: “The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act states that Apple cannot void a warranty for a product with third-party enhancements or modifications to their product.” My own comparison of the iPhone warranty against the Mac warranty finds the same phrase: “This warranty does not apply … to a product or part that has been modified to alter functionality or capability without the written permission of Apple.” Nothing else in the iPhone document seems to support Apple’s latest claim.

Now, the iPhone is clearly classifiable as a computer, albeit a very light one. It runs a version of OS X much like the Mac’s. Who would buy a Mac if Apple restricted it against software developed by people other than Apple? It’s like a grocery store making it illegal to take one of their frozen cheese pizzas home and put onions on it. Or Honda saying I can’t drive my Accord to Arkansas.

The iPhone update also re-locks the units that have been unlocked to work with carriers other than AT&T. That one we saw coming, and it makes sense for Apple to keep their corporate bedfellow happy for the foreseeable future. Disabling independently created software that makes your expensive, powerful device more functional, however, makes no bloody sense at all. •

Looking ahead to Leopard Server

Dear OS X Server-owners, and dear those-destined-to-be-OS X Server-owners,

I was just looking again at Apple's pages on the features of the new OS X Server 10.5, due in October. This is the first time I've been flat-out excited about a server release. Don't get me wrong, I dig them as much as the next geek, but they've never stirred me to, say, write an email to 20 non-IT people.

We can't invest too much in the hype, but there's stuff in here that I've been waiting for for years, and that I was always baffled Apple didn't have. And they say this:

"If you think it takes a dedicated IT department to deploy and use a server, think again. Leopard Server is designed to allow you to easily set up and manage servers."

I've never viewed J2 Consulting as your IT department, because Macs don't require that, and that's one of the things I love about 'em. We're advisers and technicians, and the solutions we get to put in place tend to keeping working, with relatively little maintenance. If Leopard Server can make our job easier, so we can serve more people, while each client pays less, sign me up!

Here are some of the tools they're including:

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/simplesetup.html
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/directory.html
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/icalserver.html
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/spotlightserver.html

And here are some of the other phrases I'm glad to read:

"The end of manual labor

Adding clients to the network is now a quick and easy process. Just plug the new Mac into the network and launch the Directory Utility application. It will automatically detect and sign on to the server."

"Who’s who

With Directory you can search for and, more important, find people in your organization. Just type in a name. … it even shows you a map of their location. You can also manage your own record and distribution of personal contact data."

"Portable Home Directories 2  Home folder icon
External Accounts is a new Portable Home Directory feature that allows you to have a home directory on an external FireWire or USB portable drive."

Give me a shout to discuss how these technologies might play a part in your environment.

Jonathan

J2 Consulting ~ Chicken soup for the Mac ~ www.j2mac.com ~ 210.367.3420

End User column: Out of Range, Out of Mind

No, it has nothing to do with the iPhone. Yeah, right. Next time there will hopefully be something else to talk about.

BTW, I’ve helped two clients work with three iPhones, and they do rock, but we’ve definitely run into some limitations. I’m looking forward to the software updates, and to the next generation.

Published in San Antonio Current, July 4, 2007

Roswell, NM, two days before release of the iPhone — Yes, I asked if this motel room included wifi. Today, I asked. Yes, they have it, or at least they feature it, but today, it’s out. You’ll like this: They claim it’s out due to “a few car accidents.” I’m still picturing that.

Phone signal’s gone, too. I’m writing from a dial-up connection. Feh.

Thankfully, I have saved upgrading my notebook until autumn; some modern laptops don’t even include modems anymore.

Sunday, July 1 — Now we know: Should you buy an iPhone? If you’re a person who would right now spend $500 on the coolest gadget on the planet to entertain yourself, hie thee to the Apple Store. At just the right size and weight, the device does what it does marvelously. I found it responsive — snappy, says the geek — and almost tactile. Browsing the web on the big, bright screen kicks butt, typing works pretty well, and the audio/video experience cannot be beat. The iPhone owners I have talked to this weekend knew what they were getting, and while some had to overcome minor hurdles to get going with it, they’re generally very pleased.

If you wanted, however, to consider that $500 a business expense to make you a better, stronger, faster thing-doer, then you might want to wait. Among the iPhone’s failings, for example, the fact that it won’t cut, copy, paste, or even select text tops my list. I’d go crazy not being able to grab a snippet from a web page or easily forward just a portion of an email. Very strange, Penny Lane. So, I didn’t buy one, and I’ll have to wait for 2.0.

OK, no more iPhone today, I promise.

Avoid the worst day of your life: File this under “mundane, but vital.” If you store anything of value on your computer, you should know that storage is doomed to fail. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, Ilsa, but hard drives (the main storage mechanisms inside computers) are extremely delicate, and many are faulty right out of the factory.

Please, please, please backup, backup, backup: Always keep multiple copies of everything, and in at least two different places.

To start with, do yourself a favor and go to Mozy.com to sign up for 2 gigabytes of free online backup for personal use. They offer very smooth software for Mac and Windows that waits until you’re not touching your computer, then it backs up any files, or categories of files, you choose.

Extra cool: If you refer a friend to Mozy, they should enter your email address when they sign up, and you will each get an extra 256 megabytes of free storage.

Mozy Pro for business use starts at only $4.45 a month for 1Gb. One lovely alternative is, surprisingly, Amazon’s S3 (“Simple Storage Service”), which costs $0.15/Gb/month. Other online backup services exist, but they tend toward pricey.

It would take too long to back up your whole computer across the internet, so I encourage (read: rabidly demand) that everyone buy at least one “external hard drive” to sit next to your machine and receive daily automatic backups. CompUSA carries several models, as does the Apple Store. Then it’s best to download and set up software to make the backups happen for you. Grab a geek if you need help there.

(Microsoft Windows has semi-OK backup software built in, and Apple’s next version of Mac OS X will include something new and purportedly very snazzy called Time Machine.)

Finally, to be thorough, upload all those precious photos to a site such as flickr.com or picasaweb.google.com. They offer more space than most people will ever need, and you can make images either public or private.

Then kick back and congratulate your wise self. You’re safe to surf.

Next time: nothing about the frickin’ iPhone, maybe.

Jonathan Marcus publishes online at themacwhisperer.blogspot.com.

End User: The Littlest App

Published in San Antonio Current, June 20, 2007

I wanted to like MySpace. But it’s atrocious: ugly, clunky, ad-ridden, the polar opposite of Google. And like so many atrocities, it’s hugely popular. I got nothing from MySpace, however, except spam from pretend women, and as all the tech podcasters I listen to have shunned MySpace and emigrated to Facebook or Virb, I thought I’d give the former a try.

One of Facebook’s features is to scan your address book and look for email addresses of existing Facebook users. Also, searching in Facebook is more efficient, and within two weeks, I got howdy-do’s from three different high school classmates, all of whom I’m glad to hear from.

Turns out that one of my old ’mates, John Lilly (not the late Day of the Dolphin guy), is now COO of Mozilla, the non-profit org that manages development of Firefox, the free, open-source web browser that currently enjoys about 15% browser market share in the U.S. (“Mozilla” was the codename of Netscape Navigator, the first popularly available web browser.)

If you own a Windows computer, and you still use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox, your fly is open and waiting for some nasty digi-bug to crawl into your PC’s trousers and have its way with you. Plus, you’re missing out on blocked web ads and saved browser sessions. (If you rock a Mac, you’re safe on the ’Net, but you should check out Firefox, or Camino, a browser made for the Mac on top of the Firefox engine.)

Coincidentally, my reconnecting with John came at a fun time for browser buffs. First of all, Firefox 3 is on the horizon, with some lovely features such as private browsing. Next, this last Monday, June 13, Apple Computer made a couple of piquing announcements: It has released for Windows a beta version of Safari, the web browser that comes with every Mac; and the iPhone (June 29, y’all!) will run a full version of Safari, supporting Web 2.0.

I hear ya: What the @#$% is Web 2.0? To oversimplify, it’s the movement to make the web less boring than it used to be. You know how, on Netflix, you can put your mouse over a film’s name, and a little balloon pops up with plot and director info? Or if you go to http://www.apple.com, there’s a search blank at top right that now drops down search results as you type. That’s all Web 2.0. Google Documents and Spreadsheets are pure Web 2.0. Which means that, if Apple’s promises are fulfilled, then boom, the iPhone has word processing… IF you have an internet connection. And you will, and it will cost you.

The latest versions of Windows and Mac OS X also have mini apps, called “widgets” or “gadgets,” depending on who you ask. Many of these are created with the same kind of code that makes Web 2.0 tick, and I sniff that Apple intends to make these insta-apps playable on the iPhone.

In his presentation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs presented his vision for the web’s future, in which Internet Explorer and Safari will dominate to the exclusion of all other browsers. So I couldn’t resist asking John Lilly what Mozilla’s thoughts were on Apple’s news. He first got me a very diplomatic statement from Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s vice president of engineering: “Mozilla’s mission is to promote an open, interoperable and participatory Internet. We encourage Apple to put their weight behind open standards and the open Web to help ensure all browser users, regardless of operating system or browser, can enjoy the best possible Web experience.”

I suspected that somewhat stronger feelings ran through the Ethernet at Mozilla HQ. John confirmed this with a post on his blog: “There are a couple of problems [with Apple’s view]. The first is that this isn’t really how the world is. The second is that, irrespective of Firefox, this isn’t how the world should be. A world of tight control from a few companies … destroys participation, it destroys engagement, it destroys self-determination. And, ultimately, it wrecks the quality of the end-user experience, too. Remember when you had to get your phone from AT&T? Good times.”

Yes, I remember that, and I also remember the browser wars between Netscape and IE, when you’d find the words “This site best viewed by Internet Explorer.” To paraphrase Bill the Cat, pppphptpt! I found a thing I wrote about the browser wars back when I didn’t get paid to do so, on a proto-blog in 1998: “Computers connected to the internet will not be truly functional until they all speak the same language.”

I tried Apple’s new Safari, and am pleased that it works better on sites with which Safari used to have problems, sites that until now I have needed Firefox to view. So now I have more choice, and that’s fine. If Apple is simply encouraging development for cool little apps on the iPhone, I like that, too. But if the goal is control, I’m gonna start using Firefox more.

Slow Mac

My Mac has not always been sluggish but now it is, unless I shut it down everyday. It is sporadic. I'm afraid it has something to do with my anti-virus updates but I know nothing about computers. Anyway, it is a PowerBook G4 version 10.3.9 with a processor 1GHz Power PC G4, Memory 564 MB DDR SDRAM.

First of all, I think it’s important to say that you really don’t need virus protection on your Mac, and if it’s what holding things up, it’ll be the first thing I ditch from a Mac.

So, here’s the deal: Your Mac is slow because you have near the bare minimum memory necessary for your computer. Bringing it up to at least 1.5Gb (gigabytes) should help performance a fair bit. I encourage all modern Mac users: Install at least 2Gb (that’s two gigabytes) of RAM, and you’ll have a modern, happy Mac. And if you can afford it, and you’re going to do anything serious with it, take that sucker to 3Gb.

I have, after much observation, found that having less than 1Gb of RAM (memory) can really slow a Mac down, unless one is doing only the most simple things with it — like, word processingwhether it’s on 10.3 or 10.4. (Surfing the web is actually a more intensive task for a computer than one might think.)

Addendums:

#1 – If you’re still using OS X 10.2 Jaguar, you seriously need to upgrade to Tiger 10.4.

#2 – You actually shouldn't have to shut your Mac down unless you are going to be away from it for a while, or unless you have done a software installation or update that requires a restart.

#3 – There are a couple of basic troubleshooting techniques for a slow Mac, but the main one is to use the Activity Monitor, to be found in the Utilities folder inside Applications:

I'd like you to bear with me through the next couple of (brief) paragraphs. It's going to sound quite geeky, but it should help us examine your problem.

When you open Activity Monitor for the first time, you'll want to do two things: Change the "Show" drop-down menu to "All Processes", and click the "% CPU" label. This will show you which applications, or processes, are taxing your computer most.

And at the bottom of the window, you'll see a bar graph. If that graph is almost all black (and your computer is sluggish), then we're looking in the wrong place. If you have a lot of green or red in there (say, more than 20%), I'd like you to call or email me what processes are listed in the window as taking up the most of the resources.

(For kicks, here's a more complete article on using Activity Monitor.)

#4 – Now, here's another, and fairly important question: Do you use a lot of different fonts? If so, try closing them and see what happens. (If you're not sure what I'm talking about, then fonts are not the issue.)

#5 – Finally, there are a couple of maintenance tasks that one can perform. I can walk you through them over the phone. I'll mention that the tool I like to use is Onyx; the version of it for your Mac can be downloaded by clicking here.

Bonjour, kemosabe. Vie gates?: iChat on your private network

Everyone do this with me: Open iChat (if it ain’t in your Dock, it’s in your Applications folder). Click on the Window menu in iChat. If you see Rendezvous, click on that; if you see Bonjour, click on that. If you’re asked to login to that network, click Login.

If everyone in your organization does this, you’ll all see each other in the Rendezvous or Bonjour window. I find sending quick text messages often more civlized — and always more quet — than phone intercom. I know of one office where they change their iChat status to show when they’re in the office or out to lunch, on the phone, etc. …

… Guess most people I know are fairly out to lunch most of the time, but that’s another story.

By the way, you can text to my AIM account s1r4real. If I’m not online, your message will be forwarded to my phone — which is easily set up, by the way, in your AIM preferences.

Also, for folks using a server, Apple is including secure private iChat in the next version of OS X Server.