rich ruminations » Mac OS X

MacWorld 2008 – Live-blogging links

Rich — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:55:23 +0000

Quite a few live blogs for the morning keynote:

Valleywag

My MacWorld Predictions

Rich — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:16:36 +0000

Here are my predictions.

I don’t expect a 2nd generation iPhone yet… but do think a refresh to the current model is likely.

1st Prediction: iPhone RAM increase to 16 GB.

Looking at Apple’s history with the iPod, they followed the initial model design with a smaller version. I think this is likely with the iPhone, for a few reasons. First, some folks just don’t need the Internet access. Second, a lower-priced model would expand the market.

2nd Prediction: iPhone Mini (my name, yeah it sucks, I’m sure Steve and company will come up with something cool)

Lots of press about iTunes movie rentals. This seems likely, so I’ll go along with the crowd.

3rd Prediction: iTunes movie rentals (although I can’t see the reported 24 hour time limit being right, that’s just too short).

But just doing rentals with the existing hardware (iPods, iPhone, AppleTV, and of course Macs) seems incomplete. I think there will be something new here, something using AppleTV and FrontRow, but more interesting to a larger, iPod-savvy market. DVR technology is cool, but the technical issues for Apple to provide a solution that works with OTA, cable, and satellite are significant (witness Tivo’s struggles).

4th Prediction: An AppleTV line, probably three sizes of flat-screen, that includes the existing AppleTV functionality plus much larger hard-disk, and tight integration with Leopard and iDisk.

How about you? I’ve opened comments… Let’s have some fun!

iPhone Synchronization Slowdown caused by Entourage

Rich — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:08:36 +0000

The past several days the once speedy iPhone synchronization process had become glacial. By yesterday morning, a sync was taking 90 minutes.

I observed that the Microsoft Sync Manager was consuming large quantities of CPU frequently as well, and made a guess that Entourage calendar synchronization might be the root cause.

So, I rebuilt the Entourage database, deleted the Entourage calendar from iCal, relaunched Entourage and waited a few hours for it to reload all my email and calendar, re-enabled Entourage calendar synchronization, and now performance has returned to the previous speedy levels – just a minute or so.

Yet another justification for avoiding Microsoft products whenever possible. Unfortunately not possible in this case, as my employer uses Exchange, and refuses to enable IMAP email access — preventing me from using Mail.app. So the Mac users are forced to use Entourage. Yuck.

At least I can use OmniFocus for project management, Pages for word processing, Numbers for spreadsheets, and Keynote for presentations. All far, far superior to the Microsoft offerings.

Java6 for Leopard – My 2 cents

Rich — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:30:14 +0000

13949712720901ForOSX .

1Password Promo – get it free!

Rich — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:56:23 +0000

I previously recommended the 1Password application. There is currently a fantastic promotion to get it for free.

Halloween Pumpkin Screen Saver for Mac OS X

Rich — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:19:20 +0000

Get into the Halloween spirit:

Jack-O-Lantern is a screen saver that displays a carved 3D pumpkin. The pumpkin is recreated in loving detail right down to the flickering candle inside. Several carving designs are included, and you can even create your own to be displayed. No getting your hands dirty carving the real thing. Artificial pumpkin smell not included.

I’ve got it installed on my MacBook Pro, works great on the built-in screen as well as the external 20″ screen.

Get it here.

Problems with Leopard Install?

Rich — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:40:12 +0000

This doesn’t look good:

Leopard BSOD

This is gonna leave a mark.

Releasing stuff on Friday is great, if it works, but then again, there’s always that danger of the Monday morning headline – APPLE’S NEW OS BRICKS THOUSANDS OF MACS.

Probably not going to be that bad, but it might be close.

Wow. You’d think after some of the buffoonery with the iPhone, the last thing that Apple needed/wanted was to put out something that would immediately annoy a significant number of people.

Well, they have. OS X 10.5 Leopard has…issues. Primarily, the upgrade installation option (which, after carefully reading the accompanying material, a LOT of people will try right off the bat) has a very, VERY nasty habit of leaving you staring at one of the last things a recent Apple user expects to see.

A Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). Well, not really a true hallmark Windoze BSOD, with indecipherable HEX included. It just . . . hangs. And refuses to start.

(Via Instapundit.com.)

I checked Macslash and some users there are reporting issues as well. I’m glad I decided to wait, hopefully Apple will sort this out quickly.

PC icon in Leopard

Rich — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:19:38 +0000

Hilarious

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Analyst: Apple shares ‘going to $600’

Rich — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:21:16 +0000

MacDailyNews – Daedalus Capital CIO: Apple shares ‘going to $600’.

Wow.

A new software app worth checking out

Rich — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:00:33 +0000

Keeping track of passwords, credit card info, account numbers, combinations, and other personal data has become an important activity for many of us. For the past four or five years I’ve used the SplashID application, because it has both a Mac and Palm client, and can sync the data between them. SplashID was a must-have for me as a long-time Treo user.

Alas, with the iPhone, a new solution was needed, as SplashID isn’t available for the iPhone, and hasn’t had much attention on the Mac in several years.

I’ve been beta testing a cool utility called 1Password, which manages passwords, credit card, and other personal/private data. The UI is very nice, the features good. Full integration with all the usual Mac Web browsers, and data is maintained in the OS Keychain, fully encrypted and safe.

I’ve been beta testing the new 2.5 version the past few months. This version adds clever support for the iPhone. To work around the current inability to create an approved native iPhone application, 1Password creates a Safari bookmark that has the entire database encrypted and embedded, as well as a nice Javascript-based UI for accessing the data.

Version 2.5 is now shipping, if you are an iPhone user, give it a look.Â

Google Maps Plugin for Address Book

Rich — Mon, 15 May 2006 19:49:37 +0000

Well-done plugin, I especially like the directions function.

Google Maps Plugin for Address Book

Apple’s New Ads

Rich — Tue, 02 May 2006 04:15:02 +0000

Apple has several new ads running on network and cable TV. They are part of a new “Get a Mac” campaign.

They’re available for viewing on the Apple Web site:

http://www.apple.com/getamac/

I like ‘em… hip, cool, and to the point.

Cool Mac OS X Widget – xCuts

Rich — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:24:35 +0000

This looks useful… I’m always forgetting keyboard shortcuts that would save me time.

xCuts:

As amazing as it may seem, until now the Dashboard has been missing a key utility that will be especially welcome by recent Windows or Linux switchers as well as other newcomers to Mac OS X. xCuts finally puts a full reference of Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts at your fingertips in the Dashboard.

This widget is powered by an external MySQL database that will be updated periodically with new information, allowing you to easily browse or search its contents. The xCuts are organized by Category, Scope, and Object, and you can even drill down to a second cross-referenced level if you need to. Or just use the fast live search form!

xCuts includes tips on the use of certain shortcuts, and it’s designed to let you copy and paste shortcuts to external documents. This resizable widget uses Ajax and the terrific Script.aculo.us (http://script.aculo.us) effects library to work its visual magic. When you’re done, click the title to compact xCuts down to a tiny lozenge for later use.

Long-term Apple secret project revealed

Rich — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 16:14:40 +0000

Chuq Von Rospach spills the beans on a top-secret Apple project.

Chax 1.4 is released – now with Tabs!

Rich — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 20:16:12 +0000

Chax, the very cool plugin for iChat, has been updated to version 1.4. Several new features, most notable is support for Tabbed windows when you have multiple chat sessions in progress. I’ve been running the beta version for the past few weeks with no problems.

Check it out, and if you use it, be sure to leave a donation.

Chax 1.4 public beta now available

Rich — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:49:40 +0000

Chax is a plugin for iChat that provides some very cool features. I’ve written about it previously here, here and here.

I’ve been beta testing Chax 1.4 the past few days. Lots of nice improvements, but the biggest is probably a new tabbed interface — this really helps when you’ve got multiple chats in progress. A public beta is now available, so check it out. The beta has been very stable, no problems at all.

I’m a heavy iChat user (as are most folks where I work), and Chax is really well-done. And keeps getting better.

Ecto and Endo

Rich — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 19:46:36 +0000

I’ve never used a newsreader… never really could see the benefit. Lately though, as my consumption of blog content as increased, I’ve noticed that my browsing habits were just not efficient… too often going to blogs with no new content, or with content that while new, I wasn’t interested in.

Yesterday I found out about a new newsreader product: Endo.

Very nicely done. And from the same guy who is responsible for Ecto, a popular blog editing application (both Mac and Windows). I decided to give Ecto a try, and in fact this is my first post using Ecto. Seems pretty nice so far. Certainly much more elegant than using the standard or enhanced Web browser interface to WordPress that I’m used to.

Chax updated

Rich — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:23:47 +0000

I’ve previously posted about Chax, a very useful plugin for iChat.

Version 1.3.2 has just been released, with these changes:

(New) Automatically set status to away when the screen saver is activated
(New) Basic Growl notifications for text invitation and text message received
(Feature improvemet) Set custom font for group separators
(Bugfix) Joining a new group chat properly focuses on the window
(Bugfix) Saved preferred screen names ignores offline users
(Bugfix) Fixed a bug where an NSArray exception would be thrown (-[NSCFArray objectAtIndex:]: index (0) beyond bounds (0))
(Bugfix) Sending away auto-replies when using an ICQ account no longer sends HTML formatting
(Bugfix) Minor UI changes in the preferences

I’ve been running the beta for the past few days, it’s been rock-solid.

The new feature to automatically set the status to away when the screen saver is activated is awesome. I’ve been wanting this capability in iChat for a long time, and now I’ve got it. No more need to remember to change my status prior to walking away from the computer (I always invoke the screen saver, with the OS X feature that requires the password to wake the computer from sleep or screen saver).

Computer operating systems and choice

Rich — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:54:27 +0000

My friend Willie notes that he won’t use Windows. He’s a smart fellow, and intuitively knows about the choices you have when selecting an operating system:

Easy
Secure
Windows

Pick Any Two.

More about Chax

Rich — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 04:10:33 +0000

A few days ago I briefly mentioned a plugin for iChat called Chax. I’ve now had a few days with it, and installed the latest update, 1.3.1 today. Lots of useful features, here are a few of my favorites:

built-in chat log viewer
send away auto-reply only once per conversation
option to auto-accept text chats, skipping new message notification window
show status changes directly in the message window
display new message notifications in the dock, and choose between displaying the number of unread messages or the senders of the messages

If you use iChat, you should check it out.