Inspirational Technology

Panther Developer Notes

Panther developer notes: Ink Services, Perl, more
Scriptable Printing: Panther's printing system supports an enhanced Apple Event for printing that enables script creators to define settings like page range, number of copies, and more. - Perl 5.8.1: - Apple is introducing a new Ink Services API in Panther so that developers can take advantage of Ink input for their applications and integrate Ink further into their software. - vImage: Apple has publicly demonstrated Panther's image editing capabilities, such as the ability to set up a folder action that automatically processes images, resizing or converting them as they are dropped in - QuickTime: In preliminary documentation for Panther's installation of QuickTime, Apple playfully dubs it "QuickTime Reloaded." Panther's version has a number of new APIs -- over 50 new documented APIs for Panther. - GCC 3.3: As Apple has announced, Panther's Xcode development suite includes GCC 3.3 as the default OS X compiler for C, C++, Objective-C, and Objective-C++. [Studio Log]

Java 1.4.1 Update

Apple has released an update to the 1.4.1 JDK for Mac OS X, hopefully this will fix the majority of my complaints about it and enable it to run jEdit without any problems. I hope they at least fixed the crasher that would take down the entire window system.

I've been running jEdit with the 1.3.1 VM for a couple weeks and it works fairly well, but the lack of scroll mouse support is really annoying.

Cocoa Literature List

Cocoa Literature List
is page of Cocoa articles broken down by topic. Lot's of good stuff listed there.

Powermac G5 Pictures

Here's a really nice photo essay of the Powermac G5 internals. The G5 may just be a computer, but it seems that Apple's attention to detail is getting even better, the thing is a work of industrial art.

Excelsior

Michael Tsai has posted a pointer to Excelsior!, an XML data binding tool for Cocoa apps. It looks pretty decent and includes a mechanism that uses XPath style accessors to retrieve pieces of data (it's not actually XPath, just looks similar). This is a much needed tool for Cocoa applications.

Mac OS X Panther: Approaching First Candidate

MacRumors is reporting that Apple seeded Panther and XCode 7B53 versions today. Other news around is saying that they're nearing release candidate status. For me Panther isn't really all that exciting, except Expose that is. That's something I'm really looking forward to.

Porsche designs new line of LaCie drives

LaCie on Tuesday announced plans to begin shipping a new line of DVD drives designed by Porsche Design GmbH this month. The drives will offer DVD-RW and DVD+RW technologies in one device and sport FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connectivity. The company is also offering a Porsche-designed CD-RW drive and external hard drives. [MacCentral]

Wow, it's amazing how companies so incredibly misstep like this. I have one of the Lacie d2 design hard drives and I think it looks very cool. These new drives by F.A. Porsche are just ugly and considering the comments on the MacCentral article that seems to be the prevailing opinion.

Lacie made a huge mistake with this change, slapping the Porsche name on it isn't going to save it. I'm going to guess this company must have new management or something, nothing else can explain such a serious screw up.

You might wonder why anyone would care what an external harddrive looks like, well...yeah it's kind of silly, but oh well.

Java on Mac OS X

I mentioned in my rant about window proliferation on Mac OS X that I was looking at using JEdit as a solution. It turns out JEdit is almost a perfectly workable solution, through various plugins I was able to get it to do everything that I wanted and it felt close enough to a native app to not drive me crazy. Unfortunately, all is not well in this world.

The JDK on Mac OS X has some serious problems when running JEdit. With the 1.4 JDK the VM crashes far too often. This shouldn't be JEdit's fault as it's the VM that's crashing. Unless jEdit is running some native code a Java app should never be able to crash the VM. This wouldn't have been a huge deal as JEdit is really good about saving its current state, just restarting the app is a minor annoyance. However, the real problem is that sometimes when the VM crashes it takes the whole WindowServer process down with it. This results in instant termination of all your running apps and getting logged out of the system. To say that's a bit of a problem is an understatement.

When you install jEdit it recommends that you use the 1.3 VM. Unfortunately doing this also results in the loss of a number of functions (in particular mouse scroll wheel support) and substantially changes the display of the app (i.e. tab layouts). Also if you turn on the hardware acceleration it has problems with garbled text and incorrect positioning in text areas. Running without mouse scroll wheel support is extremely annoying.

I'm quite disappointed with the current situation of Java on Mac OS X for running GUI apps. I've had no problems with it running server apps, it seems most of the current problems can be traced to the things they're doing with Swing, i.e hardware acceleration and the switch to the Cocoa toolkit for GUIs in 1.4. This stuff will be great once it's fully stable, but I've heard nothing about progress in this area for some time.

I'm still trying to make do with jEdit running on the 1.3 VM with no hardware acceleration. However, I would definitely prefer to be able to take advantage of the 1.4 features, that scroll wheel thing can really spoil you.

SubEthaEdit 1.1.3

Well Hydra finally has a new name, SubEthaEdit and an absolutely horrible one it is too. Douglas Adams references aside. Oh well, I guess it's better then calling it #####.

NetNewsWire 1.0.4

NetNewsWire 1.0.4 has been released. I've been using the beta and it's strange but I actually prefer the old broken renderer to the new Web Kit based renderer. Not sure why. I just started using it though so I'm sure I'll change my mind after a bit.

Desktop Pro Natural Keyboard

The last couple days I've been having some pain in my wrist and after examining how I was typing I decided it was time to switch back to a split keyboard. I had one of the original Microsoft Natural Keyboards several years ago, but ended up giving it to my girlfriend at the time. I liked it, but for some reason ended up preferring a regular keyboard again, don't remember why. Anyway, today I wanted to get another Natural Keyboard and it turns out Microsoft has really screwed up the product line. From what I can see they currently offer three different natural keyboards and all of them have compromises. Either they're PS2 only, have little tiny cursor keys, or are bundled with a mouse. I ended up with a Microsoft Optical Desktop Pro which is a combo keyboard mouse deal. I'm not too enthused about having to buy the mouse, but there was no option. I needed a USB keyboard with normal sized arrow keys and this is the only one Microsoft makes anymore. I also didn't want a wireless keyboard as batteries are just an extra expense for no real benefit. I never move the keyboard off the desk. Ugg, oh well. Anyway, the keyboard itself is pretty decent and the drivers for Mac OS X seem to work pretty well.

I spent about an hour remapping all the special keys on the keyboard and I think they make a great addition. You can pretty much program them to do whatever you want. With the media control center on the keyboard you also don't lose any of the functionality of the standard Apple Pro keyboard. Actually you pick up quite a bit like being able to hit play and having it launch iTunes and start playing automatically plus easily skip forward and backward. That's a great feature that I had previously been using PTHiTunesNotifier to provide via multikey hot keys. I'm actually a little surprised, but Microsoft did a great job of integrating the keyboard with Mac OS X.

The bad thing about this combo is that the mouse isn't all that great. It's designed to be usable in either hand and suffers a poorly designed shape because of this. My initial thought was that I would just keep using my Logitech Cordless MouseMan Optical and hook the Microsoft mouse to my Tablet PC, unfortunately, the mouse and keyboard share the same receiver so that's not possible. So I either end up ditching the Microsoft mouse and keep using the Logitech, or I use the Microsoft mouse and hook the Logitech to my tablet. I'd just as soon not have the mouse at all, it's very disappointing that they only sell this as a bundle.

Another small complaint about this is that the receiver is rather large and has an extra PS2 connector on the end. This isn't a huge deal really, it just conflicts with my desire for clean design.

Overall if you need a split keyboard for a Macintosh running OS X, the Optical Desktop Pro isn't a bad choice. It's just unfortunate that the price is inflated by the inclusion of an inferior quality mouse. Oh yeah, the whole point of buying this thing was to relax my wrists. They're definitely feeling much better now.

Interview with a Developer of ##### (aka Hydra)

O'Reilly is running an interesting interview with one of the developers of the app formally known as Hydra. It's interesting to read about their motivations and it's completely discouraging to think again about the problems they're having with the name.

Still thinking about Blosxom

I'm still thinking about converting this site to running on a Blosxom derivative, in particular on Pyblosxom. I spent a fair amount of time over the last week getting everything working in a test setup and I've worked everything out, except I'm worried about the performance of it. Even running on my dual 1.25Ghz Powermac there's a noticeable delay when viewing a page. This concerns me as the server this site runs on is only a dual 266Mhz Pentium II. I haven't tested it on this machine yet. This really shouldn't be a major problem as this site doesn't get all that much traffic and the network is kind of slow anyway, but CGI scripts always bug me. This is the one good thing about MovableType, it's slow to post, but that's because it creates static pages for everything.

The Perl version of Blosxom can also be used to generate static pages, the Python version can't.

So far I've written four plugins for Pybosxom to make it as compatible with the current site as possible. I had to add RSS 1.0 support, Textile formatting support and a post body summarize function. Along with these I also created a new plugin that tracks referrers and hit counts on a per post basis. That one was more my experimenting with Berkeley DB XML then anything, but it's very useful.

Anyway, now I'm stuck trying to decide whether to go with Pyblosxom, go with the original Perl Blosxom or to punt on the whole thing and just stick with MovableType.

Windows, windows everywhere

There's one thing that absolutely drives me crazy about Mac OS X and that's the proliferation of windows. I've been using Hydra (aka #####) as my editor of choice for the last few months and the number of windows I end up with is astonishing. I've been aggressive at closing stuff and right now I still have 18 windows open in Hydra alone. Back when my machine was having to reboot every day or so it wasn't a huge problem, but now that it's finally stable I can't take it anymore. I have never understood why people think having so many windows is a good thing, but all the major Mac OS X text editors are like this. The only exception is Project Builder, which unfortunately isn't all that great as a general purpose editor.

Today I finally broke down and downloaded jEdit again. This was my editor of choice back when I used Linux all the time. When I moved to Mac OS X I stopped using it because at that point in time Java was just too slow on Mac OS X. I've looked at jEdit off and on since then and have always been annoyed by it because it's just ugly and I really wanted to use a Cocoa application as an editor since I use TextExtras. Anyway, the thing I liked about jEdit is that everything is in one window and you can have your choice of ways to manage open documents. I prefer the tabbed approach and that was what I always used on Linux. It is so much more productive then trying to find a particular window in a whole mess of windows or even finding it in the list on the window menu.

What perplexes me is that people screamed like crazy for tabs in Safari and I see constant criticism (including my own) of Omniweb because it doesn't have tabs, yet every other Mac application has a gazillion windows. This doesn't make much sense to me. If tabs are good in Safari they should be good in a text editor or any other application too. Maybe I just don't understand this particular Macism.

At least to me it seems there's a real need for a solid Cocoa editor for Mac OS X that supports good syntax highlighting, has a good plugin architecture and doesn't open a new window for every file. Project Builder could actually be good if it had a better way to access files in the file system without adding them to a project. The way it works now is good for things like Cocoa applications where you have a bunch of files that make up the project, it just doesn't work very well for writing Python scripts and such. If it could just add a file system browser along with the project browser it would probably be workable.

One thing I am curious about, is if my opinion will change once Panther is out and I can use Expose. I've been seeing comments that people are starting to use tabs in Safari less often because of this. I hope that's the case, because the current window proliferation is really unproductive and in my opinion a fairly significant flaw with the Mac experience. I wonder if I'll even be able to read the windows in Expose, I must have 60 windows open right now.

Google Calculator

Google has a calculator. You just type an expression in the search field and it gives you the results. First thought ... how useless. Second thought, does it work from the search box in Safari, yes of course. Third thought, how very useful, it's actually faster then firing up calculator and clicking on the buttons (don't know why I always click instead of type the numbers, stupid me). Google: web services that actually work.

Legal Troubles For Hydra

Hydra is in trouble over their name. This naming thing is starting to get really annoying. If you ever wondered why the Xindice project has such a weird name, here's your answer. When I came up with the Xindice name I spent a lot of time using the Babelfish translator and google searches to come up with something that was somewhat meaningful somewhere, yet didn't show up in Google results. Indice is Spanish and Italian (among others) for index, it's also used in english as a plural form of index. Xindice is a made up word of course, but at least now when you type it into a search engine you're pretty much sure you'll get information about the Xindice native XML database. It also means the probability of a naming conflict is small. Obviously Google isn't authoritative on global naming, but it's better then nothing when you can't afford a trademark lawyer. I like naming things using made up words.

Ahh, sweet uptime

12:25AM up 7 days, 8:52, 2 users, load averages: 0.19, 0.24, 0.30

Seven days seems like such a small achievement, but it's been a real struggle to get there with my desktop PowerMac. This is the first time that machine has stayed up that long, ever! This is what Mac OS X is supposed to be like. Not a single application crash all week either. So let me redouble my recommendation that if you buy RAM for a PowerMac, buy it from Crucial.

Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

This is a must read/bookmark for any Mac user. A list of all the standard keyboard shortcuts.

PyObjC gearing up for 1.0

This week Ronald Oussoren posted the following on the PyObjC mailing list: I think it is about time to do a 1.0 release. All bugs I know of have been fixed, and the end-user documentation is good enough. That doesn't... [Artima Python Buzz] Excellent! PyObjC is a very cool project. Especially since I like the XML support in Python so much better then what's available in Objective C.

Installing Berkeley DB XML on Mac OS X with Python and Perl API support

I just wanted to post some notes about installing Sleepycat Berkeley DB XML on Mac OS X 10.2 with Perl and Python support. The builds are relatively straight forward and Sleepycat has posted a simple script to help build Berkeley DB XML it self. However, it isn't clear what is necessary to get Perl and Python working.

The most important thing, before you start compiling anything, make sure you have the latest GCC 3.3 from Apple. This is distributed as a patch to the December 2002 developer tools. This is critical, without it Python and Perl support will not work.

Next, unfortunately, you'll have to build a new Perl and Python. The Mac OS X 10.2 Python should be the right version, but I couldn't get it to work. Building a fresh Python 2.3 does work. For Perl, Mac OS X includes Perl 5.6 and Berkeley DB XML requires 5.6.1 so you have to build a new one. I used Perl 5.8.0 and it seems to work fine. So you have to build a new Python, a new Perl and the Berkeley DB XML distribution. These should all build using the standard instructions and for DB XML you can use their script.

Once you have all that built, you can then build the DB XML Perl and Python libraries.

For Python you first need to build and install bsddb3, once that's done you can build the python support for DB XML in the usual Python fashion. Make sure the python you're using is the one you built previously. Unless you specified otherwise, it's installed in /usr/local/bin/python.

cd dbxml-1.1.0/src/python
/usr/local/bin/python setup.py build
sudo /usr/local/bin/python setup.py install

There's an example Python program in dbxml-1.1.0/examples/python/examples.py that you can run to test the build.

For Perl you just build it in the usual Perl manner. Again, make sure you use the perl you compiled.

cd dbxml-1.1.0/src/perl
/usr/local/bin/perl Makefile.PL
make
sudo make install

There are some examples for the Perl API in dbxml-1.1.0/src/perl/examples.

Another Omniweb feature

Just noticed that in Omniweb when you're viewing a web page it supports type down selection of links on the page. Just type the first few characters of the link and it will highlight the link and then you just hit enter to follow it. Pretty cool. Mozilla can sort of do this, but it doesn't seem to work as well. Safari, apparently, doesn't support it at all.

OmniWeb and eMusic

Unfortunately it looks like Omniweb has a bug that keeps it from working with eMusic. That's too bad, as Omniweb also has another feature that Safari lacks; the ability to control which files get automatically opened after download. This has always been annoying as it made downloading from eMusic a multistep process when using Safari. I just reported the bug, so hopefully it will get fixed soon.

OmniWeb 4.5 Final

OmniGroup has released the final release of OmniWeb 4.5. This is the first release of OmniWeb that uses the Safari rendering engine and it seems quite nice.

OmniWeb was the first browser I used regularly after getting annoyed with IE. It always rendered beautifully, but suffered from poor performance and weak standards support. With the new release both of those problems have been solved and it still renders beautifully. It's really interesting to compare how it looks to Safari. Even though they use the same engine, Omniweb still comes out looking better. For one thing, they use different default fonts and colors and I like OmniGroup's choices. It's actually really surprising how much of a difference there is.

It's great to see this release. A lot of people thought Safari would mean the death of Omniweb, but Omnigroup is smart and now we can get two different interpretations on the same basic rendering engine. I don't know how much I'll use Omniweb, but this release puts them back on the playing field and it's fun to check it out. Here's what I see so far that I really like.

• HTML source view with syntax checking and highlighting. This has been in Omniweb for a while, but it's a nice feature and much better then the very basic source view in Safari.

• Better looking fonts.

• Spell checking turned on by default. Safari supports spell checking but you have to turn it on for each text field, which is really pretty silly.

• Searchable history so that you can search sites you've visited yet can't quite remember where you saw something. Seems like a feature that could be quite useful. May have been in old Omniwebs, but I wasn't aware of it at the time if it was.

• Auto checking of bookmarks to tell you when they've been modified. This is a feature that I was actually thinking of firing up Omniweb to try out again. It might be enough to get me to use it more as I'm working on a project where I want to monitor a large number of sites for changes.

• Omniweb isn't overly aggressive when caching files like Safari. I had such a problem with this when editing my MovableType templates that I had to start using Mozilla to do all the edits.

• And the number one killer feature that no other browser has, zoomable text fields. This is an awesome feature that gets you out of the stupid fixed size text areas that are so annoying on web sites. When you use a text area Omniweb adds a little button above the scroll bar that zooms it out into a new window that is fully resizable. Outstanding! I'm going to play with this more, but this feature alone may be enough to get me to use Omniweb as my main browser. Like Safari's aggressive caching this has been a major problem in editing the MovableType templates as the text area is always too small.

Hmm, OK, I'm liking this thing more and more. I'm going to give it another day or two and then I'll probably spring for a license. The only thing missing is tabs, we'll see if I can live without them. I'd definitely say Omniweb is back and I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes in the future now that they can focus on value add rather then just rendering problems.

Mac OS X Directory Services

O'Reilly Mac Dev Center has posted the first installment of a series of articles about Directory services under Mac OS X, including lookng at integration with Active Directory. Looks like it's going to be a pretty interesting series on a topic that is definitely under-documented.

Real closes on listen.com Rhapsody

Real has taken over the keys to listen.com Rhapsody, I guess it's time to count the days until it goes from being a great service to utter crap. I really like Rhapsody, even though it's windows only. Having access to such a huge library is incredible and is pretty close to what I want out of a music service. Unfortunately, Real Media isn't exactly known for providing quality services and I'm not at all looking forward to their influence on the service coming into effect. Usability of the current service isn't perfect, but I'll be very, very surprised if it actually improves under the control of Real. In fact I bet it goes to hell with all kinds of crap ads, cross promotion of stupid products, spam, spyware and who knows what else. It will be even worse if they try to change it into a pay-per download model, I'll instantly slam it and never go back. The model they already have is great, unfortunately things started out poorly and there's a lot of negative perceptions that need to be adjusted. Going to a stupid pay-per download model will just ruin it. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, Real does have a good opportunity. Taking the Rhapsody model and combining it together with the ability to purchase songs for download could be awesome. That's the model I want to see. I'd gladly pay Apple $10-$15 per month for this ability with the iTunes Music Store. To be able to listen to the whole catalog unlimited while at the computer and then have the option to buy tracks for download to take elsewhere or make CDs would be absolutely great. I think Apple missed the boat on this one. Of course if Real does it, the files will be in who knows what format and will have all kinds of nasty headache inducing restrictions that will ruin it. The model is killer though, and someone will eventually do it. Apple certainly could. It's a minor step from sending 30 second samples to sending full on demand tunes and the purchasing process already works great.

Sometimes less is more

Stevenf is comparing the Sony P800 with a Palm Tungstun T2 and finding that the P800 isn't so great after all. Clearly a case of less is more and once again shows how lots of features does not necessarily a good product make. For a reminder on my thoughts on the subject just read my opinion of the Acer Tablet PC. I really wish more companies would recognize this and just build better products. I guess good products aren't what sell, although it appears the Compaq TC1000 is the most popular Tablet PC and I'd say that can be 100% attributed to it's superior usability and quality design. It sure isn't because it's fast.

If you ever want to see an extreme case of this just visit a high end audio store and then compare what's on the shelf to what you find in the local Best Buy. Best Buy is full of blinking lights and audio components with buttons for their buttons. In high end stores the higher up the line you go the fewer buttons and the fewer lights you're going to find. What you will find are products that do the job better then anything and don't need flash to sell. The most expensive components are also often the ones that are the simplest to use. It's really quite sad that companies feel that it's necessary to fill products will all this junk that looks cool, but is really pretty useless. The user experience is almost always bad and the percentage of consumers who actually use anything beyond the most basic features is tiny. I used to have a dolby digital receiver and even though I'm a complete technology geek I could barely figure out anything beyond the basics and if someone else ever came over ... well just forget about it. I'll take the simpler and more usable piece every time.

Rendezvous Implementation for Windows and Linux

Rendezvous is something I really wish Microsoft would include in Windows, until they do there's Howl. It looks like it's a fairly simple C API and works on both Windows and Linux. Pointer from Hack the Planet

Crucial is fast

As I mentioned in my post about Mac OS X and RAM I had to order new RAM from Crucial. I ordered it Saturday morning with their default 2 day shipping and even though it wasn't scheduled to arrive until Wednesday, it showed up today. Thankfully! Running on 256MB of RAM made the machine perform about as fast as my old Pentium 200, it's horrible. So I'll reiterate, I can't believe Apple still ships machines with only 128MB of RAM! I can't even imagine what that must be like. The machines should at least be usable out of the box and with 128MB or 256MB of RAM they're just not.

Extra thankfully, it seems the Crucial RAM works correctly and I'm optimistic that it finally solves the problems I was seeing. So my advice, if you have a recent Powermac that has constant but random application crashes make sure you have really good RAM. Even brands like Kingston aren't good enough and if you're buying RAM, buy it from Crucial. Even if all the RAM checks out in the hardware tests and the Apple store runs all their tests against it and it passes, it can still be the RAM. Whatever the problem is, it's very subtle. I also know that this is not just a problem with this particular box, I tried the RAM in another FW800 Powermac and it had the exact same problem. Five sticks, none of which run stable. Talk about frustrating.

Mac OS X and RAM

One of the major criticisms of Mac OS X has been that it's sluggish. This is especially common among people who just play with the systems as they come stock. Clearly Mac OS X is a big advancement over previous OS platforms and is a bit sluggish on older hardware because of this. However, Apple isn't helping things much because it doesn't ship Macs with nearly enough RAM. I'm mentioning this now because I'm forced to run my dual processor 1.25Ghz Powermac on just the stock 256MB of RAM that came with it. It's so slow to run it this way, even with only a few applications open switching between apps takes way too long. It seems it's hitting swap every single time. It makes the machine feel like it's about 1/10 the speed that it really is. Until today I had 2GB of RAM and the machine ran extremely fast, I'd seen no sluggishness at all. Take out that RAM though and performance just dies. I consider it shameful that Apple is still shipping Macs with 128MB or 256MB of RAM. That's just not enough and will kill peoples impressions of system performance if they don't know any better. 256MB for a Windows XP box is perfectly acceptable for normal usage, Mac OS X needs at least 512MB and really I consider 1GB a realistic minimum. Some Macs, including the 12" Powerbook, don't even support 1GB. Even the base G5 only comes with 256MB stock, that's pathetic on a $2000 machine.

So you might ask why did I pull the RAM then? Well, while the machine was extremely fast, it was also extremely unstable. It seems the FW800 Powermacs are VERY picky about the RAM they use. I've had system instability with this machine from the day I got it and after two trips to the Apple store nothing was found. Because of the problem I was seeing, I suspected the third party RAM and spent many hours swapping sticks to try things out. At one point I even went out and bought two brand new 512MB sticks of RAM from a different brand and had the same problem with those. This left me with five 512MB sticks of RAM and I just couldn't believe that all of them were bad. Well, I'm now pretty convinced that they aren't bad, but they are all incompatible with the machine. Even though they're all the correct kind of RAM and from reasonable brands (Kingston and Simple Tech) they cause all kinds of random application crashes.

The situation was complicated because I have actually seen two different and unrelated problems with this machine. While diagnosing the first problem I ruled out RAM problems because it occurred with all the RAM I had, including the stock Apple RAM. It turns out it was a software problem that was freezing the GUI. Unfortunately, that problem also steered me down the wrong path toward resolving the second problem. In particular I didn't try the stock Apple RAM by itself again until yesterday. My main test for the instability was playing Warcraft III. I've never been able to play it without it crashing within about 10 minutes, happens every single time. Last night with the stock 256MB of RAM only, I was finally able to play it for a couple hours. It's the first time I've ever actually had to manually quit the game, prior to that it was always nice enough to just quit for me.

So, the moral of this story is that if you have a PowerMac, buy lots of RAM and ALSO make sure it's from a vendor well known for Apple compatibility. From what I've seen from reading the support forums on Apple's site, Crucial seems to be the safest place. I ordered two more sticks of 512MB RAM from them last night, hopefully it will actually work right.

With PCs I always bought the cheapest RAM I could find and never once had a problem, and I've owned a lot of PCs. I also never had any problems with the RAM I bought for my Cube and my Powerbook using that same philosophy. It makes me really wonder if there's a design flaw in these FW800 Powermacs that limits their RAM compatibility. There are a number of people posting on the Apple discussion boards that they have similar problems. What's so bad about this though, none of the memory tests detect the problem and the machine seems to work fine most of the time. It's just plagued with a higher then normal quantity of application crashes. Worse still, sometimes the application that crashes is the window server, this problem manifests itself as you being instantly logged out and taking all your open apps down with it. It's a nasty, nasty problem and extremely destructive to productivity.

Playing with Synergy

I've been experimenting with different ways of using the Tablet PC together with the Mac and in my efforts I decided to see if I could figure out a way to share the keyboard and mouse between them. I'm not aware of any software that can do this directly between a Mac and a Windows XP machine. I'm not talking about a KVM switch type of thing, I have one of those too and I don't like it. I want to share via software over the network so that mouse movements on the Mac are translated into mouse movements on the Tablet and you can do things like share the clipboard across as well.

For the most part I use the Remote Desktop client (RDC) and it works pretty well, but I don't like the fact it locks the Tablet display. I'd like to be able to still use the Tablet PC screen while also using the Mac's keyboard with it. I'd rather have a more RDC like integration, but more for just sharing the keyboard and mouse rather than doing remote display.

Right now I'm playing with Synergy. Synergy allows you to share a mouse and keyboard between multiple machines running Linux or Windows. It basically does exactly what I want, except it doesn't appear to support the Mac yet. What I've been experimenting with is using another windows PC to run the Synergy software and then using it to control the Tablet PC. So basically what I have is an RDC connection to my Dell laptop running Windows XP and then use it to control the tablet. It almost works too. The major problem is that the mouse doesn't track right, it jumps all over the place. The keyboard does work though. You can also copy from the Mac and then paste on the tablet, but going the other direction doesn't seem to quite work. The clipboard makes it to the Dell Windows PC, but not through the RDC connection to the Mac.

I also tried ShareKMC and it has the same mouse problem.

Overall it's been an interesting experiment, hopefully some day Synergy will add support for Mac OS X. When it does, it should be an excellent solution for integrating multiple machines together.

Backing up an iTunes Library

As I've been ripping my CD collection (1,000 ripped so far, about 1,500 still to go) and downloading from eMusic I've built a quite large library of music. This represents way too many hours of time to reproduce so it's pretty critical to back it up. I've struggled with this issue for a long time and have been mainly relying on multiple hard drives to handle backup duties. This is actually the most cost effective mechanism, but at the rate I'm consuming disk space it's also problematic. I'm currently up to about 100GB of data and will probably consume another 150GB before I'm done with my CD collection. I'm also uncomfortable with having everything tied to the one machine. So I finally broke down and bought a DVD burner so that I can have a portable non-HD based backup. I picked up a Pioneer DVR-105 at Frys for $179, this is basically the same drive as what Apple calls the Superdrive and will work with iDVD if installed internally in the machine. I don't really care about iDVD, but it's nice to have it available.

Tonight I started the process of backing everything up. I figure it will take about 23 discs to handle the current data and then I'll add discs as necessary going forward. I'm looking at doing the backups in iTunes and the process I'm using seems to work fairly well. Here's the process as it stands.

• Create an empty playlist
• Add the entire library to the playlist (just drag the Library icon)
• Set Preferences/Burning/Disc Format to Data CD or DVD
• Use a blank DVD-R and tell iTunes to burn the playlist.
• iTunes asks if you want to burn it as a data DVD which you do.
• ITunes then tells you the entire playlist won't fit and asks if you just want to burn the part that will. So yes.
• When the disc is done iTunes automatically mounts it and switches the view to the disc.
• Find out how many tracks burned on the disc.
• Go back to the backup playlist and select the first track in the list.
• Scroll until you find the number of the last track that was burned. This will be the same as the number of tracks on the disc.
• Hold down shift and click that track.
• Hit delete to remove all selected tracks from the playlist.
• Burn another DVD and repeat the process until all the tracks are gone.

For ongoing backups I'm planning to leverage iTunes smart playlists by creating a smart playlist that shows all tracks added since the date of the last backup. Using that playlist I'll then use the procedure I outlined above. After each backup I'll just update the date on the smart playlist. I'll probably do this about once per month and rely on HD backup during that period.

I figured this is a much easier way then trying to backup from the file system directly. The problem is spanning discs and keeping track of where you are in the process. It will also be kind of a pain going forward as you add more tracks

Hopefully this will work fairly well. The one thing I'm a little concerned about is restoring the discs. The files are written to the discs in a flat manner, rather then using the directory based mechanism iTunes usually uses. What I figured I'd do was just reimport the files off the DVD into iTunes. This is the one problem with these discs though, as I'm pretty sure it will import the file as a new record in the iTunes database. This means you'll lose all the existing metadata that is associated with that song. This is one advantage to just backing up the files from the file system directly.

Does anyone know of a better way to handle this kind of thing without resorting to a backup program like Retrospect?

Two Computers, One Set of Speakers

Since I've been using my Tablet PC a lot to listen to music from listen.com Rhapsody, I wanted an easy way to share the speakers that are hooked up to my desktop Mac. My first thought of course was to just run a splitter to the speakers and then hook it to both systems. My second thought was that that is probably a bad idea, but I tried it anyway. It of course isn't a good idea. The much simpler solution is to run the line out from the Tablet PC into the line in on the Mac. You then just need a simple piece of freeware called LineIn to pass the line in through so that it can play through the Mac's speakers. This works quite well, so now anytime the Tablet is docked it plays through the speakers on my Mac and then if you undock it you can just plug in headphones to continue listening. It also allows you to control the volume using the keyboard controls on the Mac.

Python 2.3 released

... and if the release of Python 2.3 w/first class OS X support were not enough ....

Excellent. And, of course, PyObjC will continue to provide first class support for integrating Python and Objective-C, including full blown Cocoa application development using Python in place of Objective-C.

... and on my son's third birthday and everything. [bbum's rants, code & references]

Use a Linux box as an iTunes music server

Mac OS X Hints has a nice tip on running an iTunes music server on Linux. This isn't just sharing the files via Samba or NFS, it's to enable the music to show up as a shared library in iTunes just like if you were sharing music from another Mac. Very cool.

When DRM goes bad and some alternatives

There's a follow up from the person who was having trouble with the iTunes DRM when he moved to Canada. It appears Apple is trying to make it right, but this is just further evidence of why DRM on purchased music is simply not a good idea. He points to eMusic and Magnatune as legal sources of music in DRM free MP3 format. I've recommended eMusic many times, but wasn't aware of Magnatune.

Magnatune is a label that publishes music for purchase electronically. The music has no DRM and when you purchase you can choose either MP3 or uncompressed WAV files to download. They even let you choose your own price, with options ranging from $5 to $18. $8 is the recommended price on everything I looked at. Overall a pretty interesting experiment and something we will hopefully see more of. I've been sampling a number of their artists and there's some pretty interesting stuff there. The artist gets 50% of the album purchase price. I haven't bought anything yet, but I probably will. Obviously it's a small label and you won't find any major artists there, doesn't mean the music is bad though.

Buzz Anderson to Apple

Looks like indie developer Buzz Anderson of Sci-Fi Hi-Fi and PodWorks is now a former indie developer, and has taken a gig at Apple. Congratulations to Buzz. Hopefully he can continue to write on Sci-Fi Hi-Fi. More Apple employee blogs are a very welcome thing.

More BuyMusic.com Rumblings

Well there's sure been a lot of discussion about buymusic.com in the last couple days. None that I've seen has been the least bit positive, including my own opinions. Here's a particularly interesting post from someone who actually bought something from the service, to say the experience appears to have been painful is an understatement. It also seems that they've tightened up the site so that you can only view it with Windows IE. This is quite simply foolish, although I'm sure all the negative things being said by people coming in from Macs hasn't made them too happy. If you really want to visit the site you can either turn off javascript or change the user agent in the browser, but who cares, there's really no reason to visit the site.

This is critical though, it's extremely important that windows users don't use this service. People need to make it clear to the RIAA, once again, that this is not what people want. DRM on purchased music is simply unacceptable, even the relatively liberal DRM on the iTunes Music Store purchased music is proving to be problematic on some unexpected levels. What's going to happen five or ten years from now when you try to play this music that was purchased? It seams the only way to ever get this message across is to insure that all these services continue to struggle until they bend to a point that is consumer acceptable. Right now the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is close, but it's still not good enough. BuyMusic.com is a massive step backwards.

If you're a windows user who wants to listen to digital music legally, use Rhapsody to find and listen to the full length recordings and then order the actual CD from half.com or some similar place. Rhapsody has by far the best selection of any service, is only $9.95 per month and is reasonably friendly to use. Just don't think of it as a download service. That's not what it is. It will give you the instant gratification to hear the music before the Cd arrives and it will save you money by allowing you to ignore all the CDs that turn out to not be all that great when taken as a whole. I was highly skeptical of the Rhapsody service, but I've grown to really like it. Also eMusic is another great service that is actually multi-platform and has no DRM. I personally love the selection, but it isn't for everyone.

Legal sources of digital music are slowly getting better, but as consumers we have to speak loudly by rejecting the services that are not any good. BuyMusic.com is not any good.

Penny-Pinching PowerBook

Do you need portability for email and word processing, but don't want to plunk down a pile of cash for a new Apple laptop? Diehard Mac user Michael Norton describes his penny-pinching Odyssey that explored the PowerBook 280c and the 1400. [O'Reilly MacDevCenter.com]

This is kind of a pointless article, but it was still a fun read for some reason.

Hydra 1.1.1

Hydra 1.1.1 has been released. The biggest change in this release is the addition of a live HTML preview window that uses the Safari engine for rendering. I played with it for a few minutes and looks like that will be a really great addition. It works quite well. It's good to finally see some decent applications embedding web browser support on Mac OS X, the old Apple browser component was quite pathetic.

Hydra has become my preferred editor for things like scripts, XML and HTML. It becomes particularly powerful if you use something like TextExtras to add additional capabilities and a script menu to the application. What's really cool is that you can write the scripts in any language and they'll be usable in any Cocoa application that supports NSTextView. It's definitely a geek oriented feature, but it's very handy.

Review: Listen.com Rhapsody

I'm a big music fan, no really I mean a big music fan. I'm one of these people who devours music, lot's and lot's of music in all different genres. I have music playing just about all the time. I have a huge CD collection and have been building an even larger MP3 collection from eMusic, the iTunes Music Store and any other place that I can find legal music. To this point eMusic has been my favorite service, since I'm just the type of person who can appreciate the selection that they have to offer. However, last week I finally decided to give LIsten.com Rhapsody a real try.

Listen.com Rhapsody is a music on demand service that gives you unlimited access to their entire catalog for $9.95 per month. You use their proprietary software to access the service, select the music you want to hear and play that music back. The service also offers the ability to burn individual tracks to CD for $.79 each, although not all tracks are available for burning.

The first catch with Rhapsody is that I'm a Macintosh user and the Rhapsody software only runs on Windows. Fortunately I also just acquired a Tablet PC with one the specific goals of it being to access services like Rhapsody. What makes this workable is the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client for Mac OS X. I don't often say nice things about Microsoft, but the Mac RDC client is quite nice and makes it perfectly livable to have a Windows PC to complement your Macintosh. I basically treat the RDC client as if it was the Rhapsody software running on my Mac and it works quite well. Of course, I'd much prefer to have a native Mac OS X client for the Rhapsody service, but as it stands the current solution works.

Anyway, on to the actual service. First we have to be clear, Rhapsody is not a download service. It's a music on demand service. This means you have to have a computer connected to the network to listen to the music. For people who spend large amounts of time at their computers like, well, me for instance. This isn't really a bad thing. However if you're the more mobile type who actually has a life away from the keyboard it might not be as appealing. The Rhapsody service does offer the ability to burn CDs, but I'll offer my opinion on that feature later.

For music on demand you browse the collection of music and add tracks or albums to your playlist and the client then on demand downloads the song and begins playing. While you can think of this as a streaming service, it's not really streaming in a technical sense. It's simply downloading the file when you ask to play it and then beginning play before the download is complete. Because of how this works the software does cache some number of the downloads, so playing a track again does not necessarily result in it being downloaded again.

On my Cable modem connection the performance of this mechanism is pretty good. However, all is not perfect and this is where we encounter our first glitch with the service. Since it's downloading each track individually there is a pause between tracks while it buffers enough of the download to begin playing. This pause can be very distracting on some albums where the tracks are intended to play together with no breaks. I first noticed this while listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and it was very annoying each time a song changed. On most albums this won't be a problem, but for people who like music put together in longer forms, like much classical music, it will be a real problem. It's unfortunate that the service is marred by this problem as they clearly have ways that they could have minimized the problem with a little extra work on the client. Starting to download the next track on the playlist before the current one finishes playing is one obvious alternative.

For the most part playing works pretty well. I've experienced the occasional glitch where it seems to not quite download the song fast enough, but that's been pretty rare. The experience on a lower bandwidth connection may be a different thing altogether.

Since Rhapsody has licenses from all five major labels and a number of independents the selection on the service is pretty good. Obviously, no service has everything yet and Rhapsody is no exception, but of the services I've tried so far, it does seem to have the overall best selection across all genres. It's also not plagued by the partial album problem as much as the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). In addition, because of the nature of the service, when you do encounter a partial album it's no where near as annoying as it is on iTMS. Here you're paying $9.95 for unlimited access and you're not actually buying individual albums. On iTMS when you encounter a partial album it means a waste of money to buy the partial set of tracks if you think you still might want to hear the whole thing. On Rhapsody there's no incremental cost involved so it isn't as big an issue.

Particularly notable artists that I've found on Rhapsody include: Wynton Marsalis, Annie Lennox, Doc Watson, Johnny Cash, Mogwai, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Son Seals, Jack Johnson, Coldplay and Mono. Some that are missing that I would love to see added include: Goldfrapp, Evanescence and Lilith. Obviously this is a small set of what exists, and it seems that they're adding a couple hundred albums a week. Jazz looks pretty good and classical is better then most services, but not great (the pause between tracks is an issue as noted), Blues is good for the modern stuff, less so for older recordings (eMusic is particularly strong here), folk and country look fairly good though I'm a bad judge for country. Rock/Pop is of course well represented with the usual suspects missing (Metallica, Madonna). Overall the selection is good, if still very incomplete.

I used to be an audiophile, however, I hung up my golden ears when I decided to trade quality for convenience and move to 100% computer based music. Given this, to me the sound quality of the service seems quite good. I believe the files are encoded at 128kbps, I'm guessing in Windows Media format, but the exact format isn't really clear. All I can say is that I've been quite happy with the sound quality for how I use it. I've mostly been listening through a pretty good quality set of Sennheiser headphones that are fairly revealing and I haven't noticed anything annoying about the quality. It seems at least as good as the 128kbs AAC files from the iTMS and I haven't noticed any major difference with the 192kbs AACs I've ripped from my own CDs. Is it CD quality? No, certainly not, but it's good enough for the type of service it is. Definitely better then any FM radio and better then the digital music services available from digital cable companies. Plus you can't argue with the ability to select whatever music you want and play it on demand with no waiting to download the entire thing.

Even though the service is primarily a music on demand service, it does offer the ability to burn CDs of tracks from the service. This ability has an additional fee attached, currently $.79 per track. With this you can burn one copy of the selected tracks. Any additional burns incur an additional charge at the same rate. The price just covers burning to a CD, it does not cover retaining any kind of digital format file on the computer. I haven't actually used this feature, because I find it to be a poor value. In fact I think the service would be better off without this feature, because I believe it skews peoples perceptions in a negative way. The $.79 per song burn price is a very poor value, but the $9.95 music on demand service is an excellent value for what is actually a very good service. The problem comes in trying to compete with free downloads and this is an unfortunate situation. The Rhapsody service can't offer the same kind of capability while retaining reasonable pricing and in making that attempt the real value of the service can easily be lost in the negative feelings brought on by the poor value of the burn capability.

Other then the poor value of the CD burn feature, Listen.com Rhapsody is an excellent service for music on demand. If nothing else, it's worth $9.95 per month just to be able to preview the full length album prior to purchasing it someplace else. I enjoy the service greatly. I do wish they would release a Mac OS X client, but as it stands the service is usable and a good value. Since I spend so much time at the computer I actually prefer this service to the iTunes Music Store and it makes a good complement to the more eclectic selection found on eMusic.

There really isn't a single service that is perfect. Fortunately, it's fairly inexpensive to subscribe to more then one and by using them together you have access to a library of music that is vastly larger then anything previously available. I personally own ~2,500 CDs, and the selection within that collection is vastly smaller then what is already available in these services, this to me is truly exciting and I look forward to the day when the RIAA finally decides to allow the construction of a complete music service. Until that time Listen.com Rhapsody is a pretty good start and I highly recommend it.

A tale of two tablet PCs (Part 2)

In the last episode I offered a "review" of the Acer 110TCi. OK, so it was really more of a rant about the incredibly poor usability design of the product, but you get the idea. I ended by asking the question of whether or not I've now changed my mind about how the Tablet PC can be useful to a Macintosh user. The answer is no I haven't, you just have to have the right hardware. Hardware designed with some actual thought into how it will be used.

First let me be clear, if Apple made a Tablet PC like device, I'd forget all about the Windows XP driven Tablet PC of today. Unfortunately, it's doubtful Apple will offer such a device, even though there are rumors circulating that one is being manufactured. All is not lost however, there does exist a Tablet PC that a Macintosh user can, if not love, at least can like. If you're a Macintosh user and are interested in buying a tablet to complement your existing Macintosh setup, I highly recommend the Compaq TC1000.

The Compaq is far from a perfect device so to start I'll mention the major criticisms often leveled at it.

First it's slower then any other Tablet PC. There's no debating this point. It uses a Transmeta Crusoe processor running at 1Ghz, but because of the design of the Crusoe it doesn't really feel like a 1Ghz PC for many operations. In particular launching applications and running those applications for the first time will be slow. This is because the Crusoe has to translate the Intel X86 instruction into the Crusoe's own VLIW (very long instruction word) instructions. What's interesting though, is that as you use an application more, the Crusoe optimizes parts of it and the end result is something that performs perfectly fine. It's kind of weird, but for what it gives you it's probably worth it. Of course, what it gives you is better battery life. An extremely important feature for a device intended to be used the way Tablet PCs are used. From what I've seen so far, the TC1000 performs vastly better in the battery department then the Centrino based Acer did. With the Acer I always felt like I should be plugging it in as I watched the battery meter drop, and with the Compaq I watch in wonder at how long it lasts. (one caveat here is that the Acer I had did have a defective wireless card so it's possible that the battery life was adversely affected by that, but I've seen similar reports elsewhere as well.) So coming at this as a Macintosh user, speed is not the most important thing, it's the other qualities of the device that will make or break the experience. The device does need to be faster, but even with this considered I still find it to be vastly more usable then the much faster Acer.

The second major criticism of the TC1000 is that it doesn't have a pressure sensitive pen. The TC1000 uses a different digitizer then all the other Tablet PCs. Most have Wacom digitizers, but the Compaq uses a Finepoint digitizer. For me I don't see this as a real problem. I played with the pressure sensitivity on the Acer and clearly for an artist it will be important, but for the average user I doubt it's really necessary. Would I like to have it? Sure. Do I miss it, not really. The primary reason for this is that the pen on the Compaq works dramatically better then the pen on the Acer. In particular the calibration is much more consistent, the Acer would constantly have problems with the pen near the edge of the screen. So far I haven't seen any of this with the Compaq. Again the caveat is that I'm not positive that the Acer was working correctly, but also again I've seen many reports from other people that the Wacom digitizers have lots of problems with pen calibration around the edges. The other downside of the pen on the Compaq is that it requires a AAAA bettery. This is definitely annoying, but I really like the weight it adds to the pen. The compaq pen feels much more like an actual writing instrument, rather then the cheap plastic excuse for pens I've seen on other Tablet PCs. The Acers built in pen was especially bad, and while it includes another larger pen as well, there's no way to attach it to the device.

There is one other thing to mention while talking about the negatives of the Compaq device. The TC1000 is still a first generation unit and is sure to be upgraded in the near future. There are various rumors floating around, but nothing concrete has been seen. It seems the two most common rumors are that the next gen will either switch to a Centrino or use the next generation Transmeta chip called, I believe, the Astro. Whichever route they go, I really hope they don't trade battery life for a small boost in speed.

Ok, wait, one more thing worth mentioning. Heat, the Compaq can definitely get warm and this hasn't been helped by the fact that the AC in the house isn't working correctly right now. It has a fan and the fan does make noise. In a lot of ways it seems pretty similar to the fan in the Apple 15" Powerbook. When it comes on you know it. This is actually what I consider the most serious flaw in the current design. It would be bad to have the fan come on while sitting in a meeting or something. However compared to my old Dell laptop the Compaq is whisper quiet so maybe it isn't all bad. On the Acer I don't think the fan ever came on.

So now having gotten the major faults of the Compaq out of the way, what's good about it? Well that can be summed up in one word, design! Which provides a benefit in the form of another word, usability! The Compaq engineers clearly thought about what they were doing. They didn't release a device that was full of features at the expense of usability and refinement. Where the Acer felt like a cheap plastic, piece of junk PC, the Compaq feels, well ..., it feels like it could have been an Apple product. It's not quite all the way up to Apple standards, but it comes far closer then any other PC I've ever seen and it's a thousand times better then the pathetic Acer.

The Compaq feels like a device that you can use as a companion (exactly what I was looking for). It has a very stiff frame and a piece of glass over the screen. This gives it a very solid feeling and makes it feel like it would be safe to carry it around. The edges are smoothed and rounded with no bulges that mar the clean lines of the device. Basically it feels good in the hand, a very nice thing considering how Tablet PCs are intended to be used.

The glass over the screen has a number of nice features. It protects the screen, it alters the glare profile so that you can actually use it while holding it in your lap, it's much easier to clean, it allowed the for the face of the device to be entirely flat and it makes writing feel a little more natural then writing on the screen usually does. The downside is that looking through the glass does slightly alter the quality of the image. I've seen this described as being like looking through a very, very shear nylon stocking. It's a little annoying, but given the benefits of the glass and the way it makes the device feel and work I will take the glass every time.

All the cable connections are either on the top edge or the bottom edge of the device when in portrait mode. This design makes perfect sense. It's intended so that if you lay the device flat on a desk, all the wires that would go off the back of the desk(power, ethernet, USB, VGA) are on the top and those that would likely go toward the user (headphone and microphone) are on the bottom. This allows you to plug it in and still be able to pick it up and hold it fairly easily. With the Acer you would have wires protruding from three sides in this scenario. The one thing that bugs me a little is that the headphone cable ends up stabbing you in the stomach when you hold the device. I kind of wish they would have put the headphone and microphone jacks on the bottom of the left side instead of on the bottom of the device. This would still allow clean wire routing, while also allowing you to recline while listening to music through the headphones and reading on the device in portrait mode.

The Compaq has a number of buttons on the side of the device (esc, tab, Q and email) along with three user programmable pen activated buttons(launch input manager, launch journal and screen rotation) on the face of the device. All of the side buttons, except the email button, are also user programmable. In addition, there's a jog dial on the side that allows you to scroll through documents and serves as a return key when pressed. The button layout isn't perfect, I'd actually like to see a few more buttons that are user programmable, however compared to what was on the Acer this is a vast improvement. The pen activated buttons on the face are in particular, a sign of the considerably greater refinement to the Compaq device. The jog dial is also much easier to use then the button mechanism on the Acer and it doesn't fatigue your finger at all (something that was a big problem on the Acer).

To go along with the longer battery life in general, the Compaq also has the very nice feature that you can swap the battery without shutting the machine down. This is something that Apple machines have done for years and why it's not a standard feature on all PC laptops I'll never understand. Again a nice consideration for how people will actually use the machine. A portable machine that can't stay portable for extended periods isn't particularly useful and having to shut down to swap the battery is a huge disruption to your workflow and a waste of time.

One of my criticisms of the Acer was that the power cord was too thick and too stiff, making it unpleasant to hold the device while it's plugged in. The Compaq is better in this regard, but not perfect. The cable is both thinner and more flexible then the Acer's, but not nearly as thin or flexible as the cable that Apple uses. This is a little detail that PC companies constantly miss, the Compaq isn't bad, but Apple shows it can be done better.

The Acer is a convertible design with a screen that can pivot around and lay flat to make a tablet. The Compaq is also a convertible design, but with a much more interesting ability to remove the keyboard entirely and run it as a pure slate. This makes the slate portion lighter and substantially improves the feel of it, as mentioned above. It's a compromise and in my opinion an extremely good one. The keyboard isn't a major selling point to these devices and Compaq did a great job of providing a pure slate and the ability to still use it as a regular laptop. The design they chose also has some interesting characteristics like fitting better in the cramped spaces of an airline seat. I'm not going to comment too much on the keyboard as I haven't really been using it much. What is interesting though, is the level of detail that went into the design of the keyboard. Maybe I'll write up something else later about the industrial design of addon components and talk about the TC1000 keyboard.

Overall there are many other things that I could comment on, however this is getting pretty lengthy so I'll just leave it with what I've covered so far. I'll maybe write more about this in the future as there is a lot more to like about what Compaq has done. I also haven't talked at all about the software on the device or the usability of Window XP for tablet computing. That will follow in the future.

So what does my rambling about the Compaq hardware mean. It means that a quality computing device is much more then just the sum of its parts. The Acer 110TCi is full of great parts, but the whole is horribly weakened by the terrible design that was applied to create the product. As I mentioned in the last installment, it's disappointing to me that such an inferior product could receive so many good reviews. In contrast the Compaq TC1000 has what on paper looks to be a vastly inferior list of parts. In fact that list of parts looked so unattractive to me, that when i was shopping for a tablet I didn't even seriously consider the Compaq. OK, actually, it was on the complete bottom of the list. It was only after the hands-on with the Acer that I seriously looked at the device. What I found was a device that, while flawed, was overall considerably less flawed then anything else available when you consider the whole package. It may be tough to understand this if you're a PC user used to the more speed, more features, cheaper price treadmill, but Macintosh users will get what I mean. I guess you could say, it's not about how big your parts are, it's how you use them. And Compaq has chosen parts that when put together to form a complete product, achieves something that is plain and simply, more satisfying to use. I've never said that about a PC before, but I'm saying it now. If you're a Macintosh user who's looking for a tablet device the Compaq TC1000 is the way to go. Forget the spec sheet. The Compaq is a device that can be your friend, it's refined, elegant and pleasurable to use for the kind of tasks that a Macintosh user might want (unless you're an artist). As it stands right now I won't declare my love for the Tablet PC, the software is the key there and I'll be writing more about that in the future. What I will say though, the Compaq TC1000 is a beautiful device that works well and does everything that I was hoping it would do. For a PC that's not too bad.

The shortcoming of ad programs like Google Adsense

Mac Net Journal is wondering about the value of Google Adsense. There are clearly limitations to the program, especially for site that are very focused. This is particularly bad for Mac oriented sites, as Google always seems to serve the same 5-10 ads. Most of which are for Mac hardware. It's not particularly conducive to drawing clicks from people who probably already own a Mac.

So far the ads on this site have seen enough clicks to make them worth having, but not enough to really make a difference. Fortunately I write about enough different topics that there is some variety once you get off the homepage. For me it's been pretty interesting, as I've actually learned about a number of pretty interesting products through the Google ads. This is especially true on the XML pages where the ads have a little more variety. In particular, I've found a couple new XML databases that I wasn't aware of.

Fujitsu 4" 800x600 LCD Display

Fujitsu is developing an 800x600 display for PDAs. That presents some very interesting possibilities for new devices. Not that 800x600 on that size display will be all that readable, but it will allow great pixel density which means, if the OS can take advantage of it, you can display a much higher quality image then current displays. This is something I'm dying to see overall, especially with desktop displays. We need a much larger quantity of pixels so that we can leverage the power of scalable interfaces like Mac OS X to achieve much higher quality while also gaining the option of zooming out to a higher resolution. It will be beautiful, I can't wait to see it.

Hydra, VoodooPad, Win 2nd OS X Innovators Contest

Congratulations! Hydra won in the new International category; LaunchBar came in second. VoodooPad won in the U.S. category; Audio Hijack Pro came in second. [ranchero.com]

PyObjC 1.0b1 Released

The improvements include: Improved performance and stability, Better tutorials and examples, Initial support for MacOS X 10.1, Support for the WebKit framework, Write plugin bundles in Python (requires Python 2.3) [Studio Log]

I've been playing around with the 0.9 release of PyObjC. It's a very promising project badly in need of better documentation. I've really been getting into Python lately and have been using it heavily with my Cocoa projects. I'd love to see Python included by Apple as a full peer with Objective C and Java for Cocoa applications. It would make Cocoa development even easier then it already it. Applescript Studio is nice, but Applescript is still not a language that I feel comfortable with and the way it is integrated with Cocoa means there are quite a few things you can't do with Applescript. I've found it easier to just stick with Objective C. The way PyObjC is being integrated it is functionally equivalent to Objective C and should bring all the power along with the ease of a scripting language.

Microsoft and the Alpha Geeks

Robert Scoble who's an evangelist for Longhorn is considering the question "so, what you gonna do to make Microsoft's communities strong again?". He seems to be saying that Microsoft needs to convince the pros that Microsoft has good technology. I believe what he refers to as pros is the same thing Tim O'Reilly refers to as alpha geeks.

These are the people who indicate trends in computing, the early adopters and the people who others turn to for advice about technology. And the number one observation about these people is that they aren't interested in Microsoft, they're interested in Mac OS X. I first observed this almost two years ago when I switched to Mac OS X from Linux and Tim O'Reilly has written about this several times. I found that Mac OS X was an easy sell to everyone who I would consider an "alpha geek". This is the problem that Microsoft has to face, and I know I personally have no intention of going back. Even though I'm now purchasing a Tablet PC, it's not because I think Microsoft has done such a great job, it's simply because I'm deeply fascinated with pen computing and the Tablet PC is the only option available. If Apple releases a product in the same market I'll gladly drop the Tablet PC in the trash and never look back. Honestly, I don't even consider the Tablet PC particularly innovative, I've read the developers manuals for PenPoint, written something like 10 years ago, and there's not much beyond simple evolution and modern hardware in the Tablet PC.

The technical people I'm seeing sticking with Microsoft fall into two camps, those who are not technically inspired (i.e. people who simply see technology as their job) and those who are really business people and are actually interested in money rather then technology. I guess you could really describe both groups as being interested mainly in money, it's simply one is more concerned about feeding their family while the other is concerned about making the payments on their mansion.

The first group just doesn't know any better, they go to work do their job and go home perfectly happy. They're not driven by technology advancement and they're definitely not the innovators who actually leverage technology to create new products. These people are builders of other peoples ideas and that makes them very important, but they're not leaders. They'll use what ever technology puts food on their table and they're not terribly interested in technology beyond that. These people are in the Microsoft camp simply because that's what pays the bills right now. Holding onto these people is easy for Microsoft as long as the other group of Microsoft camp people doesn't change direction.

The second group is interested in money, not technology, and therefore is not interested in taking risks until there is a clear path to profitability. This group is important, but it's also the group through out history that has been left behind by technological advancement. They won't move until it's clear it's safe to move, and by then it's likely too late. This is the classic Innovator's Dilemma problem, a problem Microsoft itself clearly faces. These people are the current mover and shakers in technology and the employers of all the people in the first group. They'll stay in the Microsoft camp as long as they continue to make money doing so.

Now, it's the third group, that doesn't fall into the Microsoft camp, where Microsoft has a VERY, VERY serious problem. The technologists, the alpha geeks, the people who eat, sleep and breath technology. These people are the creators, the innovators, the founders of new companies, the creators of new products and these people are predominately not interested in Microsoft. And I bet if you ask them they'll also say they have no interest in dealing with Microsoft, due to the trust problem. Well, OK, I can only speak for myself, but I sure have no interest in most of what Microsoft is trying to do. I don't believe that Microsoft is in a position to actually do something innovative enough to truly capture my interest. Microsoft has too many people to please, they're held hostage by their current customers. To do something truly innovative they'll have to break compatibility.

Breaking compatibility is a loosing proposition for them, they really can't do it because it effectively means releasing an entirely new operating system and then asking their developers to support it. At that point the question becomes if we have to port our applications to an entirely new OS to stay in the Microsoft camp, why not look at porting it to an entirely new OS that breaks us out of Microsoft's domination? Clearly Microsoft would build in backwards compatibility by stealing a page from Apple's book and leveraging their acquisition of Virtual PC. However, this will mean the apps will run non-native and won't take advantage of the advancements in the new platform. This worked on Mac OS X, because Apple has fiercely loyal customers. Microsoft does not have this advantage. Additionally, Microsoft's user base will then be spread over 5-6 versions of windows with a set of developers who are used to supporting all those versions of windows. This slow rate of upgrade, presents a very strong disincentive to porting their apps to be native on the new OS.

So unless the new OS is well and truly a clear advancement, then the end result of all this is that a truly innovative new OS from Microsoft will mean the end of their domination. They really have no choice but to be locked in to incremental improvements on the existing Windows base. Of course, this isn't a promising strategy either, the current Windows base is feeling really tired and creaky. It's not going to hold up well under the assault of several more years worth of advancement of Mac OS X and Linux. So what does this mean for Microsoft?

It means there's a transition taking place. It's in the early stages right now, but it's happening. Mind share is shifting and it's not shifting toward Microsoft. It's shifting into mobile devices that don't run Microsoft software, Linux on servers, Linux on low end desktops, Linux on desktops in countries that are smart enough to see the risk inherent in Microsoft's domination and finally to Mac OS X for the home user and the power user desktop of those who care about refinement. Overall I really don't see a very bright future for Windows and winning back the mindshare of the alpha geek is going to be almost impossible.

So how can Microsoft win back that mind share? Well, it definitely won't be easy, there's not much trust of Microsoft around. To start, it will require true innovation, not regurgitation of old ideas like the Tablet PC or glitzy, but useless eye candy like the current Longhorn demos. And it sure isn't going to happen with rights control technology like Palladium (I forget it's current name). What's required is real innovation that actually advances the state of computing. It can be done. Current computers are still way too difficult, and this includes those that run Mac OS X and Linux too. Microsoft has lots of smart people and is in a position to make a real advancement. They're under a very real competitive threat and this should ideally provide the necessary motivation. The question is whether they'll have the courage to actually take the risk of real innovation and change or if they'll simply focus on finding ways to cut of the air supply of their competitors. We all know what history says about this, but here's a tip, that's not the way to make people, like oh ... say the alpha geeks, actually like you. Microsoft, if you really, honestly want the alpha geeks back, for once in your existence do something truly innovative, something that actually advances computing and something that is honestly aimed at making peoples lives better. Right now it seems you're just doing things that propagate your dominance of the computer industry and squeezing more dollars out of your existing customers. Oh yeah, and you also better make sure that you do things in a way that allows other platforms to play too. That means no more closed file formats. Innovation that leads to lockin is innovation that isn't all that interesting. Innovate on the user experience, but you better leave the actual data open and free.

I honestly don't believe Microsoft can do this, it's too much risk and they don't have the courage. Robert Scoble is saying that's what they're going to do though (well, not the open file formats part of course), we'll see...

Adobe pares Mac support

Adobe Systems is set to announce new versions of its video products--but Mac users will be out of luck when it comes to video editing. [CNET News.com]

This is strange, Adobe announces a new product release, but the story isn't about the new product, it's about the fact that the new product doesn't support the Mac. Hmm....

Ordered a Tablet

Well today I finally went ahead and ordered a Tablet PC, an Acer TMC104CTi from costco.com. The main reason I went for this unit is that Costco has a six month return policy and you can return it to any local Costco store.

I'm really interested in finding out if the tablet will work for what I want, but I'm also really concerned about ending up with a piece of shelfware. Since I'm a Mac OS X user, the biggest barrier to accepting this thing is whether or not I can tolerate the highly proprietary nature of all the file formats involved. We'll see how I feel about it once I get the unit in hand. I'll be posting much more about my experience with it as I go forward. I suspect it will take a week or two before the unit arrives.

Embedded Rendezvous

O'Reilly's Mac Dev Center is running a series of articles on embedding Rendezvous. The first article is pretty lightweight, but hopefully future installments will be better detail. The more products that incorporate rendezvous the better.

Desktop LCD Monitor Resolutions

Why is it that you can't buy a desktop LCD monitor with anything resembling a decent resolution? I've been looking for a second display and the choices for desktop LCDs are terrible. On PC laptops you can get 15.4" LCDs that do 1920x1200, but in a desktop LCD you can't get that resolution unless you go all the way to a 23" LCD. What's the deal? You can get 15" at 1024x768, 17" at 1280x1024, 19" at the same 1280x1024 and then 21" at 1600x1200. I want either a 17" or 19", but 1280x1024 sucks and why would you pay more for a 19" when it's the exact same resolution. I already have a 20" Cinema Display which does 1680x1050 which is OK, because it's such a beautiful display. In reality though that resolution is too low too. Unfortunately, I can't afford another Apple display and I really want one that has both VGA and DVI inputs anyway. As far as i can tell no one makes a 17" or 19" display at anything other then 1280x1024. I want pixels, lots and lots of pixels.

Toshiba 17" Notebook - Could it be any more ugly!

Toshiba is coming out with a 17" laptop and it's about as ugly as ugly can be. The article says:

The machine goes on sale today via Toshiba's Web site and through its retail channel for a base price of $2,100. That compares with about $3,300 as the starting price for the 17-inch Powerbook. Debate the Mac OS versus Windows all you want--when it comes down to basic hardware specs, suddenly Apple has some stiff competition from the Windows world.

What it doesn't say is that the Toshiba is 1.8" thick, weighs 9.9lbs and looks like something designed in high school shop class! This thing isn't even remotely in the same class as the 1", 6.8" pound, elegantly designed 17" Powerbook.

Death to the Manual Save

OK, I'm going to rant a little. This is aimed at people developing software for Mac OS X. Will you please quit making people manually save. Manual saving sucks, let me say that again it SUCKS! It's an artifact of the computer that has been passed through to the user and that's something that needs to stop. Computers are bad enough without having to remember to save your damn work all the time. There's no reason for it anymore, so quit doing it already. Yes I know it's more work for the developer, but Mac OS X is about usability and developers should be striving to make the computer more humane. Manually saving files is not humane. Yes I also know it will take people time to get used to not having to manually save, but I promise they'll be happier for it, really I promise. People have just been conditioned to manually save because of how crappy all the past software has been. On Mac OS X this can change, it's time for the manual save to die.

I just downloaded what I thought looked like a cool piece of software aimed at writers called Ulysses. I'm trying to write more and was excited to see what looked like software focused around writing and not the computer. It has a project metaphor where you create documents within a project and keep stuff together in a nice bundle. Well guess what? Not only does Ulysses make you manually save your files, it makes you save both your documents and your projects. When you create a document you have to save it to the project and then you have to save the project. NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOO!! WHY! God how stupid. Just save the god damn thing for me. I HATE saving stuff manually, HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT! To be fair Ulysses is 1.0 and very well might turn out to be pretty cool, but I guarantee I won't be using it until it can save itself.

Another example is Spring, I use this to keep track of the music I want to download from eMusic. I never, never remember to save this thing. In fact I've become so annoyed that it can't save itself I've actually stopped using it. I've complained to Robb about this and he'll fix it eventually, but having to manually save in Spring is like having to manually save in the Finder. What's that you say? Oh you don't manually save in the Finder, ah yes exactly.

One more example, one of my favorite pieces of software is NetNewsWire Pro, in fact I'm using it to write this post. But, umm, well if the power were to go out or my computer were to crash in some manner I'd lose everything I've written so far because I have to manually click on "Save as Draft". Why? Why doesn't it just work like mail where all new messages are saved as drafts? The problem is that when you click "Save as Draft" it clears the compose window and you then have to go track down your message in the drafts folder. So that provides discouragement for saving a draft. Really the button should be titled "Save as Draft and Start a New Message". Of course that's never what I've wanted to do when clicking on "Save as Draft", but oh well. It's also quite jarring to click on "Save as Draft" and instantly have your post disappear. I know I'd rather manage a little draft clutter then to ever lose any work. I'll give NetNewsWire credit though, it does auto save once you click the Save as Draft button and then continue editing, after you've actually found your post in the drafts folder of course. BTW, did I mention NetNewsWire is one of my favorite pieces of software, it's just the "Save as Draft" function that has a pretty poor user experience.

Just image how much iTunes would suck if you had to save it every time you moved a song to a playlist, or in iPhoto having to save every time you added a picture, or in iCal every time you added an appointment. Are the functions of these applications really any different then what Ulysses, Spring, NetNewsWire Pro and "insert you favorite app" do?

Death to the Manual Save! Death to the Manual Save!

More on the Apple Tablet

The Apple tablet rumors are also getting some discussion among the Tablet PC/Microsoft camp, Robert Scoble and Loren Heiny.

Apple Tablet Rumblings (again)...

MacRumors is reviving the rumors of an Apple tablet. I'm of course am absolutely dying to buy something like that. However given what I've said about Tablet PCs I also have to feel the same way about Apple's prospects for launching a device into the category. It's just doesn't appear to be a winning market.

It seems what uptake of Tablets exists is occurring mostly in the corporate arena, not exactly Apples strong area. I think this is primarily based on price, as in reality I see the Tablet being something that should have strong appeal to the home user. At least it probably would if it was even slightly marketed toward that arena.

For me the appeal of the Tablet is for media (i.e. digital music, movies), web browsing in a relaxed manner, holding a digital library and note taking. Of these only note taking is probably outside the realm of what most people would do with their home computer and that's not entirely outside it either. The tablet form factor should also be very good for digital photography and video editing. Neither of those generally require significant amounts of text editing (at least they don't with decent software). Combine it with wireless printing and the ability to hook up to a TV and it should be a pretty compelling solution within the home.

Hmm, now that I really think about it, maybe Apple should make a tablet and aim it at this market. Of course if PC makers can't get the price down, it's not too likely Apple will either and tablet prices are still way too high. Ugh, all I know is I want a tablet. I'd much, much rather have one from Apple, but I fear I'll have to settle for a Tablet PC.

SS_PrefsController

More from the Irate Scotsman, SS_PrefsController allows you to easily create an iTunes style preferences pane. Looks pretty slick.

Panther UI Criticism

Irate Scotsman Matt Gemmell offers a criticism of the UI changes in Panther. I'm waiting to see the final thing before passing final judgement, but I agree there's some questionable things Apple is doing in the UI department. Using more and more metal being one of the biggest. Oh well, we'll see how it goes with the final result.

I'm of course still jazzed about Expose'. Also I don't necessarily see anything wrong with the new Tab controls, it's consistent with the way Apple seems to intend tabs to be used. Maybe this is setting the stage for the introduction of Safari style tabs. That would be cool as the current NSTabView is not much good for using tabs to display documents since it doesn't adequately handle overflow.

iTableView

While working through the new mountain of Mac developer blogs I just added to NetNewsWire I came across iTableView. It's a NSTableView subclass that adds coloring similar to that used in the iApps. Very cool, I implemented a simple version of this, but this looks much more comprehensive and respects the system setting for highlight colors. It also looks like Panther is going to bring this as a default control.

Mac Developer Blogs List

Yes there is a list of Mac developer blogs. I actually saw this a while back, but forgot about it.

Mac Developer Blogs

I'm wondering if there is a list of Mac OS X software developer blogs? I just discovered Sci-fi Hi-fi from a comment left in the 100th Window review. It's a blog by Buzz Anderson, the author of PodWorks. Lots of interesting pictures and comments from last weeks WWDC, makes me even more sorry I missed it.

iTunes Playlist to Blog

While messing around today I wrote a little Python script to post an iTunes playlist to a Metaweblog API enabled blog (like MovableType). I'm toying with the idea of using it to auto-post a top 25 list of songs once per week or something. The script is available here.

Here's what the top 25 looks like for this week. This is from an iTunes smart playlist that shows the top 25 most played songs that have been added to my library in the last month. iTunes smart playlists are an absolutely great feature that I hope shows up in other places in Mac OS X, like oh maybe in the Finder as a smart list of files.

Artist	Song	Album	Play Count
Metallica	Frantic	St. Anger	12
Massive Attack	Antistar	100th Window	11
Massive Attack	Butterfly Caught	100th Window	11
Massive Attack	Everywhen	100th Window	11
Massive Attack	Future Proof	100th Window	11
Massive Attack	Name Taken	100th Window	11
Massive Attack	Hymn Of The Big Wheel (Origin	Hymn Of The Big Wheel	11
Metallica	Dirty Window	St. Anger	11
Metallica	My World	St. Anger	11
Annie Lennox	A Thousand Beautiful Things	Bare	10
Annie Lennox	Bitter Pill	Bare	10
Annie Lennox	Erased	Bare	10
Evanescence	Bring Me To Life (Feat. Paul	Fallen	10
Massive Attack	Prayer For England	100th Window	10
Massive Attack	Small Time Shot Away	100th Window	10
Massive Attack	Special Cases	100th Window	10
Massive Attack	What Your Soul Sings	100th Window	10
Massive Attack	Any Love (Larry Heard Mix)	Hymn Of The Big Wheel	10
Massive Attack	Home Of The Whale	Hymn Of The Big Wheel	10
Massive Attack	Hymn Of The Big Wheel (Nellee	Hymn Of The Big Wheel	10
Annie Lennox	Honestly	Bare	9
Annie Lennox	Loneliness	Bare	9
Annie Lennox	Oh God (Prayer)	Bare	9
Evanescence	Everybody`s Fool	Fallen	9
Evanescence	Going Under	Fallen	9

What's funny is that I have a tremendous breadth of musical interest, but you sure wouldn't know it from this list. I bought a number of more popular albums a couple weeks ago which skews the results away from the more eclectic mix I usually get from eMusic.

Currently Playing "Marquis Cha-Cha" by "The Fall" from the album "Palace Of Swords Reversed", a little more eclectic bit from eMusic.

Xcode Screenshots

FunMac has posted some screenshots of XCode. The changes in Interface Builder are interesting, the biggest and most exciting is that there's now a palette to add a Safari/WebKit control to your application. Apple has also changed the look of the NSTabView and NSBox. The new look for NSBox is definitely better, NSTabView I'm not sure about yet.

Another significant addition is that they've added a rounded text field with the little search selector drop down like the google box in Safari. That should be quite useful.

Panther and BeFS

Now this could be the biggest productivity boost of all. I would absolutely love to see a more BeFS like file system in Mac OS X. There is so much power that can be brought out when the file system is more database like. It enables all kinds of applications that require tons of extra software currently. For instance much of the functionality of iTunes could be built directly on top of the file system rather then using a separate database. This doesn't mean that iTunes would be replaced by the Finder, it just means the implementation of these meta-data heavy applications would be considerably simplified.

The problem of course is portability of the meta-data. It would bring back the whole resource fork problem where you have to specially handle files that move across platforms. That is definitely not a good thing. Because of this what I'd also like to see is an open XML based format for the transfer of files along with their meta-data. It still means special handling, but at least it would be in a format that would actually be useful someplace other then on a Mac. Maybe a bundle format (i.e. a directory) with the file in its usual form and the metadata in a separate file. For transfer simply zipping it up would work and then PC users could just unzip it and access the file inside or use the meta-data for what ever.

Power Mac G5 Performance

Welp, arguments about Spec scores aside, me thinks there's some very serious power lurking under the hood of the new G5s.

Apple's Spell Checker and Product Names

While writing the previous post I noticed that Apple's built in spell checker knows about iTunes, iPhoto, iChat, iMovie and iPod. Not surprising really, but kind of interesting none the less. It of course doesn't know about iSight. It will be interesting to see if OS X 10.2.7 does.

MyiSight.com Opens Its Doors

Yep, not surprised to see this pop up. So far I don't have any plans to join the fray of people using IChat AV, mainly since I don't even use iChat no-AV. However, it's looking like Apple may have once again taken a common concept and through engineering excellence brought out something that is much more then just the average. The iPod was the same kind of thing. At first it was thought it's just a MP3 player, now it was a truly inspiring device that no one else has ever been able to catch up with. It will be interesting to see if the iSight and iChat AV has the same effect.

There's also an interesting article in the New York Times comparing iChat AV to the latest MSN Messenger. It's the typical Microsoft vs. Apple kind of thing. Microsoft has boatloads of features while Apple has refined simplicity and greater usability. Someday Microsoft will finally figure out power is not about how many features you can pile into your product, it's about how many of the features that are there people can actually use. This is where products like iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto and now iChat AV show their strength. They may not have as many features, but the user can get more done simply because the features that are there are more accessible and just work. I'll take power through simplicity just about every time and this is why I'm now an Apple user.

Bluetooth Keyboard/Mouse Support in Panther?

Bluetooth is finally turning out to be useful, well at least on the Mac it is. Haven't heard too many good stories about it on Windows. In particular the Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard and Mouse appear to be extremely problematic. Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to the removal of as many wires as possible. Hopefully Apple can actually make Bluetooth fully reliable.

More Power Mac G5 photos published

You'd think G5 photos would be boring by now, but these are non-marketing photos which shows some interesting things about the machine. In particular how much bigger it is then the G4 and how the Airport and Bluetooth antennas stick out the back. Other then the obvious comparison to a cheese grater or electric razor I love the look of these boxes. They're completely form following function with a minimalistic look that reminds me of really nice, high end audio gear. It's the kind of quality engineering that so many people just can't appreciate. They want all these blinken lights and crap, or god-awful case designs like this. I think the G5 is going to be a true classic of computer design like the Cube. Let's just hope it doesn't suffer the Cube's fate in the market.

Early Look at Panther

MacNightOwl has posted a look at Panther. Nothing really new compared to what I've seen over the last few days but it does hint that there's a slight possibility of upgrade pricing.

Expose' is the one killer feature that I want out of this thing. I hate window clutter and this looks like a very good tool to help with that.

Now what I really want though is to be able to resize any window via zooming and then to continue working with it in its zoomed state. You can do this already by zooming in on the screen to make it bigger, I use this all the time to view images and such that are too small, but I want to also be able to zoom out and make things smaller. This should work on a per window basis so that you can size the windows to better fit on the screen. This seems completely possible. In my experiments I've been able to almost get it to work. Unfortunately any NSButton that has an image on it doesn't scale properly so the interface gets all screwed up. Some things like NSTextView scale perfectly, but some forms of NSButton just don't work right for some reason. I know there's a way to do this, the dock minimization effect is one example that shows it can work but so far I haven't been able to quite figure out the right APIs to call.

Another Look at eBooks

I just finished reading my first complete eBook. It was a free book I downloaded from the Baen Free Library. I downloaded the book in Microsoft Reader format. Overall it was a good experience. I read the book partly on my Pocket PC and partly on my Mac via a Microsoft Remote Desktop connection to a Windows XP laptop. Unfortunately. a Mac version of Microsoft Reader doesn't exist.

The book I read was Wizard's Bane. The book itself was enjoyable. It won't be a classic of the fantasy genre, but it was good enough that I would read other books in the series. What's more important though, Baen is a very forward looking publisher and has chosen to release a number of their books for free in DRM free formats. They also sell books that I believe are also DRM free. According to this article on Planet eBook this has been a very successful strategy for not only increasing sales of paper books, but also providing one of the few eBook sales channels that actually makes money. I know I certainly will be more likely to buy books from this company and being able to sample their authors is a very good thing.

Unfortunately the rest of the eBook picture may not be so rosy. In particular it appears to me that the DRM situation is pretty grim. There are three major eBook formats: Microsoft Reader, Adobe Reader and Palm Reader and a number of other less common formats. For sales of books all support some form of DRM and the DRM in the Microsoft and Adobe formats seems to be horrible for usability. For instance as I was reading my book I read it on two completely different devices and it isn't at all clear to me whether the DRM encumbered formats would have even allowed me to do that. From what I can tell they try to lock the book to a particular device, which if that's actually the case is totally unacceptable from my perspective. From what I can tell Palm offers the best compromise, but I need to look deeper to be sure. I've become very interested in the eBook idea so I'm going to experiment a little more and buy a couple books in different formats to get a better idea of what the process is like.

Currently I'm reading The Hacker Crackdown, another free eBook that I downloaded in Palm Reader format from Palm Digital Media. Again this file has no DRM associated with it so the experience has been pleasurable. i've been reading it mostly on my Pocket PC and some with the native Mac OS X Palm Reader client.

Really, simply the fact that I have to so thoroughly consider the impact of the various DRM technologies presents a barrier. Maybe this is the cost of being a technologist and caring too much about how things work, but the experience of purchased eBooks right now just leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I'll write more once I have more first hand experience.

NetNewsWire 1.0.3

Finally got around to installing NetNewsWire 1.0.3 tonight. It's a very nice improvement over previous versions. The new combined view is extremely nice and it finally fixes the weblog editor problems with keychain. The "More Options..." button to control advanced features of MovableType is also a nice addition, particularly for the ability to specify Trackback pings. If you haven't upgraded yet it's well worth it.

Apple rolls out dual 64-bit G5.

EE Times: Apple rolls out dual 64-bit G5."Each G5 dissipates 97 watts..." [Hack the Planet]

These machines are sweet, but 97 watts means it's going to be tough to put a G5 in a laptop. Looking at the internals of the new machines it's clear that cooling these chips takes some effort. I'd love to see a new Powerbook with these chips, but I'll definitely be buying a dual processor system when they start shipping.

Panther Screenshots (for real)

First real Panther screenshots [MacRumors]

There's some interesting stuff in these shots. Expose' in particular looks pretty compelling and a more iTunes like Finder looks interesting. The iTunes style interface is something that's going to show up more and more in Mac apps. Speed Download is another example of an app that just switched to that style. Oh yeah, been using it a bit in my own work.

Leaked: PowerMac G5's Info!

Apple leaks their own info [MacRumors]

Wow, if that's real, it's better then everyone expected. Could easily be a hack. Sure hope not.

eBooks and eMagazines

I've pretty much ignored the whole eBook thing. Always considered them kind of annoying, but for some reason tonight I got caught up in looking at the more modern options available. One thing that particularly caught my eye was the Zinio platform for digital magazine delivery. I normally really dislike proprietary platforms (which is why I've pretty much ignored eBooks), but this thing is pretty slick. It creates a complete digital version of a magazine (including the stupid subscription cards) and delivers it directly to your computer every month. On the surface I wouldn't think this is useful with most of the information being available on the web anyway, but there's just something cool about the presentation of the magazine format that is missing from the web sites. I hardly ever read print magazines anymore, they seem like such a waste of money for something that just ends up in the trash. However, I'm tempted to subscribe to Macworld and PC Magazine through the Zinio service. Why? There's still something to the magazine format that's compelling and you can keep an archive on the computer without worrying about a big stack of magazines taking up space. I don't know, it just seems cool plus I actually like the kind of adds you see in magazines.

I also played around with the Palm reader for OS X. I was surprised to find this fairly compelling and I was actually looking at what books are available for purchase. The main reason for this is that I've become very sensitive to having large collections of physical items, in particular books. I've owned literally thousands of technology books and they always become a tremendous burden once they reach their end of life. They're so expensive when they're new that it feels bad to throw them away or recycle them, but they also go out of date so fast that nobody will buy them for a decent price. The last time I sold some tech books I think I got $14 for about 30 books on Java, Oracle and such that were about 5 years old. So that leaves giving them away. which is also a bit of a pain and is annoying. Right now I have at least five boxes of tech books that I really don't need but at the same time can't part with either. If they were in digital form it would be so much easier, a burned CD just doesn't take up enough space to worry about. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be much of a selection in tech eBooks yet, but it's getting better. I'm now a little more optimistic that someday we may get to the point where we have a decent reader platform with a good selection of books. I'm actually getting really tempted to check out the Tablet PC for this and some other things. Oh how I wish Apple would make a tablet Mac.

AlbumMagicWand 0.6

I've posted a minor update to Album Magic Wand, my little tool to use Spring as a download stash for the eMusic service. This version just fixes the problem that kept URL icons from displaying on songs and fixes a problem where some of the links on eMusic didn't have an http:// prefix.

XRA - developer release one.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been brewing an idea for a ubiquitous text watcher that integrates with the Cocoa text system ... [Michael McCracken - Weblog ]

This is a really cool idea that I've been wanting to see for a while too. I haven't quite gotten it to work since the one plugin in comes with depends on remembrance agent for emacs. I don't use emacs. However, it does run (just don't get any results) and the plugin interface looks really simple and could be useful for playing around with in other contexts.

Networking Frameworks Comparison

Stepwise reviews various Cocoa networking frameworks. “With network capabilities required by so many applications, Cocoa developers often wonder why Apple doesn’t provide a complete Objective-C solution for network programming... Fortunately, there are many third-party open-source solutions available.” [ranchero.com]

Cool, this is definitely a big question. Now we need to do something about that XML problem.

NetNewsWire 1.0.2 Ships

There are three main changes in 1.0.2 (since 1.0.1): the news reader is faster, lots of bugs were fixed, and there are new weblog editor features for Movable Type and Radio UserLand users.

Thanks to everyone who helped with bug reports, feature requests, and other feedback! [ranchero.com]

Apple service changes industry outlook

[MacNN]

A sign of progress, maybe the record industry might actually get it some day...

NetNewsWire 1.0.2b7

A beta a day keeps the doctor away. This beta fixes a crashing bug in the Notepad and improves the layout of several of the Preferences panels. See the change notes for details. [ranchero.com]

Spring 1.3b2

Spring 1.3b2 is now available! This is beta software! It has bugs. Download it only if you're comfortable working with beta software.

Please don't link directly to the download. Link to this weblog item.

Release notes (plain text). [Robb Beal's Radio Weblog]

Spymac iTunes Music Sharing

Spymac has created a directory for people sharing their iTunes music libraries. This is a fascinating use of this technology, and is very cool. Unfortunately, I suspect Spymac is just asking for trouble with it.

One kind of interesting thing about poking around in other peoples music libraries is how untidy they tend to be. Yet another cost of using P2P systems to get the files.

Tonight I went through and tried to replace the few P2P acquired tracks I have with legal copies from the iTMS. Not really very successful, I was only able to find five of the 20 or so that I looked for. All the tracks were for VERY popular music, this is the only thing I've ever bothered using P2P systems for. So I'd say the iTMS still has a way to go before it can be a good solution for replacing these things. Anyway, of the 7,715 tracks in my library, 18 are currently from P2P networks and will be replaced as soon as they're made available on iTMS.

I think my opinion of iTMS is changing. I still think it's too expensive and the DRM sucks, but it's just so damn easy to use. I swore I would never pay $.99 for a song, but so far I've bought 5 individual tracks and even worse 5 full albums through iTMS. This is the result of pent up demand and I won't be buying much else for a while since I really can't afford this right now. What albums did I buy? Heh, heh, 2 Eminem Albums, the 8 Mile soundtrack, Kruder & Dorfmeister G-Stoned and James Brown 20 greatest hits. The K&D and James Brown were impulse buys, the Eminem I'd actually wanted for a while.

One other interesting observation is that even though, in the last week, I've added roughly 1,800 tracks to my iTunes collection (I'm aggressively ripping my CD collection). 19 of the top 25 most played all time were purchased from iTMS. The other six were from eMusic.

Heartbreak of UI work

Heartbreak of UI work: Andrew Orlowski in The Register interviews interaction designer Gitta Salomon, and this quote cracked me up: "If you do this kind of work, everything bugs you. Your car, your cordless phone, your home entertainment system -... [JD on MX]

Oh man, is that so true. When I switched to the Mac I also picked up a new found interest in interaction design. Because of this I started reading everything I could find on the subject and the more I learned the more dissatisfied I became with the world around me. I'm constantly getting frustrated with the poor design on everyday things like doors, VCRs, TVs, just about everything. It really kind of sucks. It seems at least once a day I angrily declare something is a piece of garbage because its human factors are so poorly considered. Of course the most common thing you'll hear me say is "I hate computers", and I do. Computer usability is pathetic.

What's really so frustrating though, the flaws in computers run so deep that it's almost impossible to believe that you can do anything about it. Very, very, depressing.

Werbach on Post-PC

Post-PC When it rains, it pours. This has been quite a week for the emerging post-PC ecosystem. Apple introduced its iTunes music service, which is really more interesting for what it says about Apple than what it means for digital music distribution. Dell announced it is changing its name to remove the word "computer". And on Sunday, the New York times published a marvelous article by Steve Lohr about the evolution of the technology industry. The common theme is that the ecosystems of the personal computer and enterprise IT are maturing and giving way to something new. Or several new things. What comes after the PC isn't the Internet appliance, or the interactive TV, or the smart phone -- it's all those things and more. The underlying forces are irresistable. Moore's Law continues unabated, but for end-users today's processors don't feel that much faster than last year's. The market is no longer about putting a PC on everyone's desk, or about connecting that PC to the Net, or about wiring up corporate systems, or about giving people tools like email and Web browsers. Been there, done that. Smart companies like Dell, Microsoft, and Intel that have generated extraordinary wealth by riding the PC adoption curve realize that the ground is shifting. Dell's name change reflects the fact that it, like the others, is branching out to non-PC devices. But that's the least interesting of the three stories this week. New platforms such as handhelds, game consoles, and home media servers have been around for several years. Apple's iTunes service is more significant. Simply put, Apple is becoming a post-PC company. Everyone scratching their heads about how this will sell more Macs is missing the point. The Mac is near and dear to Apple, but the company has shown several times that it can jettison a core product -- the Apple II, the 68000 processor, the pre-OS X system software -- and reinvent itself. Apple is becoming something much closer to Sony: an integrated digital media company. Sony sells computers, but no one would call Sony a PC company. What it does best is create unique platforms and experiences, then market the hell out of them. That describes the new Apple as well. The heart of the company is the digital lifestyle, not a box. (I wouldn't be surprised if Sony acquires Apple, though similar deals have fallen through before.) And then there's the New York Times piece. Don't be mislead by the article's rhetoric about tech's "midlife crisis." That's the negative spin the Times' editors no doubt insisted on, because after all, how could anyone say positive things about tech these days? The point of the article is not that tech is dying, or that innovation is drying up. It's that enterprise technology is moving into a new phase. Bigger, faster, and more feature-laden are no longer selling points in the same way. Smarter, simpler, more efficient, and more flexible are the new criteria. It's much harder to make powerful system simple than to make them complex. The same issue arises in the consumer market. Apple has won plaudits for the user experience of its digital music service. That, more than a novel business model or better deal with the record companies, is what could change the market. EMusic had most of the same features well before iTunes. But there were personal computers before the Apple II, and graphical user interfaces before the Macintosh. Apple, especially under Steve Jobs, has a genius for user experience and promotion. In a post-PC or post-technology world, those are two essential skills. So, onward we go. This is a time of reinvention, not senescence, for the tech industry.

Thanks for the great analysis Kevin!

[Jeremy Allaire's Radio ]

Central followup column

Central followup column: DevNet published this month's column, about the initial reactions to the Central announcement... Jonathan's got the pro, and I've got the con. Drop a comment here if you wish to wrassle out anything on these, thanks.... [JD on MX]

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Macromedia does with Central. I clearly see real value in a cross platform solution for a "beyond the browser" solution similar to what Sherlock and Watson provide on the Mac.

We had this before with the Marimba platform, i.e. Castanet and Bongo, but it was a little ahead of its time and based too much on being a way to simply deliver fat clients to the desktop. Now, I see the focus on tying into network based services as being much more compelling.

Music sales bounce Apple stock up 11%

via MacMinute: Following news of more than 1 million song sales, shares of Apple rose more than 11 percent Monday, gaining US$1.64 to $16.09 each on the Nasdaq Stock Market. [Mac Net Journal]

iMS XML

Tristan Louis has some musing on the XML format for the Apple Music Store. [Simon Fell]

It will definitely be interesting to see if Apple opens this up to other developers. As it is now you can't do anything with it due to the terms of service for using the iTunes Music Store.

iTunes store: More than 1 million sold

Apple's new online music store sold more than 1 million songs during its first week of operation, and analysts say it shows people will pay for downloads if given the chance. [CNET News.com]

Why is it that whenever the record industry complains about lost sales no one ever mentions the fact that the economy is terrible and that just about every industry is losing sales? In this article they did mention that it could be more because of the end of the vinyl to CD conversion, hmm I suspect that ended quite a while ago, but OK. Why won't people just call this for what it is? The economy stinks, people aren't buying as many non-essentials as they were previously (CDs are definitely non-essential), and let's maybe mention the fact that the record industry has been raising prices to go along with it. I was in Borders yesterday and decided to look in on the CD section, $18.99 and $19.99 for newer releases. Sorry, that's just too expensive, obviously there are much cheaper places then Borders, but this still shows how outlandish the full retail price on CDs is now.

Now I'm not sure if I want the Apple service to succeed or fail. On one hand I want it to succeed so that the record companies will finally see that people are actually willing to pay for digital music, but on the other I also want it to fail since the DRM crap is still too annoying. I don't know which is going to be better in the long run.

I'm curious how much Apple would have sold in the first week if there was no DRM, better then 128 Kbs files and a lower price? I know I certainly would feel a lot better about making an investment in the music purchased there and would have bought a few more things. As it is I feel uncomfortable with my purchase and it was only the sheer convenience of it that got me to buy anything at all. Apple did a phenomenal job, now if the music industry would just get the hell out of the way, maybe they could hit a real home run. Apple's solved the sales channel problem, now we just need to get to the point where we're not paying for what is an inferior and crippled end product.

Iconara DOM Framework 1.0

Iconara DOM Framework is a Cocoa framework for manipulating XML-data in applications, similar to JDOM and XOM for Java. Also contains a high-level interface to Apples XML-parser. [Studio Log]

This could be so useful...too bad it's a library released under the GPL. Instant uselessness.

Interface Details: iTunes vs. Safari

John Gruber compares iTunes and Safari, and shows where Safari could learn a few things. [ranchero.com]

Billboard: iTunes Music Store "Overwhelming Success"...

Billboard: iTunes Music Store "Overwhelming Success" [MacSlash]

Well, like just about every other Mac user in the US I dove into the iTunes Music Store as soon as it was announced. I have two major impressions, one Apple did an incredible job on the technology and two the record industry still doesn't get it.

The integration with iTunes is beautiful and Apple truly has made the experience easy, maybe even too easy since you can set things up to buy things with no confirmation. I had things set this way, but changed my mind since my nieces sometimes use my computer now. I'd hate to see what would happen if they realized how easy it is to get songs from the Back Street Boys and such (assuming BSB is actually on the service that is).

From peeking under the covers a bit it looks like everything is XML and appears to use a REST style web services architecture. The responsiveness of the system (after the initial deluge of users) is extremely quick and this should really be powerful ammunition for people who want to complain about how XML is slow and bloated. This service in iTunes works beautifully, is quick and it's all XML behind the scenes.

One thing that's really unfortunate, even though Apple has used a very open mechanism for building the service, the agreement you must accept before using it prevents using any of the content for any other purpose. Very unfortunate, especially since Apple will see the revenue for all sales regardless of what channel it comes through. Having things like an RSS channel for new releases would be much better then having to visit the store to keep checking that. I'm not expecting Apple to provide this, though building one would certainly be easy given the way the service works. Oh well.

Now as for the record company involvement in all this. They still just don't get it. Everything that is bad about this service is the result of the record companies restricting what is available and how it can be used. In particular one thing that has absolutely driven me crazy is the number of partial albums on the service. Most of these seem to be missing maybe one track, but it's enough to prevent being able to buy the whole album at once. I generally like to buy whole albums and would continue to do so with this service if they were actually available. This is really pretty sickening and it really hurts the service.

Another thing that makes me sick is that the one track that I would want to buy individually, Days Go By by Dirty Vegas, is the one track off that album that isn't available separately. It seems the whole point of this service is to enable this type of purchase, but no the ultimate of one hit wonders forces you to buy the whole album to get their one hit. Bah, now they just won't get any of my money as I've heard other tracks off that album and they aren't that great.

Really though, problems like this run throughout the service. It's a huge, huge problem in genres outside pop music. Who wants to buy a single track off a jazz or classical album? Artists in these genres aren't about selling hits, they're about art and that art is in the form of an entire album. However, album after album of Jazz and classical are listed as partial albums. That's just useless and severely handicaps the service.

I give Apple a lot of credit for being able to get what they have out of the record labels. It's just too bad it's still not good enough. The DRM while vastly better then what's come before is still too much. The problem with it has nothing to do with today and everything to do with the future. It ties the music to a service and anyone who remembers the Circuit City DivX fiasco should know why this is a very, very bad thing. In this case the DRM isn't absolutely horrible and is easily defeated, but really it's just punishment for the people who are actually willing to pay for music and that's just sad and stupid.

I ended up buying a few things to try it out. Three albums and one single track. The experience is truly great. Unfortunately, I'm extremely worried about protecting my investment and I'm not comfortable with the current DRM scheme. I'll probably buy things every once in a while, but overall it's still not open enough to make me comfortable given the current pricing. Strip away the DRM and put the full catalog online and the service could be quite compelling. I still think the pricing is too high, but there's room to add value there to justify it. As it stands right now, you're paying awfully close to CD prices for less quality and that is not a good bargain. I guess if you like the kind of music where there's only one good track on a disc then it could be a better deal (assuming they'll actually sell you just that track), but for people who like real music by actual artists where the whole album is worth hearing, the service still isn't there yet.

Of course I'd still rather have a $10 per month unlimited streaming service, but that clearly doesn't fit with the Apple iPod strategy. If I actually owned an iPod I might feel differently, but I'm not too sure. I'd probably still rather have on demand access to a larger body of music with the option of buying the stuff that I really want to keep. Listen.com Rhapsody is still the closest thing available, but alas not on the Mac.

Mac Developer Directory

The new Mac Developer Directory is a place where developers can sign up so people looking for developers can find them. [ranchero.com]

The site seems to be having problems right now, but looks like it could be useful.

O'Reilly Mac OS X Innovators Contest Winners

Congratulations to Brent Simmons (NetNewsWire) and Robb Beal (Spring) for their wins in the O'Reilly Mac OS X Innovators Contest. I'm happy to be a user of both pieces of winning software and am looking forward to seeing what comes in the future.

Using Spring to Build a Better eMusic Stash

I'm a huge fan of eMusic and recently they introduced a new feature to the service called My Stash. This allows you to track albums that you want to download in the future. For heavy eMusic users it's very useful, but being a web based app the user experience isn't what I'd like. I'm definitely a big believer in the beyond the browser idea and being the eMusic nut that I am, I wanted a better solution.

I found most of what I wanted in the Spring Desktop which I already had a license for. Unfortunately Spring is early in its life and is pretty immature right now. In particular there's no way to have it create custom objects from dragged URLs. After talking with Robb Beal (the creator of Spring) about this. I set out to find another way to drag links from the browser, create spring objects from them and then place them on a canvas. I knew it would be easy to do this as a multi-step process, but the usability of that kind of solution, well to put it simply, stinks. I wanted to be able to drag from the browser and into Spring in one motion so I came up with what I'm calling the "Magic Wand" approach.

I created a small Cocoa app that sits innocently in the corner and doesn't do anything until you drag something over it. When you do this it looks at what's being dragged and sees if it can create a spring object from it. If it can it creates the object and then swaps the pasteboard contents so that when you continue your drag and drop it on a Spring canvas the object gets added automatically. Pretty cool and works great. So now I can drag album links from eMusic and easily create Spring objects from them that enable some really useful functionality. Here's a screen shot of what you can do with the objects once they're created.

Overall a very handy application and for eMusic fans at least, a great use for Spring. If you're an eMusic subscriber and Mac OS X user it might be worth checking out. Spring is commercial software, but a license is fairly cheap at $21.95 and there's potential to use it for more then just a better eMusic stash.

Here's the download for the Album Magic Wand application. This requires Spring, and if you want to download you have to have an eMusic subscription and a copy of Pickup configured to manage your downloads.

New programming guide to be available soon

[MacNN]

Hadn't heard of this book before, but it sounds interesting. There's definitely a need for more advanced books on programming for Mac OS X.

Deep inside Apple's Piles

Forgotten UI innovation to be exhumed? Inventor speaks to The Reg [The Register]

While piles are interesting, to me the really interesting rumor floating around is about a new file system. This is something that is desperately needed. BeOS was the first step, but there's much that can be done beyond that. Current file systems are severely holding back the usability of computers. One of these days I'll actually try to write up why I think this is the case.

A music related special event with Apple on April 28

via MacCentral: Apple has several music products, but speculation over the past couple of weeks has focused on three things: a new iPod; a buyout by Apple of Universal Music; and a new music service by Apple. [Mac Net Journal]

OOH, I sure hope this is more then just updated iPods.

Another Cocoa Word Processor

Just came across another Cocoa word processor called Mellel. Looks like it's been around for a while, but I'd never seen it before. It falls into the abuse the metal interface catagory and is in clear violation of Apple's UI guidelines in this regard (but so is Safari, so who knows what the guidelines are now). However, regardless of what the guidelines say this interface actually looks pretty slick. The program seems to work a little different then the norm, but that's definitely not a bad thing if it can also work better. I still don't have any real need for a word processor, but this looks like another decent alternative for a basic solution. The price is only $19 which is a real bargain compared to many of the alternatives.

One major complaint, the file format is binary with an embedded property list. This is the age of XML, and any modern program should either have an easy way to store it's data in XML or better, simply use XML for its native file format. I'm extremely hesitant to rely on any software where I can't understand the file format from the perspective of easily repurposing the data. It seems Apple is starting to get this idea (i.e. iTunes and iPhoto making XML duplicates of their DBs and the Keynote file format), it's time that other people developing for the Mac did too. This particular program can export RTF and plain text, but no XML. Of course Apple could make things easier in this regard by providing something that resembled decent XML support in the Cocoa frameworks.

NeXT still stands out in its Mac incarnation

Dan Gillmor: “Software developers loved what they could create with the NeXT platform. And for many, OS X has meant a phoenix-like rebirth.” [ranchero.com]

Transparency

God help us if we're wrong. [Don Box's Spoutlet]

Don's talking about the increasing number of Microsoft employees who are blogging and the increased transparency it's bringing to the company. This is a trend that I'm very impressed with and is providing a fascinating look at some of the smart people who work there. It's also bringing a better level of community and personality to what had previously been a very cold company. I've been adding more and more Microsoft related blogs to my regular reading and it's definitely improved my feelings about the .Net era Microsoft. Even if the amount of transparency is currently small, it sure is better then what existed before and it seems more Microsoft bloggers are coming online everyday. Of course it will take a lot more then this to regain trust and things like WPA, Palladium and the completely broken mess that is Windows don't help any, but it's good to see things improving and there are definitely some things in .Net that I really like.

I'm hoping that we can see more blogging in the Macintosh developer community. Especially among Apple employees, but also among independent developers. I'm only aware of two Apple employee blogs, Ken Bereskin and Dave Hyatt. Both are great resources, hopefully there are more out there that I just haven't found yet. Dave Hyatt's blog in particular is interesting because of the development oriented discussion around Safari. Given Apple's extreme stance on secrecy it has to be a tough line to walk, but I sure wish more Apple employees would jump in.

There are quite a few independent Macintosh developers with blogs, many of which were very early adopters. People/Companies like Brent Simmons / Ranchero Software , Don Watson / Karelia, Robb Beal / UserCreations, Michael McCracken, Unsanity and CocoaTech and of course I'm working on Mac software now too. I haven't publicly released any Mac OS X software yet, but it will come someday.

Macromedia is another company making big strides in this area with people like Mike Chambers, Kevin Lynch and Jeremy Allaire blogging. The blogs offer an interesting mix of company marketing and personal insight. Hopefully more of the latter, but regardless it puts a much more human face on the company. In fact, I don't actually use any Macromedia software, but still read some of the blogs just to keep an eye on things. Actually, Macromedia Central is something that I am interested in, but for now I'm just watching it.

Safari Public Beta 2 released

Apple finally released a new public beta version of its Safari Web browser this morning, bringing tabbed browsing, better standards compatibility, improved AppleScript support and autofill forms and passwords. [Mac Net Journal]

Good to see an official release with tab support.

Some handy Cocoa source code

I'm pleased to announce the opening of an open-source repository of some useful Cocoa tidbits used in Watson and some other projects I've been working on. Unlike the Omni Frameworks or CocoaTech's new frameworks, this is a lot less ambitious and less packaged. It's really just a weblog (Yes, Virginia, there is an RSS feed) where each entry is just a snippet of code. You need to copy and paste into your projects as needed. The copyright is, I believe, extremely liberal (certainly not infectious like the gnu license), but let me know if you feel it can be improved.

Why do this? Just a way of giving back to the Cocoa community that has been so helpful to my efforts in building Watson.

I'll add to this repository occasionally as I run across more generic bits of code, but don't expect a steady stream! :-) [Karelia Software ]

Excellent, we need more of this.

ShareKMC for Tablet PC

Another interesting toy from the Microsoft world. There's no reason this kind of thing couldn't work on a Mac, or even between a Mac and a PC. It would be a lot nicer then using a KVM switch.

XPath Queries over Objects

A very interesting article on MSDN about querying objects via XPath. This is fascinating stuff and really brings home how vastly superior .Net is for XML when compared to what's available in the Cocoa frameworks. In fact Apple's XML support is so pathetic I'm embarrassed to even talk about it.

Come on Apple, XML is the most important technology around and the Cocoa frameworks have virtually no support for anything of value in the XML arena. The pathetic Core Foundation XML parser is a joke. It's a C API, doesn't directly support namespaces, has no DOM, no SAX hell no anything that anyone's ever seen before. Forget about getting XPath or XSL-T working with it. Garbage, garbage, garbage.

Sure we can drop out to Java, or C or C++ or even Perl and Python, but why is this necessary? Objective C is a perfect language for building awesome XML tools and solid XML support is critical for building network enabled applications. So far Apple's really dropped the ball in this arena. I'd say third parties should build better tools, but XML is truly foundation now and solid support absolutely must be baked into the basic platform. Apple's has some interesting stuff, i.e. the XQuery implementation that's part of Sherlock, it's just locked up in places that are useless to other app developers. It could be so good, but instead it's so sad. I'm getting .Net envy and I'm not happy about that.

OmniWeb 4.2 released, 4.5 details revealed.

MacCentral: OmniWeb 4.2 released, 4.5 details revealed. [Hack the Planet]

4.5 is the first version that's using the WebCore and JavaScriptCore libraries from Safari. Should be very interesting to watch how this develops. I know I'm certainly excited about the prospect of having a first class HTML rendering component available for application development. Of course it's also sad that this is even interesting, Windows has had the capability for a long time and it was something that in that context was considered an evil move by Microsoft. Hypocrisy is great, oh well, bring on the WebCore based apps.

Why is Applescript so hard

Applescript is a strange language. It is easily one of the most readable programming languages I've ever seen. Yet, no matter how many Applescripts I read, every time I go to write one I run smack into a wall of befuddlement. I've used a couple different books on it and I guess it's just the complete lack of documentation that exists for the actual application implementations that is so problematic.

It seems app developers are intent on relying on the scripting dictionary for documentation along with maybe a couple sample scripts. This is just not adequate. I'm constantly amazed at what's possible with Applescript and even more amazed that the people who write these scripts were actually able to figure out how to do it. This is especially frustrating to me as I know dozens of programming languages and have used 10-12 different languages professionally, but writing Applescript is just befuddling.

It's like the complete opposite of Perl. With Perl once you learn the language programs kind of just flow out of your mind and into the computer in a very expressive fashion. However, reading Perl code, especially code written by people who take pride in using all the Perl shortcuts, can be a quite painful experience. Applescript is the opposite, reading the code is always easy. I've yet to see a script that I couldn't understand. Writing it though. Ugh, why is it so hard? It just doesn't make any sense.

Obviously, I've been doing a lot of work with Applescript or rather more in using Applescript with Cocoa applications. I'm excited by the capabilities, but frustrated with how difficult it is anytime I have to step into the Applescript domain and write a script from scratch. It's still fun though.

PowerBook Rumors (17 and 15inch)

Powerbook revisions... [MacRumors]

Now that's a cool rumor. A dual processor 17" powerbook would be sweeeet!

Of course actually having the dual proc Powermac, that I already own, actually working would be sweet too. The Apple store has had the thing for over a week, I'm getting a little pissed off about this.

Independent Macintosh Shareware Developers Group

John Kinsella is exploring the idea of creating an Independent Macintosh Shareware Developers Group. Seems like an interesting idea, but it's something that needs to be explored in an open forum. I believe there are/were organizations that did this before.

Hydra is freeware

Hmm, found on the Coding Monkeys site that Hydra is freeware. Well very cool. Wonder what else they have up their sleeve to be able to give this away.

Hydra

Hydra is a Rendezvous enabled text editor that allows you to collaboratively edit text files. It's fairly basic right now, but looks pretty cool. It's not clear to me how it's licensed though, a little troubling.

Apple Support

Well I've been a bit out of touch lately as I'm up in Phoenix right now. I finally have access to internet connectivity, but email is still a problem so if you've sent me mail and I haven't replied, that's why. I'm staying at my parents temporarily and they use crappy MSN DSL which I guess tries to force all SMTP access through their servers. Ugh, anyway I normally use Cox SMTP servers and those of course block relaying from outside their network regardless. I may need to just setup my own.

Oh well, so how about this Apple support. I'm currently trying to get my brand new dual 1.25 Powermac fixed so that it doesn't freeze when I push the CPUs for more then a couple hours. They keep trying to blame software and today the guy in the Apple store told me you can't expect too much out of these machines, and then added "it's not like they're meant to do computations for Nasa". Ugh, yeah. Apple's selling to the UNIX crowd and well there's a little problem. Those of us in the UNIX crowd expect our machines to work, 100%, all the time no matter how hard we push the CPU. To say you should expect otherwise is very, very troubling to me. In fact if I wanted a machine that was unstable I could spend a lot less money and use something running Windows, or I could spend even less then that and go back to using Linux which never crashes the way that Powermac does.

Now I know this isn't really Apple's official line, but the people in these stores are supposed to be Mac experts and they simply can't be telling people this kind of thing.

Now I also understand what a friend was complaining about with Apple. He'd been having some problems with a Powermac too and wasn't too happy with what they were doing about it.

At this point I don't want to criticize them too hard, the support in the Apple store is good. I just carried the machine to the door, a guy came over and carried it to the back and then they just dove in and hooked it up to run tests with no questions about ownership or anything. That was nice, but I'm still troubled about Apple's ability to truly deliver a 100% solid professional computing experience. Seems there's still a bit of the old Mac OS legacy that needs to be shaken out of their employees. Here's a tip, no it isn't acceptable for the machine to freeze when placed under a heavy load and yes the machine should be perfectly capable of running calculations for Nasa. Just about any other Unix box can do it, Macs should be able to too. This kind of thing is even more frustrating because I know Macs are stable, my Powerbook is extremely solid. Well, OK, it did kernel panic one time, but so far that was an isolated occurrence.

They have the machine now and we'll see how it goes. Hopefully it will be a positive experience the rest of the way.

XML-RPC and OS X 10.2.5

Brent Simmons offers some thoughts on why he'll stick with his new XML-RPC code even if Apple fixes the bugs that prompted him to write the code in the first place. I'm glad to see he's sticking with his new code, it's good to have options especially when those options are released under the BSD license.

Frustrating Weekend

It turns out my new Powermac is not entirely healthy. It freezes after being used heavily for a couple hours. This is enormously frustrating and cost me the entire weekend as I tried to figure out what's wrong with it. My conclusion...it's broken. :-) Actually it seems it has variable speed fans in it, but those fans never seem to change speed so I think it's overheating. Overall, I'm not pleased at all. Reading the Apple boards reveals this is not an uncommon problem. I needed this machine to be perfect, and it's not. The fact that I don't have a car also makes it very difficult to get it fixed. I'll probably have to wait until I move back to Phoenix and can take it into the Apple store there. Did I say I'm really unhappy about this? Yeah, guess I did. I've actually accomplished zero real work since Thursday, yep not pleased at all.

I despise having to deal with tech support, hate it, hate it, hate it. I'm the type who will spend days trying to figure things out on my own to avoid having to talk to the stupid techs who just read a script. Argh, I'll call them tomorrow. I've never had to deal with Apple support, we'll see how it goes.

An interview with NoteTaker's Scott Love

AppleLinks writer John Martellaro has posted a Q&A interview with AquaMinds founder and NoteTaker braintrust Scott Love... [Mac Net Journal]

NoteTaker is pretty cool, I bought a copy as soon as it was released. It's nice to learn more about who's responsible for it.

Apple 20" Cinema Display

Well the new 20" Cinema Display arrived today, and it's best described as absolutely stunning, breathtaking, and just amazingly beautiful. I've always loved the display on my Powerbook, but next to this new Cinema Display the Powerbook display looks like a yellowed newspaper. Literally! The Cinema Display is just so much brighter with whiter whites, blacker blacks and generally stunning color. The only thing that could be better would be to have two of these things.

BTW, I was wrong about the VGA adapter that came with the Powermac, it was for the DVI port rather then the ADC port. So setting up my VGA monitor as a second display was trivial. Unfortunately, it's too ugly and takes up too much space to keep on my desk now.

As usual the out of box experience for the Cinema Display was outstandingly simple. Unpack, plug the one cable in, detect displays and you're off and running with dual displays, outstanding.

One thing I'd like to see improved is the positioning of the display. With the elegant solution on the iMac, the way the Cinema Displays work leaves a bit to be desired. I tend to sit low with my chair almost bottomed out on its height and the display leans back a little more then I would like. I can put something under the leg to tilt it, but it just seems wrong to spoil the elegance of it that way.

Initial Dual 1.25Ghz Powermac Impressions

I've only had the machine for a few hours, and haven't done anything real with it yet, but I'm impressed so far. I also haven't received the 20" Cinema Display so the machine is sitting in a temporary location with my old 19" Trinitron monitor. Anyway, it's fast, very fast.

I'm a little embarrased to say, but most of my time has been spent playing with Virtual PC. This is mainly because I'm just amazed that it can run Windows XP at a usable speed on a completely different platform. This is the first time I've ever seen an emulator that is actually useable running something so complex. Of course I don't really have anything that I want to run under Windows right now, I just ended up installing Mozilla and Phoenix to see how they ran. I also spent some time playing Diablo and it runs at a perfectly usable speed, I doubt it could handle Diablo II though. I have a Linux virtual PC installation that I'll copy over once my monitor arrives and I get around to hooking up the Cube again.

One thing that I really love about the Mac is how easy it is to setup a new machine. All I did was put my Powerbook in Firewire target disk mode and copy over my home directory. Once that was done I logged out and logged back in and everything except the developer tools were right where they were on my laptop. This is about 100 times easier then digging out all your installer CDs to setup a new windows machine. It also applies to any virtual PC virtual machines, just copy them over and start right where you left off. The developer tools are just reinstalled from the installer that was already on the drive. Total time involved less then an hour.

One funny thing was I had to actually look in the manual to figure out how to open the CD drive. Both my other Macs have slot loading drives, but on the Powermac you have to use the button on the keyboard. Turns out there was a sticker to that effect on the keyboard that came with it, unfortunately I was using the keyboard from my Cube and I forget there was an eject button on it.

One disappointment so far, the VGA adapter only fits on the ADC port. This means that when I get my ADC based display I won't be able to hook up my CRT as a second monitor without buying another adapter for the DVI interface. Not a huge deal since I kind of want to get rid of the CRT anyway, but still disappointing. Can't wait for the display to arrive tomorrow.

Do Macs get Jealous

My new Powermac arrived today, however, in what I can only consider a fit of Jealousy, my Cube started to freak out about 2 hours before it arrived. I tried talking to it, telling it that I still loved it, but nothing seemed to work. I was playing some MP3s for a friend and the cube crashed, on restart it simply would not remount the firewire drives. Disk utility could see the drives but mounting just silently failed. I was able to trace it down to somehow /var/run had gotten deleted. So far, attempts to restore it have been unsuccessful. The machine runs, but won't mount any media and has several other glitches because of this. I may need to reinstall it which is the first time this has ever been necessary on any of my Macs. It sucks, and is quite disappointing. The machine is currently slated to replace my fathers PC in the hope that he can have an easier time with it then we've had with Windows. I don't know, maybe I should buy it some new RAM or something to show it I still love it. Err, maybe I also need to find a new girlfriend too, yep think so.

Mac OS X Innovators Contest

O'Reilly is running an innovators contest for Mac OS X applications. I love it. This is what makes the Mac platform so exciting. Innovation is real here and people will pay attention if what you do is good. Hopefully I'll have something to enter in the second round in May.

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b5

NetNewsWire 1.0.1b5 fixes some crashing bugs, partly fixes a bug regarding Movable Type categories, and moves commands from the View menu to the Window menu. (Commands that should have been in the Window menu to begin with, since they have to do with opening and hiding windows.)

Read the change notes for the full scoop. [inessential.com]

This is good, I was always perplexed by the existence of the View menu.

Webservices Switch

"Web services are like a super bus" The CapeScience guys do a switch. [Simon Fell]

Pretty funny, well it is if you're a geek.

Changing Gears

Well sometimes it's funny how your mind can play tricks on you and force you in directions you may not otherwise want to go in. A few days ago I ordered a new Mac. Why did I do this, well simply I love Mac OS X. Everyday I love it more, and all I want to do is create cool things for this operating system. I bought the Mac because I wanted to have another machine for Mac OS X development.

So what does this mean, well it means I'm committing. For the last year or so I've been saying I wanted to start a company to develop OS X software. Well damn it, that's what I'm going to do. I have several solid ideas now and I'm going to start working on one of them. I know what it is, but I'm not saying yet :-).

So I pulled out of school today and I'm moving back to Phoenix near the end of April. I seriously considered making this move in January, but at the time I couldn't finger a solid product.

There is so much untapped potential in the OS X platform. Risky? Hell yeah it is, but I'm a pretty good observer of trends and the combination of Mac OS X and Linux is squeezing Microsoft in ways they've never seen before. The Microsoft monopoly is going to be broken and when it does, innovation will finally return to software. I'm going to take this bet and hope I'm there when it happens.

Apple: Java 1.4.1 available

"This release incorporates over 60% more features than the previous release, 1.3.1." ... "Now Java applications are scriptable on Mac OS X, thanks to the new UI Scripting facility in AppleScript (currently in Beta). You can automate your Java applications, selecting menu items, pushing buttons and exchanging data. It's the perfect tool for testing and including Java applications in your workflow solutions." [AppleScript Info]

Excellent, it's about time.

My Music System

While wringing my hands over whether or not to buy a new Powermac I rearranged my apartment to solve the hum problem I was having with the audio out of my Cube. It turns out it was the poor quality cable I was using so I juggled things so that I could use the cables I still have from my old high-end audio system. This meant I switched from using a small Rotel integrated amp to my really old Yamaha MX800 power amp. The Yamaha is something I've been hauling around for about 15 years and was part of my first component stereo system. It's a pretty decent amp though the Linn and Musical Fidelity amps I used in my last system definitely sounded better. Anyway, activating the Yamaha and my old speaker cables also allowed me to activate the other remaining piece of my system that I still have, my Martin Logan Aerius i speakers. It just feels wrong to have these things setup in my crappy apartment and I may put them back in the box because of this, but man I'd forgotton how great these things sound.

This change has also made me completely dependent on the computer for all media since I don't have a preamp to use for switching sources. Surprisingly the CD drive in the Cube doesn't sound all that bad. Of course there's a huge difference between the CD and an MP3 made from the CD. There's simply no depth to MP3s, they don't sound terrible, but for serious listening the experience is definitely lacking. Well given that CDs don't have that great of depth either, maybe the MP3s are terrible, oh well MP3s are about convenience not fidelity.

With my new Powermac I also ordered two 80GB drives that I'm planning to run in a mirror configuration for some redundancy. I've been worrying about how to backup my MP3 collection since I started creating it and mirroring the drives is actually the cheapest way to do it now. My estimate is that it will take a little over 100MB to store my entire CD collection in MP3s so I'll have to add more space later, but it will be a very long time (if ever) before the whole collection is ripped. Of course I've also already downloaded nearly 7.5GB of MP3s from eMusic and that number will continue to grow in the future. Now that I'm actually spending money on MP3s rather then just ripping my CDs the need for some kind of duplication is pretty important. Previously I always had the physical CD for backup, now I'm getting a large amount of stuff that's just gone if the hard drive goes and eMusic were to shutdown. This is a big reason I've always disliked buying stuff that just exists in digital form. Now though, I'm seeing it's a hell of a lot easier to move a harddrive or two then it is to keep hauling around the 20 or so boxes of CDs I have.

Went Crazy

Well Apple did it to me again, the last thing in the world I need is a new computer, but I just couldn't resist. What did me in was the new 20" display, saw one in the Apple store and fell in love. I had budgeted to buy one more machine while in school and I figured it would be another laptop. Instead I decided I wanted to get back in the dual processor world and ordered a dual 1.25 GHZ Powermac and a 20" Cinema Display. It was a painful decision with all the rumors about IBM PowerPC 970s and such, but oh well. I really shouldn't have bought this thing, definitely feeling that buyers remorse right now. I'm sure I'll love it once it finally arrives. If not I'm going to be sick. :-) Now to survive the week until it arrives.

iMic Impressions

I received my iMic yesterday and it was trivial to hook it up to my cube. It definitely solved some of the problems I was having. I can now get acceptable output level and much better quality through headphones. It almost has enough power to drive my sennheiser headphones. It can get a basic listening level out of them, but there's no room to go beyond that. Can't blame it too much though, the Sennheisers are always tough to drive. Since I got rid of my highend audio gear, I normally use a cheap pair of Sony headphones anyway so it's not a big deal.

I also found out the hum I was getting from my stereo was the result of the long cable run more then anything else, so I still have that problem. The iMic does produce a better quality and higher level output overall though. I'll try a different cable configuration to see if I can cure the hum problem.

God Windows is Annoying

Tonight I installed Windows XP under Virtual PC and I'd forgotten how truly annoying it is. It's just dialog after dialog, do you want a passport, do you want to activate, do you want a tour of XP, blah, blah, blah. Jesus, shut up already. This is what I mean when I say windows gets in your way. Oh I also made the mistake of installing Kazaa and it just adds a whole bunch more to the mess and didn't listen to my statements about not putting anything on the desktop and not starting up automatically. It added two icons on the desktop and not only starts everytime it reboots, but also started a thing that wanted you to download some crap virus protection software. I've never used Kazaa before, and given this complete disrespect for my preferences I never will either. And we won't even discuss all the popups and popunders that IE of course won't filter. How do people put up with this complete disrespect for the user, it's horrible. I know a lot of this is fresh install crap, but still, Macs don't do this.

Camino (Chimera) 0.7

Looks like 0.7 of the browser formally known as Chimera (Camino) has been released.

Apple Office Suite

I've been looking around again for a word processor to use instead of Microsoft Word and in the process I decided to check out Appleworks. Man what a piece of garbage that thing is. It is oh so very Mac OS 9ish and given the fact it was one of the first apps ported to Mac OS X and has been there for close to two years, one thought just wouldn't leave my mind ... Apple has to be working on a new office suite. There can be no other explanation for why Appleworks has not had a major interface revision in all the time it's been out for OS X. I mean even mouse scroll wheels don't work in the thing. Anyway, this may just be wishful thinking, but I really hope they're working on something and that they truly take the opportunity to rethink the paradigm and improve things. The current state of the art here, is well, let's just say leaves a little to be desired. Apple's proven repeatedly that a simple application, with a smaller but more accessible feature set, can lead to an overall more powerful user experience. I just hope they do something similar in this space. Soon.

Anyway, I've been using Mariner Write for the last few papers I've had to write and given my simple requirements it does what I need pretty well. If something else better doesn't appear before my eval is up, I'll probably buy a copy.

iMic

Since I've been listening to so many MP3s, I've finally run out of patience with the poor quality audio out on the speakers that came with my Cube. When I moved, I expected to mainly be listening to MP3s and had been slowly ripping my CD collection for this reason. I figured, I really didn't want to unbox my CDs. Unfortunately, there was always a really annoying hum coming from the speakers and the levels just weren't good. So out of the boxes came the CDs. Now I'm hoping to remedy this with an iMic. I ordered one tonight, from reviews it seems like it does the job quite a bit better then connecting through the pro speakers. MP3s, even with the undeniably poor quality in comparison to CD, are just so convenient. Especially when you have a large collection of what can be considered archival material (i.e. pre-WWII blues).

BTW, I think CDs don't sound all that great either. I spent much time with CD, Vinyl and SACD sources and good quality vinyl on the Gyro SE table I used to have, killed CD everytime. I was extremely surprised by this, as I was definitely a member of the CD generation and had only owned one record when growing up. I went in with an open mind though, and I was sold almost instantly. Oh well, it's back to all digital sources now. My days as an audiophile are over, which isn't such a bad thing.

PerversionTracker

In the spirit of time wasting that I seem to be in this weekend. I usually don't pay much attention to sites like this, but PerversionTracker has become a regular read (helped by the fact they have an RSS feed).

As a Mac OS X user I've come to expect a certain level of quality from the software I use. This is one of my favorite aspects about the Macintosh community. It's not a market driven by heaps of features. Macintosh users expect quality and usability along with those features. That is not the case on platforms such as Windows and LInux where more and faster is all that seems to matter. PerversionTracker provides a nice check to remind us that not all Mac OS X software is created equal and that some must be singled out for ridicule to insure the pool overall remains of higher quality.

Bluetooth remote control

Now this is cool, just wish I had a Bluetooth enabled phone so that I could use it for. Hmm, guess I'd need a Bluetooth adapter for the computer too, oh well. Anyway, it's about time Bluetooth actually started to be useful. My next phone (and Mac) will definitely have it.

Until recently, I never bothered to really use the addressbook feature on my current phone. Simply because I figured the next time I get a phone I'd just have to reenter all the data. Of course it turns out I've kept the same phone for about 4 years now so I finally started using the addressbook a little more. Just in time to start seriously thinking about replacing it, ugh. The fact that the display on it is having issues doesn't help any.

Mariner Write

Another rumor now is that Apple has purchased Mariner Software. No idea if that is true or not, but their word processor Mariner Write actually seems pretty decent. May not be good enough for Word power users, but for someone like me who doesn't use anything more fancy then tables it might be usable. I'm trying the latest beta for a while to see how it goes. I'd love to have something that isn't Word so that I could use a word processor without feeling dirty.

BTW, if Apple did actually buy this company, a fresh Cocoa UI wrapped around their word processing component would make for a very interesting product indeed.

They also have a spreadsheet which I played with for about 5 minutes. It's definitely a quick Carbon port of an OS 9 app so it's not something I care too much for. The word processor has been reworked more to fit better as an OS X app. It's still an obvious Carbon app, but supports font smoothing and services which are critical to me.

New iPods and New Music Service?

Apple may be expanding faster than we thought [MacRumors]

Hmm, Apple launching a music service would be a very interesting twist. I kind of doubt it, but it would be cool. Of course it has to be completely unrestricted MP3s or it will simply fail a painful death just like every other service that tries to sell crippled files.

Controlling Your Mac with AppleScript and Java

AppleScript, while a fantastic language for running scripts locally, has minimal support for doing anything else, like sockets or serving Web pages. This is where AppleScript and Java form a powerful team. Scott D.W. Rankin shows you how to put this dynamic duo to work to control your Mac from remote locations. [O'Reilly MacDevCenter.com]

Cool, I didn't know you could do this from Java.

Now MS owns Virtual PC too

Microsoft buys Virtual PC from Connectix [Mac Net Journal]

This is just great, I guess Office wasn't a big enough hammer to hold over Apple's head. Now they can not only threaten to pull Office, but also the one way to run any other PC software. Things are going to get ugly between Apple and Microsoft in the coming years.

NoteTaker 1.1 offers major enhancements

NoteTaker 1.1 is a major update to the $69.95 note taking, organizing, outlining, and research tool from AquaMinds. [Mac Net Journal]

Excellent, I use this app and while it's surprisingly mature for a 1.0, it still has lots of room to improve. Overall still the best notetaking app that I've seen on OS X.

MP3 Sushi Server

MP3 Sushi Server is a very cool and very easy to use app to stream your MP3 collection. Just point it at your iTunes directory and let it roll. You can access it either as a radio station that plays songs randomly or via a web site that lets you browse the collection. It also supports Rendezvous so you can use it on a local network without worrying about IP addresses. Very, very cool. It's really just a wrapper around some open source tools like icecast, but it's the packaging that makes all the difference.

Quartz Extreme

If you ever wondered exactly how much of a difference Quart Extreme makes, try running JBuilder on a Mac that doesn't have it. My Cube has a Rage 128 video card and Quartz Extreme doesn't work, JBuilder just about kills it. Really sucks. It's funny to see the flurry screen saver come on and draw at about 1 frame per second.

Wish new video cards for cubes weren't so rare and expensive.

Network Clipboard

Here's a cool little app to share clipboards between Macs. Very handy if you work with more then one machine. nsRemotePasteboard

The Browser Formerly Known As Chimera

[MacSlash]

Chimera is on its way to being renamed Camino. Bummer, I like Chimera a lot better. Of course I'm using Safari now because I like the way it renders. Miss the tabs, though not as bad as I expected.

iTunes 32k Limit

Well, I guess you can't have it all... [MacRumors]

ITunes has a limit of 32,000 songs. One of the comments on MacRumors was that would be like 2,500 CDs, well... I own 2,500 CDs and had been slowly converting all of them to MP3s using iTunes. Hope they remove that limit before I finish.

1GB RAM

Today I finally broke down and upgraded my powerbook to 1GB RAM. Mac OS X just gets too sluggish once it starts paging and 512MB wasn't enough to keep it out given my usage patterns. So far it's been great with no page outs at all, we'll see how it goes after a few days when the buffer cache starts filling up. I'd assume it doesn't page out in that scenario, at least I hope so. Have to keep an eye on Safari though, seems to leak memory pretty badly.

The Mac OS X VM system explains the phantom performance increase people think they see each time an OS upgrade or any other change happens that requires a reboot. It's not that things are necessarily faster, it's just that OS X hasn't reached the point where it is paging data out of memory yet. My system is quite snappy when it's not paging, but once it starts paging stuff out it begins to feel like mud. It's kind of disappointing as I've never noticed the VM system so obviously affecting performance during routine paging on any other system. Obviously, if it gets to the point of thrashing it's always noticable, but otherwise, simple paging usually isn't this bad.

Apple needs to start shipping systems with 1GB standard, especially desktops that have cheaper RAM.