I took some time to test compiling an app of mine on several configurations with CodeWarrior Pro 8.3:

TiBook 500 1GB RAM	10.2.8	5 minutes
TiBook 500 1GB RAM	10.3	3 minutes
G5/Dual 2ghz 1GB RAM	10.3	1 minute

In Preview, you can use the handy scroll wheel on your mouse (you do have a scroll wheel mouse, right?) to scroll horizontally by holding down the shift key when scrolling the wheel.

Wouldn’t it be cool if holding down option caused Preview to zoom in and out with the wheel?

If you are a Snapz Pro X user like myself, you know that it is an invaluable tool for taking screeshots. Couple that with OS X using PDF as the default format and you end up with using Snapz Pro X a lot, and using funky shortcuts that don’t conflict with the built in shortcuts.

Well now, using the Keyboard/Mouse system preference, you can disable the built in screenshot mechanism and set SnapzPro X to use cmd-shift-3! Just uncheck the built in options you don’t want to use.

Here’s how:

If you would like to see the Exposé screen effects in slow motion, hold down the shift key while activating Exposé! Cool!

Here is a list of applications I have run successfully on Panther:

Apple Developed:

• Mail.app
• Safari
• iPhoto
• Address Book
• iCal
• iChat A/V
• iSync (with Palm conduit)
• iTunes w/ iTunes music store
• Backup Beta 2
• Scheduled back ups do not work

Third Party:

• TK3 (Pre-release)
• Quicken 2004
• NetNewsWire 1.0.5
• LaunchBar 3.2.12
• Fire 0.32f
• Snak 4.9.6
• ICQ 3.4
• Yahoo Messenger 2.5.3
• Text descenders left mouse droppings in the text input box
• BBEdit 6.5
• Palm Hotsync 4.1
• Keyspan USB to Serial drivers 1.4
• Microsoft Intellimouse 5.0
• Microsoft Excel X Service Release 1
• Proteus 3.0.3
• Synchronize! Pro X 3.1

Hardware:

• Epson Color Stylus 740 (Install drivers from Epson Printer Pack #2 on disk #3
• Microsoft Optical Mouse Blue
• MacAlly MediaPro Keyboard (no use of extra keys, did not attempt to install software)
• Kyocera 6035 Smartphone serial cradle with Keyspan PDA19 serial to USB adaptor

Update Joar has posted a very nice page on this at: Getting a certificate for Mail

Panther’s Mail.app supports certificate based signing and encryption of email. Mail’s help mentions this and the fact that you need a certificate on your keychain, but no instructions on how to get a certificate.

So after some research and help from friends, we have some (partial) instructions on how to get your own certificate. There are several ways, this is a free method.

First off, you must use Mozilla. Not Internet Explorer, not Safari, not Omniweb, but Mozilla.

Go to: http://www.thawte.com/

Click on the “Secure your email link”

Give them the info they need including the EMAIL YOU WANT TO SIGN AND ENCRYPT FROM. Has to be one you use with Panther Mail. I used geek@geeksrus.com. Tell them you are not interested in any other products, uncheck the spam boxes and click Submit.

On the next page, Click Join. In the popup window , click Next

Enter your last name, first name, and date of birth. Click Next.

On the next page, for your USA National ID, use your drivers license, and click the Driver’s license button. Then enter your email address again and press next.

I forget the next step (sorry) but uou’ll be asked at some point for a password and five questions for security purposes. The site will email you a ping code. Take that url and use Mozilla to load it, and enter your ping data. Then you’ll be on a page to request a certificate.

Once you do that, follow the instructions. Then it will take 5 mins or so. Keep refreshing the View Certificate Status page and when it says it is oked, then click the link to show your certificates. There will be a fetch button. Once you click Fetch, your certificate is stored inside Mozilla.

Now open Mozilla Preferences. Turn down Private and Security. Click Certificates. Click Manage Certificates. Select the Certificate (it is the indented one) and click backup. Now enter a password for this file (like 12345) and save to your desktop as somethihng like geek@geeksrus.com.p12

Now double click that file on the desktop. Keychain Assistant will ask for the backup password. When you get it right, your certificate will now be in keychain.

Now when you open mail and make a new messagae, you’ll see a little star icon to the right of the address selection popup. If that is checked, your email will be signed. People will get an attachment. If EVERYONE (not just some) of the people in your to/cc/bcc fifleds has sent you their certificate, then you will also see a lock icon, allowing you to encrypt the email! Sweet.

As I have used Panther, here are some things I noticed that are new to those of using OS X for awhile:

Finder

Delete files system owns: You can now select a folder you don’t own (say system owns it) and delete it in the Finder. The finder will ask for your admin password. This is the Unix equivalent of sudo rm -rf ./

Built in Zip: You can now zip files using the Finder’s contextual menu. Control/Right click on a file or folder and choose Archive… The Finder also encodes Mac files so they decode properly.

I archived a jpeg photo that I added a resource icon to with Graphic Converter and moved it to my PC, then unzipped it. What Panther does is encode the resource fork (and other meta data) into a folder named __MacOSX Inside there is a file for every file in the folder, with the filename prefixed with ._ So yes, you can unzip Mac archives on windows and the users will get the data fork (jpeg) files normally!

So I then made sure I had a data fork only jpeg image and archived that. I then unarchived it on Windows. You still get the __MACOSX folder but it is empty. Too bad Apple could not optimize out that folder if it was not needed.

I also took a 587 megabyte disk image and did some tests against Aladdin’s DropZip 7.0.3 and Stuffit Expander 7.0.3:

	Compress	Expand
Finder	9m 14s	1m 30s
DropZip	25m 54s	N/A
Stuffit Expander	N/A	5m 25s

Exposé

Exposé is Apple’s cool new window management tool. Once you have used it, you’ll wonder how you lived without it. Those engineers deserve a year’s bonus pay.

Anyhow, it is great, just press F9, F10 and F11 to see it in action. F11 is the most useful for those of us who download to the Desktop. If you chat a lot, say with iChat, F10 is super nice. Hear a bleep that someone messaged you, but their window is occluded? F10 to the rescue. And the windows update live while Exposed, too.

Yes, you can use mouse buttons and screen corners - I happen to prefer the F-Keys.

Speed

Panther is much faster. Disk access is faster. Applications launch faster. The User Interface is snappier. Everything is faster. Even help is fast - It is usable for the first time! RAM helps too - When I was importing 2 gigabytes of email into Mail.app, I was using a lot of virtual memory (my G4 has 896 megs of ram) and you could see the performance hit. Once that was done and I quit mail, it freed up the VM and the machine became super speedy once again.

Mail

Mail is much improved in Panther. I was able to import over 597,000 messages into Mail with one crash. I was trying to do the import over the network and I think it didn’t like that. Once I moved the email (2 gigabytes worth) to the local drive, the import went fine. About 14 hours to import. I did lose the unread status of all mail. Every message came in as unread.

Mail is much faster. Very zippy looking up address names and deleting messages.

The new threading is very nice, allowing you to see threads of conversation grouped together, instead of sparsely laid out in the mail list. You can toggle this behavior.

Addresses now become these cool objects that you can easily select to delete or move around. If you want to edit them, just click the little triangle and choose Edit. This is really cool, as it turns a textual representation of a person into a real object.

Searching in mail is pretty quick. Not as fast as Eudora 6, but fast enough. Searching all 597,000 emails for “lmgetm” in Eudora took 1m 45s, wheras in Mail it took 3m 33s. I rarely search all 600K emails though, so the extra time is not an issue.

The mail (on disk) for Eudora was 1.9gb. The size was the same for Mail.app. The indexing (which took 24 hours) added only 350mb to the size. Not bad at all!

Mail will now show the picture of the user you are emailing if there is one in your address book.

Mail now allows you to load images for HTML email if you turn off HTML loading by default, so be sure to uses the Viewing preferences to disable HTML. You want to do this so spammers cannot track you. You can then load images for known, good HTML email.

Mail now has a “Send Again” option under the Message menu!

Classic

If you happen to use Classic, open up the System Preferences, choose the Classic panel and check the box to show the Classic status in the menu. This is cool. You can now easily start and stop classic without opening the System Preferences.

iCal

Info Drawer: The tabbed palette of the old iCal is gone and is replaced with a really slick drawer. Inside the drawer you can set the calendar, item text, alarms (more than one), repeating schedule, etc. The repeat is nice - If you choose custom, you get an integrated modal dialog to set the event up, which fades away when done.

The one thing about the drawer that iCal does wrong is that it does not resize the window if the window is too wide. This means if you have iCal zoomed to fit your screen, choosing “Show Info” does nothing, as the drawer is offscreen.

Alarms: The alarms in iCal are much improved. When an alarm goes off, you are given buttons to dismiss it, snooze it or find it in iCal. If more than one alarm goes off, you get a scrolling list of alarms, vs. multiple dialogs.

Address Book

The Address Book brought some much needed changes. You can now specify a card as a company with a simple checkbox. You can easily add friends and spouse fiends for example. There are preferences to control how phone numbers are formatted (yay!) and even a new privacy option that when turned on for your card, allows you to check off which fields you do or do no want exported when you send someone your vCard.

File Vault

File Vault is Apple’s answer to us powerbook users who have sensitive data on their laptops. File Vault can be used on a home machine as well, but it is more useful on the road.

Even though you have a password on your laptop, if your laptop is stolen, the thief can remove the hard disk from your laptop and attach it to a new computer, thus accessing all of your files. File Vault counters this by encrypting every bit of data in your home folder.

This means as you read and write files, they are decrypted and encrypted on the fly. You can only do your entire home folder, which is a bit of a bummer - I’d like to specify a list of folders, including those on my keychain drive, to keep encrypted. Maybe in a later version?

When you set up File Vault using the Security System Preference, you must specify a master password. This is nice, especially if you have multiple users or are a consultant setting up a client’s machine. This “backdoor” password allows you to decrypt the data should someone forget their password. Forget the user password and the master password and your data is gone, forever.

File Vault seems to encrypt into a new file system and then after verification, replaces your old data with the encrypted data. This is good news should something fail during encryption.

Apple System Profiler

Apple System Profiler is now simply called “System Profiler” and is still located in /Applications/Utilities/

Console

The console is an application in /Applications/Utilities/ that lets you see the logs applications print messages into. Now there is a really nice “Logs” button that can show you all logs, such as crash reports, system logs, etc, and especially cool, delete logs. No more hunting for them on your disk!

Activity Viewer

The new Activity Viewer is incredible. You can see a pie chart of memory use, or a CPU usage graph over time. You can sample an application that is sucking up CPU time and send that report to the developer, helping them figure out what is wrong. Activity Viewer is your friend when your machine seems really slow.

Application Crashes

Now when an application crashes, you are given a chance to send a crash report to Apple. Yay! Maybe they will be able to fix OS bugs faster now or at least report to developers with very buggy applications.

Well Panther is finally out (early, too! This guy got his) and I must tell you, Panther is amazing! You’ll find Panther to be much, much faster and more streamlined. There is so much to talk about!

If you are the kind of person that likes to upgrade ASAP, you’ll find Panther incredibly useful. I have not run into any software yet that does not work, however some third party extensions may need touch ups.

If you do upgrade or archive and install, be sure to run DiskWarrior first to fix any date or disk issues. Reformatting the disk is the best choice, but you do lose all of your data, so be careful and backup properly.

Panther started out as a ho-hum upgrade, but the speed and Exposé along with all of the polish to Mail, Address Book, etc has made this a worthy upgrade.

Panther is, in a word, Mac OS X Polish.

Welcome to Mac OS X 1.0.

My Ford Taurus SHO Mach in-door speakers had blown out after 6 years of use, so a trip to Car Toys here in Portland, Oregon and $121 later (installed) I have crisp, clean sound once again.

The reference I used was Tom’s Diner, the a cappella version. The syllables were crisp, the silence was silent. I played it from my iPod running line out through a rcadirect.com CD Jukebox replacement unit. The song was purchased from the Apple iTunes music store, compressed in AAC 128 bit.

At 140 watts, these speakers should be able to handle my meager needs and being affordable, have made rocking out to my iPod enjoyable once again.

I really dig Pink’s new song, “Trouble.” Of course I bought it at the Apple iTunes Music store for 99 cents.

I especially like the chorus bridge. The melody of her voice played against itself is really sweet.

• Linksys BEFSr41 - Worked well, had some issues with my Vonage - Gave it away
• Apple Airport Snow Basestation - Works well, but apple’s features suck. Especially in port forwarding.
• SMC Barricade - What a pile of crap. Bought it for modem backup. SMC took 10 months to update firmware. Never did add the promised loggins. Screw em.
• Linksys 802.11b Wireless - Worked well, wanted to go to 802.11g
• NetGear 614 - Worked well, wanted wireless
• NetGear WGR614 - This is my current router - Works great, but when I upload, my Vonage VoIP phone is useless. I like the MAC to reserved IP feature.
• Linksys BEFSR81 - on order. This has a Quality of Service feature that claims I can plug the Cisco ATA for my Vonage service into port 1 and give it highest priority. I’ll either plug it into the NetGear (the netgear has a 100/full WAN port and cooler DHCP features) or the other way around.

Sigh

At Stereophile, talks about the innards and the sound quality, the design, etc.

This article will be updated with a few pics. I am still using the G4 (with an old monitor) until everything is set up.

First impressions:

• Super slick design. I have some pics with the air flow guard on and you can hardly tell
• Don’t try and slide this boy across carpet - It weighs a ton and digs in. Made getting under my desk interesting.
• I am now overloading my 500va UPS during boot. LOL. I have some other stuff plugged in, but I see a trip to Comp USA soon. I’ll have THREE UPSes now. But only two power outlets. HMM.
• Man this machine is fast. I decided to go ahead and test an update to 10.2.8 before the clean install. While the updater was running I launched ical. Heh graphics have stopped drawing. I know, don’t run apps while installing OS updates I’m guessing this pulsing button means reboot - Yep. All works fine.

I’m going to make sure it all works and passes mustard, then I’ll reformat the disk (A much suggested tact to avoid any bad Apple burn) and start syncing my data over with Synchronize! Pro X

Nice review of the G5 including speed tests and movies.

If you do a lot of searching, watch out for iSeek from Ambrosia. Here is a thread on it over at MacNN:

iSeek Thread

While I am not sure I need this, what is nice is that it is always live, and you can leave the search area in the menu bar. This seems useful for people with screens of 1280 pixels or wider.

Take a gander. What do you think?

BTW, am sure the movie on the first entry was taken with Snapz Pro X

Ironing crappy nylon socks on the hottest temperature is good for neither the socks nor the iron. Hated those old socks from high school anyway.

Rowenta sells a soulplate cleaner ($9.99 at Target) which did an amazing job of bringing my soulplate back to like-new condition! It is so slick now, the iron slides over the board by itself (off, of course)

I’ve posted a picture of the newly completed office. It is so much much nicer to work at, with plenty of book space, a separate desk for in/out items and the ability to swivel between three machines!

AP - Bill Shoemaker, who rode four Kentucky Derby winners and for more than 40 years was a commanding presence in thoroughbred racing, died Sunday. He was 72. [Yahoo! News - Sports]

What a classy sportsman.

Hehe this is classic

Why must Safari store it’s cached favicons in ~/Library/Safari? This is the folder backed up by Apple’s own Backup and it adds a ton of time to back up useless data.

These icons should be saved in ~/Library/Caches/Safari/Icons/

Steve