Yahoo!

If you read RSS on the Macintosh then you likely know that Brent Simmon’s NetNewsWire has been the best app around. Vienna is very nice and gave NNW competition, especially in the price category.

Well now, Newsgator has announced that NNW is free! Yes, free! You have no excuses now:

Download NetNewsWire For Free!

If you don’t read your news via RSS, you might want to consider it!

I created a file titled Foobar 3.0 in TextMate with the words “hello world” in it.

I did a spotlight search for Hello World but my file did not show in the list. I clicked Show All and it was not in the full list either.

With the full list open, I renamed my file from Foobar 3.0 to Foobar 3.0.txt and immediately, my file showed in the spotlight list.

So, Spotlight does filter files based on extension, and really does not like .0 extensions

I leave a hard disk on the floor next to the couch backing up with time machine. Today I was installing a new copy of vBulletin, but they use an awful disk structure of code+resources in one folder, so when I replaced my forums folder with theirs, I inadvertently wiped out the images that my forums user interface uses.

Well, time machine to the rescue!:

• Navigate to my images folder
• Click Time Machine on the dock
• Click back arrow
• See the missing “a2″ folder, select it
• Click restore
• Upload files to server

Done!

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Ok so we need a WEP hex key for my mom’s airport. I fire up my Intel laptop, no dice, Airport UTILITY won’t open an older Extreme, only Airport ADMIN UTILITY.

Can I download this app? No, An hour searching on apple.com, nothing. I find 4.0.2 for 10.3.3, but that won’t install.

I try 4.0.2 for windows under vmware, nope, can’t see the basestation.

My mom’s new imac doesn’t have it either.

What a freaking joke. Whomever at Apple decided that two utilities, similarly named, and then abandoning the old one, was a good idea:

You should be fired.

This is not Apple quality. This is crap.

Step it up Apple and resolve this asap.

John implemented saving a preview of the first page of a Sophie Book into the document bundle and I wrote my first QuickLook plugin:

Watch

I think it is clear that Time Machine is a hit - Easy to set up, works invisibly in the background to keep you up to date - Excellent!

Where can Time Machine go in the future?

Maybe Time Machine will replace .Mac’s Backup application. You could choose some plans to run and have time machine back up just those plans to your iDisk. Instead of Backup’s horrible excuse for versioning, you could have the great Time Machine methodology.

What do you think?

Every now and then Apple releases a major upgrade to their operating system. The last major release was 10.4, code named “Tiger.” Last Friday Apple released 10.5, code named “Leopard”

Apple releases major operating systems for several reasons:

• Money - Operating system updates make money and sell Macintoshes. Each major OS release pushes the envelope of what the hardware can do and for some people, these features are the tipping point to upgrading their machines.
• Software Advancement - It is with the major releases that Apple can make large, sweeping changes to the internals, which may break compatibility with some hardware and software, but it is done infrequently enough that it is not as much of a pain as a “dot” release, such as 10.4.11.
• Keeping a lead on Microsoft - Apple jumped over Microsoft with OS X and has been slowly gaining market share. This is good for Apple - See Money

Apple’s latest cat is a very nice upgrade. Not only are there very visible features, such as Coverflow and QuickLook, but there are nice updates to Spotlight, the Finder is nicer, and there are many new low level upgrades that users will never see but will surely benefit from.

Applications written for Leopard can take advantage of garbage collection, which simply means it is easier to write applications that have few if none common memory bugs.

Apple has connected syncing with their built in database, Core Data, which means that we should see more applications using Core Data and gaining benefits of backup via Time Machine.

Speaking of Time Machine, Apple has made it so incredibly easy to back up your Mac that you’ll wonder why this wasn’t done before. The answer is simple - In order to have something so simple and integrated as Time Machine, Apple needed to add features to the core operating system, such as FSEvents, which lets the operating system track when files are updated.

On top of that, QuickLook, which is the technology that lets you peek at documents without launching the document’s application, had to be invented so you could look at very old documents that might not have their application installed anymore.

Apple changed the dock, taking away the ability to put simple folders on the Dock and folders now become “Stacks,” which let you peek into a folder, such as your recent downloads folder.

Another thing that changed under the hood is networking. Leopard will fine tune itself for the network you are currently on, which is a boon for those of us fortunate enough to have Verizon’s fiber optic network, FIOS. No longer do we need to run tuners - Leopard does it for us. Nice.

For security, Leopard supports signed applications. While there are reports this functionality is wreaking havoc for some applications, which Apple will fix, this is great news for us Mac users. We’ve been blessed to not have any viruses nor trojan horses for our platform, but that could change. Apple is trying to head hackers off at the pass by allowing developers to put a “seal” on their applications. If a hacker edits any part of the application, the “seal” is broken and the operating system can alert the user.

Apple tweaked the UI by making the menu bar translucent, which some like, some hate. They changed the default folders look, such as Movies and Music, and most hate them.

Spotlight is much faster and even supports boolean searches, as long as you use AND, NOR or OR. Capitalization is required. You can even use parenthesis to group search expressions. For example, you can search for:

dog AND (cat OR bird)

to find any document that contains the word dog AND at least cat or bird. Simple, eh?

If you’re a scriptor, Automator has received a large overhaul and makes it much easier to write some very sophisticated scripts with just some dragging and dropping.

The new Help system has search right from the menu and can find menu items matching your search. This is great for finding hidden menus that deal with “size” or “image” in large applications. The only thing I hate is that the help system uses a floating palette which sits on top of all windows. Who thought this was a good idea?

Launching application is faster and the general feel of Leopard is faster than Tiger was.

iChat received a lot of updates - New visual effects, tabbed chatting and integrated file sharing is fantastic. Toss in screen sharing with audio and I can now support my mom’s computer from hundreds of miles away.

Some users are having awful upgrading experiences, but since Apple sold 2 million copies in a few days, I don’t think the overall experience has been poor. My install went fine and I even restored from Time Machine.

If you plan to upgrade to Leopard, be sure to see my Moving to Leopard article for tips that might make your migration to this new cat smoother.

If your windows simply disappear into thin air, it might be Spaces at work.

But in order for this bug to occur, you need to have had:

• Enabled Spaces
• Assigned applications to a space other than space 1
• Disabled Spaces

With spaces off, it seems something triggers the window manager to still move the windows to the now offscreen spaces and thus, windows are gone.

If this happens, use the Spaces dock icon to open up Spaces preferences, enable spaces and you’ll find your windows.

[isfym](http://www.isfym.com/site/blog/Entries/2007/10/27Don’tgoBacktoMyMac.html] has an article alarming about a security risk in .Mac’s “back to my mac” feature, which allows your Mac on the road to connect to your Mac at home.

The gist is this: If you have enabled “Back to my Mac” and someone knows your .Mac password, your machine at home is wide open to them.

This is not much different than if they knew the password to your machine. Their one concern is somewhat weak to me

Most people use weaker .Mac passwords. They do.

I don’t. My data is backed up on iDisk, I have email there, I don’t want anyone having an easy time at getting to that data, so I chose a password with various types of characters.

If you have an online service, use a strong password.

Now having said that, I think they are right that logging into .Mac should be different than logging into your Mac. Let the road Mac remember the .Mac password and when you connect at home, enter your machine password as a second line of defense.

While at MacCamp this weekend, I was trying a spotlight restore (open Time Machine, use spotlight to search for an application, restore) and it did something very odd: It restored into the same time machine folder the application was in.

This created a very broken partial application and now time machine fails to backup. Also, one of the broken apps contains a circular reference of symlinks, so something got broken very badly.

Caveat: This time machine was started on a beta of Leopard, so it is possible that had something to do with this failure. I’ll report more later.

Leopard represents a major leap in OS X. As such, there are some major changes under the hood that you should respect when considering moving to Leopard. If you rely on your Mac for day to day business needs, you are best off waiting for a couple of weeks and following news reports, while the rest of us geeks figure just what does and what does not work. You might also be wise to wait for 10.5.1. Apple has a history of releasing a .1 release within a month or so, quick fixing any major issues that are found by the general public.

When you do decide to move to Leopard, here are some tips to consider:

Make a complete archival backup of your system

Use a cloning backup program such as Super Duper to archive your computer to an external drive. I use the term archive because I suggest putting this drive away and not touching it for several months while you decide how well Leopard is working for you. Should you ever need to move back to Tiger, you can clone back this older backup, after saving off any data you added or changed while using Leopard.

Erase and Install

If you have several good backups of your system you might be best off erasing your system and installing Leopard clean, vs. upgrading or archive and installing. You can then use the migration assistant to copy your users and data from the archive backup you made in the first step above. (There is a method to my madness)

Time Machine vs. Super Duper

Time Machine promises to be a wonderful archival backup system, however it is new and has no track record for reliability. If you plan on using Time Machine, I suggest using a separate, large hard disk (because time machine will keep old data as long as it can!) for time machine, and a separate drive for your clone backup using Super Duper.

Three disks?!

Yes. Your data is very important. So now you have one drive with your tiger archive, one for a super duper clone backup and one for your Time Machine. Should Leopard prove great for you, you can eventually repurpose your original Tiger archive drive for Time Machine or a second Super Duper backup. Keep one offsite. You’ll thank yourself later. Drives are cheap these days.

Install Applications

After installing Leopard, install any apps that need reinstalling and keep a log, so if your machine does start acting oddly, you can contact the appropriate developer.

Beware plugins!

Quicktime Codecs, such as XIPH, iTunes Plugins, haxies, Little Snitch 1.x and other applications that hook in or extend the operating system can and probably will cause some issues on Leopard. The underpinnings have changed and thus the rules for these extensions have also. If you are having odd behavior, check the following locations for installed software. If you have an uninstaller, use that to remove the software, over uninstalling by hand:

Home Folder Locations

/Users/YOUR_HOME/Library/InputManagers/

/Users/YOUR_HOME/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/

/Users/YOUR_HOME/Library/QuickTime/

Top Level System Locations

/Library/InputManagers/

/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/

/Library/QuickTime/

Beware StartupItems

Some applications install startup unix scripts. You won’t want to remove these by hand, but rather use the application’s uninstaller. To see what you might have installed that runs when you boot your machine, look in the folder:

/Library/StartupItems/

You might see Retrospect, or some Final Cut Pro, mySQL, Parallels, etc startup items in here. If so, contact the developer to make sure you have Leopard compatible versions.

Clear the caches

If you are experiencing any oddities, it is known that cache data from your Tiger system may cause problems. Caches are files to help speed up operations and I don’t know why the installer does not nuke them for you. You can find these cache folders to delete at:

/Library/Caches/

/Users/YOUR_HOME/Library/Caches/

Enjoy!

With these simple precautions you are well on your way to enjoying Leopard and its many new, wonderful features!

This is great news. What I especially respected was the fact that Apple is taking the time to try their best to ensure a safe computing platform, vs just letting any yoho write an application for the iPhone, which the current “jailbreak” nonsense does.

Do you really want to download some random application and expose all of your contact information to the application developer, or to some virus? I doubt it.

Thus, I am hoping that Apple requires digital signatures. I think the way this would work is that a developer would file paperwork with Apple which would grant them a key. That key would go into XCode somewhere and sign the application.

This would at least have communication between developers and Apple. Whether it would be one key per developer, or one key per application, I do not know.

Apparently, Leopard has digitally signed applications from Apple already and developers can sign their own applications.

This is nice, because if an application is modified, the OS can at least warn you about it (although I have no idea if Leopard does yet).

I feel it is a great sign to see Apple taking security seriously and not resting on their laurels.

And it is free for all registered users!

Check it out

What’s new in TextExpander 2.0: - Snippet groups - Add snippet groups from external files - Add snippet groups from URLs (including password-protected URLs with Keychain support) - Synchronize snippet groups using .Mac Synchronization - Print snippets - Hotkeys to enable / disable and to create snippets from selection or clipboard - Enable or disable groups on a per-application basis - Sort snippets by date last used to identify unused snippets for possible deletion - AppleScript snippets, which expand to the result of the script - More options for sounds - Sound settings on a per-group basis - Update snippet groups from URLs and external files at regular intervals - Improved performance with large numbers of snippets

a very useful guide on how to use OpenGL Profiler to launch games, like World of Warcraft, with older video drivers (if you crash with the current drivers)

Alright, it’s only been two weeks since the pricing uproar and now the hacking community is in a tizzy because Apple has basically said, if you hack your phone, we’re not going to replace it if it becomes a brick.

The guys at the “iPhone Dev Team” (which has nothing to do with Apple) said that they will try and restore your phone to factory state so a new firmware update from Apple won’t brick it. Now people are pissed because Apple is seen as limiting their phone.

Um, Apple sells iPhones that work in the US only, as of this writing. If you buy a phone and break the EULA and hack around on it, you assume the risk of bricking it. Period.

In the US, it is legal to unlock your phone.

However, Apple does NOT need to support these customers, and shouldn’t. Why should they replace your bricked phone because you went tooling around inside the guts?

If you want to do something unauthorized to your iPhone, go right ahead. Just make sure you can afford the $399 if you need a new one.

This is no different than accessing designer mode on a HDTV and accidentally resetting the 256 settings to 0 by pressing the wrong key combo. Toshiba will not come out and give you a new TV because you were twiddling with hidden settings you found access to on the Internet.

Don’t ask me how I know about that anecdote.

I finally replaced that TV. Never did get it to look right again.

I’ve been wanting a second Macbook Pro power adaptor for awhile, and the stores just don’t seem to have the new, smaller ones in stock, so I ordered it online. $79. Cool. I have $21 left over.

Comes in 4-6 weeks. Sigh.

Just gave this update to the ole’ stalwart a shot.

1. It told me that my 140gb disk image was not big enough for a clone of a 140gb partition - but I told it I wanted to just update
2. The barber pole never changed to a progress bar
3. I had no idea if it was copying or updating
4. It let me choose my disk image but then said the target was not available, so I mounted the disk image myself
5. After 20 mins I decided to stop it. After another 5 minutes of “Application is not responding” I force quit it.

Wait for someone else to debug this application.

I’ve been using my Apple Airport Extreme N router since March. Some things work great, like iChat now functions perfectly.

However, other things, like accessing VPN with SonicWall’s client have never worked and there are still no solutions from Apple.

Now, the damned thing can’t see my printer. Power cycle the printer, unplug from hub, plug directly into router, nothing. I am not rebooting this thing because Elizabeth is using Skype.

Apple requires customers to reboot far too often to fix problems. Apple is not being prudent on fixing bugs with this product, and in some cases are introducing more.

Apple is set to really enjoy a lot of market share, but that means that each and every product has to be a winner. Sadly, their routers have never lived up to the challenge.

If you need a very simple, basic router, that just sends packets, then the Airport Extreme N is pretty damned nice. If you want a product you can rely on to work with all of your internet applications, as well as support all of the features Apple supplies, you might want to look elsewhere. Sadly, every other router seems to suck too.

Come on Apple - Step it up. Make us proud. 7 months is more than long enough to wait for a product that works as advertised.

Update: After several emails with Apple (Some on Sunday!) the issue is resolved!

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Apple released it’s rebate for iPhone purchasers today. To prove you are who you say you are, you enter your phone # and your serial number.

However, Apple has cached phone numbers from activation, thus I had to enter my old phone number (I had since ported my Vonage number to the iPhone) and now the text message with the credit coupon went to some other phone (or the bit bucket) heh.

Ooops.

Here is a hidden URL to their feedback page. Ok so it is not all that hidden, but because many applications have a “Send us feedback” menu item, for those that do not, this will help you out:

Apple’s product feedback page