Nicest of the Damned

iTunes won't quit

Fluther: ITunes restarts when quitting.

This one bit me: If you have SRS's iWow installed, it can get in a mode where it will restart iTunes almost instantly when you quit the app. You're left with a transparent iTunes icon in the Dock. Even trying to kill the iTunes (and iTunes Helper) process from the command-line doesn't work.

The trick is to also kill the 'genredetection' processes through Activity Monitor or the command line, which will (finally) let the app quit.

iPhone 4+ years in the making?

Nicest of the Damned | isync + ical + ichat + inkwell = iphone?

I'm not usually one to self-link, but I'm getting some Google hits on the short post linked above from August 2002. It references a John Markoff story, now lost to the New York Times TimesSelect product, but the abstract is pretty prescient.

Remember, this is from August 19, 2002:

Apple Computer reportedly weighs introduction of hand-held device that would combine elements of cellphone and Palm-like personal digital assistant; forthcoming Macintosh OS X, Version 10.2, is being marketed as improvement for desktop computer users, but it has features that make more sense in hand-held device than desktop; move would play into Apple's so-called digital hub strategy, in which Macintosh desktop computer is center of web of peripheral devices of Steven P Jobs, Apple chief executive...

By the way, my very next post, later that day, was on a cool new RSS aggregator, called NetNewsWire, then in version 1.0b13.

Biggest Macworld and switching to the PC

Hivelogic | Regarding Macworld 2007

O'Reilly MacDevCenter | Our Macworld Wishes

So the biggest Macworld in years starts tomorrow (Tuesday for Macworld Expo). Nobody seems to have a real handle on what Apple's going to do this year, so predictions are all over the place. Apple has pushed the hype by promising that “The first 30 years were just the beginning,” suggesting major things afoot.

Over at HiveLogic, Dan Benjamin offers a fairly safe list: Whatever Apple's iTV becomes, updates to the iMac, iPod, iLife and iWork, and a preview of Leopard, with Windows virtualization built in. All good stuff, with the virtualization probably the only controversial choice.

Benjamin doubts we'll see the iPhone/iPod phone, new iSights, or a Mac Pro update, widely expected because Intel will be announcing its new Kentsfield processors tomorrow. He rates as “possibilities” high-def iTunes (to support TV and movie content in HD), an update to the iPod Hifi, a MacBook Pro speedbump, and BlueRay support, and is holding his breath for a “true” video iPod, a nanoBook (an ultraportable laptop), and a Beatles iPod, heralding the arrival of the Beatles catalog on iTunes.

Over at O'Reilly's MacDevCenter, a survey of writers turns up a surprisingly common wish for a Core 2 Duo update of Apple's longstanding desktop form factor, last seen in, what, the 7600? For years, this was the most popular corporate Mac, in its IIcx/IIci/Quadra 650/Power Mac 7100/PowerMac 7500/7600 iteration, which usually shared a motherboard with Apple's top tower, albeit generally with a slower processor, and generally offered 3 slots. The iMac line is inherently wasteful in a corporate environment, because most companies are ready to upgrade the CPU long before the LCD has died, but the Mac mini is generally a little underpowered for corporate use. So I'll add this to my wish list (fat lot of good it will do).

Also looking back to the future are a couple of writers who want a replacement for the 12" PowerBook. That would be terrific. The Mac world significantly lags the PC world when it comes to sub-notebooks, and it seems like I'm seeing more and more of the smaller, lighter machines in airports. If you spend a lot of time on the road, and use your machine for office functions, a 12" (or smaller) machine you can hook to an external monitor in the office, with a decent keyboard and battery life, makes a lot of sense.

Also, three of their writers want changes to .Mac. One wants it eliminated (I don't see that happening), while another wants to see it significantly enhanced. I still would like to see .Mac become an extension of a home server product (like the HP MediaSmart server, but software or Mac mini-based and therefore cheaper), with two-way synchronization of selected files and folders between .Mac and the home server; automatic backup of purchased iTunes and other user content to the home server; domain, weblog, calendar and photo sharing support over the internet.

Meanwhile, I'm starting a new job tomorrow, and I hear they've got a sub-notebook Dell waiting for me. I'll be sure to let you know how that goes. It's been 5 years since I spent more than 30-45 minutes at a Windows desktop.

Why no Mac viruses?

Daring Fireball: Jackass of the Week: Larry Seltzer

John Gruber goes off on the latest Windows-centric pundit to declare that the only reason Macs are essentially virus-free is that nobody's interested in them.

Seltzer's summary graph:

Opinion: The verdict is in: OS X is as insecure as anything out there, but somehow nobody—including attackers—cares.

Gruber focuses on the inconsistency that the Mac supports a healthy software market, likely one proportionate in size to the Mac market compared to the Windows market, but the Mac malware market is “nearly zero.”

Gruber misplays his case, however, when he says “Mac OS X’s malware market share hovers near zero (as did the classic Mac OS’s a decade ago).” Both Gruber and Seltzer seem to believe that the Mac has just never supported a virus-producing community. This is dead wrong.

The Mac environment wasn't always virus-free.

Once upon a time, I ran a few public-access labs at my university. These labs suffered several virus outbreaks, most notably catching WDEF before it was discovered in 1989. We also would occasionally see MDEF, nVIR, and Scores. The Mac's market share then was a little higher -- a little under 10 percent, versus 5 or 6 percent today -- but it was still a minority platform, with the great majority of computers running DOS or Windows.

And yet, there were 10 or 20 viruses running loose in the classic Mac OS ecosystem (compared to hundreds for DOS/Windows), and there are none running loose in the OS X ecosystem (compared to hundreds for Windows). Since the hardware was at one point exactly the same for either ecosystem, the difference must be in either the software or the user base.

But the OS X user base is decidedly more capable of creating a virus than the classic Mac OS ecosystem. Plenty of “alphageek” nerd users have made the switch, attracted by Apple's elegant hardware, (figuratively and occasionally literally) transparent interface, and Unix-y base. The only thing about the user base that discourages malware production is that most people who know enough to build a Mac virus can make a nice living as a programmer or administrator, so why foul the nest? Still, the number of users capable of generating theoretical Mac malware must be at least 5 times as large as it was before the release of OS X.

So if it's not the user base, it must be the software. The Unix security model is more secure than the pre-Vista Windows model, and must take the lion's share of the credit for the lack of OS X viruses. There may eventually be Mac OS X viruses, but to claim the reason there are none is that the platform is irrelevant is more than a little bizarre.

iTunes as video jukebox

Using iTunes to catalog video is working out pretty well; I'm beginning to build a video jukebox to go with the thousands of songs in the musical jukebox accessible through iTunes.

Network streaming is very good across a wired 100-megabit network, acceptable over 802.11g, and pretty pathetic over 802.11b. I've imported a bunch of old Apple commercials, various movie videos, and have started importing shows somebody in the family wants to keep after watching the EyeTV capture files. The iTunes interface is pretty good at navigating a lot of content quickly, and provides preview frames for videos to help distinguish similar movies.

There are a few rough edges, however, and I wonder if the day isn't coming when there are two paths into the iTunes Music Store, iTunes and “iVideo.”

Why? Inclusion of both video and audio content is feeling forced. I went to listen to my “recent additions” playlist off the G5, and iTunes keeps showing me (recently added) videos. I could rewrite my smart playlist to not include videos (and probably will), but there should be a simple way to choose one kind of content or the other, even (nay, especially) over the network. Right now I just want to listen to new songs, but to do that, I have to uncheck literally five-sixths of my “recent additions” playlist.

Playing videos back in iTunes is a decidedly inferior experience to, say, DVD Player. Besides the jumpy playback, there's also no clear way to fast forward or rewind. There is a hidden feature -- if you click on the tiny preview panel in iTunes, a full resizable window opens. That's an improvement.

Still better, Improved Movie Viewing in iTunes gives an AppleScript that will fire up local movies in QuickTime, giving a smoother full-screen experience with QuickTime Player's on-screen controls. Still, it's easy to imagine a better experience with a purpose-built video management and player program.

Apple ballyhooed the addition of parental controls for a variety of applications in Tiger and in iTunes starting with version 5, but it's really a pretty weak setup, with many of the weaknesses made clearer with the addition of TV shows to the content stream.

Problem 1: Only iTunes-purchased songs can be marked as “Explicit.” Believe it or not, I have some songs I would just as soon not share with my children, but I can't find a way to set the “Explicit” tag so they'll be locked out. Apple documents the “Explicit” tag for podcasters, but I don't see any way to set it on content that isn't coming from the Music Store.

Problem 2: Video content appears to be completely unrated. Leafing through the selection of TV shows available, there's not a single episode of “Desperate Housewives” that rates a parental advisory label, even though tonight's episode is rated TV-PG.

Once again, I have no way of setting local content so that my children can't see it. I created a streamable copy of “Office Space” on my G5 as an experiment; now it's visible on the network.

What I hope Apple will do: Update from the binary “explicit/okay” system to one that reflects the V-chip ratings or the MPAA ratings, on songs and videos. There are tracks and movies that I think are okay for my 10-year-old that aren't okay for my 4-year-old. Give users access to the rating system, so that users who have parental controls can't access content at MY option, not just Apple's.

iTunes 6.02: Now with video sharing

With all the attention on the new ministore presentation, no one seems to have noticed that iTunes 6.02 enables video-sharing to your local network. Whether it's intended for an upcoming home media appliance or not I don't know, but it brings videos up to par with music.

Neither Apple's main iTunes page nor its “Share & Stream” page mention this, and the Share & Stream page refers multiple times to “music sharing,” but it's definitely enabled, as the screenshot below demonstrates.

Once you've installed iTunes 6.02, that machine will publish a “Videos” playlist, visible to but not accessible by iTunes 6.01.

There's still some weirdness going on. I've upgraded to 6.02 on my wife's iMac, and I can't see two videos she bought with an earlier version of iTunes. From my daughter's partition on my G5, I can stream a music video she bought Thursday (probably with 6.02), but can't see two movies I converted to .m4v format after capturing them on my EyeTV, even though they show up as Videos in iTunes.

I'm experimenting now to see if I can figure out a way to make the older videos show up for sharing, and how to export EyeTV movies that can be shared. If you have any insight, please e-mail me.

Update: Blue Coconut, the application for downloading music from a networked playlist, works exactly the same with video files.

Update 1/19: Welcome Digg.com readers. I'm still looking for info on how iTunes decides which videos to display (I encoded a TV episode the other night, and get full audio, but only a still frame when I try to stream it). If you have any insights, please comment.

10.4.3 released; thrill-seekers only for now

I'm one for two with Apple's new 10.4.3 release; it installed without incident on my 12" PowerBook (867 mHz), but rebooted to a kernel panic on the Dual-2.5 gHz Power Mac G5.

I removed all my external devices, ethernet included, and rebooted, still to be greeted by the kernel panic screen. Booting in verbose mode (command-v at startup) showed me a failed dependency when loading the Kensington MouseWorks software, so I came back in safe boot (shift key at startup), ran the MouseWorks uninstaller (by the way, I initially had version 2.6, but upgraded to 2.8 during a brief period of stability, and got the kernel panics back), and rebooted, and, voila, all is back to normal.

It's possible that the real culprit was some interplay between MouseWorks and MouseZoom, which I use to overclock my cursor zooming, but now that MouseWorks is uninstalled, I find that all I'm giving up is custom application settings -- the standard keyboard/mouse drivers do a more than passable job driving my PilotMouse Optical Wireless (bought by mistake: I HATE wireless mice).

Some Tiger notes

Photo by Frank Steele.

This is not a no-brainer, “everybody upgrade” release like Panther. With Panther, I upgraded Christy within a few days; Tiger will probably take a couple of months, despite some great new functionality.

I got a Micro Center flyer today, reiterating a good deal they have going through June 5: Get a $50 rebate on Tiger or a Tiger family pack, which reduces your overall price to $79.99, the lowest I've seen.

I did a ground-up install on the PowerBook, since it didn't like my volume bitmap, and I had to erase the drive.

On the G5, I did an upgrade in place, but came up with no printers installed. Samsung doesn't write Mac drivers anymore, and the SPL 2.5 driver I found on their website didn't work. Eventually, I tried an older driver (I think 2.0), and my printer magically reappeared. The HP inkjet (available across the network) added without a problem.

The iMac G4 at work installed while I was at lunch with, so far as I can tell, zero issues of any sort.

Some sticky bits:

If you're running Tiger, get the new Quicksilver, which features a new plug-in mechanism, and will be the basis of QS development going forward.

TiVo Desktop is not compatible with Tiger, adding insult to the injury that Macs aren't supported for TiVoToGo.

Imagine my shock when the Accuweather widget (one of the Tiger defaults) reported that it was 35 degrees in Atlanta. Mark at work noticed that a fix for this is to add "GA" to the search field on the back of the widget. Since I can't make it recur, it's possible this was fixed at the server.

Spotlight is awesome. If you don't keep everything neatly organized, Spotlight is for you. That's me to a 'T'. One small disappointment: It doesn't index your content on .Mac. That may be different if you keep a local copy of your .Mac contents.

Some of the propellerheads have been ragging on people who compare it to Quicksilver or Launchbar, but 80 percent of people could use Spotlight as an application launcher.

I do find it a little odd that you can't open the enclosing folder from Spotlight's menu (can you?); often I want to find a file (maybe a photo I've scanned) so I can see related materials. For that, you can use Spotlight's panel view, which is activated by option-command-space instead of command-space.

Spotlight will lead me to tag my iPhoto pictures.

Pivoting works, sort of. I think it's maybe just enabled for ATI video cards, since my G5 (with an ATI 9600 card) works, but my PowerBook (with an nVidia GeForce 420 Go) doesn't. I haven't tried the the Mac mini, but I hear it also works (with an ATI 9200).

I'm less impressed with Dashboard. The strangest thing to me is that it doesn't seem to update in the background, explaining the long delay when the dashboard is activated for the first time. I have a “This Day in History” widget loaded, but generally it's showing yesterday's events, since it doesn't flip over on its own. Merlin has asked the LazyWeb for a NextBus widget for San Francisco's MUNI, which I can't help with, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a MARTA widget in the next couple of months.

The new iSync included a piece of code (about 450k worth) that installs on my phone (a Nokia 3650). More applications can be sync'ed, including the controversial new version of Mail and your Keychains. Note that syncing Mail accounts may not be a good idea; in my case, which server I use for outbound mail changes on my PowerBook, but not on my home or work machine, so I don't want to propagate my PowerBook settings to the desktops.

Haven't tried Automator yet, despite having used AppleScript extensively.

World's cheapest G5 upgrade

My G5 fans have been running a little loudly, and almost all the time, lately. I hadn't noticed an effect on the machine's speed, but in checking the load average, it was always above 1.00. At first, I thought maybe this was an effect of the dual processor setup, but I checked the dually at work, and the load average was about .50.

I installed a fresh copy of Panther on an external FireWire drive, booted up, and my fans spun down. Load average was suddenly in the .25 range. I rebooted off the internal drive, and the fans came back. Looking at 'top', I discovered the Finder was hovering within a few percent of 100 percent. Hmmmm. In poking around, I noticed my 'Finder Preferences' file (com.apple.finder.plist) was about 2 MEGABYTES. I deleted it, fired back up, and my machine was instantly 5 times faster, with the load average down in the .20 range.

Right now, running NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, Entourage, SpamSieve, iPulse, QuickSilver, and iTunes, I'm showing "0.20 0.12 0.13" in 'w' or 'uptime'.

It's been about 36 hours since I fixed it, and the office is even noticeably cooler.

2 iPods + 2 iTunes - iServe = frustration

I have defended Apple's FairPlay DRM in the past, partly because it appears to emphasize fair use, allowing multiple burns of a playlist to CD, and letting you share your music to 5 computers across the network, and an "unlimited number of iPods."

My perspective has changed a bit. Christy's iPod mini, ordered in late April, well in advance of her birthday and Mother's Day, finally arrived in time for back to school.

So here's the setup: I have my PowerBook, with much of our CD library and all the iTunes Music Store purchased music. Christy has an iMac with a different set of tracks from our CD library and no iTMS songs. Christy has a 4-gig iPod mini, and I have a 1st-generation 5-gig iPod.

Here's what I expected: I thought that by virtue of having FairPlay-authorized iPods attached to FairPlay-authorized computers, iTunes would manage things, and Christy and I would be able to shuttle music from either computer to either iPod.

That is, in fact, NOT the case. Given Apple's provided software, the iPod can't pull music across the network, and you can't set up an iPod to pull 3 playlists from computer A, then hook it up to pull 2 more playlists from computer B. If I want to put purchased songs on Christy's mini, I have to populate it only with songs from my PowerBook.

Apparently, Apple assumes that every family will have a central computer that holds all your music, and every iPod user will go to it to sync their iPod. Hasn't Apple heard that people carry these “laptop” thingies nowadays? I don't want to leave my purchased tracks at home when I go out of town, although I suppose I could bear it if they're all on the iPod. The only way I could see the central computer approach working is if Apple shipped an iServe, with built-in iTunes synchronization (not just Rendezvous, er, OpenTalk sharing, but full synchronization).

One solution I may actually try is to cross-synch our iPods, with Christy's iPod featuring songs that are on both computers and songs that are only on my computer, and my iPod featuring songs common to both computers and songs that are only on her computer. That way, between the computer and the iPod, we would each have nearly a full set. Still hardly an ideal solution.

The longer-term solution is likely one of the million iPod manager programs out there, so I guess I'll start messing around with them, and I guess I'll have to check out Hymn and DeDRMS. It just seems really bizarre that I've bought into Apple's system from end to end, but it doesn't work like it should. I welcome correction, if I've overlooked some setting or shortcut, and I welcome pointers to any of the iTunes/iPod tools that people have used in a similar situation. This strikes me as profoundly contrary to true Apple-ness, and to the ideal of "personal" computers.

Update 8/7: This is actually easy, but completely separate from iTunes itself. Apple has a useful how-to, and it's as simple as copying the files over to a computer that's already authorized. My mistake was expecting it to all work from within iTunes.

Apple knows transitions

Macworld UK | Happy 10th Birthday, Power Mac!

Sunday was the 10th anniversary of the introduction of Apple's Power Macintosh line. Based on IBM's POWER line of processors, the original PowerPCs gave Apple a big performance leg up on Intel, one that Apple only regained (however fleetingly) with the introduction of the G5.

One of the great things about working at Coke (and later, at CNN.com) was that companies would provide software and hardware before it was released to the public.

In late 1993 or so, we got a couple of Top Secret boxes from Apple. They were prototypes of a new generation of machines we read about in the Mac press, and which would eventually be the first Power Macs.

Apple sent us the top two models, and the cases weren't even finished yet. The small one, the Carl Sagan, was in a sheet-metal box about the size of my Quadra 650, and the big one, Cold Fusion, was in a Quadra 800/880 case. We knew that the new boxes needed optimized code to perform at their very best, but we had also heard about "fat binaries," which allowed them to run older code with good performance.

Bigger fish than I got first dibs on both of them, but eventually, the time came for us to test KO/Office, Coke's internal office automation software, and since I was the support specialist for the Mac version, I finally got some seat time with the newest God Box.

We were worried about KO/Office, because it had one control panel in particular that worked on some fairly low-level routines. It was a security piece that managed logins and a secure screensaver, and we were trying to figure out what would be involved in rewriting that piece to work with the new hardware.

So I sat down with Cold Fusion, the box that eventually was introduced as the 8100/80, fired it up, and ... was immediately at home. The first thing I noticed was how little I noticed. Everything looked and ran exactly like it did on the Quadras. I had kind of hoped the PowerPC Macs (which is all we knew them as) would have some new bells and whistles, but Apple was focused on easing the transition as much as possible.

I installed KO/Office, rebooted so the control panel would work, and gave an exploratory sniff for fried hardware. No? Can I login to a network server and authenticate? Yep. Fire up the (in-house, custom) e-mail program? No errors. In short, everything worked. We were agog.

I was reminded of how seamlessly Apple made that transition recently, when I helped a friend upgrade to OS X. The friend in question has worked through 4 Macs: an SE, a IIsi, a Power Mac 6100, and a Blue and White G3/350, the target box for OS X.

My friend (I'll call her "N"), has some old, old code on her machine. She uses an address book desk accessory that was last updated in 1995, and barely appears on the web. She's happy with Freehand 7, from 1996, and doesn't want to buy an upgrade. As a result, she became the first OS X install I've done where Classic is likely to be up all the time.

Once again, I expected some fireworks. Maybe it would come from the third-party SCSI card, or the print-shop level Epson inkjet, or the comparatively low-powered CPU, or some of the old, old code. No way is this one going to be a smooth upgrade.

Once again, Apple proved me wrong. The old code happily runs under Classic, which itself runs quickly. The unusual inkjet is one of the stock printer drivers, and the SCSI card just works.

I don't know if anybody else in technology has so adeptly handled two such radical technology shifts, but it's enough to make you wonder ... If Apple decided it needed to, would it be any harder than these transitions to bring OS X to x86?

What's your favorite Mac game?

IMG Feature | The 20 Mac Games that Mattered Most

I like games, but I really don't play that much. There were times when I was in college, or working in the lab, that I played more, and many of those wasted hours are recalled by this list compiled by InsideMacGames.com.

Notable omissions? Crystal Quest, Apache Strike, ...

Tip: Stay active on iChat forever

A friend is considering ditching iChat, which he (or she) likes, because he (or she) couldn't figure out a way to keep it from going idle when, in fact, he (or she) is idle.

Why is it a problem that it works as expected? Well, the friend is concerned that his (or her) manager might use his (or her) instant-messenger status to determine when he (or she) might not be working.

I tried to AppleScript a solution, but it doesn't seem to matter if you've sent a message or not, or if your status is getting updated on a regular basis. Apparently, the only thing being monitored is whether there's been a keypress or a mouse-down event in the last hour.

Low-tech solutions to the rescue! I put a measuring tape down on my keyboard (the cursor keys, to be exact), and almost 24 hours later, that IM session is still showing the green dot. Presumably, some Scotch tape could fulfill the same function invisibly.

ecto, spawn of Kung-Log, released to the wild

Kula: ecto 1.0

I'm liking ecto significantly more than I liked Kung-Log, and find myself using it about two-thirds of the time. Now that it's out of beta, the download is a two-week trial version, and the price is set at $17.95.

Ranchero's NetNewsWire has a built-in weblog editor, but ecto has finer-grained support for comments, trackback, and notification, as well as the iTunes support that can insert your current song, as below.

Listening to: Eurotrash Girl from the album Kerosene Hat by Cracker.

Mac vs. Windows gets bloody

Mac Halo 1.03 Updater Mirrors

When Halo for the Mac shipped, it was already a version behind the Windows code, which was at version 1.03. Now the Mac version of 1.03 is available.

The good news: Mac players now can get into multiplayer games with Windows players, which means you're more likely to find a game you'll like, and you're more likely to find a game with low latency. I like the multiplayer better than I did before, and can't tell any significant difference in the single-player game.

The bad news: Version 1.03 now requires a CD in the drive to play.

Crash Test Dummies / Superman's Song from the album 99X Live X for Humanity.

Macs on Mars

The view back at Earth from near the moon. Click for larger, more detailed view.

Celestia rocks: It's a freeware space simulation that lets you rocket throughout the known universe, with incredible detail at both extremes; there are hundreds of labeled objects, and fantastic detail on planets, moons, and even spacecraft. It gives you an amazing feeling for how big things are even just within our solar system -- the default starting point is near Io, with Earth in sight. You can center in on Earth and accelerate, but even at multiples of light speed, it takes quite a while to get there.You can compress time, save favorites, and watch spacecraft in their orbits. Unlike a lot of software I rave about, this one works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Download Celestia.

Also, there's a lot of press on NASA's Maestro. I've downloaded and installed it, and it's REALLLLY slow on an 867-mhz 12" PowerBook. If it worked faster, it looks like it would be pretty cool.

Halo for the Mac at last

About five years ago, my jaw dropped as Steve Jobs showed off a new game for the Mac. Yes, the Mac. Halo offered incredible graphics, the ability to use vehicles, and cooperative play with intelligent bots.

The company developing Halo was Bungie, responsible for the 2 greatest Mac game franchises: Marathon and Myth. The Mac world was shocked a few months later when Microsoft bought Bungie, with a plan to make Halo a cornerstone game for its then-planned XBox gaming console. Man, did we howl.

Halo for the XBox came out in 2001, Halo for the PC in September 2003. Through the work of Westlake Interactive, the busiest game-porting house in the Mac world, and MacSoft, who also distribute Unreal Tournament 2003, Halo for the Mac was released in December.

I'll mostly be comparing Halo to Unreal Tournament 2003 for the Mac, the latest first-person shooter I've played on my 867-mhz 12-inch PowerBook. First things first: Halo is less brainless. There are times when you have to work out tactical situations or carefully marshal your resources. One interesting wrinkle is Halo's limitation on weapons. Many first-person shooters let you hold on to whatever weapons you come across, no matter how many. Halo limits you to 2 weapons, and you have to choose based on your expectations of the upcoming game situation.

Another way that Halo keeps things fresh through its lengthy campaign is by switching up the missions. One level may require you to play sniper ahead of a coordinated assault, while the next may require you to take to the air, and knock enemy fighters down so you can move in on a ground target. Sure, there are a few "just keep hitting the mouse button" levels that test your ammunition collecting skills as much as your combat planning, but all in all, there's something for just about anyone here.

Halo's plot is thicker than average: You're the final example of a group of genetically and mechanically enhanced soldiers on board a spaceship that crashlands on a gigantic ring world called Halo. You're able to take the sexy AI from the ship, Cortana, along in your battle suit. You start out fighting the Covenant, who have been warring with humanity, but things soon take a turn for the worse.

Probably the area in which Halo is most likely to have a lasting influence is in its integration of land and air vehicles. You can walk up to a jeep (called a Warthog here), a tank (Scorpion), a land speeder (Ghost) or a fighter plane (Banshee), and climb right in and take off. With the Warhog, you can also climb into the bed to use the pivoting machine gun, climb into the passenger seat to add firepower, or (if you're driving) pick up other Marines to provide firepower while you drive. My favorite was the Scorpion, which lets you drive, fire the main gun with the primary mouse button, or fire the machine gun with the secondary mouse button. Unreal Tournament 2004 is starting to be advertised heavily, and, no surprise, it includes land and air vehicles.

I'm on the low end of the acceptable range for the game, but found only very rare slowdowns at 1024 x 768. I've only played the network version across the internet, and only long enough to get roasted to a crisp a few times, but frame rates seemed fine when ping times were low. This one would be great at a LAN party. Reportedly, the Mac and PC version are supposed to work together, but the cross-platform network games were broken by a recent PC update, and should be fixed by an upcoming patch.

Another advantage of Halo over UT2003 (and for that matter, Bungie's Myth series) is that once the game is installed, there is no further compliance compelled. No 'Insert disk now', no 'please re-enter your serial number'. In two weeks of game play, the game has locked up once, which led to me force-quitting.

January 9, 2004 in Apple - Software, Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 27, 2003

Goodbye, Kung-Log; hello, ecto

They called it "ecto" I've occasionally messed around with Adriaan Tijsseling's Kung-Log, but never registered. I started messing around with it again when posting today, and when I went to the Kung-Log home page, I discovered Adriaan is converting the donation-ware Kung-Log into either a shareware or commercial (can't really tell yet) program called "ecto". ecto is apparently in beta for all registered users of Kung-Log.

December 27, 2003 in Apple - Software, Seen browsing, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Christmas tech support: HP 7660 and OS X

My parents gave Christy and me a Hewlett-Packard PhotoSmart 7660 for Christmas. I had been considering a photo printer for a while, but hadn't pulled the trigger, and this seems like a nice choice.

I unpackaged it, and hooked it up to the 500-mHz TiBook I use to record TV shows and spool jobs to the office laser printer. I loaded the software from the HP CD, ran the included web updater to pull newer software from their web site, and printed a calibration page without a problem. I fired up iPhoto, loaded up some glossy photo paper, chose a cute kid photo, and let 'er rip. Oops -- iPhoto unexpectedly quit. Ouch. How 'bout Graphic Converter? Unexpectedly quit. Hmmm. Try the miniBook; iPhoto unexpectedly quit.

Google didn't turn up anything. HP's support site didn't turn up anything. But wait! I noticed that the driver HP's updater pulled down is version 2.3.5, but that deep in the bowels of their web site, there's a version 2.3.6. Loaded it, and everything works exactly as expected. I printed out a 3.2 megapixel image on letter sized photo paper, and it looks fantastic.

Listening to Baby It's Cold Outside from the soundtrack album for "Elf" by Leon Redbone/Zooey Deschanel.

December 27, 2003 in Apple - General, Apple - Software, General computing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 15, 2003

iPulse

I downloaded and installed The IconFactory's iPulse after reading about version 2, released last week.

I've never been one for system monitor applications or applets, but something about this one attracted me. I think it's that in a fairly small (Konfabulator-like) floater, you can track instantaneous CPU load, load over the last hour, memory swaps, battery and wireless signal levels, network traffic, disk activity, and more, more, more. If you always leave your dock visible, the iPulse icon shows all the detail from the full-size floater.

The bad news about iPulse is that I'm seeing that I occasionally blast my machine, leading to memory paging and heavy CPU load. Instead of the very reasonable $12.95, iPulse could wind up costing me a dual-2.0 G5.

Iconfactory maintains a download page for alternate iPulse skins, and Railhead Design has posted a few others.

October 15, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 07, 2003

Fixing EyeTV

I have and like my ElGato EyeTV. I very much liked the interface when I first used it, but now, after a few months, I realize that it's one of those programs that demos well, but doesn't deliver when you really use it every day.

It's very easy to set up one-time or recurring recordings, and almost trivial to edit the recordings to chop out commercials once you've got them. The software has been pretty reliable (there have been a few times I've found the application unexpectedly closed, and missed recordings). The CyTV project (which I haven't set up yet) reportedly lets you stream video from EyeTV to remote machines.

The central weakness of the system is what the program does with MPEG movies once it captures them. Each program and each recording are given random names. My folder holding Simpsons captures is '000000000437c2f8', and the most recent capture inside of it is '00000000050bfe05.mpg'. After using the program for a while, I've gotten fairly adept at figuring out what's where by checking timestamps, but I can't imagine it would have taken a good developer more than a day to come up with a human-readable scheme for naming the files and folders.

Since it's unwieldy to manage the raw data in the Finder, the only way you can easily manipulate the movies is from within ElGato's software, which knows how to associate your programming to the raw data files. Unfortunately, every single recording you make stands completely alone. It doesn't group your recurring programs (in a "The Daily Show" folder, for instance), and doesn't let you shift-click to delete multiple recordings.

When I came back from vacation, it was a major pain to delete old shows, and transfer others to DVD. It should be a single click and drag operation to eliminate all the recordings of a given show or to delete a contiguous block of shows (for instance, everything recorded before last Thursday).

There are also a number of auxiliary files that share space with the recordings. Each recording has 1 '.eyetvi' file and one '.eyetvr' file associate with it, and each program has a '.eyetvp' file.

If I were creating a sensible structure for EyeTV's data, I would give each program a folder with a name taken from the title the user gives it or adopts from the associated guide program, like "The Simpsons". Directly inside the folder would be the movies, with a title + date stamp name like "TheSimpsons090703". The auxiliary files would be in another folder, possibly called "EyeTV files".

If I wanted to get really fancy, I would also create a folder called "By Date", which would contain aliases to the MPEG files of shows recorded on that date. This would make it much simpler to go grab last night's episode of "The Daily Show" to transfer to my iPod, or transfer a show to a different computer so Sophie can watch it.

By letting the user manage files through the Finder, parts of the EyeTV program would become a customized Finder browser, which would encourage users to store files around the entire filesystem, not just in the EyeTV archive.

Ideally, of course, EyeTV would also support a client and server, so that a) remote machines could schedule recordings, and b) the server could notify users of scheduling conflicts, and c) the server could stream shows to the remote clients.

September 7, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 27, 2003

iChat AV audio test

I finally got to use iChat AV to talk to someone today.

I took advantage of Apple’s directions on setting up your firewall — I used port forwarding so that any iChat comes directly to my laptop. I’m not entirely sure how I would manage the Linksys if I needed to allow multiple machines to use it; possibly you could set up a private filter group….

There’s a bug that’s been reported where the volume of one user or the other fades out. Today, that was me, but I also discovered a workaround. When I muted the conversation on my end, then unmuted, the volume returned to normal (or so I was told). Later, when the problem recurred, I did it again, and fixed it again.

June 27, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 23, 2003

Latest million-dollar idea

Both long-time readers of my site know that periodically I post tremendous, valuable ideas that I just can't quite get around to myself.

The latest: someone needs to build a software company focused on bringing OS X technologies to OS 9 users. There's a lot of hardware that people either can't or don't want to upgrade to OS X, and Apple has done a lot to make OS X resisters feel the pain, which translates into a business opportunity.

A couple of examples:

Rendezvous. Apple only supports Rendezvous on OS X, but it looks like it wouldn't be a nightmare to build service registration and service discovery modules for OS 9. Heck, Apple even provides a reference implementation.

iTunes. Apple doesn't build an OS 9 version of iTunes that can share over a network, so Christy's iMac can't stream music off my PowerBook.

An obvious downside to the business plan is that the market will shrink over the next few years as OS 9 machines get retired.

Update: I even have a name for the company: Nine-Tenths Software.

June 23, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 10, 2003

Why I'm a happy NetNewsWire owner

Brent Simmons has released the 9th alpha of NetNewsWire 1.0.3 in the last 18 days.

He maintains a mailing list for beta-testers where he distributes new versions of the software, discusses planned changes and bugs, and occasionally distributes a road map of upcoming version plans.

This is the way for shareware authors to treat their customers.

June 10, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 06, 2003

iTunes sharing just works....

I upgraded the Lombard PowerBook G3 (400-mhz) to QuickTime 6.2 and iTunes 4 last night, and am currently listening to songs off of it from my office overlooking Phipps Plaza. I’m through 7 songs and haven’t had a skip over my DSL.

First, I had to enable sharing in iTunes Preferences. Once I did this, “Frank’s Music” turned up in my miniBook’s source list, through Rendezvous. If you’re on the same network segment as the machine from which you’re sharing, you’re done.

Since I wanted to try it over the network, I also had to forward port 3689 to the PowerBook on my router, and I’ve set it up to use a password, so that I’m the only one listening (and so that nobody can see Christy’s music scattered around my playlists).

May 6, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 30, 2003

Weapons of the Mac Samurai

I just finished a big proposal for my new company. It was the most intense computer work I've done in a year, and it turned out pretty well. I made a few discoveries, as well.

OmniGraffle 3 Professional is an update of OmniGroup's drawing and diagramming tool that cleans up the interface and is compatible with Visio 2002's XML document format.

I still find myself missing OS 9's drawers, but less since I discovered LaunchBar. Always as close as a command-space, LaunchBar lets me type short IDs and pull up an application. LaunchBar learns my habits, as well, so I can now open Word with just a "W", or PocketTanks with "PT".

April 30, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Apple Music: Turning scofflaws into customers

I immediately downloaded iTunes, QuickTime 6.2, and iPod Software Update 1.3. I went straight to the store, and ... bought nothing.

I finally bit this morning, buying one track and two albums (here's how I'm linking your copy of iTunes directly to the store).

The yammering fanboys sniping at the service have a few good points: It would be nice if the service had broader selection, wider availability (both internationally and for Windows users), and zero DRM.

It seems to me, though, that Apple has scored a breakthrough, at least where I'm concerned: I don't see myself ever downloading a track I can get through the iTunes interface through a file-sharing service again. The DRM doesn't seem likely to get in my way, and the 99¢ price-point reminds me of buying 45-rpm singles. It doesn't seem too much to pay to carry a song everywhere.

One of the albums I bought was on my Amazon wishlist at $13.99, the other at $13.49, plus shipping. Seems like a no-brainer to make those purchases at $9.99 (plus sales tax). On the other hand, Blonde on Blonde is $8.99 on CD at Amazon, and only available by song (14 songs at 99¢ = $13.86) through iTunes.

Another point I haven't seen mentioned is what a powerfully executed example of web services the iTunes store is. It clearly is influenced by Watson, and really encourages serendipitous browsing (and would even more if it had some more obscure stuff).

April 30, 2003 in Apple - General, Apple - iPod, Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 21, 2003

On Safari to stay?

Chimera crashed on me this morning. That's no great surprise, as it has crashed once or twice a week for as long as I've used it. Instead of firing up ChimeraKnight to grab a newer nightly build, I switched to Safari.

So far, the biggest hassle is that nobody knows me here -- all my cookies live in Chimera, and I'm having to train Safari who I am. Which leads me to wonder how hard it would be to have cookies managed at the OS level, so they could be shared across browsers?

Obviously, there would be times when you wanted to maintain multiple sets of cookies, but it seems an exception rather than a rule, and you could always get around it by logging in as a new user.

April 21, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 18, 2003

Pivot point

Since I may have a few more geeks than normal coming by (Thanks, Chad!), I wanted to put forward a profitable idea that someone may be in a position to implement.

I have a ViewSonic VA800 LCD monitor. It supports pivoting into portrait mode. It does, that is, if you're running Windows or Mac OS 7/8/9. The company that created the software, Portrait Display Systems, used to have a page saying they had no plans to support OS X, but now even that is gone, leaving no sign of the Mac on their website at all.

That means that I, and hundreds or thousands of other Mac users with pivoting displays from a variety of makers, can't use the pivot function on our monitors.

Someone needs to fill this vacuum.

April 18, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (65) | TrackBack

Book 'em, Dano

I'm still trying to find a good bookmarks solution.

I was leaning toward URL Manager Pro, which runs in the background and supports the Shared Menu protocol, so it adds a menu to each of your browsers, where you can add bookmarks available from any other program that supports Shared Menus.

Unfortunately, Safari, which has become my second most-used browser (to Camino), doesn't support the protocol. URL Manager also suffers from an OS 9, Carbon-heavy interface.

While looking for an alternative, I stumbled on Bookit, from Everyday Software.

Bookit takes an iSync approach to managing bookmarks. It can read and write bookmarks for any of the browsers I currently run, including Safari, Camino, iCab, IE, Mozilla, Netscape, OmniWeb, and Opera.

When you fire it up, Bookit finds your browsers' bookmark files, and lets you choose which files you want to synch. The next step is a comparison window, where you can choose which missing bookmarks you want to move, then write the new file.

Bookit also includes two bonus goodies: a docklet that lets you access your bookmarks directly from the dock in your default browser, and a system menu that does likewise. They also allow you to open your browser directly to a URL you type in.

Perhaps best of all, Bookit is only $12.

April 18, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 17, 2003

Setting the match to spam

With my recent change in job status, I found myself collecting not just my own spam, but spam sent to bogus addresses on two different domains, as well.

I looked around at some spam-helper applications, and settled on Spamfire, from Matterform Media.

Written in RealBasic, Spamfire sits between your server and your mail client. Periodically, Spamfire checks your server. Each piece of e-mail is given a spam score, based on techniques it uses (the phrase "% off" is worth 30 points, for instance). If the e-mail is above a threshold value, it's removed from the server, and cached in Spamfire. Spamfire then triggers your e-mail program to go check e-mail, minus the obvious spams.

If there's a borderline message, Spamfire pops up a message to that effect, recommending you check the list and verify either that it was or wasn't spam. You can add senders to 'Friends' or 'Spammers' lists, and the 'Pro' version, at $30, handles multiple e-mail accounts. There are regular updates to the filtering rules, which the 'Pro' version automatically downloads.

April 17, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 14, 2003

EyeTV 1.1.2: iServe ingredient

I bought an EyeTV recently, and I'm liking it. The EyeTV is a USB peripheral, a little bigger than a USB hub, that hooks to a coaxial or RCA video stream and includes a tuner. Included software (OS X only) works with the device to capture video streams off the air.

Tivo has become a religion because it removes the tyranny of network scheduling; you can watch what you want when you want. EyeTV takes that one step farther, removing the tyranny of space. I shuttle shows from the Lombard to other machines via my iPod, and I can watch shows on a plane or on a train -- I can even watch them while in Spain.

Quality is good but not great. Any time you see TV content on a computer screen, you notice how rough a standard video image is. You can verify this by outputting the content back to a TV screen, where even at low quality, it looks as good as VHS. A typical sitcom runs 300+ megabytes, but El Gato includes software that makes it easy to scrub out commercials or other annoyances. After running a Simpsons episode through this, it winds up around 220-230 megs. With a FireWire connection, I can transfer a show to the iPod, or a PowerBook running in FireWire target disk mode in less than 2 minutes.

I've been running the EyeTV on a Lombard PowerBook with 192 megs of RAM, and it appears to capture without problems. Trying to do anything else on that machine while recording is in progress is very sluggish, as opposed to my 867-mHz G4 miniBook, where I could watch one stream while recording another.

If I had a little more time on my hands, I would like to try setting up the capturing box as a QuickTime streaming server. Opening the movies over the network doesn't work well, but you should be able to do a decent job of streaming a video captured at no more than 12 mb/s (USB speed) over a connection rated for up to 11 mb/s (802.11b).

Doesn't do closed-captioning, which would be nice for AppleScript purposes -- you could scan a transcript to see if there was anything you wanted, or monitor a news show, and capture before and after a particular keyword.

Update 4/17: El Gato has released Version 1.2 of the EyeTV software.

Also:

The Digital Hub Gets a New Spoke: Television

April 14, 2003 in Apple - Software, iServe and home servers | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 17, 2003

Myth II: Soulblighter OS X native

Myth II: Soulblighter Version 1.3.2

Myth II is an awesome game created by Bungie back in their pre-Halo, pre-Microsoft days. A squad-level tactical game, it was one of two games I immediately verified would work on my new miniBook (under Classic, but both worked well).

Now a group has updated the game to full Carbon libraries, and added support for new servers (for multiplayer mode), so you never have to drop into Classic mode. This means the game loads faster and runs faster.

There’s also a version 1.3.2 for Windows, adding everything but OS X compatibility. If you own the CD, go download the new version ASAP.

March 17, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 07, 2003

The winnah...

So it was down to the wire, but I just registered:

NetNewsWire

I decided on NNW because, of all the apps on my machine, it's the one I use the most that I haven't paid for. Which brings up an interesting point -- when I entered my serial number, it was all anticlimax. Brent doesn't disable any functionality before you register, and I still had 2+ weeks on the evaluation copy.

I would have preferred a blast of trumpets, or something.

Early candidates for next week are:
• Konfabulator
• Watson
• Entourage Email Archive X (I'm a very happy registered user of Softhing's Outlook Email Archive)

This last almost beat out NetNewsWire tonight, since Entourage (and any other Office app) was crashing on open. A quick Google search led me to a page documenting how to rebuild the Entourage database. It's exactly what you would think: just hold down the option key when you double-click on the application, then select "Typical" or "Advanced" from the resulting dialog box.

I kid you not. Nevertheless, it recovered my e-mail, 21 megabytes in all. Now I need to archive it before it does it again.

March 7, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 06, 2003

Putting my money where my mouth is

I'm eliminating MyPod from this week's "Frank Antes Up" competition. It's a great idea, and shows tremendous promise, but it's still in beta, despite the 1.0 tag.

My copy has stopped synching, hanging on a "File or resource not found" error. The support for lyrics is cool, but if you try to synch more than one lyric at a time, you'll get all the titles, but they'll all show the same lyric. Also, the program needs to break up longer text entities (like an RSS feed) into smaller bodies, since long text fields scroll badly on the iPod. Oh yeah -- I also get a duplicate help menu after the real one. All posted.

I've also had a couple of unexpected quits. Even so, I am looking forward to the 1.0.2 release.

The current frontrunners are NetNewsWire (with which I'm posting this entry), URL Manager Pro (which loses points through no fault of its own because Safari doesn't support shared menus), and Konfabulator, for which I discovered a cool Beginning Widget Writer's Guide yesterday.

March 6, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 03, 2003

New feature: Frank antes up

Having a job and a new miniBook has me wanting some new software, so I’m going to initiate a new weblog feature: a weekly software purchase, probably on Fridays. I’ll focus on cheap stuff, $30-$50 a week or less. Candidates for the first week:

• NetNewsWire


• URL Manager Pro


• Konfabulator


• MyPod


• Watson

Nominations and votes are welcome.

Update 1:25 a.m. 3/4: MyPod gets a +1 for keeping a public bugs database.

March 3, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 25, 2003

Missing the lead

Everybody on the Mac web is reporting that BareBones announced TextWrangler, a new, low-end text processor that sells for $49.

Nobody (at least as far as I've seen) has reported on the actual story here: BareBones is killing off BBEdit Lite in favor of the new (maybe newly-branded) product. I'm sure it will be good for the bottom line, but it's a shame to see one of the best freeware text processors go away.

If you're looking for cheap but not free, check out Tex-Edit.

February 25, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 11, 2003

Safari update

Apple - Safari - Download

Apple has released a new version of Safari. The changes aren't disclosed, but I suspect it does some sanity-checking on the save dialog box. I saw a report somewhere (can't locate it now) that someone had inadvertently deleted their home folder.

In any case, I'm sure it fixes an ugly bug, since the modified date is yesterday morning, and it's already being distributed. I'm used to seeing that from NetNewsWire, but rarely from the big companies like Apple.

January 11, 2003 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 22, 2002

Blog like a Pro

Ranchero Software: NetNewsWire Pro 1.0b1

Brent Simmons has released the first beta of the new pro version of NetNewsWire, his fantastic RSS browser. The Pro version includes weblog editing, offline browsing, a notepad, AppleScript support, and a find command.

All the cool kids are downloading it right now....

December 22, 2002 in Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 12, 2002

Chimera tricks and tips

eFritz | Tricks/FAQ for Chimera

A brief primer on ways to hack Chimera for things like auto-search of Google, viewing inline PDF files, mouse gestures, cleaning up after a corrupted Chimera, and more.
Seen at Forwarding Address: OS X.

November 12, 2002 in Apple, Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 11, 2002

Patches, I'm depending on you son....

OS X 10.2.2 released

Looks like a whole bunch of incremental improvements, including Apache 1.3.27.

November 11, 2002 in Apple, Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 05, 2002

Chimera .6

Chimera Release Notes

Looks like the release of Chimera .6 is imminent. I've found it dependable enough to run using the nightly builds, though it does occasionally quit with lots of windows open on my 192-megabyte G3 PowerBook.

I like it enough that I'm running the Chimera wannabe browser, Phoenix, on the Dark Side -- both my Windows boxes.

The download should be available here, but as of now (8:30 EST), it looks like there's a placeholder file in place of the .gz file.

Spotted at MacSlash.

November 5, 2002 in Apple, Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 04, 2002

Switch2Mac must have been taken

Detto Technologies | Move2Mac

Detto, which sells IntelliMover to simplify moving from one PC to another, is shipping Move2Mac, which purports to move files, folders and some settings automagically from a PC to a Mac via USB.

Seen at MacMinute.

November 4, 2002 in Apple, Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 31, 2002

iTinkering

confusticate.com | Figuring out how iSync interacts with .Mac

Some preliminary research towards figuring out what exactly goes on between your Mac running iSync and Apple's .Mac service. Eventually, this could lead to a .Mac clone that you could run locally, or that third-party providers could support.

Seen at inessential.com.

October 31, 2002 in Apple, Apple - Software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack