09.29.06
The Cat called Leopard
Thoughts on Leopard:
As a developer using Apples (ADC), I got an early release of Leopard which I promptly tossed on one of my Powerbooks. I have to say that on the surface, very little has changed. The changes are many and subtle. Foe example, the screen brightness now has a new option under battery power called “Slightly dim the display when using this power source” It whacks about 10% of the brightness. There is also a setting now under the battery called “Purchase Replacement Battery” and Battery Health is Poor. Like I said, subtle items but there are a few new ones that get the geeks very excited.
Under System Preferences and then Expose/Spaces.. spaces? what the hell are spaces? Spaces is the new virtual desktop that Apple is including. It is very rudimentary and I really much prefer “You Control: Desktops” for my virtual desktops. But Apple’s is free and it works and it will train people to use virtual desktops because to many, it’s a very strange concept. I have been using things like this my old 386 days with Quarterdeck (how many of you remember that) and so I find the new feature to very limited but to someone who has never used virtual desktops, it’s great since it works and looks much like Expose in feel and function. You can add rows and columns of spaces(hence the name) and they come together and fly apart like windows do with Expose. There is not any way to changes this or to use different effects like cubes, squares, dissolves and so on. You can not have different wall paper for each desktop nor can you have different icons but you can hard code applications to a certain window which is useful.
And Time Machine is there but I have not played with it yet, this weekend I plan to wring it out and see how well or not it works.
So far even as a pre-release, Leopard has been VERY stable and not a single crash which is much more than I can say for my Vista beta test. Things still work the way they have but mo’ better with things like SMB connections and my Cisco VPN connections.
Watch this space as I hit Leopard harder in the next couple of weeks
Here is the Spaces configuration screen. You can see it has the basics but that is about all.
09.08.06
You have Mail
One of my complaints from the beginning of my adventures with OSX is how feature poor the mail application is compared to some other applications. In the past few months I have found a good many applications and plugins that “fixed” many of my complaints. One of my favorite finds is called “Letterbox”. Letterbox is a great hack for giving mail the ability to have the reading pane on the far right side much like Outlook can do. I prefer this way to read my mail since my screen is wider than taller. Of course, the best feature is that it’s free 
Other favorites of mine are Dockstar which gives a nice visual to how many mail messages there are which types they are. Another is MailTag which gives me a way to mark and attach metadata to my email messages. This can be a powerful tool to aid in searching through alot of mail. For trying to manage spam, I like to use Spamsieve which works very well. It is stable and effective and cheap
09.07.06
Peelz
I got my Apple Peelz for my Powerbook last night and went about to install the various panels right away. The Peelz is a 3M product, clear and feels like a thick vinyl plastic with adhesive on one side. Each panel for the Mac is die cut with two to three panels per sheet. For example, the sheet with the bottom cover also has the RAM cover, battery cover and a trackpad set.
The outline cuts are very clean which allow you to pull even the biggest pieces off without too much trouble. But, on the bottom piece since it has all sorts of cutouts, it stuck together in a few places which required some of the soapy water and careful tugging to pull it apart without stretching the plastic out of shape.
I had a tray of water ready to go with a few drop of soap to kill the surface tension. Which brings up a point of concern, there were not any directions included with the shipment. If I had not read them online, the install would have been blindly which would be a big mistake. For the cost of 2 cent copy, they could have included the directions. So in my case, instead of using a sprayer, I used the suggested cookie sheet to dip the pieces. I did let them drip dry a bit before I put wet plastic on my Powerbook
What was not said in the directions is that the process takes all night. Without the water, you could not get the parts to line up with them sticking. With the water, they move till the water dries and the edges, particularly the lid edges, will not stick since water keeps oozing out for a few hours. I did the top first but I would suggest doing the bottom first, then the hand pads and then the lid last. Get it all as smooth and centered as you can, working out the bubbles by gently pushing to the the edge with your fingers and using a paper towel to soak up extra water. Once the bubbles are gone, walk away! Thats right, walk away and don not touch a thing for the night. When you get up in the AM, you can walk to the Mac and smooth down the edges and call it done. While I love the matt finish on my Powerbook, the high gloss look of the Peelz doesnt look bad at all and the plastic is very clear, no color tint that I can see. It also offers a slightly “grippy” feel so when you are walking around with the notebook, it does feel more attached to your hand unlike the smooth metal without the Peelz. Now, if the edges stay stuck down, it will be a absolute success.
Thoughts on Peelz:
Peelz is a good idea and the #M product used seems to be a very good choice. I disagree with not having included the directions in the parcel shipped but that is a minor point assuming the user will read them online. The suggested install is very workable but it would be better to have the pieces marked or placed in a suggested install order. As I noted, I think that the bottom pieces should be first, then the wrist rests and finally the lid. A picture or two of the finger techniques with the paper towel to soak up the extra water oozing from the edges. At $50.00 US for the set, it’s pricy and since I really just wanted the lid and wrist pieces, I feel that I had to over buy just to get the two parts I wanted. But, if you want to protect your Mac top to bottom, this product will work well for you.
09.06.06
No user serviceable parts inside
Dont you just love this phrase “no user serviceable parts inside”? Your favorite widget has just broken and you find that not only will the company not support you if you try to fix it, they will charge you more than the cost of a new widget to fix the old widget, even if they will fix it. And this doesnt count trying to get parts.
This just really offends me often since by nature I hate to waste something that is perfectly good. A case in point was a favorite digital camera of mine which is the Nikon 950. An older 2 Megapixel camera but it has some features like the twisting body that I just love and it takes a super clean and crisp picture. Even at the paltry 2 megapixels, it works better then many of the newer cameras I’ve used. You can see one of my best shots here that I shot with it.
So my original 950 was borrowed by my then 16 year old daughter and never came home since she likes also and since I have more than one camera, or so she says I went to eBay and found one for a cheap price and I got it for 30 bucks which should have been my warning, read the damn ad CLOSELY. In very small print, the seller had mentioned it was broken, the CCD did not work. Damn… So I go through with the buy to keep my good name and think I will use it as spare parts. The camera arrives and being the type I am, just how broken is the camera? Pop in some batteries and sure enough, no picture, no nothing. Hmmm… thats not a CCD error so dig out the AC adapter and pug it in. Presto.. lights, camera and action. I have a working camera at least when it’s on AC.
The batter holder was fractured so the batteries did not make good contact. Some superglue fix it but the cover would not stay closed. So back to ebay for a 2nd broken camera for another twenty bucks. Now comes the fun part. To replace the camera door and the surround shell, I have to take the entire outside shell off and a couple of circuit boards on a device built by elves in the watchmaker’s forrest! Oh well, nothing risked, nothing gained. With a few hours and practicing on the really broken 950, I work out the details of getting it all apart and back together again.
In the end, for the princely sum of sixty dollars I have a working 950 which I did take to Rome on my Macmania trip as a backup to my Sony. Worked like a dream the entire time!
Macs are the same way, if you dont mind taking a risk now and then you can do quite a bit yourself. I replaced my iPod 3rd gen battery in about 3 minutes and saved quite a bit of money. My daughter needed a new keyboard and iFixit came through with the keyboard and a well done guide to taking it all apart. Even my Powerbook was easy to upgrade the RAM on and anyone can take out four screws and pop a card in place. No need to pay someone fifty dollars for that. My 17 inch iMac was a simple matter of unscrewing three screws on the bottom and the entire back came off to provide easy access for a new hard disk install. Now, I ask you, how much simple could it be?
Along with the insides of the Mac, I do like to keep the outside looking nice. So on my new -used Powerbook(a absolutely cherry Aluminum 15 inch for a good price off ebay), I decided to try some “Applepeelz” coverings. These are self adhesive plastic covers for the top, bottom and handrest of the Powerbook. I hope they do not look too cheesy when in place but I will have them a few days and I will write more then about them. I also ordered some Portectorz for covering up the ports and some Wildeepz buttons to keep the screen from twisting into the keyboard. Again, I will write more once I get this trinkets and use them. It amazes me that Apple dropped the ball so badly on the Powerbooks where the screens get screwed up just by shutting the lid. What the hell were they thinking?
09.02.06
Mini Web Server
For the past few days in my spare time of not feeding two of the under three crowd, work and misc stuff that needs to be done, I got my G4 mini up and running as a web server. I have had it running for months now as my email server but I added web services when I decided to revisit a past uncompleted project. I picked up a domain name called lightandimages.net and a template of a nice art/gallery style of website from Allwebco for a reasonable price. With some minor tweaking and some studying, I was able to get my website up and running along with an email form. Since OSX does not come with a CGI form for mail, I found the replacement for the old FormMail script at The NMS Project page. A few tweaks to the script, one was changing the location of sendmail to /usr/sbin and applying the 755 privileges, and we were off and running.
Overall I found the effort to pretty straightforward and easy to get the Mac Mini serving up webpages. I did use Yahoo to register my domain name and they offer relatively complete access to the DNS settings which I needed to change the A record IP address from Yahoo to my static IP. I plan to experiment some more with the webserver and see just what kind of trouble I can get into with it
On a more fun note, I found a cool app to help me switch around to different iPhoto libraries. It’s called “iPhoto Buddy” and it is FREE and easy to use. If you try it and like it, send the man some beer money, dont be cheap! I bought a different program and in a way, I regret it since I like this one better but the first one’s price was not too bad and I did use for a few months so I can not complain too loudly I guess. There is always a new and better app over the horizon. SO what can you do with iPhoto Buddy?
◆ Manage various iPhoto libraries
◆ Each library can have it’s own name and thumbnail image
◆ Complete listings of Albums, Smart Albums, Folders, image count and size of images
◆ Works with any iLife application like iDVD, iMovie and websites
◆ Library can be local or remote over a network connection (yippie, read my post about SimpleTech NAS)
09.30.06
The Falling Dollar
Posted in Commentary at 7:54 pm by hackamac
MacDollars:
Macs have always held their prices extremely well. Even more so if you had the original box, packing, stickers and Apple store receipt
But in recent months I have seen on that great marketplace, eBay, that Mac prices have been falling rapidly for the “older” G4 hardware and even some of the G5 stuff. Within 4 months I saw the Powerbook fall over 300 hundred dollars in average sale price. I know because I have one I’m trying to sell. iBooks is the same story, G4 towers are slipping in price and so on. The mini’s have held their ground even the G4s and I think it’s the great form factor of the mini that keeps them very desirable. The Powerbooks are an interesting lesson in marketing and how you can score a real deal if you can convince yourself to live without the latest and greatest. Let me explain to you my method of my madness.
My Powerbook (one of them) is a 2006 version with the high rez screen, 1.6GHz PowerPC CPU, 128 Meg of video ram, 100 gig drive, gig of RAM and a PCMCIA slot. A relative antique to hear everyone talk but that is where they are very sadly mistaken. For my measly 1200 bucks, I got the Mac, an iSight camera, box, docs, cables and 3 years of extended warranty. I also get a machine that clocks in very close to the Macbook Pro on several of my key apps like Office and Photoshop. Even ripping a DVD is close enough to be livable but the “coup d’ grace” is the PCMCIA slot. Why? Why indeed, because children, I can use my EVDO card on my Powerbook and have a high internet connection virtually anywhere for 60 bucks a month over paying someone like Starbucks ten bucks a day for 802.11B/G access. And that is IF I can find a hotspot or an open acess point to borrow time on. Did I just say that out loud? Damn. When I was traveling to Rome this past month, sitting in the faaarrr terminal without ANY 802.11 access to be seen, I just popped in my EVDO and off I went. Unlike the Macbook Pro which has the “express flash” slot and there is not yet a EVDO card supported for or by Apple widely available. Verizon is rumored to have one and you need to hack OSX to get it to work so I guess we could count that one. But given the MBP is 2200 bucks and the “old” Powerbook with slight better resolution and lower heat is about 1,000 bucks, unless you really, really need the MBP, the old system is a much better deal. No bad motherboards to deal with, no overheating, no sleep issues and so on. THe “old” system is very stable and well known now. Not too mention that if a thief sees the MBP and an old Powerbook, he/she will probably steal the MBP.
So what have I given up? Well, I use an Intel mini every day and I use different apps to run some Windoze crap I have to use at times. The overwhelming favorite way to run Windows is Parallels. It works and it is fast. If I had to run Windows on my notebook, I would get the MBP and Parallels, no questions but the truth is many of my day to day activities run fine on Rosetta and the G4. Remote Desktop, Office, Photoshop, VNC, MacJournal, iPhoto just to name a few all work great on the older systems and well enough on the Intel. SO the only real reason is Windows and for work, I can justify it.
So, who else thinks that their G4 Powerbook is the deal of the century? Or their iMac G5? Not to say I’m not lusting for a MacPro, I am but it will have to wait.
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