Damien Barrett

Apple By Damien Barrett

So You Want to be a Mac Tech

When I was about thirteen, my older brother, Craig, was really into cars and fixing them. I'd follow him around and watch him work on his Camaro in the garage. Like a doting little brother, I wanted to be like him and was awestruck at how much he knew about cars and engines. I can remember asking him how he knew so much about them and how I could learn what he knew. Craig handed me a huge stack of car magazines and told me to start reading. I was flabbergasted. Where do I start reading? Which do I read first? Is Car&Driver more important than SuperChevy? I can remember flipping through a few of his magazines and quickly being overwhelmed at the amount of information I'd have to know to be like Craig. I soon went back to my Garbage Pail Kids cards and DOS manuals. I gave up on being a car mechanic but learned an important lesson...the best way to start learning something is to just start learning it. It doesn't matter where you start as long as you start somewhere and keep at it long enough until the knowledge begins to gel in your mind.Being a good Mac tech starts with knowing the Macintosh and its operating system--namely, Mac OS X. Good car mechanics are often filled with arcane knowledge about the vehicles they work on. They tend to know which parts break down first and can diagnose a problem from an extensive knowledgebase of vehicles and engines and parts. I've discovered that good Mac techs are the same way--they tend to know pretty well the insides of many different Macintosh models and the peculiarities of each. They know, for instance, that the Rev. A iMac G5 often suffers from logic board failures and "exploding capacitors". They can often diagnose a problem--or if one is happening--just by using the computer in question.

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Computing

Computing By Damien Barrett

Creating a Bootable Restore DVD

Hacking the Mac OS X Installer DVD I work at a university and we regularly get lots of new computers in that need to be imaged. Normally, people use a NetBoot server with NetRestore to do this, but our network is too clunky and poorly-designed to able to handle network-based imaging. So I have to resort to different methods of distributing our customized ASR images. For instance, we have one image for people in the Illustration Dept, but a very different one for workers who do not work in our design departments. Last year, I was able to use Charles Sruska's excellent BootCD to build a bootable DVD that could then be used to image the workstations as needed. The ASR image is simply stored on the extra space on the root of the DVD, and NetRestore would let techs image from the ASR image to the internal HD of the Mac. It was fairly close to a "double-click" install for my techs: Boot from DVD, run NetRestore, restart the computer. BootCD works well with Panther but has not been updated to work in Tiger. I'm sure Charles is working on it, but it's not done yet and I had to create a different solution, so I started hacking the Mac OS X Installer DVD. For the PPC machines, I used a copy of the recent Mac OS X 10.4.6 Retail DVD that was shipped to ACN members. It is a universal DVD that will boot any Tiger-compatible PPC-based Mac. Quite simply, this is how I did it:

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Mobile

Mobile By Damien Barrett

Next iPod to Have Text-to-Speech?

An article in the Scotsman speculates that the next version of Apple's icon iPod will have text-to-speech capabilities that allows it to read the text of music tracks to the listener. The article says,"Apple has flatly refused to comment on the design, but a patent lodged by the company in the United States makes clear the sixth generation of iPods will be able to convert those famous text menus into speech.The ingenious system will rely on home PC processing power and clever software. The computer being used to download tracks will analyse each album title, song name and artist and convert them into sound files. These will be loaded into the iPod, along with the song files."This is being driven by safety concerns. When you use an iPod in an "eyes-busy" activity like driving or using exercise equipment, having the music tracks read to the listener is preferable to having them only displayed on the screen.This certainly makes sense to me. Apple has long been at the forefront of text-to-speech technology. It only seems a natural move to integrate it into their iPod music players.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Useful Contextual Menu Plug-ins

One of the least-used but quite powerful tools in Mac OS X is the ability to run contextual menu plug-ins. Contextual menu items are those little programs or accessories that can be installed in /Library/Contextual Menu Items or ~/Library/Contextual Menu Items to extend the capabilities of your operating system by providing a quick way to launch a tool based on some selected text for a selected item in the Finder.Here are some of my favorite Contextual Menu items/applications:FinderPop gives you the ability to have quickly-accessible links to applications or folders at the top of your contextual menu. So, for instance, if you want to open a JPEG file with Photoshop instead of Preview (often the OS's default), you can put a link to Photoshop in your FinderPop contextual menu list and then right-clicking on the file in question will give you a quick list of applications at the top-most menu. This is faster than having to wait for the "Open With" application list to generate, which is useful if you have a lot of applications installed on your system.OnMyCommand lets you execute a string of selected text in the Terminal.SymbolicLinker is a contextual menu item that lets you build symlink to an item in the Finder. I've found this very useful in building lab and classroom images where my workstations have much of their shared data as symlinks to other locations in the filesystem. For instance, Microsoft Office 2004 likes to install 80MB of fonts for each user but I don't want dozens of user profiles each with 80MB of fonts on my workstations, so I've used symlinks to "trick" the program into thinking that each profile has the fonts installed but the actual fonts are located in a shared folder space. But because the symlink exists (but points to a different location), the software just follows the link. I've used the same trick for the excessive support files installed by the Macromedia suite.FileCutter brings a much-desired Windows feature to Mac OS X--cut and paste. I know a lot of Windows guys who are pissed that Mac OS X doesn't use the same "cut and paste" paradigm they are used to from years of Windows use. One of them actually jumped in the air and clicked his heels together when I showed him FileCutter. (Okay, he didn't click his heels together, but he jumped out of his chair).There are more CM plug-ins out there. Some applications install their own, like Toast or StickyBrain. Which ones do you use and why? Are there any "must-haves" that I've missed?

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Apps By Damien Barrett

VoodooPad 3.0 - Serious Mojo

Oh so sweet. My favorite catch-all notepad and organizer, VoodooPad, has been updated to version 3.0 today. I fell in love with VoodooPad about two years ago when I started a new job and needed to start keeping track of a huge variety of different kinds of information. I started dumping everything I could into the program--scraps of technical support information, dates and details of computer repairs, website URL's, coworkers' phone extensions, serial numbers. I didn't really know right away if VoodooPad was going to help keep all this stuff organized, but after awhile I noticed that I started to rely on the software to track down that information that otherwise would have been misplaced. I also started to notice connections between information that I might not have otherwise made.VoodooPad sports a number of new features including tabs, searching improvements, support for big documents, and new filetype embedding. There's also support for Mac OS X's PDF framework so you can print a PDF straight into VoodooPad.VoodooPad Pro is a new edition to the family that has several advanced options for power-users such as encryption, triggers, metadata inclusion, and a built-in web server to facilitate collaboration between VoodooPad users.Other programs, like Yojimbo, have popped up recently to serve as the same kind of catch-all, but I remain faithful to VoodooPad, my first love. It saved me from the growing rat's nest that was StickyBrain. Mojo, indeed.

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Apple By Damien Barrett

BBC Story - Switch to Macs For Better Online Security

Most of our readers know that Mac OS X is a much more secure environment than any flavor of Windows. Microsoft apologists like to say that the lack of viruses and malware targeted towards Mac OS X is because its much smaller marketshare. I believe there's a kernel of truth in this argument, but it's also an oversimplification. It's true that Windows is a larger target, but it's also true that Windows is just not very secure. Study after study after study shows that plugging a Windows computer into a broadband connection without any protection is a surefire way for that computer to become infected with a virus or worm. Yes, there are ways to harden your Windows computer so that it doesn't become a spam-sending zombie and these anti-virus and anti-spyware tools are getting better all the time, but it's still a lot to ask a new computer user to do just to get online.So it's nice to see the BBC and Sophos (a leading maker of anti-virus and security software) recognize Mac OS X for its better security. I'll be the first person to tell you that Mac OS X isn't totally secure; in fact there is no such thing as a completely secure operating system. But there can be no question that Mac OS X and its underlying Unix permissions model is more secure than any flavor of Windows.I can hear the comments already. "But, but...just you wait for Vista. It will solve all the security problems." Well, if you remember, that's what people were saying about WinXP. And Win2K before that. And even Win98 before that. Yes, Vista will probably be a more secure environment than its predecessors, but that's not saying much.[Thank you to everyone who sent us this tip.]

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Adium 1.0b1 Released

After months of work, the excellent multiple network instant messenging program, Adium, has reached version 1.0b1, and this release is a great one. It sports major improvements to interactions with AIM, ICQ, and .Mac IM networks, iTunes integration, the default look and feel and privacy options. It now requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 and is a universal binary.Please note that this is still in beta, though I was using it last night without any significant problems presenting themselves.[Thanks to those who sent us this tip.]

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Buying Guides

Buying Guides By Damien Barrett

Top Ten Most Beautiful Mac OS X Applications

Top ten lists are all the rage recently and Phillip Ryu gives us a unique one--the top ten most beautiful applications for Mac OS X. He's got a nice write-up and I agree with most of his choices. 10. Transmission9. Voice Candy8. Podcast Maker7. Transmit6. Quinn5. AppZapper4. Acquisition3. Coverflow2. Newsfire1. Delicious LibraryI would add to his list RapidWeaver and Comic Life, both programs that have impressed me with their ease-of-use and well-designed user interfaces. What apps would you add in your own top ten list of most beautiful Mac OS X applications?

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Apps By Damien Barrett

PodTropolis May Shut Down

Podtropolis.com, the leading podcast and iPod-ready video bittorrent tracker may soon shut down. A notice posted to their front page yesterday and udpated today explains:"It's looking like we are going to have to close our doors in the next week unless we can come up with enough money to pay our server bill for this month. Our host has put us on notice. We have been unable to pay it due to the fact that we lost an advertiser and donations have become practically non-existant. If you want to see Podtropolis keep rolling please donate via the sidebar, otherwise we have no choice but to close our doors."

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Apple By Damien Barrett

Mac OS X 10.4.7 Phones Home

Daniel Jalkut has discovered that the Mac OS X 10.4.7 update released last week is causing his computer to phone home to Apple. Every eight hours, a process called "dashboardadvisoryd" is contacting two different servers hosted by Apple, ostensibly to verify that the Dashboard plug-ins you have installed are the same versions as the ones provided by Apple.While this certainly isn't as insidious as Microsoft's much-maligned Windows Genuine Advantage program phoning home to verify the authenticity of your operating system's license code, I find myself agreeing with Daniel that Apple should provide us a way to turn this feature off. For my few computers at home, I doubt that I'll care much whether each is talking to Apple's servers, but in my work environment where I manage many hundreds of computers, I now need to evaluate whether this change is going to have a negative effect on my network. I've already got network administrators mistaking Bonjour traffic as PC viruses, the last thing I need is to have another discussion with our firewall administrator to explain why our lab computers are all hitting an Apple server at scheduled periods.I've been debating all summer whether or not our computers in the Fall would have Dashboard enabled. I have no choice now but to disable Dashboard on our lab and classroom computers until there's an easier way (other than using Little Snitch) to turn off this phoning home feature.

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Technology

Technology By Damien Barrett

Found Footage: Blowing up a PowerMac G4

Some guy asked for donations to buy a G5. As a reward to his donors, he said he would blow up his aging PowerMac G4.

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Mobile

Mobile By Damien Barrett

Worst Scratched iPod Contest

ColorEnvy.com is a company that provides scratch repair and custom paintjobs for your iPod(s), so it's only natural for them to have launched a contest to find the "worst scratched iPod." The winner of the contest will have their iPod's scratches fixed by ColorEnvy and painted the color of his/her choosing. He/she will also receive an do-it-yourself scratch repair kit to keep the iPod looking new and scratch-free.If you think you've got the world's worst-scratched iPod, send them a picture. The contest ends August 1st. My bet is that an iPod nano wins the contest. Heh.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Inkscape - Open Source Vector Graphics Editor

Everyone knows about GIMP, the open source graphics editor that competes with Photoshop for editing bitmap images, or images with "pixels in a bitmap." But what if you need a free program that can work with vector-based images, such as those that Adobe Illustrator builds? Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor that runs in the X11 environment compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.Inkscape can import many and work with many of the common graphics formats, such as JPEG, PNG and TIFF, and can export as PNG and many of the common vector-based graphics formats.GIMP and Inkscape combined can offer many of the same capabilities of their much more expensive cousins Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. If you're looking to build a graphic design machine on the cheap, you should at least check out these open source programs. They may just suit your needs.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Fireworks Screensaver for 4th of July

I've always liked screensavers. Flying toasters will always hold a special place in my heart, but I continue to be impressed by Skyrocket, a free screensaver that renders fireworks on your display. Perfect for your 4th of July party, not only is Skyrocket free, it's also a universal binary which runs fantastically on my Intel iMac. Be sure to turn on the smoke option and play around with the zoom level, Moon glow, and sound options.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

UB Replacements for Non-Intel Mac Apps

In this post about Roxio Toast, TUAW asked which applications you were still waiting for to be ported to universal binary. I thought I'd compile a list of universal binary applications that can fill the roles of those that people are still waiting for:For Screen CaptureDisplay Eater is still a work-in-progress and offers a much less refined user interface than Snapz Pro, but it's UB and it works. I've used it several times to capture my screen into a video file.For Office SuitesAgain, the user interface isn't as refined as the mainstay, but you can't beat the price of NeoOffice. The NeoOffice Alpha 2 for Intel Macs is available right now by paying for an "Early Access" program. Or you can wait a few days, as an Intel beta of NeoOffice should be released very soon (next week, if I'm hearing correctly).For Video ConversionI use ffmpegX for a lot of video conversion and the Intel version just screams on my Intel iMac. I haven't matched it up against the new Toast's DivX conversion yet, but I bet it's faster. The learning curve is a bit higher with ffmpegX, but it supports way more video formats.And a few notes. Stuffit Expander is a universal binary beta. Filemaker is likely getting close to a release of version 8.5 which will be run natively on Intel Macs.I'm also still waiting for Extensis to update Suitcase so it's UB. As much as I'd love to dump it for a different product, I don't know of any professional font managers that are updated for Intel. Both FontAgent Pro and MasterJuggler are still wallowing in PPC-land. Linotype FontExplorer X was just updated to UB, but I have zero experience with it, and Apple's own FontBook has on too many occasions eaten my font collections (always have backups!).

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Apps By Damien Barrett

iClip is Free Today

MacZot is offering Inventive's iClip as a free download today. It's version 3.7 and isn't a universal binary but version 4.0 is about to ship and the company has long offered free upgrades, so grab it now and watch for version 4.0 to ship. I'm not personally a user of multiple clipboards, but I suppose it couldn't hurt to give this a whirl. Who doesn't like free stuff.Thanks Jonathan for the tip.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Toast Titanium 7.1

Roxio released an update to their flagship CD and DVD-burning software for Macintosh this morning. Version 7.1 is now a universal binary and provides fixes with issues related to Quicktime 7.1, AppleScript, the Toast Setup Assistant, and encoding Apple Lossless files.There aren't too many more applications on my Intel iMac that are not universal binary. The Adobe CS2 suite and Microsoft Office, of course, are the two outstanding holdouts. Virtually everything else has been updated to work natively on an Intel iMac. What other applications are you waiting for?

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Adobe Releases Flash Player 9 beta for Intel Macs

When Adobe released only the PPC version of Flash Player 9 the other day, some people criticized Adobe for not simultaneously releasing an Intel-enabled version as well. Richard Brownell points us today to a post by Emmy Huang, the product manager for Adobe Flash Player telling us that the public beta release of Adobe Flash Player 9 for Intel Macs is ready. As always, be sure to read the readme and watch for bugs. This is still in beta.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

PopChar X 3.0

There are a few applications that increase my productivity to the point where, after awhile, I can't work without them. Quicksilver is one. Another is FinderPop. But when it comes to working on a desktop publishing project for days on end, nothing increases my productivity more than Ergonis' PopChar X. This amazing little application places a tiny letter "P" in the top left corner of your screen next to your Apple menu that gives you quick and easy access to the character sets in your fonts. So if you can't remember the keyboard shortcut for making an umlaut or the copyright symbol, PopChar can quickly help you find these characters and insert them into your document.Version 3.0 of PopChar X sports a completely redesigned and streamlined interface for browsing your installed fonts and their character sets. It has full support for Unicode character sets and can even do HTML character insertion into your code. PopChar is a universal binary and costs $30.00. You can download PopChar and use it in demo mode with some characters being disabled until you register for the full version. If you haven't ever tried PopChar, I encourage to do so now. For me, it's truly one of the great applications for Mac users.

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Apple By Damien Barrett

Things I'd Like to See in Leopard

WWDC is rapidly approaching and along with it we'll get our first preview of the features in Leopard. And so I've started to think seriously about the things that I'd like to see in Leopard. In no particular order:A New FinderI've disliked Mac OS X's Finder since Mac OS X first shipped. It's not nearly as streamlined or versatile as it should be. It wasn't until Tiger that the Finder began to handle gracefully a disconnected server volume. I certainly don't miss the days when a disconnected server volume often meant restarting the computer. The Finder has gotten better by degrees, but it's still got a long way to go. For instance, why can't we have the Finder columns autosize itself to filenames so the full filename(s) is visible instead of having the user have to manually resize the column width? And if the Finder can remember window placement, why can't it remember a custom column width that I've manually set on a window? Also, why can't the green plus button be either a zoom/shrink button (as it is now) or a maximize button (a la Windows)? While I personally don't like full-screen window usage, I know that having such a UI element as an optional preference would greatly ease the switching process for Windows users. And why must we resize our windows only from the bottom right corner? Writing about the Finder just makes me angry, so I'll move on now.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Yahoo Messenger 3.0b1

Apparently, a lot of our readers are Yahoo Messenger users. A good dozen of you or so sent us this tip that Yahoo Messenger 3.0b1 has been released. I've just taken it for a spin and my early impression is that Yahoo seems to have hired some great developers. This is a really nice application with a great Tiger/Leopard iChat-like interface, cross-platform webcam support, integration with other Yahoo services, chat conferencing, and file transfers. The website says that the ability to chat with MSN Messenger/Microsoft Live users will be coming soon as well. Oh, and it's a universal binary.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

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News

News By Damien Barrett

Software Update: Quicktime 7.1.2

The software elves at Apple have been busy this week. Quicktime 7.1.2 was released this afternoon. It addresses an issue previewing iDVD projects.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Adobe Releases Flash Player 9 (PPC)

Adobe released Flash Player version 9 today but it's only for PPC Macs. There's no version for Intel Macs yet. Anyone with an Intel Mac who wants native Flash components should use the preview version of version 8.x available here.You might want to take a look at the emerging issues being identified with Flash Player 9 before installing on your system(s).

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Accessories

Accessories By Damien Barrett

How to Clean Your Mighty Mouse

Apple has released an updated technical support document on the proper way to clean your Mighty Mouse. As much as I like my Mighty Mouse, I do have to clean it way more often than I ever had to clean my other mice like the basic two-button/scrollwheel Logictech one that I've been using for years. The most annoying problem with the Mighty Mouse is that it seems to very rapidly pick up dirt, grease, and other undesirable crud from my mousing surface. I clean my desk at least once a week with alcohol wipes and elbow grease, so it's not overly dirty.I agree with Apple's document that the lint-free cloth is a good way to get fingerprints off your mouse. Sometimes I'll just use paper towels and some iKlear display cleaner which seems to do a pretty good job of cutting through the crud. I've also, on many occasions, had to "vigorously rub" the scrollwheel nub while holding the mouse upside down to dislodge something that's causing the scrolling to not work properly.Apple's even posted a video tutorial on how to clean your Mighty Mouse.

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Apps By Damien Barrett

Drosera - A JavaScript Debugger for WebKit

The WebKit group released a new tool called Drosera last night. It's a JavaScript debugger that will work alongside any WebKit application, including Safari. This is welcome news for the web design community -- any tool that can help JavaScript to work more fluidly in Safari is a good thing.

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