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Weekend Review: this week's software
Grab a cup of coffee and get your downloading mice ready ladies and gents; this week's software review is coming at you:Shareware AppZapper 1.5: minor fixes and improvements ChatFX: spice up your iChat video conferences TextExpander 1.3 (formerly Textpander): an essential utility gets even better QuarkXPress 7 (yawn): but the Universal is still in beta SubEthaEdit 2.5: the much loved collaborative text editor and code-ninja tool receives AppleScript-ability, bug fixes Videator: be careful when using it to spice up your videos iComment 4.1: maintenance release and compatibility with iWeb 1.1.x DivX 6.5: Universal (and free) player along with a retail price encoder for indie video codec Donationware/Freeware Bricksmith (donationware): virtual legos on your Mac. I dare you to name something cooler Safari Tidy (free): plug-in to check sites for XHTML compliance CoreDuoTemp 0.8 (free): maintenance fix for utility to keep track of temp, CPU usage and frequency on Intel Macs MappingService (donationware): get a map from any app SmackBook (free): hilarious hack for multi-desktop management utility Proxi 1.0 (free): broader app support for application automation utility from Griffin Open Source Maintenance 3.5: minor updates to fantastic Automator action/AppleScript Password Assistant: hook into Keychain Access to easily create complicated passwords Books: feature-rich book catalogging Free Updates iWeb 1.1.1: hopefully those publishing woes have been vanquished Xcode 2.3: Apple's premiere code-ninja tool receives enhancements and bug fixes Logic Express 7.2.1: maintenance release Universal Binary Delibar 0.8 (donationware): My personal favorite del.icio.us menubar bookmark utility
Quick! Where's the debug menu?
Matt Thomas has a bug stuck in his 23" Apple Cinema Display. Amusingly, the little fella is still alive: check out the video above to see it wandering across his screen. He has absolutely no idea how to get the bug out (although one commentator suggests he should lure the bug out with morsels of food) so at the moment Matt's hoping for the bug to graciously die off screen. The same thing happened to me with my 17" Samsung LCD, I believe it was even the same type of bug! I too waited for the bug to die off screen but instead, the bug decided to lay his grave in the dead centre, right at eye level. Now whenever friends use my screen they instictually attempt to swipe it away. What do I say to them when they ask about it? "Well, I was playing this game called Bugdom - it crashed really bad one day and left one of the bugs behind". Gets 'em every time.
MacBook Pros overheating due to thermal grease?
This isn't the first time the accusation's been leveled at a company: misapplication of thermal grease causing overheating hardware got a bunch of Xbox 360 fans in a furor over what turned out to be intentional manufacture. Well, a Something Awful forum poster by the name of Interrupting Moss was having (unintentional) thermal issues with his own overheating 129° F MacBook Pro, so he cracked it open and found a dearth of silvery paste. He generously reapplied his own and re-gauged the temperature at 103° -- a 26 degree drop, and that's only an IR reading of the keyboard area. Is this a cure-all for overheating MacBooks the world over? Hard to say, but if your MacBook is too hot to handle (certainly not too cold to hold), you might consider a more mano a la máquina approach before you wait in line to talk to a Genius just to have him/her whisk away your precious laptop for who knows how long. [Warning: link possibly NSFW][Via The Inq]
Are We All Just Beta Testers?
GameDaily has an interesting article up about how game developers seem to be using players as beta testers. Buggy code is released as a final product to the public with the thought that it can always be fixed with a later patch. And, while the article specifically discusses single player games, the argument is perhaps even more applicable to large MMO's in which regular patches to add content (and fix old bugs) are the norm. While it's understandable to an extent - World of Warcraft is a massive game, and it would be impossible to test every race, class, and talent spec in every situation - some of the bugs are sufficiently obvious that they make one wonder how much testing happens at all. However, perhaps MMO's are so expansive that it's imposible to give them the full quality assurance treatment in the traditional sense - which is why we've ended up with test servers and a regular patch cycle. What do you think - are we beta testing the software we're paying for? And should we be?
Help the revolution: submit feedback
This is more of a public service announcement and reminder than anything, inspired by TUAW reader Jer's comment on my .Mac syncing UI silliness post. Jer asked whether we were submitting feedback to Apple concerning gripes like the one I blogged, and the answer is 'most definitely yes.' This brief dialog inspired me to take the opportunity to urge all Mac users everywhere to do the same.If you have a complaint, a feature request, or maybe you just found a bug in Mac OS X, or another piece of Apple's software, apple.com/feedback is a great place to go and tell them about it. Most of Apple's apps are categorized there, and it's a simple process for submitting your comment. While I don't believe it's in their policy to reply to anything submitted there, you can rest assured that it's one of the best places Apple uses to collect the information they use to keep tabs on how we like their software, especially when it comes to creating all those official bug reports you'll find sprinkled throughout their support and knowledgebase articles (besides, who wants to take bets that their engineers have TUAW in their newsreader?).So remember boys and girls, when it comes to feature requests, UI gripes and bug squashing: ask not what Apple can do for you... but submit some feedback so the world's best operating system can get even better.
Treo 700w daylight savings time bug?
Nope, this ain't no April Fool's joke, people, this is the real deal: when everybody's clocks skip forward an hour for Daylight Savings Time this year (at 2:00AM on the first Sunday in April -- i.e. early tomorrow morning), your Treo 700w's calendar appointments may not. Like putting your WinMo phone in travel mode to another time zone, apparently a bug in the 700w may cause your appointments to time-shift back one hour -- so your noon appointment will stay put, so to speak, at 11:00AM. Palm's got some workarounds on their site so you shouldn't be too put out, so make sure you sort it out soon before Monday morning when you're an hour early to all your meetings. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if America would just get rid of DST -- Arizona, Hawaii, and portions of Indiana excepted, of course.[Via TreoCentral]
DrunkenBlog discovers another image that crashes WebKit
Wanna have some fun with Safari (or apparently any WebKit-based browser), a certain picture, and a post at the DrunkenBlog? Apparently, drunkenbatman has come across another image that can crash WebKit and anything based on it, including the Finder and Preview.If you want the full rundown, head over to the DrunkenBlog post using something like Firefox, Camino or Opera - just not Safari, OmniWeb or any other WebKit-based browsers. If you visit the post in Safari, it will crash; this has been tested in the latest 10.4.5 update on both PPC and Intel versions. Also, whatever you do, do not download the image to your desktop, especially if (like me) you have the Finder option to "show icon preview" turned on. It'll crash Preview and send Finder into a constant crashing/restart cycle.Like I said, you can get the full, in-depth rundown (and I mean in-depth) on this issue and its specifics at the DrunkenBlog.
Ask TUAW: What would you change about NetNewsWire?
I just realized it's been a while since we've done a "what would you change" post. In the past we've covered a lot of Apple's big hitters like Safari, Mail and iMovie, so I thought we'd delve into one of the more popular 3rd party apps out there: NetNewsWire.Since NNW can boast the largest newsreader app user base whether on Windows or OS X, I figured it would make great fodder for feature requests, changes, improvements and bug complaints. What's even better is the fact that I myself, and most of the other NNW users I know, practically live in the app; in fact I know that I now spend far less time in a browser than I do in NNW.With all that said, however, it certainly isn't without its issues. A new feature I'm dying for is a far more robust flagging and labelling system, like I think NewsMac Pro does. The ability to assign (and organize by) different kinds and colors of labels would be a thing sent from code-ninja-heaven in my book. I would also love more customizable icons of feeds and groups, much like how BlogBridge allows for group icons. This would help a lot with finding *that one* feed or group in lists of 250 feeds and groups, like I have.But enough about me and my NetNewsWire wishes - what about you, valiant TUAW (news) readers? What are your feature requests, fixes and bug complaints for the web's most popular newsreader?
Tiger Dictionary Shortcut Bug
I found the following reproducible bug today in Tiger. Does anyone know where you can find a database of known bugs? Following the pic, you'll find the bug report I just submitted to Apple. Summary: While in Safari, I noticed a word that I didn't recognize: nee. So I did what I always do in Tiger, I moused over it and hit COMMAND + CTRL + D to bring up the Dictionary pop-up with the definition. The pop-up appeared reading "No entries found." However, when I commented to a friend in iChat, she said that the definition turned up right away for her. She had used the contextual menu to look up the word, however, so I launched the standalone Dictionary and looked up nee and indeed, 42 results popped up with the top one being nee. Read the rest after the jump...
