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Parallels Desktop 7 plays nice with Lions and cameras and developers, oh my!
Today sees the release of Parallels 7, the newest version of its popular, competition beating virtualization software. This edition plays nicely with Lion, runs multiple virtual machines and has received several performance tweaks -- for the number obsessed, you'll enjoy knowing that it resumes Windows 60 percent faster than Parallels 6. Gamers will notice a 40 percent bump in 3D graphics rendering and video-chatters will find that Windows can now access your Mac while it's being dictated by OS X. Low end users who don't have Windows 7, fear not -- you can use the "Windows on Demand" service to buy a license via an "easy-to-use wizard" like, erm -- Clippy. Mobile fans will also see Parallels' iOS app give you remote access to your home machine, but be quick -- the price is leaping skyward from $4.99 to $19.99 soon. You can grab the standalone edition for $80, but folks already using versions 5 or 6 can level-up for $50.
Yoink takes the drag out of file dragging
Lion users, have you ever tried to drag a file between full-screen apps? It's a bear to do, especially with a trackpad. Matthias Gansrigler at Eternal Storms (no stranger to TUAW) has solved this problem with an app called Yoink. Yoink simply watches for you to start dragging a file and when the app notices this dragging motion, it opens a small drawer on the side of your screen. You can drag files to the drawer, and even stack multiple files in there, then switch spaces and drag them back out. It's simple, it's effective and it solves the problem quite elegantly. Check out Yoink on the Mac App Store, where you can pick it up for US$2.99. For a video of Yoink in action, or a 15-day trial, visit the Yoink homepage.
OS X Lion bug may affect Windows file sharing
A bug has been discovered in OS X Lion Server that appears when a user tries to share a file with extended attributes with a Windows XP or Windows 7 system. The bug was first discovered by Steve Maser, a senior systems administrator at the University of Michigan's Office of Technology Transfer. In a message posted to the OS X Server list, Maser details the bug: "If a file/folder on your 10.7.x Mac (and this includes Mac OS X Server) has some specific (?) extended attributes on it and you do Windows Sharing for Windows users to access the file/folders -- you won't be able to pull the file down to your Windows desktop. I verified this with Windows 7." The bug has also been verified with Windows XP. According to Steve, the copy process appears to begin, before halting with an error message like, "the file name you specified is not valid or too long," or less frequently, an "Invalid MS-DOS Function" message. Maser also notes a workaround he devised. It's not a fix but it will allow for a file to be copied by removing the attributes from the file's metadata. Apple hasn't acknowledged the bug yet, but per Masers posting, they now know about it and and fix should be added to OS X Lion server in the future.
Snow Leopard to get iCloud support in 10.6.9 update?
Apparently those of you who aren't upgrading to Cupertino's latest and greatest desktop OS will be able to sling bits through iCloud with the upcoming 10.6.9 update. The screenshot above comes via an eagle-eyed developer, who's already upgraded his MobileMe account to the service and also happened to open its forebearer's preference pane on a machine running Tiger. No word on when it'll drop (we'd place our bets alongside iOS 5's launch this fall), but looks like those of you running Snow Leopard got some readin' to do.
Dev Juice: Help me leverage Lion-only features
Dear Dev Juice, I'm part of a tiny company developing iOS apps. We're about to develop our first Mac OS X app. There are many cool new features in MAC OS X Lion and we'd like to take advantage of these. However, this would mean only people on Lion could use our app... Do you think most people have upgraded to Lion? Or do you think we'd be ignoring a lot of potential users still on Snow Leopard? Gareth Dear Gareth Lots of users have made the jump to Lion but lots more have not. Rather than jumping on the Lion bandwagon completely by providing a Lion-only application, consider conditional coding instead. Conditional coding allows you to offer certain features only to Lion users while ensuring the application remains both 10.6 and 10.7 ready. This solution allows you to build your application for the greatest number of users. Make sure you clarify in your marketing text that certain features are Lion-only so you don't tick off either Apple or your user base. Here are a few conditional coding hints. Check for properties using key/value coding. If valueForKey: returns nil, the property is not available in Snow Leopard. Check for classes using NSClassFromString(). Code around non-existent classes in Snow Leopard by disabling features or removing inappropriate options. Check for selector compliance using respondsToSelector:. When newer APIS are supported, objects will report that they respond to those selectors, letting you call them without crashing the program. You may generate compile-time warnings about unimplemented selectors unless you use work-arounds like performSelector:withObject:. If you really want to go hard core, you can build NSInvocation instances directly. Happy Developing!
Rumor: iCloud support coming in Snow Leopard 10.6.9
According to a image sent in to MacRumors, iCloud support may be coming to Snow Leopard users. As you can see in the screenshot above, the .Mac preference pane in a previous OS X's System Preferences reads: "You will no longer be able to sync with this machine because you've upgraded to iCloud. iCloud requires a computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.9 or later for Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks." This message appeared in OS X 10.4 Tiger after a developer updated his MobileMe account to an iCloud account. The notice appears to be the first indication that OS X 10.6.9 is in the works. Presumably it will only include minor bug fixes and provide limited iCloud support for Snow Leopard. Currently Apple states that iCloud will require OS X 10.7, but that is presumably for the more advanced Documents, iTunes Match, Photo Stream, and Backups features. It's reasonable to assume Apple isn't going to lock non-Lion users out of their @me.com email addresses.
Mac 101: Easily show the user Library folder in Lion
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Those of you who've explored your Finder a little bit in OS X 10.6 or prior might have noticed a folder in your user folder called "Library." The Library folder houses all sorts of files needed to keep your user account running smoothly. Many of these files are created automatically by apps on your Mac -- like preferences and settings on how you want a certain app to look or run. Other files inside the Library folder include screen savers and widgets and, well, a ton of things you'll never need to worry about but are pretty much essential to having a healthy Mac. In OS X 10.7 Lion Apple decided to hide the user's Library folder (although not the root Library folder on the top level of the hard drive). The primary reason Apple did this is so users couldn't easily go into the folder and delete important files needed by apps or OS X itself. This became all the more important after Apple introduced the Mac App Store. Files inside the Library folder allow you to delete an app, then re-download it at a later date while retaining all the settings it had the last time it was on your Mac. If you want to see the contents of the Library folder, there are actually several ways to do it; for simplicity's sake, we're going to show you the easiest, non-techie way, courtesy of the folks at CreativeBits: In the Finder, select the Go menu from the menu bar at the top of your screen. You'll notice a list of folders across your system such as Desktop, Downloads, Home, etc. While the Go menu is displayed, hold down the option key on your keyboard. Like magic, the Library folder will appear between the Home and Computer folders. Click on it to open a Finder window displaying all of the files inside your Library folder. Again, if you're not too familiar with the contents of the Library folder it's best to leave what's in there alone. However, it doesn't hurt to explore the folder and see how some essential files are arranged and stored on your system.
OS X Lion 10.7.1 update hits Mac App Store - one week later
One week after its release through Software Update, the 10.7.1 update for OS X Lion has made its way onto the Mac App Store. It's not clear if the delay was intentional or not. Unforeseen technical issues may have complicated issuing an update to such a large piece of software on Apple's new app distribution platform. However, it's just as likely that this will be Apple's strategy going forward: offer OS X updates through traditional channels like Software Update and direct download to more tech-savvy users who typically watch for these kinds of things, give the update a week to settle, then offer the download to the more casual set who only updates via the Mac App Store. In that case, those of us who update right away might end up acting as de facto beta testers during that week. It's too early to tell either way what Apple's intent for future OS X updates will be. However, if the 10.7.2 Lion update has the same weeklong delay between Software Update and the Mac App Store, it makes it more likely that Apple plans to follow that pattern going forward.
OS X Lion 10.7.2 seed 2 now available for developers
Numerous tipsters have advised us that OS X Lion 10.7.2 seed 2 has been made available to developers. Notification of the update was sent to developers yesterday afternoon. According to information sent to TUAW by developers, there are no known issues with the seed, which indicates that 10.7.2 may be released in the near future. Apple has asked developers to focus on the functionality of AirPort (Wi-Fi), AppKit, Graphics Drivers, the Mac App Store, Mail, and Spotlight. The first update to Lion, OS X Lion 10.7.1, was released six days ago and addressed issues with Wi-Fi, Migration Assistant, video playback in Safari, and a problem with audio playback when using HDMI or optical audio out.
Why hibernate or 'safe sleep' mode is no longer necessary in OS X Lion (Updated)
Update: Several commenters expressed concern that disabling safe sleep could expose you to the possibility of drive corruption if you lose power or your machine spontaneously restarts. This particular fear is groundless; Safe Sleep doesn't have anything to do with volume corruption (except if you inadvertently bounce your laptop around while the drive is still spinning to save the sleep image, as noted below). The technology that helps OS X deal with uncertain volume status is HFS+ journaling, and it's set on by default when your drive is first formatted for an OS X install. The file system journal keeps track of changes and updates to your drive; if your Mac loses power, the journal is 'replayed' to help restore the drive to a known good state. This is always at work regardless of the safe sleep status. Whether you choose to keep Safe Sleep on or not is a matter of personal preference, but if your machine is generally plugged in and you don't run the battery down below 20%, you are never actually taking advantage of the feature. If you want to chew up the drive space and take the time for the sleep image to write anyway, that's up to you. On SSD-equipped machines, the image save time is inconsequential but the loss of storage space is even more acute. Original post below. Introduced in 2005's PowerBooks, 'safe sleep' (or 'hibernate mode' as it's known in the Windows world) is a feature designed to preserve the current state of your Mac when you put it to sleep. Enabled by default on Apple's notebooks, the feature writes the entire contents of your RAM onto the hard disk when you put your Mac to sleep. The practical upshot of this is if your Mac loses power, the next time you start it up everything should be restored to exactly the way it was when you put your Mac to sleep. If you're running OS X Lion, this feature may sound very familiar. That's because it somewhat parallels the functionality of Lion's Autosave and Resume features, which also allow you to pick up where you left off, even after a power failure or a discretionary reboot. For that reason and several others, safe sleep mode seems like an unnecessary feature for most OS X Lion users. I've disabled it on my Mac, and if you're running Lion, you may be interested in doing the same thing on your own Mac. Even if safe sleep does duplicate features already built into OS X Lion, why even bother disabling it? I did it for two reasons. First, if the system has to write the contents of your RAM to the hard disk every time you put your Mac to sleep, it could take a long time for your Mac to actually fall asleep. While this process is relatively fast on the new SSD I just installed, on my old and extremely slow HDD it could take a minute or more for my Mac to actually fall asleep. If you're in the (bad) habit of grabbing your laptop and tucking it away in your bag before the pulsing power light tells you the machine is fully asleep, you could be moving your machine just as the drive is trying to write out the data for the sleep image; that's a prescription for drive trouble down the line. The second reason I disabled safe sleep was because of the large amounts of hard drive space it consumes. The 'sleep image' generated by safe sleep isn't restricted to the amount of RAM you're actively using; instead, it's equal to the entire amount of your RAM. On my system, this meant 6 GB of drive space was being consumed by the sleep image, and since I can think of many better uses for all that space, I decided to get rid of it. If you've now decided that you also want to disable safe sleep, you have a few options. SafeSleep is one third-party app that can get the job done for free, but be warned it's no longer being updated or supported. SmartSleep may be a better option, and it's even available on the Mac App Store, but it does cost US$3.99. A few other third-party solutions exist; those are just the first two that came to mind. However, it seems these solutions merely toggle your Mac's sleep mode and don't do anything to get rid of the space-consuming sleep image. Another option, for those of you who aren't afraid of the OS X Terminal, is to input the following commands (which will require you to enter your admin password): To remove the sleep image file: sudo rm -rf /var/vm/sleepimage To disable safe sleep mode: sudo pmset hibernatemode 0 Whether you use one of the third-party utilities or the Terminal commands, you'll now have reclaimed a portion of your hard drive space equal to the amount of RAM you have installed in your Mac. If you have Lion's Resume feature enabled, you shouldn't be losing out on anything by disabling safe sleep on your Mac. Resume plus Autosave accomplishes essentially the same thing, but without consuming unnecessarily huge swathes of your disk space and without making it take forever to put your Mac to sleep. There is one caveat to this: applications not yet updated with full Lion compatibility may not support Resume or Autosave features. If you find yourself heavily reliant on these apps and don't want to risk losing your data, you may want to leave safe sleep enabled despite the potential benefits of disabling it.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me expand Mail's tracking-fu
Dear Aunt TUAW, I really like Mail 5's shipment tracking feature, but it only seems to look up shipments in USPS. What if I have a package arriving from some other service? Is there a way to change what site Mail looks up for tracking info? Your loving nephew, Bob V. Dear Bob, Those features that automatically connect to shipment look-up are called data detectors. OS X Mail has built them into Lion, allowing you to track packages sent by UPS, FedEx, and the US Postal Service. They work like this. When Mail detects shipping information, hovering your cursor over a tracking number produces a dotted outline and a small button with a downward arrow. Click that arrow and choose Track Shipment from the contextual pop-up. Mail opens a QuickLook window populated with your shipping information. You can enable and disable data detectors by issuing a command-line defaults request, e.g. defaults write com.apple.mail DisableDataDetectors YES, or NO. What you can't do is change what detectors there are, or add to them. As far as Auntie can tell, data detectors seem to be built into apps via the underlying programming system rather than specified through defaults. Data detectors are actually quite complicated things. They are based on regular expressions that match the characteristics of the item they are detecting. Apple provides built-in detectors for tracking numbers, phone numbers, dates, addresses and for URLs. A simple web search for regular expression and, say, phone number shows how deeply complex the problems are -- and how little suited they are for end-user expansion. GummyDev offers an interactive regex checker. Its relatively simple regex for UPS is /\b(1Z ?[0-9A-Z]{3} ?[0-9A-Z]{3} ?[0-9A-Z]{2} ?[0-9A-Z]{4} ?[0-9A-Z]{3} ?[0-9A-Z]|[\dT]\d\d\d ?\d\d\d\d ?\d\d\d)\b/i. If UPS is simple, FedEx is less so. FedEx apparently keeps updating their number system based on their internal corporate structure and the number of packages delivered. In Apple's SDK, the NSDataDetector class derives from the NSRegularExpression class and basically works the same way. Class instances can enumerate through matches found in a string and applies property updates based on those matches. Here's a quick example of a custom data detector that matches against any occurrence of the string "auntie", marking it in orange. So to sum things up, here's what Auntie has believes is likely going on. (Although if she got any of this wrong, do correct her -- as usual -- in the comments.) As an end-user you can enable or disable all data detectors for mail. You cannot add new data detectors, say, for the Canadian postal service. Developers can build detectors into their own apps as needed, but these detectors and the regular expressions that power them are not shared between apps. Regular expressions can be really, really ugly. Here's hoping that helps. Hugs and kissies, Auntie T.
Build a better Lion installer
Apple now offers a US$69 USB installer for Lion. It comes on one of those tiny white USB sticks we first saw with the MacBook Air. I have not used one of the Lion installers, but I have one that came with my MacBook Air: it's only 8 GB, and (this is the really disappointing part) it is not rewritable. When you mount the drive in Disk Utility, it appears like a read-only DVD, not a USB drive, which means that the drive which came with my MacBook Air is now just as useless as my Snow Leopard DVD. I assume that the Lion USB installer is also 8 GB and not rewritable (I haven't used one personally), which makes it a pretty bad deal. $70 for an 8 GB, read-only USB drive? If you haven't purchased Lion from the Mac App Store, subtract $30, but that still means you are paying $40 for an 8 GB, read-only USB drive. For $40 you can buy a 32 GB USB drive from Amazon. Or, if you prefer tiny and easy-to-lose USB drives, you can get an 8 GB Verbatim "Tuff 'n' Tiny" drive for $15. Or grab a normal looking 16 GB USB drive for $20 (that's double the capacity for only $5 more). But what if you want more than just a Lion installer? What if you want an installer and an emergency backup drive that you can boot from and actually use? What if you want something that will be far more useful than a drive you just stick in a drawer until you need to reinstall OS X? Slip Streaming Away For a moment, pretend that Apple had not released Lion yet, and you needed to reinstall Snow Leopard on a Mac, but all you had was an original Snow Leopard DVD from when 10.6.0 was first released. What would you do? Chances are that the process would be something like this: Install Snow Leopard 10.6.0. Run Software Update to download the latest Combo Pack for 10.6 and other important updates. Wait for it to download. Wait for it to install. Wait for it to reboot a few times. Run Software Update again to download the newest iTunes and other updates. Repeat steps 3-5. Reinstall your favorite programs. Try to find the registration information for the apps you purchased somewhere other than the Mac App Store. Try to find the installation discs for Microsoft Office or other programs which on CD/DVD. Start setting up the computer the way that you like it: (move the Dock to the left side pinned to the top, remove all the apps that Apple shoves into the Dock by default, change desktop picture, change a bunch of Finder settings, add my MobileMe information, change the Energy Savings, turn on Remote Login and VNC, and so on.) Rather than give Apple $70 for an installer which will be out of date in a few weeks, I'd rather make my own installer that includes not only OS X with all the latest updates, but also installs my essential apps and preferences. This is what is known as a "slipstream" and it's fairly simple to do. I would definitely recommend at least a 16 GB drive, but 32 GB would obviously make things easier. DVD installers are dead. Long live USB. Apple has made it clear that they consider DVD installers to be dead. The MacBook Air and Mac Mini have already dropped the SuperDrive, and the writing is on the wall for the rest of the Mac hardware lineup. And good riddance. Will anyone miss them? I won't. For several years the first thing I have done with any CD or DVD installer is make a disk image of it, and use that for installing. Then I don't have to worry about finding the disc or making sure it didn't get scratched, or any of that nonsense. Your Intel-based Mac can boot from a USB drive (heck, it can even boot from the SD card slot, if yours has one). So rather than make a DVD installer, we're going to make a USB installer. It's not difficult, and what you end up with is cheaper and better than what Apple will sell you. Buy Lion from the Mac App Store. Download Lion from the Mac App Store. Install Lion onto the USB drive. Boot from the USB drive. run Software Update to make sure you are up to date. Install essential applications, especially ones that you did not purchase from the Mac App Store. (For me, that list includes: Pages, Microsoft Office, LaunchBar, 1Password, TextExpander, BBEdit, BusyCal, SizeUp, QuickCursor, Default Folder X, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, SlimBatteryMonitor, DropCopy, DiskWarrior, SuperDuper, and Dropbox.) Install your preferred browser and extensions. Customize your browser. Run each app at least twice. (Why twice? Because some apps wait until the second time you launch them to ask you if you want to automatically check for updates, or prompt you for some other action.) Customize your apps to your normal settings and preferences. When you are satisfied with the setup (don't be surprised if it takes a full day to get the computer configured just the way you like it), clone the USB drive to your main computer drive, and boot from it. Now tuck the USB drive into a pocket in your laptop bag. When OS X 10.7.2 is released, install it on your computer as usual, and use it for a few days to make sure no problems crop up. If it seems stable, insert your USB drive and boot from it. Run Software Update, and then run the essential apps you installed to see which of them need to be updated. Repeat for each "point oh" release of OS X. When Mac OS X 10.8 comes out, you will have a "clean but customized" installer ready. If you've ever avoided doing a 100% "clean install" because you thought it was too much of a hassle, or if you've ever avoided using Migration Assistant because you wanted to avoid bringing over files, preferences, and applications that you don't use, this is a "third way" which should avoid the worse parts of both and keep the best parts. No more having the fiddle with dozens of basic settings (no translucent menu bars, ever!!!) with a new installation, and no worrying that some installer left random files on your Mac from that one app you tried two years ago. The USB drive also serves as an emergency drive which you can keep with you in your laptop bag. If you use Disk Warrior or some other disk repair tool which needs to be run off of a separate drive, the USB drive will work for that too. Drawbacks and Caveats You may have already noticed a potential drawback to this solution versus Apple's official installer: if you have multiple Macs, it would be safest to use a different USB drive for each one of them. What I Did But Am Not Recommending That You Do: I made a USB installer with my 2010 MacBook Air, and the used it to install Lion on my 2008 MacBook Pro. So far I have not seen any problems, but that should not be taken as canonical evidence that any USB installer made on any Mac can be used with any other Mac. In fact, my experience is statistically insignificant considering all the different variations of hardware out there. I created the USB installer, and then used SuperDuper to create a Disk Image of it. You can do that in Disk Utility, but I used SuperDuper, because it claims to be smart enough to know what Apple recommends not cloning. (CarbonCopyCloner may also do the same thing. I've been a satisified SuperDuper user for years, so that's what I recommend.) I also saved the disk image on my Drobo, so if something ever happens and I need to go back to a "clean install" of 10.7.1, I can do so easily. The MacBook Air is my main computer, so that was the one I wanted to make sure I used for the clone image. If problems crop up later with the MacBook Pro, it will be less of a disruption to wipe that drive and reinstall Lion. If that happens, I'll buy another USB thumbdrive to use exclusively with it. Your mileage may vary. Caveat Emptor. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. This deal is getting worse all the time... (aka "More thoughts on the Apple Lion USB installer") If you buy the Lion USB installer and do not buy Lion through the Mac App Store, what happens if you lose the USB installer? Maybe you thought: "Oh well, no big deal, I'll just use Lion Recovery." Wrong! Better re-read the fine print on Apple's USB Lion installer: "When you install OS X Lion using the USB thumb drive, you will not be able to reinstall OS X Lion from Lion Recovery. You will need to use the USB thumb drive to reinstall OS X Lion." If you lose the USB drive, prepare to spend another $30 to download Lion from the Mac App Store, or $70 to buy another easy-to-lose, read-only USB installer from Apple. Look, Apple obviously felt that they had to offer a USB installer, but they clearly don't like it, and they have done everything possible to dissuade you from using it: they waited a few weeks after Lion was released before releasing it, they made way more expensive than it needs to be, and are making it less useful than downloading Lion from the Mac App Store. You can take a hint, right? This is one of the few times in life when making something is not only cheaper than buying in a store, but it's much better too.
Pro Tools beta adds Lion support
Pro Tools is the industry-standard audio creation and production software used in the music and entertainment industries. Traditionally, Pro Tools takes its sweet time to be updated to work on newer OSs, but today Avid has released a Pro Tools 9.0.5 beta, which adds support for OS X 10.7 Lion. Note, however, that even though Pro Tools 9.0.5 is officially qualified to work on Snow Leopard systems, that's not the case with Lion. Hence the "beta" status. If your livelihood depends on Pro Tools, you probably shouldn't upgrade your production workstations to Lion and version 9.0.5. If you intend to upgrade, note this warning and advice from Avid. When Lion is installed on a system with Pro Tools, the OS will disable some Pro Tool plug-ins. Given that, Avid recommends against updating a Snow Leopard workstation that already has Pro Tools installed. Instead they suggest Pro Tools users create a new partition on their hard drives, then install Lion from scratch, and then install Pro Tools 9.0.5. You can check out Avid's Read Me file on the matter here (PDF) and download the Pro Tools 9.0.5 update here. [via Loopinsight]
Lion 10.7.1 lands, packs plenty of bug fixes
While you wait for 10.7.2 to deliver iCloud compatibility to your Mac, you can at least enjoy a few bug fixes, courtesy of today's surprise Lion update. 10.7.1 doesn't boast any new features, but it does solve a few major issues, including missing admin accounts and freezes when playing back video in Safari. If you haven't gotten an alert yet, you can fire up Software Update to download the first set of tweaks to the young OS, and check out the slightly more complete changelog after the break.
Why you should not be paying for VisualHub (Updated)
VisualHub was a video conversion application popular several years ago. The app was shuttered in 2008, but it continued to work in OS X until Lion rolled out. Lon Seidman, a Visual Hub customer, recently received an email from online payment processor Kagi that offered a Lion-compatible update to the video conversion app. That sounds great, except this email and the US $4.99 payment was not authorized by VisualHub developer Tyler Loch. Loch did update his app to support Lion, but this new version is available for free from the VisualHub website. Loch even put a warning on his website accusing Kagi of distributing an unauthorized version of vHub Updater and is telling people not to purchase this version. Kagi was the official payment processor for VisualHub when it was an active application so perhaps this is just a misunderstanding and not an attempt by Kagi to fleece VisualHub users. Either way, VisualHub owners should avoid paying Kagi and download the update for free. Update: [Mike Rose] Seidman spoke to Kagi CEO Kee Nethery about the 'unofficial' VisualHub update tool. According to Nethery, his payment processing company often handles simple support questions for software purchasers, even though the responsibility for support actually rests with the developer. In the case of VisualHub, since developer Tyler Loch has stopped distributing his app, Kagi pointed users to Loch's patch instructions on the Techspansion site. Despite the fact that the effort to patch the app is minimal, the process of showing the app package contents and replacing three script files was apparently beyond the "comfort level" of many users contacting Kagi for help. Facing what he describes as a "support nightmare," Nethery took the unprecedented step of building a patcher application that replaced the three script files and also updated the underlying version of ffmpeg used to power the app's compression features. He apparently is frustrated that Loch chose to "walk away from a business" when he stopped developing and selling VisualHub. Macworld also interviewed Nethery and Loch, with similar comments from the Kagi chairman. Loch, however, points out that while there is an open-source descendant of VisualHub (FilmRedux), the original app and the Lion-specific patch files are still copyrighted and closed-source. Loch had no advance notice of Kagi's intent to bundle and sell his patches and did not give his approval. While we can sympathize with Kagi's dilemma and the challenge of responding to upset customers, apparently Nethery forgot that VisualHub is not Kagi's product. The unofficial patcher app issued without Loch's permission is a slap in the face for independent developers who work with Kagi, as up until today they probably believed that their apps were theirs to support or abandon as they saw fit. Whether or not you agree with Loch's decision to close out VisualHub, it is his decision and his alone when to EOL a product. Providing the patches for Lion is a courtesy, not an obligation, and Kagi would be far better off saying "the product is no longer supported, sorry" than pulling this end run. At a bare minimum, a courtesy email to Loch letting him approve or deny permission for the updater app would have been the civil thing to do. Loch's notes on the Lion patch include a wry comment, "Enjoy VisualHub for a little while longer, until Apple discontinues support for AppleScript Studio apps or 32bit apps or non-sandboxed apps." Clearly the zombie support for this discontinued app is a fragile thing, and it can and will break. What will Kagi do then for its frustrated customers? Nothing -- and for better or worse, that's what it should be doing now. [Via Lon Seidman]
Dear Aunt TUAW: What are those lockfiles?
Dear Aunt TUAW, With Lion, I'm seeing a lot of plist.lockfile in my Preferences folder. I'm assuming the "lockfile" business has to do with the new autosave stuff in Lion, but why would that apply to a preference file? Is this a bug or a feature? Your loving nephew, Darren Dear Darren, Feature. Historically, lock files have restricted file access to one application at a time. Auntie has no reason to think that Lion's use of this concept differs. A lock file prevents a second edit from being applied concurrently, preserving information integrity. Access control is especially important when competing processes might want to update an application's defaults at once. Auntie went ahead and used opensnoop to watch what happened as she updated a few preferences. Sure enough, the lock file seemed to be set on application launch and reset on quit % sudo opensnoop -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist UID PID COMM FD PATH 501 23363 mdworker 6 /Users/ericasadun/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist 501 23363 mdworker 7 /Users/ericasadun/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist What surprised Auntie was how if she didn't identify a specific preference to watch, that all the preferences lockfiles were refreshed whenever a new lock was applied (Try it yourself, with sudo opensnoop with no arguments). It was also fun to see how TextEdit updated its autosave information, its saved state, its shared file property list and more. Opensnoop is curiousity crack. Hope this helps! Love & snuggles, Auntie T.
Apple's OS X Lion USB sticks now available online, for $69
After more than a week's worth of rumors and speculation, Apple has finally released its OS X Lion USB thumb drive, available now at its online store. This little stick offers a physical media alternative to Cupertino's otherwise App Store-centric distribution model, providing access to OS X Lion for $69. One caveat, however, is that users who download the software via thumb drive won't be able to re-install it using the recently released Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, but will have to rely upon the USB stick, instead. The other caveat, of course, is price, as just $29 will get you the exact same OS, via the App Store. To grab one for yourself, hit up the source link, below.
Hackinations: That Firefox full-screen thing
Got dual monitors? Have Firefox installed? Go ahead an open a browser window and then do this. Either click F11 or choose View > Full Screen (Command-Shift-F). Firefox then does something that Lion users have been clamoring for. It creates a Lion-style full-screen presentation, complete with the double-arrowed OS X-standard restore button. And it does this only on one screen. (Update: It has hover-to-reveal of the restore button, which doesn't seem to be a custom behavior.) I'm dying to know how. All the other apps that support full-screen use the standard zoom item built into their windows. I showed you how to add that feature to non-full-screen apps in a recent Hackinations post. But the standard zoom goes across all windows, not just on one. How is Firefox doing it? I don't know and I'd like to find out how. And, more importantly, I'd like to find out how to add it on an app-by-app basis or enable it system-wide. Got a theory? Know something about this? Drop a comment!
From the boneheaded design file: Browsing Versions in Lion
I like Lion. I really really do. I can forgive Apple for breaking my Network Area Storage device, but in general it's a nice upgrade. There is, however, that matter of the "browse versions" feature in iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), Preview and some other apps designed to work with the Versions feature in Lion. I asked several experienced Mac users if they understood how it all worked and not a one did. While some knew of the feature, and were anxious to use it, they couldn't find it. I would have expected a function that deals with a file to be on the File menu. Nope. Apple has it in the title bar, just where you are sure to miss it. If the document is locked, there's nothing in the File Menu either. You can lock the document from the title bar, but you have to unlock it from the drop down that appears on the word "locked". These are GUI choices from hell. When you finally do figure out how to browse your versions, your entire desktop changes, and you wind up in the Time Machine GUI (which Apple calls "The Star Field"), even though you never invoked Time Machine. As my colleague Erica Sadun points out, why introduce another system? Apple now offers full screen mode in several applications so you won't be distracted, but browsing versions morphs your desktop into a purple universe with flying stars whizzing by. Talk about distractions. There's no doubt that you can stumble through Apple documentation and find all this information out, but hey, this is Apple. You know, "it just works." By the way, I searched for "browse versions" in the Pages help document and came up blank. Lion does have some great features, but it's important that people understand them and that they are easy to use. It seems like these document functions really should be part of the File menu. If Apple wants to hide them in the title bar, that's fine, but give users a fighting chance. Apple should not change its motto to "it just works if you can find the non-intuitive place we've hidden it." If you want a good overview, our Steve Sande has done a nice job of explaining the new document control features. How are you doing with all this? Did you figure it out, or have you been lost too? I'm sure some of our readers were just fine, but I'll bet a lot of you are in the tall weeds.
How to auto-join hotspots in Lion
Lion makes it easy to join free Wi-Fi hotspots with landing pages, like those at Starbucks and McDonald's (often offered by AT&T in the US and BT OpenZone in the UK). Technology baked into OS X Lion eliminates the need to use a browser to pass a landing page that stands between you and the Internet. When you join such a network with Lion, a Finder window will open when Lion detects the landing page's request to accept the network's terms and conditions. You can accept the T&C right from the Finder window (which even offers backwards and forwards browsing buttons) and get connected, all without ever opening your browser. The process is even faster if you've joined that particular free AT&T or BT Openzone wireless network before. If so, your MacBook will automatically join it when you open its lid and the Finder window will pop-up automatically, allowing you to get past the landing page and get connected in one step. The no-browser way to access free Wi-Fi networks with landing pages is a small feature, sure, but its another one of those little touches that make Lion worthwhile and that makes a Mac a Mac.
