stressfree - apple

Safari 4 on Windows looks good

David — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:37:47 +0000

It is really nice to see Apple have dropped the unsightly bushed metal look in their latest Safari 4 beta on Windows. Whilst that aesthetic worked fine in OSX, in a Windows world next to "traditional" applications it came across as being really unsightly. Let's hope this is a sign iTunes will take on more of a native Windows aesthetic in a future release.

Identical twins: Safari 4 and Google Chrome (click to enlarge)

However what is really crazy is how much Safari 4 looks and behaves like Google Chrome on Windows. Apple's developers have spent the last few months "borrowing" many of Chrome's features, such as the top-sites view and browser tabs on top, but on Windows they have gone a step further with the menu system itself. This is not a bad thing as the result looks nice, but beyond the little Google logo in the top right, your average Windows user is going to have a hard time telling the difference between the two browsers.

Now if only the Apple engineers would implement process isolation for each tab or window like in Chrome. It is hugely annoying to have all the Safari windows disappear just because somebody at Adobe cannot write a stable Flash plug-in.

Loose some OSX fat with Xslimmer

David — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:05:20 +0000

These days disk space is not a huge problem, but on a MacBook Air it can get a little tight once all your applications and media libraries are installed. This dilemma is not helped by OSX 10.5 Leopard's installation bloat. Not only is multiple language support installed by default, but most applications come with both x86 and PowerPC binary files. So if like me you only understand English, removing superfluous languages and binaries will free gigabytes.

Now whilst it is possible to do this task manually it is hardly fun or a good use of one's time. Fortunately there are a few tools out there that can do the job for you, my favourite being Xslimmer. Whilst this application does cost a handful of dollars (US$12.95) it has a great interface and keeps a 'blacklist' of applications that experience issues when they are placed on a diet, for example Skype. Plus if it helps remember that for this money you are reclaiming storage space, so it could be argued $13 is a very small price to pay when your laptop's hard drive cannot be replaced and external USB drives look ugly.

Xslimmer in action (click to enlarge)

Using Xslimmer is very easy, simply open it and run the Genie command to automatically locate all your applications. Once found Xslimmer will analyse each program to determine what excess fat can be trimmed. This usually results in a 25%-50% reduction in application size. This soon adds up to gigabytes of space on a typical OSX installation. Once analysis is complete you can choose to backup all unnecessary files or just delete them entirely. After this decision is made Xslimmer quietly gets on with the job, which for me resulted in 2.5 gigabytes of storage being freed (approximately US$5.20 per gigabyte).

The only thing to keep in mind is that as software updates and new applications are installed new fat will be introduced to the system. This means if you want to keep your system nice and lean re-runnig Xslimmer every few months is a good idea.

apple
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Apple purchases CUPS to ward off GPL3 requirements?

David — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 02:57:24 +0000

Today the lead developer of the CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) project announced that in February 2007 Apple purchased the CUPS source code and took him on as a staff member. CUPS is significant within the *NIX world because it is arguably the most well supported and feature-rich printing system available. Apple has used it within OSX from the outset and personally I feel it is the best implementation of CUPS available thanks to the Aqua interface and the fact that the majority of printers just work without any effort.

There would seem to be no immediate danger of CUPS code being completely closed sourced considering it is currently released under the GPL2 license. What the code purchase suggests is that Apple probably plans on internally re-licensing the code under a closed source license for many, if not all of the platforms that could make use of it, i.e. Mac, AirPort and the iPhone.

Dual licensing such as this is not uncommon by vendors who control the rights to GPL code. It is a good way of benefiting from an open source development model and community whilst still being able to ship a modified version of the code on closed devices or only binary form. License flexibility such as this will become increasingly important as the GPL3 license is adopted as it resolves many of the loopholes vendors used to ship GPL code in what effect were closed devices (Tivoization).

Now that Apple does have a formal stake in CUPS my biggest hope is that they can spare a graphic designer to give the website and the CUPS interface with a much needed aesthetic overhaul and maybe a better logo...

Is this the end of iLife as we know it?

David — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:23:34 +0000

iLife is Apple's general purpose package for working with digital photos, video, audio and the Web. It usually receives an update every year around January/February but this year has been different. MacWorld came and went without a peep, leading to the general feeling that iLife would be released at the same time as OSX Leopard. But a few things have happened which suggests to me that iLife as we know it will cease to exist and its component applications will be absorbed into OSX Leopard:

Feature Parity with Windows Vista

The first reason lies in OSX's need to maintain feature parity, if not superiority, over Windows Vista. Whilst Apple have been quite vocal about Microsoft's feature copying in the past it would seem that Vista has digital media functionality currently lacking within OSX. This functionality ranges from the ability to manipulate digital photographs directly within the Windows Explorer through to the far more capable Movie Maker shipped on the Vista DVD. In contrast OSX needs the optional iLife package to provide this capability and as a consequence the degree to which OSX's default interface has been tailored to handle digital media is limited.

Functionality already present within developer builds of Leopard

A hint of forthcoming Leopard/iLife intergration has been illustrated in the latest developer build of Leopard. This build includes a 'Media' link in the Finder for displaying resources managed by iMovie, iPhoto and GarageBand. This kind of functionality is currently present within applications such as Pages and Keynote when iLife is installed but the fact it has made an appearance within the operating system suggests this tool-set will be far more ubiquitous in the future.

What else can Apple do to iLife?

The other problem that Apple must be facing is the looming question of what else to do to iLife to justify an upgrade. Numerous application iterations has seen its functionality reach a level where not a lot can be added without risk of eroding the lower end of Apple's professional application market. Where else can Apple go with iLife except for deep integration into Leopard alongside a healthy dose of Core Animation? By bringing together iLife's current capabilities, Core Animation's aesthetics and OSX's renowned ease of use Apple would create the 'complete package' discussed in the MacWorld keynote. Such a strategy would certainly provide them with some significant ammunition to fire in their war of words against Windows Vista.

Will it happen? Maybe not, but at least a number of other people are of the same opinion as myself which can't be a bad thing. I guess time (and Steve Jobs) will tell...

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Resetting a Video iPod

David — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 00:56:38 +0000

The nice thing about devices with removable batteries is that fixing something that has locked up is a simple task of pulling the batteries out. Unfortunately the batteries on the iPod cannot be removed so if your device does lock up you can be in a spot of difficulty. Fortunately there is a relatively simple process to reset an iPod, just do the following:

Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Slide it to Hold, then turn it off again.)
Press and hold the Menu and Select buttons until the Apple logo appears, about 6 to 10 seconds. You may need to repeat this step.

These steps were quoted from the Geekfishing Blog which also has a number of other tips on resetting a stubborn iPod.

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ipod

A tantalising prospect: Leopard supports ZFS

David — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 07:54:12 +0000

Leopard is the next version of OSX due for release mid-next year. When first introduced to Mac developers a number of significant Leopard features were purposefully kept 'secret'. Perhaps one feature hinted at that is now beginning to appear in the latest development builds is support for the ZFS filesystem.

ZFS is a fantastic file-system developed by Sun Microsystems for use initially in their Solaris operating system. ZFS is arguably the most advanced, generally available file-system which supports massive disk sizes, unlimited file attributes, sophisticated volume management (including snapshots) and great RAID support. If these reports are true then it maybe an indication of how Leopard's Time Machine functionality maybe finally implemented. ZFS would provide a fast and efficient snapshot mechanism that would work far more efficiently compared to creating multiple standard backups or even incremental backups as what would be required using a conventional file-system.

Even if ZFS is not used in Time Machine it is still great to see such a file system will be available for OSX especially at the server level where the majority of ZFS features are targeted. Hopefully in the future we will see ZFS take the role of OSX's default operating system allowing the venerable HFS+ format to be finally retired.

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osx

Another request for a small scale iServe alternative

David — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:21:24 +0000

I was interested to see a call by Tom of New Rowley for a home-orientated Mac server for storing all the digital music, video and photographs people are collecting. The product described by this post was very similar to the one I described as ideal for the small business sector a while back. It is nice to see that I am not completely crazy and that such a product would satisfy a couple of juicy markets. Whilst I do not think I would buy one for my house I am pretty sure an iServe for the home would be a lot better than the current crop of large external storage devices available for the average consumer.

Apple battery recall

David — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 21:58:24 +0000

This news is a pain because it effects my PowerBook's battery. It is not the original battery that came with the computer but one I bought six months ago. Unfortunately due to the number of batteries recalled it looks like Apple's support website has gone down too.

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laptop

Mac Serve anyone?

David — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 04:02:43 +0000

Probably the biggest untapped server market out there is at the small business level (two to twenty people). At the moment there are a number of Small Business Server (SBS) solutions in this market from a number of companies:

The desktops are the servers

Using Windows file sharing, Samba and Bonjour the business configures their own little desktop-based server for file and print sharing. Thanks to semi-intelligent Internet gateways from the likes of Linksys/DLink that handle DNS and DHCP setting this sort of thing up is relatively easy. Whilst ugly this is probably the most common file/print/Internet sharing solution in most non-tech related small businesses. Unfortunately when things go wrong they can really go very bad, I've seen a number of desktop-servers go belly up because of Internet spyware and viruses.

Microsoft Small Business Server

Micorosft Small Business Server is the most widely used dedicated small business product and by and large Microsoft have (unfortunately) done a pretty good job on it. It is fairly pricey but relatively easy to setup. Microsoft technicians are a dime a dozen (mainly because MSCE's come in cereal boxes these days) which is important because being a Microsoft product it is bound to break thanks to funky software design or rushed out critical security patches. Another positive is that as Windows is the dominant platform support for printers is all but guaranteed.

Linux Small Business Servers

Companies like ClarkConnect produce very tidy small business server alternatives based around Linux. By and large these are pretty good software products that are relatively straightforward to maintain but can be difficult to setup if you are not a semi-experienced Linux head. Products like ClarkConnect have a great feature-set and when they work things go really well but as there is a lack of decent affordable Linux technicians or concise MSDN-like knowledge bases problem solving when things go wrong can be a hit or miss affair.

Novell Small Business Server

Novell do very good 'enterprise' software but compared to the Linux and Microsoft SBS alternatives their SBS offering is too complicated as it is essentially their enterprise software shoehorned into a constrained licensing system. If you know Novell's products and have access to a highly trained (and expensive) Novell engineer who understands Netware or Linux, eDirectory and BorderManager you'll have a system that runs for years without any problems. Unfortunately the overwhelming majority of businesses out their don't have access or the money to pay for such a resource which puts a solution like this beyond their reach.

Where's Apple?

Apple make great consumer level hardware/software but are like fish out of water when put into an enterprise environment. Even their XServe/XSan products are not for general enterprise use and are specifically targeted at the multimedia professionals who tend to favor Apple products. Apple do not have a product that targets the small business server market which is an area where it looks like they could stand to flourish especially as their desktop/laptop sales in this market grow.

OSX Server is a stable, easy to setup and configure server-level operating system. What is planned in Leopard, like calendar sharing, network search and improved Windows Domain support looks like it will be made even better. OSX Server would be ideal in the small business arena as it is easy to setup and can be maintained by non-technical staff with little training. It offers the reliability of a Unix operating system and services like Samba with the ease of use granted by Windows SBS.

Unfortunately OSX Server can only run on Apple hardware and therein lies the problem. The only reasonable hardware platform in a small business environment is the Mac Mini. XServe is just too big for small businesses, it is like hitting a nail with an overpriced sledgehammer. Even the new Mac Pro's are too big and expensive for the low-end server market. Small businesses are not prepared to pay for a high-powered desktop with all the latest bells and whistles just to put it in a corner and treat it like a low-cost Dell. Arguably second-hand Apple gear like a PowerMac or Cube is a great choice but then you run into maintainability concerns plus no-one wants to put their business critical data on a second hand, out of date server if they do not have to.

Supersize the Mac Mini to fill a product void

That leaves the Mac Mini as a viable candidate but size is its major drawback. Performance-wise it is the ideal fit for a small business server where top of the line CPU or graphics performance is not a factor. A larger Mac Mini (for arguments sake called a Mac Serve) capable of fitting three 3.5" SATA hard drives and four sticks of RAM would suit most small businesses expansion needs. The only other hardware addition to the Mac Serve would be an extra ethernet port to handle DSL/cable modems and preferably some extra USB ports to accommodate all the office printers that seem to accumulate.

Cost-wise there would be no reason why it would not be too much more than a standard Mac Mini given the basic hardware and manufacturing similarities. If a Mac Serve/10-user OSX Server bundle cost US$1500 it would be a pretty hard combination to say no to given its ease of use, compact size, features and competitive price when put against Microsoft SBS on a Dell server. What's more the Mac Serve would work out of the box and could in theory be setup by non-technical users who just know they want to share files and printers on a dedicated (and good looking) server that sits out of the way on a shelf.

It is a shame that the chances of something like this coming out are tiny and the likelihood of being able to run OSX Server on non-Apple hardware even lower. It looks like a great small business capable operating system but given the fact it cannot be deployed in offices economically to compete against Microsoft or Linux alternatives it will just stay in the realm of multimedia professionals and Universities, oh well, I guess we can always dream.

A little OSX security tip

David — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 23:04:25 +0000

The administrator designated user is by default the first user created on an OSX system.
In many cases you probably only have one user on the system and in that case this account will have administrator privileges. Whilst administrator privileges are not complete 'root' privileges it does hold enough power to do serious damage.

Most of the so called OSX 'viruses' are actually trojan horses that are executed by an unsuspecting user. The most famous one was a bash script named like an image file and then given a picture icon (so when the user opened it the malicious script was run).

The easiest way to protect yourself from all of this is to create an admin account with administrator privileges and then take away administrator privileges from your everyday users. This will ensure that even if you accidentally run a trojan or just a malicious application it won't be able to cause any real harm (though it would still be possible to delete all your personal data files). Whenever a system modification is about to take place the authentication box will popup asking for the administrator username/password. This is a nice warning message to you that a system change is going to take place and a deterrent to those users who are not supposed to be making system changes (like kids wanting to install games or p2p clients).

It is a nice security blanket and something Apple should really consider doing by default (but I guess they are more concerned about ease of use). If you ever need true root privileges to edit system details (like files in /etc/) open the Terminal and do the following:

su admin [enter]
(change from your account to the admin)
sudo sh [enter]
(open an sh terminal prompt with root privileges, you'll then be able to make any edits you like)

In both cases you'll need to enter the admin password as the sudo command is only available to the user designated as the administrator on the computer. It is possible to edit the sudo configuration file and add a specific non-administrator user to the list of allowed users but it is a lot easier (and a little bit more secure) not to do this.

SleepWatcher: Mac housekeeping before going to bed

David — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 00:15:17 +0000

If you have ever mounted a network volume you'll know that chances are if the Mac goes to sleep it won't remount the volume when it wakes up. This is a pain for me because I have all my music on a single samba share, using SleepWatcher ensures that volume is always mounted when I wake my Mac from its slumber.

To perform tasks at the sleep/wakeup moment create .sleep and .wakeup files in the user's directory (e.g. /Users/david/.wakeup). These files are just plain old shell scripts so you can do anything you like within them, just ensure you mark them executable by the user. Below is my .wakeup file which I have symlinked to .sleep, it mounts my music volume (on the server SERENA) when waking up and disconnects when going to sleep.

#!/bin/sh
#
# This file should be $HOME/.sleep and $HOME/.wakeup.
# This is run by "SleepWatcher" through /etc/rc.sleep and /etc/rc.wakeup
#

# BSD echo command needs this for escape sequences.
test "$SHELLOPTS" && shopt -s xpg_echo

tel="tell application"
case $0 in
*sleep)
echo "$tel \"Finder\" to eject \"MUSIC\"" | osascript -
;;
*wakeup)
echo "$tel \"Finder\" to mount volume \"smb://SERENA/MUSIC\"" | osascript -
;;
esac

apple
osx

Boot Camp easily enables Windows on Intel Macs

David — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 01:24:20 +0000

Late last week Apple released Boot Camp, a tool that greatly simplifies the installation of Windows XP on Intel Mac hardware. Obviously this tool has been in development for some time, it and the included Windows drivers CD image are very slick. Once hackers managed to figure out how to get Windows XP running on the Intel hardware a few weeks ago it must have been decided within Apple that now was a good time to let the cat out of the bag.


OSX and Windows after Boot Camp (click to enlarge)

Last night I used Boot Camp to install Windows XP on my Intel Mac. The process was very smooth and the instructions provided by the software could not have been clearer. After about an hour I had a fully functional Windows XP install with graphics, wireless, bluetooth and sound all working without hassle. In fact it was significantly less work to set Windows up on an Apple Mac than it is to do the same with a Dell machine. Hopefully this tool will urge Dell and HP into action in this regard.
Another nice touch is that the Windows volume is accessible from OSX so it is straightforward to copy things to the Windows partition. Unfortunately as Windows does not support HFS (yet) the reverse is not possible.

The only negative was that no driver was included for the iSight. This is probably not a technical issue but rather Apple just trying to force users into iChat rather than a competitor like Skype.

Below are some screenshots of the process. At the end you are left with a dual boot system complete with a very nice boot selector and options within both operating systems to select which is your primary boot disk (a very nice feature).

The documentation mentions this is a technology preview release for the upcoming Leopard release of OSX. Personally I'd rather see virtualisation brought into play so that you can easily run Windows applications at full speed within OSX with the option of booting into Windows for those times when you need a lot of horsepower for games. Either way the Boot Camp Beta is a great tool that has really opened up the gaming and CAD options when using Mac hardware.

FireAnt: an iTunes competitor in the video space

David — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 04:39:15 +0000

FireAnt brings video, RSS and tagging together into a very tidy package used for automatically downloading video content onto your desktop or personal media player. It is interesting that people can construct their own 'channels' which are a series of different (or similar) shows and act like a mini-CNN, Discovery Channel or E!

Whilst Apple's iTunes video service it is still targeted at the 'pay per episode' model it would be nice to see a competitor offer something that worked with the concept of channels. We do not have the bandwidth or the iTunes video store in New Zealand but it would be nice to imagine a day where I could subscribe to and pay for mini-channels produced by people of my same interest group featuring both commercial content, videoblogs and adverts. For example I would gladly subscribe and pay for a channel that played the Simpsons, TWiT, Discovery Channel documentaries about space, the highlights of BBC World News and an episode of Lost. That would be a great night(s) television watching. Plus I would not mind the adverts as long as they related to me (ie nothing about retirement, womans products or toilet paper). Conventional broadcasting models do not allow for this but digital video based environments like what are evolving certainly do.

Intel OSX is all go

David — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 09:26:55 +0000

Over the weekend I finished the transition from my PowerBook to the Intel based iMac as my primary development platform. Rather than use the PowerPC only Flock or stick with Safari I have started using an unofficical Intel compiled version of Firefox. Performance is excellent and there are no issues with reliability, Java or Flash.

Installing Rails and ImageMagick turned out to be very straightforward thanks to DarwinPorts, the Rails on OSX wiki and the ImageMagick on OSX howto. Currently there is no Intel compiled DarwinPorts binary but fortunately it compiled from source without issue (once the Apple Developer Tools were installed).
In the process I found a nice Eclipse plugin for Ruby on Rails named RadRails.

The only non-Intel development specific applications I am waiting for are Transmit (FTP/SFTP) and NaviCat (MySQL manager). Apparently a Universal Transmit should ship soon whilst NaviCat maybe a long way away. Fortunately both applications run okay through Rosetta.

First thoughts on Intel iMac

David — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 23:58:11 +0000

My Intel iMac arrived on Tuesday and I have been playing with it ever since. Overall it is working out really well, it is snappy when running Intel/Universal binaries and the screen quality is superb. The extra 512meg of RAM has not arrived yet so it is hard to judge performance but it is very promising. At the moment it kind of feels like you are driving a Formala One car with the tires borrowed from the family sedan, whilst Intel binaries run very nicely Rosetta is very slow especially when two or more legacy binaries are open at once. I have a feeling however that the extra RAM will help a lot with this.

Fortunately a good portion of the applications I use have Universal binary support. Two of my most used applications, Proteus (IM client) and NetNewsWire (feed aggregator) have yet to gain universal binary support. Rather than wait around I have swapped to the very capable (and Universal) AdiumX and NewsFire, both of which are very nice. Apparently Firefox won't gain Universal support until March which is a pain because my new favourite browser Flock is based on it. Eclipse now has Intel support thanks to a SWT patch but Fink will be a few weeks off by the sound of it. This means I can't use the iMac for development just yet because I use Fink for compiling Ruby, OpenLDAP, PHP5 and Apache for testing. MySQL has been quick to come out with an Intel binary which is good to see.

AdiumX and NewsFire running on the new desktop (click to enlarge)

All in all very promising. I am sure in a month most things will be sorted out and by March all the pieces will be in place to complete the transition. Once that is the case the trusty old PowerBook will be put in a corner and used for the odd occassions when I actually need a laptop.

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