| |
 |
Monday, April 22, 2002 |
OS X applications ranked by category
I am rolling my reviews of OS X applications from popular categories - Web browsers, e-mail clients, chat clients - into a living document called OS X applications ranked by category that I will update along with notes to show which programs I find most useful for small business owners and those who actually use their Macs to work.
Be sure to check back regularly, because as a living document, this page will change regularly as applications are updated and as my OS X user experience changes over time.
This story is an HTML rendering of an outline I am maintaining using Radio 8, and if you use Radio and want to view the outline in your Instant Outliner, just subscribe to my I/O file. The OS X application ranking outline lives in the Living documents section of my Instant Outline. This is the URL for this specific I/O document.
11:39:49 PM 
|
|
Is OmniWeb 4.1 about to be finalized? Or is there something else in the wings?
MacNN teases with a short note tonight that offers no real information at all: Omni Group to ship important update.
So, I am wondering...does this mean that OmniWeb 4.1 is about to go final? Tonight OmniWeb was updated again with a new sneaky peek to version 4.1sp70. Or, does the Omni Group have something else up their sleeves?
10:03:41 PM
|
|
Creating a living document to note what I find most useful in OS X
Tonight I plan to get started on a story that I will use to rank the usefulness of common OS X applications: Web browsers, e-mail applications, chat clients, etc. I plan to create the document today and then alter it over time as my perception of the usefulness of the tools change. Why? Simple: New versions arrive and make old reviews useless over time.I will create this new story as an outline, as I continue to use the outliner functions of Radio 8.0.7 to write and manage my site more and more over time...
5:25:14 PM
|
|
San Jose Mercury News looks at Bluetooth, and 80211b News responds
Mike Langberg of the San Jose Mercury News Critiques the State of Bluetooth: this article comes a few months too early, and his conclusion is correct: not ready for consumers yet. Until OS level inclusion of standard Bluetooth stacks happens, Bluetooth is still in preview, despite manufacturer claims. A few comments on the article, though. [80211b News]
Be sure to follow the link to the 80211b News site to read the response to the article, as well as other Wi-Fi and Bluetooth news. Some of the other stories in the flurry of activity on the site today include a Swiss perspective of Wi-Fi, announcement of Cisco's dual-band access point that will ship in August and other news...
4:36:08 PM
|
|
HotApp 1.3 lets you assign hot keys to apps and files
HotApp v1.3. - HotApp is a utility application that lets you assign any hot key to activate or run an OS X application. This makes it possible to trigger an AppleScript script from a key combination. [AppleScript Info]
4:22:24 PM
|
|
One user's experience moving OS X from one hard drive to another
Monday: Swapping a Hard Drive Under OS X. I just swapped out the meager (wow) 20 Gb hard drive that came with my G4 Cube with a $160 7200 rpm 80 Gb drive (from APS Technologies ). The swap out was easy enough, but the prep was tough. A friend warned me that you can't use Retrospect for X to restore to an empty hard drive. In fact, you not only have to back up all your files using Retrospect (to capture all the tweaky OS X stuff), but you also have to install 10.1.x on the new drive up to the release version of your backed-up volume. So I did. I pulled a FireWire 60 Gb drive in from home, make Retrospect backups of my two partitions, rebooted to the FireWire drive, initialized and partitioned the new drive, and installed 10.1 on it. Then ran through the updaters to get up to 10.1.3, and then booted from that new drive to run Retrospect and copy everything else. Miracle of miracles, after rebooting following the copy, my machine is pretty exactly as I left it. With a 30% faster rotational drive with four times the storage. Thanks, Apple ... [GlennLog]
Glenn's notes remind me of when I moved from a 10 gig hard drive in my PowerBook to the current 20 gig drive, and I am struck by how little things have changed in a year. What it boils down to is that OS X is not easy to work with in some situations like this, and those hoops that folks have to jump through in the process are really no better than the rigorous steps that those using other OSes need to go through. In the move to OS X, we have made the move to a more powerful operating system at the expense of usability.
I should note though that even under Mac OS 9.x and earlier, making the move from one hard drive to another with a complete user setup was not something that everyday users would consider. Adding an additional hard drive is easy under OS X and under the Classic operating systems, but making a complete move from one drive to another has always been a task that leaves many users thinking it would just be easier to buy a new computer...
4:18:42 PM
|
|
MCE doubles the burning speed in new Expansion Bay CD-RWs
MacCentral notes that today MCE brings 16x Expansion Bay CD-RWs to PowerBook G3s. The new drives double the effective burning speed from the 8x drive I have in my Pismo PowerBook, and just like the drive I use, it is OS X compatible.
1:44:31 PM
|
|
A move toward addressing computer recycling
Agreement on Computer Recycling. Responding to a growing problem of waste computer equipment, manufacturers and local governments have agreed in principle to set up a nationwide recycling program. By Jennifer 8. Lee. [New York Times: Technology]
It is fitting that this topic is drawing more interest now, on Earth Day 2002. And it is something that I wonder about as I sit here in a home office with two unused older Macs sitting on the floor, waiting to either be used, sold or recycled...
1:40:49 PM
|
|
Gate says a modular approach would kill Windows
AP: "Gates also echoed arguments by Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer that a modular Windows requirement is impossible to engineer and would force the company to pull Windows off the market." [Scripting News]
Scripting News is also running a poll asking if readers think that Gates is lying. I just think that Mr. Bill believes he has the world's computer users over a barrel and that his "I'm taking my marbles and going home" argument will scare the courts to end litigation against his pet company.
1:17:29 PM
|
|
Developer morphs BBEdit into an AppleScript tool
Make BBEdit into an AppleScript Development Environment. Studio Log: “I began to try and create a script that would take the text of a BBEdit window, compile it in AppleScript and save it to a compiled script. Little did I know that it would lead to a much more interesting exercise.” [ranchero.com]
10:26:31 AM
|
|
How to set up WEP on a Mac-based network
About This Particular Macintosh offers a how-to article about setting up a WEP passphrase and setting up a more secure wireless connection between a Mac and a non-Apple wireless base station: How to: Wireless Network Encryption
9:35:41 AM
|
|
A brief look at Chimera 0.2.3
The native OS X Web browser Chimera is starting to get interesting. Now at version 0.2.3, it is functional enough to at least see where the browser may be headed, and in this early incarnation it displays most pages pretty well, it looks a lot like OmniWeb with its anti-aliased text, and it has added a sidebar somewhat like OmniWeb - offering browser history, favorites, Google search and a customization area. Most of these functions don't actually work yet. It is an interesting start, but don't bother downloading it for real work just yet...
9:26:27 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2002 Rob McNair-Huff.
|
|
|
|
|
