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Driving through the driving rain Today I am away from the home office and on the road, driving through some of the worst rain this winter on our way south through Oregon to the small town of Gold Beach on the coast. Updates to MNJ will be limited over the next few days as Natalie and I are away from home to visit her grandmother who lives in Gold Beach, near the mouth of the Rogue River. If the rain ever lets up we could see some cool birds on this trip. Excellent!
iPhoto 2 and iMovie 3 coming tomorrow "On Jan. 31, iPhoto 2 and iMovie 3 will join iTunes 3 as free downloads available at www.apple.com." That is the announcement sent to all .Mac members in an email today, so be ready to play with new iApps tomorrow if the inclination strikes you!
GraphicConverter 4.5.3 update released The latest update to the must-have graphics toolbox application GraphicConverter brings the program to version 4.5.3 and adds MRW import, improved display quality in slideshows, better Photoshop plug-in compatibility, and a host of bug fixes to the $30 program. Complete release notes about this update are here, and if you use GC and you have never checked out the AppleScript collection offered on the Web site, do yourself a favor and check it out.
A useful file conversion tool using QuickTime AppleScript Studio App: QuickTime Quick Batch
A Toast patch for iView MediaPro users Toast patch for MediaPro users I really love that the makers of iView MediaPro have created a Weblog to disseminate this information. Every company should do this to offer critical updates to their users, and the URL of the blog should be included on the packaging for their products. It takes customer support beyond the current realm of forcing users to come find what they need in a crisis to offering tips ahead of time that oncoming crisis. Excellent!
A couple of useful Apple Kbase articles Apple posted a couple of very useful Knowledge Base articles today:
Apple's incredible iLife deal for educators MNJ reader Andy Smith offers a great perspective on Apple's new deal for educators that lets them buy iLife and Keynote for a tiny price of $14.95.
Great point, Andy! Of course, I should have mentioned this great deal earlier, but I have been swamped with paying work (that I hate, but that is another story...) over the last couple of weeks, so MNJ has not had the kind of attention it deserves. On another iLife note, a number of sites are confirming that iLife is shipping now...
Frustrated by Chimera For the last few days I have not been able to use Chimera at all, because for whatever reason, even after running Disk Warrior on my disk and a number of restarts and downloads of the newest daily builds of Chimera, the program crashes on startup for me every time I try to run it. Have others run into this? Solutions? While Chimera hasn't been working, Mozilla is rock solid and I have been using Safari as my main browser. Safari still has shortcomings and it hasn't been updated in a couple of weeks now, but it works pretty well with a daily restart of the app, in my experience. Hopefully some of the rendering problems will be addressed soon. I am also using OmniWeb for some critical work as well. Most notably, OW handles sites that use certain private security certificates that cause every other Mac OS X browser to choke and die...
Notable recent software releases Here are a few highlights from recent software releases as found on Macupdate:
.Mac Address Book syncing goes live Apple Activates .Mac Address Book Syncing
O'Reilly on adding voice overs to slide shows Another installment of The DigiCam Chronicles on the O'Reilly Network delves into ways to add sound to you photo slide shows under Mac OS X...
A glimpse at my new Pismo workstation
A few people expressed an interest in how my desk looks now that I have integrated the new 17-inch Princeton LCD display with the built-in display on my aging Pismo PowerBook. The shot above shows how I currently have the machine set up on a desk in the kitchen, where I can look out the windows to the south and west with present views of a church spire through the branches of the ash tree in the back yard and billowing clouds building up against the Cascade Mountains to the east. Sure, I can't see the mountains from here, but they are there...
New Spring beta version integrates RSS User Creations has rolled out a new beta version of its Spring application that adds RSS headlines with support for all flavors of RSS except 1.0. Spring 1.1b2 also offers drag-and-drop of feeds from NetNewsWire and for most feeds dragged directly from a Web browser. For complete info about the new release, check the weblog of User Creations president Robb Beal or click here to download the new version.
New Power Macs unveiled at 1.42 GHz, and new LCD pricing New Power Macs faster, cheaper Apple also dramatically cut the cost of the 23-inch Cinema Display from $3,499 to $1,999 and introduced a new 20-inch Cinema Display at $1,299. The 17-inch digital flat panel display dropped from $999 to $699.
Opera about to abandon the Mac because of Safari? Want evidence that Apple's effort to develop its own Web browser could backfire? Ever heard of Opera? It looks like the fat lady is singing, in the words of Dick Motta:
More Macworld Expo highlights from TidBITS TidBITS also follows up with the second part of its Macworld Expo superlatives article tonight...
TidBITS goes on Safari TidBITS' Adam Engst takes a measured look at the pros and cons of the Safari Web browser in its second incarnation. His conclusion:
A new beta of NetNewsWire Pro NetNewsWire 1.0b14
Wow...this is one bright LCD I broke down and bought one of the 17-inch Princeton LCDs on sale for $350 at Costco this week, making a run to the mecca of consumerism early this afternoon. Setting the large silver-colored beast up on our kitchen table was a snap, and it works great with my Pismo PowerBook, especially when I set up the PowerBook on a laptop stand so that the height of the built-in LCD and the external LCD are about the same. It will take some time to get used to the fact that the Princeton LCD is so much brighter than my Pismo's aging LCD though. I turned the brightness on the 17-inch LCD down to about 50% and it still is much brighter than my Pismo. I am definitely being spoiled with the new screen real estate though. I have often hooked my PowerBook to a 15-inch Sony Trinitron CRT monitor while working in the office, but the difference between a 15-inch CRT and a 17-inch LCD is huge. One final note about the built-in speakers in this Princeton LCD monitor: They are not all that great, but they seem to have a little better range than the built-in speakers in the Pismo...
eWeek comments on Apple's latest moves Apple Moves Boldly Forward
More heat reports on the 12-inch PowerBook My friend John called this morning to say he had just been playing with one of the new 12-inch PowerBook G4 machines, and he offered some good and some bad news about the machine from his perspective. The good: The keyboard felt more solid to him than the keyboard on the Pismo PowerBook. The bad: The heat generated by the little machine was very noticeable. As John said, that may not be a huge issue unless you do a lot of typing on your PowerBook. One interesting note was that as we talked about the 12-inch PowerBook I reminded John that it doesn't have a PC Card slot. He didn't even notice that fact when he had his hands on the machine. Like many people, he assumed that a full-fledged PowerBook would have the full collection of ports for connectivity. Not having a PC Card slot is a deal killer for John to consider buying a 12-inch PowerBook. Sure, he could buy a FireWire media reader to get big image files from his digital camera into the machine, but why bother when he is already set up to work with PC Card slots? This is just another example of the compromises built into any of the PowerBook products. Maybe Apple will hit the sweet spot for more high-end users with a new 15-inch PowerBook G4...
Why would you want Steve Jobs as President? There must be a kernel of humor in all of the stories on Mac sites and on Wired today about the idea of having Steve Jobs run for president of the United States. What is it with the cult of personality around Jobs? I just don't get it...
The rise of the Uber-browser The maker of NetNewsWire offers his perspective on Safari developer David Hyatt's comments about integrating RSS reading into the browser:
My thoughts: Rolling RSS reading into Safari would be the first step down the road to building yet another bloated browser. I think it makes more sense to have Safari work with other apps that can add capabilities when tied in with the browser...
Recent notable software releases Here are highlights from recent software releases, as noted by Macupdate:
Nisus reminds everyone that Writer is still coming Nisus reminds Mac users that the native Mac OS X version of its Writer word processor is still in the works, though there is no release date nor any pricing information available in the short article on MacCentral. A couple of interesting notes from the article: A public beta version could be available in late February or early March, there will be an upgrade price from the Classic version of Nisus Writer, and Nisus is working on a translator to enable moving documents from Word's .doc format to Nisus Writer and then back again. The translator may not be part of the first OS X version of Nisus Writer. It will be great to see Nisus join the rest of the world on Mac OS X. The sooner, the better...
Just how bad was yesterday's bug? CNET takes a look at the combination of laziness and the lack of serious attention paid by Microsoft to fixing critical bugs in a day-after story about the Sapphire worm today. Meanwhile, the portion of the Lycos site that I work on is finally back online after paying a big price for building parts of its site on faulty Microsoft code. Now the question is whether things will be even worse tomorrow morning...
A question for those using LCD monitors Before I plunk down $350 on a LCD monitor from Costco, is this Princeton 17-inch LCD Slim Monitor worth the money? Does anyone have experience with using Princeton LCDs with a PowerBook? Since I am not going to rush into buying a new PowerBook anytime real soon, my next major purchase will be an LCD to hook to my Pismo PowerBook as a second monitor. The aforementioned Princeton LCD is on sale next week at the local Costco. I just want to get something worthwhile rather than plunking down money on something that won't be good to use with not only this PowerBook but with a new PowerBook later this year...
Comic relief of sorts, at Microsoft's expense After reading the self-righteous comments from Microsoft officials in many reports this morning that attempted to absolve the company of the worm that was slowing down the Internet and spreading around the world today by infecting Microsoft SQL servers - after all, the bug that allowed this attack was discovered months ago and MS released a patch to close the hole - it was hilarious that Microsoft's own Windows XP verification servers were offline today due to problems caused by the SQL worm. For many hours, if you wanted to use your newly updated Windows XP system after doing something like adding a new hard drive then you had to sit back and wait for MS to get its act together and its servers back online in order to use your machine. I reiterate my old standby: If you want to avoid computing problems, the first and biggest step you can take is to remove any Microsoft code from your computer. Of course, as I write this in a non-Microsoft program, I am writing chapters for our Birding Washington book using Word 98 under Classic in another window. Where is Nisus Writer for OS X?
NetNewsWire Pro 1.0b13 adds posting to categories NetNewsWire Pro 1.0b13
Are you feeling the Web slowdown? The SQL virus that is causing a big slowdown in Web surfing today hasn't been felt much here in my home office, but I did suffer from an email outage from about 10:30 p.m. last night until 6 a.m. this morning. This is the fourth major email outage in the last couple of months with my current provider... If you sent me critical email between those hours last night, Pacific Time, then please resend. Otherwise, Scripting News has a nice compilation of info about the SQL worm:
O'Reilly: Tips for emerging software developers Software Strategies for Emerging Developers
Mariner Software's DocDrop: Just what the .doc ordered If you have Microsoft Word format .doc files and need to convert them to a more accessible format, Mariner Software's free DocDrop utility is what you need. DocDrop converts .doc files to .rtf files that can be opened with many other word processors such as Mariner Write, AppleWorks, and others. Better yet, you can drop a whole folder of .doc files onto DocDrop and it will work its magic. DocDrop is an open source product under the GPL license. It works with Mac OS X and Mac OS 8.6 and higher...
Comictastic 1.1.3: Freeware comic-strip viewer Spiny Software has released a new version of its comic strip viewing app Comictastic. The app makes finding and viewing comic strips as easy as using an RSS news reader - choose your favorites from the 50 supported strips or add support for others and you can read them each day in Comictastic.
ImageCaster 1.0.4: A Webcam app for OS X ImageCaster is a scriptable webcam broadcasting solution for OS X. It can take virtually any image, from video camera or other sources, and broadcast it on the WWW. It can add overlay text and graphics and upload schedules can be customized. Among the many changes in this release: Improved error reporting to the activity log when script execution fails. Data-fork only AppleScripts will now be correctly executed. Eliminated an exception that was being raised when a blank path was specified for a pre- or post- delivery script. The "Anonymous login" and "Maintain connection between uploads" FTP options can now be accessed/altered via AppleScript. [AppleScript Info]
Senate to Pentagon: Enough with the database idea Citing a story in tomorrow's New York Times, Dave Winer is one of the many people tonight pointing out that the U.S. Senate has sent a message to the Pentagon and the Bush Administration about its idea of building a national database to spy on the American people:
On a political note: Blogging for voters There is some interesting and deep content on Britt's Escapabe Logic blog tonight, including a volley about what it means to be a hero and how to apply that to today's political scene in Blogging for Voters.
Scheduler 3.4: Control your Mac with AppleScript Scheduler 3.4
Apple confirms Keynote bug Apple Confirms Keynote Glitch
User upgradable parts for the 12-inch PowerBook G4 If you have dreamed of doing work on your own diminutive 12-inch PowerBook G4 then you should read the AppleCare Knowledge Base article with instructions for working with the user-serviceable parts in the machine: the AirPort Extreme card and memory only...
My Audion findings I spent time across two different days this week to play with the capabilities of alternate MP3 player and recorder Audion 3. The program has quite a few pluses over the free iTunes:
In the end though I found it ripped files from my CDs much slower than iTunes and I was frustrated by the MP3 organizer features enough that I have ended my testing. Maybe I will revisit Audion when I get a G4-based PowerBook rather than this aging G3-based Pismo PowerBook. One definite positive for Audion is the support advice I received from Panic's Steven Frank. I wrote to Steven about the kinds of ripping speeds I was seeing and he offered some good advice - speed depends a lot on which ripper you are using and the quality settings. I was trying to rip files at high quality using each of the different MP3 rippers for testing purposes...
In response to the RSS feed discussion I am now experimenting with new options for the MNJ RSS feed. If you see something odd my next few posts, know that I am tweaking things...
Apple iDelays iLife iDon't know what to do with my iLife now that I read on MacMinute that iLife has been iDelayed... (iCouldn't iResist...)
Discussion: Should RSS feeds be headline-only or full text? When I moved Mac Net Journal to Tinderbox as my authoring program last November I also made a switch in the type of RSS feed that those who read MNJ see in newsreaders like NetNewsWire. Where once the full text of each MNJ story could be seen in my RSS feed, now just the headline is offered. Why do this? For one, it helps cut the costs of the RSS feed bandwidth involved with running a site like MNJ. It also encourages more people to actually visit the Web page that I work hard to maintain. But not everyone is thrilled with headline-only feeds. The folks on the Unsanity weblog have a discussion underway (Half-assed RSS feeds) about RSS feed issues and I wonder what MNJ readers think of the current MNJ feed?
OmniOutliner 2.2b1 Late yesterday The Omni Group released a new beta version of its excellent OmniOutliner application. OO 2.2b1 adds XML exporting, which enables export to Word's outliner among other things, as well as new support for importing and exporting with Apple's new Keynote app. In addition, more column types can be formatted and styled in this beta release and there are a few AppleScript changes rolled into the mix as well. Check the release notes for complete details. In addition there will be a disk image available soon with tips for how to use the XML export option with Word.
Signs that life is too hectic As someone who has been under some serious deadline pressure, money-making pressure, and just general pressure from too many things on my plate at the moment, I can offer a couple of clear signs that help show when I need to step back and set a schedule and re-prioritize:
Thankfully, this has been a slow week for Mac news, but things have been crazy enough around here to point out that I am burning too many candles at both ends... It is great to see that some Apple Store locations and other computer shops are receiving initial shipments of the new 12-inch PowerBook G4 machines, but it sounds like Apple is pushing back the ship dates on many people's orders for the 17-inch PowerBook G4. There is also word that Apple's claims that the DVD-R SuperDrive in the 17-inch machine would burn at 2x are nowhere to be found on the new spec sheets...
Notable software releases Here are some highlights from the software releases over the last day, from Macupdate:
Making RSS news aggregators easy Should Apple integrate a new category of Internet preferences to account for the growing trend of people using RSS news aggregators into Mac OS X? That is the proposal of Michael Aldrete on his weblog last week. Interesting idea...
TidBITS offers its superlatives from Macworld Expo TidBITS continues its tradition of wrapping up the most notable highlights from Macworld Expo in its look at this year's superlatives from San Francisco. If you are interested in new products as well as the best-of-the-best from the show floor, this should be required reading...
Notable software releases Here are highlights from recent software updates and releases as found on Macupdate:
Looking at Audion Audion 3 from Panic looks like an excellent MP3 player and encoder, but I am running into problems in testing my trial version today. Most notably, the encoding speed is about one-third to one-half the speed of encoding files in iTunes. If you use Audion 3 for MP3 encoding, can you offer any tricks? Or is this pretty much the state of working with Audion in this current version?
Safari downloads top 1 million mark According to Apple, since its announcement and release on Jan. 7, the public beta version of the free Safari Web browser has been downloaded by more than 1 million users...
Burning multi-session CDs with DiskCopy An AppleCare Knowledge Base article offers great tips for how to burn multi-session CDs with a CD-R under Jaguar. If you use a CD drive and do backups to CD, or you just want to be able to shoe-horn more data onto a CD-R, this is required reading.
Panic's Steven Frank writes about 'free' software Writing on his weblog, Panic developer and co-founder Steven Frank offers his perspective on 'free' software:
Is Chimera dead? Signs of the end of the Chimera development efforts in the wake of the arrival of Safari and the departure of major programmers is the topic of MacSlash's latest discussion: Is Chimera Dead?.
AirPort blog is offering great coverage As you would expect given that it is run by two veteran writers, the new Apple AirPort Weblog is offering excellent coverage of AirPort Extreme and the general state of wireless on the Mac. To really understand what AirPort Extreme is and isn't, check out the 802.11g and AirPort Extreme Update posted yesterday...
TinyBooks: A simple single-entry bookkeeping app Ken Winograd offered up his TinyBooks accounting application for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.x yesterday. It is billed as a flexible, non-bloated, single-entry bookkeeping program designed for home users and small businesses. I haven't used the $49 TinyBooks application just yet, but it looks like a great bare-bones program for its target audience. And I love looking at shareware programs like this. It was created to be Ken's own bookkeeping solution and it worked well enough that he wants to share it with the rest of the Mac community. Excellent!
Writer stacks up XP and Linux, comes away appreciating Mac Seattle Times columnist Paul Andrews writes about his experiment of trying to compare the installation and setup process for Windows XP with the same process on Linux in How does Linux stack up against Windows XP. The article reinforces my previous experiences with running Linux, but the conclusion of the piece is why I mention it here.
That is a nice endorsement for the Mac, even though it alludes to the higher costs of Apple products.
WebCore not ready for business, other than with Safari While there has been talk about how Safari and the WebCore services in OS X will help independent developers add better HTML rendering to their applications, Safari team member Dave Hyatt asked developers to stop it for now. Here is how Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire fame responds to the command:
To be clear, this is not a criticism of Apple or Safari, but it does show how far the browser has to go before it is ready for prime time...
Safari hits #2 in MNJ user agent list Although the large majority of Mac Net Journal readers hit the site with an RSS newsreader, or NetNewsWire to be exact, the second most popular browser for looking at MNJ is Safari...
Register Keynote, get a year of Macworld MNJ reader and supporter Andy Smith offered the following a couple of days ago:
Mr. Barrett: It's not just Quark's fault Damien Barrett offers a great round of the reasons that many people are still not ready to make the switch to Mac OS X. Number one: The cost of switching is exhorbitant when OS X doesn't run well or at all on older Apple hardware, when Office costs a ton of money, when Quark is still not available in a native OS X version, etc. It is no one thing that is holding people back but rather a host of smaller problems led by the fact that upgrading costs a lot of money, and money is scarce in today's slipping economy...
OmniGraffle as an RSS reader Jesse Shanks: Using OmniGraffle as an RSS News Reader with Applescript. [Scripting News]
Time to fess up: I'm using Safari a lot While Safari still can't handle all of my Web browser and Web work duties, it is showing itself to be quite decent at dealing with most everyday tasks. Problems remain though:
In other words, Safari in its current state is a good start, but it isn't ready to completely replace any of my other Web browsers. However, it has allowed me to remove Internet Explorer from my Dock...
Notable software releases Here are some highlights from recent software releases noted on Macupdate:
Engst and Fleishman launch an Apple AirPort Weblog The Wireless Networking Starter Kit authors Adam Engst and Glenn Fleishman have launched a new companion blog, the Apple Airport Weblog:
To add the RSS version of the blog to NetNewsWire Pro or your newsreader of choice, paste in the URL: http://wireless-starter-kit.com/airportblog/index.rdf.
Make Mine MPEG-4 version 4.0.1 Make Mine MPEG-4 v4.0.1 This program is an excellent example of putting the cutting edge Apple software built into AppleScript, AppleScript Studio, and QuickTime Pro to use to create some of the highest quality compressed sound files available...
Mail now allows attaching AppleScripts to rules Attach AppleScripts to Mail.app rules How much do you use AppleScript to add features and capabilities to OS X programs? I just wonder because there is a lot of customization possible, but I get the feeling most people avoid AppleScript.
iCommune may be iGone MacMegasite notes iCommune threatened by Apple: "The author of iCommune, a file sharing plugin for iTunes, has received a "Notice of Breach and Termination of License" letter from Apple, stating that he violated my license to the Device Plug-in API which iCommune uses. For the time being, he's making the download unavailable, while he try to sort things out with Apple. Any good lawyers in the house?" [MacMegasite]
Apple posts $8 million loss for last quarter MacMinute offers details of Apple's 1Q03 earnings report. The numbers: An $8 million dollar loss or $0.02 per share. Apple also announced it expects flat revenues looking into the rest of 2003...
Eudora updated to 5.2.1b2 A new update to Eudora today adds a number of bug fixes, including making the program use less CPU cycles when running in the background, re-enabling the battery check under OS X, fixes for crashes caused by malformed HTML messages, and more. Check the release notes for complete details. Eudora 5.2.1b2 is a 3 MB download...
Disk Warrior 3 coming in early February According to a post on O'Grady's PowerPage at the end of a story about Alsoft's Disk Warrior utility, Rusty Little from Alsoft offers what he says is the scoop about the upcoming DW 3.0 that will boot from OS X and work like a charm with the new PowerBook G4 models:
This will remove one red flag about buying one of the new PowerBooks, and it is great news for all OS X users since it will mean that the ability to boot into OS 9.x will no longer be required!
Comment catch up A few people sent email comments about yesterday's stories about Apple and how it should commit to making Safari the best browser on OS X, bar none: Al Willis writes:
Meanwhile, Andy Smith writes:
Doc Searls on Safari Writing on his Weblog, Doc Searls offers his comments on Safari:
The rumor mill already talking about a TiBook replacement Insanely Great Mac and other sites are already talking about rumors of a replacement for the current line of TiBooks. For once, these rumors make sense. I doubt that Apple will do anything to shoe-horn Bluetooth and Airport Extreme into the current TiBook design, but that it will rather unveil a new design with better Airport antenna wiring and other enhancements to bring the mid-level PowerBook G4 in line with the new 12-inch and 17-inch PowerBook G4. The only question is when Apple will unveil a new mid-level PowerBook? I imagine it will be a few months. Meanwhile, if you want to get a high-powered PowerBook that can still boot into OS 9.x as well as OS X, get a current TiBook now. Supplies are bound to grow thin...
A useful timed AppleScript Mac OS X Hints: An AppleScript to create timed screen captures
Some great digital photography tips Derrick Story does a great job offering digital photography tips in the first article in his series of digital photo how-tos on the O'Reilly Networks site called The DigiCam Chronicles. Today's installment looks at how he took the shots he took at last week's Macworld Expo. I am sure to learn some useful new tips for using my now three-year-old Nikon CoolPix 950 and its 2 megapixels of digital goodness.
Notable software releases Here are some recent notable software updates and releases, as found on Macupdate:
NetNewsWire Pro 1.0b10 Brent Simmons keeps refining his excellent RSS news reader and Weblog editor NetNewsWire Pro with a new release:
A technical note about the Comments feature It appears that the site I use to provide comments on MNJ is having technical difficulties today. If this continues I will switch to another commenting system. Meanwhile, if you would like to send a comment and the link is not working, you can always email me with your comments at whiterabbit@whiterabbits.com.
A MNJ reader's Macworld Expo impressions Mac Net Journal reader Brian Caldwell made a trip to Macworld Expo late last week and sends the following comments about what he saw on the show floor:
Thanks for the comments, Brian! I especially appreciate the comments about the keyboard and heat emanating from the 12-inch PowerBook G4. Both of those comments are troubling and they lend more credence to the idea that I will wait until I can get my hands on one of the new PowerBooks before making any buying decisions...
Cool Safari features MNJ reader Andy Smith offers notes about one of the feature in Safari that he finds quite useful:
What is your favorite new feature included with Safari?
Now that Apple has started, it had better finish the Safari I have posted a number of skeptical and questioning items about Apple's decision to launch its new Web browser Safari. But now that the Jaguar has been sent out into the browser jungle, I want to offer a few words. First, Apple needs to make Safari a serious browser. The resouces being spent on developing this browser will be wasted if Safari is approached like other Apple applications, which are fraught with compromise. Yes, Apple should maintain its push for simplicity, but it also needs to make Safari a killer app that runs circles around all other OS X browsers. Forget about simply matching IE feature for feature. How about making Java run as well on Safari as it does on Windows machines? At this point, no OS X Web browser can handle Java as well as Windows browsers. I know because Java limitations force me to choose to use IE under Windows or IE under Classic every day on my Mac. Second, Apple needs to position Safari to innovate the stagnant browser market. In the last year the only major new feature to come to browsers is tabbed browsing. Safari needs to integrate tabbed browsing, but don't stop there. Third, Apple needs to cater to the creative community of writers and content creators who flock to Macs and make Safari the best WYSIWYG weblog editing browser on the planet. Offering spell checking in input fields in this first public beta version is great, but this isn't enough. After all, OmniWeb has offered this since the arrival of the OS X Public Beta. Try to come up with new features that will make Safari and OS X the logical choice for serious webloggers. What worries me about Safari and about Apple's efforts to create applications in general is that Apple will make an initial product and then not take the effort far enough to make the product appeal to more than the most basic of Mac users. This is the shortcoming of Apple's iApp strategy. Sacrificing power for simplicity makes sense if all you want to create is a proof-of-concept kind of program. But if Apple's goal is to make Mac OS X the ultimate destination for both beginning as well as high end users who want to use the Mac as a digital hub then they need to think beyond the obvious first steps. Otherwise, Safari will be yet another toy in the stable of useful but underpowered iApps. Do I think Apple will make the serious effort to make Safari stand head and shoulders above the rest of the Mac OS X browsers? Not really. To do so will take money and time, and it will take a commitment to risk it all by charging OS X users to use a killer browser when the project is done. My biased opinion is that Apple should have worked with third-party browser developers to create the killer Web browser. It would have done more to build a solid base for OS X outside the halls of Apple's offices in Cupertino. But once again Apple has decided to do everything in house, third-party developers and partners be damned. Time will tell if this is just another half-hearted volley, or a geniune effort to create something great.
Low End Mac: Avoid the OS X only PowerBooks for now Dan Knight makes a good point in urging PowerBook fans to think twice before leaping to the new PowerBooks, which will only boot into Mac OS X. The reason: Many OS X disk utilities such as the excellent Disk Warrior app I use to keep my Pismo in good shape will not work on the new Macs. Why? Disk Warrior has to boot from a CD or an external drive running OS 9.x to work its magic on my OS X hard drive...
NetNewsWire Pro 1.0b8 NetNewsWire Pro 1.0b8
Apple objects to court settlement CNET notes that Apple objects to Microsoft settlement: "The Microsoft competitor says an antitrust settlement between California and the software giant is more beneficial than punitive." Amen to that. Since when did court penalties involve giving away vouchers for discounts on more Microsoft software? Let's all feel sorry for MS, as many news anchors were trying to make us do when this ridiculous settlement was announced on Seattle area news the other night...
Jaguar Bluetooth problems Michael McCracken writes on his site:
If you are using Bluetooth, have you seen this behavior? Is there a solution?
CopyPaste X 1.5 adds features CopyPaste X 1.5 adds a new contexual menu that lets users manipulate CopyPaste as well as other enhancements for the program that adds multiple clipboards to Mac OS X and offers other text utilities. The program remains $20 shareware.
Microsoft Office v.X 10.1.3 updater out MacCentral notes that Microsoft is offering an update to Microsoft Office v. X today. It looks like most of the enhancements deal with bugs related to Italian and French languages in Office. Check the story for more...
iCab X 2.9 arrives In what may be the first response to Apple unveiling its own OS X Web browser last week, the makers of iCab have released iCab X 2.9 today. Among the changes are new cache management to deal with the increased speed of this release, new search features that let you use any search engine from the URL input field, and fixes to add better performance under Jaguar.
iCommune: Share iTunes across a network iCommune 1.0b2 is the latest version of a freeware app that lets you share iTunes libraries across a network, bringing the capability that Steve Jobs previewed many months ago as a possible use of the Rendezvous networking frameworks. Apple hasn't offered the iTunes library sharing as advertised, so James G. Speth came out with this free public beta of iCommune.
The Web site also explains Speth's current thinking on new features for iCommune...
Is Safari your default browser? Do you have Safari set as your default Web browser now? If not, why? What browser are you using instead of Safari?
Launch multiple apps with one click SoftBundler 2.0
CPU speed shortage leads to PCs kicking Mac ass Professional photography guro Rob Galbraith shows just how much the lack of processor speed in top-of-the-line Macs make Apple's offerings much slower than their Windows counterparts in In pro digital photography, megahertz matters. In his tests, Galbraith shows that PCs running Windows XP Professional surpase dual processor Macs running OS X when it comes to dealing with RAW format photos used by many photo pros. There are interesting comments in the discussion thread related to the site though, including at least one mention that all RAW image processing programs for OS X are extremely slow... Update: Macintouch has a reader report started on this topic, including one reader post and an extensive response from Rob Galbraith...
Walking the Open Source walk A Novelist Who Walks the Walk: Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, an outspoken advocate of the free publication and copying of digital works, is putting his money where his mouth is. He's giving away his first novel to anyone who wants it. By Paul Boutin. [Wired News]
Binocular follow up Anyone reading MNJ who also happens to be interested in birding may appreciate hearing what kind of binoculars I picked up during the trip Natalie and I took yesterday. I ended up buying a pair of Pentax 8 x 32 DCF WP bins for about $250 after a $75 rebate. These are not the kind of ultimate, high-end bins that wealthy birders like to brag about, but they are a huge move up from the cheap Bushnell 7 x 15-35 bins that I have used for the last couple of years. The new bins are also lighter weight, and best of all, I was able to put them to use right from the start yesterday by seeing my first-ever Short-eared Owl hunting in the distance around 3:30 p.m. as nightfall approached! Besides the Pentax binoculars, Natalie and I also each picked up an inexpensive pair of Celestron 10 x 25 bins that are tiny and perfect for carrying everywhere. Now there will be no excuse for not being able to ID birds any old time...
Is Safari overusing caching to achieve speed? As I continue to play around with Apple's Web browser, Safari, and I deal with its quirks and limitations along with its speedy rendering, I am wondering how many others are just taking the leap and using Safari as their new full-time browsers, no questions asked? Why would I care? Because Safari struggles to keep up with Mac Net Journal, for one. Often after making a new post to the page I click through to the Web site to make sure everything is fine with the post, and with Safari I often click the bookmark for MNJ and then have to reload the page yet again to even see the new post. My bet: Safari is sacrificing doing proper checks of the Web page each time it is visited in an effort to attain more speed. Instead of loading the page it is loading the page from the Safari cache, which is much faster than actually grabbing new content from the Web. This same behavior would explain why Safari doesn't update the numbers of Comments at the end of each post on MNJ. Improper use of the cache would explain each of these apparent bugs with Safari on the MNJ page. I also wonder about the caching issue and if it is at the heart of the apparent speed of Safari because when I look at pages like the message board page where I work on Lycos.com, if I have a discussion list on my browser and I make a post and Safari has to reload the page it is 2-3 seconds slower doing so than Chimera. And, in another caching related bug, Safari never updates the number of New or unread posts that is in red lettering next to each discussion title in discussion listings. This lack of completely updating a page upon reload has me using Chimera as my default browser until the bugs are cleaned up a bit in Safari... Update: Michael McCracken offered a suggestion to add some code to my template for Mac Net Journal that seems to solve one of the problems - the updating of the number of Comments after each story is now updating to reflect the real content of each thread. However, I remain wary of what Safari is doing with the cache that causes it to run slower than other browsers on more dynamic Web sites, such as the discussion listings on Lycos...
Birds a plenty, and photos to boot
We are back home after a day of great birding and a side trip to buy new binoculars. What a day! We drove 250 miles, saw 4,000-plus Snow Geese, and most amazing of all, watched as a two-year-old Bald Eagle flew over and sent the entire flock of Snow Geese up into the air in one great wave of black-tipped white wings. To top off the day, around 3:30 p.m. we watched a Short-eared Owl hunting near Samish Island in the northwest corner of the state. It was a great day for birding, and luckily the rain held off until the dark, drenching drive home...
Dave Winer notes how Safari can hurt Ooops. Reading Jim Roepcke's weblog ,... The good news is that the people at The Omni Group sound like they already have a new strategy, and at least in my case, they still have a loyal user who, although I don't spend a lot of time using OmniWeb 4.1, just paid a shareware fee to support further development of the browser. I already own OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle...
Safari updated for the weekend Safari Update 1.0 Beta (v51) 1-10-03 is a 3 MB upgrade to the beta Web browser that Apple says is recommended for all Safari users. Get it while it's hot...
Another bird watching weekend While Natalie and I should be getting a bunch more chapters written for Birding Washington, instead this weekend we will be venturing out into the warm winter weather here in Puget Sound country to take photos of Snow Geese in the Skagit River flats and watch hawks and falcons hunt. With a little luck, maybe we can see some Short-eared owls hunting over the marshy fields near Samish Island! As a bonus addition for tomorrow's trip up north, we plan to stop by a great binocular and telescope shot in Anacortes - originally enough, called Anacortes Telescope - to shop for some new birding binoculars. I'm not sure where we will head Sunday.... Maybe the Olympic Peninsula, or even stay closer to home and write...
ChimeraKnight updated to 1.9.3 ChimeraKnight 1.9.3 automatically updates Chimera to the latest nightly version. New in this version: Added gopher image installation to html resources. Changed method to test for BSD subsystem. Fixed bug that would repeatedly ask for Navigator path in OS X 10.1.5. Fixed bug when accessing log tab manually. Made with AppleScript Studio, it requires OS X 10.1.5 or later, AppleScript 1.8.3 or later, and the BSD subsystem. [d/l]
Need a laugh? Thanks to Mr. Barrett for pointing out the funniest link I have seen on the Web this week: Fans outraged over new character in 'The Return of the King'. On a not-so-funny note, the email server that I use at Digital Forest has been down for more than an hour and I know that email being sent my way is bouncing. If you have an email that needs to get through pronto, send it to pugetsnd@mac.com... Update: My regular email address is working again...thankfully...
Five reasons Macworld Expo was worth it Derrick Story offers his Five Favorite Things from Macworld SF- "Here are five cool products, that alone, were worth the trip to San Francisco." [O'Reilly MacDevCenter.com] It looks like I am not the only person enamored with the 12-inch PowerBook. I think it will be a favorite of many writers on the go...
New ways to support MNJ Mac Net Journal's Web page looks a little different today as I add new options for ways to donate to support the site. Now in addition to the PayPal donation option I have added a link that lets you donate using Amazon's honor system. Some people are not comfortable with PayPal, so this offers another way to donate with your credit card. If you would like to support MNJ without using a credit card at all then you will want to check the page I am creating here in a couple of minutes, which will let you know how to send a check to support the site. Many thanks to those who submitted donations for MNJ so far in 2002!
MacNN digs into 12-inch PowerBook details MacNN writer Sean Yapez offers some more fine details about the feel of the new 12-inch PowerBook in In-depth: 12-inch PowerBook. Here are a few of the details:
There is a lot more in the article, including photos at the end of the piece. The reason I point to this, yet another article about the 12-inch PowerBook, is partly selfish, since I still lean toward this svelte and rugged yet pretty full powered machine as my next PowerBook. It will be dangerous when I get to actually try the keyboard of this machine for myself in the coming weeks. Why would I even consider a machine with such a small screen? Especially when I am doing so much digital photography? Simple: Over the last year I have lugged my Pismo PowerBook all over Washington state while taking photos and doing research for the Birding Washington book, and weighing in at about 6 pounds, the Pismo is about as heavy a machine as I would consider using on the road. The Pismo is also rugged, much like the 12-inch G4 PowerBook. The liability of a small screen is not a huge issue since I can do my actual photo editing back at home, hooking up to a second larger screen for editing. It will be a little while before I actually make the move to buy a new machine, but at this point the drawbacks of the 15-inch TiBook remain the same - poor wireless reception and a notable lack of ruggedness - and it will likely be at least six months before the 15-inch machines get new features like AirPort Extreme with a new wireless antenna configuration, if these features ever come to the current TiBook. In short, I didn't like the compromises involved in buying a 15-inch TiBook before Macworld Expo, and nothing has changed on this front. Meanwhile, a smaller option has arrived with a G4 processor to beat the old iBook options, much better battery life than my Pismo, and weighing in at about 1.5 pounds less than my current machine...
Safari should work with Blogger, but it is being blocked Blogger Pro Blocks Safari: Blogger, if you're listening, you can treat us just like Mozilla. We will work. What do you think I used to post blogs on the Mac before you started blocking it?[I wonder why? (Source: Surfin' Safari)][Archipelago]
A sneak peak at iPhoto 2 Derrick Story says that iPhoto 2.0 Steps, Not Dashes, Forward with "Lots of other little improvements, such as easier access to your iTunes library, make iPhoto 2.0 a worthy download." (O'Reilly Network via MyAppleMenu) [myapplemenu] Among the things not improved: Performance. iPhoto apparently still chokes on big file libraries...
HomePod looks like an interesting music device HomePod is a wireless music playing device that lets you play music stored on your Mac in one room through your stereo in another room. Quoting from the CNET story:
At $200 and available in late March, this looks like an interesting device...
MacReviewZone: One on One with the Little Al PowerBook MacReviewZone offers some photos and first impressions of the new 12-inch G4 PowerBook at this week's Macworld Expo. Judging from these shots, it looks like a fun and useful little machine that could be a real workhorse combined with a secondary 15 or 17-inch LCD for home office use. So far none of the personal hands-on accounts I have heard of this machine has talked about the feel of the keyboard, which is a key for a writer like me. And one email account I read mentioned that the little machine was putting out a ton of heat on the Macworld Expo show floor, bringing to mind concerns about how the tight little machine circulates enough air to cool down and remain bearable if you are working with it in your lap...
QuickTime 6.1 update released Check the Software Update panel in your OS X System Preferences app to download QuickTime 6.1. The 19.4 MB update does the following, according to Apple's release notes:
The installation process requires a restart...
Anyone care to test for this Safari bug? A disturbing story on MacWrite offers a warning that option-clicking on a download link in Safari may result in erasing the contents the Home folder on your hard drive. There are also discussions of this bug as well as the printing problems that are plaguing some users on MacNN, which in turn point to discussions of the problems on the Apple discussion forums. If this bug is real, this would be a great reason to stop playing with Safari 1.0 Public Beta until a new version arrives... Alternative advice of ways to get around the bug is to turn "Remove Cleared Downloads" to manually and it should make using Safari less risky...
Interesting news from Microsoft NY Times : "Microsoft has built a new wireless data network... It may have nothing to do with Macs and OS X right now, but it is interesting to note, nonetheless...
How about using the 17-inch PowerBook as a media center? During a chat with an MNJ reader last night an interesting use for the new 17-inch PowerBook came to mind: How about using the new G4 not only as a laptop but as your family's entertainment center? Depending on how much you need a big screen to view TV or videos, the new AlBook would offer DVD viewing, music listening when hooked to an external amp or speaker system, and by adding a large external hard drive and an EyeTV setup you could also use the PowerBook as a personal video recorder and to watch live TV. And if the 17-inch LCD on the PowerBook isn't big enough, you could pipe the video through the S-video connector to a bigger TV screen. Is this what Apple is shooting for with the digital hub idea? Not exactly, but it would be an interesting use of current (well, nearly current, since the 17-inch PowerBook isn't shipping just yet...) technology to tie together computing and lifestyle products like video, music, and TV. If and when I can afford to replace my Pismo PowerBook, I have contemplated switching it to be a media server, hooked into our stereo to serve music and video...
Graphic Converter updated to 4.5.2 GraphicConverter 4.5.2
Macintouch readers comment on Safari Readers of the popular Macintouch site are offering their comments about Apple's new Web browser in the Safari Reader Report. If you are still playing with the beta browser, reading through the tips and comments may come in handy...
Program enhances Safari, but you may want to wait Safari Enhancer 1.0 is an application that reveals hidden features in the public beta version of Apple's new OS X Web browser. It gives access to the debug menu, lets you set minimum font sizes, and allows you to import Internet Explorer bookmarks as often as you like. The program is a simple 79k freeware app. Before you rush out to tweak your copy of Safari though, think twice. It appears that Apple developers are fixing the most glaring bugs with the browser in a short time span and it is possible that new versions of Safari will be forthcoming soon...
Support Mac Net Journal It has been a month since I last reminded MNJ readers that this site is supported by individuals who put enough value in the site to click the PayPal badge and offer a small donation to keep Mac Net Journal alive. So far in 2003 there have been no donations to support the site, so if you value MNJ and the forum it provides for Mac news, discussion and debate, please consider making a donation!
Which PowerBook would you choose? For someone considering a new PowerBook in the near future, like me, yesterday's product announcements added a ton of options for what to buy. The G4 PowerBook 17-inch looks like a monster of a machine that will work great for graphics pros, while the G4 PowerBook 12-inch looks like a great machine for those who actually need to carry their laptops around more. The dilemma I face is that I spend a lot of my time working with my current Pismo PowerBook in my lap, with no external monitor hooked to the machine. I wonder about how tough it would be to balance the 17-inch PowerBook on my lap, as well as how well this wide and thin machine would hold up to travel. On the other hand, I wonder about just how small that 12-inch PowerBook screen feels. The great news about both of these machines is that they push the envelope with great PowerBook features. A 12-inch PowerBook with a SuperDrive and a G4 processor is great! And while I am a little disappointed that it can only hold 640 MB of maximum RAM, if I opted for a 12-inch machine with maxed out RAM, a 60 GB hard drive, a SuperDrive, an extra power adapter, extra battery, and AppleCare it would run to roughly $2800. If I get a new machine soon, this is the route I would lean toward. Of course, just to make things more interesting, Apple also cut the price of the 1 GHz G4 PowerBook yesterday, lopping $200 off the price of the former top-of-the-line machine. This may be an attractive option as well. If you were buying a new PowerBook today, what would you buy?
Problems printing and otherwise after installing Safari? An MNJ reader comment on the Safari thread raises a good question: Is anyone having problems with printing, CD burning, or booing into OS 9.x after installing Safari? Here is the original comment:
Is Apple trying to bring everything in-house? Following yesterday's keynote speech and the announcement of more software developed internally by Apple, I have been wondering if anyone else sees how Apple is turning inward? First there is news about the current batch of bundled Apple apps in OS X - iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie - and the move to wrap those three apps which remain free with iDVD in the new iLife suite. While iLife is sure to appeal to many OS X users, the moves to keep iPhoto, iTunes and iMovie free for the time being is another example of Apple's move to dominate software categories by flooding the market with free applications at the expense of competition from worthy third-party apps. Then there is Safari. While I welcome the thought of a faster Web browser, which would address the speed portion of Steve Jobs' stated reasoning for creating yet another browser, nothing in the beta version of Safari fulfills the second stated reason for a new browser, innovation. And in the process of creating yet another browser, Apple has made conscious resource decisions that are troubling. Why spend resources on a browser when the underlying Java libraries in OS X fail with some Java sites on the Web? Isn't it more important to create an OS with the best Java capabilities than to create a Web browser when other free browser efforts are making major advances. Chimera kicks Safari's ass with better standards support, acceptable rendering speed, and a tabbed browsing option that far surpasses the random windowing behavior of Safari. And how about the way that Safari is a slap in the face of developers at places like The Omni Group, creators of the truly innovative though now stagnant OmniWeb browser? These are just a few of the examples where Apple has decided that essentially, if a job is going to get done that it must do it itself. The new Keynote application is another example, though I doubt many will complain since it is a direct hit on Microsoft and PowerPoint with its ability to import and export PowerPoint presentations - something that third party apps in the presentation category have failed woefully at integrating on their own. While on the one hand it is good to see Apple innovating and making OS X more of a must-have operating system, Apple is doing so at the expense of squashing third-party developers. And as I mentioned in another post earlier today, I worry about the staying power that Apple will show in all of these different product categories. The company has a history of creating software and then dropping its development just as abruptly as it arrived. Will this continue to be the case? Or can we expect that all of these bundled apps - Mail, iChat, iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iCal, iSync, and more - will be ongoing products that won't be dropped when an important stockholder sneezes?
ExtendAIR antennas for AirPort Extreme I noted yesterday that the new AirPort Extreme base station and the new G4 PowerBooks offer connectors for external wireless antennas. MacNN has a short story this morning about new ExtendAIR add-on antennas from Dr. Bott that use the new connections to acheive modest 250-foot range with the ExtendAIR Omni that sells for $100 and a more impressive 500-foot range with the directional antenna, the ExtendAIR Direct, which sells for $150. The Omni is available for worldwide use, but the Direct is a U.S. only product due to regulatory restrictions. I wonder how many other new wireless antennas will spring up now that Apple has embraced extending wireless range? Meanwhile, I wonder how long it will be before I get really sick of the name "AirPort Extreme" as a cartoony way to refer to a current generation wireless networking system? Apple referring to the first-generation 802.11b networking as "AirPort" was catchy and it didn't sound all that funny, but "AirPort Extreme" has the same tired feel as extreme sports. If you have to call it extreme, it isn't...
Excellent: Safari designer Dave Hyatt has a weblog Thanks to Dave Winer for pointing out that Safari developer Dave Hyatt has a weblog called Confessions of a Mozillian, and in it he answers a few of the concerns raised on the dive into mark weblog about the new Apple browser's rendering shortcomings. Reading through Hyatt's response it is pretty clear that the current Safari beta, as speedy as it feels and as capable it is as a beta version, it is still a major work in progress with major design decisions to be made before it is the be all and end all OS X browser. My suggestion: Start sending in those bug reports and feature requests if you want to help make Safari a viable resource. And throughout the process keep it in the back of your mind that Apple has built browsers and email clients and other useful tools before, only to abandon them when it became apparent how much work it would take to make a killer app.
Article proclaims Mac fans are big geeks Not PC But True: Mac Fans Are Geeks I have to agree with the premise of this article because of the distinction made between Mac users and Mac fans. Those who use Macs because they feel they make sense as a computing tool are the users. Those who use Macs and eagerly await each announcement by Steve Jobs with their credit cards ready for the latest cool new thing are the fans. Yesterday's keynote speech catered to the fans. Now it is time for the users to make sense of the flurry of announcements.
.Mac users: Beware Backup foibles If you are a .Mac user like me, you may be using Apple's simple Backup program in conjunction with Net space on your iDisk to backup information on a set schedule. For me, while I do backups to a FireWire drive here in the home office using ChronoSync to keep a current copy of everything in my User folder, but since I don't do a physical backup like this every day then I also have Backup set to do daily backups of my most important outlines from TinderBox as well as any current AppleWorks files I am using to write our book, Birding Washington. My use of Backup as a simple off-site storage, automated to connect overnight and backup files, seemed to work fine until shortly before Christmas. Then I am not sure what fouled up. I noticed last week that when I fired up Backup out of curiousity to ensure that my files were being magically backed up on a schedule each night, it turned out that nothing had been backed up since Dec. 22, 2002. This was disconcerting. I did a manual backup and checked that no settings had changed on Backup, then I shut down the program and returned to work. I just did another check of Backup to see how it was doing this morning and sure enough, it hadn't done an automatic backup at all since the last time I ran the program. I am not sure what is causing the problem, but I am sure that Backup cannot be relied on for anything critical. Hopefully this problem will be addressed soon by Apple...
Be careful of your Web preferences and Safari Beware if you go into the Safari preferences and choose Safari as your default browser. I cannot remember actually setting this preference earlier today, but in order to change my default browser in OS X back to Mozilla, which wouldn't change using the Internet preference panel under System Preferences as usual, I had to launch Safari and change the browser preference there. To be clear, if I tried to view a Web site URL by double-clicking a link in NetNewsWire Pro, rather than launching a new window in the default browser I have set in my OS X preferences, after running Safari earlier today it was Safari that co-opted my browser preference and launched instead...
Key links from today's announcements Use these links to go directly to pages related to today's announcements: PowerBook G4 17-inch - http://www.apple.com/powerbook/index17.html PowerBook G4 12-inch - http://www.apple.com/powerbook/index12.html Airport Extreme - http://www.apple.com/airport/
iLife - http://www.apple.com/ilife/
Safari - http://www.apple.com/safari/ Keynote - http://www.apple.com/keynote/ is the new presentation tool selling at $99. Final Cut Express - http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/ is the boiled down version of Final Cut Pro selling for $299.
External antenna connectors on 'Books and base station As I dig through the specs for the new PowerBooks as well as the new Airport Extreme wireless hardware, I notice that the 'Books and the new 802.11g Airport Extreme base station offer ports for connecting external antennas. This should be a welcome addition for those looking to set up wide-ranging wireless networks. I am still digging to see what this does to the range...
Let's go on a Safari One of the first new apps that you are likely to grab after this morning's Macworld Expo announcements is Safari, the Apple baked and branded Web browser that offers higher speed page rendering than anything else running on OS X. I grabbed my copy after the keynote and so far, it works great. I can guarantee one crash though, and unfortunately it has to do with the work I do on Lycos.com. Go to clubs.lycos.com and create a username, then click to go into a chat room. What the Java applet load, watch it appear to start working, then watch it lock up the browser just as it does with IE 5.2, OmniWeb, Mozilla, Chimera, and all the rest of the OS X browsers. This one thing is the reason I still have Classic on my machine, because IE under Classic loads the Java applet just fine. Other than this fatal flaw for me and the lack of a tabbed browsing interface, Safari feels like the speedy and convenient browser that Apple has billed it as. Pages snap online! But some others have noted rendering weaknesses with Safari. (Check out the quick Safari review on the dive into mark weblog.) I will keep using Safari as my main browser throughout the day, and as you do the same, offer your comments about what you are finding and what kind of feedback you are offering Apple. Update: I have to give Safari credit. It is blazingly fast! But since I develop Web pages, I am among those disappointed that Apple has chosen to introduce a host of new problems for page designers. Safari has serious display problems with some pages, and it may have the goal of being a standards compliant browser, but just take a look at some of the security issues and old bugs mentioned in the review on the Dive into Mark site noted above and you will see just how far Safari has to go. Safari is a beta version, so hopefully some of these things will be addressed quickly. Among the most annoying features, there should be an option for tabbed browsing and at the very least I hope the browser has better window handling when it reaches 1.0 status. Right now, opening a new window you could see the window draw just about anywhere on your screen, which is a great reminder of how well tabbed window interfaces save screen space...
Macworld keynote coverage Below is a fairly exhaustive look at today's announcements during the Macworld Expo keynote presentation done by Steve Jobs in San Francisco, in reverse chronological order: New 12-inch PowerBook
New Airport Extreme base station
New AlBook - the Aluminum PowerBook
Keynote - a new presentation application
Safari - Apple's own Web browser
I am curious if this new browser will offer better Java support than other OS X browsers (IE had the best support going into today, but it still breaks with many sites) and if it will offer the kind of pop-up ad killing like Chimera. And how about great rendering like OmniWeb? Digital Hub - Users want to use their music with their photos. - All new versions of the iApps are available now that are integrated with each other. - iLife is the new name of the new suite - Available Jan.25 and bundled with all new Macs - Free iPhoto 2, iTunes, and iMovie 3 - iDVD 3 for sale in a bundle with iPhoto 2, iTunes, and iMovie 3 for $49 - iTunes 3
- iPhoto 2
- iMovie 3
- iDVD 3
Mac OS X update - 5 million active users of OS X, 3.8 million new users in 2002 - 5,000 native apps today. - All new products no longer boot into OS 9 starting today - A few lagard apps need to get out ("We all know which one we are talking about") - Office Party promotion extended to April 7 - QuickBooks Pro from Intuit was one of the most requested apps that just started shipping - Virtual PC 6 out now - Macromedia Director for OS X now out - Pro Tools 6.0 for OS X shipping this month from DigiDesign
- Final Cut Pro now the No. 1 pro video program - Final Cut Express a new product with a few top-end features removed
iPod - A new iPod accessory from Burton, a snowboarding jacket with an iPod pouch, with controls built into the sleeve. Steve calls the jacket "wicked." Selling for $499 as an Apple online store exclusive... - 600,000 iPods shipped since a year ago November, one every minute since it began shipping - No. 1 player in U.S. and Japan, where it has a 42% market share .Mac - 250,000 paying subscribers and growing every month iCal and iSync - iCal sites on the Net - iSync an important strategic asset for Apple X for teachers program - 290,000 free copies of OS X sent out so far, and now the program is extended through this quarter. Apple retail stores - $148 million in sales, with 50% of computer sales to Windows switchers - 51 stores across America now - 85 million people within 15 miles of an Apple Store now Switcher campaign - 7.8 million visitors to the switch site since last summer, 68% of those using Windows Once again, more demand than bandwidth It looks like the organizers of Macworld Expo once again tripped on providing enough bandwidth for everyone who has an interest to watch the live QuickTime video presentation of Steve Jobs' keynote speech this morning. I am muddling through... and finally connected on my wife's computer!
Investors urged to sell Apple stock Merrill Lynch to Apple investors: Sell Of course, if enough people pay attention to this recommendation, this could be a good opportunity for real Apple fans to pick up some cheap stock...
Live coverage of the keynote, from afar I will offer live coverage of the keynote speech at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco this morning, even though I am not in the house for the big show. If you want to listen to or watch the keynote you may want to get in the queue early to listen to the QuickTime broadcast here. My fingers are crossed that this time there is enough bandwidth for me to watch the presentation live. I had a world of frustrating problems trying to do this for the Macworld Expo keynote last July...
New .Mac Address Book unveiled Apple has combined the capabilities of iSync 1.0 with .Mac to offer a new feature to .Mac members today: .Mac Address Book with contact synchronization. Quoting the .Mac member Web site:
Is anyone else seeing an odd error with MNJ and IE? My friend John contacted me twice today to say that he is seeing an odd error message when he tries to access Mac Net Journal from his OS 9.x-based Pismo PowerBook. A screen shot of the error can be seen below:
Has anyone else seen something like this when trying to access MNJ? I am baffled a bit because I cannot duplicate the error on my PowerBook 3400c running IE under OS 9.1, and this is the first report I have heard of the error. Anyone else?
iCal has iKilled my Palm Desktop software I noted late last week that I was surprised how well iCal and iSync worked with my Palm Vx, but when I decided that the experiment had gone on long enough this afternoon and I tried to switch to Palm Desktop as my organizer, I found a world of problems. Palm Desktop's Background app keeps saying that my disk is full, which it isn't, and as long as it keeps giving me this error I cannot even launch Palm Desktop. Luckily, I have my organizer of choice, Personal Organizer 4.5, all fired up and running, and now all I need to do is to restore the syncing capability of the program and I am away from iCal as slick as can be.
How will small developers do without a Macworld? Many signs point to the possbility that this week's Macworld Expo in San Francisco may be the last of its kind. While I sit here kicking myself that I never did make the trip to the Mac mecca that is Macworld Expo, I also wonder what the practical impact of a Mac world without a Macworld Expo will be. How will it impact small developers who today can make a spendy pilgrimmage to the expo to talk about and show their products? The Mac computing community responds to the buzz for products as much as to the actual products themselves, and I wonder what companies will plan to do to replace the impact of two big Mac showcases every year. Thoughts?
No PowerBooks in the house? MacReviewZone offers an update about PowerBook prices and availability every week, and today's update notes that there are no PowerBooks available at all at the Apple Store right now. Does this signal a new model or upgrade tomorrow? Time will soon tell...
An addition to my digital photography links AppleScript Info is full of useful notes this morning, including the note that the makers of iView Media Pro have a weblog. I have added a link to the weblog under my digital photography links....
A must-read for AppleScript fans AppleScript Info points to an article on Macscripter.net that sounds like a must-read for anyone interested in where things are going with UI browser preview and Mac OS X GUI scripting:
Adam Curry: iCal hoses Pocketmac sync utility Adam Curry offers a warning for those using the Pocketmac sync utility with iCal:
Are others using Pocketmac syncing seeing the same problems?
Coursey: Macworld Expo must die ZDNet columnist David Coursey fires a parting shot before leaving for the CES industry conference, offering reasons for Why Macworld must die.
Let the flood of Mac news begin The opening of what may be the final Macworld Expo ever tomorrow in San Francisco will lead to a flood of Mac related news this week. Count on MNJ to weed through the product announcements and dig out the important gems, and be sure to stop by to talk about the impact of new products and software. My goal: Make sense of the madness...
iCal updated to 1.0.2 Apple has released another update to iCal today, this time without any information about changes to the calendaring program. With luck, this will address some of the problems noted by MNJ readers late last week...
Which iApps would you pay for? If Apple does indeed announce that it will begin charging for upgrades to iPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie at the Macworld Expo, as expected, which of these and other iApps are you willing to pay for? Will you consider paying for iPhoto and iTunes, but not iMovie? In my case, the only iApps I use regularly right now are iChat - which is a surprise even to me - and iTunes. If Apple starts charging for these applications as they should then I will reconsider which of the apps I will continue to use. Suddenly Apple's offerings will be on a level playing field with other applications, and I may decide to use Audion or another MP3 player rather than iTunes, for instance. But I suspect that there will be some iApps that I will be willing to pay for, simply because they are the best solutions out there. And I will pay without any ill feelings for Apple. After all, they need to keep those in-house developers working on something that actually pays for their keep.
MacSpeech offering Macworld special pricing If you have been waiting to grab a copy of the OS X speech recognition application iListen, next week may be time to bite the bullet and pick up a copy. MacSpeech is offering iListen 1.5 with a headset bundled at $129, or $89 for the software only. The special is good from Jan. 5-11 if purchased through the MacSpeech booth or the online store, and iListen with a USB headset will be available for $129 through the end of January through MacMall and ClubMac. MacSpeech is also offering show special pricing on Mariner software products, with Mariner Write and Mariner Calc each priced at $49, or $89 for both.
TypeIt4Me for OS X coming next week TypeIt4Me, the autotext application that has been a mainstay for Mac users dating back to the days of Mac OS 8.5, will make its worldwide OS X debut next week at Macworld Expo. The $27 shareware typing utility lets you type more text with fewer keystrokes by defining commonly used phrases that can be automatically typed with text shortcuts. And it is being offered for a special Macworld show price of $19.95. Upgrades from the Classic version of TypeIt4Me are $9.
Hmmm...what is happening with OmniWeb? I made some major revisions to my outline of Mac OS X apps ranked by category today, and in the process I was struck by how long it has been since there has been either a public beta update or any news at all about the excellent OmniWeb browser. The last time anything happened with OmniWeb was Oct. 1, 2002. It makes me wonder just what The Omni Group has up its sleeves for Macworld Expo next week?
NetNewsWire Pro 1.0b6 NetNewsWire Pro 1.0b6 fixes a crashing bug with Blogger sites and adds the ability to create custom tags for the weblog editor. [ranchero.com]
More iSync notes Michael McCracken offers some additional notes about hotsyncing a new Palm Tungsten PDA using iSync 1.0.
Developer Robb Beal on the end of free iApps Writing on his Weblog, UserCreations founder and Spring developer Robb Beal offers what I imagine will be a common response to news that Apple is about to start charging for iApps:
In other words, it is time to pay the piper...
Will you pay for a new version of iPhoto? CNET is reporting this afternoon that Apple will unveil a new pricing policy for some of its iApps at Macworld Expo next week:
And so, this begs the question: Are you willing to pay for the formerly free iApps? And how much are you willing to pay when there are other shareware and commercial programs with even better capabilities available already?
Damien Barrett comments on 'Mail.crapp' New York Mac consultant Damien Barrett confirmed that Mail.app still hoses attachments after more than two years of development and updates. A client wondered why no one could open attachments she sent to them, no matter whether they used Macs, Windows, or had AOL accounts.
I can also add that PowerMail 4.1 and many other OS X email clients can reliably send attachments to any and all other email clients. Apparently there is simply a disconnect in the design of Mail.app and a stubborn refusal to admit that the current encoding option is a major screw up...
Comfort Keyboard: another ergonomic option If you are interested in more ergonomic computing, you may want to check out the review of the Comfort Keyboard on the MacHome Web site. The reviewer gives the highly customizable $300 keyboard a four apple ranking.
Moore interesting PowerBook notes Charles Moore digs up some more interesting tidbits for PowerBook and iBook users in this week's installment of The 'Book Review. Among the highlights: Smith Micro's QuickLink Mobile, the Supergo ergonomic stand, the Macally iceKey slim USB keyboard, and a 2.5" IDE to USB hard drive enclosure for less than $10.
Some quick MNJ stats for 2002 Although these numbers are a bit incomplete as they only include a tally through Dec. 23, 2002, the following stats offer an interesting glimpse at the sheer number of visitors and hits for MNJ during 2002: 3,992,987 hits 290,301 unique visits 55,471,518 kbytes of data transfered Thanks to all the MNJ readers for a great year! And an especially big thank you goes out to the dozens of you who donated to keep MNJ alive during its astronomical growth in 2002! Keep those donations coming. They are what makes creating, writing, and managing Mac Net Journal possible...
Is or isn't it a high resolution JPEG? One of my resolutions for this new year is to learn how to use Photoshop better than the basic knowledge I have now. I currently do most of my photo editing in GraphicConverter, which is a great application, but I would like to see how much better my photos can look with the touch of the standard high-end photo editing capabilities of Photoshop. Right out of the gate on Jan. 1 I took some high quality JPEG images of a shorebird despite my understanding that all JPEGs shot with my Nikon CoolPix 950 were, accoriding to the info offered by GraphicConverter, being captured at 72 ppi rather than the richer 300 ppi of the uncompressed TIFF format images I can take with the same camera. Throughout 2002 as we did research for our upcoming book Birding Washington, I tried to shoot everything as a TIFF, despite the fact that each image takes up more than 5 MB on the Compact Flash card and takes 20-30 seconds to save once the photo is taken. The main reason for doing this is that I need the 300 ppi images to be shooting high enough quality shots for publication in our book. 72 ppi looks great on a computer monitor, but it looks hazy in print. My quandary is that now I see that both Photoshop and iView Media Pro say that the high quality JPEGs I take with the Nikon CoolPix 950 are indeed 300 ppi images, compressed at a 1:6 ratio. But if I look at the same image with GraphicConverter it says that the high quality JPEGs from our camera are 72 ppi. I wonder which is right? And do I dare sacrifice the compression ratio difference in shooting JPEG vs. TIFF images if I want to make prints of these photos later on down the road? Let's talk digital photography...
Color me surprised - iCal and iSync success I have been cautious and pessimistic about using iCal and iSync until deciding to take the plunge in the name of research and trying to sync my Palm Vx using today's new versions of each program. It took a while, and some digging to figure out how to get my Palm to sync, but after 20-30 minutes of digging around I have the same info on iCal and in my Address Book as I do on my Palm! A quick tip if you haven't used iSync with your Palm yet. Apple's directions for how to enable Palm syncing are horrible. They say you have to enable the Palm device from Palm's HotSync Manager application, but they give you no clue how to do so. The process is really pretty simple: Open HotSync Manager (it is in the Palm folder in your chosen Applications folder) and go the Conduit Settings section under the HotSync menu. If you were sure to install the iSync Conduit when you upgraded to iSync 1.0 earlier today then it will show up in the Conduit Settings area - if you haven't, stop, go back and look in the iSync 1.0 installer folder and double-click the Palm conduit installer. In order to get the iSync Conduit to work, double click on it in the Conduit Settings area and enable it and you are in business! My feelings about iCal 1.0.1 are yet to be determined. I want to be able to keep and sync notes in my organizer. But I will give iCal another chance...
Odd...MS and Apple both have major outages today Does anyone else find it odd that first Apple suffers what appears to be an all-day long outage of .Mac services, and then Microsoft users lose access to .Net Passport servers. Murphy has been busy today (as in Murphy's Law, of course...).
Notable software releases As found this evening on Macupdate:
A reader warning about iCal 1.0.1 MNJ reader Chris Bentley is reporting problems with his installation of the new iCal 1.0.1:
Is anyone else seeing problems with iCal 1.0.1?
iCal and iSync updated to start the new year iCal 1.0.1 offers performance enhancements and more in a 10.4 MB update to Apple's calendaring application, and iSync 1.0 is the first non-beta release of the file synchronization tool that lets users sync Address Book entries and iCal calendars with compatible mobile phones, an iPod, or a Palm OS PDA. Automatic sync scheduling and performance improvements are rolled into the first full release of iSync. iSync 1.0 is a 5.1 MB download, and it also allows users to synchronize two Macs, but a valid .Mac account is required. For more info about iSync, be sure to check the list of compatible devices.
A great collection of free AppleScripts AppleScript Info notes: Essential Script Menu Scripts for Web Developers.
A new year, a new life bird I spent one of the wettest New Years Days in memory sloshing around Southwest Washington yesterday in an easy search for a rare bird for our state, a Eurasian species of shorebird called a Ruff. Natalie and I joined a friend from the Tahoma Audubon Society to go view the bird in the Grays Harbor area, and despite the rain I did manage to get a few decent photos of the bird as it was feeding and flitting about in a ditch outside the small town of Satsop. I posted photos of the Ruff on the Web last night.
A happy New Year to all! We at MNJ offer wishes for a happy New Year to all people around the world. I raise my glass to a great 2003, to exciting Mac OS X and Apple developments in the near future, and to wishes of peace in these tenuous times. There may not be any updates to MNJ tomorrow, as Natalie and I plan to kick off the new year fittingly with a birding trip to the Washington coast and the Pacific Ocean. Peace... |
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Copyright 2002 White Rabbit Publishing. |