Mac Net Journal

I received my family pack version of Leopard at work this morning and set it running to upgrade the OS on my MacBook Pro while I was busy in meetings and working on my PC. Things went without a hitch and so far everything is working just fine. My machine seems to be running a bit hotter than normal, and the battery life seems a little shorter, but it is too early to tell if either of those things are significant yet. And I am too tired to do any more real testing tonight.

So, all I can say at this point is that Leopard simply works...

Everything Paul Boutin knows about writing
Sunday, October 28, 2007, 10:38 AM

Paul Boutin offers a very usable list of tips about how to make your writing more effective in Everything I know about writing...

On early problems with Leopard
Sunday, October 28, 2007, 9:22 AM

Jeff Carlson gives a quick rundown of some of the early issues with Leopard.

I still haven't bought and installed Leopard on my machines. I may make a run across town to pick up a copy today...

Leopard reader reports and advice from MacInTouch
Friday, October 26, 2007, 9:41 AM

MacInTouch looks like a good resource for tracking how Leopard installations are going for those who already have the new version of Mac OS X in hand.

I won't be installing or even buying Leopard today. I am heading to Seattle this evening with my wife to see an opera, and tomorrow I will be taking advantage of good weather to do more work on my house. I may take a break to run out and buy a copy so I can install it tomorrow night...

Early installers note missing features in Leopard
Friday, October 26, 2007, 8:43 AM

MacDailyNews offers some insight into features that Apple dropped from today's release of Leopard. I would be more disappointed with the decision to drop wireless backup support in TimeMachine if I hadn't already been using a hard disk attached to my wireless Airport base station for backups using SuperDuper for many months now. Sometimes it pays to be resourceful and roll your own solutions rather than relying on Apple.

Now we'll see when Apple adds these features back into Leopard via a software update...

Filemaker won't work with Leopard?
Thursday, October 25, 2007, 8:58 AM

So one day before the launch of the newest version of Mac OS X, Apple-owned Filemaker is warning customers not to try using their program under the new OS. Who gets fired for incompetence this time?

Microsoft forcing Windows users to install Desktop Search?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007, 10:22 PM

The Register has an short piece today that helps explain one of the little computer surprises I encountered with my Windows PC at work today.

A few weeks ago I set up Google Desktop on my machine, so I would finally be able to find things on my PC like I can do on my MacBook Pro. Google Desktop works fine, and it offers huge improvements over the search tools built into Windows XP (yes, we are still using XP at work, and I also have XP installed under Parallels Desktop on my Mac).

Oddly enough, this afternoon I noticed that there was another search tool running in the toolbar on my work PC. A right click on the search field showed that somehow Windows Desktop had been installed on my machine and finished indexing the hard drive without any intervention from me. That's right...I didn't install anything. I didn't agree to anything. But Microsoft took over my machine anyway.

Trust? Yeah...right.

Gmail IMAP and the iPhone
Wednesday, October 24, 2007, 9:36 PM

Lifehacker offers a couple of useful pieces today about the new IMAP functionality that some users are getting access to today. For what it's worth, I am still not IMAP worthy with my Gmail account...

Have we traded quality for Web 2.0?
Monday, October 8, 2007, 10:50 PM

Over the last few weeks, as I spend more and more time using Web 2.0 apps like Gmail and Google Reader, I wistfully start up the cozy old applications that have been my mainstays for years - OmniWeb, PowerMail and NetNewsWire - and I am struck by how much of a trade off I have made for the sake of convenience and marginal gains in searchability of my e-mail, for instance.

Here are the trades I have made over the last year:

OmniWeb -> Firefox (actually, Minefield, because a couple of weeks ago Firefox stopped rendering pages correctly when I view Google Reader)

Why? - Firefox is more integrated with Google apps and Google Reader. For instance, when I use Firefox I can open attached files as Google docs, rather than downloading everything to my machine.

What did I give up? - Beautiful page rendering, workspaces, simple keyboard navigation of "tabs" in OmniWeb.
PowerMail -> Gmail

Why? - A very searchable e-mail database, highly customizable and reachable from any browser. In addition, I use the Gmail client on my Treo 650 to help manage and access my mail on the road much better than I could while relying on using PowerMail.

What did I give up? - Nothing really. I continue to download my mail into PowerMail as well. I guess you could say that I haven't fully committed to Gmail.
NetNewsWire -> Google Reader

Why? - The initial reason to switch is that Reader seems to update its feeds much more quickly and reliably than NetNewsWire. So I dabbled with using Reader at work, where time really matters. In addition, I can keep track of my feeds on my Treo and even post to my growing shared link feed on Google from my phone. I can't do that last bit with NetNewsWire.

What did I give up? - Using the best RSS reader on the Mac. I still use NNW some, but not nearly as much as I used to...