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Now that I am spending more time working in my home office rather than just kicking back with the PowerBook in the living room all of the time, I have started firing up the color Webcam connected to my old PowerComputing PowerWave 604/120 Mac clone and beaming snapshots to my Web site every 30 seconds while I work. The shots can be seen at http://www.whiterabbits.com/cam.html
-- It looks like there could be a new open source e-mail client on the OS X block soon...Ginko, from Objectpark in Germany, now in a limited preview release [noted from Mac Scripting]...[posted at 9:32 p.m. PDT] -- Yesterday's entries on the Mac Resource Page also include a step-by-step example of how the author set up his PowerBook G3 as an e-mail server under OS X 10.1...[posted at 10:31 a.m. PDT] -- The Mac Resource Page includes a note from Bare Bones Software, stating their intentions to create an OS X native version of Mailsmith...[posted at 10:24 a.m. PDT] -- MacFixIt has an important security alert for OS X 10.1 today, after a reader noticed that there is a problem with the Drop Box folder. If you use the Drop Box, do yourself a favor and read about the problem...[posted at 10:20 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- Audion 2.6.1 - Shareware audio player and encoder for MP3s and streaming audio
I had to make another hardware purchase today after noticing that my UFO-style power adapter that came with my year-old Pismo was working on minute and not working the next. The reason: The line running from the adapter that plugs into the back of my PowerBook has a short somewhere at the plug that goes into the laptop. Luckily (or not, depending on your views of long term AppleCare plans), replacement of the adapter is covered under AppleCare, so I should have a new adapter on hand in a week or so. Meanwhile, I hopped over to MCE to order one of the small Madsonline adapters. I needed a backup adapter anyway...
-- Bernie Case has written an interesting article comparing the power consumption patterns and battery life on his Pismo PowerBook using OS 9.2.1 and OS X 10.1. What he found was that OS X's power management is not all that far behind OS 9.2.1...[posted at 4:47 p.m. PDT] -- MacWindows has news today about the new VPN client for OS X 10.1 recently released by Cisco...[posted at 2:24 p.m. PDT] -- The great Mac OS X 10.1 experiment Part II from ZDNet offers some tips about essential utilities for OS X and the remaining difficulties of living completely OS 9.x and Classic free...[posted at 2:18 p.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- Sorenson Video 3.1 - Commercial software that adds the Sorenson codec for developers working with QuickTime
-- Albert is a small application that can automatically run AppleScripts when you send it a specially formatted e-mail message. The program, from Stimpsoft, is freeware...[posted at 2:14 p.m. PDT] -- Macintouch has an extensive report on LCD problems that many Pismo and other laptop owners are seeing with their screens about a year or so into their normal use. I haven't seen this particular problem with my Pismo or my wife's PowerBook, but if you have an aging machine with a fading or pink-colored LCD, you may want to read through the extensive posts on the Pink Pismo LCD report...[posted at 2:09 p.m. PDT] -- Apple's best reason yet to pitch your Pentium [Chicago Tribune]...[posted at 1:50 p.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- iOrganize X 3.6 - An update to the shareware notepad and organizer program
-- Toon Boom back in beta for OS X 10.1 [Creative Mac News]...[posted at 5:53 p.m. PDT] -- Epson released another series of printer drivers today - for the Stylus Photo 1280, 890, 780, 980 and 980N. All of them are available in the listings at VersionTracker...[posted at 5:37 p.m. PDT] -- If you work with photos and graphics on your Mac, you owe it to yourself to check out THE essential OS X image manipulation tool, GraphicConverter. Lemke Software unveiled a new version, GraphicConverter 4.1, today. It adds support for a number of image formats as well as fixes to speed up the program under OS X. The program is a bargain at $35, and this upgrade is free to registered users...[posted at 5:29 p.m. PDT] -- The Mac Observer makes a good point in asking if Apple will ever advertise OS X? Why Apple hasn't bothered to tout its powerful new OS is anyone's guess. I would be willing to bet it won't happen anytime soon though. Not with the sounds of Madonna and flying people all over the TV screen right now advertising Windows XP...[posted at 10:50 a.m. PDT] -- Writing in the Detroit Free Press, Mike Wendland talks about his recent experience using OS X in Apple is nifty, but Windows is more practical...[posted at 10:45 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- Agfa PhotoLook X 3.60.4 - Update to the scanner software
I continue my frustrating search for the perfect e-mail client. Today I took a look once again at Powermail and Mulberry after Eudora took over my machine at an inopportune moment this morning, ruining some work I was doing on a graphic file by popping a mailbox window up in front of my work and obscuring what I was doing. After futzing around a bit and trying the demos of each e-mail program, I still find Powermail a very capable e-mail alternative for OS X. If I could just figure out how to send mail with it (I keep getting authentication errors with everything I try to send), then I would consider paying for it. Mulberry on the other hand just pops up way too many windows for my taste. If I am going to make a move from Eudora to another mail program, I want an improvement in the endless window spawning situation and not something even less visually appealing. Mulberry is a feature-rich program, but its look and feel don't work for me. I will keep playing around with Powermail to see if I can get it to work, but for the time being I have simply disabled Eudora's preference to open folders when they receive new mail. It makes dealing with my mail less convenient, but what is a guy to do?
-- Group Organizer 4.0 for Mac OS X due next week (from the makers of Personal Organizer 4.0, which I have been using instead of Palm Desktop on my PowerBook since last week...) [MacCentral]...[posted at 4:54 p.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- LaunchBar 3.1.1 - Shareware that opens files, applications and other things by typing an abbreviation
Are you going to buy Microsoft Office v. X when it is made available on Nov. 19? Or are you trying to find ways to live without the high-priced office suite under OS X? E-mail me about it...I would love to hear what other Mac professionals are doing about the high cost of upgrading.
-- Get ready to plunk down your upgrade fee for Microsoft Office v. X on Nov. 19. The Redmond computer giant has announced that Office for OS X will be released on that date. Read more about it at MacCentral...[posted at 12 p.m. PDT] -- Business Week takes a look at Why Apple is still in the black...[posted at 11:56 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- FoldersSynchronizer 2.2 - Update to the shareware file synchronization tool
-- QuicKeys X : The return of the Ghost [TidBITS]...[posted at 4:42 p.m. PDT] -- OS X - Airport Unleashed [AppleLust]...[posted at 4:40 p.m. PDT] -- Another interesting analysis of the iPod by former Kerbango Senior Design Engineer Al Luckow...[posted at 4:38 p.m. PDT] -- While iPod seems to be drawing yawns, iTunes 2 looks like a winner...and it will be free for downloading in a couple of weeks (early November, according to Apple)...[posted at 4:20 p.m. PDT] -- Many early comments on various Weblogs and message boards about today's iPod announcement follow a similar vein...Why does this cost so much? And just what is so revolutionary about the iPod? The MacCommunist column from Wired News is a good example, citing that other MP3 players with similar features cost considerably less than the iPod. In short, the iPod is pretty, it looks cool, but it is short on capabilities for the price...[posted at 4:17 p.m. PDT] -- Apple's new toy, the iPod, was announced this morning. 6.5 ounces with an LCD display, 5 gigs of hard drive storage, a FireWire interface that also provides recharging power, capacity for up to 1,000 songs, 10 hours of battery life...$399...Check Apple's iPod page for in-depth details...[posted at 12:15 p.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- MP3 Rage 3.9.1 - Shareware MP3 player and client for Gnutella and Napster networks
It's time for Qualcomm to offer an update to Eudora for OS X. The current version, Eudora 5.1b16 for OS X, was released in June, and while it is still one of the best e-mail clients for this system (better than Mail for a number of reasons, which I will mention in a moment), it still has critical bugs. The most annoying bug: If you are sending a message, don't even try to close a mailbox or do much of anything or I can guarantee that Eudora will crash. This happens 100 percent of the time. The next most annoying bug: If you are typing a new message and Eudora checks mail, it steals your cursor and you have to wait for the mail checking process to stop before you can resume typing. And, finally, the third most annoying Eudora 5.1b16 behavior is that, if you have it set up to open folders that receive new mail, it will often paste those folders in the foreground, covering whatever work you are currently doing until you take the time to either close the windows or switch to Eudora and pay attention to it. These bugs became slightly less annoying with the arrival of OS X 10.1, but they still exist and interfere with using the rest of OS X. And at times, such as a few days ago, these bugs have infuriate me enough that I move back to Mail, which has a much more modern user interface and works much faster than Eudora under OS X. But Mail itself has some problems. Most notably, if you need to send an attachment to some Windows users, they won't receive the attachment as planned. Instead, it will show up as a jumble of text. But the bug that sent me packing back to Eudora once again today was that Mail managed somehow to lose an e-mail message - one that I know I didn't delete and that I had in fact flagged to respond to later today. No one can accept that from an e-mail program, and I simply cannot stress enough that I don't trust Mail... That being said...if Apple's next update to Mail fixes these problems, then it may still end up being my mail client of choice, but right now I would look at Powermail before I would move my critical e-mail to Mail. By the way, I wrote a quick rundown of OS X e-mail clients for an upcoming issue of MacAddict. It should be on magazine racks soon...
-- MacCentral also posts a reminder today that Epson is due to release a series of printer drivers for OS X today. The models due to get new drivers include: Stylus C40, Stylus C60, Stylus C80 and Stylus Photo 785EPX. Drivers for another set of printers are due next Monday and then again on Nov. 5...[posted at 9:23 a.m. PDT] -- Developers solidly support OS X [MacCentral]...[posted at 9:19 a.m. PDT] -- The PowerBook Zone Web site celebrates the 10th anniversary of the PowerBook computer line...[posted at 9:14 a.m. PDT] -- There is a lot of speculation on the Net and on Mac mailing lists about Apple's planned announcement of a new consumer digital device tomorrow. The most prominent predictions are that it will be the iPod music device I mentioned on Friday, but that hasn't stopped the rumors, as can be read on this story from CBS Marketwatch...[posted at 9:11 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- Snapz Pro X 1.0.1 - Update to the shareware screen capture and QuickTime movie creation tool
-- Wired thinks it has the scoop on Apple's new electronic music device that will be unveiled next week - possibly called the iPod...[posted at 10:38 p.m. PDT] -- Be sure to run the Software Update in the System Preferences under OS X 10.1 to install two critical upgrades - one to take care of security problems in Internet Explorer and another to deal with security problems with OS X itself. Both are critical, and I haven't had any problems after downloading and installing the updates...[posted at 10:34 p.m. PDT]
Opera 5 for Mac OS X beta 2 released...[posted at 3 p.m. PDT] -- The LA Times also has a nice story today about Macs and digital photography: Welcome to the Digital Darkroom...[posted at 11:36 a.m. PDT] -- Utilities I still miss under OS X 10.1: At the top of the list, a multi-copy utility like CopyPaste...[posted at 11:21 a.m. PDT] -- Although not Mac related, the New York Times (free subscription required to read this link) has a good article today about professional photographers moving to digital photography...[posted at 11:19 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- Opera X 5.0b2 - Update of the beta Web browser
-- MacCentral mentions this morning that Epson has announced a new OS X compatible ink-jet printer, but from the tone of the follow up posts by readers of the story, Epson is still facing criticism for its slow progress in releasing OS X drivers for many of its older printers. The new six-color printer, the Stylus Photo 820, will sell for $149 and there is a $50 rebate available for the printer...[posted at 9:38 a.m. PDT] -- Stepwise.com offers details about a serious security flaw in OS X 10.1 that allows anyone with a little knowledge and direct access to your OS X machine to gain root access to the computer...[posted at 9:30 a.m. PDT] -- As can be seen from the software update links below, today brings a slew of updates and software releases for OS X 10.1. Most significantly, BBEdit 6.5 is a major upgrade to the text editor that adds markup and coloring support for cascading style sheets, access to the program from the command line in the Terminal, a new grep engine and snap-to-grid palette dragging and resizing. The upgrade does come at a price though. Users of BBEdit 6.1.2 (such as myself) will have to fork over $39 to upgrade. A cross-license upgrade from competitive products is $79 and a new single user license is $119...[posted at 9:22 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- BBEdit 6.5 - An upgrade to the popular commercial text editor
-- Chronos has announced that its PIM for OS X and OS 9.x Personal Organizer 4.0 is available now. It offers synch capabilities with Palm and Handspring computers and is offered at $60 for first-time users and as a $40 upgrade for current license holders...[posted at 9:52 a.m. PDT] -- As expected, Apple announced upgrades to the iBook and the PowerBook today. Each gets a speed boost along with options for larger hard drives in the various configurations, and there is now an option for a built in CD-RW drive on the PowerBook G4. MacCentral offers details about the upgrades...[posted at 8:48 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- Personal Organizer 4.0 - The commercial PIM from Chronos
I wrote to Bare Bones, the makers of BBEdit, about the problems I have been having with the program under OS X 10.1, so I should have some progress to report back in the near future. I rely on BBEdit a lot, for Web site development as well as some simple writing tasks, so that is why I am shaken by the experience of losing notes from an on-going file I used to keep open all of the time in BBEdit. I am now reworking that file in another program and moving on, but I hope that the folks and Bare Bones can give me some idea why my software is acting this way. It is more than a little disconcerting... As I was writing the above I received prompt e-mail back from the folks and Bare Bones, so they are very responsive and working to figure out what is going on.
-- Macworld looks at wireless broadband routers and the advantages they can offer over and above an Airport hub from Apple. A major shortcoming of the article: It doesn't offer specific info about how these routers interact with OS X...[posted at 10:47 a.m. PDT] -- PC Magazine gives Mac OS X 10.1 pretty high marks in its review, with the editor giving the system four out of five stars. The author summarizes, "This new version is truly an essential release for the Mac faithful, who won't feel like beta testers any longer."...[posted at 8:27 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- MP3 Rage 3.9 - An update to the shareware MP3 player and client for the Gnutella and Napster file sharing networks
I haven't heard anything about this bug from other sources, but I am having major problems with BBEdit for OS X under OS X 10.1. The problem is what resulted in my losing more than a month's worth of postings for this Web site a couple of weeks ago. Here is what I see: I often keep BBEdit open 24/7, and I also keep many documents open all of the time too. Earlier today I spent a couple of hours adding clippings to a simple text file I keep with all kinds of text from the last few months called maintext.txt. I keep this file open in a small window so that I can cut and paste text to it easily as I work. Well, this evening I went to access that file after leaving home for a bit and found that while the text in the window view still showed fine, scrolling up and down the document most of the text from the rest of the file was gone....blank. I have seen this happen over the last couple of weeks since upgrading to OS X 10.1, but I haven't been sure that the problem was with BBEdit until today. So, the long and short of this is that I cannot rely on BBedit any longer for critical work. It still seems to function pretty well for editing HTML pages, so long as I don't keep those documents open for a long time and then wake my machine from its time running the screen saver. In a case like this, I have to ensure that all fo the text is there before I save the document and accidentally remove all of the text that I cannot actually see on my screen...
I received my SanDisk USB Compact Flash card reader today, so it looks like for the first time since moving to OS X nearly a year ago (when I was using the Public Beta for 90 percent of my work), I will be able to load images from my digital camera directly onto my Pismo without the need to reboot into OS 9.x. Over the last few months I have resorted to bringing digital images into my Pismo by first loading them via a PC Card reader onto an old PowerBook 3400c that I run in my office, and then moving the images over to this laptop via Ethernet. The only upside of this old system was that I had a backup of each of my images. But I couldn't work with this system when I am on the road, shooting pictures for a book project or what have you... Uptime update: 9 days, 1 hour...it appears that OS X 10.1 is running pretty solidly despite being slept and awakened at different times with and without an external monitor hooked up to my PowerBook FireWire 2000 (Pismo) with a 20 gig hard drive and 192 megs of RAM...
-- Brent Simmons unveiled his latest Weblog project yesterday at mac.scripting.com. If you are interested in the Mac, OS X and scripting and outlining tools, this will be a good resource to check now and then...[posted at 1:55 p.m. PDT] -- Speaking of digital images and getting them into a Mac OS X 10.1 system, Apple has posted Mac OS X 10.1: Cameras and devices compatible with Image Capture in its AppleCare Knowledge Database...[posted at 11:15 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- Brother OS X Drivers update - Driver files for Brother printers and other SOHO devices
I finally received my update CD package from Apple today. Ironically, the $20 update package that includes the OS X 10.1 upgrade CD, a 9.2 full install CD and the new developer tools CD comes in a much less attractive package than the freebie version I picked up a couple of weekends ago at my local CompUSA store. The package does offer a fresh batch of official Apple certificates, which were not part of the freebie package, but the $20 upgrade package doesn't come in the well-organized packaging that were part of the free upgrade. Interesting...
-- Another in-depth report, this time from Apple, is The portable creative workstation, showing how a PowerBook G4 can be used as an all-in-one machine for audio, video, Web site creation and other creative projects...[posted at 11:39 a.m. PDT] -- Workingmac takes a first look at the final version of QuicKeys for OS X...[posted at 11:33 a.m. PDT] -- SkyLine PCMCIA drivers for OS X [Go2mac]...[posted at 11:30 a.m. PDT] -- Tenon releases public beta of Mac OS X web server suite [MacObserver]...[posted at 11:28 a.m. PDT] -- Ready to do some in-depth reading and analysis of OS X? A detailed article from AppleLust digs into the way that Apple is working to keep the friendly Mac face the leading feature of OS X, while still offering access to the power of Unix underneath the user interface...[posted at 11:26 a.m. PDT] -- The Digital Camera Resource Page offers a list of cameras and media card readers that are confirmed to be compatible with OS X 10.1. One thing on the list as NOT working is the Sandisk USB Imagemate CompactFlash reader, which I just bought yesterday to finally load photos onto my PowerBook under OS X 10.1. I have heard in the past that this adapter does work under OS X, so I hope that the mention of it on this page is wrong...[posted at 11:21 a.m. PDT] -- Writers at Go2mac offer their analysis of OS X 10.1 in their article, "OS X: A platform divided"...[posted at 11:15 a.m. PDT]
Apple's bungled upgrade to OS X 10.1 continues to amaze me. It has been more than a week since X.1 was made available at select stores in limited quantities, and even though I ordered the $20 upgrade CD package two weeks ago, I still haven't received the package. OS X 10.1 is great, take my word for that, but no one should have to jump through these kinds of hoops or wait this long to get a software upgrade...
-- Adaptec has released a document called the Mac OS X Compliance Update, with details about which of its adapters currently work or will be supported under OS X...[posted at 5:46 p.m. PDT] -- TidBITS posted issue No. 600 last night, and Adam Engst and his crew announce new services and features for the must-read newsletter, including an HTML version of the e-mailed newsletter, new features in the TidBITS Web database and syndication of TidBITS articles using RSS...[posted at 10:09 a.m. PDT] -- There is a new bug or "feature" in Internet Explorer 5.1.2 under OS X 10.1 that is driving me nuts. On my PowerBook, if I click and hold on a link, the browser used to bring up a pop-up menu with a variety of options, such as copying the URL to the clipboard or opening the link in a new window. But under this new version of IE, I have to click and hold on the link, then move the cursor a bit to get the pop-up menu to activate. And even with this bit of juggling, it still doesn't activate half the time...[posted at 9:14 a.m. PDT] -- The WebSTAR Server Suite V for use under Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server is available today from 4D. The completely rewritten Web server, mail server and FTP server suite is a $199 upgrade for users of 4.x and $299 for users of 3.x. The program is $399 for first-time buyers, and like many recent software packages, the cost pays for a license with one year of technical support and software updates. Yearly updates cost $179...[posted at 8:32 a.m. PDT] -- Do use Blogger with OS X 10.1? You may want to check out BlogScript 0.9 from Tim Conner. It allows you to select text from any application and choose BlogScript from the AppleScript Menu to publish to your Web site using the XML-RPC features of the new operating system....[posted at 8:24 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- BBEdit 6.1.2+ - This is an 18k bug fix from Bare Bones that addresses a problem where files are not being added to the Open Recent menu under OS X 10.1
-- Dig into details about the AppleScript capabilities of OS X 10.1 on the AppleScript Sourcebook. And speaking of AppleScript, I have been seeing an odd behavior with my PowerBook and the downloadable AppleScript Menu add on from Apple. The menu icon keeps disappearing on me at random times when I sleep and then restart my machine, especially when I wake the machine when it is connected to an external monitor...[posted at 3:37 p.m. PDT] -- Gene Steinberg wrote an article today on Mac Review Zone about how to maximize PowerBook battery life under OS X 10.1. It is worth reading if you use a PowerBook for your computing, and he offers a pretty good list of tips. I would add the following: - Turn off Classic to add additional time to your battery life -- Mac OS X Image Capture exemplifies digital hub idea [MacCentral]...[posted at 1:27 p.m. PDT] -- The final version of CE QuicKeys X 1.0 is available today for OS X 10.1...MacCentral offers information about the upgrade...[posted at 1:11 p.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- VueScan 7.1.22 - Update to the alternative scanner program
-- Yesterday's updates on MacFixIt's OS X page has some interesting tidbits about adding items to your OS X 10.1 menu bar as well as reported problems caused by the Word Test Drive for OS X...[posted at 12:03 p.m. PDT] -- Epson has updated its printer support page with details about when to expect OS X compatible drivers for selected printers. Look for additional Epson drivers to become available starting Oct. 20...[posted at 12 p.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- VueScan 7.1.21 - Alternative scanner software
I just realized this morning that for the last couple of days, this site has been missing some major pieces of info - all of my entries from September until earlier this week. I am going to try and restore as much of it as possible later today when I get home and consult my latest backups, which were done last weekend before I upgraded to OS X 10.1. There is an obvious lesson here...backup your data, early and often... Back in business with the September archive! But I still lost all of my posts from Sept. 26 through Oct. 1, including those I posted when I first picked up OS X 10.1...
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- Myst III: Exile X 1.22 - An update to the sequel to Myst
-- Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jim Heid sums up his impressions of OS X in Oh what a difference a .1 makes...[posted at 11:18 a.m. PDT]
Four days into using and thoroughly testing OS X 10.1 on my Pismo PowerBook with 192 megs of RAM, and I am still pretty happy with this upgrade. But there seems to be as many quirks and problems with OS X 10.1 as there are fixes and positives....well, nearly. It is hard to believe that IE 5.1.2 that comes with 10.1 has such a huge security hole, and then to learn that using your iDisk with 10.1 opens up big security risks as well. And until I fixed it this morning, I couldn't run Web sharing on my PowerBook because someone at Apple forgot to make a small change in a configuration file with the upgrade. OS X 10.1 is a monumental improvement over 10.0.4, but using it doesn't invoke the feelings of nirvana that some seem to feel with this update. 10.1 is much faster than its predecesor, but it is still slow doing some things. For instance, if you need to use Classic to run older applications, on my machine it takes more than 100 seconds for Classic to start up. And the shutdown process for this OS, although much faster than it was, is still too slow. Here are a few observations and decisions I have made with my machine under OS X 10.1: - Although Mail appears to have made some notable improvements since its previous release (flags to denote if you have replied to a message, among the most useful), I am still putting up with the relative slowness and old-time user interface quirks of Eudora 5.1b16. Simply put, I don't trust Mail. I don't trust the way it stores attachments mixed in with its messages. I don't trust that I won't get caught by the POPspool bug that has plagued some users, where they see mail come in but it never appears in their In box. And most of all, I don't trust that Apple will continue to develop and improve the program now that it exists in its current form. - I am still using IE 5.1.2, but grudgingly. I eagerly await a new version of OmniWeb, with hopes that it will offer some Java integration and better long-term usage abilities than the previous version of OmniWeb had under 10.0.4. The old version of OmniWeb, which I still use quite a bit, tends to get sluggish if left running day after day. - It is high time that I stop waiting for Dantz to come up with a useable version of Retrospect for OS X. First they said the backup program would be available with the final release of OS X 10.1, and now they say it will be another month and that sometime after the arrival of OS X 10.1.1 (this numbering scheme must have been dreamed up by the same geniuses who came up with the distribution plan for OS X 10.1) they will have a working version of Retrospect for OS X. Backups are too important to have to wait eight months from the arrival of OS X in March until a working version of the main backup utility is available. - I must learn AppleScript. OS X 10.1 integrates a lot more of the capabilities of AppleScript into the Finder and other areas of the OS, and the sample scripts that can be downloaded from Apple's AppleScript page are way too cool. If you are lucky enough to be running 10.1 now and you still haven't downloaded and installed the AppleScript Menu in your menu bar, do it. You will love the possibilities. OS X 10.1 is truly a must-have OS if you plan to stick with using the Mac from now into the future. And if you have been holding out, thinking or hoping that this whole Mac-running-on-top-of-Unix thing was going to pass like a bad nightmare, it is time to wake up.
-- In addition the problem with the new version of Internet Explorer under OS X 10.1 leaving your computer open to hackers who would create malicious files compressed in binhex of macbinary format, Open Door Networks offers a word of advice for those using iDisk. Under OS X 10.1, if you use iDisk you are sending your password across the Internet in plain text format, and it can easily be intercepted...[posted at 11:53 a.m. PDT] -- If, like me, you cannot get Web sharing to work under OS X 10.1 after making the upgrade, the stepwise Web site offers an explanation of the problem and a solution. This is must-read material if you want to run a Web server on your OS X 10.1 system that had previously been patched with the Apple Web sharing update that was available through Software Update a month or so ago. The update involves using the Terminal application and pasting in the following: sudo perl -i.prefix -p -e 's/apple_hfs_module/hfs_apple_module/g' /etc/httpd/httpd.confYour Mac will ask for your password before making the changes. [found on MacFixIt]...[posted at 9:52 a.m. PDT] -- 80,000 Microsoft servers 'disappear' [vnunet]...[posted at 9:43 a.m. PDT] -- Tri-BACKUP and Tri-CATALOG support Mac OS X [MacCentral]...[posted at 9:40 a.m. PDT] -- Still waiting for your CDs to upgrade to OS X 10.1? Join the crowd. If I had not been lucky enough to grab a copy from my local CompUSA store last Saturday, I would still be waiting too. I ordered the pay version of the upgrade from the Apple Store last week by phone, and nothing has been delivered so far. The Mac Night Owl takes a look at the situation and has a few comments from Apple folks about this odd upgrade CD hunt in Apple looking into the availability of free 10.1 updates...[posted at 9:37 a.m. PDT] -- Buy a Mac from an Apple retail store, get free RAM [MacCentral]...[posted at 9:33 a.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- iJect 1.1 - Freeware program that remaps the CD eject key from F12 to Shift-F12
The disaster-free upgrade to Mac OS X 10.1 [O'Reilly Network]...[posted at 4:29 p.m. PDT]
Noted from Versiontracker.com...
- BBEdit Lite 6.1.2 - Freeware version of the popular text editor
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