Macintosh | Bieber Labs

Well, I got my MacBook updated to Leopard last night. I chose to upgrade over Tiger, despite reading quite a few articles recommending against it like this one. Truth be told, I read those articles after the upgrade process had already been started - so it was kind of too late to turn back.

I’ve had few issues. Leopard did wipe out my printer settings that I worked so hard to figure out (this apparently happened to others as well). I thought there was some extra magic that I had to do, as I set up the printer last night multiple times with no ability to print. As I started to look at it this morning, it wound up the Windows machine went to sleep. Once I woke it up, the printer worked fine. I suppose this would have been an easy thing to check last night but I stopped work and went to bed, opting to let Spotlight and Time Machine do their thing while I got some sleep.

All of my applications seem to work fine. I did have to reinstall the FeedBurner Dashboard Widget, and Twidget seems to be a little flaky, but honestly I can’t tell right now if its the widget or Twitter itself. I also had to update the Cisco VPN Client to version 4.9.01.0080, which I found on MacUpdate.

Overall though, everything looks fine. My impression of Leopard over Tiger at this stage can be best characterized in one word: “eh”. Time Machine is cool and I can see it will make my life much easier than manually backing things up to my external drive. Coverflow in the Finder is cool, but I can’t see a practical use for it. Spaces will be great, if I can figure out how to use it.

I guess its fair to say I just haven’t spent much time with it yet. Time will tell whether it was worth it or not. I’m just glad the machine booted.

How To Set Up Mac OSX To Print to a Windows Print Share

I found one annoyance about Mac OSX. I could not figure out how to set my Mac up to print to our shared printer that is connected to a Windows XP machine.

Well, thats not necessarily true. I figured it out once, but for some reason it just stopped working using the standard printer setup. Since then, I’ve been printing to PDF, emailing the document to myself, and grabbing it on the machine with the printer and printing the PDF. Since we were setting up Jonna’s new Vista machine anyway and working through those connectivity issues, I decided to work on getting printing to work for real.

After culling through a bajillion posts today, I finally figured out how to do it. I figured this ‘pictorial’ could give you all of the steps you need to do without having to go through the effort that I did to get the information.

As an aside, all images were grabbed and marked up using Skitch.

Step 2 - Click Add Button

Step 3 - Option Click More Printers

Apple made it very non-intuitive to get to the advanced options. You have to hold down the Option key, then click “More Printers” in order to get to it. This annoyed me. The advanced option should be there no matter what. I shouldn’t have to do anything special to add the smb: address of the printer.

Step 4 - Select Advanced from drop down

Step 5 - Select Windows Printer via Samba

Step 6 - Enter smb:// URL

‘username:password’ is the username and password to log into the Windows machine with. IP Address is the IP of the Windows machine with the printer, and finally share name is the name you gave to the printer when you shared it.

Step 7 - Select Printer Type

I hope this “graphical representation” of the process helps you get your shared printers up and running. This is what I needed. Rather, I had to read through many false starts and theories before getting to the meat of the issue, which was essentially getting to the ‘Advanced’ options in the print manager. Now you know the secret. Happy printing!

iPod Power Adapter - Sold Separately

Photo by rbieber

Kudos to Apple for getting an even larger share of my wallet. When you buy an 80G iPod, the only way you can charge it is through your PC. In order to charge via AC power (say when your getting ready to travel and will not be taking your home machine with you), you have to spend another $40 on a USB Power adapter. These use to come WITH the unit.

This Weeks Drunk and Retired Podcast, OS X, and Dashboard Widgets

Dave Fayram sits in with Cote this week on his podcast talking about Rails backends. This was all interesting, but what really caught my ear was the last 11 minutes or so of the podcast, where Cote and Dave start talking about using OS X in businesses, and Dave describes his all Mac office and brings up the use of Bon Jour as “their own personal twitter server” and the use of dashboard widgets to perform work in context, much of what I was thinking about when I wrote Metrics As a Side Effect last week. Its cool to see that other people are thinking about this stuff, and a shame that businesses are so stuck in the “business use” of Windows that we cannot take advantage of some of the ultimately cool things available on the Mac to increase personal productivity, such as the dashboard, Growl, and Rendezvous.

It was interesting to hear Dave talk about how “beautiful” their infrastructure is, because they have been able to focus on things aside from security, VPN, notification frameworks and the like because a lot of the things that infrastructure folks spend most of their time on are taken care of already on a Mac network.

I have to say, I am at least 5x more productive at home on my Mac than I am waiting 15 minutes for my Windows machine to boot and log into the network in the office. I tend to do my most important work off hours now, just to be able to work on a more intuitive and easier to use machine. I feel like I can concentrate more on the problem I am working on than how to do it, which again, tied into the whole Rails conversation for me.

Very interesting discussion. Excellent content. I highly recommend this one.

First Trip To The Genius Bar

Since buying my Macbook in June, I’ve become extremely addicted. I’ve made an investment in repurchasing software where necessary and buying software that I’ve talked about on the blog and have converted over to it being my primary machine. I’ve been extremely impressed with the machine thus far and actually, at this point, find it torture to move back to Windows for any period of time.

I’ve had really no problems until recently. All of a sudden over the past four weeks or so, I’ve had issues with the magnetic AC adapter plug actually seating properly. At first, I would go into the living room unplugged, come back to plug in and would notice that the light on the AC adapter plug didn’t go on. A quick jiggle and the machine was charging again.

More recently, the light would just turn off randomly and the ‘jiggling’ became a more concerted effort to get the plug seated. So I decided on Saturday that it would be a good time to make my first trip to the Genius Bar over at the Apple store in Woodfield to see what they could do for me.

Once again, I have to hand it to Apple. I walked into the store and explained my problem and the person at the register kindly explained to me that I could walk to any machine in the store, hit the ‘Concierge’ button on any of them, and schedule time with a ‘Genius’. As soon as we registered, my name appeared on a screen above the bar, along with a ton of iPod and OS X tips that circulated on the screen so I knew exactly where I was in line and had something to do while I waited.

When my turn came, I went up to the bar, pulled the machine out of its original box and explained the problem. A quick test of another plug found the AC plug to be bad. A few minutes later I had a brand new AC adapter and was walking out of the store to have lunch with Jonna.

I like the environment that Apple has created in its stores. Its a marked difference from going to the ‘Geek Squad’ at Best Buy. Going with the same problem there would have been standing in line getting irritated because nothing was there to keep my head busy except watching the 4 people in front of me, only to get up to the counter to watch some kid fumble around with the machine (not the plug) until I had to direct him to what the actual problem was (I’ve had this happen, its rather irritating). Apple obviously realizes the problems with standing in line with a problem and has gone to the lengths to keep people occupied and interested in something as they wait.

I also found the staff to be extremely knowledgeable and polite as I watched the people in front of me get their problems solved with their iPods, which usually came down to a reboot, which while is documented in the manual, even I had issues with (I tend not to read manuals). The staff dealt with even these common sense (once you know them) questions politely and like it was the first time they had answered them.

I have to give major kudos to Apple for the concept of the Genius Bar. It made for yet another positive Apple experience for me.

Mac Software I’m Finding Useful

I thought I’d take some time to sit down and document the tools I’ve been using lately as I continue my acclamation into the MacIntosh world. These are tools that I’ve found really useful over the last six months or so.

The Camino Browser - hands down the best browser I’ve found for the Mac so far. It’s my default browser.
Ecto - Mac Native application for writing blog entries and posting them to your blog. Supports Blogger, Blojsom, Drupal, MovableType, Nucleus, TypePad, and WordPress among others. Doug referred to MarsEdit as another alternative, but Ecto fits the bill for me perfectly. It includes spell checker, Amazon Web Services integration, templates, preview - really everything you would want in an offline authoring tool.
Vienna Newsreader - Vienna is an open source RSS reader for the Macintosh. It is quite comparable to FeedDemon, which I used on Windows, but I like it a lot better. This tool has become one of the things I use daily in order to keep up with things
Snap N Drag - Screen capture utility I mentioned in previous posts. I use this all the time as well. Excellent tool.
BBEdit 8.5 - BBEdit is an HTML editor for the MacIntosh platform. Its the only thing I’ve found comparable to HomeSite for the Macintosh. I’m using a trial version of this application right now, but there is a good chance that when the 30 day trial ends, I’ll be buying a copy. It makes HTML authoring a hell of a lot easier than Emacs.
UberCaster - This is podcasting software. I have a license for it, but I haven’t had the time to muck about with it. By far the easiest podcasting software I’ve seen so far for the Macintosh. The software is currently in beta.

Some additional software I’m looking at that looks useful, but I don’t have need for it yet:

Xyle Scope - CSS exploration tool. I’ve messed around with this a bit and it looks really interesting. I haven’t found another tool like it so far. Allows you to explore CSS and how the styles are resolved on your page.

I’m still looking for good image editing software that doesn’t cost a bajillion dollars (like Photoshop) and doesn’t require X-Windows to be installed. If anyone has any suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them.

Building Subversion on The Mac and using Ecto for Blogging

I finally upgraded my Subversion installation on my MacIntosh to the 1.4 version. I was waiting for the “official” packages to come out so that I could just install it, but in looking at the different places recommended by the downloads page, these distributions haven’t been updated since early 1.3 releases.

I’ve had a goal to keep my Mac somewhat pristine. I decided thats not really practical. There are a lot of things that I use that I just like having built from scratch, so that I’m on the most current software and not dependent on someone else’s schedule. Subversion is one of those tools.

One thing I was shocked at was how quickly and seamlessly the build happened on the Mac. These MacBooks are pretty fast machines. I think it took a total of roughly 20 minutes (if that) to build, run tests, and install. The build on the Mac is definitely the fastest configure/check/install cycle I’ve gone through in the many installations of Subversion that I have performed over the years.

I tell you, the more I’m on the Mac, the more I like it. I haven’t run into anything that I’ve found irritating.

Its all good.

This is also the first post I am writing using a trial version of Ecto. I have to say, this application is pretty impressive too. They have both a Mac and a Windows version. I like it much better than blogging in Wordpress directly - and at $17.95 a copy, its practically a no brainer to purchase.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to milk the 21 day trial, but it feels like this application is a pretty good fit for me.

Pathway Wikipedia Visualizer

Photo by rbieber

The Pathway Wikipedia Visualizer. Pretty cool application.

I played around with this application a little tonight. For each page you go to, it lays out all of the links for you. You navigate based on the links laid out and you can keep track visually of everywhere you’ve been.

Way cool.

Is Apples MacBook Pro Rotten To The Core?

Articles like this top Digg article of the morning from ZDNet make me extremely nervous about my new purchase. I tend to be somewhat of an “early adopter” once I actually make a decision and I’m starting to rethink that purchasing strategy. I have (so far) had no problems with the MacBook, but according to the article it could take a couple of months for the symptoms to occur.

Why Mac’s Suck

I found this video via Ed Gibb’s KungFuGrip site and it cracked me up. Enjoy!

The folks at iMedia have put together a video rebuttal to this video. While not as funny, it is informative.

MacIntosh Web Browsers

In my short life as a Mac user, I’ve taken some time to find the browser that fits me well. My first inclination was to use Safari but for some reason, it didn’t “feel” right to me. The interface is flat and boring to me for some reason. Next, I downloaded Firefox. This is my favorite Windows based browser and I like the standards support and the fast rendering you get with this browser. It works fine on Macintosh, but once again, it didn’t “feel right”. I suppose this is the beginnings of the “Mac User Snobbery” kicking in. I like to run things that look like they are meant to be on a Mac.

Over time I found and downloaded Camino. Camino is also a Gecko based web browser (Gecko being the rendering engine found in Firefox and the Mozilla browsers).

Camino has quickly become my default browser. I like the clean design of the interface and its “Native Mac-Like Construction”. It feeds the Mac Snobbery that I am slowly developing and makes me feel like I am browsing on a Mac - even more than Safari does, oddly.

The one thing I miss from Firefox is the del.icio.us extension. This extension quickly became a huge dependency for me, as I like to keep all bookmarks in del.icio.us and not bookmark locally. Unfortunately, I am unable to find anything comparable to the del.icio.us extension for Camino.

I have, in my quest, found some pretty interesting Mac related del.icio.us applications though, including Cocoalicious, a del.icio.us client for the Mac. I’ve downloaded and installed it, but haven’t quite been able to get it to work yet. I think when I have some extra time I’m going to download the source and figure out why I can’t seem to get any of my del.icio.us data into the application.

But I digress … I do think that Camino is an excellent browser, I just really miss my bookmarking extension. I have become extremely dependent on that functionality since the extension was released, and its been a rough road not having it built into my browser. If anyone knows of a similar set of functionality for Camino, please feel free to shoot it over to me.

MacIntosh: The Chimes of Death

The Chimes of Death. I had never heard this term until last night.

Don’t worry, the new Mac Book Pro is running fine. I wish I could say the same for my wife’s iBook.

Jonna asked me for some help last night installing the Cisco VPN client on her work machine, a G4 iBook. As she turned the machine on, the fan started running and we heard three tones - and then nothing.

We tried everything. Remove the battery, remove the plug, insert the AC without the battery, insert the AC with the battery, hard reboot, reset the PMU (with some Vulcan key stroke that would make the most hardcore Emacs user cringe) - you name it, we found it on Google and tried it.

This is where, for me, the Mac fell down in usability. There is NO message on the screen whatsoever in this scenario. No clue as to whats wrong - just the three tones and the light on the front blinking. I wonder if this is something they got from the old Altairs?

In any event, it looks like the machine is dead. I’m sure that she will have to have her IT department send or take it somewhere to get the problem resolved. Most of what I read mentioned either bad RAM or a bad logic board. The RAM is doubtful, as the machine has been running fine for months and no memory upgrades have been done.

Apple definitely needs to work on the customer experience when these types of problems occur. These machines are brilliant until you have a problem. Then it seems that there is nothing you can do, including diagnosing the problem. You get literally NO information, just three chimes and a dark screen.

I can tell you, when something like this happens and you Google around for some answers, you find some pretty pissed off Mac users out there.

The Mac has Spoiled Me

On Sunday we went to Jonna’s company picnic and had forgotten the camera. Jake had his camera and we took some pictures there. When we got home I smugly hooked up Jakes Kodak EasyShare C330 4MP Digital Camera to the Mac and oddly got the message “No images to import”.

Checking the iPhoto camera compatibility list I found that the Kodak EasyShare C330 4MP Digital Camera is not compatible with iPhoto. You know what this means … time to boot up the Windows machine upstairs. It goes without saying that my puffed up chest deflated just a bit.

I put it off for a couple of days, but this morning I decided to grab the pictures off the camera to upload to Flickr, using my Windows machine. It literally took about 5 minutes for the machine to boot, if not more.

I’m extremely spoiled with the Mac. While I’ve done no official timings, it feels to me that I’m up and booted in about 20 seconds. A five minute wait for a system to boot and load all of its start up applications is just something that I now find intolerable.

Before grabbing the Mac, I used to come downstairs in the morning, hit the on button on the gateway, say good morning to Jonna, go to the garage to smoke, come back in, make a pot of coffee, hit the washroom — and by the time I was done the hourglass was just fading away and the machine was ready for me to finally hit my email.

Ed Gibbs wrote a post on Saturday about how fun PhotoBooth had been with his kids on visit to the Apple store, and mentions how this little application enriched the Apple Store experience. He mentions a number of positives he experienced just in the Apple Store itself, all true.

But I tell you, a key piece of the Mac experience for me over the past few weeks has been the complete rearrangment of my schedule in the morning. All of that stuff that I used to do in the morning still happens, but in a completely different order. Now I hit the on button on my Mac, run into the living room to say good morning to Jonna, come back to my desk, log in, check email, check my daily feed, and maybe get up at some point to make coffee.

The Mac has eliminated a LOT of wait time in the morning. For me, thats worth the price of admission. Photobooth is pretty damn fun too though.

iTunes Music Store Faster on a Mac?

I’ve been meaning to throw this question up here for a while. Is it just me, or is the iTunes Music store a hell of a lot faster on a Mac than it is on Windows?

While I like the convenience of iTunes, I absolutely dreaded hitting the music store on my Windows machine. It felt like it took forever to get any decent results. Since moving to the Mac though, the Music Store responds extremely quickly and I have no qualms about doing searches and browsing around now.

I’m just curious - has anyone else that has both types of machines noticed this behavior, or is it just my mind playing tricks on me?

New Things To Learn!

One of the really nice things about switching platforms is the plethora of new things one now has the capability to learn that you might not have found a reason to learn before.

I’m a stickler on having something practical to do when learning something. If I don’t have a real thing to shoot for when learning a language, its pretty much a guarantee that I won’t be able to learn it.

The conversion to the Mac platform, the availability of the development tools through the Apple Developer site, and some time spent reading iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business has given me a lot of motivation to dig down and learn Objective C.

Free tools have been around for Objective C programming for quite a long time. The GCC compiler has supported Objective C as far back as I could remember. But frankly, I saw no reason to learn it when I had all of these scripting languages available and most of my Unix work has been either web based, or command line driven tools.

However, the last three or four weeks sitting with the Mac and working within the Mac UI has gotten my curiousity peaked on this odd little language that really gets no visibility until a few guys from NeXT choose it as the basis of their development tools. I really want first hand experience to understand why the guys at NeXT chose this language as the basis of their platform.

Now, I’ve done a lot of C and C++ programming in the past, so one might think that learning Objective C would be no big deal. I have to tell you, I’m struggling a bit. One thing I do think is pretty cool is the dynamic nature of the language. To me, it seems very Python / Ruby - ish in that respect. However, its a lot to learn and I’m really going to have to spend some quality time with some books to get familiar with the concepts. Its very different than C++.

I’ve got three books on order from Amazon: Programming in Objective-C, Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, 2nd Edition, and Building Cocoa Applications : A Step by Step Guide. Unfortunately, I received #2 before #1, and #1 is definitely the book I need first.

I think its pretty cool that I have the excuse to learn something completely different. The past four weeks on a new platform has been interesting to me. Its really like starting all over again with a whole new world available to me — which is what attracted me to this field in the first place.

Objective C Resources

Objective-C: the More Flexible C++ - Linux Journal
C and Objective C Compared - MacTech.com
comp.lang.objective-c FAQ

iTunes Finally Converted to MacBook

Well, after about two days of file copying, I finally got all of my iTunes stuff moved over to the new Mac. Why did it take so long you ask? I’m not really sure.

Copying between the Windows box and the MacIntosh using Windows File Sharing just didn’t work unattended. It kept failing for some reason. After about three tries at that, I decided to install cwRSync so that I could restart incrementally, but for some reason, this would not run unattended either, and I didn’t want to spend forever running back and forth between the family room and the living room (where my desk is).

Finally I decided to copy my iTunes library up to the Linux server. I started it at about 7:00am and by 7:30-8:00pm on Tuesday the file copy had completed with no interruptions. On Wednesday, I started an rsync from the Linux server to the MacBook. Another 12 hours later and that was complete.

I had heard horror stories about moving this stuff around if you had purchased music and was a little worried that I would have to spend a lot of time getting the machine authorized and stuff like that. Not so. As a matter of fact, I found these instructions on moving your iTunes library with metadata and they worked without a hitch. I now have all of my music on the MacBook. Nice!

I really do like this environment a lot better than anything I’ve used in the past. I’m not clear as to why I had all of the copy failures I had from machine to machine, but thankfully I’ve got the trusty SuSE server to back me up.

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