I recently replaced the Mac Mini I use to host my web development with a PowerMac G4. (Story: the Mini was mine, a personal purchase I made to support my work on Scriblio and other WordPress-related projects, but recent changes in our network and firewall policy made the machine inaccessible from off-campus without using the VPN. Having a personal machine sit at my desk at work isn’t as useful if I can’t use it conveniently and for para-work activities, so I wanted to take the Mini home.) The first challenge was replacing the x86-specific apps and daemons with PPC versions, the next one was in coming to terms with how dramatically slower the dual 1GHz G4 is from the 1.66Ghz Core Duo.

John Poole’s 2006 blog post confirmed what I was feeling: G4s are way slower than I realized at the time.

Perian: “The swiss-army knife of QuickTime components”

• File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
• Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture

The LGPL-licensed QuickTime plugin installs easily on Mac OS X 10.5 and does what it promises. FLV videos (such as those you’d sneakily download from YouTube) open just like any other QuickTime vid, and you can easily export them to other types.

Setting aside questions about the usefulness of antivirus software for Macs, it appears VirusBarrier (commercial) and ClamXav (open source) are the best options. There are others, of course.

Added: Avast offers a free version for MacOS X as well.

I’m really glad to see the news about the iPhone 3g. I’m interested in how the new mobile me service takes a small step toward cloud-based storage services that I’ve wanted for a while. And the news that Max OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” will focus on speed and stability, rather than features is good, especially considering the following.

You see, I’m a fan of Apple products. Not because I like the brand, but because the products work for me. I do enjoy that the Apple style is rather compatible with mine, and I have to admit that Apple products have influenced my work and choices, but now I’m realizing that I really do enjoy the products simply because they help me do the things I want to do faster and better…until they don’t.

I used to love iPhoto. Even more than taking pictures, I enjoy sharing them. iPhoto did that, and the editing tools made quick work of preparing my photos for sharing. I find iPhoto’s adjustment tools faster and easier to use than Photoshop’s (I started using Photoshop at version 2.0, so I’m more than comfortable with it), and the organization tools — the digital shoebox — have given me been a fair place to keep the large number of photos I’ve taken over the years. And that’s the problem.

I now have over 20,000 photos in my iPhoto library, and the performance of the application has dropped significantly. Further, my whole computing experience falls down when it’s open, even though I’m running a not-too-slouchy 2.16 GHZ Mac Book Pro with 2GB of RAM. It’s gotten to the point that I cringe when I plug in my iPhone after taking a few pictures and it opens to download them. And yesterday I finally worked up the courage to download the 300 photos that had been collecting on my DSLR.

In short, I realize now that iPhoto’s non-performance has taken the fun out of photography.

People suggest that I could archive my old photos to DVD or create separate libraries, but that misses the fact that a huge part of iPhoto’s value to me is in having easy access to all my photos without having to remember what disk they’re on. The storage issue was what had me propose Space Ship, as the 53 GB of photos hardly have to remain on my local hard drive, and it’s keeping me from switching to a MacBook Air, but the performance issue may drive me from iPhoto, and possibly the Mac platform all together.

You see, without easy access to my media, I lose much of the value that the iLife suite brings to me. Why use iMovie if the media browser can’t find the source photos and videos that are no longer in iPhoto? Keynote’s integration of the iLife media browser was great, but again, if my source material isn’t there, why use it? If I have to go through the effort of manually managing my now far-flung media, why use a Mac at all?

Please Steve, I’ve loved Apple products all these years because they did what computers where supposed to do: they made my life easier, more fun, and more productive (even if “productive” means getting an great photo of a family vacation). But you’ve not mentioned the Mac being the center of my digital life in some time, and it’s clear from Apple’s recent product announcements that the company is focusing elsewhere. Please remember that I enjoy creating media as much as consuming it, and I need products and services that support that creativity.

We knew iLife 08 was a bit ho-hum when you announced it in January, but now it’s looking pretty tired.

Apple’s Time Capsule is great. Seriously. When has backup been easier? But I need more.

The MacBook Air’s small storage highlights a problem I’ve been suffering for some time: there’s never enough storage. The slower processor and limited RAM expansion are sufferable, but storage isn’t. The 120GB drive in my MacBook Pro now is stuffed with 8GB of music (and that’s after spending hours paring it down a few weeks ago), and almost 50GB of pictures. I’ve piled up almost 10GB of email, another 10GB of stuff in my downloads and desktop folders that I can’t quite place nor get rid of, and a paltry 5GB of just plain old documents.

That’s about 80GB of my own stuff, add to that 8GB of applications and 15GB of stuff in /Library, /System, and /var (well, /private/var). Now recognize that a “120GB” drive can really only store about 110GB and you see my problem.

My photo library grows fast. I took 1.5GB of photos last weekend. Most of them are junk, and I’ve started actually tossing ones I don’t think I’ll ever use, but it hurts. I’ve also tried burning photos of to CD or DVD, but that defeats the point of having a library in the first place. And none of this changes the fact that, even without my photos, I’d be bumping in to the limits of the Air’s disk capacity (let’s assume that I’d be getting the 80GB HDD model, not the 64GB and at least $1000 more expensive SSD model). And then I have to ask myself “do I really care if I have a Mac if I can’t have iPhoto?” The short answer is “less so.”

So here’s my real question: Why hasn’t Apple figured out how to offer me a storage solution that puts frequently used items on local disk, and less-frequently used items on a network disk? Seamlessly.

Really. I want my iPhoto and iTunes to work just like they always have, but if it’s been a while since I looked at the pictures of my sister’s graduation from a few years ago, I want it to put them on a remote disk. And when I do decide to look at them again, I want it to fetch them from that remote disk and show them to me as though they’d never left. It might take a moment longer for me to load them from the network, but I can suffer that. Especially if it means I don’t have to manage where they are for myself.

It’s amazing how many pieces of this are already in place. The network is nearly ubiquitous. Unix and Linux have had union filesystems for years. Clearly somebody would have to think seriously about what happens if the network isn’t there, but that’s solvable. The value of having a hard drive with elastic capacity and seamless live backups is certainly worth it.

p0ps Harlow tweeted something about trying to get an AMP environment running on his Mac. Conversation followed, and eventually I sent along an email that look sorta like this:

If you’re running 10.4 (I doubt it, but it’s worth mentioning because I’m most familiar with it), here’s how I’ve setup dozens of machines for web development and WordPress:

Install MySQL
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#macosx-dmg

Install Marc Liyanage’s PHP 5 package
http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/

From there all you have to do is install WordPress.

10.5 changed lots of this (as you probably already know). The good news is that it includes current versions of the AMP suite. The bad news is that the PHP doesn’t include a number of useful components. Still, it will run WordPress and I’ve got it working on my laptop. These directions look like pretty much what I had to do:

http://stringfoo.com/2007/11/05/server_setup_on_leopard/
http://remysharp.com/2007/10/27/lamp-in-leopard-osx-105-php5-and-apache-22

It’s likely none of that will be helpful, in which case you will have discovered why I’m no longer a sysadmin.

Marc Liyanage’s builds of PHP for Mac are probably the easiest to use and they include most all the extensions a person could want, but he hadn’t released a package for Leopard at the time (he’s got a release in beta now). As it turned out, p0ps actually was running 10.4, and he got things going in a jiffy.

I’m as annoyed as the next guy about how hard it is to find a decent screencast app for Mac. The forthcoming Mac OS 10.5’s new iChat Theater (and the built-in screen sharing/control features) should create some new opportunities for developers, but right now it’s hard to know what works or is worth trying.

Further, I narrowed the field with the following requirement: I need an app that records to QuickTime-compatible files, not Flash. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

• Snapz Pro X, the $70 oft-cited front runner is now native.
• iShowU, $20.
• ScreenRecord, $20.
• Copernicus, $free.

Extra: this how-to pointed out OmniDazzle and Mouseposé as tools to help draw users’ focus during both live or recorded demos.

screencast, mac, mac os x, apple, demo, screen sharing, screen copy

Old instructions that connect the Mac OS X Address Book app to a phone via Bluetooth from O’Reilly and SillyDog. Once paired, the Address Book can initiate dialing, notify the user of incoming calls, and send SMS texts.

Bluetooth Texter SMS Widget, message2net, and BluePhoneElite all offer further tools to interact with your Bluetooth-connected mobile phone. The list of compatible phones (BPE & m2n) offers some leads for those trying to make the connection.

Finally, Simon Winter offers some tips on interacting with SMS via AppleScript.

bluetooth, mac, mac os x, sms, texting, applescript, cell phone

Those of us hoping for an early release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard might be disappointed to learn that Apple will just be getting around to giving out a “feature complete” beta at WWDC in mid-June. If you really must have it, conference badges are $1,295.

The Leopard beta. Available first at WWDC.
At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, we’re planning to show you a feature-complete version of Mac OS X Leopard, and you can take home a beta copy. Be the first to get your hands on the Leopard beta and get a huge head start on development. Register now for WWDC 2007–it’s your ticket to the future of Mac OS X.

Nobody knows how long until the full release (or a torrent of the beta) is available.

Leopard, Mac OS Leopard, Mac OS X, Mac OS X 10.5, beta, WWDC, Mac, waiting

It couldn’t be much easier. I’d previously posted command line instructions, but it turns out that there’s a huge number of people who don’t know the easy way: just CTRL-click on the file and select “Create Archive…” You’ll also find the option in the File menu. Either way, you’ll end up with both the original and a zipped copy.

Decompressing that zip — or any other — is as simple as double-clicking it.

Like I said, easy.

mac os x, mac, apple, os x, zip, archive, zip file, how to, instructions

For a long time I was a big fan of Dantz Retrospect Backup. For while I was so committed that I would do an incremental backup of my laptop and most every other computer in my house every day, but I’ve been using it one way or another since 1999 or 2000 or so. All those backups have added up, and they’ve even saved me a couple times. I wish, of course, that I’d been using it previously, when my laptop was stolen in 1995, or when my hard drive failed catastrophically in 1997.

Now however, Dantz has been bought by EMC and merged into a Frankencompany that appears to have no interest in maintaining their Mac products. ComputerWorld has some ideas about how I can do backups going forward, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard promises to have a pretty sweet looking backup solution built-in. But, like Mark Pilgrim, I’m worried about how I’m going to be able to access the years of data archived away on those old Retrospect-formatted CDs and DVDs.

The problem is that, for a time, I was happy to delete stuff, knowing that I had a good backup on CD or DVD. So how will I be able to get those files back? How will I be able to go back into the digital shoebox and explore my past as I once did with photos — often still in their one-hour processing envelope with negatives?

archive, backup, backup software, dantz, dantz retrospect, digital preservation, emc, emc insignia, mac, preservation, retrospect

I’m lazy, that’s all I can say to explain why I hadn’t put any serious thought into upgrading from the 1.3.x version of Apache that ships with Mac OS X to the much more feature rich 2.0.x or 2.2.x. But today I found reason enough to switch my development to 2.2.3, and I went looking to the community for information about the switch.

A post in Marc Liyanage’s forums made it clear how easy config/compile was. Minutes later I was up and running and fiddling with the new features.

Mac OS X, apache, apache 2.2.3, mac, web server

All my searching seems to confirm my hazy memory that my olf NewerTech FireWire 2 Go card does indeed support target disk mode, but the old “hold T while booting” trick doesn’t seem to be working. Another shady part of my memory is that the key command was different, but what is it? Either Google is failing me, or it really isn’t online anywhere. Help?

tdm, NewerTech, FireWire 2 Go, NewerTech FireWire 2 Go PCMCIA/CardBus Card, Target Disk Mode, mac, powerbook

Sure it’s old news, but I am pretty happy that Mac OS X 10.4 has a built-in VNC server.

You’ll still need a client, like Chicken of the VNC, but it couldn’t be much simpler to make work. Though, you could run a separate server app (even several instances of it) and work up a hack like this to allow you to have several people all logged in to the same machine (and getting different screens) simultaneously. And it’s also worth mentioning the VNC to Flash screencasting trick.

And…if what you really want to do is use and control a couple (or more) computers side by side, then what you might really want is some virtual KVM software (or, more properly, some keyboard and mouse-sharing software). Zach is super excited about Synergy for these things.

built-in, mac, Mac OS X, Mac OS X 10.4, remote control, screen sharing, virtual network network computer, VNC

Via an IM from Ryan Eby: a pointer to Andrew Escobar’s directions on how to install Apple’s Front Row.

apple, front row, hack, install, media, media pc, media player, jukebox, mac, computer

In case you’re looking: Metaphyzx’s Mac OS Wireless Adapter Compatibility List.

tags: apple, card compatibility, compatibility, compatibility list, list, mac, mac os, mac os x, macintosh, network adapter, wifi, wifi adapter, wifi cardbus card, wifi pc card, wifi pci card, wifi pcmcia card, wireless, wireless adapter, wireless adapter compatibility

I do a lot of web development on my laptop. I’ve got Apache and PHP there, so it’s really convenient, but I usually move projects off to other server before I get around to wanting to mess with mod_rewrite. Not so, recently, but I ran into a big stumbling block when I discovered OS X’s Apache comes pre-configured to ignore .htaccess files.

A couple points. First, Apache’s own mod_rewrite docs include the following quote:

Despite the tons of examples and docs, mod_rewrite is voodoo. Damned cool voodoo, but still voodoo.

So I’m not going to feel too bad about scratching my head for a minute before realizing I should check to make sure the httpd.conf file had support for .htaccess files enabled, but the second point, and I know this thanks to Richard Rutter’s Clagnut, support must also be enabled in the user’s http.conf file (located in /private/etc/httpd/users/). For full details, go read Rutter’s enabling .htaccess in OS X post.

tags: .htaccess, apache, apache http server, apache web server, docs, enabling .htaccess files, httpd.conf, mac, mac os x, mod_rewrite, os x, richard rutter

Shiira Project, an Apple WebKit-based browser with some interesting features.

Sadly, it also brings page transitions to the Mac. Let’s hope these don’t become the new <blink> .

tags: alternate browser, blink, browser, browser development, mac, webkit

Apple this morning released the Mighty Mouse ($49 at the Apple Store). With a scrollball, left and right click, and side buttons, it’s a big departure from Apple’s old opposition to multi-button mice. Apple didn’t invent the mouse, but they were probably the first to put mice through usability testing. One, two, and three button mice of a great many different shapes and sizes were tested before they settled on a one-button mouse for the original Macintosh in 1984.

Interestingly, the “buttons” appear to be solid-state electrostatic sensors which give no tactile feedback.

“A tiny speaker inside Mighty Mouse produces button-clicking and Scroll Ball-rolling sound effects.”

tags: apple, computer, hci, human factors, mac, macintosh, mice, mouse, multi-button mice, multi-button mouse, one button, one button mouse, one button mice, two button mice, two button mouse, two buttons

Other than a bit of head scratching after the announcement in June, I’ve been quiet about Apple’s switch to Intel processors. Now, ArsTechnica’s Jon “Hannibal” Stokes has written some of the most intelligent material I’ve seen since.

How’s it work? Hannibal thinks Apple’s relationship with IBM soured to the point where they refused to play the game. And Apple is imagining a world of devices Macs, iPods, and as yet unannounced portable, personal lifestyle devices. The announcement Apple didn’t make is its switch to Intel’s XScale processors for those portable devices.

It’s worth reading the whole story.

tags: apple, arstechnica, big switch, intel, ipod, mac, personal lifestyle, switch to intel, wwdc, xscale

Everybody else may know this, but MacOS X includes the command-line utility to make Windows-compatible ZIP files. It works a lot like tar, but without needing any switches.

> zip {target file} {source files}

tags: archive, command line, compression, mac, mac os X, tar, zip