Unruly Rambling - apple category

Leopard Purrs but not without a hair ball

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Like all the other Apple nerds in the world on Friday, my brain didn't wander far from the 6pm release of Mac OS X Leopard. I arrived at the local West County Apple Retail Store promptly at 5:50pm. As I walked in, I saw a line that started near the entrance of the store and went down about 60 yards. As I got closer to the "end of the line", I noticed that instead of ending it made a 90 degree turn and went across the mall to the other walkway. That walkway wrapped 90 degrees as well and stacked up back towards the apple store(although on the other side of the mall). This section of the line actually went past the apple store. The line was basically U shaped and I was at the top right tip of the U. The store opened a bit late, probably 6:05 or so but the line moved immediately. For as many people that were there, it was pretty efficient. After 30 minutes of waiting, I entered the Apple Store and was greeted with a Leopard handout and a black t-shirt celebrating it's launch. While I'm not a big fan of black t-shirts, I accepted the gift with gratitude. I plan to wear it whenever I want to annoy my non-geek friends.

After entering the store, I walked directly back to the counter and stood in a very short line of two. I checked out minutes later. Bottom line is that I went from last in line at 5:50pm to exiting the mall before 7pm. Not to shabby if you ask me. My expectations were that I'd be there a minimum of 2 hours so I was pretty happy about saving the time. One thing that struck me as odd about the whole event was the number of people that were in line and didn't buy the new operating system. I saw many people walk in, get their t-shirt, look around a bit, and leave. This seemed very weird to me then and still does now.

So now for my day and a half assessment of Leopard.

The Good

The archive and install feature worked flawlessly and seemed faster than every other OS X install that i've done in the past.
The eye candy is very nice, it seems like the LCD on my 17" MacBook Pro got detailed with high gloss polish. Seriously, everything seems more vivid.
Spaces has a very fluid feel just like Expose.
System Preference Cleanup. Sharing and Network are more clear and concise now.
Finder Updates make the finder feel more like the iLife apps.
Mail's new features ToDo's and Notes are long over due but I'll be sticking with RememberTheMilk.com for now
Tabbed Terminals may allow me to say so long to iTerm. This remains to be seen though, I've been pretty happy with iTerm.

The Bad

iCal didn't maintain my calendars and I had to sync my iPhone to get them back
Time Machine, Time Machine, Time Machine(See next paragraph)

Let's just say that the idea of time machine was the main driver behind my upgrading. I probably would have bought the OS anyway, but this was the number one feature that I wanted. The implementation of time machine is not quite what I had expected. All along I had been expecting to hook an external hard drive up to my Airport and have time machine backup wirelessly. After all, the main machines at my house are my MacBook Pro and my wife's MacBook. Time machine was suppose to save me the idle time hooking up external hard drives and copying data for hours on end. After booting up leopard for the first time, I was prompted to connect to my AirDisk without doing anything. Now that I could access the drive, I headed straight for Time Machine in System Preferences. Upon arriving, I could not find my air disk. Hmmm, I thought. I went back to the find and made sure I could copy a file there, which I could. After years of being abused my Microsoft, I wrote it off to needing a reboot. I rebooted and only received more of the same. I found the answers I was looking for, but not the ones I wanted. It seems somewhere along the way Apple removed the Air Disk feature from Time Machine. Google cache can retrieve an older version of the page where it exists, but the current features do not include this. Now I'm right back to hooking up external hard drives again only to use a new backup tool. Not exactly the experience I had hoped for. After reading more on this, it seems there is a work around for time machine. Not supported I'm sure. The work around involves pluggin the drive directly into the mac and letting time machine run once. While it's doing this, you need to execute a few unix commands to create a hidden file with appropriate permissions and ownership on the external drive. Once time machine completes it's first run, you hook it back up to the Airport and it will then be used by time machine. The fact that I have to do this work around tells me that the AirDisk is probably not to stable. Only time will tell.

My next rant on Time Machine is about this pesky window that is present when it is running. Is this really necessary? I have it minimized but I wish I could hide it all together and never see it again.

My last rant on Time Machine is around configuration. I personally don't need hourly backups. I'd be fine if time machine ran int he middle of the night every night. Hey Apple, where is the configuration? Your assumptions that I need hourly are not accurate!!!

An Open Letter to Steve Jobs

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:21:00 GMT

First off Steve, I highly doubt this was a decision made recently. My guess is that this twist was in the playbook a while back, probably pre iPhone release.

With that being said, this is brilliant marketing. By lowering the price by 1/3 or $200(really $100 since my argument is that the overcharged on purpose knowing this was coming), Apple expands the target base of potential iPhone owners. The $100 Apple Credit to early adopters takes those that were already enamored by Apple and it's products to a new level. I know several folks with an iPhone and I haven't heard a single one of them complain about the price after they purchased it. By giving these fanatical people a free $100 credit(in their mind), they will likely be sold on Apple and their products for a lot more than just the iPhone. Think of all the people that are PC users that bought iPhone at $599. The Mac Mini price point of $599 might be a good option for those in the market for a new computer with a $100 credit. Assume that this occurs and some small percentage of people buy a Mac Mini and eventually join the cult. This is the gift that keeps on giving.

Now, what was the risk in pulling this off? The only thing I see is less iPhone sales during the launch due to the inflated price. Since Apple has a cult like following, this risk is lower than it would be for the average company. In other words, some people will buy Apple products because of their brand loyalty without regard to price or competitive pricing logic. The functional quality and head turning beauty of the iPhone was bound seal the deal for another large chunk of the risk factor audience. Finally, if all else failed, Apple certainly had the media hype going and could have triggered this price reduction early on to salvage any hit that they took.

Since I'm not a marketing guy, tell me where I'm wrong...

Here is the link to the document that inspired this late night post.
An open letter to iPhone owners from Steve Jobs

iPhone email, how do you have it configured.

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:49:46 GMT

The first couple weeks that I had my iPhone, I was using POP3 to retrieve my mail from google. I have my domain setup through Google's hosted service. To make a long story short, this didn't work so well. If you want the details just google and you will find plenty of gripes about gmail and the iphone. The bottom line is that if you have more than one place that you read mail, you need a better solution than POP3.

This is where I embarked on my journey to find a free IMAP provider. With IMAP, I would be able to read my mail on the iphone and when I got home, my Macbook pro would show it marked as read. I basically had two views into the same email system. After doing some searches, I found out that AOL offered free IMAP email accounts. Since AOL is a pretty substantial name, I assumed the service would be decent so I decided to go this route. My setup was as follows. Inside of gmail, I setup the forwarding to forward all mail to this AOL IMAP account. I also set gmail up to archive the mails once they were forwarded. On my iphone, I added the new IMAP provider using the "Other" option when setting up email. The special thing that I did was input the gmail smtp server instead of the IMAP server. Why? Well because I don't want people knowing that I'm using AOL for email. I want them to see all mail come from my domain so I don't end up with more email addresses to maintain. Let me just say this has worked very well. I'm able to deal with each mail once and I didn't have to complicate my friends lives by offering them yet another email address. I have lived with this setup for the last 2 weeks or so.

This weekend I added another tweak. One of the issues I was running into was that all my mailing list mail was showing up on my iPhone. Not exactly the place I wanted it. I prefer to read mailing list email online through a browser. I generally use it for searching anyway. Very seldom to I read every message. I usually browse it like you would browse merchandise at the local mall when you have no intent to buy anything. I came up with a solution to solve this as well without upsetting the current infrastructure(IMAP AOL incoming, SMTP Google outgoing). Instead of doing the global forward inside gmail, I do the following. I turn off global forwarding. I enable all of my filters that tag each mailing list email. I think add a final filter that looks for where the subject of the email does not have the mailing list subject tokens and isn't from mailing list address and forwards this on to the AOL account. One other thing I have gmail do is skip the inbox and archive these messages right away. I also have it tag these messages with a tag called imap so I know they made it over. This means the only thing I have in my inbox is mailing list emails. Everything else that makes it through to the iphone is either good mail or a spam message here and there. Now I have the best of all worlds. I have mailing list email in my browser inbox, personal email goes to both my iPhone and laptop, and best of all I don't have to read and delete mail more than once since I'm using IMAP.

If you have a better way to handle mail, I'm all ears. Obviously, if Google opened up IMAP to the public all this noise would be a non-issue. This would be my preference. Either that or pay for my mail to be hosted. If I run into any further wrinkles, this may be my next option. As for right now, everything is working very well.

NOTE: One odd thing that is happing on my iPhone is that I sometimes see the same message twice. Like it lives in IMAP twice. When I look at AOL's email through the browser or through Apple Mail on my Macbook pro, I only see it once. I'm wondering if this is a product of having a weak connection where the mail downloads but doesn't notify the IMAP server that it actually got the mail. This was happening before this weekend so it has nothing to do with the new filters. Since it's specific to the iPhone only and very easy to fix, I'm not too worried about this. Nevertheless, if someone out there knows why this is happening, please comment.

Apple iPhone 8GB reviewed by a very satisfied BlackBerry Pearl user.

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 04:41:16 GMT

Way way back in the year of 2006 when Apple released the news that they were working on the iPhone, I didn't really blink an eye. My wife, on the other hand, was immediately interested. First let me say that she is not the typical business user. My wife manages a restaurant that we own. Needless to say, she appreciates technology but isn't driven by it like I am. The consumer oriented features of the iPhone were right up her alley. She loved the email and iPhoto integration. The ability to sync her small collection of mp3's was great since she doesn't have an iPod. And last but not least, browsing the web with a real internet experience would be perfect for slow moments at the restaurant. After reading the ads and talking to her about the iPhone, I was a skeptic. Basically, I was convinced that it would be mostly hype. I have always been skeptical of PDA type phones since there focus was usually not on the phone features but instead on features like stylus integration and voice recording. My desire has always been to have a device that was a phone first and a pda second. In the likes of being simple, input functions were always optional to me. I would have been happy with a pda phone that did phone functions well along with read only display of pda data (calendar, email, office docs, etc.

Back in December 2006, I became a BlackBerry Pearl user after a friend of mine from work gave me a demo of his new toy. I was immediately blown away by the close attention to detail that the BlackBerry had. To date, it was the best looking cell phone that I'd come across and had a very intuitive and simple interface. Being a longtime Apple user, the Blackberry's close attention to detail was immediately obvious and intrigued me. Within a week or so, I joined him and purchased the Pearl at full retail price. That's right, I wasn't even up for contract renewal. I think the grand total was $300 out of pocket. I never blinked an eye at the amount since I had very good intentions of productivity gains. The pearl's productivity functions were worth every penny. Specifically, push email and the plethora of 3rd party apps allowed me to make use of this device virtually anywhere. I was able to email, read rss feeds(newsgator), and get sports scores. You know, all the important data retrieval categories.

Now let's fast forward to the release of the iPhone. The Sunday after the device was released, my son and I were at the mall walking around aimlessly killing time. We sometimes head there when its raining or we have nothing to do. He is two so he has lots of energy and likes to truck around the mall on idle sundays. Anyway, we made the infamous, and usually expensive, trip into the Apple Store. After looking at the monumental device, I decided to ask if they had any in stock. The sales person said they did indeed have one and actually had many more than that. In an effort to be a good husband, I decided to contemplate buying one for her. A few moments later a caffeinated idea charged through my brain and my impulse to buy was satisfied. I chose the 8 GB model since it was only $100 more. I mean, if you are okay with spending $500 for a phone, why not $600 to double the capacity :)

I'll just say that she was pretty happy when I gave it to her. I was happy too since I would be able to play with it a bit too. Once she opened it and I played with it for a few minutes, I was very interested. Interested enough that I played with it every night after work for a week or more. She had to pry it out of my hands on a couple occasions just to make a call. My obsessive nature inspired her to pick up a second one for me. Her motivating factor was to facilitate her gaining control of her own phone. I was very grateful and switched over to the iPhone almost immediately. After using the device full time for a couple days, I was totally sold on the technology. I began to trust the typing suggestions and learned many ways to use the device and get the most of out it. The biggest perk was the ability to have a real web browser in hand. Other honorable mentions include, google maps, youtube, and the ability to sync iLife apps without buying a third party app. See Missing Sync for BlackBerry Released for details.

Since then, I have been using the iPhone for a month or so. Overall, I'm pretty impressed by the device. It is very similar to my Blackberry Pearl with respect to its close attention to detail. In my mind, the BlackBerry is the I Ching of messaging devices over the last 5 years. In my opinion, the iPhone doesn't displace the BlackBerry as the prototypical business users messaging tool of choice. The BlackBerry models are all very durable and suited for hard core business use. They have services that go through your companies intranet and allow you to get internal MS Exchange email remotely. Calendar syncing and meeting notices can all be managed remotely. At this time, the iPhone doesn't allow some of these features without accommodations from your companies IT staff. There are ways to do some of it but in order to have a seamless experience, you will need IT support.

Low and behold, my patient wife(she has to be since her husband is anything but patient) decided to remedy her situation by purchasing me matching 8GB iPhone. Since then, I have been quick to pull it out at lunch, play with it over dinner, and even during golf outings. I absolutely love this device. It's amazing to see the number of times that I really use the web browsing. I always avoided this with the BlackBerry Pearl. Even though the pearl was a step ahead of ordinary cell phones, it doesn't even compare to Apple's offering. I'm flabbergasted at how much I like the iPhone. I do everything on it from setting up tasks on Remember The Milk, reading RSS feeds using newsgator, and last but not least buying concert tickets from ticketmaster in the car driving to chicago. No other cell phone that I know of provides all the features that the iPhone does with the beauty of the Apple experience. With that being said, there is room for improvement. Specifically, listed below is my wish list.

Faster Network, EDGE doesn't cut it unless you are doing RSS. Remember I said I'm impatient
Copy/Paste
Multimedia Messaging. If you send me a picture message, I get a text message that directs me to download the image from a website where I have to enter two cryptic strings to find my picture. Since bullet 2 doesn't exist, this is something I'll never do since it would require me writing down the info or flipping back and forth between safari and the SMS app. Instead, I'll ignore the pic message.
Ability to use the landscape keyboard in all apps, not just safari
iChat
Greater Capacity so I can chuck my iPod
Normal headphone jack so I don't need an adapter
More Mail features(filters, rules, SMIME, faster rendering, etc)
ToDo Application to fulfill my GTD interest
User defined gestures
Ability to access file system to store files
Ability to sync notes

Spring Cleaning delivers a needed tutorial for OS X users.

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 20:50:01 GMT

A month or so ago, I got the keen idea that I wanted to replace a 19" boat anchor of a monitor with something flat panel to gain some desk space. This altruistic goal was accomplished after a 20" Samsung wide screen display showed up on my doorstep for less than $200. I was happy since I reclaimed a nice big corner of my desk. Even though I accomplished my original goal, the printer sitting on the end of the desk irked me too. Unlike the monitor, I'm not able to replace my printer with a smaller model. At least not one that would be significantly smaller. The best I could do was find a better location where it wasn't taking up a square foot of desktop space. My decision was to put it in the desk where two linux boxes resided. One of the linux boxes runs this site, a personal wiki, and cvs repository. The other sits mostly idle as a large backup file server. In order to maintain my current setup, I would need a new smaller computer to do these lightweight tasks. Mac Mini to the rescue! I picked up a refurbished Mac Mini from Apple for less than $500. It's a duo core 1.5ghz which is probably 8 times faster than the linux box it replaced. The good news is that it is also 10 times smaller and looks fantastic sitting out in the open. In addition to relocating the printer in the tower compartment, I also moved the spare paper, DSL modem, and various other office items. My desk looks fantastic now. Don't quit reading yet, there is a point to this entry and it has nothing to do with the neatness of my desk.

Instead of installing CVS on the new Mac Mini, I decided that I would migrate to subversion. This was not as easy of a task as I thought it would be. As I sought to find a decent tutorial online, I came up short time and time again. I never did end up finding anything that I could follow step by step and get to where I had a subversion repository front ended by Apache, using Apache authentication running on OS X. Instead I used bits and pieces of content from a half dozen sites to get everything to work. For those of you that are in search of something similar or have run into this same brick wall, the following tutorial is for you. I did my best to document every step along the way. If you run into something that is ambiguous or needs updating, please let me know. I intend to keep this up to date.

HOWTO: Installing Subversion(1.4.3) and Apache(2.0.59) on OS X(10.4.9)

Missing Sync for BlackBerry

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:55:30 GMT

This is my call for Mark/Space to hurry up and release Missing Sync for BlackBerry. While I love my new BlackBerry Pearl, it is easy to tell why PocketMac is free. Besides crashing all the time, it also has a tendency to duplicate data and not pick up changes. I've seen many posts about people losing data so I worry every time I click that green button. On top of it not working correctly, it has two major deficiencies. First, you cannot sync documents. If you create a memo on your blackberry, it syncs to Stickies. I don't know about you but this seems like a pretty worthless feature. I've been a mac user since the System 7 days and I've never thought stickies were worth the disk space the app consumed. The other major annoyance is its lack of file transfer capability. I have a MicroSD card but the only way to move anything to it is by mounting the card as a external hard drive. Unfortunately, I see no way to copy pdf docs or other known formats and open the docs up using the phone software. Another weird thing is that the disk only has folders for pictures and audio. I'm a standard ring tone kinda guy. I think a phone should sound like, well a phone. I rarely take pictures with me so that feature isn't being utilized either. What I'd really like to do is grab the latest technical PDF with me and read it while waiting to get my hair cut or while standing in line somewhere. Hopefully the Mark/Space notebook will solve this problem for me. Right now, I'm forced to email the docs to myself and access them that way.