The Apple Blog

There are times – especially when I sit and wait a few minutes for Office apps to start – when I sit back reminisce about using Microsoft Word on my old, trusty Mac Plus (and later SE). It was a peppy little program that did word processing very well without all the bloat that we see today. Sadly, Microsoft is not the only company producing software where newer does not alwas mean better. Unless you are diligent about keeping installers or install media around, finding copies of older applications is not always easy. Developers do not like to have old versions floating around as they can create a support nightmare.

If you are pining for a program that lives solely in the past you may not need to look further than mac.oldapps.com. The site (and its sister sites for other platforms) houses old versions of software for your Mac and boasts a library of 490 previous versions of 33 Mac programs (which are not limited to OS X). For example, you can go all the way back to the beginning of iTunes, flip back to more peppy versions of Acrobat Reader and even see just how ugly modern sites look with Internet Explorer relics.

As you browse their library and stroll down memory lane it is important to remember a this caveat: many developers use new, major versions to fix security bugs in their programs and you may be exposing yourself to vulnerabilities that your anti-virus/malware software offer no protection against. Be sure the functionality/usability you need is worth the potential security trade-off.

If you do use their library of ancient wares, read up on their purpose and consider using the PayPal link on that page to say “thank you!” (and help with hosting charges). Also, if you know of any other sites that offer old versions of Mac software or have your own story to reminisce about, drop a note in the comments.

[Props to Ryan Naraine for the serendipitous link today.]

There is a lot of buzz surrounding music labels’ agreements to sell DRM-free music in marketplaces other than the iTunes Music Store. The problem is that they miss the big picture. They don’t pay attention to the two things that really matter.

1. People want to be able to buy their music easily
2. People want their purchased music to work on their devices

The iTunes Music Store allows people to easily purchase music. They set the precedence with a $0.99 price point, and everyone is following suit. They showed that if it is easy to purchase music and easy to listen to it again, they will pay that price.

The problem is that with the (barely) exception of Amazon.com’s mp3 store, the price point has stayed the same 99 cents. People will still pay that price, and DRM-free music is certainly enticing for those of us that even understand that. Many people don’t realize that DRM even exists.

To make things worse, some companies try to charge $1.99/song for downloading it straight to your phone. It just doesn’t make sense.

So, you get a less-than-the-easiest interface for downloading music, and it costs about the same or more, and these companies want to bite in to Apple’s market share? I don’t think so.

If they want to bite into Apple’s bottom line, they need to offer something more than what iTunes offers. Yeah, it is DRM-free, but other than that, there is nothing.

Russ Crupnick, senior analyst for NPD group had it right when he said:

“When you have 80 percent market share on Apple devices…there isn’t much demand from people to get unprotected music. They don’t seem to encounter any issues with it.”

I am a big fan of tossing out DRM and all, but differentiating in only the DRM category is not enough. These DRM-free shops will get the Apple haters, but not much more.

To make themselves stand out and sell more, make a daring move and sell the music for much cheaper. People will continue to buy music from iTunes until something better comes along. Is it greed? If I could buy two songs from one vendor for the price of one iTunes song, and the quality was just as good as anywhere else (if not better), what would stop me from buying those two songs instead of downloading one song from iTunes? Nothing but ease of use. If the song could be downloaded and automatically added to my iTunes Library, I would do that in a heartbeat. Who wouldn’t?

Pirates will exist as long as it is easier to steal music than it is to buy it. Allofmp3.com had a good idea when pricing songs by the data size instead of a straight price. It was illegal which is not cool, but many people went to great lengths to purchase songs from that website. You could get between four and seven songs for the cost of one iTunes song. Music labels can create a site just like that and iTunes would immediately feel the pain. It would be so easy to get a lot of music for so cheap, that many people just wouldn’t bother pirating music. There will always be those who break the law, and so there will always be people who pirate music. But instead of borrowing a CD from my friend, I would much rather just go to a website and buy the album for a couple bucks.

People will always want value for the money they spend. If Rhapsody, Napster, Amazon, Microsoft, and anyone else wants to take market share away from Apple, they need to change their tune, start making it easier to get cheaper, DRM-free music into our iTunes libraries, and the money will follow.

One of the notable shortcomings of the iPhone is the lack of a chat client. Oh sure, SMS looks like iChat - but we all know that you’re really paying for each of those messages you’re shooting off. So we could wait for Apple to open up a true chat client…or just let Google do it for us.

Yesterday Google quietly launched Google Talk for the iPhone, and it rocks. Nice and quick, it follows the look of the Gmail  iPhone interface and works very well. I was really impressed by the way it handles multiple chats - it has a pulldown menu at the top on the window with your contacts listed. When you’re chatting with someone and you receive another chat from another contact, the pulldown turns orange and highlights the contact that sent you the new message. Very cool, very easy to use.

Give it a whirl by going to www.google.com/talk on your iPhone.

I believe I can safely say that the primary objective for users running OS X is to connect to the Internet to read mail, check out web sites, chat with friends, download new apps or grab/share multi-media content, etc. With bandwidth caps staring to become all the rage by the mega-providers, knowing how much you are consuming may be critical knowledge to hold back the costs/fees on your monthly bill.

This post covers two of three key programs for managing bandwidth: iftop (a command-line utility) and SurplusMeter (a GUI tool). The third utility - lsof (another command-line utility) - will require a dedicated article in-and-of itself.

How Much Am I Consuming?

SurplusMeter is a small tool from the fine folks over at SkoobySoft with one mission: to show you how much bandwidth you are consuming with the option to enter any known caps to ensure you are not over your limit. You can download SurpluMeter directly from their site. It is a PPC binary compatible down to OS X 10.3.9. For those who want to live life on the wild side, you can grab the source code and compile it yourself. I have built an OS X 10.5 compatible Universal Binary version which you can download via this post. No matter which way you decide to go, it is important to copy the application to your local volume as it runs an agent program - which runs in the background collecting bandwidth data - that will make it difficult to remove mounted volumes if you keep it running.

The main view of SurplusMeter is fairly straightforward. You can set which day to start the monthly tracking period on and specify your known bandwidth cap - which can also include upstream usage. Monitoring can be paused if you know you will be moving between networks, the collected data can be reset and you can even choose which interface to monitor via their “English” names vs OS X short device names (e.g. “Ethernet port” vs “en0“). For my example, I did a short sample of bandwidth on my AT&T 3G ExpressCard, hence the PPP modem selection. If there were hiccups during program execution or you know of other bandwidth usage on your connection not emanating from your Mac, you can add bytes to the current data collector.

Similarly, you can also remove bytes if you were measuring data on an interface that moved between networks.

SurplusMeter is kind enough to store its data in ~/Library/Application Support/SurplusMeter/surplusmeter_data.plist in a very human- and machine-readable format (a well-annoted Apple plist) so you can do what you like with it:

In general, it is a great, special purpose utility to have around.

What’s Going On Here?

SurplusMeter tells you that you are using bandwidth, but does not provide any further details. This is where tool number two - iftop - comes into play. You can grab a pre-built package of iftop (”interface top”) from AFP548.com or grab the source and try your hand at building it (you may need to download some support libraries). Users of various “ports” tools should be able to find iftop in one of the repositories.

Where the command-line tool top provides a mechanism for determining what processes are consuming precious system resources (in a very similar fashion to the Activity Monitor application), iftop does something similar for network usage on a particular interface.

You will need some more technical information to run iftop successfully. First, you will need to know which network interface you want to monitor. To find out which interfaces you have on your system, open Terminal.app and run the command:

ifconfig -l

My output from that shows:

lo0 gif0 stf0 en0 fw0 en1 vmnet8 vmnet1 ppp0

Interface en0 generally is equivalent to “Ethernet” and en1 is usually equivalent to your AirPort card. ppp0 would refer to most modems, including 3G cards. Additional interfaces may be related to a VMware or Parallels install, your local firewall interface or other local types of network devices.

With Terminal.app open, run iftop -h to see what the command line options are for the tool:

Synopsis: iftop -h | [-npbBP] [-i interface] [-f filter code] [-N net/mask]

   -h                  display this message
   -n                  don’t do hostname lookups
   -N                  don’t convert port numbers to services
   -p                  run in promiscuous mode (show traffic between other
                       hosts on the same network segment)
   -b                  don’t display a bar graph of traffic
   -B                  Display bandwidth in bytes
   -i interface        listen on named interface
   -f filter code      use filter code to select packets to count
                       (default: none, but only IP packets are counted)
   -F net/mask         show traffic flows in/out of network
   -P                  show ports as well as hosts
   -m limit            sets the upper limit for the bandwidth scale
   -c config file      specifies an alternative configuration file

For this example, the most useful options are “-i” to let us choose which interface to monitor and “-P” to show which ports are in use. The tool requires elevated privileges to work so you have to run the following to start your view: sudo iftop -P -i ppp0 (again, replace “ppp0” with “en0” or “en1” or whatever interface you need to monitor).

You should see something similar to the following screen upon successful execution (minus the annotation):

The main part of the display lists, for each pair of hosts, the rate at which data has been sent and received over the preceding 2, 10 and 40 second intervals. The direction of data flow is indicated by arrows, <= and =>. So in this example, where I started iTunes just after kicking off iftop, we can see that:

• 166.129.237.160 (my local machine) made a series of http (web) requests to Apple servers
• some of Apple’s servers do not resolve from IP addresses to host names
• the average transfer rate over 40 seconds is between 0.2 kilobytes and 9 kilobytes per second

After quitting iTunes and running for a while, then letting it sit “idle” (not actively doing network activity), you can see that the pattern of usage can change dramatically.

While iftop can let you see more of what is going on, it cannot tell you which applications or processes are causing the usage. You can infer quite a bit (i.e. http traffic is most likely coming from your browser - but this is not necessarily the case as shown by the last screen), but finding out core details is where lsof can be of real value and will be covered in our next installment.

While I have presented a free way to monitor bandwidth usage, Guy Meyer has a set of tools - Net Monitor & Net Monitor Sidekick which do something similar but are not free (the Sidekick program is in beta which is expired so I was not able to test it).

If you are using any of these or similar tools to monitor bandwidth utilization, drop a note in the comments to share your insights with TAB readers and keep an eye out for our post on lsof!

About three weeks ago, I finally upgraded to Delicious Library 2. It is definitely a slick program. The greatest addition for me was the ability to add my gadgets to my library. It just makes sense to be able to add all my electronic gear.

You can add items in nine categories: books, movies, music, software, videogames, toys, gadgets, tools, and apparel. Sadly, the software Delicious Library 2 cannot be added via the lookup tool:

What I don’t like

There are two ways to add an item to your library, through the iSight, and through a search box like the one pictured above. It uses Amazon search, and it lets you add just about anything that you can buy on Amazon. I am not sure how Shipley designed the search for Delicious Library 2, but when I tried to add my Nintendo Wii to the library, it brought up every accessory you can buy, but failed to show me the actual Nintendo Wii. I was able to find a couple Wiis with some additional accessories, but that was about it. I don’t have the box anymore, so I couldn’t just scan it (which is the case with most of my electronic gear). The good news is that I was able to add component cables for my Wii to my library, as well as extra Wii remotes, classic controllers, nunchucks, grip covers, and remote charging stations.

There are some frustrations with searching, though. In Delicious Library 1, you could search by ISBN (which was probably because the iSight scanning did not always work). But now, in Delicious Library 2, you can’t. It is very frustrating to know the ISBN but not be able to use it to search. It is probably easier to search with keywords, but sometimes the results listed are far too broad and varied for it to be that worthwhile. I wish the option to add was as simple as this:

You can also publish your shelves to the web. I published mine to my iWeb site, and it looked pretty good. The only drawback is that it did not include links to Amazon, so if someone were viewing my library, and wanted one of my books, they couldn’t just click on the title and get to the book. They would have to copy and paste, or just look the book up. That seems like a big oversight.

What I do like

Although the release notes for this version say that the algorithm for scanning with iSight is only “slightly improved” it is far better than Delicious Library 1. I scanned the same book in both, and got a much faster scan time for Delicious Library 2. I waved it all over the screen on version 1, but with version 2, I put it right in the guides, and scanned it before it was actually lined up all the way in the guides.

That makes for much faster adding of items. I also tried it out with an external USB webcam, and that worked just as well. That made it very easy for taking it to my bookshelves, instead of bringing all my books to my computer.

Visually, it rocks. When you add an item, a “container” fills up with colored circles that becomes your item. Your items shatter or go up in flames when you delete them, as shown below.

Perhaps the best feature for the kids out there is the ability to export your library (or just selected shelves or items) to a bibliography. In college, I used EndNote for my citation needs, and if this were available, it would have been much easier. EndNote requires you to type in every single thing about your book, and only just recently came out with a very poor online search tool that doesn’t get the correct info 95% of the time. Bibliographies are available in the following formats: AMA, Turabian, APA, CBE, Chicago, and MLA. For college students who do a lot of writing, it is definitely worth the $40 or $20 (for an upgrade).

In conclusion, Delicious Library 2 is most beneficial in that it provides a record of most things that you own, and it does it in a fun way. It is actually exciting to feel like you are a checker at a store as you scan items into your library. I finally have the itemized list of stuff that I need to show the insurance company if anything ever happens. Everything I buy from now on will go right into the library, so I can have a record of it. This is a good program for those who want to catalog their stuff and have a record on the web (or iPod) that you can get to if you need it later.

Delicious Library costs $40 for a new license and $20 for an upgrade from 1.5 at delicious-monster.com

I have been way too busy recently to play any games, but one game that was announced last week has made me long for the days of yore when I could play for hours on end with no thought of responsibilities calling my name. Blizzard Entertainment announced Diablo 3. This third installment of mankind’s fight against Diablo picks up the storyline two decades after Diablo 2 ended. It will feature five new character classes and lots of enemies.

The 20-minute gameplay video shows a barbarian fending off dozens of beasts that are climbing up walls and coming out of every corner to fight. The graphics are of course beautiful, and Blizzard assures us in the FAQ that “as with all of Blizzard Entertainment’s recent releases, Diablo III will ship for both Windows and Mac simultaneously.”

There is no word on system requirements for the game, or a release date or price for that matter. It could be a while, as Starcraft 2 was announced over a year ago, and is still waiting for a release date.

You can buy Diablo II, which only requires Mac OS 8.1 or higher and a G3, for $19.99 and relive the glory days.

For all TAB readers interested in getting access to the most cutting edge (dubbed “sneaky peek”) releases of OmniFocus (their task management app) you can sign up for advance notifications via their Sneaky Peak page.

The “Omni” apps are well-crafted products and their programmers do their part to make code available to the developer community so folks can use components that work well without having to reinvent the wheel. As a company, they also seem to care about the users of their products given that they went out of their way to cite a review on their blog which contained both praise and pummeling.

(D&D fans will also appreciate this entry which explains how to use OmniFocus to manage your 4th edition character sheet).

If you use OmniFocus for “getting things done”, drop a note in the comments with what works and what needs improvement.

I recently ripped a few seasons of my favorite TV shows from DVD’s to MP4’s so I could put them on my iPhone for when I travel; however, when I imported them into iTunes they imported as movies, not TV shows. No big deal I thought, I would just select all, hit ⌘ + i and change them all at once. To my horror and dismay, when I tried to batch change the video type the option wasn’t available…are you kidding me Apple?

After a quick Googling I ended up at Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes site and found the following script:

Set Video Kind of Selected v3.1

“This script will change the video kind property of the selected tracks to your choice of “Movie”, “Music Video” or “TV Show”. Additionally, “Show Name”, “Season Number”, and “Episode Number” can also be set or cleared for each selected track.”

After you download it, just follow the instructions for the install. If you are successful you will have a new menu bar icon that looks like a scroll:

To use the script to change the video type to TV show:

1. Select all the TV shows you would like to edit (⌘ + a - select all)
2. Click the scroll and select “Set video kind of selected”
3. A box will pop up allowing you to edit: Video Kind, Show Name, Season Number, Episode Start Number
4. Select Video Kind and then click the “edit” button
5. Another pop up box will appear. Select “TV show” from the list and hit the “ok” button

After a few seconds or minutes (if you have a lot of videos) all your video types will be changed to the correct video type. Enjoy!

Although the speculation was rampant when Apple bought PA Semi earlier this year, Intel made it official: there will not be Intel processors in the iPhone.

Intel is preparing more x86 versions of their processors for mobile devices, and “Apple chose not to take that road map at their next generation of platform…That was disappointing,” said Patrick Gelsinger, general manager of the digital enterprise group at Intel.

Disappointing is right. Apple plans on selling 10 million iPhones this year, and analysts are predicting that they may sell up to 15 million in 2008! It also means you won’t be able to run Windows Mobile on your iPhone anytime soon. I was really hoping for Boot Camp on the future versions of iPhone.

[Via Forbes]

Apple has released OS X 10.5.4 (59 MB via Software Update) to the masses which includes the content of Security Update 2008-04. The update also includes improvements to AirPort reliability and speed, many iCal improvements, two secure surfing improvements to Safari and three Spaces & Exposé bugs.

The Security Update fixes 21 security issues in OS X 10.4 and 14 security issues in OS X 10.5. Fixes for especially nasty bugs include:

• CVE-2008-2309 which adds .xht and .xhtm files to the system’s list of content types that will be flagged as potentially unsafe under certain circumstances, such as when they are downloaded from a web page. While these content types are not automatically launched, if manually opened they could lead to the execution of a malicious payload. This update improves the system’s ability to notify users before handling .xht and .xhtm files.
  
• CVE-2008-2314 which disables hot corners when the screen lock is active (When the system is set to require a password to wake from sleep or screen saver, and Exposé hot corners are set, a person with physical access may have been able to access the system without entering a password prior to this fix.)
  
• CVE-2008-0960 which performs better validation of SNMPv3 packets (SNMP can be used to retrieve information about your system).

OS X 10.5.4 can be installed via Software Update or downloaded directly from Apple.

Users still running OS X 10.4.11 can also (along with the Security Update) look forward to a Safari 3.1.2 update as well, which includes a fix to a security issue (CVE-2008-2307) involving a memory corruption issue that exists in WebKit’s handling of JavaScript arrays. Without the patch, users who visit a maliciously crafted website may see unexpected application terminations or be vulnerable to arbitrary code execution. Apple engineers improved bounds checking to fix the problem.

If you have installed any of these updates, drop a note in the comments if you experienced any issues or if you can confirm whether a particular issue you have been seeing has been fixed.

Today Apple quietly launched iTunesU-K12, a resource for K-12 schools and districts throughout the United States. So far, only a few states have contributed (Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Utah) with varying amounts of content available.

iTunesU-K12 was announced at NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) at the “Apple’s Big Splash” event.

A district employee from Utah, Kelly Dumont, participated in some development of the content being launched, “Here K12 ed will have a central gathering place for resources, be they audio, video, text-based, etc.”

All of the resources are free. The best one is Arizona’s IDEAL eLearning page, which basically is a mini-iTunes store. It has hundreds of podcasts about many things, including my personal favorite, “Ask a Biologist.”

As part of iTunesU-K12, you can find resources on learning about technology, languages, chemistry reactions, history, and much more. Here is the link to the surprisingly plain new page. Go take a look and see what it has to offer.

[Via The Educational Mac]

In the wake of reports from TUAW and RoughlyDrafted.com that 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard, would be the smallest Apple OS in years, many have been scrambling to figure out how exactly Apple was going to be dropping that much heft from their mainline apps. An especially big loser was Mail, down to 91 MB from 287 MB. 

Speculation has been running wild that this was an indication that this dramatic weightloss is an indication that Apple is looking toward minikernel type operating systems and the types of platforms that this would indicate - mainly leading to more ‘real OS X on the iPhone’ discussions.  Others have speculated that the weight reduction is due more to the loss of the PPC code in 10.6, or the switch from language (.lproj) files in each app to a system-wide localization database.

While there’s no denying that the loss of size is dramatic, it’s actually less of a reduction than I can get by running running XSlimmer - to use Mail as an example, the xslimmed Mail weighs in at a svelte 24.7 MB - significantly lighter even than the version shipping with Snow Leopard.  This, I’d think, very much argues that the size reductions can be entirely explained by loss of the PPC code and the language files.  In fact, the extra 70 MB might even be new features - hey, we can hope, right?

I have always been nervous about syncing my contacts and pictures to my iPod because they would be accessible by other people if I ever lost it, or it was stolen. I also have never sold a used iPod for the same reason.

That is why I was excited when Steve Jobs announced at the keynote that iPhone 3G would allow enterprise users to remote wipe their devices. I think that is a great idea, especially for enterprise users.

AppleInsider is reporting that the software update for iPhone 2.0 (and presumably iPod Touch) will allow users to securely delete all their files like you securely delete your trash on your Mac. You will be able to get to the secure delete function the same way you get to the “Erase all content ad settings” now: Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Contents and Settings.

According to Apple, the software that will allow this will be released with the new iPhone on July 11th.

It will take you longer to secure wipe your phone, about an hour. It will securely delete your data, so if you are upgrading to an iPhone 3G, make sure that you upgrade after the software update to securely delete everything from your phone.

I just plugged in my 4th external hard drive today - the 1TB My Book Essential Edition. That brings my total external storage capacity to about 2TB - which is pretty good considering most people don’t have ANY sort of backup solution. But as I was plugging in the new drive I came to a realization that my backup solution was actually only a 50% solution to my backup needs.

The hard truth is hard drives fail. Manufacturers quote a lifespan of approximately 5 to 10 years. But most of us know that estimate is about as accurate as Apple’s estimated battery life. So although I have an entire row of hard drives, if one of them were to fail I would be “fraked.” (No, I can’t believe I said that either)

So in order to truly sleep soundly at night I moved my most sensitive and important data online. I looked into a number of different solutions including Mozy, Box.net, and even a manual upload using my Dreamhost account - but none of those solutions met all my needs. I wanted something simple to use and a solution that could grow depending on my changing backup needs.

Jungle Disk Desktop 2 seems like the best solution for the job right now. Although the price might turn some people away (read: it’s cheap but not free) the pricing structure allows you to pay for only what you use since the application uses Amazon’s S3 internet storage service. After the one-time purchase of $20, this translates into $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used, $0.10 per GB of data uploaded, and $0.17 per GB of data downloaded. For my current needs I’m paying about $1.95 per month for storage and pennies each month to upload new data.

The best feature of Jungle Disk Desktop is the fact that your Jungle Disk mounts just like your iDisk - allowing you to access your files directly from the Finder. Drag and drop, copy and delete. You can use your Jungle Disk just like any other hard drive.

Jungle Disk Desktop 2, which was just released this week provides some welcome upgrades to the previous version. Perhaps the biggest change is the user interface. The new backup preview dialog so you can see exactly what will be backed up and the selection dialog makes it faster and easier to set up automatic backup.

The new version, which is a free upgrade to previous users, also includes a number of other upgrades and new features including:

• Better “bucket” management - Jungle Disk uses Amazon’s “bucket” structure to store files. Amazon S3 itself doesn’t have a built-in notion of directories or folders at all. Because of this, it is up to each application that uses S3 to decide how to use buckets to store files and folders. The new bucket features allow you, among other things, to encrypt your data without having to re-upload your data.
• Support for connecting to multiple buckets at the same time
• Support for multiple backup jobs with independent scheduling
• New command line options to integrate with external task schedulers and batch jobs
• Expanded bandwidth limiting feature

I’ve used Jungle Disk primarily to backup my iPhoto library - the most precious 13GB of data I own. However, due to the changing nature of the iPhoto library, I opted to purchase the optional Jungle Disk Plus service which allows you to make block-level file updates - uploading only the changed portions of your large files. It also gives you web-based access to the files (even via iPhone) and the ability to resume uploads of large files where they left off. The Plus service will run you an extra $1 per month, but I think the savings in both bandwidth cost and time are worth it. Every week at a given time, Jungle Disk scans my iPhoto library file for changes and uploads them. That’s it. It’s that easy.

Of course, if you’re uploading a large amount of data it’s going to take time. As I write this post I’m backing up an additional 6GB using my cable internet connection at 360 kbits/sec. According to Jungle Disk it’s going to take approximately 1 day and 13 hours to finish uploading. But if you’re performing incremental backups quietly in the background or in the middle of the night, this shouldn’t be an issue.

After using Jungle Disk for a few weeks, I have to say I’m impressed. It’s proven to be the easiest, most convenient, and most affordable solution for me. It quietly backs up my data in the background and I feel safe knowing that my data is floating around inside Amazon’s data cloud. Combined with my external hard drive backups, I can now sleep soundly at night knowing my family photos are backed up.

• H.264 versus MP4
• iPod Touch Case
• iPhone Plans in Canada
• BootCamp Windows Shortcut
• Documents Automatically Lock in Dreamweaver

With more and more web applications being built by Mac-addicted developers, I thought I’d have a chat with Stephen Caudill over at FatJam. Stephen not only codes his creations on Apple hardware but also relies on it to serve up the applications to the public.

Travis Vocino for The Apple Blog: Hey there Stephen! To me, it feels like the Mac, and specifically the MacBook Pro, is the web developer’s absolute choice when it comes to deploying an environment suited to the work. It definitely hasn’t always been that way though, as you know. What about you? What’s your history with developing for the web on Apple hardware?

Stephen Caudill for FatJam: In August of 2004, I started looking at the programming language Ruby, in response to the philosophy of “developer joy” that Ruby on Rails’ creator, David Heinemeier Hansson was extolling. At the time I was working in Big Java and really just hated it… the job, the tools, the verbosity of the language were all a millstone around my neck and I wanted this golden path that David was describing.

In and amongst the various doctrines of Ruby on Rails was this devout love of the Mac computer that I kept being inundated with. Around the same time Paul Graham penned an essay in which he observed that all the smart hackers he knew were migrating to OSX… That was apparently all the coercion I needed, as I soon found myself exploring a first gen Mac Mini. In retrospect, I guess I was drinking the Koolaid, but it was good Koolaid after the sour taste Windows left in my mouth.
Read the rest of this article »

A few years ago I made the switch to Macs. One of my concerns as a business owner was making a smooth transition. I had been interested in Macs for years but held off mainly because I would be starting from the beginning. I was a Windows power user. My natural skin care business, up until that point, had been running on the Windows OS. I’ve always been fascinated by Macs but my own fear of learning a new system kept me away from Macs for years.

I finally switched my personal and business computers to Macs almost two years ago. I quickly realized that much of the concern I had about the Mac OS were unjustified. In making the transition the most important thing, I learned was not to treat my Mac like my Windows computers. They are different. It took me a few weeks before I felt comfortable with my 17″ MacBook Pro and a few months after transitioning I wondered why it took me so long to make the switch?

Mac’s Mail application quickly replaced Outlook. I include photos of the actual products on my website and the brochures I create I was able to upload and edit my pictures in iPhoto. Eventually I upgraded to Aperture. I was still able to create graphics in Photoshop I just had to purchase a copy for my Macbook Pro.

I had a few of my clients that needed documents completed in Word and have found NeoOffice to be a good solution. Occasionally I would chat with clients through Instant messaging and iChat and Adium has fit the bill perfectly. I use Quickbook Premium for business planning. Endicia for Mac is my home postal office. It lets me ship out most of my packages. Keeping track of time and submitting invoices is handled through TimeNet Pro. I also found David Pogue’s Switching to Mac series to be extremely helpful.

Apple is offering a free online business seminar which is perfect for the business user who is contemplating a move to Macs. Not only will you receive valuable information on how to make your transition seamless you’ll also receive helpful tips to get your Mac office up and running in not time.

The seminar is 26 minutes and will be led by Jim Heiser, Apple Business Marketing, and Sasha Rovin from the Apple Retail Store in Los Angeles. The course is geared towards new Mac business users. They will guide you through the basics of Mac OS X Leopard.

In the seminar you will learn:

• How to get around on the easy, user-friendly Mac OS X interface
• How to customize your Mac
• How to use shortcuts and quick keystroke and mouse commands
• How to connect a Mac to existing workgroups and other office computers, including PCs
• How to communicate, share files, and use existing printers as a shared resource for the group

If you’re interested log onto the Apple website and register for the free online business seminar. Since the seminar is available 24/7, you are able to watch it when it’s convenient for your schedule.

Do you have any tips to share to help make the transition to Macs easier? Leave a comment.

My very frustrated wife called me today to ask how to send a photo that she had imported to iPhoto ‘08. She was frustrated that she couldn’t find the actual file so she could attach it to an email. The iPhoto Library sits on our external drive (you can choose where your library is located by holding down alt/option while opening iPhoto). This is what she got when she tried to find the photo she wanted to send:

She understood that her photos were in the iPhoto Library because it was such a large file. I told her to right-click the iPhoto library and select “Show Package Contents,” which is what you could do if you were just in Finder. But you can’t do that when you are trying to attach a photo to your Gmail message.

The easiest way to do it is also the most intuitive. When you have the “Open” dialogue box open, simply drag the photo from your iPhoto library to that box, and it will guide you to that event’s folder, and select the image that you dragged to the dialogue box.

After you do this, you can click “Open” and it will attach to your message.

If you are using Mail.app, you can just drag a photo to the application icon and it will create a new message with that picture attached. If the message is already open, you simply drag the pictures you want to attach to the message window, and it will attach them.

I read an article this morning highlighting some very peculiar questions regarding how developers interact with customers via the iPhone/iPod Touch App store. I read all of them and the answers seemed so clear that I don’t know why Apple hasn’t answered them officially. Perhaps they will in the next two weeks, or there are some people at EA who might know already. Most likely, Apple hasn’t even thought of this stuff yet and they’ll answer it with the launch of the store. It’s all liquid folks, that’s the beauty of software and its policies. Apple wants to make the store an overnight success, and a long standing platform for the future (more on this next).

What exactly does Fairplay for apps mean?

It means the end of this concept where end users put in license keys, publishers track users in a ridiculous database where customers come back and upgrade but can’t log in, so they create a new account, and now the publishers think they have more customers than they really do. It means that Apple is trying to make it easy for developers to reduce their code and let Apple handle piracy. For better or worse, Fairplay does a good job at what its designed to do. It makes sense for Apple to DRM apps just like any other content from iTMS. Now perhaps an app doesn’t need DRM because its free, or a publisher just doesn’t like Fairplay. Well either case is invalid becasue 1) users would just redownload if needed and 2) Apple isn’t the platform an anti-Fairplay publisher really wants to develop. No one is saying apps are tied to one device, and Fairplay is designed with that in mind. I truly doubt based on my knowledge that a device, a computer, or some other ‘thing’ is any different that the other ‘thing’ in Fairplay’s code.

How will developers get customer information?

Through a developer publishing portal. Think about it. Then again, is it really the developer’s information or is it Apple’s?

How will support be handled?

Sure no one knows an app better than the guy who wrote it and the support team in India. See above.

What about trials?

See above the above. For most, I expect there will be a trial download and a licensed download, perhaps one with Fairplay applied and one without.

How will refunds be handled?

I get my refunds and purchases all through a merchant payment gateway, and most of them seem to work with the internets. Let Apple deal with most cases, that would explain a 30% cut in what is sold. I think for special cases, developers could issue credits to customers through their account. Maybe the customer won’t come back and they use their credit elsewhere. Do a better job then and don’t get too upset if all customers aren’t pleased.

How do we give out review copies?

These are sort of like refunds right? Just a refund before the sale actually happens. So why couldn’t a developer issue iTMS credits via their publisher portal? I don’t think Apple will generate the full infrastructure/interfaces right away that do this. Frankly the trend I’ve seen with their efforts have been more rapid releases than in the past. So sit tight, because Apple wants to hear people complain so they can get what the majority want and what Apple can feasibly provide.

What about other pricing concerns?

I believe publishers can price apps at whatever they choose. If a new release is out, would it be feasible to promote it via offering a discount to everyone?

Here are some things I would like to know. The iTunes store currently has featured content on all parent and subpages (i.e. the home page and sublinks not pointing to direct media). How do Apps get categorized and who decides what gets this lucrative real estate? Can developers rely on a review system or is it going to be who gives Apple the biggest checks? What if I want to buy multiple copies because the publisher has developed a specific reason that this case would apply, perhaps most likely in an enterprise situation?

I do think that Apple will have a publisher portal where anyone wanting their app in the store can manage the information they need to for interacting with customers, promoting a product, or deliver new features. It’s very easy to think that the iPhone has version awareness and could check in with the app publisher just as most software update mechanisms work. Again, that’s the genius in the whole platform…its software, as liquid as the water that we drink.

I came across a comment about a small but useful utility I had not heard of before called Unplugged. This utility (in the form of a System Preferences panel) from Briksoftware watches for events related to your power cord being plugged or unplugged and notifies you via Growl (if Growl is not installed, the application will use an alert window).

You can choose whether it starts on login, whether you are given an extra notification when battery resources are at a level you define and can restrict display if designated applications are currently running:

You also have complete control over the information presented in the alerts:

With my Growl configuration, the notifications look like this:

   

It’s a very simple application that does not require a substantial amount of system resources (as shown below). There have been times when I have had the MacBook Pro become unplugged and not noticed the screen dim only to discover much later that I’m on 50% battery left. This utility would have definitely come in handy then and is now a part of my “must have” applications.

I had a bit of trouble trying to send a PayPal donation to the author via the link on the page, but managed to do so via the standard PayPal “Send Money” option. As always, I highly encourage folks to support independent development on the Mac.

If you use Unplugged or have suggestions for other small-but-useful utilities, drop a note in the comments.