Weblog of a “Switcher”

When Leopard first came out, one of Leopards new features, Stacks, didn't allow for the ability to display the contents of a folder on the Dock in the way that Tiger used to which was to display all the files and folders in a popup list menu. Later versions of Leopard added this feature back in.

Quay is a great replacement for Leopard's (OS X 10.5.x) Stack feature. It was first released in public beta form not long after Leopard was released and has gone through 7 revisions since. I have been using it since Version 1.0.1 and have found it to be a great extension of Leopard's Dock.

First, it does what Leopard should have done from the beginning. Allows you to display the contents of a folder on the Dock in an easy to setup fashion.

As you can see from the above screen shot, Quay lists out all the files in a given folder, nothing really all that different from Leopard. What sets Quay apart from Leopards built-in feature is configurability.

Along with all the options that Leopard supports, Quay allows you to display more information than Leopard like Folder item Counts, Invisible Items, and Package Contents.

You can sort the list in a few more ways that Leopard; Application, Label, File Size. Quay also displays icons for the items in the folder where Apple decided that icons were not necessary.

Quay allows you to adjust the size of the icons or show a preview image which uses the preview images used in CoverFlow.

The best feature of Quay is the ability to display a little more information than just the name of the file. You can display the Date Modified, Date Created, Label, or File Sized of each item in the list.

Quay also allows you to customize the icon that will appear in the Dock after it's added. You can add an icon or badge over the folder image, change the color of the folder, and even choose a different image for the folder itself. This is done from within the application that is run from the first menu item of a Quay options menu.

You can even place the folder on the left side of the Dock usually reserved for Application icons.

If this was all that Quay did, the €7 or about $10 being asked for the program would be a steal. However, Quay does a few more things.

If you hold down Command and Option when clicking on a running program in the Dock, Quay displays some statistics about that running program. The version of the program, the memory it is currently using, Average and current CPU percentage.

Lastly, Quay supports Leopard's Smart Folders. Just drag a smart folder into the Dock and Quay displays it just like any other folder. Leopard doesn't support this at all. You can place a smart folder in the Dock, but when you click on it, it just opens the folder in the Finder.

This is one of my "must have" programs for the Mac. Before Quay, I had very little in the on the right side of my Dock. Now I have 10 Quay folders helping me find documents and applications I open/run frequently.

It's a great buy for the €7 or ~$10 being asked. There isn't a trial version, but the first folder on each side of the Dock will work until registered.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: dock, Leopard, popup menu, quay, Stacks

Secrets was (and hopefully still will be) a great little System Preference Pane that allows users to make adjustments to their system without having to worry about running Terminal and typing in scary command-line commands. I reviewed it earlier here: "Secrets".

I say was because I am reading text in the Secrets Discussion Group that gives me the impression that the developer has stopped working on it. This seems a little surprising to me since the developer is related to textdriven.com which is the developer that wrote Quicksilver. Although didn't the developer of Quicksilver put the source into OpenSource so that the project could continue?

Anyway, I have a suspicion as to why Secrets may lose development. MacPilot 3.0 has a great new feature that basically looks just like Secrets.

As you can see, MacPilot's General tab looks a lot like Secrets. I guess the big difference here is that the developers of MacPilot are the only ones adding items to this section of their program where with Secrets, anyone could add a new adjustment, if approved.

Now, MacPilot isn't free. It costs $19.95, but along with the functionality of Secrets, it also has a bunch of other adjustments that can be made to pretty much any part of Tiger and Leopard. I had bought it a while back as part of a software bundle and was quite pleased with the way it works. It's my main tool for making Leopard adjustments.

Now that MacPilot 3.x is out, I have removed the Secrets Preference Pane since it's had bugs that make it difficult to work with. Secrets had some great potential, but there just hasn't been any real progress made to fix bugs that have been found.

Its possible that the folks working on Secrets are just really busy with other coding projects and will get back to Secrets soon, but I can't recommend Secrets anymore knowing that MacPilot is out there and works so well.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: macpilot, pane, Preference, Secrets, utility

This is going to be a really unfortunate review. I had some high hopes for this reader. It has a gorgeous interface. Way better than any I have seen in any other feed reader. It's not for all the feeds you would be reading since the format of the UI is a newspaper. But there was one nagging problem that made me remove the program from my Hard Drive.

It has certainly received high praise from many other bloggers. As well as a bunch of Twitter posts.

Times, by Acrylic software, is a really unique idea in RSS Feed readers.

The main User Interface is a newspaper. All the stories from many feeds are displayed on the front page of this newspaper and when there are more stories that can fit in one section, there will be a scroll bar that will allow you to scroll down to the rest of the stories.

When you find a story that you are interested in reading, you simply click on the story and the front page curls down to reveal the story on a full page behind the front page. If there is a picture in the story, you can click on a small eyeball icon to do a QuickLook on the picture to see a bigger version of the picture. Not the best way to do that. I would prefer just clicking anywhere on the picture. Still, a really nice touch.

It's really pretty.

However, there is one nagging problem that really bothered me to the point that I removed it. Managing the subscriptions. The only way I could find to manage the subscriptions that Times uses a small slide down section of the interface that shows about 15 subscriptions that look like buttons. There are a couple of controls at the top of the section:

Here is the problem here. I wanted to remove all the subscriptions that come with the program. There is no way to multi-select the list of feeds currently subscribed to. So removing all the feeds at once was not an option. So, I had to select one at a time and hit the delete key for each and acknowledge the delete for each feed. I wasn't happy about this, but I only had to do it once. However, as I was deleting the feeds, the program would crash. This happened several times. So I gave up on Times.

I suspect that when 2.0 comes out, Times will be a very cool program. I'll certainly give them another chance when 2.0 comes out, but until then, I'm going to have to pass on it.

Good luck Acrylic, keep up the great work with such a unique interface. Something lacking in a lot of software and other forms of entertainment.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: feed, newspaper, reader, rss, times

Is this a sign that Leopard has become the new Linux? I say this because in the past, enterprising hackers have put Linux on just about every device that can run a program. From iPod Nano's to LinkSys routers to game consoles, and more.

With this news from TUAW.com, it's seems like we are seeing Leopard running on WinTel computers (as expected), now an OQO, what next? An iPhone? Woops, to late, Apple already did that with the iPhone software. Maybe we'll see Leopard running on Blackberry's and Windows Smart Phones soon. That would be truly amusing.

Of course, this all depends on wether or not the news that the OQO is running Leopard is really true.

(Via.: The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Hackers, Leopard, Linux, oqo

I guess with all the blogosphere attention that Apple got over the Windows version of it's Apple Software Update program having Safari 3.1 in the list as an "Update", they felt that they had to make a change. I commented about this back when it happened here and here

I have been keeping an eye on Apple's software update program ever since this whole mess started up. I wanted to make sure that when the Safari 3.1.1 update hit, that it would still stay hidden based on my choice to use the menu option: "Ignore selected Updates".

Today I saw that along with Safari 3.1.1 and iTunes + QuickTime, there was an entry in the "Updates" list noting that the Apple Software Update program was in need of an update. (It's not showing up now since I updated it before I took the screenshot.

So it looks like Apple made a change to the update program to create two lists. One list contains all the "Updates" and the other list is titled: "New Software". This should help alleviate some confusion over wether an item is an "update" or an "install".

One problem that is still going to be complained about, mark my words, is that the entries in the "New Software" list are checked by default. This was one of the complaints about Safari being in the list. Some people didn't have a problem with Safari being in the list, they just objected to it being checked on by default.

I pretty much agree with the fact that "New Software" should be unchecked by default. This way, a user won't accidently install "New Software" without realizing it when all they really wanted to do was update QuickTime or iTunes.

It's going to be interesting to see what the blogosphere says about this attempt to appease the masses. Somehow I don't think it's really going to appease them at all. I guess time will tell.

Update: Did any Windows users notice as they updated their QuickTime version (if they did), that Microsoft updated their computer, yet again, without telling you what was updated or even giving you the option to not do the update?

This happened to me on my older Windows box (the one I used to take the screenshot with) after I updated QuickTime. When my machine was finished rebooting, it told me that Microsoft had updated my system with a critical update. No notice before the update, no prompt before updating that there is an update ready.

So where are all the people out there crying "dirty pool" for this act? At least these folks that are calling "foul" on Apple are Apple users. I just don't understand why there are not more people out there complaining about Microsoft basically taking over their machines with their updates. I will be the one deciding on wether an update is necessary for my machine or not. With Microsoft's track record of updates causing problems with their OS I don't want updates being installed on my Windows computers without my knowing what is being updated.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, apple software update, Software, update

After seeing a poor attempt at describing what symbols match up with what keys on the Mac from another website, I decided that it would be good to actually show all of them and also show you how to find a page in OS X's help system to find a lot of them.

- Command
- Shift
- Option
- Enter
- Return
- Control
- Up Arrow
- Down Arrow
- Left Arrow
- Right Arrow
- Page Up
- Page Down
- Top (Home)
- End
- Escape
- Delete (or Backspace) (above \)
- Forward Delete (or Del) (next to Home/End keys)
- Eject key
- Tab
- Back Tab (or Shift Tab) (Probably not seen on screen)
- Space (appears in some program menu items)

That pretty much covers what you might see in Menu Item mnemonics (or shortcuts).

You can find a great list of keyboard shortcuts for OS X in OS X's help system. In Finder, pull down the "Help" menu and type shortcuts. You should see an item called "About keyboard and other shortcuts". Select that entry and Apple's help system will pop up with a list of shortcuts for pretty much every aspect of OS X.

Also, if you type "Symbols for special keys" in the help menu or Help's search field, you will see an entry of the same name. That is where you can find most of the symbols and their names like what I have displayed above. I have added a few that you will probably see in menu items that were not displayed in that help page.

I hope this post helps you to understand the strange symbols displayed all over when describing keyboard shortcuts or combinations to get to certain functions and features. I know I could have used them back when I was starting out on the Mac.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: keys, Mac, special, symbol

MacHeist is offering a new software bundle for $49. This one has a lot of software I already own so I don't see myself taking advantage of it, but if you haven't purchased the earlier bundle, this one might be OK.

The software in this bundle is:

• Awaken
• Cha-Ching
• CoverSutra
• DEVONthink Personal
• iClip
• Overflow
• Wallet
• WriteRoom
• XSlimmer
• Enigmo
• Bugdom 2
• Nanosaur 2

Awaken: This is a great program if you are a business person who travels often and usually bring your Macintosh notebook with you. Just load up iTunes with some good tunes to fall asleep to and to wake up to and setup Awaken to use them. Awaken has a sleep timer that will slowly change the volume of the music playing down to 0 when the sleep timer is up and in the morning it will slowly raise the volume to gently wake you up. I have used it for this purpose and it works great.

I would even go so far as to buy a Mac Mini to use as a replacement for my home alarm clock if it weren't so expensive. You can program alarms in such a way so that you never have to mess with it again. A great app.

Cha-Ching: I got this from the previous MacHeist bundle and I don't really use it since I do all my banking on the web these days. If you don't it's a pretty decent money management program.

CoverSutra: I really like being able to see the cover art of music that I am playing, but I don't like leaving iTunes all the way open. I typically use the mini view. CoverSutra lets you place an image of a CD jewel case on your desktop with the artwork of the track that is currently playing. Plus, it has a menu bar item that allows you to access all your playlists as well as search for individual tracks, artists and albums. This is something I use all the time now.

DEVONthink Personal: I have this program from a much earlier bundle. I have pretty much never used it and I haven't updated it. I really can't review it and won't here.

iClip: I have this program too. I tried to use it back in the day, but it was just too cumbersome to use easily, so I stopped using it. I now use Savvy Clipboard ($12) which is a much better clipboard manager and is cheaper than iClip by itself.

Overflow: I bought this program a long time ago back when I was looking for a decent program launcher utility. I played with it for a while, but found it a little difficult to use. I then switched to Quicksilver (free), but found that program way to hard to take full advantage of. I settled on LaunchBar ($19.95). It's almost as powerful as Quicksilver, but has easy to use menus to help you use it and has a decent help file too.

If you don't mind the way Overflow is activated, it's a pretty good launch manager. I just wish it had a better way of editing the panes it uses to display applications.

Another program to look at is DragThing ($29). It's a little pricy, but it's the most powerful program of it's type. I used to use it back in the days of OS 9 and I even purchased an upgrade to use it with Tiger and Leopard. I don't because of it's use of screen real estate, but if you like this kind of program, it's the best.

Wallet: Now this is an odd choice since this bundle is being billed as the "12 Top Mac Apps". I think 1Password ($34.95) is way better than Wallet even if it is more expensive. Wallet is what I started with though. I used it for quite some time, but was unable to upgrade it for some reason. I sent them several emails about my problems with upgrading, but I never got a response back. That's when I switched to 1Password.

1Password has a secure way to access the information you store in it on the web as well as on some mobile devices including the iPhone.

WriteRoom: I don't own this one and haven't checked it out. I'm not a writer which is what this program seems geared toward. It basically helps remove all distractions associated with a computer when you are using it so that you can concentrate on your writing task instead of dealing with incoming email, IM's, Twitters, etc... It's probably very good and the retro "green screen" look is pretty funny. Reminds me of my days with my Apple ][ and monochrome monitor.

XSlimmer: I have heard conflicting views of using a program like XSlimmer to save hard drive space. I suppose as long as you have all your install images, it's safe enough to use. It helps you save hard drive space by removing the code in applications that you don't use. If you have an Intel Mac, then it will remove the PowerPC code and it will remove the Intel code if you have an older G5/4 Mac. I believe it also removes the languages that are not being used as well from programs that offer internationalization such as French and Spanish versions as well as English.

If you have a program like AppZapper ($12.95) or CleanApp ($10), then you won't need XSlimmer since those programs do the same thing as XSlimmer as well as help you uninstall software you no longer use.

Enigmo, Bugdom 2, Nanosaur 2: are all games. I bought Enigmo on my own, but got Bugdom 2 and Nanosaur 2 via other software bundles. They are pretty fun. I especially like Enigmo. A nice program that reminds me of a real game from Ideal called "Bing Bang Boing". (I love the internet! Where else would I be able to find a copy of an ad from back in 1972 about a game that never really took off!)

written by Dave M. \\ tags: bundle, cheap, Macheist, Software

As I run this site and keep track of the statistics from Google Analytics, I have had a couple of search hits from people looking to know how to remove a Preference Pane from System Preferences.

When I first got my Mac's, I too didn't know how to do it and relied on 3rd party programs like AppZapper and CleanApp to help me remove them. Later I found out exactly how to do it via OS X and so I thought I would pass along that knowledge.

So, say you have a Preference Pane you don't use anymore and want to remove it from System Preferences. Obviously, the first thing to do is Launch System Preferences.

As you can see, I have quite a few installed, but I am not currently using Witch, so I'll walk you through the process of removing it.

First thing you do is while holding down the Ctrl key, click on the Preference Pane icon you wish to remove. Now this is not the same as Right-Clicking on the Preference Pane icon. In fact, Right-Clicking on a Preference Pane icon will simply display the Preference Pane.

When you Right-Click on the Preference Pane icon, you will see this popup menu appear. Actually, you won't see the exact one because I have a few Context-Menu plugins installed as well. However, the "Remove "preference pane name" Preference Pane" menu item will be present when you do it.

No all you have to do is select the "Remove "preference pane name" Preference Pane" menu item and that Preference Pane will be a thing of the past. It's just that easy.

I get the impression that the designers of OS X wanted to make sure that removing a Preference Pane is something that you actually want to do and not do by accident. That is the only explanation I can come up with that explains why you have to use the Ctrl key instead of just Right-Clicking. Which, by the way, is what the Ctrl key is for when you are using an Apple one button mouse.

There is a drawback to removing a Preference Pane this way. You don't remove all the preferences for the just removed Preference Pane. Each Preference Pane has options that a user can set. Hence it being a Preference Pane. Those options are stored in a special folder in the users home directory kind of hidden away. Typically the path is {your home folder}/Library/Application Support/{name of preference pane}. It's usually pretty difficult to find the correct files to remove. Fortunately, these files are not big enough to be a bother and they are just text files so they won't slow down the OS like Windows' Registry typically does.

AppZapper

CleanApp

AppCleaner

If you are like me and really want to make sure that you have all the files to a Preference Pane removed, then I would suggest a program like AppZapper ($12.95), CleanApp ($10) or the free program AppCleaner (free). Each of those programs help you remove Preference Panes as well as Applications and other files that you may not need to help you recover space on a Hard Drive. I personally use CleanApp, I found it to have more features than AppZapper and it's a little cheaper. I have not looked at AppCleaner, I wasn't aware of a free Application Uninstaller like AppCleaner until after I had purchased CleanApp. However, I don't mind paying the $10 for a program. It's less than a trip to the movies these day.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: how to, Leopard, Mac, Os X, Preference Pane, remove, System Preferences, Tiger

Update: OK, I feel pretty darn stupid now. I found out why so many people are not able to restore closed tabs in Safari like I have been able to.

Turns out it's because I'm running an extension I found for Safari called Saft. Actually, I'm running a bunch of extensions for Safari. I liked a lot of the features I had in Firefox thanks to the extensions I had installed over there, but Safari doesn't really support extensions like Firefox does. However, it does support InputManagers or SIMBL programs. Saft can be run as an InputManager or as a stand alone application.

I run Saft as an InputManager so that it's around when ever I launch Safari. It does a bunch more things along with restoring closed tabs so head over to the programs website and check it out. It's not expensive at all and in my opinion, well worth what the developer is asking for it.

If you accidentally close a tab and want to reopen it, just type Ctrl-Z, or use the Edit menu and select "Undo Closing Tab".

I have no idea if this is a new Safari 3.1 feature or it's been in all versions of Safari since the beginning. I just had no idea it was there until today. Interestingly, it does not work in the Windows version of Safari 3.1. Can't say I understand why that is, they should be from the same build branch.

Here is why I'm posting this:

I just found a great feature of Safari totally by accident. Sometimes I close tabs I have open by mistake. It's pretty easy to hit Ctrl-W one too many times or just when you thought you were in a different application. At least for me it is. :shrug:

So I was working on an article I am going to post next when I accidently hit Ctrl-Z to undo something I had done in Snapz Pro X thinking I could undo something I had done. However, Snapz had completely gone away and Safari was the top app. I noticed that the page I was looking at had changed. I got a little worried since I had some text in a window I had typed and was afraid that I had lost it by closing the tab. So I looked at the tab bar and noticed that there were more tabs than should have been if I had closed it. I hit Ctrl-Z again and saw another new tab appear. I then realized that I was restoring tabs I had closed out earlier.

So I looked at the Safari menu bar to see if I could find out what Ctrl-Z did, not really thinking that it was Undo. I looked at the History menu first, then went over to the Edit menu and saw "Undo Closing Tab".

Now, at this point, I was saying to myself: Duh! Of course. Still, I wouldn't have thought to use Undo to restore a closed browser tab in a thousand years. Especially since Firefox and other browsers have other ways to restore closed tabs or no way at all.

So I pass this info on to others in hopes that it will make their decision to use one browser over another a little easier.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Leopard, Os X, Safari, Tiger, tip

There has been a lot of talk on the Apple blogs about a hacking contest where Charlie Miller won $10,000 plus a MacBook Air because he was the first one to hack into the machine and gain root access. How did he do this? He surfed to a test website he setup for the exercise with Safari. He managed this feet in just 2 minutes after CanSecWest security conference opened on the second day. No one was able to hack into any of the laptops setup for this purpose on the first day.

The way this contest was setup, if you can hack into one of the systems to gain root access you get prize money plus the system you hacked into. Hence the name of the contest: PWN2OWN. The first day was OS only attempts. The second day, the OS and software that is released with the OS are fair game, and on the final day, 3rd party software is added to the list.

Apparently, Microsoft Windows Vista was hacked on the 3rd day. No one managed to break into the 3rd system up for grabs, a Sony Vaio running the Linux distro Ubuntu.

I bring this up because one of my favorite bloggers to read brings up some valid points about security and Apple lax attitude for it. It has actually been a point of contention with myself an a lot of MacZelots. I constantly hear how secure OS X is due to it's Unix Kernel BeOS. Sure, that Kernel is probably very secure. However, there is a lot of software running on top of it that may no be so secure and the CanSecWest PWN2OWN contest shined a very bright light on that fact.

Safari is not clean software. This has been proven time and time again via Safari running on Windows machines and even the iPhone. It's hard to say how many problems are in other software that Apple produces, but Safari is a popular piece of software to attack these days. Especially since Apple all but forced it on Windows users recently.

This brings me back to my comment about a point of contention with MacZealots. See, I state that the reason Apple's OS X hasn't seen any major successful security exploits so far, is due to it's lack of market share. The old "security thru obscurity" argument. I have been ridiculed over and over again by my stating this.

What I mean by this is pretty simple. Since Apple owns a very small percent of the home computer market, virus writers don't see the OS X and the Macintosh as a viable platform for their attacks. Back in the 80's and 90's, virus writing was more of a personal pride thing. Hackers wanted to be able to claim that they were the ones to take down thousands of computers using their "handles" or monickers. Apple and Microsoft were targets back then.

Currently, virus writers are finding huge profit in the work they do. They write elaborate systems to allow spammers to get out their messages without drawing attention to themselves by using millions of "zombie" systems to do their dirty work for them. They are willing to pay big money to do this. In fact, there are viruses out there that actually have anti-virus software in their code to eradicate competing viruses so that only their virus is on the unsuspecting computer users system. They don't take computers down like before, but try their best to not be noticed at all.

Trust me when I say this is a big business. Spammers make millions of dollars spamming us, they are very willing to share some of that wealth to good virus writers to make sure that they have their way of sending out spam messages.

So what happens when Macintosh and OS X becomes more popular? Say when they see 30% market share or better? The Mac and OS X will wind up being a target just as much as Windows. Will that ever happen? I don't know for sure, but Apple is doing everything in their power to make Macintosh and Apple a very popular name. It also doesn't hurt that Microsoft has put out a dude of an OS called Windows Vista. Windows users are re-evaluating their decisions and seeing their friends running Tiger and Leopard and seeing that they don't have any problems with speed and usability.

The last couple of months, Apple has seen great sales numbers. Better than they have ever seen in their Notebook and Desktop computer lines.

If Apple keeps up this trend, they are really going to have to step up their security efforts in their software to make sure that they are secure. One thin Apple does have going for it is that when an exploit is discovered, it's fairly quickly corrected. Apple doesn't wait for "monthly updates" like Microsoft does. When they have a security update that needs to go out, they send it out.

So I am really hoping that Apple starts looking more closely at security and stops sitting on it's hands thinking that they are the best when clearly they have work to do.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Bloggers, Charlie Miller, Clean Software, Fair Game, Gain Root, Grabs, iPhone, Lax Attitude, Microsoft Windows Vista, Os X, Party Software, Point Of Contention, Prize Money, Reason Apple, root access, Safari, Security Conference, Security Exploits, Security Tag, Sony Vaio, Test Website, Unix Kernel, Windows Machines, Windows Users, Wit