Weblog of a “Switcher”

This is a continuation of my sad, sad story of the demise of the boot drive on my Mac Pro and the process of recovery. This chapter finds the rather stupid Mac Pro owner looking to recover all the purchased media from Apple and iTunes.

Monday morning at around 8am, I sent off a letter to Apple asking them if they would allow me to download all my purchased media and games from iTunes since I lost all the data on the drive the media was on. I told them that I normally backup my data, but my backup drive had recently crapped out and that I was waiting for my new drive to arrive when the drive holding the media died. Not entirely the truth, but pretty close.

I did have a Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo 1TB RAID drive which contained 2 500GB SATA drives and a very small RAID controller. The drive worked great for about a year, but then started acting strange. Turns out that the fan used to cool the box seized up due to dust and stopped spinning. I was unaware of this fact until the drive completely shot craps. From what I can tell, one of the 500GB drives is dead and the other may still work. I'm testing that fact now and was ultimately the reason why I accidentally wiped the boot drive. I want to use it for a Boot Camp drive for Windows.

My new 1TB My Book Studio Edition II drive is a single 1TB SATA drive. No weird built-in RAID controller, no need for a fan to help cool the unit down. Just 1TB's of pure backup storage for Time Machine to do it's thing with. In fact, it's finished the full system backup now so I am back to being safe once again.

Anyway, I got an email from Apple at 5:30pm the same day telling me that they have decided to allow me to download the tracks I lost. Now, from what I have heard from Leo Laporte and TWiT, Apple allows it's customers 1 of these "get out of jail free" cards (as it were) per year. I shouldn't need more than just this one since I will be not only backing up to the external drive, but also backing up my purchases to DVD later. I'm not going to allow myself to lose my media again, period!

So, now I'm downloaded the thousands of files that make up all the music, movies, and games I purchased over the years. There is quite a lot. It's interesting to see that iTunes is smart about this and is not downloading tracks that I recovered off my iPod earlier. This saves a little time and confusion when it comes to dealing with duplicate files.

So, once again, Apple support shines bright and true. It sure is nice to know you can count on them when you need them. Pity other computer manufacturers can't seem to get their acts together.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, customer support, iTunes

Have you ever accidentally dragged an icon off of your Dock thinking it was the actual icon and not the top most icon on a Leopard Stack? Man I have, many times. One thing I really miss switching from Windows XP to OS X is the ability to lock down the Dock so that I can't accidentally remove an icon or change the size of the Dock icons or even move it to a different side of the screen.

DockLock is a shareware program that actually locks the Dock down so that you can't accidentally remove an icon, move an icon to a different location on the Dock, or even change the size of the icon magnification.

The program takes 0 bytes of memory after you run it because all it really does is change some settings in Leopard's Dock process. So, if you have an Applescript or Automator script that does the same thing, or you have a program like MacPilot, you might not feel you need this program. However, this program puts all the adjustments needed to make this work into a nice single little package that eliminates the need to have the other options mentioned.

The DockLock application icon, if stored on the Dock, lets you know the Dock is locked or not.

The program's preferences are pretty extensive considering all it does is modify "default" commands in Leopards Dock process.

As you can see, it even allows you to switch the 3D effect of the Dock on and off.

The best part is that they are only asking $8 for the program. Considering the amount of work that goes into writing Macintosh applications, this is quite a deal.

I'm still evaluating the program myself, but considering the ease of use, I'm probably going to go ahead and purchase the program.

Check it out at: http://www.armelline.com/DockLock_2.0.html

written by Dave M. \\ tags: dock, Leopard, lock, shareware

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

I just learned of a great little free program to help folks that are transitioning from Windows to the Macintosh, or just want to be able to access the Apple Menu Bar from anywhere on the screen.

The program is called DejaMenu and its really a nice compact program that doesn't take up any screen real estate. No Menu Bar icon and no Dock icon.

To use the program, install it somewhere where you normally install programs. Launch it. The first thing you will see is a dialog asking if the default keyboard shortcut (Control-Shift-M) is OK. If so, press Accept Combo and your set.

Now, if you find yourself on your second monitor or far away from the menu bar and want to access it, just press Control-Shift-M and you will see the applications menu in front of you.

If you have a multi-button mouse, you can even map one of your buttons to enter the keyboard shortcut and have access to the menu via the mouse.

One little caveat I have found so far is that this utility doesn't handle modifier keys changing the menu. So he shows all menu items no matter what modifier keys are pressed. So the menus are a little more populated than normal, but at least you have access to Option-File->Save All (as an example) with this utility.

I highly recommend this one for just about anyone who wants to make their life a little easier.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: apple menu bar, dejamenu, free, Freeware, menubar, utility

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

Secrets is a Leopard Preference Pane that allows it's users to modify settings in Leopard that before were only accessible from Terminal.app. This allows the "less savvy" population of computer users to customize their Leopard installations as a pro might.

It all starts with downloading and installing the Preference Pane from http://secrets.textdriven.com/. Just unzip the downloaded file and double click on the "Secrets.prefPane" file. Leopard knows that this is a Preference Pane and will copy it to the correct location. OS X is just awesome that way.

It will then open the Preference Pane which looks like this:

As you can see from the screenshot, there are quite a few "Secrets" to choose from. The light blue (iTunes like pane) on the left side of the window shows all the programs that have "Secrets" to choose from. There are also two special items. "Top Secrets" shows the most popular secrets and "All Secrets" which will show all the secrets that can be chosen.

When you find an item you which to change, clicking on it will reveal a bit more information about the secret:

You can then click on the User Interface control that changes the secret. In the above example, that would be the checkbox. Depending on what the secret changes, you might be prompted to quit the application that will be effected. This appears at the bottom of the Preference Pane next to the "Revert" button.

A really nice touch to this Preference Pane is the "Update Secrets" button. Clicking this button will tell Secrets to go out to the server that holds the database of all the secrets and see if there is a need to update the database stored on your computer. It also checks to see if the Preference Pane needs to be updated as well. The "?" (Question Mark) button takes you to the Google Code page where the Secrets Project is being maintained. The "Revert" button will restore the secret setting back to it's default value and the "More Info ->" button takes you to the database entry were the selected secret is stored on the server's database.

I personally am not all afraid of using Terminal.app to make these kinds of changes. This can be a problem since I don't always remember that I have made them and then don't know how to set them back to their default value. The Secrets Preference Pane makes this a no-brainer.

If you like the idea of personalizing your installation of Leopard, hope over to their website and give it a try. Best of all, it's free.

Update (5/8/08): It looks like development on the Secrets Preference Pane has either stopped or really slowed down. I talk about it here along with a really good replacement program and a possible reason for the lack of development here: MacPilot: New Version Kills Secrets Preference Pane Utility

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Checkbox, Computer Checks, Computer Users, Correct Location, Customize, Database, Database Entry, Double Click, Downloaded File, Google, Info Button, Interface Control, iTunes, Leopard, Os X, Population, Preference, Preference Pane, Question Mark Button, Screenshot, Secrets, Top Secrets, Unzip File, User Interface

Don't get me wrong here, I am really excited that Apple has worked out a deal to allow us to rent movies. I have already used it and am pretty much pleased with it. I'll explain my disappointment in a little bit...

Renting movies from Apple is a real boon for me. I've tried Netflix and Blockbuster's DVD rental via snail-mail and have been nothing but angered with both. After less than a month with each service, I started getting movies that were on DVD's that looked like they had sandpaper rubbed on them. They were completely unreadable. I would return the DVD and let them know that the disc was destroyed. However, the next disc they would send was either just as bad or they had simply sent me the save DVD.

For the longest time, I have resorted to BitTorrent for a way to "rent" movies. I would watch them, then delete them off the computer. This worked pretty well for me, but takes a long time to download and there is an element of danger with using BitTorrent to "rent" movies.

I do buy movies and television shows on DVD. I own all 10 seasons of Stargate: SG1 and the first 3 seasons of Stargate Atlantis (we are currently on season 4). I own over 100 movie DVD's. I have even bought a few movies from Apple. I don't do this often though since you don't get any of the extra's that are on the DVD's when buying from Apple. If I don't care about any of the DVD extra's, I'll buy from iTunes.

Now that Apple is renting movies, I waited till the first movie I wanted to rent was available, The Simpson's Movie, and tagged it for rental. I was pleased to see it start downloading immediately. I was surprised to find that I couldn't move/copy the downloaded rented movie to a different Mac. I'll have to make sure that when I rent movies, that I use my MacBook so that it's on the computer that is attached to my home entertainment system. Otherwise, I won't be able to watch it in comfort.

My "disappointment" came when I was ready to start watching it. I wasn't able to use Front Row to watch the movie. I am able to watch movies I have purchased via Front Row, movies I have "rented" via BitTorrent via Front Row and Perian. Yet, I'm not able to watch rented movies via Front Row. Why is this Apple? What could possibly be done that would break your precious DRM with Front Row?

Also, when playing the movie I rented, I was rewarded with a full screen display that not only had black bars on top and bottom of the video, but on the left and right! For some reason, the full screen experience for the movie was "less" than full screen. Fortunately, my Sharp Aquos HD television has the ability to "zoom" a picture so that I didn't have any black bars. It clipped a few pixels around the image, but was fine for watching the movie. Doing so made the movie a bit pixelated, but I guess that's expected considering the "full screen" they chose to give me.

Oh, I know. They would be competing with TV! Really? TV is $229, a MacBook is $1099 and a MacMini is $599. How could that be competing with TV? Seriously Apple, let us use Front Row with Movie Rentals. Why else would you have opened up Front Row on all Macintosh computers in Leopard if not so that we can get the full multimedia experience with Front Row?

Another disappointment is the lack of ability to rent TV Shows. If I am going to pay over $30 for the ability to watch a season of a TV show, I'm going to just go out and buy the DVD box set. I want to be able to watch the series for a fairly minimal cost. Say $4-$5 for 4-5 episodes. Pretty much a DVD's worth of episodes. I hope they are just testing the waters with movie rentals and will be adding TV shows later.

Now, another possible disappointment is the lack of HD quality movies using iTunes instead of TV. Now, its possible that there just isn't any HD quality movies out yet since the TV software update isn't out yet. I do hope that this is the case. My MacBook is more than capable of displaying 1920x1080 interlaced (1080i), so why not allow me to watch HD content? Now the "Steve" told us that HD content is coming. So I can only hope that it's coming to all rentals and not just TV rentals.

Overall, I'm still pumped about the idea of renting movies via my Macintosh. I just wish they would do a better job of it. If they don't deal with some of these issues soon, I'll have to go back to the "best" way to do it. Via BitTorrent. It's slow, but it works and gives me true HD quality.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Bittorrent, Blockbuster, Boon, Disappointment, Element, Few Movies, Home Entertainment System, iTunes, Little Bit, Long Time, Longest Time, Mac, Macbook, Netflix, Sandpaper, Sg1, Snail Mail, Stargate Atlantis, Television Shows On Dvd

Wow guys, I thought installing Windows XP in Parallels or Boot Camp was bad...

OK, so I did something kind of stupid this weekend, I attempted to "update" my Windows XP game machine to Windows XP Pro. I thought: "How bad could it be, I'm going from XP to XP Pro?" What a freaking mistake!

So I did the upgrade and when it rebooted to finish the upgrade, it started bringing up the Windows splash screen, then went black then instantly after that, the infamous Blue Screen of Death followed immediately after that with a reboot.

Why did this happen? Well, my guess is that I had a separate partition with Vista RC2 installed and so I probably had a "dual boot" boot sector that wasn't updated properly after the update. So, I might have been able to recover the update, but I really didn't feel like it, so I wiped out the partitions, and started from scratch.

I almost decided to screw Windows and install Ubuntu. However, I am wanting to play Spore when it comes out next year. So Windows it is...

This is where things when really south. Oh sure, the install of XP Pro went easily enough. What went south was the fact that my computer was running like an IBM AT from back in the day and had no sound. Why? No drivers. Really, Windows had no drivers for my system.

At first, I was pissed. I have an install disk with Windows XP Pro SP 2. Then I realized something. There are billions of hardware combinations that Windows runs under. How in the world could Microsoft have all the drivers for all the combinations that it has to run under? Then I remembered that my Dell came with a "ResourceCD" that has all the drivers for the hardware that it came with. So I pulled out the CD, after taking about an hour to find it, and ran the installer to install the drivers I needed to get my system up to something a little more modern.

What surprises me, in this day and age, is why isn't this stored "in the computer" as a ROM drive that can be activated so that the Windows install could find it and use it to get drivers installed? This way, after installing Windows, a user will have a system that "works". Instead, I had to do things that a normal home user would have no idea how to do. It wasn't easy at all to do. I had done it once before so I actually had a clue what I was doing. Otherwise I would have been a little iffy my self.

So compared to Leopard and the Mac, the process of installing the OS from a wiped HDD is like night and day. Leopard was extremely easy and Windows XP Pro was a nightmare.

Now after all the hell I went through to get Windows installed and my hardware drivers installed. I then had the fun I have had in the past with Parallels and Boot Camp. 87 lovely updates followed by several more updates for a total of over 110. So, about 10 reboots and 110+ updates and I finally have a Dell PC that is ready to use again. With Leopard and the Mac, it was install, maybe one reboot no more than two, and I was up and running with the Mac. Yet there are still people out there that think that Windows is way easier to use than the Mac...

It's really a shame that most game developers don't make Mac versions of their games. There are a few that do. Thanks Blizzard! It's funny really, since the Mac has a limited number of graphics cards that are supported and all the rest of the hardware is built into the Mac, developing games for the platform has to be as easy to do as any XBox/Playstation/Wii game would be. Oh sure, there are not as many Macs in the home as there are PC's or Game Consoles, but still...

So that was my fun this weekend. All because I wanted to be able to access my Dell with Remote Desktop Connection instead of VNC. Ah well...

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Billions, Blue Screen Of Death, Boot Camp, Boot Sector, Dell 8400, Dual Boot, Game Machine, Guess, Hardware Combinations, Installing Windows, Mistake, Parallels, Partition, Partitions, Reboot, Rom Drive, Scratch, Surprises, Windows Splash Screen, Windows Xp