But as television here goes, all I’m finding myself watching is Heroes, Spooks and QI. Without the iPlayer as the BBC have yet to release a version for OSX (or preferably an open platform based on Dirac).

In almost equally exciting news (for you perhaps, but personally I find this much more exciting) my electric guitar has recently arrived. And it is awesome. Unfortunately it did arrive a few days later than originally hoped- but otherwise Thomann have been exceptionally good value and lots of help when I ordered.

Paranoid.

So when my ibook kernal panics within minutes of booting, I panic. Then I google. Then I disable the Airport chip. ‘Sallright I can live without wireless until Summer and I’ve the time to get AppleCare to service it (it’s in daily use and mission critical).

Then, it crashed. And the screen didn’t come back on when I rebooted. And removed the battery. And rebooted. And remembered. A reboot holding on to the left side of the button was enough to get the not so aptly named ‘mr-t’ back on its’ feet for long enough to get the important files off (and still going). I’m taking it in to AppleCare (because they cancelled computer collection) on Monday, and if there’s no improvement. I’ll be getting a thinkpad.

Silly wordpress, this should work better now.

21. Copious Amount of Freeware While it is true that Download.com lists less freeware for the Mac, I highly doubt that you will find yourself using or even having installed all of these 50,000 pieces of freeware. Since MacOSX is mostly POSIX compatible, it can easily run most open source software. And the mac developer community is vibrant and the quality of software for the Mac is generally higher.
22. What is it With Steve Jobs? They trust Ballmer more than Jobs? What can I say?
    
    Dance, Monkeyboy, Dance?
23. The Menu is Where? Where it has always been. The Mac interface predates the Windows one and the menu bar adheres far better to Fitts law than the Windows one. Just imagine an MDI that fills the whole screen (and lacks the fugly background), that’s more the Mac idea.
24. Full Selection of Peripherals. The Mac would really benefit
25. Build Your Own Computer. Point 6, the third time. Besides, personal taste is generally subjective, but it isn’t beige.
26. The Apps Don’t Crash!Far more common (to crash) than a PC! I laugh. Sh*t shovelling the registry to increase MTBBSOD was amongst the reason I switched. If Mac Apps crash- I ask you to name them. It may take a reboot for you, but with my mac I can ‘killall’ the app before it takes the kernal down.
27. Tablets and Touchscreens. I want a tablet macbook. So do many mac users. I hope Apple make one. These guys do however.
28. You don’t need as much RAM. The Mac implementation of VM may leave lot’s to be desired. However, lower system overheads mean you don’t need as much RAM on a MAC as a PC. 512mb is powering my mini quite happily on the latest OSX and software. My friend just put another 2gb in his Vista box to make it run. Sheeowsh.
29. A Mac’s Delete Key Doesn’t Delete. Yes it does, it just deleted what I was about to call you for mistaking the UI for the file browser. Besides, it’s actually a forwards backspace key. Although, I have to admit that this quirk annoyed me for a while. Also command-delete works.
30. Apple Doesn’t Like Meddling. No, they don’t. Getting into an EMI shell means that you can easily brick a system. If you’re really hellbent on doing it: there’s a program called rEFIt to do the job.
31. PCs are greener. Who’d of thought? Greenpeace bashing a popular company? The lower power requirements and the non presence of an identifyable Vista Upgrade layer in our tips.
32. Best for Begginers. PCPRO beleive that PCs are best for begginers. The real world doesn’t. After switching my grandparents to use Macs, they get far more out of their computers. There was no problem with having to perform a solid day of maintenance on their computer 6 months later running complex updates etc. on their machine. And I remote controll it through VNC.

Well, to be brutally frank this was the worst PCPRO that I have ever read. Ever. Over the time I have read it, it has changed. It’s also a lot smaller nowadays. The articles comparing PCs to Mac are incredibly bigoted. Now the only reason that I’ll pick up a copy is to read the Real World Computing and it’s Open Source section. (Page 184.) Interestingly, there is more MacOSX in their Real World Computing than their feature piece.

[1|2|3]

11. Sensible Support Costs
    PCPRO have made a valid point here; the support plans available for Macs is far less than a PC. However, Apple products have almost always placed in the top 5 for fewest product returns. Also, where they state that most computer shops only service PC’s- they are only counting the PC worlds anti-mac bias. It’s possible to find a shop to service your apple gear.
12. Microsoft’s on your team. No they’re not. With activation and Windows Genuine Are You A Thief? Microsoft are clearly not on your team.
13. Black’s still the new black
    In making this point, PCPRO are implying that Macs are quick to go out of fashion. Then how come older macs can still sell for very respectable prices (far more than equally old PCs).
14. The CD-ROM has an eject button.
    I suppose it does, but then again which is best is entirely a matter of preference. And it’s notable to say that most Macs nowadays use slot-loading drives, which are naturally more convenient to eject via software.
15. No Confusing Version Numbers.
    Apple only sell one version of OSX, and for PCPROs claim that updating it breaks that; well, that’s ridiculous. For those confused: here it is. 10.x.y x= the version of OSX, there’s a new version every 1-3 years. y= “service pack” there are 10 of these between two versions and usually bring new features to OSX.
16. What the hell was that?/The Apple start up tone irritates the PCPRO editor?
    Then hold mute as you boot. Apple have used sampled sounds since the Apple II- and the current start up sound is about 16 years old. Also, Windows has an equally jarring sound to a mac user.
17. Cheap OEM Versions
    This is covered in point 6. Because you cannot build a mac from scratch, then you do not qualify for OEM. The closest you’ll see to an OEM copy is pre-installed on every new macintosh. There’s no arbitrary be a geek and buy a mouse discount.
18. Far Better Media Capability
    Currently MCE is superior to Front Row at acting like a £1000 video recorder. For one, I’m happy that my dedicated DVR unit does this without making toast and catching virii. Also when you buy a Mac TV-Tuner it is likely to be from Elgato who offer very good software to do just that. (Apart from the virii.)
19. IT Support Expertise
    For a magazine which has always seemed to be for professionals in the IT industry, the idea of becoming the ‘gold dust’ of support professionals must be enthralling. Same goes for programmers, you also need less support on the mac.
20. Not So Insecure.
    PCPRO argues that a PC with latest service packs and antivirus is unlikely to get a virus. This may be true, but Windows insistence on patching is very annoying to a power user like myself. I want the only update traffic to be the update list and update files, not the entire UI. Also, the antivirus software is not infallible and requires constant updates to be this secure. Also, MAC OSX is more secure by design- not additional measures.

[1|2|3]

This post will be furnished with appropriate links and pictures when available as this is from the currently on sale June edition (152).

1. Service Packs Really Don’t cost £90.
   Although 10.1 was released in 2001, OS9.2 was still in service until 2002 and an upgrade from 10.0 was given for free. 10.2 however can not be considered a service pack, and neither can 10.3. With each incorporating major performance leaps on the last, and graphical user interface overhauls. In fact, 10.2 bought Quartz Extreme- speeding up the UI considerably, and 10.3 carried the idea of Exposé which has just been poorly copied in Vistas Super Alt Tab. Tiger bought more stability and fine tuning, if any could be compared to a service pack, but I challenge you to find one with as many new features. Also, Apple release the 10.x.x releases for free- and these are the truer companion to the windows service pack. I’d also like to note speeds ups in each version, and far greater support for older machines.
2. No Price Premiums for Flashy Designs
   Apple are not trying to undercut the PC market to gain dominance. That’s not their plan, if you want to compare Apple to a PC manufacturer then pick a high end one. Also, they live longer than PCs and although you may have to splash out more for a Mac- you’ll replace it less often than a comparible PC.
3. Thousands of Decent Games
   Yes, Windows has the stranglehold on the PC gaming market. But with the new intel chipsets, more and more developers are making mac games now. Yes, you can run windows on a mac too. And if you’re dead set on upgrading your graphics hardware: then don’t be scared.
4. Two Mouse Buttons
   Welcome to 2007, as suprising as it seems MacOSX has full right mouse button support. The mighty mouse as they say may not by default use it, but it’s there for anyone who wants it. I’ve got used to the control-right click for the ibook and it no longer bothers me- I do hope they put some sort of way of determining which side of the button was pushed on their newer laptops though.
5. Broadband just works here too.
   With the advent of wireless broadband, USB modems are dying out and configuration is web based. And the wireless management for Macs is miles simpler than for windows.
6. Tailor made systems
   As far as I’m aware- most desktop macs are upgradeable and use ZIF. There are many valid claims that having only a few hardware configurations is a bad thing, but this adds to OS stability immeasurably.
7. Macs are months behind
   So be it. What it can do is what matters, when a machine will last 4 years then being up to the minute isn’t so important. Although, I’ve yet to see an 8-core desktop windows machine (without a server liscence).
8. Life beyond 1st January
   How important a factor is the date of the yearly trade show? If you want to get the latest, then ask for the macbook to be saved until after mac world. It’s an annoying business practice, but then again- it is legal.
9. Superior Search Abilities
   Why PCPRO threw in “I hate the Finder, the Zoom button and window resising is different” under this title bemuses me.
10. Saftey in Numbers
    Apple isn’t small. They have an $80 billion market cap. Sony are apparently more prone to experiment with a much larger cap of $50 billion. (That’s leaving the PS3 = sinking ship thing out). No. Apple aren’t going to drop OSX any time soon.

11-22 will be posted on Thurday the 20th of April.

In other news: Statistics coursework looking less like a 50 tonne weight descending on me. Normal updates resume other end of the tunnel.

Yesterday I received an invitation to the new brainchild from the makers of mydreamapp (I voted portal); MacHeist. Personally I don’t know what it is yet, but I do know that I will get hevilly discounted or free shareware. And in my books, that’s a good thing.

Also, my mac just went “swoosh”. It’s not Adium- that’s a chord. It’s not Mail- wrong “swoosh”. It’s not one of a million things, and I have no idea what program is reporting success or failure. None whatsoever.

Also in the news is Apples iTunes 7 and an 80gb video iPod. iTunes 7 even darker interface shows a solid departure from the traditional OSX aqua and metal style interface and shows perhaps some insight into Leopards UI- but perhaps not, as this might just be a little outing to the island of UI inconsistancy. Talking about new user interfaces it would appear that the next Office for mac will not have one, oh dear.

In unrelated news Nintendo told Europe just how much they should expect to be ripped off and when. The most significant thing about the £180 price point is that it is very close indeed to an XBOX360 core unit and it’s disparity with the price the US and Japan are getting.

Oh and I almost forgot; I’m sixteen next Sunday.

Before looking at the exciting features of cron, let’s first look at replacing a simple crontab entry using launchd.
So let’s look at the cron style plist from apples website. [annotated with square brackets]
N.B.: This file goes in /Library/LaunchAgents and will be ran from next login. Also note that this can be any of the three Library locations ~, / or /System/
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.
com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.apple.periodic-daily</string> [What the enrty is called, Apple reccomends a reversed DNS address such as org.themak.cron-job]
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/sbin/periodic</string> [the full UNIX path of the program, /usr/bin/open is a good choice]
<string>daily</string> [this is any arguments fed to the program, so to start firefox "-a" and in another <string> " firefox" (try open -a then the name of the application you wish to run before adding it here)]
</array>
<key>LowPriorityIO</key>
<true/>
<key>Nice</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<dict>
<key>Hour</key>
<integer>3</integer> [run this at 3:15 am]
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>15</integer>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>


Also launchd will be smart about sleeping macs and not try to run calendar events on them. Launchd can also do far more than a simple cron style calendar based tasks but also can be made to do much more. To get started with launchd I recommend checking out: Mac Geekery’s article on plists., the apple developer page or even an informative article by ArsTechnica. There is also a wealth of information on launchd to be found with google, I haven’t even scraped the surface. Also, try these manpages:
man launchd
man launchd.conf
man launchd.plist
man launchctl

No Image:
With big image:

What can I say about Microsoft?
They make the best Office suite.

When I used Linux, there was only one thing that drew me back to using Windows; Microsoft Office. It always pulled me kicking and screaming back to Windows. But when I switched to mac I also installed Office 2004. Unfortuneatly iWork only had a limited trial and although keynote showed immense promise. Seriously, I think a fairc comparison is a peashooter (powerpoint) versus and ICBM (keynote), it was really that pronounced. For essays and the like I like to use Lyx because of its’ output and the formatting niceness of LaTeX. 00

For inter-service compatibility, there is none to beat AdiumX. Being open source I can always run the latest version on the svn tree- not suggesting this as a smart thing to do. The SVN version occasionally has it’s glitches but on the whole is very stable. Just before writing this article I ran svn update and recompiled from the latest build (17291), actually a later build as that one wouldn’t compile.

Adium is an open source Instant Messanger with full support for XMPP, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, gTalk, bonjour and several other protocols. Originally it used libgaim for this but now it uses a mix of libgaim, libezv and joscar- with smack soon to be used for XMP (this will have jingle support and will eventually allow Adium users to talk with gTalk users.

Adium 1.0 was released in 2001 by a student called Adam Iser, but was re-written to form AdiumX (originally planned to be Adium 2.0). Adium uses OSX’s built in html component (WebKit) to display each chat, and this allows for easy themeing of the chat window with only knowledge of HTML and css). Also the contact list is easy to theme and in the SVN version will hide on an edge of the screen and can be configured to only show as little or as much user information as it takes to show who’s online.

Adium has full out of the box support for Growl, a universal notifications protocol for OSX. Which allows you to be constantly informed of when someone comes online or sends you a message. Also possible is to have notifications read out using the system voice.

On any other platform, the choice for a good powerful tabbed web-browser is fairly easy; Firefox. But on OSX it looks nasty:

1. It uses custom widgets.
2. It uses Aqua and a menu. Not unified.

So I looked for an alternative, deciding against Safari because I didn’t like it and eventually settled on Camino.
Camino shares a lot with the Firefox project, a need to create a seperate Navigator only version of Mozilla- but for OSX will full native widget use and utilizing OSX only features.

Unfortuneatly Camino has recently suffered development stagnation with long waits between versions and lacks the support for extensions that Firefox has. Otherwise Camino is a very stable and useful web browser with a solid and standards compliant rendering engine.

My future browsing choices:
Camino is a solid browser but with little chance of seeing a version 2 anytime soon, I’m going to look at the emerging alternatives:

1. Firefox 3.0 Minefield
2. Shiira 2.0 currently in beta

Firefox.
Firefox has all the cool features found in firefox that make it highly probable that it will regain it’s crown as king of the Browsers. However:

Shiira.
The early beta of Shiira 2.0 shows much promise and has many new and interesting features that turn up the heat for other web browsers. (Shiira has quite a long way to go yet, as some settings are greyed out and some parts still in Japanese)

Mail.app

It could be said that there is only one real choice for an email client for OSX: Apple Mail. For one it comes pre-installed with OSX and secondly; it genuinely is the best email client available.

The roots for Mail.app lie in NEXTSTEP and NEXTMAIL which bears great resemblance to the current Mail.app- especially the contact photographs and the way attachments are handled.

There are several features in Mail which set it apart from other Mail clients:
Use of a systemwide address book.

• Smart Mailboxes.
• Image handling.
• Expandability.

Address Book.
Unlike Outlook or any linux email client, Mail uses an Address Book which is universally present for other applications. This means that if I add a contact using Mail, I can also add IM accounts to that card and set up my IM software to add their picture automatically. This Address Book, being present as part of the OS not the mail client allows its data to be used by other applications with ease.

Smart Mailboxes.
Smart Mailboxes utilize spotlight and act as a way to sort messages, with a Smart Mailbox set up for emails sent regarding certain projects, sent photos or attachments.

Image Handling.

When you are sent an email with image attachments, you have the option to view the images as a slideshow. In this slideshow you have the option to navigate between images, to view a contact sheet or to add them to iPhoto.

Expandibility.
With its’ plugin architecture and AppleScript, Mail allows for lots of expandibilty. Three notable plugins are:

• MailTags.
• Letterbox.
• GrowlMail

MailTags is a productivity app, allowing messages to be assigned to projects and to dos.
Letterbox is a simple hack which forces Mail to display in a three column way instead of the default.
Vs.
And GrowlMail which is part of the growl notification framework, allows for a growl message to be displayed. This allows for you to get a grasp of the emails content before switching to Mail and needs no interaction.

Future.
The future looks good for Mail in OSX with the addition of HTML stationary, a system wide framework for RSS, TODOs and support for Notes. Whereas some people have concentrated on the pure evil that is inherant in HTML emails, my question is how will this affect the slideshow and import into iPhoto features of Mail.

Seems that support is reliant on Core Image, so yay for my iBook and nay for the mini

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read more | digg story

–EDIT–
Thought this song was appropriate.

–EDIT–
Finished, should be getting my key for it soon. I’ll be posting my thoughts on it soon.

1. Must be free.
2. Must not suck.
3. Must not have too many annoying quirks.

So after some searching I found two candidates:

• Vienna
• NetNewsWire Lite N.B.: I’m sure the payed for version is far superior to the lite one.

NetNewsWire Lite Things that I like about NNWl:

• That really shiny unified interface.
• The ability to send things to a blog writing program. Note to self: Find blog editing program which is free.
• It’s user inteface.
• That icon.
• The polysyballic name.

Things I dislike about NNWl:

• Opening a browser window every time I click on a link.
• Not being able to have the reading pane to the side
• The fact that it could be so much better- if I payed for it

Vienna- From the open source corner. Things that I like about Vienna:

• Being able to say it in one breath
• The icon less UI
• The built in tabbed browser- which is based on Safari
• The right aligned reading pane.
• Its’ open source -itude.

Some things which I dislike about Vienna:

• The Metal UI.
• No custom favicons.

Conclusion Net news wire lite is a well built but understandably feature anaemic, due to its’ bigger brother Net News Wire Pro. Vienna has a plethora of features and is a fully fledged rss aggregator although could do with more of its options accessible from the preferences section and would do well to lose the metal in favour of a dark-metal theme such as the one featuring in iTunes 6. The winner? Vienna! XD

It seems to perform its fuction very well. I also signed up for their mystery meat thing for £9- so I’ll see how that works out. MacZot basically bulk buy shareware and sell it on at a discount price to drum up publicity. They seem to have some good apps on offer- which changes every day.
MacZOT is for Mac users. They say.
–update:

The mystery programs have been revealed, and they’re OK but nothing really spectacular. I suppose they were worth the £9- but I have no use for these programs and would have been happier getting fewer but more useful programs.

Printing
The printer is nowhere to be seen in the gutenprint (formerly gimp-print) list (at least in the main set-up) but I stumbled upon this news release which states that it does work in the beta.

1. Download Gutenprint from sourceforge, and install it. (It might seem to hang for 2 minutes- that’s OK)
2. Accept that you are using beta quality software- and I’m not responsible if it doesn’t work.
3. Click the add printer button on any print dialouge.
   
4. Option- click on more printers.
   
   
5. Select Advanced.
6. Then ‘other’.
7. Now pick out the printer PPP file.
8. 
   This file is HD/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/stp-escp2-dx3800.5.0.ppd.gx. The easiest way to find it is by going to en.lproj and then entering dx3800 into the search bar.
9. Click choose.
10. Click add.
11. Click add.
12. Print this page, it’s finished- and you’ll need it for the scanning section.

Scanning

Scanning on the DX3800 is supported by SANE, for the purposes of this tutorial we will install TWAIN-SANE and it’s SANE bundle- but I will not go into detail about TWAIN-SANE as I had problems with it so I will use an applescript to run the scan.

1. First download pretty much all the packages from twain-sane’s website and install the ones you need. Except for iconv if you are running Panther or Tiger (10.3 or 10.4) Also make sure to download the files marked as binarys- not SDKs.
2. Install in this order:
   1. libusb libusb.pkg.tar.gz
   2. gettext gettext.pkg.tar.gz
   3. SANE backends SANE-backends.pkg.tar.gz
   4. SANE preference pane SANE-Preference-Pane.pkg.tar.gz
   5. twain-sane TWAIN-SANE-Interface.pkg.tar.gz

   Click on them to decompress and then click on the .pkg to install.

3. Open terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal).
4. Put something in the scanner.
5. Copy this into terminal:

   scanimage --format tiff > test.tiff
   

6. Wait until the scanner is quiet.
7. Open your home directory and look for a file called test.tiff, prepare for rubbish quality.
8. If it is there open it after a few seconds, if the basic essense of the scan is in the image the it’s OK- if an error was spewed out then follow the troubleshooting instructions.
9. Open image capture and perform a few colour scans at 150 and 300dpi to test, if it works the good for you .
10. If not (like me) then you will need to run scanimage to scan each time, or write an applescript to do it.
11. 
    The applescript source; you can use this to build your own version with custom settings.
12. 

13. The compilled application. Just run this (or the script) and choose a filename, then after a while the file will be in your home directory all ready to use, in full resolution. It would be possible for me to make a preview and select thing, but that’s for another day.

14. The files don’t want to play so copy this into script editor and save it, and make a copy which is compiled and as an app.

    property theCommand : ""
    repeat while theCommand is ""
    display dialog "Name of scanned file:" default answer
    theCommand
    set theCommand to text returned of result
    end repeat
    try
    do shell script "/usr/local/bin/scanimage --mode color --format
    tiff --resolution 300 > ~/" & quoted form of theCommand & ".tiff"
    end try
    

    Thanks to applescript.net for the applescript.

Hope you enjoyed this and found it informative please post in the comments with any difficulties and successes.

1. Open terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal).
2. Copy this into terminal:

   export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
   sane-find-scanner
   

3. Your screen should look like this:
   
4. Take note of the vendor and product numbers.
5. Open system preferences.
6. Select SANE.
7. Click on the configure button next to epson.
8. 

Update:
This seems to look like its drinking the ink, but only replace it when your printouts are looking off colour. Also those ink head checker things that clean your printer aren’t available so it might be worth borrowing someone’s PC laptop (or use boot-camp if you use an intel mac) to run them.