The BFC Computing Weblog: Category Mac

Leopard is Still a Turkey

Bill McGonigle — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:48:00 -0400

I’ve been writing a short note here after each minor release of Mac OS X 10.5, noting the major problems with it, and 10.5.5 is unfortunately no different. Today I applied it to my main machine’s Leopard install and tried two fairly simple operations:

delete a partition with Disk Utility
install Software Updates

The first totally messed up my drive’s partition table, resizing a supposedly untouched partition from 96 to 26 GB, rendering it unusable. The second, applying a half dozen software updates failed on the first attempt, and on the second attempt rendered the system unusable (LoginWindow would keep crashing and re-loading in an endless cycle).

So, I’m restoring my machine from backup now, and will stick with 10.4 (Tiger) until Leopard is as stable as Tiger.

Maybe 10.5.6 will be better, but as of now I’m still recommending clients stay on 10.4.11. A year into Leopard now, and it still has fundamental problems - that Apple has 10.6 (Snow Leopard) planned as a no-new-features release specifically to address architectural problems is a sure sign the issues run deep.

iPod Command-Line Sync on Mac OS X

Bill McGonigle — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:15:00 -0400

This will sync any attached iPods if iTunes is running:

#!/bin/sh
osascript <<_END_OF_UPDATE
tell application "Finder"
        set processList to get name of every process
        if processList contains "iTunes" then
                tell application "iTunes" to update (every source whose kind is iPod)
        end if
end tell
_END_OF_UPDATE

It can be called from a cronjob to keep an iPod updated. iTunes ought to just do this automatically.

iPhone: Developers Burned, Investors Leery

Bill McGonigle — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:30:00 -0400

Fraser Speirs, former iPhone developer, had his application rejected by Apple on grounds that it might compete with iTunes. Unfortunately for Speirs and every other developer out there, you have no way of knowing if an app will be allowed by Apple until the last step in the development process, unless the app already exists in the Store. This raises the risk for investing in an iPhone app tremendously, meaning few businesses will make the investment, especially if their application is cutting edge. How would you like to invest $200K in an iPhone development project to have it turned back by a fickle screener?

But, I mean, who could have seen this coming in a completely closed and proprietary development environment?

Rule #3 of business - never have your business completely dependent on another business. A well-diversified, well-capitalized business might be able to take this risk, but the majority won’t. Android and Maemo are waiting.

transcode on macports fixed

Bill McGonigle — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:23:00 -0400

If compiling transcode for macports has you stuck at ‘undefined symbols’ for _mpeg2convert_rgb24 , the problem is that configure isn’t finding the ports version of pkgconfig, so it can’t find the library’s symbols.

The right thing to do is to make transcode depend on pkgconfig, so the ports version gets installed for you. I submitted a patch for this a few weeks, back, and it just got accepted, so expect to see it in the wild in the near future.

First Open Source iPhone App Killed?

Bill McGonigle — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:49:00 -0400

Apple has pulled the popular iPhone application BoxOffice from its store without informing the author or responding to his queries.

Some have speculated that it might be at the behest of the data provider (Fandango) but the author clarified, “i’m in talks with fandango right now, and they’re thrilled with my app”.

Another possibility is that the terms of the iPhone SDK were violated by the publication of the source code for BoxOffice, which necessarily discloses parts of the iPhone API to third parties.

For those wondering if Apple was actually going to enforce the non-open-source aspect of its NDA, this may be the test case that will decide the issue.

Ideal Time Machine Hard Drive

Bill McGonigle — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:47:23 -0400

After coming close to losing a few years' worth of the kids’ digital photos (I had a backup, thank you, rsnapshot, but when I only have one copy it’s close to being lost) I decided to find a good full-time backup hard drive for the wife’s computer. Hers is a Mac Mini running Leopard, and it has the Time Machine backup system (think exactly like rsnapshot, but with directory-level hard links as well). So, I wanted to find a drive that would be:

Small
Quiet
Easy
Big enough to handle backup of an 80GB drive
Reliable
Cost-effective

Now, there are several drives out there that have the capacity. Most are pretty big (physically), and many of them require an AC wall wart and have fans in them. That I didn’t want.

I usually just head over to Newegg and find a case and a drive and screw something together, but they didn’t have any that met the requirements. By this time I had decided that a Firewire bus-powered drive with a 2.5” 160GB drive would be perfect, and I finally found one at MacSales/OtherWorld Computing. These guys sponsor the open source project XPostFacto which lets you run OSX on hardware Apple has abandoned (so that you can connect to the Internet without being pwned). So, good guys, and they have the 160GB OWC Mercury On-The-Go Oxford911 FireWire 2.5” 5400RPM 8MB Cache Portable Storage Solution, which, while a mouthful, is just the right drive for Time Machine backups. I didn't think I'd buy another PATA drive, but the Oxford 911 chipset is really quite well-proven, a nice feature for a backup drive. The drive comes with a cable and a pleather case:

and a CD that contains some software for something I don't need (it would be a nice green move to be able to leave out pleather cases and CD's if they're just headed to the trash heap). I plugged the drive in, the Mac asked me if I wanted to use it for Time Machine, and a few clicks later the backups started running. Nicer interface than rsnapshot, for normal mortals anyway. Now after all that, there are two complaints. First, it's in a very nice lucite case. But the case doesn't have much in the way of markings on it. There's a 3-position switch on the back, and you have to refer to the user's manual pamphlet to figure out what it does. It's a switch for Bus Power/Off/AC Power. I made a label on my label maker so I could recycle the instructions. The second point isn't about the product but the marketing. The box exclaims, "Fits in your shirt pocket!". Here's how well that works:

This particular oxford (not 911) shirt of mine has bigger pockets than any others, and it just fits. When I hear a claim like that, I think of another 2.5" drive I have:

that can almost fit reasonably in a pocket. This isn't a shirt pocket drive - maybe cargo pants. Better to just call it a really nice drive.

Ideal Time Machine Hard Drive

Bill McGonigle — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:47:23 -0400

Small
Quiet
Easy
Big enough to handle backup of an 80GB drive
Reliable
Cost-effective

Now, there are several drives out there that have the capacity. Most are pretty big (physically), and many of them require an AC wall wart and have fans in them. That I didn’t want.

This particular oxford (not 911) shirt of mine has bigger pockets than any others, and it just fits. When I hear a claim like that, I think of another 2.5" drive I have:

that can almost fit reasonably in a pocket. This isn't a shirt pocket drive - maybe cargo pants. Better to just call it a really nice drive.

Ideal Time Machine Hard Drive

Bill McGonigle — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:47:23 -0400

Small
Quiet
Easy
Big enough to handle backup of an 80GB drive
Reliable
Cost-effective

Now, there are several drives out there that have the capacity. Most are pretty big (physically), and many of them require an AC wall wart and have fans in them. That I didn’t want.

This particular oxford (not 911) shirt of mine has bigger pockets than any others, and it just fits. When I hear a claim like that, I think of another 2.5" drive I have:

that can almost fit reasonably in a pocket. This isn't a shirt pocket drive - maybe cargo pants. Better to just call it a really nice drive.

Mac OS X 10.5.4 Issues

Bill McGonigle — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:28:00 -0400

I was hopeful that Mac OS X 10.5.4 would address previous versions’ data corruption issues, but it appears they still exist.

According to MacFixit, issues still exist with saving files to servers via at least AFP (are NFS or SMB affected?), system logging issues, firewall problems, and apparently Software Update is still buggy at applying binary deltas.

So, unfortunately I’m still not recommending 10.5 (Leopard) Client for folks who need to use network filesystems. If you’re using local disks only and don’t mind downloading the ‘Combo’ OS updates and applying them by hand, you’re likely to be fine and feature-wise Leopard has plenty to offer.

Hopefully 10.5.5 will finally quash the network filesystems problems, and nearly a year from release the OS will become widely useful.

PICT Abandoned by Apple

Bill McGonigle — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:30:00 -0400

I was cleaning up my hard drive today and found some screenshots I took of websites on 9/11, in Apple PICT format. Less than 7 years later, those PICT’s aren’t viewable on OSX in the Preview application (the standard image viewer). Seeing as this OS came out in 2005, it was likely abandoned then. At the time I was running the latest version of Mac OS 9, judging by the screenshots.

So, less than 4 years of support for that presumably very common file format.

I’ve converted the pictures to PNG (Using Photoshop 7, which can parse them), which as an industry standard open format ought to be recoverable for some time to come.

This has been reason #687 to avoid proprietary file formats.