An Accidental Stroke of Brilliance

Today, when I left my newly installed and configured HackBook (running XxX 10.5.6) downstairs for awhile, the display went to sleep. I thought nothing of it of course. I closed the lid and took it upstairs. When I opened the lid, it gave me the boot prompt. “Strange,” I thought, and when I pressed enter to boot it, nothing happened. My keyboard had stopped working. I rebooted and the keyboard still didn’t work. Rebooted again. Nothing. At this point I was cursing. Loudly.

I figured the only way to get it back was to reinstall it. I got the XxX 10.5.6 DVD, popped it in, and waited for the “press any key” prompt. I pressed the spacebar. The prompt was still there. My keyboard still wasn’t working. I started cursing again when the countdown on the prompt reached zero and booted my hard drive. Elation filled me. I was back in business.

As soon as I got to the desktop, I fired up System Preferences. I figured the problem was with my power-saver settings. I went to “Energy Saver”, clicked “Show Details”, and set everything to “Never”. Hopefully that’ll make it so it never happens again.

I rebooted without the DVD, reached the boot prompt and pressed enter. My keyboard was working again. Huzzah!

The lesson here? If this ever happens to you, pop in the DVD and let it boot for you.

AppCleaner: The Free App to Clean Up Useless Crap

AppCleaner is a great program for Mac OS X for uninstalling apps. Most apps can be uninstalled by just dragging them to the trash and emptying it, but there are certain apps that just can’t be entirely deleted this way, and that’s where AppCleaner comes in. When you start it you get this:

When you drop an app, AppCleaner searches your hard drive for any files labeled with that app’s name. It can also uninstall widgets, plugins, and prefpanes. The app makes liberal use of animation, which is really nice. And the best thing about AppCleaner is that it’s free.

You can download it here. Mac OS X only.

New iShuffle an iFail

Today, Apple introduced the new iPod Shuffle, and when I saw it on Apple’s website my first reaction was, “WHERE THE HELL’S THE CLICKWHEEL?!”:

I kept searching, vainly, for any hint of a clickwheel; any sign of a button. But no. There are none.

So without a clickwheel, how are you supposed to control this thing? Apple’s solution is to put all the controls on the earphones:

This (to me) seems like an incredibly stupid decision from Apple. I would hate having to reach for my earphones every time I wanted to skip a song when I could just hold the iPod in my hand and change songs instantly. And it pretty much forces the listener to use Apple’s painfully circular default earphones, or their $80 rubber-tipped ones, at least until third parties release their own accessories for the new Shuffle. It’s also a learning curve, though admittedly a small one. The controls work like this:

Plus and Minus buttons: Volume control.

Middle Button, single click: Plays and Pauses the music.

Middle Button, double click: Skips songs.

Middle Button, hold: Activates VoiceOver.

Middle Button, hold longer: Activates VoiceOver for playlists.

Middle Button, after previous: Selects playlists.

And that’s not all the controls. For a complete list of the complicated clicking needed to do the advanced controls, click on the image:

VoiceOver, as its name suggests, is a new feature that dims the music and announces the track currently playing.

Another gripe is that the new design only allows for 10 hours of battery life, down from the previous generation’s 12.

The new shuffle costs $80, comes in silver and black, holds 4GB or 1,000 songs, and I wouldn’t fork over $80 for it.

[Apple]

Safari 4’s Hidden Preferences

When Apple release the public beta of Safari 4 last week, not everyone was thrilled with it. Some complained about the tabs (which I’m still uncertain about) and others complained about the new toolbar. Thankfully, Apple included some hidden preferences to get rid of these features.

To trigger these hidden preferences, type these codes into a terminal (note: this only works on a Mac):

Disable the New Tabbar

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

Disable the New Toolbar

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO

Re-enable the Old Blue Progress Bar

Note: this requires the previous tweak.

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO

Disable the New URL Autocompletion

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList -bool NO

Disable the New Google Suggest Menu

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -bool NO

Disables CoverFlow in Bookmarks

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool NO

Disable the New Dimming Animation in Top Sites

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapshot -bool NO

Disable Top Sites Completely

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool NO

Undoing these Changes

Tabbar: defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop

Toolbar: defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign

Blue Progress Bar: defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle

URL Autocompletion: defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList

Google Suggest Menu: defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest

CoverFlow in Bookmarks: defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView

Dimming Animation: defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapshot

Top Sites: defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites

OmniWeb And Other Apps Now Free

The Omni Group has made several of it’s Mac-only shareware apps free. Included apps are OmniWeb (web browser), OmniDazzle (screen effects), OmniDiskSweeper (space saving), and OmniObjectMeter (memory optimization).

Adobe and Apple Working Together to Bring Flash to the iPhone

AppleInsider reports that Adobe and Apple are collaborating to bring Adobe’s flash plugin to the iPhone. 

Shantanu Narayan, Adobe’s CEO, said in an interview with Bloomberg that “[i]t’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating. The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

The challenge lies in Flash’s weight; it’s simply too resource intensive for the iPhone’s processor. There’s a slimmed down version of Flash called Flash Lite, but Steve Jobs has said that it doesn’t have enough features, such as playing web video, to make it a viable option for the iPhone.

Of course, there’s no release date yet, and no word on what this means for the iPhone’s YouTube app, but here’s hoping they make something great. I’m tired of switching between desktop YouTube and the YouTube app to get to my subscriptions.

Glims Enhances Safari

 Glims is a plugin for Safari for those who are irked by its limited feature set. It adds quite a few features to Safari, including fullscreen mode, starting with your last used tabs, unclosing tabs, search engines other than Yahoo and Google, search suggestions, and much more.

Run Mac OS 9 in Leopard With SheepShaver

If you want to run Mac OS 9 inside of OS X, either because you want to run some classic games, or you’re feeling nostalgic, you can use SheepShaver to set it up. 

SheepShaver is an open-source PowerPC emulator that allows you to run classic Mac apps inside Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and BeOS.  I’m only going to tell you how to get this on Leopard, so if you’re running Windows, Linux, or BeOS you’re on your own.

There’s an installer package that will install SheepShaver and Mac OS 9 here. Download it, unzip it, and follow the installation instructions. That’s it.

Not very instructional, I know, but to make up for it I have plenty of screenshots:

 

Picasa Beta for Mac Released

Google has finally released the Mac beta for Picasa. Like its Windows and Linux counterparts, it offers seamless integration with Picasa Web Albums. Picasa scans your computer for pictures and keeps them nicely organized with tagging, folder organization, and timeline features. Google included some options to ensure that Picasa and iPhoto don’t clash with each other over who gets to manage your photos.

Picasa would be a great download for anyone looking for an alternative to iPhoto, though it is still in beta.