On the elevator ride down this evening a co-worker asked me, “So you install Leopard yet?” I was about to respond when I stopped and took a moment to think about how truly weird that question was. For one thing, my co-worker is not a Mac user. Never owned a Mac. Second, Leopard is an operating system – a Mac operating system – which at a certain point in time was simply not elevator conversation. People barely knew which version of Windows they used let alone that a Mac might have an operating system. At least that’s how it used to be. If in 1997 someone asked me, “So, you upgrade to OS 8 yet?” I would have said… well I can’t answer that because it never would have happened in a million years. No one knew what OS 8 was. They’d have laughed at me for using a Mac. “Macs?! Mac’s don’t even have files!” someone would say and I’d roll my eyes and think “Just you wait until Copland comes out, you’ll see!”

And so I go to bed last night at 2:00 AM because the Red Sox just won the World Series. Again. I mean wow. I don’t think most people realized just how painful being a Sox fan was before ‘04 to truly understand how enormous that is for me. Give 2002 era Shawn the ability to sneak a peak at this entry and he’d shit his pants twice and pass out. But of course, now it’s not even shocking. Now we’re talking about dynasties. Hell, 2 in 4 years practically is a dynasty in this age. It’s so bad people are sick of the Red Sox. “Ugh, they always win,” is what I’m hearing now. This is bananas. Now the Red Sox are the Yankees apparently. I’m actually reading this. I’ve read 5 articles over the last 2 days that ended with the statement “But the Red Sox are the Yankees now.” I don’t even know what to do with this. How did I go from being defined as an underdog to being… well, this, whatever it is.

Everyone owns or wants a Mac, the Sox are the most dominant team in baseball…

I’ll say this much, up might be down, left might be right, coke might be pepsi, but I’m loving every second of it.

Tags: apple, redsox

I just stumbled upon this trick last night and it makes the MLB.TV experience 1000% better on the Mac. Go to the Flip4Mac control panel in System Preferences and under the Browser tab check “Launch QuickTime Player.”

What this will do is launch QuickTime Player every time your browser encounters an embedded Windows Media file and open the video in QuickTime instead of embedding it in the browser window. I had never turned this on because the idea of launching a separate app seemed redundent, but trust me when I say that the experience of watching the game in Quicktime Player is exceptional compared to being stuck in that crappy little browser window.

First of all, once it’s liberated from the browser it instantly gains functionality. You can resize and position the window a lot easier than the large clunky browser window. You can also quit your browser entirely once the game has started.

Second, now that QuickTime has enabled full screen mode for the masses with its latest update (7.2) you can now watch games in full screen without having to use (or pay for) the bloated MLB.TV Mosaic app.

Third, For users that have an Apple Remote, you can now play and pause the game with the remote!

Fourth, and this is the coolest part. you can watch as many games as you want at once, QuickTime player doesn’t care, check it out.

If you have two monitors you can even watch two games full screen simultaneously!

Tags: apple, baseball, flip4mac, mlbtv, quicktime, tips

Check your feeds, cause we just smacked you (metephorically) in the face with episode 21 of the freshly renamed Maniacal Rage Podcast. Download or subscribe.

Even cooler is that the fine folks at iTunes have chosen to feature us on the podcasting page this week! Check it out. How cool is that? Thanks iTunes!

Tags: apple, comedy, goodnews, humor, podcast

I just used the auto-generating password function that is built into OS X to come up with a new password for a client. Instead of asking it to generate a password of random letters and numbers, I asked it to generate a “memorable” password. Here are 5 consecutive passwords that it came up with:

glaze79{fart
upon225[huge
smoke55_bole
duple96\vile
rob5(Shiitic
gorse4&bungs

While, yes, thank you, these are very memorable, and would work for me personally if I was feeling frisky, I can’t exactly give any of these to a client. Even the ones that aren’t technically offensive arouse uncomfortable associations. I also couldn’t say, with a straight face, “And your new password is ‘Glaze Seventy-nine Farts.’ ”

Tags: apple, haha, ohjesus

These ads make me smile.

Tags: apple

After confessing my obsession with Dashboard and its widgets I decided to turn the post into it’s own website. Completed entirely in the time between waking and going to work each day, it’s just something I needed to get out.

I present to you I Love Dashboard. Go check it out.

So no, it’s not a movie. But if this is successful I have a screenplay all ready to go. And yes, it will be just as exciting as you imagined for a movie about dashboard widgets.

BLAKE
Holy fuck, what time is it?!

HOLLY
(through tears)
I don’t know! I just don’t know!

BLAKE
I’m going to use my widgets.

Holly is stunned speechless. BLAKE hits F12.

BLAKE
Fuck me, it’s 12 o’clock.
(grave)
I missed Leno’s monologue.
(beat)
I’m going to kill myself.

Exciting? You bet your ass. So anyway, if you’re using OS X go take a look at the brand new I Love Dashboard.

Tags: apple

[UPDATE: I’ve actually started a new website based on this entry. Surprisingly it’s called I Love Dashboard.net. Check it out]

Ever since OS X Tiger arrived I've picked up on a lot of Dashboard hatin' and I'm here to snub some of that out and get some Dashboard lovin' going. I obviously don't have any firm numbers about how many people use Dashboard vs. don't, but there's a vibe out there and too many people are trying to turn it off for good.

The one thing that I really don’t get about the anti-Dashboard sentiment is that it seems to be coming from web designers/developers. Here Apple allows users to basically create mini web-apps that float on your desktop and the web design community is (for the most part) yawning. Well, I shouldn’t say no one is excited, there’s hundreds of new widgets being released weekly, but the world doesn’t need another 800px wide widget for looking up phone numbers in Linköping, Sweden (no offense to Sweden).

To the web development power coders: you are desperately needed.

I think for the most part people are having trouble getting used to using Dashboard. It’s a third arm and if you can’t remember it’s there you’ll never use it. So hopefully to that end, I can share some tips on getting it into your workflow.

Use Dasher
I stumbled upon Dasher within the first few days of Tiger and it definitely increased my Dashboard usage. It’s like an anti-nicotine patch, it gets you addicted to Dashboard. It’s function is ridiculously simple and will definitely be an option in a future version of OS X. It’s a free preference panel that activates Dashboard after a specified period of inactivity, just like a screen saver. I have mine set to 8 minutes. This way every time I return to my computer, the Dashboard layer is present. I can instantly see whether I have new mail, view my upcoming iCal events, check the status of that package that’s on it’s way and review all of my Sticky notes. All this before I’ve even settled into my seat.

Easy Access
This section is going to depend heavily on your own habits but it’s worth getting into. It’s also highly obvious to most power-users but sometimes people need to be pushed to think outside the box. I never ever use the F12 key to invoke Dashboard. It’s just something I can’t get into, I don’t know. I’ve never been a huge keyboard-only person. My style is an equal mix of keyboard and mouse. So I set up the lower-right corner of the screen as a hot-corner for Dashboard. This way with the flick of the mouse I’m in Dashboard. It’s almost like moving the mouse to a second display. I can easily invoke Dashboard if my hands are on the keyboard (F12) and just as easily if my hand is on the mouse (hot-corner). The idea is not having to break whatever input mode I’m in. The hot-corner also makes dragging and dropping to the Dashboard easier for use with such widgets at the Transmit Widget or the Flidget Widget. (It should be noted that I never ever accidentally invoke the hot-corner, so fear not).

Use Quicksilver
In general if you are not using Blacktree’s Quicksilver you are not really using your Mac. OK, that’s going too far but I use it compulsively and so should you. Anyway, if you do use it, you can set it up to launch Widgets. This is great for launching those one-time temporary-use widgets like Package Tracker, Flight Tracker or even Calculator if you don’t like it taking up space. It’s also great for multiple-use widgets like Stickies. Via a hint on Mac OS X Hints, just add /Library/Widgets/ to the Quicksilver catalog and you can launch any widget anytime. Much easier than navigating the clunky scrolling list within Dashboard. (One note: The newest version of Quicksilver (β42) seems to fix a bug in β40 where Quicksilver would launch two copies of the triggered Widget. So upgrade if you are getting this behavior.)

Use Automator To Install Widgets
This one is also rather self-evident but there isn’t a whole lot of Automator lovin’ either. Plus there is something soothing and harmonious about combining Tiger technologies. Set up an Automator action to move new widgets to the Widgets folder. This makes it infinitely easier to try out new widgets without navigating to the somewhat buried Widgets folder. Also, who wants to waste space in the Finder sidebar with the Widgets folder? Having to manually move widgets can lead to a case of Dashboard reluctance so let Automator do the work. To make it even easier, someone already wrote an Automator action, all ready to go.

Get over the resources
A lot of people complain that Dashboard takes up a large portion of memory and processor power. Yeah, it does a bit, but I’ve got to say, using it on my dual G4 as well as my G3 iBook, I’ve never noticed. Not once. It doesn’t bother me at all in the rare moments that I do notice. Some people don’t like the idea that it’s consuming a lot of memory but seriously: get over it. It’ll just get in your way of using cool Widgets. If my G3 iBook can handle it, anything can handle it. Plus, don’t we have all these resources so that we can use them? There’s a decent discussion in this Mac OS X Hints thread. Obviously I tend to side with the guy saying that OS X is good enough at handling memory that you don’t really need to be worrying that much on a well equipped machine.

If that didn’t persuade you remember that another advantage of using Quicksilver to launch Widgets is that you don’t need to keep as many of them open at once.

Now if I were going be doing any hardcore video editing I’d definitely turn dashboard off temporarily (using DashOnOff or the Terminal), but for my daily routine of browsing, e-mailing, news reading and writing, Dashboard is not a concern.

Good Widgets
I may start highlighting good widgets I come across but for now here’s a few that you may have missed.

Gmail Checker (download)
Although the name is inaccurately vague, I really love this widget. Yes, functionally it only counts your unread Gmail messages which you can do with a thousand other widgets and utilities but this one looks fantastic. Something about that British postage stamp just works for me. Plus I’m big on any visual design that I can read across a room (more on that in a bit).

iCal Events (download)
This widget may have actually caused me to use iCal more than I ever did previously. With a list of upcoming events (I set mine for the upcoming 10 days) I know exactly what is going on. Before I never really launched iCal and ignored the alarms because they became so routine. The only thing is that I had to hack the source to change the title from that awful rust orange color to a nice bold white. Essential Widget.

Symphonic (download)
Oh, oh, here we go. Symphonic is a command line for iTunes. Type “hey” and Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” plays. Type “wilco” and all of your Wilco songs will play. It’s pretty smart. It’s Quicksilver for iTunes, except that you really can’t use Quicksilver in this way. This might be the first really good widget, in the sense that it does something that is perfectly suited to a widget, that hasn’t been done with another technology and does it very well. (And when it’s not doing anything, it stays the hell out of the way).

Countdown Calendar (download)
Yeah this is sort of goofy but I love it and it is a good example of one of Dashboard’s strong suits. Elegantly styled bits of useful information. Basically it just counts down to any day you’d like but it’s a neat addition to iCal events. Remember, half of Dashboard is about fun. I’m using mine to count down the days until the Red Sox game I’m going to at the end of August.

Google Maps (download)
I still find myself going to the actual website but the Google Maps widget is blindingly fast and even easier to use than the website. Now with Address Book integration it’s even better. If you’re constantly looking up addresses, keep this widget open.

Flores/Coras (download / download)
I truly love the philosophy behind Stephan.com’s series of widgets and I want to see more of it. They all use a visual metaphor to convey simple information. There’s something very appealing about this concept. Yes, his widgets tend to be large but is there anything more serene and warming than being alerted to new e-mail via flowers appearing in a vase? I don’t think so. I used this to check my Gmail before I found Gmail Checker. I still use it to check my regular Apple Mail. Laugh if you’d like but from across the room I instantly know exactly how many emails await. (Oh, and yes, the Starman Widget is a bit appalling, but I forgive.)

Elements (download)
This widget makes me wish I was still in high school. It gets a mention purely because it is so beautiful. I have absolutely no use for instant-access to the periodic table but this widget makes me wish i did. At least follow the link and check out the screenshot. All widgets should be this well designed.

ColourMod (download)
Another beautiful widget, ColourMod is a simple color picker that is great for quickly visualizing a hex color. The newest version (1.6 as of this writing) is much more compact and much much faster than the initial version I downloaded.

BatteryInfo (download)
I cannot stress enough that Dashboard is about being useful and beautiful. BatteryInfo doesn’t tell you anything that the battery menu item doesn’t but it looks so absolutely fantastic that it makes me want to drain my iBook battery all the time.

Feel The Love. A call to arms.
So please, give Dashboard another chance if you have already given up on it. We need all the great designers and developers who have given up on Dashboard to start making their own widgets. The Dashboard potential-o-meter is hovering around 10% I’d say. The truly great Widgets have yet to be made. So get to work.

Tags: apple

Does it bother anyone else that the OS X program Acquisition, used to - let’s be honest - download illegal content, is such an abrasive nuisance about paying its shareware fee? The nag warnings are practically preachy.

I mean. “Support people not corporations?” Really?

Tags: apple

Hey, why not get on the bandwagon and notate my Tiger thoughts and discoveries?

Mail – Finally, thank you lord, you can specify a default e-mail address for new messages. Everyone always said “Yeah but it defaults to whatever mailbox you have open.” But I usually dealt with the overal ‘Inbox’ and I have all these strange old e-mail accounts. So every once in a while I’d accidentally send from purple AT morrisonfilm DOT com (old random addresss from my old college short—don’t ask) and people would think I was weird. Anyway. Fixed.

Wacom – Despite reading some reports to the contrary my Intuos2 drivers (last updated February 2004) work just fine. I did do a clean install of Tiger however.

Also there is a new option which makes using handwriting recognition more usable. In Panther it was either on or off. If on, every time you dragged it would pick it up as writing which would either do nothing or insert some random characters if a text field was open. It was a pain. Now you can require holding down one of the pen buttons to activate recognition. I’d prefer a few more options but this is much much better and now I can keep recognition on.

Also, the handwriting recognition seems better. Maybe I’m just writing clearer now…

Fast User Switching – Nice. Space-saving options for short name or icon-only menu item.

Safari – In all previous versions, Safari would copy your Google search string to a page search (apple-F). That was handy when you searched for ‘cat’ but not when you searched for a long string with quotes, etc. Now Safari only copies the first word. This is actually much more useful. Though I still can’t decide between Safari and Firefox.

QuickTime Pro – With such beautiful, useful and fun improvements to QuickTime Pro, why - oh God why?! - is the Size dialog box when exporting a movie the same one that was used in QuickTime 1.0?! Would it kill them to add a ‘Lock Aspect Ratio’ checkbox! Over a decade now of this crap! Jesus! At least there’s a calculator widget so that I can conveniently do ratio math!

The Offensive Window:

Finder Slideshow – OK, coolest surprise yet. I totally missed this initially. In Spotlight search results, the list of image files has a play icon as one of the view option in the upper right corner. Click it and you are presented with a slideshow of the pictures. Cooler yet, via the slideshow dashboard window, click the thumbnail view and your photos “Exposé” so you can easily navigate the files. Cooler still, this feature not only works via the Spotlight search results but also by selecting any number of images in the Finder and choosing ‘Slideshow’ in the contextual menu. Sweet!

Tags: apple

Dig the candy apple red on the high gloss black finish. It’s the U2 iPod and I spotted TWO of them on the subway home after never seeing a single one before. The second guy had his in an opaque case.

Come over here and listen. If you buy the U2 iPod you fucking pull it out, hold it high over your head and rock those colors. Otherwise buy the white one and laser-engrave “BORING” on the back. It was like when they sold Crystal Pepsi in cans.

Tags: apple

Thanks to Garrett my iPod now curls up at night inside a giant blue sock. Giant to the iPod that is. Small to us. Thanks Garrett!

Tags: apple

You buy an Apple Airport Express. You bring it home, skipping. You furiously rip open the packaging and plug that bad boy in. You insert the software CD into your computer, install, restart, etc. The Setup Assistant automatically launches. A warning appears on your screen informing you that you cannot use Apple Airport Express because your Mac does not have an Airport Card. You will freak out. You will verbally humiliate your new Airport Express and throw the packaging at the wall and you will yell, “Poop on this!”

You then regain your cool. You had thought that you could use your new Airport Express with your existing third party 802.11b Wireless network. You had thought that your non-wireless G4 would stream to your Airport Express through your LinkSys Wireless router. You ignore the included setup manual and read the online FAQ. This step is important. You realize you were wrong.

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Tags: apple

MacOSRumors is just the worst. I’m not referring to their content. Their articles, when they come around, are pretty informative, if a bit sensational. My issue is with their lack of updates. And not so much even that. The real problem is their promises.

[Update: Of course, the instant I write this, MacOSRumors actually starts updating regularly. Whatever. You still can’t erase 6 years of sloppiness with 5 days of improvement. Right?

Update 2: Well, apparently I have been duped for the last 6 years. The general consensus is that MacOSRumors is complete garbage. From this thread, the guys over at MacRumors (a very level headed and responsible rumor site) claim that MOSR actually makes things up. And come to think of it, MOSR has consistently been extremely wrong (like when they said Intel would go out of business and G4s would reach 2 GHz by summer ‘99). Bookmark: delete.]

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Tags: apple

First of all, the one thing that I don’t think anyone realizes about these new iPod minis are that they are not marketed toward Mac power users. The only people writing commentary, that I’ve read, are Mac power users, and only one of them seems to get it. They come with wristbands and lanyards. They come in pink and powder blue. They are small and cute. Of course you don’t want one. Neither do I. But take a guess who is willing to shell out $250 for a cute little pink iPod you can wear around your wrist. I can think of plenty.

Second of all, when I saw the keynote and Jobs was demoing GarageBand, I said to myself, “This is something I need to be a part of.” I am not a musician, I don’t know how to play instruments, I’ve only recently learned about counts and measures, but nor do I really care. I want to make music. Perhaps it is a testament to Apple marketing but today I decided I want to buy a keyboard. Who the hells knows, other than that this is something big. I should note I have no intention on making music per se, you’re welcome, but more like atmosphere and scoring and what have you.

Tags: apple

Well, here we are, after months and months and months of extremely hard word, Garrett has finally released xPad 1.0.

I remember the day that Garrett first told me he installed the Apple Dev tools and was starting to fuck around. That was only 9 months ago. And here we are now with xPad 1.0, a sexy, sleek, ultra-Apple application.

I can’t really say enough good things about it. Sure, yes, I’m biased, but if you try out xPad you won’t be able to argue that it isn’t an elegant, superbly thought-out and ultimately useful app. The attention to detail in xPad is the clincher for me. It’s of the quality you crave every time you cross your fingers and download a piece of shareware.

Anyway, go download it and give it whirl.

Tags: apple

John Gruber writes in his latest entry that Mac power users should abandon Apple’s Mail program in favor of Bare Bones Software’s Mailsmith 2.0. He writes:

But if you’re not happy with [Apple Mail], and email is important to you, you’re nothing more than a stubborn goof if you refuse to consider coughing up a few bucks for something better designed for your needs.

I was sold. I’m tired of Apple Mail’s odd quirks that get in my way. I would love a powerful e-mail program. So I read through all the features, I was impressed, and headed for the online store. Mailsmith is $100! Are you kidding me? That’s a tad more than “a few bucks” in my opinion. I mean hey, maybe I’m not as rich as most, but free vs. $100 isn’t going to prompt much chin scratching for me. For $100 I could buy Unsanity’s best Haxies AND the fantastic looking new version of Nisus Writer Express AND be feeling pretty good about myself. Or I could save the money for when I upgrade to Panther which will surely offer some improvement to Apple Mail.

For only a modest improvement on Apple Mail, $100 is simply asking too much. I don’t think I should be called a stubborn goof for clinging to my $100.

Tags: apple

I was at the Apple Store this evening, picking up my iBook from repairs on a faulty logic board. All seemed well, I signed the papers, turned to leave then paused, remembering the gigantic wall-sized picture-advertisement of Apple’s new 17” PowerBook G4 that I saw when I walked it. I turned back to the “Genius.”

“Got any 17” Powerbooks yet?”
His eyes lit up. “No, not yet, but we have a pre-release test unit in the back, I’ll get it!” He runs behind the Employees Only door and seconds later hops out holding the gem. There was pride in his face, holding it. He carefully slid it onto the counter, perfectly parallel to the edge.

It was a spectacular machine. First you notice the size. The thing is enormous, but in a good way. The size doesn’t make you think of the original Apple portable, or some mid-90s dense PC laptop. It’s razor thin and to my shock, extremely light. Rather, the size makes you react much like you would to a King Sized Snickers bar. As the marketing goes, more is more.

This is truly a portable desktop. The 17” screen is wide and expansive. The keyboard is the same size as the 15” PowerBook, which leaves lots of room on either side. In this space are stereo speakers. Huge stereo speakers. They reminded me of my car speakers.

The biggest disappointment of the experience was that it was not a functioning unit. It couldn’t boot. Go figure. I really wanted to test the functionality of the backlit keyboard and get a look at the screen, but being forced to only look at the structure truly made me appreciate what craftsmanship went into this machine.

And the aluminum enclosure, like the 12”, is just so much prettier than the titanium. Yes, I said prettier.

Leaving the Apple store I realized why I love Apple so much as a company. In what other store could you expect this experience? Not at CompUSA by a long shot. Do you think giddy employees would truck out the latest laptop at the Gateway store? Would they even be giddy? One of my biggest gripes about modern customer service is the sedated, glazed-over look that all the employees have. Mumbling pre-scripted lines about product warranties or membership club cards. The Apple store is an oasis in a desert of apathy. Sincerely.

Tags: apple

Added the commenting feature so as to be hip and up-to-date in this fancy modern “interactive” world.

These are hilarious.

Speaking of Apple, tonight is their special “Biggest Shopping day of the year” Event. 6pm at your local Apple Store. I’m not in the market for anything computer related. Certainly not a new machine. I might be able to afford the Apple approved varnish and shammy, but that’s about it. Yet I will go anyway. Because they said “Free stocking stuffers.” Bam, I’m there. In my head I see Elves greeting me at the entrance, handing me an iPod and a Cinema Display saying “Merry Christmas from Apple.” In reality we’re talking a plastic Apple pen. If they advertised “Free Plastic Apple Pen” I wouldn’t go. Yet I know that’s what I’ll get. But sucker me is going anyway. I’ll take that pen and probably buy the shammy, and later on I’ll actually show the pen to people and talk about how cool it is. While buffing my iBook.

Fine, I’d go to the event even if they advertised “Free Plastic Apple Pen.”

Tags: apple