Mac

Snow Leopard

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It is interesting to note the varied experiences with Snow Leopard. For what it is worth my installation time was 43 minutes. A single disc and a couple of clicks affair – if I had a five year old to hand I could have left them to do it without any problems.

Space saved
Space saved

I regained nearly 23GB of disc space. Perhaps I should delete some of my accumulated junk and gain even more disc space. The original Leopard screenshot was named “Picture 59” (59! Perhaps I should delete some of my accu… ) but the shiny new one is called “Screen shot 2009-08-29 at 13.41.54”

Although most things seem to work fine I am constantly lost without FinderPop but I suppose the Turly fellow has some kind of an excuse and we can wait a while longer. Meanwhile I dragged my FinderPop Items folder into the Dock so at least some familiar stuff can be quickly found amongst all the clutter. Perhaps I should delete some of my accu…

To make 1Password version 2 work you need to drop Safari down to 32 bit mode from it’s Info pane:

32 Bit option
32 Bit option

But the Snow Leopard friendly version 3 is currently being tested and should be with us soon.

Another trusty assistant is Spell Catcher which does seem a little tetchy at the moment but I shall follow their advice and see if I can make it a little happier.

The swanky Services looks like it will be quite useful once it is configured for the individual’s needs.

Services menu
Services menu

I have not noticed any real problems so far. Even my creaky old PhotoShop 8 (the first CS version) seems to work fine. Things certainly seem snappier. Scrolling through a long list of stuff (Perhaps I should delete some of my accu… ) in a Finder window is notably smooth and fast. Spotify takes a long time to connect but I am not sure if that is a Snow Leopard thing or a Spotify thing.

I did do a full bootable backup of the old Leopard disc before the update so it will be interesting to go back after awhile with Snow Leopard and see just how different it feels.

Library Books software for Gloucestershire

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Harold Chu’s Library Books software for Mac OS X tracks your borrowings and reminds you when they need returning/renewing. I had messed with an earlier version but never managed to get it to connect to the local library service. A new version was in today’s MacUpdate listing but as Gloucestershire was not included in the preset UK libraries I had another go at getting it to work. Success 🙂

So if you live in [W:Gloucestershire], are a member of the library, have a Mac and a tendency to forget to return stuff this is what you need.

Install and run the Library Books software. It only appears as a star icon in the menu bar. Click on the star icon and select Preferences. Select the Logins section and click the + button to add a new library.
From the Library drop down menu select Generic Catalogue Systems – TalisPrism / Talis Catalogue System.

The Library Books Settings Pane
The Library Books Settings Pane

In the General settings add a Name and your Borrower numbet. PIN can be left blank.

In the Catalogue section add:
Catalogue host: http://www.searchourshelves.gloucestershire.gov.uk
Library Web Page: http://www.libraries.gloucestershire.gov.uk/
Date format: dd/mm/yyyy
Click the Save button.

That’s it!

Click on the Star icon and select Update and it will fetch a list of your borrowed items. The number of items are displayed next to the star. You can make the star change colour the day before an item is due to be returned and/or add the dates to iCal so that it will also remind you.

The software is free and no more late return charges 😉

Update: The details were sent to Harold Chu the developer who says that they will added to the Preset list in future versions.

Final Cut Studio upgrade

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It was quite fortuitous that the day I decided I would order an upgrade for my creaky old antiquated version 1 of Final Cut Studio was the very day Apple updated the software to the new version 3. It only took 4+ hours to install! Which was not quite as long as the 17 hours it was predicting.

17 Hour update!
17 Hour update!

So now I have a whole lot of new toys to play with and distract myself from actually finishing any of the numerous projects I have on the go 😉

The Revolution Run Around – Guess the number

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I have been messing around with the Revolution software which is generally pretty neat but occasionally deeply frustrating – which is not necessarily a bad thing. It is based on Apple’s old [W:Hypercard] so I had some inkling of how it would/should work but the documentation (as is often the way with such things) can leave you wandering around in a circle, so close and yet so far, but the support forums are very, erm, supportive so I did manage to put together (and finish!) a (very) simple guess the number game to see how it all fits together.

The Guess The Number game
The Guess The Number game

The Revolution software does generate versions of your creations for some other non-Mac computers but I do not know if they actually work (the alternate versions not the other computers 😉 )

Download the Linux version or the Mac OS X Version or the Windows version.

Perhaps I need a separate page to document my explorations…

Safari 4

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The new Safari 4 beta refused to launch for me. Plug-ins are the usual suspects with browser failures. I was using the wonderfully useful Glims and a quick search of the Interweb revealed a couple of lines to paste into the Terminal….

sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Glims/

sudo rm -rf /Library/InputManagers/Glims/

A quick Restart and Safari 4 is working – this very post is coming from it 🙂

Safari
Safari

If you need to get back to version 3 there is an Uninstaller on the Safari 4 [W:.dmg] which will put you back to where you were.

Glims Updated: 25th Feb
A new version of Glims is now available.

Not that we didn’t know something was cooking at Apple but we didn’t expect it to be released so fast. We apologize for any problems we may have caused and hope you keep enjoying our plugin.

Indeed we shall.

Apples/Pears Windows/windows

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Yet another switcher whinges that Macs do not work the same as Windows PCs and that Microsoft’s software for the Mac is different to the Windows version. Ok it is the day before MacWorld Expo so the article is probably more click bait than serious journalism but you have to wonder what these people are thinking. If you do not like Microsoft’s software for Macs don’t use it. If you prefer Picasa to iPhoto then ask Google for a Mac version – oh look here it comes now! But Picasa’s insisting that my EyeTV stream was a picture became rather irritating. I am guessing that iPhoto’s new Facebook button will be the deal clincher in this house :-/

 

One commentator to the switcher article said:

It still boggles my mind the hoops I have to go through to do something simple like renaming a file on Mac. What’s the hotkey for that? Oh, there isn’t one. You need to click and hold the mouse button down on the file name for what feels like a random amount of time (and if you get it wrong and “miss”, the file opens instead… which means whatever app it’s associated with also opens).

What? How hard can it be? Select whatever you want to rename, hit Enter, Type a new name, hit Enter, done.
Look…
[local /wp-content/uploads/2009/01/renaming.mov nolink]
Another common theme is the Mac’s menu bar not being attached to individual windows. Just because Microsoft managed to get this, and much else, wrong when they tried to recreate a window based operating system like the Mac had is hardly a reason to condemn the Mac. What you are doing is opening a document in the window not running an application in the window. You can open lots of documents all using the same application. You do not want lots of windows with the same application running in each. Which is why when you close a window on the Mac the application does not Quit.

Hey ho!