I love my Mighty Mouse. It feels great in my hand, the scroll ball is absolutely a joy to use, and it tracks extremely well in OS X. The downside is that the scroll ball has a tendency to get dirty over time, and it can impair its ability to scroll. My Might Mouse started to suffer these problems, and after a couple of days, lost the ability to scroll down altogether.
A quick search of the web yielded a few different options on how to clean it. One of them takes it to the extreme and shows you how to dismantle the mouse and clean the internal parts individually. Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary for my mouse.
In short, I tried rolling the ball while wiping it with a slightly damp cloth. It didn’t help much at all. On Apple’s suggestion, I turned the mouse upside and performed the same action. Bingo. That did the trick.
So, the next time your Mighty Mouse stops scrolling, turn it upside down and give the scroll ball a few pushes. And if that doesn’t work, you can always disassemble it.
NetNewsWire, which is arguably the best desktop news reading client available, just changed the game by reducing the cost of the application to zero. You heard me – NetNewsWire is free. Brett Simmons, the developer, has a full run down of what prompted the decision to release NNW as freeware.
The change of status accompanies version 3.1, which includes numerous enhancements and bug fixes. For those who aren’t aware, NetNewsWire can sync your feeds with NewsGator’s online service, allowing you to keep up with your feeds on your mobile device (say, an iPhone).
I’ve long loved NNW, but always felt the price was too high. Especially considering that I had multiple licenses of NewsFire. However, since I’ve had an iPhone, I’ve been loving Google Reader. Being able to have all my feeds in Google Reader and keep up with them through the day on my desktop, and then in the evening on my iPhone during my bus ride home has been wonderful. Sure, Google Reader isn’t as slick as NetNewsWire, but I think this is definitely an instance where the cloud app’s convenience factor outweigh’s the slickness of the desktop client.
Macinstein is reporting that among the other various bug fixes in Mac OS X 10.5.2, there is an “enhancement” to the way that Stacks works. In short, Apple has added the ability to display Stack’s content as a Folder or Stack, and as List items, the way they were presented before Stacks.
If this enhancement ends up shipping in 10.5.2, I will be one happy camper.
I’ve noticed that under Leopard, many installs that used to require a forced restart, now do not. One of these, is the Cisco VPN client, which I am required to use for my day to day work. Under Tiger, once the app was installed, the installer (the standard Apple supplied one) required a restart. Under Leopard, the install completes, it gives you the big green check mark, and you’re done.
However, I’ve noticed that many of these apps still require a restart even though the installer isn’t forcing it on you. The Cisco VPN client will not work until you restart you Mac, in my testing. I’ve stumbled upon a few other apps that still require a restart even though the installer doesn’t force it on you. One of those is MySQL (MySQL 5.0.45, i386).
So, if you have completed and install in Leopard, and your app is seemingly not working, try a restart. It might just fix the issue.
You talk to any Mac fan and they just love every single product that Apple throws at them.
It’s not that the Mac is any better than Windows, it’s just that people like it better. Windows users don’t have any problem seeing the faults of their platform, which I respect. One of the reasons that I wrote this book is the book helps fix the problems.
Mr. Karp, if you read any Mac related sites, particularly the blogs, you will realize that Mac users aren’t blind to the ills of Apple’s products. Sure, we do love most of the products that Apple “throws” at us. But we don’t pretend that those products are perfect. We’ve just used the other guys products (Microsoft, I’m looking at you), and quite frankly, find that the Mac is better.
Windows users constantly gripe about how Mac users/zealots are “smug” in their assessment that the Mac is better than Windows. They seem to completely gloss over the possibility that the Mac actually is better than Windows, and a particular group of people gladly pay more money to use it.
Look at it this way. With Windows being so ubiquitous, it’s fairly safe to say that nearly every Mac user has tried, or used Windows at some point in time. And they still find the Mac a better option.
Can the reverse be said of Windows users? Most of the Windows users I have met are completely ignorant of what the Mac has to offer.
I don’t mind if someone has tried both options and declared that they are equally good/bad. But 95% of the the time when a Windows user claims that Windows is as good as the Mac, you can bet that they have never touched a (modern) Mac.
Hulu, the joint venture between NBC and FOX, began sending out logins to users who signed up for their private beta a few months ago. We were lucky enough to receive an invite, and gave the service a spin.
First of all, what is Hulu? Hulu is a content portal that will broadcast shows from NBC and FOX. The shows are not available for download, only for direct streaming from the site. Shows are offered with commercials in some instances, and without in others. For example, episodes of the Family Guy and the Simpsons featured no commercials, while episodes of the Office and Heroes did. Since Hulu is a joint venture between two competing networks, I’m guessing there will be inconsistencies in how the content is presented.
Mac users should be happy to note that Hulu uses Flash for it’s codec. Unlike NBC Direct which requires Windows (and .NET), Hulu ran just fine on both of my Intel Macs running Leopard/Safari 3/Flash 9 plugin. This is refreshing since the other video service I use, NetFlix’s “Watch Instantly”, is based on Flash, but requires Windows/IE to function.
We tested Hulu on our Media Center PC, which is hooked up to a Samsung Plasma HDTV (720p). At full screen, the video was grainy and pixelated. Compared to Netflix’s “Watch Instantly”, the full screen quality was subpar and generally unacceptable for HDTV viewing.
Hulu’s content (again, from both NBC and FOX) contains old and new shows, and, to my surprise, some movies as well.
Hulu also features user reviews inline with each episode. Additionally, you can embed episodes in your website or blog. The embed feature allows you to select either the entire episode, or a portion thereof. Of all of Hulu’s features, this is the most puzzling. Why would NBC balk at offering it’s episodes on iTunes at a cost of $1.99, but allow users to embed these episodes in to the blogs? It really doesn’t make much sense to me.
Looking for classics such as the A-Team, Adam-12, Remington Steele, or Hill Street Blues? Hulu has them. Movie selections included the Breakfast Club, Sideways, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Weekend at Bernies, Bulworth, The Sixth Sense and more. Shows that are currently airing include just about every selection from NBC and FOX that is currently on air. This also includes shows from these channels cable channels, like FX and USA. This brings shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Burn Notice, Monk, Ghost HUnters, and the Riches in to the fold.
Content wise, Hulu has a good selection right from the start. On it’s inaugural evening, I was having some issues with Hulu’s streaming. The shows would play, but were stuttering every two seconds. Most likely this was due to a high volume of users hitting the site for the first time. Rechecking the site this morning featured smooth streaming on every show I played. Hopefully, Hulu will be able to handle the load of a primetime viewing audience. My suggestion to whomever is in charge of IT at the Hulu operation – give Internap a call. A site that functions solely as a streaming content provider can’t afford to have choppy streams – ever.
While it is nice to have the Hulu option, I still miss NBC’s shows on iTunes. Being able to take the shows with you on your iPod/iPhone for trips and daily commutes was a big deal. The world is changing, and not everybody has the time to park their ass in front of a TV (or a computer) to watch their TV programming. With millions of devices capable of playing back video content anywhere, anytime, TV networks better start realizing that the game has changed. Hulu shows that they are catching on, but haven’t fully figured it out yet.
And now, Heroes series 2, episode 10, “Truth and Consequences”. Enjoy.
Panic’s excellent system icon replacement app gets the Leopard treatment. New to CandyBar 3 is the ability to customize the Dock in Leopard, and (finally), icon management ala Pixadex. In fact, CandyBar 3 replaces Pixadex altogether. CandyBar 3 is $29 for new users, $24 for users upgrading from either CandyBar 2 or Pixadex 2, or $19 for those who own both CandyBar 2 and Pixadex 2.
So, Leopard ships and all is right in the world of Mac users. Web Developers have a lot to like in Safari 3. Numerous HTML/CSS/Javascript bug fixes and improvements make the viewing experience significantly better than Safari 2 (and Safari 2 was no slouch either). Additionally, Apple has made Safari 3 available to Tiger users and Windows users, which is nothing but good for the platform. You want your rendering engine fixes to be used as broadly as possible, so this is a no brainer for Apple.
However, with Safari part of Leopard, and Leopard now shipping, the question needs to be asked: Has Safari 3 left the beta program? You would think so, because, well it’s actually shipping in Leopard. But if you check out the Safari page on Apple’s website, it still reads Public Beta. What’s even more bothersome is that Apple doesn’t give you any indication on the Safari page whether the build available for download is newer than the build included with Leopard. Now, I’m a smart guy and I follow these things, so I know that Safari in Leopard is newer than the downloadable beta version. But the average joe won’t, and Apple gives them no way to tell if it is before you download it.
The WebKit team has continued to make improvements and fix bugs, even after Safari 3 shipped in Leopard. While I applaud Apple’s perseverance in improving Safari’s rendering engine, as a Web Developer, not having the definitive word on whether a browser is a release or not, can be troubling. It turns a target for development and testing in to a gray area. If I have a Mac customer who is seeing some strange issue with a site that I develop for them, is that issue resolved in the shipping version of Safari? And are there to be two shipping versions of Safari – one for Leopard users, and one for Tiger/Windows users?
Good luck asking Apple these questions. Transparency is not their policy. This is understandable for hardware products. But for software products that developers depend on, it is not.
When Leopard was shown for the second time publicly at WWDC, I was impressed with Stacks and what they would bring to the Dock. When I got my hands on the WWDC seed later that day, I was a little disappointed to see what had been removed from the Dock to accommodate Stacks. As you already know, Apple removed the ability to drop a folder or a hard drive in the Dock and let the user right/control click on it to get a hierarchy menu of the file system. At the time I wasn’t too worried, because Leopard was still at the Developer Preview stage.
Of course, now that Leopard has shipped, and many of us are using it as our everyday OS, we’re finding out exactly how much we miss this feature.
One of the things that was present in the WWDC 2007 Developer Seed Dock was the ability to grab a bunch items from any folder, and drag them on to the Dock to create a Stack independent of a Folder Stack. This was the feature that made Stacks interesting to me. For example, many people drag their entire Applications folder to the Dock, and then right click on it to select their application. But in reality, most of us use only a handful of these apps on a regular basis. Being able to select the top 9 (to keep the Stack in “Fan” view) and drag them on to the Dock was a very useful feature.
But Apple removed this feature from the shipping version of Leopard as well.
So now we are left with a Dock that doesn’t give you the ability to easily (and quickly) traverse folders and removes the one cool feature of Stacks that was featured in the WWDC 2007 build.
I’m sorry, but there’s little else to call this except a major regression. Sure, the new Dock looks nice (at least to me), but Apple has intentionally crippled it be nothing more than a single app launcher and active app identifier.
There have been calls since 2001 for Apple to “fix the fuckin’ Finder”. I’m afraid there is a new call for Apple to “fix the fuckin’ dock”.
A new non-destructive image editor has hit the scene. Naked Light will debut in a public beta on Friday, November 9th. Billed as “node based compositing”, Naked Light is a Core Image editing program that simplifies the interface, yet increases the power of the program by offering non-destrucive editing, live filters, and pro editing tools. You can see what Naked Light has to offer here, or catch up with the developer on his blog.
A user of Macs since they had silly names like Performa and Centris, Theodore Lee is a techie who prides himself on his vast knowledge of all things Apple. OS X Factor was started in 2001 (originally as macosxcentric), and continues to churn out tips, tutorials, reviews and commentary on the tech sector.
Waterfall Software (makers of Wallet, the best password storage utility available), are soliciting beta testers for a new application they have developed...
Steve Jobs will once again be passing on the Apple Expo. Last year the keynote was presented by Apple VP Phil Schiller. This year, however, the keynote has been canceled all together. Steve Jobs will still apparently be attending the Expo, but we are unable to confirm this...
I love my Mighty Mouse. It feels great in my hand, the scroll ball is absolutely a joy to use, and it tracks extremely well in OS X. The downside is that the scroll ball has a tendency to get dirty over time, and it can impair its ability to scroll. My Might Mouse started to suffer these problems, and after a couple of days, lost the ability to scroll down altogether.
