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.
Many Mac users upgrading to Leopard have hit a brick wall in their installation. Upon reboot, the system hangs at the blue screen indefinitely. Users plagued by this issue have been chatting on Apple’s boards. One craft user, [], determined that Unsanity’sApplication Enhancer was probably to blame. Upon trashing APE, most users report that they can complete their boot process.
I understand that Apple doesn’t sanction system modifiers like Unsanity’s APE. Still, Apple knows that many users have APE installed, and if they had checked against it, they would have caught the issue before it affected their users. Instead, they chose to ignore it and end up with the ensuing bad press.
I’m psyched about Leopard. I’ve been using it since WWDC 2006 (nearly full time since WWDC 2007), and it is the real deal. However, I’d be lying if I said it was perfect. Apple did an amazing job with Leopard, but there are still a few areas where I can’t help but be let down. Here they are, in no particular order.
1. No Finder Tabs. Safari’s had them from the start. iChat and the Terminal got them in Leopard. But still no tabs for the Finder. All of the other improvements to the Finder are welcomed, but the lack of tabs has me disappointed. Did Apple (or Steve) feel that tabs would confuse some people in the Finder? Why not make it an optional setting, like it is in all three apps that currently have tabs?
2. Still no frickin’ FTP from the Finder. Sure, you can mount an FTP share and browse it. But you can’t write to it. This bug (or feature, depending upon who you ask) has been present in Mac OS X since the beginning. I’ve filed a bug on it for every major OS release. Each time, some one makes like it is the first time they’ve heard about it. My guess is that Apple intentionally cripples FTP in the Finder, making .Mac seem all that more attractive. Sorry Apple, I’m not buying it (.Mac) anymore.
3. No ZFS read/write support. I guess Leopard is getting ZFS read support, but not write support.
4. Finder Icons. Someone in the UI department must have successfully pleaded their case that creating a unique, full color icon for each Finder item was way too time consuming. Badging icons with a single color, embossed icon clearly reduces the time it takes to produce the icon. It also reduces readability and is a big step backwards from the icons in Tiger. Thank god for CandyBar.
5. Appearance, Desktop and Screen Saver. Two separate items in the System Preferences, yet they all deal with Appearance. Consolidate them in to one item (with three tabs). Again, something that should have been done 5 years ago.
6. Sound effects. We’ve been using the same system alert sound effects since 10.0. They are in desperate need of an update.
7. The Dock. I have to say, I actually like the 3D look of the Dock. However, it does not work when positioned on the left and right hand sides of the screen. Additionally, it would be nice to have a few extra options for the Dock, like the ability to change the color of the highlight dot, or to revert to the previous, plain jane Dock, for those who aren’t fans of the 3D shelf look. Update: Apple apparently has fixed this in the GM build of Leopard. Go Apple!
8. Mail, and the lack of a formatting bar when composing an email. We don’t need anything fancy, but for those composing RTF emails, it would be nice to have RTF formatting options front and center. Give us the same formatting bar that you get inside TextEdit (styles, alignment, spacing, lists) and all will be forgiven.
9. iChat. I have a couple of issues with the updated iChat. First off, while it was nice to gain GTalk support, it would have been just as nice to get Yahoo! Messenger support. MSN would have been a bonus (although I can understand Apple wanting to leave it out).
Additionally, iChat’s interface when using multiple accounts is ridiculous. I’m forced to have completely separate lists of users for each account? So, if I have AIM, .Mac, GTalk, and Jabber (which I do), I have four Windows open of buddy lists. Why can’t this be consolidated to one Window, ala Adium?
10. iChat/PhotoBooth/ScreenSavers. The WWDC 2007 build of Leopard featured some really cool effects for iChat/PhotoBooth/ScreenSavers that were removed form later builds. For example, there was a Star Wars-esque “hologram” effect that was super cool for iChat/PhotoBooth. There was a “security” screen saver that took pics from your iSight while you were away from your computer. I was sad to see them go, especially the hologram effect, as it was one of the main ones we used at WWDC.
Apple’s been firing on all cylinders for about 5 years now. It has transformed itself from a “beleaguered” computer company, in to a money making consumer electronics powerhouse. It has taken it’s perceived weaknesses – proprietary OS, non-conformist hardware designs – and turned them in to pillars of strength. Apple now has more than twice the market cap of Dell. In short, they are doing everything right and being handsomely rewarded for it.
Anyone who follows Apple remembers the late 90′s when Steve returned and killed the Mac OS clone market. It made sense at the time. The original contracts set a very low price for the OEMs to buy Mac OS from Apple, and the cloners made boxes that significantly undercut Apple in price. It was not a good deal for Apple at the time.
Flash forward to 2007. Apple is in great financial condition. They have strong sustained business in their iPod and iPhone divisions. Mac shipments are way up, as are pre-orders of the next release of OS X, Leopard. Microsoft, in contrast, has had a harder time with Vista adoption than they would have liked. Sales of Vista are OK, but it isn’t driving sales of new PC hardware like their OEMs had expected. Many PC users are looking at alternatives because of Vista’s high hardware requirements and restrictive licensing terms.
Which brings me to my question: Is now the perfect time for Apple to license Mac OS X to other hardware vendors?
Think about it. Apple isn’t solely reliant upon its Mac business, as it was back in 1999. Mac OS X already runs on Intel processors. Public perception of Microsoft and Vista, in particular are at an all time low.
Apple could tackle cloning in a number of different ways. The most unlikely way would be form Apple to simply sell an unlocked version of the Mac OS that would run on any vanilla x86 hardware. I say this in the most unlikely scenario because 1) it would require a huge effort on Apple’s part to craft/test/QA drivers for hardware components/configurations that are beyond their current offerings and 2) Apple would still probably like to ensure that the OS X “experience” is as controlled and pleasant for consumers as possible.
A more likely scenario would be Apple bringing on a couple of “partners”, like HP and Dell, who would build machines with a specific hardware spec. In this regard, Apple could charge a premium for the OS license, and they could further extend the reach of OS X. Additionally, every new OS X customer out there would also be a potential customer for Apple’s other software – iLife, iWork, Logic, Final Cut Pro, Aperture and more. Whatever Apple lost on the hardware sale, they would have plenty of options to make it back on the additional sales of their consumer/professional applications.
The biggest risk with the cloning scenario is that clone sales would undercut Mac sales. I believe that so long as Apple controls who does the cloning, and what cloning products are produced, reduced sales of Macs would be minimal.
Apple currently has one Mac under $1000 – and that is the Mac mini. Apple’s actions have clearly dictated that they do not believe competing with low cost PCs is in their best interest. The Mac mini serves little more purpose than to deny nay sayers ammunition to call Apple’s products “over priced”. What if Apple ceded the sub-$1000 market entirely to clones from Dell and HP? Neither of these companies have bettered Apple’s designs in the portable market. So it is safe to assume that Apple would probably not see diminished sales in the portable market. The iMac is a thing of beauty that no one (not even Gateway with their Uno machine) has been able to replicate. And Apple has positioned their Mac Pro as a workstation powerhouse, that while expensive, is still competitive with other workstation offerings from Dell and HP.
So, Apple brings in HP and Dell as partners to sell low cost consumer desktop CPUs in the $500-$999 range. What does Apple gain in this?
Well, by having another hardware vendor for the Mac OS, Apple suddenly becomes an option in many places it never was. Many Government agencies are prevented from buying Macs solely because they need to receive at least two competing quotes on hardware purchases. This same practice is prevalent at many corporations as well.
Additionally, Apple expands Mac OS share well beyond what they can do as one company. As Mac OS market share expands, so will sales of Mac software, hardware and peripherals. As Mac OS market share expands, Microsoft’s market share decreases.
Personally, I believe Apple is headed for a situation where they will add hardware partners who can sell Mac OS X desktop CPUs. I don’t believe this will happen under Steve Jobs though. He has long shown a disdain for the cloning market. However, Steve Jobs can’t run Apple forever. At his age, he could have anywhere from 5-12 years left in him as CEO. With his string of successes, Apple is his to run as long as he likes (or as long as he’s successful). But Jobs isn’t a materialistic person. As he ages, with his list of successes, he will eventually choose to retire and enjoy his family.
When this happens, you will probably see Apple do an about face on many of their positions. It would not surprise me to see them send in the clones under these circumstances.
iBooks Author. It is now clear why we're still on iWork '09. The same team must have been working on iBooks Author. Looks a lot like Pages. 2 weeks ago
God damn it - I want to stick w/ Aperture, but unless Aperture 4 is released before Lightroom 4, I'm making the move. 2 weeks ago
Whenever I think about moving to Android, I see an article like this, and I wonder what the hell I was thinking. http://t.co/pZzTJoh82012-01-04
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.
