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Category Archives: Mac
on buying Mac apps
Jonathan Rentzch, a Mac developer, wrote an interesting post about the pros and cons of buying Mac apps in the Mac App Store versus buying them directly from the developer.
I think that he sums up the developer experience really well. From an end-user perspective, I think he’s overly dismissive of two major points (easier to buy and install apps, infinitely easier to know when software is updated). I think that he also completely leaves aside the point that the MAS gives a lot of visibility to apps that would otherwise be overlooked. This is good both for developers — even though the MAS takes a bigger cut of sales than developers would have by selling through other methods, the increase in sales probably more than makes up for it — and for end-users. He also doesn’t include the point that developers cannot offer trials via the MAS today, which is negative for end-users. For example, I’m using a trial of BusyCal right now because I wanted to see if it would fit into my workflow before plunking down $50 for it1.
It’s my hope that many of Rentzch’s points, especially those which are about the current sandboxing implementation, will disappear over time, and that the MAS will be a great solution for buying Mac apps.
- The answer, by the way, is yes. It’s certainly miles and miles better than iCal! ↩
James Dempsey and the Breakpoints album coming!
It warms the cockles of my little geek heart to know that James Dempsey and the Breakpoints are in the studio recording a song tentatively titled “Endian Reservations“.
Longtime WWDC attendees have probably seen James perform before. For your geek pleasure, here’s the classic “MVC Song”:
Edited on 5/2 – James emailed me to let me know that “Endian Reservations” is a song, not the album title, so I fixed that.
VMware View Client for Mac and Linux are now generally available
In December, we released a tech preview of our View Client for Mac and View Client for Linux. They’re now generally available with updates and fixes. While we were in there updating the code, there’s also updates to the View Client for iPad and View Client for Android. You should go forth and download.
OS X tip: reboot your Dock
I’m a Dock minimalist. There are only three applications that live in my Dock: mail, web, IM. Everything else is launched via Spotlight search. I like having an uncluttered Dock, and I like that my Dock only ever shows the applications that I have open.
Every once in awhile, my Dock will stop updating itself. It won’t show when I’ve launched an application that lives in my Dock, and it won’t show additional apps that I’ve launched. When this happens, it always throws me off to discover that I’ve got an app open that isn’t showing in m Dock.
Thankfully, there’s a quick fix for this:
- Launch Activity Monitor, which is located in /Applications/Utilities/
- In the list of open applications, select Dock and then click the Quit button in the toolbar.
After you’ve done this, your Dock will disappear for a couple of seconds. It will relaunch itself, and the newly-launched Dock should now be correct.
VMware View Client for Mac available now
Ever since I joined VMware last year, one of the top search hits for this blog has been “vmware view mac” and variants. Today, I have great news: there is now an application to match that search. Yes, VMware View Client is now available for the Mac — and it’s also joined by a View Client for Linux, an updated View Client for iPad, and a View Client for Android. For more details, check out Pat Lee’s blog post.
To download the new View Client for Mac, start here. That’s got the download link, the readme (yes, you should read the readme!), and a forum for providing feedback to us.
Go forth and download!
it’s the little things
I just noticed a little change to iTunes that makes me so very happy.
The last time I wrote up an iTunes wishlist was in February. My last item on that wishlist was “carriage returns in comments”. At the time (which was iTunes 10.1.2), you couldn’t type in a carriage return. You could cut’n’paste one in, but that was pretty annoying.
This weekend, as I was ripping more CDs into iTunes, I discovered that I can enter a line break! Option-enter now gives me a line break. Earlier, this didn’t do anything. I’m so excited!
Susan Kare’s sketchbook
Susan Kare, best known amongst geeks for designing the first proportional-width typefaces (including Chicago and Geneva) and icons (including my personal favorite, Clarus the dogcow) for the Mac, has recently allowed the Public Library of Science access to her early sketchbooks.
Go check out that article: it’s long, but it’s a great look at some of the imagery of the first Mac that made it so ground-breaking. Make sure you look through some of the icon ideas that never got used, such as icons for “boot”, “auto indent”, and “bug”.
the evolution of iTunes
I bought an iPod when they were introduced, and I started using iTunes when it was introduced. I’ve gone through a few different iPods, and then got an iPhone when it was first introduced. Today, I’ve got an iPod Shuffle, an iPhone 4, and an iPad 2. I also have two separate iTunes libraries: one on the home server, and one at work.
When I first started using iTunes, most of my music library was MP3. Upon the introduction of Apple Lossless (ALAC) and its support in iTunes, I decided to move to that in an attempt to future-proof my library. The decision to move to ALAC had some unexpected fall out. When ALAC was introduced, iTunes treated those files exactly the same as other supported music files. This is mostly fine, except that ALAC files are much much larger than MP3 or AAC files, which means that you can’t store a lot of music on an iPod or iPhone.
Concurrently, that first iPhone had a problem: to get my calendar or address book onto it, I had to sync with iTunes. Support for Exchange ActiveSync wasn’t added until much later. My work calendar has everything on it, and so my iPhone had to sync with my work laptop if its calendar and address book were to be of any use at all.
I ended up creating a new iTunes library on my work laptop, just for syncing my iPhone. I ripped a bunch of CDs to my work laptop, using AAC so that I’d have reasonable file sizes for use on my phone. A side effect of this decision is that my work laptop is also the home for my iPhoto library, since the vast majority of my pictures are taken with my iPhone.
In the intervening time, though, things have changed. My two primary reasons for needing that separate iTunes library have disappeared. iTunes will now downsample ALAC files for use on the iPhone and iPod, so I don’t have to worry about having massive files on there. The iPhone now supports Exchange ActiveSync, so I don’t need to sync it with my work laptop to have my calendar available to me on my phone.
The problem is that iTunes has grown in that intervening time, too. It’s no longer just where my music lives. It’s where I buy some music1, and now it’s where I buy apps for my iPhone and my iPad. iTunes is the gatekeeper for how I get data onto my iPhone and iPad. And there’s also the Mac App Store, which is tied to the same Apple ID that my iTunes account is, and so conceptually I think of them as living on the same computer. (And yes, I do have two Apple IDs: the one that I’ve been using for purchasing songs/apps, and my developer Apple ID.)
iTunes Match could solve part of this problem for me, although I hit up against its 25k track limit. Macworld has published a workaround for this, which is to have a separate iTunes library that syncs with iTunes Match. This is really no different than my two-libraries-on-two-machines approach now, so it’s not very useful to me. I hope that Apple improves this in the future, because I really do love the idea of iTunes Match.
The problem that my household has is the proliferation of devices, which has led to a proliferation of iTunes libraries. I’ve got two Macs (one at home, one at the office). My husband has two Macs too (also one at home and one at the office). Our home server is a Mac, and it is the main repository for our media collection. We’ve got another Mac in our home study. I’ve got an iPhone 4, iPod Shuffle, and iPad 2. My husband has an iPhone 4, iPad, and an iPod. He’s got his own iTunes account, mostly for iPhone apps that he’s purchased.
I think that the next thing that I’ve got to figure out in with iTunes is how to contain all of this sprawl. To date, I’ve just handled the new changes in iTunes on an ad hoc basis. It’s time to stop and figure out how to move forward. Is it possible for us to have just one iTunes library? How do we handle all of the music and apps that one of us has purchased? How does this impact our photo libraries? I’m not sure, but I think that we’ve got to figure it out soon, before the situation gets any worse.
- I mostly still buy CDs. I only buy on iTunes when it’s an exclusive, or if I really do just want one track off of an album. ↩
more on giving up on Safari
It seems that I’m not the only one who is giving up on Safari in its latest incarnation. Macworld staff writer Lex Friedman is also dropping Safari for Chrome, and for the same reason: Safari’s insistence on refreshing the content of a tab if you haven’t viewed it in awhile. This has a performance impact on your whole Mac.
I didn’t expect Chrome to become my browser of choice, but that’s what won. It feels snappier than either Safari or Firefox. It doesn’t grind to a halt the way that Safari does. Firefox has always driven me away because it refuses to honor the system network settings, which gets in my way when I’m at the office and switching between the wired network (with a proxy) and wireless (no proxy)1.
- I should note that Adium, my IM client of choice, also has this problem. On Adium, it’s actually more annoying: if I want to use it, I have to reset my proxy settings for each bloody IM account. I use ’em all, so this is quite obnoxious. However, if I’m in a meeting, I generally don’t want Adium connected anyway, so not using it isn’t as much of an issue as not using a web browser. That said, if anyone’s got a solution that makes Adium be a good Mac citizen, I’d love to hear it. ↩