TidBITS#814/30-Jan-06
=====================
If you've just purchased a new Intel-powered iMac, be aware that
you may not be able to boot it from an external drive; Jonathan
Rentzsch explains why. Also in this issue, Matt Neuburg reviews
DropCopy and the new information manager Yojimbo from Bare Bones
Software, we note a new repair program for 15-inch PowerBook G4s,
and Geoff Duncan looks at Disney's acquisition of Pixar and what
it might mean for the Mac community. Win a copy of SmileOnMyMac's
browseback in DealBITS this week!
Topics:
MailBITS/30-Jan-06
DealBITS Drawing: SmileOnMyMac's browseback
It's a Small World, After All
Booting an Intel iMac from an External Drive
Tools We Use: DropCopy
Let Yojimbo Guard Your Information Castle
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/30-Jan-06
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-814.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2006/TidBITS#814_30-Jan-06.etx>
Copyright 2006 TidBITS: Reuse governed by Creative Commons license
<http://www.tidbits.com/terms/> Contact: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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* READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today! <----- NEW!
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* Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 8.2 -- More than 100 new features <--- NEW!
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Demo or buy it today, visit <http://www.barebones.com/>.
* AUDIO HIJACK PRO: Gain total audio control to record <------------- NEW!
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* ConceptDraw Project - Powerful Project Management Tool for Mac. <-- NEW!
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---------------------------------------------------------------
MailBITS/30-Jan-06
------------------
**PowerBook Repair Extension Targets RAM Problems** -- Apple
recently announced the PowerBook G4 (15-inch 1.67/1.5GHz)
Memory Slot Repair Extension Program (yes, that's the full title).
The program addresses an issue that many PowerBook G4 owners have
been experiencing where the lower memory slot would stop working.
PowerBook G4 models manufactured between January 2005 and
April 2005 are affected (serial numbers W8503xxxxxx through
W8518xxxxxx); Apple will replace the memory slot and extend
the warranty covering the repairs for two years. More specific
information can be found at Apple's Web page about the program.
[JLC]
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303173>
DealBITS Drawing: SmileOnMyMac's browseback
-------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Google is great, but it won't help you find information on just
those Web pages you've viewed. For that, you need a utility on
your Mac, such as SmileOnMyMac's recently released browseback.
Unlike other Web history utilities, browseback presents the pages
you've visited as chronologically stacked decks of card-like
thumbnails, making it easy to, well, browse back through your
Web travels. You can also perform full-text searches to limit
the view to just those pages that match, and once you've found
the page in question, you can view it in PDF as it was when you
visited it, go to it in your browser again, save it to PDF,
print it, or send it to someone via email. browseback is both
fun and useful (Macworld gave it a Best of Show Award at Macworld
Expo San Francisco earlier this month), and it's well worth a try.
It's a 2.6 MB download, and there's a universal binary version
available for those folks with new Intel-based iMacs.
<http://www.smileonmymac.com/browseback/>
<http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/01/12/bestofshow/>
In this week's DealBITS drawing, you can enter to win one of
three copies of browseback, each worth $29.95. Entrants who
aren't among our lucky winners will receive a discount on
browseback, so be sure to enter at the DealBITS page linked
below. All information gathered is covered by our comprehensive
privacy policy. Be careful with your spam filters, since you must
be able to receive email from my address to learn if you've won.
Remember too, that if someone you refer to this drawing wins,
you'll receive the same prize as a reward for spreading the word.
<http://www.tidbits.com/dealbits/browseback/>
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/privacy.html>
It's a Small World, After All
-----------------------------
by Geoff Duncan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Walt Disney Company announced last week that it will be
acquiring animation house Pixar in a $7.4 billion all-stock
transaction (a nice return on Steve Jobs's original $10 million
investment when he purchased Pixar from filmmaker George Lucas in
1986). The deal has been approved by the boards of both companies,
and is expected to be completed by mid-2006. Pixar President Ed
Catmull will serve as the President of the new Pixar and Disney
animation studios, and John Lasseter (considered by many to be
the crown jewel of Pixar) will serve as Chief Creative Officer
of the studios, as well as Principal Creative Advisor at Walt
Disney Imagineering, where he'll contribute to Disney theme park
attractions.
<http://corporate.disney.go.com/news/corporate/2006/2006_0124_pixar.html>
<http://corporate.pixar.com/releaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=185239>
<http://www.pixar.com/companyinfo/history/1986.html>
And what of Pixar's iconic CEO Steve Jobs, also CEO of Apple
Computer and in control of about half of Pixar's stock? He'll
be joining Disney's Board of Directors as one of three non-
independent members and, overnight, become Disney's largest
shareholder, owning roughly 6.5 percent of Disney's stock.
Pixar has developed several successful animated films distributed
by Disney under a long-term deal, including Toy Story, Toy
Story 2, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and The
Incredibles, with total earnings from the films estimated near
$3.2 billion. However, friction between Jobs and former Disney
CEO Michael Eisner led Jobs to walk away from the original Disney
distribution deal when it concludes this year with the release of
Cars. Jobs apparently gets along well with Disney's current CEO
Robert Iger and plans to spend a whole lot more time with him.
The Disney acquisition brings Pixar's talent and unique culture
into the Disney fold, and enables the House of Mouse to further
leverage Pixar characters, stories, and creations through its many
media and merchandising channels. For many Pixar employees, the
deal may represent a bit of a dream come true: many of the
storytelling and production values of classic Disney animated
films initially inspired Pixar. However, the deal may complicate
life for Steve Jobs's other day job at Apple Computer, where,
as a member of Disney's board, he may face additional hurdles
convincing other video content providers (Time Warner, NBC/
Universal, CBS, etc.) to put their content up for sale on Apple's
iTunes Music Store.
At first glance, the merger might seem eerily reminiscent of
Apple's acquisition of Jobs's NeXT, Inc., several months after
which Jobs ousted Apple CEO Gil Amelio and took over Apple's
troubled reins in 1997. Indeed, with Pixar's upper management
being placed in charge of the combined Pixar and Disney animation
studios, it might be easy to see this acquisition as a reverse
takeover for Pixar, if not for Jobs personally. But the situation
is significantly different. For one thing, Jobs didn't found
Disney, so it's hard to see him having the same passion for
Disney that he does for Apple. Further, despite a recent
shareholder revolt led by Roy Disney against former CEO Michael
Eisner, Disney is much more than its animation studios. In total,
Disney garnered nearly $32 billion in revenue during 2005 from
businesses including its own cable television channels, the ABC
broadcast television network, half a dozen music labels, half
a dozen more movie studios, plus theatrical productions, its
world-famous theme parks, and - of course - vast merchandising.
That said, none of this means Jobs won't have an impact: he's
always been out to change the world, and with control of Apple
and a board position at Disney, he's better placed to do so
than ever before.
Booting an Intel iMac from an External Drive
--------------------------------------------
by Jonathan Rentzsch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
When I received my new Intel-based iMac, I attempted to install
Mac OS X on an external FireWire hard drive. Imagine my surprise
when I hit a brick wall attempting this formerly simple task.
While the Intel-based Macs are mostly compatible with older Macs,
they change the Mac boot process in fundamental (and incompatible)
ways.
<http://www.apple.com/imac/>
The Intel-based Macs are the first Macs to use Intel's Extensible
Firmware Interface (EFI). Originally intended to replace the PC's
aging and unloved Basic Input Output System (BIOS), EFI has found
its way into the new Macs, taking over for Open Firmware in
PowerPC-based Macs.
Tagging along with EFI is a new partition scheme: GUID Partition
Table (GPT); GUID itself is an acronym, expanding to Globally
Unique Identifier. GUIDs are locally generated, world-unique
random numbers, which make them handy for uniquely identifying all
kinds of things without a centralized organization or database.
GUIDs are a great way to identify hard disk partitions, enabling
the operating system to track volumes even if the device interface
changes (as would happen if you ripped your old hard drive out of
your Mac and tossed it into a FireWire enclosure).
GPT replaces Apple Partition Map (APM) as the boot partition
scheme for Intel-based Macs. And therein lies the rub. Intel-based
Macs can't boot from older APM drives, and PowerPC-based Macs
can't boot from newer GPT drives. This appears to be a permanent
situation - each scheme makes incompatible assumptions about the
layout of physical block 1 on the disk. While GPT was designed
to be compatible with Master Block Record (MBR, the PC's old
partition scheme), it doesn't play nicely with APM.
Even if you could somehow mesh the two schemes, the sad fact is
that Mac OS X 10.4.4's double life has not been reconciled to the
point where one copy of 10.4.4 will boot both PowerPC- and Intel-
based Macs. You can see the evidence of this when you select About
This Mac on both systems and click the version number. On PowerPC-
based Macs, it reads "Build 8G32", while on Intel-based Macs it
reads "8G1165". Eventually Apple will reconcile Mac OS X to one
universal build for both systems, but we're not there today.
The new partition scheme affects booting off external drives
and at least three Mac OS X programs (in a total of four
different ways). Unfortunately, the net impact is a worse
user experience.
**Mac OS X Installer** -- On Intel-based Macs, the Mac OS X
Installer issues an install-blocking error if you attempt to
install on a APM drive: "You cannot install Mac OS X on this
volume. Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume."
While it's nice that Apple upgraded Installer to be aware of the
scheme incompatibility, the error message fails to convey why Mac
OS X cannot boot from the selected drive. I sympathize with the
desire to shield the user from partition scheme complexities, but
this error message is simply wrong. Mac OS X can start from an
APM drive - only Mac OS X on Intel cannot. A better error message
would be: "You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume. Mac OS X
on Intel startup requires GUID Partition Scheme."
In order to convince the Installer to allow installation onto your
external drive, you must use Disk Utility to repartition the drive
using GPT. Unfortunately, Disk Utility is one of the programs
whose interface suffers in the face of the new additional
partition scheme.
**Disk Utility** -- Starting with the version of Disk Utility
that shipped with Mac OS X 10.4.3 (confusingly, version 10.5.3
(198.5)), a critical yet nondescript Options button was added
to the Partition tab. This shy button appears only when you've
selected an external drive. Clicking it reveals a sheet that
enables you to select the partition scheme prior to partitioning
the selected drive. While the sheet mentions why you'd want to
use the PC Partition Scheme (MBR), it remains mute on the need of
selecting APM for booting PowerPC-based Macs and GPT for booting
Intel-based Macs. Even Disk Utility's Help documentation fails
to explain why you'd want to choose one over another. Here we
have a setting that's critical to enable booting Intel-based
Macs off external drives. When visible at all, it's buried -
sans documentation - in a pop-up menu, in a sheet, invoked by
a generic button, inside a tab view. It doesn't get any more
obscure than that.
Disk Utility's Erase tab lacks any mention of the partition
scheme. Arguably this is beyond the tab's scope - the Erase
tab is more concerned with erasing what's already there than
partitioning drives. But this view doesn't hold, given that you
can easily repartition a drive in the Erase tab: just select
an existing drive with multiple partitions and click the Erase
button. Disk Utility happily repartitions the entire drive into
one large partition - always using the APM scheme, or always
unbootable on an Intel-based Mac. Ideally Erase would ask the
user for the partition scheme, defaulting to the only bootable
scheme for the current machine.
**Startup Disk** -- This preference pane fails in different ways
depending on whether it's run on a PowerPC-based Mac or an Intel-
based Mac. Try plugging a GPT drive into a PowerPC-based Mac.
Startup Disk allows you to select the disk and goes so far as to
let you see the Restart button. However, when you actually click
Restart, the process then fails with a beep. If you read your
console.log file (using the Console application in your Utilities
folder), you'll see the "bless" command (which Startup Disk runs
behind the scenes) has failed, complaining it could not determine
the partition of the selected GPT drive.
The user experience is slightly better when you plug an APM drive
into an Intel-based Mac: APM drives are filtered out and don't
show up at all in the list of boot drives in Startup Disk.
Neither experience is good. Startup Disk should be reworked into
a vertical list of all partitions (similar to Mac OS 9.2's Startup
Disk Control Panel). Boot-incompatible drives should still be
listed, but dimmed out and made unavailable for startup selection.
A concise note beside each partition would correctly explain why
it cannot be selected for startup.
**No Universal Boot Drive** -- An important point to keep in mind
is that all this complexity can be ignored for non-boot drives.
If you just have a drive with data on it, you can use it inside
or outside both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs without any issues.
If you have an existing boot drive - either internal or external -
that was used with a PowerPC-based Mac, you'll need to repartition
it (thereby erasing all of its data) in order to use it to boot an
Intel-based Mac. The same goes for the other direction (Intel-
based Mac to PowerPC-based Mac).
Currently, there is no method to enable one external drive to boot
both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. Given the fundamental block 1
incompatibility between these two partition schemes, this
situation may be permanent.
The only possibility I see is hand-crafting a hybrid partition
scheme that empirically boots both kinds of Macs. I say
"empirically," since it may involve crafting a scheme that's
invalid by both definitions of APM and GPT, but works anyway due
implementation details of how particular Macs boot. For example,
APM demands that physical block 1 begins with "PM," while GPT
demands "EFI PART". Depending on the how stringent the checks
are at boot time, it may be possible to get a PowerPC-based Mac
to start executing disk-based code before ensuring the validity
of block 1's PM prefix. That low-level code could quickly "fix-up"
the erstwhile GPT scheme into an APM scheme, allowing booting
to proceed normally.
That said, while perhaps theoretically possible, I'd file such
a technique under black-magic rocket-science and would never use
it myself. My data is just too precious to risk in such a way.
**Gradually Progressing Technology** -- The Intel-based Macs are
out of the gate, and of course there will be stumbling blocks
with new machines with new architectures. While the initial
program versions haven't fared well in the face of a new
partition scheme, at least Installer does stop you before
installing Mac OS X on a drive whose partition scheme makes
it unbootable. That's a 20- to 40- minute misstep averted
thanks to a commendable up-front check.
[Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch is an indie Mac contract programmer
around Northwest Illinois.]
Tools We Use: DropCopy
----------------------
by Matt Neuburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I've recently discovered DropCopy, from 10base-t Interactive.
This little utility's "window" is a small translucent dark spot,
rather like a hole, that sits behind all other applications
(and behind your desktop Finder icons). Drag a file or folder
onto this hole, and a menu appears next to it, listing the names
of any other computers on your local network that are also running
DropCopy. Continue dragging onto an item of that menu, and the
file or folder is copied to that computer.
You could use Personal File Sharing to accomplish the same thing,
of course, but DropCopy feels far more lightweight: you don't need
to turn File Sharing on, you don't need a username and password,
you don't need to log on or open any remote Finder windows, you
don't need to worry about permissions. Instead, DropCopy uses
Bonjour (formerly known as Rendezvous) for auto-discovery and data
transfer. You could use iChat, but you'd need to arrange multiple
screen names to avoid the "multiple logins" problem, and you'd
have to be at both computers at once (one to send the file and the
other to accept it). With DropCopy, you just send a file into the
hole and it's on its way. For just popping an occasional Finder
item over to another computer, DropCopy is simply perfect.
DropCopy also lets you post a text message dialog to another
computer, and you can even fetch the contents of another
computer's clipboard. (Back in the old Mac OS 8.6 days, I wrote
some gruesome AppleScript tools to accomplish that.) If you've got
more than one computer on your local network, even if there's just
one human user, you'll probably find DropCopy a huge time-saver.
The interface is delightful (I love the animation as the hole
darkens and lightens while a file passes through it), and the
price (free!) is right.
<http://10base-t.com/dropcopy.html>
Let Yojimbo Guard Your Information Castle
-----------------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The latest entry in the ever-growing roster of information
organizers comes from Bare Bones Software, maker of such
programs as Mailsmith and BBEdit (and its freeware little
brother, TextWrangler). Yojimbo, whose evocative name means
roughly "bodyguard for hire" in Japanese (as in the classic
Kurosawa film), is distinguished by its ease of use and the
way it supplies structure to certain types of data.
<http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1196>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07956>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07289>
<http://www.duallens.com/index.asp?reviewId=60603>
Yojimbo's approach to maintaining information is simple. You have
a single database of items, called the Library. An item can be
text (possibly styled, and possibly including images), a URL
(called a "bookmark"), an archive (either a Web Archive of
the sort that Safari now knows how to save, or a PDF), a serial
number, or a password. (Arbitrary files, such as images or Excel
documents, or aliases to such files, cannot be stored as items in
Yojimbo.) A particularly nice touch is that you can create a PDF
and save it into Yojimbo in a single move, using the Save PDF
in Yojimbo command in the PDF pop-up menu of any application's
Print dialog. (You might use this feature, for instance, to
store copies of receipt pages from Web orders.) Any item can be
encrypted, and to enable this, you must assign the library itself
a password; password items are always encrypted. A preference lets
you decide whether you want to be prompted for your password every
time you decrypt an item to read it.
You don't have to work directly in Yojimbo's window to throw items
into it. A system-wide hotkey summons the Quick Input Panel, in
which the current clipboard contents are turned into an item and
where you have an opportunity to determine what kind of item it
is and assign a title. There is also a drawer at the edge of the
screen (the Drop Dock), into which you can drop items. Finally,
you can drop text and PDF files (one at a time, or in batches) on
Yojimbo's Dock icon to import them. Unfortunately, there's no way
to import a tab-delimited text file of passwords or serial numbers
into individual password and serial number items, making it
difficult to migrate existing collections of data from other
applications into Yojimbo. And Yojimbo isn't scriptable with
AppleScript, so the best way to transfer such existing data
to Yojimbo may be organically, as you use the information.
In keeping with its goal of direct simplicity, Yojimbo supplies
only a modicum of organization. You can flag an item, or assign
it a label (a color). You can create "collections" (like iTunes
playlists or iPhoto albums) and assign an item to one or more
of them. There are also some built-in "smart collections" which
present categories of items, such as all text items or all flagged
items. And a search field lets you find items based on their
titles, contents, or comments, instantly. (But you cannot nest
collections, create your own smart collections, or save a search.)
In situations where it makes sense (bookmarks, serial numbers, and
passwords), Yojimbo provides a set of fields to hold the different
pieces of data in the item. So, for example, a bookmark has a name
field, a location field, and a comments field; a serial number has
a name, the serial number, and four further fields. This is a good
use of structure where it makes sense, without imposing it on the
text and archive item types that don't need it. However, you can't
define your own fields for custom types of information. If this
became possible in a future version, you could use Yojimbo to
store (for example) recipe references, with fields for name,
cookbook name, page number, and so on. I currently use iData 2
as a lightweight flat-file database for this sort of thing, but
surely the point of an information organizer should be that you
can keep any kind of information in it. As so often, I'm reminded
with nostalgia of the wonderful WebArranger, which permitted you
to define your own item types, each with its own set of fields.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07761>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=01149>
You would expect from the thoughtful and accomplished folks at
Bare Bones a certain clarity and slickness of interface, as well
as a showpiece that takes advantage of the brightest and best
among system technologies. With Yojimbo, that's just what you
get. Yojimbo is a Tiger-only application because it relies on
the latest Mac OS X advances. For instance, it's a Core Data
application, so that your items are kept easily and automatically
in a SQLite database. Yojimbo also makes all non-encrypted items
individually available to system-wide Spotlight searches, by
representing each one as a stub in your Caches folder. (Whether
you regard this as a felicitous choice depends upon your point of
view. I don't want more matches in my Spotlight searches; I want
fewer!) And if you have a .Mac account, Yojimbo can use the .Mac
SDK to synchronize your Yojimbo data between machines, so you can
retrieve your passwords and serial numbers while using your iBook
on the road.
<http://developer.apple.com/macosx/coredata.html>
<http://developer.apple.com/internet/dotmackit.html>
Bare Bones's Yojimbo Web page asserts that the program has
"no learning curve"; and this, allowing for the usual pedantic
disagreements over what the phrase "learning curve" means,
is absolutely true. Download it and run it; in less than a minute,
you will know exactly how to put data into it and find what
you've put in. Much as I appreciate the effort that Bare Bones
has put into Yojimbo, though, it's not a particularly ambitious
application and may not compel people to switch to it from other
programs that offer roughly similar features. Nevertheless, anyone
who has hesitated to try any information organizer because they
all seem overly complex and confusing might well be attracted to
Yojimbo's direct simplicity and should certainly give it a try.
Yojimbo requires Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later; it costs $40 for an
individual license that may be used by one user on multiple
machines, $70 for up to five users with multiple machines,
or $30 for educational users with a single machine. The demo
version expires after 30 days.
<http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/demo.shtml>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/30-Jan-06
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The first link for each thread description points to the
traditional TidBITS Talk interface; the second link points to
the same discussion on our Web Crossing server, which provides
a different look and which may be faster.
**Turbo Tax problems** -- Now that tax season has started in the
United States, readers revive this thread comparing experiences
with Intuit's tax-preparation software. (7 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2850>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/383/>
**CCTV software for Macs** -- A reader looks for Mac software that
can read CCTV output, and discovers an inexpensive way to make
panoramas! (3 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2852>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/694/>
**Automated/batch lookup of longitude/latitude for city lists?**
Several methods of determining a city's longitude and latitude
are available. (5 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2854>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/696/>
**DVD Ripping Question** -- Readers look at the many ways of
ripping unprotected DVD content to one's hard drive for a
variety of uses. (14 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2855>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/697/>
**Converting AOL.ART compressed files** -- Do you have lots of
images saved from your days of using AOL? They're most likely
compressed in a proprietary format, which can be accessed using
a Windows program. (2 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2857>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/698/>
**Referencing Photos in iPhoto 6** -- iPhoto 6 no longer requires
that it copy your photos to its own directory. (1 message)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2858>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/699/>
**Tech support for ThinkFree Office** -- A reader warns that one
low-cost alternative to Microsoft Office offers almost nonexistent
technical support. (1 message)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2859>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/700/>
**Switching from Entourage to Mail?** Advice for making a mostly
clean transition from these two email programs. (3 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2861>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/701/>
**Questions about Sonos Digital Music System** -- Andrew Laurence
answers queries following his review of the Sonos Digital Music
System. (1 message)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2862>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/702/>
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