TidBITS#842/14-Aug-06
=====================
Steve Jobs previewed Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard at last week's Worldwide
Developer Conference, but his references to still-secret features
piqued our curiosity. This week, we offer a wish list of fixes and
features we'd like to see appear from behind the curtain when
Leopard ships next year. Also in this issue, Matt Neuburg looks at
Microsoft's discontinuation of Visual Basic in the next version of
Microsoft Office for Macintosh, and Adam both provides more thoughts
on a collaborative editing application and notices that the latest
iPod software update causes his iPod nano to sk-sk-skip. Plus, we
note the winners of this year's Apple Design Awards and announce a
DealBITS drawing for lynda.com's Online Training Library.
Articles
iPod nano Skips After Update
DealBITS Drawing: lynda.com's Online Training Library
Visual Basic a Casualty of Processor War
Apple Design Award 2006 Winners
More Thoughts on Collaborative Editing
Leopard Wish List
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/14-Aug-06
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iPod nano Skips After Update
----------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I've been remiss in not writing this up sooner, but I remember it
only when I'm in the car, listening to podcasts or music on our iPod
nano. Since the most recent iPod update - iPod Updater 2006-06-28 -
our iPod nano has suffered from frequent (at least one per car trip)
1- to 2-second bits of garbled playback. Another person reported
this on TidBITS Talk[1] as well, although it's not clear if the
problem is widespread. Since the iPod Updater 2006-06-28 contains
iPod nano Software 1.2, with Nike+iPod support (and unspecified bug
fixes), if you're not using the Nike+iPod Sport Kit[2] (see "Grab
Your iPod and Run"[3] for details), I'd encourage you to hold off on
this particular iPod update. Apple knows about the problem and is
undoubtedly working on a fix.
[1]<http://emperor.tidbits.com/webx/TidBITS/Talk/882/>
[2]<http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/>
If the problem bothers you sufficiently, you can restore to the
previous iPod nano Software 1.1.1. Look in your
/Applications/Utilities folder for an iPod Software Updater folder,
which contains older iPod updaters. I launched iPod Updater
2006-03-23, the second-most-recent one, clicked the Restore button
(remember that this will erase everything on the iPod, so do a
restore only if you're loading everything from the Mac anyway), and
let it restore. Before copying music and podcasts back to the iPod
nano, iTunes tried to get me to install the bad update again; I
demurred, and all was fine. I later let the bad update install again
for testing purposes, and the problem returned, so I repeated the
entire process to revert back to iPod nano Software 1.1.1. I'll
revisit this issue once I'm ready to test the just-arrived Nike+iPod
Sport Kit.
[3]<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08543>
DealBITS Drawing: lynda.com's Online Training Library
-----------------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Different people learn software best in different ways. Some like
playing with a program on their own, others prefer reading something
like one of our Take Control ebooks, and many people like attending
classes. But there's yet another form of training that's becoming
increasingly popular - video training via the Internet. Perhaps the
best-known company in this field - at least of those that provide
topics of interest to Mac users - is lynda.com, founded by Lynda
Weinman in 1995. lynda.com has approximately 250 training programs,
many of which cover Macintosh software and were created by the same
authors who have written best-selling books and ebooks. So if you're
interested in online video training, check out the list of topics in
lynda.com's Online Training Library[4]; all the titles have free
samples, and you can see if any of them would prove useful in your
work.
[4]<http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/>
In this week's DealBITS drawing, you can enter to win a one-year
premium subscription to lynda.com's Online Training Library[5],
worth $375. Entrants who aren't among our lucky winners will receive
a serious discount on an Online Training Library subscription, so be
sure to enter at the DealBITS page linked below. All information
gathered is covered by our comprehensive privacy policy[6]. 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.
[5]<http://www.tidbits.com/dealbits/lynda/>
[6]<http://www.tidbits.com/about/privacy.html>
Visual Basic a Casualty of Processor War
----------------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The announcement last week from Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit
(MacBU)[7] that Virtual PC for Mac will be discontinued, and that
future versions of Microsoft Office for Mac will lack support for
Visual Basic macros, has sparked one of those rumor wildfires over
which, as usual, cooler heads must prevail.
[7]<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/macbu/default.aspx?pid=whoweare>
Virtual PC was always a desperate half-measure at best, sufficient
(say) to test a cross-platform application built with REALbasic
slowly, but not for serious Windows-based work. Personally, I won't
miss it, and I look forward to acquiring an Intel-based Mac and
running Parallels Desktop[8] so I can try Dragon Naturally
Speaking[9] at last.
[8]<http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/>
[9]<http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/>
As for Visual Basic, the news seems to me almost entirely good.
Visual Basic support in the Mac version of Office was always a
crusty hack (just how crusty is made clear by Erik Schwiebert in his
blog[10] and by Rick Schaut in his[11]), and was never on a par with
the Windows version anyway; its removal will be, if anything,
liberating.
[10]<http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic>
[11]<http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2006/08/09/693499.aspx>
The real take-home message here is that Mac Office has at last been
completely migrated into Xcode. This means that a universal binary
build of the Office applications is now more than a theoretical
possibility. In effect, the MacBU has managed to squeeze a camel
through the eye of a needle; the fact that in the process one of its
humps fell off (Visual Basic support) doesn't detract from the
achievement. Plus, remember, a Microsoft Office that can't run
Visual Basic will close one of the largest security holes on most
people's Macs today, namely the danger of receiving a Word document
infected with a macro virus. Finally, you'll still be able to
automate Office through AppleScript, support for which became
downright excellent in Office 2004, and which will surely be even
better with the underlying Visual Basic scaffolding removed and no
longer dictating how an AppleScript command is formed.
And what if you need Visual Basic compatibility in order to
cooperate with Windows users? I guess you'll just keep on using
Office 2004 (under Rosetta, if you've migrated to Intel); that will
be a pity if it means missing out on subsequent Office improvements,
but to call it a hardship would be a bit strong.
The real unanswered question, it seems to me, is how Excel users
will write custom functions (as opposed to macros). AppleScript's
math would not be up to this, even if Excel could somehow call back
into it, so the MacBU must either ignore the problem and cripple
Excel or come up with a completely innovative solution. Time will
tell.
Apple Design Award 2006 Winners
-------------------------------
by Jeff Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) wrapped up this year
with the annual Apple Design Award[12] winners, who received not
only fame and Mac developer cred, but a special cube award that
lights up when touched. (How is this illuminated miracle
accomplished? The winners of the 2004 award for best student project
didn't merely take theirs apart like any normal person; they peeked
inside using a CT scanner[13] and built 3D reconstructed models, of
course!)
[12]<http://developer.apple.com/ada/>
[13]<http://mekentosj.com/goodies/cubism/>
Congratulations to this year's winners, and we encourage you to
visit their Web sites to get a sense of why they were chosen.
* Best Mac OS X Developer Tool: Winner: TextMate 1.5[14]. Runner-up:
F-Script 1.3[15].
[14]<http://macromates.com/>
[15]<http://www.fscript.org/>
* Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics: Winner: modo 201[16]. Runner-up:
Unity 1.5[17].
[16]<http://www.luxology.com/>
[17]<http://unity3d.com/>
* Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget: iClip lite 2.0[18]. Runner-up:
WeatherBug Local Weather Widget[19].
[18]<http://inventive.us/iCliplite/>
[19]<http://weatherbug.com/weather-widgets/mac/>
* Best Mac OS X Automator Workflow: Winner: Build Real Estate
Catalog/Ultimate Productivity Action Pack[20]. Runner-up: Lecture
Recording Workflow 1.2[21].
[20]<http://automatedworkflows.com/automator/ultimate.html>
[21]<http://www.dent.umich.edu/itunes/developers/>
* Best Mac OS X User Experience: Winner: iSale 3.1[22]. Runner-up:
Boinx FotoMagico 1.7[23].
[22]<http://equinux.com/us/products/isale/>
[23]<http://www.fotomagico.com/>
* Best Mac OS X Game: Winner: The Sims 2[24]. Runner-up: Wingnuts 2:
Raina's Revenge[25].
[24]<http://www.aspyr.com/games.php/mac/10880/>
[25]<http://www.freeverse.com/wn2/>
* Best Mac OS X Scientific Computing Solution: Winner: EnzymeX
3.1[26]. Runner-up: FuzzMeasure Pro 2.0[27].
[26]<http://mekentosj.com/enzymex/>
[27]<http://supermegaultragroovy.com/>
* Best Mac OS X Student Product: Winner: Lineform 1.1[28]. Runner-up:
PhotoPresenter 2.5[29].
[28]<http://tribarsw.net/lineform/>
[29]<http://www.arizona-software.ch/applications/photopresenter/en/>
More Thoughts on Collaborative Editing
--------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Thanks for all your mail and comments about my "Calling Mac
Developers: Request for a Collaborative Editor"[30] article in the
24-Jul-06 issue of TidBITS. What with the comments on my article and
Jason Snell's post on Macworld.com[31], we've been having
discussions both with users who desperately want the collaborative
editor we're proposing and with some developers who are potentially
interested in writing it. That doesn't mean we don't want to hear
from more developers; the more the merrier, and if someone were to
start an open source project, I'm sure the extra coders would be
welcome. However, we want to clear up a couple of common
misconceptions that have arisen.
[30]<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08613>
[31]<http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macword/2006/07/rfp/>
**SubEthaEdit and Real-Time Tools** -- First, lots of people have
asked if we've considered SubEthaEdit[32], from The Coding Monkeys.
Yes and no - we know all about SubEthaEdit and use it occasionally,
but it's not at all suited for the kind of group collaboration we
have in mind here for two main reasons:
[32]<http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/>
* It's only real-time, which demos incredibly well and is very useful
in specific situations like group note taking and the occasional
group writing situation. However, most writing and editing is done
asynchronously and sequentially, where each person works on his or
her own schedule and passes the file along when done.
* It loses track of who made what changes as soon as the document is
closed - there's no persistence, and no versioning capabilities.
Saving is also somewhat confusing; since the person who shares the
document should be saving, but if anything interrupts the
connection, all the people connected to that document end up with a
local-only version that they don't know if they should save.
As I said, we do use SubEthaEdit whenever we're working on an
article as a group. For instance, for our coverage last week of the
announcements from WWDC, we fired up SubEthaEdit and all wrote (or
at least edited - several people find the presence of other activity
in the same document highly distracting) into a shared document,
divvying up specific bits of coverage. And this week, we wrote our
Leopard Wish List article in SubEthaEdit as well, since it too had
small contributions from a number of people.
We're testing a workaround for the saving issue by having the person
who creates the document use an auto-save utility; currently we're
trying GoldfishSoft's $20 shareware SaveMe[33], and it would seem to
fit the bill (although it's hard to say how it would work over time,
given that the demo times out after 30 saves). It's also worth
noting that the current version of SubEthaEdit itself is no longer
free, but the notable changes between the free versions and the
current SubEthaEdit 2.5 revolve around its capabilities as a text
editor, not as a collaboration tool. Luckily, it turns out that you
can still download older versions of SubEthaEdit[34] for free.
[33]<http://goldfishsoft.com/saveme1.html>
[34]<http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/old.html>
A few people pointed us toward NoteShare[35] from AquaMinds, but it
too is a real-time tool, though with the added fillip that only one
person can edit a particular shared notebook at a time. That
eliminates the need for tracking multiple sets of changes
simultaneously, but it also means that a collaborative editing team
would have to store only a single document per notebook to avoid
having one person lock everyone else out from all other documents in
that notebook. NoteShare is definitely a 1.0 product, though it may
evolve in useful ways given comments made by AquaMinds about future
versions possibly allowing multiple simultaneous editors of a single
notebook and providing versioning capabilities.
[35]<http://www.aquaminds.com/nsProduct.jsp>
**Text Creation, Not Publishing** -- Second, a number of people aren't
quite realizing where in the publishing process our proposed
GroupEdit exists. In a professional publishing environment, text is
written by an author, is edited and commented upon by one or more
editors, goes back to the author, returns to a primary editor, goes
to a copy editor/proofreader, and only at the very end of the
process is sent to print publishing software and/or a Web content
management system.
In most Internet publishing scenarios - particularly weblog and wiki
approaches - collaboration happens at the very end of this process.
Weblog entries only generate comments and links once they're posted,
and wiki entries are available for modification only after they've
been published for the first time. That's because weblogs evolved
from the personal publishing paradigm, and although wikis have long
been group-oriented, an entry in a public wiki like Wikipedia is
available for public collaboration from the very moment it is
created, not once it has been "published" officially.
So what we're looking for in GroupEdit is a tool that supports the
pre-publishing process, long before the public ever sees the end
result. We don't want a sausage, we want a sausage stuffer. And yes,
the back-and-forth that results in a well-written, well-edited,
thoroughly proofed publication is a case of sausage making - it
isn't always pretty, and it's not something that most publications
want exposed to readers. Although I haven't been deeply involved in
Wikipedia, my impression is that the manufacturing of a
controversial Wikipedia entry reveals quite a bit of the sausage
making, and while that may be fine for Wikipedia, it's not something
most publications want to do.
I say all this as a way of explaining the more basic reason why
tools that enable Web publishing, like weblog utilities, wikis, and
even programs like Macromedia Contribute, never quite provide what
we're looking for. All of them are tweaked to support that final
aspect of the publishing process, rather than the early steps when a
document is moving back and forth rapidly (and the more rapidly the
better, though current tools hamper quick transitions tremendously)
between an author and one or more editors.
The program that comes the closest to meeting our needs is probably
Adobe InCopy[36], which integrates with InDesign to enable writers
to work more fluidly with text that's destined for InDesign layouts.
Although InCopy would seem to have many of the basic features we
want, it falls down in being focused primarily on integration with
InDesign and on collaboration between writers and designers, not
writers and editors. Plus, at $250 per copy, it's not something we
or Macworld could afford to provide to freelance writers.
[36]<http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy/>
**Return to the RFP** -- Therefore I would once again encourage
everyone to take a look at our RFP in QuickTopic Document
Review[37], both with an eye toward making comments that could help
refine or enhance the proposal and toward alerting Macintosh
developers who might be interested in working on such a project or
who might even have code that would benefit from features along the
lines of those we outline in the RFP. The comments and discussions
that the RFP has spawned so far have been helpful and are exactly
what we hoped it would bring out. We're looking forward to keeping
the dialogue going and hopefully getting something along the lines
of GroupEdit into development.
[37]<http://www.quicktopic.com/37/D/bVHWhMLMj74?inline=1>
Leopard Wish List
-----------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
When he introduced Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on stage during last week's
Worldwide Developer Conference keynote, Steve Jobs was clear about
how there were more "top secret" features coming in Leopard. That
got us thinking - given what Apple has done in previous versions of
Mac OS X, and what they've announced for Leopard, what's left? What
improvements to Mac OS X remain for the picking? After some
discussions among the staff, we came up with this list. (And if
you're interested in hearing more about what Jobs did talk about in
Leopard, check out the last two MacNotables podcasts, one a panel
discussion[38] with Dan Frakes, Ted Landau, Bob LeVitus, and Andy
Ihnatko, and the other a solo show with Adam[39].)
[38]<http://macnotables.com/archives/2006/666.html>
[39]<http://macnotables.com/archives/2006/667.html>
**Faster Faster, Pussycat!** Put bluntly, the overall Mac OS X user
experience is still too slow. Throwing hardware at the problem helps
to a certain extent, but working in the Finder and switching among
multiple different applications involves far too many pauses. The
spinning pizza of death is a sufficiently common occurrence that we
find ourselves distractedly switching applications merely to keep
working, although it's nice that the colored wheel is less commonly
an indicator that a restart will be required in the near future.
We'd like to see significant attention paid in Leopard to
performance in areas that will provide perceptual speed differences
to every Mac user with sufficiently modern hardware. New features
are great, and we understand the need to justify the selling price
of a new version, but fine-tuning what's already implemented not
only provides a boost in everyday activities, it makes sense when
looking ahead to future revisions.
**Smarter Finder** -- Speaking of the Finder, rumor has it that Apple
is working on it for Leopard, and we have some pet peeves we'd love
to see addressed beyond performance. There are still times the
Finder doesn't notice new files appearing, which is confusing at
best, and its warning when you're copying multiple files over files
with the same names really needs the chronological information
available when copying a single file over an identically named item.
Other complaints include the default button when changing the
extension of a file's name (if you're changing the extension, in
most cases you probably intend to change it, so that should be the
default); the way the Finder selects the original file after you
duplicate it, rather than the copy that you probably want to work
on; the tendency of a folder to be scrolled out of sight when you
rename it; and the way the Show Original contextual menu command
doesn't always (if ever) select an alias's original file. Apple
could do worse than to study Cocoatech's Path Finder[40] for hints
on how to address these and other small usability problems with the
Finder.
[40]<http://www.cocoatech.com/pf4/>
**Smarter Authentication** -- How often are you prompted for your
administrator password? Perhaps it's not as often as we are, given
the amount of software we install and test, but we're willing to bet
that you blithely type your password whenever prompted without the
slightest thought about what will happen next. (That's true of us
most of the time too!) In Leopard, therefore, we'd like to see
serious consideration given to how often authentication requests are
made - with an eye to reducing the number to the point where users
are more likely to pay attention to them, and to how the
authentication requests are made - with thought given to making them
more explicable. One possibility might be to create security levels,
with a different type of authentication request for each level and
with the necessary user action becoming more involved for higher
security levels. So an installer that wants to install an
application in the Applications folder would require relatively
simple authentication, but if that installer also wanted to install
a kernel extension, the action required to authenticate would be
more complex (and would be required to inform the user more
thoroughly about what it intends to do).
**Service Management** -- We appreciate the utility of services, but
frankly, the entire situation is a mess. Any application can
register a service, cluttering the Services menu with an insane
number of services, many of which hijack keyboard shortcuts or are
impossible to figure out. We'd like to see Leopard provide a way for
users to manage which services are available, control their keyboard
shortcuts, and learn more about the functions that the services
actually provide. This might entail developers adding metadata to
their applications with service descriptions, but users should be
able to add their own descriptions as well. Also, services should be
made available through some other mechanism than the hierarchical
Services menu within the Application menu, which is clumsy to access
and which few users ever even notice; for example, imagine if you
could specify a few services as favorites and access them from a
full-fledged Services menu (which could be just an icon) in the
menubar. (Peter Maurer's shareware Service Scrubber[41] is a good
interim step, but this is the sort of operating system-level control
that should be provided by Apple.)
[41]<http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=servicescrubber>
**Hotkey Manager** -- There are numerous ways in which a keyboard
shortcut can be defined in Mac OS X: hard coded within applications;
customized within applications; services; automation utilities like
iKey, Keyboard Maestro, and QuicKeys; launchers like LaunchBar and
DragThing; and Mac OS X's own Keyboard & Mouse preference pane. With
so many possibilities, it can be nearly impossible to figure out
what a given keyboard shortcut will do, and sometimes keyboard
shortcuts stop working for inexplicable reasons. Leopard should
rationalize this situation as much as possible by having the
Keyboard & Mouse preference pane become a central clearinghouse for
all registered keyboard shortcuts.
**Active Security Agent** -- Every so often, there's a huge fuss in
the Mac world about some piece of software sending data back to the
mother ship, secretly installing an input manager, or generally
doing things that it shouldn't. As much as we approve of software
like Objective Development's Little Snitch[42], and firewalls like
DoorStop[43] from Open Door Networks, and IPNetSentryX[44] from
Sustainable Softworks, we'd like Leopard to include an active
security agent that would build up a profile of standard patterns of
use and warn the user when something seemed to be deviating from
those patterns or behaving in ways that are known to be dubious. The
Mac has long had a reputation for being highly secure, but it's safe
to say that the concentrated attention of less savory elements would
undoubtedly reveal vulnerabilities, and a gram of prevention is
worth a kilo of cure.
[42]<http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/>
[43]<http://www.opendoor.com/doorstop/>
[44]<http://www.sustworks.com/site/prod_sentryx_overview.html>
**Seamless Network Usage** -- It's a little hard to pin this wish
down, but it seems that using network-based resources like file
servers or printers is still too fussy. The spinning pizza of death
is a commonplace sight when working with network resources that may
be slow or unavailable, and while some of that is undoubtedly
unavoidable, it would be great to see Leopard make network usage
more seamless. Perhaps that means checking network connections in
the background when they're not being used to make sure they're
available when requested, or providing error messages without
waiting 2 minutes when a server connection disappears. Or perhaps it
means providing some sort of status display that the user could use
to determine whether or not a network resource was really available
without having to try a connection that won't work. Improving
Leopard's behavior in this area will be left as an exercise to
readers at Apple.
**Better Multiple Monitor Awareness** -- Most of us here at TidBITS
use two monitors when we're not on the road, meaning we maximize our
workspace by attaching two monitors to a desktop computer or by
adding a second monitor to a laptop. If we want to use Apple's Dock,
though, we sometimes get frustrated, since logical positions for the
Dock on a single monitor don't always map well to sensible positions
for two displays. We can use Marcel Bresink's free TinkerTool[45] to
position the Dock at the top of the screen, but it would be nice to
see Leopard enable the Dock to live on any edge of any display, if
multiple displays were present. Another option that would make
multiple monitor fans happy would be the capability to show the same
menubar on both screens. That way, the menubar would always be above
the current window, no matter which screen contained that window.
[45]<http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html>
**Menubar Icon Management** -- Most users have a lot of icons at the
right side of the menubar. Of these, some are controlled by
preference panes, and others by options in application preferences,
plus there are some, like the Script menu icon, that seem to have no
visible interface for adding and removing the icon from your menu.
Some can be removed by Command-dragging the icon off the menubar;
others can't. (Those of us who never use Spotlight from the menubar
wish it were in the former category.) All this is by way of
suggesting that Leopard should standardize and centralize how
menubar icons are added and removed; it's fine to provide multiple
approaches, but having one place to turn off all the unnecessary
ones would be a boon.
**Extensible Location Manager** -- Mac OS 9 had a built-in Location
Manager that enabled users to switch a number of settings all at
once when they moved their laptop from one location to another. In
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, changing your location setting using the
Location submenu of the Apple menu adjusts only your network
settings. That's a good start, but unlike Mac OS 9's Location
Manager, it doesn't affect other preferences you may want to change
depending on where you're located, such as your default printer,
SMTP server, time zone, sound level, and Energy Saver settings. A
third-party product called Location X[46] offers most of these
options, but it's inexcusable that Mac OS X's built-in Location
support is still so far behind where it was in Mac OS 9.
[46]<http://homepage.mac.com/locationmanager/>
And while we're wishing, let's go one step further: why put the
effort into choosing a location when the Mac can do it for you? As
soon as you connect to your AirPort wireless network at home, for
example, all of your location preferences could be enabled. Or
perhaps your Mac OS X firewall settings could be beefed up when you
connect to a T-Mobile or other public Wi-Fi network? (Location X
also has this feature, called AutoLocate.) Computers are designed to
automate silly tasks, right?
**Widgets Outside Dashboard** -- Dashboard makes a lot of tasks
easier, but its main problem is modality: you must switch into
Dashboard, perform a task, and then switch back to your regular
working environment. If you take a simple tool like the Calculator,
it requires more steps (and more time) to copy and paste a result
from Dashboard's calculator than from the stand-alone version in
your Applications folder. How is that an advantage? So it should be
possible to use any widget on its own, without having to switch into
the Dashboard "layer" of Mac OS X. It'd be a great step forward in
usability. You can already accomplish this with the Amnesty Widget
Browser[47], but it shouldn't require an extra purchase to make
widgets usable.
[47]<http://www.mesadynamics.com/amnesty.htm>
**Startup Item Manager** -- The days of Apple's Mac OS 9 Extension
Manager are long gone, but the need for an extension or startup item
manager is not. We have system-wide startup items, account-specific
login items, input managers, kernel extensions, and goodness knows
what else. As such, it's near-impossible for any mere mortal to
figure out exactly what non-Apple code is loading at any given time.
To help users improve performance, troubleshoot problems, and
enhance security, we'd like Leopard to offer a unified interface for
managing all types of third-party code that can execute without the
user explicitly launching it.
**Smarter Hard Disk Usage** -- With Time Machine storing multiple
snapshots of your data over time, the hard disks in today's Macs are
going to fill up fast. Mac OS X needs plenty of free space to
generate swap files and other invisible cache files, so we'd like to
see three smart improvements to how storage is handled.
The first is dynamic repartitioning, a feature that already exists
but is not accessible to average users. Apple's Boot Camp Assistant
creates a new partition on your hard disk for Windows to use,
without requiring you to reformat your hard disk or jeopardizing any
of your existing data. If you decide to stop using Boot Camp, the
utility can remove the partition and return your drive to its
original state. Disk Utility should include an interface to do the
same thing with Mac partitions, and that capability should include
resizing partitions if the need arises. There are already some ways
to pull this off with command-line hacking, and several third-party
utilities offer dynamic repartitioning (although they're slow and
awkward to use). We'd like to see Leopard make the process faster
and easier. Also, since dynamic repartitioning involves having all
your data concentrated in one area of the disk so as to leave a
large contiguous empty space in the remainder, we'd get a
defragmentation facility as a bonus.
The second improvement is a better early-warning system for when
your free disk space is almost gone. By the time Mac OS X pops up a
warning dialog, bad things have already started to happen:
performance slows down, and you can't burn optical discs (because
there isn't enough space to create a disk image, a problem that
Roxio's Toast[48] works around quite nicely). In worst-case
situations, you could be able to run an application or system update
installer but not be able to reboot the machine successfully when
the installer is finished. We'd like to see Disk Utility or some
other background process monitor the space-related health of the
hard disk. And Apple could do worse than to build in a utility
similar to the excellent Disk Inventory X[49], which reveals what's
eating your free space.
[48]<http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/overview.html>
[49]<http://www.derlien.com/>
And lastly, we'd like a bit more control over the Trash. We'd like
to see the Empty Trash item in the Finder menu become hierarchical
so we could choose which volume's trashed files are erased. For
example, if you have a USB flash drive mounted on the Desktop, and
you choose Empty Trash in Tiger, the trash on the startup volume is
erased as well, which may be undesirable. Another idea would be a
feature that lets you set parameters for automatically deleting
files over time when the disk space was needed. It could start with,
for instance, QuickTime files that have been in the Trash for more
than 3 months. Presumably, Time Machine's tracking of deleted files
would enable you to go back and rescue a file that you inadvertently
trashed long ago and was automatically deleted.
**Sanctioned Plug-in Architecture for Mail and Safari** -- Developers
have created numerous plug-ins and extensions for Mail and Safari
that add valuable features or resolve interface deficiencies. The
problem is, Apple doesn't officially provide a plug-in architecture
for either program. There are no documented APIs for plug-ins and no
developer support, so developers trying to add features have to use
trial and error - and risk causing crashes or other application
misbehavior (see "Are Input Managers the Work of the Devil?"[50]).
Apple does offer a framework for adding Internet Plug-Ins (for
adding new content types to Safari and other applications that use
WebKit), but what's needed is a full-blown extension API along the
lines of that found in Firefox and Thunderbird.
[50]<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08430>
**Nicknames in Mail** -- Mail's Previous Recipients list keeps track
of everyone you ever send email to, not just those you plan to
correspond with again. As a result, when you use the auto-completion
feature to address a message, chances are good that you'll get the
wrong one accidentally. You can prune the list manually, but it's a
pain. We'd like to have the capability to turn off Previous
Recipients altogether and instead manually specify short nicknames
for frequently used contacts (as in Eudora).
**Easy File-, Folder-, and Volume-Level Encryption** -- FileVault
stinks. Even assuming that Apple has worked out all the bugs in the
initial versions, the mere concept of encrypting the user's entire
home folder is flawed, since very few users care about encrypting
their photos, movies, and music, which likely account for the bulk
of the data in most home folders. Plus, because FileVault relies on
a sparse disk image file behind the scenes, backup strategies must
explicitly ignore that file and instead look only at the contents
while the disk image is mounted (otherwise, receiving a single email
message would cause the entire multi-gigabyte disk image file to
require backup). There's no need for such a blunt instrument, and
Leopard could easily apply the technology behind FileVault to
individual files or folders, enabling us to encrypt only the data
that we actually need encrypted. With some adaptation, it could also
enable the encryption of an entire disk, which would be ideal for
USB flash drives, iPods, and other removable storage devices that
might carry sensitive data.
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/14-Aug-06
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
**1984** -- PodBrix created a limited-run Lego set of Apple's famous
1984 commercial... which is now sold out. 3 messages[51]
[51]<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/906/>
**TidBITS on Avantgo** -- In the switchover to the new TidBITS
publishing system, mobile PDA issues weren't initially included, but
they're working now. 8 messages[52]
[52]<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/909/>
**VOIP echo problemo** -- If you're experiencing echoes in
Voice-over-IP conversations (such as with Skype), here's an
explanation of what's happening. 3 messages[53]
[53]<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/910/>
**Thoughts about numbered URLs in TidBITS** -- We changed some of our
formatting last week, where links now include a number that helps
reference the corresponding URL. Readers respond to the change. 9
messages[54]
[54]<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/911/>
**Apple has redefined sleep** -- The sleep indicator light operates
differently on newer Macs. 3 messages[55]
[55]<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/912/>
**Car dictation > Word processing** -- A reader learns how to dictate
text - while driving - for later flowing into a word processor. 2
messages[56]
[56]<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/913/>
$$
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