TidBITS#904/12-Nov-07
=====================
Issue link: <http://db.tidbits.com/issue/904>
It took a few years, but Apple finally got Spotlight right,
according to Matt Neuburg, who takes a deep look at the improved
search technology in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. In other Leopard news,
we're tracking Leopard-specific updates on our Web site, and print
versions of our Take Control ebooks about Leopard are now available.
Changing gears, Glenn Fleishman analyzes Google Android, the Open
Handset Alliance, and how it all affects Apple and the iPhone.
Speaking of cell phones, AT&T has begun offering international data
plans designed to avoid bankrupting iPhone users. We also note the
releases of BBEdit 8.7.1, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.9, and
VMware Fusion 1.1 (along with VMware Importer). Plus, we pass on
links to new Apple ads (along with a great parody) and welcome
Freeverse as our newest TidBITS sponsor!
Articles
Stay Up to Date on Leopard Compatibility
BBEdit 8.7.1 Adds Features, Fixes Bugs, Saves Data
Freeverse Sponsoring TidBITS
Word 2004 Crashing Bug Squashed
New Apple Ads: Real, Fake, and Funny
VMware Releases Fusion 1.1 Update, VMware Importer
AT&T Offers New International iPhone Data Plans
Design Tools Monthly Hits 15 Years in Print
DealBITS Winners: SmileOnMyMac's TextExpander 2
Google's View of Our Cell Phone Future Is an Android, Not a GPhone
Spotlight Strikes Back: In Leopard, It Works Great
Take Control News: All Leopard Titles Available in Print
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/12-Nov-07
------------ This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by: --------------
* READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!
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* GET FETCH 5 FOR FREE! Fetch Softworks makes Fetch, the original
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* WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social Networks
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Take a guided tour today <http://www.webcrossing.com/tour>
* MARK/SPACE, INC: Introducing SyncTogether, Mac-to-Mac syncing
of contacts, calendar events and tasks, notes and more. Perfect
for a single user with multiple Macs or groups that need to sync
selected iCal calendars. <http://www.markspace.com/bits>
* Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2004.
Supporting the Mac community through tech support newsgroups,
user group appearances, our new team blog, and more!
Check out our team blog at <http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/>
* Seamlessly run Windows on your Mac with VMware Fusion! Run
Windows, Linux, and Solaris simultaneously without rebooting.
Customizable toolbars, easy to manage virtual packages, and more.
VMware Fusion: $69.99! <http://www.allume.com/mac/vmware/tb/>
* Freeverse, Inc.'s SOUND STUDIO 3.5.5 - Sound Studio is for anyone
who needs to record or edit audio with a professional tool, but at
a consumer price. Perfect for Podcasts, Music, More! Now updated
for OS X 10.5 Leopard. <http://www.freeverse.com/soundstudio>
---------- Help support TidBITS by supporting our sponsors ------------
Stay Up to Date on Leopard Compatibility
----------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9307>
We're maintaining an online-only article called "Leopard
Compatibility List Updated" to bring together news of products that
have been updated for Leopard compatibility. It doesn't make sense
to publish this article in the email editions of TidBITS each week,
since it changes constantly, so check our Web site for updates, or
subscribe to our RSS feed using a program like NetNewsWire that can
call out changed articles. We're focusing on products we consider
important or interesting, which means things that we've covered in
the past or are thinking about writing about in the future - there's
no way this list could hope to be comprehensive. That said, if you
know of something that's not on the list but has appeared in TidBITS
or Take Control in the past, let us know so we can add it!
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9281>
<http://www.tidbits.com/>
While you're at our Web site, be sure to notice our new Leopard
Information Center in the upper right, with links to all sorts of
useful Leopard-related stuff we've done, including the Leopard
Compatibility List.
BBEdit 8.7.1 Adds Features, Fixes Bugs, Saves Data
--------------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9300>
Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit 8.7.1, adding a few new
features and squashing a bunch of minor bugs. The new features
include the capability to insert time stamps from the Edit > Insert
menu, support for dropping items from disk browsers into
applications like Terminal that expect file URLs, and the capability
in language modules to turn off spell checking for code runs. For a
full list of new features, changes to existing features, and bug
fixes, see the extremely detailed BBEdit Current Release Notes page
(and contrast it with Apple's terse release notes, which could be
performed by a mime). BBEdit 8.7.1 is a free update for users of
BBEdit 8.5 or later; it's a 15.2 MB download. Mac OS X 10.4 or later
- including Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - is required, and the program is
a universal binary.
<http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/>
<http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/current_notes.shtml>
<http://www.crazyapplerumors.com/?p=969>
<http://www.barebones.com/support/updates.shtml>
And while I have your attention about BBEdit, I want to tell you
about a little-known feature in the program that saved me from data
loss last week. I encountered some server problems that resulted in
nearly every static file in my server's Web directory being deleted.
Ugly, but I have Retrospect set to duplicate the main disk in our
Xserve to the second disk every night. I run other backups too, but
it was easy to move the active database over to the second disk, set
the second disk as the startup disk, and reboot. The server was
offline for an hour or two, since I was working very carefully and
making copies of important data in case of further problems, but the
overall approach of switching to a duplicate was simple.
The only problem was that this happened in the afternoon, and I had
been editing files on the server all day, work that I didn't want to
recreate. Since I was editing directly on the server, I didn't have
local copies of those files. Luckily, in the Text Files pane of
BBEdit's Preference window, there's an option to make a backup of
each file before saving. Since I had long ago set that option, I was
able to go into my BBEdit Backups folder and recover the most recent
version of each of the files I had changed during the day. If you
regularly edit remote files live, I strongly encourage you to turn
on BBEdit's backups.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2007-11/BBEdit-prefs.jpg>
The only downside? Since I forget about that BBEdit Backups folder
regularly, it currently contains over 17,000 files dating back to
2004. Oops... time to delete anything before 2007.
Freeverse Sponsoring TidBITS
----------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9301>
We're pleased to welcome our newest long-term sponsor, Freeverse.
They're a bit unusual in the Macintosh world because they both
develop their own software and publish applications from other
companies. Freeverse is probably best known for their offbeat games
- the Big Bang Board Games, the Burning Monkey card games, the
arcade games Airburst Extreme and Neon Tango, and more. But the
company has a serious side as well, with their vector-based drawing
program Lineform, the webcam software Periscope, and a kid-specific
Web browser called BumperCar. Not content just to develop their own
software, they also publish Felt Tip Software's Sound Studio 3,
Plasq's Comic Life Deluxe Edition, Ubisoft's Heroes of Might and
Magic V, and more. What's perhaps most impressive is that the
company has won more Apple Design Awards than anyone else - six so
far. So whether you're looking for a little light diversion or
powerful tools for sound and graphics, check out the Freeverse Web
site.
<http://www.freeverse.com/>
Thanks to Freeverse for their support of TidBITS and the Mac
community!
Word 2004 Crashing Bug Squashed
-------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9297>
Despite being hard at work on Office 2008 for a Macworld Expo
release, Microsoft has just made available the Microsoft Office 2004
for Mac 11.3.9 Update, which solves a crashing bug in Word 2004 when
you try to print a document. The update is a 2.5 MB download and
requires that you have already installed the 11.3.8 update (a 9.1 MB
download), which eliminated a buffer overflow in Word 2004. If you
haven't been keeping up with all the Office updates, I recommend
using the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility to get each one in turn,
since each requires the previous one.
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/download/Office2004/Office2004_1139.xml>
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/download/Office2004/Office2004_1138.xml>
New Apple Ads: Real, Fake, and Funny
------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9305>
Apologies if I'm behind the times on this, now that we watch TV only
via a Netflix subscription, but Apple has posted a new set of Get a
Mac TV ads that poke fun at Windows Vista. Sure, for most TidBITS
readers, the ads are preaching to the converted, but I admit that I
still enjoy seeing Apple point out the Mac's advantages like this.
<http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/>
An unexpected bonus to Apple's minimalist style has been the ease
with which it can be parodied, as in this hilarious Saturday Night
Live version of an iPhone commercial, linked to by Gizmodo. The
sketch reportedly never aired, having been cut when another sketch
ran long. (Check Apple's site for the original iPhone ads that are
being parodied.)
<http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/leaked/the-snl-iphone-sketch-that-never-aired-321328.php>
<http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/>
VMware Releases Fusion 1.1 Update, VMware Importer
--------------------------------------------------
by Joe Kissell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9303>
VMware has released Fusion 1.1, a free upgrade for registered users
of their virtualization software for running Windows on an
Intel-based Mac. This release finalizes a number of features that
first appeared in the public beta version of Fusion 1.1 about seven
weeks ago, including Leopard support, experimental support for
DirectX 9.0, improvements to the Unity mode in which windows from
Windows applications intermingle with those from Mac OS X, improved
Boot Camp integration (including support for Windows Vista Boot Camp
installations), and iPhone syncing with Microsoft Outlook. Fusion
1.1 is a 176 MB download.
<http://www.vmware.com/mac>
Also available as a free (1 MB) download is a beta version of VMware
Importer, a new drag-and-drop program that enables Fusion users to
import virtual machines created in Parallels Desktop version 2.5 or
3.0. This tool makes Fusion more parallel with Parallels, which
already offered Parallels Transporter, a utility for importing
virtual machines from VMware and Virtual PC.
<http://www.vmware.com/download/fusion/importer_tool.html>
<http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/features/transporter/>
AT&T Offers New International iPhone Data Plans
-----------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9295>
Likely due to the complaints from travelling iPhone users hit with
astonishingly high data charges (see "iPhone Billing and
International Issues," 2007-08-20), AT&T has implemented new
international iPhone data plans that apply in 29 countries. For
$24.99, you get 20 MB of usage, and for $59.99, you get 50 MB of
usage. If you go over the usage limit, you're charged $0.005 per
kilobyte within the 29 discounted countries. For the 50 MB plan, you
pay $0.010 per kilobyte outside those countries, except for a
selection of neighboring countries listed at AT&T's site, where
you'll pay $0.0195 per kilobyte. People on the 20 MB plan pay
$0.0195 per kilobyte in all parts of the world outside of the 29
included countries. Keep in mind that these new plans come on top of
your existing iPhone monthly bill, and we recommend you verify the
details of your plan with AT&T before leaving on your trip.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9116>
<http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/roaming/affordable-world-packages.jsp?WT.svl=calltoaction#iphone-international>
<http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/dataconnect-global.jsp>
Design Tools Monthly Hits 15 Years in Print
-------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9296>
Congratulations to our friend Jay Nelson, who has been pulling
together information of interest to the graphic design community in
Design Tools Monthly since 1992, not long after we started TidBITS.
Each issue of the monthly 12-page newsletter contains about 100
short articles covering news, upgrades, bug fixes, hardware, and
more. Subscribers can also access an online "Software Closet" that
collects what Jay feels are the best free utilities, plug-ins, and
fonts for designers. With Jeff Gamet, Jay has also started the
Design Tools Weekly podcast. Design Tools Monthly contains no ads
and is available only by subscription for $229 per year if you want
paper issues, along with quarterly CDs of software and PDFs by mail,
or $199 per-year for online-only access. A free sample issue is
available, and anyone who buys Sharon Zardetto's "Take Control of
Fonts in Leopard" can use a coupon in the back to receive three free
issues.
<http://www.design-tools.com/>
<http://www.design-tools.com/podcast/>
<http://www.design-tools.com/html/free-sample.htm>
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/leopard-fonts.html>
DealBITS Winners: SmileOnMyMac's TextExpander 2
-----------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9288>
Congratulations to Susan Varney of roadrunner.com, Chris Lozac'h of
ilovelife.com, and Bill Bauer of mac.com, whose entries were chosen
randomly in the last DealBITS drawing and who received a copy of
SmileOnMyMac's TextExpander 2, worth $29.95. Thanks to the 783
people who entered this DealBITS drawing (and received a discount on
TextExpander 2), and we hope you'll continue to participate in the
future!
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9287>
<http://smileonmymac.com/textexpander/>
Google's View of Our Cell Phone Future Is an Android, Not a GPhone
------------------------------------------------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9291>
I never expected Google to get into the consumer cell phone
business, just like I never expected Google to build a national
Wi-Fi network, nor, even if they win a spectrum auction in January
2008, do I expect Google to build a national cellular network.
Google doesn't do hardware - they build ways in which to use
hardware to reach more people to feed those people more ads. (Two
minor exceptions, before you cavil: their Mountain View Wi-Fi
network, serving their headquarters' town, and Google search
appliances - server hardware for businesses.)
Last week's announcement of a consortium of cell carriers,
chipmakers, and phone handset makers collaborating on a new cell
phone platform confirms my worldview. Phones using this new platform
will start shipping in the second half of 2008.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/technology/05cnd-gphone.html>
**Control What Runs on the Phone** -- The Open Handset Alliance is a
response to the cell operating systems and associated software that
dominate ordinary handsets and smartphones worldwide. While many
platforms and carriers allow customization of phones by carriers, as
well as post-purchase installation of software or utilities by
customers - the iPhone so far being a rare exception - the
underlying platforms are generally locked down. There are also
licensing fees.
<http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/>
Google and its 33 partners will launch a platform named Android; a
preview for developers is now available. Android uses Linux as a
base, Java as the glue, and open-source components throughout
(Android was the name of a firm Google acquired that was working on
such a platform). The platform will be free to handset makers and
end users for development and distribution, which explains the
composition of the partnership. The Symbian platform has dominance
worldwide, and the company that develops it is owned just a fraction
under 50 percent by Nokia, the biggest handset maker worldwide.
Microsoft's Windows Mobile, the Palm OS, and RIM's BlackBerry
dominate in the United States. Linux-based cellular platforms are
picking up steam worldwide, however, and this will accelerate that
trend.
<http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/android_overview.html>
<http://code.google.com/android/>
<http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/images/AndroidSDK.png>
The marketplace for cell handsets is confusing, because we do things
differently here in the United States than in much of the world.
Most phones are subsidized through multi-year service plan
commitments and cannot be freely interchanged across networks. In
Europe and in many other countries, consumers mostly buy phones at
full cost and then sign up for services. We also have two
incompatible network standards in use in the United States - GSM and
CDMA - and thus you cannot switch easily from Verizon or Sprint
Nextel (CDMA) to T-Mobile or AT&T (GSM). CDMA is found in South
Korea, too, while GSM is used by most of the rest of the world
except China, which has its own variant. While you can unlock a CDMA
or GSM phone after a contract expires and activate that phone with a
given American network, or purchase a GSM phone from abroad that's
unlocked, these are relatively rare in practice. (Even more rare are
specialized GSM/CDMA dual-protocol phones, which are typically
expensive and designed for frequent international travelers.)
What this means is that cell carriers in the United States control
access to their networks by allowing only a certain range of phones
and other devices to connect. Microsoft may be a giant company, but
it is still beholden to Verizon, AT&T, and the other carriers to get
phones into people's hands; Apple, likewise, discovered this in
having to commit to a single carrier and seemingly acquiesce to
limits sought by AT&T in order to get the iPhone released. In
Europe, Nokia has a slightly different position, because although it
can't dictate features and phones to carriers, it can market
directly to consumers, which enables it to offer a wide variety of
phones.
In both marketplaces, the carriers rule. Innovative features from
chipmakers may be ignored by the carriers, while handset makers
other than Nokia are usually directed into making products that the
carriers want. Even if Nokia inserts a feature it wants, carriers
can keep that feature from being enabled on their networks; Nokia
has plenty of phones that stream video, but that feature typically
works only over Wi-Fi. Companies that are more involved with
software than hardware find themselves stymied in getting their Web
services or applications installed because of carrier objections.
**Partners and Interests** -- Who's involved in the Open Handset
Alliance and why? Alliance members Broadcom, Intel, Marvell,
Qualcomm, and TI are all chipmakers who are beholden to handset
manufacturers to push their products into phones. By having a
platform that they can build their own reference designs around,
they have much more flexibility to find manufacturing partners
outside the mainstream, or to deliver more interesting products to
existing handset makers.
While Qualcomm controls a lot of fundamental cell technology through
patents, notably on the CDMA standard, it doesn't control platforms.
It's a rare move for Qualcomm to be part of an alliance promoting
greater variety and less control, frankly.
What's also interesting about the alliance is that it includes major
handset makers LG, Motorola, and Samsung, which are largely locked
out of the current smartphone market. It's not that they don't have
offerings, but they don't own any segment of the market. This is an
attempt for them to leverage a new platform that no one controls,
and that they can extend.
Carriers are also part of the alliance, with the two U.S. carriers
who need a clue (T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel) along with some giants
in Asia (China Mobile, KDDI, and NTT DoCoMo), and Telefónica, which
has 212 million customers across Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
Other alliance members include eBay, which owns Skype, and which
could potentially leverage this platform to produce a true Skype
phone that could combine support for cell networks, Wi-Fi, and other
wireless technologies; and Sirf, which is the biggest maker of GPS
receiver chips in the world, and which would like to have more of
them put into phones with more capabilities enabled.
Let's look next at how this fits together in different parts of the
world.
**What Do Carriers Gain?** Of all the partners, you might wonder why
carriers would find this alliance interesting. Self-preservation,
among other reasons. Carriers want to be able to keep more of the
revenue, and to be able to release more interesting phones more
quickly to encourage upgrades. They want to tailor their offerings
to particular markets and niches. All of these desires conflict with
the slower pace, monolithic offerings, and centralized control of
existing platforms.
In the United States, although Sprint Nextel is the third-largest
carrier, the company is in a weak position. The company is losing
subscribers in an awkward transition of former Nextel customers to
new systems, and it mishandled an expensive and still-ongoing
transition in a swap of frequencies with public-safety agencies.
(It's a very long story.) Sprint Nextel's chief resigned a few weeks
ago, and the company just scrapped its current plans to launch a
mobile WiMax network alongside competitor and co-operator (in both
senses of the word) Clearwire. (The deal may be off for now, but
both firms say they're committed to mobile WiMax, and when a new CEO
is hired at Sprint, a new deal could be put together. In fact, some
reports indicated Sprint might purchase Clearwire or spin off its
mobile WiMax division to merge with Clearwire.)
Mobile WiMax offers the potential for ubiquitous broadband wireless
at rates matching today's wired broadband, and with higher speeds
and fewer restrictions than current cell data networks. The WiMax
commitment represents a huge risk for Sprint, and one that would
cost billions to execute. Sprint Nextel needs a platform for its new
WiMax network, which uses new spectrum, and had already inked a deal
that would enable Google to offer services over this new network.
T-Mobile, the distant fourth-place U.S. carrier, has been pursuing
different strategies for years, as they lacked sufficient spectrum
to compete in the 3G market. In 2006, T-Mobile purchased licenses
over which they can deploy 3G, but it still won't be enough to
compete head-to-head with other carriers.
So T-Mobile has been investing heavily in a Wi-Fi network since
acquiring the assets of an early firm that went into bankruptcy in
2002. The company now has one of the largest Wi-Fi networks in the
world with over 8,500 U.S. locations, and thousands more worldwide.
T-Mobile was the first to launch converged Wi-Fi/cell calling in the
United States, too, using handsets that can seamlessly move calls in
progress from a Wi-Fi network to a cell network and back again.
Clearly T-Mobile needs to think different, too.
In China, there's always been a desire to have technology that isn't
dependent on companies from other countries. It's why China has its
own cell standard, but also why third-generation (3G) cellular is so
delayed there while their homegrown specifications hit snags. It's
not at all strange that a carrier in China would want a platform
they didn't have to export currency to use, and one that could be
entirely within their power to mold to local needs. (And,
potentially, to local government control. I don't mean to introduce
politics; it's simply a fact that Chinese telecommunications is
designed for monitoring and interception. And I can't be smug about
that anymore in the United States, can I?)
In other parts of Asia, I have less of an explanation, as I
understand competition there less well. There's been a much
longer-running trend in Japan for phones to have more advanced
features, for network operators to allow more independent activity,
and for consumers to pay for specific software features. That may
all tie in together, too.
**iPhone Versus GPhone** -- Android will have much in common with the
iPhone at the base level, but likely less so in terms of user
interface and cell carrier experience.
Internally, the iPhone runs the Unix-based OS X; Android will use
Linux. The iPhone uses swaths of open-source and free software from
GNU and other foundations, associations, and independent
programmers. Android will, too.
But pop up one more layer, and you find that while Android will give
developers access to all those innards, ostensibly providing even
kernel software code, the iPhone will never give up those secrets.
Handsets that use Android will have to adhere to a set of principles
and be tested operationally against those ideas, and by passing
tests should be allowed to operate on the network of a carrier
that's part of the alliance. The iPhone is designed to work on a
limited number of networks worldwide.
The iPhone software development kit (SDK) will allow some kinds of
programs to be developed, but programs may require approval or
certification from Apple and/or AT&T and other partner carriers
before those programs can be distributed. The Android SDK will
apparently allow any form of development and installation.
There's a lot of risk for carriers with Android; they must design
their networks to isolate bad actors rapidly in order to avoid
spreading viruses or having phones that suddenly act up and take the
network down. That's a real fear, and one that Steve Jobs cited in
Apple's interest in delaying an SDK for the iPhone until security
issues were well-characterized and covered.
The Internet still works despite armies of zombie computers and vast
quantities of spam because it's resilient. Cell networks aren't
quite as tough and will need to become more hardened before Android
phones can be let loose.
**Google's Spectrum Bid** -- To circle back around to Google, I
mentioned early on that I didn't expect that even if they won a
spectrum auction next year they'd run a cell network. This is where
it all comes around.
By January 2008, the FCC will auction the last bit of prime
frequencies that will be freed up on completion of the transition of
television stations from the UHF band. This is the end of analog
television broadcasting, set for 17-Feb-09. The so-called Upper 700
MHz auction has a number of licenses, but the one to watch is the "C
Block" auction for 24 MHz of prime territory.
The 700 MHz band penetrates walls easily and a single base station
can transmit over four times the area using the same power as a base
station in the 2.5 GHz range, the spectrum that Sprint Nextel and
Clearwire will use for mobile WiMax.
Google and other firms - some of which are in this alliance -
lobbied the FCC to require open access rules that would mean three
things:
* Any winning bidder of the frequency would have to sell access to the
network on a non-discriminatory wholesale basis to any reseller
* Any device could gain access to the network
* Any device could access any service or run any application
None of the provisions could be construed to allow unlimited
bandwidth at fixed prices or uses that would disrupt the network.
The FCC turned down the open-resale provision, but adopted most of
the others, and has fought back carriers who opposed the rules. (The
FCC has a backdoor, though. They required a minimum bid of over $4
billion for the C Block and $10 billion for the entire auction. If
those minimums aren't met, the auctions will be conducted again
without the open access requirements.)
Google indicated its willingness to bid on the spectrum,
guaranteeing the minimum bid necessary, if all the rules were
adopted. But they stated at the same time that even if they won,
they'd be more likely to work with a partner that would build and
run the network.
It was clear all along that Google wanted a national broadband
wireless network that would be unimpeded by gatekeepers. Recall that
Google feeds enormous amounts of data to customers of telephone
companies and cable firms via DSL, cable, and fiber, and that those
telephone and cable companies are interested in establishing a
tiered network in which Google and others would have to pay to push
their content through at the highest possible rates on each network.
Is it any wonder Google is promoting an open phone platform and some
measure of openness in the last great wireless broadband spectrum
auction?
Some folks we respect, including John Gruber, wondered or stated
that Android was vaporware, which I found odd. Vaporware implies
that you're announcing a product well in advance of shipping with
nothing really in hand beyond a demo and with the intention of
sabotaging competitors who are forced to explain to customers why
they don't have The Amazing Feature that's in the vaporware - even
though the vaporware isn't available. The iPhone would have been
vaporware if Apple hadn't set specific expectations on availability
and then lived up to those expectations. (Leopard had a few
vaporware features that may return in later updates, especially in
regard to Time Machine's support of networked drives.)
Given that the Android SDK shipped as promised in a form that anyone
with developer chops can download and work with, that removes some
of the vaporware taint. Whether a product can and will ship with
Android software is, of course, another matter that only the future
can prove to us.
Fake Steve Jobs, however, might have put it best, as he often does:
"Companies don't form alliances and consortia when they're winning."
<http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-not-phone-its-alliance.html>
**Tying It All Together** -- Google is promoting something that's in
its best interest, of course, but as a firm that generally attempts
to make money by disseminating information as widely as possible,
it's in our best interests, too. Google doesn't like gatekeepers or
walled gardens.
In the end, it's conceivable that we could wind up with hundreds of
companies making handsets that work across wireless networks of all
sorts worldwide, providing us access to the latest software and
technology at a fraction of what we pay now. That's one vision of
the future, it's Google's vision, and Google seems to have the
momentum to make a real go at it.
Spotlight Strikes Back: In Leopard, It Works Great
--------------------------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9283>
In earlier articles, we've talked about some of the great new
features of Leopard that might make an upgrade worthwhile. I wrote
an article about Spaces, Glenn Fleishman explained how File Sharing
is light years better than it used to be, and Joe Kissell gave us
the low-down on Time Machine. (The best way to reference that
coverage is from our "Leopard Arrives" series.) In this article, I
want to tell you about what I think is the last big piece of the
Leopard improvement puzzle - the all-new, all-singing, all-dancing
Spotlight.
<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1269>
In order to explain why Spotlight in Leopard is so good, I have to
talk briefly about why Spotlight in Tiger was so bad. If you already
know that, or if your teeth can't handle any gnashing, you might
want to skip this next section, where I recount a bit of regrettable
history.
**Tiger Spotlight: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly** -- When Spotlight
was introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, it was touted as a major
improvement for users, and it's not hard to see why. Finding things
on your hard disk(s) has always been hard - my mother can't find a
newly created Word document five seconds after she's saved it - and
now that your hard disk is really big and you've got lots of files,
it's getting harder. The old-style Finder Find involves searching
through the hard disk, file by file and folder by folder, so it's
slow; and besides, it requires that you know, with a fair degree of
correctness, the name of the item you're looking for, which is often
exactly what you do _not_ know.
Back in the old System 7 days, on the other hand, a lot of us were
crazy about a wonderful utility called ON Location, from ON
Technology. It generated an index of the names of your files, so
searching for a file by its name was very fast. What's more, it used
third-party translators to look inside your files (regardless of
their format), read their content, and index that as well, so you
could do a fast search for a file based on some words used inside
the file. Well, Spotlight promised to bring that kind of technology
to Mac OS X, only even better. ON Location had to build its index,
and to keep the index up to date, it had to rebuild it periodically.
Spotlight, on the other hand, once its initial index was built,
would _always_ be up to date, because every time you made any change
to the hard disk, Spotlight would be notified right then and would
modify the index accordingly. Small wonder that Glenn's article
introducing Spotlight to our readers was so hopeful ("Spotlight on
Spotlight", 2005-05-02).
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8087>
Right from the beginning, however, there was trouble. Some features
didn't work; for example, there was an option to search for
invisible files, but no invisible files were ever found. Some areas
of the hard drive were excluded from the index, so files in those
places couldn't be found, even by name; this exclusion was
hard-coded into Spotlight (it wasn't a preference the user could
access), so there was no way even of learning what the problematic
places were. Files of certain types were not found properly; I
experienced this particularly with some font files, and Apple
confirmed that this was a bug (perhaps caused by the distinction
between a file's visible name and its "display name," which was
sometimes a weird string to which the user had no access). The
indexing would mysteriously stop working, and would have to be
restarted using the Terminal command line.
Worst of all, however, was the interface through which you actually
performed a search and viewed your found results. There were three
such interfaces: the Spotlight menu, the Spotlight window, and the
Finder search window.
* The Spotlight menu didn't act like a real menu, it often froze up as
you were typing your search, and it displayed only a limited number
of results. To see all the results, you had to open the Spotlight
window.
* The Spotlight window was annoying in every conceivable way. It
belonged to no application; it just hung there mysteriously on your
computer, refusing to come to the front when you cycled through your
windows or your applications. Its interface was unlike any other
window; if anything, it seemed like something out of a Web browser,
or a Windows machine. Results were clumped by default into annoying
categories; getting information about found results (such as, "Where
_is_ this file?") required a great deal of clicking; results could
not be easily manipulated; and the search could not easily be
refined (beyond the simple default refinements listed down the right
side of the window).
* The Finder search window had one big advantage: a search could be
refined though a Location Bar and multiple Criteria Bars that could
be summoned to describe in detail what you wanted to look for.
However, you were inconveniently forced to do this even for
something as simple and common as searching for a file by name; you
could use the Finder search window only to look for files (not, for
example, iCal events); and things were still clumped into groups
(mysteriously, not the same groups as in the Spotlight window),
though you could ask for a flat list. When you _did_ ask for a flat
list, the Finder search window became almost downright good: it
started acting quite like a normal Finder window, a familiar and
effective interface for working with your results.
The upshot was that none of Apple's Spotlight search interfaces was
very pleasant, and none of them gave you access to anything like the
full power of Spotlight as implemented through the "mdfind"
command-line syntax. For example, mdfind lets you specify wild
cards, case sensitivity, and sophisticated Boolean criteria
combinations. That's why a host of third-party alternative Spotlight
interfaces sprang up, including my own NotLight. But even these were
restricted in what they could do by the underlying Spotlight
indexing technology (for example, NotLight couldn't find invisible
files, because neither could Spotlight); and many users preferred to
revive the pre-Tiger search behavior with a free utility such as
EasyFind.
<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/29015>
<http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/>
**A New Deal** -- In Leopard, Spotlight is faster, less biased, and
far more compliant. Under the hood, the index is both constructed
and consulted more quickly, so you spend less time listening to your
hard disk thrash and more time looking at search results. Everything
within the scope of your permissions is indexed and searchable (or
if something isn't, I've yet to hear about it). Searches that are
supposed to work (like searching for invisible files, or searching
for a file by the name the user believes it has) do work. And the
search interface is so good that it might just put third-party
interfaces out of business.
The Spotlight window is completely gone. If you want to move quickly
and see the top results, you use the Spotlight menu; if you want to
see all results, or get some interface assistance in constructing
elaborate search criteria, you use the Finder window. Those are your
only options. The Finder window is now _really_ close to being a
normal Finder window: it comes in all the normal Finder views except
Column view (though, unfortunately, in List view you can't ask for
extra columns of information, such as Size), and you can do in it
nearly anything you can do elsewhere in the Finder, so you'll hardly
know you're in a special Spotlight-oriented world. And yet, you
_are_ in a special Spotlight-oriented world, as is proven by the
fact that you can search in the Finder search window for things that
aren't files or folders, such as iCal events and Safari history
items. (The main difference I've noticed so far between what you can
search for in the Spotlight menu versus the Finder search window is
that only the former lets you look up a word in the built-in
Dictionary.) Plus, the Finder search window's criteria-construction
interface lets you say nearly anything you'd be able to say using
mdfind in the command line.
So, for the rest of this article I'm going to explain how to
construct a search. There are actually two different "languages" for
doing this: there's the textual language of what you type in the
search field, which works either in the Spotlight menu or in the
search field of a Finder window, and there's the more gestural,
interface-based language of manipulating the Finder search window's
various options.
**The Search Term** -- When you type "tonya" into the Spotlight menu's
search field, that's a search term. Spotlight interprets this as a
request to seek matches in a fairly broad way. Capitalization is
ignored, so a document containing "Tonya" will match. Diacritical
markings are ignored too, sort of; a document containing "Tónya"
will match, but if your search term had been "Tönya" then the
document containing "Tónya" would match but documents containing
"Tonya" would not, as if your use of a diacritical in the search
term had indicated a kind of diacritical wild card. You're doing a
word-based search, but what you're searching for is the start of a
word; so, you'll also match a document containing "tonyatastic",
though not a document containing "retonyafication". (To specify that
you want to match _entire_ words, put "tonya" in quotes; now you
won't match "tonyatastic". Quotes can also be used to search for
exact multi-word phrases.) But the notion of a word includes
camel-cased word components, so you'll also match a document called
"HelloTonya". Oh, and the search is performed over every kind of
metadata, so you'll match documents with "tonya" in their names, in
their contents, in their Spotlight comments, and so on.
Two kinds of modification permit to you restrict the search term's
application. First, you can specify the kind of metadata you're
interested in searching. This is done using a colon-based syntax.
For example, to find files that have "tonya" in their Spotlight
comments in the Finder, but _not_ files with "tonya" in other types
of metadata, you'd put "comment:tonya". The Help documentation gives
several other examples of this syntax, some of which are
surprisingly powerful. For example, you can ask for files modified
on or before a certain date by saying "modified:<=8/10/2007", or
files created in a certain range of dates with
"created:8/10/2007-8/12/2007". The trouble, though, is that as usual
Apple spurns the notion of stooping to provide you with any _real_
documentation: there is no complete conspectus or systematic
explanation of the syntax, or even a list of the metadata terms you
can specify in this way. (The way I found out about "comment:" in
the first example was by trial and error.)
Second, you can combine terms using the Boolean operators AND and OR
(in capitals), and modify a term with NOT; a minus sign before a
term, with no space, means "and not". The default operator, supplied
if you use multiple words without quotation marks or an intervening
Boolean operator, is AND. Thus, on my machine, searching on "tonya
tidbits" finds 103 items, those that contain both terms; "tonya OR
tidbits" finds 530 items; "tonya -tidbits" finds just 15 items,
because it's so rare on my computer for Tonya to be mentioned
without also mentioning TidBITS.
**The Finder Search Window** -- To summon the Finder search window,
click Show All in the Spotlight menu after a search, or press
Command-Option-Space, or (in the Finder) choose File > Find
(Command-F), or just start typing in a Finder window's search field.
You can use the search term syntax I described in the previous
section, but you can also use the Location Bar and the Criteria Bars
to restrict and specify your search in a more graphical fashion.
The first question to ask yourself is whether you want to restrict
the search location to one particular folder. If you do, then you
must start by being _in_ that folder in the Finder before starting
the search by pressing Command-F or typing in the search field. When
the window changes to a Finder search window, the Location Bar will
display the name of the folder you started in; click that name to
restrict the search to that folder.
Another nice feature of the Location Bar is that it offers an option
to restrict the search to the "File Name", as opposed to the
"Contents" - the latter being a misleading term which actually means
the default of searching all the metadata at once. These two
choices, search by name or search by all metadata, are the two most
common forms of search, so it's very sensible of Apple to provide
some simple, up-front interface for choosing between them.
To tweak your search further, click the + button at the right end of
the Location Bar. This reveals a Criteria Bar. Here you can choose a
metadata type in the leftmost pop-up menu. By default, there are
just six sorts of metadata listed here: Kind, Last Opened Date, Last
Modified Date, Created Date, Name, and Contents. (Here, "contents"
really does mean contents.) When you choose one, other operators,
fields, and pop-up menus appropriate to your choice appear. So, with
"Contents" the only operator is "contains" and you get a text field
for typing some text. With "Name" you get a pop-up menu of five
operators: "matches", "contains", "begins with", "ends with", and
"is". (The difference between "matches" and "is" is that "matches"
is word-based; thus, "tonya" matches a file named "Adam and Tonya"
using "matches" but not using "is".) With "Kind" you get a pop-up of
subtypes, and some of those subtypes have subtypes of their own;
thus, the "Kind" called "Music" can be "All", "MP3", "AAC", or
"Purchased".
There is also a seventh item in the leftmost pop-up menu of a
Criteria Bar: Other. This is where things really start to get good.
When you choose Other, you get a dialog listing _all_ the kinds of
metadata the Spotlight index knows about. You can just pick one to
use it; you can also select a checkbox to specify that that option
should appear in the menu from now on, so you don't have to pass
through the Other dialog to access it. I recommend that you
immediately check two items that I think you'll be using quite a
lot:
* System files. When set to Include, files are sought even in special
locations such as /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Preferences. For
example, if you search on "com.apple" you won't find much, but if
you include system files, you'll find hundreds of preference files.
* Spotlight items. When set to Include, searches are expanded beyond
files and folders to include other sorts of entities, such as iCal
events, Safari history items, and preference panes.
A huge power user tip: When you summon the Finder search window with
Command-Option-Space, or from the Spotlight menu, Spotlight items
_is_ set to Include. When you summon the Finder search window with
Command-F or by typing in a Finder window's search field, Spotlight
items _is not_ set to Include. This is actually quite brilliant.
Spotlight is making a very reasonable distinction and assumption
here: if you started in the Finder, you probably just want to look
for files and folders, but if you summoned the search window in a
more global way, you probably want to look at all kinds of entities.
Of course you can always summon a Criteria Bar and change the
setting if the initial default isn't what you intended.
You specify additional criteria by showing and configuring
additional Criteria Bars; to do so, just click the + button in any
existing Criteria Bar. But here's the real trick: if you click the +
button while holding the Option key, you get a special Boolean
Operator Criteria Bar. The pop-up menu here says Any, All, or None
(the equivalents of the Boolean OR, AND, and NOT operators), and it
applies to the Criteria Bars that are grouped just after the
Operator Bar and indented to the right. Such groups can themselves
include a Boolean Operator Criteria Bar, and so you can form Boolean
expressions of any depth and complexity (the equivalent of using
parentheses in a logical expression). The default operation, used if
you simply set multiple criteria without grouping them, is AND (that
is, all the criteria must be true at once to get a match).
**Conclusions** -- Spotlight in Leopard is what Spotlight in Tiger
should have been but wasn't. (Don't get me started on a rant about
why Apple has so much trouble getting these things right the first
time out.) How good is it? Maybe not quite good enough to put
NotLight completely out of business. NotLight will need modification
in order to take advantage of some of the new features of
Spotlight's underlying technology, but it has three features that
the built-in Spotlight interfaces do not:
1. With NotLight, the search is _not_ live, so things don't keep
flashing and bogging down while you're typing a search term; you
type until you're ready, then do the search.
2. The Finder Path Bar is great for determining where a found item
is by selecting it, but with NotLight you know where _every_ found
item is, _without_ having to select it.
3. NotLight lets you choose between case-sensitive and
case-insensitive term matching; sometimes that's actually useful.
Nevertheless, the improvement in Leopard's Spotlight is very, very
dramatic - so dramatic that, whereas, in Tiger, once I'd written
NotLight, I _never_ used any of the built-in Spotlight interfaces,
but used NotLight exclusively for all searching, in Leopard it is
quite probable that I will very rarely turn to NotLight. Coming from
me, that's big praise. The fact is that the difference from Tiger to
Leopard is like night and day: from being a pain and a trial to use,
Spotlight is now a joy; from a wretched, ill-advised interface, we
now have a model of how interface ought to be, a gorgeous,
easy-to-use graphical expression of a powerful and complex
underlying syntax. In short, Spotlight could be another major reason
for upgrading to Leopard.
Take Control News: All Leopard Titles Available in Print
--------------------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9306>
If you've been wanting to get printed versions of our Take Control
books about Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, you need wait no longer. Each of
the books' Web pages in our Web catalog now has a Buy Print Book
button on the left side, and anyone who has already purchased an
ebook version can now click the Print link at the top of the PDF's
first page to order a discounted print copy. We recommend purchasing
the print version from within the ebook so you'll get both the ebook
- with its Check for Updates link - and the print version for the
same price as a directly purchased print copy.
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/12-Nov-07
------------------------------------
by Jeff Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9304>
**Can't Delete Mail from Apple Mail** -- When Mail starts acting up,
one solution is to rebuild your mailboxes, but don't rule out the
possibility of accidentally displaying deleted messages. (7
messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1619/>
**Cellphone Jammer, Anyone?** If you know someone who can't stop
nattering on their iPhone (or other cell phone), you can buy a
device that kills the connection. It's illegal, but the satisfaction
might just be worth it. (2 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1620/>
**Are preferences good or bad?** Following Matt Neuburg's plea for
preferences in Leopard's Stacks feature, a reader argues that too
many preferences leads to user confusion. (16 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1621/>
**Leopard Simplifies File Sharing** -- A change in Leopard to how
passwords are sent leads to problems connecting to NetWare servers.
(3 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1622/>
**Leopard and FileMaker Pro 6** -- Leopard and the latest version of
FileMaker aren't yet friendly, but what about running older versions
of the database application? (7 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1623/>
**GMail and IMAP** -- After setting up Gmail to work using IMAP, a
reader has encountered a number of odd incidents in Mail. Any
advice, or is Gmail's IMAP undercooked? (33 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1578/>
**Tab, Delete & Return keys just beep in Leopard text boxes** -- When
obviously wrong behavior starts happening, it's time to test against
a new user account in Mac OS X to find the culprit. If you don't
have a test account on your machine, set one up; instructions here.
(6 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1627/>
**"Time Machine" caught in a time warp?** Is Time Machine responsible
for hanging a reader's Mac mini, or is the problem with something
else, like FileVault? (4 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1628/>
**Leopard Apple Mail--Universal, but not quite** -- Sometimes not
knowing something can help. After encountering problems with Mail
under Leopard, a woman marked the Open Using Rosetta option in the
Get Info window, which solved her issue - probably the last thing
most people would try. (1 message)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1630/>
**Aperture insists that I reregister it continually** -- Repeatedly
being asked to register Aperture has driven one reader to the point
where he may no longer buy Apple software (and don't ask him about
telephone tech support). (1 message)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1631/>
**Google Used 70 Times More than Yahoo** -- Google's dominance in the
search engine field is backed up by some dramatic numbers. (3
messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1632/>
**Cloggy keyboard on MacBook Pro?** Do the keys of the MacBook Pro
require a firmer touch than past Apple laptops? (2 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1633/>
**Installing Leopard on a 24" iMac** -- A reader shares his experience
installing Leopard on a brand new iMac (which hadn't yet been
pre-loaded with Leopard, though he got the system update for free).
(1 message)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1634/>
**TinkerTool available for Leopard** -- A venerable utility for
accessing hidden preferences has been updated for Mac OS X 10.5. (1
message)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1635/>
$$
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