OS X

This update extends RAW file compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto 08 for the following cameras:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

That was fast.

As noted above, Microsoft had "fixed" Vista a long long time before the ads appeared. And as I noted at the time, too, maybe Apple itself should have fixed its own incredibly buggy recent products--MobileMe, iPhone/iPhone 3G, and Leopard among them--instead of hypocritically and falsely calling out a competitor.

Did Apple launch MobileMe poorly? Beyond a doubt. But it seems they got the bugs out of it after a few months. Leopard? Fine on this end and I was an early adopter there. iPhone? I had the original and now a 3G (the applications available brought me back and justify the cost).

Vista? I'm still telling those who buy computers to avoid it if possible and stick with XP.

And advertising budgets? Well, Apple has a hefty markup on the products they sell (unlike, for example, the xbox) so they need to spend that money someplace.

Organized is a new widget from iSlayer featuring a calendar with events, world clocks, notes and to do's. The calendar and to do's utilise OS X's inbuilt databases, so they're always in sync with iCal and Mail.

Awesome, their widgets (or if you want them in your menu bar, their menulings) have always been on my system and I'm glad they released this widget. I like how this not only replaced their menuling for time (since it doesn't fit on my 12" Powerbook) but also grabs iCal events, to dos and Mail notes.

Don't forget to donate to iSlayer.

In addition to my Mac Pro, I now have a 12" Powerbook that I use on the go. Having two computers introduces the hassle of keeping them in sync. Since .Mac comes with a 60 day trial, I decided I'd give it a try. For what it does, it does it well: it kept my mail, bookmarks, calendar and address book in sync, but nothing else.

However, .Mac costs $100 a year and it didn't meet all my needs. It did, however, offer a whole bunch of solutions (in the form of cloud computing) that I didn't want because rather than used someone else's cloud, I'd rather roll my own open source cloud. I don't use flickr, gmail or wordpress.com for this very reason, so why would I want .Mac email, webhosting, galleries, etc? All I really want to do is keep to Macs in sync, including all my documents. I googled and the best I found was Geek Throwdown: How to sync two or more Macs?.

Enter Unison. Here's a quick guide:

1. I turned on remote login in system preferences on the PowerBook. This lets me SSH into it, which is a good thing because Unison operates over SSH.
2. Installed the OS X binary of Unison onto both machines. (Downloaded the GUI universal binary and then launched the application, from there, within the application I was able to install the text version. Again, I did this for both machines.)
3. Logged out of the PowerBook, then SSHed into it from the Mac Pro. I then deleted my entire home directory on the PowerBook (rm -rf).
4. I exited all running programs on the Mac Pro except a terminal.
5. Created a directory .unison in my home directory on my Mac Pro. Inside that directory, I created a file sync.prf. Here's the contents of that file, annotated to explain what each line means:
   

   # Roots of synrchonoization
   # I want to sync my entire home directory of the Mac Pro, the local machine with
   root = /Users/brianpuccio
   # ... my PowerBook, hostname beta, the entire home directory
   root = ssh://brianpuccio@beta.local//Users/brianpuccio
   
   # This synchronizes file modification times
   times = true
   
   # This turns off logging
   log = false
   
   # This tells unison to ignore some files and paths
   # http://alliance.seas.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/wiki/index.php?n=Main.WikiSandbox
   ignore = Name .FBCIndex
   ignore = Name .FBCLockFolder
   ignore = Name {Cache*,.Trash*,.VolumeIcon.icns,.HSicon,Temporary*,.Temporary*,TheFindByContentFolder}
   ignore = Name {TheVolumeSettingsFolder,.Metadata,.filler.idsff,.Spotlight,.DS_Store,.CFUserTextEncoding}
   # ~/.fseventsd/ is owned by root, don't have privledges to this, so ignore it
   ignore = Name .fseventsd
   # Unison is also the name of a usenet client http://www.panic.com/unison/
   # This ignores its very large and often changing cache, which is fine since I don't use it on the Powerbook
   ignore = Path {Library/Application Support/Unison/news.usenetserver.com}
   # This is Mail's cache of my IMAP accounts, since this was large and I kept having Unison crash on the
   # first few syncs, I omitted this path figuring Mail on the PowerBook would sync once it went online
   # It worked, so I left it alone and in here
   ignore = Path {Library/Mail/IMAP-*}
   # This is my aperture library and it is too big to fit on my PowerBook (and the PowerBook too slow to run Aperture)
   ignore = Path {Pictures/Aperture Library.aplibrary}
   # It seems like Unison should automatically ignore its own config folder, but it didn't for me, so I added this
   ignore = Path .unison

6. I ran Unison by issuing the command unison sync (sync because that is the name I cave the preference file, sync.pref.
7. The GUI launched, asked me for my password on the PowerBook, which I entered. It did a quick comparison (since the PowerBook should have a completely empty home directory) and then listed all the files and directories.
8. I made sure that Unison was set to sync each file and directory from the Mac Pro to the Powerbook (Unison uses left and right terminology, e.g., sync file from left to right).
9. I clicked Go and it churned along.

For the most part, it worked. All my files were moved over, my keychain and all its passwords, my browsing history and bookmarks, my Adium settings, accounts and chat histories, my Colloquy settings and chat logs, my dock, my background ... quite literally everything.

There are a couple of issues:

1. Window positions are copied over. Going from a 1920x1200 screen to a 1024x768 means some windows were too large. A quick window, zoom command fixed those. (But they then get synced back to the Mac Pro, where everything will now launch in the top left of the screen.) I'm just going to accept this.
2. Several files (such as ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dashboard.plistand ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist) are constantly modified by the OS and the very act of logging in to both machines means they both have their timestamps changed, which means Unison doesn't know which one you want to sync to the other, so it displays a ? instead and the default is to do nothing. Of course you can go through each of these one by one (or even en masse) and set that sync to be a Left to Right or Right to Left sync. I'm going to try using the force option and either favor a root explicitly or use the newer option.
3. Dropping to a terminal to do this (and I do it a few times a week, whenever I shift from one machine to another) is annoying. I'm created an Automator script to run Unison and added it to my dock.
4. Typing in my password for every sync is annoying. I now use an SSH key.
5. I have only tried this where UIDs and GIDs were the same. Good luck to you if they're different!

I will update this as I make improvements.

Software Update is pretty awesome for Apple software, but have you ever wanted that functionality for the rest of your apps? 19-year-old developer Louka Desroziers created a nifty little menubar app called LogicielMac Update that checks for updates to the applications installed on your machine. There are options to automatically download the updates and install them. You can also create an ignored list of apps that you don't want to update.

The app gets most of its information from LogicielMac (logiciel meaning "software," and Mac meaning "best platform ever"), a Francophonic site similar to VersionTracker and MacUpdate. But fear not, English speakers, as LogicielMac Update is localized for English.

This still doesn't hold a candle to apt.

It's alive. Reader Patrick (Whiskeyfrown) is lucky enough to be using one of the few Psystar Open Computing machines that have made it into the wild, and he was generous enough to make a video showing the machine (including the connections in the back to the monitor to show that it's legit). The thing boots up and runs pretty damn fast, says Patrick, but Software Update won't recognize it so you won't be able to patch. System Profiler thinks that it's a Mac Pro.

I've given up on trying to get a MAMP stack on my local Mac Pro. As beefy as machine as it is, it's not Linux. First, apache didn't work out of the box on OS X. Then, while working on image module, I found out that OS X's PHP doesn't come with GD. (I won't even mention my issues with ruby.)

So I'm going to spend more money on proprietary software (VirtualBox didn't work), most likely VMWare's Fusion so I can run a virtualized instance (or three) of Linux locally. It will take less time, behave the way I expect it to and be a breeze to update, thanks to apt.

nfortunately, Leopard's PHP installation does not ship with a GD module. If you use this PHP version, Drupal will report that it can't find a GD library (and no image processing will be performed either). There is a tutorial on the web that explains step by step how to compile GD2 for the stock PHP 5.2.4 that comes with Leopard; however, PHP segfaults after the installation (at least for me).

You know, for an operating system that is hailed by many as an alternative to Linux that just works, OS X isn't really all that great.

Unfortunately, Leopard's PHP installation does not ship with a GD module. If you use this PHP version, Drupal will report that it can't find a GD library (and no image processing will be performed either). There is a tutorial on the web that explains step by step how to compile GD2 for the stock PHP 5.2.4 that comes with Leopard; however, PHP segfaults after the installation (at least for me).

I don't know what they were thinking when they omitted this, but this isn't the first issue I've had getting a MAMP stack up and running. I miss Linux.

If you've installed MySQL via fink and you're going to install the MySQL gem for Ruby and you're getting something like this:

Macintosh:~ brianpuccio$ sudo gem install mysql
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing mysql:
	ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby extconf.rb install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/sw/var/mysql/
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lm... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lz... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lsocket... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lnsl... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more
details.  You may need configuration options.

The command you really need is sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysql_config