Adding a Mic to a Mac

The other day my buddy Jeff sent me a link to a video someone had put together that was one of the funniest things I had seen in a long, long time:

The Web Site is Down

Warning: you have to have been in an IT capacity to really appreciate the support desk style humor involved. What was amusing about this was that Jeff and I both thought man, Skype (which figures prominently in the video) looks pretty cool. Determined to check it out I decided that I needed to add a microphone to my Mac Pro in order to get this up and running properly.

When I switched from Windows to Mac I had a number of peripherals that were suddenly available. While most, like printers, USB hubs, memory card readers, speakers, etc. just plugged in and worked, my little standard boom microphone didn't. I plugged it into the back of my Mac Pro and it just didn't record sound.

The reason is the back of the Mac Pro has an audio-in port and I mistakenly assumed was a mic-in port. It's actually a line-in and requires a preamp if I wanted to use my standard mic. Since it was a freebie Creative boom microphone that I'd had for years I decided to just plant it on my Ubuntu machine and get a nice replacement for the Mac Pro.

I ran off to my local Best Buy where I've become such a familiar face that they greet me by name. That's never a good sign. I checked out the mid-range desktop mics and settled on the Rocketfish Digital USB Microphone. My needs for a mic are quite simple and the $24.99 I paid for it didn't seem too bad.

I popped it into a USB port, pushed the little ON button on the top and it was ready to go. I fired up Audacity to see what my recorded voice sounded like and it came through loud and clear, though I did need to set the input volume pretty high.

Now with a functioning microphone attached to my Mac Pro I'm going to give Skype a whirl and see if it's as cool as it looks in that video.

Without a voice that sounds like I've been breathing helium that is.

Some cool Firefox add-ons

For the last week and a half I've been trying out Firefox as my primary web browser. Back when I was a Windows guy I switched to Firefox because of the innovations it introduced and most importantly the extensions available for it. Now that I'm exclusively a Mac / Linux guy I figured I would check out the Firefox add-on market and see what's available.

It's important to note that the web browser is more than just a device to view web pages. I personally do a lot of data entry through web pages, mainly with this blog. Since I use Blogger I end up composing these posts using the in-page editor. Obviously if you comment on this blog you will be using a simple text editing surface to enter your comments. This can extend further when you look at online products like those offered from Google, including e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets.

I also do a lot of my development work using a web browser. In some cases it is to simply see the results of the application I am working on and in others I am trying to work out CSS issues or image alignment problems. Fortunately the Firefox add-in space has an extensive library of tools to make life easier.

Given that as an introduction, what follows are the add-ons I found tremendously helpful.

Foxmarks
As I have for many years I use several computers in my daily work. I have my Mac Pro, which is my primary development machine and overall workhorse. I have my new MacBook Pro, which I use when traveling and for taking to meetings. I have a great little Ubuntu workstation that I use for some testing and to host certain external services and goofing around in general. Each of these machines is running Firefox and as a result I have 3 different sets of bookmarks.

Foxmarks is an add-on and free online service that synchronizes your bookmarks. Not only does it keep your bookmarks synchronized it also provides a web site that you can access from anywhere (my.foxmarks.com) where you can view the bookmarks. While this is very similar to the bookmark component that's offered with Mobile Me from Apple, the service is free. Since Mobile Me does not support Firefox bookmarks you now have a way to keep those bookmarks synchronized as well.

BBCode
I spend a fair amount of time in forums and responding to comments in this blog. In these cases being able to insert HTML links, character formatting and image references can be a bit of a pain. BBCode provides some nice context sensitive menu help to formatting. I have used this extension for years and if you spend any time in online forums you will really appreciate it.

Forecastfox
Though I have more sources of weather information than I can shake a stick at I love being able to glance down at the status bar of my current browser window and get a reading on the weather. Forecastfox, something I've used for years, fits that bill perfectly. Not only can I see a little radar view of my area I can click and get access to a detailed AccuWeather forecast.

ColorZilla
One of the challenges in doing web based design is matching up colors perfectly. Sometimes you just need to make sure that your web page's background matches the RGB color of a part of an image. ColorZilla provides a nice little way of "color dropping" any part of your web page and then seeing the RGB value for that.

Once you've selected a color you can copy it in standard formats to the clipboard, making it easy to insert into HTML or CSS.

Firebug
If you do any web development work at all, Firebug is an outstanding addition to Firefox that gives you extensive control over HTML, CSS and Javascript on the web pages you are visiting. Calling this an add-on is a bit misleading; Firebug is so powerful it feels like a full development environment.

So there you have it, my first cut at some great Firefox extensions. I didn't count 1Password, though technically that does appear as an add-on to Firefox. I'm still looking for a decent dictionary reference to replace the fact that Control-Command-D does not work in Firefox. The number of add-ons and themes for Firefox is incredible; well over 5,000 of them. While quantity is no indication of quality, there are several more that I really am looking forward to trying out.

Got a favorite that I didn't include? Let me know!

My critical applications 5 months after switching

It's now been 5 months since I switched to Mac, time to update the list of Mac applications I use regularly and have found invaluable for me. My list has changed over time as applications have fallen in and out of favor and the tasks I have done with my Macs have changed. I've done this a couple times before so you can see how the list has changed.

Quicksilver
When I sat down to write this article I outlined the applications I use frequently and Quicksilver was not even on the list, yet here it is at the very top. Why is that? One of the phrases that is referenced by Quicksilver is "Wei Wu Wei—Act Without Doing". Quicksilver has become an intrinsic part of my workflow, so much so that I don't even notice it is there.

Though I use it primarily as an application launcher much like I used to use Spotlight I have become quite addicted to Quicksilver's snappy user interface. The potential for automating tasks and accessing files with Quicksilver is quite extensive and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface with it. The plug-ins are also interesting—especially the Clipboard plug-in—which allows you to see that last 10 (user definable) items copied to the clipboard.

One bit of caution with Quicksilver: it can be overwhelming if you are new to Macs. If you've just switched you are better off working with Spotlight for at least a month or two before branching out with Quicksilver. I tried using it when I first got my Mac and was unimpressed—it seemed so complicated. I didn't appreciate the value of it until my second attempt at using it, once I had become comfortable with my Mac.

Firefox
I'm still playing with Firefox and given that I spend so much time in a web browser it's not surprising that this ranks so highly. I still like Safari as a web browser, though Firefox 3 has proven to be a worthy competitor. I haven't played with the Firefox Add-ins since Firefox was my default browser on the Windows platform so I'm looking forward to rediscovering the Firefox add-in market in the near future.

As I mentioned before, Firefox 3.0 is a really nice release and if you tried it in the past but bailed out on it like I have you may want to try it out again.

1Password
I would be lost without 1Password. It makes it so much easier to keep track of the web sites I have accounts on, remembering my passwords for me. I also use the wallet feature to keep important information locked up on my machine like credit card information (so that I don't have to run off and grab my wallet) and standard contact information, making completing address forms very easy.

Terminal
Though not really application in the traditional sense I have really begun to appreciate the power of the command line interface with the OS X terminal. The seamless copying and pasting between OS X applications and the command line interface make it easy to work with. The multi-tab support means I can have several BASH shells running at the same time in one compact window so that I can move between them very easily.

Having recently moved to Ruby on Rails as my web development platform I've found myself spending a lot of time in a terminal window. It is so much more powerful than the DOS command line I used to use it's not even in the same league.

Textmate
When I left Windows for Mac I knew one of my highest priorities was going to be finding a replacement for my beloved UltraEdit text editor. Textmate was highly recommended by a number of people and since I planned on writing code with it there was no question that this was the editor to choose. What makes Textmate special is it's ability to add functionality with "bundles", a series of commands and macros that can be tied to a file type, effectively turning Textmate into a specialized editor. The Rails bundle that I am using has been a huge help in writing code and the Git bundle makes version control painfully simple.

Mail
I've gone back and forth on using Mail to connect to my Gmail accounts and lately I'm back to using it again. Gmail's IMAP interface seems to have improved, though every once in a while it acts up and loses it's connection, requiring that I restart Mail.app. Other than that little challenge I've found Mail to be a nice, light application for sending and receiving e-mail.

iStat menu
If I'm using a Mac without iStat menu I feel that I'm driving a car without a dashboard cluster. On my MacBook iStat helped me understand which applications were pegging the CPU. On my Mac Pro I used iStat to see what kind of network activity was going on in the background. On my MacBook Pro I used iStat to help me keep an eye on the temperature of my CPU and the speed of my CPU fan. There are other applications that can handle this but nothing is as simple, clean and easy as iStat menu.

iPhoto
Though I do still struggle with it at times I've come to appreciate iPhoto and have moved all of my digital photos over to it. iPhoto is fine for doing the kind of minor edits I generally need with my photos: cropping, straightening, large scale adjustments and red-eye removal. I've used it to create a great slide show for my wife, tracking each of our kids as they grew up over the years.

The Ken Burns effect is excellent, adding a real sense of motion and drama to photos. About the only problem I had with it was that if used automatically it would occasionally use the effect to hone in on an inappropriate portion of the photo. Occasionally the focal point of the photo would be a part of the anatomy you don't necessarily want zoomed in on, especially when it's photos of your children as they mature. Needless to say I often had to take over manually and that can be rather time consuming.

Other than this little nit I've found iPhoto to be very serviceable for my needs.

Pages
When I bought my MacBook Pro I decided to purchase a copy of iWork as well since I was able to leverage the educational discount. I used the trial for Microsoft Office for a pretty long time and had started to get used to it but the application seemed too sluggish to me. Not that MS Office is all that bad but after using each for a period of time iWork seemed much cleaner to me. The UI is uncomplicated and I haven't had a problem finding anything that I need.

Since I'm no longer using trial versions and have made the plunge on iWork—spending actual $ to get it—I expect that I will find ways to make it work in every situation. In the event that someone sends me a file that I cannot view in iPages I expect that I will simply berate them for using a non-standard file format, much as I had been berated for doing the same thing in the past. I rarely push word processors, spreadsheets or presentation software very hard at all so I don't anticipate this being a problem.

OmniGraffle
When I was looking for a Mac replacement for Visio I had a number of people recommend Omnigraffle. Not only did it meet my needs, effectively doing everything I did in Visio, it did several tasks much better. The library of templates available for Omnigraffle are extensive and I am now able to mock up some great UIs very quickly and generate Rails style database schema.

NetNewsWire
I haven't found a better RSS reader than NetNewsWire and that's in part because I haven't bothered to look. NNW does exactly what I need and does it well. The fact that I can synchronize what I've read between my two Macs and my iPod Touch makes me very, very happy. I love it when applications leverage the web in unique ways.

iTunes
My use of iTunes predates my use of Macs by several years since I've been an iPod user for a pretty long time. The integration of the iTunes store into it is nice and seamless, making the purchase experience about as easy as it gets.

Adium
I still switch back to iChat occasionally but for the most part I use Adium as my chat client. I love the way Adium allows me to quickly review chat logs from prior conversations. I like the way the it can be customized and create an incredibly compact chat window. The price is also excellent (free). The only downside is that I cannot do video chats, which is why I switch back to iChat every once in a while.

So there you have it, my list of critical applications that I use nearly every day on my Macs. I'm not talking about the built in functionality (other than Terminal) because that's enough for an entire blog post on it's own. Spaces, Quicklook, etc. are also critical to my needs. I also have quite a few other applications loaded and available like Cyberduck and VMware Fusion, though lately I haven't been using them nearly as much. This is more a function of my recent application needs though.

Fixing a Windows virus makes me appreciate my Mac

A good friend of mine called me on my cell this morning.

"Yo! Hey brother, I have a problem with my laptop. Can you help me out?"

Walt's a really bright guy but isn't into computers at all. Computers are just another tool for Walter, giving him access to e-mail and the web while he is out on job sites. He works from his truck so it has become his mobile office, with a little Sprint broadband device allowing him to get electronic access from nearly everywhere.

The company he works for is small and since he works hundreds of miles from the headquarters it's up to him to maintain his own computer. He was not a happy camper because Windows was telling him that he had some virus infections and that he needed to clear them out. At this point his machine had become unusable and he wasn't sure what to do next.

Since he was in the area I asked him to swing by so I could take a look at it. The machine itself was a newer Dell laptop running Windows XP. Sure enough, there were a bunch of dialogs popped up complaining of virus infections. But something seemed really wrong.

Though the dialogs looked like they came out of the Microsoft Security Center they looked... I don't know... odd. I had never seen those particular dialogs before and had never had Windows prompt me to click a button to scan for viruses.

Apparently the latest trend in Windows viruses and spyware is to create windows that tell you that you are infected and to follow their steps to remove the crap from the machine. They masquerade as very official looking Windows dialogs. The giveaway for me was that I haven't seen Microsoft use an Always on Top window for a warning before. They may make it system modal but never something that simply covers other windows.

When I asked Walt what he used the machine for he said e-mail through Outlook and looking up manufacturers web sites for information. That was it. Nothing else I asked? "Not even porn" was the smiling response. Obviously in one of his web searches he clicked on a link that he thought contained a legitimate site for his job but was wrong. Who knows, maybe he just clicked the wrong link in a search result.

I went to the PC Tools web site, downloaded and installed PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Anti-Virus. Sure enough his machine was infected with something that was generating all of these little error dialogs. After a couple of successive scans and repair cycles we were able to get the machine clean and I made sure the system was set up to keep the machine relatively safe, at least for the year that the subscription lasts.

While this was going on I mentioned that I had switched to Mac and that problems like this were not something I even worried about anymore. Walt looked at me with the "that's nice" stare. This was a company supplied machine and he sure as hell wasn't going to be getting them to buy him a Mac. He just needed this machine to be able to work so he could get his day back on track.

Walt of course really appreciated the help. It only took me about 45 minutes to get everything resolved for him before he was able to pull out of the driveway and head off to the next job site. While his truck drove down the street and I walked back inside I thought to myself, I'm so glad I'm not dealing with THAT any longer.

What, me worry?

Sure, there are viruses trojans that have been created for Macs though they are few and far between. Macs can be hacked and compromised and pretending they cannot be is just plain unhealthy. The reason Macs have been left relatively unscathed while Windows machines are easy pickings is because there are literally tens of millions of unpatched and unmanaged Windows machines just sitting on a live internet connection.

It is really hard to run a Windows XP based system without commercial virus protection. I don't run any on my Macs because I'm very cautious about what I download and install. I do believe that the Mac will continue to grow in popularity and with that growth a bigger target will be placed on them. Until that happens though I'm going to continue to enjoy not going through what my buddy Walt just went through.

Switching to iPhoto from Picasa

When I switched to Mac from Windows one of the programs I missed the most was Picasa, Google's free photo management tool. Picasa and iPhoto are very similar and perform many of the same functions, including photo editing basics like red-eye removal, cropping, straightening, etc.

Back in March I talked about the basic differences between Picasa and iPhoto. Since then I've acquired my Mac Pro, shut down the Windows machine that used to be my primary photo archive and moved everything to iPhoto. That has presented some interesting challenges.

For many years I had established a pretty standardized model for storing and managing my photos, necessitated to a large degree because I didn't have a photo management tool other than the Windows file system and Photoshop for the first few years. My system was quite simple: I had a folder for each year and within each year I had a folder for each day. A typical folder structure looked something like this:

When I would take new photos I would grab the memory card, put it in my reader on my PC and then just move them to the appropriate folder based on the date the photos were taken. This eliminated naming issues if the auto-generated file names rolled over (an issue in the early days) and gave me a pretty easy way of finding things based on date.

Picasa was great because it supported this model. All I had to do was tell Picasa to monitor my Photos directory and everything under it and Picasa took care of the rest. Everything was indexed from there and all I had to do was copy the files off my memory cards and on to the hard drive.

Switching to iPhoto

iPhoto supports two models for storing photos: they can either be copied into a single library "file" that iPhoto manages or they can be left in their original directory and referenced from there.

Copying the files into iPhoto's library is the default behavior. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, this will double the size of your photo library if you use this option and plan on keeping the photos on disk. You can of course just delete the photos from their original location once they are imported or even use iPhoto's ability to suck them right out of your camera.

The other option is to leave the files in the location you started from and have iPhoto reference them from there. You lose the ability to embed ColorSync profile information if you go this route and you really don't want to move those files around once iPhoto knows about them. This is the method I'm using for a couple of reasons.

Sharing Photos on my Network

While Mac has become the platform of choice in our household, my wife and son are still clinging to Windows machines and I still have a couple Windows boxes that are used occasionally, along with an Ubuntu system to round it all out. Sharing photos with all of those machines is pretty important.

If you copy your photos into iPhoto's library you can share them from there, though there is a catch; you have to keep your copy of iPhoto running at all times (in order to share) and the people that want to access the photos must have a Mac and run iPhoto.

Given my multi-cultural network of machines that is not an option. As a result I have a volume on my Mac Pro that contains all of my original photos. This folder is shared on my network in Read Only form so that anyone on the network, regardless of OS, can see them.

The other reason I do this is because there is a pretty good possibility that at some point I will use something other than iPhoto on my Mac to manage my photo library. It may be Aperature, Lightroom or even the rumored Mac version of Picasa. Keeping my files in a neutral storage location—all 21,000 of them—ensures I won't have any problem getting them into my next tool. Even if that next tool is the next version of iPhoto.

Replacing a MacBook with a MacBook Pro

On Saturday I pulled the trigger on my MacBook Pro purchase, going with the base model 15" MacBook Pro directly from my local Apple store. Here are the specs:

2.4GHz

2GB RAM

200GB 5,400 RPM hard drive

Glossy display

My youngest daughter is quite pleased because this frees up my little MacBook for her. I've been steadily working through getting things transferred and installed on the MacBook Pro and every hour or so my daughter pops in and asks if she can take the MacBook yet.

Soon, honey. Soon.

I'm actually a little reluctant to part with the MacBook now. It is after all a wonderful little machine and to a large degree I appreciate it a bit more with the new MacBook Pro getting all of my attention. I even set about comparing them side by side, taking a few pictures along the way.

From a size standpoint the 15" MacBook Pro is still a pretty small machine. Actually a tiny bit thinner than a MacBook it feels quite sleek and the aluminum case feels very solid and durable compared to the shiny plastic case on the MacBook. Though the MacBook Pro weighs in at 5.4 pounds compared to the MacBook's 5.0 pounds that nearly half pound difference feels like a lot more. Finally the width and depth are about an inch larger on each edge for the Pro.

The display on the MacBook Pro is excellent and for me the main reason for the upgrade. At 1440 x 900 I get 26% more screen real estate than on the MacBook, which is actually pretty substantial for such a nominal increase in the size of the machine. The display is a bit brighter on the MacBook Pro too.

Before doing too much I ended up swapping the after-market memory I had placed in the MacBook (4GB) with what was in the MacBook Pro (2GB). That swap was very simple; 3 tiny philips #0 screws on each machine and about 3 minutes of work and each machine was being powered back up without any issues.

My initial impression of the MacBook Pro was not too good though. After firing it up and letting it charge up I started the process of installing my applications on it. At first I tried the Migration Assistant but decided that I really didn't want everything transfered over from my MacBook to the new MB Pro. Since the MacBook was my first Mac I had a lot of "software experiments" on it and I figured I'd just be selective.

One of the first things I installed was iStat menu so that I could monitor the machine as I put it through it's paces. It was a good thing I did because the temperature gauge came in handy.

The MacBook is One Hot Computer

While busily copying files over to the MB Pro I noticed that the case was getting pretty warm, especially under my left palm. After a little while it became more than just warm and was flat out hot, with heated air blasting out of the left speaker grill like a mini-furnace.

I went online and did some research and found hundreds of complaints about the heat that is generated by a MB Pro. I read many cases of people going to Apple to complain about the heat generated by the machines and being told that it was within specification. My little MacBook would get warm when I pushed it hard for an extended period of time but that wasn't too often. In addition the heat was always routed out the rear edge of the case, right at the base of the display. The front area where I rested my palms was never an issue on the MacBook.

I also found more than one instance of Apple personnel telling people that the MacBook Pro is not considered a laptop computer; it's a notebook. What's the difference? A laptop can rest on your lap and be used, a notebook apparently requires a desk under it. Given the heat that the MB Pro was generating for me the only way this thing was going to get parked on my legs was if I was suffering from hypothermia.

Though I don't do it often, I do occasionally like to take my MacBook off the desk and plant it on my lap while watching TV with my wife. The heat that it generated was just not acceptable for the way I wanted to use the machine.

I ended up doing a little father's day shopping and found the Belkin Laptop Cooling Pad at my local Costco for $20. It not only allows you to comfortably rest the MacBook Pro on your legs without sautéing your skin it also has a little USB powered fan the pushes cool air up at the bottom of the machine, helping it stay considerably cooler according to iStat menu. At least now I had a decent solution to my little heating problem.

I used the Belkin cooling pad for several hours yesterday and it does work quite well. The only challenge is that a lot of the spontaneity of simply grabbing the machine off the desk is lost when I also have to reach for the cooling pad at the same time. For people that work for many hours with their notebook computer on their lap this is a great little device though.

Now that I've been running the machine for a little over 24 hours I've noticed that the heat has dissipated to a large degree. The machine still gets warm mind you, especially on the left side, but nowhere near the mini kiln that it felt like initially.

If the machine is running quietly for a while with minimum CPU usage I am seeing the core CPU temperature hover at about 51° Celsius. If I let it run at about 15% CPU utilization for a couple of minutes the CPU temperature pops up into the 63° Celsius range and the keyboard gets a little warm but not uncomfortably so. I'll be monitoring this very closely over the next couple of days.

Keyboard / Trackpad Differences

The two machines have the same basic keyboard layout, the only difference being that the MacBook Pro has two additional dedicated function keys for Dimming and Brightening the backlit keyboard (F5 & F6). Since I had been using F5 as my Spaces key I had to find another shortcut for that. The backlit keyboard function is pretty handy, illuminating the entire keyboard when the lighting conditions warrant it. I imagine this would be very handy while trying to use the machine at night on an aircraft, assuming you have the seat room to really use the machine effectively.

The other difference is that the keys themselves are more like a traditional laptop or desktop keyboard; both my MacBook and aluminum keyboard on my Mac Pro have the same "chicklet" style layout with smaller flat buttons that have a slight separation between each key. Since the physical arrangement is identical there is no real adjustment, though using the countered keys on the MacBook Pro is actually quite nice.

Finally the trackpad on the MacBook Pro has a few more options than my MacBook did. While the MacBook's trackpad supported two finger scrolling and right click emulation, the MacBook Pro adds pinch and expand, rotate, swipe and additional tapping support.

Looking Ahead

When I asked the Apple store folks whether I could replace the hard drive myself and still keep the warranty valid the answer was no. If I wanted to swap out the hard drive I would need to use an Apple authorized service center; the store in Tysons Corner, VA does not offer that service. They told me that if I did have the hard drive replaced properly then everything would be covered under warranty except the new hard drive.

I'm going to see how well the 200GB drive I have holds up for now. I've still got a lot of free space left right now and as long as I keep my video footage over on the Mac Pro and limit myself to a subset of my music and digital photo collections I should be perfectly fine.

When the 320GB / 7200RPM drives become available I'll see what it would cost to get an authorized dealer to install one. If it's not too bad then I may go that route. I'm also adopting a wait and see attitude on the heat issue. I'm not sure if this is just something you live with on MacBook Pros or if my machine has an issue that I'll need a Genius to take a look at.

Intimidating people with a Macintosh

Perspective is a funny thing. Here I have happily become a heavy Mac user, thoroughly enjoying my transition from Windows and encouraging friends and family members to consider a Mac when the computer conversations come up, often saying that Macs are so easy to use. As is evidenced by the volume of blog posts I've made on the subject of Macintosh, I clearly feel that everyone is entitled to my opinion, elation and angst.

Earlier this week a good friend of mine—one that is highly technical—told me that his old Windows laptop was dying and that he needed to get a new machine soon. His wife has an iMac and he's played around on it a bit but he never gave me the impression that he was really interested in trying out a Mac as his primary machine. I of course brought up the idea that maybe he should look at a MacBook or MacBook Pro. His response was quite amusing:

"Frankly Dave I'm a bit intimidated by the Mac. I read your blog and it seems like there is so much to learn."

This from one of the smarter people I know too! But Macs are so easy, how could anyone be intimidated? I then realized that for people that are considering a switch to Mac and encounter me or my blog at this point in my adoption it can be a bit overwhelming. Having all of this transition information in one place may indeed seem like there is a lot to learn.

In the event you are considering a switch to Mac from Windows and come across my blog, don't be intimidated by what you see. I talk about everything I learn because I'm a techie geek and I enjoy sharing anything of value that I find, whether it's a feature, tip or piece of software. There are some challenges to be sure but they tend to be relatively minor for most people. 

The reason I like using Macs is that I get a nice, clean and highly useable system right out of the box. For the average person a home computer is used for e-mail, web browsing, digital picture management and home video tasks. Those chores are straightforward and simple on a Mac and can be handled right after powering it up the first time. The only additional software a non-power user has to consider is a word processing, spreadsheet and presentation package and there you can choose between Microsoft Office for Mac, iWork from Apple or go the free route with something like NeoOffice for Mac. The vast majority of users can get by on that and be perfectly happy and unintimidated.

The reason I love using Macs is that when I decided to dig a little deeper I found a tremendous amount of depth to the platform. I could extend and customize my machine in ways that made me highly productive and satiated that techie fire I have for learning and exploring.

The bottom line is that Macs are not intimidating once you get past the basics of UI navigation and controls; it takes a couple of weeks of adjustment, a little longer if you are still using Windows at the same time because they are slightly different.

As for me I'm still seeing how deep this rabbit hole goes. I'm leaving a well marked trail though so you can always catch up later if you want to. No need to feel intimidated!

Going back to Windows is really tough

In the brief time that's passed since I completely switched to Mac from Windows I have barely powered up my primary Windows machine. My Mac Pro gets the majority of my attention and since I'm doing my development work in Ruby on Rails now I haven't even had to fire up Windows in a VM very often. The MacBook fills in the rest of my time—usually travel or meetings—with the Ubuntu machine performing some server related tasks (Subversion server and MySQL mostly).

Rather than have an extremely expensive piece of hardware sitting around and depreciating every day I decided to sell it while it still has some value. A buddy of mine on one of the gaming networks I belong to offered to buy it and yesterday I went about the process of cleaning out the machine. Since you can't really sanitize an existing Windows install the best thing to do is just reinstall/reformat Windows XP.

I spent 17 years on Windows so I know my way around, especially when dealing with arcane driver and registry issues and the inevitable errors. Why was it then that I felt like a stranger in a strange land on the machine? I was only a month and a half removed from daily Windows use. My precious Mac keyboard shortcuts didn't work and the navigation controls I struggled with initially on Mac were now ingrained into my muscle memory.

More than once in prepping the machine and ensuring that everything of value was moved off I would just jab at Command-Space (Alt-Space on the Windows keyboard), expecting QuickSilver to launch so that I could get to a program quickly. Nothing happened of course and I would sigh, my shoulders would sag and I would reluctantly grab the mouse. I tried to do simple things like copying text to the clipboard and fail (Command-C on Mac, Control-C on Windows). 

I had to open a CMD window and execute several instructions to manually register some DLLs; I reluctantly remembered that I had to go through the little CMD menu in order to paste items. On my Mac when I need to paste a string into the terminal I use the standard Command-V; Windows can't use their default Control-V command in a CMD window because the Control modified keys have significance to command line applications. It's just a mess.

All of these little things were just a frustration to me. When I was going through the transition from Windows to Mac it was easier because I had a feeling that the Mac was something I wanted to spend time on. From the minute I fired up the MacBook I was excited about using the machine; it had me at hello. On the other hand with Windows I know that I'm not going to be using it any time soon so I'm far less tolerant of things not working the way I except them to. It is a mindset thing to be sure.

I am very fortunate; as an entrepreneur and business owner I have the luxury of choosing which technologies I want to use. Since my move to Mac happened to coincide with the creation of my next venture I was able to make a clean start and not be concerned with legacy issues, especially since I opted to go with platform independent development tools.  Outside of their homes few people have that choice.

I am going to box up the Windows machine in preparation for shipping. I rotated machines pretty regularly so I don't hold a particular affection for the physical machine I'm about to send off. I do however feel like I'm sealing a big part of my Windows experience into the box and shipping that off too though.

Who knows, maybe I'll rediscover Windows in 17 years or so.

Becoming powerless

At 1:30am this morning my wife woke me up.

"The power is out."

My sleep addled brain slowly came online, registering what she said to me. I cast a quick glance at the digital clock on the nightstand and sure enough it was dead. There was a mild thunderstorm in our area. As I lay there debating whether this required action on my part—again, my brain wasn't fully activated yet—I heard the faint cry of my UPSs down in my basement office.

It's rare the power goes out in our area and if it does, it never stays off more than a couple of minutes. The UPSs that powered the various machines in the basement could easily handle a 2 or 3 minute outage. That's when my wife said:

"It's been out for about 15 minutes."

Ninja like I sprang into action, racing down the now pitch black stair case and hoping I wouldn't twist an ankle and plunge headfirst to an embarrassing demise: "Local hero perishes in valiant effort to save data" would be an unlikely headline. "Local idiot dives off staircase for computer and dies" would probably be it. You know you've been in IT too long when you hear the bleeping of a UPS alarm and have the same visceral response a mom does to a crying baby; "they need me"! Damn, I am such a geek.

There are three UPSs in my office, two of them were crying out that they needed power while the third—the one powering my Mac Pro—was silent. I powered down the two machines attached to the other UPSs and looked over at the now completely silent Mac Pro. It's UPS couldn't handle the load that long and I had a couple of external devices sucking power off that same UPS as well. A silent white flash outside, followed a few seconds later by the rumble of thunder simply set the moment. Man, I hoped I had saved everything important and that Time Machine wasn't in the middle of a backup when it died.

Apparently the power came back a couple of hours later. When I did finally wake up I was greeted with what seemed like dozens of flashing digital clocks throughout the house. I love that engineers put digital clocks on ovens, microwaves, coffee makers, etc. I just wish they would put friggin batteries in them too.

I powered up the Mac Pro and started in for the day. I opened up Console.app and scanned through all of the entries. I didn't see anything noteworthy and after firing up a few applications everything seemed fine. If you are ever curious as to what your machine does when it starts up fire up Console, click on Show Log List and then click on All Messages right after boot up. Lots and lots of information in there on what's really being loaded up.

Time Machine kicked off just as I started to write this. As I composed my prose I noticed that TM was still working. Usually TM runs extremely quickly on this Mac Pro, now it was taking forever.  I looked at the console and there was this message:

6/4/08 8:24:47 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[297] Node requires deep traversal:/Volumes/BigDisk reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable| 

I can only assume that since the machine did not shut down in an orderly fashion that something was left in an open state and now backupd needs to ensure everything is okay. The backup ended up taking about 30 minutes instead of the usual 2 minutes.

What I really need is a UPS that can talk to my Mac Pro. The UPS I have attached to it now is a legacy from my Windows machine: a Tripp Lite Omni VS1000. I've had really good luck with Tripp Lites and would be quite happy to keep using it but unfortunately I didn't find any Mac specific software that would enable me to use it as anything more than a battery backup.

Ideally what I want is something that can communicate with the Mac. Being able to read power levels, get warnings of a low battery that needs to be replaced and the ability to send a signal to the Mac to gracefully shut down is perfect.

In my brief searching this morning I could only find older references to Mac specific UPS software and devices, so I'm going to ask you: Any recommendations for a decent mid-range, desktop UPS that has OS X compatible software? If someone is aware of good third party software for driving a Tripp Lite from OS X that would be even better.

Next time the power drops in my house I'd really just like to stay in bed and know that the machines will handle their own shut downs gracefully.

Why switching to Mac was the right move for me

I'm now at the four month mark in my move to Mac. It didn't start out as a switch; when I bought my MacBook in the beginning of February I was really looking for an excuse to play with some new technology. I was satisfied—not excited mind you but satisfied—to use Windows as my operating system. I had my development environment on Windows and was well versed in all the ins and outs of it. I custom built my PCs myself, mildly over-clocking them to get better performance and being very comfortable in trouble shooting virtually any class of problem. I was a pretty hardcore Windows guy.

What started as an addition to my little technology family evolved pretty rapidly though. Not only did I find the Mac intriguing and fun to use, I found myself enjoying my Windows machine that much less. The MacBook went from a curiosity to a cool toy to my preferred personal productivity tool in a very short period of time. After a couple of months I hadn't really switched though, my MacBook was really just my trusty sidekick and Windows continued to do the heavy lifting for me.

I would sit in front of my Windows machine and do my development work and then slide over to the MacBook for virtually everything else. Email, web browsing, news feeds, blogging – all of that became the domain of my MacBook. This worked great until I realized that I was simply not enjoying working on the Windows machine any longer. It's not that it suddenly became more difficult to use or my machine's performance was poor, I just didn't like using Windows. It became the older commuter car that I took to work every day while the Mac was an open top sports car that I couldn't wait to drive on weekends. 

I was fascinated by the Mac Pro and the power it had. OS X screamed on my little MacBook and I wondered what it would perform like on a Mac Pro. It met or exceeded my relatively high expectations.  Three days after I got the Mac Pro was the day I technically switched to Mac. Why? Because after transferring my files from my Windows machine to my Mac Pro I shut down the Windows XP machine. Turned it off. Stopped using it.

Yes, I do fire it up occasionally if I need to transfer something I didn't get the first time but I now use my two Macs throughout the day, occasionally use the Ubuntu machine and simply bang my knees into the powered down case that holds Windows. It is also much quieter in my office now.

I spent 17 years using Windows, a couple more if you count the experiments with the dreadful Windows/286 & Windows/386. Man real mode sucked. I was a heavy DOS user before that. On Windows I went through 3.0, 3.1, Workgroups, NT 4.0, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003 Server and Vista. I had spent countless hours honing my skills with the platform, both as a power user and professional software developer. How would it be possible for someone with my background to switch to a completely new platform and walk away from all of that history?

I've been wondering about that lately and have come to a conclusion. I was just tired of Windows. There was nothing about it that really excited me. I waited 5 years for Vista to come around and when it did I was unimpressed. There was nothing that really stood out. The Aero interface had some cool visual effects but other than that Vista was more of a pain than anything else. It was really slow on a two year old machine I have (which had the Vista Capable logo), the security was oppressive and even though it had been building up for years the graphics driver situation was a mess for many months after its release.

When I started using computers back in the early 80s it was a passion of mine. I would immerse myself in the technology, staying up until the wee hours learning everything I could. I would lose track of time very easily, wondering why all of a sudden it was so dark (or light) outside. For many years now that passion has been gone. I could get a glimpse of it by purchasing a new machine and spending a few days optimizing it but within a week or so the excitement would wear off. 

It's now four months later and I'm still looking forward to the cool things I can do with my Macs. I have learned a lot in a relatively short period of time but I have so much that I'm looking forward to mastering. More than anything I'm glad I switched to Mac because it has rekindled that passion.

Computers are fun and exciting again to me.

My favorite feature in OS X is...

Mac OS X 10.5 has some amazing features and as a recent switcher from Windows to Mac I've spent a lot of time using as many of them as I could so that I could really become proficient with my Mac. This morning I got to thinking: if I had to choose one single feature in OS X that I would have a difficult time without, what would it be?

For me that feature is Spaces.

My use of Spaces has become highly tuned now. On my dual screen Mac Pro I have 6 Spaces and keep certain types of application targeted in each of them. Here's how I use them:

1) NetNewsWire	2) iTunes
3) Safari / Adium	4) Open work area
5) Rails development area	6) VMware Fusion / Windows XP

Which means that when activated it looks like this:

I have mouse button 6 on my Logitech mouse dedicated to Spaces so I can quickly navigate when I'm in "mouse mode", I have F5 dedicated to Spaces on the keyboard when I'm in touch type mode and I use either Control-Option-Arrow to move between spaces quickly or hit Control-Number to pop directly to a window. If I'm alternating between two applications quickly I'm hitting Command-Tab.

On my MacBook with its limited screen real estate Spaces is even more important.

What's your favorite?

So there you have it - my most used and valued feature of OS X - the one I would have a really hard time without. Apple says there are over 300 new features in OS X - if you had to choose one single feature on your Mac (Finder doesn't count!) that you couldn't live without, what would it be?

Knowing where you are in Leopard's Finder

It's happened to me many times; I'm deep into the folder structure of one of my hard drives and I lose track of where I am. Sometimes I will double click on a folder name to make it the primary view but then I lose context. 

While the Show Path Bar option in the Finder is helpful it's a little too verbose for me. It displays each of the folder icons as well as the folder names. I just want a quick path to the folder I'm looking at.

It turns out there is a Finder setting that you can use to display the full path of your current view in the title bar of the Finder window.

Open a terminal session and enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Once that command has been executed you will need to relaunch the Finder for the change to take effect. You can do this by holding down the Option key and then right-clicking the Finder in the Dock bar then selecting the Relaunch option.

Coming from the Windows world I always liked to have my complete path accessible in the Explorer window - this gives me that same effect. I really wish that the path it displays in the title bar was "copyable" to the clipboard, though it is not. On to the second short tip:

Copying the Path to the Clipboard

The second thing I needed was the ability to get access to the path so that I could copy it to the clipboard easily - usually because I'm sending a reference to the path to someone else on my network or creating a script file to manage something in a specific location.

I know there are several ways of doing this but the one that seems to work best for me is to have the file or folder selected in the Finder and then choose the menu Finder / Services / TextEdit / New Window Containing Selection. This will pop up TextEdit with the entire path to whatever you have selected in the editing area.

If you know of a better way to get access to that file path quickly just drop it into the comments below. As Ross Perot would say, I'm all ears.

Common Myths for the Macintosh

There are lots of reasons that people don't want to switch from Windows to Macintosh. I assume the most common reason is simply because Windows works for the people that are using it. The old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it" tends to apply here. These people are not upgrading to Vista either, they're staying with Windows XP or even Windows 98 and are just fine.

There are however an increasing number of people that are moving to Macs now - many of them people like me that hated Macs at one time. I believe there are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which is that people that are running Windows XP are faced with an upgrade to Vista as their next logical step and feel that maybe it's okay to consider a Mac since they have to go through a full operating system refresh anyway.

One of the reasons I was not interested in Macs for a very long time was that I clung to many facts about the Mac that I felt eliminated it from contention. Well, as with many things in life it turns out the facts that I knew about the Mac were either hopelessly outdated or simply myths. What I wanted to do was tell you the ones that I was aware of and often cited when I dismissed Macs in the past.

Mac's only use a single mouse button

I'm not a Mac historian, my history with the Mac being very recent but I've read that Mac multi-button mouse support has been around for some time. You may look at the MacBook keyboards and only see a single mouse button or a Mighty Mouse and think that it's not supported. The reality is the MacBook track pad has an ingenious way of supporting right mouse clicks that I find better than having the extra little stub that is a right mouse button.

You simply press two fingers to the surface and click the button and it emulates a right mouse click. While the Mighty Mouse (which I personally detest) only appears to have a single mouse button it does indeed support right clicking. I just plugged in my Logitech mice and happily right click whenever I need to.

There are not that many applications for Macs

Windows does indeed have far more applications written for it than are available for Mac. What you have to do is look at the quality of those applications though. Many of the hundreds of thousands that are cited for Windows were written back in the 90s and few have been updated. Sure, most still work but that doesn't mean they are still relevant. I have found no lack of software for my Macs -  virtually anything I have needed is available in native Mac format. 

Frankly, as a Mac n00bie I was shocked by the volume of quality Mac software available, especially on the consumer front. The number of Mac titles for business software, especially in the vertical markets for small businesses, is much smaller though.

Macs are closed machines that cannot be expanded

I have personally swapped out the memory in my MacBook inside of about 5 minutes. I upgraded my MacBook's hard drive in another 5 minutes. That's about all you can physically do with any laptop, whether it's a PC or a Mac. My Mac Pro upgrades were even easier. That machine is designed to make expanding common hardware about as easy as it gets. It took me less than a minute to install a 1TB hard drive - so little time I grabbed my video camera and filmed how easy it was:

Sure, I can't overclock my processor and the number of graphics card drivers that are supported by OS X is significantly smaller than Windows but to say I can't put non-Apple replacement parts into my Mac is just not the case. The Mac Mini and iMacs are limited in their upgrade options, but the same holds true of the Windows machines from Dell and HP that have the CPU and display all packaged together.

Macs don't work well with Windows machines on a network

I've got a GB switch at home and a variety of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Ubuntu and now Mac machines on it. Sharing files between the machines is very simple. My Macs can see my Windows shares and my Windows machines can see my Mac shared folders. I shared my printer attached to a Windows machine with my Mac and it was able to use it just fine.

Macs are more expensive

This is the one that I struggle with a bit. Yes, the Macs are slightly more expensive than PCs in general, but you have to look at what you are or more importantly not getting when you buy a Mac. Low cost PCs are often subsidized by bundled application software that is included with a new machine. When I recently bought a little HP that would eventually serve as my Ubuntu workstation it came so loaded with crap and Windows Vista that it barely even ran out of the box. The average consumer that isn't a techie would be hard pressed to clear up all of the stuff that bogs down the average new PC.

For techies it's a different story. You can go to places like Newegg and build a high performance system that has exactly what you want on it - nothing more, nothing less - and adjust expectations on price accordingly. But doing that means you are your own technical support clearing house. When the motherboard in my newly built gaming rig wouldn't post I had to call the manufacturer and work through a series of steps before we found that the board was shorting out. I needed to RMA it myself and undergo the same process when the replacement arrived days later. It took me the better part of two working days to build up that machine.

That said, I did that because I enjoyed doing it, however that time comes at a cost. Is your time worth anything to you? If it is and you don't find joy in doing this kind of technical troubleshooting then getting a fully tested and serviced machine that works out of the box is incredibly valuable. You get what you pay for in this case.

Macs can't run my Windows software

Well, that of course is not the case. I can take a legal copy of Windows XP or Vista and without spending any money use Bootcamp (which comes with OS X) and boot into Windows if I have to. It's standard PC hardware so it runs great. Better yet, grab a copy of VMware Fusion and run the Windows applications side by side with your Mac apps.

I haven't tried playing any high-end games on my Macs yet. This blog has burned up my remaining free time so they are out for now, though that's the most common complaint I've heard that I can't refute. Perhaps someone can jump in here and clarify that one. Can you play high end games like Crysis on Mac hardware and get decent performance?

Macs are mouse centered machines. You constantly have to grab the mouse.

Macs not only have excellent keyboard support, the use of shortcuts is profound. About the only thing I've found that doesn't work as well as Windows is the use of mnemonics in dialog windows that make it easy to jump to a field in a large form with lots of items in it. When a dialog pops up inside of a Mac I find that I generally grab the mouse.

On the other hand shortcuts on the Mac are consistent between applications and liberally sprinkled throughout. If you have ever seen someone that really knows the Mac well use a keyboard to do some work it's an exercise in humility. It's like productivity++.

So there you have it, the myths that I clung to that kept me from seriously considering a Mac for so long. I'm sure there are other reasons that people think switching from Windows to Mac is a bad idea - I've seen enough flame wars on the topic to know that it's a religious issue for many. 

Avoid the potholes when switching from Windows to Mac

Thinking about switching from Windows to Mac? Got a shiny new Mac and you want to learn the ropes quickly after spending years on Windows? Got a friend that just converted and they say the Mac doesn't work like Windows? This quick guide should help overcome the most common problems new switchers encounter.

Applications

Most Windows applications tend to comprise of an EXE file and a number of other peripheral files, such as DLLs, Help files, third party controls, etc that are often placed in different directories on your machine. Mac applications generally come in a package that appear to be a single file to you as a user. In reality there are multiple files to most applications, they are just packaged up to appear as a single file in OS X.

Installing Applications

In Windows you generally run a setup program to install an application. It is complete and self contained. On Mac there are a couple of different installation models out there. The most common for downloaded software is to simply drag the application's icon into your Application folder in the Finder. Some install programs will actually place the file in for you, though most require that you drag it in yourself.

DMG Files

A DMG file is a disk image file. Some times you will download an application or series of files that are packaged up as a DMG. Opening it will mount what appears to be a new virtual drive on your desktop. You do not want to run programs from there - drag any applications out of the DMG Finder window and into your Applications folder if you want to run them. You can eject a DMG virtual drive from your desktop (Right Click - Eject) and it will be removed.

Uninstalling Applications

The process for uninstalling applications from a Mac are really easy. The vast majority of the time it's merely a matter of dragging the application's icon out of your Application folder and dropping it in the trash. There are some files and settings that applications can leave behind and tools like AppDelete, Hazel and AppZapper help clean that up, though I have not used any of these personally.

Window Sizing is Different

While the Mac OS X windows have what appears to be Close, Minimize and Maximize button in most windows, one of them doesn't work the way it does in Windows. Pushing the Maximize button on OS X will usually make the window as tall as possible for the display area, but not affect the width unless your windows has a horizontal scroll bar.

You can also only size a Mac window by grabbing the lower right corner of the window. The clean, uncluttered UI on the Mac means there isn't a border to grab hold of to resize windows from any edge.

Keyboard Blues

The Alt key on Windows is in the same place as the Command key on a Mac. The Start key on Windows is where the Mac's Alt key sits. Those two keys, more than any other, will cause headaches for you. I've put together this quick guide that should help you at least learn the new common keystrokes.

There Is No Start menu

Most Windows users either toss their application icons on their desktop for easy access or use the Start menu to gain access to their applications. On Mac the Dock bar (by default at the bottom of your screen) is the best place to put the applications you will run most frequently. I highly recommend that you become proficient with the Spotlight feature though. It's an even better way to start applications. This is also the point where people recommend that you go out and get Quicksilver.

There Is Only One Menu Bar

Unlike Windows, which has a menu bar within each application, OS X has only one menu bar that changes options as you switch between applications. If you use a multiple monitor system like I do the get ready to put some serious mileage on your mouse. 

Closing An Application Window Doesn't Always Close The Application

In Windows if you close the main window to an application by clicking on the little X button it will shut the application down. On OS X that is not always the case. If the application supports multiple windows (like having multiple documents open at once), then clicking X even on the last open window will leave it open. The best way to quit an application in OS X is to select Quit from the application's main menu. I always just hit Command-Q now.

Killing Off A Non-Responsive Application

In Windows if you need to kill an application that stops responding you can activate the Task Manager, select that application from there and close it. In OS X you click on the Apple menu and select Force Quit, select the application and force it to quit.

The Tab Key Doesn't Work In Every Control

By default OS X does not allow you to tab through every single control. This is a major pain on things like Web Forms that contain check boxes and radio buttons. This is easily address in OS X Leopard by going into System Preferences / Keyboard & Mouse / Keyboard Shortcuts and changing the option on the bottom to make the Tab key work with all controls. Do that right away and save yourself some frustration.

The Missing Backspace Key

What is labeled Backspace on Windows is labeled Delete on Mac - they perform the same action though. The Delete key on Windows is the Delete Forward key on Mac, again performing the same function. If you happen to get a MacBook you will notice that several keys are missing, which is why the keyboard feels so roomy in such a small space. Here is a list of how you can gain access to those missing keys on a MacBook.

So there you have it - the most common problems for me when I first made the switch. There are tons of great features in OS X that you should plan on learning about and I've got numerous posts that cover the ones I've settled in with. The list of applications and features that I've adopted have changed from my first month to my second and into my third month of use.

The advice I would give to recent switchers from Windows to Mac is to try and embrace the way Macs work rather than try to make your Mac work like Windows. Much like moving to a new neighborhood, I can look around and complain that I don't know any of my neighbors and rip on the fact that there is no decent Thai food nearby OR I can make new friends and explore the new cuisine options. Attitude is everything.

Switching to Mac isn't right for everyone