Mac Mode

… maybe.

The Leopard installation has been on my To-Do list since Sunday when we bought Leopard. Went out the night of the Leopard launch but instead of buying that, I bought the PS3 game Eye of Judgment — and have already blogged about it over at Hmm (twice!).

It’s not that I’ve intentionally been procrastinating on the Leopard upgrade, but I wanted to wait until there was enough window of time to fully evaluate the feature set. Halloween is a trick or treat day and today one of my treats is being able to spend a little time with Leopard and see how it compares to Tiger.

Now, really, I’m going to open that Leopard box with the mesmerizing purple space … maybe.

Didn’t get Leopard yesterday but will be buying it soon. First needed to upgrade the memory from the 256MB RAM it came with to at least 512MB which is the minimum for Leopard. I stuck a 512MB stick of RAM to bring the total to 768MB RAM. Was a smooth operation and in the process I blew out the dust with a compressor (outside) and cleaned the Mac.

The following tutorials from Apple came in handy:
- eMac: how to install the optional stand. Need the right size allen wrench and you’re good to go.
- eMac: how to install memory. Only one screw to get to the memory compartment underneath.

The eMac is heavy, isn’t it?

Usually I don’t post about rumors here, but there are exceptions to everything.

Macenstein:

the Mactactic twist here is they use that data to create countdowns that predict the exact day each item will be updated. For instance, are you looking for a new Mac Pro? You’ll have to wait 1 month and 2 weeks. Mac mini? A new release is only 2 weeks and 6 days away.

Macenstein is talking about the Mac Buyer’s Guide which italicizes the warning that: This page is based on rumors and speculation and we provide no guarantee to its accuracy.

IMified is available at http://www.imified.com/ I’m writing step-by-step instructions for how to use this and will be posting at http://www.makeyougohmm.com/ shortly.

Update 7:25am PST: The step-by-step at Hmm is here.

I’m a fan of Easter Eggs, having written in depth about this before and challenging Microsoft OS stance on Easter eggs being “grounds for termination.”

The site eeggs.com has an updated list of Mac OS X Easter Eggs and hidden secrets.

Just checked Wraparound out and while it is intended for those with multiple monitors it works slick with one monitor too.

Via freemacware:

When the cursor reaches the edge of the screen, it can now wrap around to the other side and keep going. It can work horizontally, vertically, or both.

Feels like much less work navigating with the mouse with screen wraparound.

Long list of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts via Lifehacker.

Bad news on the Sony bad battery front and unfortunately this time involves Mac laptops.

CNET:

Additional information can be found by calling 1-800-275-2273 or visiting an Apple Web page for the recall. The recall involves 1.1 million batteries sold in the United States and an additional 700,000 sold overseas online and through retail stores and resellers.

Apple said it has gotten nine reports of batteries overheating, including two cases in which users reported minor burns and property damage. However, it says no serious injuries have been reported.

If this applies to your Mac, get that battery sent back. Recall details here.

For awhile I’ve been wanting to setup printing on the Mac using the printer attached to one of our Windows machines and shared over the network. I had no idea how to do this on a Mac, so first I explored around the preferences menu looking for printer options. Looked like I already had a printer configured from some time in the past but it didn’t work so off to Google I roamed.

The following how-to post proved to be very helpful and blockquoted are passages from those instructions below, which boiled down to the following steps:

Windows
1. make sure Windows XP is setup to have printer shared.
2. determine the IP address of the Windows machine connected to the shared printer by using shell.

START -> Run -> Type: cmd
type:

Probably will be something like 192.168.101.xxx where xxx is the number of the machine.

3. Add OSX port to Windows machine:

Start > Control Panel > My Network Places > Network Connections. New task on the left: Change Windows Firewall Settings, then click on the Exceptions tab. Click on Add Port, enter “OS X printer” (or whatever you want) in Name and “515″ in Port Number. Leave TCP selected, click OK,

4. Make sure Windows Print services for Unix are installed:

Click Start and then Control Panel. Double click on Add or Remove Programs. Click on Add/Remove Windows Components. Double click Other Network File and Print Services. Select Print Services for Unix.

Mac OS X
1. Start terminal and type:

cd /usr/libexec/cups/backend/

2. Create symbolic link for CUPS by typing:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/smbspool smb

If you get an “already exists” message, don’t worry about it, continue.

3. In your browser navigate to CUPS web interface at:

http://127.0.0.1:631

4. Select “Manage printers” and then “Add Printer.” Give your printers any name, location, and description. The description field will be displayed in your Mac field.

5. Under the device option choose:

LPD/LPR Host or Printer

6. In the device URI option type:

lpd://windows.ip.address/WINDOWS_SHARED_NAME

where WINDOWS_SHARED_NAME is the shared name of the Windows printer.

7. Burn a test print. I printed the teminal bash screen. Voila!

I like reading what other Windows users who switch to Mac have to say. Ed Thomson writes about his experience and offers some tips. Emphasized are his tips and my comments follow:

Get a new keyboard - I disagree with this one. I like the sturdy white Mac keyboard.
Get an old mouse - I haven’t done this, but agree that the one-button Mouse is not nearly as effective as a two button Mouse with scroll wheel.
Ditch Safari - Ed advocates using Firefox instead, which I’ve begun doing the last few months. Firefox is now my regular browser of choice on Windows too. One thing I like better about Safari is their built-in RSS reader, but Firefox with its continually growing army of extensions is tough to beat.
Ditch iChat for Adium - I have barely used iChat so have no preference here. I’m not that excited about IM, but Adium sounds like Trillian on Windows which is the way to go vs. any single one IM app anyway,
Don’t expect to be able to compile anything yourself and Install Xcode and X11 - I have done almost zero development using the Mac, so this hasn’t been an issue to date. Ed makes good points here though.
Edit /etc/hostconfig and add the line: HOSTNAME=yourcutehostname.domain.com - thanks for the info.
If you’re a graphic designer, wait - the frustration here is with the apparent sluggishness of Adobe Photoshop CS2 on the new Intel Core Macs. Again, a non-issue for me, since I’m not a graphic designer and don’t own an Intel Core Mac. Yet.
Get a wireless card - advice for laptop users
You will not play games - an old and well known dig against Macs. I didn’t buy the Mac to play games, that’s what the Xbox 360 is for. Although I do play a few games on Windows. I do wish Second Life ran better on my Mac, but I don’t blame the Mac, I need more than 256MB RAM. My next Mac — an intel core — will have a minimum of 512MB and probably 1GB.

All in all, I’ve been a Mac owner for a little over 1 1/2 years now and it hasn’t prompted me to want to switch all our systems to Mac, but it has been moved to the left of my desk so I can use it every day. I listen to the radio through RadioSHARK through it, iTunes for music and Colloquy for IRC. I do some blogging through it — mainly this Mac blog. I use Cyberduck for FTP.

switchr:

Switchr is a site dedicated to providing useful Tools, Guides and News to the Macintosh community, and especially new Macintosh users.

Om Malik lists his 10 favorite Mac apps which include: Quicksilver launcher, Ecto blogging client, NetNewsWire RSS reader, VLC, BluePhoneElite, Cocktail, CandyBar, USB Overdrive X, FolderShare and the Camino browser.

I linked up the ones that I’m most interested in checking out.

There has been a lot of talk about Bootcamp on the Mac which allows dual boot for Windows and Mac. The New York Times points to new software called Parallels that takes that a step further: running Windows and Mac together.

via Lifehacker:

When you’re running Parallels, you can start up Windows XP in a separate window and copy and paste from one app to another. Even sweeter, unlike Boot Camp, Parallels supports versions beyond XP - Windows 98, 3.1 Windows 3.1, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2 or MS-DOS

Parallels is a free public beta with pre-order for the final version $40 USD or $50 after release in a couple weeks.

I’ve been enamored with MAMP lately on the Mac but this looks kind of interesting.

Server2Go

… is a Webserver that runs out of box without any installation. That means it is a webserver that can run directly from cdrom, usb stick or from any folder on harddisk. Server2Go allows you to create a standalone working web site or PHP application on a CD-ROM. Server2Go was primary developed for the usage on CD-ROM but there is no problem use it from other drives too.

metrobilly writes:

If you run OS X on a notebook, you can quickly run out of space on your hard drive. Stopping short of getting a FireWire external HD, your best bet is to use some easy tips and apps to free up space on what Jobs gave you.

I don’t have an OS X notebook but the hard drive that came with the eMac is pretty small. The six tips offered could come in handy for keeping the HD cupboards clean.

Noticed after upgrading to the newest version today of Second Life for the Mac (review here) that Professor Lawrence Lessig will be at an upcoming event in world next Wednesday January 18, 2006 from 5:30pm - 7:30pm PST in the Pooley Auditorium (SL link).

More details at the official Second Life blog. Special seats are available in a media section for established bloggers and mainstream media. Nice to see bloggers getting more respect as something other than hacks.

In playing around with Second Life on the Mac, I’m finding that I sorely miss the scrollwheel functionality with the default mouse. Is it possible to emulate this scrollwheel functionality somehow with some set of keyboard combination? Anybody know? Thanks in advance for anybody that has the answer. I’ll be Googling this I’m sure.

Lots new in the Mac scene, so I’m starting to get caught up and go through this information. More soon I hope.

iTunes Library Updater for Windows using .NET 2.0 via Download Squad:

keeps iTunes’ library updated by automatically adding new tracks from the directories of your choice and removing tracks for which the files no longer exist.

One of the things I like about this time of the year are all these Best of / Worst Of Year lists. Looks like I’m only using 2 of Paul’s 10 apps every new Mac user should download. Cyberduck for FTP and Stuff-It Expander. I’m definitely going to check out TextWrangler2, AdiumX and iBackup, and yeah, sooner or later I’ll finally download Firefox. I’ve been enjoying Safari but I do miss those FF extensions. Not sure about the others, but I may check those out as well.

Time for the 2005 MacWorld Editor awards, affectionately titled the Eddys.

Cool, Comic Life made the list. By Brent Simmons count, NetNewsWire creator (which also won a 2005 Eddy): “Seattle counts for three winners this year. (But it could be more: I didn’t look super-closely.)”