OS X 10.5 Leopard Still Available from Apple
From Tom:
Dear Charles,
Just a point of issue in your
exchange with Mark in your Miscellaneous Ramblings: [Mac OS X 10.5] Leopard is still for sale
at Apple for $129 US. One would have to phone a sales agent to order
it, as it is not listed online.
Whether or not one should actually use Leopard on a PowerPC Mac is a
different question. Invariably it runs slower than [OS X 10.4] Tiger, and the video
requirements make it a poor choice, especially on a G4. Apple did us a
disservice by dropping support for Tiger. Windows XP is its equivalent
in the Microsoft world, and they will continue supporting that until
2014.
Apple is in business to sell you a new computer or gadget. Anyone
who thinks it is still the same beleaguered company it was in the late
nineties when it had to cater to the needs of loyal Mac users to
survive is really kidding himself.
Yours truly,
Tom
Hi Tom,
Thank you for the information. Evidently the Apple
Genius who informed Jim with the iMac G5 still running Panther who
started this thread was unaware of that availability.
I agree that Leopard slows down PPC Macs. It certainly
did our 1.33 GHz
PowerBook G4. However, I was smitten from the day I installed it -
with Spaces and QuickLook especially - so I deemed the performance hit
a justifiable tradeoff.
OTOH, I've never seriously entertained the notion of
using XPostFacto to
hack an install of Leopard on my Pismos, which continue to run
very nicely with Tiger, but I'm certain would bog down badly trying to
meet Leopard's graphics demands.
Charles
Apple vs. Microsoft OS Availability and
Support
From Mark:
Charles:
I was probably looking in the wrong place, but I could not find a
place at [the online] Microsoft
Store for anything other than Windows 7 for sale. It may just be
that I am looking in the wrong place, but I could not find where you
could purchase just XP. If Microsoft does things similar to some
companies, such as when you tried to dig the old tech support files
from Apple's website, I could have missed the correct web page.
Unlike Microsoft, Apple is in the fortunate [or unfortunate]
position of controlling the hardware and software. Some see that as a
plus, while your points make it more of a problem. To sell new
hardware, you keep changing the OS that goes with them, so that you
cannot keep installing the latest OS on your older computer. I like
that the same company that makes the hardware, makes the software,
hopefully that is a better synergistic effect . . . but it
also allows Apple to make rather arbitrary decisions on supporting OS
for older hardware. Similar to you, I also enjoy getting the most out
of my Macs, for as long as I can, and I also believe in using every
hack possible to put the next OS onto hardware that Apple does not
officially support. I got almost eight years out of an LC III, four years out of a Performa 6400, six years out of a
G4 iMac flat panel, and now
using my Jan 2008 Mac Pro so
that I can run those programs that require an Intel CPU. The LC III and
6400 are downstairs in my Mac museum, while the G4 is more then
adequate for my 16-year-old teenager for his school work.
Apple shutting off the OS supply except for the current version is
not an economic policy I agree with . . . and I think it also
leads to a large number of people, such as Jim, who are lucky enough to
know someone with the appropriate retail install disk, getting a
bootleg copy of Tiger, Leopard, etc. I do not believe that should have
to happen, but I know it does. Mac users who try to find one of the few
remaining legit install disks end up paying a fortune for their attempt
at honesty.
I do like your idea of continuing to sell legit copies of the
previous OSes. They have already spent the large R&D costs to get
to the point of releasing the particular OS, so printing more copies is
negligible as you mentioned.
Ignoring Apple for just a moment, is there not some blame to be put
on the peripheral manufacturers [TurboTax and the HP that Jim could not
use] that no longer provide support for the OS on his older Mac? It
does turn into a cart-horse/horse-cart dilemma. Makes for some good
discussions at my local Mac user group.
Look forward to your columns at LEM. I continue to learn new things
each time.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark,
Thanks. It's a two-way street. I learn a lot from
readers like yourself.
I like the advantages of Apple's vertical integration
too. Makes for a much more elegant synergy, which is why, I guess, we
love the Mac - if not necessarily Apple.
Actually, I've since learned more about Microsoft's
scale of residual Windows XP support. According to Wikipedia, Direct OEM and
retail sales of Windows XP ceased on June 30, 2008, although Microsoft
continued selling XP through their System Builders (smaller OEMs who
sell assembled computers) program until January 31, 2009, and XP may
continue to be available as these sources run through their inventory
or by purchasing Windows Vista Ultimate or Business - and then
downgrading to Windows XP.
Wikipedia says Windows XP Service Pack 2 will be
retired on July 13, 2010, almost six years after its general
availability, and according to Microsoft's posted timetable, general
licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and retail sales were terminated on
June 30, 2008, 17 months after Vista's release. However, an exception
was announced on April 3, 2008 for OEMs installing to ultra low-cost
PCs (ULCPCs) until one year after the availability of Windows 7, which
will be October 22, 2010.
Further, on April 14, 2009, Windows XP and its family
of operating systems were moved from Mainstream Support to the Extended
Support phase, during which Microsoft will continue providing security
updates every month for Windows XP, but free technical support,
warranty claims, and design changes are no longer being offered. On
April 8, 2014, all Windows XP support, including security updates and
security-related hot fixes, will be terminated, which seems fair enough
- 13 years on!
You can find more info at these URLs:
Further complicating the discussion, another reader
informs me that you can still obtain Leopard from Apple for $129, but
it's necessary to phone a sales agent to order it, as it is no longer
listed online. But at least Apple hasn't completely thrown G4 and G5
owners, some of whose machines are not yet five years old, under the
bus.
As for continued software availability, the best
citizen has to be Netscape, which has continued to make really old versions available for
download.
Charles
WindowShade X and OS X 10.6
From John:
Hey Charles,
I switched from Windows to the Mac back in 2003, so never saw
WindowShade in active service. I have, however, played about with
Classic and even Mini vMac over the years
since and know what you're talking about. Double-click a window's title
bar to have it roll up like a blind, so you can manage more of them
within your screen space. I've tried it while experimenting with
Classic software and can see how it would have been a great step up
from how things were on Windows 2000 and the like I was running at the
time. But since I was exposed to Exposé first, it feels
like a step backward to me.
You do have my sympathy though, because like anyone who's been
computing long enough, I too have been through a few of these forced
breaks of habit.
My first Mac - still in active duty - was a 12" PowerBook. I bought it this time seven
years ago, and it blew my socks off. Mac OS X was absolutely
stunning. It looked gorgeous, was as stable as a rock, and made my
previous system on Windows 2000 look like the horrible mishmash of dark
arts and bad decisions that it was. No longer was there the need to
consult a horoscope and break out the crystal ball before configuring a
network.
But I really missed maximizing windows.
My first six months on the Mac were in [Mac OS X 10.2] Jaguar. I tried a
fair few hacks to regain maximize and the other things my habits were
calling out for. But hacks are seldom the solution, and never as
graceful as doing things the way the system is designed. Gradually, I
got used to the Macintosh - and specifically the OS X - way. Yet
not so for maximize. "Why couldn't I just learn to live with zoom
instead?" I wondered. But you know muscle memory's cruel
imperative.
Then [OS X 10.3] Panther
came out, I upgraded, and fell in love with Exposé, which is
still one of my favourite Mac features. And somewhere in the playing
around with hot corners, function keys, and Command+Tab shortcuts, I
forgot about the once all important maximize. Somehow it was gone. The
first I noticed was my vexation with a Windows machine at "doing the
wrong thing" when I hit what had finally become the zoom button....
That's not the first muscle memory I've rewired over the years, nor
will it be the last. It seems to be a matter of digging in and getting
involved with a bigger shift. I'd been using computers in full screen
mode for most purposes for donkey's years, and it was only
Exposé's magic which made me stop and think again. All while
simply having fun, too.
WindowShade X, as I understand, is a way to work around having to
use the Dock for window management. I might well have latched onto it
before Exposé, if I'd heard of it at the time. Minimized dock
windows are indeed quite lame - and unworkable beyond a handful.
Windows made the same mistake in 95 and kept on making it in all my
years on the platform: jamming ever smaller shrunken windows down there
the busier you were while using it. Yuck. That's why Panther was such a
breath of fresh air for me: It wasn't just a break from my half-year of
OS X, but half a decade of Windows behind that. Wham. New way to
juggle, find, use, and think about all your open windows. I was
delighted. Still am in fact. Not least with how well it works with
Spaces and [OS X 10.6] Snow Leopard.
Something else to try is "minimize to dock icon" in Snow Leopard.
This makes minimized windows much more sensible, as they shrink to
their app's own icon and reappear only when asked, such as when opening
up the app's dock menu or - very smart - in Exposé itself. Both
Leopard and Snow Leopard have made solid improvements on Exposé.
I dare say Apple likes it.
John
Hi John,
Thanks for the further observations.
I'm not an early adopter by nature. I began
experimenting with OS X on a Power Mac G4 Cube back
in late 2001, but I never really switched to "System 10" for
production work until Panther came out in the fall of 2003.
Interestingly, I've never developed an affinity for
Exposé, although I absolutely love Spaces - and of course
WindowShade X.
Incidentally, I got hold of the latest Application
Enhancer and WSX betas, which were downloaded from links available by
becoming a follower of Unsanity Software's Twitter account. They
installed smoothly and seemed to work fine, so I initially thought
happy days were here again. However, after a few hours I discovered
that the Bold, Underline, and Italic commands had quit
working in text editing applications - at least in Tex-Edit Plus and TextEdit - which was too
crippling to live with. Uninstalling APE and WSX and rebooting restored
normal text formatting behavior, so I guess there are still some bugs
to work out.
However, your suggestion that I try the "minimize to
dock icon" feature, of which I had been unaware, sent me scurrying to
David Pogue's Mac OS X
Snow Leopard; The Missing Manual for full details. I've got to
admit it's pretty cool and removes one of my biggest objections to
collapsing open windows to the Dock. And the associated Dock
Exposé feature may finally win me over to Exposé. In
fact, after several days I'm beginning to think that when used in
conjunction with Spaces, I may even like it better than windowshading
in some ways. Maybe the old dog can learn some new muscle memory.
As I've mentioned before, I agree with the
philosophical view that it's ideal to get along with as few system
add-ons as possible, so I'm going to give this a good shot, and maybe
it will finally wean me off WindowShade X, as a must-have at least -
although I still think the windowshading concept is excellent.
Charles
P.S. As this edition of Miscellaneous Ramblings
Mailbag gets filed, Unsanity Software has released WindowShade X 5.0.1 and Application Enhancer 2.6, which
are OS X 10.6 friendly. Indeed, WSX 5.0.1 requires Snow Leopard,
although Version 4.3 remains available if you are running OS X
10.5. That version is now unsupported, but your currently valid
registration code will continue to work with older releases of WSX.
You can download the previous version of WSX from
http://www.unsanity.net/windowshade-x-43.dmg
Unlike previous WSX upgrades, the version 5.x upgrade
is not free to all registered users. For those who purchased on
or after August 28, 2009, this upgrade is free. If you bought WSX
before August 28, 2009 and you have a previously valid serial number,
you will be given a 33% coupon if you wish to update. The full price is
$15.
Finally Installing Snow Leopard
From Adam in response to Charles Moore Finally Installs Snow
Leopard:
Hi Charles,
LOL on your latest column title - that says it all, I suppose!
:)
I agree with you about Rosetta:
"I was really surprised to discover that the Rosetta
dynamic translator that lets PowerPC vintage Carbon applications run on
the Intel version of OS X does not install by default and had to
be downloaded separately, which fortunately worked fine in Software
Update...."
Fortunately this is a small update and quickly gets loaded as a
one-time deal, but it's omission is puzzling. When I install Mac
OS X on client systems, I always click the Customize button and
choose things like Rosetta and QuickTime 7 (in S.L.), X11 if needed,
disable unnecessary fonts and printer drivers, etc. You can also force
the Snow Leopard installer to copy all available printer
drivers, which solves some problems with missing printers in
updates.
You also mentioned the problem with Application Enhancer being
needed for WindowShade X. Some software which requires that capability
does run on Snow Leopard - I'm using Audio Hijack Pro, which uses the
"Instant Hijack Server.ape" Application Enhancer and works fine through
10.6.3. I wonder why what's different about this than the code needed
for WindowShade?
Best,
Adam
Hi Adam,
Back when I used to do a lot more frequent Mac OS
installs than I have for the past few years, I maintained the habit of
routinely clicking the Custom button and tailoring the install
configuration.
Simply forgot this time.
I now have the latest Application Enhancer beta, and
it works, but either it or the Snow Leopard WSX beta introduces a text
formatting bug that still needs squashing (and probably other issues,
although that's the only one I noticed before uninstalling both.
Charles
Problems with Creator Codes in Snow Leopard
From Sam:
Charles,
Although the fix you found [for opening Tex-Edit Plus documents in
TE+ with a double-click in Snow Leopard] was happily very convenient,
the problem that underlies it is much broader.
In 10.6, Apple dropped support for "creator codes", which allow an
application to "own" a document that it had created. This document
would always open in that application. Newer applications have been
updated to work with the new way of doing things, but older apps (not
just Carbon apps or ones compiled for PowerPC) aren't designed to work
without them.
Sam
Thanks for the supplemental information, Sam.
I had inferred that there must be something like that
behind the behavior, but was ignorant as to what it was exactly.
Charles
Speeding Up Office 2004 on 10.6
From Ruffin:
Charles,
I was glad to see Evan's comment
from the last mailbag that,
"One thing I noticed is that MS Office '04 became
almost unusably slow on my 2007 MacBook. I presume
this would be the case for any Rosetta app."
Personally, I've found Office 2004 to be the most serious Rosetta
offender and have always considered Rosetta's continued existence in
10.6 to be primarily driven by a desire to keep Office users on the Mac
passably happy. And I bet Office 2008 is getting the vast majority of
the time in the Rosetta testing lab now. Evan and I are probably (in
Bill & Steve's minds) supposed to upgrade. Personally, I've found
myself using Office 04 more on older G4 Macs I have, and it's good to
read confirmation that my thinking the performance of 04 on 10.6 stunk
wasn't all in my head.
When I thought I noticed increasingly bad performance with each
update from Microsoft for 2004 on my Late 2009 MacBook, I eventually
erased the up-to-date version and reinstalled the original from the
Office DVD - and haven't updated it. There are some serious drawbacks
to doing so - security concerns, obviously, as well as small pains,
like a smaller number of characters allowed in an Excel cell - but I've
convinced myself that I've noticed a substantial increase in speed and
performance. YMMV.
Ruffin
Hi Ruffin,
Thanks for the comment. I haven't used Word regularly
since Word 5.1 (which I still fire up occasionally in Classic Mode on
my Pismos to access the old Word format files I have archived), but I
do notice that Carbon apps are relatively sluggish running in Rosetta
on 10.6. Fortunately for me, the two I use most - Tex-Edit Plus and
Color It! 4.5 -
are so inherently fast that it's not a big deal with them, but another
Carbon app that I use regularly on a limited basis, MailSmith, has really slowed down in
10.6, especially for functions like deleting multiple message
files.
Charles
Hackintosh: I Gave It a Go and I Was Wrong
From Luke:
Dear Mr. Moore
You may recall, I ranted over the
idea of the Hackintosh. Well, I am recanting my rant from before
because for the past 4 months I've tried everything I could, and I have
yet to succeed. The reason for this email is to tell you that I tried
to build my own "Hackintosh". To make a long story shorter, let me say
its freaking hard to setup and configure. I thought I knew what I was
doing. In the end, though, a real Mac is always the best
option.
I did, however, end up with a decently spec'd Windows game machine
that can triple boot: Windows XP Pro, Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard, and
Ubuntu Linux 9.1. I figure I ended up spending over $800 for my
efforts. All said and done, the Mac OS X side has never fully
worked . . . it literally took me one month to get the LAN to
even recognize. For that, I ended up scavenging some ancient
10-year-old 10/100Base-T PCI card, and amazingly enough the Mac
OS X side saw it and allowed me to use email and the Web. However,
the Mac OS X side feels crippled. No matter what I did, I could
not get it to recognize the Intel HD Audio. Ha ha ha. I can only laugh
after fruitless hours wasted over weeks of tweaking Kexts and mind
numbing hours of trying to understand EFI-X and OSx86.
Yep, the Hackintosh route is only for the tried and true hard core
geek. If it was not for the fact I've learned a ton of What Not To Do,
I think I should have just bought a new Mac mini and built a basic Windoze
computer for all the other crap ( ha ha . . . I am still a
gamer).
I still keep my PowerPC Dual G4 fired up though. It runs a nice
scanner and color inkjet printer with my trusty Photoshop CS. For the
Windows part of my new "Gigamac", as I refer to it, I have had to find
and use Open Source or freeware apps, as I ran outta cash. The most
interesting point though is this: In the four months the Windows part
of the computer has been running, its suffered through over 32
virus/Trojan/malware, the Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard side has had
none, and whereas my trusty Dual G4 Mac in its entire eight year run
has had only 1 Trojan attack, and that sucker was from Microsoft
Word.
Peace & thanks for letting me respond.
Luke
Hi Luke,
Thanks for the report.
I think, as you say, that hackintoshing is a pursuit
for those who like to tinker and fuss with their computers. An
associate of mine has been running OS X on an old Pentium 4 Dell
for about four years now and claims to have just about everything
working, but a real Mac would've been an awful lot easier, and
definitely more satisfactory for someone who wants it to "just
work."
Charles
USB Adapter for PowerBook G3
From Shea in response to CardBus USB
for PowerBooks (published in 1999):
Hi:
I read your old article about USB adapters for PowerBooks and was
wondering if you have any updated info.
I think I have a WallStreet, and I need an
adapter card (if that's the correct terminology).
Shea
Hi Shea,
It's been quite a while since I had a Mac in service
that didn't have built-in USB, and the topic of USB adapter
availability isn't one I've kept up with. I expect the selection
available has thinned out substantially since I wrote the article you
reference.
What you need is a CardBus or PC Card USB adapter.
CardBus has been superseded by ExpressCard, and I would be mildly
surprised if anyone is still making CardBus USB adapters, although
perhaps someone is. There may be some remaindered old stock around, and
used units available on say
eBay.
Check out
Pronto.com and NexTag.
Charles
Editor's note: You might want to read Adding USB
2.0 to a Titanium PowerBook G4 - the same card should work in your
WallStreet. Mac OS 8.6 and later support USB 1.1 on PC Card/CardBus
adapters. Mac OS X 10.1.3 and later are required for full USB 2.0
support. Some cards that claim Mac compatibility:
iPad Wireless with Dial-up
From Lloyd:
Greeting, Sir:
My wife's 40th birthday present (last week) was a 32 GB iPad. Like your household, we were long-term
dial-up users, only switching to DSL last weekend. Since I prefer
wireless for laptop usage, we'd been using an AirPort 'Graphite' base
station to broadcast FasterMac's dial-up signal. Since the
DSL hookup happened after the iPad arrived, it's first taste of the
Internet was via dial-up. (I had to start the WiFi with my PowerBook 1400, but the iPad picked up
the signal just fine. With some experimentation, it might be able to
start the WiFi on its own)
With the world of dial-up shrinking daily (at least in North
America), the chances of there being many dial-up experiences for the
'Pad community is fairly small. But it can be done, and I wanted to
share that knowledge with you and the LEM community.
Best Regards,
Lloyd
P.S. The 'Pad is a nice entertainment device, but I prefer my
Newton MP
130 for productivity uses.
Hi Lloyd,
Thanks for the insight and info.
No iPads (officially) here in Canada yet.
Dial-up is fairly rapidly disappearing in Nova Scotia,
although some users are hanging on despite wider availability of
broadband. I sure feels slow now that I'm acclimatized to broadband.
Hard to imagine how I managed, although part of that dynamic is that
websites continue to get more and more graphics heavy and complex.
Charles
Using Compact Flash as a Hard Drive in a
PowerTower Pro
From Mike:
Hey, just a tip to let those interested in quiet computing with
older desktop Macs know that it can be done. I was inspired to follow
this path after reading the LEM articles on using Compact Flash as a
hard drive* for the Pismo G3. I am now in mobile silent computing
heaven!
However, my main graphics/writing machine is a PowerTower Pro with a very annoying
high-pitched SCSI drive. (And, yes, I had tried everything under the
sun to quiet it.)
Here's what I did. I installed a SATA FirmTek card (from OWC), the
SATA-CF adapter (from Addonics), and a 16 GB CF SLC card (from NewEgg).
Then I booted from CD, formatted the CF card in two partitions, and
copied over the files from the hard drive to the new partitions. I used
the old partition names for the new, just to make life easy.
Success!
Now the only thing I hear are the case fans, the CPU fan, and the
power supply fan (and those are all very quiet, due to installing quiet
fans and a Seasonic power supply). The machine boots up and shuts down
just as quickly and demonstrates very few hiccups. Initially I noticed
some "spacing out" as performance slowed to a crawl. I turned off
virtual memory to solve that, which didn't cause a performance dip,
because the PTP has 768 MB of RAM. Also, indexing doesn't complete. I'm
not sure what's going on there, but other than that, it's been smooth
sailing. The main adjustment I've made is trusting that the computer is
working even when you don't have the hard drive sounds as audio
feedback.
The only other thing that I saw was that my ATTO SCSI card and the
FirmTek SATA didn't play well together. Only booting from a CD allowed
them both to be active at the same time. I suspect both wanted to be
the boot device and this caused a failure to load the OS.
Best,
~Mike
LEM articles on using Compact Flash to replace a hard drive:
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the report.
Silence - even relative silence - is golden, as I
fondly remember from running my PowerBooks off RAM disks back in the
pre-Internet days (in this neck of the woods) with their hard drives
spun down.
Charles
Blocking Flash in Firefox
From Michael,
I use AdBlock Plus for
SeaMonkey and FireFox. Works for me. :-)
Michael
Sent from my G4
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the information and link.
Charles
Word Processor Perfection
From Alvin:
Hi Charles
There's something about word processors that has to be done right, I
agree. There's something dreamy about having the right experience when
it comes to writing. I found OpenOffice
Aqua is powerful, affordable, and clean after you set it up to be
as uncluttered as possible by unclicking things in the View menu.
Optima font is a great font - it's like a cross between Arial and
Palatino, and its very relaxing for writing. It's a great font if
you're going to print it right away (it's not as legible, though, when
it's smaller than the standard 12 size).
Optima font at 14 points - very easy on the eyes.
OpenOffice Aqua 3.2 seems to follow the WYSIWYG engine for Snow
Leopard too. It does save in the standard .doc [format] as well by
default. If you set the Finder's background to Nature and put it to
random to frame the application. It's better to use the the right mouse
button using the Ctrl-plus-mouse combo for font formatting so you can
just palm grip the Magic Mouse, which is very relaxing as it's close to
the hand's natural position as possible (System 9's right button mouse
by holding the mouse for a few seconds would have worked, but you still
have to hold it to retain the context menu). You can hide other and
just focus on OpenOffice, but you could also use Spaces and just click
the app's icon to switch. It takes just one time to setup things, but
it's worth it after. I do like word processors like OmniWeb that goes full
screen, but I think framing OpenOffice with the Finder's background is
a balance, because full screen will hinder your accessibility when you
want to look at the Web or if you need to paste photos on your
document.
With all these in place, it becomes a balance between accessibility
with the Finder, the ambiance of Ommwriter as well as its
unclutteredness, the cleanliness of Pagehand, and the power of major
word processing applications. Nothing will be perfect as long as it's
man-made, but this setup is very close to perfect I think. Copy-paste
might not be it's strength though, as you can see, after Gbu, there's a
one line between Gbu and Alvin which I can't get rid of which is not
present in OpenOffice .
Gbu,
Alvin
P.S. For an affordable live partition resizer, try Ubuntu 9.1. It's
just hard to resize that partition that OS X puts in the middle of
partition (it's 128 MB) using that. If that 128 MB partition could be
resized larger without any ill effects, then this is truly an
affordable partition resizer. If not, then maybe iPartition is
still better (Disk Utility is picky with resizing partitions I
noticed). I'm using OS X now solely.
I still think having separate drives is safer than partitioning for
another OS, even if it's USB external or FireWire - if it's just for
Windows 7 for games at least. If there's more than enough memory, it'll
just load everything there, and you're okay, I think. I think it's
better to have USB 2 1.5 TB for Time Machine and another one for
Windows 7 with less than 500 MB for games if you still have USB left in
your iMac or laptop, LOL. Maybe if you're going more than one external
drive - it's better to just have a DIY server (I'm thinking about it)
for it (PC parts) and just install Ubuntu in an extra Flash drive to
run it. For Snow Leopard to see Ubuntu, which is all that matters for
Time Machine to work or maybe even the Boot Menu (hold Option shortcut)
when OS X boots, it might be tricky, but once you've done that, you can
use that DIY server (just make sure you have a good PC casing like my
former affordable Lancool casing from Lian-Li). You can equip it with
wireless if you like or use CAT5 or higher. You can have more than
three drives for not much money compared to buying external drives or
external enclosures. Ubuntu's system is also a great backup when your
Mac fails; it'll run and save using the CD or the Flash drive (it's
very easy to install in a flash drive). Ubuntu 9.1 is Dvorak
recommended (very skeptical, but he does makes sense too, LOL). It's
also a great backup OS when you need to edit files on your Mac hard
disk and OS X won't boot right.
Hi Alvin,
Thanks for the comments, and glad you've found a word
processor you like.
I still find that my tag team of Tex-Edit Plus and
TextWrangler do
about 98% of my text crunching lately. When I need word processor
capability (e.g.: Word document open/save support) lately, I've been
using Bean, which is a nice little
program, but I miss the text manipulation features and superb
AppleScriptability of TE+.
I have two partitions on my MacBook's internal drive
(currently with Leopard and Snow Leopard installed respectively) plus
an external hard drive dedicated to Time Machine backups - and two
others for hard drive clones and overflow storage. Probably an external
drive is the way to go for running Linux.
Charles
Hi.
Those two are pretty powerful and small, lots of automation. I just
tried them a little bit just now. I might be using TextWrangler every
so often, 'cause it's integrated with Xcode. Ommwriter is really
something else; it just needs a little more powerful and make it more
technical, as I've suggested to it's developer, without cluttering it's
cool interface, which would be a tough challenge. Maybe having it full
screen is like going back to the past when we used to be more focused
and lasted longer, 'cause we were more relaxed. Nowadays, there's so
much going on, so much information at one time, on top of multitasking
we find it a little hard to focus and finish one thing.
I think multitasking is a kind of an illusion anyway. You're really
just doing one thing at a time. We could actually get rid of the Dock,
interfaces, buttons, and menus and focus on just the document just as
you would in real life, if say you're drawing or writing on your pad or
notebook. Although you're focused on one thing, it's possible that
you're waiting for something you started earlier to finish. So
multitasking seems to be just doing one thing now while the others run
in the background. It doesn't have to be presented all at the same
time.
I think the iPhone/iPad OS should be on the desktops too, soon (the
iPhone is really multitasking, 'cause it could run the stopwatch in the
background while a song is playing while you're surfing the Web in
there, it's just not presented at the same time), because it is very
efficient, the apps are small but are powerful (you could combine
things at the same time with your fingers as opposed to the keyboard
and mouse where you really are just doing one thing at a time when you
type a letter or point the mouse come to realize it now as I type
this). It just looks like you're multitasking, because the keyboard and
mouse, the elements on the iMac i7's screen is presented at the same
time, which may be another word for cluttered computing, LOL).
For the normal user and those who are a little technical and don't
want to tweak the insides of the OS's system or need to monitor things
like a stockbroker or nuclear technician would, apps free of menus and
scroll bars in full screen and multitouch is a savior. If they could
just make a screen that wipes out grease from our fingers instantly and
make the display lighter (OLED or something else), it would be nice to
have a 90" surround Avatar-like iMac soon (or at least a 30"), and if
that Light Peak tech makes the Web faster, I think we won't need a CPU
or hard disk or a GPU in our homes or offices. We just need a
multitouch screen and a gesture that is an equivalent to Command-Tab to
switch between other full screen apps.
And then it would be 2012 and the second coming, LOL (I strongly
believe that because as a sign, light technology for transmitting
binary info to and fro is the limit. Maybe it's God's sign that when
you've reached that, He will come again)
Ommwriter's full screen and ambiance concept is the app of the
future (it's just recycling the past actually) I think in our high
stress world (brought about by technology, ha ha - iPhone in one hand,
iPad on the other, Facebook, emails telling you someone sent you a gift
on FB, WOW addiction, etc.), which is really caused by people's lack of
absolute control though. The things have owned a lot of people nowadays
instead of the other way around. The background photo is perfect too;
it's icy and feel very soothing. I'm sure the combination of those
alpha waves or beta waves that helps us work better, LOL. I noticed I
keep coming back to Ommwriter and even making up for its shortcomings
by copy/pasting what I've done there to say Xcode's text editor (or
soon to an HTML5 editor. There's so much tools for the Internet to
format the page the way you like it - Flash, Java, CSS, HTML, etc. I
hope HTML5 simplifies them and really replaces Flash and Java).
Try Ommwriter again, at least for simply the therapeutic/relaxing
effect of writing (it's really a psychology thing, when you express
yourself either by talking or something else, or through art maybe, it
relaxes you - again maybe it's those alpha and beta waves the brain
produces again, that it produces, he he . But really, for me for those
waves to be started it starts with the individual's soul being uplifted
when it shares itself and the gifts God gives it who would give
opportunities for use to share it or not).
Thanks.
Alvin
Hi Alvin,
Well, the world does seem to be going your way with
the popularity of the iPad (and soon myriad Windows and Android
competitors), touchscreen smartphones, and so forth.
Personally, I'm not enthusiastic about touchscreens,
much preferring conventional keyboard and pointing device input.
I have to say that fullscreen application windows have
never much appealed to me either. I tend to prefer keeping tabs on
what's going on in the background.
However, if touchscreens and fullscreen float your
boat, more power to you. It's a matter of subjective taste I guess.
Charles
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