Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

Well that was an interesting little exercise. The previous post (Traffic Woes) was written by pen on my Dell Pocket PC in its Notes app. Rather than go through several steps to export the note as text I simply dragged a copy of the actual Note which has the extension PWI to the Mac’s desktop.

I dropped it into Tofu and there was all of my text as I had written it, along with some XML-style code. I dropped it into an editor (Scrivener) and removed the spurious code, then tidied it up before posting it to the blog. There it was, pasted into the blog’s online editor. Great. I post and there’s nothing in the entry.

Mmm. Paste as plain text. Still nothing. Go back and save the text as plain text, then re-open it and copy and paste. Still nothing. I guess there was more to that PWI file than simple ASCI. Damn those Microsoft files!

In the end I went back to the Dell and pasted the text into Pocket Word and saved as plain text. That worked.

I know it wasn’t a virus, or even nefarious, but I still feel infected.

Why use the Pocket PC in the first place? Let’s just say that when they were writing the Transcriber handwriting recognition software for this thing: they were using MY handwriting! If you saw my writing you’d say it looked exactly like Marker Felt in iPhone Notes, and Transcriber “transcribes” it flawlessly. Credit where credit’s due.

Not being in control; that’s one of the major causes of stress. One of the great and pleasurable aspects of owning a computer (particularly a Mac) is that you are in effect the master of this one small part of your life. Set things up to reflect your tastes, assign your shortcuts, arrange windows just how you like them etc. But when it comes time to connect to the outside world, now someone else is in the driving seat.

One day or hour or minute you’re getting great down load speeds, the next, you’re not. It’s all so seemingly random. No wonder that the internet is compared so often to traffic and transportation; in most areas of your life you can assert control, or buy control if you have the means — but when it comes to driving from here to there, or downloading from there to here, well, tough.

I have one thing that I repeat to myself whenever I am having a particularly kludgey down load session: It’s not me, it’s them.

In the past I’d dive in and start to adjust my network settings in the vein hope of curing this latest slow down, when half an hour ago everything was running along nicely. What had changed in the last half hour? Nothing at this end. Like I said, and forgot, it’s not me, it’s them…

I used to get really angry on my drive to work each day. There was one particular intersection where traffic (including me) waiting to turn would be held up for what seemed like forever. Certain folks would feint driving straight through, and at the last moment, make the turn from inside the intersection, around the legitimately turning traffic, and holding up that traffic even more.

My blood would boil, and then I taught myself a little game; I imagined that I lived in Viet Nam where everyone is a terrible driver. Rather than fume and cuss at the bad drivers I calmly accepted the fact that they were all bad drivers and instead, quietly celebrated whenever I might spot someone actually driving well.

Finally that idea didn’t hold either, and I ended up taking an all together different, and longer route. I had to leave home five minutes earlier but those five minutes saved my sanity. I know there’s a lesson in there somewhere; one that I can migrate to the internet and downloading woes. Wish I knew what it was.

Maybe it’s just this: Relax.

Recently, Apple released Safari for Windows to broaden their user base, and that of standards compliant browsers in general. At about the same time they released the guidelines for creating web pages that could be optimized for the iPhone.

They stressed the concept of conformance to web standards and the use of the simplier forms of enhancements, like javascript and CSS, rather than full blown Java or Flash applets. So, theoretically, we would have pages that are viewable on any modern browser and platform, including the iPhone.

For a long time there were articles complaining about the number of websites that could only be viewed properly using Microsoft Internet Explorer; while Firefox and Safari followed the rules, they couldn’t always display pages tested only for the cludgy Microsoft browser.

Now there is no excuse for lazy web developers who use IE as their primary browser not to at least see how their new pages would look in Safari, and then fix them so that they’ll look as good and be as functional — in any browser.

All fine and good — and yet… Now we are seeing lots of sites that look great in iPhone, and are geared towards the iPhone user, but try to look at them with the gold standard of compliance, namely Safari, and you get kicked right off.

What went wrong here?

Imagine a single device that combines a display (17 to 30 inches), speakers, and network connectivity (wifi and fast ethernet). Several of these “iScreens” could be placed throughout your home, connecting back to your main Mac hub.

You walk into any room in your house that has an iScreen and you access and control it using your iPhone. On the phone’s main screen is an AV icon. When you tap that icon the AV controls appear and the phone sends a signal to the iScreen that turns it on and resumes whatever you were watching or listening to the last time you were in that room.

For argument’s sake, let’s say that the last time you were watching Tv channel 2 — that channel comes up on the screen and the phone shows the Tv controls. At the top of the phone screen are two buttons: one for Sources that causes the media-type chooser to slide into view, and one called Settings . Between them is a slide button to turn off the iScreen. Immediately below the two buttons is a roller displaying all the available TV channels (emanating from the Mac, which is interfaced to your cable box/satellite receiver/whatever), as well as un-watched recorded shows — with the current channel selected.

Rolling to another channel causes a pop up to show live TV from that channel or recording on the phone, not on the iScreen. Tapping the pop up, or pressing the right arrow on the roller changes the channel on the iScreen. You can also step through the channels by feel, using the volume switch on the phone. Below Channels is a Mute button and a volume slider.

The last item is a Record button that, when pressed, turns into an Unlock slider. When unlocked, recording begins and a pop up asks the recording duration, input for an optional name, and Done and Cancel buttons. The recording function also works with channels being previewed, so you can spot a show and start recording without disturbing others in the room who are watching channel 2. As you move the recording duration roller it displays remaining minutes and hours, as well as corresponding end-times (for example: 90 minutes — 10:30 p.m.).

The Settings view for Tv would include sliders for brightness, contrast etc., along with a scheduler for time shifting that shows the next seven days of shows; just click a show to highlight it for recording. More elaborate settings would be handled on the Mac.

Remember: The shows are coming from, or being recorded to the Mac; the iScreen is just the viewer and the phone is just the controller.

As well as TV, the other sources would include: Movies, Music (and Podcasts), and Radio.

Movies would be handled pretty much the same way they are handled using iTunes on the phone; only this time the actual movies are stored on the Mac and viewed on the iScreen. If you quit a movie before it ends you are asked if you want the remainder transfered to the phone for private viewing the next time you physically sync.

iScreen music is handled just like movies — accessing the files stored on the Mac; only this time you have the option to sleep the iScreen’s display and just use its loudspeakers.

Radio includes internet radio (from the Mac’s iTunes), Satellite radio (if attached), and broadcast (if attached). All of the different radio sources can be subjectively tagged and grouped into a common seamless Favorites list. Recording functions, like those for TV, could also be included.

So, say you’re watching Pirates of the Caribbean, “Did someone say: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?…” At the same time that the others in the room are continuing to watch the film, you are choosing the other one on the phone’s display. You voice your suggestion and if they agree — you tap to commit and the iScreen serenely fades to black and then up comes the new movie, or show, or song; what have you. Right there and then. No more special moments ruined by on-screen displays and channel flipping when you’re not the guy with the remote.

…Now there’s Loose Stitch—an online outliner that works in Firefox, Safari and iPhone. It works in much the same way as any stand-alone outliner, and can even import your existing files provided they are in the universal OPML format…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Some Great Web-Based Services — Loose Stitch

Generally speaking, OS X has been rock solid for me — with one glaring exception. Some time ago iCal died. One day it launched and immediately quit again, and it’s been like that ever since.

At first I sent off the crash logs to Apple, but I don’t bother now. I’ve searched through those logs but it’s all double-Dutch to me. A little research revealed that I might be missing an important system font — no, it’s there; or that some background tweak is clashing with iCal — no, if I start as another user with nothing loaded it still crashes.

My hunch, and there’s nothing scientific about this, is that I installed a trial version of Photoshop 7 at one stage and that modified the system in some way that killed iCal.

The long and the short of it is that iCal is gone so from time to time I’ve tried other free OSX calendars. One was Sunbird (ugly), one was Google Calendar (works best with Firefox, which I hate, and only when connected), and PandoCalendar.

I quite like PandoCalendar. It’s a little bit funky for my liking, but that’s easily fixed by going into the preferences and changing a few fonts and colors. There are no week or day views, only the whole month is shown; hover over a marked day to see a speech bubble pop up with the day’s tasks and appointments.

I really like how it can be configured to speak the appointments as well. Love that.

Appointments are quite clunky to set; after clicking a date, you click for a new appointment and then manually enter the start time. It would be really cool to be able to select the hour or minute and then spin the mouse wheel to change the value. See, I’m already spoiled by iPhone!

It is subtle enough that I will probably keep it running in the background for reminders related to operation of the Mac itself; I have a (forgive me) Dell VGA PDA for my regular scheduling.

PandoCalendar

Interesting Times Ahead

“Ooo la la, what’s this? Apple filed a patent application for a “mouse with optical sensing surface.” That’s right, a multi-touch mouse building upon the touch-sensitive mouse patent app we’ve already seen from Apple. This beast would allow for a buttonless pointing device which could sense the position of your digits for a myriad of gestural and positional control. Whether this is a patent to safeguard a brewing idea or actual product in the pipeilne is anybody’s guess. Surely this filing, along with those for a backside touch interface and touch sensitive bezel give us a clue as to Apple’s product mindset. Multi-touch MacBook touchpads anyone?”

Engadget — Apple applies for multi-touch mouse patent

I really cringe when I see articles that say that it’s some kind off a rip off if Apple charges $599 for a phone that theoretically can be broken down into $250 worth of components.

Here’s the thing.

A Toyota Corolla probably costs around $2000 in parts — a famous painting probably costs $2.

You pay what you want to pay or you pass.

Apple spent years designing and perfecting the software that everyone is now finding so delightful. They produced hardware that is every bit as well executed as any fine wristwatch. Apple have 5 other equally amazing projects on the back burner that will be financed by this thing.

Finally, hundreds of thousands of people are perfectly happy to pay the asking price. If the retail price was $300 instead of $600: Yes, Apple still would have made a profit, but 6 million people would have lined up in the weekend, 5 million of them would have gone home empty handed and the AT&T infrastructure would have collapsed under the strain.

So, what if Jesus himself turned up next Friday? After the initial excitement there would be articles pointing out that: “Turns out he’s only the SON of God,” “he’s only regular flesh and blood,” “You have to sign up with Christianity…”