I continued my experimentation with Leopard and my Alesis MultiMix 8 FireWire this past weekend. I have excellent news to report as a result of those experiments.

I installed the new beta driver available from Alesis that specifically mentions Leopard compatibility in the resease notes on the PowerBook G4 I upgraded to test with the stable drivers a few weekends prior. I do not recall whether I updated the PowerBook to 10.5.1 first but I am not sure that is relevant based on my second experiment, see below.

I was tickled to find that the beta driver works without issue on PowerPC hardware under Leopard. I did several twenty and thirty second recordings to make sure the old intermittent static issue didn’t resurface. The sound was clean and consistent. I am a bit superstitious about my main system, a G5 desktop, so will wait until the drivers come out of beta, testing them first on this spare PowerBook. If you are less superstitious, you are probably safe using the beta drivers, now, if you have dire need.

I have a friend who was concerned about the same problems I was having, but he has an Intel Mac. To cover his questions, too, I installed the beta driver on my MacBook Pro, hooked up the mixer, and recorded the same samples. My MacBook Pro was then and is now running 10.5.1 and the beta driver also worked perfectly on my sole Intel system. Again, if you are comfortable using beta drives, I see no reason not to use these.

I have had a smooth ride upgrading my new MacBook Pro to Leopard. I apparently am not running any of the problem child applications. The only one I lost was pre-Leopard, that was GnuCash under Fink, and it seems to have more to do with my new Intel Mac than Leopard. Under Tiger, it would crap out immediately after launching. I can still use it remotely over X on my home network, which is how I prefer to use it anyway. I’ve just lost the ability to run it on my portable while traveling.

I have been using GnuCash for my personal finances for over four years and have not found a Mac native replacement. I have already been through this, so while you are welcome to make suggestions, I am very particular in my requirements and have looked extensively before.

I just ran my old PowerBook through the upgrade, to test GnuCash and my Alesis mixer under Leopard. GnuCash on PPC works fine. There is a font issue under Leopard’s version of X11 that has nothing to do with GnuCash or even GTK+. I found a quick and dirty hack that resolves what is only a display issue, so I know when I do upgrade my G5 desktop where I run GnuCash for the household, it will still work locally and remotely.

I was not so fortunate with my Alesis mixer. I have had bad luck with driver upgrades for this mixer. Alesis released an update earlier this year which I eagerly installed under Tiger on my G5. Then I starting noticing intermittent static coming off the mixer. I switch out mics, cables, everything and it kept happening. Fortunately, that driver package has an uninstaller and the older driver since apparently you need to run the old driver to update the firmware on the mixer itself. So I downgraded and it has been smooth sailing with Tiger and my G5.

Today I upgraded my PowerBook to Leopard as an experiment. The PowerBook was also running this stable, static free driver under Tiger. My Alesis is the Multimix 8 FireWire. This is important, because others have reported rampant static problems with the USB version of the mixer under Leopard. While testing my mixer with the PowerBook newly upgraded to Leopard reveals it does not, the breakage is distinctly not the static problem others have reported with Leopard and the USB version of the mixer. Actually, I may have that problem, too, but because of my own unique breakage I cannot tell.

Under Leopard on the PowerBook, while Garageband shows incoming signal, I am not getting anything back out to the mixer. I have my monitor turned on. This exact same project file and settings worked fine right before the upgrade. I know, I tested it specifically to make sure I had a known good baseline. And, yes, I already made sure the input and output are both routed through the Alesis driver in the preferences. Funny thing is, even if I change the output to the internal audio, I still don’t hear anything coming out.

Leopard with one of my PPC systems and the Alesis Multimix 8 FireWire simply does not work.

I need to rebuild my old PowerBook to give the wife an overdue speed bump. I cannot keep experimenting with my old PowerBook but hers just makes the requirements to run Leopard. I will use her old PowerBook to maintain an experimental Leopard system to test any new revs of Leopard and/or the Alesis drivers until something works cleanly. And in the meantime, the G5 stays on Tiger as I will not change that setup, my main podcasting rig, until I have one just as stable to replace it.

Oh, and I can absolutely confirm that Last.fm hates Leopard or vice-versa. I had to switch to another account with which I never used that particular application. If Last.fm loads at all under Leopard, get the hack saw and start cutting your foot off. I could not prevent the damn thing from loading and every single time it did post login it took Finder with it. Seriously, rip the application from your system and do a fresh reboot and login after doing so to satisfy yourself it won’t come back from the dead before upgrading to Leopard.

Daring Fireball pointed out John Siracusa’s review of Leopard. Like Gruber, I haven’t spent much time with the land slide of reviews. I’d prefer to experience the upgrade, myself, once my 5-pack arrives from Amazon rather than succumb to other people’s preferences and biases.

Siracusa, though, has done a phenomenally in-depth tour of Leopard. I’m a bit agnostic to some of the UI gripes but his reasoning is consistent and perceptive, regardless. The kernel details are engrossing especially since you don’t have to be a kernel hacker to appreciate what he’s written. Siracusa does a wonderful job of providing sufficient detail to appreciate where the lower levels of the OS have evolved or stagnated and why.

It is a lengthy read, I’ve spent several hours and am still not done, but I think well worth it if you want to speak about Leopard in an informed fashion relative to other operating systems like Windows and Linux and in contrast to what has come before with OS X.

Jeff Atwood has another one of his infuriating pieces up. It is a comparison between installing an application bundle on a Macintosh and running the typical installer on Windows.

He quickly gets hung up on the number of manual steps involved in installing an application bundle and wonders why the convention on the Mac is not to use an installer. Sure, going be number of steps, the Mac is longer. I don’t think that makes it more complex or harder. And it completely misses a critical difference between an application bundle (which is not unique to the Mac by the way) and a typical Windows application.

The point of an application bundle is that it is self contained. No external pieces that must be set up just so in order for the application to run. Delete the bundle and the application is gone. No linger registry entries. Yeah, there may be some preference files but they are on the file system, in a standard location, where they can easily be found, identified and discarded if desired. And safely, too.

Application bundles are also usually agnostic of where they are installed. You can put them on your desktop, in your own folder or wherever you find them easiest to use. Granted, this seems to be something even seasoned Mac users miss. A very common issue I have seen with newer Mac users is they leave the applications in the disc image file, even if they keep it in their dock. Launching such an application bundle from the dock still just works, though, opening and mounting the disc image to get at the bundle. I’ll admit that I did this once or twice when I got my very first Mac.

Sure, Mac developers could use the very robust installer that is bundled with the OS X. Some kinds of software, like low level libraries and kernel extensions, do indeed use the installer to make sure all the pieces parts end up just so. The uninstaller could use some work, but the tools are there to build it out. From the command line, you can easily audit where all the parts of a .PKG file went. And as with application bundles, usually, it is safe to just go ahead and manually delete those files.

The installer, though, adds a speed bump to that assumption that the bundles and files are safely user modifiable. The choice to distribute Mac applications as bundles in disc images re-inforces the feeling that these are meant to be safely handle by the user at the expense of a few more steps.

Speaking of those steps for a moment what irks me is that the example Atwood references is not even typical. Most developers do not compress their disc images, so the silliness about digging out the image file is rarely an issue. More and more developers are also adding symbolic links in the disc image with a nice background to the folder that simplifies the process even further without preventing more advanced users for dragging the bundle off to a different, preferred location.

How many horror stories have you heard over the years of a Windows user trying to move or remove an application and disastrously harming their PC? There is no real reason this must be so other than convention and inertia. The Windows installer may be one click, but it is also a black box that band aids a process and end product that most Windows developers do not want the user touching.

Application bundles may seem “harder” to install to the uninitiated but re-inforces that the bundle is merely another kind of file that the user may safe move, remove or copy just like any other kind of file without worry.

And if you want to play a numbers game, how long does a typical setup.exe take to run compared to copying a bundle? All you have to do with the bundle is copy it. You get the same progress meter as any other kind of file copy. With an installer, other steps may be performed and you are limited to the feedback the developer chose to give. Is it copying files? Which ones and where? What does it mean when it says it is configuring?

Mac is only one example of different ways to get new software onto a system. Taking the installer forward to a more logical conclusion you arrive at the package management systems available as an integral part of Linux distributions. Wonder why Jeff didn’t take a swipe at say Ubuntu’s typical software installation? Nice golden hammer you have there.

Jon ably clarifies what the AAC format is and is not, as well as responding directly to severely of Apple’s critics. The misconceptions about AAC also drive me crazy. Sure, Apple is probably the biggest licenser of AAC, which does tend to skew the common perception, but there is nothing stopping anyone else for licensing it, other than the cost per unit. And as Jon points out, and others have recently, while Apple may be the biggest, they are not the sole licenser by any stretch.

This is a fairly coherent piece that I wish had stay much more with the technical details with which it started. The article loses focuses about where it delves a little into apologism, then goes on to double back and try to hold Apple’s feet to the fire.

There are some interesting if weakly framed questions about real market pressures for why Apple has little incentive to act to remove DRM contrasted against real technical costs for maintaining such a complex system. I am not sure I completely buy the arguments about selling DRM-free music side-by-side with FairPlay enabled files. I think he’s more right about regression risks and potentially opening exploits which the labels would gladly use to extort damages from Apple. I just disagree with the magnitude of the problem and that it needs to be solved in the way he postulates.

I think he hints at an aspect that many overlook, though, that while DRM-free music would no longer require key distribution and encryption, it still needs authorized sales and to prevent download in the absence of such. I just don’t buy that Apple would have to re-purpose their existing authorization to work as is but skip the key mangling based on the presence or absence of DRM. Why not embedded a second “store” within the existing store? As long as the front end experience is seamless, who cares?

I’d say read the first part of the article because it does very clearly explain what AAC is and is not as a format. I get a little tired of the misconceptions around AAC. “AAC is an enhanced podcast.” “AAC is DRMed music.” Read that part and stop spreading such misinformation. Take the rest with a grain of salt, as commentary that isn’t really any more or less on the mark than anyone else try to read Jobs’ mind.

Technorati Tags: DRM

I’ve continued playing around with MacFUSE and the file systems I can run on those, sshfs and SpotlightFS.

Secure Remote Disk, the Cocoa front end I mentioned previously, released a new version this week. Actually, they released two, 0.3 and 0.3.1. I recommend you manually download 0.3 and remove your old app bundle before installing it. Then use the auto update feature to get 0.3.1. The auto update from 0.2 to 0.3 does not work, they changed the bundle name between releases.

0.3.1 adds the optional remote directory and the UI is a bit nicer. It now has an icon, too, so the experience so far is much improved. I don’t know if the original tips on usage hold but I haven’t noticed any problems regardless. Seems like this front end is on the right track and I’ll keep using it until/unless something better becomes available.

The ticket I entered for SpotlightFS was resolved but I didn’t get notified. Turns out older versions of MacFUSE look for mount_fuse.fs using the execution path but the binary is buried somewhere under /System. If you find the executable and symlink it into your execution path, say /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, the app works as intended. A future update to MacFUSE is supposed to fix this.

SpotlightFS is nice but seems to be it could use a bit more attention from a usability perspective. The keyword search based on folder name is limited. I guess spotlight saved searches getting the love of proper integration with the file system offsets that simplicity, but some one stop shopping for creating search folders, either simple or complex, would be nice. May have to pull the sources and see if something can’t be done with extended attributes on the file system.

The early work with MacFUSE is promising, though, so I am still looking forward to updates and more interesting Mac specific file systems coming online.

Technorati Tags: FUSE, SpotlightFS, sshfs

In the podcast from the 21st I talked about Amit Singh’s port of FUSE a nifty user space utility originally developed for Linux. Brian pointed out my omission of a link for a related project, Secure Remote Disk, a Cocoa front end for working with sshfs.

I’ve now had a chance to play with both, as well as trying out SpotlightFS which appears to be the first Mac specific filesystem for MacFUSE.

I’ve wanted to use sshfs since I first read about it in LinuxJournal some time back. It definitely lives up to my expectations, althought both GUI front ends fall short. SRD does not allow specifying a remote directory, as far as I can tell. I may be missing something. sshfs, offered from the MacFUSE project pages does allow this option but does not allow me to specify my own mount point. Again, I may be missing something, but for now, the command line it is.

Not that this turns out to be a major draw back. I have successfully suspended my PowerBook a few times with an sshfs volume mounted and have not had a lick of trouble. This being the case, I can well imagine a .command file to run at login to just go ahead and make the connection for me, pretty much eliminating the need to manually mount the remote systems I use most frequently. For ad hoc access, I suppose SRD is a bit more useable given the limitations.

Yesterday, the MacFUSE project released its first Mac specific filesystem, SpotlightFS. This looks very promising, in the words of the author

SpotlightFS is a MacFUSE file system that creates true smart folders, where the folders’ contents are dynamically generated by querying Spotlight. This differs from Finder’s version of smart folders, which are really plist files with a “.savedSearch” file extension. Since SpotlightFS smart folders are true folders, they can be used from anywhere—including the command line!

Sadly, I have yet to get this to work, as much as I would like to. I have entered a ticket for my troubles and am guess this just didn’t get enough testing before he posted it. It seems to be looking for my mount command in the wrong place, at least going by the error in my console.log. I have picked over the contents of the SpotlightFS.app bundle but haven’t found anything promising. Hopefully remedying this is a conf file edit or a symlink away. I’ll update as I make progress with this filesystem.

Overall, though, I was impressed by the ease of installation and stability of MacFUSE. Given that it is only a little more than a week old, I anticipated lots more front ends, filesystems, and useful apps to come building on top of it, both ports from Linux and BSD and uniquely Mac apps, like SpotlightFS.

Technorati Tags: FUSE, sshfs, SpotlightFS

One of the things, as an old Linux hand and a more recent Mac user, that drives me crazy are some of the claims about running open source or free software on the Mac. Sure, it’s technically possible but anything that requires the Apple X11 server can be a it of hassle, especially if you want to use system services like the paste board or drag and drop. I’m not saying they don’t work but it is a bit jarring at times.

Color me tickled to see news of a native port of GTK+ to OS X. This is not to say that GTK+ applications will necessarily look like Aqua applications, but to have them more consistently integrated into the environment will be pretty nice, any way you consider it.

It’s not surprising, given that Andy has written quite a bit about Apple technologies. But in this scathing review of the Zune, he actually compares it to Toshiba and Sandisk’s offerings, as well as Apple’s. This is also the first article I read about the Zune Marketplace’s use of points, though a co-worker had already mentioned it and we were both scratching our heads as to why Microsoft thought it was a good idea. Andy’s remarks on the install process seem pretty consistent with the Engadget blow-by-blow that I linked to earlier.

I am starting to understand why Jon Gruber got so infuriated with Brian Krebs over at SecurityFix. Generally, I think Krebs’ reporting is no better or worse than anyone else trying to present readable yet accurate coverage of security issues that may affect the average user.

However, this post irked me within the very first paragraph.
Read the rest of this entry »

I am unimpressed by what I am reading about the Zune, really. Scanning through Engadget’s very comprehensive story on installing the Zune companion software, well, I don’t think Apple has much to worry about in the immediate future.

There has been a lot more interesting speculation about the Microsoft, Universal licensing deal where the Redmond giant has agree to shell out a nominal license fee per hardware unit. A concession most of the labels would dearly love to extract from Apple. But the only point on which Jon Gruber and Ed Felten agree is that unlike Apple, Microsoft is in a weak market position when it comes to music licensing. They have to take what they can get, like anyone else who does not have nine tenths market share.

Beyond that, Gruber thinks Microsoft is trying to poison the well. He worries that the hardware royalty will eventually spoil the whole market as labels continue to pursue what they no doubt feel is essentially a piracy tax. He thinks this will eventually include Apple, despite their dominant market position.

Ed Felten disagrees on that point and is largely unconcerned. I’m solidly the fence, though I am leaning heavily towards Felten’s view. Apple has not been afraid to tell the labels, “no”, when it is in their best interest to do so. Giving up hardware royalties would immediately affect their bottom line, no if’s, and’s or but’s. However, I hate making prediction as the universe is inherently unpredictable, so I’ll concede that is possible if perhaps unlikely that Microsoft and Universal are laying the groundwork for a shift in some future balance of power negotiation between Apple and the labels.

Is this a big deal? Its not like semthex’s work allowed you to run the full stack, all the way up through Aqua, on your run of the mill beige box. I guess it is disingenuous to play to the open source practitioners then yank the rug out from under them, regardless of the reason. If Apple is so afraid of OSX escaping onto non-Apple hardware, why go the open source route with any of their low level systems software in the first place? You can’t tell me that Marklar doesn’t predate or wasn’t at least closely contemporaneous with their license decision.

This is mildly intriguing, if only because as opposed to previous attempts, it may be slightly more legal, from a license standpoint. The fact that you still can’t run Aqua makes this less exciting. It also begs the question of how is this different from Darwin?

I suppose this is somewhat like the distinction between Linux and BSD, as expressed by my original Linux mentor, Kurgan. Linux enthusiasts like that it allows them to run Unix on a PC, BSD enthusiasts because it is Unix on a PC. (Hope I got the emphasis right, it is admittedly a subtle distinction.)

So if this newsworthy because Mac enthusiasts can run OSX on a PC, even if it is essentially the same as Darwin due to the lack of Aqua?

I’ve had a Yak Pak flap doozy for years. Actually, I bought it through the MegaTokyo fan shwag store. I bought another flap doozy from them it one of the pieces of hardware on the strap came apart within a few months of buying it. Yak Pak hasn’t sold this particular messenger bag directly from their site in quite some time. I ordered what I thought was the equivalent bag from Yak Pak, the small commuter doozy, and it is a joke. I can fit my 12 inch PowerBook, in its sleeve, into the bag, but that’s it. And several inches of the machine hang out, so the flap doesn’t close all the way.

Does anyone else who has either a 12 inch iBook or a 12 inch PowerBook have any suggestions of a rugged yet stylish messenger bag, large enough to fit a sleeved laptop snuggly as well as the usually assortment of geek gear, like the power brick, assorted connectors, pens, and maybe even a computer book?