Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Review, Software
Wednesday Apr 30, 2008
Just a heads up on a new release of a program called FreewarePub KidiFree (page is in French, but you can use Google for an English translation), which apparently attempts to keep track of the available Mac freeware out there. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s probably because this software was previously only available in a French language version. Now, when you initially install the program, you can select English as your desired language, but we warn you upfront that not everything has been translated. In particular, certain menu options seem to have been missed in the translation process. It’s not a big deal, since the program seems pretty intuitive.
The search feature could be better - it appears to only search software titles, not descriptions, which could make it less than useful if you don’t have some idea what you’re looking for. But if you just feel like browsing through a collection of available freeware, this will let you do it. One interesting feature (which we did not try) was that apparently it will let you save a collection of freeware in a designated directory, then burn the whole mess to a CD or DVD. What might be a good feature is that it lets you designate certain programs as favorites - but there’s a definite problem here. We designated “Bean” (a freeware word processing program) as a favorite, and look what happened when we went back into favorites and clicked on it:
Yes, that’s the wrong program, and the description is in French. This apparently happened because we still had some text in the search field, but when we removed that text and tried again, it then showed the correct program - but the description was still in French! Clearly, FreewarePub KidiFree needs some additional work. But, if you simply want to be able to browse available Mac freeware (the way you would browse, say, used CD’s in a thrift shop) then this program should at least work well enough to allow that. Hopefully they’ll fix the bugs and complete the English translation soon. If you know of a better free program to browse Mac freeware, please let us know in a comment!
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Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Hardware, Software
Wednesday Apr 30, 2008
One issue that some Mac “switchers” have encountered is that the colors on the Mac display look just a bit washed out compared to those on a PC. It’s generally not enough of a difference that anyone would complain; in fact, many new Mac users would think it was their imagination, or would attribute the difference to hardware variations (different display or graphics card).
In reality, however, there is a difference, and it is due to a configuration choice made by Apple. There is a page that describes the issue in some depth:
A solution to Mac “Save For Web” colour discrepancies
The gist of the problem is that Apple has chosen to, by default, go with a gamma setting of 1.8, whereas other systems use 2.2 as the default. On the above-mentioned page, it gives this bit of wisdom: “Unless you have a color management expert instructing you otherwise, select a 2.2 gamma and a D65 white point.” However, the white point is not as important as the gamma, and you may wish to use the default white point that has been determined to be right for your display. It’s most important to change the gamma setting, and calibrate the display in the process. How do you do this? By setting up a new color profile. This is fairly easy to do.
First of all, if you are using the “Shades” program (or any other program that gives you software control over display brightness or any other display parameter), go into the program or preference panel and turn it off before you begin this process, otherwise it may fight you at every step of the calibration process, turning an easy task into a really difficult one with less than satisfactory results.
Go to System Preferences, click on Displays, then go to the “Color” tab, then click on “Calibrate”:
Then follow the instructions. BUT, before you change the setting of your display’s contrast (using the control on the display itself), make a note of the current setting. You will be changing it as part of the calibration process but once you are all finished, you may decide that you want to go back to that setting, or something reasonably close.
During the calibration, when you are asked to adjust the monitor’s brightness, it will say to set it to where you can “just see” the oval:
The only problem is, Apple’s idea of “just seeing it” and yours might be a bit different. We wound up using a setting that was a bit more than where the oval was just barely perceptible, but still a bit less than where the two halves of the surrounding rectangle started to appear as different, and that seemed to work best. Originally we tried setting it where the oval was just barely perceptible, but then after the adjustments were completed we couldn’t get a monitor setting that we liked (everything was too dark for our liking, particularly on some of the wallpaper).
When you get to this screen:
You want to select the “2.2 Television Gamma” because that is the setting used on most non-Apple computers, and therefore that is the setting that most graphics (including those on the Web) are adjusted for. This is the setting that Apple probably should have used in the first place - at least they give you the option to use it, but we think it should have been the default. On the next screen you’ll be asked to select a target white point:
We suspect that “D65″ and “Native” are very close on modern displays (perhaps even identical). You can try both and see which works best, or you can just go with the recommendation from the above-mentioned article to use D65.
When you are all through, you are likely to see color in places that only looked grey or washed out before. That is because Apple’s default color profile and gamma setting tends to wash out certain colors. But, unless you have just acquired your Mac, it will look strange to you, because it’s not what you’ve become used to. You may have to try adjusting the monitor’s brightness and contrast to get something you like. The interesting thing is that whites may seem “whiter” than before and that may throw you a bit, but it will also show how screwed up Apple’s default color profile is. Try it for at least a day or two before you decide you don’t like it. We found that by setting the monitor’s contrast back to the original setting (the one we told you to note in the previous paragraph) and then using the brightness to adjust the monitor for best picture yielded the best results, but your results may be different.
If you decide you really hate the calibrated profile, you can always go back to the default Mac color profile for your monitor, but then you can expect displays on other computers to look strange. Keep in mind that if you’ve gotten used to looking at washed out colors, it may take some time to adjust!
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Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Review, Software
Sunday Apr 27, 2008
Let’s face it, some people are more interested in the weather than others. There are some people who are content to go look out a window and see whether it’s sunny or raining, and that’s all they need to know about the weather. Then there are the people that faithfully watch the 6 o’clock news just to see the weather report, and then there are those folks who want to know every little detail about the weather.
Unless you are content to be a window-looker (or, on the other extreme, you are the sort that chases tornadoes in a pickup truck), your need to know the current and upcoming weather will probably be met by WeatherDock 2. Now, we must admit that there are several programs and widgets that will show you your local weather on the Mac - there’s certainly no shortage of free weather software - but we like this one for several reasons. First, it’s very flexible in how it displays the weather. We have it set up to display the current conditions in the top menu bar, and then there is a drop-down that shows the forecast for the next several days:
Click on a particular day and a window pops up with even more information (this window can also be accessed from the dock icon if you choose to use that):
The drop-down tray that is shown above is only seen when a particular day is selected, and gives additional information about that day’s forecast.
While we like the menu bar operation, it’s also possible to have a dock icon with badges representing various current conditions. A similar icon with optional badges can be placed on the desktop, if you’d prefer it there.
There are an unbelievable number of preferences that can be set on this program, but we don’t want to leave you with the impression that it’s difficult to set up, because it isn’t. Basically all you really have to do is tell it the locations (yes, you can have more than one) for which you wish to receive weather forecasts, and then tell it how you want the current conditions displayed (menu bar, dock icon, desktop, spoken aloud, etc.). Note that you can tell it exactly which parameters you want to see. For example, if you couldn’t care less about the barometric pressure, but the current wind speed is important to you, then you can choose to omit the one and display the other in the menu bar or on the dock, etc.
Finally, unlike many programs of this type, it is not U.S.-centric. It gets its data from The Weather Channel and weather.com, and can display conditions and forecasts for hundreds of locations worldwide, however the available data isn’t the same for every location. You can add any location to your favorites, or remove it, but what is slightly confusing is that you can add a location through the preferences menu or by using the "Favorites" button in the main window, but you can only remove a location using the "Favorites" button.
And the best part is, WeatherDock 2 is freeware (but the author does accept donations). We happen to think that WeatherDock 2 is far superior to any other weather program we’ve seen on any platform. Download and try it and see weather you agree (sorry about that, we couldn’t resist).
photo credit: TeledyNIt’s a pretty sure bet that you’ll get a more accurate forecast from WeatherDock2 than from the critter in the cage above (in case you’re wondering, that happens to be Wiarton Willie, the resident groundhog for Wiarton, Ontario, Canada).
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Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Crabapple, Opinion, Software
Saturday Apr 26, 2008
We almost titled this, "The post you never saw (because the dog editor ate it)." That’s because we tried out a new editor plugin for Wordpress here in the CrabApple Forest, and discovered (too late to do us any good) that it doesn’t autosave our partially written articles, the way the native Wordpress editor does. So if you make a dumb mistake and leave the editing page, as we did, there’s no draft copy to fall back on. Although we are not motivated to rewrite the entire article, we will refer you to some pages that we had referenced in that article, that we had intended to share with you.
photo credit: emsefThe first page describes how you can create Automator actions that will show or hide "hidden" files on the Mac, including the infamous .DS_Store files. This same tip could be used to provide easy access to just about ANY shell script that doesn’t require user input:
Quick Tip: Show/Hide Hidden Files
If you prefer to do this the old, manual way from the terminal, that’s explained here. The second thing we intended to explain was this:
How to prevent .DS_Store file creation over network connections
That article, from Apple’s support site, shows how to keep your computer from leaving "Mac droppings" (those infamous .DS_Store files) on other computers on networks you may be connected to. Normally you don’t even see those files unless you instruct Finder to let you see them, and that was the point of the first tip above.
So if you follow the advice in the second tip, your Windows and Linux using friends will have one less thing to crab about when you connect your Mac to their local network, either physically or over certain types of remote connections. We are sorry that you missed the witty prose and sparkling commentary of the original article, but we have learned that autosave is an invaluable feature in a blog editor and although the built-in Wordpress editor may not be as flashy as the one provided by the plugin, at least it works and doesn’t let our text fall into the great bit-bucket in the sky.
Now please pardon us while we go off and have a crabfest about how well things are (not) working in Wordpress lately…
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Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Crabapple, Hardware, Programming, Review, Software
Friday Apr 25, 2008
EDITOR’S NOTE: First, an administrative note: We’ve been having some real issues with Wordpress version 2.5, and a lot of effort has been focused on fixing them this week. Until we have those worked out, our frequency of publication might be a bit lower than we’d prefer. Enough said about that, now on to today’s tip…
photo credit: mac_vegetarianWhen Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) first came out, one of the greatest new features - and, unfortunately, one of the most frustrating for some users - was Time Machine. Time Machine is probably one of the best pieces of backup software ever written, in that it makes it absurdly easy to retrieve previous versions of accidentally (or purposely) erased or damaged files. But the only problem is that for many users, it has only consistently worked well if you were willing to dedicate a hard drive (or at least a partition) to Time Machine.
Some users have other storage sitting out on their local networks (known as Network-Attached Storage, or NAS), and wondered why they couldn’t use that for their time machine backups. The funny part is that shortly after Time Machine first appeared, a company called Xiotios Software came out with a small program called iTimeMachine which had only one purpose - it enabled the use of AirDisks and Network Disks in Time Machine.
And it worked, until Apple came out with an incremental upgrade to Leopard, which promptly broke the ability to use external disks for backups for many users. Another upgrade, and some users have reported that they can use external drives, while other still cannot.
We think that what iTimeMachine does is the equivalent of opening a terminal window and entering this:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
… which is another method that some folks have used to allow Time Machine to access networked drives. But this alone doesn’t seem to be sufficient in some cases. Today, Mac OS X Hints published an article describing a three-step process to create a Time Machine backup on a network-attached storage (NAS) unit. 
photo credit: Kai HendryUnfortunately, it comes a bit too late for us - earlier this week we bit the bullet and dedicated an external drive to Time Machine, rather than making further attempts to save Time Machine backups to a drive connected to our “Unslung” Linksys NSLU2, which would probably have worked had we had the above information available.
Our “Crabapple of the Week” gets tossed at Apple, for not making Time Machine work well with network-attached storage, or even their own AirDisks, in the first place, and for not yet fully supporting them even as I write this. Of course, those hard cider drinkin’ boys will have already run down to the Apple store to buy a Time Capsule, but for those of us not ready to open our wallets every time Apple comes out with some new (and, dare we say, sometimes overpriced) gadget, information on how to make Time Machine use our existing devices is much appreciated. And another Crabapple goes to Apple for giving out questionable information (this is a quote from Wikipedia’s page on Time Machine):
….. According to Apple, it can only be backed up to network drives if they are being hosted by another computer running Leopard (including Leopard Server). Further, the volume needs to be formatted with the HFS Plus file system, with journaling enabled. External hard drives typically are pre-formatted with the FAT32 filesystem. To use Time Machine, the hard drive must first be formatted, which erases all data. The hard drive will not require formatting if it is already using the HFS filesystem.
Except that for a period of time after Leopard was released, we were making successful Time Machine backups to a drive attached to the aforementioned Linksys NSLU2, which runs a version of Linux, not Leopard. Oh, and the drives were formatted using EXT3 (the format used by the NSLU2) and we did not reformat them, and Time Machine did not erase any data on the drive. So, if the above information from Apple (as reported in Wikipedia) is true now (and we do not believe that the above is entirely true), it’s because Apple changed something during a recent Leopard upgrade. Would Apple deliberately try to make users think they have to purchase a Time Capsule, or at least use a dedicated external drive, even if that’s not strictly true? We won’t speculate further on Apple’s possible motives for spreading questionable information, but we do wish they would just go ahead and fix Time Machine to play nicely with whatever external storage the user may have available.
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