Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Programming, Review, Software
Thursday Apr 24, 2008
If you have any experience on Unix/Linux systems, you may notice that a few essentials seem to be missing on the Mac. In particular, you may find it difficult or impossible to compile programs. Even something as simple as compiling a Perl module cannot be done, unless you first install Xcode, formerly known as the Developer Tools. The following instructions will show you how to install Xcode. Note that the screenshots are from an installation under Mac OS X Leopard but the installation under Tiger should be similar, except you will use a different version of Xcode.
The following instructions show how to install Xcode from the Web, in case you don’t have your OS X installation disk handy. If you are using Leopard, it may be easier to install from the Leopard DVD - if you’d rather do that, insert the DVD and look inside the "Optional Installs" folder. Do NOT click on Optional Installs.mpkg. Hold on while we navigate the web site for those downloading Xcode, and we’ll catch up with you in a moment. If you are using Tiger, there’s a newer version of Xcode on the Apple web site, so you should probably start there instead of using the version on the DVD.
You must first obtain the correct version of Xcode for your version of Mac OS X. To begin, go to this URL:
http://developer.apple.com/tools/download/
This will place you on the downloads page for Xcode. Note that there are different versions available:
Select the version appropriate for your version of OS X. If you are not already logged in you will have to do so… note that an account is free if you don’t already have one:
Next you should be presented with the actual download page. Select the files you want - you don’t actually need the Release Notes but they may come in handy.
Unless you have the sort of broadband connection that makes everyone else envious, go do something else for an hour or two while Xcode downloads. If you are still on dial-up, get a friend with broadband service to download it for you, or just install the version on your install disk.
Got it downloaded? Good! Open the Xcode dmg package you just downloaded. You will see several packages (you folks who are using the version on the DVD can begin following the instructions from here):
The ONLY one you want to use for this install is XcodeTools.mpkg:
Click on that icon to open it up and you will be presented with this screen:
Click Continue for the legal stuff…
Click continue again and and this pops up:
You can read the license (again) if you need to, but you’ll have to click "Agree" to go on. On the next screen, DO NOT CLICK INSTALL unless you want EVERYTHING in the package. If you don’t need everything (and many users don’t), you will save significant hard drive space by being a bit selective here:
Click the CUSTOMIZE button… just to emphasize the point you want to click THIS BUTTON:
That, in turn, will bring up this screen:
The top checkbox (for Developer Tools Essentials) should already be checked (if not then check it). You ALSO want to at the very least check "UNIX Development Support" as shown above (note the names will probably be truncated as shown above). Pick the selections you want, then click INSTALL. Do NOT click "Standard Install" - that’s there in case you want to change your mind and want to install everything. Note that you can always run this again if you decide you really need one of the components you don’t install during this session. After you have clicked on Install, you will have to enter your password:
And once you have done that and clicked OK, should see this screen for quite some time:
Eventually you will (hopefully) see the screen you are waiting for:
And the installation of Xcode is finished! Now you should be able to compile programs or Perl modules using "make" (assuming you know what you are doing!), write programs for the Mac using Objective-C, and so on. This article will not teach you how to do that, but at least we’ve got you started (we hope).
These instructions and graphics were adapted (with permission) from the (recently changed) instructions for the Mac version of a Perl script called CallerIDpop, which polls a Linksys or Sipura VoIP adapter or phone once per second, and when there is an incoming call it pops up a Growl notification on the screen showing caller information (and more). It can also write a log file of calls received on the adapter. If this is of interest to anyone, see this article on the Michigan Telephone, VoIP and Broadband blog which describes the script and offers it for download. The download is fairly large, but that’s because it contains versions of the software (and instructions) for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
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Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Review, Software
Saturday Apr 19, 2008
One of the complaints you sometimes hear from new Mac users is that there are no games included with the Mac. They think that because Windows includes a few games, the Mac should also. Not everyone wants to play Chess, you know?
Fortunately, this is an easy oversight to remedy. There are some great FREE games out there and today we’re going to tell you about one of them - it is called Klondike Forever and it is one of the best implementations of Klondike Solitaire we have ever seen on any platform. Even at the startup screen you can tell that the design team had someone with considerable graphics skills (Note: Click on any of these images to view them at actual size):
Game play itself is easy, and the layout is beautiful (provided you like the color green):
You can select the screen size, but it hasn’t been updated for larger displays. This is the one issue I found in the software - if you call for full screen play, it will do it BUT it actually temporarily changes your screen size settings. Then when you end the game and it changes back, any other windows you had open are probably not at the position, nor are they the size where you left them. I’m sure this would not be an issue if you normally ran your display at one of the three sizes shown. Alternately, just don’t try to run the game full screen - it will happily give you a window in the dimensions of one of its three supported sizes - or else try to have a few other windows open as possible when you switch to full screen mode.
You can select which items are to be animated, the volume level of sound effects, and select some of the rules to be used:
And this page has more options, and some statistics in the upper left-hand corner:
And if that’s not enough options for you, you can even set a few from the top menu bar:
The web site for the game lists the included features as follows:
- Game rules settings
- Unlimited undo/redo
- Full screen mode
- Highlight playable cards
- Highlight cards of any rank
- Single or double click auto-move
- Sticky click option
- Auto-play to foundations
- Auto-flip face down cards
- Peek at hidden cards
The same company that makes Klondike Forever also offers a couple of other packages - Puzzles Forever is listed as "Jigsaw puzzles brought to life in 3D" and is also free, while Solitaire Forever is a package of "Over 150 solitaire games brought to life in 3D" - however, with the exception of four of the games, these games cannot be freely played until you register. As the site’s FAQ says, "In a nutshell, you get 4 games free, and you can try out all other games, but they will time out after 2 minutes. Registration removes the time limit." I get the impression that Klondike Forever was released freely to show you what the programmers could do, in the hope that you’d want more of their solitaire games.
In any case, Klondike Forever is a beautiful and very configurable game, so what are you waiting for? Go get it, and enjoy it on those rainy summer days when you just need a mental diversion for a while!
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Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Review, Software
Friday Apr 18, 2008
One thing that takes many people who have switched from Windows some getting used to is the relative ease of installing and uninstalling software on the Mac. We’ll assume for the moment that you know how to install a program, but you may have been told that uninstalling a program is easy - all you have to do is drag it to the trash. Well, that is all you have to do to vanquish the original application bundle, but the problem is that if you have run the application even once, it’s probably created other files on your hard drive that will be left behind. In particular, there’s almost certainly some sort of preferences file stored on the drive, usually somewhere in one of the Library folders or subfolders.
While you could search for these and delete them manually (and Spotlight makes that easy enough to do IF you have some idea what the name of such files might be), there is software available to automate the process of making programs clean up after themselves. As is often the case in the Mac world, there are a couple of programs where it appears that the designers put a lot of effort in to making “eye candy”, and naturally those program are not free. They are also a bit cumbersome to use - you have to open the program and wait for it to load, and then drag the app you want to uninstall onto their window. Not quite as easy as just dragging the unwanted app to the trash.
AppTrap takes a different approach. There is no graphic interface until you actually attempt to delete a application by dragging it to the trash. AppTrap runs in the background and when it sees that you’ve trashed an app, it pops up a window and asks if you want to trash the files associated with the software.
AppTrap is FREE and in our experience seems to work just as well as the programs that cost money, though we will grant that it doesn’t have fancy icons or a nice windowed interface to drag apps into. It just waits for you to trash an app in the normal manner, then does its work. There is a tremendous advantage to this approach - you never forget to use it, because it’s always there.
For those that that really, really want some sort of full-featured application with a GUI, but still don’t want to pay for this type of software, mosey on over to the AppCleaner page, and note that there are separate downloads for Leopard and Tiger. From the AppCleaner web site:
Simply drop an application onto the AppCleaner icon and AppCleaner searches for the related files and you can delete them by clicking the delete button.
If you change your mind, just click on the cancel button.
The “Applications” button shows all the applications installed on your system. You can select them and then click on the search button. AppCleaner will search for the related files of the selected applications and delete them, too.
The “Widgets” button shows all the installed widgets and the “Others” button displays all the installed Preference Panes, Plugins and Screen Savers.
We haven’t tried AppCleaner because we are happy with AppTrap, but everyone has different preferences in software, so we mention AppCleaner as another option for those who, for one reason or another, don’t care for AppTrap.
Now, having said that, we will caution you that in our experience, none of these types of applications are able to delete 100% of the files that certain programs lay down on your hard drive. This is particularly true in the case of some “trialware” apps that are free to use for a certain number of days, then either stop working entirely or disable some part of their feature set, in an attempt to coerce you into paying for the software. Such programs use all manner of techniques to make sure that neither you, nor programs like AppTrap can find all of the files they’ve left behind. So, if you install this kind of program with the expectation that it will reset the clock on your expired “trialware” programs, you’ll most likely be disappointed. But if you just want to clean up the preference files and other “normal” associated files (ones that the software author doesn’t make an extraordinary effort to hide), a program such as AppTrap or AppCleaner will usually do the trick.
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Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Review, Software
Thursday Apr 17, 2008
photo credit: CodeFin
Have we mentioned lately that we love free Mac software here in the CrabApple Forest? Those hard cider drinkin’ boys go all mushy (like Applesauce) over something called the MacHeist Bundle, which to us is simply confirmation of the notion that a lot of Mac software is overpriced and could be sold for less. As Lifehacker explains it:
Every now and then, a web site called MacHeist packages up a handful of popular Mac shareware and offers the entire bundle for a significantly discounted rate. Despite criticisms from developers, MacHeist is an obvious win for consumers looking to score some great shareware on-the-cheap. Now MacHeist is back with another bundle offering 12 Mac apps for a measly $49. …..
We interrupt here to note that $49 is only "measly" if you receive that much value from the bundle. We remember back to our younger days, when we might have gotten ourselves suckered into buying an album containing twelve songs, only to find that one of the songs was pretty good, most of the rest were nothing we’d have spent a dime to hear, and two or three stunk like a week-old dead fish after it had been sprayed by a skunk and then dumped on by a big dog. We are not saying this bundle is like this, but we are reminding everyone that quantity does not necessarily equal quality. Anyway, Lifehacker continues:
To be honest, though, this time around I’m not terribly impressed with the options, so I’m rounding up no-cost alternatives to the current MacHeist bundle (minus the three games) that will give you most if not all of the functionality of their shareware counterparts for a grand total of $0.
Yes!!! Free stuff!!! NOW we’re talkin’! So, thanks to Adam Pash and the gang at Lifehacker, here’s a nice little list of free software that you may find interesting. Of course, we hope to keep turning you on to great free software here in the CrabApple Forest, but we’re not above giving a little Apple-flavored sweetness towards others who compile lists of free Mac stuff.
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Posted by JohnnyAppleseed | Under Review, Software
Wednesday Apr 16, 2008
Those of you that have upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard have probably discovered Time Machine. Time Machine is not without its frustrations when you are trying to set it up, but it is hands down one of the best backup systems out there for the typical user. The ability to literally reach back in time and grab a file that was accidentally deleted, or changed in an undesirable manner, is something you don’t fully appreciate until you have used it a few times. It’s really too bad that it doesn’t work as well as it should under certain circumstances (such as when saving to some types of external drives) but we suspect that Apple is working on the problems, and there are supposed to be fixes for Time Machine in the next Leopard update.
One of the frustrating things about Time Machine is it that it makes a new backup once an hour, and there is no way provided to change that timing. As you may imagine, people have various reasons for wanting to adjust that schedule, and fortunately there are two different pieces of free software that will let you do that. Pick one (and only one) and let it modify Time Machine’s behavior to your liking.
The first one we’ll talk about is TimeMachineEditor, which lets you change the default one-hour backup interval of Time Machine. According to the author’s site, you can change the interval or decide to make a backup once a day, once a week or once a month.
The site also describes how it works:
TimeMachineEditor merely updates a system configuration file to change the Time Machine scheduling.
Nothing is installed in your system and you can easily revert back to the default settings (using the ‘Show Default Settings’ menu item from the ‘Settings’ menu).
Once you have changed the scheduling, you can still use the Time Machine preference pane from “System Preferences” as you did before. However the next backup date in the Time Machine preference pane may not be correct, this is just the user interface not being aware of the new scheduling and can be ignored without risk.
The above screenshot shows that it is possible for the user to select an interval. There are more screenshots showing other modes of operation on the author’s web site, so have a look.
The other alternative is called TimeMachineScheduler, and it will let you set the backup interval of Time Machine from 1 to 12 hours.
The feature list for TimeMachineScheduler is as follows:
- Set the interval from 1 to 12 hours.
- Run the backup manually or automatically also at startup, login or when the daemon has been loaded.
- Display the status of the daemon, of the backup volume and if the backup is currently running.
- Automount, an option to mount and unmount the backup volume automatically (see known problems).
- Option to hide the backup volume (to take effect a Finder relaunch is required).
You can visit the TimeMachineScheduler web site for more information. Sooner or later we expect Apple to include this functionality in Time Machine itself, eliminating the need for add-ons such as these. Until they do, you can use either of these programs to get Time Machine to backup on your schedule.
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