Macgasm

It seems like every time I read about the applications someone uses on their Mac, I find a new gem. So we are going to start a series here to share some of this information.

What I do: I am currently a system administrator with a development team at IBM, and just finished an Agricultural Business degree with a minor in computer science, and I am a photographer. My MacBook sees a wide range of use.

Apple Apps I use:

Safari: I like webapps, and live in my browser. When I first started on the Mac I clung to Firefox for a while, but with time grew to prefer the integration of Safari. I never used a ton of plug-ins on Firefox, so I didn’t miss much with Safari. I quickly got used to the way Safari handled things like auto-completion, and for some reason I like the way WebKit renders. Finally with Safari 4′s speed and new tab “Top Sites” feature, I was sold. However, I love Google Chrome, and when it comes fully to the Mac, I might switch.

iTunes: I love iTunes. I know many hate it, but it just works for me. As with most Apple products, the advantage is in the details. Things like various ways to customize your view, and I love the new Genius playlist feature. iTunes is generally speedy, and I love the fact that the rewind, play/pause, and fast-forward keys on my MacBook work no matter what. Windows never did that without trouble.

Terminal: The one sentence explanation of why I run a Mac is the “it just works” of Windows on a Unix base. I have just grown too accustomed to the Unix command line to go without it. And for development and system administration, there aren’t really many alternatives. Some people prefer iTerm, and I used it off and on in the 10.2 and 10.3 days. But Terminal with Leopard integrates perfectly into the system, supports tabs, and I stick with a modified “Homebrew” theme with semi-transparency. It sounds like eye-candy, but when you can pull up a documentation page with IP addresses or other information, and run your terminal right on top of it, things get done quicker and more accurately. I recommend looking into alternative fonts to keep things easy on your eyes. Hivelogic recently ran a good post on programmer/console fonts, my current pick is Inconsolata.

Spotlight: I am typically very organized about my filesystem, but I find Spotlight to be very useful for speed. I ran LaunchBar through a trial period, and preferred it, but it wasn’t worth the cost to me when Spotlight does 95% of what I want LaunchBar to do. I hit Cmd-Space and type the first few letters of the app or file I want to launch, and bam, its done. My obsessive compulsiveness on the computer leads me to mostly keep files off of the desktop, and minimize apps in the dock, so a launcher is perfect.

Time Machine: This should have been invented a LONG time ago. It should exist on every major operating system. For years geeks have been writing rsync scripts to do this, but why someone didn’t create a simple interface for “everyman” to use this, I don’t know. But it is a lifesaver. I still don’t do a good enough job with off-site backup, but at least I know I’m covered unless a metor hits my house, or some other terrible thing.

That is about it for built in stuff. There are some system utilities that see a little bit of use, but not enough to be considered my choice. I like TextEdit, but between TextMate and full blown word processors, it doesn’t see much use. I will pop up dashboard once in a while to check the weather, but my iPhone serves that purpose most of the time now. And I use Leopard’s quick look often, but that is less of an app and more of an OS function.

Third Party Apps I use:

Acorn: I had considered buying Acorn before it was in the latest MacHeist bundle, but with it in the bundle it was a slam dunk. It is a great little app for minor image work. I kinda think something like this should be included with the OS, but on the Mac, Acorn does it. A similar app on the PC is Paint.net. $49.95.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: Photographers have a number of choices for RAW image organizers, but the two most popular are Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and Apple’s Aperture. I don’t really remember why I picked Lightroom, but I have tried Aperture since, and I was disappointed. I think it is just a matter of picking one and getting used to it. Aperture does offer better integration with iPhoto and the ability to build books and cards for Apple’s printing service. Lightroom offers great integration with Adobe Photoshop. $299

Bean: I love Bean. I wish I had more reason to use it. It is lightweight, well featured, and has a clean design. So many free OSX apps are Linux/Windows apps shoehorned onto the Mac, but Bean is not. The Windows/Linux answer to Bean is Abiword, which is a great product, but Mac fit and finish is almost always better. $Free

Burn: Similar to Bean, Burn is a free, open source OSX exclusive that does things well and simply. Remember what I said about liking Unix earlier? A big part of Unix is the idea of apps that do one thing but do it well. Bean and Burn are like that. $Free

Caffeine: Nice little tool. Start up caffeine and nothing happens, but an empty coffee cup appears in your menu bar. Click on the icon and it fills with steaming hot Joe, and your Mac won’t fall asleep on you. Very handy for doing things like watching videos. $Free

CoverSutra: Some good stuff here. CoverSutra puts the Track, Album, Artist, and artwork for the song you are currently listening to in iTunes on your desktop. Very cool, looks nice. But the killer feature to me is the keyboard shortcuts. At home I have a beloved Apple Extended II keyboard. I like it better than my IBM Model M keyboards, but it lacks those keyboard controls I mentioned above. With CoverSutra I can hit F6, and up pops a box with song info and controls. I can hit the spacebar to play or pause, and Cmd-Right or Cmd-Left to skip tracks. Quite handy. I got mine from an old bundle, but I would pay $20 for it again. $19.95

Disk Inventory X: I remember triple booting Windows 98, NT4, and Red Hat Linux all on the same 500MB hard drive. I remember buying my first 80GB hard drive and wondering what I would ever fill it with. But time moves on. MP3′s go 256K, image files turn into 14bit 10MP RAW, and movies go HD. I now have a 320GB HDD in my MacBook, and recently had to move my photo archive to an external disk because my poor MacBook was packed to the gills. Disk management is tough. Disk Inventory X is a lifesaver. It gives you a visual diagram to show you what is taking up space. See that big block on the right, it’s all those TV episodes you downloaded from iTunes but don’t watch anymore. Back them up and get them off your main drive. Huge help, and $Free.

Dropbox: Speaking of hard drive issues, Dropbox has been awesome. I end up using an extra ThinkPad at home with Linux sometimes, and I keep a Windows ThinkPad in the office for weird issues that need it. I keep all of them hooked up to Dropbox so all of my important info is just a click away. The (possible) downside is that you have to have a separate folder for Dropbox, instead of just telling it to sync your entire home directory, but this can be nice to keep stuff that is too big in it’s own place. The service also provides web access, which is useful when you are using a friend’s or public computer. The 2GB account is free and gives you enough space for the important documents and a few key media files, and the 50GB account will let you keep almost anything short of a large photo collection or music and movies. For many users, 50GB will hold everything. $Free for 2GB, $10/month for 50GB, $20/month for 100GB.

Google Notifier: I was an early user of GMail. I loved the web interface, but wanted the integration a built in mail client provided. I was excited when GMail added IMAP, and used it for a while, but I missed GMails keyboard shortcuts, address book, and speed. Merlin Mann of NetNewsWire: I go back and forth on this. I will use Google Reader for a while, then I will use a desktop news reader for a while. I love the fact that you can plow through feeds with just your spacebar using NetNewsWire. I like the email inbox type view, and how easily it opens up things in a browser window. But I don’t like that it only syncs every half hour, and I often feel like it doesn’t pick up on feeds until hours after they are published. So it is a mixed bag. NetNewsWire is a great product, and allows syncronisation with the iPhone app, the web app, and readers for other operating systems. It comes down to a matter of preference. In truth part of the reason I am currently using NetNewsWire is my continued paranoia about how much Google is keeping my info. $Free

OpenOffice.org: Open Office is a really nice project, but has a bit of a checkered past with the Mac. This is a prime example of the issue I mentioned above with open source software. It is often designed with Windows or Linux in mind, and shoehorned onto the Mac. Until the recent 3.0 release, OpenOffice was one of the worst offenders. It only ran in X11. NeoOffice was available, but buggy. This new version isn’t great, and isn’t as Mac-like as I want, but it is much better. It is my current pick because of the price. iWork is a great package, and obviously very Mac like, but it is hard to create something in iWork and use it on another platform unless you export it as an uneditable PDF. MS Office for Mac is ok. It is kinda Mac-like, and mostly cooperates with other platforms, but it is clunky and expensive. I do so much in Google Docs and Bean anyway. So for the few times I need a full office suite, Open Office is good enough. $Free

TextMate: I love me some TextMate. If it wasn’t for the fit and finish and simplicity of great Mac apps like iTunes and TextMate, I would probably be on Linux. But for some reason, Mac apps are just better. They manage to be simple enough to be used by a new user, but allow enough customization and buried options for a power user to eventually put to use. TextMate is like this. A dead simple text editor at first, but as you learn the shortcuts and bundles, it is as powerful as any. The fact that there is such a community around it, and a great plug-in system to extend it really puts it over the edge as a “killer app.” Luckily a little bit less expensive than it was a year or two ago since the dollar is now stronger against the Euro. As of today it will run you USD $56.

The Unarchiver: An unsung hero. I rarely see this app mentioned. Like 7-zip on Windows I install it on every fresh box, and never think about it again. With the Unarchiver I just double click on a .zip, .rar, etc. and it opens right there. I never even think about it. But if I install a new system and forget about it, I quickly realize something is missing. It is so seamless the first time I went without it I thought I had missed an OSX system update or something. And best of all, it is $Free

Things: This one is tough. I haven’t been using it enough lately. And when you don’t take the time to open it and use it, Things is a bit useless. The feature set it there though. I can tap Ctrl-Opt-Space to open a quick entry box, bang in what I need, and it is in my inbox. It syncs with my iPhone, where it has a great (although not system-wide) entry box. It allows fairly granular but simple catagorization. I got a copy of the Hit List from the latest MacHeist, but haven’t tried it yet. However I expect Things will continue to be the winner for now. $49.95 on the Mac and $9.99 on the iPhone.

Transmission: Another open source, Mac centric app. There is also a Linux version, but the developers either write it for OSX and then port it to Linux, or they do a heckofa job with the Mac version. It is a clean, simple, but powerful BitTorrent client. $Free

Transmit: I used CyberDuck for a long time. I would almost suggest CyberDuck over transmit because it is free. CyberDuck is open source, and again, made for Mac. But something always felt clunky with CyberDuck. As a system administrator and computer science student, I spent a lot of time in an FTP client, and I just decided it was worthwhile to pay for Transmit. It is a great app, and is even more simple but powerful than CyberDuck. Like TextEdit, there just isn’t anything like it on other platforms. Panic just ran a 50% off sale last week on Transmit and all of their apps, but if you didn’t get it then, it will run you $29.95

Tweetie: Unless you live under a rock, you probably heard about Tweetie for Mac being released a while ago. The iPhone app is loved and one of the most popular iPhone twitter clients. The Mac version brought along a great package of the right features. Highly reccomended, $19.95.

VLC: The do-everything media player. Useful for any random video formats you come across on the web. I first discovered VLC when all of the Windows DVD players were clunky and expensive. I could install VLC for free without digging up the CD that came with my DVD-ROM. It was faster and had a better interface than any of the other junk out there. VLC somehow is free and open source, and has a great interface on Mac, Linux, and Windows. They do a good job of providing the performance, usability, and looks that few do on all three platforms. $Free

WriteRoom: WriteRoom provides a distraction free environment for writing. For the ADD sufferers like myself, it can be very helpful. I’ll start writing and I get a new email, or my feed reader shows some new info coming down the pipe, or I see someone come onto IM, and I get distracted. I own a few typewriters that I used to use when I needed to focus, but then you have to type or scan it back into a computer. So WriteRoom was the answer. If you need it, it is worth every penny. $24.95

That covers the bulk of my day to day software. Not everything, but most of the things that are either the most important to me, or that I think people may not be aware of yet. There are several thing that are on my machine, but are either minor enough or well-known enough I didn’t bring them up, so I will leave a partial list as “honorable mention.” Adium, Calaboration, coconutBattery, Espresso, Spirited Away, VMWare Fusion, Growl, SteerMouse.

Well I was on the radio on Friday, and had an excellent time.  The lead up to the live show was pretty crazy for me.  Luckily, by the time that I got to the CBC building I was feeling pretty confident in myself.  I was surprised about how “unnervous” I was about the whole thing.  Blew my mind.  Anyway, I snapped some pics (on flickr), and enjoyed my brief ten minutes on the AIR. It was super cool to see the insides of a professional radio station, and after a couple quick glances around the studio, it gave me some quick ideas for our podcast.  Hopefully I can apply some of the concepts in hte near future.   Anyway,  you can give the radio interview a quick listen below.  Aside from the “super fan” comment I was pretty happy with it.  The host, Adrienne Harewood, was pretty cool.  We had a quick chat about Jim Morrison before the mics came back on.

Give it a listen!

Hopefully it’s the start of our mainstream media takeover! ;)

If you’ve spent any time at all on a Windows machine you’ve probably come into contact with some wma files, or even ripped a cd or two using the windows media player into the wma format.  If you’ve made the switch and need to convert these files into mp3′s so that you can use iTunes or get that music onto your iPod you’ll need a third party application.  Switch Audio Convertor foots the bill.  You get the ability to queue up a bunch of files and even set the export settings to your liking.  Give it a look.

I can finally get those old archived audio disks out of storage and put them to use final.  Hey, I haven’t always used a Mac, please forgive me for my past sins.  Geesh, tough crowd!

Cable TV.

Yeah, I saw the flinching, I heard the groans. We all know and hate the stereotypes… The long hours waiting for installation, billing cycles based on the Mayan calendar, customer service from mighty Lucifer and pricing courtesy of the mafia.

I’ve never felt good about cable, and now digital cable and digital cable HD…. And the soon-to-be digital cable HDD+ with the ear bleeds built in. I constantly feel like I’m being punished when calling customer service about a problem with something that I am clearly paying for… Like I’M to blame for the blocking on channel 2 and 6, or the flames flickering from my “DVR”.

Well, no more! Today, we made the switch… To cable Internet!

(Music crescendos and then falls off into a bad High School marching band squeak)

Yes, I know that having just Internet service and not TV from the same company destroys my previous rant, but I needed a column at 10:25pm. JUST… Indulge me.

ANYWAY, we decided to shed the shackles of cable TV and put all of our entertainment eggs in the magical Internet basket. And how did we accomplish this lofty and freeing goal? Why, with a Mac, of course! See what I did there, Macgasmites? How I brought the whole thing full circle-jerk to our favorite splooge-inducing fruit of technological ecstasy?

Watch and learn, oh iPhoned grasshoppers of titanium love.

To quote the great Homer Simpson, “They have the Internet on computers, now.” And the Internet now has TV on the computers… now. Thanks to services like Hulu.com, Boxee and the very strange and 80′s layout-inspired Joost, you can pretty much get all the TV you want, on demand and for free.

Side note: If you happen to find yourself in payment withdrawals because of your recent release from the blood sucking cable company, there are pay-TV services like MLB.tv… And just about every respectable high- quality porn network. However, if you really have a need to throw your money out the window, let me know when and where. I have a wheel barrel that needs money filling.

So, what’s the equipment setup, you ask? Easy -peasey, Apple pacifiers! I used a stock Mac mini with wireless keyboard and mouse, hooked via AV cables to a flat screen… You actually don’t even need a flat screen ““ if you don’t mind never getting laid again. Your cable-ready TV built in the last five years will usually suffice and Apple makes a neat little adapter for the av cables, so hook up is a cinch.

Once you hook up to your high-speed Internet connection, there are several free services that offer an all in one type service, threading many Internet TV services into one, big buttoned, brightly colored romper room of viewing pleasure. The aforementioned Boxee and Hulu are my favs. I’m sure there are several other, similar services, but I’m not a tech reviewer and you’re not paying me, so let those magical fingers do the Google walking.

Screw the cable company, while throwing rocks at the big, corporate windows that YOU bought! Unnnless you use their Internet service, in which case, send them a drunken rant on a cocktail napkin with your next check.

Yours in bucking the system for a higher quality couch time,

Corey “FRS” Pandolph

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, Josh and Grant wax philosophical about parental controls in the App Store.

[03.9 MB] [0:08:20] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, Grants talks about push notifications on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

[03.2 MB] [0:06:50] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner]

Apple recently released a minor update for their set-top media center which adds gesture support for the iPhone/iTouch Remote application. (Free, iTunes) This is great news for those of us who have longed for a consistent method for controlling the Apple TV. The standard Apple remote allows a user to navigate the menus of the Apple TV as well as the standard, play, pause, stop, etc. controls for media.

Unfortunately the Remote application on the iPhone/iTouch was horribly inconsistent in the way in which a user controlled the Apple TV. Rather than navigating and using the Apple TV’s menus the Remote application essentially put your library on your iPhone/iTouch and you navigated through your library there. Then you played and controlled the media iPod style from that point on. Flipping the album art over for chapters. It worked and the Remote application was awesome then but I always thought it was lacking.

This has been changed with the combination Apple TV/Remote application updates. Now you still get the ability to drill down into your library on your handheld device and find the track or tv show you were looking for and play it immediately but in addition you can use the new “Control” feature to bring up a trackpad like area in the Remote application which will accept control gestures.

When you select the control option you are presented with this screen.

A flick to the left or right on the trackpad or dragging and holding will allow you to fast forward or rewind while flicking down will show the chapters. Tapping on the trackpad will play or pause the media and using two fingers to drag to the left will rewind a video 10 seconds. A very cool and very useful addition to what was an otherwise already awesome application.

But back to the Apple TV update. There are a few other changes worth mentioning. First, Apple has seen fit to change the way video playback is controlled. Gone is the single right and left click to skip to the next chapter. Now a click to the left or right fast forwards or rewinds and subsequent right and left clicks increases the speed. To skip chapters you have to click down to bring up the chapter markers. Next, the view options have been enhanced. You can now sort the list of movies by Genre, by Movie (Alphabetical) or by whether or not is have been watched. You can also sort the list of Podcasts and TV shows by Date, by Show (Alphabetical) or again by watched status. The other new feature is the ability to search Flickr tags which I haven’t had a chance to play with too much yet but searching being the new sorting it seems to me like a welcome addition.

On a side note, updating the Apple TV’s firmware will undo any patchsticking you may have done so…just keep that in mind. I’m just putting that out there. To tell you the truth I haven’t re-patched my Apple TV since the 2.3 update with the Hulu problems and general bugginess of Boxee. But of course that’s not to say I wouldn’t just that I haven’t. Yet.

I’ve had an iPhone since the original was launched in 2007. I’ve been through every update, including the latest, iPhone OS 3.0. Throughout this time, Apple has added more and more features, provided APIs for developers, and added much needed functionality like Cut, Copy and Paste to its iPhone OS. Despite all of the progress since version 1.0, there are still a slew of things that are missing which other Smart Phones already seem to have included.

Our own Josh Schnell and Grant Brunner did a podcast and had three things that they wanted to discuss. You can listen to that here. I fully agree with what they suggest, yet I have more things that I think should be added to the iPhone OS.

Application management works better with iPhone OS 3.0 particularly since Spotlight has been added. Yet, I would like to see a list view instead of the current view. I’m not saying that I do not like the current view, because I do enjoy it, yet having a list view could be more beneficial for some users. Additionally with the list view, the ability to sort the applications by ‘Name’ as well as ‘Used Most Often’. That way a user can quickly find an application; or possibly more tragically, see which application is their biggest time sink.

The next feature that I wish for is more granularity in relation to controlling Podcasts. By this I mean I would like to be able to sync the three most recent podcasts of Buzz Out Loud, while only syncing one of the Daily GizWiz and Mac OS Ken (since I listen to them on my drive to work each day) or even 6 of Love Line, since they may have 2 podcasts each day. The first being the actual show, and the second being the most interesting caller from that day. I realize that this could probably most easily be done in iTunes, and it cannot be that difficult to create separate sync settings.

The next feature is Wireless syncing. I know many people have asked for this, and I would definitely like to see this implemented; even if it is only available via WiFi. The ability to not have to plug in my iPhone in order to synchronize my media would be great, particularly if you could schedule this to occur at a specific time every day; or even several times throughout the day.

One reason that Apple may not like this idea is because then their process for syncing and their protocols and actual transferred data may be vulnerable. But, hey guess what Apple? There is this little thing called encryption that can be used to protect the data. Such a novel concept. So there is no real reason, other than Apple’s own refusal in implementing this feature as to why we do not have this yet.

The final feature I would like to see is an iTunes remote management tool built into the iPhone OS. You may think ‘We already have one with the iTunes Remote Application.’ Well, yes, but that’s not what I am talking about. I would like to see an application that would allow a user to actually remotely manage their iTunes Library. They should be able to do anything, from adding a song or application, updating applications, purchasing content and anything that they could do via iTunes and being right in front of their computer, except from the iPhone OS device.

I do not know if we will ever see all or any of these items yet the addition of any of these features would push the iPhone OS even that much further ahead of other smartphones devices. C’mon Apple, get programming to get these features to work.