Tag: Mac

So today I completed a switch of my calendar and contact information from Palm Desktop to OS X’s Address Book and iCal. After getting everything kosher in iSync, my Palm m505 is now syncing happily with Address Book and iCal. The only thing I’m still using Palm Desktop for is the Memo Pad feature for my various lists and notes. If anyone knows of a sync-able alternative, I’m all ears.
Why the switch? Well, I just acquired a Newton 2100 (thanks again, Damien!), and there are methods for getting it to sync with that info. I also plan to get a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone in June, when our current contract is up, and would like to be able to sync all of my info with that as well.

Well, there won’t be an expo this summer in New York called “Macworld Expo.” Instead, IDG and Apple today announced CREATE. Not that I’m likely to go, even if I’m still employed with VZ…
(via Ric)

So since the weekend, Safari has been giving me major headaches. It seemed to particularly dislike my using Movable Type, and viewing slide shows on anyone’s .Mac homepage. It would crash violently, occasionally taking into oblivion the post I had just completed typing. Said crashes were all dutifully reported to Apple via the Bug button in Safari’s button bar.
It was getting incredibly annoying yesterday afternoon, however, so I took action. First, I manually killed the entire Safari cache folder; using the Empty Cache command just wasn’t cutting it. Next, it was to the preferences file, which was swiftly introduced to the Trash. And just for good measure, I restarted the TiBook.
I should say that I’m not too surprised that the corrupted preferences was obviously contributing to the problem. Ever since the last public beta version of Safari (v60), I’ve used the leaked 62, 64, and now 67 revs. I’m sure something floopy worked its way in at some point.
At any rate, after thorough usage last night and so far today, things seem to be back to normal. I’ve gone in and killed the metal appearance, so that Safari looks like a normal OS X app, with no apparent side effects yet.

Thanks to Jeremy Hedley, I’ve discovered Mount.app, a faster means of mounting disk images than using Disk Copy. Just as Michael’s DropDMG is easier and faster than Disk Copy for making images, Mount.app is faster at mounting them in the Finder. Just goes to prove the adage that not everything that comes with the OS is the best.

MacMinute is reporting on a set of three AppleScripts for iTunes released by Trinfinity Software. I’ve downloaded them, used them, and am grateful. Thanks to the folks at Trinfinity.

One of my favorite pieces of software has been updated. WeatherPop has been revved to version 1.7. The Advance version is only $8 and gets you:

• National Weather Service forecasts for the United States
• my.aol.com and wunderground.com forecasts for US and International users
• 3 to 5 day forecasts depending on your location
• Beautiful color icons and realistic moon phases
• Up to 3 favorite locations in addition to the your main location
• The best darn easy-to-use Mac OS X-savvy interface they could design
• 14-day trial period so you can decide if you like it before you buy

I refer to it often throughout the day, checking out other locales where I have friends and family as well. Great piece of software, so download it, register it, and support a Macintosh developer.

John Gruber makes an outstanding case for one of the few things I don’t like about Safari.

One thing that Safari has gotten wrong ever since it debuted is that it applies anti-aliasing to all typefaces, including small monospaced fonts such as 9- and 10-point Monaco.
Yes, yes, the Mac OS X zeitgeist is such that anti-aliasing is everywhere. But small-point monospaced fonts are the exception to the rule, for good reason. Monospaced typefaces are an anachronism, a throw-back to the typewriter era. They are, for most purposes, ugly; their metrics contradict the basic precepts of proper typesetting. With regular (non-monospaced) fonts, small punctuation marks such as commas and apostrophes fit snugly next to adjacent alphabetic characters; punctuation is intended to be subtle. But with a monospaced font, every character consumes the same amount of horizontal space on the line; it’s downright silly that an apostrophe should consume the same space as an “m.”

Downright silly, perhaps, but I find a certain elegance in monospaced fonts. After all, look at my logo and tagline!
I differ with Gruber only in his observation of Geneva in Camino versus Safari: I think Geneva looks better in Safari, though, I admit, at the same point size, it is slightly less readable than in Camino.