Matias Tactile Pro 2.0 Keyboard for Mac (and Windows)

I bought a non-Apple Mac keyboard a few months back, replacing the Apple kb I'd grown to loathe. Alas, I'd never head of the Matias Tactile Pro 2.0 Keyboard. I came across it today by way of a review of Apple's new products. That review discussed Apple's latest evil keyboard (ok, so it's slightly less evil than their old evil desktop keyboard) referenced a 3 yo review of an older version of the Tactile Pro 2:

I realize that some may find it odd that I wax rhapsodic about something as mundane as a computer keyboard, but those who've had the pleasure of using Apple's old Apple Extended Keyboard (code named the "Saratoga" for its battleship gray color and size) and have had to put up with lesser keyboards from Apple and others, will be thrilled to know that there's a modern, USB keyboard that's nearly as nice as the Apple input device of old.

That keyboard is Matias' $100 TactilePro. The folks at Matias use the same keyswitches found in the Apple Extended keyboard and it shows. The keyboard is a bit noisier than my old Saratogas (more clack) but it's just as springy and responsive. Like the older Apple keyboards (and unlike the current Apple offerings) the TactilePro includes a Power button for switching on and off compatible Macs (not all Mac models will respond to pressing this button). And like Apple's new keyboards, the TactilePro includes Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute, and Eject keys (F14 and F15 are used by Mac OS X to adjust screen brightness, though the keys aren't marked that way).

The new version of the Matias has dual UBS 2.0 dock (how do they power it?) and Mac key symbols, but the price has gone from $100 to $150 (!!). The web site doesn't discuss device drivers, but most non-Apple kbs have them.

Google apps: feeble.

How feeble are Google's vaunted "Apps"?

So feeble that a new user going to the calendar site doesn't see the group calendar. They see only their own calendar.

So feeble that Page Creator has been stuck at the "intern's summer project" level for years.

Feeble.

Update 8/10/07: There are so many bugs and oddities I think I'll just keep adding them to this post ...

1. Start page: click the "even more" link in the google tools hieararchy and get:
   Not Found
   The requested URL /intl/en/options/ was not found on this server.
2. Creating and editing the common start page has very limited control options.
3. In order to allow a user to edit a single web page, you have to give them admin control over the entire domain.
4. You can change a user's name in the user controls, but this doesn't propagate to the calendars. Even if you manually change the name in the calendar, the name shown as "calendar owner" will remain incorrect.
   

iPhoto 7 (iLife 2008): again, no Library merges

[Update: the link won't work because Apple deleted my post within 2 hours of my posting it. I'm not surprised. Maybe their vigilant reaction is a sign they're feeling some heat about this issue. There are very active complaint threads this morning about library merging.]

From my post on Apple's Discussion group (corrected because iLife 2008 is iPhoto 7, not iPhoto 8)

Apple - Support - Discussions - Feature request for iPhoto 8: Import ...:

You're traveling with your MacBook. Organizing photos, adding metadata, creating albums, slideshows, etc. You get home. You want to import your travel library to the main library, preserving ALL the versions and metadata.

You have just married the Mac Geek of your dreams. You need to merge Libraries into the shared folder (which can't be shared over a network, but let's just ignore that). How do you do that?

You created and used separate Libraries back with iPhoto bogged down at 2000 images. Now you want to combine them, preserving version relationships, album relationships, descriptions, titles, keywords, roll information, photo books, slideshows, etc, etc.

Yes, I know about iPhoto Library Manager. I license and use it. It does miracles with Apple's limited merge support, but some metadata is lost. I also had so many issues with earlier version merges that, even though I use it all the time, I'm gun-shy. Sorry, merging Libraries is very complex. It's hard to believe that anyone but Apple can do it safely.

iLife 2008 (iPhoto 7) is the fourth release in a row to disappoint those of us asking for Library management.

Choices? Aperture, which Apple clearly intends us to buy instead, doesn't allow one to edit dates on images (good-bye scans!), is dog slow (appallingly slow - still) by design, and can't handle video. Others? They don't import iPhoto Libraries. I ain't redoing metadata on 14,000 images.

Anyone interested in putting together an online petition to ask Apple to add Libary merge/import/management to iPhoto 2009? Picket Cupertino maybe?

I ordered it, of course. What choice do I have?

VueScan vs. Nikon Scan on OS X

I've published a few posts about VueScan; it's a well regarded cross-platform scan control software package that appears to be a one person show. The author's personal focus and prolonged dedication has produced an idiosyncratic product that, with a few quirks (auto-crop isn't what it could be) performs admirably well. I bought a "pro" license, so I get my updates as long as Hanrick toils away.

I've mostly used VueScan to do print and a few negative scans, but recently I worked on a set of my mother's slides. These range from about 40 to 50 years old, in various states of repair. I used Nikon CoolScan V I bought about 3-4 years ago, it's oddly still about state of the art for slide scanning (though slow now). I started out using Nikon Scan 4.02, downloading the latest OS X version from Nikon's support site (yechy non-Apple installer btw. I installed as admin, but the app works for a non-admin user). It's a quirky mix of various semi-integrated packages that Nikon resells, but it mostly worked. It was slow however, and I wasn't impressed with the results various image adjustment options. I got the best results turning everything off, working with the clumsy levels tool, and using Digital ICE for damaged slides. Performance on a G5 iMac was dog slow and, really, it was clumsy.

I then tried the same images on the G5 using the latest version of VueScan. It worked beautifully. Results were better than what I got with Nikon Scan. I didn't fuss too much with white balance or levels, I went with the very good initial results then dropped the 24bit TIFF into Aperture for finishing. From Aperture I exported high res JPEGs to store in iPhoto (note Aperture doesn't allow date editing, an incomprehensible defect). The processing was a bit slow, but the workflow was great.

Next I tried VueScan, which has full Intel support, on my dual core MacBook. Processing was 2-3x as fast.

If you're using a Nikon Cool Scan (CoolScan) with OS X, don't bother installing the ugly Nikon software. Buy VueScan (cheap at the price) and finish your TIFFs in a secondary image processing package (like iPhoto, Aperture, etc).

iLife '08

So true.

iLife '08 guided tour - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)... The 20 minute video gives you the highlights of the iLife suite and tries to convince you it is worth $80, but you're reading TUAW so I am guessing that you already bought it.

It was an easy buy since Aperture still doesn't support #$#!$!@$ date editing. Of course Apple didn't add the one iPhoto feature I wanted -- Library merge/import. I bought it anyway for the new photo editing tools and iMovie. It will be interesting to see if iWeb allows one to update a theme -- the last version had the fatal flaw that one's initial theme selections were the eternal theme selections.

I'll have my comments in a week or two -- I don't have time to mess with it for a week or so so I ordered it online.

8/20/07: Well, I shouldn't have bought it for iMove, but iPhoto 08 has some good features. Here's the link to download the last good copy of iMovie.

Freecycle: Given away free stuff

I've had a hard time giving away good stuff in the past. Next time I'll try this:

TidBITS: Freecycle: Disposing of Good Old Stuff

...I had heard about the Freecycle Network, an Internet service that connects people with stuff to give away with people who want free stuff, but until this point I had never tried it. It turned out to be extremely simple. I went to the Freecycle Groups page to find the Ithaca group, followed the link to its Yahoo Groups mailing list, subscribed, and read the ground rules (this is important, since some things - like the required Subject tags - are not inherently obvious to a newcomer), and then sent a pair of email messages to the list, describing the LaserWriter and photocopier.

FlickrDown: make Flickr tolerable

Flickr allows users to download full res images, but it's a tedious multi-click process. It's pretty clear from reading the help forums that Flickr/Yahoo discourages distribution of full res images using Flickr, so they make the process as painful as possible.

GMAN: FlickrDown to the rescue. This open source free app is downloading my SIL's (sister-in-law) photoset as I type, I'll dump them in iPhoto later today. There's a similar open source app for OS X apparently, but my son is occupying the iMac at the moment. This one seems quite fine.

Google maps still route via 35W

I'm tracking how long it will take Google to correct route information between my office and Minneapolis. As of 8/3 they still route across our fallen I-35W bridge.

More interesting will be to see if Google will start including bridge quality and design metrics in their routes. Wouldn't you like to have a "avoid risky infrastructure" checkbox option? How about crossbones on I-35W type bridges with ratings of "deficient".

Google may be able to encourage some state governments to move investments forward ...

Rescuing data from 1993: archival surprise and a FullWrite Professional shocker

[8/3/07: Corrected notes on the import/export translators]

I was tossing out old files, when I came across printed versions of some reviews I wrote in the early 90s for MD Computing, the Journal of Family Practice (when it was an academic journal), and a few other geeky doctor journals. I decided to see if I could actually get at the data.

The file formats weren't the big problem (ok, with one exception and a big surprise - below). The big problem was the archival format. When I wrote these articles in 1992 to 1993, (yes, 15 years ago!) I routinely zipped a folder of .... 124 kb.

The 15 yo archived files didn't travel well. Apple's built-in unzip simply reported and error and halted. Stuffit Expander gave me an immortal SPOD that sucked cycles and forced a power cycle restart. "The Unarchiver" complained about a file defect, but it did extract the files.

WinZip on XP did better, albeit with a security warning and there was some problem with unzipping to a directory. I was able to drag and drop the ingredients however.

I had a tougher go with mysterious blank icon 36 KB extension-free document that nothing could open. Text Wranger showed a mess of non-ascii charcters and the string "FWRTFWRT" in the header. I guessed it was some ancient StuffIt archive and dropped it on StuffIt Expander -- this time it did expand.

The files turned out to be some GrandView outlines (I didn't bother with those), some MORE 3.1 files, MacWrite II, WordPerfect 5.0, and .... an Ashton-Tate FullWrite Professional document. Oddly enough, my G5 iMac has copies of MacWrite II, MORE 3.1 and FullWrite buried away. Only FullWrite wouldn't run; it sent my CPU to 100% but wouldn't start.

A Wikipedia article, however, pointed to a freeware version of FullWrite Professional. I installed the once monstrous application that crushed my Mac SE years ago -- it took up 2.8 MB. Yes, that's an "M". Less room than a single JPG.

2.8MB.

It launched perfectly under classic running in OS X 10.4.10 on my G5. No error messages, nothing, just opened the file with an outliner beyond anything currently available on any Word Processor in 2007. Yes, Word 2007 (ummm, maybe 2GB to install?) has nothing like the old FW outliner.

My next surprise was the import/export list of an immense number of file formats. It took me a while to remember that MacOS Classic included an OS facility for file translation available to every application. The lists was further extended if one licensed MacLink Plus. It's a very impressive list, though the quality of the translation isn't great:

(click to see full sized image)

The list of supported export formats includes: Acta, AmiPro, AppleWorks, Claris Works, FrameMaker (yes), HTML+, InfoDepot, MacWrite 5, II, Pro, Word, MS Works, MultiMate (remember?), Nisus, OfficeWriter (remember?), Professional Write, RTF, SDM Writer (what the heck?), SunWrite, MORE 3.1 (!), TeachText, Text, WorkPerfect, WordStar (omigod), WriteNow, XYWrite ... and one or two more. Plus a few variations of each. It's the same list for file open as well. Plain text, which probably came from FWP rather than from the common translator tools, did the best job of preserving the outlines look and feel.

I opened up a MacWrite document and saw my old email address again: 4867991@mcimail.com.

Between my old apps, the free version of FullWrite and some fiddling with archivers it looks like I can rescue most of the old documents. Of course classic is mostly forgotten (does 10.5 allow Classic even on PPC machines?), so there's not much time for this. A few more years and I'd have given up on the FW files.

BTW, Word 2003 did a fine job opening the old WordPerfect docs and saving them as RTF.

Did I mention the install is 2.8MB? The core application is 768KB.

768KB. Once, giants walked the earth.

Update 11/6/10: I received an email from Roy Leban, who was a lead engineer on the original FullWrite project. He has several blogs, but they're updated infrequently.

Microsoft updates Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac

I thought they'd semi-officially abandoned this client. Apparently not: Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.0 (Beta) - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW). Great news, I'll be using it.

LaunchBar revised

Michael Tsai tells us about LaunchBar 4.3. This is one of my favorite apps. It's no longer fashionable since there are similar free products for OS X, but it never causes me a bit of trouble and it does everything I need. I even try to learn new features occasionally. I like the way they tied in Spotlight too. I'll update to 4.3 -- I also like that I've never had a problem with an update.

Also, I have a weird trait that I like paying for good software.

BTW, there's still no comparable equivalent for XP, despite hordes of would-be imitators.

Update 8/1/07: Wow, what a staggering array of features! I'm going to try to learn some of them, starting with the calculator. If you hit cmd-spacebar to launch LB (Cmd-F inside LB for Spotlight), then if you type any digit the calculator starts up.

Update: Great article - how to get more out of Lauchbar.

Safe sleep is stupid -- and at last someone else is saying so

When I got my otherwise excellent iBook I noticed sleep on shutdown was broken, even when Spotlight doesn't mess it up more. Surprisingly few people crab about this, but now Joe Kissell has spoken up for all of us:

TidBITS: Stewing Over Safe Sleep

... The situation is different on more recent Apple laptops - every portable model starting with the 15-inch and 17-inch Double-Layer SuperDrive models introduced in October 2005. These models do have an ordinary sleep mode, just as before. But Apple's documentation warns you that when you put such a laptop to sleep (by closing the lid, for example), you must not move it until the power light has begun pulsating. During the first moments after you close the lid, when the light is on steadily, Mac OS X is busily copying the contents of your RAM to your hard disk in preparation for the possibility that your battery might later drain completely - forcing the computer into Safe Sleep mode. And during that time, when the disk is spinning, any untoward movement could cause damage to the hard drive mechanism. (You can also employ a command-line hack to force it to bypass the ordinary sleep mode and go directly into hibernation after saving the RAM, if you so desire; I discuss this a bit later.)

So far so good, but here's where the problems start. It takes more than a "moment" for your computer to write this hibernation file to disk and go to sleep. The length of time it takes is proportional to the amount of RAM you have installed. On my new MacBook Pro with 4 GB of RAM, it takes 49 seconds for the computer to sleep when Safe Sleep is active; with Safe Sleep turned off, it takes only 4 seconds. That's an enormous, and enormously annoying, difference.

Moreover, for each gigabyte of RAM you have, you effectively lose a gigabyte of storage space on your hard disk, because of the space required for this special RAM cache file. Given the higher cost and lower capacities of laptop hard drives, this space usage is a nontrivial issue. In essence, there's now both a performance penalty and a storage space penalty for buying the latest hardware and maxing out your RAM!

Even so, the inconveniences of Safe Sleep would be slight if Apple offered an easy way to turn it off. But as things stand now, you have to do this in Terminal...

... I remember being in the audience for a Steve Jobs keynote several years ago in which he was demonstrating wireless streaming video. A PowerBook was playing a video clip that was being streamed over an AirPort connection from another Mac. To show how robust this capability was, Steve closed the PowerBook's lid while the video was playing, putting the computer to sleep, and then, a few seconds later, opened it again to demonstrate how the video immediately picked up where it had left off. We all applauded: that's how seamlessly things were supposed to work.

You can't do that anymore - at least not without using an unsupported hack. You have to wait almost a minute before your laptop will sleep, during which time you should not be moving it around. Look, it's 2007 and I'm a Mac user; if I can't put my brand new computer to sleep and into its bag in less than 10 seconds, something is seriously wrong.

To add injury to injury, Apple dramatically shrank the sleep/power LED on the iBook, so it's darned hard to spot the pulsating power light now. I thought the loss of quick-sleep was related to the MacTel transition (XP laptops take forever to sleep) but Kissell tells us it's an Apple thing.

Thanks Joe, I thought I was alone ...

Firefox: One thing IE does far better -- and FF could do it to

There's one old, old, thing IE does that FF doesn't do. It's been bugging me for years, but now I'm gonna say it.

It's the damned, stupid, drag-and-drop behavior Firefox inherited from Netscape.

Here's what I get when I click on a URL in the Firefox and IE location bars, then drag and drop into a blog editor, Microsoft Word, the RTF edit box for in Firefox, anywhere ...

• IE: Firefox - Rediscover the Web
• FF: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

IE uses the page title for the URL text display. Firefox gives me the URL. (I think Safari does the same thing as FF and Camino definitely does the same thing as FF. I don't know about Opera or OmniWeb.)

I'm sure someone prefers the FF behavior. I think the IE behavior is 100 times better. Ok, a thousand times better.

Update 8/1/07: I tried with OS X, turns out there's no drag-and-drop "insert title" behavior with Camino, Safari or (if I remember correctly) - Firefox. So it probably requires some OS cooperation too.

Remote control for OS X: Suddenly, coming out of the woodwork ...

What the heck?! I've been ranting about the crummy remote control solutions [1] for OS X desktops for years -- to no avail (of course, I'm not delusional you know). All of sudden, they're popping up all over. Desktop Transporter is more interesting that most because it's now been acquired by DevonTechnologies, a very well regarded OS X vendor. It's not a straight VNC port [1] so I'll probably take a look at it. I doubt anyone but Apple is going to really be able to make this work the way I want [3], so I probably have to wait to see how bad 10.5 will be -- but I'll give is a try.

Some info on Desktop Transporter: Version Tracker: 3.8 stars

BTW, in the course of looking at DT I came across this extensive Macintouch topic thread. Alas, if only Macintouch would implement feeds for their topic page. There's only one mention of DT, but they mention some I'm familiar with. See also:

• Gordon's Tech TidBITS reviews OS X remote control software
• Gordon's Tech Leopard It does include remote control software
• Gordon's Tech The Apple AirTunes vision -- not really ready for primetime
• Gordon's Tech Remote control of a Tiger desktop
• Gordon's Tech Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) client service is now installed by default in 10.4
• Gordon's Tech Apple Remote Desktop 2 w- VNC

Update 7/28/07: No luck. I installed DT on two machines. It seemed to connect, but then simply hung with a black screen preview and a persistent "connecting" message. One machine is on 10.4.9, the other on 10.4.10. Local network, all Apple equipment. The only funny thing is I use WDS (an airport extreme and an airport express). The app complained NAT sharing was not enabled, though that should only be needed for remote access and the two machines showed a green internal connection. Enabling NAT on the Airport Extreme made no difference. I don't have time to futz with it, so this one is a flop.

--

[1] I know about VNC ports. I'm sure DT is really a VNC based solution, but it sounds like the developer worked to make it a better fit for Apple's oddball VNC implementation. It will be interesting to see how it handles multiple monitor and fast user switching for example.

[2] I know about Timbuktu as well. It was great once, but nothing I've heard about them recently makes me think they've kept up with the OS X world. Last time I looked they didn't have the confidence to offer a trial version. I suspect they just couldn't get deep enough into the OS to be efficient after classic died.

[3] It would have to be deeply integrated with Apple's mixed vector/raster display technology, which means only they can write it.

Living with Access 2007: "Disabled Mode", Trust Center, and a Bug

I have to live with Access 2007 at work. It's a mixed bag. Some things from Access 2003 have been improved. On the other hand, I despise the ribbon bar. Other things have not been touched: Access tables links still use path names (argghhhh), links still break when paths change, scripted column values pass the script rather than the script result (produces very bad side-effects), you still can't link in a query so that you could use the query results, there are no "view" equivalents, etc, etc.

Some things are really nasty. Here's one from an unanswered question on an Access site:

Re: Query Access 2007 "Disbled Mode"

... When I run the Make Table Query it says in the lower left corner the following error:

"The action or event has been blocked by Disabled Mode".

Access 2003 and 2007 alike have this idiotic question you have to answer on startup -- something about enabling "risky" stuff. I can't figure out how to disable the question. I think it's related to this problem. In my case I needed to write the output of a script from an Access 2003 formatted file to a new Access 2007 formatted file.

So how does one fix this? A member of the borg tells one how to discover disabled mode status programmatically, but that's no help. This probably helps:

http://blogs.msdn.com/access/archive/2005/11/01/488022.aspx

... Disabled mode and the Office Trust Center are designed to make it easier for a user to make trust decisions in scenarios where scripts that launch Access do not come into play.

There are scenarios, where developers of a solution want to ensure that code in Access (startup form/ macro or otherwise) always executes. In such cases the recommended approach is to ensure that one or more of the following conditions are met:

• The database is signed with a trusted certificate.
• The database is installed in a trusted location.

By meeting these conditions, the code within the solution will always be enabled. In scenarios where neither of these conditions can be guaranteed, Access can be made to revert to its legacy behavior of a modal startup trust prompt, that will launch and execute code in the database or not open the file at all. To revert to this legacy behavior set the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Access\Security\

Value: ModalTrustDecisionOnly = 1 (DWORD)

Okay, let's look into the trusted location:

Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Access Options...

Click Trust Center, click Trust Center Settings, and then click Trusted Locations.

...If you want to create a trusted location that is not local to your computer, select the Allow trusted locations on my network (not recommended) check box.

Click Add new location.

 ... We recommended that you don't make your entire Documents or My Documents folder a trusted location. Doing so creates a larger target for a hacker to potentially exploit and increases your security risk. Create a subfolder within Documents or My Documents, and make only that folder a trusted location.

In the Path box, type the name of the folder that you want to use as a trusted location, or click Browse to locate the folder.

If you want to include subfolders as trusted locations, select the Subfolders of this location are also trusted check box...

So I did this and got the error message: "the path you have entered is not a valid location or cannot be used ...". I think I'm getting this because I use drive letter substitution to get around the age-old access problem of linked file path dependencies.

A Google search on the last suggests the same problem arises with network drives, despite the claim that Access will allow trusted access to network drives. So this is probably a bug.

So I gave up, changed my trust center settings to "show the message bar", exited Access 2007, changed the default file mode to Access 2002-2003, restarted, clicked "enable everything" and I was able to run the query.