Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Camino - Firefox with a better GUI?

Camino: "Upgrades the Gecko HTML rendering engine from Mozilla 1.0 to Mozilla 1.7, resulting in performance, stability, and rendering improvements"
I don't like the Firefox GUI and font management on OS X. It's ugly. Also FF is slower than Safari on my machine. I'll try this one too.

Migrating from one system to another (OS X)

Mac OS X 10.3.6: "Re: Anthony Burokas question: How to migrate to a new Mac without Setup Assistant. I have done this using the free utility Carbon Copy Cloner.

1. Download Carbon Copy Cloner onto the old Mac.
2. Shut down the new Mac.
3. Connect the Macs with a FireWire cable.
4. Start the new Mac in Target Disk Mode (hold down the T key)
5. On the old Mac, use disk utility to format the new Macs hard disk. (Anthony will need to copy any data he needs from the new Mac first)
6. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your old Mac's hard disk onto the new Mac.
7. Disconnect and restart your new Mac.
8. Reinstall iLife and other goodies from the System Restore disk.

I have done this 5 or 6 times. One time the new Mac wouldn't start up with the OS from the old Mac. I simply used the system CD or DVD that came with the new Mac and did an Archive and Install."
Nice discussion, but this is all way harder than it ought to be. In the old Classic days sytem migration was trivial. XP, btw, can handle a similar transition by mirroring then doing a repair install. Neither solution is really satisfactory.

Monday, December 06, 2004

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Beta

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Beta
Coming soon! OmniOutliner Professional has in-depth outlining features like folded editing, named styles, clipping service support, audio recording, saved templates, and much more.

Sounds more like .... MORE 3.1 (Symantec). I'll write and ask if they're going to import MORE files into the Pro version.

SAFT plug-in for Safari -- looks well worth testing

haoli

$10. Worth a test given the feature list. I wonder if it would work with Omniweb ...

OS X firewire problems: occult solutions

MacInTouch Home Page:
About a week ago, I decided to add some new music to my 4G click-wheel (40 GB model). I placed the iPod in the dock and waited for the appearance of iSync and iTunes. And neither appeared. The iPod did not mount. Took the iPod out of the dock and put it back in. Still no joy. Checked all cables and connections (FireWire in my case) and nada.

I'm running 10.3.6. and iTunes 4.7, plus latest updaters for iPod on a MDD 1.25 ghtz G4.

So I ran the Apple Hardware test and it reported a problem with my FireWire bus. (I have no other FireWire peripherals.) The diagnostic suggested that I read over my warranty information and get in touch with AppleCare.

So I went to the Apple website in search of a link with which to do this. Decided to check the Knowledge Base and, lo and behold, I found an article about FireWire problems. The article suggested that I shut down the machine, disconnect the power cord and all peripheral inputs EXCEPT for the FireWire line, and wait at least five minutes and then reconnect everything and then boot up.

I followed this procedure and the FireWire bus came back up. iPod mounted normally and has done so since. No explanation in the article as to what causes this or how the fix works, but it did work.

Firewire is too bizarre to live. It reminds me of SCSI.

Friday, December 03, 2004

Xcelis: cell phone to VOIP

Xcelis

This peculiar service is primarily useful for making international calls via a cellphone. In my case I all Canada several times a week. My employer has no trouble with personal calls on my corporate cellphone -- but not with calls to Canada! So if I switched to a corporate phone, this service could be very interesting.

OS X Setup Assistant Use

MacInTouch Home Page: "Following up on discussion of Mac-to-Mac migration, Steve Chambers suggests a trick that could be a big help when you have multiple disks on an older computer, only one of which will appear in FireWire disk target mode:

Actually you can copy the Setup Assistant to the old Mac; it runs just fine. Then you have access to all the drives and Apple's migration utility."