Good advice on new iMac purchases: run hardware test immediately

Macintouch: iMac G5 (Part 12)

I'm definitely going to do this:

My advice? If you buy an iMac, get it set up, run Software Update, then run Apple Hardware Test. (Put in the DVD that came with the computer, restart holding down the Option key, click on AHT, click the next arrow.) Run the 'extended test', which will take 30 minutes or so. If it reports any failures, take the computer back to the Apple Store and exchange it for a new one.

Apple probably took a bridge too far when they put the G5 and a modern hard drive in this enclosure.

Update: If you want to run the hardware test repeatedly, type Ctrl-L to switch AHT to loop mode. Also, if you're accustomed to earlier versions of AHT, you may wonder how to get started. The directions are in small print on DVD 1 of the 2 DVD set. It takes a LONG time to go through the AHT selection and startup process; be patient. The machine is not dead, it's just .... thinking. A lot.

USB Overdrive: a great solution to undersupported or unsupported USB game and other devices with OS X

USB Overdrive

The USB Overdrive X is a driver for Mac OS X (Jaguar, Panther and Tiger) that handles any USB mouse, trackball, joystick and gamepad from any manufacturer and lets you configure them either globally or on a per-application basis. It reads all kinds of wheels, buttons, switches and controls and supports scrolling, keyboard emulation, launching and all the usual stuff like clicking, control-clicking and so forth. The USB Overdrive can easily handle several USB devices at once.

Awakening a home to music - iTunes, Awaken and a stereo

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

If one has a home stereo receiver connected to an Airport Express and controlled by a workstation, then this tool could allow one's home to waken to music. A reason to add wireless speakers to the odl home stereo?

Awaken digital alarm clock utilizes iTunes. Posted Jul 29, 2005, 1:00 PM ET by Dave Caolo

My iMac lives in my bedroom, so it makes sense that I'd want to use it as an alarm clock. I know there are several ways to get this done, and today I discoverd one more: Embraceware's Awaken.

Awaken will wake you up by launching iTunes and playing a user-selected track or playlist at a designated time. Set up recurring alarms or individual, date-specific occurrences. Other features include a sleep timer for drifting off to your favorite music, podcast support (be awakend by your favorite podcast) and a wake-from-sleep feature that rouses your Mac from sleep mode if need be (why should you be the only one inconvenienced?).

Awake requires Mac OS 10.3 or later and iTunes 3.0 or later (note that iTunes v.4.0 or later is required to display album art with alarm notifications). There is a 14 day trial version available, and a single license will run you $8.95US.

QuickTime bug: MakerNote info corruption (also affects iPhoto)

JakeO.com - Exifixer is an EXIF image reader library in PHP

This bug apparently causes massive bloat and slowdown in some iPhoto libraries: "QuickTime (including iPhoto) messes up the MakerNote tag for certain photos (no workaround yet)".

From Macintouch on 7/27:

Eric Lindsay

...This occurs when photographs from certain cameras including some or all Pentax and Nikon are included in your Library. These cameras include in their JPG EXIF information called a MakerNote. For most cameras the MakerNote is a few hundred bytes. In a Pentax Optio, the MakerNote is around 40KB.

iPhoto 4 stores the MakerNote in the Data directory for each day of photos, in a file called *.attr There is one such .attr file for each photo. Because iPhoto 4 has separate files, it does not slow down on closing the way iPhoto 5 does.

iPhoto 5 combines all these .attr files with their large MakerNotes in a file called Library.iPhoto. If you have say 6000 photos, and each has a 40KB MakerNote included, this makes Library.iPhoto expand to over 250MB.

If you have such a bloated Library in iPhoto 5, you can demonstrate this making a new Library from a bunch of photos. Then remove the MakerNote from the same bunch of photos, and import them into another new Library. Compare the size of Library.iPhoto.

There is a Perl script at anders.hultman.nu/data/makernote that can remove MakerNote. You need to amend the first line to point at your copy of Perl, and put the rmmn-100.pl script in your $PATH

So there are perhaps two issues:

1. MakerNote corruption problem (maybe fixed since first noted)?
2. Design issue with how iPhoto 5 consolidates MakerNotes (size not bigger than iPhoto 4 really, but slow shutdown due to how data is managed for users of Nikon cameras).

I use Canon cameras, so I'm not affected. Sounds like it may be a combination of more than one bug and a design decision.

High quality phone headset for Mac

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

These will be big for making personal voice calls from the cube computer in one's office:

The Sennheiser M145 is a computer and multimedia headset that combines high-fidelity stereo headphones with a hands-free, noise-canceling microphone. The headset includes a dedicated USB adapter with built-in soundcard electronics. Designed to be plug-and-play with any Mac OS up through Mac OS X 10.4, the Sennheiser M145 is $120. (Sennheiser web site not yet updated.)

The best part of OS X 10.4.2? Simple Finder for kids

Apple - Mac OS X - Family

My new machine came with Tiger. So far it's mostly a posterior pain. Old software has to be upgraded, the install is bigger, Spotlight insists on indexing peripheral drives it should ignore, I can't see how to constrain search to a path, and Quartz Extreme is still disabled and Retrospect has no Tiger support in their (orphaned post acquistion?) Windows based Mac backup (you can use the Retrospect/Mac client -- but that's not a licensed use and it's not supported).

There are a lot of nice touches, but I don't see any big advantage in Tiger for me over 10.3.9. Given a choice, I'd still choose LaunchBar over Spotlight, and I had to pay $10 for the new version of Launchbar after I upgraded!

With one exception. In 10.4.2 the 'Simple Finder' (managed user option -- Children) is very nice. It was broken badly in 10.0-10.3, so it's great to see it back. The Simple Finder now supports multiple 'windows' based on the number of icons in a folder, and there's an option (choose from menu) to break out to the full finder. So an administrator can now log in as a child, then configure the system as needed, then return to child!

The kid support is almost worth the upgrade.

The Missing Sync for Palm OS -- and the sadness of iCal

The Missing Sync for Palm OS - Synchronize Mac OS X and Palm OS

The web site doesn't emphasize this, but you can use Missing Sync for free for a two week evaluation period. I started today -- it looks very good. A breath of fresh air. I was able to remove the festering, parasitic, incompetent mess that's Palm Desktop from my Tiger machine.

On the other hand, there's iCal. Wow. So much hype for something so feeble. No 'categories' for tasks? You must be joking! I thought the Palm data model was feeble, but iCal makes it look pretty darned complex. There's no way this would handle any kind of demanding workplace.

Looks like Entourage and Missing Sync with a PocketPC device are the best PDA solution for the Mac. This may work ok for my wife however.

Missing sync has a good list of supported conduits.