OS X fix: hang when connecting to a network service or apple partner

This is an obscure fix. If OS X hangs when connecting to a network service, consider deleting a keychain file:

Aperture (Part 3)

Ordering Prints from Apple did not work (I got a Connecting to Apple's Book & Print Ordering Server dialog with an endless progress bar). After a bit of googling I found an iPhoto tip to use the Keychain Access app to delete the keychain file for NetServices. The problem vanished instantly.

OS X has its share of obscure fixes: Delete cache. Delete preferences files. Try another user account. And now ... delete keychains. (Delete permissions is well known, but probably less useful than any of the above.

Open PDF as rich text in OS Cocoa applications

I installed this free DevonTech OS X service, and, as promised, I can now open a PDF in TextEdit and edit it. That's really kind of miraculous. So why is this so obscure?

DEVONtechnologies : Freeware : Services

PDF2RTFService 1.0

PDF2RTFService is a free filter service that enables many Cocoa applications, for example TextEdit or Apple Pages, to open Adobe PDF, PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files as paginated rich text documents. The application just needs to be able to read rich text documents. The actual conversion is done by Quartz and the PDFKit of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, PDF2RTFService post-processes and paginates the output for better results.

OmniOutliner 3.5 has been released

OmniOutliner is the heir to MORE 3.1. Arguably it's passed MORE's outliner capabilities [1], especially now that version 3.5's LinkBack capability allows them to embed OMNI Graffle items in an Outline. The update is free for registered 3.x users.

OO is also a reasonable way to produce HTML documents. It can even create HTML with dynamic outliner capabilities. (Whey has no-one done a browser that can represents a structured HTML document as an outline? Odd.) Alas, it doesn't handle hyperlinks, a feature I've requested.

One of the reasons I love OO is the file format. Rename the file to a gzip extension. Open that. Rename Contents.xml to Contents.xml.gzip. Open that. Now view Contents.xml in a text editor. Plain XML. If OO went way, it would be relatively trivial to write a utility to translate the files to RTF or another format.

[1] MORE 3.1 also had a vector drawing capability, a presentation module, and a module for creating org charts and the like. So a true replacement would be OO + OmniGraffle + Keynote. OO is now integrated with OmniGraffle, but Keynote integration is limited to saving an outline in Keynote format. Nonetheless, that level of integration does make me more interested in purchasing Pages/Keynote.

Apple's Aperture is looking shaky: locked threads and deleted postings in their discussion forums

Apple has always reserved the right to lock or delete discussions in their support forums that they dislike. In general they're reasonably tolerant -- sort of like the Chinese government. When they've got a real problem, however, they tend to lock things down.

They're now deleting and locking quite a few comments about Aperture:

Apple - Support - Discussions - Why are threads locked? ...

Nope, they lock out anyone who has anything negative to say. It's their website so they're entitled, but it's hilarious that they're so easily offended. After all, we're just pointing out what's wrong with their software. THEY are the ones who screwed people out of $500 or E500 for something that says 'Designed for professional photographers' right on the front of the box.

It's not even CLOSE to meeting that goal! And I'd point to my previous threads on the subject, which are quite detailed, but they've been deleted because the truth might hurt sales.

Unfortunately for Apple, there will be a large number of websites and magazines with INDEPENDENT reviews which aren't bought & paid for. Once those come out, Aperture sales will plummet.

Now that Apple has an RSS feed, and that feed is cached by Bloglines, I get to see and read all the comments that get deleted.

It's a marker of Apple's sensitivity on the topic that they appear to have deleted an innocent posting of mine, in which I asked if Aperture imported both Edited and Original images from iPhoto, or just Edited images. My hunch is that it imports only the Edited images, so anyone transferring their library from iPhoto to Aperture will, if they delete their iPhoto library, have unwittingly lost all of their originals. IF I'm right people will not be happy. I've asked the question again in a standalone post, if Apple deletes that one I'll know I've really hit a nerve. [Update 12/4: It wasn't deleted. Those who've tried report the Original and Edited are both imported, and are represented as a 'stack'. Good Aperture news for a change!]

I know better than to buy 1.0 products from Apple, but a lot of MacOS X users have been desperate to escape from iPhoto and they've moved faster than they should have. Other early adopters are relatively new to Apple, and haven't realized that software QA is not a priority at Apple. (Innovation is a priority, reliability is not a priority.)

Update 12/4: Derrick Storey reports life with Aperture on a G4 laptop isn't bad.

Use Disk Image to rescue an unmountable drive partition (OS X)

From MacOSX Hints

macosxhints - A possible way to save a corrupted drive or partition

An unhappy event happened to a cheese-maker friend -- he hadn't made any back-ups of his old G3 tower, and naturally the hard disk went down along with all the recipes of his award-winning cheeses. I tried all the usual -- TechTool, DiskWarrior, Disk Utility -- but they all just threw up their (figurative) hands in horror and simply gave up. (Disk Utility would see the disk, but not mount it).

In a fit of desparation, I told Disk Utility to make an image of the seen but un-mountable partitions. And quite surprisingly, it worked!

Noise Ninja and other noise reduction sofware

I tested my Digital Rebel XT in low light levels, using a greenish wall as a background. I found ISO 400 went pretty well, but 800 and 1600 were pretty awful. I didn't try the trick of transforming the images to black and white, but I'm also lining up some noise reduction software to try:

• Noise Ninja: Used by many photojournalists.
• Neat Image: Cheaper.
  
• AbsoluteDeNoiser: Free

Graphic Converter also does some noise reduction. This review page looks very interesting.

Allow two iTunes instances on one machine to stream to two AirTunes clients

This MacOSXHint is misleadingly titled: macosxhints - Simultaneously share iTunes on one multi-user Mac. The focus is on how two instances of iTunes on one machine can stream to two AirTunes clients from one library.