Why a Mac is really far faster than a PC - irregardless of published test results

PCs pay a heavy performance tax in the real world that doesn't show up in testing.

When a PC is tested, there's no antiviral software running. Same thing for a Mac.

When I use my PC, I run Norton AntiVirus. My Mac runs bare.

How big is the hit? A backup running in XP is twice as fast with NAV disabled as when it's enabled. Twice. That's one heck of a performance penalty. I have to remember to disable NAV when I'm doing disk intensive tasks. Very annoying.

Galerie and other Better HTML Export replacements

I made extensive use of Better HTML Export to create albums from iPhoto 2 to 5. Around iPhoto 5 or so the developer sold the product and I heard no more of it. I visited the new site, but it didn't give me a warm feeling. Since BHTML Export inserted itself deep into iPhoto I needed that warm feeling prior to installation. I'm not sure it was every updated for iPhoto 6.

It turns out the reason that BHTML has been forgotten is that there were over 3 replacements. Apple made the Web export function in iPhoto 6 a bit better. Apple added iWeb integration -- an entirely new approach to the web publishing problem -- albeit a solution that at first was very .Mac centric and managed only a single site. (Only recently has iWeb become friendlier to non .Mac sites and supported multiple sites.) Utilities like PictureSync and better Web sites ( still like SmugMug) provided yet more options.

The last and best replacement, however, is Galerie. I'd looked at this years ago and I didn't like it then, but it's great now. It's free (too bad really, I prefer to see this work be compensated), works well with iPhoto 6, has lovely templates and doesn't require any intrusive plug-ins. As noted in Macintouch recently:

Galerie 5.3 works with iPhoto, iView MediaPro, Extensis Portfolio, or GraphicConverter to export photos to web pages. It supports EXIF data in web pages, picture quality selection, visitor feedback, HTML templates, watermarks, and text in generated pictures, among other features. This release is a Universal Binary and adds compatibility with iPhoto 6, an option to add a link to a photo to show its position on a Google map and satellite view (if GPS data are embedded in the file's EXIF data or by manually entering the position in a command in the photo comment), workarounds for some AppleScript problems, and other changes. Galerie is free for Mac OS X 10.2 through 10.4.

So there you go. BHTML Export was good in its day and I was happy to have paid for it, but it has been replaced. The annoying part of this story is that it's not always easy to discover replacements when favored software is sunset. In this case, as in others, versiontracker comments on the dormant BHTML Export page reminded me of Galerie.

BTW, Galerie's popup's lack scrollbars. Here's how to add them (thanks Ronald P.R.):

You can edit the used template to get scrollbars in the popup windows.

1. If the template contains a file "javascriptpopupwindow.txt", you can open it in a text editor (like TextEdit), do a find-replace, replacing "scrollbars=0,resizable=0" by "scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes" (both without the quotation marks) and save the file.

2. If the template does not contain a file "javascriptpopupwindow.txt", you can open the Galerie application package (using the contextual menu in the Finder) and navigate to Galerie/Contents/Resources/, where you will find a file "javascriptopenpopupdefault.txt". Make a copy of that file (do not remove the original from the application!), rename it "javascriptpopupwindow.txt", make the same change to it as described above and add the file to the template.

OS X Utility to clean web pages: Tidy

macosxhints - Tidy up your HTML with ... tidy! describes a 10.4 utility that will fix up HTML. I may try it the next time Blogger scrambles a blog posting.

MacBook: Less useful than the old iBook?

The new MacBook is pretty enough, but in what way is it a real improvement on the G4 iBook?

The G4 came with AppleWorks (can open Excel spreadsheets!), ran classic apps, and was underpowered for Aperture. The MacBook doesn't include AppleWorks, can't run classic, and is not approved for Aperture or any of Apple's pro apps. The G4 worked with the chargers and power connectors that came with my G3, the MacBook has an expensive and proprietary charger that's only available from Apple (lockin!). The MacBook runs hotter than the G4 and has a shorter battery life.

Sure it's faster, but if faster doesn't get me the Pro apps is it really worth all that much?

There's only one real win with the MacBook. It boots XP. (Oh, and it does monitor spanning without a hack.)

The MacBook does less than the iBook, but what it does do it does faster. The only way in which it's a "win" is the ability to run XP.

That's sad.

Ipod Won't Sleep: fix

My iPod wouldn't sleep. Triggered by disconnecting it from iTunes without dismounting. Reset didn't fix it. Had to reconnect to iTunes, then mount, then dismount properly. Then reset. Now ok.

Backup application built around Amazon S3

JungleDisk is a Mac/Win backup app that uses Amazon's S3 storage. Cost for 15GB of images would be about $3 a month.

I'm not sure I'd put business plans online this way, but I'm going to give it a try for backup of photos.

SuperDuper: a backup backup

My primary backup is still Retrospect, but it's creaky and buggy with a grim future. While I'm waiting for something better I think I'm going to start using SuperDuper to mirror some of my systems. Kind of a redundant backup to my backup that I'll do every few weeks. I use USB enclosure drives for my backups (two enclosures, one offsite), with the new cheap 320GB drives it's not hard to keep a couple of images as well as the Retrospect data.

PS. I am a bit of a nut about backups. In 19 years they've saved me from catastrophic data loss at least five times.