CompanionLink: another sync vendor

A correspondent, Joseph, tells me the professional version of CompanionLink 2.0 supports selective synchronization to a Palm device. (Sync only part of the database while at work, all of it at home).

They claim to support a wide range of devices and sync targets, including Act, GoldMine, Notes and Google Calendar. That makes me nervous; it's hard to see how they can manage all of the data model conflicts between so many different devices and platforms. A free evaluation copy is available, but this is not easy software to evaluate. When things go wrong with synchronization they can wreak havoc on irreplaceable data that may be difficult to restore (such as Exchange server data). The vendor does not have any open support forums; that's another sign that this software may not be trouble-free.

I'll ask Joseph to share his experiences.

MacBook Core 2 Duo: My Amazon Review

Below is an edited and updated version of my Amazon review of the Core 2 Duo MacBook. In brief: good product, some odd choices, I'm not all that impressed with Intel, and I had a mediocre experience with Parallels.

Amazon.com: Apple MacBook MA701LL/A 13.3" Notebook PC (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD SuperDrive) - Black: Computers & PC Hardware

I bought a build-to-order version of this machine from Apple educational with 2GB of RAM. If one uses the Macintouch link to purchase this from Amazon you get a better deal and help out a web site that provides great Mac tech support.

Thus far I've gone through user migration, several days of light use, and one test of Parallels (which was disappointing). It's worth the money and it's one of the best laptops I've bought (I do miss my 1990 vintage PowerBook 165 though!). I've been nursing my broken-hinges G3 iBook so I could get the 2nd rev of the MacBook, it was worth the wait. I don't see any evidence of the serious heat problems that afflicted the first MacBook and I assume they've mostly fixed the abrupt shutdown problem. The odd looking keyboard is fine and the large trackpad works well -- though I'm not sure the tap-to-click is worth the occasional errant clicks. The accompanying documentation is extremely minimal but very well done and sufficient for most users. Those who need more probably wouldn't read a bigger manual anyway.

You should be happy, especially since the rest of my review will prepare you for the minor annoyances.

Now that I'm done saying nice things, here are the nits. Firstly, it's too sharp. Some whacko at Apple design figured 'sharp' was in this year, and the edges of the case annoy wrists when typing and fingers when carrying by the base. This is not all bad; it ensures good wrist position because it's uncomfortable to type wresting your wrists on the front edge. Overall though, dumb.

The screen is the DVD-friendly widescreen form factor, so the 13.3" is less useable for computing work (photos, etc) than one would wish. Annoying, but hard to escape these days. It comes with a remote for watching DVDs and listening to music, but really I'd rather have had the original iBook form factor. Compared to my older 12" iBook the machine is thinner, longer, wider and about the same weight. The fans run often, are very audible, and can be very noisy, but the base is not excessively hot. PowerPC (legacy applications that invoke Rosetta when used) cause fans to run and the battery to decline quickly.

The battery is twice the size of the G4's and yields comparable or less battery life. I'm unimpressed with the power/heat/performance ratio of Intel's hyped architecture; I had to significantly drop the screen brightness to get a reasonable battery life. The conversion from PowerPC to Intel has thus far underwhelmed me, especially since I was disappointed with Parallels (see below). The machine, for example, takes longer to sleep -- making it much too easy to run off with with a spinning hard drive. You have to shut the case and look for the cycling sleep light.

In terms of connectors I don't miss the modem. The video connector seems proprietary, but I'm used to that from Apple. The VGA and DVI cables are reasonably priced and I bought both (check what comes with this machine). The ability to support two desktops is the one really big improvement over the G4 iBook.

The built in camera is silly. It's low resolution with a tiny lens and awful performance with ambient indoor light. The MagSafe power connector is impressive, even though it means there won't be non-Apple licensed chargers for this machine. Apple has retained the rest of their power adapter design, which has been the best in the industry. (I'm big on power adapters as a leading indicator of product excellence).

The MacBook comes with much less bundled than my G5 iMac. In part that may be because Apple probably wants to avoid non-"universal" (intel-compatible) apps and in part to reduce support costs and product cost. You get Apple's superb iLife apps, some simple games, OmniOutliner, and a "comic" generator. No encyclopedia, etc.

I used Apple's user migration to move 3 user accounts, software, files, etc from an old, old iBook. This requires a firewire cable, so IF YOU WANT TO DO USER MIGRATION BUY OR BORROW A FIREWIRE CABLE. The firewire cable is not included with this MacBook. The migration process is well integrated into initial setup and, all by itself, probably pays for any price difference between the bottom-of-the-barrel Dell laptop and the MacBook. I did run across some minor cleanup tasks, but the iBook had very old stuff. Migration takes longer than you expect and periodically pauses for long minutes; it's not frozen, just thinking. Start it and come back in a few hours.

I bought the InCase neoprene sleeve to protect the MacBook when it's carried in a bag or backpack. It's a handsome, well made case, but it desperately needs some thin, lightweight strap-type nylon carrying handles. Sigh. I guess they omitted them for price and aesthetic reasons, but I recommend looking for something with straps. Not recommended.

Also not-yet-recommended is the famous Parallels Windows emulation environment. I downloaded the trial version and attempted to install Windows 98. Ugh. Awful. Wasted hours. I don't know if it's this bad with every machine or if they've not tuned it to the new MacBook. Flawed documentation, flawed auto-configuration. slow, huge power drain, didn't work, etc. I may try XP with Parallels once I recover. I recommend testing Parallels before you buy. If you do install XP and enable network access you are paying for XP, Parallels, and an antivirus solution.

The bottom line is that this looks like a good OS X laptop without some of the flaws of the first MacBook. Since any OS X laptop is an improvement over an XP laptop it's an excellent choice for everyone. If you intend to run Windows software I think Apple's Boot Camp (separate download) may be more reliable and elegant than Parallels.

Update 11/25/06: The MacBook is almost fast enough to run Aperture. If Apple ever fixes Aperture, it might be a decent platform for smaller projects. It takes longer to go to sleep than my G3 iBook -- it's easy to pick it up and start moving before the lazy blinking light begins.
Update 11/26/06: Adobe/Macromedia Shockwave doesn't run natively on Intel. Since it uses Rosetta, the browser has to use Rosetta too. This rules out most kids game sites.

Parallels Desktop for Mac: Bloody awful

Update 12/2/06: Ahh. The Windows 2000 story is much nicer.

Update 11/23/06: Boot Camp feels kind of crude as well, it uses up more drive space, and it doesn't do as good a job as a VM does controlling nasties. I think I'll wait a month and then try Parallels and XP again with the kids games. If they do better, then I'll go that way.

Update 11/23: I tried again with XP Pro. (I disabled network services for the Mac user because I was reusing my XP serial number for the test -- XP allows 30 days of use this way). This worked far better and took a fraction of the time to install. It didn't, however, manage the kids games. It through range errors, had trouble with resolution switches, etc. Since the kids games are a big part of my interest in running XP on this machine I'm going to try Boot Camp first. I can see how Parallels could be worth it when running a small number of well behaved business applications strictly with XP. They should never, however, have claimed to provide Windows 98 support! (See below.)

Parallels Desktop for Mac has been the toast of the Mac world for months. It's supposed to allow one to host a windows VM on an Intel Mac. I gave the free demo a try on my Mac Book Core-2 Duo with 2GM of RAM.

Wow.

That was really bad. Maybe all those reviews I read came from a parallel universe. I tried configuring it with Windows 98. I don't know where to begin with all the bugs I came across -- before I gave up. Briefly:

1. The documentation is wrong about where the device drivers are stored.

2. The default VM configuration had about 3 errors I had to correct to get things most of the way to working.

3. The necessary device drivers are buried on an image that has to be loaded via the VM configuration panel.

4. It was slow, slow, slow --- and it sucked power.

5. The widespread simple grammatical errors turned out to predict the entire user experience.

Perhaps the problem is it really only supports XP, but I thought Win 98 was a reasonable test. What a waste of time!

Looks like I'll give boot camp a try. I'm only glad I didn't pay money for this hunk of junk.

BlogJet This! for Firefox 2.0

BlogJet is an excellent XP blogging tool, but the author should have done a better job of pointing users to the Firefox 2.0 plugin: BlogJet - Blog - BlogJet This! for Firefox 2.0.

I'm disappointed that he seems to have been planning to charge for the Firefox 2.0 extension update, or even to require an update to a new BlogJet version to get the extension update. It's a great product, but ...

Migrating to an Intel Mac: workflow tip

I'm migrating a G3 iBook (started out running OS 9) to a MacBook Core-2 Duo. The tip in bold below will be most useful. I've already deleted all my classic apps (they hadn't been used for years and were all in one folder) and the children's classic games, this will help with minimizing emulation:

Bagelturf - Home Page

... Next I went through all my applications and utilities checking to see what was PowerPC and what was Intel or Universal. I did this quickly by bringing up the file inspector with option command I. It looks just like the file information window (command I), but updates as I click on different files. So this cuts out all the opening and closing of windows I would have had to do. Each time I found a PowerPC only application that I still wanted I made an alias of it on my desktop with option command drag, and when complete, I put all of those into a folder. This gives me a list of applications to go seek out Intel versions later. Pretty much everything I care about is now Intel. A few lingering Classic applications will no longer run (Intel Macs have no Classic support), so those were deleted. I found out later that another way to find all of my PowerPC applications is to use System Profiler. The Applications section finds them all and they can be sorted by CPU.

I think I'll be trying XP on this box as a game platform for the kid's games ...

Parallels and multiuser OS X

I'm setting up the new MacBook (I'll have commentary on the machine later). I was able to rapidly configure the users with Apple's migration tools, but now I wonder how to give each user access to Parallels. Coincidentally, Mac OS X Hints just addressed this (thanks Andrew): macosxhints.com - 10.4: How to share Parallels Desktop with multiple users.

They don't talk about licensing rules and XP, but I think the basic solution for us will be to have a special user for Parallels, and that user will need to log into an XP account. If the special user has a managed account I can leave it without a password, that should help the switch process for the kids and for me (main users). I do wonder how well Parallels will work for the kids games, and whether I should just go the Boot Camp route.

The RDC options is also interesting, note it requires XP Pro.

Ideally I'd like to "borrow" a copy of Parallels and figure out whether this will really work for us.

Very odd OS X bug: Cannot delete Finder Extensions Enabler

This is a truly weird bug.

I used the OS X system migration tool to configure my MacBook. The donor system was my old G3 iBook, with an old version of Classic. That version of Classic contained a file called "Finder Extensions Enabler".

OS X can't delete that file, nor can it delete an accompanying text file.

Why not? I don't know, but the Version string has an oddity. It contains the string [Nevin ":-)" Liber]. I'm betting the embedded quotes in the Version string has messed up OS X.

Update: I tried Onyx, but it couldn't get rid of these suckers. OS X Hints suggested Secure Delete, but that hung. Then I tried OS X Help -- it had quite a few tips. I noticed the file owners were another account, so, while they were in the trash, I changed ownership. Delete didn't work, but now Secure Delete did the trick. (Finder, File menu)

Update 2/5/07: Read the comments. The author of the version string responds! The limitations of ASCII are embedded everywhere, but Asian character sets will, one day, clean things up. This bug struck me again when I migrated from an iBook (that can run Classic) to my new MacBook. Secure Delete saved me again.