Windows On-Screen Keyboard (OSK)

When Some Keys on the Computer Keyboard Aren't Working (Digital Inspiration) - just type osk in the command line. Great tip!

iShowU: screencasting for OS X

I've been using iShowU to create a series of OS X video tutorials (screencasts) for my mother. I'm impressed! It's one of only 2 or 3 OS X apps that can do this, and it's only $20. Works fine and you can edit in iMovie. I'm going to experiment with exporting from iMovie as a "iPod" video, which in my past experience is surprisingly viewable.

For screencasting use create a very simple user account and run the screen res at 800x600 (or 1024x768). Screen rate is 2 screens/sec and set size to match the res (800x600). Stop and start with the shortcut keys. I'm experimenting with output.

For viewing the choices seem limited. I wonder if .Mac would work better! I'm currently using a link, which in Firefox causes the .mov file to be downloaded then played by Quicktime. I'm also staging via Google Video, but then in it plays in very low res Flash (like all shared video I can find).

What I want is a "free" (ad supported) video sharing site that would stream using the better Quicktime codec.

Update 1/1/10: I'm impressed! This works extremely well. I do my screen captures now using H.264 for compression and res 800x600 with "thousands of colors". I set the low refresh rate to 1 fps and the high refresh rate to 4 fps and choose the 'use low when mouse not moving' option. A short tutorial screencast takes only about 6ooK. I upload the videos to my Google web creator page as files and then create a blog post pointing to them. I don't use the video pages because the files are so small I don't need to stream, and the QT H.264 codec gives far better results than Flash video.

Update 8/17/10: iShowU is still around, now with 10.6 versions and a "pro" version. Price is very reasonable, the upgrade price is just the delta between the original and new price. Unfortunately, the've adopted an insane licensing/copy protection strategy. You need to consider this new hassle in your purchase decisions.

OS X unzip: what to do when it seems to fail (hint: Stuffit)

I downloaded the latests version of Chipt's excellent Backpack widget today, but when I unzipped it I saw two files instead of one widget. One had a size of zero, the other had no size information. It looked corrupt, so I tossed it and started to write the author. As I started my email, an idea struck me.

It had been opened using an old copy of StuffIt Expander (9.0.1). That's not the way OS X normally opens zips. I used get info to view the file information, and saw that the "Open with" setting was StuffIt. I switched to the obscurely named BOMArchiveHelper -- the internal OS X application. That did the trick; the folder now had a proper widget and I installed it. I clicked the "Change All" button as well.

There's more than one problem here. As has been well described by 'Drunken Fireball' and others, Apple seriously mangled the innards of OS X when they switched from the well designed Mac Classic metadata system for data file type and creator to the kludged mixture used by OS X (way too weird to describe, it's some mix of old metadata, new metada, the three character file extension (whether hidden or not) and the phases of Venus).

The other problem is StuffIt. I don't know if Chipt was using StuffIt.... Chipt wasn't using StuffIt, but a few misguided developers have stuck with it. StuffIt is an abomination. It was once a great product, but a few years ago the current owner went a bit berserk with various DRM schemes, hiding the well established free version, working to lock users into proprietary schemes, etc. I don't know the current version of StuffIt, and I don't care. Stuffit's day has passed. I keep it around only because a few people use the .sit format (alas), but I'm beginning to rethink that. I'm going to delete it from my system, and install it again in the rare instance that I need it.

OS X usability hall of horrors

We all know that OS X has lots of design flaws, usability errors and half-built zombie components (such as Services, Sherlock, the Finder, and the Dock. I didn't realize how long the list was, however, until I built and configured a Mac Mini for my 70+ yo mother. The act of documenting the build opened my eyes to how bad things are. Of course XP is worse, but, really, that's a feeble excuse.

I don't expect 10.5 to be much better, but I hope I'm surprised. Of course OS X works very well for me, but that's not the point. Here's the list, in no particular order:

1. It’s not hard to put an icon behind the dock, esp. when the auto-arrange option is set for the Finder. If the user can’t control the doc (it's been locked as part of system configuration), the icon may not appear to be retrievable.
2. It’s too easy for users to drag things and make them go “poof” -- with no obvious way to undo this.
3. The options to customize toolbars is too limited. Where’s the Help button?
4. There is NO documentation on how to use OS X in the box or on the machine. NADA. You need to buy a book.
5. The trash should be on the $#!%$! Desktop, not attached to the Dock.
6. The Dock is one big usability disaster.
7. Using the Trash icon to “Burn” a CD is really dumb.
8. The Address Book is a disaster. You can’t customize the Toolbar. It feels little changed from 10.0. The UI is a complete mess. Do you know how to delete an address book entry? Now let's talk about Mail.app integration ...
9. It’s much too easy to lose the main Window in Mail.app.
10. The sequence of steps required to make a ‘Preview’ window “right sized” is obscure and bizarre.
11. Widgets: Oddly enough, if you’re careful, you can put together a good set, but pressing F12 should hide everything else and the Widget layer should be impermeable - so can’t click through to Desktop or other apps...
12. iTunes breaks a number of UI conventions, but the one of the worst is using the ‘smart size’ Green button to switch to the mini-player instead of resizing the main window. iTunes also disregards the existence of the Dock. I think the iTunes developer team dropped several competence grades in the past few releases.
13. Location information for the Dashboard widgets is set by the address card information for the currently logged in user. This is not documented. Cute and stupid. (The address related widgets don’t work outside the US, and they don’t provide any error messages to that effect either.)
14. Open Mail.app. Then open Address Book. Then create an address. Then in Mail.app click on addresses. Note the newly added address does not appear. Eventually it is recognized, but it takes a surprisingly long time and a few application restarts. Shameful.
15. Create a sticky. With cursor at the end of a line, print it. Notice the last word does not print. Wretched.
16. The "stuck" CD/DVD problem. (If a CD has fingerprints or otherwise cannot be recognized properly, it doesn't mount on the desktop, but it doesn't eject either!)

You do get the feeling nobody in Cupertino cares about this stuff any more ...

Yet another OS X bug - iTunes this time

I'm running into a serious bug every hour or so! This one is with Apple's Front Row menu. Music that plays fine in iTunes, and that came from a CD (not the Apple Store) won't play in Front Row -- I get the "not authorized" notice.

I'm thinking very negative thoughts at the moment. Time to go to sleep.

Update: Others have noticed this. $#!$#!$!@%!%

Maybe Jobs should take some of his suspect stock option money and pay for some QA testing.

Update: Here's the main discussion. Tag update didn't work, move Library didn't work, now trying move and Consolidate (takes a long time, so maybe ...). Update later.

Update: Ok, it's fixed. Killer bug though. My iTunes library was in a folder titled iTunesMusic. When all was done the files were in 'iTunes Music'. I did the following:

1. upgraded all tags to most recent standard
   
2. used advanced settings to change location of all music
3. use 'consolidate' menu item which had the effect of copying (so almost ran out of room on drive) all music from iTunesMusic to a new folder called iTunes Music in the parent folder I'd moved everything to.
4. started OS X in safe mode to flush caches then restarted
   
5. started iTunes, confirmed it was using iTunes Music.
6. moved iTunesMusic to the trash
7. Started Front Row which then locked up. Killed front row with cmd-alt-esc.
8. emptied trash and restarted iTunes. (I think Front Row was still trying to use the files in iTunesMusic, which was in the trash.)
   
9. Started Front Row again -- now it works.
   

The MacBook has a flicker problem ...

Alas, hundreds of postings, this being only one of the recent ones: Apple - Support - Discussions - Has anyone got the screen flick problem ....

I can attest my 2 month old Core-2 Duo is flickery, though it's more annoying that intolerable. It's more obvious with the default blue background, less with white background. Better at intermediate brightness, worse with CPU load and heat. Sounds like a design flaw. I'm early in my warranty period so I'll just track it. Apple repair can be shaky -- if you get a repair too early in a defect issue cycle you end up worse than when you started.

Some people claim it's not so obvious when using XP BootCamp, which would be encouraging that their might be a firmware or software fix.

OS X windows file sharing: incorrect password bug

"OS X" "windows file sharing" "incorrect password" - Google Search didn't help me, but I figured this but out on my own.

The bug bites when you enable windows file sharing by account. You have to enter the account password -- but it doesn't work!

I think this bug shows up when you migrate a 10.3.9 account, that itself started life with 10.1, to a new machine running 10.4.x using the OS user migration utility. That seemed like a great idea at the time, but in retrospect OS X does not manage machine migration nearly as well as Mac Classic did.

The answer is to go to each user account and change the password to something different. Then change it back to the original password. This fixes things.

There's a similar "incorrect password" bug that shows up on the Win98 side when connecting to a Mac SMB share. I haven't figured that one out yet, I'll try restarting the Mac and see if that helps. I also used the super-occult OS X Directory Access utility to change my OS X SMB workgroup to match the Windows workgroup.

Note that the Windows workgroup SMB browse name is the same as the Bonjour/Rendezvous browse name (machine_name.local).

Jeez, ever since I started migrating my mother from Win98 to OS X I've been running into a torrent of OS X bugs and usability errors. OS X really does have a lot of issues ...

Update 1/1/07: Well, I got bidirectional file sharing working between Win98 and OS X. What a pain! I'm not sure what did the trick. I used the ultra obscure Directory Access utility to change my OS X SMB workgroup name from "workgroup" to the name used by the Win98 machine, I logged in to the Win98 machine with a username that matched the username on my OS X machine, and I probably did a few other things too. It does work, but really this is ugly.