How to use OS X iCal to sell Microsoft Vista

A few people have complained that Vista is slow.

Personally, I've never touched Vista. I'm willing to bet though, that nothing on Vista could be anywhere near as slow as OS X Leopard's iCal calendaring application. Calendars that were speedy and responsive on Windows 98 can crush a modern OS X 10.5 desktop.

Here's how to sell a Vista solution using OS X:

1. Start with a set of calendars that hav a few thousand events distributed across multiple calendars and iCal subscriptions [1]. (What, your life isn't that busy? Imagine what Obama's calendar looks like.)
2. Use the "period" hack to give Leopard iCal a "list" or "agenda" view of events.
3. Select a set of, say, 50, events from the list view. Using the context menu, move them to a large calendar with a thousand or so events.
4. Go to bed. If you're luck the fifty events will be moved by morning.
   

I remember how awed I was when the hospital I was studying at bought an 80386. Did they really need that much computing power?

That 80386 could have chewed through a few thousand calendar events in no time. Twenty years later a computer with roughly 400 times the power takes over 50 times longer to complete a similar task.

A 20,000 fold decrease in software efficiency is quite an achievement.

Maybe we don't need to worry about the Singularity after all. At the rate we're going the hardware of 2028 will struggle to add single digit numbers.

So what's wrong with OS X and iCal?

There's no easy answer. Apple follows their own set of priorities, and as long as their share price is relatively strong that won't change. In this case I suspect Apple chose a data store architecture that was consistent with Spotlight searches and their own internal aesthetics, rather than a data store that ... you know ... could actually ... perform. Beyond that there must be some nasty OS design constraints and bugs; even the slowest possible data store should be faster than this.

As an Apple customer I'm hoping for great sales of Windows 7 (aka Vista 2.0). Apple needs more fear.

Update 11/2/2008: Bento is just as slow as iCal. I think the data architecture must be the performance killer.

[1] This would be typical of someone migrating from a Palm or Outlook environment. iCal doesn't have the concept of tags or categories, so Palm categories become iCal calendards.

Restoring an iCal event (list) view in Leopard and other iCal oddities

I've been cleaning up my Leopard calendar after my Outlook/Palm to iCal/iPhone migration. It's a long process, during which I often mourn that FileMaker gave us the pathetic Bento rather than extending FileMaker to handle OS X data stores.

A list (aka "tabular") or Agenda view of all events (appointments, tasks) would sure help -- but Apple removed that feature in 10.5. (I blame Apple's penchant for doing insanely stupid things like this for the tooth I broke yesterday.)

There is a workarounds ...

Macworld | Mac OS X Hints | View all events in 10.5’s iCal

While iCal in OS X 10.5 has some nice changes—default event alarms, for instance—there are other changes that weren’t so nice (the loss of the sidebar with its easy-to-use event info still bothers me a lot). Another not-so-welcome change lies in the ability to view all of your events (and/or to dos) in a nice list view. In the 10.4 version of iCal, clicking a list-view-like button on the lower right of the iCal window would bring up a pane showing all your events. That button—and seemingly, the ability to see all your events—is gone in the 10.5 version of iCal.

However, there’s a strange workaround that will create a similar view—why it works, however, isn’t clear to me. To see a list of all your events and to dos, simply type a period (.) in the Search box at the top right of the iCal window.

A single double quote (") character also works.

You can also view iCal events using the Finder's cover flow feature, but that's not a terribly useful feature. It is good to remember that kind:ical will find all iCal events.

From the search/list view you can delete events or select and move them to a specific calendar.

PS. Operations performed on multiple items from the search view are exquisitely slow. They bring my PPC machine to a standstill. It helps to kill the 'mds' (spotlight) process.

Update: After an extended bout of iCal editing I killed my PPC session in a unique fashion. The screen blacked out. I had to hard cycle. There are ugly bugs in iCal!

MobileMe, Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, iTunes and yes, sync Hell

I thought I might finally have a use for MobileMe. I thought I might be able to use it to get some calendar information from work Outlook/Exchange to MobileMe to iCal to my iPhone.

Hah.

You know how this goes. With the last release of MobileMe for Windows Apple disabled calendar synchronization when Exchange is in the mix:

MobileMe Control Panel: Calendars is dimmed, cannot be selected for syncing in Windows:

.... Outlook is installed but connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server, and MobileMe Control Panel 1.2 or later is installed. If Outlook is connected to Exchange, Calendar syncing with MobileMe is not available. For more information about MobileMe and Exchange syncing, see this article...

There's no explanation of why this was disabled in MobileMe 1.2, but I suspect bidirectional MobileMe sync was trashing Exchange calendars [1]. We've heard rumor that Apple is having a dreadful time getting Exchange support working with 10.6; so it's not surprising that a sync setup involving Exchange 2003/2007 <-> Outlook 2003/2007 <-> MobileMe might be umm ... problematic.

Apple should have expected that; synchronization is Hell.

Most confusingly (yes, synchronization is Hell) Apple claims that Contact sync is also forbidden when MobileMe is involved...

MobileMe Control Panel for Windows 1.2 or later will automatically turn off syncing with Outlook for you if you had it setup previously. This text appear when it detects that you are using Outlook with an Exchange Server:

"Syncing of contacts and calendars with Microsoft Outlook is not available while Microsoft Outlook is configured to use Microsoft Exchange Server. You may still directly access your data from Exchange over the air using your iPhone or iPod touch."

You will still be able to sync your contacts with Windows Contacts (on Windows Vista) or Windows Address Book (on Windows XP), as well as with Yahoo or Google contacts, per usual.

When I looked I saw that Contacts sync was not grayed out, but maybe that's sync to Windows Address Book (which should be empty though there's a possibility of some brain blowing reflection from Outlook Contacts).

Apple's kb article mentions using Exchange ActiveSync to get Exchange data on the iPhone, but that's a diabolical trick. We already know that will wipe all personal data from the iPhone -- unless you sync personal data from OS X to MobileMe and MobileMe data to the iPhone.

If your head isn't exploding you're not paying attention. Did I mention synchronization is hell?

Ok, but what about the old iPod-style iPhone Calendar synchronization via iTunes and a USB cable? (Taking MobileMe out of the picture entirely, in case you missed that) ...

... If you are not able to use Exchange ActiveSync, but would like to sync your Outlook data to your iPhone/iPod touch while using Exchange, you can sync your iPhone/iPod touch through iTunes over a USB cable. Note that if you sync an iPhone/iPod touch this way, you will not be able to sync your iPhone/iPod touch over-the-air with MobileMe.

You see, you can sync an iPhone with one of:

1. iTunes to Outlook (w/ or w/o Exchange) via USB cable (then Outlook cannot sync to MobileMe)
2. iTunes to iCal which can in turn sync to MobileMe (OS X only) via USB cable
   
3. MobileMe
4. Exchange Server via ActiveSync
5. MobileMe and Exchange Server via ActiveSync
   

But what about synching one iPhone to iTunes to iCal at home and iTunes to Outlook at work via the USB cable? Although one person reported a solution using Entourage, I'll stick with my understanding that this is strictly impossible.

Which leaves Outlook to Google calendar to Missing Sync to iCal to iPhone via USB cable at home. (Don't even think of making this anything but unidirectional.)

If you understood that last sentence, I'm afraid of you now. If your head just exploded please join the club.

I wonder how things work with the gPhone (Google Android)?

[1] I'm not insane. I would never enable bidirectional sync in this setting, I was looking for unidirectional sync. I imagine Apple felt it would be tacky.

Update 11/3/08: The last option worked.

Apple concedes the gamma war

Photos that appear just right on a Mac seem dark and muddy on a PC.

It's the curse of gamma. Eons ago Apple chose a perfectly reasonable value for this obscure metric of color image contrast. Then Microsoft opted for very cheap displays that had a different value.

We know how that turned out.

In theory, I think (the topic is esoteric), colorsync software should manage the gamma effect. Unfortunately Windows does a terrible job with color management. So the problem remains.

With its next OS, Apple has throw in the towel ...

AppleInsider | Snow Leopard to see HFS compression, default gamma switch

...Macs to date have typically employed a lower-contrast but lighter 1.8 gamma level, but the new Snow Leopard build now changes this to a deeper 2.2 gamma that was previously only an option in earlier Mac OS X editions...

Today if you use a Gamma of 2.2 you can make your images look good, but the rest of the OS looks nasty. With 10.6 the OS will look good with a gamma of 2.2.

I suspect our old photos will look good in 10.6 as long as they have color profiles embedded, but going forward photos will look good even on color-damaged Windows clients.

So this is actually a good thing, though it's also an admission of defeat.

gContacts for iPhone: well worth my $2.00

I installed gContacts after reading this Ars review about a Google Contacts view app ...

gContacts brings Google contacts to iPhone

... Offered in the App Store for $1.99, gContacts is more or less a dedicated address book application for the Googlers amongst us. It can view both contacts and suggested contacts for one or more accounts, offering full access to contact information like phone numbers, a contact's photo, e-mail addresses, job information, and any notes you've attached.

gContacts also integrates pretty well with other iPhone applications, allowing you to call contacts and draft an e-mail...

Someday I might get around to reconciling my primary address book with my Gmail contacts, but that day is months away (esp. since Bento, which was my primary strategy for reconciliation, is so feeble).

The big weakness, other than being read-only is that gContacts has no search. Still, it does bring a heck of a lot of email information to my iPhone.

Worth $2. More if they ever add search ...

Update 10/28/08: It's no longer sold. No explanation. I assume Apple would have used their kill switch if it were doing something illegal. I suspect the name turned out to be copyrighted already.

Update 10/29/08: The author responded in Apple Discussions. The take down was trademark related. The app should return with a different logo and possibly a different name.

How gigabit ethernet can replace firewire for system migration

As long as you have two fairly modern machines, you can connect them without a router ..

Creating a small Ethernet network

...Some later Macintosh computers can automatically detect and reconfigure pinouts so that a crossover cable is not required and/or may be used interchangeably with a standard cable.

I'd forgotten about cross-over cables, I wonder what year Macs became auto-configuring.

Incidentally, in my experience Gigabit ethernet connected drive services feel much faster than locally connected USB drives.

No sound with Flash on OS X

My Flash videos were silent. Audio seemed to be working otherwise. I reinstalled Flash, but silence still reigned.

Mac OS X Hints had several old fixes: A possible fix for no sound in Flash on Intel Macs. The most direct fix involved running a Midi utility to correct the sound sampling rate, but my sampling rate was fine.

Turns out there's a wee little sound control in Flash video. It's independent of the system sound. Mine had somehow been set to the lowest value.

Who knew?