My otherwise limitless love for Quicksilver has recently been tempered by a burgeoning love for the addition of Quick Look to Mac OS X in the 10.5 version. Pre-Quick Look, Quicksilver was hands-down the fastest way to access and open files. ⌘+Space ➟ type a few characters ➟ and you were on your way. In some instances you still had to wait for some Behemoth Application to open up and unfurl its many tendrils into memory. But it was still a hell of a lot faster than navigating the Finder via mouse clicks, etc.
With the advent of Quick Look however, we are faced with a little bit of a conundrum.
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A few thoughts on Mac OS X 10.5 (”Leopard”) after having spent a solid week using it:
- Spaces. I didn’t think that I was going to use this at all but it turns out that it’s a great alternative to minimizing certain windows. Example: during the day I typically run all the apps I need and minimize certain ones (e.g., Things; e.g., OmniOutliner) to “get them out of the way” while I work in others. What Spaces has allowed me to do is to put these apps off to the side, in their own separate context, without having to get them jammed up in the Dock.
- Time Machine. In a word: awesome. It’s already come in handy and permitted me to recover some inadvertently lost files from the otherwise certain doom of “Secure Empty Trash”. The UI is a little intense but the metaphor makes sense and it didn’t take me long to figure it out.
- The “new” Dock. I’m a hidden-Dock-on-the-side kind of guy on my main machine so I really haven’t noticed this. That said, I actually like the way it looks. Also…
- Stacks. I didn’t think I would use this either. But I’ve found them to be pretty useful. It has also been nice to pull stuff off the ol’ Desktop. This new default Downloads folder, for example: I could get behind that in a big way.
- Translucent menubar. Meh… I could see why some folks are turning it off. None of the Desktop graphics I’ve used have made it difficult to read the menus (at least not yet). One thing that I do like about it is that it seems to soften the top edge of the screen a little bit while still maintaining that “hard ceiling” effect.
- Cover Flow in the Finder. Another one that I thought I wouldn’t use. Sure enough, it’s replaced column view as my preferred file browsing method. Combined with Quick Look, it’s emerged as a very nice UI improvement.
- Accessing Shared Machines. Weird. I’m undecided if I like this change or not. On the one hand, it seems to be a lot easier to access the machines I need. On the other hand, I was accustomed to the whole “⌘k” thing to get to the Connect to Server dialog. So that screwed me up for a while — especially since it didn’t seem to want to respect the afp:// in my server addresses. Once I figured out how to make the connections, the rest kind of fell into place (e.g., network-connected volumes still “live” at the same place on the command line so I didn’t need to update my rsync scripts) but it was a little bit of a rocky start.
- “Unified” UI. I like. Active/front-most windows are certainly more obvious than before. And this UI treatment seems to make better use of individual pixels and overall screen real estate.
- New Mail. A lot less crashy. (At least for me.) But just like when they threw RSS into Safari: /meh.
- Quicksilver. Not “Leopard” per se but I’ve noticed a couple things about Quicksilver since the upgrade. First, like Mail, Quicksilver also seems a bit less crashy than before. Second, some of Quicksilver’s pre-loaded scripts seem to require updating; e.g., “Show Character Palette” and “Show Keyboard Viewer” (both of which I use all the time) seem to just flake out now. Also, something about the animations and special effects in the UI are a bit different.
- Plays well with others? Seems to play less nice. Example: finding printers shared over Samba? Oh you can find them. But forget about authenticating.
Those are the top observations from the first week. I’m sure I’ll notice some other things but if I didn’t notice them in the first 168 hours then they’re likely not going to be major.
OS X 10.4.11 is out. Included in the update is Safari 3. Initial, 30-second impressions? Well, Safari can finally rock-and-roll with all of the WordPress editor features. So I’m happy about that. (Now to bring all of my Camino bookmarks back over…) Everything else looks like bug fixes, patches, security updates, compatibility improvements, and the like.
Goes to 11, indeed…
UPDATE: Safari doesn’t seem to “actually” play nice with the WorPress rich text editor (MCE, if I’m remembering correctly); it just LOOKS like it does? Also: double-clicking on the tab bar MUST yield a new tab (like Camino) — none of this “right-click > New Tab” nonsense.
As of yesterday, I am now on-board a [tag]MacBook Pro[/tag]. It’s my new work machine. BenNevis being both a scotch and the tallest peak in Scotland, the hostname naming convention fits with both home and office. So far, so good. First impressions in the first 24+ hours:
- Fast. Yes. It’s fast. Things are snappy and responsive. Must be the 2.0 GHz Core Duo. And the 2 GB of memory help, I’m sure. That said, it cooks and rivals (if not surpasses) Malkovich (running a 2.0 GHz G5).
- Rosetta. While most of the apps I run “all day” are [tag]Universal Binary[/tag] already, there are a few essentials that are still PowerPC-based. I.e., Microsoft anything. Word and Excel both run transparently and without a hiccup. It’s nice that there’s no emulation “ghetto” that needs to launch first (see also: “[tag]Classic[/tag]“) - - the application just opens as if it were running on KetelOne or Malkovich (etc.) That said, it does seem like apps running in Rosetta are more crash-prone. I had to force quit Word a couple of times today - - but then again, it never really has fully behaved for some types of “Track Changes” behaviors. (Meanwhile, Excel was faster than I’ve ever seen it.)
- Watch out for drivers. If you use 3rd party hardware, watch out for the drivers. They may not be Universal Binary (or the equivalent). I prefer to use a Logitch keyboard and trackball and to fully take advantage of their features, I need to run the Logitech “Control Center”. However, after installing the Preference Pane, [tag]OS X[/tag] decided that they couldn’t place nicely together. So much for my proper key mappings. So much for my scrollwheel as a double-click…
- Fan noise? I keep reading about excessive fan noise and “whining” from the machine. I haven’t noticed anything. Nothing out of the ordinary at least. It’s not silent. But it’s not load. However, it does get friggin’ hot. I’ll pay that price for fast though.
- Huge power brick. I’d read that it was bigger. Then I held it in my hands and dubbed it “Scotty” - - I canna give you any more, Cap’n! I’ve given yea all that she’s got!
Meanwhile, in the real world… I keep plugging away at getting everything set up the way I need it. No matter how prepared you think you are, it always takes an extra couple days.
Neat article off Int’l Herald Tribune re: some elements to consider in the recently-finalized [tag]Adobe[/tag]/[tag]Macromedia[/tag] merger/acquisition festival (first announced in April).
The “good point” is their citation of how Microsoft plans to bundle print-to-PDF capabilities into [tag]Windows Vista[/tag] (much as Apple already does with [tag]OS X[/tag]). This $650 million threat to Adobe’s [tag]PDF[/tag]-creation-software business underscores the rumors that they’re moving toward that “universal client” presumably dubbed “Apollo”. Moock has commented that there are no immediate plans to roll the [tag]Flash[/tag] and PDF platforms into one. It doesn’t make sense logistically or w/r/t/ purpose - - though long-term it does.
What I don’t get is their assertion that Adobe and Macromedia could not sustain their respective growth without the merger. Everyone I know in the graphics and web industries regarded them in this two-sides-of-the-same-coin sort of fashion. Adobe was this graphics-and-print giant that was trying its hand at web app software while Macromedia was this web app giant dabbling in the print-and-graphics world. (Where was Adobe’s equivalent of ColdFusion? Did Fireworks really compete with Photoshop? That sort of thing.) The argument that they needed to keep their respective guards (and now just “guard”) up against potential moves by Microsoft makes some sense. There’s no knowing what the future holds, right? Maybe FrontPage 2012 will do a number on GoLive Dreamweaver? Maybe Acrylic really will be able to compete with Illustrator and/or Photoshop? Both companies could have held their own - - which isn’t to say that their merger doesn’t “make sense”, just that Microsoft’s entry into the “creative professional” software market isn’t as inevitable as some of the analysts seem to think.
[tags]Macrodobe[/tags]
Greg Westin has a good redux on semi-securely enabling [tag]WebDAV[/tag] on an [tag]OS X[/tag] box. What’s good about the article is that it uses iCal’s “private server” publishing scenario as a use case and goes from there. He does a pretty good job of describing how to set up WebDAV in Apache and then how to use digest authentication and directory restrictions (via <Location>) to secure it.
Just remember to make that davlocks directory…
