MacNoob

I sorted through an iCal problem the other day and I thought I’d share it with everyone.  I, like many others subscribe to a couple of calendars in iCal on my Macs, namely U.S. Holidays and the Houston Astros schedule.  The problem is, if you sync calendars via Mobile Me, calendars you subscribe to can’t be published and won’t sync to an iPhone or iPod Touch.  There is a way to work around this and it’s fairly simple.  The only tools you’ll need come with your Mac.  Here’s what you do:

1. In the iCal menu select <Calendar><Find Shared Calendars…>.  This will launch your browser and take you to published iCal calendars on Apple’s download website.
2. Find a calendar you want and right-click (control-click) its’ “Download” button and select “Copy Link”.
3. Paste the link into a new browser window’s address bar but DO NOT PRESS ENTER.
4. The URL should look something like: webcal://ical.mac.com/ical/…
5. Change “webcal” to “http” and hit Enter.
6. If you did everything right, what will be displayed is the content of the .ics file that iCal understands.
7. In your browser menu, select <File><Save> from the menu and save the file to your desktop.  Safari and Firefox will both append a “.txt” to the filename so it looks something like this: “USHolidays.ics.txt”
8. Rename the file removing the “.txt” portion.
9. In the iCal menu select <File><Import…> and select the file you just renamed and iCal will ask you which of your calendars you’d like to import the new file to. (or you can create an new calendar for the new events beforehand)
10. Select one of your calendars and click “Continue”.
11. That’s it!  The new events will show up in the calendar you specified.

If the calendar you specified is one you publish to Mobile Me, the new events will be published also and will be synchronized across all your Mobile Me machines and devices.

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Joseph Kelley OS X iCal, OS X tips

Apple’s recent hiring of Bob Drebin has sparked a tsunami of speculation as to Apple’s intentions regarding chip design and manufacture.  AppleInsider points to LinkedIn profiles of Drebin and Wei-han Lein to support their speculation about a new, home-grown mobile processor for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch successors.  With last year’s purchase of PA Semi, over $25 billion in the bank and all the new hardware hotshots including Mark Papermaster, Apple seems to have all the pieces in place to mount a serious effort to design and build its own chips.  The question is: For what?

Consensus among pundits points to the afore-mentioned mobile processor and that may be true, but I think they have something else up their sleeve.  Looking closely at Mr. Papermaster’s hardware group, one finds a ton of engineers (some say over 100) with graphic chip design and manufacturing backgrounds.  I’m starting to believe Apple has a desire to make its own graphics hardware.  Here’s why…

1. OpenCL technology (that leverages GPU capabilities) built into Snow Leopard promises to take OS X performance to the next level once application development catches up to the standard.  This just feels like something Apple would leverage by controlling the hardware and API completely.
2. Intel and Nvidia sue each other so frequently their lawyers have their own parking spots at the courthouse.  Apple has clearly staked its foreseeable [Mac]hardware designs on Intel and everyone seems to agree, that was the correct move.  If the squabbling gets nastier, Apple may have to distance itself from Nvidia to avoid getting caught in the middle.
3. AMD (owners of ATI) has to be reeling from the exodus en masse of their key engineering people.  I don’t think their graphics product pipeline has run empty yet, but with so many ex-employees now in Cupertino, ATI no longer seems like the kind of company Apple would need to partner with.
4. If ATI and NVidia are both undesirable, that leaves…NOBODY! (Yes, I know Intel makes graphics chipsets, but Apple’s last hardware refresh ditched them altogether.  The divorce is final.) Apple clearly hopes to make OpenCL a differentiator between OS X and Windows.  Given its history of tight (and closed) coupling of OS X to its hardware, Apple may not wish to bet the farm on any technology they don’t own outright.

Any of these reasons, taken separately, don’t amount to much, but together they make a strong argument for both the means and motive for Apple to build their own graphics hardware.  Couple that with a $25 billion bankroll and there’s no doubt they could if they wanted to.  Now it’s just a question of Apple’s desire and few ever seem to guess that right.

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Joseph Kelley Apple Minutiae, Hardware, OS X, Technology chips, design

I have always admired the speed of Safari but the lure of Firefox’s add-ons kept me from switching to Apple’s browser…until now. When I switched to a Mac some 18 months ago, one of the first things I downloaded was Firefox. I’d been using it on Windows since version 0.9 and on my new Mac it was an island of familiarity in the ocean of new(to me) operating system. Frankly, the then current Safari 2 seemed a little feature-poor by comparison. When I learned about Webkit, I began downloading the nightly build every now and then just to see if its speed could wow me enough to make me switch. While it was very fast, I always found myself missing FEBE and Better G-Mail. FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) enables me to save all my add-ons, bookmarks and preferences automatically and is an absolute necessity when moving between and adding computers as often as I do. The Better G-Mail add-on adds features and visual appeal to the normally bland Google app. I spend so much time with GMail I really need it to look and feel more like a desktop app.
When the Safari 4 beta was released I was immediately attracted to its speed and new features.  Also, a couple of recent developments have lessened my dependence on my favorite Firefox add-ons. First, Google has dramatically enhanced GMail’s feature set. With a multitude of new themes and its recent addition of off-line capability there is little need for third-party embellishment. Second, the new Foxmarks web service provides web synchronization of bookmarks and login data between Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.
I really wanted to give Safari 4 a good shakedown so I immediately set it as the default browser on my Macbook Pro, the machine I use 90% of the time. The first couple of days were a bit uncomfortable just because of the normal learning curve. Different button and tab placement along with some slight rendering differences kept me a little off-balance, but I was determined not to fall back into my comfort zone for comfort alone. After just two or three days using Safari 4 I found I had gotten quite used to it and I still haven’t run into any real show-stoppers. The sites I frequent all work well and the JavaScript-rich ones certainly render much faster. I really thought Apple’s claims of speed were just so much hype, but Firefox now seems almost sluggish on sites like GMail or Google Maps.
Is Safari perfect? Of course not. Are there things I wish Safari did better? Sure. Is this new version good enough to lure me away from Firefox? Time will tell, but it is still the default browser on all my systems after a week and that’s about five days longer than any of its predecessors.

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Joseph Kelley Apple Minutiae, OS X, Software Safari

If you spend all day most every day staring at a computer screen like I do, you might get bored looking at the same old wallpaper day after day.  I’m always on the lookout for new eye candy to dress up my desktop because I typically change my wallpaper every week or so.  Working for a Windows-laden corporation, I prefer my desktop advertise the fact that I “Think Different”.  Consequently, I’ve managed to collect quite a few Apple and Mac-centric wallpapers over the past several months and thought I’d share them with everyone.  I’ve uploaded 68 of my personal favorites.  Some of these you may have, some you may not and to the best of my knowledge none violate anyone’s copyright or license agreement.  In any case, click here to peruse and download any (or all) you like.

P.S.  Feel free to put them on your Windows machine if you use one at work or if you’re just waiting to purchase a good computer.

MacNoob

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Joseph Kelley Apple Minutiae, OS X, Promotion

If you’re new to the Mac platform, the sheer number of apps promising to make your life easier or more productive can be daunting.  I’ve wasted lots of money on applications I rarely (or never) use.  These five are real “keepers” and won’t cost you a dime.

I’ve owned my Mac for 18 months now and it’s hard to remember my computing life without it. Maybe I’m presumptuous, but I feel like a real OS X veteran now. I’ve tried a ton of applications as I’ve explored this new (to me) platform and it turns out there’s five of them I use every day and can’t imagine using my Mac without them. The cool part; THEY’RE ALL FREE! I’m not going to try and number these or assign them any relevant score because they serve such a variety of purposes. I find them all extremely useful and wouldn’t want to give a single one of them up.  This post isn’t a review, just a list of free stuff that I think every noob should at least try.

• Quicksilver Using this application is by far the fastest way to launch an app or find a file anywhere on your Mac.  It has a skinnable UI and is capable of much more than launching apps and opening files, but if you’re like me and prefer to keep both hands on your keyboard, Quicksilver is perfect for finding and opening things with just a couple of keystrokes. In fact, just about anything you can do in Finder with a mouse, you can do in Quicksilver with the keyboard.  Beyond that, there is a huge list of other applications that provide plugins to Quicksilver exposing their functionality.  FTP and e-mail are the two I use most, but the list of possibilities seems endless.  For searching, file manipulation and application launching, Quicksilver can shave tons of time off of every-day tasks.
• Evernote Just as its’ name implies, Evernote is a virtual ubiquitous notebook that works on any computer with a browser and internet connection. I use it to record all my product keys, snatch web pages and code snippets and about a hundred other things. I add a note on my Mac, it syncs with the Evernote server and is available on my PC at work and my iPhone.  One of the coolest features of Evernote is its OCR (optical character recognition) capability.  When you paste any picture containing text into Evernote, that text becomes searchable like everything else.  It even works on pics of hand-written notes.  It’s not magic, the Evernote folks actually employ humans to decipher the pictures.  There are Mac and Windows versions of the product, but I find the web-based app to be the most useful.  I can log into evernote.com from any machine with an internet connection and get to all my notes and attached files.  As a professional IT guy, this feature has saved my bacon more than once.  Registration is free and the only restrictions are the amount of data you can transfer per month and the file types available for synchronization.  I used the free version for several months without noticing any of the limits.  I synced all sorts of picture and music files and any document I wanted to sync, I simply converted to PDF first.  Evernote never complained about any of them.  There are no nag screens either.  I wound up buying a one year “premium” subscription ($45) out of guilt more than necessity.  Being a software developer myself, I wanted to reward the Evernote Corporation for conceiving and producing such an extremely useful product.  It has become an integral part of my daily workflow.
• Dropox As Evernote is for managing notes and clips, Dropbox is for managing and sharing files.  The best way to describe Dropbox is an internet-based file server.  Installing Dropbox creates a folder on your Mac that allows you to move or copy files of any type into it and Dropbox synchronizes those files to your corresponding folder on their servers.  You can access your files from any computer (Mac, Windows or Linux) with an internet connection using a web browser or the free client application.  When you add a file to your Dropbox folder it is then automatically synchronized to every machine where you have Dropbox installed.  This process happens quietly, in the background so, as a user you simply click on your dropbox folder to access your files without having to first download them.  If there are files you’d like to share with others, Dropbox provides a public folder for each account.  Files you place in this public folder can be shared with everyone or only those you choose.  In Finder, when you right-click on a file in this public folder, a menu option allows you to copy a link to the clipboard and paste it anywhere you want, like in an e-mail or other document.  Like an advanced file server, Dropbox maintains versions of all your files.  If you make an editing mistake or accidentally delete something within a document, correcting your mistake is as simple as opening an earlier version of the file.  This could come in particularly handy if multiple people are working on a project in one of your public folders.   The free version provides 2 gigs of space.  For $10 per month or $99 per year that increases to 50 gigs.  I use the free version to keep several important files that I never want to be without and for sharing pictures and short videos with friends and family.  It is amazing how much you can store with 2 gigs of space if you shy away from media, especially video.  In fact, excluding media, my entire life’s work (since 1982) fits on about a gig and a half.  When you have multiple machines and/or change computers as often as I do, the size of your personal data becomes a familiar number.  Now, thanks to Dropbox I have it all available to me anywhere I go.
• iStat Menus This application is an instrument cluster for monitoring all facets of your Mac.  From physical conditions like fan speeds and temperatures to operating conditions like CPU and memory utilization, disk and network activity, iStat Menus provides a way to monitor them all in an efficient, unobtrusive way.  I installed this app the first week after getting my Mac and I’ve used it every day since.  iStat Menus installs as a preference pane in the System Preferences application.  From there you configure which of the multitude of monitors you want to display on your menu bar.  I keep the CPU, memory and temperature graphs on mine.  Clicking one of these menu bar displays drops down detailed data about it.  For instance, I keep a small CPU graph on my menu bar to see how busy my system is at a glance.  If I want to know more, I click the graph and a drop-down menu shows me a detailed graph of each CPU core, a list of the top five processes by CPU usage and information about average load, system uptime and how many processes I have running.  There’s also a link to launch the Activity Monitor if I need to know more.  In addition to the CPU, you can configure menus for memory, disks, network, temperatures, fans and even how you display the date and time.  Each is as complete and extensible as the CPU example I just described.  I’m a geek, so I like all the bells and whistles, but even an every-day user will find something in iStat Menus to their liking.
• Skitch I use this app for every picture on this blog and any time I need to capture any portion of my screen.  The best thing about Skitch (aside from the price) is its intuitive interface and ease-of-use.  Skitch is the easiest app I’ve tried for capturing, annotating and sharing screen and iSight snapshots.  Images captured with Skitch can be automatically uploaded to .Me, flickr, facebook or to Skitch.com.  Are there more extensive screen capture utilities? Yes, but none are easier to use or less obtrusive than Skitch.  I own Snapz Pro X and use it for more intricate capture jobs but Skitch is the app that is always running and on my menu bar because of its’ simplicity.  It does 90% of what I need in a capture utility, it’s small, easy and it’s free.  I donated to the company because I like their product so much, but the Skitch application doesn’t nag you to do so or limit functionality in any way.  It just works well and does almost everything I need it to.

Keep these applications in mind if you’re looking for the capabilities they provide.  They’re all on every Mac I own.  I only wish they’d been available or I had know about them before spending money on others that don’t work as well or I didn’t really need.

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Joseph Kelley OS X, Software

My Dell XPS has been in its bag for over three weeks now.  It is my “official” company-issued computer, but I have a new Vista machine on my desk that I’ve started using for all the Windows heavy lifting.  The surprising thing is just how much of my job I can do on my Mac, once I installed VNC, that is.  (VNC is the remote desktop app we use to connect to any computer on-site.)  I have installed Office 2008 on my Macbook Pro and much of my work involves creating and editing documents.  That is, of course, unless the document contains any VBA code.  You see, Microsoft neglected to add that feature to the newest Mac version of Office.  Most all of the remainder of my job description can be accomplished by remote connections or via a web browser.  All my servers and about 95% of the desktop PCs at my site run the VNC server software allowing me to pop in by simply typing my password.  All our network hardware (printers, switches and routers) sport their own web servers and Firefox works just fine for them.  Most companies have hard and fast rules about using a non-company computer on the company’s network, but since I’m the IT manager (thus, the enforcer of said rules) I get away with using my Mac.

The corporation I work for has mandated so much security software on portable computers, they’ve rendered them virtually unusable.  The two main culprits are SafeBoot and Sygate.  Safeboot encrypts the entire hard disk with 128 bit AES.  In a word, it’s S-L-O-W!!!!  Never mind the stupid screensaver that kicks in every 15 minutes and is too moronic (CIOs call it secure) to remember your user name.  Sygate is the mother of all big brother applications and forces compliance to whatever corporate “security” policy the intellectuals at headquarters think is appropriate.  You must comply with Sygate policy before it will let you log into your network.  It’s just ill-advised paranoia mandated by upper management so they can sleep better at night knowing their network is secure.  Guess what, it’s not!  I suspect installation of this nazi-ware just enabled them to check a couple of boxes on some audit forms that weren’t checked before.  Now, at least, their jobs are safe.

“The CIO”

I’ve worked for three Fortune 500 companys in my life and the IT executives of each seem to read from the same playbook.  I think they are well-intentioned for the most part, but I sometimes wonder if they ever have a creative thought.  It’s almost as if they get all their security ideas from a Symantec brochure.  Oftentimes the initiatives they direct are last year’s solutions to a previous decade’s problems.  When I see the overbearing and machine-crippling “solutions” they’ve provided for us helpless sheep, I can’t help but wonder if they ever read anything current or browse the internet at all.

Using my Mac sidesteps the whole corporate security issue altogether.  There is no Sygate or Safeboot for the Mac because there are no real security issues with OS X and I never keep any proprietary data on my machine.  Yes, the corporate network is still quite safe.  Besides, I think the Mac is just a lot more fun and I really like being the non-conformist.  Actually, there is no company policy regarding any computers other than Windows machines, a loophole you could drive a truck through.  Come to think of it, I know how I can save the company millions.  Next, Ubuntu!

Joseph Kelley IT, OS X Corporate Security, Mac