Tag Archives: Apple

My Favorite Small Mac OS X 10.7 Features

As usual, some of the most interesting (to me) new features in the next release of Mac OS X are in the cheap seats, not on the highlight reel.  The following items are excerpted from http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html after today’s WWDC announcement of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion:

[Address Book] Yearless birthdays

You can now add birthdays to your contacts without including a year.

[FileVault 2] External drive support

FileVault 2 supports encryption of external USB and FireWire drives.

[Finder] Merge folders

When you try to combine two folders with the same name, the Finder now offers to merge them into a single folder.

[Internet Restore and Utilities] Built into Lion

OS X Lion includes a built-in restore partition, allowing you to repair or reinstall OS X without the need for discs.

[Networking] Low-power wake

In OS X Lion, your Mac can wake up for services such as file sharing, backup, and more without the need to turn on the monitor or attached USB devices.

[Networking] NFSv4 support

Lion includes support for NFSv4. // Not that I’ll use it, but anything that helps NFSv4 is a good thing in my book.

[QuickTime Player] Rotate clips

If you open a video and it’s upside down or sideways, just rotate it to make it right.

[Safari] Drag-and-drop downloads

You can drag downloaded files from the Downloads list to your desktop for easy organization.

[Screen Sharing] Per-user screen sharing

You can remotely log in to a Mac with any user account on that computer and control it, without interrupting someone else who might be using the computer under a different login. // This is going to be a Really Big One for some people.

[System] Windows migration

With OS X Lion, you can migrate all the information from your old PC to your new Mac. Lion automatically transfers your documents, contacts, calendars, email accounts (Outlook and Windows Live Mail), and photos stored in Picasa, and puts them in the appropriate applications. // Family IT guys, REJOICE!

[System Preferences] Custom desktop color

Now you can create a custom solid color from the color picker. // Solves a longstanding embarrassment, which is always good news.

[Time Machine] Local snapshots

OS X Lion lets you take the Time Machine experience with you when you’re away from your Time Capsule or backup drive. Time Machine keeps a spare copy of the files you create, modify, or delete right on your Mac. Now if you accidentally delete a file while on the road, you can recover it from a local copy.

[Time Machine] Encrypted backups

Keep your Time Machine backups secure by backing up to an external USB or FireWire drive encrypted with FileVault 2. // This is a Really Big One in general.

[Other Features] Resize from any edge

You can now resize a window from any side or corner. // Solves another (and more annoying) longstanding embarrassment.

I’m looking forward to the big stuff like Versions and Mission Control (not to mention the kinda-amazing Lion Server deal), but these little things are always my favorite part of a new Mac OS X release.

The New Apple TV

We have a new Apple TV. Herein, my experience.

It’s almost ridiculously small. Considering it’s basically a TV-connected 8GB iPod Touch, that’s not a surprise, but next to a Playstation 3 and 52″ TV, it’s nearly invisible. I really appreciate the lack of a power brick. It has a 6W power supply, which is maybe 1/16 what the PS3 requires.

Note that the Apple TV is connected via Ethernet to an Airport Extreme, which is connected via Ethernet to a cable modem on Comcast. Also connected via Ethernet to that Airport Extreme: the aforementioned PS3 and a Mac mini, which would ideally be on its way out of the den and into my office, but apparently not just yet.

Also note: no cable or satellite TV at our house, just Comcast data. We had Comcast WHATEVER_PACKAGE_SUPERB for the initial six months after the cable modem showed up, but never watched anything other than things we could already stream online. I have no interest in paying for traditional television service because it’s packed to the very top with Idiocracy-style nonsense.

But good TV, we like. We watch it (completely legally) via The Intarnet.

Apple ID

You use your Apple ID to turn on Home Sharing so the Apple TV can access content on iTunes from a computer on your network. I was immediately frustrated because my Apple ID had a space in the username, but the on-screen keyboard for the Apple TV doesn’t include a space character. I tried a few things, got frustrated, and used the Apple ID site to give in and change my Apple ID to an email address. This made me a bit sad; my Apple ID has been around for a long time and I had to go change it on all my devices. Once changed, the Apple TV set up fine and I could see iTunes stuff from the Mac mini. Bittersweet.

iTunes Content

I have a Season Pass on the iTunes Store for Mad Men. It downloads on the Mac mini. It shows up nicely on the Apple TV. It also manages to mark viewed content as viewed, which is very nice. I ranted for around five minutes the other day while walking to lunch about how annoying it is to play content stored in iTunes on Computer A (master) using iTunes sharing from Computer B. In my experience, metadata like played/unplayed, play counts, ratings, etc. doesn’t get updated on Computer A, which makes it much less useful. I know why this is, but it bugs me, especially for podcasts. The Apple TV appears to do this, at least for purchased TV.

I haven’t rented anything directly on the Apple TV. I don’t know if I’ll do that anytime soon, since most of the movies I want to watch are on Netflix and most of the shows are on Hulu. Most of both are Not Available for rental from the iTunes Store.

Songs, podcasts, my own non-iTunes Store videos stored in iTunes, etc. all played back fine on the Apple TV. Unless I find otherwise, my assumption is that if iTunes can play it, it can show up on the Apple TV. Works for me.

Netflix

The new Apple TV is much better as a Netflix player than the PS3 because there’s no fan, no disc (though that goes away this month, I hear), and both startup times and responsiveness are much better. It’s just a few seconds from selecting “Netflix” to hearing “Previously on Veronica Mars…”

One thing I don’t like: a few times while streaming Netflix video, it’s suffered from a cycle like this:

  1. Playback freezes for maybe ten seconds
  2. Playback resumes for five or ten seconds
  3. Repeat

This has only happened during a weekend night, but I don’t know if that’s significant. The last time it happened, I immediately switched to the Mac mini running Safari, netflix.com, and the Silverlight-based player, and saw no further hiccups. That makes me think there’s something different about the Apple TV (either its software or the Netflix backend it requires) that caused the issue. Annoying.

Hulu

Ha! It doesn’t do Hulu. The Mac mini seems like it might have to stay put. Hulu Plus is not the answer for me, and I don’t know what answer it provides to anyone who doesn’t want to watch back episodes of The X-Files on their iPad. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Hulu itself is great for watching recent shows, but Hulu Plus requires a subscription payment to still show you ads and not allow you to watch content you’re used to seeing on a mobile or TV-connected device. (Unless you have a Mac mini on your TV…)

It is deeply stupid to have to think about what device and signal path I have to use to watch an episode of freaking Glee.

I am well aware that the Apple TV will probably never let me view Hulu content without jailbreaking. I have made my peace with this.

Internet Radio

I listen to Groove Salad. It is great. It is a simple menu item on my TV now. This is awesome.

Flickr

It’s very easy to flip through pictures and slide shows from Flickr contacts. Images look nice and the UI is very responsive.

Except for those two times it crashed and the Apple TV had to reboot.

YouTube

I watched video from my friend Steven Bryant. I generally dislike actually using YouTube, but this looked good, was more or less easy to navigate, and provided a much more elegant experience than the YouTube web site or iOS app.

Except for that one time it crashed and the Apple TV had to reboot.

The Remote App

The updated Apple Remote app is on my iPhone. The gestures to control the Apple TV are not entirely intuitive, but the basics are fine. The big win is being able to use your iPhone to type on-screen, because using the IR remote is just as horrid as any other similar input method.

Incidentals

  • I haven’t noticed a method to control volume. This is good. Controlling volume in one place (the AV receiver) is much more intuitive and results in less frustration compared to the three places (app, OS, receiver) that I get with the Mac mini.
  • 100Base-T is all you get with the Apple TV. It’s meaningless, but I don’t know if Apple sells anything else without Gigabit Ethernet.
  • You have to use a dedicated menu item in iTunes (Advanced -> Choose Photos To Share…) to select images you’d like to view on the Apple TV. It seems weird, but since you never plug the Apple TV in (unless it’s broken), I guess the normal interface of select device, then select options wouldn’t work.
  • I mean it: it’s comically small.

I don’t regret the purchase, especially at $99. I’d like a few rough edges smoothed out, and I don’t know what to do about Hulu. I know there are other teeny-tiny media-to-TV devices on the market these days, but this is the one I have and it’s been good overall.

Apple Store: “Unngh”

This is what Apple gets for releasing a sweet new Mac mini on iPhone 4 Pre-Order Day.  The throngs are clogging up the tubes and the iProducts are not moving.

Can’t pre-order an iPhone 4 from the Apple Store, AT&T, or on the new Apple Store iOS App. The dorks (like me) are awake, and they are hungry for Meat.  I suspect the conference bridge, already hopping overnight, is about to turn seriously Thunderdome ugly.

A First World Problem of the highest order.

iPad

So this is an iPad. Neat.

I’ve got a loaner from the school to test out the user experience with a web app version upgrade I’m working on. The WordPress iPad app is pretty nice, hence this “Hello, World!” post.

It’s impossible to touch type on the virtual keyboard, at least for me, at least at the moment. Rage.

Not 100% convinced that it’s useful for my set of First World Problems, but it’s certainly an interesting device. Molly went from hating iBooks to thinking it was kinda nifty in just a few seconds, and some apps I’ve seen are nice, so there’s a chance I will break my “No Revision A” rule.

The new iPhone (putting G_____o criminality aside) is where I’m really looking for something awesome. Try as I might, I can’t fit this iPad in any pocket I have. The most useful device is the one you have with you.

Mac OS X 10.6 Automator Services: Awesome

I’ve been enjoying how Automator in Mac OS X 10.6 lets you easily create services for simple little annoying things.  I expect it’ll take about three times longer to write about what I just did than it did to actually do it.

I’m always writing emails containing computer hostnames, and sometimes I want to include the full DNS name and IP address in those emails.  That’s especially handy when you’re writing about firewall rules, as I just was.

I created this simple Automator Service workflow in about 60 seconds.

When I select some text in a text editor and run this Service (context click, select the Service name), this happens:

“foo” -> “foo.domain.com [192.168.1.200]”

A few notes:

  1. “Get Specific Text” is grayed out because it’s disabled.  As you’ll find when writing Automator Services, you have to have some dummy text available to substitute for the selected text when developing your workflow.  You just disable this when you save the Service.  Easy, but confusing if you don’t know what’s going on.
  2. Be sure to check “Replaces selected text” at the top.  That means whatever you have selected in your text editing window will be replaced with the output of this script.
  3. Be sure to change “Pass input” in the “Run Shell Script” task to “as arguments”.  That makes $1 become your selected text.
  4. There is zero error checking.  You will probably blow up your computer and the Internet.

It actually took much longer to write this post, especially because WordPress didn’t want to create an image link for me.  Thanks, WordPress!