Murphy Mac

Server Glitches

The release of the iPhone / iPod touch 2.0 update snuck up on me a little bit.  I was so interested in the 3G phone release (and the share price of aapl) I’d kind of forgotten there’d be an update for my iPod touch.  Once I realized there was an update I tried to get it from iTunes.  Repeatedly.  Despite links on the Apple site the download wasn’t actually available for most of Friday.

I really wanted to try the new Remote application, especially on the Apple TV I got back in May.  But Apple tried to deliver a little too much on Friday, and the links for the new software were useless.  An Ars Technica link pointed to a copy of the iPod firmware that could be downloaded from an apple.com site.   Rumor has it that software worked fine.  It’s quite shocking that Apple would leave the file out in the open all day, even after it had been publicized.

Version 2.0

Anyway - now I have the software update.  I’m really happy with the Remote application.  It would be nice if I could control everything on my Apple TV with it, like Flickr and YouTube.  But it’s a welcome  progression from where I was.

I used to be able to control iTunes remotely using Remote Buddy, but the G5 housing my media library had to be turned on.   The new Remote app links up with my Apple TV directly so I can access the content on its hard drive.

I haven’t really messed around with the Apple TV too much.  But last night I got more interested in organizing my TV shows and music.  There are quite a few options for selecting which content syncs and what gets left behind.

Apple TV Nuances

Here’s something I’m not sure about.  You can set the Apple TV to sync with one computer and pull streaming content off other computers.  I’ve customized how my content is synced instead of letting iTunes figure it out for me.  But under that setup there doesn’t seem to be a way to stream from the computer you’re synced with.  So once the Apple TV drive is full you can’t access any other content from the primary computer.  Can anyone tell me if I have that wrong?

Here’s what I’m looking for now:  If I can control my Apple TV from my iPod I can surely control it from a Mac.  Is Apple going to allow this?  If Apple doesn’t deliver the functionality to Macs it seems kind of mean - like they’re holding it back to drive iPhone and touch sales.

If my touch isn’t sitting in the living room Mrs. Murphy will need to control the music with her Macbook Pro.  She’ll have to use Remote Buddy and we’ll have to talk about the difference between accessing the G5 and accessing the Apple TV and her eyes will drift away, glazed, and I’ll be left talking to myself, trying to explain why Apple doesn’t give her a nice remote app for her lappie.  I’m not looking forward to that.

More on 2.0

There are some nice new features in the 2.0 software.  Here’s what I’ve seen so far:

• Multiple delete in Mail.  As much as I liked the swipe to raise a delete button in the old version I found it awkward at times.  I like the idea of invisible buttons - epsecially on a small screen where space is precious.  But having another option is a welcome improvement.  I think it’ll help with business users who hit the email hard.
• Saving pictures from the web.  Or from an email.  Nice.
• Screen shots.  I captured a Google map page and sent it to a friend so he’d know where to meet me for dinner tomorrow.  If you hold the home button down and hit the power button a screen shot is added to your photo library.  From there you can attach it to an email message.
• Apps.  I hacked my iPod touch almost as soon as I got it.  I wanted to use it for ferrying files and ssh and whatever else the genius developers could dream up.  I ended up not using the hacks all that often.  In fact, I hardly used them at all.  I’m sure useful apps will show up soon, but for now the Remote app is my favorite.  I resist games and I’m not a big social networker.  Twitteriffic is about as far as I’ve gotten.

More on the Hacks

The work the hacking community did with the first release of the iPhone and the iPod touch was nothing short of incredible.  A professional interface.  Persistance when Apple tried to trip them up.  A reliable uninstaller.  I have a feeling we won’t see ssh or other command line tools any time soon in the App Store, so maybe my jailbreaking life isn’t over yet.

iPocalypse?  No. 

Most people didn’t notice the problems on Friday, Apple just racked up some more free publicity, slightly tainted.  But the true fans were frustrated, and rightfully so.  There’s no excuse for not having server capacity and adequate bandwidth for a launch event like Friday. Apple has had plenty of Christmas days to learn their lesson.  Clearly they haven’t learned.

But we often forget that most people  don’t read Engadget or Ars Technica or TUAW.  Most people heard early adopters were having a hard day and never gave it a second thought.  In fact, as Apple products become more and more mainstream the fanboys and fangirls become a smaller and smaller percentage of Apple’s customer base.  It’ll be easier and easier for Apple to slide by with poor execution like we saw yesterday.

S0 - what’s next?

iPod touch - Apple TV - Amazon.com

Murphy used to control iTunes using a laptop. With an almost two-year-old little girl on the loose that’s not always so convenient. Laptops are a prime toddler target. If Murphy’s little angel isn’t beating on the MBP she’s slamming the lid shut and saying, “Buh-bye.”

Remote Buddy changes everything. A toddler doesn’t always notice an iPod touch or an iPhone. So now Murphy can select a playlist, skip to the next track, rate a song - all kinds of things. If a toddler approaches you can jam the iPod between the sofa cushions.

Remote Buddy has a nice layout. The buttons are easy to tap and you can browse using a very iPod-like interface. Murphy has been making lots of progress rating songs and cleaning up his library.

Murphy’s music is on a G5 upstairs, but he listens on a stereo in the living room via an Airport Express. When it’s safe to use a laptop the interface is perfect. Murphy set a keyboard shortcut to open Remote Buddy in a custom sized window - using a special kind of bookmark.

The screencast shows some basic functionality. The Remote Buddy interface launches in Safari, so you don’t have to hack your iPhone or iPod touch.

Remote Buddy product site.

Murphy found himself locked out of his Mac for the first time ever the other day. The Genius Bar had replaced his Macbook Pro with a new machine. They used Target Disk Mode to transfer Murphy’s data from the old machine - but when he got home his password wasn’t accepted.

Murphy called the Apple store thinking maybe they’d changed his password to some Genius Bar standard password. While he was on hold, he Googled the procedure for resetting a forgotten password. Before getting through to the Genius Bar the problem was solved. Here are the steps:

• Boot with your install disk, holding C as the machine starts up.
• Select your language
• The menu bar will appear where it usually does, though you might not notice it! Select the Utilities menu and click Reset Password.

That’s all there is to it. Now your account is accessible and you can get back to work. Apple has a support document on the topic or you can search the Help system for Reset Password.

Hopefully this post shows you how important physical security is when it comes to protecting your data. See the previous post for more information on securing sensitive files.

Here’s a link to a guide you should print out. Have it somewhere handy for that day your Mac won’t boot.

Quick post in case you haven’t seen this:

I’ll be the first to admit I knew nothing of Webkit until I saw it mentioned on Digg. I always forget to look at Digg. Murphy does too.

Then I read this glowing review by Seth Weintraub over at ComputerWorld. What is Webkit? It’s a developmental version of Safari you can get your hands on right now. I’ll let the post speak for itself, but in summary Seth thinks Webkit is seriously fast. More importantly, the often-ornery Digg comment crowd seems to agree.

When you start Webkit up you’ll see all your links and bookmarks. Basically, jumping back and forth between Webkit and Safari should be more or less transparent. I only played with it for a few minutes. Gmail wasn’t doing so well with auto-fill on the address line. Let us know how you do in the comments.

Here’s the link to Webkit’s nightly builds.

NOTE: Murphy could use a little help on an Applescript with regard to captured text, paths, and spaces in file names. If you have the required expertise please drop an email to murphy at murphymac dot com.  Thanks.

We’re getting ready to make our first iMovie 08 screencast - and we’ve hit a snag. Has anyone gotten the audio to fade in and fade out? There are a few unanswered threads on Apple Discussions and elsewhere so maybe some other users are having issues. It doesn’t matter if it’s a background audio track or a clip attached to a video segment, neither work. Even though 2 seconds is selected with manual fade, nothing happens. At least nothing Murphy can discern.

As for the rest of iMovie 08: It definitely has its good points. Things are missing from iMovieHD - we’ll get to those in a minute. First, the good points.

It’s nice to have all your events (source video) accessible in one tidy pane where you can combine them into one project. The old iMovie let you drag from one project to another, but many users may have found that cumbersome. Murphy doesn’t keep a lot of video on disk as it takes up a lot of space, so this feature may go somewhat underused. But that brings up another point: Archiving your raw materials.

You can easily delete an event from iMovie and leave the project in place. The project won’t be fully functional until you bring the source video (the event) back online. Murphy copied some source video to an external drive, deleted it from iMovie, then put the source back. The project recognized the source video as soon as it was back. Even if it was just copied back into Finder. That’s pretty nice. There’s no mention of this in the help file, so your might want create a backup before testing this out.

Editing seems far more intuitive in iMovie 08. There are some nuances but it seems far better than the awkward interface of iMovie’s past. Murphy made a whole screencast about using the in and out markers in iMovieHD because they seemed so unintuitive. It’s nice to have lots of thumbnails and an obvious dropzone to deposit your video into. There’s a preference to make all your transitions the same kind too, which may or may not have been in the previous version.

The big problem many users will have with iMovie 08 is effects. Slow motion, fast motion - not there. Many forum posters have mentioned work-arounds - like taking your project back and forth into the older iMovie. In fact, one poster has mentioned in numerous places on Apple Discussions that this iMovie is not an upgrade to the older iMovies. (scroll to ziatron’s posts) If that’s true they really shouldn’t have named it iMovie. Granted, it’s a whole new product. But I don’t think Apple’s plan was to distribute two versions of iMovie, as the poster suggests. iMovie 08 feels incomplete, if not a little rushed. Falling back on iMovieHD (’06) couldn’t have been the preferred solution.

Murphy has spent more than a reasonable amount of time trying to get audio to fade in or out. Please post your success story, if you have one. Taking the audio to Garage Band or the older iMovieHD doesn’t count!

Watch for a screencast about iMovie audio soon, maybe even tomorrow.