Macintosh

Plaxo as .Mac replacement

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Plaxo looks like it might be a good alternative to .Mac sync. The new “3.0” version includes a sync client for Mac OS X that can synchronize OS X address books and iCal calendars from one or Macs with Google, Yahoo, and other web-based addressbooks and calendars.

I’m thinking of dropping my .Mac service when it’s due for renewal in a few months, since the only thing I use it for is syncing and that’s been broken since I started using Leopard. I don’t use my mac.com email since they don’t have any spam filtering and I don’t use my mac.com web page since it lacks PHP or CGI support. With a decent replacement for .Mac sync, I have no further need for .Mac.

My contact info at Plaxo

Apple's WWDC Bash was awesome!

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At first I was a bit disappointed that Apple decided to have their traditional Thursday night WWDC Bash in Yerba Buena Center across from Moscone instead of the Apple Campus as they usually do, but it turned out to be their most awesome bash of any WWDC I’ve attended. Apple usually gets a fairly popular indie band for their bash, although last year they only had a DJ. This year they got Ozomatli, probably the biggest band they’ve ever had.

They were simply awesome. I always liked Ozomatli ever since I heard “Saturday Night” in the iPod commercial, but now I’m an even bigger fan. Every one had a great time and they got the geeky crowd dancing like crazy. They played for over an hour and ended the set by marching into the middle of the crowd still playing their drums and horns, turning into a gigantic conga line.

Ozomatli

I’ve posted more photos here.

Leopard

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Like most WWDC attendees, I immediately tried Leopard. After two days, several reinstallations and lots of crashes, I went back to Tiger.

Leopard worked OK when I did a clean install on my external drive, but I couldn’t use it for any real work that way since I couldn’t access any of my email, address book, iCal, or Yojimbo data. I decided to give it another chance by doing an upgrade install on my MBP (after doing a full backup, of course), which was only barely usable. For some reason blued (the Bluetooth daemon) would keep crashing and relaunching continuously which made Bluetooth unavailable. Also many applications including Parallels Desktop would crash immediately after launching. Doing an archive install didn’t work any better. Among other problems, the clock was very confused about time zones. The menu bar clock showed the time in PDT, but the date & time control panel showed it in EDT.

I spent much of the day yesterday reinstalling Leopard several times. Last night I gave up and restored Tiger from the Backup. My MBP is now back to normal. I’ll try installing it on my iMac when I get home.

As a lot of people have said, the translucent menu bar is a mistake. If you use a dark colored background, the menu can be very hard to read.

A great utility: WiFind

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After reading a review on MacZealots, I decided to try WiFind and ended up buying it.

WiFind is simple and very useful. It replaces the Airport status menu with a more informative menu telling whether each network is open or protected and the signal strength. It came in very handy at WWDC and is well worth the $8 price.

WiFind

Avoid Seagate FreeAgent Go drives

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I needed yet another external drive so I can test the Leopard beta and not wipe out either my internal drive or the backup drive I brought with me to SF, so I decided to pick one up at CompUSA.

After looking at several models, I picked the 120 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go. When I got it back to my room, I discovered it included a USB Y-cable, with two connectors on the computer side. There’s a reason it came with that cable: it draws too much power for a single USB port, so you need to connect it to *both* ports with one of the connectors providing power only. If I connect it to a single port, it won’t work.

I ended up returning it and getting a Western Digital Passport 120 instead. This one works nicely from a single USB port.

Zune installation described as "worst experience ever"

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Via UNEASYsilence:

According to Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s president of the Entertainment and Devices Division, Zune has already met the goal of 1.000.000 players sold, set at launch for the end of June. He also confirms that new Zune things will come in this fall, talks (not) about the Zune Phone, the new Watermelon Red Zune, the Zune Marketplace and of course Xbox 360.

The writer then goes on to describe his own experience installing and using the Zune:

This weekend I made a conscious decision to give my iPod a week off and go Zune only. Come on, the thought of access to unlimited subscription music, and FM radio (not a fan of the brown, but whatever). So, I kicked my second laptop into BootCamp, made the Vista plunge and installed the Zune software.

Long story short; the software installation process was quite possibly the worst experience ever, but that was quickly eclipsed by the HORRIFIC ass backwards annoying Zune software/syncing experience. After HOURS of coaxing I think I have the damn thing working.

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Switched to TextMate

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I’ve been using BBedit since the beginning, but I’ve now switched completely to TextMate. Like Emacs, TextMate is an editor I can “live” in and do almost anything from it. In fact I now use it with BlogMate for most of my blogging rather than MarsEdit. I find that TextMate’s macros & snippets are much more powerful than those in BBedit. TextMate helps me type faster by supplying closing quotes or brackets, which I found annoying at first until I got used to it. I still miss BBEdit’s FTP browser, though.