Macintosh

After running the OS Whose Name I Shall Not Mention on my G4 minitower for several days, I’m now about to take the plunge and install it on my PowerBook. I’ve done a complete mirror backup of the PowerBooks internal drive to a bootable external FireWire drive, which I can use to recover in case of disaster. If I’m not back here in a few hours to report success, most likely something terrible happened.

Update: It works! Nothing terrible happened. I found a few minor incompatibilities, however.

I’m hooked on the new version of Mail.app. I love Smart Mailboxes – they work just like Entourage’s mail views. I can now have a mailbox which shows all unread messages and one showing mail received today, one of the things I really missed with I switched to Mail. I’m thinking of installing it on my PowerBook once I make sure I can build all of my projects on it and have them run on earlier systems.

I’m now running you-know-what full time on my G4 minitower. To avoid Apple’s wrath, I’m not mentioning the name. The one question that remains is whether I can use it as my development environment and build applications that will run on 10.2 & 10.3.

I have my Mac Mini set up and working as a home media center. It’s connected to my TV as the display. I have no keyboard or mouse with it – I’m controlling it with VNC and an ATI Remote Wonder. So far I have remote setups for iTunes, DVD Player, and EyeTV. I can view DVDs, Quicktime movies or live video from an ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0. I can also record video & burn DVDs. See some pictures of unpacking & setting up here

My Mac Mini finally arrived! I’m setting it up now. Earlier this week I got an ElGato EyeTV Wonder USB and an ATI Remote Wonder to use with it.

Since Cingular bought AT&T Wireless, I decided to switch to one of Cingular’s pricing plans with rollover minutes & free roaming. However, they wouldn’t let me use my old AT&T Sony Ericsson T616 with it. I ended up buying a Motorola V551, which was the nicest reasonably priced Bluetooth phone.

I was able to pair it with my PowerBook and browse it using Bluetooth File Transfer, but iSync wouldn’t recognize it. After doing some searching, I discovered that the V551 isn’t compatible with iSync because it lacks Bluetooth syncing support. However, I found that OnSync 1.8 works with it and I was able to sync my addressbook to the phone.

I’ve had a Belkin Bluetooth mouse for a while and the only thing I don’t like about it is the very short battery life (about a month or so). Before my trip a few weeks ago, I bought a Targus Bluetooth mini-mouse and I found the battery life is even worse – only two weeks or less. With both mice, the mouse suddenly goes dead without warning when the battery runs out. The batteries just died today, for the second time since I bought it less than a month ago. I’ve given up and I’m now using a corded mouse.

Via MacInTouch: The DigiBarn Computer Museum reports that Jef Raskin, the man who originated and inspired the Macintosh revolution, passed away peacefully yesterday.

Apple stock is still rising. It’s been rising steadily for a few months now & it closed over 90 today. I wish I’d bought when it was in the 20s; it’s too late to buy now.

From sfgate.com:

Are you using a PC? You probably have spyware. The McAfee site claims a whopping 91 percent of PCs are infected. As every Windows user knows, PCs are ever waging a losing battle with a stunningly vicious array of malware and worms and viruses, all aimed at exploiting one of about ten thousand security flaws and holes in Microsoft Windows.

Here, then, is my big obvious question: Why the hell do people put up with this? Why is there not some massive revolt, some huge insurrection against Microsoft? Why is there not a huge contingent of furious users stomping up to Seattle with torches and scythes and crowbars, demanding the Windows Frankenstein monster be sacrificed at the altar of decent functionality and an elegant user interface?

There is nothing else like this phenomenon in the entire consumer culture. If anything else performed as horribly as Windows, and on such a global scale, consumers would scream bloody murder and demand their money back and there would be some sort of investigation, class-action litigation, a demand for Bill Gates’ cute little geeky head on a platter.