Topic: Public

Today, after the big WWDC bash, I was talking to a publisher of a major Mac print magazine who also does a fair amount of online publishing.

"Safari 5's Reader feature," he said, "could force us to stop delivering content."

As a consumer of web content, I disagree. I find the advertising to content ratio on some pages to be ridiculously high. The Safari dev team is improving the user internet experience by winnowing the chaff from these pages for us.

Nik Fletcher also got it right in saying "media companies should be asking themselves ‘how did reading content online become so sucky’?"

Yet media companies need to make a living too. Some of them make it by with fairly thin margins and have cause to worry that people will mash the "Reader" button no matter what appears on the page.

In discussing this with the publisher and a co-worker it occurred to me that the Safari dev team had missed out on a rather good opportunity to help media companies improve their sites - using technical means already at their disposal - simply by creating a new user agent for Safari in reader mode.

I've tested Safari 5 against our own web server, and activating the Reader does not change the user agent to "Safari 5.0 – MacReader. It really should. Media producers could examine their logs and make their pages more readable to begin with, and make it less likely that visitors would feel the need to strip the main article out of its design and context.

It's really as simple as that. The Safari dev team has missed a chance to help improve the web by giving valuable feedback to those who need it most.

While it's true that the concatenated RAID set does not employ striping, it's still a single file system volume, meaning that you will lose all of the directory information if you break up the concatenated set. Because there's no striping, you should have little trouble recovering the data via Data Rescue or File Salvage, but the volume and catalog and partition information are permanently gone.

It's not really surprising people misunderstand the difference between concatenated and striped RAID. There's little documentation about it. But here's the basics:

1. Concatenated RAID is designed to make volumes of ***different*** sizes appear as a single volume, with performance comparable to a single volume. Volume information is held on a special partition structure on all of the disks, without copies on each. JBOD is safer than this configuration. In a data recovery situation, whole files ARE recoverable from any of the disks in a concatenated RAID set.

2. Striped RAID is designed to make volumes of the same size appear as a single volume, with enhanced performance over a single volume. Volume information is held on a special partition structure on all of the disks, without copies on each. JBOD is safer than this configuration. In a data recovery situation, whole files are NOT recoverable from any of the disks in a striped RAID set.

Gecko to the rescue? Do the robot? No, not Geico! It's Gecko, the engine behind the Mozilla (FireFox) family of web browsers! Gecko has taken a lot of heat from a lot of know-it-all critics, but today, Gecko, is the toast of America, a true Open-Source-Software hero! Why, read on...

Yesterday, the mainstream media (and Mac media) were buzzing about how FEMA added insult to injury for Mac and Linux users by blocking them from applying for disaster relief online. Needless to say, with the Federal Government's competence in question, espcially with FEMA being under a microscope, it's amazing that they'd make a choice which excluded anyone. Sure, Mac and Linux users can call an 800 number, but realistically, what's the chance of getting through on the phone? To make things worse, much of the phone service is still out of commission in the area affected by the hurricane anyway...

So, upon hearing the disturbing but not-so-surprising news that Uncle Sam is a Windows snob, I turned to an old trick that has gotten me by many such browser checks in the past: faking the user agent. Safari has a well-known debug menu that allows users to choose from a menu of user agents. Doing so got me past the first few screens, only to be confronted with a message telling me to turn on Javascriopt (or course it was on). Interestingly enough, the FEMA disaster relief application page was done in .jsp. It's well-known that the Mozilla, Netscape, Camino, and Firefox browsers are much better at handling javascript-driven sites that Safari can't (though it's getting better), so I decided to search for a way to fake the user agent in Firefox. Fortunately, the Mozilla family of browsers supports plugins, and there's a sweet plugin called, not surprisingly, "User Agent Switcher" by one Chris Pedrick, that provides a pull-down menu in the "tool" menu that allows for a Mac users to select "Internet Explorer 6," apparently does allow a Mac user to fill out and submit the form.



Naturally, I didn't want Uncle Sam to chase me down, so I just clicked as far as I could without filling in any information, so please email me if it doesn't work. BTW: I haven't tested this with Linux, either. To install the plugin, simply download it, then allow add the site to Firefox's list of trusted sites it if you get a message that it's blocked. It seems to work just fine with Firefox 1.0.6.

It's great to see an Open-Source Software package like Firefox actually have the ability to make a people's lives better, and fill in the gaps in functionality that other Open-Source based software (Safari) leaves, especially in matters of crisis such as the Katrina disaster. However, because of its position as both bundled and default web browser on OS X, I will have to say, in all honesty, and with a heavy heart, that Safari has yet to live up to that responsibility.


Click for larger image

Dean Shavit is an ACSA (Apple Certified System Administrator) who leads training sessions for MOST (Mac OS Training & Consulting). He also goes by the nickname "Source Hound," the title of his monthly column for MacTech Magazine. If you have questions or feedback you can contact him at dean@macworkshops.com

The other day, I ran across an Asteroids widget for OS X 10.4. It works great, so I really don't have that much to say about it. Go ahead, download it, give it a try. Computers can be fun again! Some folks like myself might get a little juiced about classic (or new) arcade games that live in a peek-a-boo layer, rather than jostle shoulder-to-shoulder with other prcoesses.


Asteroids widget

However, as fun as the Asteroids widget is (and it's almost perfect, lack of thruster buttons taken into consideration), it's certainly not the first game-in-a-layer-other-than-the-Finder I've encountered, and the memory of the first is now rushing back to me, making me wonder where my backup of OS 8.1 could be, on which Zip disk (yikes). Anyone remember Lunatic Fringe? That was an awesome game that was a plugin to the After Dark ScreenSaver program, of the Famous Flying Toasters. Lunatic Fringe was fun and original, written by Ben Haller of Solarian II fame, but since After Dark was commercial and is also kaput it's doubtful that we'll see it resurface, but who knows...maybe we'll have an After Dark widget with Lunatic Fringe inside! But that'd sure be a lot of work just for a single game, no matter how good it was.


Lunatic Fringe

Fortunately for those who love Lunatic Fringe, and those who just remembered they loved it like myself, there's a neat app called Fringe Player whose sole purpose is enabling the After Dark module to run as a standalone under OS X. So I guess a Dashboard widget isn't too far fetched, but now I'm really thinking of how far we can take Dashboard...how about a MAME for Dashboard (after all, there's MAME for my Nokia 6600) and while we're at it, a Playstation emulator, and what about...

Dean Shavit is an ACSA (Apple Certified System Administrator) who leads training sessions for MOST (Mac OS Training & Consulting) when he's not playing Frogger on his Nokia 6600. If you have questions or feedback you can contact him at dean@macworkshops.com

A few weeks ago one of the most important Mac-related events of the year passed by, barely noticed by most. It's been a pretty big year for Mac users, with the release of Tiger, the announcement of Leopard, the beginning of a transition to Intel-based hardware, and the resurgence of the Mac Admin as a qualified and valued professional in the corporate and education arenas signaled by the number of ACSAs (Apple Certified System Administrators) increasing more than tenfold, along with the resurgence of MacTech Magazine as a trade journal for this fast-growing field. MacTech was nice enough to make me their open-source software columnist, so now every month I write about integrating open-source solutions with Mac OS X and OS X Server. It's an exiciting time to be a Mac professional.

Even with all of the milestones I just mentioned, the third week in June marked an important event for Mac open-source that didn't exactly occur with a media "bang," but more like a soft "pop." It's very similiar to an event that my business partner, Adam Lavelle, attended at Harry Caray's restaurant here in Chicago in mid-June, 2002. According to Adam, four other people attended the Mozilla 1.0 release party, which, though organized through the Mozilla Foundation, generated less than what I'd call a brew-ha-ha three years ago. Yet looking back at June of 2002, with Firefox taking back both the Windows and Mac OS X desktop, it's now pretty easy to point at the release of Mozilla as a watershed event considering the popularity of Firefox and its promise to challenge Internet Explorer as the dominant web browser. Now at least, IT managers have a browser that works equally well on Macs and PCs, for the most part.

NeoOffice/J Logo

In my mind, the release of NeoOffice/J 1.1 on June 21 has the potential to be as important as release of Mozilla 1.0, even though it has a much much lower profile, which is pretty ridiculous. Who couldn't use an Office Suite that nearly 100% compatible with Microsoft Office, and free? At last, Mac users have their own non-Xwindows version of OpenOffice, but which is much better than OpenOffice, considering that it takes advantage of quite a few Aqua features. Patrick Luby and Ed Peterlin of the NeoOffice/J project have worked their tails offs porting a huge open-source project to an inhospitable platform (OS X) by cleverly using Java for the interface elements that wouldn't port directly to Aqua. This is the equivalent of making animal organs work in a human being. It's that hard.

While NeoOffice/J might never seriously challenge Microsoft Office for market share on Mac OS X (just like OpenOffice and StarOffice have never really caught on for Windows users), At least it's there as a cross-platform analogue for IT managers who'd like to implement OpenOffice on PCs and NeoOffice/J on OS X machines, although with Intel-based Macs less than a year away, the next NeoOffice/J port might be a different challange altogether.

At any rate, I can repeat it over and over to myself: there's a free office suite for OS X, and it's good. Download NeoOffice/J. Use NeoOffice/J. Exercise those muscles for when Microsoft Office requires over-the-Internet activation and leaves a security hole the size of a Mack truck in your OS X installation. If nothing else, the existence of NeoOffice/J will raise the bar, make life better for students struggling financially, or at least keep Microsoft honest when it evaluates its pricing for the next version of MacOffice.

Some people have voiced frustration at the change of the screencapture format from PICT in OS 9, to TIFF in OS X 10.1, to PDF in OS X 10.2 & 10.3, and now to PNG in OS X 10.4. Most people don't realize that Apple isn't really changing much about the screencapture process (not at least since 10.2, when many of the features we missed from OS 9 were added back to OS X). This procedure will work with Panther or Tiger.

But not to worry. If you're a magazine columnist like myself who frequently needs send screenshots to their publisher in a certain format (MacTech likes them in high-resolution TIFF format), you'll be happy to know that there's a way to change the default screencapture file format. As a matter of fact, you can change it to whatever format you wish, as long as it's supported by Preview.app.

Simply open up the Terminal, located in /Applications/Utilities and enter the following command (since this only affects your user account, you don't need administrator privileges for this to work):

minime:~ dean$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf (or jpg or tif or pict or whatever format you want, as long as it's supported by Preview)

Then simply log out and back in to your computer. Your screenshots will now be in the format you want!

Just to review, for those who don't already know, taking screenshots in OS X is pretty nifty.

1) to take a screenshot of the entire screen do command + shift + 3
2) to take a screen shot of a a selection of any part of the screen do command + shift + 4, make your selection with the crosshair, then click the mouse. If you'd like the screenshot on the clipboard for easy pasting into other applications, hold down the control key while clicking the mouse. If you want to cancel, use the escape key.
3) Repeat the same procedure as above, but instead of selecting something, tap the spacebar once and the crosshair will turn into a camera which can be used to snap any active window, no cropping! Way cool! Of course, if you want it on the clipboard, use the control key, and the escape key to abort.

Bonus Tip: for advanced users, there's the screencapture command line utility which can be used for automated screenshots in scripts.

Here's the usage display, there is no man page:

minime:~ dean$ screencapture
screencapture: illegal usage, file required if not going to clipboard
usage: screencapture [-icmwsWx] [files]
-i capture screen interactively, by selection or window
control key - causes screen shot to go to clipboard
space key - toggle between mouse selection and
window selection modes
escape key - cancels interactive screen shot
-c force screen capture to go to the clipboard
-m only capture the main monitor, undefined if -i is set
-w only allow window selection mode
-s only allow mouse selection mode
-W start interaction in window selection mode
-x do not play sounds
-S in window capture mode, capture the screen not the window
-C capture the cursor as well as the screen. only in non-interactive modes
-t<format> image format to create, default is png
files where to save the screen capture, 1 file per screen
minime:~ dean$

Dean Shavit is an ACSA (Apple Certified System Administrator) who leads training sessions for MOST (Mac OS Training & Consulting). If you have questions or feedback you can contact him at dean@macworkshops.com

Productivity Software

NeoOffice/J is a great free alternative to Microsoft Office. Built on the source code for OpenOffice 1.1.4, this great Aqua port makes use of Java interface elements to run without X Windows. No additional installs required. NeoOffice opens PowerPoint documents, Excel documents as well as Word documents and offeres the very best compatibility with Micrsoft Office documents at a price you can beat - free.

AbiWord is another XWindows application ported to OS X that doesn't require the use of X11. If you just need a small, lightweight word processing application, Abiword is very very good. It's a standalone, with no other installers required, but doesn't offer the same level of compatability with Microsoft Word documents that NeoOffice supports.

Web Development

NVU Graphical Web Page Editor is a very functional OSS alternative to programs like Adobe GoLive and Dreamweaver. Aqua interface, no additional installs required.

Graphics Software

Seashore: "Seashore is an open source image editor for Cocoa. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP's technology and uses the same native file format." This is a really good one to keep an eye on, it could become the NeoOffice of graphics...

MultiMedia Software

Audio

Audacity is a fantastic Open-Source Audio Editor that supports Windows, OS X, and even OS 9! It can slice up AIFF sounds and even MP3s!

Audioslicer" is a great application which "inds all silences in an audio file and allows you to split it into several smaller audio files and to name/tag them properly. For now only MP3 is supported but other audio formats may be added in the future..."

Emulation

MiniVmac is a "miniature" emulator for a Classic Macintosh Plus, allowing you to run all sort of antique software. It's a fun toy, but at the very least it enables you to open document in programs that have been discontinued and won't run on newer hardware/OSes. Now if you want to run that vintage black and white Defender clone, or how about the old Mac Version of Gauntlet, you can!

QEMU is widely regarded as the fastest Intel emulator for the PowerPC, though it will also compile and run on Linux X86 systems. Driver and networking support is rather weak, so it's much better suited for running an emultated Linux workstation that most flavors of Windows, but its development has progressed rapidly, so it's good to keep on an eye on it! If you need a solid Windows emulator for day to day use, then Virutal PC, alas, is still really your only option, until you can get a MacTel and run WINE.

hardware

The Maccam Project provides support for hundreds of "cheapo" USB webcams for use with Mac OS X. If you're camera's not listed as supported or unsupported, it's probably as obscure as obscure can be. This will become more and more important now that Apple has discontinued production of the Firewire iSight external camera.

Lo and behold!

DVD Jon cracked Fairplay (the DRM a.k.a "Digital Rights Management for the iTunes Music Store) and opened a backdoor to order Fairplay-Free music right from the get-go!

Wait a second, Apple uncracked the iTunes Music Store!

Wait a second, DVD Jon cracked Fairplay again!

The headlines buzz back and forth through the Mac Media. DVD John, a.k.a. Jon Johansen, the infamous cracker and programmer who undid the encryption on DVDs, has now set his sights Apple's Fairplay DRM under the guise of making the iTunes Music Store accessible to Linux users. Granted, this somewhat flimsy justification would simply disappear (poof) like an unwanted Dock icon if Apple simply spent a little time to support Linux users and release an iTunes for Linux. Given the ugliness of X Windows, that's pretty unlikely, as it would look little like the iTunes Mac users love, and Windows users have grown to love.

I can't really say that I blame Apple for creating Fairplay, which I view as a necessary evil that satisfied the controlling record labels and maintains "fidelity" to the iTunes music store and Apple's music downloading experience. Yet, I have never, ever (despite being a committed Mac user and professional) purchased a single song from the iTunes music store. I haven't even signed up for the iTunes music store. I even have a dozen or so of the promotional Pepsi iTunes giveaway caps gracing my desk that I let expire. Just for the record, I do own a 10 gig second-generation iPod and use it extensively, but only to hold the CDs I already own.

I am going to turn forty-one soon, and recently, I've been lightening my load by jettisoning some of the crap I've managed to collect in my four decades of consumerism. What I haven't gotten rid of is pretty telling: I have cassettes, vinyl albums, and even eight track tapes in my music collection as well as several hundred CDs. The sorriest part of it all, is that I own about a dozen albums that cross one of more of the formats. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, however, is on all four, five if you count the AAC version that lives on the iPod.

So, you might be thinking to yourself, if you've lived with multiple music formats your whole life, why wouldn't a little twist on AAC (Fairplay) fit right in with your collection? Good question, the answer's very simple:

"I have had enough, and can't take it anymore"

Albums were a big enough headache, what with their propensity to warp and degrade and their need to be brushed with an expensive felt swab and some cheesy soapy water that sold for twenty dollars a bottle. Cassettes, for the most part, also lost their fidelity over time. Eight tracks never had it to begin with! So, with the bizzare rules of Fairplay (you can only authorize so many computers, if you lose your files tough luck, if you burn 'em to CD then re-rip 'em it's O.K.) it was simply too much for an old fogey like myself to even contemplate dealing with (though I do help our consulting customers navigate the Fairplay rules from time to time). I continue to buy CDs, because they last, don't degrade (though there's some question if they'll really last more than thirty years) and work in a variety of devices from my car stereo to my DVD player to my computer. As far as I'm concerned, CDs are a gift from the almighty.

Personally, I think that the iTunes music store isn't as successful as it could be in its current incarnation simply because the product it sells amounts to another format--it locks the purchaser into a computer platform (OS X or Windows) and doesn't allow for the free use of the product on other platforms like Linux. While someone who uses Linux can certainly buy an iPod and load it from their computer, they can't purchase the music from the iTunes music store.

Un-Fairplay

Why is Apple giving Linux users the short shrift? Much of the underlying code that makes OS X so excellent was beta tested in the open-source Linux world. Tiger's going to include an email filter (spamassasin) and a virus scanner (ClamAV) that were ported directly from source code that grew in the warm substrate of Linux. Could it be that DVD Jon is simply sending the following message to Cupertino: "you take our best, but give us nothing."

The fact of the matter is that Linux is at least as big as OS X (which isn't saying a whole lot when it comes to raw numbers), or bigger, if you believe some statisticians, but Linux is the field where the young daemons of OS X learn how to walk. Can't they do it with headphones on and listening to U2?

Dean Shavit is an ACSA (Apple Certified System Administrator) who leads training sessions for MOST (Mac OS Training & Consulting). If you have questions or feedback you can contact him at dean@macworkshops.com

Transitive Transition?

Last week, the Mac Media has been batting about rumors aplenty that Apple will rollout a version of Tiger that will run on Intel hardware in conjuction with instruction translation technology from Transitive called "Quicktransit," a sort of low-level instruction emulator that allows code compiled for one type of processor to run on another. This would allow, for example, Mac OS X 10.4 a.k.a. "Tiger" to run on a computer with an Intel processor, with only a twenty percent performance penalty.

While an Intel Processor distribution of Mac OS X is more disticntly possible because of the Darwin version for Intel that Apple maintains, and because the architecture of OS X allows for the source code to be easily ported, it's never been much of a stretch to imagine how little effort it would take for Apple to move its OS to a different processor. The iTunes port for Windows shows that Apple certainly has the expertise in the Application arena as well.

While the Quicktransit technology would make this process much easier, alleviating Apple's need to select a set of hardware it would support and create drivers for that hardware, the technology's unproven and might not be quite all it was cracked up to be. It seems that with every new release of OS X, there's talk about an Intel version, whether it would be successful, disrupt Apple's business model, or turn the entire computing world on its ear. There are still those who believe that OS X on Intel hardware would mean the "death" of Apple's hardware business, and that it's the most dangerous idea Apple has ever entertained, if it is really considering the idea. In a word, suicide.

The PearPC Project certainly shows that there's considerable interest in running OS X, even if you don't own a Mac, while the now proven PearPC poachers pushing CherryOS seem to feel that there's certainly a market for OS X on Intel hardware, no matter what the speed penalty.

The most interesting aspect of these rumors, in my opinion, is the lack of debate about whether it can be done, whereas the argument now seems to focus around the question of whether Apple should do it. If anything, that should be the clearest example that OS X and the Mac platform have finally arrived at where it should have been all along, at the top of the OS heap. The very fact that Windows networking and VPN and file system compatibility are now a forgone conclusion (something that we take for granted), is so remarkable to me, that I wonder how I ever got along using OS 9, and why anyone would prefer it over OS X (although I know that there's some who still do).

But what are we really talking about here? A Tiger distribution that runs in emulation (no matter how efficient) on Intel hardware brings us closer to. . .to what? Cheaper Macs? Hardly. Macs have never been so affordable or price competitive as they are today. There's almost no "Mac Premium" left, considering all of the headaches that Windows users have to suffer with crappy hardware and security/virus isues. The question remains, what does Tiger on Intel bring to the computing world, other than an alternative OS and applications which pretty much exist in Windows versions anyway, some much better and more mature than their OS X brethren.

The Big Payoff: In Vino Veritas (In Wine There Is Truth)

Do you like Wine? I occasionally have a glass, but when I'm not using OS X and running software on a Linux box, Wine is all I have. Wine is "an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix." To put it succintly, Wine is like a Classic Envrionment for Windows Applications under Linux and X11 (the GUI for Linux and other forms of UNIX). X11 already runs on OS X, and there's currently an effort underway, called Darwine that strives to bring Wine functionality to OS X. Linux uses Wine to run Microsoft Office, Adobe Graphic Design Applications, Visio, and other major productivity Applications under Linux without having to have Windows installed. The Darwine project is hampered by the fact that Mac OS X only runs on PowerPC processors, which means that any applications that will run under Darwine will either have to be Windows applications written for a PowerPC processor (many do exist, but are leftovers from the discontinued Windows NT 4 PowerPC distribution), or they would need an emulator to run under OS X. Currently, the Qemu emulator seems to be the best bet for Darwine, but it's still a long way off, and no one can imagine a day when it would be fast enough to be true solution for most Windows Applications. That would cease to be an issue if OS X were to run on an Intel processor, with the Quicktransit solution or without. Imagine Windows Applications running at full processor speed, faster, or just as fast as the OS X Applications on the same computer, with no emulator, no Windows Desktop.

Even though the Justice Department's antitrust cases against Microsoft haven't amounted to a hill of beans, many of the findings in those cases do preclude the posibility that Microsoft could legally stop companies from running Microsoft Office without a Windows OS license. So, if Apple were to uncork an Intel version of Tiger, it would be days of Wine and Roses for those businesses that wanted to dump Windows, with all of its security holes and Microsoft licensing, in favor of OS X, with Wine installed to run those necessary evils (I mean applications) that they already own. Salute!

Dean Shavit is an ACSA (Apple Certified System Administrator) who leads training sessions for MOST (Mac OS Training & Consulting). If you have questions or feedback you can contact him at dean@macworkshops.com

Using a Cingular Nokia 6230 as a Bluetooth Modem with OS X.

In my constant search for fast, low-cost wireless data access, I recently abandoned T-Mobile's T-Zones inexpensive 5-dollar-per-month GPRS data service (they started blocking every port except for 25, which only allows email access) and now I "tether" my Mac to Cingular Nokia 6230 for bluetooth internet access, which I use quite often as I am out in the field and need to get email on my Powerbook or need to download a file for a client who only has dialup. The nice thing about the Nokia 6230 is that it is capable of EDGE speed data which is typically 2-3 times faster than GPRS. I can usually establish a connection of around 180Kbps which will let me download at around 22KBps. Granted there is tons of latency and the battery on the cellphone wonĖt last forever, however in certain situations it is very convenient. You must make sure you can get EDGE speeds for this to work Contact Cingular to see if itĖs available in your area.

Now onto the fun part.

First requirement is CingularĖs MediaWork Unlimited package for $24.99/month. It used to be $19.99/month, however they recently raised the price. Next, download the 3G Nokia modem scripts from www.taniwha.org.uk and install them in your /Library/Modem Scripts folder. Do not download the GPRS scripts, as you will not achieve EDGE speeds with them.

On the phone go to:

Menu->Settings->Connectivity->Bluetooth->Bluetooth On

and

Menu->Settings->Connectivity->Bluetooth->Bluetooth Settings->My phone's visibility->Shown to all.

This will allow the Mac to find your phone via bluetooth.

Once the scripts are downloaded and installed, go up to the bluetooth menu and pair the phone with your Mac. Pair the phone to use as a modem for GPRS data. On the next screen in the setup assistant enter the following data in.

Username: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM

Password: CINGULAR1

GPRS CID String: wap.cingular

Modem Script: Nokia 3G CID1

I personally have the modem accessible from the menu bar so I just click on it and connect that way. This is an inexpensive way to get fairly highspeed data from your Nokia 6230 via the Cingular network for a lot less than the cost of the $80/month full EDGE data service.

Ryan Grimes -- R. T. Grimes Consulting (Serving the Indianapolis Metropolitan Area) /
-- ACDT, ACPT, ACTC (10.1), ACHDS.
Ryan can be contacted at ryan[at]rtgrimesconsulting.com or (317)534-0562

Editor's Note: In part two of this series, I will look at ways of getting around T-Mobile's T-Zones GPRS lockdown.

Ever since Steve Jobs announced the Mac Mini, there's been a lot of buzz about using one as a server. Of course, Apple has a great offering of server hardware, with the XServe and XRaid, which has only gotten sweeter with the addition of XSan, which now could propel Apple's servers into the top tier of Enterprise IT solutions.

So what's all of the fuss about using a Mac Mini as a server? I suspect it's the excitement of having an affordable Mac, finally, to supplement the "other" Mac in the home or business space, and to have something to "play with" or "practice on." Myself, I regretfully don't feel the same level of excitement, having a training center where I've been able to play with just about any server configuration my little heart desired for the last three and a half years.

While I can understand the excitement, I just got done proposing an Xserve/Xsan solution to a customer only to see it fall short on the redundancy and performance side to an IBM Linux solution that was serveral times more expensive. All this while the Mac Web is buzzing about puny Mini Mac servers.

It's grass roots IT (which some would call rogue IT), but the lure of a small, cheap, and elegant computer running UNIX server tools is very hard to ignore, especially with the ease of use and elegance that OS X and Apple hardware provides. It almost brings to mind (gasp) the word "appliance;" is this a warm-up for something in the future? An Apple-branded NAS?

Which leads me to believe that once again, the Mac might be becoming the "computer for the rest of us," and the Mac Mini the "server for the rest of us." Just last week, however, I enganged in a rather lengthy email debate with an Apple consultant in California regarding my opinion that the Mac Mini, while a capable server, was probably not a good solution for small business or even for colocation as a server, and that the excitement (no matter how justified) should be somewhat tempered by the fact that low-cost server Macs (actually lower in cost than the Mac Mini) have been available for four years. The Mac I'm speaking of is the iBook.

What, you say, the iBook? That's $999, hardly the inexpensive server option that is the Mac Mini at $499. And I would heartily agree, except for the fact that if the Mini's going to be used as a small business server, there has to be a few small additions, see the table below:

<table border="1"bordercolor="#000000" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="100%">

Mac Mini 1.2 ghz/256/40

Ibook 1.2 ghz/256/30

512 mb RAM

$75.00

512 mb RAM

$75.00

2 hour UPS (APC XL 750VA)

$419.00

2 hour UPS (Built-in Battery)

0

15 inch LCD (DELL – E153FP)

$199.00

12 inch LCD (Built-in LCD)

0

Mouse

$10.00

Mouse

0

Keyboard

$20.00

Keyboard

0

Airport?

$79.00

Airport?

$0.00

Total:

$1,301.00

Total:

$1,074.99

Specced out with the bare minimum needed to be an effective server, requires 512 megs of RAM, etc. Sure the Dell flat panel display might be a little excessive, but then an old CRT sort of defeats the space saving qualities of the Mini, no? And even the smallish 15 inch LCD and full size keyboard and mouse will take up much, much, more space than an iBook. Of course, there'll be those folks who will talk up the colocation value of the Mini, but colo space is generally sold in 1U chunks, and a Mini is taller than that.

The Mac Mini is really very close to an iBook sans screen and input devices and battery backup. I currently run an email server on an iBook G3 366 with external Firewire RAID, and find it to be a capable single-purpose server, with a nice form factor. So, if you're considering purchasing a lower-end Mac for use as a small business server, you'd be well served to consider the iBook as an alternative to the Mac Mini, for the reasons shown in the table above. And don't get me started on the resale value of the iBook v. the Mini, either.

Dean Shavit is an ACSA (Apple Certified System Administrator) who leads training sessions for MOST (Mac OS Training & Consulting). If you have questions or feedback you can contact him at dean@macworkshops.com

My trip to MacWorld San Francisco this year was a strange trip through the MacFunHouse. Here's a few shortys describing some of the more unforgettable moments from this year's Expo.

Lowlight: Small Cars

My cousin is a physician who lives and works in the Mission District of San Franciso. She doesn't have a car, but when I come to MacWorld, I always stay with her and she borrows a friend's ride to pick me up from the airport and take me back. I'm used to driving a Tahoe, and frankly the little Hondas feel kind of cramped.

Highlight: Crab Season

Early January is Crab Season. Dungeness Crab was on sale for $2.99 per pound. Yum yum.

Lowlight: Blisters

San Francisco is a walking town. By the time my cousin and I had spent three days walking around beforeMacWorld, both feet had developed painful blisters.

Highlight: Badges, Badges, Badges

Not only did I get a free flight with frequent flier miles to attend MacWorld, as well as getting to stay for free with my cousin, I also received an exhibitor's badge for working at the Apple Consultant's Network booth, a media badge for being editor of this here site. I also scored a bonus media badge from MacTech Magazine as their latest columnist. The media badge could supposedly get me in anywhere, including the Keynote. Read on.

Lowlight: Keynote Lockout

Waking up at 6am, I planned on getting to the Keynote early to wait in line, but found myself redirected into a room where the Keynote was played to us on large screen monitors. Not bad, but disappointing. There were a lot of media in that room, nearly 700! Sitting next to Scott Shephard from OSXFAQ was a bit of pickmeup, "Look at those icons on the Dock," he kept exclaiming. Such enthusiasm is contagious.

Highlight: The Media Room

Free sandwiches, coffee, pasta salad. Famous folk: Walter Mossberg, Peter Cohen, Tuncer Deniz. Free WiFi, general comraderie. First glimpes of the iPod Shuffle pilgrims showing off their white talismans with pride.

Lowlight: Ryan's Hope

Ryan Rempel is a great man and a great programmer, but seems to have teamed up with a hardware sales company to develop his XPostFacto software. As such, he's hung around their booth for the last two Expos to demo an unsupported beige G3 running Panther. Last year, few were interested. This year, very few. It's time XPostFacto moved to the home of all great Open-Source projects, Sourceforge, where it could get the true attention it deserves.

Highlight: The MacTech Magazine Meet-and-Greet

Held in a small bar, several blocks from the Expo. I found myself in a room with some of the smartest Mac folk in the world. Meeting the staff of MacTech for the first time. What fun.

Highlight: Sushi the Size of Your Head

There's a little Sushi restaurant which has seats for ten. There's a two hour wait to eat. My cousin always takes me there when I visit SF. I don't know where it is, she makes me wear a blindfold.

Lowlight or Highlight?: No takers for Tech Support?

It seemed that MacWorld this year was a family affair--lots and lots of youngsters. But while working the Apple Consultants Network booth, there was little action. Seems Macs are working very, very, well these days.

Lowest of Lowlights: Taylor Barcroft

The ACN (Apple Consultants Network) Business Meeting is always one of the highlights of MacWorld. This closed-door meeting is when we get the skinny on the status of our program and get a pep talk from the Americas/Asia VP of sales John Brandon on how we're all doing. Taylor Barcroft, who seems to be the Mac Equivalent of Morgana the Kissing bandit, albeit with a video camera, screamed at John Brandon "Where's my copy of iWork and iLife, I'm poor!" He even won a door prize! Prozac anyone?

With all of the buzz surrounding Apple's lawsuits against several "rumor" sites, I can't help but express a somewhat disheartened sigh of angst regarding the situation. It is not the first time the Apple legal team has cracked down on the Mac media, but it's getting to the point now where such filings are begininng to point to a larger issue which, I think, signals a sea change in the Apple's corporate culture and the way it views its users.

Wait a minute. Did I just call the Mac media Mac users? I did! Mac-related sites, including this one, are spawned by Mac users wanting to share information with other Mac users. So the site evolves into a something that speculates on upcoming Apple products, and what they might be called, or look like. I've often thought, in a moment of temporary grandiosity, and Apple legal might come knocking on my door with a subpeona or something similiar because I'd accidentally guessed the size/shape/niche of a new Apple product. That scenario's pretty unlikely, though, considering that I'm not privvy to any inside product information and that I respect whatever NDAs I sign.

Yet with Apple so aggressive toward the Mac media (biting the hand that feeds is easily applied to both sides, without much of stretch), it has become quite clear that Apple's evolving into a company that innovates, yes, but also innovates in a predicatable manner. Entering into the realm of consumer goodies (iPod), Apple has set itself up for this scenario--it's easier to guess what the next audio/video consumer product is going to be because the market makes it clear what the market leader (in this case Apple) needs to do to stay in the top position. But it didn't used to be that way.

When was the last time we were surprised by the announcement of a new Apple computer or software innovation? Nearly of all of Tiger's features have been pre-announced and exhaustively covered, Xsan, Xgrid, etc., are in beta for all to see before release. The Apple Developer Connection covers all the details of such, ad nauseum. So what is all of the fuss over an audio "device?"

The answer is: Apple's evolving into something other than a computer and software maker. It lost the battle for the personal computer desktop eons ago, but has learned a lesson when it comes to the digital hub/audio gadget market. With the proliferation of Apple retail stores, and the bulk of advertising dollars spent on the iPod, it's clear that now even the mothership's legal resources are focused on keeping that market position.

Apple is still the best computer company in the world. OS X is the best personal computer OS and Apple's current hardware is the best available on all counts in its market (the enterprise hardware is better, but still has a way to go). If the world ran OS X instead of Windows, it would be more productive, more secure, and less paranoid. Organizations and computer users would have more time to plant vegetable gardens or help their neighbors. Yet Apple isn't focused now on its computers, but the gadgets. Computers are old hat; many folks think of them as no more than ordinary household appliances, such as toasters. Let's hope Apple isn't thinking that way as well.

Dean Shavit is an ACSA (Apple Certified System Administrator) who leads training sessions for MOST (Mac OS Training & Consulting). He is also a writer for MacTech. If you have questions or feedback you can contact him at dean@macworkshops.com

The landscape of Mac magazines has never really included one aimed specifically at Mac Pros: Admins and Consultants. Sure, there's websites like Mac OS X Hints which serve up questions, tips, and OS X mods (hacks). This site, in its own small way, contributes to the what I like to call a "virtual trade magazine," a scattered, unrelated, group of sites (all very excellent in their own way), but while consumer-related publications like MacWorld and MacAddict thrive, there really hasn't been a magazine, or trade journal emerge to serve the needs of Mac Pros.

My girlfriend is an attorney, and she reads several trade journals weekly that her firm subscribes to, and her father, a retired attorney, continues to read them as well. Yet if a Mac Consultant or System Administrator were to go to Borders, say, and look for a magazine targeted at their business and technical needs, they might be disappointed to find slim pickings, if any pickings at all.

Now this situation has changed for the better. Out of the ashes of a one of the most established (read oldest) Mac publications, comes the trade journal Mac Pros have desperately needed since the release of OS X in 2001, which forever changed the nature of the work Mac Pros do. OS X widended the gap between user and Administrator with its amazingly large (yet rewarding) learning curve, and has, though its evolution, created a brand-spanking new profession and an audience.

The magazine I'm speaking of is MacTech, which is just celebrating its 20th year of publication, with a revamped focus that now covers the needs of all Mac Pros, not just the developers it has served since nearly day one of the Mac platform. Inside, there's articles about Active Directory Integration in OS X, the history and structure of Open Directory, getting started with PHP 5, Kerio Mail Server, PDFtk, and much much more. The writing is clear, authoritiative, professional and chocked-full of examples, screenshots, and examples of commands that will pique the imaginations of anyone who makes their livelihood using Mac OS X.

And why am I so shamelessly plugging a magazine that up until a couple of months ago, I had never read? Because the new Editor of MacTech, David Sobsey, asked me to contribute! And after having read the first issue, I'm completely blown away by the other contributors, and have learned more this week from reading MacTech, than in several other weeks of scouring Google for similar information.

The Internet is a fantastic source of troubleshooting and development information and a great place to learn new things, but there's never any substitute for a well-written article from an expert, and that's what MacTech delivers in its action-packed 100 pages. Sure, it's a little expensive if purchased by the copy, but the $49.99 annual subsciption for a monthly publication is a fantastic bargain, compared to those "tip" sheets (barely a dozen pages) that go fo $120/year.

The New MacTechX has a risk-free trial subscription offer, as well, so give it a read, you won't be disappointed, after all, I'm about as hard to please as they come!

IĖve got a new toy. My last article was about PVRĖs and Macs and how they can interact together. My article today is about my new HP iPaq 4700. I wonĖt go into a lot of detail regarding the iPaq itself, there are other sites for that information. IĖm going to talk about how it works with my Mac.



First, a little information regarding WHY I purchased a Windows-based PDA. I really needed a PDA for my business. I got tired of not having my calendar/contacts available to me all the time because they were on my powerbook. So I started looking at getting a PDA. I hadnĖt looked at one since my Palm Vx days, so things had changed a bit. Color screens were the norm, as were add-ons like SD slots and CF slots for peripherals. These devices are pretty powerful and have a lot more capabilities than PDAĖs of the past.

I really wanted to like a Palm-based device, however was sorely disappointed with the T5 when it was recently introduced. For the money, it just didnĖt have the features I wanted, so I took a look on the Ïdark sideÓ. Dell was about to unleash the x50 series of their Axims and they looked to be pretty good for the money. When they were finally released, I ordered one and then proceeded to start the month-long wait to actually get it. I decided to do a bit more research into this and came across the HP iPaq HX4700 series. It had a larger screen than the DELL, a larger battery, more software, and I could get one now (if I could find one somewhere, that is). After hunting around Indianapolis, I found one at an Office Depot store and I snatched it up.

I brought the device home and got my copy of PocketMac Pro to sync it up. I can actually sync via the USB cable, wifi, or Bluetooth. Following the instructions in the PocketMac Pro manual is essential, as itĖs a weird process to set up and I never would have figured it out on my own.



Once set up, the options are pretty clear. I run my business off of iCal and syncing it is a snap to do. I also have a few contacts in Address Book and that was painless to set up, as well. PocketMac Pro does a great job at syncing these (you do need the newest update 3.4.3 to keep USB syncing working properly.) I can even sync an iTunes playlist and an iPhoto album to the device if I want to. Of course MicrosoftĖs Media Player on the device is no iTunes, as far as ease of use, and the iPaq is no ipod, however thatĖs another article.

Ryan Grimes -- R. T. Grimes Consulting (Serving the Indianapolis Metropolitan Area) /
-- ACDT, ACPT, ACTC (10.1), ACHDS.
Ryan can be contacted at ryan[at]rtgrimesconsulting.com or (317)534-0562