Tag archive for 'mac-os-x'

03
Jul

What I would like to see in Snow Leopard

By Damien Guard Categories: Apple Tags: .

The word is out that Snow Leopard will be about trimming down Leopard – likely Apple’s effort to switch to lower-capacity solid-storage such as found in the MacBook Air and perhaps future iPhones and maybe a tablet.

Mac OS X binaries have always been on the large size containing as they do multiple human languages and processor code (PPC, X86, X64) and it will be good that you don’t need to keep running TrimTheFat or XSlimmer to get them down.

Given this is such a system-oriented release, here’s what I want to see:

  • More detailed system information such as RAM SPD details, processor revision etc. (Manufacturers are offering faster RAM but you have to run a tool in Windows to find out what you have)
  • Option for ZFS system-partition with intelligent fast compression.
  • Support for flash memory as a cache/page-file – 32GB ExpressCards are cheap but useless on OS X.
  • Uninstaller to clean up installed/created files squirreled away in /Library etc. (Present in NextStep but had disappeared by OS X now space is a priority it’s time to bring it back.)
  • System notification API with standard responder that can be replaced by Growl for more customisation.
  • Show package contents to work on ZIP files and other supported archives. Ability to drag files in/out.
  • Core compression API to complement core video and core data API’s with plug-in ability for extra compression algorithms and archive formats.
  • Optimization of the OpenGL drivers and API to get frame-rates for Mac games on par with their Windows equivalents.
  • Smart play-lists in Font Book – come on I want a list of English fonts… or monospaced ones. Why should I have to manage them?

I’d be very surprised if Blu Ray support doesn’t show up too and it might be time for DVD Player to just become Movie Player and gain some features from QuickTime which would then become just an API and the missing authoring features exposed to CoreVideo or iMovie.

[)amien

2 Comments
11
Nov

Show Package Contents in Mac OS X

By Damien Guard Categories: Apple Tags: , .

Bundles are a concept in Mac OS X whereby a specially named folder becomes what appears to casual users to simply be a file that can be copied as usual and often launched by double-clicking on it.

Other operating systems have file formats that are little more than containers for other files and in doing so keep those interesting resources out of your reach. (Okay, we have DMG but that's more of a transportation mechanism like ZIP, TAR etc.)

To see the contents of one a bundle select it and just choose Show Package Contents from Finder's context menu (hit the Task button in the toolbar, ctrl-click or two-finger click).

The ones I find most interesting or useful are...

Application (.app)

All sorts of great resources can be found in here including icons, templates, sounds and the NIB's for the user interface. Great for learning but consider the licence before you take resources for your own application.

Garage Band project/template (.band, .wand)

Audio files of the instruments and output can be found inside.

Safari Download (.download)

An absolute gem if you are downloading audio or video files and want to watch or listen to what has downloaded so far.

Slideshow Screen Saver (.slideSaver)

Various images used in the slideshow.

iDVD theme (.theme)

Various images in tiff format and Quartz Composer compositions you could try using as screen-savers.

Time Machine (.inProgress)

If you have a partial backup with Time Machine and need a file it my have backed up this could be a life-saver.

iPhoto Library

Your original and modified photos from iPhoto and the XML data behind them.

iMovie project (.rcProject)

Contains a QuickTime movie of all the still images used in the project.

Others

There are others to be found scattered across your file-system too:

Extension Type
.action Automator action
.bundle Bundle
.clr Colors
.colorPicker Color picker
.component Component
.dvdproj iDVD project
.fs Filesystem
.kext Kernel extension
.key Keynote presentation
.mdiimporter Spotlight importer
.nib Interface builder
.numbers Numbers spreadsheet
.osax Scripting addition
.pages Pages document
.plugin Plug-in
.pkg Installation package
.prefPan Preferences pane
.saver Screen saver
.wdgt Dashboard widget
.xcDataModel Core Data model
.xcodeproj Xcode Project

You might also want to check out this guide to examining bundles.

[)amien

2 Comments
03
Oct

Apple’s Boot Camp beyond the expiry date

By Damien Guard Categories: Apple Tags: , , , .

Screen shot of Boot Camp expiredStories about Apple's Boot Camp and the looming expiration of the 1.x beta versions to coincide with the release of Mac OS X Leopard and Boot Camp 2.0 are abound.

To clarify there are a number of pieces of software which make running Windows on a Macintosh, they are:

  • EFI firmware update with legacy BIOS support
  • Boot Camp Assistant (partitioning tool)
  • Apple's Windows drivers (iSight, touch pad, Apple Remote etc.)
  • Apple's Windows software (Software Update)
  • Third-party drivers (Intel, ATI, NVidia, RealTek etc.)

The licence to use Boot Camp will apparently expire when Leopard is released however the Boot Camp Assistant will expire 1st January 2008. To repartition your disk after this date simply set your clock back to any time during 2007 then launch the Boot Camp Assistant. I have tested this and it works just fine, just remember to set your clock back afterward ;-)

Other components are unlikely to expire as:

  • the EFI firmware update was never part of the Boot Camp package but a separate prerequisite
  • the third-party drivers are available directly from the vendors

The only real question is whether the Apple-provided drivers and software for Windows will continue to function. I believe they are unlikely to expire and if they do it only covers non-essential functionality like the keyboard back light, iSight driver, Apple Remote etc. many of which were not even present in earlier versions of Boot Camp. The touch pad functions as a standard input device (albeit in a more basic mode) without Apple's drivers.

As Douglas would say Don't Panic.

[)amien

6 Comments
21
Jul

Hidden menu options on the Mac

By Damien Guard Categories: Apple Tags: , , .

Apple tends to hide away unusual functionality in order to keep the user interface easy to use.

Here are a few hidden menu options that magically appear when you press the Shift, Alt or Ctrl modifier keys.

The Apple System Menu

Standard menus

Apple menu

  • Alt > System Profiler... (Leopard only)
  • Alt > Shut Down (with no confirmation)
  • Alt > Restart (with no confirmation)
  • Alt > Log Off (with no confirmation)
  • Shift > Force Quit ? (current application)

File menu

  • Alt > Close All (in some applications)

Edit menu

  • Alt > Deselect All (in some applications)

Window menu

  • Alt > Minimize All
  • Alt > Zoom All
  • Alt > Arrange in Front

Finder

Finder menu

  • Alt > Empty Trash (no confirmation)
  • Alt > Secure Empty Trash (no confirmation)

File menu

  • Alt > Always Open With
  • Alt > Show Inspector (like Get Info but changes to reflect whatever you select)
  • Shift > Slideshow (Leopard only)
  • Shift > Add to Favourites
  • Shift > Find by Name... (Leopard only)
  • Ctrl > Open in this Window (Leopard only)
  • Ctrl > Get Summary Info

View menu

  • Alt > Clean Up
  • Alt > Keep Arranged By (Leopard only)

Go menu

  • Ctrl > Enclosing Folder in this Window (Leopard only)

Dock

Application running menu

  • Alt > Hide Others
  • Alt > Force Quit

Safari

Application menu

  • Alt > Private Browsing (no confirmation)

File menu

  • Alt > Close All Windows
  • Alt > Close Other Tabs

Bookmarks menu

  • Shift > Add Bookmark to Menu

Pages

Edit menu

  • Alt > Delete Page (no confirmation)

Insert menu

  • Alt > Custom Footmark...

QuickTime Player

Window menu

  • Alt > Show Movie Info

iPhoto

Photos menu

  • Ctrl > Hide Flagged Photos
  • Ctrl > Move Flagged to Trash
  • Alt > Clear All Flags

Events menu

  • Alt > Merge With Next

iChat

Buddies menu

  • Alt > Send Direct Message

Window menu

  • Ctrl > Logout Jabber List

Xcode

File menu

  • Ctrl > New Empty File
  • Ctrl > Close Project
  • Alt > Open in Separate Editor
  • Alt > Reveal in Finder
  • Alt > Show Inspector
  • Alt > Save All...
  • Alt > Save a Copy As...

View menu

  • Alt > Zoom Editor In Fully
  • Alt > Split View Horizontally

Project menu

  • Shift > Ungroup

Run menu

  • Alt > Step Into Instruction
  • Alt > Step Over Instruction

Find menu

  • Shift > Find Previous
  • Shift > Replace and Find Previous
  • Alt > Find Select Regex in Project (Damn useful!)
  • Alt > Replace All

OmniWeb

File menu

  • Alt > Save As...

Bookmarks menu

  • Alt > Open Bookmarks Window
  • Ctrl > Open All Changed Bookmarks

OmniGraffle Pro

Edit menu

  • Alt > Select None

Arrange menu

  • Alt > Bring Forward
  • Alt > Send Backward

Note: OmniGraffle Pro also toggles various toolbar buttons on alt including lock/unlock and which side the utilities drawer slides out.

OmniOutliner & OmniFocus

View menu

  • Alt > Expand Line Completely
  • Alt > Collapse Line Completely

VMWare Fusion

Virtual Machine menu

  • Alt > Start Up Guest
  • Alt > Shut Down Guest
  • Alt > Suspend Guest
  • Alt > Restart Guest

Colloquy

View menu

  • Alt > Show Inspector
  • Alt > Mark All

Window menu

  • Alt > Select Previous Active Panel
  • Alt > Select Next Active Panel

Camino

View menu

  • Alt > Reload All Tabs
  • Shift > Force Reload Page

Bookmark menu

  • Shift > Bookmark Current Page
  • Shift > Bookmark Current Tabs as Tab Group

If you like keyboard short cuts you might also want to check out KeyCue which can display all of an applications short cuts on in a single list when you hold down the Apple key including these key-modified options.

Heavy keyboard users may also want to head to the Keyboard & Mouse preferences pane where you can switch on full keyboard navigation allowing you to tab through all controls in a window. It also shows a number of useful key-navigation options you may not be aware of such as pressing Ctrl-F3 to select an item from the dock.

[)amien

0 Comments
13
Jun

Font rendering philosophies of Windows and Mac OS X

By Damien Guard Categories: Apple, Fonts and Microsoft Tags: , , , , , .

Jeff Atword asked What's Wrong With Apple's Font Rendering? and as I answered in the comments it comes down to philosophy:

The primary difference is that Microsoft try to align everything to whole pixels vertically and sub-pixels horizontally.
Apple just scale the font naturally - sometimes it fits into whole pixels other times it doesn't.
This means Windows looks sharper at the expense of not actually being a very accurate representation of the text. The Mac with it's design/DTP background is a much more accurate representation and scales more naturally than Windows which consequently jumps around a lot vertically.

Jeff and Joel both wrote follow up posts agreeing that it is one of philosophy but both are of the opinion that the Windows pixel-grid approach is the better whilst our displays are only capable of low dots-per-inch (DPI).

What they don't seem to appreciate is the compromise this causes.

Here is an example of Times New Roman on Windows (left) and Mac OS (right) scaled over whole point sizes with sub-pixel precision:

Font scaling on Windows and Mac OS X

The two thing to note here arising from this "pixel-grid is king" approach are

  1. Windows does not scale fonts linearly as the rough line points out
  2. Windows scales the height and width but not the weight of the font

Neither of these may matter to a casual user but for professionals preparing material destined for high DPI (film or print) then it's a world of difference. How can you layout a page on-screen and expect the same result on the page when the font isn't the same width?

The issue is reminiscent of the "I hate black bars on wide-screen films" brigade who believe that the film should be chopped, panned, scaled and otherwise distorted from the artists original intention simply so that it fits better on their display.

Typography has a rich and interesting history developed and honed over centuries. It is a shame to misrepresent typefaces especially as the pixel-grid approach becomes less relevant as displays reach higher resolutions.

Update

Some additional comparisons and a note that the gamma differences between Windows and Mac will affect how you see the "other" systems rendering on your machine.

Further update (21 August 2007)

Thanks to Daring Fireball and ZDNet we've had a few more great comments which I've summarised here:

George thinks the philosophy idea is wrong because "What percentage of Mac users sit around all day doing nothing but pre-press work?" but as Fred points out Microsoft's desktop-user optimised rendering ends up on images and videos all over the web, thus escaping the environment for which it was crippled.

George also claims that Vista's rendering is improved, I can't vouch for that one way or another but from looking at his screen shots the difference there could simply be the contrast level as adjusted by the ClearType tuner.

Nathaniel believes that it's not Microsoft's job to manipulate a typeface and that if you want on-screen readability then choose a font designed for that such as Microsoft's own Tahoma or Apple's Lucida Grande.

I'd go further and say that Microsoft's own aggression in sticking to the grid kills font choice at the regular reading size of 10/11 point by optimising everything to a generic sans or serif look:

Windows XP

Windows fonts around 11pt in ClearType

Mac OS X

Mac OS X fonts around 13pt in Medium (Best for LCD)

James points to an article called Texts Rasterization Exposures that proposes a combination of using vertical hinting only and calculating horizontally to 256 levels and has some convincing screenshots showing the benefits. Probably too late for Leopard or Vista SP1 though.

[)amien

46 Comments
25
Oct

What next for Mac OS X?

By Damien Guard Categories: Apple Tags: .

Well obviously the hot item for the next major release of Mac OS X will be Intel compatibility but I'm hoping they'll get a chance to squeeze some new features in too. Here what I'd like to see next:

FrontRow

Apple's new iMac-only media centre interface seems to gave garnered quite a bit of a attention. So much so that enterprising individuals have hacked it onto their Mac. Apple should make it available to non-iMac users, possibly as part of 10.5, the next iLife or maybe even bundled with the optional remote control.

User interface unification

Every new app Apple release seems to have a new user interface now. While the look is merely cosmetic the behaviour is often affected leading people to expect one result and get another.

Here's hoping the iTunes 6 UI trickles across through the whole system, perhaps even with a switch in control panel that lets people choose between that and Aqua. In the mean time check out Uno which sorts out as much as it can visually, behaviour needs to be done by Apple.

If you feel like stealing what little Longhorn still had, check out the Ruler Aero theme instead.

Uninstaller

Back when OSX was still called OpenStep it featured a rather nice install system called Package Manager. OS X still has the installer part of this and indeed records the receipts for use by an uninstaller... That has never existed. Come on Apple, sometimes we need to uninstall apps and we'd rather not trudge around the /Library/ to clean up after them.

Microsoft Windows in a window

Apple have already claimed they will be encouraging dual-booting with Windows on their new Intel boxes even if not actively supporting it.

A better approach would be something similar to their Blue Box virtual machine running Mac OS 9 apps under OS X. As 10.4 will use their new Rosetta technology to run PowerPC apps on Intel this should be simple by comparison. The problem here is that they may need to get Microsoft to licence them portions of VirtualPC.

iTunes DVD audio-track ripping

If Apple want to shift more of their higher end iPods whilst keeping the record labels in check, why not introduce a function to rip the audio soundtrack from DVD video's to iPod's. I for one have a bunch of comedy shows and stand-up material I'd like to have on the go and I'm sure not paying for them again.

[)amien

0 Comments

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