nutMac

You cannot begin to understand my frustration with Rogers and there recent tactics for hijacking “Server not found or DNS error” response pages (see here and here). I got so furious that I called Rogers and demanded a workaround to their little “solution”. And to my surprise, the technical representative JUMPED at the opportunity to show me how! So here’s to you Rogers and all that you mean to me:

• find the Internet Settings on your computer or router (there are plenty of web article to help you for Windows or Mac)
• Change the “DNS server(s)” to something public, like, for instance, 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.1 (a US based public DNS server, not likely to ever go down)
• Boom! Buh-bye Rogers/Yahoo! search page

You see, by default, Rogers (or any other ISP) has you using their DNS server (your computer will automatically use your ISP’s DNS server unless told to do otherwise) and therefor they can track what you are doing or see what’s being served to you. So in the event that you call for a site that doesn’t exist, they can cheerily offer up a Rogers/Yahoo! search page laden with advertising and paid-for links instead of actually telling you that that server or site you actually requested might not exist or might have an error.

Here is where Rogers FAILS! Umm Rogers? People who actually know how to use a computer and who aren’t using Internet Explorer 6 actually use the address bar as a search field and not strictly a place to resolve URL and DNS calls. For instance, my local Mac reseller is Carbon Computing and I wanted to call them today. I thought I would get their phone number from their web site so into my address bar I entered “carbonation” and pressed enter, which, prior to Rogers meddling, would normally resolve to “http://www.carbonation.com“. If the search term were something unresolvable, like “jingle butt pants on fire” then my browser would inform me that “http://jingle%20butt%20pants%20on%20fire/” cannot be found and probably ask me if I wanted to search for the term “jingle butt pants on fire” in Google (or which ever search engine I have set as a default).

Rogers figures they are doing you a solid by removing this extra step, they’ll just perform the search for you. But in a case like mine I don’t want to SEARCH for “carbonation”, I want to RESOLVE it by slapping a .com on the end of it. And by circumventing the default server error message, don’t you think they are causing more mayhem than good?

To the bonehead at Rogers that thought this was all a good idea… you are the biggest boob of all the boobs at Rogers. And that is a fair feat my friend.

Just a quick note (from my iPhone), noting the irony of the fact that Apples own website will crash iPhone’s Safari.

Is it an AJAX thing? I have noticed a lot of AJAX heavy sites will effectively kill Safari, but you think Apple would have made sure all their ducks were in order in their own backyard before launching a product designed to flaunt their own OS prowess.

How much happier could a geek like me get? Well for the first time since I started putting down my Mac thought patterns down on digital paper (this blog) I can say that I am proud of the keywords used to find nutMac. My top 25 keyword are predominantly TextMate, QuickSilver, MAMP, HTML, CSS, SQL, websearch and various combinations therein. If that is not THE most geekified set of words, I don’t know what is. The only word missing from the list is Unix!

So what does this mean? I guess I could use it as some sort of metric that what I write is important particular demographic. I mean, these keywords are an exact reflection of what I write about. These are things I have searched for myself wishing to find an article that answered my needs. Maybe my articles are answering the needs of geeks like me. That would be pretty cool if you ask me.

So if you read this blog, you must be a geek. But not any geek; you are a Mac geek and probably one that knows a little more than the average geek about OS’s, hardware, software or some form of programming. You are hardcore (if not just work with me here). So if you like what goes on here, but crave something more of an audio nature, please check out the podcast from MacBreak Tech. I have raved about them in the past and I am going to do it again now. This show is for geeks. Real geeks. Crack the case open, pull on the wires, hack it with a bash command kind of geeks.

The first time I wrote about the show, there would be only 5 or 6 comments per episode. Now they get 15 to 25 per show, and the geekier the show, the more comments! Take, for instance, the show where they turned an old G4 Power Mac into a NAS drive (a long standing request of mine). How geeky is that? It got 25 comments! You have to be a hardcore geek to understand WHY anyone would want to do this (the correct answer is “because you can”, by the way).

The number of outlets for this kind of geekery are few and far between (outside of flame bait, forum arenas where the main topics are Kirk vs. Picard ) so when a show as well put together as this one comes along, one that doesn’t cater to the ADHD, Digg skimming, tech trend surfer, it is a refreshing and very welcome change.

Thank you John, Kenji, Ben and Craig for making MacBreak Tech.

Apple really missed the mark with the Leopard version of Finder. I don’t need more places and things in my sidebar to get confused with. What I need are tabs. Who really looks at there system and folder structure in such a linear fashion? And with multiple Finder windows virtually indistinguishable from one another, who really wants to drag files from one window to the next?

Tabs are todays solution to many peoples daily folder grind. To move effortlessly from one location to another, to drag files tab to tab with the certainty the Finder won’t slip and slide into other folders as you hover over them with file-in-hand, to not fill your entire desktop real estate with little, grey, nondescript windows.

Finder is arguably the backbone of the OS. Sure it’s not sexy to hone something as dismal as a file browser and then blow your horn about it, but by perfecting the Finder with each new OS X Apple stands to have something to really talk about. Not everybody is going to do backups a la Time Machine, not everybody is going to get Spotlight, and most people only have one computer at home and will certainly never need to share that on the LAN or otherwise. But there is one indisputable fact of all Mac OS X users, new or old; they will all need to browse files on there computer and so much of their experience doing so is what will determine, for them, whether Mac OS X is a good operating system or not.

I make a plea to you Apple, don’t treat Finder like your 9 to 5 underwear. Make Finder your sexy lingerie that you are just dying to show off. Finder hasn’t had any significant advances since OS X came to be. It’s time she got a facelift, tummy tuck and some new lipstick.

Technorati Tags: Mac OS X, Apple, Finder

Oh Apple Canada, we stand and in wait for the… I have been biting my tongue for the last week or so, slowly digesting the Macworld Expo news, seething more and more each day. I could touch on all the things about the MacBook Air being a little less than stellar (bites tongue harder) but you’ve already read the thoughts and opinions of the tech pundits out there. Or I could go on about Apple reinventing things like online movie rentals as though it’s never been done before (tongue bleeds in mouth). Or I could rant about the seemingly obvious updates for the iPhone… but what is the point? What is the point of me going on about things that are likely no to affect me for some time to come?

As a Canadian with only imaginary boundaries separating me from the Apple motherland, I am forced to sit and watch as my southerly neighbors bask in all the digital media glory that is Apple these days. Until recently I couldn’t so much as download some music and a podcast or two. Now I suppose I should be thankful that I can download the odd Canadian television show that CTV might happen to see fit to distribute. The pickin’s are slim; no movies downloads, no major network television shows, no movie rentals… can I remind you that geographically speaking it is a mere imaginary slice of air space that separates Canadians and Americans in what is called the worlds longest unprotected border. There are no technological hurdles to overcome to deliver this content to us. Trust me, we are quite well connected in every other respect, but iTunes, it seems, exists in some other spacial realm where data transfers must hit the Can-Am firewall of politics.

Canadians are not alone in their belly aching. We are joined by legions of other countries with similar complaints in service lags. The difference is this; Canadians have free trade agreements and partnerships that all but make us American, collectively speaking. Why then must Canadians be the last to get anything that Apple dishes out. I mean seriously, Germany, the UK and France all have the iPhone… countries who’s trade importance doesn’t match that of Canadas when you combine those three countries together, and who’s geographical locations puts one of the worlds greatest oceans between them and they manage to get an iPhone.

Ok, I am not biting my tongue anymore… Apple? You suck! (that is until you let me buy House MD, CSI and Grey’s Anatomy… for my wife… from iTunes Canada)

Technorati Tags: Apple Canada, iPhone Canada, iTunes Canada, Apple sucks

Anyone who owns a mac and who will participate in flame wars of rabid proportions against software developers who dare ask money for their software or serve ads as an alternative, or, heaven forbid, mix in affiliate links in with served results… I have one challenge for you. Make it yourself. I challenge you to make your own app that doesn’t suck, that droves of people want to use. Then support it, update it… and give it away for free. Free as in FREE… nothing… no money… Could you do it? No? Didn’t think so. Shut your pie hole then.

Dave Watanabe is a stand up guy. For real. He is. A fellow Canadian like myself. I have had many exchanges with him over the years. I own and have paid for every piece of software he distributes and supports and updates regularily. Yes I even paid for Inquisitor back in the beta days. I donated around $20 and will probably do so again in light of all of this ridiculous attention that arose from some ones epiphany that Inquisitor (a brilliant Safari plugin) serves up the odd affiliate ad from time to time. Uh… yeah… there is a company called Google (have you heard of them?) who’s entire business model is based on that principle. So what’s the big deal? I have known about it since day one.

So flame wars are nothing new but what gets me is the personal nature that they take on. Calling Dave the “the biggest asshole in the world” and demanding that his work be stolen and sabotaged? It’s a piece of free software… did it take away from you life somehow? Did it cause you personal damage? Are you irreversibly scarred by the fact that you may or may not have actually been served one of those affiliate links, any more so then being taken to one of the bazillion link farms that Google serves up in their results?

The bottom line is this, if you don’t want to pay for software you can expect one of two things; 1) the support will suck, or 2) the service will be ad supported, or 3) service and support will cost you something. If you don’t like that model, go with Linux… oh… wait a minute… is that a Dell? A page dedicated to Dell? I am sure the relationship is completely platonic…

Technorati Tags: Watanabe, Inquisitor, TUAW

Boy did Apple ever get that slogan right. Let me preface this post by first stating this; I truly had high hopes for Apples new Time Machine found in the new Leopard OS X… had. Now that I got that out of the way, I can comfortably start my rant.

Time Machine for OS X Leopard sucks! No, it more than sucks; it sucks the biggest suckiness this side of suck universe. There is more suck packed in this one app than all of the os’s that Microsoft has ashamedly released in the last decade. I had suspected some of Time Machines downfalls in an earlier post postulating that Time Machine could in fact instill a very false sense of security. I have successfully realized the hard truth in this fact.

First let me tell you what Time Machine is good for; retrieving one, or perhaps a small handful of misplaced files or pictures or movies or schematics for building a HAM radio or whatever… Let me tell you how Time Machine does this; all space flight through starry backdrops aside, Time machine effectively uses Finder to dig through another disk or partition on, or mounted near your computer, looking for previous states of your current or selected location or file. Once you find a state that give you warm fuzzies knowing you won’t have to retype your entire book report or PHD thesis, you select “restore” and watch as Finder copies that file or picture or yada yada, into the present state. That’s right, “copies”. As in you open one Finder window and copy one thing from one location to another. Herein lies the problem. Finder is not the most adept tool for restoring or copying in this instance because, despite it’s ability to do so, Finder won’t preserve all of the touch data (Unix and Linux touch command that controls the attribute, modified, accessed and created dates) which can seriously mess up other backup and syncing programs that you should be using in addition to (or because of) Time Machine.

Further to this, Finder is acting as the user when performing this copy action. This is fine if all you need to restore is your files or pictures or movies or letters to Grandma… but Finder is tragically under-authorized to restore important things like user settings, application states, support, caches, preferences, (and the list goes on)… anything that might require root or admin access. Anything in the ~Users/adam/Library, for instance, and that is exactly the sort of inadequacy that might prompt me to exclaim things like “Time Machine sucks”.

When, you might ask, would one ever find themselves needing to restore their user Library folder? Well here is the scenario that had me pulling my hair out (noting that I take full responsibility for my stupidity but also noting that something similar and equally as tragic can happen to anyone). Those that follow me on Jaiku might recall a lot of talk last week about me rebuilding G4’s, moving G5’s, setting up Mac Pro’s, etc… Last week, an employee of a print and graphics outfit, for whom I do contract design, got a new Mac Pro. This spurred into motion a great shift of computers that involved no less then 5 computers as the now unwanted G5 made it’s way downstream, bumping another G5, a G4 PowerMac, a G3 PowerMac and a dead slot load iMac further down the chain of their useful lives.

Since I spend a great deal of time at this firm, and don’t own a MacBook Pro (a full Mac Pro sits happily upon my desk in the home office) I have managed to happily exist by syncing my home computer with whatever machine they’ll seat me at via a firewire drive I carry with me. I sync with Chronosync, a brilliant and powerful, hassle free application. The machine I had been using at the firm, until the arrival of the Mac Pro, was a G4 PowerMac (we’ll talk about the joys of working on a Mac Pro at home and a G4 at the office in future rants) but I was now about to move everything over to the G5 that was now available.

Migration assistant had served me well in the past and had done it’s job as expected in this instance as well. One thing I had overlooked, mind you, was the small but important issue that the touch information was altered to the extent that Chronosync would now view everything on that G5 as being newer than what was on my firewire drive, and I had Chronosync set to automatically sync as soon as the firewire drive was detected. I initially thought this wouldn’t be much of an issue since both machines, at the firm and at home, were in sync… or so I thought.

To shorten this story a bit, I’ll jump right to the part where I discovered that the caches, preferences, user settings and application states tend to have a way of resetting, or forgetting themselves in the process of moving from a G4, to a G5 to a firewire drive to a Mac Pro. Odd but totally true (yes I did already own up to my stupidity so you can just shut up now). What I was left with was a Mac Pro full of what it now considered unregistered software, empty address books, no bookmarks… Kind of puts a kink in productivity as I sure you can imagine, so I set forth to recover my entire user from Time Machine. Sure I could have just used my other Chronosync backup disks, but Time Machine seemed like a cleaner solution… at the time. Not to mention that Steve Jobs made it look so easy and fast.

So I just jumped into Time Machine, selected a state that my user was in earlier that morning, clicked restore and without a trial sync, file scan, folder analysis or any process that would do any sort of pre-check to see what complications might arise before beginning the process, time machine set my request into action. I identified immediately that all that was taking place was a “Finder copy” and knowing how Unix works (over writes instead of amends folders and folder contents) I immediately panicked. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

Time Machine, or the Finder as it were, chugged along happily for a few brief minutes before stopping to inform me that Finder does not have sufficient permissions to copy to the Library folder… after it already over wrote the folder itself with nothing inside. Not good. A messy situation just got much, much worse. Many people might not realize how critical the data in their user Library is. In short, your computer ceases to be anything you once knew and loved. The computer doesn’t really know who you are anymore. Applications don’t know you and many won’t even launch. The whole experience is unlike anything you may have had on a computer before. It is not a good experience at all.

How can Apple call Time Machine a backup and restore utility when it’s got no safety checks in place, no trial-sync, no scan, no prior assessment of any kind? How can Apple call Time Machine a backup and restore utility that replaces entire folders in true Unix fashion instead merely replacing files within? How can Apple call Time Machine a backup and restore utility that does not have sufficient permissions to restore anything, anywhere anytime?

Lucky for me, I am very conscientious of my data storage, maintenance and security and was able to recover my entire user from a Chronosync backup and was back up and running in a matter of hours. But had I not had an alternate plan and been like any average user out there, I would be screwed! So let this be a lesson to you; Time Machine might look cool but be very careful on what you are entrusting to it. It might cause more harm than good.

Technorati Tags: Time Machine, OS X, Leopard, Chronosync

Just when you had high hopes of things becoming more streamlined, Apple throws a wrench into the gears of productivity. This might sound like such a minor thing to you all but it’s a REALLY big deal to me. In my quest to blaze through my operations on a mac with blistering speed I hit a big speed bump in Leopard when it came to the contextual menu in finder. The Automator actions are now buried 2 deep so getting to my actions requires skimming through 3 levels of contextual menus.

Like I said, it may sound like a small thing butt it’s a pretty big deal to me.

Technorati Tags: Leopard, OS X 10.5, Finder, contextual menu

Was there any doubt? Of course to the Leo Laportes of the world who couldn’t ever imagine that Apple could possibly know what they are doing, news like this might come as a shock, since he would have it known that Apple is the biggest bunch of retards for not allowing this sooner…

Steve says:

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone…

Of course you do. You wouldn’t have put an operating system of such stature on any old cell phone…

we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc.

And the fact that 1.0 firmware was hacked, slashed and otherwise rendered completely helpless to persevering programers who would have there way with it is certainly cause for alarm, in my books.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Who would of thought that was so much to ask… LEO!

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.

Signed, sealed, delivered! I hope Leo Laporte has enough humble pie to go around because he need to take quite a helping for himself.

To the Merlin Manns, John Grubers and Macalopes out there, thank you for being the voice of reason in all of this.

[tags]iPhone, 3rd party apps, Steve Jobs, Leo Laporte, SDK, developers[tags]

So all the blogs in the land are abuzz with Apple news, new iPods and touch pods and classics… Let me be the first curmudgeonly bastard to say that these iPods look like crap! Seriously, do a direct comparison to the M$ Zune and I think you’ll find that the Zune looks better! YECHK! Seriosly, since when does Apple take design cues from Microsoft?

Here is my take; Apple hopes that by making all of the “lesser” iPods butt-ugly, they will sell more of the over-priced, under-powered, way under-capacity iPod Touch. I mean really… you make one model that’s practically a USB drive with a headphone jack (except slightly less useful) and two models look like slightly molded, warmed up lumps of asphalt. Then you make the iPhone look-a-like, iPod Touch, which, for slightly less money, you can do a mere fraction of what you can do with the iPhone.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for everything that Apple does; I wish I were as successful as one whisker on Steve Jobs face, but sometimes I don’t get the fanaticism of my American uber-consumer counter parts. Did you here them cheer at the Special event when Stevo pulled the Nano out of his pocket and showed of it’s profile? COME ON! I’m more impressed with the smart pass I can use at Tim Hortons to pay for more morning java-fix… all that money in a 1 mm thick piece of plastic that fits in my wallet. Get real, it’s called the NANO! We should be surprised that it’s visible to the naked eye in the first place. My favorite Nano was the first one… who’s iDea was it to screw that up?

Technorati Tags: iPod, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPhone