Letterbox Beta Ready for Snow Leopard!

Apple does some really boneheaded things sometimes.  A mistake they keep repeating is limiting the viewing arrangement in Apple Mail to two columns.  Note to Mr. Jobs: Just because you may think this is the best way to read e-mail, the rest of the civilized world and every other e-mail app on the planet gives users the choice of two or three column viewing.

Do you think Steve is listening?  Of course not.  Not to worry, though.  Mr. Aaron Harnly to the rescue!  His "Letterbox" creation fixes this idiodic problem with Apple Mail and has since Tiger (OS X 10.4).  This add-on for Apple mail arranges the view to three columns: 1) Folders, 2) List, and 3) Preview.

Get letterbox here.  Even though this is a beta for the new 64 bit Mail app, it works fine for me in 10.6.1.  Click the "Donate" button and throw Mr. Harnly a few bones for his trouble.  He provides a great service for us Apple Mail users!

iPhone OS 3.1 Doesn’t Break AT&T Tethering

Yesterday I was nearly drooling to get iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1 installed on my gear.  I really wanted to organize my apps  in iTunes.  Some weeks back I did the small hack that enables tethering on my iPhone and was almost certain the 3.1 update would squash the bug that allows the yet unprovided AT&T feature.  The new iTunes function for organizing my apps only works after the 3.1 upgrade so I had to make a decision.  I certainly didn’t want to lose my ability to tether, but I really needed to get my 11 pages of apps organized and the thought of doing it with the wiggly icons on my phone was just too painful to consider.  So I upgraded to 3.1 and guess what?  Tethering still works!  This sure fooled me.  I thought Apple, AT&T or both would want to get rid of the hole that allows this hack, but obviously it isn’t a big enough problem to show up on their collective radars.  Yet.

Finally! An Apple Event That Won’t Cost Me a Dime.

First, it’s great to see Mr. Jobs “vertical” as he put it.  Every day above ground is a good day.  Next, I’m thrilled nothing came out of today’s Apple event that has me reaching for my wallet!  This is the first one in a long time.  Not that I’m not excited, but all the new goodies that I’m interested in are free.  iTunes 9 finally gives me a method for organizing all the crap on my iPhone and iPod Touch(s).  We were told it also syncs faster with all the iGadgets.  I can’t tell if that’s true, but Apple certainly dolled up the old gal with new fonts, buttons, progress bars and the like.  It looks especially good on my Snow Leopard-equipped MacBook Pro for some reason.  Can’t quite put my finger on it just yet.
The new iPod Touch pricing is obviously designed to kill the Zune HD before it ever hits the street.  If they’d put a camera in the Touch that might have been reason (excuse) enough to send me to my local Apple store but thankfully all they did was bump the flash and the processors a bit.  I could use 64 gigs, but not enough to spend $400 on a third iPod Touch.  I carry a 32 gig model and a 32 gig iPhone 3GS with me almost everywhere I go.  I can live with splitting my media between the two a while longer.
The new Nano looks great, but I already own a Flip Mino HD and love it.  Between it and my new iPhone, I’ve got video covered.  I’m sure at least one of my daughters will find one under the Christmas tree though.  All in all, I won’t be spending $179 on a Nano right away.  That’s almost $600 I won’t be blowing (investing) on new shiny AppleToys today.
I just upgraded all my iGadgets to the new 3.1 OS along with iTunes 9 and Apple isn’t one penny richer for it.  If everything Mr. Jobs said about this new software is true, I look for my iPod/iPhone experience to get even better.  Never mind I’m only spending a little time and SSD space to have all this fun.  With two daughters starting another college semester I didn’t need to shell out to (help capitalize) Apple.  With all the stuff I’ve splurged on (purchased for purely business reasons) this year it was time for a breather.

Snow Leopard Shows Us Who the Really Crappy Companies Are

I was really jumping when my Snow Leopard Family Pack arrived Tuesday and mad at myself for pre-ordering it at Amazon.  I did save another seven bucks when Amazon lowered the price but I really wanted to install 10.6 on my new MBP on Friday (release day) instead of waiting on the United States Postal Service for four days.  As it turns out, it was the best thing that could have happened.  Three applications that I absolutely rely on in my everyday workflow, Quicksilver, iStat Menus and SuperDuper! weren’t ready Friday but have since been updated to run on Snow Leopard.

Quicksilver is my default launcher.  Nine of ten apps running on my Macs get started by a ctrl + space hotkey sequence.  So much so that I feel really crippled when working on someone’s Mac where it’s not installed.  I keep a copy of the app on my thumbdrive and I will install it on someone’s machine if I have a lot of work to do on it.  I take it back off if the machine’s owner wants me to but when they see how fast I move around using it they usually opt to leave it on.  Before all you Quicksilver aficionados start shaking your fists at me, I know it is so much more than a launcher, but that capability is what I miss first when using a machine without it. Anyway, Blacktree updated Quicksilver before I did my 10.6 upgrade on Tuesday and I’m glad for it.

SuperDuper! is the app I credit for keeping my OCD in cheque.  My many years in the IT business have made me a devout backup practitioner.  In my experience I’ve come to realize digital data does not exist unless it resides on at least three different devices in two separate locations.  Take it from me, I’ve been on the bad (responsible for) side of data loss.  My lessons were hard-learned.  SuperDuper! automatically updates a complete clone of my boot volume (and any other volume for that matter) at any frequency I choose so I always have a “warm & fuzzy” feeling that my data is protected and never worry about a disk crash.  After trying several solutions, Carbon Copy Cloner, Retrospect and others, I settled on SuperDuper! because I found it the easiest and least obtrusive of them all.  I paid the $25 for the full version two years ago and have used it ever since.  If I had to work without a backup I’d feel like a trapeze artist without a net and I was glad to see Shirt Pocket update SuperDuper! for 10.6 so quickly.

iStat Menus is my Mac dashboard of choice.  I install some sort of system monitor on every machine I use, Mac or Windows.  On the Windows side there are a plethora of gadgets to accomplish what I need, namely CPU, memory and network activity monitoring as a minimum.  I’m a gearhead and like to know how my machines are running.  These types of apps are called “dashboards” for a reason.  The analogy is perfect.  The number one complaint us IT types get is, “My computer is running so slow!”  The first things us pros look at in those situations is the dashboard data.  Is the CPU pegged at 100%?  Is there no available RAM and a 10 gig swap file?  iStat gives Mac users all this “heads up” type data via menu bar displays with a wealth of other monitors just a click away.  iStat Menus not being ready forced me to install Menu Meters, a similar app that doesn’t include half the functionality of iStat but was ready for 10.6 on release day.  If forced to rate the two, Menu Meters would be a distant second.  Using it put into sharp relief the clear superiority of iStat Menus.  I won’t go into detail, I simply ask you to try them for yourself.  They’re both free so it won’t cost a nickel, just a little time and menu bar space.

There are still quite a few apps, plugins and drivers not ready for Snow Leopard and my iMac can’t be upgraded until M-Audio gets off their ass and upgrades their driver for my NRV-10 audio interface.  Really?  C’mon M-Audio!  You’re a big company with lots of resources.  I’m a lowly little developer and I’ve had a functional copy of 10.6 since February.  There’s no excuse for any mainstream hardware supplier not having Snow Leopard drivers ready for their hardware.  Apogee was ready for 10.6 on release day with solid drivers for their Duet and Ensemble devices of similar function, but M-Audio can’t even provide an estimate for when theirs will be ready.  They’re just lazy, poor businessmen or both.  I can understand if an independent developer takes a little more time updating a freebie like Letterbox.  I really miss my three column mail view but can’t get too upset with Aaron Harnley for not having this free plugin ready.  I mean, what’s in it for him, right?  M-Audio has over $700 of my money and I expect them to keep up.  If guys like iSlayer can update iStat Menus, an equally if not more difficult upgrade than a firewire audio driver, then M-Audio should be able to get a current driver to their paying customers.  They’re just failing boneheads.

If all this sounds like whining then maybe you’re just a wuss.  This is a common problem every time there’s a major OS upgrade, Mac or Windors.  I think users have gotten jaded and are too quick to “bend over and take it” when their hardware stops working.  I just don’t think its too much to ask of a hardware vendor, especially a big one like M-Audio, to have drivers ready for their paying customers.  After all, Snow Leopard was officially announced well over a year ago at last year’s WWDC.  Betas of 10.6 have been available to developers for over 9 months, so companies late with drivers can’t fall back on the “newness” excuse.  I’m sure there are hundreds of devices for the Mac that have fallen dark since the upgrade.  Some because they are older and unsupported, but some because the company responsible is a poor performer like M-Audio.  Major OS releases serve as a barometer for measuring who’s on the ball and who isn’t.

17” MacBook Pro: Billeted With Balls

After six weeks with my new MacBook Pro I am as enthusiastic about recommending it today as I was the first week I owned it. This beast isn’t for everyone and sometimes even I (a completely butched-up Texian type guy) wish it were just a tad more portable, but if you need a laptop capable of virtually any task a desktop machine can handle, this beauty is as good as it gets.

This machine:

3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 1066 Ram
256 GB Apple SSD

has all the guts one could ask for in a portable computer but the build quality of this “unibody” laptop is its most impressive feature. People who claim this 6.6 pound 17” version of Apple’s latest MacBook Pro line is too big to be “really portable” are often the same jackballs that gladly carried a 15” Dell D series Latitude (the most popular laptop ever) a couple of years ago. That machine was a full 1 pound heavier and 50% thicker than this new 17” MBP. If you can carry a 15” HP (6.1 lbs.) you wouldn’t even notice the difference if weight were your only concern. When you compare this Mac to the current 17” offerings from Dell, HP and others, it is the most portable 17” on the market, by far. Dell’s “Studio 17” starts at 7.9 pounds, gets incrementally heavier as you add features and uses a “brick” style power adapter that’s 50% bigger and heavier than the Apple equivalent. When I consider what I need to put in my bag to be truly portable, I always include the power adapter. I mean, really? Do you ever leave the house with your computer without some way to power it? The afore-mentioned Dell system weighs in at 10 pounds when you consider the machine and the “brick” needed to keep it charged. The 17” MacBook Pro setup weighs just 7 lbs. and you could arguably leave the power adapter at home given the new non-user-replaceable battery will last over six hours (my real world experience).
Sculpted, not stamped.
Apple has done what was once considered nearly impossible. With the switch to the unibody manufacturing technique they created a sturdy 17” portable computer with all the horsepower 99% of users will ever need in a package less than one inch thick. The key word here is sturdy. This thing looks and feels like a solid slab of aluminum when closed and when opened the fit and finish of the new MBP is the most precise I’ve ever seen. When I buy parts for my Harley, the machined type or "billeted" parts machined from a solid piece of metal (like the MBP’s unibody) are double the price of their forged metal equivalent but look infinitely better and last twice as long. By comparison, my previous (late 2007 17” MBP) laptop, while quite a nice computer, seems almost flimsy.
Prepare for ludicrous speed!
When you add an SSD to this new configuration, you can add the words “rugged” and “f-ing fast” to the list of adjectives used to describe it. I’m still amazed by this Mac’s 38 second boot time (with all my startup apps included) and most all other apps launch instantly. For example, when I start Mail, iCal, Address Book and many others it feels more like I’m un-hiding them. Double-click an app’s icon and pop, it’s there. I’ve never used any computer that feels so responsive. Apple’s SSDs don’t offer the extremely high read and write speeds of some other brands, but in the real world, random read speed (multiple small reads scattered across a disk) is what really counts when booting or launching apps and the near-zero latency typical of all SSDs (Apple’s included) is where most users see real performance gains. Now, when I use my 24” iMac (Late 2008, 2.8 GHz, 4GB) it feels almost sluggish by comparison. It’s still difficult to justify the $650 price tag for the 256 GB SSD upgrade, but I’m spoiled now and don’t want to live without it. I’m convinced that adding a SSD is by far the single, best way to increase a machine’s performance, if you can stomach the cost.
As for other performance aspects, the 1066 MHz front-side bus and memory coupled with the latest top o’ the line Intel meat grinder is as good as you’ll find in any laptop. Benchmarks aren’t my thing, but the ones I’ve seen put this box right at the top of the heap. The keyword here is laptop, so it doesn’t make sense to think you can render hours of 1080p video that would choke an 8 core Mac Pro, but there’s little else this portable won’t do. I certainly don’t hesitate tackling any chore normally reserved for my iMac.
Wide open spaces.
Lets face it, the 1920 X 1200 display is really why you buy the 17” model and nobody offers anything comparable in a package nearly as compact as the unibody MBP. Screen “real estate” is always a concern of mine and I frequently don’t have the luxury of hooking up an external monitor. While only 2” bigger (measured diagonally), the 17” MBP provides 44% more screen (pixels) than its 15” little brother and the extra space really comes in handy. I chose the default glossy display because my machine is used almost exclusively in an office environment where glare is not an issue, but I also think the color saturation and sharpness of the glossy display is far superior to the $50 anti-glare (matte) “upgrade”. (I’ve always wondered why the pixel density of laptop displays is so much higher than what you can buy in a comparably sized desktop LCD. The best resolution I can find in a 17” wide format desktop model is 1440 X 900. Just curious. If anyone has a good explanation for this, please leave a comment.)
It costs a little more to go first class.
If you’re from south Florida or if you just couldn’t tell, I’m absolutely in love with this machine. It is beautifully constructed, aesthetically pleasing, rugged and blazingly fast. At $3449 it is not cheap by any measure, but when I consider the two desktop machines it replaces, that price doesn’t sting quite so badly. Besides, if price were my primary consideration, I’d be like one of those goobers in a “I’m a PC” commercial shopping for a plastic laptop at WalMart. Is this a machine for the masses? Of course not, but if you’re searching for a desktop replacement with more ponies than you can harness, in the most beautiful, well-built package available, this 17” MacBook Pro will get you there fast and in fine style.