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Apple Universe

Top-level category for all Apple, Mac, and OS X related topics.

A look at the first eight years of macosxhints.com

I was cleaning out some old images from the site, and found over 150 apparently unused images. Whoops, that's what nine years of bad housekeeping will get you.

One of the leftovers, though, was kind of interesting. At some point in time, I graphed the number of hints published each day on macosxhints.com, from launch through 2008—a total of 12,051 hints.

Even if unlabeled, it'd be pretty easy to figure out where the major OS X releases occurred (except for 10.1, not sure what's up with that?). And you can see a general downward trend in hints per day, as the OS became more established (and more locked down) over time.

In any event, I thought it was an interesting chart, and figured I'd toss it into a quick post instead of just sending it to the dustbin.



Control is the key to avoiding needless dialog boxes

Over the weekend, I wrote myself a little AppleScript program that makes it much easier to create license files for our customers. (Given my lack of knowledge on AppleScript, I'm quite happy with the result.)

To make it easy to use on all my Macs, I stored the finished result in Dropbox. I tested it using my MacBook Pro, assigning it a global keyboard shortcut using Butler. It worked great; as soon as I typed the shortcut, I'd see my "Which program?" onscreen dialog, and all was good.

When I got back to my iMac, I used Butler to point to the same script on Drobpox, and tested it. I was very surprised to see that, instead of launching my app, OS X presented this dialog box:

Confused, I pulled out the MacBook Pro, and tested again…and again, it worked fine, launching without any confirmation dialog.

After many minutes of hair pulling, I figured out the problem: On the MacBook Pro, I had assigned the shortcut as Shift-Option-M; on the iMac, I decided that it'd be easier to type Shift-Control-M, so that's what I used (intending to change the MacBook Pro to the same shortcut). As soon as I removed the Control key from the shortcut, my application loaded without the confirmation dialog.

I've been unable to figure out why this happens, but if you're launching AppleScript apps via global shortcuts, avoid using the Control key in those shortcuts (unless you like needless confirmation dialogs, that is).



Do Dropbox droppers do due diligence?

Apparently Dropping Drobpox is a thing now, because Condoleeza Rice has been named to the board of directors. I'm aware of at least two prominent people (Chris Breen and Mark Frauenfelder) who have publicly discussed their Dropbox departures, and I assume there are many more.

First, I admire these folks' convictions and follow-through on those convictions. For me, Dropbox is too ingrained in what I do to make such a switch. Additionally, I don't believe someone sitting on the Board of Directors of a company is reason enough to change my practices relative to that company's products.

However, for those who feel strongly about Ms. Rice, I assume they'd want to avoid any companies that have directors with similar backgrounds, right? In order to make such decisions, they need to do due diligence on any company whose products they might like to use.

To ease that task, I put together a brief list, based strictly on companies having board members involved in the military-industrial complex, and who may have been active in the same timeframe as Condoleeza Rice.

The first entry in the list may be somewhat surprising…

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iCloudy with a 100% chance of stupidity

I use a lot of cloud services for file storage, primarily Dropbox, but also Box and (begrudgingly, for certain shared projects) Google Drive.

I also use iCloud, but not in any way that would be considered a true cloud file storage service. I use it strictly as a sync service for contacts, calendars, reminders, notes, Safari; I also use Back to My Mac.

But that's it; I don't use iCloud for cloud-based file management at all. Why not? Because iCloud in its current implementation is chock full of the stupid, at least for those of us who still use and rely on OS X.

Stupid #1: Not enough free space, and too costly for more

A quick comparison chart shows just how far out of line iCloud is with other cloud-based services:

ProviderFreeTier 1Tier 2Tier 3
GBGB$/Yr$/GB/yrGB$/Yr$/GB/yrGB$/Yr$/GB/yr
Box10100$60$0.6001000$180$0.180------
Dropbox2100$100$1.000200$199$0.995500$499$0.998
Google Drive15100$24$0.2401,000$120$0.12010,000$1,200$0.120
iCloud515$20$1.33325$40$1.60055$100$1.818
Pricing sources: Box • Dropbox • Google Drive • iCloud
Note that you can get additional free space on Dropbox through referrals and uploading images; Box occasionally offers a promo with 50GB of free space.

Kirk McElhearn covers this price and space issue in more detail in his blog post, Why Does Apple Only Offer 5 GB Storage with iCloud?.

I agree with him; if iCloud wants to attract more users, it needs more free space, and more competitively priced upgrade plans.

Read on for more of the stupid…

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How to: Simplify value pasting in Excel

I tweeted this over the weekend, but thought it might be worth a bit more explanation here. By default, when you copy and paste something in Excel, Excel defaults to pasting everything from the copied cell: the formula, shading, borders, font, style, etc.

Excel dialogSometimes this is OK, but often I just want the values from a cell or range—either because I'm using them in another table with different formatting, or to convert a formula into fixed values.

Out of the box, if you want to paste just the cell values in Excel, you have to select Edit > Paste Special, then navigate the world's busiest dialog box (as seen at right), click on the tiny Values radio button, then hit Return.

If you're doing a lot of value pasting, this is a royal pain. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to fix this design stupidity.

How you fix this depends—for the first step—on whether you're running Excel 2008 or Excel 2011.

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Wallpapers: iPhone 5, 5s, 5c

I created these wallpapers a while ago, but never loaded them to the site. They're all modified versions of photos I used for the wallpapers for the iPad & iPad 2, iPad 3 and newer, and iPhone 4 and 4S. (There's even a small collection of wallpapers for the iPhone 3, 3G, and 3GS, for the nostalgically inclined.)

These wallpapers are 640x1136 pixels in size, and designed for use on the iPhone 5, 5S, and 5C. Note that the images shown in the image sliders below (hover and click to cycle) are low-quality 160x284 JPEG representations of the actual photos; to get the high-quality images, download the entire bundle [37MB] and install only those you wish to use.

Home Screens (5)Lock Screens (23)

License: All photographs in these wallpapers are © Rob Griffiths, and are freely provided for personal use only. You may not include these wallpapers on other sites, nor in any commercial product, without my prior permission. (I hate having to put this here, but prior experience has shown it to be necessary.)



A look at the Office 365 subscription decision tree

Macworld logoHand in hand with my review of Excel for the iPad, I took a look at the $100 per year subscription plan required to actually use it, and just who might want (or need) to subscribe:

Unless you spent the past week offline, there’s really no way you could have missed the news that Microsoft released iPad versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. There’s also no way you could have missed the uproar over the pricing for the three apps.

But just in case you did miss the pricing uproar, here’s a bit of background on the issue. The apps are free to download and can be used to view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files (though installing a 400MB app to view a file seems like overkill). However, you can’t use the apps to edit existing files or to create new files without buying a subscription to Office 365, Microsoft’s online Office-everywhere service. And that subscription will cost you (assuming “you” are a typical home user, and not a business or college student) $100 per year. Suddenly those free apps don’t look so free any more.

Read the rest over at Macworld.



Review of Excel for iPad

Macworld logoI spent some time (a lot of time, actually) with Excel for the iPad, and reviewed it for Macworld:

There are any number of spreadsheet apps available for the iPad, but recently the market changed dramatically when Microsoft released the full Office suite for iPad, including a version of Excel. While you can argue that Excel is many years late to the iPad party (and I wouldn’t disagree), the iPad version of Excel is a solid entrant, and instantly changes the landscape for competitive apps.

Read the rest over at Macworld.



Disney does digital right with ‘Frozen’ Blu-ray

Macworld logoI was pretty happy with how Disney handled digital copies on their Frozen Blu-ray:

What with the recent Veronica Mars/UltraViolet debacle, you might think all studios still live in the dark ages, and just don’t get it. Thankfully, as I discovered with my purchase of Frozen—the kids’ “Dad, you gotta buy it!” movie of the month—not all studios opt for such an anti-consumer path.

Frozen is available for purchase via iTunes as well as traditional retailers. At the time I bought, iTunes was asking $20 (with iTunes Extras included), which is the same price BestBuy was asking for the Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy bundle.

Read the rest on TechHive.



How I manage spam on my mobile devices

Macworld logoMe, writing about battling spam on my iOS devices (which lack any sort of built-in spam handling tools):

Spam. Nobody likes it. Everybody hates it. Yet it continues to exist, filling inboxes with unwanted offers for generic drugs, overseas lotteries, health insurance, and who knows what else. The problem can be especially bad if you’ve got a really old email address, and that email address has been listed on various websites over the years—spammers love to harvest emails from websites, making your old, established, and public addresses subject to an amazing bombardment of spam.

Read the rest over at macworld.com.