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Apple Universe

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

Deals to be found at the Apple refurb store…

If you know me at all, you know how I feel about glossy screens, especially on laptops. As nice as the new MacBook and MacBook Pros are (and they are very nice, based on some early hands-on time with the new MacBook at the local store), the glossy screens are a deal breaker for me. I tried to use a MacBook for six months or so, but in the end, the glossy screen was too much for me, so I went up to the MacBook Pro and its nice matte display.

With the lack of a matte option on the new MacBook Pro line, I won't be buying another Mac laptop (of the 15" variety) until Apple comes out with some form of non-glossy screen--whether that's a true matte screen, or just an effective anti-glare coating, I don't really care. But until there's a solution, I'm going to use what I have for as long as I possibly can.

My current machine is a two-year-old 15" 2.33GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM--and it's a very nice machine. However, it's already two years old, and I want to get at least five more years out of my matte screened laptop...so I figured I'd go look on eBay for used last-gen 2.6GHz MacBook Pros--the fastest 15" machine with a matte screen available, basically.

On my way to eBay, though, I got sidetracked by the Special Deals section of the Apple Store--otherwise known as the Refurb Store.
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A look at how OS X tips spread via Google

When iTunes 8 came out, one very annoying change was the removal of the "Show iTunes Store arrow links" preference -- in previous versions of iTunes, you'd toggle this setting to remove the link arrows that appear when you select an item in your Library.

I never use these things, and they bother my eye, so as soon as I got my hands on iTunes 8, I started looking for a solution (here's how I do that). With some help from Kirk McElhearn, we soon found the solution in a hidden preference value -- a variable named show-store-arrow-links.

After a quick test, we confirmed that it worked, and I wrote it up as hint on Mac OS X Hints. At the same time, I ran a Google search for 'show-store-arrow-links', and came up with no matches.

Note that this does not mean Kirk and I were the first people to post about this workaround -- more than likely, it had already been posted elsewhere, but Google hadn't yet indexed those sites (we were doing this shortly after iTunes 8 was released).

Still, I thought this was a perfect chance to see how things propagate across the internet, as I could repeat my search for show-store-arrow-links over time, and see how quickly the hit count increased. Given the uniqueness of the term, any matches would definitely be people either linking to the hint on some other site, or actually posting their own version of the hint.

Within two hours of the original hint's posting, the hit count was up to five. After seven hours, 137. At 24 hours, 384. At that point, I grew bored with tracking the increases, and tabled the study. Today, though, after 12 days, I ran the search again, and there are now over 1,000 sites that contain the hint (or a link to it) on how to block the iTunes Store arrow links in iTunes 8.

I think that's a good measure of how many people dislike these arrows, and who really wish Apple would have left that preference in place. (Sorry iTunes for Windows users; preferences are stored differently in Windows, and I'm not sure anyone's figured out how to make similar modifications on that platform.)



Music in the new iPod nano ad…

Because I couldn't find this anywhere else on the net, here it is ... the music in the new iPod nano ad is a song called Bruises by Chairlift from an album called Does You Inspire You. I found this by doing a lyric search on the first line ("I tried to do handstands for you..."), which led me to this blog post [dead link removed] -- not directly about the iPod nano ad, but it does mention the song and the lyrics.

iTunes store link

The new nano may just get me to upgrade my original "tall" nano, which is one of my favorite iPods ... but the new one has some really nice sounding features; I'm going to try to go see one in person tomorrow.



New Macworld video posted…

Macworld logoIt was my turn on the Macworld video blog-go-round again this week. The topic I chose is "working with multiple Macs in one home." The end result is a 10-minute clip covering a number of third-party tools that make the process easier, and a couple of general usage hints.

Due to the huge number of downloads, the size of the macworld.com video is 320x240. But if you want, you can see grab the original 640x480 version right here. Warning, it's 185MB in size (I didn't work very hard to compress it, so the quality is good, but it's huge).



Feedback from readers

Macworld logoAs you might guess, I get a lot of email from readers of Macworld and macosxhints.com. For the most part, I love hearing from readers -- even if it's negative feedback, believe it or not. In the case of negative feedback, however, it's nice if the writer provides enough detail so I know (a) what they're upset about, and (b) what I might be able to do about it. I've actually had many useful and productive exchanges with folks who wrote to flame me for one reason or another.

However, on the opposite side of the fence, as an example of the kind of useless feedback I hate receiving, I offer up this email that arrived this morning:

Do you proof read these articles before you publish them?

That was the entire email. I have no idea which typos the author may be referring to, nor for that matter, which one of the 20 to 30 things I wrote last week that those typos may be in. It's also somewhat ironic to note that proofread is one word, not two -- if you're going to chastise me for typos, it's best not to make any of your own!

I really do enjoy hearing from and corresponding with readers. But if you're going to take the time and effort to write to me, at least include enough information for me to understand what it is that's gotten your attention, so that I have some context for your comments and can respond in a meaningful manner.



Macs, clones, and license agreements

As you may know by now, a company known as Psystar has announced they're selling Mac "clones" for $549, complete with Leopard pre-installed. From a legal perspective, these machines clearly violate Apple's OS X 10.5 end user license agreement (EULA). If you're so inclined, you can find a full copy of all of Apple's EULAs on this page--the 10.5 EULA is a 2.1MB download. The relevant portion of the EULA is section two, part A:

This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.

Seems pretty black and white, doesn't it? Use OS X in this manner, and you're violating the EULA. So how can a company like Psystar hope to stay in business, given this legal transgression that's key to their business model? Wired offers up some legal opinions on how they may be able to survive--basically, violating an EULA isn't in nearly the same class of legal violation as is violating copyright or patent law. A breach of contract suit won't prevent Psystar from selling their clones, and probably wouldn't even serve as a financial deterrent: as one attorney notes in the Wired article, "the maximum damage Apple would be able to claim is the price of Leopard -- actually, the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) price of Leopard, which might be a few dollars." Another attorney comments that EULAs are problematic in court, as they've vague by nature. He says, "Companies make them as broad as possible but there's no way to basically enforce them. It's a scare tactic, a way to say, hey, we're reserving all these rights."

The Wired article is a good read, and notes that Apple's best defense may be in technology, not the courts--future system updates may render cloned systems unusable, which will certainly cut down on Psystar's ability to attract and retain customers. So that's what the experts think. From where I sit, over in the "just barely passed the required business law class" section of the room, here's my take on why I don't think it'd be wise of Apple to bring their EULA into the court system.
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The downside of public hint submissions

In general, I wouldn't change a thing about the way OS X Hints has worked out over the years -- I've learned a ton, had a ton of fun, and even managed to completely change my career. One of the first things I did right (through sheer luck, more than anything else) was to choose a content management system (Geeklog) that allowed for public story submissions. With the whole community participating, the hints collection has grown at a tremendous rate.

Lately, though, the downside of public submission queue has become apparent: spam submissions. As an example, here's a bit of what I saw in the queue this morning:

spam

There were well over 100 such entries, all of which were added between Friday morning and early Monday morning. Ugh. (Geeklog presently lacks any sort of captcha on story submissions, though I think there's one in the works for the next minor update.)

So instead of spending time reviewing, editing, and posting hints, I spent the first 10 or so minutes of the morning identifying all the spam entries and deleting them from the system. Clearly these are automated scripts at work, hoping to hit sites that use unmoderated submissions. They care not if a site is moderated, obviously, though it certainly puts me in a foul mood as I clean up their detritus. Sigh.



Macworld video … upsized

Macworld logoAs you may (or may not) know, Macworld editors each take a turn in front of the video camera on a rotating cycle; my number came up again last week, and this is the result - an OS X productivity tips video (the link is to a page of info about the video). The only problem with that video is that it's 320x240, which makes the detail somewhat tough to see, especially in some of the larger screen captures. So I've decided to post (with Macworld's permission) the larger version of the video here for download:

Productivity tips video: 640x480, 8mins 50 seconds, 90.5MB

I'll do this with my future videos, too, at least until/unless my monthly bandwidth is used up. I don't foresee that becoming a problem, though, unless there are over 10,000 of you out there downloading this thing :).



iPhone wallpaper collection

After updating my iPhone to 1.1.3 (and jailbreaking it, courtesy of ZiPhone), I decided I was bored of my current iPhone wallpapers—I've been using Rob Randtoul's very nice iPhone wallpaper collection, but felt it was time for something new. So this morning, I spent a bit of time trimming some of my pictures down to iPhone size, and found that the end results looked better than I was anticipating. So I thought I'd share the results, in case anyone wants more variety on their iPhone. Click the image at left for a larger view of the collection, and if you'd like to download the wallpapers, well, here's the link:

iPhone Wallpapers [1MB]

To use, just add these to your iPhoto library, then sync to your iPhone. I code my iPhone wallpapers with a unique keyword in iPhoto, create a Smart Album based on that keyword, then sync that smart album to the iPhone. Then use the Wallpaper section of the iPhone's Settings panel to set your wallpaper. (If you have a jailbroken iPhone and you install SummerBoard, you can use your wallpaper as a background behind the iPhone's actual screen, too, and not just the wake-from-sleep screen.)

Many of these aren't really suitable as wallpaper (especially in SummerBoard mode), but some actually work out pretty well.



A picture 30 years in the making…

My use of personal computers began back in 1978 or so with a Commodore Pet. While it was an interesting machine to play around with, it didn't really grab my interest completely. That happened when my father brought home an Apple ][ in 1978. As I recall it now, it took but a few days for me to realize that this machine was really something special. From that point forward, there's been an Apple ][ family machine, or a Mac, in my household basically ever since (with only a couple years' exception, when I worked for IBM). Given my history with the machines and company, I was thrilled today when I finally got the chance to meet one of my heroes in person...

wozniak

When I sat down in the speaker's lounge this morning to finish up the slides for my presentation, Steve Wozniak was there, sitting at the same table as I, doing the same thing--finishing his notes for a talk he was about to give. Sitting next to him was an Apple employee I know from elsewhere, so I asked her if he'd have time for a quick picture when he finished his notes. After getting the OK, I introduced myself, and (corny, I know) thanked him for inventing a machine that basically changed the course of computing--as well as having a tremendous positive impact on my life. In person, Steve struck me as friendly and outgoing, and he chatted with the folks at the table for a bit before heading off for his talk.

So, thank you Steve Wozniak, for the chance to say hello and for taking the time to snap a quick picture with me. I know you must get sick of the requests, but you were gracious and friendly about the whole thing.