Mike Cohen: MacOS X

Fri, 01 Nov 2002 15:56:20 GMT

I will no longer update this site at radio.weblogs.com. I will now be publishing my weblog at http://www.mc-development.com/~mike.

Fri, 01 Nov 2002 01:14:44 GMT

Mac O'Lanterns. Mac O'Lanterns Light Up Halloween. For a pair of Mac fans, there's no one scarier than Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer. That's why they carved his portrait into a pumpkin, along with an amazing likeness of 'Switch' star Ellen Feiss. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News] [Mac Net Journal] The Steve Ballmer Mac O'Lantern is truly scary!

Thu, 31 Oct 2002 20:11:36 GMT

Freenet available for Mac OS X. Freenet is free software designed to ensure true freedom of communication over the Internet. It allows anybody to publish and read information with complete anonymity. Nobody controls Freenet, not even its creators, meaning that the system is not vulnerable to manipulation or shutdown. [MacMegasite]

Mon, 28 Oct 2002 22:46:28 GMT

I didn't write anything today because I was busy programming. I've fixed many bugs in my preemptive threading code for Mac OS 9 and I'm now actually able to establish a connection. I keep finding places where I need to call a toolbox function with MPRemoteCall, but those are getting easier to find.

Fri, 25 Oct 2002 20:02:05 GMT

A Shipping Nightmare. Last week, I ordered a LinkSys WET-11 wireless ethernet bridge, and thanks to a series of screw-ups by FedEx Ground, it never arrived and is now on its way back to the shipper. [MacMegasite] Buy.com won't re-ship it. I ended up buying one from Amazon.com for the same price.

Thu, 24 Oct 2002 02:47:26 GMT

OK, here's the excellent news I mentioned yesterday: effective Nov. 1, I'll be an employee of Absolute Software. I got the official offer today & I've already signed it & faxed it back to them. I've been working for them as a contractor since last October, developing the Mac versions of their CompuTrace & asset tracking software.

Thu, 24 Oct 2002 01:20:46 GMT

NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.2b3. NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.2b3 fixes a bug introduced in the last beta.

There was an HTTP connection leak that would cause NetNewsWire to stop being able to read news. Fixed. [inessential.com] Excellent! I noticed this bug today.

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 20:33:01 GMT

Anyone with a clue and a desire to minimize maintenance costs of their OS X system either knows or will soon learn that thou shalt not install crap in /Applications/ unless it is completely unavoidable. There are a slew of good reasons to do this and I have ranted on said topic a number of times in the past. Recently, the question was posed -- If not /Applications, then where does Apple suggest we install applications? The off the cuff answer is simple; make an Applications/ directory in your home account and stick the apps there. Works and works well. That Apple doesn't automatically create that directory as a part of the default user template would seem to be an oversight on their part. Of course, the next question: What are all the directories within which OS X looks for applications? Good question. The Foundation provides API via which one can easily query for the set of paths upon which various searches are performed. For Applications, the default complete set is:

~/Applications
~/Applications/Utilities
~/Developer/Applications
~/Applications/GrabBag
/Applications
/Applications/Utilities
/Developer/Applications
/Applications/GrabBag
/Network/Applications
/Network/Applications/Utilities
/Network/Developer/Applications
/Network/Applications/GrabBag

GrabBag? What the heck is that (turns out, it is where Demo applications go!)?? And what other interesting things can we deduce via the Foundation API? For one, OS X considers /Developer to be like /Library. In particular, the Library search paths (in order) are:

~/Library
~/Developer
/Library
/Developer
/Network/Library
/Network/Developer
/System/Library
/Developer

Furthermore, the Documents directory is limited to just the user (~/Documents). There isn't a concept of a shared documents directory. On the other hand, Documentation directories can be found in multiple locations. It would seem that there should be Developer specific directories in this mix (like there are for Library).

~/Library/Documentation
/Library/Documentation
/Network/Library/Documentation
/System/Library/Documentation

By default, Users are found in one of two places; /Users or /Network/Users. I wonder if that list is extended if the system is the client of an OS X Server based network (or otherwise integrated as a client into a directory services based system)? In any case, there you have it -- all the fun places that the system looks for things, by default. What this means is that, if there is a directory in /Developer that contains stuff found automatically by some random tool, you can likely create the same directory in ~/Developer and add, extend or override to your heart's content. Same goes for /System/Library/* and the myriad of contents within. Obviously, a lot of stuff will be hardwired to wherever it happens to live. But other things will not be-- Input Managers, for example, can be dropped into the appropriately named directory in any of the directories in the Library search path. [bbum's rants, code & references]

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 19:17:39 GMT

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 23:14:40 GMT

News Aggregators. If you have a lot of web sites that you visit regularly, a news aggregator can save you time and bring you the latest news instantly. [MacMegasite]

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 18:50:52 GMT

I've converted my code to use Apple's OTMP library for multi-tasking. Although it works under X, I still can't get it working under 9.

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 16:48:04 GMT

WOW! I now have 143 people online at MacMegasite!

Sun, 20 Oct 2002 23:09:45 GMT

I just installed Jaguar on my G3 server (which is running Radio Userland). It runs a lot faster, and I have all of the services back up, including CVS for my project & web pages for a few friends. I'm now also using it as a print server. My Canon S600 is now connected to the G3, so I can print to it from my G4 or my iBook.

Sat, 19 Oct 2002 01:13:05 GMT

The enterprise Mac. IN MAY 2001, Apple began shipping OS X on new Macs. Six months later, at the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer and Web Services conference, it was clear that a sea change was under way. The open-source geeks who flock to these events were flouting Microsoft not with PC notebooks running Linux, but with PowerBooks running OS X. Displayed on their gorgeous Aqua screens was the Mac's newest and most unlikely killer app: SSH, the secure shell, in all its 80-column, 25-line splendor. [Full story at InfoWorld.com.] ... [Jon's Radio]

Fri, 18 Oct 2002 03:38:22 GMT

Ballmer Sees Free Software as Enemy No. 1 [Slashdot] Poor Microsoft! ... they're getting hit from Linux and Mac OS X. Dance your way out of this one, monkeyboy.

Wed, 16 Oct 2002 21:13:35 GMT

Red Hat recently published a security patch that, thanks to the infamous Digital Millenium Copyright and Suppression of Free Speech Act can only be explained fully to people not within US borders. [Daypop Top 40]

Red Hat has struck a small blow against the DMCA, by publishing a security patch which can only be explained fully to people who are not within US jurisdiction. The company's position here seems to be not altogether voluntary - according to a spokesman "it is bizarre, and unfortunately something Red Hat cannot easily do much about," but like it or not Red Hat has been recruited to the campaign to make the DMCA look ridiculous.

Wed, 16 Oct 2002 18:01:04 GMT

This is a really cool testing tool. Enter a URL and it will display the full HTTP headers returned by the server. Very useful to find why some page displays incorrectly - usually the server is returning a MIME type of text/plain instead of text/html.

Tue, 15 Oct 2002 20:08:42 GMT

SlashDock 2.3. SlashDock is a lightweight news aggregator that displays headlines from RSS feeds (including MacMegasite) in your dock. [MacMegasite]

Tue, 15 Oct 2002 02:04:15 GMT

BounceWeb has been down since about 3PM this afternoon, which affects macmegasite & worldbeatplanet. I'm moving both sites to my reseller account, which is still up. I'm using backups of the database from last night, so all statistics & anything posted since then has been lost. I've changed the DNS servers for WorldBeatPlanet, but I haven't changed macmegasite yet. If it comes back up, I can simply point it to the database on the new server. I'm reluctant to switch to the new server because I'll lose shell access, subdomains don't work, and the SMTP server doesn't seem to be able to send mail. I'm thinking of switching to http://www.netsourcehosting.com, although I'm paid a year in advance at BounceWeb. If I switch, I risk losing my reseller account (which I'm using to host mymacmail.com). I'll most likely make the switch when my year is up, since it costs about the same & they seem pretty reliable - the administrator of that site is also the administrator of www.derekandalexking.org.

Sun, 13 Oct 2002 23:45:17 GMT

The top-10 things I missed in 10 days without OS X. With my PowerBook away to be repaired for the first 10 days on this month, I found myself using Mac OS 9.x and even Windows in between shifts of using my wife's PowerBook. Here is what I missed most about having my own OS X-based machine to work with:

Speed - The move from a G3 PowerBook with 1GB of RAM to a PowerBook 3400c with 144MB of RAM or a Windows box with 64MB of RAM was a painful slowdown.
Stability - It is hard to beat the stability of Mac OS X, no matter how much I may point out shortcomings of the operating system.
Radio 8 - The additional speed of Radio under OS X cannot be appreciated enough until you run it under Mac OS 9.x on an underpowered machine. There is truly a reason computers keep getting faster.
NetNewsWire Lite - One of the first programs I fired up when I got my Pismo PowerBook back was Brent Simmons' excellent RSS news aggregator.
Chimera and OmniWeb - Neither of these Web browsers can be touched by anything under Mac OS 9.x.
OmniOutliner - How did I used to live without an outliner?
iTunes - Yes, I can run iTunes under Mac OS 9.x, but that older version of the program is not as flexible as the newest running under Jaguar.
Fire and Proteus - It is hard to touch the OS X goodness of these two multi-protocol chat clients that let me communicate with people using AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and IRC all from within one application.
Unix under the hood - I don't dig into the command line a lot on a day-to-day basis, but there is no beating it if you need to fire up Terminal in order to see what process is eating up all of your processor time.
Complete flexibility - Mac OS X offers more ways to access your data and to customize the way you work with your data, through shareware, Unix and other means than any other OS in the world right now. And it is customizable in a completely user-friendly way.

[Mac Net Journal] I haven't booted 9 since I bought my fax machine - the only reason I used to run it was to fax my time sheets, since neither FaxSTF X or Cocoa eFax worked reliably. On the other hand, I'll have to be running 9 a lot more often when I start working on the 9 version of the CompuTrace client. Hopefully I'll be able to do most of it from classic, without actually having to boot 9.

Sun, 13 Oct 2002 03:31:46 GMT

The finder just crashed giving the following stack trace, which confirms that it's written in PowerPlant: Thread 0 Crashed:
#0 0x9502a0e8 in LView::Activate()
#1 0x9502db20 in LWindow::Activate()

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 23:34:11 GMT

WebServices framework docs available. Steve Zellers mentioned that the WebServicesCore framework that shipped with Jaguar now has preliminary documentation. Excellent! I have been programming against the WSC API for a few months now and it is mostly straightforward. It is a great API -- very easy to use and makes the differences between SOAP and XML-RPC fairly painless from a developer's perspective. Docs are certainly welcome, but I'm even happier that Apple chose to release the API into developer hands when they did as opposed to delaying the release until the docs could be written. [bbum's rants, code & references] This is extremely cool! You can use normal AppleEvent manager calls with the target address specified as a URL to send a request to a web service.

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 21:47:18 GMT

I discovered that I can target an AppleEvent to a kernel process ID as well as the older methods of using an application signature or proces serial number. I now have my controller application using AppleEvents to communicate with the client instead of sending it a HUP signal. It's a lot cleaner and will port nicely to the Mac OS 9 version.

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 19:10:58 GMT

iBook to the rescue. I just got back from a weekend trip. I'm still catching up on work and will resume normal posting later today. I had my iBook with me, and a few hard-core PC users were quite impressed by it. [MacMegasite]

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 04:16:40 GMT

Carbon vs Cocoa Written by one of the guys from Unsanity -- yes, the haxies people. [radio free world]