Where is Klaus?

Snow Leopard: Services is worth the upgrade!

After a frustrating day with Snow Leopard yesterday in getting my network printers working, a look at the totally changed implementation of services brightened things up considerably today. Without exaggerating too much I can state that the revised services and automator implementation in SL alone is worth the $29 you have to pony up for the software. In Leopard and earlier implementations of services we all knew that the feature existed but never really used it. Now in SL, this is an entirely different story. But rather than trying to explain to you what it is all about, I suggest you watch a couple of movies prepared by Alex Lindsay of Pixelcorps with Sal Soghoian, Apple's creator of "Services" and "Automator". I bet you will enjoy them.

Snow Leopard: Apple Talk R.I.P.

Early adopters invariably get punished! It's a lesson I had learned the hard way several times before. But the "thrill" of being among the early birds to test Apple's new operating system this time around was again stronger than reason. The result, as you expected, was serious trouble in getting certain things to work properly. This time it was my network printers (an old HP Laserwriter 4050 TN and a relatively new Canon PIXMA 5200R) which simply refused to work.

Apple Care Support, although very friendly and supportive, could not get my printers working either. Their advice: "put pressure on the print suppliers to update their drivers".. Apple Care offered to "push" the problem within Apple, although with little hope for a solution within a reasonable time frame. That left "googling" as my last hope.

It didn't take prolonged browsing to obtain confirmation, that I was far from alone with my problem. APPLE had unceremoniously dropped its age old proven network software "Appletalk" without even mentioning it. As a result, network printing no longer functions with a great number of printers, as manufacturers could not keep up with providing modified printer drivers. After reading through several dozens of Apple Forum pages full of irate early adapters with non-functioning network printers I finally found a solution suggested by a HP engineer which worked. To save you time, I shall repeat it here:

Take the following steps to mount a HP network printer: 1) delete the "old" printer icon in the "Printers" window of the "Print & Fax" System Prefences tab of Snow Leopard. 2) select a new printer by pressing the "HP Jet Socket" tab under "Protocol"and enter the printer's IP address into the "Address" tab. 3) The system then automatically searches for and finds the HP Laserwriter printer driver (for which an updated Snow Leopard compatible driver exists on HP's website and I believe also on the Snow Leopard system disc) 4) with the new printer driver selected press "Add" on the "Add Printer" tab in Print & Fax System Prefs and you are good to go. The HP driver only works with this procedure. By inputting e.g. the printer's name and selecting "Internet Printing Protocol" the system finds the appropriate printer driver, but the actual printing gets stuck every time as the printing queue triggers the printer to go "off".

I hope this will be of assistance to other frustrated "early snow leopards".

Unfortunately, this procedure did not work for my other printer mentioned above, since Canon has not yet provided an updated printer driver. Be patient, early adopters ....

Lusting for "Front Row" with an older Mac? equinux's "Media Center" is the way to go!

"Front Row", particularly in its latest update for the Intel Macs, is  Apple's "camel's nose stuck in the home audio and video  tent".  Particularly with the recently introduced single and dual core Mac Minis and the updated "Front Row", Apple has made an important step forward towards offering an attractive solution for your living room.  Front Row relies on Apple's zero configuration utility "Bonjour" to allow users to stream video, audio and pictures from any  Bonjour enabled computer (Mac or Windows) in your house. Yet another reason to lust for one of the new Intel Mac's?
If you didn't mind to live dangerously, owners of G4 desktops or laptops always had the possibility to use one of the readily available "Front Row" hacks, such as the one from Andy Garcia until Apple's lawyers plugged the loophole.
No need, however, to be brave or spend your hard earned  Swissies or Dollars on a new generation Intel Mac: Equinox's free "MediaCentral" software does the trick perfectly well. It provides most of the functionalities of Front Row and even some additional  ones: it turns your Mac into the ultimate media center. With the push of a button you can access your iTunes or iPhoto libraries, play iTunes videos and movies located in the movie folder of your Mac. It streams movies from the internet - e.g. Movie Trailers, Web LiveTV - or, if you own El Gato's "EyeTV", you can even watch TV.
While "Media Center" supports more video formats and allows you a few additional features to Front Row, the software has a few shortcomings. For instance, the present version of the software does not play videos or music purchased from Apple's Music Store, a significant handicap if you are a good client of the trend setting downloading service.

Who cares, if all you want is to turn your "aging" Mac into a leading edge media center providing an elegant home for all your songs, pictures, videos and movies?

AppleJack - user friendly MacOSX repair tool

Although Mac OSX requires little day to day maintenance and crashes are pretty much a thing of the past, you never know when something will go wrong with your Mac. Preventive maintenance can do a lot to avoid or at least reduce the occurrence of individual program misbehavior or even a systems crash. Regular MacFixit readers know, that before installing a systems update it is advisable to check and, if needed, repair your hard drive with Disk Utility and regularly check and repair file permissions. However,  some of Disk Utility's functions only work if you start up the computer with the  OSX  Install disk.
AppleJack provides an easier solution. The free software allows you to repair your disk, repair permissions, validate system preference files and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files - in short the most frequent culprits to corrupt your system. All you have to do, after having downloaded and installed AppleJack,  is to restart your system in Single User Mode (holding down the Command and s  keys) and type "applejack" or "applejack auto" (which will run through the tasks automatically). By all means print out and read the AppleJack ReadMe file before you start using the software.
To get more information on this great potential lifesaver, check out the AppleJack's website and an excellent article by MacFixit author Dan Frakes.

Reality Distortion Field

This site may not be news to you Apple afficionados, but it was to me when I found it by coincidence surfing the net - the story of the original Macintosh told by its creators, mostly by Andy Hertzfeld. As you would expect, this is mostly about the personalities who made this incredible journey of making THE visionary computer a reality. It's fun reading. Start by Andy Hertzfeld explaining "Reality Distortion Field" and you will finally understand Steve Jobs marketing magic. You will enjoy drinking the Coolaid.