Experience From Switching Back

by Aditya

A couple of months back, I wrote about my experiences as a switcher (see shuffle November 2006). Due to reasons, completely involuntary I might add, I had to use Windows again for a month. So how does it feel to switch back? Here are my main conclusions.

• You start pointing your mouse to the corners of the screen to activate Expose, only to see nothing happens.
• You search the internet for a Widget for the dictionary, then realize that you are using Windows XP and not Mac OS X 10.
• You are so used to the old interface that you instinctively move the mouse pointer to the top left corner to close the windows.
• You start complaining about reverse compatibility issues such as why AppZapper and Adium are not available for Windows.
• You download a considerable number of files to make the computer at the very least us- able. They include among many others: Firefox, Mac OS themes, Adobe Acrobat Reader, iTunes, some nice wallpapers, some not so nice Anti-Virus applications and what not.
• Since Stickies are not available on your desktop or Dashboard, you buy some from a nearby shop and install it on your cupboard.
• You keep pressing F1 for help. Then try to search for fifteen minutes for what you want. If there were a “I am feeling lucky” button on it, then I swear I would never use it. Unless of course, Apple built it for them. You find a solution to what you were looking for by going to some internet forum.
• The GUI seems so hideous, that you wonder if the leaves outside have turned black and the Zebra has stripes of purple and orange.
• You count the number of days before you will get your Mac back working. (Err.. that could transform to hours and minutes also).
• You tell yourself to download Ubuntu and install it in place of Windows.

Final thoughts

All said and done, it is not that one cannot live without Mac OS X or that you will die using Windows. Know about the cut on your lips which does not make you cry, yet makes you desperately wish that it were not present because it stings a bit? Like that incessant itching you can’t reach or stop? Yup, I think you get my point.

Say XAMPP Five Times Fast if You Can

by Magnus Nystedt

Have you ever wanted to try out some web application programming? Perhaps writing your own blog engine, or just publish your company’s employee list to a web page?

There are obviously many options for you and your Mac comes with some of them built in. Mac OS X comes ready to go with Apache, PHP, Perl, FTP server, and more. If you want to try these things, and more, but you want something that’s more up to date than the versions that come with Mac OS X and that’s easy to install, try XAMPP. XAMPP is free and it’s an all-in-one-package for development of dynamic, database- driven web applications using open source technologies. he Mac OS X version of XAMPP contains Apache, MySQL, PHP & PEAR, SQLite, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMy- Admin, OpenSSL, GD, Freetype2, libjpeg, libpng, zlib, Ming, Webalizer, mod_perl, eAccelerator, and phpSQLiteAdmin. XAMPP is about 50Mb to download, it’s easy to install, and it comes with a control panel application from which you can control the individual components. For example you can start and stop the MySQL database in XAMPP by one click on a button. XAMPP offers you a simple way to try out some of the more current versions of these applications without going through too much of individual downloads and work with the command line.

If you can figure out how to say XAMPP ive times fast, you can figure out how to develop dynamic web applications. You can download XAMPP for free from http://www.apache-friends.org/en/xampp-macosx. html. A similar package is MAMP which you can get from http://www.mamp.info/en/home/.

Editorial - Windows Vista Arrives

by Magnus Nystedt

Why write about Windows Vista in the newsletter of an Apple User Group, you ask. It’s quite simple, our world is dominated by Microsoft, currently with Windows XP, and in the future by Vista. It’s something that we have to live with. We have to use Vista-running computers at some point and our Macs have to communicate with them too. Some of us will even install and run Vista on our Macs via Parallels or BootCamp. Vista means “a view or a prospect” according to Dictionary.com, which is perhaps an appropriate name. Personally I much prefer Tiger though. So Windows Vista has been launched after five years of development and it’s going to affect all of us to some degree. We celebrate it by dedicating our Comic Corner to the arrival of Windows Vista. There is also an article about what is new in Vista, as well as a debate from EmiratesMac.com about Mac versus Windows. Don’t worry though, this will not be a common thing, that so much of shuffle is taken up by Windows. But we will of course continue to write about Windows as it concerns Mac users. But I’m so glad I’m not the editor for a Windows user group newsletter. All we would have to write about was security holes, updates, and driver issues. And we can soon put Vista to the back of our minds because Leopard is right around the corner. he latest rumors are saying that it will be out as early as March. I would think a few months after that is more likely. WWDC is in June, which seems like a good occasion as any to launch Leopard. We have some exciting things coming up this spring and I hope you will all take part in them and help out when requested. EmiratesMac User Group is on the way to bigger and better things, but it can only happen with your help.

Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music

It doesn’t happen very often that we hear directly from Steve Jobs, in fact I can’t remember it ever happening like this, but on February 6 2007 he has posted an open letter entitled “Thoughts on music” (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/). It’s written following the increasingly heated debate over DRM’s “to be or not to be”. Countries like Norway have very publicly said that the iPod and iTunes is a closed system that is anti-competitive and they’ve even taken Apple to court over it. Something has to be done, that’s pretty clear, and I suspect that’s what made Jobs come out and write this public statement. The whole problem, according to Jobs, is that the four major music companies, from where Apple gets the music it sells in their iTunes Store, require Apple to protect their music. Apple license the rights to sell and distribute the music from these companies who together control over 70% of the music available in the world. Jobs says that when approaching these music companies about selling through the iTunes Store, they required that Apple implements a solution that would let customers only to play what they buy on Apple’s players meaning iTunes and iPods. This led to Apple developing their DRM technology called FairPlay. He acknowledges that any DRM is “a cat-and-mouse game” where the maker and the breaker tries to constantly outsmart each other. That’s also been the case with FairPlay where it’s been cracked several times, and Apple has patched and improved it each time.

Three alternatives
Jobs then presents three alternatives for the future. The first alternative is to stay the course and continue with DRM as it is today, with each manufacturer, like Apple, developing and implementing their own DRM technology in “silos” that are more or less interoperable (usually not at all). This is what the music companies want but it doesn’t seem to be what consumers want. The second alternative is to let other companies implement FairPlay by licensing the technology to them. Jobs says he’s worried about leaks in such setups: leaks to competitors as well as to hackers. The DRM would be less effective and over time, presumably, loose significance. The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. And here Jobs gives perhaps his most surprising view throughout the whole letter. Jobs says that “this is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat” and states that if the big music companies would allow Apple to sell their music DRM-free, Apple would sell only music free of DRM in the iTunes store. He also says that all iPods would be capable of playing this DRM-free music.

Blaming the music companies
It will probably seem to some that Jobs is just blaming the music companies and are trying to clear any blame from Apple. And in a way that’s his job, to protect Apple. I don’t doubt that he’s correct in his description of the major music companies, they have a huge vested interest to protect in investments and revenues. And Apple is certainly interested in selling their music. But now Apple is so big in music sales that Jobs can perhaps demand more from the music industry. Is this a sign that something is changing? I think the very fact that Jobs made this public statement means that they are aware of the issue and that they will work to change things. When any changes are coming is of course still an open issue.

by Magnus Nystedt

RSS 101

The explosion in new services on the internet we’ve seen over the last few years, including blogs, podcasts, and more, often owe their existence to varying degrees to something called RSS. RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, is a technology which allows users to subscribe to digital content, and receive notice and updates whenever something new has been published. I’m sure you’ve seen the orange RSS icons all over the web, and perhaps wondered “what is that?”

Old technology finds new use
The idea of something doing what RSS is doing isn’t really that new. Apparently Apple was at the forefront of this with something called MCF (Meta Content Framework). MCF and other technologies existed before RSS but they never became widespread because most of them were tied to a single platform or system. One of the beauties of RSS is that it’s a technology that can be supported on virtually any operating system, any application, and service, really, anywhere that users would want RSS support. For example, a RSS-feed can be created with a Mac, published to a Linux server, and subscribed to using a Windows application, and it all works seamlessly.

RSS feeds
At the very heart of a RSS-feed is a text file that exists on a web server. This text file, technically a XML document but we’ll leave that for another article, describes the content of the RSS-feed. For a blog, for example, it describes the general information about the blog, as well as the details of each individual post. Whenever there is another blog post made, this text file is updated automatically by the blog software, and when the user checks if there’s anything new, the new post is downloaded to the user’s computer. For a podcast it works very much the same way, with the addition that the text file also points to an audio file for each episode and that audio file can be automatically downloaded to the user’s computer. These text files can be written and updated manually by someone, but most of the time they’re managed automatically by some type of software. For EmiratesMac.com, for example, the software that manages the forums, also manage the RSS-feeds we offer.

RSS and your Mac
Fortunately for you, your Mac is already well-prepared for RSS technology. You can subscribe to blogs and podcasts without downloading or purchasing any new software. Whenever you browse to a site that has a RSS-feed, Safari will show a small blue RSS icon on the location bar. By clicking on the icon you can read the RSS-feed as well as subscribe to it. If you want to subscribe to audio or video podcasts, iTunes is all you need. For more advanced RSS-reading needs, there is software like NetNewsWire and Google Reader. Both make it easier to subscribe to and follow a large number of RSS feeds and offer various functions to make your life easier.

Final thoughts
RSS is a wonderful technology that can help you keep up with a large quantity of information without it taking too much time. I currently subscribe to over 300 RSS feeds using Google Reader which means hundreds of new posts per day. Sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming but with RSS and a good RSS-reader it wouldn’t be possible.

You can read more about RSS at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS. Apple has a long list of RSS feeds at http://www.apple.com/rss/. You can find out more information about NetNewsWire, and download a demo at http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct.aspx?ProdID=NetNewsWire. NetNewsWire is $29.95 to purchase. Google Reader is free and you can find it at http://www.google.com/reader.

by Magnus Nystedt

What’s New in Windows Vista?

Microsoft has with lots of fanfare launched Windows Vista and we thought we’d take a quick look at it. After five years of development and presumably billions of dollars spent it’s finally here and we just want to tell you what is new, and what we think you should know about the new Windows. This is not a review, we’ve not used Vista extensively ourselves.
by Magnus Nystedt

Five different Vistas
Something that has been debated a lot is the five different versions, or “editions”, that Microsoft offers for Vista. The versions are Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. There’s also an Enterprise version which rounds off the five. The Home Basic version is just that, basic. You don’t even get one of the main selling points of Vista, the Aero interface. Most users will at least want Home Premium, which in addition to Aero adds laptop support, Media Center, some games, and a DVD maker application. In the Business edition you get enhanced networking support, including Remote Desktop, as well as some Backup and Restore features. The Ultimate edition has all of these features. Something to keep in mind if you are considering running Vista in Parallels on your Mac is that to be legal you need to get at least the Business Edition. Microsoft’s license says that the Home versions of Vista are not allowed to be run in virtualization. That there’s nothing stopping you from doing so is a different matter. And you could still install and run the Home versions of Vista with Apple’s BootCamp. Apple, of course, offers just one version of Mac OS X, not counting Mac OS X Server.

Aero interface
The most obvious new thing with Vista is the interface. It’s called Aero and it requires a pretty fast graphics cards and processor to run at all, and certainly to run at any acceptable performance level. At a quick glance Aero looks in parts much like Mac OS X with gradients, transparent elements, rounded corners, and more. Personally I like Mac OS X’s look better and think Aero is a bit too much “eye-candy” and too little functionality. But it’s an improvement over Windows XP, that I can say at least.

Security
One of the common complaints about Windows XP was and is that it has more security holes than a piece of swiss cheese. Perhaps the main news in terms of security is User Account Control which asks the user for permission whenever certain things happen, like downloading and launching applications. I suppose it’s like on a Mac, whereby any actions requiring administrative rights prompts the user for a password. It seems they may have overdone this a bit though in Vista since in my brief time with the OS, these popups kept appearing all the time, which was more than a little annoying.

Sidebar
Think Dashboard stuck to a side of the screen and you get what the sidebar is. And Microsoft calls the things that go in the sidebar Gadgets (Widgets in DashBoard). It seems you can find much the same Gadgets as there are typical Widgets, including calendar, clock, weather information, and more.

Mobile computing
It seems Microsoft has realized that a lot of people use notebooks, and have finally added support for sleep in Vista. Or I should say it now works. From what I can tell, sleep wasn’t really working in XP but now in Vista it is. Of course, on Mac we’ve enjoyed instant sleep and wake-up for many generations of portable Macs.

Applications
Vista comes with a set of upgraded applications. Outlook has been given an overhaul and is now called Windows Mail. There’s a basic photo application called Windows Photo Gallery. Windows Media Player 11 is included, as is of course Internet Explorer 7. The Media Center applications that come with some editions of Vista has also been upgraded.

The last word
So there you have it, a quick look at Vista. You may ask if you should upgrade if you run XP in Parallels or BootCamp. I think that depends on what you do with Windows. Personally I am in no rush to put Vista on Parallels on my MacBook. XP is just fine for now. But sooner or later the day comes when applications require Vista, and then I will upgrade. You make up your own mind whether it’s worth upgrading.

You can read more about Windows Vista at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/default.mspx. You can compare the five editions at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx. For a fun comparison between Vista and Mac watch David Pogue’s video on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=TaIUkwPybtM.

Review: Belkin TuneBase FM for iPod

If you want to use your iPod in your car to play music through your car stereo but you don’t have anywhere to plug in your iPod or a cassette player, this is the thing for you. The Belkin TuneBase FM for iPod is an iPod FM transmitter, iPod charger, and iPod holder all rolled into one. It plugs into your cigarette lighter and hold your iPod up on a flexible neck so you can position it so it’s conveniently accessible to you. The TuneBase supports 88.1MHz-107.9MHz and it’s very easy to set frequency. Turn your radio to the frequency you want, then push up and down buttons on the TuneBase until you have set the same frequency. You can then set that frequency to one out of four programmable memory slots. The TuneBase comes with adapters to fit iPod video, 4G, photo, mini, and nano. Personally I was worried that the holder’s neck wouldn’t be stable enough to hold the iPod without moving it around too much, but that turned out to be unwarranted. The TuneBase holds your iPod very securely. We found the audio quality to be okay for the most part. There’s definitely static once in a while, and it obviously depends on the area you’re in and what radio stations are broadcasting. Most of the time, just tweaking the frequency setting made the audio quality improve. Belkin’s TuneBase is not going to get you the best possible audio quality when playing music from your iPod in your car, but it’s a convenient and cost-effective solution.

by Magnus Nystedt

AntiRSI Forces you to Take a Break

RSI, or Repetitive Strain Injury, is something that is a danger to all of us spending so much time working with computers. RSI can set in when you work with the same motions for a long time, like typing on a keyboard, or using a mouse. One way of minimizing the risk of having RSI problems is to take regular breaks. AntiRSI is a simple little free application that does just that. All it does is that it shows a timer in your Dock, and it counts how long you have worked. It then forces you to take a 13 second tiny break every 4 minutes and a longer 8 minute break every 50 minutes. It does this by displaying a notice on the screen and while the notice is up you cannot use the keyboard or the mouse. You can download AntiRSI from http://tech.inhelsinki.nl/antirsi/ and read more about RSI at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury.

by Magnus Nystedt

Review: CSSEdit 2

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a way to determine how web pages look and feel, which is used by many web sites on the internet. CSS is fundamentally text files, much like HTML, so a web developer can write CSS-code themselves, or use a visual editor like CSSEdit.

Highly specialized

CSSEdit is a very specialized program. It does one thing (create and edit CSS) but it does better than you could even imagine. I have used CSSEdit for some time at work, so I saw a good opportunity to do a quick review for shuffle. For other developers out there I should mention that I fall into the camp of hand coders. I rarely use environments like DreamWeaver and prefer to write my code instead. A recent exception to that has been CSSEdit which has made my work with CSS so much easier and better.

Interface

It’s also a very Mac-ish program, and I think you know what I mean. It’s one of those applications that just feels Mac, and that’s about as high praise as a piece of software can get in my book. Concerning the interface it’s really divide into four parts. In the main window, there is the left part which shows a list of the styles in the currently open file. The center part shows the source for the styles. This is also where you can edit the code yourself. And over on the right is the property editor, which is the where you can just check boxes, make selection in drop-down menus, and type values into text fields to create and edit your CSS. These three parts are always synchronized so a change to one is immediately reflected in the other two. The fourth part of the CSSEdit interface is the type of floating and semi-transparent palettes that has become so popular lately.

Live Preview

The Live Preview window in CSSEdit is really useful in “why-didn’t-I-think-of-that-first” sort of way. For example, you can drop a web page file on the Live Preview window, and CSSEdit will see the CSS parts of it, let you edit them, and any change you make will be reflected in the preview. It saves you a lot of clicks since you don’t have to save the file, switch to a browser, reload, etc. CSSEdit can also help you get CSS files from other web sites with the Extract from site function. Just point CSSEdit to a site and it will download all the CSS and display it in its main window. One of the best ways to learn CSS, I think, is to look at what others have done, try to understand it so you can later apply that knowledge to what you are doing. CSSEdit is a great tool in that respect.

Milestone Manager

One really nice addition to CSSEdit is the Milestone Manager. Have you ever by accident saved over a file only to much later find out that you made a mistake. But now you can’t go back because you didn’t save the file’s different versions. With CSSEdit that becomes a thing of the past because you can save “snapshots” of your files and later go back to any of the “snapshots”. I do wish that CSSEdit could automatically save a milestone at every save, or every tenth save, or something like that.

Validation

For web developers writing code that validates against current standards is important. Web pages that validate are more likely to display correctly in different browsers and the validation process often catches any typos and other mistakes that may have been made. Validation in CSSEdit is a one-click effort. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Wrapping up

This is a simple one to wrap up. If you are doing any kind of web design and development, but especially if it involves CSS in any way, shape, or form, you need CSSEdit. Many other applications has CSS support and CSS editing functionality, but nothing even comes close to CSSEdit. This is a no-brainer, folks, just get it.

by Magnus Nystedt

Review: XType

Some time ago my nine year old daughter asked me to teach her the proper way of typing fast on a computer keyboard. I showed her how to position her fingers on the keyboard and showed her some exercises. I didn’t have enough time to sit and teach all day; I needed that old typing instructor application from Winsoft-France that I used some 20 years ago on Macintosh Classic.

We don’t have any typing instructor for Macintosh any more I thought, until my friend Salman gifted me this typing instructor for Mac OS X called XType. I can’t express how much XType can turn typing exercise into a session of fun.

XType interface is Arabic by default. It can be switched to English but instructions stays in Arabic as XType is an application for Arabic Macintosh users. Any new user should start from Lesson 1 and must pass each lesson all the way to Lesson 15 in order to get a certificate at the end.

The fun about it is that plenty of personalized messages appears during training sessions that tie a bond between the trainee and instructor with some jokes also. Most of the words in early exercises displays real words, in advanced exercises there are plenty of thoughtful sentences to type specially in Arabic.

I must say that the software writer has some patients when he worked on the Help application for XType. Users will find great deal of assistance in the help window with plenty of graphics to make the learning curve visibly easy.

XType is a very specialized application but I am unaware of any similar software for Mac. If you need to learn correct typing skills look no further than XType.

For further information go to http://www.macwinsoft.com/xtype/. You can catch the developer of XType on EmiratesMac.com under the username “rsfsalman”.

by Zaid Al-Hilali

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