Category: Apple

I’ve been playing with Clutter, and I think I finally found a way to replicate my physical desk on my virtual one (warning: linked image is quite large):

I know everyone else in the world has already seen this, but if you haven’t: the concept is simple, and cool. Clutter listens in the background while iTunes plays, and downloads the album art for the currently playing song automatically. If you want to keep the album out for reference, just drag it to the desktop…then you can double click it later to play the songs from that album. The end effect is something like Tyler’s CD collection in college.

If I had realized MacNetJournal was going to point to my item about setting up my new Mac this morning, I would have added more detail to begin with. Here is a little bit of a deeper dive into how I made the transition.

Partitioning? Nah

My old G3 had a 30 GB drive partitioned into a 10GB chunk for Mac OS X and a 20 GB chunk for Classic. I had originally set it up this way in the fall of 2000, in anticipation of the OS X public beta, and had never had sufficient backup media to archive everything so I could change the partitions.

My $0.02 on partitioning Mac hard drives: I’m not sure it’s worth the bother any more. Sure, having Classic on a separate partition keeps extraneous junk out of your root directory, but unless you’re super vigilant, user data will get saved to the wrong OS partition or to an OS partition instead of a user data partition. And if, like me, you’re a music junkie, or consume a lot of any type of big files (movies, applications, games), you can exhaust the available free space on a partition quickly, leaving you to scramble to figure out how to move things around and keep your logical scheme consistent. Partitioning was clearly valuable in the days before HFS+, when partition size dictated block size and lots of small files could fill a large hard drive because they each consumed large blocks of space regardless of whether they filled the whole block or not. I don’t think it’s worth the hassle any more.

Accordingly, I left the 60GB drive on my PowerBook as it was set up: one partition, Classic and MacOSX on the same partition. I had about 50 GB of a total 55 GB formatted space available on the drive when I booted the first time.

System Update is your friend

The “one half hour from opening the box to video chat” that I talked about in the original article is more impressive when you realize I had to install a ton of software upgrades during that half hour. I downloaded the iChat AV beta, which wasn’t preinstalled, only to have the installer quit because I wasn’t running 10.2.6. The PowerBook had shipped with 10.2.3 preinstalled, which is a little surprising considering that 10.2.4 shipped sometime in February—I guess that gives a clue about why Apple dropped the price on the 15″ model. So I ran Software Update, installed about six updates including a 10.2.6 unified update, rebooted, ran the iChat AV install, rebooted, and then we had our nice chat with Lisa’s folks. Then I ran Software Update one more time to pick up the six updates that were there once I had 10.2.6 installed (including iSync 1.1, security updates, and a few other odds and ends) and rebooted one last time. I think this took less than an hour.

Not having to copy manually: Priceless

Some of my most crucial data I didn’t have to move at all. When I finished installing iSync, I ran it and it pulled down my address book data from .Mac as well as my Safari bookmarks and my calendars. How do I love thee, iSync? Let me count the ways.

Moving everything else

User data is fairly easy to move. I dumped the contents of my home directory (Mac OS X) and my Documents directory (Mac OS 9) onto a temporary folder on the new machine, then sorted obvious data into its new home (MP3s, movies, general documents). One nice side effect of the move: I was able to rationalize things like having two Documents folders, multiple places for music, etc.

I then copied selected Mac OS 9 applications into the dedicated Applications (Mac OS 9) directory, and cherry picked applications from my old Mac OS X Applications folder into the new machine’s Applications folder. I didn’t do a wholesale replacement because I didn’t want to overwrite anything that already existed on the new machine, and I didn’t want to bring over any useless applications that I hadn’t gotten around to deleting.

The last step was probably the trickiest: the global and user Library folders on the old Mac OS X machine (paths: /Library and ~/Library). I definitely didn’t want to just overwrite everything that was in the new machine’s libraries already, so I manually moved over all the folders that didn’t already exist, then selectively moved other folders and files from Application Support and Preferences, moving those that belonged to third party applications and leaving most of the Apple ones behind. The exceptions were my iPhoto and iTunes data. My previous post talked about the one hassle I had with moving the iTunes library over. I haven’t looked at iPhoto yet, but everything should be pretty solid there.

I still haven’t looked at the old system’s Classic System Folder. There probably isn’t a lot of anything that matters in there any more, since the last time I started a Classic app was about six months ago, but I’ll do a final scrub for any legacy data that may have gotten in there.

Conclusion: As easy as it could be

The MacNetJournal pointer to my previous article calling my move “easy” is a little ironic, considering how involved the full details of the move are. But I think this was about as easy as it could have been. I couldn’t use a utility like CarbonCopyCloner, since I was changing my partition definitions and wanted to be selective about what I brought over. And really, since I had to move files, fonts, and applications that dated back to my first Mac (my faithful SE/30, 1990 – 1995: fare well, wherever you are), the process wasn’t really so bad.

Things that were easy about getting the new Powerbook set up:

1. Getting it out of the box and turning it on.
2. Getting iChat AV working with our camera. We had my in-laws seeing our moving, smiling faces about half an hour after we brought the laptop out of the box. Also, we bought them an iSight and got a tripod for our Sony camera, so we should be able to do full duplex video conferencing after Lisa’s next trip.
3. Moving files off my old laptop. I shut the G3 down, started it in FireWire Target mode by holding the T key down immediately after powering it back on, connected it to the G4, and dragged all the stuff over that I wanted.

Things that were more difficult:

1. Figuring out the power brick. The G4 comes with a much cooler power supply that includes an optional extension cord that plugs into the modular power brick. It took a few minutes to figure out how the built in electrical prongs slid off and the extension slid on.
2. Recovering from our dropped connection when I clicked our pictures to full screen. When we reconnected (audio only), Lisa’s parents told us they still saw a frozen still image.
3. Sifting through my old /Library directory to find the right preferences, license files, and support files to make sure I wouldn’t have to re-enter license numbers.
4. Moving iTunes over. I had previously discovered where the library files lived, so I was able to copy those over without losing my playlists. I was also able, amusingly, to use the library files and play music directly off the G3’s hard drive while I still had it connected. But I’m going to have to either manually review over 3000 songs and tell iTunes where they live on the G4’s hard drive, or write a script to fix all the locations.

Still, this has been one of the fastest cutovers ever. And I still have almost 30 GB of hard disk space left over.

Just setting up my new 1 GHz 15″ G4 PowerBook. It may take a while for me to transfer all the files off the old machine so that I can blog, etc. again. I know—sympathy may be lacking.

Lisa and I (Lisa in NJ, I in Seattle) got my mother in law set up with iChat AV and Timbuktu this weekend. Now we can talk in crystal clear CDMA-format audio, and we can watch her screen if she calls with a tech support problem. To which I say: Nifty. (We tried the audio chat built into Timbuktu first, but gave up: static-y, and half duplex—stepping on each other’s words—doesn’t cut it.)

Speaking of half-duplex, it appears that audio chatting with iChat AV degrades to a one-way conversation if one participant is on broadband and one on dialup. Thanks to Greg for trying the experiment.

I came home tonight and iTunes wouldn’t start, complaining that “the iTunes Music Library cannot be read because it does not appear to be a valid library file.” Here are some good instructions on how to fix it, courtesy Joe Crawford.

I have to earn a living and so won’t be live blogging Steve’s WWDC keynote this time. But Brian Jepson is filling the void (thanks to Dave for the tip). Looks like with the new AV features in iChat we might be able to do some videoconferencing to our East Coast family members—provided we can get them to Mac OS X.

Okay, this one is entirely my fault for partitioning a 30GB hard drive two and a half years ago, and letting it get to the point that the boot partition has less than 250 MB free and the other has less than 60.

But why is it that some apps are so VM hungry that they can actually chew up almost 200 MB of free disk space in a session? It’s probably me. I am in the habit of leaving NetNewsWire open for days at a time, and I think the app archives all the RSS bits that it receives so it knows whether you’ve read them or not. Last night I couldn’t print from Chimera. I then started quitting apps, thinking I might need to reboot, and got told by iTunes that it couldn’t save my library file because I was out of disk space. I cursed, quit NNW and Mail, and logged out and back in.

When I restarted iTunes my library was fine. But NNW was another story—all my subscriptions were lost and so were my weblog settings.

I’m not sure about the moral of the story: don’t bother partitioning your hard drive? Don’t leave NNW running for days? Or maybe, don’t build up an MP3 collection that’s almost 14 GB on a 30 GB hard drive.

Well, there will be one fewer Mac browser to worry about supporting in the future. Following on the heels of suggestions that there will be no future stand alone releases of Internet Explorer, Roz Ho of Microsoft’s MacBU said (and CNET confirms) that the Mac version of Internet Explorer is now browser history.

While I think that watching MacIE, Safari, OmniWeb, and whatever the heck will happen to the Gecko-based browsers compete would have been fun, I gotta say that as a web page designer I’m not unhappy to have one fewer platform to test on.

Yes, there was happiness at the end of the road. After obtaining a Bluetooth adapter for my home machine, I experimented with trying to sync my contacts (using iSync and trying to send one at a time from the Address Book) with no luck. I then turned to the web. MacFixitForums were unhelpful, but the MacInTouch reader reports on iSync pointed out something I had missed, namely that the phone tries to use port 3004 for the mRouter discovery protocol, and that opening ports 3000 through 3004 enables the communication.

I made the change, turned the firewall off and on, and then had to reboot—I suspect because I had to force quit iSync when it failed the first time. After the reboot I was able to synchronize my address book to my phone, all 1471 contacts processed seamlessly.

Remaining issues:

• What’s up with mailing photos from the phone? Worked yesterday, doesn’t work today.
• Bluetooth File Exchange doesn’t work. At all. Can’t move a file, can’t create a new folder.
• Why won’t iSync transfer iCal items to the phone? There’s a calendar on there after all.

Fun news from the world of iTunes: Apple will be meeting with a bunch of indie labels, among them Matador and local faves Sub Pop, tomorrow to discuss what it takes to participate in the Apple/iTunes Music Store. Story first reported on MTV.com; MacCentral has a confirmation from Apple.

Of course, if they’re just talking tomorrow, it’s anyone’s guess about how long it will take for non-major-label content to show up in the ’Store. But it’s a kick to think that Kinski, Ugly Casanova, L7, the New Pornographers, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Cat Power, Interpol, Guided By Voices, and, yes, the Jesus and Mary Chain could show up in an iTunes window next to the current headliners, who include No Doubt, the Doors, and Luther Vandross.

MacSlash: Price Drops on 15″ Powerbooks. This price break brings the 1 GHz 15″ PowerBook I’ve been lusting after down to $2599, which is still rather a lot but close enough to drool over.

Of course, what it really means is that by the time I might actually replace the Pismo, the 15″ model will have been replaced by an entirely new model. Apple lowering the price on an existing model is usually a sure sign that they’re clearing out inventory.

Heh. I’ll call your bluff, Craig.

I’m really bummed about the XML problem. I complained vocally when Radiohead and Sigur Ros disappeared from the store. But I won’t be crying about the shutting down of sharing beyond local subnets in iTunes 4.0.1. Why? Because the reality is that despite all the Brave New World stuff, Apple is piloting a brand new channel in the face of what I’ve repeatedly called out as one of the most consumer-hostile industries the US has ever seen. And I want them to succeed. And, as someone pointed out on Slashdot,

there are so many ways to legally share your music… heck, just setup a live365 station if you want to share your music. Why insist on doing it illegally, and ruining it for everybody?

Sorry, flame off. I am pissed off about the XML stuff—that’s one really good AppleScript that will never see the light of day.

In a comment on my article about Radiohead’s albums disappearing from the iTunes Music Store (as reposted at Blogcritics), Matt MacInnis makes excellent points about the leverage that bands like Radiohead and Sigur Ros may have in their contracts to negotiate better royalties for new form factors. I wonder why other artists with equally high leverage, like U2 and Sting, haven’t done so. Maybe because they’re on Universal?

The countdown has started. The page is up on Apple’s site. Apple’s new store in Bellevue Square Mall, a mere 3.8 miles from Microsoft Headquarters, opens on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. The CrazyAppleRumors guys will be there.

But, alas, I won’t. I have better places to be—like in an airplane flying to a family event in South Carolina. About which more details later.