Macs

I’ve been a big fan of Adium for some time now (ever since its very first release so long ago). It was the first and only Instant Message client to properly use the dock. With a quick glance, you could tell who just signed on or off, who was messaging. Because it was in the dock, you didn’t need to switch out of your current application to see notifications. The effect was also minimal, causing little distraction or taking up any screen space. Alas, it was not without its failings, most prominently its lack of file transfer support and the ability to read away messages. The latter was nearly impossible to go without. It was an unfortunate side effect of the protocol being used. I was forced to move to iChat until this was addressed. That brings us to Adium 2 (whose current number is less than 1, which I agree is confusing in many ways). Adam Iser, the author of the original program, made Adium into a Sourceforge project. This doesn’t work for all projects, as some just get neglected. However, after a slow start, their team started making headway, allowing users to download and compile their own copy off the development CVS. They now churn out regular milestone builds like any good open source project. The most recent milestone (0.7) which is available at their website has some impressive features and though they may not agree, I think is ready for primetime and general use. The level of customization is unparalleled in any other product and save for audio/video and file transfers, is feature complete. To go along with this customization, Adium has an excellent “Xtras” site to host them all. I personally have my own preferences, which I will post screenshots of once I get home. These customizations include: * Dock Icons * Emoticons (Smileys) * Contact (Buddy) List Styles * Message View (Chat Window) Styles * Sound Sets * Of course, AppleScripts Adium isn’t just an AOL Instant Message client either. It also supports: * MSN Messenger * Yahoo Messenger * Jabber (which according to rumor will be added to iChat) * Gadu-Gadu * Rendezvous * .Mac * and more It also supports plugins, including one for the previously mentioned Growl. The possibilities are truly endless. Honestly, this is the single project I’d like most to get involved with if I could only motivate myself enough to get Cocoa and Objective-C down pat. Keep reading for pictures. ...

I know you’re all very excited boys and girls. Apple has bumped their iBook computers. We now have: * A 1.2GHz 12″ iBook with 30GB hard drive and a combo drive * A 1.33GHz 14″ iBook with 60GB hard drive and your choice of combo or super drive All three models sport: * 512KB of Level 2 Cache * 133MHz system bus * 256MB of PC2100 RAM built-in (with a single slot free, allowing for 1.25GB total) * ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 with 32MB of SDRAM * One Firewire 400 port * Two USB 2.0 ports * Video mirroring (no spanning) * V.92 56Kbps modem * 10/100Base-T Ethernet port * Airport Extreme on all models * Optional Bluetooth * Display supporting 1024×768 resolution ...

Thanks to my continued participation in Macworld’s Forums, I’ve gotten to know some of the Macworld writers. One of them is, of course, Dan Frakes. He’s done me the favor of sending me a copy of his latest book, Mac OS X Power Tools. It arrived in the mail to today. The sheer size of it surprised me, but I am no less determined to read it cover to cover. Once I do, you can look forward to a thorough review.

After months of being derided for a relatively small amount of space (100 MB of iDisk space, 15 MB of mail space), Apple has finally bumped up the space for .Mac to 250 MB combined (which you can allocate in any way you see fit). I’ve been waiting for this for some time now. I use a .Mac address as my main one and some other services for other stuff. The main reason for this was that 15 MB wasn’t enough to keep all my mail for all time on the server. As a result, I use Gmail for all my mailing lists. Now I can rethink this and maybe use one address for everything. ...

While it has mostly gone unnoticed until this point, Growl is some of the coolest new software around. It doesn’t do much on its own right now, but it won’t be long before lots of your software utilizes it. Growl provides a notification system for all your applications. All a developer need do is send notifications to it. Current applications that you can use with it are: Adium Fire iTunes Mail gCount …and more Growl has been around for a little, but only recently was a build offered to the public. Some warnings need be said. gCount will need an update to use the newly released build. You’ll need a version of Adium 0.7 (currently in beta). ...

For some time now, I’ve been using MarsEdit to post to my weblog. It’s the standalone version of the blog editing capabilities that were part of NetNewsWire (Pro). I didn’t get to talk about this because it was private. With the now public beta releases I am freed of that obligation. You can see more information on Brent Simmon’s Blog (which should be part of your RSS subscriptions by now). Simply said, it’s pure perfection. You can use it with any of a number of blogging software packages. This includes: ...

The Unsanity blog recently featured an entry on a shareware author that took a slightly more aggressive stance on software piracy. Slightly might be the wrong adverb for this case as the mechanism employed had the ability to wipe out the offending user’s entire home directory. The author reportedly decided this was too harsh and removed the code a few hours later. Why do I bring this up? Well, Unsanity wanted to keep quiet what the product and who the author was, but Slashdot ran a story today revealing the identity. The cat is out of the bag, as they say. ...

I recently criticized Watson for removing EyeTV functionality from Watson’s TV Pane. Dan Wood has restored this and the iCal functionality (with caveats). I must applaud him for this. I think most Watson users would have taken the TV pane as was and thought nothing more of it. It’s great to see such dedication.

After a long iMac-less summer, Apple has announced the new iMacs with full specs and pictures. I’d list them here, but I figure there’s not much point. You can all read. Of note is the fact that the iMacs are using a system bus that is a third of the processor speed. This is a first for G5’s, but probably won’t have a large effect upon performance. They’ve also adopted a new form factor that has essentially moved the entire guts of the machine into the LCD frame. This begs the question, why couldn’t they make a G5 Powerbook again? I won’t go off on a rant about misplaced priorities at Apple again. I’m sure that can come back another day. ...

Months after the announcement that they would do so, HP has begun selling the iPod. Different faceplates can be gotten through HP (thought I believe they are actually sticker; I couldn’t get a picture of them because I refused to wade through their flash based iPod site). This is a win-win situation for Apple and HP. Apple spreads its market dominence while increasing public visibility. HP gets to sell an existing product (meaning no reasearch and development costs) that’s already dominating the market. This allows them to sell the iPod at lower prices as well as bundle it with their own systems. ...