Out with the Logitech driver, in with USB Overdrive
June 30, 2008
I’ve had a little problem with my Logitech Control Center driver for a while now. I would get this little LCC Update icon appearing in my Dock every once in a while. It seemed as though the updater was trying to tell me something. I would click on the icon but nothing would appear. Going to the Logitech site would result in seeing the same version available for download that I already had on my machines. This was occurring on both my MacBook and Mac Pro so I was pretty sure it wasn’t hardware specific.
I also had a problem with TextMate, my favorite programmer’s editor. Every time I would try to use the "mate" terminal command it would generate an exception and not load TextMate. I could start TextMate from the Dock bar or through Spotlight or by clicking on the Textmate.app icon, but the symbolic link that TextMate created for me was not working. Since I’ve been playing with Ruby on Rails I’m spending a lot of time in a terminal window and access to this is very important.
I did a little research and found Steve Jamesson’s blog - he was experiencing the same problem I was. It turns out the Logitech Control Center was at fault! That was all I needed to hear - I ran the uninstall program for it, did a reboot and now the "mate" terminal command was working. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
Now my mouse is button "light"
Well, not quite happy, happy, joy, joy. Now my advanced Logitech Mx510 gaming mouse was turned into a simple device and OS X would not recognize my extra buttons. I love those buttons - I use them for browser navigation and to access Spaces. I needed something to make this work again.
From what I could see there are three aftermarket drivers that will allow you to map external devices - some not just mice but joysticks and other components as well. They are:
Each of these is sold as shareware. I decided to give USB Overdrive a try since that’s what Steve Jamesson got to work. It was quick and easy to set up and sure enough I regained the function of my extra mouse buttons. If it continues to look like a winner over the next couple of days I’ll be paying the $20 to get it - I think it’s really important to support these guys that produce shareware.
Some Advice for Logitech
Apparently a company as large as Logitech doesn’t have the resources to create proper drivers for their own devices - just read some of the comments over at Version Tracker - yet these little independent shops seem to be able to pull it off. If you are going to list that your driver supports the OS you should at least update the driver when you know it’s defective.
In the unlikely event that anyone at Logitech reads this here’s some advice: get someone in your business development group to talk to one of the three folks that make these little utilities. Work out a little license arrangement and make it available as your Mac OS X driver. The cost of the license to you would be minimal and the goodwill you would generate among the Mac community would be priceless.
UPDATE: I just noticed that many of my Growl notifications that were not working suddenly are working again.
Desktop Theatre Sc 23: Robot Distraction
June 30, 2008
Knowing where you are in Leopard’s Finder
June 27, 2008
It’s happened to me many times; I’m deep into the folder structure of one of my hard drives and I lose track of where I am. Sometimes I will double click on a folder name to make it the primary view but then I lose context.
While the Show Path Bar option in the Finder is helpful it’s a little too verbose for me. It displays each of the folder icons as well as the folder names. I just want a quick path to the folder I’m looking at.
It turns out there is a Finder setting that you can use to display the full path of your current view in the title bar of the Finder window.
Open a terminal session and enter the following:
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
Once that command has been executed you will need to relaunch the Finder for the change to take effect. You can do this by holding down the Option key and then right-clicking the Finder in the Dock bar then selecting the Relaunch option.
Coming from the Windows world I always liked to have my complete path accessible in the Explorer window - this gives me that same effect. I really wish that the path it displays in the title bar was "copyable" to the clipboard, though it is not. On to the second short tip:
Copying the Path to the Clipboard
The second thing I needed was the ability to get access to the path so that I could copy it to the clipboard easily - usually because I’m sending a reference to the path to someone else on my network or creating a script file to manage something in a specific location.
I know there are several ways of doing this but the one that seems to work best for me is to have the file or folder selected in the Finder and then choose the menu Finder / Services / TextEdit / New Window Containing Selection. This will pop up TextEdit with the entire path to whatever you have selected in the editing area.
If you know of a better way to get access to that file path quickly just drop it into the comments below. As Ross Perot would say, I’m all ears.
Knowing where you are in Leopard’s Finder
June 27, 2008
It’s happened to me many times; I’m deep into the folder structure of one of my hard drives and I lose track of where I am. Sometimes I will double click on a folder name to make it the primary view but then I lose context.
While the Show Path Bar option in the Finder is helpful it’s a little too verbose for me. It displays each of the folder icons as well as the folder names. I just want a quick path to the folder I’m looking at.
It turns out there is a Finder setting that you can use to display the full path of your current view in the title bar of the Finder window.
Open a terminal session and enter the following:
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
Once that command has been executed you will need to relaunch the Finder for the change to take effect. You can do this by holding down the Option key and then right-clicking the Finder in the Dock bar then selecting the Relaunch option.
Coming from the Windows world I always liked to have my complete path accessible in the Explorer window - this gives me that same effect. I really wish that the path it displays in the title bar was "copyable" to the clipboard, though it is not. On to the second short tip:
Copying the Path to the Clipboard
The second thing I needed was the ability to get access to the path so that I could copy it to the clipboard easily - usually because I’m sending a reference to the path to someone else on my network or creating a script file to manage something in a specific location.
I know there are several ways of doing this but the one that seems to work best for me is to have the file or folder selected in the Finder and then choose the menu Finder / Services / TextEdit / New Window Containing Selection. This will pop up TextEdit with the entire path to whatever you have selected in the editing area.
If you know of a better way to get access to that file path quickly just drop it into the comments below. As Ross Perot would say, I’m all ears.
The Tao of I.T. Al #22
June 27, 2008
Roll your own Dashboard Radar Widget in 30 seconds
June 26, 2008
I spent the first 30 years of my life in sunny Southern California where the weather report primarily consisted of a recitation of the smog alert levels and information on what was happening in the rest of the country. Having lived on the East coast for the last 15 years weather has become a little more important to me - we actually have a lot of it.
I was playing around with the Dashboard yesterday, looking for a decent widget to help me get a good radar picture of my area. The weather widget that comes with Leopard is okay because it shows a forecast in a pleasing format however for those days when you have a serious thunderstorm in the area or a Nor’easter parks it’s butt on your house you like to get a better idea of when it’s going to vacate the area. For that, nothing beats a nice animated radar view of the weather:
The best weather radar I’ve found for the US is from the Wunderground weather site. So the technique I’m going to share with you will take less than a minute to do and will give you a current, high resolution animated radar picture of your region of the country instantly. It’s really, really easy and all you need is a Mac running Leopard.
Step 1: Load up the Wunderground Radar Mosaic in the Safari web browser by clicking on this link:
Step 2: Click on the region of the country that you would like in your radar map.
Step 3: When your map appears, click on the little Animate button right below the map image.
Step 4: When your animated map appears, click the Scissors icon in the Safari toolbar, then select your animated map and click the Add button in the top-right corner of the browser.
Congratulations! You now have a nice, big (640×480) animated radar weather map of your area whenever you activate the Dashboard. The next time you hear of a storm approaching you can simply pop-up the dashboard and get an accurate picture of where the trouble is. I know this works in Leopard but since that’s the only Mac OS I have I don’t know if this will work in Tiger or earlier.
Don’t live in the US? Want something with an international flavor? The reason the Wunderground map works is because their system generates an animated GIF file. I’ve tried some other sites that use different animation techniques and they don’t work in the Dashboard. If you can find a site that generates radar maps outside the US that work using this technique please mention them in the comments below!
Yes, I know, if you live in Southern California you probably don’t see a need for this. Just use this technique to keep an eye on those of us that actually have inclement weather.
Can DreamWeaver love Wordpress?
June 26, 2008
Steve Carroll is trying to make me eat my words.
This developer has managed to make Dreamweaver relevant to my world by creating an extension called ThemeDreamer. This MXP turns Dreamweaver into WYSIWYG Wordpress Editor. Read more
Desktop Theatre Sc 22: In Search of a Desktop
June 25, 2008
Common Myths for the Macintosh
June 25, 2008
There are lots of reasons that people don’t want to switch from Windows to Macintosh. I assume the most common reason is simply because Windows works for the people that are using it. The old adage "If it ain’t broke don’t fix it" tends to apply here. These people are not upgrading to Vista either, they’re staying with Windows XP or even Windows 98 and are just fine.
There are however an increasing number of people that are moving to Macs now - many of them people like me that hated Macs at one time. I believe there are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which is that people that are running Windows XP are faced with an upgrade to Vista as their next logical step and feel that maybe it’s okay to consider a Mac since they have to go through a full operating system refresh anyway.
One of the reasons I was not interested in Macs for a very long time was that I clung to many facts about the Mac that I felt eliminated it from contention. Well, as with many things in life it turns out the facts that I knew about the Mac were either hopelessly outdated or simply myths. What I wanted to do was tell you the ones that I was aware of and often cited when I dismissed Macs in the past.
Mac’s only use a single mouse button
I’m not a Mac historian, my history with the Mac being very recent but I’ve read that Mac multi-button mouse support has been around for some time. You may look at the MacBook keyboards and only see a single mouse button or a Mighty Mouse and think that it’s not supported. The reality is the MacBook track pad has an ingenious way of supporting right mouse clicks that I find better than having the extra little stub that is a right mouse button.
You simply press two fingers to the surface and click the button and it emulates a right mouse click. While the Mighty Mouse (which I personally detest) only appears to have a single mouse button it does indeed support right clicking. I just plugged in my Logitech mice and happily right click whenever I need to.
There are not that many applications for Macs
Windows does indeed have far more applications written for it than are available for Mac. What you have to do is look at the quality of those applications though. Many of the hundreds of thousands that are cited for Windows were written back in the 90s and few have been updated. Sure, most still work but that doesn’t mean they are still relevant. I have found no lack of software for my Macs - virtually anything I have needed is available in native Mac format.
Frankly, as a Mac n00bie I was shocked by the volume of quality Mac software available, especially on the consumer front. The number of Mac titles for business software, especially in the vertical markets for small businesses, is much smaller though.
Macs are closed machines that cannot be expanded
I have personally swapped out the memory in my MacBook inside of about 5 minutes. I upgraded my MacBook’s hard drive in another 5 minutes. That’s about all you can physically do with any laptop, whether it’s a PC or a Mac. My Mac Pro upgrades were even easier. That machine is designed to make expanding common hardware about as easy as it gets. It took me less than a minute to install a 1TB hard drive - so little time I grabbed my video camera and filmed how easy it was:
Sure, I can’t overclock my processor and the number of graphics card drivers that are supported by OS X is significantly smaller than Windows but to say I can’t put non-Apple replacement parts into my Mac is just not the case. The Mac Mini and iMacs are limited in their upgrade options, but the same holds true of the Windows machines from Dell and HP that have the CPU and display all packaged together.
Macs don’t work well with Windows machines on a network
I’ve got a GB switch at home and a variety of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Ubuntu and now Mac machines on it. Sharing files between the machines is very simple. My Macs can see my Windows shares and my Windows machines can see my Mac shared folders. I shared my printer attached to a Windows machine with my Mac and it was able to use it just fine.
Macs are more expensive
This is the one that I struggle with a bit. Yes, the Macs are slightly more expensive than PCs in general, but you have to look at what you are or more importantly not getting when you buy a Mac. Low cost PCs are often subsidized by bundled application software that is included with a new machine. When I recently bought a little HP that would eventually serve as my Ubuntu workstation it came so loaded with crap and Windows Vista that it barely even ran out of the box. The average consumer that isn’t a techie would be hard pressed to clear up all of the stuff that bogs down the average new PC.
For techies it’s a different story. You can go to places like Newegg and build a high performance system that has exactly what you want on it - nothing more, nothing less - and adjust expectations on price accordingly. But doing that means you are your own technical support clearing house. When the motherboard in my newly built gaming rig wouldn’t post I had to call the manufacturer and work through a series of steps before we found that the board was shorting out. I needed to RMA it myself and undergo the same process when the replacement arrived days later. It took me the better part of two working days to build up that machine.
That said, I did that because I enjoyed doing it, however that time comes at a cost. Is your time worth anything to you? If it is and you don’t find joy in doing this kind of technical troubleshooting then getting a fully tested and serviced machine that works out of the box is incredibly valuable. You get what you pay for in this case.
Macs can’t run my Windows software
Well, that of course is not the case. I can take a legal copy of Windows XP or Vista and without spending any money use Bootcamp (which comes with OS X) and boot into Windows if I have to. It’s standard PC hardware so it runs great. Better yet, grab a copy of VMware Fusion and run the Windows applications side by side with your Mac apps.
I haven’t tried playing any high-end games on my Macs yet. This blog has burned up my remaining free time so they are out for now, though that’s the most common complaint I’ve heard that I can’t refute. Perhaps someone can jump in here and clarify that one. Can you play high end games like Crysis on Mac hardware and get decent performance?
Macs are mouse centered machines. You constantly have to grab the mouse.
Macs not only have excellent keyboard support, the use of shortcuts is profound. About the only thing I’ve found that doesn’t work as well as Windows is the use of mnemonics in dialog windows that make it easy to jump to a field in a large form with lots of items in it. When a dialog pops up inside of a Mac I find that I generally grab the mouse.
On the other hand shortcuts on the Mac are consistent between applications and liberally sprinkled throughout. If you have ever seen someone that really knows the Mac well use a keyboard to do some work it’s an exercise in humility. It’s like productivity++.
So there you have it, the myths that I clung to that kept me from seriously considering a Mac for so long. I’m sure there are other reasons that people think switching from Windows to Mac is a bad idea - I’ve seen enough flame wars on the topic to know that it’s a religious issue for many.
Learn by blogging about it
June 24, 2008
To say the internet provides a revolutionary amount of information quickly and easily is a tremendous understatement. When I sit back and look at how I acquire information now compared to how I did it back in the pre-internet days the changes are profound. What is interesting for me is that fully half of the guidance I obtain these days comes from the tips, rants and raves of people that simply use products the way I do. They just happened to get there before me and were kind enough to write it all down.
When I started this blog a part of me was motivated by a need to add to that collective of information. Basically I wanted to give a little back to that giant interwebs resource. My thought was that I would share the experience from the very beginning of adopting a Macintosh as a new platform. I would write about it as my experience with the machine unfolded, giving people a play by play as I went.
A funny thing happened…
I have several friends that switched to Macs well before I did. What was interesting to me is that many of them would come to me and say "Wow, I didn’t know that!" when I discover a feature, product or tip. In the past when I learned a new technology I had a tendency to get to a level where it accomplished just what I needed and then I would stop striving to learn more. All too often I have used only 50% of the capabilities of some powerful tool or device because I only learned enough on the surface level to get by for the task at hand.
I wasn’t really advancing my use of technology - I was merely adapting a different technology to the way I always did things. I would look to something and simply say "I used to perform this action with the old stuff - how do I do that with my new stuff"? I learned on a need to know basis.
This blog changed that model for me. Suddenly the blog was all the motivation I needed to dig a little deeper, to find that little tidbit of information that would help me embrace the technology a little better. Once my blog started to become a little more popular I suddenly found lots of people that would read what I wrote and offer up some deeper information on the area I was exploring. Here I am only 3 1/2 months into owning Macs instead of Windows machines and I feel like I have an incredibly detailed understanding of how the machine works and how I can best leverage it. I still have a lot to learn but I’m significantly further along than I would be if I just approached it as a 1 for 1 replacement challenge.
Overcoming Fear
One of the concerns I had about writing this blog and sharing my n00bish learning experiences was how much of my life I really wanted to make public. I’ve always had an overdose of self-confidence (I am an entrepreneur after all) and writing about something I knew little about was going to be a challenge. Did I really want to expose how dumb I could be?
While I have taken a few hits from the usual people that populate the interwebs and spew crap at will, they have been few and far between. Instead I have been lucky enough to get some really nice people to participate and provide information that has helped me tremendously and add to that collective of data for others to leverage.
Blogging isn’t for everyone
It does require a commitment to stay engaged to the people that read your blog. I try to respond to any comments people leave and always reply to e-mails sent to me. It’s really not all that much work. You also have to be able to write clearly, though as you may have noticed with my blog, my writing is very informal and conversational. I find it easier for people to read that way and a lot easier for me to create.
If you do want to learn a new technology really, really well try blogging about it. Blogger accounts like the one I use for this blog are free and you can create one pretty quickly. Not only will you learn a lot about the topic you write about you will also be giving back to the great knowledge store that is the interwebs.
Scott Hanselman is one of my favorite bloggers. Though he writes primarily about developing using Microsoft .NET products his posts on blogging are pure gold for anyone that is interested in starting up a blog. If you develop using Microsoft tools he is a must read - add him to your RSS feed ASAP if he’s not already there.
If someone told me six months ago that I would be blogging on nearly a daily basis and really enjoying it I would have laughed in their faces. Then again, I probably would have laughed even harder if they would have told me then that I would also soon be leaving Windows for Macintosh.
