I picked up my brand new aluminium MacBook yesterday afternoon. The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue had two of them on display. Because they had just arrived and had not yet been locked to the tables as everything else is at the Apple Store two employees had to stand at the table at all times to ensure nobody walked off with one.

Then I had to go to work for 8 hours. I wasn’t able to actually turn it on until around one o’clock in the morning. I then spent about three hours transferring files, setting it up, and generally getting a feel for my new notebook.

Things went remarkably well, all things considered.

There’s been considerable outcry from the peanut gallery over the lack of a FireWire port on the recently released MacBooks. This means no Target Disk Mode. This means that Setup Assistant: the nifty little application that runs when you boot up a Mac for the first time, and Migration Assistant: the same application run at a later time, won’t be so easy to use. It probably means a number of other things, but the only FireWire devices I’ve used thus far have been old iPods and external hard drives and I’m not savvy or demanding enough to tell the difference.

As it turns out though, the lack of a FireWire port didn’t affect me too much. Setup Assistant gives you the option of transferring data from another Mac on the same network or direct ethernet connection, another volume on the same Mac, or a Time Machine backup.

I tried the first option via direct ethernet with the hopes of daisy chaining an external FireWire hard drive to the wife’s iMac. The external drive is split into multiple partitions, one of which contains a backup of each of our computers. This is probably not the safest idea, but I’m going to correct that shortly. This did not go smoothly. While the two computers did see each other, I never seemed to get past the handshake step. Furthermore, Migration Assistant on the iMac shut every application down and seemed to unmount the external drive.

So, I tried the second option of transferring data from another volume on the same Mac with the same external drive connected via USB. This would have worked swimmingly, were it not for one very major problem. I mentioned earlier that my previous notebook — a 5-year-old PowerBook G4 — had finally fallen victim to the ravages of age and, amongst her other problems, had developed a rather nasty hard disk failure. Well, this slow decline left me completely unable to perform a full system backup. I did, however, manage to backup my user folder.

The other volume transfer immediately saw the partition that contained the wife’s backup. Had I wanted to, I could have neatly transferred her settings and information to my new MacBook like a charm. What it did not recognize as a valid source was the partition that contained my user folder and nothing else. I hadn’t really expected it to, but I kinda sorta hoped it might. Had I another, larger, external drive I probably could have just added my user folder to backup of my wife’s computer and gotten pretty close the effect I had hoped.

If the lack of FireWire port on the new MacBook is giving you pause simply because you didn’t think Setup/Migration Assistant would run without Target Disk Mode you needn’t be too worried. With a program like SuperDuper! and an external USB hard drive you can get the same results by making a bootable backup of your system. Now, this won’t help you if you need to use Target Disk Mode for some other reason, but it does make the initial setup nearly as easy.

In any event, I just proceeded through the steps as if it were my first Mac and then moved everything I could on over. I’m amazed at how well it worked, honestly. I copied my copious music collection (I think fully half of my old PowerBook’s hard disk was devoted to iTunes) and the associated library files and album art via USB, then moved on to the iPhoto library, the Documents folder, and everything else I wanted to keep. Here, a poorer designed OS might have choked. Even manually copying iTunes and iPhoto libraries from another computer with an older OS and different chipset caused no more than a 30 second hiccup as the library files were updated. Three hours to copy something like 5 years worth of digital life doesn’t seem that bad at all.

*By which I mean “me.”

This is installment two of my series on Mac software I’ve found useful enough to pay real honest-to-god money for in the hopes that you too might find something you love. I started cataloging all of the applications I’d purchased a little while back to contrast against the amount I’d spent on software (excluding games) as a Windows user. The two figures are not even close. In all fairness, I didn’t start using a Mac until around the time I got a “real job” and steady income. Still, I spent a hefty sum on PC games and very little on other software, choosing to make do with freeware or unregistered shareware. Take that to mean whatever you will.

Salling Clicker

Salling Clicker is quite possibly the nerdiest app I’ve ever paid money to use. It turns your Bluetooth enabled mobile phone into a robust remote control for your Mac. I was so excited about the possibilities of it that it influenced the phone I bought — an aging Sony-Ericsson T616 that I still use to this day despite a bent charging connection because I hate every other phone offered by the major phone carriers. At the time — way back in 2004 — finding a phone with Bluetooth capabilities was no easy feat.

As it uses Bluetooth you don’t need to worry about line-of-sight as you would with an infrared device. So long as you can stay connected (and with the Bluetooth receiver in a G4 PowerBook that’s unfortunately a bit iffy) you can browse your iTunes library, check for new email in Mail.app, or do any number of other nifty little things. Not only that, it’s scriptable with AppleScript. Now that the current line of Macs (aside from the Power Mac variety) come with Front Row and remotes it might not be as novel to control a Mac with a remote control, but Salling Clicker makes up for that with increased expandability and compatibility.

Salling Clicker costs $23.95 and is available at salling.com. There’s even a Windows version available.

Cha-Ching

Before I got a checkbook I started writing all of my incoming and outgoing cash flow in a little notebook. By the time my checkbook finally came in I realized that I hated writing in that little register and I kept using the wee notebook. Well, now I don’t write it down anywhere. I use Cha-Ching.

Cha-Ching is a great example of what differentiates a Mac app from a Windows app. It’s simple, pretty, and effective. Using Cha-Ching is no more complicated than my little notebook solution, nor should it be. You enter a transaction, Cha-Ching does the math for you. Once you’ve entered a transaction you can assign tags and make smart folders (in case you ever wanted to see just how much you spent on software recently). It integrates with Address Book to autofill fields. Cha-Ching even lets you take photos of the stuff you bought with iSight. You can back up your data to .Mac. It does what it needs to do and never gets in your way.

Cha-Ching costs $14.95 while in beta and is available at midnightapps.com

NewsFire

When it comes to Mac RSS readers there are really two choices: NewsFire and NetNewsWire. Preference is split divisively between the two camps. I took them both for a spin and my choice was NewsFire.

NewsFire, like many Mac apps, is an attractive one. It’s got your neat fades. It’s got your rounded buttons. It’s got pizzazz. When a feed is updated it swoops up to the top of the window. NewsFire also lets you create Smart Feeds much like other “Smart” groupings in OS X. You want to know which feeds have audio? Video? NewsFire can do that. Not keen on the iTunes podcast system? NewsFire has an integrated audio player. And because it uses Safari’s WebKit engine news posts appear exactly as they would in Safari, embedded YouTube videos and all.

NewsFire costs $18.99 and is available at newsfirerss.com

So there’s part two. Agree? Disagree? Have an alternate list? Comment away!

Macworld 2007 was a bit of a bust for the Mac. All of the major announcements being consumer products with nary a mention of Leopard or iLife to be found. Which is not to say we aren’t still excited about the iPhone or the AppleTV, they just aren’t Mac products. So I decided to make a list of software available for the Mac that I found to be excellent enough to put my hard-earned money down. Over the next couple posts I’ll bring you lists of some terrific applications the Mac community has developed in the hopes that you too might find worthy of your support.

TextMate

When it comes to serious text editing on the Mac there is contentious debate between two camps: those who love TextMate and those who love BBEdit. While both are excellent applications and justifiably beloved there are two very good reasons to choose TextMate over BBEdit:

1. Ruby on Rails – TextMate is the editor of choice for Ruby on Rails development and, from what I’ve read, handles it significantly more gracefully than does BBEdit.
2. Price – TextMate costs about $75.00 (depending on the exchange rate) less than BBEdit. That made a pretty big difference to me.

It’s no simple task to detail precisely why TextMate is such a worthwhile purchase. Unless you have need of a powerful text editor, and many of you might not, you won’t find much to love here. Web developers and software authors, however, have a great deal to love in TextMate’s tag completion, macros, and color coding. TextMate is expandable by means of Bundles and has the support of a devoted cast of developers. If it doesn’t support a desired language “out of the box” chances are good someone has put together a Bundle for you.

TextMate costs €39 and is available at macromates.com.

FlickrExport for iPhoto

Flickr is great and all, but wouldn’t it be even greater if you could upload your photos directly through iPhoto and saving yourself at least two steps? That’s precisely what FlickrExport does. Once installed an extra option is made available in iPhoto’s Export screen. Before uploading you can set tags, change the photo’s title, add a description, and scale the photo as needed. After that it’s just a click and your photos are on Flickr. I can’t imagine using Flickr without it anymore.

FlickrExport costs £12 and is available at connectedflow.com. A version for Aperture is also available.

Keyword Manager

Dealing with iPhoto’s keywords using the default set of tools leaves a bit to be desired. I never made much headway into putting them to good use until I picked up this plugin. Keyword Manager adds a few extra windows to your iPhoto allowing you to easily and deftly add keywords to your photos and keep them organized. First, it allows instant access to keyword additions directly through one window and keyword organization through another. Keyword Manager keeps your keywords in hierarchical order. Family photos could be tagged with a name, which is kept under a family category itself nested under the primary category “Family.” Or photos of particular buildings in a city might be categorized under that city (itself under the country in which that city is located). Anal retentive taggers rejoice! Your ability to create Smart Albums will be drastically improved.

Keyword Manager makes a great companion to FlickrExport above as all of these keywords assigned in iPhoto will automatically be posted to Flickr. Your Flickr photostream will thus be kept just as organized as your iPhoto Library.

Keyword Manager costs $19 and is available at bullstorm.se

That does it for my first catalog of Mac applications. Stay tuned for another batch of apps you’ll wonder what you ever did without. Disagreements? Suggestions? Your comments and critiques are appreciated.

iTunes 7.0 was released yesterday. Among the flashy new extras like the Cover Flow browsing option and automatic downloading of album art is a tremendously awesome little addition that I haven’t read mentioned anywhere (yet). In the Item Information pane is a new field called Album Artist and it drastically reduces the clutter inherent in albums that have tracks with “featuring so-and-so” and “with whats-her-face.” This is endemic particularly in hip-hop albums and has caused me no end of frustration when I fire up my iPod hoping to hear the hot new track I swore I loaded the night before only to find out I missed it because it wasn’t in the same place as the rest of them.

Put simply, adding an album artist turns this:

into this:

If you’ve been raging against the scattered tracks you find with guest stars just select the album or tracks in question and press CMD I. You’ll get the improved Item Information box seen below. Type the major artist in the field and all of a sudden your iTunes library makes a lot more sense.

Rock on!

Not too long ago I became totally crushed out on Backpack, the amazingly elegant organizational tool by the mad geniuses at 37signals. Faced with the prospect of planning a wedding I got a little panicky in the part of my brain that loves to make lists.

“You’re going to forget things!” that little part yelled at me, probably while collating something or other, and continued “You really ought to put write it down; make lists; take notes. You’ll be sorry if you don’t!”

So we got a notebook and filled it with tabs and folders and paper. But, I grew out of Trapper Keepers a long time ago. This is the 21st century; shouldn’t there be a better way, possibly with lasers?

That’s where Backpack comes in, though there are sadly no lasers. It has everything I needed. It’s a to do list. It’s a place to keep notes. It stores photos and files and sends me email to remind me of things. It can be shared with Staci or anyone else on almost any computer anywhere. It can read todos, notes, and files from email. It’s just super, super keen.

Does it get any better than that? Oh trust me, dear readers, it does. The base set of Backpack tools is enough to get my organizational knickers all atwist, but it’s nothing compared to how sexy it can be when you add the magic of Quicksilver to the mix.

Quicksilver is a bit tricky to explain if you haven’t seen it in action. At its most basic level Quicksilver is little more than a search and launch app not entirely unlike Spotlight. You press a keyboard shortcut, you type, you find, you launch. Truthfully, you could use Quicksilver to do just that and you’d never understand what all the fuss is about. I initially didn’t much care for it when I first installed it. I think, perhaps, I was overwhelmed by what it could do, but underwhelmed by what I had been using it to do. Because you can do a hell of of a lot with Quicksilver.

For now though, let’s just concern ourselves with using Quicksilver to add list items, notes, pictures, and files to your Backpack pages. I realize this has already been covered elsewhere but my guide has pictures so I’m going to run it anyway. I’m going to assume that you’ve already installed Quicksilver and signed up for Backpack. You have, haven’t you?

(Note: The following screenshots have been taken with Quicksilver β49. Depending on which version you have installed your screens may look slightly different.)

Install the Backpack and Apple Mail modules. In the Plugins section of Quicksilver’s Preferences look for these two modules. You’ll be using the Apple Mail module to communicate via email with your Backpack pages. The Backpack module allows Quicksilver to see the address of all of your pages so you don’t need to remember the random email address Backpack set up for you. You don’t necessarily need to use Mail.app. So long as you’ve properly configured your favorite email app as your Default Email Reader in Mail’s preferences this will work just fine. You still need the Apple Mail module to interface with this preference, but these steps will work with anything, including GMail.

Enable Email To… (Send Directly) for Text. Once you have installed the two necessary modules you need to enable a few actions to allow Quicksilver to send your text directly to Backpack. Under Actions in the General pane select Text and find Email To… (Send Directly) in this list. You could use any of the other Email To… actions but they’re considerably slower. Make sure they’re still checked though. We’ll use them later.

Enable Email To… (Send Directly) for Files & Folders. If you have a paid Backpack account you can send files to your pages. If you don’t plan on paying for Backpack or don’t need to send images to your pages you can skip this step.

Add QSBackpackPlugInSource to your Catalog. Before Quicksilver can find any of your Backpack pages you have to tell it how to look. Go to the Custom section of your Catalog. Click the little + at the bottom of the screen and select QSBackpackPlugInSource from the drop down list.

Enter your Name and API Key. Now you’ll need to identify yourself. Enter your Backpack user name under the Contents tab of the catalog you just added. You’ll find the API Key at the bottom of your Backpack Account page. You’ll need to click the link that says “Show API.” It’ll be a long string of alphanumeric characters. Just copy and paste it into Quicksilver.

Click refresh. Once you’ve entered your username and API key you’re all set up. Click the Refresh button and a number will appear next to QSBackpackPlugInSource equal to the number of pages you’ve set up in Backpack. Once you see that number, you’re ready to go!

Send an item to your list. Okay, so now what? Now you’re ready to email content to your page, without ever opening Mail.app. Let’s start with a quick list item. Open Quicksilver and press “.” (that’s a full stop a.k.a. a period). This opens the text function. Type the word “todo” followed by two “>>” a space and your text. like so todo>> Do this here thing. Tab over to the second field and select Email To… (Send Directly). You should be able to accomplish this by simply typing “E.” Finally, tab over to the third field and select whatever Backpack page. In this example I am going to send it to my “Quicksilver + Backpack” page so I typed “QU” and waited for the Backpack logo to pop up. Press return and you’ll probably hear the Mail.app’s “whoosh” sound unless you’ve turned it off.

Send a note to your page. Sending a note is just as easy. Open Quicksilver. Press “.” Type “note” followed by “>>” a space and then your text. Like so: note>> I am typing a note. If you want to add a title to your note you can do so like so: note:title>> I am typing a note with a title. Tab over to Email To… (Send Directly). Tab over to your Backpack page and press return.

Send a file to your page. By now you should have no problem figuring out how to send a file. It works exactly the same as the previous examples, except you don’t press “.” at the first step. Find the file you want to send. If you have the iPhoto plugin installed you can browse through your Library or Albums. Alternatively you can browse through the files on your hard drive. Once you’ve found the file, tab over to Email To… (Send Directly), and then tab over to your Backpack page, and finally press return. Voila!

The results. The next time you visit your page you’ll find all the lists, notes, and files you sent waiting for you. With these two awesome apps configured thusly you need never interrupt your work to jot down an idea or task. You don’t even need to touch the mouse. A few quick keystrokes and your brilliant ideas are saved the wrath of forgetfulness!

Note: You’ll recall I said it was a good idea to leave Email To… (Compose) enabled. The reason is it makes is much easier to send multiple items to your list. If you want to add more than one thing at a time you only need to make a Textile unordered list and send it via email with the subject “todo.” You can do this with Quicksilver directly, but you’ll need to remember to put your linebreaks in with option + return (just like in many other OS X apps in which return is used as activate). You can add multiple todo items in the Quicksilver text area like so:

todo>>
* Item the First
* Item the Second
* Item the Third
* Tacos
  

If composing an email, just put “todo” on the subject line. Full instructions for adding content via email can be found on the Backpack help pages.

If you’ve been following along at home you should now have a fairly good grasp and the strength of these two apps, both together and alone. Learning to use Quicksilver with Backpack definitely helped me understand what Quicksilver can do for me much more fully, and helped me keep current with my Backpack pages. Go get one or the both of them and start playing around. You certainly can’t beat the price; Quicksilver is 100% free and Backpack only costs money if you want more. Though, if you do decide to start paying for Backpack would you be so kind as to use the link below? Backpack has a referral program whereby free Backpack can be had by spreading the word.

As an Apple user and ardent proponent of the hardware and operating system I feel I would be remiss if I did not mention last week’s announcement. If by some peculiar reason you have not heard of it — say you were lost in a desert or fell into a short-term coma — suffice to say that it allows the new Intel processor Macs to boot Windows XP SP 2 and if you can look at any technology blog to read more sordid details. While personally intrigued by the possibility of dual-booting, I’m not going to get the chance to do so for a good long while now. This PowerBook G4 is going to have to last. I just can’t afford some fancy-pants MacBook Pro.

The arrival of Boot Camp has helped push a coworker over the fence towards a shiny new MacBook. A few days earlier she asked if I had any buying advice about a new notebook computer and still managed to act mildly surprised at my answer. Unless you come to me with some incredibly specific request, say you need a computer that can run a 9-year-old piece of Windows software produced by a company that once lived in an obscure Eastern European nation that no longer exists due to civil war, plague, or other monolithic disaster I am going to tell you to buy a Mac each and every single time. She was concerned because of my frequent loud outbursts against companies that do not appreciate web standards or even block Mac browsers from viewing their web pages (I don’t particularly feel inclined to link to any of them). I felt chagrined, not for my ranting against these lazy developers, but for misrepresenting the quality of the platform. Boot Camp allayed some of her fears. Hopefully she’ll follow through. I’d hate to see her packing a Dell or some shit.

So, at least it got her thinking more seriously about a Mac. That’s really the whole point of Boot Camp, isn’t it? A crutch? A rather expensive crutch (potentially) to make switchers feel less intimidated?

Boy, it sure would be pretty nice to have a copy of Windows XP available for gaming. Hell, just for game demos. I sometimes get so jealous when I read that some new demo has just dropped and everyone is all excited. Then I realize that they mean for Windows only. I should really be used to that by now.

I mentioned a while back that I recently came into possession of some new AirPort gear. Installing this new AirPort Extreme required a complete reset of my previous AirPort network. I was using just an AirPort Express to serve delicious, nutritious Internets to our two computers. Now I was to use the Extreme as the primary base station, and the Express as a client. Simple enough to do, and I had no problems to speak of.

No problems at all, until I wanted to print something.

A while back I picked up a HP DeskJet 6840 to replace the hand-me-down printer we had been neglecting. A hallmark of this particular printer is its wireless capabilities, and I was going to be damned if I was going to hook it up by a USB cable if I didn’t have to. Now, by no means would this printer be impaired by installing it by means of a USB cable to the AirPort Express. It has print server capabilities. I have three spare USB cables lying around the house. But, goddamnit! This printer is wireless and I was going to use that function.

I don’t remember exactly how I got it hooked up to the network when we just had the AirPort Express. I do remember being puzzled though. According to the instructions, the 6840 needs to be plugged into an ethernet port as if it were another computer on the network until all the wifi settings are entered. I couldn’t precisely do that with a wireless router lacking both WAN and LAN ports. I fidgeted around with it until it started printing and left it alone.

Now that I had an AirPort Extreme though, I could go through the instructions exactly as written. So I plugged the printer into the LAN port, went through the installation, entered my WPA2 password, unplugged the cable, waited until the little wifi lights came on the front of the printer, and I was ready to go. Aside from one thing, that is: The damned thing wouldn’t print.

It found the network just fine. It connected to the network just fine. It wasn’t the security settings. All of the computers on the network found it by Bonjour as per the instructions. Everything went swimmingly, except when I clicked the print button it just sat there doing nothing in particular. So I went through all the setup again, exactly as written. I set up the whole network again, without WPA. When that didn’t work, I turned it back on again.

Here’s the problem: I followed the instructions. I honestly cannot explain why this might have made a difference, but the problem was somehow related to using the Bonjour printer setup. If I selected the the Deskjet 6800 that appeared automatically as a Bonjour printer in Printer Browser not one single print job I sent would finish. But, if I clicked “More Printers…” at the bottom of that window and set it up via “HP IP Printing” it works consistently and reliably. Weirdness.

I really don’t play World of Warcraft as often as I used to, and all my online buds have moved on to higher levels and phatter loot, but I have to say that my new flaming zombie-demon horse is pretty goddamn boss.