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Mac OS X
Snow Leopard on its way
Though the weather is warming up nicely in South Africa, the Snow Leopard is nonetheless making an early appearance. Apple‘s updated Mac OS X, that is.
No doubt those of you who receive marketing blurb from Core, the local Apple distributor, will also have seen an invitation to the Snow Leopard launch at your nearest iStore. The event takes place on Friday evening at 18:00. I’ll be at the Clearwater iStore.
A sneak peek at Mac OS X 10.6 is promised, as is a chance to get your mitts on a copy. Here’s hoping that the USD 29 price point will be maintained as promised…
Let Leopard read from ext2 and ext3
Though it’s built using a variety of UNIX components based on BSD, there is no native support for everyday Linux file systems in Mac OS X. I found that out the hard way, having torn the 320GB boot drive and a 400GB data drive from katana. Those contained ext3 file systems which I assumed I could simply hook up to the iMac and transfer my data.
Of course, I made another backup to an NTFS volume, but there was some stuff I wanted to get hold of on the hard drives. With Windows 7 installed and katana up and running to service the IT requirements of my better half, I hooked up the two drives in an external enclosure to the MacBook…
It’s not the type of message one is intent on seeing. No longer having easy access to a Linux system, I was unsure what to do. Clicking Initialize… at this point would not be a good idea.
I’ve discussed MacFUSE before, particularly with regard to NTFS support in Leopard. That was my first port of call, being a standard component I install on a new Mac.
It didn’t take too long to find an extension for MacFUSE specifically written to support both ext2 and ext3 file systems. Aptly named fuse-ext2, the only requirement is that MacFUSE has already been installed. The plug-in is simply installed and after a recommended reboot the machine is quite capable of reading the attached ext3 hard disk.
I plugged in the hard drive and was rewarded almost immediately with a mounted file system. For my purpose, fuse-ext2 works perfectly. I have no need to write back to the drive, which is something the developer warns about: the drive is mounted by default in read-only mode.
Though it is possible to change this to be read and write, such an operation is not recommended.
Here’s my advice for any file system woes you may have with Leopard: check out MacFUSE and its associated plug-ins first.
Snow Leopard for USD 9.95
When I purchased my iMac I mentioned the fact that Apple had just launched a special upgrade programme for purchases made during June. That programme would entitle low-cost updates for Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard is already cheap at the proposed launch price of USD 29. A price of USD 9.95 would be even better. My request as to whether or not a similar programme would be offered to South African buyers of the Mac range after a certain date was met with a very blank stare…
I assumed I would receive some sort of communication at some point in time. Today, the email from Core arrived:
Any purchase of a Mac made after 8 June 2009 qualifies. The online order process is reasonably simple, requiring the USD 9.95 payment to be made for shipping and handling. Then, there’s a requirement for some very outdated snail mailing of the proof of payment printout and the invoice indicating the date of purchase. A tracking option is provided on the website to assist eager upgraders in determining where in the world their personal Snow Leopard is.
The Mac OS X up to date programme website can be found here. Nice to see that we haven’t been forgotten!
CheetahWatch the E220
Getting the Huawei E220 modem to work with Mac OS X is no big deal, even if the stock Huawei dashboard software is not installed. I need to use the E220 with a variety of systems, from Windows and Linux to the MacBook and as such don’t rely on the Huawei connection dashboard unless I’m using Windows. That means the operating system needs to give me some support to get the card to work without too much hassle.
On Leopard, the modem installation is easy though connection management could be a bit more elegant. A click on the phone icon in the menu bar provides rudimentary functionality, but very little feedback regarding data transfer rates and bandwidth consumption.
I stumbled across a rather nice utility to make working with the E220 on Mac OS X a bit more pleasant on my usual trawl through the Interwebs. CheetahWatch won’t make the E220 speedier or provide better performance, but it will provide far better feedback and even warn when certain usage values have been reached. The utility is a free download and really tiny. Once installed, I removed the phone icon from the menu bar. CheetahWatch indicates signal strength and connectivity in a small icon on the menu bar and provides a context icon from which a couple of settings may be selected.
When selecting Connect, the application uses the standard dialler, but shields the user somewhat from the simple interface OS X provides. Access to the usage history is a click away and the Status option provides a simple yet effective indication of current transfer rates and signal strength.
With the exception of the FFFFFFFFFFFF text indicating a non-existent network, CheetahWatch is a must-have for anyone pairing an E220 modem with Mac OS X. Download it from the CheetahWatch site.
Let Leopard write to NTFS
To maintain some kind of data interchange capability between Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, I generally keep one external hard drive and one 16GB USB thumb drive around that is formatted FAT32. That saves me from having to figure out other ways of copying data from the MacBook or Mini to Linux, for example. The biggest issue is the file system’s stability and its ability to handle files that exceed the 4GB barrier. One solution is to connect the systems up to a network, but that’s not always convenient and I like to carry my files and backups with me on a mobile drive.
Mac OS X has no issue reading NTFS-formatted hard drives, but will stubbornly refuse to write any data to that file system. MacFUSE is a solution that operates with plug-ins to enable Mac OS X to read, but more importantly write, to a variety of file systems. NTFS included.
MacFUSE is not the only software component required, but is the most important. Specific plug-ins for specific file systems need to be added as these are required.
To get going, download MacFUSE from Google‘s Code repository and install it. A new item will be visible in the System Preferences pane, under the section titled Other.
There is nothing to configure or change for the MacFUSE add-in. Instead, clicking the icon in the System Preferences pane indicates whether or not updates are available and enables their installation. MacFUSE may also be removed from the system.
To enable NTFS write support, one more component needs to be installed. Download the NTFS-3G add-in for MacFUSE. The installation is very simple, but a system restart is required to activate the capability in the operating system. By the way, the NTFS-3G component is available (and often pre-installed) in most popular, modern Linux distributions. Hence, you’d be able to read from and write to NTFS volumes if you’re using such a distro without requiring the installation of additional software.
Once the two components are installed and the system restarted, attaching an external hard drive formatted as NTFS should work as before. Except now, you should be able to drag and drop files to it.
Secrets
There’s no denying it: a Mac is simply in a different class and offers more than an ordinary computing experience. The MacBook has been my daily computing platform and has not let me down in any way. That’s more than I can say for other systems I’ve used…
The System Preferences application permits the most pertinent system settings to be tweaked and changed. But, like any other operating system, there are a number of settings that require under-the-hood knowledge or rather arcane modifications to system parameters to be activated. The creator of the very powerful Quicksilver has made such settings much easier to access and modifiy, by providing a plug-in for the System Preferences application. The appropriately-named Secrets provides an excellent resource for every Mac OS X hacker and power user. Simply download the PrefPane plug-in and install. It’s for Leopard 10.5 and higher only, and will certainly add value to your computing experience if your system conforms to its installation requirements. Think of this as the TweakUI for Mac OS X.
PrefPane provides an additional icon in the Other section of the System Preferences window.
Clicking on that shows a dizzying array of extra settings that can be effected. In many cases, these settings relate directly to specific applications or functions of the OS.
I’ll let you discover some of the settings available by yourself – there are simply too many to mention. I am pleased to have finally changed the location of the scroll arrows on my windows: instead of appearing in a stacked formation at the bottom of the scrollbar, they are now shifted to the top and bottom of the scrollbar.
Some tweaks are useful, others less so. But it is likely that you’ll find the solution to that nagging question you had about changing some behaviour of the system. For completeness’ sake, all Secrets are also document on the Blacktree website. A very useful addition to any modern Leopard system.
Moose-ing around
This is one of those applications you simply have to install to appreciate. Don’t worry: it won’t improve your productivity. On the contrary: it may actually decrease it. Uli’s Moose is a Mac OS X application and features a moose making witty comments at inappropriate times. As I’m typing this, the moose politely informs me that it’s 10:31 and time for an antler polish.
I haven’t been a Mac convert for all that long, but some research has revealed that the original talking moose saw the light of day sometime in 1986 and has been delighting users the world over since then. In 1997, Uli saw the need to update and modernize the moose for the more modern Mac OS.
The moose is a free download and requires no installation. Simply launch the moose and that’s it. As the opportunity arises, a nugget of wisdom is sure to be dispensed. If you’re annoyed with the moose, shut him down. But don’t be surprised if he protests…
A bunch of additional animations and speech files are available for the moose. Get them here.
Vista or XP user? Don’t feel left out.
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