Insanity Part 2.0

I’ve been using Firefox 3 alphas, betas, and RCs off and on for several months now, and I’m looking forward for the final release of Firefox 3. It’s a fantastic release and has really come together in the past several months, and I think anyone who’s ever used Firefox or even thought about using it should download it as soon as it’s released.

Thus, I bring to you a non-comprehensive listing of things I love that are new to Firefox 3, in no particular order.

• OS X-consistent window chrome theme
• Aqua form controls and buttons
• The Awesome Bar (this cannot be overemphasized enough)
• Overall speed and performance increases
• Quartz font-rendering on OS X, bringing with it OS consistent font smoothing!

Things that I love in Firefox 3, but where credit deserves to go somewhere else:

• AdBlock Plus

Things that I wish were in Firefox 3, but sadly aren’t:

• Text responds to CMD-CTRL-D for the dictionary pop-up (bug 301451)
• In-browser PDF Reader plugin (no, Adobe’s plugin does not work)

Try a sneak peek of Firefox 3 right now by downloading a release candidate build. As always with pre-releases, the intent is to figure out what significant but unknown bugs are before general release, so if this idea makes you squeamish you should probably avoid it for now.

This is a really slick device – I don’t have a lot of A/V devices to control with this yet, but once I do, its usefulness is going to increase exponentially with each new A/V remote The design seems pretty nice, and it’s got a decent heft in your hand.

Setup process takes about 30 minutes, depending on how many devices you have, and it involves a few reboots of the remote. The breadth of their remote database is rather impressive, and it’s nice to see it seamlessly integrate with my cable box and TV.

Now what would a discussion of a Logitech product be without complaining about Logitech software? Let’s get the positives out of the way first: the software does what it advertises and it does it pretty well, without crashing or anything bizarre like that. It does work, and doesn’t give you too much hassle while doing it. The interface is pretty streamlined and leans very heavily on the Wizard side. It does have drivers available for OS X, and they seem to be updated reasonably frequently. It is a separate package from the keyboard/mouse drivers.

That being said, the software has some negatives. It is pretty pokey and slow – not unbearably slow but noticeably slow. For example, UI elements don’t respond instantly to clicks or interactions, they take about tens of milliseconds to act. Doesn’t sound like much but you feel it as you go along. Most of your interactions seem to take place on a server – not much data is located on your HD but this does add a bit to that sluggish feel. This has the added benefit of being fairly well up to date with remote codes.

Best case for having a universal remote connect to your computer: no more hunting for driver codes and enduring weird keypress procedures in order to program something. Rarely going through that dog and pony show for all the driver codes and discovering that none of them worked.

I can say unequivocally that the Logitech Harmony software uses the Mozilla Gecko engine. How do I know this? Because the software does something really dumb and creates a very Firefox/Gecko-esque profile in the home directory with complete disregard for OS X platform standards. A folder named “browser – Logitech” is created in ~, instead of the much more sensible location of ~/Library/Application Support or ~/Library/Preferences, where it is hidden away from the user. Honestly, how often am I going to be poking around the preferences folder for my Harmony updater?

The software also creates a folder in your home directory (~) simply called “Logitech.” Best as I can tell, this contains further preferences and remote settings data that aren’t part of the browser component. Again, something better off living in ~/Library/Application Support/Logitech Harmony or something like that. In case anyone at Logitech ever reads this: THESE ARE STUPID LOCATIONS FOR YOUR PREFERENCE DIRECTORIES.

What’s more, this directory is created with the privileges 777 for some bizarre reason, and owned by root. In my own home directory! Why?! For those of you who don’t know, 777 means that everyone on your computer has read, write, and execute privileges on this directory. Since it’s in your home directory, it’s not likely to be a problem, but it’s still stupid.

By comparison to this Logitech package, the Logitech Control Center for keyboards and mice seems downright awesome. Don’t even get me started on how useless SetPoint is for Windows.

In the end, I do like the remote. The hardware is well designed and once it’s all set up, the remote works really well. The software fulfills its job just fine, but it’s really poorly designed and effectively shits in your home directory in OS X. I didn’t try it on Windows, but I have a feeling they do the same thing in My Documents. Yet again, Logitech can’t seem to pull off more than a C+ effort when it comes to making Mac drivers.

Final call: I’d still recommend it for someone looking for a really neat universal remote that puts almost all other universal remotes to shame, but with reservations about the drivers.

Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote on Amazon.com

Store and share documents online with Office Live Workspace

Microsoft just released their new Office Live Workspace web app today. It’s a new type of collaboration tool but meant for the small business and average folk, as opposed to the more enterprise-oriented Sharepoint Server. If that doesn’t make sense to you, think of a Microsoft take on Google Docs. Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of trouble dealing with it.

Uploading a document is pretty easy. In a workspace (you can have multiple ones) click on the big “Add document” button the toolbar. It’s pretty straightforward – use the file selector to upload some file.

What if you’re editing a file locally and you want to upload a new copy to the server? This is somewhat less than intuitive – this option is buried under a big “Versions” button as “Upload and overwrite file.” A sensible title except for being stuck under Versions: versioning is far more Computer Science-y of a concept than I think most people are used to.

In the end it doesn’t really matter anyway because on Firefox 2.0.0.12 (that’s the latest version, for those keeping count), the “Upload and overwrite” menu option doesn’t even work! That’s right, you can click on it all day and it won’t do a damn thing. The same is true if you use Firefox on either Windows or OS X. Move over to IE7 and it works just fine. It’s bizarre how Firefox is on the supported list of browsers and I can’t do something as basic as upload an updated file copy.

Another pick – on OS X most Office documents come with file extensions (e.g. the .doc, .docx, .xls variety) but some do not. If you upload a file without an extension, Office Live is not smart enough to determine what the file is nor is it smart enough to warn you about the missing extension. This is somewhat important, because if you upload a file without an extension you won’t really be able to do much with it. I couldn’t even upload a new version of the file because they said it didn’t match the same type.

This brings me to a final point. Google Docs lets you edit the file within the browser, which means it works on any OS that runs IE, Firefox, or Safari. Best as I can tell, Office Live doesn’t let you edit any Office document over the web, and instead you must download the file and edit it locally, which still requires a working copy of Office and is less convenient. To their credit, they do have an add-in that lets you open and save the document directly from the webserver.

Long story short – only usable on Windows in Internet Explorer, and even then not all that usable.

Proto for Mac OS X :: Firefox Add-ons

Awesome new theme for Firefox 3 Mac users – only works for the latest nightly builds. Much more Leopard-like than the default theme. It’s hoping to be included as the default theme for OS X Firefox builds, but it’s only a preview at this point.

Apple Making Deals for Web Video Rentals – New York Times

MacWorld 2008 could be very interesting indeed…

Here’s my wishlist/realistic expectations out of an Apple rental service:

• 48 hour or 5 day rental after first playback, with a 2 week hard deadline. 24 hours is possible (this is what Movielink does), but that kind of sucks compared to a BB rental.
• Unlimited plays within active rental period.
• Plays on any of your authorised iTunes, iPod, iPhone or tv device. This is the stuff that vertically integrated market dreams are made of! Authorisation limits will be kept the same as currently (5 computers, unlimited iPods).
• $4.99 US for SD/HD. There’s a possibility of tiering here (e.g. $4.99 for SD, $6.99 for HD) a la iTunes Plus at release. This also matches a typical Blockbuster store rental but beats it on convenience and speed terms (assuming you can start playing midway through the download).
• Purchases can be made through either iTunes Store and tv, and will sync back and forth to either. I wouldn’t expect iTunes Wifi Store just yet but that would be an interesting twist.
• No DVD burning. Duh.

There was a rumor running about a while ago, suggesting that to get this Fox deal Apple will raise the price of movie purchases. This sounds reasonable to me, and I could see this tradeoff being done. It’d be a hard lump to swallow though, so who knows.

The June Financial Times rumor put pricing at $2.99 for 30 days, but I have a feeling that through negotiations the movie studios probably managed to squeeze out a little more because that’s a long time period and a really low price. Remember that the real competition is Blockbuster and Movielink. That same rumor also mentions a transfer to only one device, but I think it’s important to note that right now iTunes doesn’t have any restrictions on how many devices you can copy to, and for the sake of uniformity I’d hope they won’t change this. In order to restrict the time limits it might be necessary though.

If they offer an HD service for the tv, this could be the start of a tiered service like with the original iTunes Plus. You might have to turn on HD in your preferences (or HD might be exclusive to tv owners only) before you can buy it; otherwise it’s all SD 640×480 for the iPod crowd. Call it iTunes HD or something. Keeping it exclusive to tv might be an appealing lure for that device – not like anyone with a 320×240 iPod is going to enjoy HD anyway.

Usual disclaimer applies: complete prognostication and fabrication on my part, with no knowledge of any real information other than what’s been printed in NYT, WSJ, MacRumors, and the like. I wouldn’t be trading any stocks based on these guesses.

Updated (2008/01/12): Recent rumors have the price and rental period pegged at $3.99/24 hours. That time period is shorter than I was wishing for, but it’s pretty realistic and not too bad. The price is actually lower than I was thinking and beats out Blockbuster retail, so that’s a plus.

Steam rating – Valve Developer Community

In case anyone was wondering what the Steam Rating meant on your Steam Community page.

With my new install of Mac OS X Leopard, I decided to get my system into a fully updated shape. Most things made the transition fine, some things aren’t going so hot. For instance, Parallels is a lot buggier than I ever remember it being under Tiger.

And then we come to the Logitech drivers. Much-maligned under Windows (MouseWare wasn’t all that hot, and SetPoint is pretty damn bloated), I found the Mac version to be reasonably well done. However, the latest version, 2.3.1, is pretty crappy, at least compared to the old sets.

Logitech bundles (and has bundled) Unsanity’s Application Enhancer without informing the user of doing so. I’ve bitched about this previously, and this has been very well covered elsewhere.

Previously, I could use CMD-CTRL-Eject in order to reboot my computer from within OS X. No more with this new driver set. Couldn’t tell you what changed it, but it doesn’t work anymore. Using it on the built-in laptop keyboard works fine, so it’s not OS X that’s the problem.

Now my biggest complaint: Caps Lock. The S-530 desktop set doesn’t include a light for the Caps Lock key. Somewhat annoying, but not catastrophic. Apparently, somewhere along the way between 2.1 and 2.3.1 Logitech’s decided to put a big notifier on the screen whenever you hit Caps Lock.

Problem is, it’s big, it’s not configurable, and it’s not even all that in-sync with my typing! If you’ve used Growl with the Bezel look, that’s the sort of look that Logitech went with. Except, it’s not actually using Growl – it’s using their own thing and I can’t turn it off or configure it to do something other than take up the middle of my screen for 2 seconds. The same dialog box also comes up if you plug or unplug a Logitech device – as if the Windows XP balloon notifier wasn’t annoying enough.

Thanks Logitech – you make great hardware, but some of your software choices are really awful.

Just downloaded a Camino nightly build, and I noticed that Camino’s also picked up the Cairo work that’s been going into the Firefox nightlies lately. This is good news for those that like having a Gecko browser but want something a little more OS X-y than Firefox is. Looks like the days of crappy font rendering in OS X Gecko are slowly coming to an end

So I’m sitting here, wondering why my system takes a long time to login and eventually noticing that something call “update_prebinding” is the cause of it. Two instances of this program, in fact, one running under PPC and the other under Intel. The symptoms? After logging in, my system would be doing a whole lot of disk churning for about 5 minutes, inexplicably.

After a quick google search, I happened upon this MacRumors Forum thread (who knew they were good for anything?). The poster describes my exact symptoms and then goes on to say that uninstalling something called “Application Enhancer” fixes it.

Being a frequent reader of Daring Fireball, I remember vague things about Application Enhancer – mainly that it’s not all that good. That’s okay though, because I would never install anything like APE to my system – I’m too careful!

Lo and behold, once I check my /System folder (thanks Spotlight!), I find an ApplicationEnhancer.bundle located somewhere in the depths of the folder. How did it get there? I’ve no clue. My best guess is that some app that I use (yet to be determined) installed it on its own without telling me, and I’m left to pick up the pieces when I’m figuring out why my login times take so damn long.

Just a helpful little tidbit for those of you who might be wondering why your OS X system is taking extra long to log in.

While trying out a new Microsoft keyboard (before settling on my Logitech), I noticed something rather interesting in the drivers:

An option to switch your Caps Lock button with the Control button! Sounds like there’s some old school Unix people working on the OS X keyboard drivers at Microsoft I’ve no idea if this is also present in the Windows drivers though.