Saturday, June 7, 2008
Mac OS X Hints: 10.5: Use Automator to create 'sticky' folder views
Mac OS X Hints: 10.5: Use Automator to create ‘sticky’ folder views
Recently I decided to switch to ‘Spatial Finder’, i.e., each folder opens in a new window and remembers its position, i.e., what the Finder was like before OS X. (You can toggle this behaviour with the ‘pill’ control on the right side of any Finder window.)
So far I’m happy to be back, except for the problem in Leopard in which it won’t remember the View setting (as Icons/as List) for each folder. This change was intentionally made by Apple because they liked it this way for Browser (non-Spatial) mode, and didn’t seem to notice that it broke a very important part of Spatial mode.
Which brings me to my point, the linked article: it makes this somewhat simpler by giving you a menu item you can use to force Finder to remember the View. The instructions look complicated, but they’re not too bad.
What gets me most about this is: I have another machine that runs Ubuntu Linux. Its equivalent of Finder is called Nautilus. When I set Nautilus to Spatial mode, it does everything perfectly. More perfectly than the software by Apple, the people who invented Spatial mode… and then broke it.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Lifehacker: Enable Google Contact Sync in OS X
Lifehacker: Enable Google Contact Sync in OS X
Mac OS X 10.5.3 has a new feature that can synchronise a Gmail address book with the computer’s Address Book. Strangely, this is only available if you own an iPhone. However, removing this limitation is trivial.
The best solution is in the linked comments. Open Terminal.app and type this:
defaults write com.apple.iPod Devices -dict-add invisibl-eyefown ’{ “Family ID” = 10001; }’
This creates settings for a fake ‘device’ that looks like an iPhone (thus enabling the feature) but won’t interfere with your current iPod or future iPhone.
According to Little Snitch, the sync actually occurs only when you connect an iPod - doesn’t matter what kind, as long as the setting is activated in Address Book.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Serious security vulnerability in Debian, Ubuntu SSH package
Serious security vulnerability in Debian, Ubuntu SSH package
Yikes. Now’s a good time to run Update Manager. Your key will change, which means you’ll get a scary warning when you next try to login remotely.
Edit: Ubuntu’s package manager will automatically regenerate your machine’s bad SSH key. Debian’s will not. (Just verified myself on both OS’s.) Debian will post instructions here once they get around to writing them.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Apple Software Update for Windows offering to 'update' Safari that was never installed to begin with
Apple Software Update for Windows offering to ‘update’ Safari that was never installed to begin with
Apple has made it incredibly easy — the default, even — for users to install ride along software that they didn’t ask for, and maybe didn’t want. This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices.
This is sure to hurt Apple’s reputation among people who know enough to see what’s going on, but also result in Safari conversions from people who only just barely know how to use their computers. Will the benefit to Apple outweigh the harm? I’m sure they have made internal predictions, but it was clearly a business decision at the expense of ethics.
