OS X Lion One Day In

One day in to using OS X Lion full time on my main machine, and I have to say that I am generally happy. Not blown away, but happy. Here are a few observations.

There’s nothing I dislike about Lion (so far). It is basically Snow Leopard plus so far as my experiences so far. I can’t say I see myself using the Launchpad, but the Mission Control is very attractive and I can see myself using it occasionally.

I use a Magic Trackpad and the additional gestures are great. I’m already a big fan of using gestures to turn pages, scroll and zoom. The addition of swipe between desktops or full screen apps, swipe to go to desktop, swipe to see related windows and swipe to open Mission Control, is all to the good. Gestures just make everything quicker and easier for me.

With this release scrolling now works as if you are pushing the scroll content, rather than pulling the scroll bar. Bottom line, the scroll gesture works upside down, swipe up to push the page up (scroll toward the bottom) and vice versa. This behaviour can be inverted (restoring the old Snow Leopard behaviour) but I quite like the new way, it is just a case of retraining my muscle memory (give it a day or two).

I had a couple of teething problems tying up to iCloud, but these were swiftly resolved; calendar, reminders, bookmarks, and contacts all nicely synching between main machine, iPad and iPhone. So another win for Lion.

Altogether, Lion has enhanced my desktop experience.

2012
01/20
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OS X Lion Upgrade

I finally took the plunge last night and upgraded my main work machine to OS X Lion (having previously upgraded a laptop and a Mac Mini without incident some months ago). I waited until now for two reasons; I wanted to wait for at least one update (OS releases are seldom trouble free, especially significant upgrades) and I wanted to wait for the key applications I use to catch up to OS X Lion.

Having met the two upgrade conditions I delayed further while I established a sound backup of the machine (no small feat in itself as I have a couple of terabytes of data on this machine). Key data on this machine (about one terabyte) is already backed up to my CrashPlan service (highly recommended) but I wanted a more complete backup before doing an upgrade, welcome 12Tb of  QNAP TS-659 Pro II goodness (RAIDed and used as a TimeMachine backup disk).

Backups duly done it was time to bite the bullet.

As with the other machines the upgrade process was easy and relatively quick (about 30 minutes). The OS X Lion upgrade tool took care of everything and the machine restarted as expected. I have many small applications that start on login (things like iStat, Dropbox, Concentrate, Hazel, Growl, Butler and a variety of application helpers). These all started without problems with the notable exception of SnapZ Pro. The license key announced itself out of date and I had to renew it (not a problem, it’s a free replacement and the tool provides a simple ‘renew’ button). I would not even mention this if it were not for what happened later (see below).

So, everything looked okay after the restart. The machine was very sluggish and the disks in the machine were being hammered. This, it turned out, was because OS X Lion rebuilds the Spotlight database, reindexing the whole machine, a four hour process on my system.

While the Spotlight index was being rebuilt the system also performed a TimeMachine backup (a mere 18Gb of data to be backed up) and I took the opportunity to reinstall the Java JDK that the installation of OS X Lion had removed (actually, it’s not removed, but OS X Lion stores the JRE/JDK in a different location so I took the opportunity to update to the latest 1.6 Java build [I know, 1.7 is more recent, but I'm developing to 1.6 at the moment]).

Once indexing had finished (and the machine was no longer I/O bound) I figured I would try a reboot without closing any applications (I generally have a long list of applications open all the time) just to see how Lion coped with restarting them all when it rebooted.

It didn’t. At least it failed on three counts. SnapZ Pro decided to complain about the license key again, Notebook complained that the license was already in use, and another minor issue (well, it turned out to be minor, but it was a major issue when it happened) was that my DevonThink Office Pro databases failed to reopen (DevonThink just hung on restart). I killed the unresponsive application and restarted it without a problem. I decided to forge ahead for the moment and hope that this was just a minor glitch.

I then upgraded all the system software. This involved another (small) OS X Lion upgrade because the original installer I used was the one I downloaded months ago and Lion has been updated a couple of times since then.

This upgrade was much faster (as one might expect) and the machine rebooted perfectly. I had deliberately not closed any applications and everything came up as expected (neither SnapZ Pro or Notebook complained and DevonThink reopening without incident). Big smiles and sighs of relief all round.

The disks were still active but not significantly. The UI response was a little sluggish, but by now it was about one in the morning so I called it a night and left the machine running (I leave this machine on 24×7 anyway).

The following morning I came in to find the machine back to its snappy self. Everything working tickety-boo and a Safari update pending. Why not? I performed the installation, which required a reboot (again without closing any applications) and sure enough everything shutdown and restarted perfectly, I was right back were I left everything after the restart.

All-in-all a very satisfactory outcome, so far…

2012
01/20
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Life’s too complex

I try to keep my life relatively free of complications, but it amazes me how quickly small complications accumulate. I don’t mean the big complex life issues, but the small accumulation of dross; devices, sources of information, people, and ‘stuff’.

KISS; Keep It Simple Stupid.

There is an old design adage, “good design results from removing features until you can remove no more”. Similarly. I intend to remove this from my life until I can remove no more.

Surely I will end up with nothing, after all. The ultimate reductio is to nothing? Well, no.

The reduction continues until you can remove no more without losing function. So with my life I shall remove the extraneous, the unnecessary, that which does not move me closer to my goals. Of course, this somewhat presupposes I have defined my goals…

2011
12/10
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Feeling ‘Odd’

Over the past couple of weeks my mood has been up and down like a yo-yo. Underlying it, an unidentifiable sense of anticipation.

I have no idea where that sense of anticipation might be coming from. Really. None. It’s just there and it’s irritating. It’s like being a kid just before your birthday, knowing your birthday is just around the corner. Knowing that nice things are going to happen but not precisely what those good things might be.

Of course, my birthday is not just around the corner. Nor, for that matter, am I aware of anything ‘just around the corner’. I just have that ‘feeling’. Weird. Irritating.

I feel like I should know why I feel this way.

2011
11/15
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Apple: “It just works”—unless it’s a web service

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you I love Apple products. I love the fact they just do what I want, when I want. No fuss. No mess. Great.

But when it comes to web services Apple really stink! Sure there’s iTunes and the App Store. They work adequately, but they’re really just glorified e-commerce sites. I’m talking about web services like MobileMe and now iCloud. I’m especially talking about the launch of these services.

MobileMe worked adequately for me. Nothing special. I really only used it to sync simple data (specifically iCal) between my various Apple devices. My needs are simple. MobileMe had a rocky start, was never really loved for anything more than my simple needs and is now on death row awaiting execution next year.

The shiny new iCloud has recently launched. Well, sort of. It’s more a misfire really. It seems many people (me included) are suffering all manner of issues. First off, I have to upgrade all my systems to Lion and iOS 5. Okay, iPhone and iPad upgraded without too much hassle (took a while, but I did not seem all the reported error messages). MacBook Pro upgraded, not problem and I don’t expect any problems upgrading the Mac Mini I use as a home entertainment hub (no rush for this one to upgrade). However, my Mac Pro is another story. This is my main machine and although I have most key data backed up offsite using CrashPlan I won’t do an update of the OS on this machine without a full local backup, and that’s where the trouble starts.

My main Mac Pro has 6TB set up in a RAID 5 array and has a large data set on it. Add to this that the machine is set up just as I like it (and is used for development work using things like Java), and I really need a full backup. So I have just invested in a 12TB NAS store, which will hopefully arrive in a couple of weeks curtesy of Amazon. Until then I cannot (or rather will not) upgrade the Mac Pro.

Okay, so most of the systems are now up to date ready for iCloud. But there’s a problem.

Any attempt to connect to iCloud informs me that my account needs to be verified and I should check my e-mail. But no e-mail arrives. Ever. Even logging on to my Apple ID account and clicking the ‘verify now’ next to the relevant address does nothing. Na-da. Zip. Zilch.

Seems I’m not alone. Many others are reporting problems with this process. Someone raised the issue of having more than one Apple ID with the same e-mail address associated with it. Now, I have to Apple IDs; one for MobileMe and one for everything else. I connect to my old MobileMe account and sure enough, the alternate e-mail is shown as the same one as my main Apple ID. But I cannot edit it from MobileMe, I have to go to appleid.apple.com. So I do. And on that site the alternate address is shown as something different. WTF?

So, I may have a problem with colliding e-mail, or I may not. No idea.

No problem. I’ll contact Apple Support. Yeah, good luck with that. The only contact option is ‘Online chat later’. Not now, later. That’s just a big ‘fuck you’ as far as I’m concerned. I can’t send an e-mail and wait for a reply, I can however be ignored. (Oh, they’re happy enough sending the support e-mail to my ‘unverified’ address.)

Anyway, all-in-all a very frustrating experience.

The upshot of all this is that I’m left with unsynchronised iCal for a while. This is more irritating than problematic at the moment, but if this persists I’ll just ignore iCloud and find an alternate calendar solution.

2011
10/14
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Quickie: Lies, truth, art and magic

An enchanting  video of Marco Tempest performing with three iPods.

2011
08/13
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Perspective

Rarely, but every now and then, the insignificance of the ‘problems’ in my life are thrown into stark relief and I realise that even the worst of my travails are trivial.

2011
07/29
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Should Google+ have a character limit on posts?

This article by Farhad Manjoo, in which he suggests Twitter should double its 140 character limit on Tweets, got me thinking. In particular his observation that on Google+ there were more conversations, as a direct result of there being no imposed limit. The problem, as Manjoo observes, with having no limit is that this opens the possibility of unwelcome screed replies.

The argument for short messages is that they encourage creativity and thought. The counter argument is that, in a conversation, it is often not possible to summarise a complex idea or argument into a short message. It’s a common enough adage that brevity and clarity are bedfellows, but enforced brevity can be a barrier to clarity when u r forced 2 resort 2 txtspk.

The solution seems simple enough. Why not let each user set their own limit? When another user posts an unsolicited long message it appears truncated to my personal limit in my view with a ‘read more’ link (or perhaps I can choose to ignore long posts completely). When another user replies to my messages they are told that I have set a specific character reply limit. Of course my posts are subject to my own imposed limit too, and when I reply I am subject to the originators limit.

It’s important that each user is limited to their own imposed limit to avoid a situation in which users set very low limits on replies while allowing themselves all the room they want. Such an imbalance would not lead to fair exchanges and would soon frustrate the system into silence.

In order to keep things simple for people who do not want to set their own limits each account would have a default limit, say 500 characters (although that’s entirely arbitrary on my part), and a lower limit of 100 characters to prevent people setting silly lower limits (although I say ‘why not’ if you want to lock down to single character conversations, that’s your prerogative, stupid though it might be. But, we do have to consider the possibility that people are idiots and need to be protected from themselves).

Self imposed limits, or should we just let people write what they want and use the old fashioned method of ignoring long boring replies?

2011
07/23
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Rectification of the gradual decline

Good grief! You know how some things change so gradually that you hardly notice? You know, like a your child growing up. The way people saying, ‘my how he’s grown’ takes you by surprise? You become so familiar with the ever so gradual change that you forget how much the change in the eyes of those who see them less frequently. Well that’s happened to me today.

I just picked up some new reading spectacles. Now, my eyesight is pretty good. My prescription is very slight, a correction for mild long-sightedness, but the difference I notice when working at the computer or reading is… well, it’s a revelation.

To give you some idea of how slight the problem is, I never bothered taking my screen of maximum resolution and I seldom enlarge text (I could, reasonably comfortably, read 9pt of even 8pt text. Footnotes in books were seldom a problem. However, recently I noticed that I had started to hold small text at arms length to read it and I was reading less and less in the evening as I found it challenging to maintain focus on text. I ascribed this to simple fatigue for several months but, having the time, I decided to have an eye test.

Sure enough, I was prescribed reading glasses and the optician assured me these would help with the fatigue on close work such as reading (she also warned me to expect one day to wake up and find I could no longer maintain focus without the glasses—so there’s something to look forward to).

Anyway, today I picked up the glasses and am now sitting writing this while wearing them. It’s like I have a new computer. Seriously! I now realise just how grey and wishy-washy my vision had become. Taking the glasses off and replacing them (allowing a few seconds between for my eyes to adjust) I realise that, with the glasses on, my screen is crisp and the blacks are truly black while, without the glasses, I can still read the text but it is now very slightly fuzzy and looks washed out (more a charcoal grey than black).

Like the child growing up, I had not realised just how my vision had gradually declined over the years.

So, if, like me, you take your eyesight for granted but your eyes start to feel tired toward the end of the day, get yourself off to an optician. You may be surprised at what a radical difference even a slight improvement could make.

2011
07/14
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Words

I love words. I just wish I had a better memory for them. That said, I am always interested in the precise meaning of words and their etymology and relationship to philology. (Although I freely confess I sometimes misuse words—sorry words, nothing personal—due to my poor memory and occasional  lexical indolence.)

Anyway, were was I? Oh yes, words. For several years I’ve thought about investing in a really good dictionary. Not so much for reference, but for pleasure. Not the sort one usually finds on the shelves of your local bookstore, nor an online dictionary such as dictionary.com, but a really good one that not only provides the basic classification and background to the word but also all the details of its history, usage, and subtleties of meaning. The very best, the heights of the lexical arts has to be the Oxford English Dictionary, more commonly referred to by its initials; the OED. But the OED is eye-wateringly expensive and I’ve always talked myself out of it.

But, not more! I finally decided I deserved a treat. (To be fair, I often decide I deserve a treat. I’m such a nice guy I deserve them. ;) ) So I’ve just bought the OED on disc (much as I love books, I believe a computerised version to be more practical and it’s definitely more portable). I was going to subscribe to the OWD online service but DAMN! I thought the CD was pricey enough but the online version is just silly money and much as I’d like to subscribe I won’t use it THAT much and although language develops I don’t see my CD version going out of date too quickly.

What really choked me off was being charge £3 shipping. I mean, this is a CD costing the best part of £200 and they couldn’t throw in shipping! Oh, and the delivery time is estimated at seven days! Seven! I mean, Amazon estimate 3–5 days on free shipping, what’s with seven days on shipping you’re charging £3 for?

Sheesh!

Oh well. One week today I should be luxuriating in a sea of words.

2011
07/06
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