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.

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 The license key announced itself out of date and I had to renew it (not a problem, it’s a free replacement and the tool provides a simple ‘renew’ button).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…

Java on Mac OS X is being deprecated. This means that Apple will not continue developing a Java virtual machine in the future. There is hope that this effort will be picked up by the open source community, but also concern that the required knowledge of OS X internals will not be available, and so the effort will be somewhat hobbled.

Flash will no longer be deployed as part of OS X but there is currently no sign that it will be actively banned from the OS.

The App Store will operate in much the same way as the existing iPad, iPod and iPhone App Store. It will be a walled garden, guarded by Apple, providing easy access to Apple-approved applications. So far there is no indication that Apple will prevent users from installing their own applications alongside App Store products.

So, what are Apple up to? Is this going to kill Mac OS X?

It seems fairly obvious to me that Apple have a strategy to commoditise their product line and these moves suggest that OS X, and consequently their laptop and desktop products, will become commodity products in due course.

This is a galling thought for some, and I confess a little shiver of disappointment myself, but it could make perfect sense for Apple.

Controlling the channel through which applications are delivered to a hardware platform reduces the risk of poor quality applications befouling the user experience and reduces the risk of infection from malicious code (like viruses). For most users this is a good thing. Most people are willing to give up some freedoms (the freedom to install any software they like, from whatever source they like) in order to have a secure user experience.

Most home users have a fairly small list of activities they want to be able to do from their computer; e-mail, surfing the Internet, writing a letter, keeping basic accounts, store and process photos, and so on. Adding the App Store provides these facilities at low cost with high quality, and for this most users will gladly surrender the ability to get their software from outside sources.

This attitude is anathema to the technically competent, but they tend to miss the point; most people neither want nor need the flexibility they espouse. Apple are going after a different, and much larger, market: the normal user who does not have time to figure out the technical intricacies of using their computer. The user who just wants the damned thing to work reliably and securely.

Apple seem content to sacrifice the needs of their smaller technical audience in order to provide for the much larger commodity audience.

I suspect that Apple will allow users of OS X to operate in a ‘safe’ mode, locked in their safe walled garden, but continue to allow the techies the freedom to work as they prefer, at least for the foreseeable future. Apple must be careful not to totally alienate those who develop for their platform (and let’s face it, these are the techies) otherwise they risk having no creative force behind their App Store. But they won’t go that far and if their strategy works they will have plenty of people willing to work ‘the Apple way’ in order to take advantage of the captive market.

I love my Mac and I would hate for it to become neutered completely, but I do see the point of Apple’s approach and providing I can run a virtual machine on OS X I can install Linux and Windows to run within them those tasks that OS X does not support (something I already do).

So, to coin a phrase from Samuel Clemens, rumours of the death of the Mac are being greatly exaggerated.

Armed only with an iPad I ventured onto a client’s site feeling slightly naked without my constant companion (my laptop). My laptop was at home, wired into it’s life support system (my home network). The home router had been told to make certain facilities available on the Internet and the iPad knew were to access these facilities.

Basic facilities such as note taking where dealt with using Evernote (great product, get it now!), all of these notes will be available on the iPad, my iPhone, and my laptop once I get home. So far, so good.

Web access, no problem. Safari on the iPad is perfectly fine.

Need to take a photo? Well, no actually. But if I had, no problem. Capture the snap on the iPhone and use Evernote to synch it onto the iPad and laptop (or transfer it into Dropbox, dealer’s choice).

E-mail – ah. The laptop automatically collects e-mail and removes it from the server. This works well normally, but presents a challenge now – the iPad client seldom sees it before the laptop removes it. I could simply reconfigure my system, but I don’t want to do that, it all works fine as it is, I do not want to mess with it.

Hurrah! iTeleport to the rescue. Use that to connect to the laptop, pick up my e-mail as if I were sitting at the laptop. Sweet.

Now, I was using iTeleport over a weak 3G connection (no WiFi for me), but it was surprisingly usable. Slow, certainly, but it worked and it was fine for reading e-mail. Using iTeleport for extended functions such as writing documents or drawing in tools like Omnigraffle will probably not satisfy over a weak link. But for simple stuff it rocks!

What iTeleport excels at it being able to load documents into Dropbox; a simple operation on the laptop. Dropbox synchronises with the iPad and bingo! The document is now available on the iPad. Mmm! Synchro-goodness.

Tomorrow, as they say, is another day (actually, everyone but the insane says that) and I am sure I will have more to report tomorrow because I intend to repeat the experiment.

Bottom line: when I don’t need a lot of heavy lifting processor power, the laptop stays at home from now on!

I do not actually need the laptop for today’s work (that is, I will not be doing any heavy lifting that might need the laptop’s power), so this is an ideal test of the iPad in my working day.

What I do have though is access to the laptop, which is running at home, through iTeleport (a very neat VNC system). So if I need access to something on the laptop, or specifically to an application that runs only on the laptop, I can log in to it and use the iPad as a remote terminal – nice.

My one concern was that I may not have access to a wireless network so would have to run through 3G (or, heaven forbid, Edge). My worries were only partially justified. I have just tried the laptop link and it is usable (just) through the 3G link. I would not want to do any major work through it, but for accessing information or minor updates it is ideal. It also means I can transfer a file from the laptop to Dropbox and subsequently access it on the iPad – brilliant.

So far, so good. I shall report on the final outcome later.

(oh, and I figured out how to scroll within text boxes on Safari on the iPad – simple really, use two fingers and drag on the text box :} )

There seems to be a trend to the small, positioning themselves between the iPad’s 9.5 inch display and the typical smartphone 3.5-4 inches. So what is the market? Why choose a particular screen size?

Having used the iPad for extended viewing I think it’s about as small as I would want to go with a device for reading/surfing for any length of time. In truth I would have preferred an A4 sized screen, sacrificing a little in portability for a better viewing experience. It’s a close call though as I can view the iPad’s screen for many hours without fatigue and it feels comfortable to hold in one hand (which a large A4 form might not). For viewing video I could comfortably go down to 3.5 inch screens, but much detail is lost at this size and watching a full length film (as against a few YouTube videos) is a less than compelling proposition.

Dell have claimed that their Mini 5 is, with a 5 inch screen, the largest size that will fit into a shirt pocket. Hmm. Somewhat questionable reasoning there, but okay I’ll run with it. First, I have very few pocketed shirts, but of course that’s not really the reason for Dell’s boast. What they really intend (I suspect) is that the device is small enough to be considered truly ‘pocketable’ (not something anyone would claim for the iPad).

Samsung’s effort, the Galaxy, runs to a 7 inch screen (slap bang centre between Apple’s 9 inches and Dell’s 5 inches — is anyone else snickering at the double entendre potential of that last statement?). This, to me, seems too small for comfort and too large to be pocketable. What were Samsung aiming for?

It will be interesting to see how the marketplace judges these devices. Will people prefer Dell’s ‘fits in a pocket’ approach (which begs the question, why not just use a smartphone rather than carry around an additional device – iPhone 4G anyone?), or will they go with more iPad sized offerings, or possibly something in between like the Galaxy?

There are many ways to examine your hard drive to identify where it’s all being used up. In my case I pretty much knew which directories where eating up all the space, but out of curiosity as much as anything else I tried a couple of disk analysers.

The first was OmniDiskSweeper, a free utility from the OmniGroup (the same people who make the spectacularly good OmniGraffle diagramming tool, and the ever-useful task management tool OmniFocus).

OmniDiskSweeper is simple and efficient. It scans your disk, reporting the total space assigned to each folder. Folder sizes are totalled so that it is relatively each to see which folders contain the most material.

The weakness of OmniDiskSweeper is that is it possible to miss large files that could be removed if they are buried in among other large files. The lack of a broad overview means these files can be overlooked.

This is not a weakness shared by the second disk analyser I used, the beautiful (and useful) DaisyDisk (free unrestricted demo with a nag screen, or $19.95). The reason for the apparently odd name of this tool becomes clear when you see the analysis display.

It looks vaguely flower like and I assume ‘Daisy’ was chosen for it alliterative quality.

DaisyDisk performs the same task as OmniDiskSweeper. It scans the selected drive, noting each files size and totalling each directory’s content. Where DaisyDisk wins out it in this flower-like display. It is a simple matter to see where file space is being used and spotting large files or directories among all the other clutter is simple, just look for the larger coloured segments. The colour coding provides easy identification of the sort of space (differentiating Library, User, Applications, and System files, among others). Hovering the mouse over one of the coloured segments provides specific details of actual size, path and for folders a breakdown of the largest constituent files and folders it contains.

Need a closer look at a specific folder? No problem, double click the relevant coloured segment and the display focusses on that folder. The makes examining deep folder structures with many smaller files much more comfortable.

Well worth a look if you want to figure out what is eating up your disk space.

The result of all this investigation is confirmation of my previous suspicions and so I have just archived three large folders containing media for the training course I produced last year (a grand total of 60GB of data). Add to this the removal of temporary render files used by Final Cut and my previously 10GB or so of free space has expanded to a comparatively capacious 91.2GB.

Anyway, long story short. With the archive and cleanup complete it provides a bit of breathing space and let me get on with producing some more media projects I have in mind.

The next time I’m in an Apple store I’ll ask about the possibility of dropping in the 500GB clone drive. If they can do this under the support contract I’ll definitely take that option as it will mean less messing around archiving data (and inevitably restoring it the next time I need to work on the files).

So, there are fewer exploits for OS X, what’s all this vampire stuff? It is said that a vampire can only enter a private residence if invited in, and the same applies for the vast majority of OS X exploits. Almost all exploits on OS X require you (the user) to install them. You have to take a deliberate actions such as opening an e-mail attachment, running software containing malware (again, ‘patches’ claiming to circumvent licenses are a prime source of these), visiting suspect websites (links in e-mail are a prime source of links to iffy websites and should NEVER be clicked unless you know the sender – double check the real sender and reply address, never trust the display name – and recognise the actual link address – NEVER trust the link text).

Protecting your OS X machine is more about not inviting the vampire in than garlanding your environment with garlic:

1. I do not run ant-virus software (this is the equivalent of garlic, it may be effective but it stinks up the place and is only effective at close range, i.e. the vampire has already made it through the door). Anti-virus software is a massive overhead and, in most cases on OS X, provides a false sense of security and most of it has a history of creating as many problems as it solves. This is not to say I will never run anti-virus software in the future. When the threat outweighs the cost I’ll be first in line.
   I guess a case can be made that running anti-virus software helps out by catching viruses in files and attachments that might infect other OSes if we pass them on, so we would be good citizens by helping stop their spread. But this is like punishing yourself for someone else’s mistake. Having chosen a secure environment I should make it less secure and slower just so I can protect those who chose a less secure option in the first place? Where’s the sense in that?
2. I always use a firewall to block all incoming connections (except those I specifically allow for periods when I need them).
   1. Use Shields Up to check your system for open ports through which naughty people might attack.
   2. Make sure that you are not sharing any services unnecessarily. (Open System Preferences… → Sharing and make sure nothing is selected that you do not mean to be sharing, most especially things like Remote Login or Remote Management should be OFF for most people. I leave everything OFF by default and only turn on sharing when I actually need it, turning it off again as soon as I’m finished. I do this because I’m often roaming and using WiFi connections. Any time your WiFi is on you’re potentially vulnerable, so playing safe is sensible.
3. I use LittleSnitch to control all out-going traffic. This is a great little program. It’s irritating at first, but once you’ve used it for a while it is an invaluable tool in ensuring you’re aware of all the software that’s trying to connect from your machine to the outside world.
4. Leave Bluetooth and WiFi off unless actually using them. (Saves the battery too if your not plugged in.)
5. Make sure any WiFi connection is encrypted and password protected. This is especially true when using an ad hoc computer-computer network — always set a password when creating an ad hoc network!
6. Keep software up to date.
   I always install updates for any application as soon as possible, but especially security updates for OS X. It is very, very rare that this policy causes more trouble than it’s worth.
7. Never open attached files in e-mail unless certain of the source.
8. Isolate suspected Spam in the mail tool’s junk/spam folder. If possible, only review sender and titles (do not open junk mail at all, even in a preview), move any messages that are accidentally junked back into the inbox and add the sender to my address book so it is no longer junked.
9. Do not allow previews of e-mail messages to display images unless you explicitly permit it. Alternatively, view all your messages in text only previews.
   This one is more of a privacy concern (although some image handling exploits have been known). Spammers commonly use embedded images (linked back to their site) to confirm ‘live’ e-mail addresses. as soon as you open the preview your e-mail system effectively announces it’s presence by visiting the spammers site to fetch the image. Turn off images in preview and selectively turn them on for addresses you know to be safe.
10. Do not click links in e-mail unless 100% certain of both the source of the e-mail and the link.
11. When receiving unsolicited e-mail about billing or account problems from an apparently legitimate source (especially your bank!), DO NOT click the provided link. Log in to your account on the supplier’s web site manually and check your account from there. If you cannot verify the account this way, use their support, billing, or sales contact on their website and ask if the e-mail is legitimate before following any link — caution is the better part of valour.

No system is perfect and mistakes inevitably get made, but using these common sense precautions I’ve survived online pretty well problem free since before the WWW started. Sooner or later I do not doubt I’ll have a problem, it would be unreasonable to expect to spend so much time online without a problem.

Being online a lot and expected to stay problem free is a little like running back and forth across a busy highway and expecting to avoid being hit. No matter how carefully you think you are checking the road on each run, sooner or later your attention will waver, or someone will approach in a stealth car, and you’ll get hit. The best we can do is be as careful as possible (or stop using the internet/running across the highway).

But while the Department is working to improve its debt recovery, its efforts are constrained by outdated systems and it has deferred plans to invest in them due to lack of funding. Better systems would help the Department improve tax recovery and reduce losses.

p. 3, “Summary” HM Revenue and Customs: Improving the Processing and Collection of Tax: Income Tax, Corporation Tax, Stamp Duty Land Tax and Tax Credits – Second Report of Session 2009–10

The argument is that existing IT systems are outdated and insufficiently connected so it is impossible for tax collectors to show all tax owed by individuals or companies in one consolidated report. This apparently makes collection of tax more difficult.

The solution? Spend more money updating the IT systems.

Regardless the government’s less than stellar record when it comes to managing large-scale IT projects or my own vested interest in increased IT spending (I work in IT), surely a better solution would be to simplify the tax system? Simplify the tax system and you save time and effort in calculating the tax owing. Simplify the tax system and you make it more transparent and consequently more difficult to manipulate. Simplify the tax system and you do not then need Deep Thought to figure out who owes what.