Cafe Bucky

No, I haven’t bought a Mac mini, but I can sure see its appeal to large audience.

It’s high time that Apple addressed the huge market of potential Mac users that have been sitting on the fence. For $500, the lower end Mac mini will serve the needs of many who just want to check their email, IM, browse the web, and do some spreadsheet and writing stuff.

For $500, they wll be getting a Mac that’s fast enough to handle everyday tasks, and won’t have to worry so much about all of the Windows-targeted spyware/malware/virulent strains.

For $500, they can reuse their USB keyboards and mice, and any industry standard monitor out there (VGA resolution up to 1920 by 1080!). No problem going to a DVI monitor, or a regular TV.

For $500, they’re also getting Panther & iLife.

Not bad! Not bad at all! It makes me wonder why Apple took so long to do this. On the other hand, let’s be glad they did. .. .And they did it with style! It’s going to be easy to tote this along in a backpack or messenger bag.

A couple of nits to pick:

* only 256 meg of ram? man, that’s pretty slim. I wonder how many users will get turned off to Macs the first time their machine starts swapping memory out to disk. I predict that a fair number of users will say “heck with warranty”, and upgrade the memory themselves (Apple charges way too much for memory).

* no audio line in?! Really? This means that someone that wants to play guitar through GarageBand will have to go through a USB device. There’s enough space on the back of the mini for the jack. What gives?

Aside from that, I hope Apple sells a million of these. I expect to see them popping up in cars, tucked alongside TVs, sitting on kitchen counters, and sprinkled throughout schools. Great stuff, Apple.

I wish I were going to MacWorld SF. I’ll miss the keynote. Perhaps I’ll get a hall pass for Thursday.

And Now, for My Grand Prediction! I’ll predict something that nobody has posted!

Ready?

(drum roll….)

Apple will finally introduce…

here it comes …

A Two Button Mouse!

and! and! they’ll even give it a scroll wheel!

(okay, stop laughing now, I don’t think they’ll do this either)

I agree with about half of the predictions going around. Won’t say which half though :-)

I recently started working with folks that use Yahoo Messenger. I still talk to people on AIM all the time though. It gets a little “busy” running two IM clients all the time.

So I tried Gaim (on Mac OS X, via Fink). Well, one thing I can say for it is that it stays connected over my DSL line (unlike the Yahoo Messenger client for the Mac). But still, it lacked a certain… something.

Then I tried Adium X. Wow, that client’s a lot more like it! It handles AIM and Y! for me, and so I’m happy. I love how you can drag screennames from different services into the same groups.

It doesn’t do audio or video, but it does what I want for 95% of my IM needs. Kudos to the team that works on it!

Someday, there will be a perfect, crystal moment where all of my Web bookmarks are tucked into nice neat folders. Someday, all of the files and directories will be perfectly organized, and there won’t be duplicates. Someday, every single app on my systems will do everything asked of it, and all of my systems will talk to each other in every way imaginable.

Oh, sorry, I was just listening to Midnight Oil’s song “DreamWorld”. If, in fact, you are perfectly organized and set in every aspect of your computing experience, go to the next level – you aren’t trying hard enough! The trick is to get a lot of work done, push the environment to do more, but not break everything in sight.

On my Linux boxes back in California, I like use the KDE Konsole for my terminal program. The thing I love about it is the tabs.

On the Mac, I’ve tried Terminal (don’t like it, because I’ve been doing X11 since 1989, and I believe in using my mouse for copy and paste). I’ve tried iTerm (which is a Cocoa app, has tabs, but crashes too much). Most of the time I just punt and use a couple of xterms with the venerable app “screen”. (a little side story about “screen”… I once hacked my own copy to push a shell from anywhere – basically mapping ctrl-A-! to give me a prompt… I could do a quick command, exit the shell, and redraw the screen to be back where I was, cursor and all.. the things we’d do on a Wyse 50 terminal.. ah, the old days…)

My powerbook doesn’t have enough real estate for a bunch of xterms, and flipping through 4 sessions in screen gets confusing (maybe if I could color each one.. hmm?)

So what I really want is a tabbed terminal app that can handle copy/paste with the mouse, and not crash. Enter konsole.

Konsole is great at tabbing sessions, once you clear up the keycode snafus (you can google for “konsole mac xmodmap”). The one remaining problem is that I can’t paste a clipping into it from a non-X11 app.

So, if I could find a solution for pasting into Konsole from “native” Mac apps, I’d be happier. Google’s leading me nowhere on this one. Someone must have this figured out, right?

I like the new iMac. The design is great. If it’s as quiet and lightweight (compared to previous iMacs) as the specs say, then it warps into a “sort of” portable. Easy to take around the house.

But I think Apple blew it with configuration. Let’s look at the 20 inch 1.8ghz model: $1899 and only 256 meg of memory, NO Airport card, NO Bluetooth. Huh?

Ok, let’s bump it up to 1gb of memory, and add an Airport card and Bluetooth module (this is, after all, supposed to be a “Digital Hub”) – $2253

Don’t know about you, but this is getting pretty pricey for a consumer machine. I wish Apple would toss in these “extras” in order to garner a little bit of market share.

Of course, my fave config, including the AppleCare protection plan, would run the total up to $3422.

(but I wouldn’t do it Apple’s way.. I’d get an iMac + Airport + Bluetooth, and upgrade the memory and drive myself to save a lot of money)

I mentioned yesterday that I was having a geeky weekend (and I submit this post as partial evidence, your honor…) One thing I said was:

Music: I’m off to the Apple Store to see if they have an Airport Express in stock. I’m pining to stream my collection to the decent speakers in my apt (5.1 Acoustic Research – S-20′s)

So I did. Bought one.

… and so it didn’t. At least at first.

The Airport Express comes with an install CD. On it is the “Airport Express Assistant”. The Assistant is a nice bit of eye candy, but under the skin, what it really says is “it’s my first day on the job, and I don’t know how to do that yet”. I think it would work great for someone that isn’t very security minded.

My setup is: Road Runner Cable -> Airport Extreme. My PowerBook then gets onto my “javajoint” network wirelessly. The idea was to add the Airport Express to the “javajoint” network. Here are the obstacles ran into for my setup:

• I run a closed network (don’t broadcast the SSID). The asst. couldn’t see the very network I was connected to on my PowerBook.
• I run WPA, so I couldn’t take advantage of having the Extreme bridge to the Express with WDS (not the fault of the asst) – no biggie.
• My Extreme only allows access via MAC address, WPA, and a login. The asst didn’t detect the MAC address bit.

So it went something like this: … lets put the Express on its own network.. oh wait! That’s dumb, because then I can’t be on the internet and stream to the Express at the same time .. ok, let’s open up the closed network.. good, ok the Express can see “javajoint”. Damn, it’s still not working! Let’s reset the Express for the 5th time. … hmm. Ok, forget the asst. Let’s go into the Admin Utility. Hey, the MAC addresses! Forgot about those… Ok, we’ll export the list, delete them all, and see if the Express can get in. Ok? Good, that works.

Wait a minnit … I have to type in the MAC address for the Express? By hand? Oh man (wagging my finger at the “assistant” program, threatening to delete it forever). Damn, wrong MAC address .. the Express has one for the ethernet port, and one for the, er, wireless port … they are one digit apart.

So the result is:

• I am back to running a network that doesn’t broadcast the SSID
• Still running WPA, because I am surrounded by APs here (I see 5 others on a Sunday morning), and I don’t want to run WEP
• Express is known to the Extreme by MAC address
• It works! No thanks to the “Airport Express Assistant”
• Oh, and my HP 5150 DeskJet works fine with it.. that bit was easy.

So, all of these stories you read about how people have it working right out of the box… what sort of security could they possibly be running? (my guess is little to none) btw, yes, I know I gave out my SSID in this post – I am not worried about that – could be something completely different 5 minutes from now, ya? :-) (hey, what’s with that car sitting out on the street, 3 giggling teenagers with laptops, and why are they saying “mwah ha ha!”?!)

Ok, that’s enough of that. I’m having a pretty geeky weekend. Random bits:

My contract took a turn for more interesting. I’m still at AOL, and can only say that I’ll be getting into a lot of XML + XSLT. … and other stuff. I’m under NDA, as per usual.

So.. anyyyyyyyyway. I’ve been:

* installing AOLServer on my PowerBook
* adding a dash of the tDOM package
* and I wrote a “workbench” in Tcl of 3 frames that lets me endlessly tweak .xsl and .xml files, and see the resulting html output, all from a browser.
* loading up slots of my Safari subscription with all manner of XML-related titles.

Music: I’m off to the Apple Store to see if they have an Airport Express in stock. I’m pining to stream my collection to the decent speakers in my apt (5.1 Acoustic Research – S-20′s)

And another geeky thing I’m pining for… I’ve been wanting an electric guitar (I’m so out of practice!). I’m not all code & command lines. The creative side wants to do more than photography. Hoping for a Strat copy (or Mexican Strat?) that I can route through GarageBand. (yes, I still have my Edirol PCR-50 keyboard, and it’s great, but it’s still not a guitar)

More random:

Movies:

* I really enjoyed the silliness of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
* and am glad that The Bourne Supremacy came out so well!

Paper:

* Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy is something I picked up, almost randomly. I’m glad I did. It’s putting a lot about philosophy into context (and sequence). Fun and informative.
* Is it my imagination, or is Wired Magazine turning into an ongoing ad for BioTech?

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has written a pretty good analysis of the Dashboard vs Konfabulator controversy. I’m pretty convinced that Apple is doing the right thing. As a longtime web person, I look forward to digging into developing something like a FlexiPhoto gadget.

For a good demo of Dashboard, go check out the WWDC Keynote. It’s at about the 1:20:30 mark.