os x

Review of Desk.PM’s Publishing App (v. 1.0)

/ Christopher Parsons / 6 Comments

Desk.pmI downloaded a copy of Desk last week, an OS X applications that is designed for bloggers by bloggers. It costs $30 from the Mac App Store, which is in line with other blogging software for OS X.

To cut to the chase, I like the application but, as it stands right now, version 1.0 feels like it’s just barely out of beta. As a result there’s no way that I could recommend that anyone purchase Desk until a series of important bug fixes are implemented.

What’s to Love

I write in Markdown. At this point it’s so engrained in how I stylize my writing that even my paper notebooks (yes, I still use those…) prominently feature Markdown so I can understand links, heading levels, levels of emphasis, and so forth. Desk uses Markdown and also offers a GUI where, after highlighting some text, you’re given the option to stylize add boldface or italics, insert a hyperlink, or generally add in some basic HTML. That means that people like me (Markdown users) are happy as are (presumably) those who prefer working from a graphical user interface. Everyone wins!

In line with other contemporary writing applications (e.g. Byword, Write) the menu options are designed to just fade away while you’re writing. This means there are no distractions when you’re involved in writing itself and that’s a good thing. You always have the option to calling up the menu items just by just scrolling somewhere in the main window. So, the menu is there when you want it and absent when you’re actually working. Another win.

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Solved: Bluetooth Devices Not Connecting to OSX

/ Christopher Parsons / 153 Comments

Apple Wireless KeyboardI’ve exclusively used Bluetooth devices to connect to my docked MacBook Pro for many, many months. It’s been a blissful period of time…one that came to a crashing halt this morning. After spending an aggravating period of time getting things working, I wanted to share with the Internet broadly (one) solution to getting both an Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic Mouse (re)paired with OS X. I will note that I first ‘lost’ my Magic Mouse, and after a restart of my computer subsequently was unable to pair my Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard.

Problem:

After months of blissful Bluetooth connectivity, I’ve awoken to discover that neither my Magic Mouse nor my Apple Bluetooth Keyboard are properly pairing. First my Magic Mouse failed to scroll, which led me to remove the Magic Mouse and attempt to pair it to my computer again. This attempt failed. I then rebooted my computer, and was still unable to pair my computer and Magic Mouse. After another restart, my Apple Bluetooth Keyboard was also unable to be be used as an input device with my computer. It is important to note that, while the Bluetooth Device Manager reported this failure to pair, both devices are reported as ‘connected’ under the Bluetooth icon in the OX X menu bar. Neither device, at this point, is responding to any input.

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Solved: Apple SATA II 1.7 Firmware Problems

/ Christopher Parsons

mbp13When something ‘just works’ 99.9% of the time, that .1% of downtime is particularly frustrating. This is what I recently experienced with my Time Capsule networking fiasco, and was paralleled by another problem stemming from an Apple firmware update.

The new MacBook Pros were shipped with their SATA II data speeds crippled; they were limited to 1.5Gps rather than the SATA II 3.0Gbps standardized speed. While this had no real effect for HDD users, it did affect SSD users – SSD is capable of taking advantage of the SATA II spec, and so SSD users rightly complained.

Apple heard these complaints, and released a firmware update for the MacBook Pro line; they warned that the update might not work with non-stock drives (!) but that it would restore SATA II speeds. I decided to update the firmware, just because having an up-to-date system is a good idea. This is right-minded thinking, right?

Wrong.

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Technology Fix: Pocket Mac and Blackberry Devices

/ Christopher Parsons

I don’t have a lot of time (term is coming crashing to an end, and I don’t want to get crushed!), but I thought I should probably post how to get a Blackberry to actually work with OS X once Pocket Mac stops working (and it will…trust me). But first, I want to have a bit of a preamble…

I love my Blackberry. It goes where I go – it’s rarely more than a few meters away from me. It has truly reacquainted me with email, and that’s great. I also love my MacBook. I’m rarely away from it for more than 12 hours at a time, and it’s a delight to use. I like the OS, the craftsmanship, and so forth.

I really hate how poorly RIM has decided to treat Blackberry owners who use Macs. RIM’s syncing ‘solution’ is Pocket Mac, which is a load of junk. In Windows, I could upgrade my OS, could configure my BB, could install applications, and so forth using the BB sync client. I can’t do that on a Mac – it’s been almost 2 years since they released Pocket Mac, and I still can’t do these basic operations, which means that I need to have a Windows virtual machine. On top of that, Pocket Mac will, fairly regularly, just stop syncing my contacts and calendar (it can’t actually sync anything else with any reliability). For a few months I’ve been trying to get this resolved, and progressively getting more and more annoyed. Annoyed to the point that I’m tempted to just move to an iPhone (I won’t because of security issues, and I can’t just get an email plan without a data plan, but it’s tempting).

Today I figured out how to resolve my issues with Pocket Mac not syncing properly anymore.

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It Just Works (Sometimes)!

/ Christopher Parsons

Time Capsule is incredibly helpful – it’s saved me from several moderately catastrophic data loses. What is less than terrific, however, is the instructions for connecting an external hard disk drive (HDD) to it. To save myself the hassles of figuring out how to set it up again in the future, and for those who are searching for the solution, I’ve thrown this together.

Problem:

Many drives are shipped partitioned to FAT. That’s great…for PCs. Heck, my Macbook could read it too, but doing so crashed my Time Capsule. I figured that it was probably FAT, and so just opened up the Disk Utility to erase the drive and partition it to HFS+ (Journal). Then I found out that this element of OS X has been broken for a long, long time.

Crap.

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Repairing iWeb

/ Christopher Parsons

For the past two days I’ve been troubleshooting a problem with iWeb, and thought that I’d post my problem (and troubleshooting steps and solution) here so that other people who experience a similar problem can diagnose and remedy the problem.

Problem:

I had used iWeb to toss together a quick placeholder site for my girlfriend’s new domain without any incident a week or two ago. A few days later I went back into iWeb and was unable to add new pages, or create a new site. While the options to do both actions were available, clicking on them neither added a new page, nor created a site.

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