Tag: Mac

Matt Deatherage used the above line as the title for an e-mail on the MacJournals-Talk list, and he’s right. You usually don’t see updates and new features added to .Mac until fall arrives.
You can read the gory details, but the gist is .Mac members now get 1 GB of storage, split between mail and data, there’s a new version of Backup, and .Mac members can now congregrate in to groups.
As of five minutes ago, looking at my iDisk space inside the .Mac preference pane, I saw it was still at 200 MB. I logged in to my .Mac Account Settings, and it reflects the 1 GB increase. You will have to click on the Storage Settings button to see the change reflected in your e-mail/iDisk breakdown. Quitting System Preferences, then relaunching and clicking on the .Mac pref pane will have the storage update reflected there.
I have been debating renewing my .Mac subscription, and these updates really don’t change much for me. I’m not ready to transition everything in the next 12 days, when my account is set to renew, so I’ll be a .Mac member for at least another year. Watch for an upcoming post about .Mac value.

I use Safari Enhancer to kill the brushed metal look of Safari. I just used iTunes Unified to change iTunes 5’s Unifed-Metal look to normal Unified.
So why is it my chat client has to have brushed metal? What the hell is wrong with me?

The September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available.
Wes had a great idea for the cover, and we like how the art turned out. We’re just sorry we couldn’t have run it last month, but that’s the way it is some times.
Speaking of Mr. Meltzer, in this month’s Bloggable, Wes covers the latest Mac-on-Intel musings from the Mac blogosphere, as well as blips on the Mighty Mouse, browsers, and Apple rumors. David Ozab shares a moving tribute to Robert Moog, the man responsible for popularizing the modern synthesizer, which many a Macintosh has played in concert with. Sylvester shares his digital music experiences in this month’s Pod People.
Regarding the Pod People column, we seem to have run through the staffers interested in contributing, and we are seeking future columns from our readership. If you would like to share your iPod experiences, please [drop us a line](mailto:editor@atpm.com?subject=Pod People).
Chuck Ross’s critically-acclaimed FileMaking series continues with a look at Fields and Calculations. (I kid not; reader feedback on Chuck’s articles has been incredibly positive. Congrats, Chuck! It’s our pleasure to offer your work to our readers.)
Our own Matthew Glidden shares some photo textures from Louisville, Kentucky, and New Orleans, taken in August of last year, in this month’s desktop pictures section. My good friend Francisco also has a contribution, a picture of what the night sky in Manhattan may have looked like, starting in 1998…
Cortland decodes corporate buzzwords while missing a golden opportunity. Meanwhile, the plan of the evil geniuses is temporarily foiled due to their inability to read a map. Once again, I wrote the blurb (ahem, Lee), so I’m using it here. It took me long enough to come up with that; why reinvent the wheel?
Frisky Freeware notes the Nvu web authoring system. It’s free, and cross-platform to boot, and looks fairly nice. If I wasn’t such a text editor nerd-wannabe, I would probably look in to it more, but most of my web design and development is done inside BBEdit.
David Blumenstein puts the ABSmini one-touch storage system through its paces, while Tom Bridge does the same with Apple’s new Mighty Mouse. (I’m still trying to scrape together funds for a Kensington trackball.) The Dean, Frank Wu, examines the NeoCase from RadTech. I had many a neoprene case for my old PowerBooks, and it’s cool in a retro way to see them still around. Andrew Kator works over the PhoneValet 3.0, while Marcus Albers logs in to Tron 2.0. Light-bike races are still my favorite. Finally, Lee reviews You Control: Desktops, which, for the special price You Software is offering ATPM readers, is worthy of consideration for your multiple desktop needs.
We have some staff vacancies, as you can see on our cover page, we need Pod People authors, as I stated earlier, and we always need cover art each month. If you’d like to contribute to ATPM in any way, please let us know.

Dear Apple,
Is it really and truly necessary for a x.0.x upgrade of a web browser to force an full-blown system restart? Think of the minutes of productivity lost for this single user. Think of the total hours lost by large corporate entities.
Oh, Safari is closely tied to Mac OS X? How very Microsoft of you, Steve.
Get your act together, gang. It’s a web browser. Updates and upgrades shouldn’t force restarts.
Thanks,
Annoyed Retrophisch™

As I’ve said before, I like the look of iChat. So when I made the switch yesterday to Adium, so I could use both the AIM and Google Talk (viz: Jabber) protocols at the same time, I began a hunt to have Adium replicate the look of iChat. If you feel similarly, I’ll save you some time.
First, don’t download the official Adium client. Instead, download Metal Adium X by Mike Barca. That will give you the metal look for the chat window(s) and the Contacts list, as well as Aqua-y goodness for progress bars, etc. As he explains on the Metal Adium site, Mike updates the app within 24-48 hours of a new release of the official Adium client.
Second, download iChadiumMod, so your message view will have the iChat-style balloons. Next, be sure to change your sound set to “iChat” in the Events preferences. Finally, you’ll need a new Dock icon. There are a few iChat replica icons on Adium Xtras, but I didn’t want an exact duplicate. I’d like to be able to tell my apps apart, thank you, so I went with the iChat Adium derivative.
Looking at my chat setup now, I can’t help but wonder if this is near to what iChat would look like with tabs:

I’m sure Steve would have the tabs at the top, a la Safari, but otherwise, pretty darn close, no?