Coty's Weblog

Anyone know what Objective-C 2.0 is exactly?

So, the Xcode 3.0 page mentions Objective-C 2.0:

So compelling, Apple wrote Xcode 3.0 itself using it. Enjoy modern garbage collection, syntax enhancements, runtime performance improvements, and 64-bit support. At your own pace, since it’s backwards compatible with existing Objective-C source. Write applications more quickly with fewer bugs using Objective-C in Xcode 3.0.

Anyone know details—particularly what the "syntax enhancements" are?

Leopard Wish List: Proper Plug-ins Please

Ok, I'd really like to see LLVM, ZFS, DTrace, virtualization, and similarly geeky features in Leopard, but I there is something much more mundane that Apple could do that would be much more generally beneficial.

Please, provide stable, supported plug-in APIs for Mail, Safari, and Address Book. No more InputManger hacks, no more SIMBL, no more private plug-in APIs. I am sick of Saft breaking on me after every minor update. It is ridiculous that there isn't any official documentation of the Mail plug-in API. It is more ridiculous that there just isn't a Safari plug-in API.

The plug-ins are out there. Check out Pimp My Safari or Hawk Wings. How about some actual support now?

Potash?

Rui Carmo is not dead. He doesn't want any e-mail or even comments, though, so this is my way of saying, "Hope you're better soon."

Not sure I get the potash title. Does it have to do with the fact that "people who work in potash mines have a 25% lower incidence of heart disease"?

Boot Camp

Though everybody and their brother has already mentioned it, I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention Apple's release of the public beta of their solution for installing and running Windows XP on Intel-based Macs: Boot Camp.

If you've been keeping up, you know that the challenge of booting XP on Intel Macs was overcome a while ago. (By some intrepid hackers at Voxify, it turns out.) That was a great for hackers. Boot Camp is going to make dual-boot something just about everyone can do. The Boot Camp feature that really makes it stand out to me as a more accessible solution is its support for non-destructive resizing of your Mac partition to make space for your XP installation. Oh, and the driver support won't hurt, either.

In the long run, though, I do hope that we either get something better than this. Something more like VMWare or Xen. Hoping Leopard might bring this. As Rui Carmo notes in his post, "rebooting is so last century."

Spotlight on Entourage

Today Microsoft released an update to Microsoft Office for Mac 2004. (Download here or use Microsoft AutoUpdate.) This update brings long-awaited Spotlight support to Entourage. In case you're curious, the reason that Entourage lagged on this is because it stores its data in a single data file. Spotlight, on the other hand, indexes and accesses individual files. Entourage seems to have worked around this impedance mismatch in the same way that Apple's own Address Book did: by creating a pointer files that Spotlight can index that open the original item in Entourage when selected. (If you're curious, you can find these files in ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Microsoft/Entourage/2004.)

While we're on the topic, I was surprised to find fellow Mac users at work unaware of Entourage's ability to access Exchange systems. If you have the most recent Exchange installed and have access to it via OWA, then you can probably configure your Mac to access it for e-mail, calendaring, contacts, etc. It is much better than suffering through OWA on a Mac. (For those of you who usually access OWA via IE on Windows, you may be surprised to find that the fancy, almost-Outlook in a browser experience isn't offered on non-IE browsers—Mac or otherwise.)

Another under-appreciated Entourage feature that got some attention at work recently is Entourage's Project Center. I can't think of a real analog for this in Outlook, and I find it to be a useful feature. The Project Center lets you group together e-mails, contacts, calendar entries, and even files that are related to a given project. This Beginner's guide to the Project Center gives an overview.

Oh, and in addition to the Spotlight integration, the updated Entourage also supports Sync Services, so you can synchronize your Entourage contacts and calendar entries with Address Book and iCal, repectively. This feature will also allow you to sync with .Mac and between various Macs you might use. I've only tried calendar synching so far. In case you're wondering, a new calendar will be created in iCal named Entourage to receive your Entourage data.

Thinking About Tomorrow

Well, Apple is supposed to announce "fun new products" tomorrow. I really have no idea what it will be, but here's what I've been thinking I'd like:

• Expanded network TV content
• Feature-length movie content
• Intel-based Mac mini to store and play said content
• Video-capable AirPort Extreme to distribute said content

Goodness knows I love my TiVo(s), but if iTMS would add The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm, then I think I could be done with cable and TiVo. Oh, and I'd need The Daily Show and Colbert Report. At that point, I'd have all the shows I want, and I think I could do it for less than I'm paying for cable.

Emotional Rollercoaster

First, Steve announces the Intel-based MacBook Pro. Phil says Apple hasn't done anything to prevent people from loading XP. I'm excited.

Then somewhere I read that it might not be that easy since the MacBook is EFI- rather than BIOS-based. I'm down.

Then Christophe points to efibootmgr. I'm hopeful.

Then Schillling points to the XP Won't Run on Intel MacBook, iMac post on BetaNews. I'm crushed.

Then, apcmag.com says Intel Macs may boot XP after all. I'm confused.

Someone has to have the definitive answer! What (TF) is it?

Waiting Over

As usual, this isn't realtime by a long shot, but my new PowerBook G4 did finally arrive on the 28th. It arrived at my house right after I got home from work. I ran into a little snag when I first tried copying over files and settings from my old PowerBook. After I completed the copy, the system hung every time I tried to log in. I'm pretty sure that the problem was related to ADmitMac's kernel extensions not loading correctly. So that bummed me out because it led to more waiting, as I ended up reinstalling the OS and then doing the file copy thing again without copying over root-level files. That did the trick, and I had my new PowerBook running pretty much just like my old PowerBook by noon on the 29th.

I'm enjoying it immensely. The extra CPU speed is great. The extra pixels on the screen are nice, too. I am going to go ahead and upgrade the RAM to 2GB, though. I ordered with 512MB, but I had 1GB on my old PowerBook. I could be satisfied with 512MB for a bit given the increased CPU speed on the new rig, but Newegg had a special on RAM that I couldn't pass up.

The waiting _is_ the hardest part

Not a big Tom Petty fan, but he had it right: The Waiting is the hardest part.

BTW, that is the status of a new 15" PowerBook G4.

Thanks for iChat, but how about simplifying encryption in Mail?

An unheralded new iChat feature rolled out in the latest Mac OS X release is simple encryption of iChat conversations. You need a paid for .Mac account for it to work, but if you have that it is a piece of cake. (Just go into your iChat account preferences and check the security tab.)

What seems odd to me, though, is the fact that Apple doesn't go ahead and do something similar in Mail. Mail has supported signing and encrypting for some time, but the process requires going to Thawte or Verisign to get an e-mail signing certificate. I don't think I'm going to have my mom go through that process.

Maybe it is just me, but I'd like to see e-mail signing and encryption popularized much more than IM. In my experience, people greatly overestimate the privacy of e-mail communication. The same can be said for IM, but given the relative permanence of e-mail as compared to IM, I'd argue that this misapprehension with respect to e-mail is more significant.