Yippee! After what seemed like everyone and their dog ranting about their new power supply and fan replacement for the MDD G4's, I was getting depressed. I ordered mine within a few minutes of announcement, but yet didn't receive it when it seemed everyone else had theirs. But today it finally arrived! I would have liked to blame Apple, Microsoft, or the alignment of the planets, but it was a lame error on the order that was partially to blame. (I put the wrong expiration date on the credit card)

My biggest complaint...well, actually, my only complaint about the MDD G4's was the jet engine noise. Sure, it was still not too bad compared to some of my friends PCs, but the noise level had always been one of my bragging rights. I loved my quiet macs.

So after about 40 minutes or so, I had the "out with the old, in with the new" completed. Fairly painless process which impressed me with the attention to detail that goes into a design such as the MDD G4's. Quite the compact and tight fitting package. So anyway, I fired it up and lo and behold, it's ultra quiet!! I have two hard drives in it, and they are by far the loudest component now.

Thanks to a unexpected, yet much needed, replacement program from Apple, I'm able to work in peace again. Aaahhhhh....

Oh and iTunes 4, new iPods, and iTunes Music Store all look very cool. Silence was good while it lasted, but time to crank up some exclusive U2. :)

Tonight I am leaving to Moscow for 3 days. Tomorrow will be the annual Mac users party (it happens twice a year, in September and in April). Lots of interesting people to meet, chat, and drink beer with.

If you want an impression about what it looks like, some photos are available here (it's in Russian, but pictures are pretty self-explaining).

It is pretty interesting usually - Macs are pretty rare here (and local Apple IMC doesn't do much about changing the situation, preferring to slack off), so the fact that about 100 Mac users meet together is a big happening for us.

Along with me, Pavel, our beta tester, will come over; also Alex Lagutin from Rogue Amoeba Software will be coming on a separate train (he lives in the same city as I do).

See you Monday!

Just a quick note to you all that Menu Master update I've been talking much about is finally out. I have been unable to defeat Adobe InDesign this far, however I got some interesting thoughts on how to make it work in the future revisions of the haxie.

Other than that, it is a much recommended update. It now allows you to set FKey shortcuts without modifiers, fixes a bug with shortcuts not being remembered across launches, and plenty of other issues you've reported.

Menu Master 1.0.1 (910 K, internet-enabled)

This is kind of a personal entry, but it gets to technology eventually. I had an absolutely super day at work today. I overslept and woke up at about 6:36 AM instead of 6 AM. It seems my alarm didn't go off which was not a good thing. When I arrived at work, the phone by my station had the forward light off. The administrative secretary is gone this week so she wasn't able to switch it. I really hate answering the phone. I'm not exactly a people person over the phone. Probably why no one calls me and I'm not allowed to call anyone. I called the help desk three times asking for help on the forwarding, followed the instructions perfectly and no go. The third time my call went unanswered.

After all that, I was told by the assistant principal the network was down. I did a few checks and indeed it was. I called the help desk again and was told someone was already on the way. The guy arrived and the T1 line was down (it didn't even transmit power). I had to show him which T1 line was live because all schools are supposed to have at least two connections, but we have only one at our school. Anyways, he called AT&T to see what the problem was, and I guess they immediately called Qwest and blamed it on them. AT&T provides our service but Qwest owns the lines. I hope Qwest goes bankrupt soon so that they can get bought out by someone that knows what they are doing. Qwest actually sent a guy down as well which was a first since they've never actually cared before for the internet access. The guy confirmed it was a problem with the line and left to go down the street to try to fix it.

Meanwhile, we have absolutely no access to the internet, email, or worse, SASI, our student information database program. The PCs are also pretty much dead because Office is stored on the server and it took 15 minutes to log into the barely working server. You could also not print from the PCs because we have a Novell network and the PCs have to go through the district servers and then back to the actual printer at the school. Macs can print fine. On an aside, I really hate that the people that actually work at the school (me) cannot configure or name printers on the Novell network. Normally the printers are named by room so that someone that isn't me can easily find out where the printers are and can choose which one they want. But because we have moved a lot of printers around, it seems the namer and configuration person is getting lazy and just naming the printers after colors like red, blue, yellow, and green. One of the printers is a color (crayon) printer and the rest are monochrome printers.

The secretaries and other office personnel really need access to SASI and the server. All the students schedules and other information is on SASI and people often come into get their kid for an appointment or something and need to find out where their child is. With SASI down it requires looking through a 500 page book with printed schedules that is extremely out of date since it was printed 3 days before school started. One of the parents came into register their kid as a new student but we couldn't without SASI so we just had to tell the student that she'll have to start on Thursday instead of tomorrow (Wednesday) not that she cared since it meant she got an extra day of school off. Another person had since came down from the district and they were trying to figure out why the computers were so slow and why one of them said INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE all of a sudden. They repeatedly asked if I had installed anything recently and when they spoke to each other, they'd first look around to see if I was there, as if they were going to blame the slowness on me. They seemed to completely ignore the fact that every computer (Mac and PC) was configured to always have a network and the computers would fail miserably when there wasn't one. This was also the most likely reason why the server died and they were basically wasting their time trying to fix it. I mean, all these problems occurred sometime soon after the network died. No one has been using the computers since then.

So basically I had nothing to do today which made me feel extremely guilty. Even more so after I read Jamie's post (odd url). She did so much today and I just sat there waiting for the end of the day. When I went home, the network was still down and the two district guys had left to "monitor our situation" from another school.

Oh well, I'm just glad a new South Park is on tomorrow. Although I wish that someday Unsanity is mentioned, for bad or for worse, any publicity is good publicity. I love how South Park is "almost" live. Sometimes it's even more live than shows like The Daily Show, David Letterman, or Jay Leno since I've heard that these shows usually aren't done until maybe 7 hours before airtime. IIRC, Leno and Letterman are filmed at 3pm and TDS is filmed the day before. Still, there is nothing like standing in line at Safeway for about 20 minutes waiting for someone to reboot their computer for the next day.

It is a common tendency for the operating system makers to try and incorporate as much functionality into the OS from the start. Since I am most versed with Macs in general and Mac OS X in particular, let's use this as an example.

Mac OS X comes bundled for "digital lifestyle", as the company proclaims it. To back up that slogan, you get plenty of stuff "for free" (of course embedded into the cost of the whole operating system) - iTunes to convert CDs into digital format and play the music, iPhoto to import stuff from your digital camera and catalog it, iMovie and iDVD to master and burn out movies imported from your digital camcorder.

iCal gives you a neat looking calendar/scheduling application; Address Book gives you a control over your contacts; iSync will synchronize all this to various digital devices you've got. Cool.

All of these applications do what they claim to do (almost), and did I mention they look cool? Brushed metal interface, all these little buttons and nifty effects like animated opening of the burn button.

Matter aside, these applications do what they are made for, and they are easy enough for a new user to learn. However, in my vision, they lack one thing: any appeal to a semi-experienced user. Let's see why:

• They often lack the features a semi-power user needs;
  
• Many appears as half-baked, even though they are at version 2.0+ (iMovie, for example, lacks many of the little itsy bitsy things such as contextual menus in some areas, etc);
  
• Their interface, though attractive, does not syncs well with the rest of the system (it was discussed a lot on Macinblogs lately);
  
• And the most important part, they are slow (about the only exception I can think of is iTunes).

Let's take a more close look at the last point: speed. It is understandable that carrying an advanced featureset and lots of media manipulations can't be all that speedy, but we're talking about the interface responsiveness here. I am, trying to assemble my first home-made movie in iMovie, using a semi-modern Mac (dual-Ghz), don't like clicking into a movie fragment and waiting for half a second for the system to understand I clicked in and update the UI. I don't like browsing through the iPhoto library with an ocassional coffee breaks every time i click on an up arrow because my library contains about 600 photos. And I am pretty certain that an average user feels the same way as I do - "if this is an application for a digital lifestyle, why does it feels like molasses?"

My opinion is that the applications we get bundled with system, "for free", while proving the point the system is modern and ahead of competition, can, in fact, frustrate the user who just bought a Mac and tries to use all of the stuff. Sure, it can manipulate photos, but does it matter if it becomes a pain to do so? Does it makes the user feel he overpaid for the system he just purchased? We all understand that the "free" applications are, in fact, not free, as their development costs are incorporated into the cost of the OS itself.

Does this means we all fall for a false advertising and pay more for stuff we don't actually need or can't use reliably? Does this means Apple, and other OS vendors, are just filling the "feature checklist", without caring much about the quality of the end product, and, as a result, about its customers? Does this means that we, as the users, are encouraging this behavior by sheepingly buying whatever is offered to us?

Questions aside, I believe Mac OS X is the most promising operating system out there; but we should question the quality of the bundled features, not the availability of them.

What do you think?

Nice, just got this at our corporate mailbox:

Dear Sir/Madam

I have graduated with a Diploma in Textile Design and Technology at
the (removed). I have a strong interest in designing,
gained through my exposure to elective coursework in designing
textiles, knowledge of understanding colour and fabric formation.

I assume we get the email because we happen to have a product called Silk. Sure, this sounds a bit about fabric, and I guess that's why we got the email in the first place. Still, silly, either the guy used a bulk mailing on a pre-determined keyword-based email list harvested by spam bots, or just sent it to everybody.

No, man, we don't do textile design. Yet. Wait a few months until we turn into a mega corporation handling everything from knit socks to entertainment robots. Or maybe not.

This school district is RIF'ing (Reduction In Force, IIRC) about 163 or so staff members. This is about 6-8 staff members per school which equates to about 180 students. All to drive the districts costs down. They're also cutting some programs such as art, music, and life management (economics) which is extremely silly. They could seriously be cutting their technology budget. They think just because you throw money at technology that it somehow makes them excused for not knowing how to use the technology. The district switched to PCs because that's what everyone else is doing. I guess they shouldn't blame kids that get knocked-up either because "that's what everyone else is doing." Anyways, the switch to PCs has cost a lot of money. It meant buying new computers for all the schools even if the olds ones worked fine. It meant buying new software, training the staff to use them (not yet done), and then hiring people like me for each school. Then it meant having to buy brand new Dell PCs because the 3-4 year old Transources have serious fundamental design flaws and they were all starting to fail. FWIW, Transource had the lowest bid when the district was looking to purchase PCs. I'm told even the Dells are starting to fail at some schools en masse. This is not saving money in the least.

It's even worse that no one here knows how to use technology to it's full potential. All the PCs/Macs are used to search the internet, teach office, and typing. They are not teaching anything creative and they are definitely not helping the student to learn both a non-linear and linear thought process without the ADD. My biggest gripe is that not even the teachers use their computers of if they do, it's not often. One of my bosses the other day said my school had one of the lowest Dell/Student ratio in the district and she wanted to send over some Dells. She wanted 10 teachers that have old Macs and "needed" to be upgraded. Sigh. I just got 7 Transources to replace old Macs (below 5400) a few weeks ago and four teachers told me not to install them because they'd rather use their Mac that they've had for 7 years and that has all their files on it. And how exactly does giving teachers new Dells/PCs help the students in any way? The students don't often get to use the computers because there is only one in each classroom and always more than one student would want to use a computer. I told my boss that getting more Dells here just isn't practical until at least the end of the year.

About three months ago the principal ordered an identical Dell for him and the assistant principal. Both have graphite iMacs as their primary computer and the district has told them that all administrative personnel must be on PCs by the end of this year. The order was lost for about two months and when the PC we received is not what we ordered (it came with a 15 inch LCD flat panel instead of the 18 inch we ordered). I have no clue why the principal wanted an LCD screen or why he wanted a wireless keyboard/mouse. Personally I find them both a waste of money for a school district. The assistant principal did not receive his computer and he's been stressing over it because the parents at another school have been talking like he won't be here next year. It was even worse because he was typing the wrong passwords which caused his to worry even more about being canned. Which is very possible, since parents and other people not directly involved with them that make the decisions do not understand how important it is to have both a principal and an assistant principal. One is the decision maker and one is the disciplinarian their duties do not overlap and without two there would be horrible time scheduling problems.

That's another thing. I have this set up as a well oiled machine. The teachers never contact me because of problems because either they just don't like me or there really isn't any problems. So I just sit here all day waiting for something to break. The teachers/staff always ask me if I am busy when they have a problem. Usually I just chuckle. I guess I could say "Yeah, but you're problem is far more important than what I am doing right now" which would honestly be the truth but it sounds like I am making fun of them or something and I can't exactly do that. If I know the teacher well enough I will definitely joke like "you're so needy" or "stop being lazy" which is also the truth with some of these teachers but I say it in a joking manner. Is it wrong for me to become extremely bitter if I see others happy even if they are complete strangers?

Because of where I sit in the office, I get to hear pretty much all the staff members talk about the other staff members. I've never seen so much "hate" and mistrust before. Three people could be talking badly about one person and then one of them leaves and the other two talk badly about the person that just left. It's really depressing. Worse, a lot of what is said is true. The staff members are especially angry with the administration because the administrators were supposed to tell them, in person, that they were canned. They just received notices in their boxes and had a form to sign to say they received the notice. I saw so much crying the day people were notified...

I am ready to give up on iPhoto. Since I got a digital camera, and it started filling up with photos, it has been an increasing pain. The more pictures you get in the library, the more slower it gets (surprise, surprise!).

So now I am ready to give up on iPhoto and switch to some other, alternative image catalog program. Can you make a suggestion?

I need to:

• View my photos
  
• Rotate them 90 degrees
  
• Print them
  
• Export them to a smaller size
  

Anything else that iPhoto offers, I don't need. Alright, I also wouldn't mind a camera import option, but I can live without it, since there's Image Capture.app.

So, what is a good, fast replacement?

So I am sitting here today trying to make Menu Master work with InDesign (as mentioned before). The app from the inside is amazing. Or at least the way it works. I haven't touched anything else, but the way it treats menus in the menubar is worth mentioning.

First of all, when you pull down any menu in the menubar, it creates it from scratch by first removing all old menu items and then calling InsertMenuItemText() repeatedly for each item. Fine. It also passes a wrong item index to the call (afterItem parameter), being always off by 1 past the actual menu bounds. Still fine, toolbox is trained to catch these quirks.

Now, when you choose any of the submenus, it actually creates a new menu with a new menu ID and fills it up. I don't know what to do about this since Menu Master stores the shortcut preferences based on the item's menu ID, and since this is completely dynamic, it's hard to make it work as is.

And last thing... Once you actually assign a shortcut, InDesign will completely ignore it, consulting its internal table of shortcuts, without even attempting to use the required Carbon call to check for the menu shortcuts, making the Menu Master shortcuts you've set totally useless. Nice, mm?

I will continue looking for solutions, but if I will fail, that's another application to the Menu Master exclude list. Sigh.

And now let's end this little rant and declare a message to all the programmers out there:

Please, please, please, do not try to re-invent the wheel and use the system supplied calls for performing standard things.

ClearDock was updated to version 1.2.3. What's new?

• Fixed a bug with application rectangle colors not working if the Dock was in position other than Bottom.
  
• Fixed a bug with colors being not applied when chosen from the named color sets.
  
• Optimized the code for better performance.
  

ClearDock 1.2.3 (224 K)

Argh. Downloaded a copy of Adobe InDesign Trial to investigate why Menu Master isn't affecting it. Tried to install.

The installer quits all running applications. WTF?! Adobe installer engineers, OS9 days are over, there's no need to quit everything to install a copy of your application in the system. Ugh.

Well people, I got completely frustrated with Safari timing out with this stupid 60 second timeout message whenever I try to access eSellerate sales reports and other similar db-driven pages, so this was born in about an hour -

Introducing SafariNoTimeout 1.0 - a haxie (that doesn't requires APE, btw) that sets the connection timeout in Safari to 10 minutes (or different value if you feel like doing defaults write stuff in Terminal). I find it useful for own needs, so maybe some of you will find it useful too. Who knows? ;)

Download @ http://www.unsanity.net/safari-no-timeout-10.dmg

Feel free to comment, but please don't ask me to fix this or that in Safari - Safari team in general and Dave do a great job on that on their own!

It's getting that time of year again when the temperature here in lovely Phoenix will reach 110° F and I need a new jacket/coat for the weather. Right now I'm wearing a black leather jacket, but that gets way too hot when you're walking a few miles with your back against the sun and since there are no clouds here, it's even worse.

I'm looking for suggestions on a nice black, light (as in weight), breathable fabric jacket. My only requirements are that it be long (below my butt, but above my thighs), it be black, it has two pockets on the inside (breast pockets?) one on each side, two pockets on the outside, a collar, and it should be colorfast (not fade easily). My old jacket faded too much over the years and is unwearable. I really don't care who makes it. It could be from a reputable online store, Robinsons-May, Sears, JCPenny, Nordstrom, Neimen-Marcus, Dillards, or any place like that. Oh yeah, and no logos on it like Nike or something like that.

Why does it have to be black? It's part of my "look". I wear a black coat/jacket; a plain, long t-shirt; and plain, cotton pants (no denim). It makes me extremely recognizable to those that know me or have seen me (sadly) and I feel most comfortable wearing those clothes.

And for those that think it's too hot and insane to be doing this, I've done it for at least the last 8 years. It's what I do. Because of the high temperature here, all of the buildings/stores in this area of their air conditioning set to somewhere between 30°-50° F below the outside temperature and it's even lower for movie theaters. Always wearing a jacket helps a lot. I often hear comments like "I should have brought a jacket" when people are in restaurants as well. But I tell you one thing, I'd rather be in Phoenix in 110° F weather in the summer than in New York City in 80°-90° F weather in the summer with their humidity.

It was bound to happen sometime. I've had such good luck so far. I didn't cross my fingers before clicking "Install". I didn't smile at enough people last week. The stars were aligned against me.

For whatever reason, the 10.2.5 update was not my friend. It seemingly ate my preferences folder from my home directory. This may seem a small thing, but after an hour of using my computer I began to get very annoyed. At first I just ignored all the little signs that something was up. I just chalked it up to "10.2.5 reset some things". Finally I began to investigate. Lo and behold, my ~/Library/Preferences directory was looking very very slim. I began to curse and scream at Apple. How could they do this to me? I did not back up my prefs. (no clue why not...rest assured I will in the future)

So after crying for a while, and beginning a plan to re-construct my valuable preferences and get important things working, (Mail.app) I thought to myself "self, you should look in the Trash". Guess what I found there? Yup, a nice shiny...or not so shiny...folder named "Preferences". Sheesh Apple...of all the places to put it, could you have put it anywhere more obvious. Figures I'd look there last.

The strangest part of all of this is I was up and running for a while. I of course restarted after the install and then I launched all the usual apps. Mail was up and running fine for a few hours. Somewhere between the restart and the Moment of Discovery, the Preferences folder found its way to the Trash.

Phew. What a load of fun. I've yet to try to figure out any actual reason for the above. If anyone knows...(S.Jobs, this better not be a nasty prank because you don't like us shading windows ;) ) clue me in.

A few recent threads on MacNN set me off a bit.

A couple of our fellow Macintosh friends feel that us developers just aren't giving away enough free software. We are actually charging for our work. (can you believe our nerve!?!)

My rant appears here: The Mac Development community

The original thread that started it: Windowshade or rollup feature?"

Am I nuts? I just can't understand how a person can be mad, upset, offended, or even slightly miffed that a developer would charge for their product(s).

Sound off, go crazy, and who knows...maybe I'll change my thinking. ...As soon as I can go down to the store and pick up a new set of tires for my car because last years model had a better set. ;)

Menu Master 1.0 was a success, thanks to you. And of course, a couple of glitches did surface:

• Inability to change shortcuts for some applications like Adobe Photoshop and Thoth;
  
• Menu Master not remembering the shortcuts across application launches (Eudora and some others);
  
• Not showing a list of customized shortcuts in the Menu Master preference pane.
  

Last bug was fixed within 3 hours after the initial release of Menu Master, so if you see it, download Menu Master again. Today I fixed the first two bugs, and now pending some other misc stuff that surfaced when fixing them (heh), I'll work on the remaining one. So overall, it looks pretty darn good, and we expect a 1.0.1 release sometime next week or so, after we do some testing on the changes.

Thank you for your support and please drop us a note if anything is missing from Menu Master!

If you, after reading this entry, will call me a total dork, go ahead. Why am I saying that?

Today, I dumped my SonyEricsson T68i phone in favor of the old phone I was using, Sony CMD-Z5.

Since I purchased the T68i for own birthday back in October, I felt it's way too much for my needs. It looked like a fine idea - being able to Bluetooth to the phone, GPRS to the Internet, and all that jazz, not to mention it comes from Sony, a company I like when it comes to consumer electronics.

However, after a few months of use, I was greatly disappointed with it. Maybe I am not a typical cellphone user, but I really couldn't find any advantages of T68i over my old CMD-Z5 that I kept in a closet.

T68i offers a color screen. Wow. Why in the world a cellphone would need a color screen? No, really. Other than factoring the price up a few dollars, I really see no advantages of a color LCD over a B&W one. Sure, you can set funky images as the background for your cell provider name, and get nice "screensaver" picture when the phone goes to idle state. But see, I use my cellphone to make and receive calls when I am on the go, and I don't use the screen for things other than looking up a phone number I am about to dial, or ocassionally to glance at it to see the time (if I managed to forget my wristwatch at home).

Second, T68i has a joystick-like stick to navigate menus and control the phone. My hands might be not the right kind, but the stick thing is way too uncomfortable in handling. It goes in wrong directions at times, and it often shifts to the left or right when you try to click it, making it select the wrong menu item. Painful. Even the up/down buttons on Nokia phones are more convenient than this. CMD-Z5, on comparison, has a jog-dial control, which is very easy to use with an index finger, since it is located on the side of the phone.

T68i has obvious software flaws at times. Since it has no flip thing, you have to turn on the keys lock thing to prevent ocassional input when the phone hangs in your pocket. Getting used to the whole "press C then YES to unlock the keyboard before doing anything" thing was pretty hard for me, being spoiled by the "open the flip and there you go" trick in CMD-Z5. But this isn't the point. The point is that even though T68i has keys locked, it still can be turned off from the keyboard. I've had too much cases when I go out, put the phone in my pocket, and then at the end of the day realize it turned itself off sometime during the day, and that I have missed any calls that were made at that time. Just great. This particular thing was driving me insane; I had to take out the phone out of the pocket every half hour or so to make sure it still is turned on.

Next, the menu system. This has to be related by the style of the input device on each phone (joystick on T68i, jog-dial on CMD-Z5), since CMD-Z5 has some sort of spooky looking rotating array of menus that slide into focus as you rotate the dial -- not the best implementation possible, but not the worst; T68i has a set of 4x4 icons (or was it 3x3?) that you access with the joystick. As I said before, joystick shifts to sides when you click it at times, so you end up selecting a wrong menu. Bad idea. And don't think T68i menus have anything in common with older Sony phones. It's an Ericsson menu, and the whole phone is an Ericsson phone, having nothing from Sony other than the name "SonyEricsson".

Games. Oh right, T68i has way more games than CMD-Z5 does. I've played them for about two times on both phones. If I know I will have to wait and have to kill time somehow, I either bring a book with me or a GameBoy Advance.

Answerring machine. For some reason, T68i, being all advanced, didn't implement that feature, even though it does have a voice recorder built in. CMD-Z5 has it, and boy, it is handy. Sometimes, when I am driving a car, I don't feel like answerring the phone, yet it will pick up the call for me and record a message. Maybe not essential to many people, but essential for me for sure.

So, as you may have figured, I am a simple person and don't use the most advanced features found in T68i. I don't need the organizer, or the timers, or the color LCD. My experience with T68i was frustrating, so I switched back to the phone I liked. Now I just wish it had Bluetooth and GPRS, so I can ditch the T68i completely. For now, it will sit on my shelf until I'll want to connect to the Internet from my tibook. Thank you, SonyEricsson, you're not for me.

I just signed up for TiVo's Home Media Option and I must say, I've very disappointed. They have demos of it online.

First, let's talk about...

Click the More Link below to see the rest.

installation. In order for the TiVo to see your computer, you mist install the TiVo Desktop software. This was painless on my iBook, although it does not exactly tell you just what you are installing nor how to access it. You download the file, the disk image mounts, and the installer launches automatically. However, there is no read me included on the disk image either, and there is no documentation on the Mac version software on TiVo's software website. I had to do a search for "TiVo" on my hard drive to find out where it had been installed. (/Library/PreferencePanes/) Once I had installed it, all I had to do was open the preference pane and click start. It saw my iTunes playlists and my iPhoto albums. I checked the ones I wanted to share and clicked start.

My desktop was a different story. When I first downloaded it and it auto launched, it told me to quit the System Preferences. I did, but I had to quit the installer and double click the .pkg folder for the installer which seems to have defeated the purpose of an auto launch installer. I install it, then immediately open the preference pane. No iTunes playlists or iPhoto playlists are shown. No error either. I wonder if there is some sort of error occurring and I check the Console (/Applications/Utilities/Console). I see an error about the plist format being incorrect and it needs to be UTF-8 but it's retrying as if it were. I guess it lied to me about the retrying part. I open the xml file in BBEdit, change the format to Unicode and UTF-8 and save it. Then I reopened the preference pane and it saw my iTunes playlist. It, however, did not see my iPhoto albums. I decided to open iPhoto 2 and it had told me it was going to update my library. I guess I had forgot to ever launch iPhoto 2 after I had installed it. This time the preference pane saw the albums.

Now, for the TiVo part. The TiVo automatically saw my computer's shares in Music & Photos. To get this, you must have the TiVo OS 4.0 or later installed. It will be installed in the next few weeks automatically or you can force it by purchasing the Home Media Option, waiting a few hours, then go to Messages & Setup>Phone Connection>Make Daily Call Now then resetting the TiVo after it gets done and the screen says "Pending Restart".

Photos The photo option had a few "online" photos that I guess are stored on TiVo's servers. These photos are organized into groups like Spring, Exotic (I thought it said Erotic) and some other group. These photos are nothing to write home about. I guess they were just proof of concept. I went to my photos. When you choose an Album to view, it shows the thumbnail images of the pictures in the album after a short loading time. You can go to anyone, hit Select on the TiVo remote (that's another rant altogether), and then choose "Show Full Screen". Seems like one too many extra steps. If you want to start a slide show, you can then press the Play button on the TiVo remote. Actually, all these steps are listed online here. I can't say I agree with TiVo's choice of Chan Up/Down to go to the next or previous picture in the slide show. Completely unintuitive. It should be the fast forward/rewind buttons and it should remove the option to change the speed using those since you can choose the slide show speed in the options (Step 4 in the above URL). The TiVo shows massive flicker when displaying a picture full screen, it's very annoying. If the TiVo is available to those countries with PAL or SECAM (the French), I pity the flicker they'd have to deal with. I'm not sure if the TiVo supports playing hierarchical items or not. Does anyone know if it can play all photos in all subfolders?

Music This is slightly neater but also very lame. It's odd, but there are a few main stream songs on the "Music on TiVo Online" option. When you choose this, you can listen to a few songs you don't have on your TiVo. I guess this isn't so odd since AOL Time-Warner is a TiVo investor. When you choose your Mac from the list in Music & Photos, it shows folders for "iTunes Songs", "iTunes Albums", and "iTunes Artists". It also shows the little iTunes playlist icon for iTunes playlists but it doesn't show the iTunes Smart Playlist icon. The steps for playing a song are online here. There is no way to show the progress bar without fast forwarding or rewinding. The music shows up in this little box in the center of the screen that shows the current song number (like 12/15), the artist, the title, the genre, and I believe the album. If you notice, there is no screenshot of the playing window and that's probably for the best. It's very plain. That is the only information shown. It dims slightly if you don't do anything for about 15 minutes, but that's still enough light to cause burn-in on some TVs like rear-projection big screen TVs, suck. Navigating the playlist is even worse. If you have a lot of songs (128 for a min example or 7000 for a max example), it's a pain to scroll through them. You have to keep hitting chan down over and over to scroll to the screen that contains your song. And you can't hit chan down quickly in succession either, you have to wait a few seconds. It'd be nice if it would use left/right to go to the next or previous letter of the alphabet. No one can defeat the Cobras... err iPod.

I have no use for the Multi-Room Viewing option since I only have one TiVo. Even if I had more than one, it'd cost an addition $49 per TiVo to get them hooked up to the Home Media Option and it already costs $99 for one! It refuses to let me schedule shows online. Says I either don't have the home media option or don't have a Series2 DVR. I obviously have both so I'll have to call and yell at TiVo when I get home.

Honestly, I don't think this is a very good option. Especially since there is nothing really special about the Home Media Option and most importantly, it doesn't allow you to save your TV shows or watch them on your computer. Although, it does seem to allow your TiVo to connect to other computers on the inernet with the TiVo Desktop software installed. Posted by rosyna at 12:53 PM