Just noticed that our friends at Rogue Amoeba have released a new app I've been testing for a while, called Nicecast.
This is an amusing little tool. It takes any audio from any application (using the Audio Hijack Pro backend, it seems), and streams it to the world, re-compressing on the fly, so you can tune in with any player that supports streams (iTunes, WinAmp and even QuickTime Player) and listen to the stream. This opens up quite a lot of possible uses. All in all, a nice lil app to try, I think.
Now waiting for my ad comission, Rogue Amoeba -- and best of luck on the OS X Conference! ;)
WindowShade X 3.1 is now available for your download. Thanks to everybody who submitted the bug reports and feedback!
I've recently hit a bug in the iChat AV: I've been trying to add a new buddy, and it replied me with the "Feedbag Error 17", then the person would go 'offline' from the iChat point of view, making it impossible to message the same person again.
So I went ahead and filed a bug on it on the Apple's Radar. This is the reply I've received to my bug:
Thank you for the bug report on iChat AV. Please know that the ability to add more than 150 buddies is a limitation imposed by the AIM server. The lack of a good error message is a known issue that is currently being investigated by engineering.
Ack. OK, now I know this is ain't Apple's fault I cannot add any more buddies to my list. That doesn't makes me feel any better though -- are we in 1980 again when AOL decided that "150 buddies outta be enough for everybody" as in "640K outta be enough..."? I realize I may be a talkative person, and have more buddies than many of other people do, but man, I want the ability to talk to more than 150 people, and I don't want anybody to control how many friends I should have.
Oh well. Maybe someday they will upgrade their servers, or something. Until then, I'll stick to 150 chosen few.
UPDATE April 2, 2004: There are a follow-up to the problem here. Check it out.
Hey Unsane Ones!
Long time reader, first time poster. I'm Jason Harris, the author of Mighty Mouse. Nice to meet you all. :)
Below is a beta of Mighty Mouse with a bit of Panther goodness added. It worked pretty well in Panther before this update; this just clears up a few minor issues and makes Mighty Mouse aware of fast-user switching.
Enjoy, and let us know if there are any problems!
- Updated for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.
- Added the volume slider to control the volume of the Xounds sound effects.
- Added support for Rogue Amoeba's Detour v1.2.
Just a quick note we have posted a page that contains Mac OS X 10.3 Panther compatibility information for our haxies. The page will be updated as we progress with the compatibility updates:
http://www.unsanity.com/panther.php
WindowShade X 3.1b4 (release is available)
- Once again improved shadows handling under Panther.
- Fixed a bug with live shadow preview not being shown in the WSX Preference Pane.
- Fixed an issue with WindowShade X Preference Pane name being shown as com.unsanity.windowshadex in System Preferences (Mac OS X 10.2).
We're close to the release, I hope!
As promised here, I am posting a build of Metallifizer that has a preliminary support for stripping out brushed metal out of Panther's Finder.
Metallifizer 1.3a1 (APE only)
Couple of notes:
- I have only tested this on Panther, so I have no idea if it works on Jaguar; if you use Jaguar, you best still be using 1.2 as this version offers no advantages suitable for 10.2.
- I suggest adding Finder.app into the settings panel manually. it's in /System/Library/CoreServices/ directory.
- Other Carbon applications will probably not look good at all metallifized.
- The separator bar on the Finder windows will not be metal, but it also will not be cleared and will contain various 'tracks' when you drag it around. I didn't have enough time to find out how to defeat this, but if you're brave and have the abilities, the sources are in the SDK.
- If anything goes wrong,
defaults delete com.unsanity.metallifizer
Also, posting a new build of WindowShade X 3.1 fixing an issue with the shadows and failure to start up of some applications // crashing in Photoshop when accessing the Apple Color Picker:
WindowShade X 3.1b3 (see here for a newer beta)
As I have mentioned before, this is not for public consumption - do not link to the files. Feel free to link to this blog entry from your blogs, forums, whatever, just not the public news sites.
If you missed the previous entry, get the Application Enhancer 1.4.1 from there: [Let Me Show You The World In My Eyes]
As you may know, Apple is finally doing a staged release of the GM version of Panther to the ADC members with seed access. We were hard at work on the Panther compatibility ourselves, and we think it's time to share what we've got at this point with you guys.
Please be advised that the links below point to beta quality software. This means, it may make your OS crash. If it does, please let me know at the slava[at]unsanity.com. Two betas below were specifically updated to fix some of the Panther glitches. Other haxies have not yet been updated, so please proceed with caution if you use them.
If you run a news site, please do not post links to the files -- we are not yet ready to release these to the masses, so please keep these files on this site only. However, you are free to link directly to this blog post from your blogs (no links from public news sites, please!).
Application Enhancer 1.4.1
Application Enhancer SDK 1.4.1 (only if you need it)
WindowShade X 3.1b2 (see this entry for a newer beta)
FruitMenu 3.2b1
All of these should work on Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3. I will be posting the current, a bit unfinished, build of Metallifizer later, when I package it; adventurous minds can compile it from the SDK, as the latest source is included.
ClearDock works as-is on Panther; Menu Master and Dock Detox are not yet recommended for usage under Panther, as they may cause weird behavior under some circumstances.
All in all, let me know either by email or in comments to this post how everything's working.
Update 10/17: Here is the updated WindowShade X build and Metallifizer alpha.
I'll be heading off to Tokyo, Japan in two weeks for a week. Staying at the Cerulean Tower Hotel...
I've never been there before and I am very eager to hear any suggestions on what I should see, what I should do. I wish to go to some out of the way rural town to see what it's like in the Japanese equivalent of "Hickville".
October 12th, 2000, Unsanity LLC opened its doors to the public. We had absolutely no products back then -- our first (now discontinued) product, Unsanity Echo, was released a day later.
Either way, we like to think October 12th is the company's birthday (even though we actually started working together on the first product over than half a year before the official 'doors open' event). I think we have achieved a lot in these 3 years -- mainly because of your feedback, ideas, recommendations to friends and of course your support. We are proud to be the company that serves thousands of Mac OS X users -- even though most of our stuff is not shown in your Docks, it's there, and it makes your life a little bit easier.
Brian, Gregg, Pavel, Rosyna: happy birthday to us too -- I like to think of my company's birthday as the second birthday for me.
;)
Apple and their practices with their developers excite me one day and confuse and annoy me the next.
The seed process and development of Panther over the past few months has been no secret. The fact that Apple seeded developers pretty much weekly was published all over the net. In fact, I found myself checking various rumor sites to find when the new builds were available. They had the latest seed information minutes after Apple made them available and it was easier than logging into my ADC account and checking there.
I loved having the weekly seeds even though I ended up only installing about every other one since they were so frequent. I can imagine for many developers it helped them a lot in their product development and panther compatibility updates. This has been a good thing for both parties...up until recently.
Now I feel more like we were used as a massive testing pool for Apple to leverage and then cast off when they got what they wanted. Here we are, 14 days away from "Panther Night", and developers who pay a very healthy sum of money to Apple are left using an relatively older build of Panther. Now that it is crunch time, I guess we're supposed to develop and test our products using a pre-release build and then hope nothing has changed when the final goes into consumers hands on the 24th.
To be somewhat realistic and fair, in all likelihood nothing major has or will change that affects most developers. But it's the principle of the thing. I didn't pay Apple to be a beta tester. I paid for a service that would enhance my ability to produce our products and run our business, and it seems like we're getting the shaft when it counts. We would like to have our products ready for the release date. We would like to ensure, to the best of our ability, that they work with the version consumers will install. But in the current scenario we don't get that option and it annoys me to no end.
I can imagine various reasons for Apple doing this, and most of them make some sense for Apple, but that's just it, they make sense for Apple, not the developer community.
I imagine Apple's thinking could be something like this: "If we release the final Panther to developers, then it will go out all over the net early thus hurting our sales."
My response: "Too bad suckers. It's already out there anyway. We paid for special treatment, now give me my final version of Panther!"
UPDATE: I am now downloading a newer version of Panther from ADC. Many thanks to the powers that be at ADC for 10 days advance access. I would have hoped for more, but I'll go with the glass is half full view and not cry over what is history now. :)
While working on Labels X update for Panther today, I discovered an interesting thing: Apple engineers has added the calls to read and write label names and colors (GetLabel/SetLabel was there before, but SetLabel was a single blr, plus they worked with Str255 so localized label names were a hassle -- new calls work with CFStrings). What is most fun, though, is that the calls return proper new names (Red, Orange, Yellow etc), but old colors (Essential, In Progress etc). In fact, Finder.app completely ignores the colors returned and seems to use its very own, hardcoded values. WTF? The quest continues tomorrow...
Another random note is Image Capture.app -- I have noticed there is that spiffy rotating cube effect in the importing pictures sheet when it imports multiple pictures from the digital camera. Neat.
Google AdWords and the like can be very, very bad and inappropriate at times. Roy Horn, of Siegfried and Roy was mauled by a tiger (Democrat friendly link available, but with no ads) he was performing with on Friday.
The story is sick enough but the ads on the page advertise tickets for Siegfried and Roy which has been cancelled indefinitely. Here is a screenshot:
I spent a few more minutes on Metallifizer: Panther Edition yesterday in between updates of WindowShade X for Panther, and achieved some better results:
As you can see, metal is no longer in the window, and the curved sides on the bottom side of the window are gone too, which matches Aqua windows. The only glitch remaining is related to the splitter area in between the left shortcuts area and main file view: it is not getting properly erased so if you drag it around, you can see trails on it. But that is pretty much fixable, I just have to devote some more time to it.
Seriously. They must hate me. I ordered my G5 (Dual, +Bluetooth, +9800, -Modem) on 7/23/03 via the ADC Store. It was supposed to ship on or before 10/02/03. Well, it's 10/02/03 today and it hasn't shipped.
Other people that have ordered long after me have already received theirs. Check out this thread on the MacNN forums. Some ordered a month after me and received theirs already. When Apple says it's first come, first serve, THEY ARE LYING! I know someone that ordered 2 days before I did and he received his last week.
It's not just the fact I've not gotten mine yet or that people can pick up a dual G5 now at their local Apple Store that bugs me so much. What does bug me is that my account got authorized for the charge 7 times over 5 weeks. Every time the account was authorized I was locked out of it for the day ($3000 daily limit). I eventually got so fed up with it that I just applied for and got an Apple Instant Loan then after a little bit of hassle was able to put the G5 on the loan. For a silly experiment I added a wireless Bluetooth keyboard to the order (this was on the day after they were announced) that wasn't supposed to be available for another 2 weeks. The Keyboard arrived at my door the next Monday. Maybe Apple is shipping out G5s alphabetically by middle name in which case I should get mine before someone named "Zelda" but after "Zachary"
Another thing that proves Apple hates me. I filed a technical support incident on August 22nd. I still have not received a reply from them (yes, I did ask what was going on, with no answer). Apple says there is a three day turnaround for incidents. Well, it has been over 5 weeks.
Update: Everyone else seems to be reporting Apple upgraded their shipping method for free. Mine was originally for standard overnight and it has been downgraded (not by me) to "bestway" which I am told means Ground.
For the person that asked a while ago, Todai is a really good place. All you can eat Japanese food. Fabulous deserts and crepes that are made to order. Yum. Yum.
Well, did a quick update to Metallifizer (not out publically yet) so it supports Carbon applications, primarily to see what can be done about the Panther Finder:
As it turns out, it works half-way: the window is no longer metallic, but the 'fake' window elements as the bottom status bar and the draggable separator are still metal. I'll see if it's possible to take them out somehow so they don't suck in that metallic patter (might be some new flag available for controls, or whatnot). I'll keep looking.
Application Enhancer beta that runs on Panther has been seeded to the beta testers today. So far so good, and I've done a small chunk of preliminary haxie testing on Panther:
- ClearDock works as-is on my computer;
- Xounds works as-is as well;
- Mighty Mouse also works fine;
- WindowShade X 3 has some quirks in the Minimize-In-Place functionality, and will have to be updated;
- Labels X also work just fine, except they do not respect the label colors new for Panther -- will probably have to be updated to include that functionality;
- FruitMenu also seems to work fine so far.
I'd like to emphasize that this is some very brief testing on my own machine, and I did not test all the features of the abovementioned products, so in the coming days some other quirks might surface. But overall, everything that is not working right is fixable so far, and I am pretty confident we'll have the fully working versions available in the near future.
If you'd like to be included in the beta list, email me your computer configuration from the Apple System Profiler (and I'll leave figuring out my email to you ;).