 Chris M Ward's .mac website

Welcome to
Chris M Ward's
.mac
website

This site is about Mac stuff from the perspective of someone who has comparitively recently (2005) acquired an Apple Mac (17" Powerbook G4) after over a decade of PC use. I tend to spend a lot of time deciding on what is best rather than rushing out and buying the first thing I see, and thought some of what I have learnt might be of use to others moving up from those beige things that crash a lot.

I'm in the UK, so some things discussed on this page have a British perspective, these are marked with this image.

If somebody somewhere finds something useful here my life will have been worthwhile.

All the really interesting stuff is over there →

FAQ

What does the M stand for?
Magnificent

What does FAQ stand for?
Fundamentally Asinine Question?
Fleetingly Answered Queries?
French Artichoke Quiche?
Frank Acumen Quiz?
Fearfully Amusing Quotations?
Fancy Abbreviation Quandary?

What persuaded you to buy a mac?
In 2004, the staggering 60Gb capacity of the iPod made me pay attention to what Apple were doing. I wanted a portable computer, and the Powerbook outshone any PC design by several stardates:

The way the power light snores when it's in sleep mode.
The illuminated logo on the back.
The almost invisible catches.
The two colour LED in the power cable.
All the connectors being on the side instead of hidden round the back.
The illuminated keyboard.
The display that adjusts to the ambient light level.
Even the power transformers are a work of art.

In all it was obvious that somebody had taken the effort to sit down and really think about the design of every component, whereas most PCs just tend to be slapped into whatever knobbly shaped box happens to be lying about. I work on the basis that what you can see on the outside reflects what's on the inside.

I must confess that this photo of Welsh model Ceri Jones (Zero One Management, Newport) might have set something in motion a few years earlier. This photo just wouldn't have worked if she was posing with a PC laptop. If Apple knew how many Powerbooks this had sold they'd pay her a commission. I'd give credit to the photographer too if I knew his name. Somebody will doubtless enlighten me.
What problems have you had switching from a PC to a mac?
Well first of all I haven't switched completely. I have far too much stuff on my PC from decades of using it to just switch at the drop of a hat. My Powerbook was mainly intended for portable use when I'm away from home, but I now use both at home.

Garmin doesn't yet support Mac OS X for their GPS devices.
At MacWorld Expo in January 2006, they announced that they would do so 'by end 2006'. By end 2006 they were saying 'in 2007'.

Any problems with the mac?
No, but there are some little differences that take a bit of getting used to:
• There's no delete key — you have to press fn backspace.
• You have to remember the hash key is alt 3 because it's not printed on the keyboard. Please fix this Apple — you've done the Euro symbol.
• The double quote character is in a different place — this gets me everytime.
Not exactly show stopping problems, considering my PC continues to crash virtually every day...

Times the Powerbook has crashed on its own since April 2005 = 0 (though it did decide to go into a corner and sulk twice when I tried to connect to a Philips Photo Frame via USB, though I much suspect the Philips device to be the guilty party there).

Will you ever buy another PC?
Certainly I've no plans to do so at present. Besides, you can now run Windows on a mac if you really have to.

How do I email you?
It's a .mac account — use your initiative. If you haven't got any initiative I don't want to hear from you :-)

Tips
Some useful tips I've picked up over time.

Multiple email addresses on one account.
Mail does not let you create more than one 'account' using the same hostname and username. So if you need to be able to send using different addresses on the same account, you appear to be stuck with changing the address manually each time. But there's a way round this: in the 'Account Information' 'Email Address' field you can put multiple addresses seperated by commas.
[Credit: Michelle Steiner]

Website icons for iPhone and iPod touch.
To create a nice icon for your website for iPhone and iPod touch users (like the favicon but much prettier), you need a 57 x 57 pixel image linked to your page using this code in the HEAD section:
<LINK REL="apple-touch-icon" HREF="your-icon.png" />
(Don't worry about the pretty curved highlight effect, the iPhone or iPod touch will do that for you!)

Rejects
Software I've tried but rejected.

Path Finder ★★
March 2008
This is an alternative to Finder. I only tried it out for one reason — Apple's refusal to list sub-folders first in Finder. I find this very annoying and sought out a solution.
Path Finder does indeed solve this problem, but it has a number of annoyances that dissuaded me from forking out $35 (£18).
Firstly the interface is far too complex, there seem to be a half dozen ways of doing many tasks and you just end up bemused by all the drawers, toolbars and menus.
Shift select doesn't work as you'd expect it to. Cmd drag copies rather than moves. 'Move' on the menu copies rather than moves.
Most annoying of all is that the trial version only lasts 21 days then just stops completely. The makers don't seem to realise that people are busy and don't have time to spend 21 solid days evaluating the software, more time is needed, or better still permanent trial-ability with some functional limitations.
On the good side it handles icon view properly which Apple screwed up in Finder when they introduced coverflow and still haven't fixed. The info panel in column view is also much more detailed than Finder.
It has potential, and I might consider it again if they unclutter the interface and make the trial version run permanently. Then again Apple could just provide an option to list sub-folders first in Finder :-)
PathFinder is made by Cocoatech.

Microsoft Messenger ★
February 2008
Previously I had this rated as three stars, but didn't use it all that often. Then one day when I launched it to try to help a friend who was having problems with it on her PC, it demanded I download a new version. Then I found out Microsoft had deleted my account without warning because they deemed I hadn't used it often enough. Then when I tried to register a new account I found they try to force you to sign an agreement in which you agree to receive advertising (spam) from them. I told them where they could shove their arrogant attitude.

Warning
Do not try to buy anything from www.datakits.co.uk — this company are utterly useless.

• On 16 Nov 2007, I ordered a Marware Elite case for my iPhone which they claimed to have in stock.
• They sent me an email the next day claiming to have dispatched it.
• A parcel did not turn up until 7 days later (UK post).
• They sent me the wrong style of case, and it was a case for an iPod touch, not an iPhone (The iPod touch is 5mm smaller so the iPhone will not fit).
• I sent an email about this.
• Seven days later, no reply.
• Sent another email complaining about lack of response.
• Seven days later no response.
• On 5th December I managed to find a phone number for them on the intranet and rang — only to get an answering machine message voiced by some bloke who sounded like he couldn't care less about anything. They promised to contact me within 48 hours. I was not optimistic.
• The same day I found an email address for Portsmouth City Council Trading Standards Dept and decided to send another email to Datakits, but CC it to Trading Standards.
• I got a reply from Trading Standards with hours saying they would take the matter up with Datakits.
• On 6th December, low and behold Datakits suddenly decide to respond to my email.
• After arguing about whether the iPhone would fit into an iPod touch case, they asked me to send the incorrect case back and said they would refund the postage, and send the correct case.
• So on 8th December I posted the incorrect case back, cost £1.38.
• On 14th December I received an email from Datakits saying they had dispatched the correct case.
• On the 18th December I got an email saying "We are sorry to have misled you but we are out of stock. We have refunded you." — So not only was their previous email claiming the item had been dispatched obviously a pack of lies, they even had the stupidity (or maybe it was a rare burst of honesty) to admit they deliberately misled me!

• Not until the 12th of January, nearly two months after the original order, and after I emailed a reminder, did I finally get a refund of the postage for returning the incorrect item.

Don't make the same mistake as me and order anything from them, this company do not deserve to be in business.

If you don't believe me search for other mention of this domain on the web, you will find countless other people who have experienced the same couldn't-care-less attitude and bungling incompetence (wish I'd thought of doing that before I ordered from them).

And do you know what? A month after having tried to order the Marware Elite case, nobody else in the UK had one in stock. Perhaps Marware didn't notice the iPhone was being launched in the UK — and quite frankly I've had enough of companies who can't sort themselves out.

Plan B
For the first month I'd been carrying my iPhone around in a leather case that I bought for a Pocket PC some years ago. It was too big for the iPhone, but it protected it well. It is made of good quality leather, has a velcro tab to stop the iPhone falling out, and a mutli-way belt loop that allows the case to be mounted any which way you want on your belt. The case is still in excellent condition despite being some 6 years old. So I checked out the manufacturer's site and found they now do an iPhone case. Right then that's that sorted.
⇨ Nutshell iPhone Case ★★★★★
Hand made in New Zealand. Girlies can even buy it in pretty colours.
I ordered mine on 19th Dec, it was dispatched from New Zealand on 21st Dec, and arrived here in the UK on Jan 16th — it's a long way from New Zealand.
$59.95 + $12.50 Reg Airmail = $72.45 (£35.92 at time of order)
Just the job, but here's a tip: put the iPhone in the case top first if you aren't using headphones, then you can hear the ringer better!

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Mac stuff	Jump to topic
Hardware Some useful bits and pieces that I use with my Mac.	Crumpler Schoolhymn The case I chose to protect my Powerbook from bumps and scratches. Check out the site even if you don't want a case — it's possibly the coolest website in the known cosmos. Alternative UK supplier
	Starck Mouse I first tried a bluetooth mouse (not the Apple one) but it was so bad I sent it back (note that in the jargon of bluetooth mouse sellers, ‘lag’ means it doesn't work properly). So I acquired something else designed by Phillippe Starck — a silver mouse with cool blue lighting that looks superb alongside a powerbook. The cable could do with some design attention though — it looks like a bit of string, perhaps that was the intention but it doesn't quite look right alongside the high tech. Since I bought this, Apple have got over their refusal to compromise the aethestics of their single button mouse design by introducing the touch sensitive Mighty Mouse, and if I were buying a mouse today I'd certainly want to check that out.
	Dension ICE Link A bit of wiring and circuitry that lets you connect your iPod to your car radio. Behold: your entire CD collection in your car — and an empty glovebox!
Software Some useful software that I've added to my Mac. Ratings use the same policy as my iTunes ratings shown below. In alpabetical order.	Azureus ★★★★ A bit torrent client. Allows you see details of your torrents in exquisite detail. Not too obvious how to get started (you need to save torrent files using your browser, and then open them in Azureus) and has locked up a few times, so only 4 stars, but these are relatively minor issues.
	Default Folder X ★★★★ Speeds up access to favourite and recent folders in open and save dialog bozes. Only 4 stars because it really ought to have a menu for the user's root folders.
	Google Earth ★★★★★ Appropriately, this is probably the best free software on the planet Earth.
	info.xhead ★★★★★ A value for money program that provides a perfect secure home for all those little bits of info that you need to keep away from prying eyes — from bank account details to website passwords.
	Line Form ★★★★ An inexpensive vector graphics program that includes support for SVG images. Although fairly simple, the help could be better, and figuring out how to draw curves can be a challenge until you get the hang of it, so only 4 stars.
	Net Monitor ★★★★★ Natty menu bar graph that shows network traffic. Invaluable for seeing whether your connection is actually working.
	Net News Wire ★★★★★ A free RSS app that allows you to view all your RSS feeds in one place and syncs with equivalent mobile RSS readers.
	Opera ★★★★ Safari isn't a bad browser, but if you do a lot of web surfing, it just doesn't have all the trimmings that Opera offers. In particular its bookmarks are hopeless compared to Opera: they are not sorted alphabetically by default which is just plain silly; there is a whole unnecessary tier (A 'Bookmarks Menu' within the Bookmarks menu); you can't add a bookmark to a specific sub menu with just two clicks as you can in Opera; it also doesn't let you store passwords which is a real pain these days. Opera is far more user-friendly but only gets 4 stars because it does have the annoying habit of crashing far more frequently than any other application, though at least you can restart where you left off.
	Perian ★★★★★ A Quicktime component that allows you to view FLV files (Flash videos) in Quicktime. It just works.
	PhotoBook ★★★★★ A Facebook photo viewer that lets you browse your friends Facebook photo albums as easily as you can browse your own on your mac. Freeware, donation optional.
	Quicktime Pro ★★★★★ It's well worth upgrading to the Pro version that let's you save movies from the web and view movies full screen.
	TextMate ★★★★★ I loathe WYSIWYG HTML editors because they have a mind of their own, so I have long used the excellent text editor NoteTab on the PC. I'd searched in vain for something as good for the mac, until one day I found a link to TextMate. It won Best Mac OS X Developer Tool at Apple's WWDC 2006. It has the stunningly useful option 'Save when focus is lost'. Which is a bit like 'lock door when leaving house'. Amazing no-one thought of that before.
iPhone Apps Selected iPhone Apps and Web Apps	FileMagnet ★★★★ Lets you store a variety of file types on your iPhone for viewing off line. A few file types missing at present, such as Excel, but they are being worked on and the update will be free.
iPhone Apps Selected iPhone Apps and Web Apps	Net News Wire ★★★★ Allows you to read all your RSS feeds in one app, and syncs with the desktop version so you don't have to 'read' everything twice.
HTML Entities Here's some useful HTML Entities for Mac users creating web pages. These may not display properly on a PC. (Why can't we have '&apple;' ?)	⌃ ⌃ — Ctrl key ⇧ ⇧ — Shift key ⇪ ⇪ — Shift lock ⌘ ⌘ — Command key ⌥ ⌥ — Option /alt key ⏏ ⏏ — Eject key ★ ★ — 5 pointed star as used in iTunes   — Apple logo More...
iSight Okay so maybe this should be under hardware, but then you wouldn't find the related software would you?	iSight I put off buying this for quite a while, because everyone I knew with a webcam was using MSN Messenger under Windows, and I wasn't convinced you could connect the two.
	aMSN Messenger ★★★ This free program allows you to use the iSight with MSN Messenger users. It allows you to see both your own video stream and the other person's. Plus it allows extensive control of the video picture.
	Mercury Messenger ★★ This allows you to use the iSight with MSN Messenger users. There is said to be a facilty to allow video conferencing but it involves some extra components that I haven't tried out yet.
★ iTunes Ratings iTunes ratings are great for categorizing songs, but how do you decide exactly which rating to give each song? Here's my method:	5 ★★★★★ All time classic. Would always like to listen to this.
	4 ★★★★ Great song. Like to hear often, but would skip it occasionally.
	3 ★★★ Good song. Would buy this, but not an all time favourite.
	2 ★★ Wouldn't buy this, but it's okay.
	1 ★ Not so bad as to need trashing, okay to hear once in a blue moon.
Websites Useful websites for powerbook possessing people.	Apple It would be interesting to discover the proportion of Windows users who visit the Microsoft site on a regular basis — compared to the proportion of Mac users who visit the Apple site.
	Ross Barkman Modem scripts for Mac OS X
	skins.be A most excellent collection of wallpaper (cars, movies, and female celebrities) pre-sized for various screen sizes.
Widgets Aaaah look, a baby program. These cute little things are going to catch on in a big way. There are too many clumbersome programs out there that offer so many features you forget what they all are. A widget just does one thing. Simple. Here's some of my favourites.	Frame URL Put any picture on your dashboard.
	iCal events See what's coming up in your calendar.
	ISS locator See when the International Space Station is overhead.
	RSS News Reader Allows you to read multiple RSS news feeds in one widget.
	Weather widget See the weather for the next 5 days
Wi Fi WiFi's great, or rather it would be if the prices weren't such a ripoff. Monthly charges aren't too bad compared to cable, but most potential users will be travellers who aren't going to go to the same place day-in day-out, so a monthly contract that ties you to one sparsely distributed network is pretty useless, and daily rates are mostly extortionate.	J D Weatherspoon are offering a free 30 minutes of wifi when you purchase a drink or food. wififreespot has a list of locations in the US, Europe (UK is listed under England/Scotland/Wales and includes bars, cafes, pubs, B&B, hotels, etc), and worldwide. BT Openzone has a 23.5p "per minute" PAYG option. I hope this is by Direct Debit but I can't be sure as they expect you to sign up to a 12 month contract and submit all your details before they condescend to tell you how you pay. As of 2007, The Cloud are offering a pay-as-you-go option of 30 minutes for £2.99 (10p/min), 60 for £4.50 (7.5p/min), or 180 for £6.99 (3.8p/min), which is definitely heading in the right direction. Unfortunately they spoil it somewhat by making you buy vouchers that expire in 30 days. As long as you know you are likely to use the allocated minutes within 30 days this is the best PAYG option I know of at present. Of course if you have an iPhone on a UK O2 contract, WiFi service with The Cloud is included at no extra cost.
3G Due to the sparse coverage by WiFi at present, I looked at PCMCIA 3G Phone Cards. Here I explain why I abandoned the idea for now.	On the face of it a 3G PCMCIA card seems a great idea — a mobile phone inside your powerbook that might one day have pretty much national coverage. I was initially surprised to find 3G cards were as rare as a four leaf clover. When you did find one, they were way too expensive, especially when you consider it is a much simpler device than a phone (no keyboard, no screen, no speaker). The main reason they are so rare becomes obvious when you investigate how much the phone networks try to charge you for using 3G. Most try to tie you into an expensive contract with download limits which is an absurdity as you'll have no idea how much data you want to download each month; whilst the cost of PAYG (pay-as-you-go) is a joke. However, it does seems that some of the mobile networks are at last starting to wake up to what people have been waiting for: • Vodafone's new 3G broadband USB Modem looks a bit like a squashed mouse, and connects via a short USB cable which might allow for repositioning to provide some signal benefit when trying to use your laptop in a car. The device has a download speed of 1.4Mbps. They also have a PCMCIA card. Either is free when you sign up to an 18 month contract at £25 per month with a 3Gb per month limit. • T-Mobile's 12 month Web'n'walk Plus service costs £29 per month with data charges of 79p per kb, which sounds a lot until you find they have a cap of £1 per day (makes you wonder why they bother with the 79p/kb charge at all). They do not mention any download limits. Their USB modem costs £29.99, has a connection of 'upto 1.8Mbps, is compatible with macs, and also looks like a squashed mouse. • Orange's 3G data card costs £68. Their website is so useless I can't figure anything else out. • O2 will sell you a USB Data Modem for £120. It has a docking station. Errr Why? It look far bulkier than the one Vodafone give you for free. Further information is conspicuous by it's absence. Their tariffs are pathetic. Maybe now they have the iPhone contract for the UK they will wake their ideas up. • BT also expect you to pay £120 for a card, and also have absurd tariffs. Many companies insist on absurdly complicated tariffs and having 3G data in their business sections. When are these corporate drones going to realise that there are people out here who want to use 3G data for irregular (read PAYG) personal use? So to spell it out to them: No monthly charge, fixed price per Mb. Why exactly is that difficult to provide?
Archive This stuff is out of date now, but left here in case anyone is searching for such info.	USB-Phone cable You wouldn't believe the hassle I had trying to connect my Powerbook via USB to my mobile phone. Okay so the phone (Siemens S35i) is a few years old and hasn't got bluetooth, but this isn't rocket science. The phone works fine with a several years old HP Pocket PC, and I wasn't about to buy a new bluetooth phone just for occasional connection. First I tried an unbranded 'USB Data Cable'. First bad sign (obvious with hindsight) was that it wasn't branded. Subsequent investigations revealed it to be based on a Prolific PL2303 chip. Second bad sign was that Prolific didn't even have a working driver on their website. Took a few months for one to appear — and it still didn't work. Later I found a Siemens driver on another site but that didn't work either. The USB Cable seems to drain the signal from the phone, making it impossible to get a usable signal. So I basically gave up on that cable. Months later Google turned up Digicom's Palladio USB cables. The 8E4109 model was said to work with the Siemens S35i. I spent several weeks trying to find a company that could supply one of these only to find that every company that listed them on their website was either out of stock, or simply no longer stocked them but couldn't be bothered to update their websites. So I gave up on that too. One company in Italy had some in stock, and I was about to order one when I discovered said company had never heard of credit cards. Determined not to be beaten, I managed to obtain a Siemens 9-pin serial data cable (from John Andrew in Ireland). To connect this to my powerbook I acquired this rather nice USB-Serial adaptor from EasySync in Glasgow. Its translucent blue design matches the mouse and it has green and red LEDs to indicate activity, an included short 10cm USB extension cable allows it to fit into the powerbook when the firewire port is in use. Initial lack of any connection was solved by using the 'Generic Mobile Phone (slow)' modem script available from Ross Barkman's most useful site (look for the 'Generic Mobile Phone Scripts' zip file). Oh the joy when the lights on the EasySync adaptor started to flash!

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