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Macworld Expo: credit where credit is due

November 21, 2007 / / 2 Comments

For the first time in years, Macworld Expo has exceeded 400 exhibitors. The South Hall of the Moscone Center is sold out for the January 2008 event, and space in the Moscone West is going fast. This is a tremendous accomplishment for a show that many had written off completely just a few years ago.

Some of the credit, no doubt, is due to Apple’s comeback, but that doesn’t begin to explain the scale of Macworld’s resurgence. I’d argue that the main reason Macworld is back and better than ever come down to the efforts of one man, and it ain’t Steve Jobs.

It’s Paul Kent.

Paul has been the driving force behind the conference program at Macworld for years, and it was always the shining star of the Expo. Even while vendors and exhibit attendees were leaving in droves, the conference sessions remained vital and relevant. Paul — through enthusiasm, integrity and sheer exuberance — continued to attract quality speakers and add exciting content. Say what they would about declining attendance and exhibitor flight, the press never — ever — had a bad word to say about the conference program.

A year or so ago, IDG hired Paul to run the whole Expo — conference program, exhibitors, feature presentations and all. He immediately put his stamp on the entire program — revitalizing the “upstairs” show in the same way he did for the conference sessions downstairs. Paul added content to the exhibit floor, brought in innovative features, won over exhibitors, all while continuing to improve the conference program. The result was the best Macworld in recent memory, and a stage well set for this year’s show.

I’m lucky enough to know Paul and to count him as a friend. I love watching him during Expo. He’s one of the most personable people I’ve ever met — constantly asking questions, gathering information on how things can be even better, making sure his speakers and attendees have what they need. In the midst of the chaos and crises, I’ve never seen him flustered. He is always upbeat, always quick with a solution. Putting him in charge of Macworld may well be the smartest thing IDG has ever done.

People speculate on what will happen to Apple when Steve Jobs decides to retire. Can it survive? Will it continue to innovate? Would it really be the same company? I’d ask the same questions of Macworld Expo and Paul Kent.

For Macworld’s sake, I hope we don’t have to find out for a long, long time.

Safari, you’re dead to me now

November 19, 2007 / / 4 Comments

I completely skipped running Tiger on the Macs in my office — mostly over networking issues that never seem to have been resolved. We have two newer machines (both DP G5s) that came with Tiger installed. We found some workarounds for most of the issues, especially those dealing with our company’s proxy server.

In a desperate attempt at troubleshooting one of the Tiger machines, I upgraded it to Leopard. The upgrade was painless for the most part. Lotus Notes even launched and connected perfectly — which was my biggest concern. It all gave me the courage to install Leopard on my own 10.3 machine (I don’t even remember which cat that was anymore — Jaguar?) Again, all went well, including my Lotus Notes.

Unfortunately, Safari (or anything that uses Apple’s OS-based tools) still won’t connect through the proxy server, whether it’s through the pac file or by manually entering the proxy address. What’s worse — any app that makes the attempt crashes rather unceremoniously. Luckily, FireFox uses its own scheme and works fine.

I’ll have to see if SquidMan’s been updated for Leopard yet, but I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to rely on third-party tools at this stage in the game.

[UPDATE: HR Softworks’ “Authoxy” seem to work fine. More important than getting Safari to work is the fact that it allows Apple’s Software Update mechanism to work.]

Amazon’s ‘Kindle’ debuts

November 19, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Amazon’s try at an eBook reader, the “Kindle,” was released today. If anyone can make a product like this work, I think it’s Amazon (OK, and maybe Google).

I really like the idea of taking the computer out of the equation. I also like that Kindle comes with free EVDO wireless networking that works only for the product’s features — I think that’s going to be an important factor in its adoption.

What I don’t like: The price, for sure. $400 seems like a lot — especially when you’re still paying $10 per book. It also seems dated already, both in terms of industrial design and the greyscale screen. And is the full keyboard really necessary? I guess it’s needed for the buying process, but it seems heavy handed given that the functionality of this device should be 90% focused on reading text.

I think it’s a very interesting start and has loads of promise. It’s definitely a 1.0 product, though, and unlike the iPhone, I think I’ll wait a rev or two to jump on this bandwagon.

High-tech hide and seek

November 7, 2007 / / 0 Comments

This isn’t at all Mac-related (hence the “random” part of “RandomMaccess”), but I’ve been playing with my Magellan eXplorist lately and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a handheld GPS unit used for hiking and orienteering — it doesn’t have any maps or know roads, for instance, so it’s not much good for driving directions. It simply shows you where you are using latitude and longitude coordinates. You can let it track your movement, leaving “breadcrumbs” along the way so you can find your way back to camp for example. You can also set waypoints, so you can find a particular spot — like a good fishing hole or a campsite.

A game that’s grown out of the popularity of these devices is called “geocaching.” Essentially, it’s a high-tech game of hide-and-seek. The “hider” puts a cache — usually a container filled with a logbook, pencil and some trinkets — in a hiding place, then records the coordinates and publishes the information to a website so others can find it. Sometimes, some additional descriptions about the location or the cache are provided. Then, the “seekers” try to find the cache using their GPS devices. When they do, they sign the logbook, swap a trinket with one of their own, and report back on the website — whether the cache was where it was supposed to be; in what condition; notes about the surroundings, etc.

It all seems like fun. I haven’t found my first cache yet, but there seem to be a lot both where I live and where I work, so I’m sure I’ll go hunting soon.

Steve Jobs does what Moriarty couldn’t: kills Sherlock

October 30, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Professor Moriarty almost did it at Reichenbach Falls, but it took Steve Jobs and his Leopard to finally kill off Sherlock. Apple’s new operating system deletes the abandoned search utility during the installation process.

Sherlock was introduced with System 8.5, but has been dying a lingering death for years, as Apple replaced its functionality with Dashboard Widgets and web utilities became more ubiquitous. Most of its tools had ceased functioning already. I haven’t even launched it in years. In fact, the only way I knew it was gone is that it’s deletion left a question mark behind in my wife’s dock after I installed Leopard.

Leopard can’t see printers shared from old Macs

October 30, 2007 / / 0 Comments

I keep my main home Mac in my family room, so in order to avoid (OK, reduce) computer clutter, I keep my printers in the basement. For us, it makes a lot of sense. We don’t actually print things that often, and besides the room they take up, printers are noisy — especially our black and white laser printer.

The printers are shared from an old beige G3 PowerMac tower, which doesn’t support Mac OS X past 10.2. The G3 also hosts a personal FTP and website, and has an external FireWire drive attached for backups.

This arrangement has worked great for years — the G3 is rock-solid and the monitor is usually kept off, so the whole system doesn’t draw much power.

After upgrading our main Mac (a dual-2GHz G5 PowerMac) to Leopard over the weekend, though, I was surprised to find that it could not see the shared printers, even though it could see the G3 itself just fine. I fired up an old iBook that was still running Tiger and confirmed that it could see the printers, so it definitely seemed like a Leopard issue.

Doing a lot of searching turned up some posts on Apple’s Support Discussion boards about the issue. Apparently, Leopard drops the CUPS protocol and uses only Rendezvous. The older Macs, obviously, share printers via CUPS, making them invisible to Leopard. The answer, provided by several posters, was to edit the configuration file used by Leopard’s built-in CUPS server, to look for printers using all protocols, not just Rendezvous.

It’s a pretty geeky solution, but it worked for both of my Leopard-upgraded Macs. Although it’s probably not an issue for many users, it’s impact could be pretty major for those who are affected. The way the Mac community not only found, but came up with a way to address the issue so quickly, is very impressive.

Life can be so sweet

October 29, 2007 / / 0 Comments

On a side note, my “office” this morning is Manhattan’s Bryant Park, where I’m watching ice skaters on the “pond” and listening to Louis Armstrong sing “On The Sunny Side Of The Street” on the park’s PA system. The WiFi is slow, but usable and the weather is brisk but comfortable. Pretty good working conditions, if you can get them.

Leopard 2; Gremlins 1

October 29, 2007 / / 0 Comments

On the three machines on which I’ve installed Leopard so far, two went off without a hitch: a G5 iMac and a dual G5 PowerMac. The third, a MacBook Pro — ironic perhaps, in that it was the only Intel-based machine I’ve upgraded so far — not so much.

For reasons I won’t get into, I run FileVault on the MacBook Pro. I’ve gotten to used to seeing (and for the most part ignoring) messages that tell me FileVault is taking up more space than it needs and that I can fix it. I usually ignore it because 1) Space is not really at a premium on this particular laptop; and 2) It takes way too much time to do and doesn’t seem to help for very long.

So when I got this message when my MacBook was shutting down in preparation for the Leopard install, I ignored it. It think that’s what bit me. The install itself went without a hitch, but when I tried to log back into my main account, I got a message telling me my FileVault-protected Home directory couldn’t be opened. I accepted the offer to fix it, but was greeted with an “unknown error.” My main account was hosed.

Luckily, all important data had already been backed up, and the alternate account on the machine opened just fine. I wound up deleting the original account and recreating it with the same settings. So far, everything’s working fine.

Lesson learned: If you’re offered the opportunity to “fix” FileVault before installing Leopard, take it.