Grah!

Mail.app just cleared a draft message I had been working on for days! Aah! Not cool!

Quicken Problems

So I'm playing around with new money management software, right, because Quicken 2006 feels like a very Windowsy app. (One high on my list is Cha-Ching, a program currently in beta that was featured on a recent MacBreak short from the MacWorld expo.)

However, I'm having some serious problems exporting my transactions to .QIF from Quicken for importing into other apps. (There's no way I'm going to reenter 7 months of transactions in each program just to try them out.) I can't open the exported files in anything. Preview opens on double-click, but no window shows up. Cha-Ching, bless its little soul, actually tries to do something with the file, but it can't find any transactions. I just got done with a "Live Chat" with one of Quicken's technicians. Here's the transcript. Well dang, I had the transcript on my clipboard but accidentally copied over it. But let me just say that the conversation ended with her saying something along the lines of, "I sympathize with the frustration you must be feeling."

Any tips would be very appreciated. I can provide screenshots if that would help.

My Thoughts on the iPhone. Apple's, that is.

First, let me say that Macrumors.com severely disappointed me. I had the "spoiler-free" page (which would be updated with the link to the keynote video once Apple uploaded it) on auto-refresh, and a headline popped up saying that Apple had announced the iPhone and Apple TV! Bastards! But once I saw that, the floodgates that were my willpower turned out to be less Amsterdam and more New Orleans, and I rushed over to the Apple site and just about broke down over the iPhone.

I really should have commented on the latest MacBreak Weekly earlier. They played a clip of Leo's radio show where a guy called in and claimed to have a source at Apple. The guy said the iPhone would be CDMA. Now, I had a very strong feeling that would not be the case -- if it were so, Apple would likely partner with Verizon, a company scorned for its disabling of features, and that's something I really don't think Apple or Apple fans would like. But now that it's announced as a Cingular product, you're just going to say I'm exploiting the hindsight bias ("Well of course it's that way..."). But really I had thought of that earlier today while listening to the podcast! Really!

Now, about that -- what's it called again? iPhone? How does that fly with Cisco? Turns out it doesn't. But moving on!

It's a PDA! It's a phone! It's the much-hoped-for widescreen touchscreen video iPod! It's so amazing I want to cry. Apple's first entry into the mobile computing market since the Newton (which still holds a place in my heart) is perfect. At least in theory; we'll see what issues crop up once it's released (sometime in June of this year; it's still pending FCC approval). The case and the interface are absolutely gorgeous. Best of all, it's available for my carrier! If only I could get steady reception in any part of my house (even just one spot would be fantastic), I would change my view of Cingular from reluctant acceptance to outright joy. But for now, all I can muster is some muted joy.

Since it's called the iPhone, I guess I'll talk about its capabilities as a phone first. There isn't really anything that will change the way we use our cell phones forever, but the improvements Apple has made on the traditional cell phone are poised make the iPhone experience better in a way disproportionate to their technological complexity. For me at least,

• The Favorites list is a feature I have ached for my cell phone to have, and I could never understand why it wasn't the first thing the developers thought of as they tested their phones. How hard would it be, Motorola, to include this kind of thing with your OS? (Hint: not very.) It's painful to me to know my wife has to scroll through about 15 other S's to get to my name to call me. (Yes, I know about speed dial, but she's set in her ways.) There are workarounds though, for us stuck with more mediocre phones. One is to use the "recently dialed numbers" screen to find whoever you want to call. Or you can just name important people in the format "## Person" so that they float up to the top of the list. Just don't let "02 Wife" find out that she's behind "01 Boss," or there might be some cold shoulder headed your way.
  
  
• Merging calls is pretty cool. I don't think it's something that will get much use from little old me, but it's good to know it's there.
  
  
• Visual voicemail is the greatest idea in the history of leaving messages. It may (may!) make me not hate the voicemail system quite as much. How many times have you wanted to listen to a message but had to wait through the voicemail lady announcing the number of each voicemail and the time of the call? (For example, with Cingular: "First... saved... message.... Sent...Friday... January... fifth...Ten...Forty...Five...A.M.) This is even worse if you have multiple messages before the one you want to listen to. Well, visual voicemail solves this problem so elegantly it's a wonder it took this long for someone to implement it. Speaking of which, I'm wondering how the iPhone interfaces with Cingular's voicemail system to make this work. Any clarification is encouraged in the comments.
  
  
• Viewing texts as a chat falls in the same category as the Favorites list... Why in the world didn't it get implemented before? What would have been so hard about that?
  
  
• The "soft" number pad (for dialing) and QWERTY keyboard -- "soft" meaning touchscreen elements rather than physical keys-- is a great innovation. It saves so much space over having physical keys, which don't get used all the time. How much bigger could the Treo's screen be, for example?
  
  
• Predictive text that corrects mistakes... I love it! Leave it to Apple to make something smarter than you are!
  
  
• I posted some of the gripes I had with my current cell phone a while back on one of my now sadly-neglected HiveLive hives, and hopefully some of the things I wanted out of my ideal cell phone will be addressed. One that I didn't mentioned was that when someone calls and the phone is open or I'm on with someone else, the "Ignore" button is where the "Answer" button should be -- that is, the right soft key. The menu that comes up on the iPhone solves this problem perfectly. Also, it should be interesting to see if Apple allows you to set special ringtones for certain people calling you but not texting you.
  

The rest of my comments about the iPhone aren't nearly so extensive as to require bullet points to keep them all straight. I think the demo of the iPhone-as-iPod looks amazingly cool, especially the integration of Cover Flow and the automatic landscape/portrait orientation sensing. The latter really increases the phone's potential as a web browsing device as well, although my experience with Cingular's EDGE network (which I admit has been limited to my V557, which isn't really a multimedia kind of device) has me a little skeptical about the speed displayed in the demo. Widgets are also a great idea for a mobile computing device -- I assume this type of platform I assume has been limited to programs that run only when launched and aren't really supposed to be in the background too much. Again, this isn't really a major breakthrough, but the little things make a difference in product experience. I also love the fact that I could get a phone number via Google Maps and call that number, all from one device.

This product launch could go one of two ways. It could be wildly successful, propelling Cingular and Apple ahead of the competition (the way I hope it will be). The other possibility is that the iPhone could languish due to the fact that you can only get it with a 2-year contract. This restriction will be in place for at least 2 years, during which time Apple's phone competitors could have time to incorporate Apple's innovations into their current devices for a smaller cost and for different carriers. For this reason, I really wish the iPhone had been available as an unlocked device. I understand how handy it is for a service provider to subsidize part of the cost of a phone, making it seem cheaper than it is, but it's risky.

All in all, Apple didn't do anything too revolutionary, but the innovations they brought to the iPhone show how the little things can go a long way toward making a product experience awesome.

(And how about a few sentences on the Apple TV? I think it's a great idea. If I had a widescreen TV, I would definitely get one. $300 doesn't seem too unreasonable. Plus, the Photos screensaver looks awesome.)

A Comment on the Mac Google Experience

{**See the first several comments for info about my edits of this post BEFORE reading**}

Google kicks ass. There's no doubt about it. Gmail's amazing, Picasa's amazing, Google Docs & Spreadsheets are pretty cool too. But as much as Google appeals to the young, techno-hip crowd of today, its programs sometimes don't work well with another big player in that same scene: Apple. As a recent Switcher, I've noticed a few things about the Google experience that aren't quite the same on Macs. There are two basic kinds of deficiencies that I've noticed. [Subsequent investigation (I am without access to my Windows machine at the moment) might reveal more.]

Some of Google's offerings, mainly webapps such as Gmail that can run in any major web browser, simply aren't [isn't] as capable in the Mac OS as they are [it is] on Windows. For example, in Gmail on a Windows machine, when you right-click on something, you get a context menu that is specific to Gmail itself, not the web browser. This provides additional functionality and, in general, a user experience more like that of a desktop app. On a Mac, on the other hand, the context menu in Gmail is the same as the context menu for any other webpage. (This is in Firefox 2.0.)

Other Google products, such as Picasa[, on the other hand,] and Google Earth Plus, are [is] not available at all for the Mac OS. Needless to say, this inhibits the use Mac users can get out of them [it]. I miss Picasa so very dearly from my days on a PC; the little advantages it has over iPhoto make a big difference. And the more I run around my neighborhood, the more I wish I could save paths in Google Earth -- a feature only available to subscribers to Google Earth Plus, a Windows-only application. Of course, I could get Parallels and a licensed copy of Windows, but DAMN that seems expensive.

I expected the Google Mac blog to keep me informed of Google's latest developments for Mac users, but it's actually a sort of personal blog for developers who happen to work in Google's Mac labs. For examples of this, look at the latest two posts: Some guy's hometown and some guy's bassoonery. It's really kind of insulting.

While brainstorming for this post, an idea hit me. Google's assault on Microsoft's user base is one of the greatest trends of recent computing. It seems like a lot of Microsoft's Live services are responses to Google's services (some of which are, admittedly, responses to Yahoo!'s services). Maybe Google has gotten so into this whole competition thing that they're focusing solely on drawing people away from Microsoft -- and Mac users don't need to be drawn! This seems pretty petty to me, though. Maybe it's that Google doesn't want to compete with things already available for the Mac. That would explain the lack of Picasa, as iPhoto's solid, but... No, that's just ridiculous.

In short, Google's an awesome company with some awesome products which are for the most part available on all major platforms, but I wish they'd fix these few shortcomings.

Desktop Cleaner

I was watching the latest MacBreak Weekly video because I love Merlin Mann and track him incessantly, and he mentioned the application Hazel (Mac OS 10.4+). The theme of the videocast was things to help you un-distractify your Mac, and Hazel fits the bill by cleaning up extraneous files and doing things with them.

I thought this app would be perfect for cleaning up after Firefox. I specified a Temporary folder for it to download things to, but that only works when I save files and not when I select "Open in...". So I browsed around the Hazel website for a while, but my college student instincts ("Don't pay for anything you can get a functional facsimile of for free/cheap or make yourself") kicked in, and I decided to make such an application myself.

I was able to use Automator, while learning some in the process, to cobble together a working application that gets any documents, images, or disk images and moves them into that file type's respective subfolder in my "Desktop Cleanup" folder. I say "working" because it's not very ideal. For one thing, the program finds any files on the desktop or (and here's the problem) any FOLDERS that are on the desktop. Sort of annoying, but I can move those folders and put aliases to them on the desktop instead. Another problem is that, if there are any files that don't fit into the 3 categories specified, you have to manually move them OR add another Action to the workflow. I'll probably be changing it as I go along.

Eventually I'll upload the workflow and the application, but for some reason I can't upload anything from where I am now. For now, you'll have to settle for an explanation. The workflow just consists of pairs of linked commands:

1. Find Finder Items
2. Move Finder Items

I've set each Find Finder Items command to find items matching one criterion having to do with the kind of file it is: Kind=Audio, Kind=Document, Extension CONTAINS dmg, Extension CONTAINS zip, and Kind=Image. Audio needs to come before Document because otherwise the program will count some music files (.m4p at least) as documents. The reason that's a problem is because I have each Move Finder Items command set to move the found items to a certain type-specific subfolder of my "Desktop Cleanup" folder. Also, it's important to make sure to select "Ignore Results from Previous Action" for each Find Finder Items command, so that the sequence for each file type is separate from its neighbors.

Batch Renaming Files in Mac OS X

So, iPhoto screwed up my library AGAIN (I reeeeaaallly wish Google would make a Picasa for Mac), and I was getting sick of having to look at every one of my several thousand photos and put it in the right folder, along with classifying them as originals, exports for upload, or edits. I decided that renaming the picture files was the only way I could save myself this trouble the next time this happened. Long story short, I was about to give up on my search for a free renamer for Mac and shell out 20 bucks for payware (I shudder at the thought) when, in an act of desperation, I scanned the comments on all the Lifehacker posts about renaming files in bulk (which pertained, annoyingly enough, only to Windows).

Luckily, one commenter had mentioned the free app NameChanger for Mac OS X. I just about cried when I used it for the first time, that's how awesome it is. The program allows you to drag-and-drop files to rename onto the icon or into the program, and shows you a live preview of what the filenames will look like after you're finished.

Later, while playing with Automator (which comes with Tiger) for my Desktop Cleaner program, I discovered that Automator can rename photos. By selecting "Show Action When Run," it's possible to specify what to replace and what to replace it WITH. However, NameChanger has several advantages.

1. No programming required. Just download and extract, and it's ready to go.
2. As-you-type preview. A little gimmicky, but cool.
3. Ability to replace first, last, or all occurrences of a term.

But the Automator option has some things going for it too, such as the ability to put a date before or after a name (NameChanger can only put it after); the ability to use date created, modified, or current date; and different customizability of dates. But for me, it's much nicer to just download a program that does the work for you.

Post One

Behold, for I have finally done something I've been meaning to do for a while. (Ignore the fact that it should be a low priority.) This blog shall forevermore be the place where I keep interested parties (probably nobody but myself) informed about my latest traipsings around teh Interweb in search of technological goodness. Topics will range from operating systems to software (usually freeware/open source because I'm cheap but not cheap enough to steal), Apple to Casio. Anything remotely tech related in my life will go here.

Thus it was spoken. And the masses clamored for more.