The new multitouch trackpad does not come with a physical button, but it can detect “idle” fingers on the trackpad so when resting my thumb I can still use the trackpad as if the thumb was not in contact with the pad. Most of the time. If I am to move my thumb only the slightest – which I typically do when I try to tap-to-click with my index finger – it will start interpreting my movements as multitouch gestures and very diffrent things than I intended will start to happen. Most annoying.

After searching for a software solution to disable the lover one third of the trackpad I got pissed of and typed “I hate the macbook multitouch trackpad” and guess what, I am not the only one. First hit in the result list is Kustaa Nyholms site over at sparetimelabs.com, which on his Multitouch page explains why he hates the trackpad and what he did to fool it into behaving properly. I have to admit, It’s a sexy solution

Now my thumb rests nicely on a piece of former DVD case, and my erranous click rate has gone down to zero. It even looks good, although I will try to get some thinner double sided tape and do a better job with my scissors to get it perfect. Thanks Kusti!

However, there is always some wrinkles.

Wrinkle number one was the “Top sites” functionality. It is really slow, and bogs down the browser experience. Luckily, it’s mendable. I found a great list of tips for disabling/re-enabling functionality over at Macosxtips.co.uk. To say goodbye to Top Sites just enter the following in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool FALSE

The other thing was a decent flash block. I usually don’t mind sensible ads on web pages, I even find good deals that way some times. But flash ads are way to annoying, so I want to block them. Firefox has a nice plugin called Flashblock, which I have been using for quite a few years now. It blocks all flash, and gives a clickable flash symbol that will display the flash animation/video. Very useful.

I have been looking for something similar to Flashblock for Safari, but only found SafariStand which is based on blocking/allowing for specific sites… Not very useful, really – or I didn’t figure out how to set it up properly. But after some more googling I finally found ClickToFlash which does the same thing as flashblock and to top it all off is free as in freedom. Me like!

First, the MacBook Pro:

Then, the white little MacBook:

So, you want the Mac OS X menu bar to automatically hide itself? So did I. One would think that this was a typical thing that you could enable by right-clicking the menu bar and then click the  “Autohide” option? Think again – this is Apple, and their Human Interface Guidelines probably says any such action is WRONG – as is a lot of other features I desire. Then, how to do it? A friend of mine suggested Menufela. This does not currently work with Leopard, AND it costs money. So I googled around a bit, and found out that one is able to disable the menu bar per application by tweaking the applications Info.plist.

Having to tweak every application on the system just to make the menu bar hide itself is really, really stupid. But whatever, I like to muck about with my system (which most probably is why it is soon ready for a reinstall) , so I thought I’d give it a shot. I edited the Info.plist of iTerm, and behold, the menu bar was gone. I moved the mouse to the upper edge of the screen – and voilá, there it was again! Fantastic, just what I wanted. Now what? Make a script that does this to all the applications in /Applications, of course!

Brilliant idea. This is very easy to do with a little mix of the cli programs find and defaults. So I started up iTerm – with no menu bar – and typed this command that will edit every Info.plist for all applications in /Applications:

find /Applications -type d -name “*.app” -exec defaults write “{}/Contents/Info” LSUIPresentationMode -int 4 \;

Away it went – it gave a lot of errors and took quite a while to complete, but when it was done all applications except Finder had no menu bar! I was happy as a kid eating his first ice cream cone.

Until I restarted Safari and went to a web page that required login. My password was gone! Suddenly being a little bit nervous I started up Keychain Access, only to discover that I was getting a “Access to this item is restricted” every time I tried revealing a password. Time to panic. I tried all the tricks I could find via google, including verifying and repairing my keychain from within Keychain Access. Nothing worked. Then I suddenly happened to find a thread on macnn.com describing how to re-sign modified applications….  I suddenly relized I had been an idiot, and started reading..

True enough, codesign -v  reported “code or signature modified.” – modifying the Info.plist file will break the programs signature, hence disallowing access to your keychain items! I then followed the howto and generated a new certificate for code signing, and re-signed Keychain Access. After resigning I had access to my passwords again!  So I tried the same for Safari, and lo – passwords started showing up for websites again. Really fantastic. So in order to “repair” all the broken applications in /Applications I did this:

find /Applications -type d -name “*.app” -exec codesign -f -s privateCertificate “{}” \;

Now all the applications using Keychains were able to get access to their password, albeit I have to press the “Always allow” button all the time, at least I do not have to start remembering passwords all over again All in all a fun little poke into the shadows behind the Apple.

And just to repeat myself: Don’t do this, it may have all kinds of weird side effects. Play with fire and you will get burned.

In the MWFS ‘08 keynote Steve Jobs presented Apples very much anticipated new Ultra-portable, the MacBook Air (MBA). And behold, a sleek, sexy, glossy, aluminium sheet of pure goodness!  Or is it really? In 2005 Dell came out with the ultraportable X1, and I was wondering how that three years old machine holds up to the newest and greatest from Cupertino.

Left: Apple MacBook Air. Picture from Apple.com.
Right: Dell X1. Picture from notebookreview.com

Size. Size matters, no matter what they say.  MBA  is boasting a thickness of 0.4 to 1.94 cm, while X1 is 2.5 cm all over.  Since it is a square world I use the thickest measurement when calculating volume. So, the MBA is 1.94×32.5×22.7 = 1431.235 cubic centimetres. X1 clocks in at 2.5×28.6×19.68 = 1407,12 cubic centimetres. Winner:  Dell X1.

Weight. Matter has it (yes, a phun). And since the MBA is 1.36 kg and the X1 is 200 grams less at 1.140 kg the winner must be the X1.

Screen resolution. MBA has 1024000 square pixels, while the X1 has only 983040. But, when you measure screen size vs number of pixels you get that the MBA has 1024000/13.3 = 76992.5 pixels/inch, while the X1 has 983040 /12.1 = 81243 pixels/inch. This means the MBA has a big screen with low pixel density, and since I really dislike it when hardware doesn’t fill it’s full potential (also look at the size of the edge around the screen on the MBA – it’s huge!) the winner is the X1 again.

Connecting extra peripherals and such. USB: X1 2, MBA 1. Ethernet: X1 1, MBA 0. Modem: X1 1, MBA 0. VGA: X1 1, MBA 1, DVI: X1 0, MBA 1. Audio jacks: X1 2, MBA 1.  Firewire: X1 1, MBA 0 (!).  SD and CompactFlash card reader: X1 1, MBA 0. The MBA’s lack of built in ethernet, VGA and only one usb connector plus it’s heavy reliance on extra dongles makes the X1 the winner once more.

Connectivity. X1 has wifi b/g, 1 gigabit ethernet, bluetooth and a modem. The MBA has a/b/g/n wifi and bluetooth. It must be mentioned that the MBA has 802.11n that is now becoming increasingly popular.  It also has EDR. But still, lacking a gigabit ethernet port is the reason the X1 is yet again victorious.

Drives. The MBA proudly toutes an optional 64GB SSD, which normally would be a “wow, omg, gimme!” – but as usual with Apple and upgrades I am betting that  getting a 64GB SSD for the X1 on the open market is much cheaper than upgrading the MBA to the SSD.  And talking about drives, the X1 comes bundled with a optical drive, while the external USB MacBook Air SuperDrive is an option. Because of the bundle and Apples over-pricing of upgrades the X1 come out on top.

Power. Intel core 2 duo 1.6GHz versus a Centrino mobile 1.1GHz? Come oon. MBA totally owns that. But in order to get CPU power you will need battery power. And the MBA battery is not easily replaceable. With the X1 you can bring a few six cell batteries with you and use your laptop all the way to where you are going, while when the MBA is dead it must be plugged into an electrical outlet. Replaceable batteries is a much more on-the-go feature than heavy CPU power, so the ultraportable power price goes to the X1.

Availability. The X1 is no longer manufactured. However, you can pay $535 for it by pressing the “buy it now”-button on ebay and have it shipped to you in less than a week.  The MBA has 2-3 weeks delivery time according to Apple, but I would not be surprised if it would take 6 weeks to get it in your frisky little hands. However, as the X1 has reached the end of it’s production life the MBA must be declared the winner by walkover.

Memory. The MBA wins this with it’s 2BG vs 1.25GB maximum capacity.  It looks like the memory chips on the MBA is onboard chips that are not replaceable, so when a RAM chip fail you must get the machine to the apple repair shop, while with the X1 you may just get a replacement RAM chip and pop it in. I said the MBA won, but it did not.

Ok. I guess I could go on and on with this. The key points are that the X1 is smaller, lighter and has a wider range of possibilities than the MBA. If I were to leave my 15″ MacBook Pro at home and go ultraportable and had to choose between a three years old design and a brand new super slick designer laptop I would choose the old one. Does not look that good, but is more practical. I am quite disappointed that Apple could not outcompete that three year old heap of silvery plastic, but they will probably sell quite good on their good looks and impressive thin-ness.

  A: Fordi det er heilt motsett av den måten menneske vanlegvis les tekst.
  Q: Kvifor det?
  A: Topp-posting.
  Q: Kva er det mest slitsame i epost og på news?

  A: Fordi det er helt motsatt av den måten mennesker vanligvis leser tekst.
  Q: Hvorfor det?
  A: Topp-posting.
  Q: Hva er det mest slitsomme i epost og på news?

  A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
  Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
  A: Top-posting.
  Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

Meir om det same:

http://audun.norblogg.net/2007/01/10/sitering-av-epost/
http://home.online.no/~vidaandr/news/OBSquoting.html
http://antibiomatika.net/usenet/quoting.html

Then came Leopard bringing not gifts, but Spaces. Spaces is one of the worse implementations of virtual desktops I have seen.

1. Impossible to turn off the animations when switching desktop. Theese animations tend to get slower during the day also.
2. Impossible to have more than 4 columns of desktops
3. When you Cmd-Tab around in your applications you also switch desktop. With the whole animation and all this is horrible. Just ask Nick Santilli over at theAppleBlog.
4. You may not set up your own keyboard shortcuts for direct access to each desktop. You must live with <Modifier>+<Number>

The first three annoyances are something I cannot remedy that easily. But number four is something you may actually do something about! Or at least, there is a workaround.

Enter Butler.

Butler is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. Like launching applications. It’s much like QuickSilver in many ways. The Butler website has some challenges as I write this, so I enclose the install DMG here.

Download Butler:  butler.dmg.zip

Now, for the setup. I want to have a grid of 4×2 desktops. I want the upper row to be accessible with Cmd-Esc to Cmd-F3, and the lower row with Cmd-1 to Cmd-4.

So, what to do?

* Start Butler.

* Modify your spaces settings. Set the “Switch directly to a space” key to be Option, as you want Cmd as your future hot
key, and Control is convenient for having as the real spaces shortcut. See illustration below.

* Configure/Customize Butler. Add a new Keystroke Smart Item.

* Then add a name to it, like “Workspace 1″. Also give the keystroke that you want Butler to generate.

* Now select the “Triggers” tab, and give the hotkey wanted for switching to that workspace. I prefer my first workspace to be on Cmd-Escape:

* Repeat the process for all your desktops/workspaces, then go back to System Preferences and make the hot key for “Switch directly to a space” to be Control (^).

Voilá. You now have your own hotkeys for navigating directly to a desktop in spaces.

You see, I am one of those paranoid geezers that like to keep their files encrypted in case someone steals their laptop. So I use Apple’s built in encryption, FileVault, for my home folder. And it seems Time Machine does not play as nice with FileVaults as it does with non-protected data. Time Machine itself states, albeit not in that exact wording, that it sucks with FileVault:

Another thing that annoys me with Time Machine is that you cannot make bootable backup disks with it. When your laptop gets stolen or your disk crashes and the customers are calling you every ten minutes the luxury of just plugging your USB/Firewire disk in, boot from it and have your complete work environment ready is pretty priceless. I’ve been there. Spending time reinstalling may not always be an option.

My current backup scheme that allows for this consists of two parts:

• Using RsyncX for backing up my entire system. This approach has the same caveat as Time Machine – I prefer to log out and back in as a second Admin user in order to successfully unmount the sparsebundle (sparseimage in Tiger) that holds my home folder, so that I am sure that it gets backed up properly. There is one “problem” with this – I only get the latest snapshot of my complete system. I can live with that, as I can boot from it. This method is not new, I used this howto from 2005 to get it rolling.
• Using plain rsync over ssh to get incremental backups of my home folder. I used a slightly modified version of the “backup to a central backup server with 7 day incremental” from the rsync examples page. Since this runs over ssh to a server at home I may take backups while on the run with my laptop, so I do not have to lug around the extra USB drive in order to get backups done.

The combination of theese two methods makes restoring my system in case of a disk replacement as easy as two rsync commands after I boot from my USB drive:

1. Rsync the entire contents of the USB drive into the new disk after partitioning it. The backup USB disk is, needless to say, also the perfect rescue tool.
2. Log in as my FileVaulted user and update my home folder from the server via ssh.

However, if bootable backups is not a priority and you are OK with carrying the extra Time Machine backup disk with you and risk getting BOTH your laptop and your backups stolen – then Time Machine is for you. Also, if you are a home user with a desktop Mac Time Machine is also probably perfect for you. But as a laptop user with security needs Time Machine is not an ideal solution. The rsync setup is also more of a hack, and could be more seamless.  Any hints towards a seamless, fast restore, backup regime for security-minded laptop users is greatly welcome

With Leopard the environment variable $SSH_AUTH_SOCK is set automatically, and the ssh-agent is managed by launchd (I think). SSHKeyChain may still prove useful for setting up tunnels, but I see no point in waiting for yet another application to start at login.

If you have been using SSHKeyChain you must remember to go into it’s Preferences and Uncheck the “Manage (and modify) global environment variables” ticker, otherwise SSHKeyChain will override the OS settings – even if it’s not running.

The actual adding of ssh keys is a bit non-intuitive for people used to doing ssh-add. Just using ssh-add <keyfile>  will only add the keyfile to the current session. If you want to never type your passphrase again, but let ssh-agent get your passphrase from Keychain every time you try to use the ssh key/identoty file you need to have a few things in place:

* Your <identity>.pub must be present in the remote accounts $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys file

* You may use this syntax from the command line to add the key: ssh -i <identity file> user@host . I guess you may do this from the Keychain Access application in some way too, but I was not able to find out how. There must be a slicker way.

So, I used this command in my terminal to add my “lolcats” private key/identity to my Keychain:

ssh -i lolcats lolcat@hostname.tld

And up came this dialog window, voilá: