Disorderly Content

Looks like I spoke too soon when I raved about how smooth my upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4 was. While diagnosing the instability caused by a flaky memory module I discovered a couple of million errors being reported to the system log. One of these was being generated every second:

May 14 10:00:02 Timbala postfix/master[7073]: fatal: fifo_listen: remove public/pickup: Permission denied
May 14 10:00:03 Timbala launchd: org.postfix.master: exited with exit code: 1

When my own attempts to diagnose the problem went nowhere, I tried various Google searches. And eventually I found a blog entry from someone with the same problem. His posting led me to to the launchctl program, which confirmed the presence of the offending process. Telling launchctl to stop it didn't make any difference. So I went searching through launchd's various directories. And in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ I found the file I was looking for. I moved the org.postfix.master file out of the way, rebooted and am no longer getting all those spurious errors.

It's obviously a bug that Tiger tried starting Postfix's daemon in the first place. But what's really curious is that my G4 Cube running Tiger doesn't have the same problem. For some reason, it doesn't try to start the Postfix daemon in the first place. Curious.

Update 05/25: Thanks to a blogger who linked to this post, I have undone my brute force solution and replaced it with something that solves the real problem. Apparently, there was a user for the postfix software that didn't get created, as well as a permission problem. After moving the file back where I found it, I ran the following commands:

sudo /Library/Receipts/Essentials.pkg/Contents/Resources/CreateSystemUsers
sudo /etc/postfix/post-install set-permissions
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist

That seems to have done the trick. Everything looks okay, and the console isn't getting any more spurious messages.

Warning: What follows is another post hoc ergo propter hoc story. If you haven't been following this blog from the beginning (and shame on you if you haven't) and you haven't encountered that particular bit of Latin, you may find this posting instructive. Or at least entertaining. Or not.

As a rule, I reboot my two year old Titanium PowerBook every couple of weeks, generally because some software update insists upon it. When I'm not using it, I just close the lid and let it sleep. It sleeps better than I do these days.

A few weeks ago Apple released a patch that brought Mac OS X to version 10.3.9. During the post install reboot, I noticed that my clean and perfect guitar chord suddenly sounded awful, all staticy and nasty. I assumed, in a post hoc ergo propter hoc way, that something about the patch screwed up my startup sound. But since the rest of my audio sounded just fine, I didn't give it any more thought.

And then this past Monday I installed Mac OS X 10.4, AKA Tiger. And when I had a bunch of applications running, the system felt more sluggish. Not unusual with a new OS release, although I wasn't exactly happy. But then I brought up the About This Mac screen to check something. And was surprised to discover that my 1 GB PowerBook now reported a measly 768 MB. Had Tiger bitten off some of my memory?

As the week wore on, and as I started more and more apps and left them running for quick access, the performance problems became more pronounced. And I began to wonder if the About This Mac screen was telling me the truth: that my computer had suddenly lost its memory. So I tried shutting down, reseating the second DIMM and rebooting. No change. Then I finally did what I should have done from the beginning: I pulled out that second DIMM. And what do you know? The startup sound was as perfect as the day the PowerBook came home from the hospital. I guess it was trying to tell me something with that static; I just wasn't smart enough to pay attention.

A quick trip to Fry's later (well, two quick trips; the first one didn't have the memory in stock), I inserted a replacement DIMM, rebooted and verified that I'm back to a full 1 GB. And I'm marveling at how I associated two events (applying a patch and the bad startup sound) and missed the smaller connection: that the memory partially failed at some point since the previous reboot, and this was just the first boot attempt since then. If I hadn't applied the patch, I wouldn't have needed to reboot.

And to think that I used to provide tech support for a living. Good thing I didn't have to do with customers as clueless as me!

...and the world will try to invent a better mouse. Such is the case with Dashboard, Mac OS X Tiger's new mechanism for little user interface doohickeys. (The technical term for these elements is widgets, which is in fact no more descriptive than doohickeys. But I guess I'll go along with the powers that be.)

But widgets aren't perfect, at least not yet. One problem is that Safari, Apple's web browser, is happy to install new widgets. And those widgets could be malicious. It didn't take more than a couple of days after Tiger's release for an example of a self-installing but thankfully benign widget to be developed and deployed. And it doesn't take much imagination to see that there's a serious problem here.

But as the saying doesn't say, but really oughta: "Build a better mouse and the world will build a better mousetrap." And it took just another couple of days for a developer named Zack Schilling to invent Widget, The World Watcher. Basically, this Widget adds an action to the Widgets installation folder. And if something tries to install a widget, the action will pop up a dialogue to let you know and give you a chance to abort the install.

I suspect Apple will do some work to reduce the risk associated with widgets, since otherwise Mac OS X could become as big a security risk as, say, Windows. But in the meantime, it's nice to have this Widget watching out for us.

This morning the UPS guy delivered my copy of Tiger, which for you non-Mac people (and you know who you are) is the latest version of Mac OS X. So, being the brave soul I am, I popped the DVD into my PowerBook and let the installer do its thing. And now I'm running happily away on the new OS. What's that thing they used to say at Holiday Inn? The best surprise is no surprise? Yeah, it's like that.

But it was really, really hard not to call this one Putting a Tiger in My Tank. So I think you ought to appreciate my strength of character.

Oh, and it looks like iSync now works with my Motorola phone via BlueTooth. So no more USB cable. Thank you, Apple. Hope you weren't too put out about my earlier complaints.

I've been playing with the capabilities of my Motorola V551 mobile phone since returning from my Oz trip. And appreciating for the nth time the essential nature of both the web and Google for getting anything done. In this particular case, I wanted to know how to get pictures and ringtones on and off the camera, preferably without having to pay Cingular to do it.

The phone supports Bluetooth. Which would be nice if my PowerBook did. I could solve that easily enough by buying an adapter, and I probably will. But Googling told me that I'd have a "half a loaf" solution. (At last he gets to the point.) Here's what I learned:

• Mac OS X supports the V551 with iSync, but not with Bluetooth. You need a physical connection for that: a USB cable. I found one on eBay, bought it and did indeed discover how to sync phone book and calendar between my Mac and phone. Took forever the first time. But it was easy, aside from a panic when a call came in while I was syncing. And I'd left the cable tied up, so I had to abort the process to get the phone to my ear. My fault, not Apple's or Motorola's.
• You might think making a USB connection would mount the phone as a disk on the Mac's desktop, like a flash drive or a camera or iPod. I certainly hoped it would. No such luck, alas. But from others' reports, you can use Bluetooth to copy files back and forth. I guess I have to get that Bluetooth adapter after all.

So I can sync and back up my phone, but only with a cable. And I can copy pictures and ringtones, but only with Bluetooth. Talk about your consistent interface!

To be fair, there's are indications that Apple will make things better when Tiger, the new Mac OS X release, comes out next week. A new Bluetooth implementation is supposed to solve the iSync problem with Moto phones. We'll see if it does.

Update 04/23: It's a few hours later. I've been playing with Bluetooth with mixed results. The good news is that it works: I can get my Mac to talk to the phone, to browse folders and to send files over. The not so good news is that I've had limited success doing what I want to do. For one thing, I can't see all the files on the phone. For example, I can see pictures I took with the phone's camera. And I can see pictures I've sent via Bluetooth. But I can't get to pictures I received via the network. I assume that's a security thing to keep me from getting at pictures I paid for, although that's not what I'm trying to do. The same with audio files; I can't retrieve ringtones. And, although I can send audio files to the phone, I haven't been able to make any that the phone'll play. So until I can figure this out, I'll have to rely on smashTheTONES to create my ringtones.

Damn, I was so close...

Update 05/11: In case you were wondering, installing Tiger on my Macs did make syncing a lot better. Now I can use Bluetooth for both syncing and uploading to my phone. Better late than never, although now I have a USB cable I don't need. Well, actually I have about a dozen USB cables I don't need. But this one is special.

First it was the Mac press, writing in horror as Apple Computer went after the publisher of Think Secret over reports they ran on an unannounced product. Apple wants to force Think Secret to reveal the source of the information; Think Secret is claiming the right as journalists to withhold the names. And what's started as the Mac press has expanded into some mainstream press.

Which makes this article at Daring Fireball a breath of fresh air. Both Think Secret and others have used the straw man argument that Apple is only trying to intimidate a small publisher with limited resources, that they'd never try it against a mainstream publication with its own legal team. They seem to believe that the First Amendment and the right of the people to know are absolute.

But the Daring Fireball article questions both premises. Apple wouldn't go after a major news organization because most such organizations would know better than to run such a story. This isn't the case of a whistle blower reporting corporate malfeasance. It's an employee violating Apple's confidentiality rules just to show off. And having spent a little time at Apple, I can tell you that the company takes its image and its secrets very seriously. I wouldn't want to be that employee. Nor would I want to be any news organization, large or small, that stands in the way.

One can argue that divulging the product in question isn't a big deal, that it was a niche product that wouldn't interest all that many people. But we don't get to make that decision; Apple does. And they may indeed be looking to make an example, to send a message to other loose-lipped employees. That too is their right.

My feeling is that sites like Think Secret want it both ways: to be informal and not subject to the rules of professional journalism, while at the same time expecting that arguments about the public's right to know and the rights of a free press apply. I think that's naive. More to the point, it's a disservice both to journalism and to blogging.

Most of the Mac sites have reported the news that Jef Raskin, father and namer of the Macintosh, has died of pancreatic cancer. Although the Mac wasn't and isn't what Jef envisioned (he was more interested in the computer as dedicated appliance, like an easier-to-use Wang word processor), there's no denying his foresight, his dedication and his genius. Strangely enough, the best tribute to Raskin I've seen is at As The Apple Turns, strange because these guys are rarely serious. And even in memorializing the original MacDaddy, they aren't solemn. Which may be why I like it so much. Because as much as a curmudgeon as Raskin could be (and he was), he also had a sense of humor and a humanity that infused his technology. He will be missed.

I've been fighting a holding action against the flu or something remarkably similar for the past few days. Stayed home Monday and Tuesday, one benefit of the internets being the ability to do most work-related activities from the comfort of my couch. I did have to go in today to do a remote presentation, WebEx web conferencing not working so well on Macintoshes. But as soon as the presenting was done, I returned home to watch television and continue my interrupted recuperation.

As per my routine, I popped the screen on my PowerBook within a couple of minutes of arriving home. And shortly afterward, my Instant Message program popped up with a file being sent to me by a former coworker. The title was slightly provocative: thong-sandals or something like that. And if I were healthy, my natural paranoia would have kicked in. But it didn't; I accepted the file. And after a couple of minutes my IM program died.

Still not getting it, I restarted the program. It tried sending again, at which point I noticed the .pif extension on the file. That's no image format, I thought. That's a Windows executable file. I bet said coworker's computer is infected with a virus!

And so it turned out to be. Fortunately, my Mac is immune to Windows viruses. (Or is that virii?) I wish my own immune system were nearly so virus-resistent.

Okay, maybe just clever. But I think it's inspired; see if you agree...

With all the noise over Apple's new iPod Shuffle, the stick-of-gum-sized music player, the biggest complaint is over the lack of a screen. And that mostly focuses on the user not knowing what a song is, assuming of course that he or she doesn't recognize it right off. (Hey, it happens to me all the time. Then again, maybe that's just old age taking over.)

Anyway, here's the brilliant idea. Mac OS X has voice technology. So what would it take to have iTunes add a voice that speaks the song titles and artist at the beginning of each track? It could be an option you turn on for the iPod Shuffle, or even for the regular iPod in situations where you really ought not to be looking at the screen. (Like driving, for example.)

Like I said: brilliant. And I won't even try to patent it. Although if somebody does implement it and wants to send me an iPod out of gratitude, I wouldn't say no...

Update 03/11: Am I ahead of my time or what? According to Daring Fireball, Apple has just implemented my brilliant idea. So if I'm so smart, how come I'm unemployed?

With things kind of quiet at work, at least for me, I decided to take some time off today and head into San Francisco to visit MacWorld. There was once a time when I could spend three full days wandering the aisles at MacWorld; this one took me about an hour and a half. Some of the difference is the web; we get so much information thrown at us every day, at least if we want it (and I do), that there are a lot fewer surprises when you get to a trade show. Some if it is that Macs are a lot more mainstream than they used to be; thanks to USB and all sorts of other standards, there's less need for special Mac devices. Some of it is that Apple's more available, thanks to its own stores and local retailers like Fry's Electronics. Every time I visit either one I get a good look at a wide range of goodies.

But there's one place where Macs aren't mainstream: software. With a different operating system and GUI, software has to be written specifically for the Mac. And I was surprised at how few software makers were present at the show. I guess they don't feel the need to exhibit any more. Which is a shame, since there's nothing better than seeing a demo of a cool product by somebody who really knows how to exercise it.

So what was there to see? Apple's new products, of course: the Mac mini in all its teenyness. And the iPod Shuffle, which takes teenyness and minimalism to a whole different level. I want both, although I'm less than pleased to note that the Mac mini is completely unupgradeable by the user -- even memory has to be factory installed. Still, it's three times faster than my G4 Cube, one third the size and, even after adding memory, less than half the price. So we'll see.

Oh, and there were lots of iPod accessories. And lots of notebook bags and cases. And all the digital camera and printer makers, which was nice. I need a new laser printer. And even if I don't need another camera (my D70 isn't even out of warranty yet), there are some little pocket sized models that are just crying out to be taken home.

But I so miss the old days of MacWorld. The love fest. The objectionable software. The giveaways. The spending way more than I ought to have spent on stuff I didn't need and never... well, maybe I don't miss that part quite so much.

Update 01/13: A correction: According to Cult of Mac, you can upgrade the memory on a Mac mini yourself. It's not recommended, but it won't break the warranty. So I guess this thing's back on my list as a replacement for my Cube.

This heartfelt tale of the rightness of Windows requires Quicktime to view. Which seems wrong somehow, doesn't it?

The Mac rumor sites have been full of stories about what His Royal Jobness will announce next week at MacWorld in San Francisco. The best documented rumors concern an iMac sans display and a new office suite with the possible name of iWork. Which would have been par for the course, if Apple hadn't upped the ante by suing Think Secret over the leaks.

Which also would be commonplace and not worth writing about. Except that Charles Arthur writes in his blog that Apple's lawyers may have an interesting time when they try to serve Think Secret with papers:

$ whois thinksecret.com

   Organization:
      The dePlume Organization LLC
      Nick dePlume
      P.O. Box 71
      New Woodstock, NY 13122
      US
      Phone: (425) 930-47691
      Fax..: (425) 930-4769
      Email: nick@deplume.com
  

Nick dePlume? Is that like a nom de pen?

1. BTW², although the address is in New York, a reverse phone lookup tells me the phone number is in Bellevue, Washington. Isn't that Microsoft country? Curious place for Mac rumors.
2. Oh, BTW is TLA-speak³ for by the way.
3. And TLA is a three letter acronym. Unless you're in the other Washington. Over there it's a three letter agency. CIA, NSA, that sort of thing.

Gizmodo reports on a rumor that new 4GB iPod Minis are actually shipping with 5GB drives, presumably in preparation for an announcement at MacWorld next week in San Francisco. He describes this secret upgrade as an odd business practice. Maybe so, but not without precedent.

I was at Sun Microsystems during the era of the first SPARCstations. The original SPARCstation 1 had a 20MHz processor. And when faster processors became available, Sun released a new and improved 25MHz workstation they called the SPARCstation 1+. They took all the outstanding orders for the SS1 and shipped them the 1+ with a little note. The note explained the change and expressed the hope that the customer wouldn't be inconvenienced by receiving a faster machine at the same price. To my knowledge, no one complained.

Cult of Mac quotes from an Irish Times interview on the @U2 site about the band's decision to appear in an Apple ad. As a big Apple fan (but not particularly a U2 fan), I found their thought processes interesting:

Q: Speaking of which: U2 in the Apple iPod ad?

Bono: We always say that we are a gang of four but a corporation of five.

Larry: It was a very clear idea. They make products that we like, also they have single-handedly saved the music industry, they have developed the technology to download the music and for it to be paid for. Record companies couldn't do that -- they were faffing around suing people. We are big fans of Apple, we're happy to stand up and say that, "yes, these guys design the best stuff." When it came to the single, "Vertigo," they were going "can we use that song" and we were thinking, we want to get that riff out there. They wanted to make an ad and we told them we would be in it.

Bono: No money changed hands.

Larry: I'm very precious and conservative about the use of U2's music anywhere because I have concerns about the perception of the band. We're not endorsing a product we're embarrassed about -- we use it the iPod, we like it, it's helping us and other musicians to get paid for their wares. Ninety per cent of people will pay for downloads. Apple and Steve Jobs are saving music for the future. It won't be Universal, EMI or Sony running record companies in 10 years' time -- it will be Apple and telephone companies. We don't do advertisements, we did do the Apple campaign.

Bono: We did think about doing a car ad at one stage. We were offered $23 million for one song. Here's a moral hazard for you: we, and I particularly, know what $23 million can buy if you're not going to keep it.

Larry: Yeah, a yacht!

Bono: You can build a lot for $23 million in the countries I've been in. But you either tell people you're giving it away -- then, by our definition, it is no longer charity, in the sense that the right hand shouldn't know what the left hand is doing. Finally, the reason we didn't do it was because it was for "Where the Streets Have No Name." If a U2 show is going askew, as it can, the one song you can rely on to get that room back is "Where the Streets Have No Name," and we didn't want some 16-year-old kids turning to each other and saying "oh great, they're playing the car ad." Now, had it been a different song out of the U2 canon...It's not zealotry that stops us -- in the end we didn't want to embarrass our fans, we didn't want to change the mood in which that song is perceived.

It's not the "in bed with a corporation" usual thing that stops us. We are in bed with many corporations: MTV are a Viacom corporation; Clear Channel -- they play us on the radio; Universal, our label, is a Vivendi corporation. It's not the cash, it's just "don't embarrass us." In my other life as a lobbyist I will be looking for $223 million and I'd prefer to spend my time doing that.

Slashdot provides a pointer to a truly inspiring tale of completing a development project even when no one in authority knows or cares. Having spent a little time at Apple myself, and having been rejected like an organ transplant that went horribly wrong, I can only marvel at the determination of a fired engineer who somehow managed to stay on the job to the bittersweet end. It's a tribute to his determination, as well as to the sloppiness and incompetence of his (former) employers, that he succeeded. And I mean that in the nicest possible way; if only other employers were quite so inept. Or could engender a fraction of the loyalty we see here.

An article at Yield.com called Beatles fans in denial of Apple Computer heritage sets the record straight regarding the name conflict between Apple Corps Ltd, home of The Beatles, and Apple Computer, which does something unrelated. To quote Fox News, "We report; you decide."

I ordered an Airport Express right after Apple announced them. It's a little wireless access point in the shape of a PowerBook power adapter, only a little bit bigger. And one of its uses is to provide a wireless link between computers running iTunes and your stereo. Which it does very well, especially if these two are in different rooms. But there was one major inconvenience: if you're in the room with the stereo, you don't have control over the music.

But now Keyspan has an answer: a new version of their Digital Media Remote. Plug the receiver into the USB port on the Airport Express and you can use the remote to control iTunes on the connected computer. Can't wait to get one and try it out.

Spotted on Gizmodo.

Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Everest "because it's there." Other people see great challenges where the rest of us see really stupid ideas. But aren't we glad there are those people to do the really stupid things so we can read about them?

A while back I read about somebody who used Mac OS X's built-in RAID support to create a RAID filesystem across a stack of floppy disk drives. RAID is designed to spread a directory across a bunch of disk drives, for performance or failure resistance or both. Let's just say that doing it with floppies is as silly as it is brave.

But as impressive as that stunt was, it ain't nuthin' compared to getting Mac OS X running on a Centris 650. I had one of these, a 25MHz Motorola 68040 with less main memory than my PowerBook's video card. And wholly incapable of running the PowerPC-only OS X. Then how did an Australian adventurer pull off the miracle of getting it to work? Emulation! First, get a copy of Debian Linux, which can be made to run on a 68040. Then install a copy of PearPC, a PowerPC emulator, on top. Ignore the fact that Linux runs like a pig on such a slow processor with such a tiny memory space. And further ignore the fact that PearPC runs more than ten times slower than the native operating system on any computer. And you get a running Mac OS X on a Centris. But slow? Boy howdy!

Here's just how slow: The system was booted today at 9PM local time. An hour and a half later, the Apple logo appeared. Expectations are that the Dock will be up and running by the same time next week. I can't wait to hear about the performance running Word!

(A vote of thanks to As The Apple Turns for this story. This is just the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to their site.)

The Macintosh news sites have been full of reports about a Mac emulator for PCs CherryOS. Reports is too strong a word, since there's little to report beyond the claims of the company (their website is here). And those claims are producing large and, in my humble opinion, entirely justified amounts of skepticism. A Mac emulator that runs at 80% the performance of the real thing? That supports a wide range of PC peripherals? Does it come with a Holy Grail too?

The most skeptical writeup I've seen so far is at Jack Whispers, where the author suggests that emulators are the next get rich quick scheme. He has an interesting take on the business models of Windows emulator firms Connectix (Virtual PC) and Insignia Solutions (SoftWindows).

As for CherryOS, it sure has the odor of scam about it. Is it really just an attempt to bilk anybody foolish enough to pay $50 for a test drive? Or is there something there?