Modding CoverSutra Themes, The Sophiesticated Way
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
CoverSutra is an iTunes controller for Mac OS X. It’s been around a while now. Back in the days when iTunes controllers were all the rage. Yet it stood its ground and has become quite robust—becoming a lean, mean, controlling machine—and a solid edition to any modders desktop. Moreover, it provides users with three nicely designed themes. But sadly, it’s not very modder friendly, if, you know, you aren’t into the default themes. However, there are always ways around things, and modders are notorious for dissecting and deconstructing programs.
This guide will take a lot of the legwork out of modding CoverSutra. So let’s begin. First, open up the contents of the program (right click on the app in Finder) and navigate to the PlugIn folder, found inside of the Contents folder. There, you’ll see the three default themes. Choose the theme you find most disposable (I’ve chosen JewelBoxing—the modern CD box displayed on the left Album Cover dialog screen in the Preferences Pane).
Snow Leopard Woes: The Service Battery Notice
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
Some Snow Leopard adopters have noticed a strange warning in their status bars: “Service Battery.” I’ve personally had the “Service Battery” warning for some time now under Snow Leopard. Leopard, incidentally did not yield this bulletin, and neither did the early test builds of SL, suggesting that Apple made some last minute changes before the final release.
I have not taken my MacBook Pro in to see an Apple technician because nothing has changed, save it takes nearly a full minute for my battery to begin charging (SL notifies me that my battery is “Not Charging” when AC is initially connected; however, the charging does occur after a short delay), and my battery life is severely crippled (standard use gives me just shy of 2 hours). This notice has simply led me to assume my 1.5 year old battery had come to the end of its life. However, recently rumblings in the Apple forums are suggesting that that may not be the case, or rather their may exist an underlying problem of some kind with either Apple batteries (something that is not entirely new) or with Snow Leopard itself.
Prevent Hard Disk Spindown Using PMSET
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
Using PMSET on Mac OS X, you can prevent your external hardrive from going to sleep (or spinning down). If you rock a notebook, and rely on an external enclosure, you probably know how annoying it is when your drive goes to sleep on you and it takes a good 30 seconds for it to spin back up again. More annoying is when Finder becomes unresponsive until this happens. If your drive is set to spindown every 15 minutes, then this ends up being downright maddening, and seriously cripples your workflow.
Worst yet, most external enclosures are incredibly aggressive when it comes to their power saving features, and sadly, nearly all of them do not provide the option to change the frequency of which the drives power down. It may not be so bad if you could get the drive to spindown when you truly weren’t using it, but enclosures are dumb. They spindown regardless of your intended usage. If the system is not actively using the hardrive, then it goes to sleep. Well, I suppose that’s fine but system’s still consult your drives even if you don’t expressly do so (e.g., entering Front Row will talk to any drive connected to your system, and if a drive went to sleep, become unresponsive upon load until said drive wakes up).
I got real sick of this behaviour and decided to hit up google, hoping to find a workable solution. Sadly, all I found were ancient hacks, obscure cron jobs that wrote to the drive every n minutes, and over-priced programs that meant I had to run an additional process. I had hoped for a better way, and eventually I stumbled on one: PMSET.
Palm Just a Bunch of Pirates, Arrrrr!
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
Everyone’s pretty familiar with the Palm Pre and its fabled iTunes support (unless you’ve been on Mars, in a cave, with your eyes shut, and your fingers in your ears). The release of the new Palm Pre saw native iTunes connectivity. Its users rejoiced. Apple (obviously) didn’t like Palm piggybacking off its baby (hey, Apple fanboy or no, they did put a ton of money and man-hours into their flagship program; you know the one that blew open online music sales?), so they released a new version blocking the Pre. Apple 1, Palm 0. A few days later, a new firmware update for the Pre was loosed on the disgruntled phone owners returning iTunes connectivity. Apple 1, Palm 1.
So now we wait. We wait for Apple to inevitably block the Pre with a probably much more advanced method. You see, the Pre used a hack the first time around. Apple blocked it by requiring that all devices present their God-given USB vendor ID. Palm fired back by spoofing the vendor ID to look just like an iPod. Clever? No, not really. And Nilay Patel (of Engadget fame) writes why, in an elegant and truly sound rundown of Palm’s “tactics.” You can hit up his post here.
I was going to write a lengthy discussion about the debacle, but I think Patel has already said it all. Just a fantastic piece of journalism, from a very astute and down to earth reporter. I’m sure Pre owners aren’t going to line up to return their Pres over this situation any time soon, but I hope they remove themselves from the heat of the moment and see just what’s really is going on, and why companies shouldn’t conduct business in this way. That’s a two minute time-out for you Palm. And I want you to write a 500 word essay on why you think this is not how to conduct business.
Microsoft Stores Complete with Guru Bars?
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
So you’ve heard of this? Microsoft is proposing to open Microsoft Stores (Apple Store clones, nearly down the the furniture). It’s a good move, but what are they going to line the shelves with? Copies of mice and Windows XP boxes? I kid. But truthfully, they don’t manufacture that many products. Oh, and keyboards—mice, Windows, and keyboards. Maybe X-Boxes too? Have a gaming wing? Anyway, I digress.
Employees delivered a stirring PowerPoint, outlining the plan. Right away, I noticed a big problem: The PC. You know, the thing that actually runs Windows. Apple has the luxury of supporting their own hardware (as well as software). When a Mac user walks up to a Genius Bar at an Apple Store, the Apple Genius has express knowledge about the entire unit. Sadly, Microsoft “Gurus” won’t. There are plenty of PC makers who manufacture hardware—from Dell, HP, Toshiba, Acer, Asus, Sony, MSI, and more. While the operating system may be the same on all of them (read Windows XP and up), the hardware won’t be, and Microsoft is in no position to supply a repair. So if your Asus notebook won’t boot, what is a Microsoft Guru going to do for you? Refer you to the device manufacturer? That’s going to upset a lot of people. I mean, I can do that myself. Why did I visit a Microsoft store if they’re only going to transfer my problem to another company? People won’t like that. No one likes to be transferred. It’s upsetting. People want to leave with a repair or a new product, not the run-around.
