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).

In Finder, right click on the file and choose “Show Package Contents.” As you’ll see, there isn’t much to a theme. A handful of .tiffs and an Info.plist file. Open up the plist and you’ll see the code required to make the theme functional. If you have any experience in modding, you’ll feel right at home, as this stuff is actually quite rudimentary.

Let me give you a precis of the plist file. The lines you need to change are the values of the coverFrame keys. These tell CoverSutra how to position and size the cover being displayed. Leave all other strings alone, even the size key, which dictates the actual image size. As pictured to the left, you can make the cover any size you wish, provided it is ultimately constrained within the dimensions of the current theme (144×144 for example). You’ll notice that each theme as 3 difference cover sizes (Extra Small, Small, and Medium—I guess Sophie doesn’t like large? Anyway, I digress). Medium is the standard size and is the one I’ve modded successfully, and will be the one I use in my example.

First thing to do is create your overlay image. This will be the image that is pinned on top of the album cover art that CoverSutra will display when a song is played. As I said, you can make this image any size you wish, provided it does not exceed the dimensions found in the theme. Simply start with a 144×144 (for medium) sized canvas and go from there. Tiff files support transparency, so position the image however you wish.

Next, save the file using the same file name (in this case medium.tiff and emptyMedium.tiff, where the latter is the image that will be displayed when your song does not contain cover art). Now it’s time to adjust the cover art to be displayed properly within your new image. These values are found under the coverFrame key (bolded values) of the plist file:

CoverSutraAlbumCaseMedium
    caseImage
    medium.tiff
    coverFrame
    {{15, 24}, {100, 100}}
    size
    {144, 144}
    emptyCaseImage
    emptyMedium.tiff

The first set of values (in pixels) represent the left and bottom offsets, respectively. The second set of values represent the actual vertical and horizontal cover dimensions. To promote clarity, let’s go through an example.

In the code above, the cover art is positioned 14 pixels from the left, 24 pixels from the bottom (represented by the yellow areas). The other two values represent the full dimensions of the cover art, as represented by the four red corners. Essentially, here the cover is 100×100 pixels and it is offset from the left 14 pixels, and from the bottom 24 pixels.

Once you have the correct values, simply save the changes to the plist file and then copy your modded theme back to the PlugIns folder found within the program. I’ve personally ported over my Fcuk Vinyl BowTie theme, which you can download here (as you can see, I’ve replaced the JewelBoxing theme). It is of note that I have only modified the medium size that is typically pinned to the desktop. Once you overwrite the default theme of the same name, open up the CoverSutra Preference Pane and you’ll see it listed in the Album Cover tab.

There really isn’t all that much to it, but hopefully I saved you the 20 minutes of legwork it took me to mod my first cover art. Now go and mod all your BowTie themes and bring them over to CoverSutra. But bear in mind, you will only be able to replace the default themes, and that means running no more than 3 themes at a time.

Modder 4 Life.

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.

A recent article by Josh Carr, a smarmy, arrogant, and belittling reporter on the once enjoyable TAUW, claims Snow Leopard is simply more advanced at isolating and reporting battery decomposition. He states:

Most of the time, people don’t realize their battery has issues until it REALLY has issues like 20 minute run-times, random shut downs, the black “x” in the battery icon, etc. All of these are issues we (technicians) use to identify a bad battery. These new battery checks could actually help you find out your battery is bad before the warranty runs out; before it gets to the point of no return.

Now aside from the healthy dose of FUD and pushing half-baked, “personal experience”, he claims those suffering from this warning simply have bad batteries (and for a lack of a better term, are just plain stupid). He implies that many users are simply not knowledgeable in this area and should implicitly trust Apple engineers (and Geniuses) in their assessments. However, one Apple form user (brownstone) reports that an Apple certified Genius ran diagnostics on their battery after the service message appeared, to find the battery was actually functioning properly, yet upon a visible check, the battery showed signs of swelling. Both the user and the Apple Genius expressed awe that such a problem was not picked up by the Apple on-sight diagnostic software (could it be that Snow Leopard is more advanced than their own inhouse diagnostic tools?). Brownstone’s battery was deemed defective and he received a prompt replacement, free of charge.

If the batteries are defecting, Apple will stand behind them, provided they are under warranty of course. However, if the warning is a result of battery “depletion” (read: battery overuse), then you are going to foot the bill for a new one.

Yet some users report the presence of this warning despite installing brand new batteries—batteries that also run just fine under Leopard. Some, who own multiple batteries, claim the newly released operating system finds fault with all of them. Other users report intermittent service battery warnings or cycling battery health states (as read by iStat widget). These reports seem to signal more than just a handful of aging or potentially failing batteries.

In attempts to fix the problem, many forum users have tried trashing the com.apple.PowerManagement.plist file, re-calibrating their batteries, resetting PRAM, all to no avail, prompting users to either revert back to Leopard or simply suffer with the issues.

Random shutdowns at various battery percentages and an inability to charge the battery past these points have also been reported, yet these reports are preliminary and insufficient data exists to point direct fault at Snow Leopard. However, some users claim the issue is fixed when they revert back to the previous iteration of Mac OS X (and an increase in battery life is experienced).

As of today, Apple has nothing to add, stating they are not aware of any such problems in their newly released OS. Notebook users declare that Apple technicians and service staff are pointing to likely hardware failure (batteries or logic boards). They advise that users heed the warnings and take their computers in for servicing. In most cases users have indeed identified bad batteries, with a replacement solving the illustrious warning. However, there does exists too many people that report a wide range of problems to ignore. In any case, this doesn’t seem to be a clearcut case, as Mr. Carr would have us believe.

Moreover, if SL is indeed functioning properly, this would signal a massive underlying problem with Apple batteries. A problem that is perhaps validated by those receiving the battery service notice on new, replacement batteries.

My own battery has been replaced twice already. The first was part of a larger recall, while the second was due to battery failure. Both were covered under my warranty. But this new battery is only a year and a half old, with not but 159 cycles. Surely a battery has to last longer than that?

As is with most Apple notices, they are less descriptive than a user may like. The current battery notice tells us nothing about what is actually occurring with the battery, simply that a problem exists.

If you have this warning, I encourage you to post your experience in the Apple forums, or to call Apple directly, and speak with a technician. If your computer is under warranty, you will receive a brand new battery. If your battery, however, is no longer covered under warranty, then I would strongly urge you to avoid purchasing a new one until more information is made available. This may very well be a software issue and if that is indeed the case, may be fixed in a future release (currently, Mac OS X 10.6.2 does not provide a fix). Until then, if your battery functions properly (no intermittent shutdowns and sustains a full charge), yet merely exhibits a reduced charge capacity, you may want to hold off on shelling out for a replacement.

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.

PMSET manipulates power management settings. In fact, the Energy Saver preference pane is a simplified interface for pmset, removing some more advanced functionality. Well that advanced functionality is what we need here. Note: All changes made through pmset are saved in a persistent preferences file, located in:

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

So fire up Terminal (located in the Utilities folder), and we’ll get started. The -b, -c, -u, and -a flags determine whether the settings apply to battery (-b), AC (outlet) (-c), UPS (-u) or under all of these conditions (-a).

So if we type the following in Terminal: sudo pmset -c disksleep 0, we are telling our system to prevent the disk from sleeping when it’s connected to AC (power outlet), but to allow the disk to spindown normally when it’s either on battery power, or using a uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Note: For the settings to be applied, we need to use the sudo command. This means you’ll have to have administrator access and will be required to enter your password. Don’t panic if characters don’t appear when you type the password, this is completely normal. Sudo doesn’t provide character feedback as to enhance security.

If we want to prevent the disk from going to sleep no matter what kind of power source we are using, we would enter the following: sudo pmset -a disksleep 0. If we want to, say, extend the disk sleep interval to an hour, we would enter the following: sudo pmset -a disksleep 60. Again, this will apply the changes no matter what kind of power source we are using and if the drive is not used for an hour, allow it sleep.

But say you want to prevent the disk from sleeping on AC, but also to extend the sleep interval to an hour when you are unplugged and running on your battery. Well, you would type the following in Terminal: sudo pmset -c disksleep 0 -b disksleep 60.

There is a lot more pmset can do for you, but if you just want to prevent your external disk from going to sleep so you can work without OS X waiting for your hardrive to spinup back up all the time, the above examples should suffice.

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.

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.

Walking into an Apple Store, you get full service under one roof. If there is a hardware failure, they can service the unit for you. No need to go anywhere else. Because Apple manufacturers both the hardware and the software to run it, they are in an optimal position to please the customer. Microsoft makes an operating system (okay and a gaming station and some peripherals). But it doesn’t manufacture (or have any connection with) the hardware. It just so happens that PC manufacturers chose to install said operating system on their products (they could just as well—and have—install a competitor like Linux).

Sadly, let’s add further to the confusion: 99% of PCs sold on the market have a big sticker declaring “Designed for Windows”, blurring even further the distinction between Microsoft and the PC. A general user may wonder why the Microsoft Guru can’t fix his Toshiba when 3 stickers on the face scream Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft!

Setting up these Guru Bars are great on conceptual paper (and I imagine squirmy stockholders that haren’t too happy about the profit reports), but they fail miserably when you run them through the “real life simulator.” Again, Microsoft is going to butcher this endeavour because they are just incredibly myopic (baffling at times, I know). Success is not based on ideas alone, but the actual implementation of those ideas, and that’s what this company just can’t seem to grasp (baffling at times, I know). They mimic the successful company only to a superficial degree. No wonder the Redmond Giant is wobbling…

October 26th, 2007 came and went. There was no cure for cancer. No sign of world peace. No apocalypse. But if you owned a Mac, or were awaiting for one in the mail, you were counting down the minutes to 6:00 PM. Why? Because of Apple’s new operating system: Mac OS 10.5., ebulliently dubbed Leopard.

Leopard is a progressive step to a better operating system. It boast improvements galore (Apple claims 300+), everything from the new unified interface, to the new Quick Look feature. Apple has put down the gauntlet to anyone in the operating system (hint, Microsoft) and has shown them what it really means to love your customers. To help them work faster, better, and smarter.

This love is apparent from the first screen and grows as each new feature is uncovered by the end-user. Again, Apple’s pedantic nature shines through, like some monolithic beacon of hope for all of us that suffer from perfectionism. Down to the icons, Apple takes great care in crafting its products, and Leopard is no exception.

If you have a Mac, do yourself a favour and pick up a copy. If you are one of the many idling on a PC, go and have a good cry… then buy yourself a Mac.