Freecasts

Think of this post as an extension of Fredric’s Fantastic Freeware except that instead of me doing the reading/ad-libbing, you will have to supply your own internal voice. These are the top free or cheap Mac Apps that every Mac user should have.
Network Apps:
Cyberduck- I have used most ftp programs for the Mac including; Transmit, Fetch, and the command line, and I still prefer Cyberduck. Free
MacFusion- This amazing program lets you mount a remote drive with read/write access through ftp or ssh on you desktop. This is compared to the Finder which only lets you mount a ftp drive with read only. Requires MacFuse which is free as well as MacFusion.
SpamSive- This program is considered by many (including me) to be the best spam blocker on the Mac. Setting it up isn’t difficult, but be sure to read the readme. $30
iFreete- This application is a freeware directory for the Mac. In other words it finds Mac freeware and lets you see screenshots, reviews, and downloads for a particular piece of software. It is kinda hard to explain, but think iTunes for freeware. Free.
JollysFastVNC- There are many VNC programs for the Mac, but my favorite is this one due to it’s speed. Free.
Colloquy- The definitive Mac IRC program. Free.
Media
Perian- It may be a bit vain, but I think I was one of the first people to discover Perian and get it well known. I say that because over a year ago, I submitted it to digg. Anyway, Perian is the ultimate Quicktime plugin, allowing QuickTime to play almost any file. Free.
VLC- I use this app when Perian just doesn’t work. I have yet to find a file format it won’t play. Free.
VisualHub- This app can take most video formats and transform it into either: iPod, H.264, Mpeg4, Mpeg, DVD, Divx (with many types), WMV, Flash, PSP, DV, and Tivo. Not only that but it is quick and the developer has a good sense of humor (read the readme). $23.32
iSquint- The little brother of Visual Hub. It can convert almost any format into a format readable by the iPod. Free.
Handbrake- Converts DVDs into video files on your computer. Works on most if not all DVDs including the protected ones. But we all know that you won’t use it for illegal uses, right. Good. Free.
Pixelmator- Much has been said of this little Photoshop competitor, but I will tell you what you need to know. Fast as hell, has most of the functionality of Photoshop, $59, ’nuff said.
Productivity
NeoOffice- In my tests, this app has all the functionality of M$ Office (which I hate with a burning passion) for free. It can open and write to any office doc. The one problem is that it is a bit ugly, but it recently got a facelift. Free.
Schoolhouse- This app is a Swiss Army Knife app. Not only can you manage your homework in it, but you can calculate grades, you can email teachers, and take notes. All from this one app! A must have for any student.
TextMate- There is so much that can be done with this app it is staggering. It can be used to write code, to make websites and to write text. $59.
iWork- Includes Pages (word processor and page layout tool), Numbers (spreadsheet maker), and the best presentation software that I know of; Keynote. I use this app all the time. It can open and save to office formats. It is also better looking and faster than office and has all the features that most office users use. $79.99
Utilities
Growl- It is impossible to describe this app, but I will do my best. This pops up a little notification window when another process has something to tell you. Very useful. Free.
Onyx- The ultimate Mac Maintenance utility. I use it once a week to keep my Macs running fast. Free.
SuperDuper- My favorite Mac backup program. The reason why it has won my heart is that it can do incremental, bootable backups. $27.95
Quicksilver- The best launcher out there. 100x quicker than Spotlight and more expandable. With all the plugins that are available for it, it can be used for many things. Free.
AppFresh- Think software update for all of your programs. It also has intergration with iUsethis. Free.

Good friends of mine will probably remember that I got an iPhone shortly after it came out (July 7th to be precise). Provided that those people are also readers of this blog, they might also wonder why there was no review of the iPhone after I got it and the reason is such: I hate doing reviews right after I get something. It is too easy to be overcome by the “shineyness” of a new gadget and overlook other faults. Not to mention that (in my humble opinion) you can not do a review of a product without having a bit of time to use the damn thing and find out it’s faults and hidden greatness. Several things are left out of this review most notably all the hacking and bricking. That stuff is up to you. I hacked my iPhone, but in this review, I will pretend that the iPhone was unhackable and I never hacked mine. In this review I will list the pros and cons each of the features by their order in the SpringBoard. The exceptions will be the clock application (I don’t use it), the calender application (since I don’t use it), the stocks application (what is there to review), and the settings application.
1: SMS
Pros:
The SMS program is the smoothest SMS app I have ever seen on a phone.
I love the fact that you can click on links for phone numbers and web sites.
Cons:
No MMS; either sending or receiving.
The chat interface can be a bit confusing when you are not having a regular conversation on sms.
The message limit in the iPhone’s software.
2: Photos
Pros:
This application has an amazing interface. This is the first app I show off when flaunting my iPhone. People just go crazy for the flicking and the flipping.
I love how it responds to the motion sensor.
Cons:
None really
3: Camera
Pros:
In bright light the quality is quite good.
The fact that the little camera icon turns with the iPhone shows off that attention to detail that Apple is known for.
The shutter visual is quite cute.
No shutter sound. Those are just so annoying.
Cons:
You have no control over the advanced features of the camera such as exposure, white balance, shutter time, and resolution.
There is no zoom.
In low light, the pictures don’t look as good.
4: Youtube
Pros:
The H.264 videos look great.
Depending on if you are on wi-fi or Edge, it changes the resolution.
The videos load relatively quickly.
Cons:
This application is a huge battery sucker.
The navigation is a bit weird in the fact that I cant search by uploader.
Sometimes when I click on a link to Youtube (either in Safari or Mail) it takes me to the web page.
Not all the videos are converted to H.264.
5: Maps
Pros:
Good integration with the iPhone.
Live traffic updates.
The directions feature.
Cons:
No street view.
Sometimes the pin isn’t where the address is.
It doesn’t cache maps.
6: Weather
Pros:
It is accurate.
Cons:
I wish the icon would reflect the actual weather.
7: Calculator
Pros:
Simple to use.
Cons:
I wish it had more advanced functions and graphing.
8: Notes
Pros:
Until February, the closest we have to a to do list on the iPhone.
Perfect for jotting down quick things.
The animations.
Cons:
They don’t sync with anything.
They can’t be exported.
9: Mobile iTunes Store
Pros:
Very quick.
You can buy iTunes Plus content.
Perfect for impulse buying.
Cons:
Perfect for impulse buying that will later be regretted.
Doesn’t work on Edge.
No podcasts or videos.
10: Phone
Pros:
Unlike my dad’s Treo, it is usable.
Calls come in clear.
Thanks to the infrared sensors near the top, face dialing is a thing of the past.
It has a great microphone.
Cons:
No contact searching.
The weakest speaker that I have ever seen on a phone.
11: Mail
Pros:
The best mail client I have seen on a phone.
Cons:
That isn’t saying much.
No spam filter.
No “Mark all read” button.
Sometimes emails don’t get downloaded immediately.
12: Safari
Pros:
Motion sensor aware.
Fast (on wifi).
The zooming is very very smart.
I like how it handles tabs.
Cons:
No flash plugin.
Limited to 8 tabs.
Doesn’t cache pages to be open.
No downloading.
When I stream a song, I should be able to surf the web at the same time.
13: iPod
Pros:
The best iPod ever.
External volume control.
The included headphones are better quality than the normal iPod headphones.
The iPhone headphones have that pause/next track button built in.
Cons:
Weak speaker.
Sometimes I get into coverflow mode when I don’t want to.
The damn recessed headphone port.

The application and source code.This guide is for Tiger and possibly Leopard, but I do not know. It will show you how to create a program that will move a Finder window around without user intervention. The best part is you don’t have to write a line of code.
1: Open Script Editor.app (you can find that in your /Applications/AppleScript folder).
2: Press the button on the top of the window that says “Record.”
3: Navigate back to the Finder.
4: Open up a new window.
5: Move that window around, letting go of the mouse after every few seconds of moving (I find that lots of smaller movements create great looking animation.)
6: Once you are done, navigate back to Script Editor and click stop.
7: Save it to either a script or an application bundle. It is very important to not save it as an application because if you do, it will only compile for what architecture you are on. An application bundle is universal.
8: Click play and watch a Finder window go around the screen like magic!
(The source code for my version will be uploaded tomorrow or later.)

As a result of my PowerBook failing again and Applgeek’s MacBook problems along with issues with other Macs from other friends, I decided to write an open letter to Apple requesting them to stop making poor products. It will remain open until March 26th (The date which my PowerBook died the first time). From March 26th until April 1st (Apple’s 31st birthday), I will be collecting signatures for this letter. If you want to sign or want to make a revision, leave a comment or email me csporn@gmail.com. And for those of you who say that online petitions never go anywhere, this is not an online petition, I will be mailing this in to Apple on April 1st.

To whom it may concern:

I recently noticed that at Macworld 2007, it was announced that Apple Computer would drop the “Computer” from it’s name. Personally I think this was not a foreshadow of things to come (more consumer electronics from Apple) but a reaction to things that had happened. What happened? Apple started shifting their focus from computers to the iPod, the prototype (then) iPhone and other consumer electronics. I have many cases that can prove that too. I will start with my own problems, not to be self-centric but I know those the best. While I am talking about mine, I will also throw in other examples of like issues.

I got my first Mac in December 2005. I loved it very much and it just so happened that around that time I was in the market for a laptop. I was looking at some PC laptops when I discovered something; there was a huge price gap between the low end and the high end! It was then when I found that the PowerBook was the perfect gap between them and I bought it on December 31st. After several long days I got it on January 6th, and just my luck; Apple introduced the MacBook Pros. Now at that time I did not feel bad about that. I thought the Intel based Macs would be horrible and besides that I used Photoshop a lot. On top of that I had heard that it was never good to buy the first generation of a new Mac. Looking back, the MacBook Pro customers got it easy compared to what happened to me.

It all started around early February 2006. I was playing a movie in QuickTime when I decided to make some music in GarageBand. Once I opened up GarageBand, the audio in my QuickTime movie started stuttering. Thankfully this was fixed in the 10.4.5 update. Shortly after that, I noticed that my sound card was not outputting to the speakers anymore. Instead it kept the optical audio output on all the time. I had tried every chicken swinging act I could think of to no avail. I went to an Apple store and spoke to a Genius who told me that because I had dropped it a few times, I had caused exactly one dent on each corner of my PowerBook that had hit the logic board or the sound card. This is the start of where my PowerBook experience started to go sour. But it wouldn’t happen all at once, it would start fine and go downhill quicker that Windows Me.

Everything was great after I got my PowerBook back from Apple. It was working quickly and nothing was going bad. Then something very weird happened back in July which still to this day I can not fully explain. On July 8th I decided to check out the new operating system that was taking the Open-source world by storm; Ubuntu Linux. I was burning the iso I got off of their website to a CD when the battery died. I thought that to be weird as two seconds before it shut down, my battery meter displayed that I had 15 minutes left. After I plugged it in and turned it on again, I realized that the CD was a coaster despite the fact that it was verifying when the computer died. I have to admit I swore a little bit and then perhaps the strangest thing in all my computer-using years happened. Right after I swore, I got a kernal panic. I don’t know if this is some little easter egg in the operating system, but I am not the only one who had weird things happen to their Mac after swearing at it. A friend had his MacBook Pro beep after swearing at it and another friend had his Mac Mini get a kernal panic after burning a Ubuntu CD. Weird. So that meant that I would have to spend the day before my birthday fixing my PowerBook. (Reinstalling, updating, etc.). Then in August my battery failed out of the blue. I was surfing the internet, and then poof! My screen is black and I can’t turn it back on. I called Apple and thankfully they sent me a new battery the next day. In some ways I wished they hadn’t.

About a week later I heard of the huge battery recall that Apple was doing. I checked my battery’s serial number (the one Apple just sent me) and my computer’s s/n against the numbers that I saw and they are both in the range of the recall. During my 1 hour lunch break when I could connect to the internet I went to Apple’s web site and found that my PowerBook’s s/n was ok, but my battery was listed as having the wrong s/n. I thought this to be odd so I called Apple where I was told to go online. This made me furious; I had tried going online which didn’t work and on top of that I no longer had internet access! After I managed to get someone on the phone, they told me that their phone lines were tied up so I would have to call tomorrow, then they told me to go to the website for help. Before I was able to tell the person on the phone my story, I heard the dial tone. I had just waited an hour and a half to be told to go to the website and hung up on. I tried both the phone lines and the website the next day and nothing changed. On Friday, (my first try calling was I think on Tuesday) I called the number for Apple Retail phone number. They were able to help me and most importantly they listened. I requested that if they could get me the battery before Sunday (when I was going on a one week vacation) it would be great. They said they would try but they promised that I would get it by the time I was back. I returned, no battery. In the end I had to wait six weeks to get the new battery. This is compared to the 1 day when I called before. I couldn’t believe it. Between a ticking time bomb and a dead battery, I would choose the dead battery.

In October, I noticed that sometimes when I was running Aperture, iTunes, and Firefox at the same time my computer would get very hot then shut down. I thought this was an issue that only happened to MacBooks but I was wrong. I did a bit of researching and found that there were and still are a lot of PowerBook owners who suffer from RSS (random shutdown syndrome). Because of this I scheduled an appointment at the Apple Store where the “Genius” declared everything to be fine. Not five minutes after I got home, it happened again. I called Apple and after waiting about an hour I was told that they would send me a box and they would fix it for free.

After being computerless for a week (I know I have other computers, but everything is on my PowerBook), which was nearly impossible due to the fact that I am a student, I got my PowerBook back and it was as good as new. Until December 26th that is. About a week before that I noticed that my screen was rather weird and also that my SuperDrive was not buring DVDs correctly. By this time I had Apple Tech Support as the number 2 speed dial on my phone so I called up. When I got it back, I noticed 3 things: 1, My SuperDrive was fine as was my screen. 2: My PowerBook had a new dent in it. 3: Some of my RAM had been taken out. Not to take away from the good job that was done on fixing my problems, but I would like to focus more on numbers 2 and 3.

I was furious when I got my laptop back and noticed that it had a new dent in it. I know that PowerBooks and MacBook Pros dent very easily due to their alumium case. In fact I once talked to a Genius who had a PowerBook which was all dented up. However, it is one thing when I dent up my computer, it is a whole different animal when Apple does it. Next I was just as annoied when I found that my 1 gigabyte RAM stick had been taken out. I read on the little piece of paper that it was defective and I knew that that couldn’t be true. Before I had sent my computer in, (as part of my battery of tests) I had run memtest. Memtest is a memory checking tool that runs in Single-User mode. When I ran it, everything showed up okay. I am wondering if this was a ploy for you to get me to buy your overpriced RAM.

I have had many more repairs and with each one, more things get better and things get worse. Just today I got my PowerBook back from it’s 6th repair and I noticed that basicly all of my problems (including the aformentioned dent) are gone, but your track record is not good and I will most certainly be checking up every day.

As stated before, I am not the only one who is having trouble with his or her Apple Laptop. My co-blogger, Applgeek has had immesurable trouble with his MacBook and his previous iBook. A good friend mine Joe Sayer has had problems with his MacBook and his MacBook Pro both to the point that he got rid of both of them.

So Apple, do you feel that just because you have dropped “Computer” from your name you can start making poor quality computers, or do you feel that you can make good computers while making good consumer electronics too?

Sincerly,