Category: OS X

Comments on: Leopard is the New Vista

PC Magazine’s Oliver Rist has a harsh observation: Leopard is the New Vista. And what’s worse, he may be right. Here’s the Waltomatic take on each of his five points. Who’s the winner?

Today I was forwarded a review of OS X entitled: Leopard is the New Vista, and It’s Pissing Me Off.

LUV OS XI think it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of Apple, in general, as I find their hardware, environment, and tools far more productive for my development, office, and home needs than I ever did using Microsoft or its products.

I think it’s also fair to say that I’m willing to also point out when things don’t work:

Oliver Rist, raises some very good points in his treaty on Leopard’s recent similarities to Vista’s screw ups.

Here’s my take on his five points.

Vista Similarity 1: Wait for a Service Pack—Perpetually


Rist is right in saying that “[With Tiger] Everything. Just. Worked. Period.” I’m also quite in agreement that with Vista, even “a year after its shrink-wrapped release” it still has problems, driver issues, and “doesn’t work with 50 percent of new software.”

But I wonder how far back he’s actually recalling. Historically, I recall that each early version of Apple’s OS had serious kinks. Is comparing Tiger 10.4.9 with Leopard 10.5.1 actually a valid Apple to Apple comparison? (excuse the pun)

I’m with Rist if he thinks it should be, but accept the reality it isn’t. In my mind, Apple changed a number of things about the OS that they didn’t have to. Stability, size reduction, and additional hardware support will always earn high marks on my reviews. Unless the new glitz is functional, it doesn’t do much for me; but more on this in a moment.

At the moment, I’m tolerant because historically Apple has made right in reasonable time. By 10.4.3 and 10.4.4, I was quite happy. Given that I suspect Apple’s real purpose was not to make GUI fluff, but to pave the way for resolution independent graphics and new Core Animation, I’m surprised how well things held up.

Microsoft, Direct X improvements aside, gets no such pass, because as a whole, I still have problems with the OS, and it’s been around longer, and had more people working on it.

That said, I’m also aware that a good number of the Microsoft blue screens of death aren’t Microsoft’s fault — directly. When drivers do bad things, it can topple an OS. Of course, this leads me to wonder why Microsoft didn’t manage their kernel layers a bit better.

Knowing this actually provides some insight for Leopard as well. Everyone understood how Tiger worked. Too well, perhaps. There were quite a number of OS resource tweaks that delivered amazing integration and features. I was certainly one of the advanced users.

However, Apple assumes, and I think rightly so, that if you intend to do an upgrade in place, then if you’ve changed the operating system out from underneath them, you roll the dice. A number of people were bit by Unsanity’s Application Enhancer that didn’t upgrade at the last moment before installing Leopard.

Keeping up to date with OS X third-party applications is just as hard as it is on Windows. That’s why I eventually plopped down the money for Version Tracker Pro. Had I not, I would have been one of those that the new install would have taken out. Diligence is king.

Even so, my problems with an Upgrade was slightly broken features, like the password working after a screen save (despite the settings to the contrary), and performance. I later learned that the former was a permission problem on the preference, and the latter was a library extension that didn’t work with Leopard and just tried to keep reloading itself.

My solution was to do an Archive and Install. All of my options were preserved, just like an Upgrade in place, but because the OS was virgin fresh, my system behaved wonderfully.

I give Apple this round, simply because a “fresh install” with Microsoft is so destructive.

Oh, and yes, once you’ve touted something as a “new” feature, like 64 bit, you can’t do it again for the next release. That’s cheating.

Vista Similarity 2: Needless Graphics Glitz


Leah, my iPhone girl.I love eye candy as much as the next guy, and in my operating systems too.

However, I question the real value one gets out of it. As long as it doesn’t get in the way, that’s great. If it communicates more information subtly, that’s great too. Incidentally, what I mean by that is effects, like Genie, which show where your Window is going when you minimize it, is useful.

All these different preview modes, sliding covers, and non-sense, I could really care less about.

Though, I have to admit I’m a closet user of them. Sometimes it easier to quickly view an image to make sure I’ve got the right one, or scan the contents of a document because a poorly chosen filename was used. I’d like to think Apple could have done this without the big production.

What really gets my goat, however is that Tiger had transparent Windows. Then it went away! That really made me mad, because I was using them since I had a small desktop.

So, that made me go find Virtue, in order to have multiple desktops. My gosh, I loved that product. Where else could you have different backgrounds, on a 3D cube, and get to them by keystrokes, mouse maneuvers, or tilting or laptop or waving your hand over it and triggering the ambient light sensors!

But then Apple went and created Spaces. With no real future, Virtue is going away – – and killing off a fantastic sales tool for me. With no competition, I don’t see Apple adding these things back.

And, only now, are we starting to talk about the transparency I had before. Argh!!!

So, while Vista is pretty, and Apple is pretty, Apple got by for having slightly more than fluff for fluff’s sake. Apple gets to take this round, begrudgingly.

Vista Similarity 3: Pointless User Interface “Fixes”


I’ve got to say, again, I agree with Oliver. The new dock may look pretty, but Apple had an uncanny way of letting me know what was going on with those nice, readable from a distance, black, unobtrusive triangles.

Do I have a way to get them back?

Can I switch an put the dock on the side and get something more acceptable looking? Yes, but then again I don’t want it on the side.

It’s crappy decisions like this that cause people to write utilities to hack the operating system which cause the initial instability problems in the first place.

Using Vista as the example, just because something is pretty doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable to use.

Having said all of the above, I have to admit that many of the things I initially didn’t like, I quickly grew to use. They bother me less.

Let’s just say in this round, the bell rang, and there was no winner.

Vista Similarity 4: Nuked Networking


I groan when I see Microsoft operating systems splinter over stupid artificial limitations like how many network connections can be concurrently inbound or outbound. I shake my finger at any operating system which can’t handle jumbo packet sizes or let me switch between 10/100/1000 ethernet speeds.

But I do accept that Windows shares, using Samba, can be difficult with Microsoft deliberately sabotaging protocols to force a homogeneous network with them being the vendor. Embrace and Extend. Anti-Trust. Bogus interoperability. Halloween Memos. I just can’t take the message that Microsoft is out to help me seriously anymore; too much bad history; too little progress. DRM, WGA, poison pill updates, spying – that’s the reason I left Microsoft.

While I recognize that Apple and Microsoft are in a cat’n’mouse game for accessing Windows resources, I do have a complaint to put on Apple’s shoulders.

And that is: just because I have a network, doesn’t mean I want to network. Unless I’m trying to comb my network’s machines, don’t bring them all to my Finder. I don’t need that. I know what kind of network traffic Microsoft generates.

On the other side of the coin, VNC is now built in. And, well, wow. Apple, you did well there. It’s almost as if Apple knows I’m slowly expelling Microsoft and replacing it with Unix systems.

But that doesn’t change the fact that when I do need access to a Windows box, and I’m using my Mac, I want it to be just as seamless. Just the other day, I tried to copy a file from a Windows share to my local desktop to work with a local copy. Locally. (Sense a theme?)

The Windows box said “that file is in use” (because someone had the network Excel file open) and wanted to know if I wanted a read-only copy. The Mac, however, simply said Permission Error and never told me why.

Apple: I need error messages to not be so abstract. Give me a way to Option-Click on them or something and dump the error.h code; in short, if I’m smart enough to fend for myself, let me. Or, just make it work.

I assume people have already heard that if you Move (not copy) a file from one resource to the other, if the destination is full and aborts the copy, the source file still gets deleted (the other half of the move). I hope that’s fixed.

Now, the sheer fact that Microsoft has a horrible time with other OS’s (and depends on them playing by their rules), the final score for this one goes to Apple. Though Apple got lucky.

Vista Similarity 5: Bundled Apps as New Features That Suck


Oliver and I may start to part ways at this one, although not that far.

All the standard home and media applications Apple bundles with their OS are really top notch in my opinion. In fact, I buy iWork in addition to iLife. It’s Apple’s Pro applications that use a interface that I find very dated. And ugly.

But the feature we all seem to gripe on is Time Machine.

My first experiences with Time Machine were horrible. The system would seize up, and, well to be fair, I have to admit that this all went away after I did an Archive and Install, rather than the Upgrade in place over my existing patched OS Tiger.

And, while I applaud the concept of Time Machine, I don’t like that I can’t force it to kick off when I want. Or that I can’t easily point it at a common server. Or use it wirelessly.

But my biggest beef is why in the world Apple just didn’t hold off, wait until ZFS was working the way they wanted, and delivered something that managed things directly with the filesystem itself.

In addition to Time Machine, I find myself using SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner to make quick, efficient backups, that are also bootable.

What I think Oliver might have missed is a subtle difference.
– With Time Machine, everything is backed up.
– Not that Time Machine backs up everything.

Let’s cover that a little closer. Time Machine does do a full backup, but then everything from then on out is incremental. And intelligently so. In fact, you can even go wandering around the files on the backup disk directly, should you choose to.

The way I’m reading things is that the review gives the impression everything is always backed up. That’s just not so.

Would I like to be able to tell Time Machine to only back up what I want it to? Yes. Please.

Would I like to only delete the things I intend to? Of course. But, realistically, it’s when I delete an important system file, and Time Machine has a copy, that I’ll suddenly become more forgiving of why it does what it does.

All his GUI gripes with Time Machine are dead on. However, when you get Time Machine working (via a clean Archive and Install – which keeps your preferences, data, and applications, btw), it does work as advertised.

It’s close. Time Machine’s integration is trivial. But over all, I think Vista’s backup, is better in the long run. Vista wins this round.

Oliver, I think, in this case was guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To be ticked off at the first version of a new application that could have been better, is justified. To extend that assessment to all bundled apps, as he does in his title, is not.

What the world hates is that after buying the OS, you still can’t do much with it. With Apple you can. And, with most Window machine purchases, you get a lot of crapware. Apple, you don’t.

In fact, I think Apple misses the mark. QuickTime Pro should be bundled with the OS, and if they were really on top of things, iWork as well. I’d gladly even pay the full retail price rolled into the cost of the machine. Why? Because can you image if everyone’s machine out of the box shipped with software that could do Office related stuff? You’d have a killer do-all platform from time the machine was powered up. There’s no way Microsoft could do that.

So, while Vista won this round, I’m gonna give Apple half-credit, since I think it was an unfair contests.

Walt’s Final Score


Apple 3.5 / 5; Vista 1 / 5.

I’d still rather use OS X Leopard than Vista any day of the week.

Walt gives OS X Leopard a thumbs up, even though it still needs some work.

Five Things I Can’t Do with OS X Mail’s RSS

With the new OS X release of Leopard, there were amazing improvements in Mail. One of which was the addition of RSS feeds. Here are five things I can’t do with RSS in Mail that I wish I could… Apple, are you listening?

I notice with OS X 10.5 (Leopard)’s new Mail integrated RSS reader, once I have a feed there’s a few minor annoying limitations that aren’t available.

OS X Mail RSS1) While I can review what the RSS feed URL is by hovering over it, I can’t copy it to the clipboard.

2) If the RSS feed location changes, I can’t change the feed’s URL.

3) I’d love to be able to drag the RSS icon to a browser and have it open the page.

4) Or, I’d like to be able to right click the feed and have it open it in a browser or my default RSS reader (NetNewsWire).

5) Drag the RSS feed icon, or an article from the feed, into an open Mail message to share the URL.

I hope Apple will enhance the feature capabilities soon.

Four Complaints of Leopard

OS X 10.5 – sweet, sexy, cool… and four annoying problems that are bound to get fixed soon.

Before we begin, let me say that I like Apple and that I had a very smooth transition to OS X 10.5 Leopard. I had the foresight to upgrade all of my applications, thanks to Version Tracker Pro pointing out what needed upgrading. And, I also had the foresight to update Unsanity’s Application Enhancer before doing the OS X upgrade.

Things couldn’t have been smoother. Shortly after inserting the disc, I was running the upgrade, and my desktop, data, applications, and settings were all preserved perfectly. I’ve never had that kind of experience with Windows.

That said, there are four complaints I have regarding Leopard.

UPDATE: Phil Wherry points out that I overlooked the obvious: Command-Drag the .Mac icon off the toolbar. This works with any icon.

Additionally, there’s some serious value in looking at notMac.

One: Dot-Mac is in-your-face. There’s a new icon in the status bar at the top for .Mac, and you can’t get rid of it with the preference pane unless you sign up for a trial account. Then the preference pane gives you the option.

Come on Apple, that’s so unlike like you.

Here’s why I don’t want .Mac in a nutshell: I have Linux, and it does a better job. I can secure FTP, secure copy, and rsync; it has Apache, Lighttd, and a host of other web servers; it has Sendmail, Postfix, and other mail options; it has DNS, ssh, X-Windows and other services; it has Samba; it has multiple accounts, with permissions; and it has far, far, far more than 10GB of disk space. For those of us with Unix experience and servers of our own, we don’t need .Mac, therefore, we don’t want it on our desktops. It comes across as an overly inflated service that can be mimicked by simple services included in the standard install of Ubuntu. And it’s free.

Sure, some people don’t know how to set it up, and they might want it, but don’t force it on my desktop.

Two: The Finder’s Sidebar has much smaller icons. Plus, for example, the desktop icon doesn’t mimic the desktop wallpaper I’m using. I liked large, findable, easily clickable icons.

Three: It feels like it boots slower. Yes, once I’m in it, it feels very snappy. And, intellectually, I know that a one time short wait is worth far more than perpetual ongoing stalls, though emotionally, to be honest, I haven’t gotten used to it.

Four: Stability. Yes, that’s right, I said stability. As in, it has problems.

My first experience was when someone handed me a disk with .JPG images dumped from their camera; a disc verify hadn’t been done, and unbeknown to me, it has a read problem with one or two files. Guess what – when cover flow hits them, it crashes the Finder.

Now, good on you for restarting the Finder, but I’d much rather it didn’t crash in the first place. At least my machine is still usable.

Which, incidentally, is more than I can say for Time Machine. It has serious glitches.

Using a directly connected firewire drive, I backed up my machine using Time Machine. And, as I worked, I let it run in the background.

Two problems there.

One, Spotlight appears to be finding things on my backup and on my main drive. Oh, that may sound handy, but not when you’re trying to launch an application. And certainly not when you right click a file and see two copies of things with the Open With… menu.

Two, Time Machine can sometimes take a good moment to backup the system. Especially if you’re using Virtual Machine technologies and your image file changes; that thing is huge. Time Machine dutifully starts to back that up, so I get up to take a break while it does its thing in the background. That causes the machine to fall into sleep mode, and that’s where the real problems begin.

When you wake the machine back up, Time Machine looks like it’s still backup up, but you’ve got just a spinner doing it’s thing. Worse yet, if you go to start any applications, they appear to start, bouncing the icon in the dock, but then nothing happens.

Almost.

According to both top and the Activity Monitor, a process is started, although the desktop doesn’t show any applications. You can see them with Command-Tab, but you can never get the application to come to the foreground. You can’t quit. You can’t force-quit. You can’t get rid of them from the command line using kill, either. Any open applications you have do continue to run, though.

That’s when you discover that your log has crazy reports about messages being sent to selector 0, and then you find out that Apple / Restart… doesn’t work either. Killing tasks with Command-Option-Esc simply reports “Application Not Responding.”

The solution, known to many Unix folks, is to ssh into your machine from another system, and issue the sudo shutdown -r +0 command. That does work. It also gives the illusion everything was just fine on shutdown, so Apple doesn’t get an error report.

However, don’t use Time Machine, and all is well with the world.

Concluding Thoughts
Does any of this worry me?

No.

I’m certain that other users are experiencing the same thing and deducing what causes the behavior, and that everyone is filling out the report-this-problem-to-Apple dialogs that appear.

Most certainly, Apple with issue a patch or two, and by 10.5.1 or 10.5.2, all will be well, and applications will come out with minor updates to fix problems. All will be well soon enough, and each of these problems will get addressed.

While minor bumps are expected with any major new release, this is certainly a much better experience than what happened with us and Vista.

I’m sticking with OS X 10.5 to ride it out, but to my Mac friends and followers without solid Unix experience, I’d say don’t let go of 10.4 just yet. One more pass from Apple’s magic wand is still needed.

ASIDE: Third Party App Problems Encountered So Far
SnapZ Pro is using CGSCreateCString, CGSCreateBoolean, CGSReleaseObj, and CPSPostKillRequest; these are obsolete and degrades system performance.
Parallels is using a forked process, when it should be using exec().
Firefox is reporting memory deallocation issues.
Version Tracker Pro crashes when it quits.

UPDATE 27-NOV-2007: Well, those smaller icons have grown on me. I’m liking them now, and before where they just sat there, I’m using them more often. Booting still seems a bit slower, but realistically, I don’t now, and never did, really have to reboot the Mac.

Furthermore, as I write this, 10.5.1 has come out, as well as many package updates. Version Tracker PRO works fine, Firefox has had an update, as have a number of utilities. I’d have to sat the Mac is quite usable and stable.

My recommendation is not to do an Update, but either an Archive and Install, or a migration from another machine/backup. This seems to clear things up quite well.

A lot of people seem to be treating this as a bash the OS post. It’s not. It required some serious digging to find stuff that was a little off. Unlike Vista, which instantly tried my patience and provoked my anger for many months.

Rebuilding Spotlight’s Index on OS X (Manually)

Got problems rebuilding the Spotlight index on OS X or all you’re getting is an empty list with no files found? Here’s how I reindexed my system using just the Terminal and no special software – turns out there was one small thing that had gotten in the way.

After doing a number of disk clean up and optimizations, I found myself in the circumstance of OS X’s spotlight returning no results. Whether I searched for a keyword in Mail, or by Spotlight using Command-Space, I got no results backs – just an empty list for my troubles.

It turns out there’s a neat utility out there called Rebuild Spotlight Index 2.7 that does all the grunt work for you. Problem is, it didn’t work for me.

What’s going on is actually fairly trivial, and it’s possible to simply do everything via the command line.

The metadata utilities need to run as root, so to see what your drive is up to, you’d enter something like: sudo mdutil -s /

This shows the status on the root volume.

To turn indexing on for a volume, you enter: sudo mdutil -i on /

And, to force Spotlight to rebuild its index, you simply erase the master copy of the metadata stores on the volume like this: sudo mdutil -E /

However, while I did all this, Spotlight was still not building the indexed for me.

Here’s how I solved it, using just the Terminal.
First, I wanted to see the schema file, so I printed it out using to the standard input using: sudo mdimport -X

At the bottom of the schema listing, I say a reference to a schemaLocation, and took a shot in the dark that perhaps that Spotlight’s index rebuilding needed to check data against its schema before it would start. To do that, it might need network access, if not back to the local machine.

And, for good measure, I went to check the date/timestamp on the Spotlight directory using: sudo ls -la /.Spotlight*

While most of the files had the timestamp of when I tried to delete the index, not all the files had the current date and time. Additionally, the file sizes were not growing, a good indication the index was not being rebuilt.

Thinking to myself, “what could be causing network traffic, even internally, not to be working”, I realized that I had just rebooted and PeerGuardian2 was currently active and blocking traffic. This is a great tool for blocking malware and unwanted network visitors, but occasionally it gets in the way. So, I turned it off.

Then, I did the following commands to ensure indexing was on, the spotlight metastore was really gone, and that I wanted it rebuilt:
sudo mdutil -i on /
rm -rf /.Spotlight*
sudo mdutil -E /

The moment I did the last command, this time the system sprung to life, the directory /.Spotlight-V100 was created, and the files inside it were growing quickly. Spotlight on the toolbar showed a progress bar, indicating the system would be done indexing in a bit. The big difference? I turned off the network traffic blocker for a moment.

Macbook Pro: Network connectivity just disappears

Interesting problem on the Macbook Pro: after several hours of use, the all the applications act as if the network connection is gone. Problem is, I still have full strength signal and other devices can get to the internet. Toggling the AirPort brings things back. I’m trying to figure out why. Notes, tips, and code fragments.

Shortly after the 10.4.9 update, and even though I’m running 10.4.10, I’ve noticed an odd behavior with my wireless network connectivity. While using my machine, often for hours at a time without incident, my applications will all suddenly act as though there’s no internet, and indeed, looking at the routing tables, by all appearances it is gone.

The odd part is that my signal strength is at full. And, even more confounding, if I turn off the wireless and turn it back on, I suddenly get connectivity again and the applications recover. Meanwhile, other devices connected wirelessly don’t see the drop, so I know it’s local to the Macbook Pro.

Is anyone else out there experiencing a similar problem where the machine just drops internet awareness?

The only clue I ever seem to get in my console.log file is the message:
mDNSResponder: SetupAddr invalid sa_family 0
mDNSResponder: getifaddrs ifa_netmask for fw0(7) Flags 8863 Family 2 169.254.59.71 has different family: 0
mDNSResponder: Repeated transitions for interface en1 (FE80:0000:0000:0000:0216:CBFF:FEB6:AD8C); delaying packets by 5 seconds

According to websites with source code for the operating system, the file dDNS.c contain codes that looks like this:

mStatus dDNS_SetupAddr(mDNSAddr *ip, const struct sockaddr *const sa)
	{
	if (!sa) 
                { 
                LogMsg("SetupAddr ERROR: NULL sockaddr"); 
                return(mStatus_Invalid); 
                }

	if (sa->sa_family == AF_INET)
		{
		struct sockaddr_in *ifa_addr = (struct sockaddr_in *)sa;
		ip->type = mDNSAddrType_IPv4;
		ip->ip.v4.NotAnInteger = ifa_addr->sin_addr.s_addr;
		return(mStatus_NoError);
		}

	if (sa->sa_family == AF_INET6)
		{
		struct sockaddr_in6 *ifa_addr = (struct sockaddr_in6 *)sa;
		ip->type = mDNSAddrType_IPv6;
#if !defined(_WIN32)
		if (IN6_IS_ADDR_LINKLOCAL(&ifa_addr->sin6_addr)) 
                    ifa_addr->sin6_addr.__u6_addr.__u6_addr16[1] = 0;
#else
		if (IN6_IS_ADDR_LINKLOCAL(&ifa_addr->sin6_addr))
                    ifa_addr->sin6_addr.u.Word[1] = 0;
#endif 		
		ip->ip.v6 = *(mDNSv6Addr*)&ifa_addr->sin6_addr;
		return(mStatus_NoError);
		}

	LogMsg("SetupAddr invalid sa_family %d", sa->sa_family);
	return(mStatus_Invalid);
	}

It appears that the software can’t figure out whether IP4 or IP6 is in use, so it reports it has no idea how to set up the socket. It’s interesting to note that the socket isn’t null, so something’s going on.

But what is mDNSResponder? Well, for one, it contains Apple’s Bonjor services that allow zero-configuration networking.


mDNSResponder is a multi-cast DNS deamon. And, what’s even cooler, is that you can force it to emit its status and dump tons of info in the console.log by sending it a gentle signal:
sudo killall -INFO mDNSResponder

Even FreeBSD has mDNSResponder in its ports collection.

And, even while Apple has a way to disable Bonjour, I’m not sure that I want to, nor am I 100% convinced this is the problem, but is more likely a symptom. Afterall, Apple has had network problems before. Plus, they appear to be actively working on Bonjour.

As my friend Phil points out, the IP addresses in the 169.254 range are in the zero-configuration range for peer-to-peer communication.

Like I said, I’m curious to know if I’m alone in this, or even better, if someone’s solved the problem, what was it…?

UPDATE 1-Aug-2007: It appears that the AirPort Extreme Update 2007-004 fixes this problem. And, while you’re at it, get the Security Update 2007-007 as well.

Ubuntu and Parallels Rescue Broken XP

How I recovered a badly damaged XP box with severe Windows Update problems using Ubuntu and Parallels for OS X.

Normally, I don’t provide XP support, however, because I was the one who recommended the owner perform a Windows Update that precipitated the total incapacitation of the machine, I felt a slight guilty streak of obligation.

Because of the horrible reputation of Windows Genuine Advantage disabling legal installations, the owner of the box disabled all Windows Updates for fear his system would become disabled and he’d lose his data. As such, when I recommended keeping the system patched, there were well over 60+ patches to start with.

Frozen XP DesktopProblem was, one of those patches was for the NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4200 graphics card, and during the installation process, when the Microsoft Version was applied, the machine froze, requiring a manual reboot via the reset switch.

Naturally, after a forced shutdown one should invoke a check disk. However something insidious occurred. Explorer, and I don’t mean Internet Explorer, no I mean Explorer – the GUI shell, would lock up shortly after login. The start menu would go dead, icons didn’t function, start/run couldn’t invoke programs, applications invoked from the command line wouldn’t work, Internet Explorer wouldn’t even start, and Windows Update did nothing. Even Ctrl-Alt-Del wouldn’t work, as the Task Manager couldn’t start. Nor could the user logout or shutdown the machine. Things were bad. It was like the desktop was there, but the underlying services that made it function were dead.

I’ve had easier recoveries from the blue screen of death. If you can get past that, usually you got yourself a working system. In this case, the system would boot, and even allow a login, but once there, the interface wouldn’t function.

Of course you’d think booting and reverting to the last known good configuration would help. It didn’t. Safe mode was equally hosed. Anything past the login prompt rendered the machine in a frozen state, popping up a message about a Windows General Services failing, with an option to report the problem to Microsoft.

That’s the state of the machine as I received it prior to repair.

Here’s how I fixed it.

The detail message reported that the offending file as WUAUENG.DLL. A quick Google search showed this was the Windows Update module. It seems between going from Windows Update to Microsoft Update, the DLL got corrupted. As Windows booted after login, it accessed the DLL, and the system froze.

My goal was to replace at least this file from a working system. Problem was, I was in a catch-22. I couldn’t access the broken system, and if it was possible, the files would be in use by the operating system anyhow.

I downloaded Ubuntu and burned it to a CD using OS X. I then booted off the live CD on the broken machine, however while it could see the NTFS volume, it couldn’t write to it.

So, I enabled all the repositories by going to System / Software Sources, making sure Universe and Multi-verse were included. Then I opened up the terminal and entered sudo apt-get install ntfs-config, and installed the package that allowed writing to NTFS drives.

I added root to the fuse group, and then went to Applications / System Tools / NTFS Configuration Tool. It was quick to tell me I needed to run ntfs /dev/hda1, which fixed the volume and set it to check the disk on boot.

I shutdown Ubuntu, booted Windows, which caused a check disk, and when I finally got to the login prompt, shutdown again without ever logging in.

I booted back off the Ubuntu CD, did the same trick as before with the repositories and installation of the NTFS driver, and this time was able to mount the drive as writable.

I went to the WINDOWS\System32 directory, and found the following files, to which I renamed them, appending .old to their extension for the purposes of a backup: wuaueng.dll, wuaueng.dll.mui, and wuaueng1.dll.

Then I booted Parallels on OS X, brought up a copy of XP, went to its C:\WINDOWS\System32 directory, and copied those three files to a USB stick. I unmounted the USB stick and shutdown Parallels.

With Ubuntu still running on the broken machine, I plugged in the USB stick, which instantly appeared on the desktop, and copied over three files to the broken machine’s system32 directory.

I then shutdown Ubuntu, removed the USB stick and CD, and booted into Windows. The error message was gone, but it was obvious things were still fragile.

Back on OS X, I downloaded Windows XP Service Pack 2, burned it to CD, and stuck it in the broken machine, executing it. A bit later, it finished and I rebooted.

I was suddenly able to run Windows Update again, and that downloaded 40+ updates, effectively jump starting the process by grabbing only the critical updates. In a rise-lather-repeat cycle, I did this until all the critical updates were obtained. Then I did the same with the optional software.

Each time I came in from a mandatory reboot, I made a system restore checkpoint.

Just to confirm it was the NVIDIA driver, I downloaded just that option from Microsoft, and the machine locked up. Which, to get out of I had to hit the reset button, screwing up the disk again. No problem though, I booted, holding down F8, and booted to the last known good configuration. When it came up, I right clicked properties on the C: drive, and forced a check disk, rebooting. The machine came up fine.

Going over to NVIDIA’s site, it was a trivial matter to download the latest driver for the GeForce 4200 card, and unsurprisingly, it worked without incident.

Ubuntu saved the day for being able to repair and manipulate the NTFS volume, while Parallels made it possible to see what needed fixing, where it went, and a working copy without having to have a second dedicated Windows box.

A recovery solution wouldn’t have been possible with an disc of an OEM version of XP alone. Honestly, I don’t know why users put up with this, or how Microsoft can sleep at night.

The recover process, non-stop, took from 10am – 7pm straight. No breaks. No food. No stalling. That’s nine hours of my life I’m never getting back.

Fixing Duplicate Menu Items

When duplicate items appear on OS X’s Finder’s Open With pop up menu, there’s something you can do about it. Enter this command…

I’ve recently bumped into a problem where, on occasion, I get duplicate menu items in my right-click pop-up on the OS X desktop, when I select Open With.

Duplicate Menu Items

Turns out this is merely an indicate that the database for LaunchServices needed to be fixed.

And, in fact, this was covered over at Mac OS X Hints a while back. But, given that I had need to look up the command more than once, I present it here.

Inside Terminal, enter:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

You don’t even need to enter your administrator password, nor do you need to reboot.

OnyX for OS XOnyX allows you to also rebuild the LaunchServices by going to the Maintenance / Reset panel. Though there are a number of other ways to reset launch services for each version of OS X.



Apple’s Top Secret Feature?

Could Apple’s release of Safari for Windows actually be a hint to one of the Top Secret Features in the forthcoming OS X?

According to WebWare, Apple is releasing its browser, Safari, for the Windows platform.

The initial question from the community is: Why? (Though this may be the wrong question..!)

Clearly the region of the browser application space has been filled by Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and a handful of others.

Wouldn’t releasing Safari simply make the Windows environment more compelling to stay? This got me thinking…

What if multi-platform Safari wasn’t the point at all, but it was actually a proof of concept of something greater?

A while back, Apple made the stunning announcement that it had been secretly working on a way to take the same source code and produce a PowerPC version and a Intel (Mac) version, and have them look identical. Combined together, they make the Universal Binary, which is a program that can be run on either system architecture. This was no small feat of clever engineering.

What if the Top Secret feature is that they’ve added Windows as a target for the same source code? Already RealBASIC is doing it, but that’s BASIC, not the mixed language richness of XCode.

As a developer, if I can use Apple’s amazing environment to produce Windows code, I’m all for it.

As a business owner, if I can produce applications and have them work on Apple’s customers as well, I’m all for the additional marketspace.

And, …if I’m a home user… if I’m wanting to switch to Mac, but I’m tied to the Windows platform because of application lock-in, this is a breath of freedom if my applications and data work elsewhere.

Could it be that Apple has taken Safari and simply “recompiled” it? That this is merely the test run to give applications independence of Windows, allowing users to switch over to a kinder, friendlier environment?

I’d like to think so.

Mac to Windows: The Experience

I corrupted my Windows tech guru, turning him on to Apple. He explains from a Windows viewpoint what it’s like to deal with a bare-metal install on Apple compared to a pre-installed Windows system. In this review, we see a totally different perspective: rather than focusing on features, Marcus addresses the overall experience.

I have a good friend, Marcus. He’s a super-uber-master-wizard at Microsoft operating systems and has astounded me on numerous occasions with obscure tidbits of advice from secret registry edits to recovering from system crashes so bad that even Microsoft would recommend switching to Linux.

Why tell you about Marcus? Because I have corrupted him. Yes, it’s true — I showed him the Mac.

No, not the stupid little in-store demos where you can create a photobook with iLife; no, I gave him the real demo, the one reserved for hard core developers.

Marcus shortly thereafter obtained his own laptop, and quickly made the swap to OS X, abandoning in a fortnight over a decade’s worth of emotional ties to Microsoft.

Or so I thought. Marcus writes me, he’s got some new emotions pertaining to Microsoft.

What follows are Marcus’s own words, as only a Windows power-techie can explain. But this review of his isn’t about the features, it’s about the experience.

Marcus writes:

Macintosh. Every time I find another tool that Apple offers to make my life easier, I realize that the scale tips in there favor. I was able to rebuild that drive yesterday in under 2 hours using the transfer my data method from the OS CD. So as my positive experience increases with Apple, inversely that causes an increasing disappointment of Microsoft. I am still shocked that Apple will provide a utility that will allow you to replace your hard drive and automatically transfer not only your profile and files, but all of your applications and their licenses. I booted up and everything is working.

Marcus had an external Apple drive loaded with data and applications; he wanted to install a fresh new version of the OS on a different machine, but port over everything from the old disk – but not the older OS that was on it. Apple’s default OS installation does this automatically, cloning from another system.

Dell vs. McAfee. I bought a Dell Inspirion E1505 laptop for my nephew, Justin, to take to college with him. After putting in over ten years of technical support for various companies I’m now the technical support for the family when it comes to PC’s. I thought I would just open up the laptop and setup everything for Justin in advance. That way he could have one more kid moment when he opens the gift, it would be in a functional state and ready to work, i.e. play games.

I opened the box on a Tuesday night around 6pm. I got everything ready and turned on the laptop. Immediately things went wrong.

1) The network drivers were not loaded, so the system could not call Microsoft to register.

2) Once getting to the desktop, Internet Explorer crashed with a fatal error requiring a reboot.

3) McAfee was not installed correctly and reports too many errors to even cover. This required ALL of McAfee Security Center to be uninstalled.

4) Microsoft Update was not installed, rather they were using the old Windows Update. It crashed 3 times attempting to install this update. (Note: Microsoft Update patches all MS products, verses Windows Update, which only updates the OS.)

5) After Microsoft Update was installed, the real patches start to download. Two hours later on broadband, another GB of the hard drive gone, the system appears to be nearly functional.

6) At this point it’s getting close to 9pm on Tuesday. All of the Microsoft OS and applications are patched, registered and working properly.

7) I reinstalled McAfee. The installation appeared to go smoothly. The application no longer reports any errors and results in a HUGE green checkmark saying that my system is protected.

8) Next, I initiated the Update feature of McAfee and this is when it all goes wrong. A window pops up asking me to register my software now or later. Since I had purchased a 3 year contract with them, I would really like to do this to get full support from them. I select to register now and I got an hour glass suggesting something was going on, the screen flashed and nothing happened. I saw a little red circle moving next to the clock in the tool bar reporting that 16% of the updates were complete; however, the software was not registered. After the download is complete, it requested a reboot.

9) After the reboot, I did a right click on the M icon now next to the clock. This is McAfee Security Center’s ideal of easy access to their software. I was presented with several choices, but thought I would start with Product Setup. I selected that field, got an hour glass, a screen flash and nothing again. I decided to just select open Security Center this time. The application still reports everything is working properly within it’s horrible “Crayola” interface. I again attempted to verify if the updates were complete, so I selected Update. Again the register now button appeared and failed. After trying this several times, by 10pm I was completely done with this thing for the night.

Thursday (yes, I have a life and was busy on Wednesday):

1) I turned on the laptop and found that McAfee was still in the same state as I had left it.

2) I called India…rather, I called Dell’s technical support. They reported that this appears to just be a software problem and that I should call McAfee.

3) I called McAfee. Press # for Home Products. Press 1 to make a purchase, Press 2 for something, Press 3 for technical support. Technical support will cost you 2.90 a min, but feel free to use the free technical support on the web via right clicking the M on the toolbar and selecting Customer Support. (Note: You mean the M icon that’s broken and will not do anything for me. WOW, what a terrible idea!)

I decided to Press 1 to make a purchase. I told them I wanted to verify that I was a customer with them since I was paying for a 3 year subscription that I could not register. I gave them the Dell service tag number and I was not in the system. Then they asked for an email address or my customer number. I had to then explain again that their on-line registration was broken and that they would not have yet received any such information from me. They then asked for a phone number to look me up that way. Again reminding them that I had not given them anything yet to create an account. So, they manually created an account for my nephew. I thanked them for putting me in the system, but had to explain again that in now 6 days the application reports that if unregistered it will cease to function. They of course argued that I’m in the system and a paying customer. While on the phone, the application gave me yet another reminder to register.

Annoyed with McAfee’s mentally challenged support staff, I called Dell back.

I explained the situation of paying for software that is going to disable because it could not be registered. They worked with me for 45 min trying to find a solution. Then without pressing the issue any further, Dell informed me that I can simply request a replacement laptop within the first 21 days or my money back if I’m not satisfied.

Bottom line, Dell was so professional. Dell offered all the information I needed to just wash my hands of this whole matter. McAfee on the other hand really doesn’t seem to want to help anyone. Considering the choice between McAfee and Norton, I’m not really impressed with either, but at least Norton knows how to register their software.

To sum up, with OS X, Marcus was able to do something in approximately two hours that’s completely impossible to do with Windows: install an OS from scratch and move everything from an older system to it seamlessly.

On the Windows side of the house, even when it came pre-installed by an experienced vendor, it took him, a super Windows guru with a decade of experience multiple days and phone calls just to get Windows to a point where it could be given away as a gift.

Marcus, next time perhaps Justin would like a Mac? You did.

Great XSLT Tool for OS X

Found an awesome tool for performing XSLT transformations on Mac OS X. It’s called XSLPallette, and it worked flawlessly where web browsers fell down hard.

While working on some XML and XSLT stuff, I ran into some strange problems where transformed XML content was making Firefox spin its wheels forever and Safari was having problems rendering XSL variables.

I wasn’t engaged in a browser war shoot out, I just wanted to know that the XSLT was correctly transforming the XML into the desired output. As various tools were slowly slipping from my fingertips, I figured I might just have to go back to the command line.

XSLPaletteBut then I discovered XSLPalette. It’s a “free, native, XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 debugging palette” for OS X (and it’s a Universal Binary).

All I have to say is that, as a developer, I’m impressed with the ease this tool provides for trying different XSLT engines. I does basically one thing, and that one thing very, very well. I like that in developer tools.

You give the palette an XML file, and XSLT file, select the engine, and it does the transformation, showing you messages along the way, in addition to the transformed output, a collapsible view, and a browser-like rendered view.

Walt gives XSLPalette a thumbs up!