When I tried to launch the file (THEWIRE_S1_D4-1.m4v) in Quicktime, I received the error:

The movie could not be opened.
An invalid sample description was found in the movie.

Ok…. Thanks?

VLC would play the audio but it was so badly muffled you couldn’t hear anything.

All the rest of the audio on all the other episodes from the same DVD were fine. It was just that one.

I re-ripped it directly from the DVD, and still had the problem.

Since it was an audio problem, I decided to look at HandBrake’s audio settings. Normally I never touch HandBrake except to use the presets. But, desperate times and all that.

Here are the default settings for this particular episode:

I’m sure there are nice people out there who speak this language, but to me it’s complete nonsense.

However, I am quite adept at doing comparisons so I looked at the default settings for another file from the same DVD, one that worked. And this is what I saw:

Ok, now I’m looking at two things I don’t understand, but I see that in the 2nd one “Track 1” is listed as “5.1 ch” and in the first one it’s listed as “3.0 ch”.

Sure enough, all the working episodes have “5.1 ch” but the one not-working one was “3.0 ch”.

What does that mean? I have no frakking clue.

There was one other option for English audio, so I chose it:

I re-ripped the episode with those settings, and it worked in VLC, QuickTime, and it copied to the AppleTV.

Why is one episode on the DVD mastered with different audio than all of the others? I haven’t a clue. But now you know how to work around it.

How ironic is it that a show about audio surveillance would end up with audio problems on the DVD?

Oh, just shut up.

• Address Book
• iCal
• Keychain
• Safari Settings
• Stickies [of which I have zero]

I run a daily full system backup of my iMac using SuperDuper and wouldn’t dream of being without it.

But given Mobile Me’s penchant for sucking when it comes to syncing, I run Backup.app not only on my iMac, but also on my MacBook.

The Annoyance

The problem with Backup.app has always been that it is annoying.

It pops up and bounces in the dock for 2 minutes before it actually backs up anything.

What do I want? I want it to backup my files and leave me alone.

I can solve this on my iMac by having the backup run at 3 a.m. when I am (hopefully!) not using the computer, but the MacBook is usually asleep at that time, so I have it run at 11 a.m.

Given that you have to manually schedule these backups, I’m not sure why Apple thinks that you need to confirm it every.single.time but it does.

The Fix

The simplest solution would be to change the preferences, but oh look there aren’t any. Backup.app doesn’t even have a preferences panel at all. So there goes that.

I finally got fed up enough that I asked Twitter if anyone knew of a solution and @jkestr suggested that I take a look at “defaults read com.apple.backup” in Terminal.

(For the non-Terminal aware, this is a way of looking at an application’s preferences, even if it doesn’t tell you about them. And I really should have thought of it myself.)

I was hoping to find something like “MakeBackupAppBounceAnnoyingly” which I could set to FALSE, but alas, no such luck.

But I found something almost as good:

"Backup Timer" = 120;

Aha! 120 seconds is how long Backup waits (and bounces) before running

I tried:

defaults write com.apple.backup "Backup Timer" 0

thinking that would make Backup just run but all that happened was the app launched but the backup did not actually execute. I tried again with:

defaults write com.apple.backup "Backup Timer" 1

which does work and which limits Backup to just one bounce.

Realizing I wasn’t going to do much better than this, I decided to run Dockless and set Backup.app to not show up in the Dock at all. The two of these combined makes Backup as innocuous as possible.

n.b. I assume everyone else already knows this: but you can set Backup.app to backup to a local drive instead of iDisk. The iMac backs up to Drobo, my MacBook backs up to iDisk.

Why? Well, read the above link, but basically it allows me to play MPEG-2 files in Quicktime.

What can I say, I’m a simple man. Yes, you can play MPEG-2 files using VLC. This isn’t intended to convince you of why you might want the MPEG-2 com.

It’s also not going to tell you how to get it if you haven’t paid for it (sorry, if that’s what you were looking for).

The purpose is to be able to figure out to re-download it after you’ve paid for it. (If you want to buy it, it’s $20 at the Apple Store.)

Because I keep forgetting.

1. Goto http://store.apple.com/

2. Click on the “Account” link shown here, top right corner:

(That was how the store was designed as of 2009-01-30. It may have changed since. Basically you want to find a way to log in once you are at the Apple Store website.)

1. Look for a download link “Downloadable software purchases” such as this:

(You’ll be prompted to login.)

4) You’ll see a line like this (the date will indicate when you purchased it)

QT 6 MPEG-2 Playback - Mac OS X     D2187Z/A    3 August 2004       Download

The word “Download” will be a clickable link.

That’s it.

Simple. Once you know what the steps are.

As Dr. Cupper used to say, “Everything is easy when you know what you are doing.”

2) I used this post to install OS X directly to a hard drive.

3) I copied some of the files from eeeboot.org onto the hard drive

4) I removed the stock hard drive from the Eee and put the OS X hard drive from step #2 into it.

5) I booted up the Eee with exactly zero expectations that this would actually work.

6) The machine showed the Bios flash screen, and left me with a blank screen and a blinking cursor.

So, yeah. Not so much.

7) Disabled Onboard LAN as suggested here which was the only BIOS setting that I had which wasn’t as recommended. Rebooted. No joy.

I’m wondering if I’m going to need to upgrade my BIOS firmware:

ASUS EEE PC ACPI BIOS Revision 1206
Core Version 1206
Build Date 10/17/08
EC Firmware Version: EPCB-017

8) Burned EEEboot.1.09.iso to a CD. Then realized I have no external CD-ROM drives in the house. My external DVD drive went into my Ubuntu machine, which is at the office. Which means the CD-ROM that I took from that machine is probably also, at the office.

9) I put the original Windows XP hard drive into an external, bus powered, USB case and attached it to the Eee. I set the BIOS to boot from the external hard drive, and Windows would boot but immediately blue-screened and rebooted again. Too bad, that could have been handy. Not sure if that is a Windows limitation, but seems possible. I may try installing EEEBuntu on an external drive, but not until I have OS X running, or I’ve given up.

UPDATE: 2009-01-31

I gave up trying to do this without a DVD drive, and followed the instructions listed above.

And it worked perfectly.

Except for the Wifi.

I tried all the new drivers and the RALink and finally just opened up the case and unscrewed the WiFi card that came with it and found out it is not an RALink card. It’s an “Azureware AW-GE780 PCI-E” which has no OS X drivers.

So I need to get a different card. I’ll probably try to get an Airport card so it will work with OS X and XP (Boot Camp drivers, baby!)

Here is the key to getting this to work: Go slowly.

I’m going to say that again because it bears repeating: Go Slowly. Read carefully. The instructions linked from http://eeeboot.org/ worked fine, but there is a lot of information packed in there. Some things work better if you do them in the proper order. Some will work out of order. But save yourself time and frustration by doing it in the order shown there.

For some reason my Audio was not working at first. The author suggested that I try reinstalling the audio kext file. Once I did that (and rebooted) it worked fine.

Tip: set the auto login for the eee pc at first. You’re going to be rebooting a lot while you are setting this up. Do it, don’t skip any, but go ahead and make it a little easier for yourself.

Update: 2009-02-08

I purchased a MacBook compatible Airport card from JuneTrading for $40 but if I had to do it over again I would buy it from eBay. There is a guy on eBay who consistently seems to have this card and sells it for $25-$30 via the “Buy It Now” option. I didn’t order from him because he ships from Hong Kong (well, that, and I loathe eBay). Well, guess what, so does JuneTrading. [n.b. JuneTrading and EzDealWorld seem to be the same company].

I unscrewed the back of the eee PC, and removed the old WiFi card. The only trick here is the two little wires connecting the WiFi card. They come off by pulling straight up (be gentle but firm) and be sure to re-attach them to the new card in the same way.

WARNING: Be very careful to tuck the PCI-E wires back underneath the plastic edge before putting the cover back on so they don’t get caught under the plastic or cover the screw hole.

Unfortunately, that card did not work. It would only see my “G” network, not my “N” network. So I returned it, or will, when the replacement I ordered from Applecoreonline arrives.

Yuck, eBay and PayPal. On the other hand, it was “buy it now” and he’s not in China or Hong Kong, so hopefully I’ll get it sooner. I paid about $36 including shipping. There was a “Make A Deal” button and I considered it (after all, the folks in Hong Kong/China are selling the same thing for about $10 less) but decided I was more interested in getting it, and fast, than haggling.

[Update 2009-02-12: the new card arrived, popped it in, and voilà! Wireless-N, baby!]

What’s Next?

I wish the internal Ethernet worked, but so far no one seems to have gotten that to work. Apple sells a [USB Ethernet adaptor](http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB442Z/A] which apparently works, but I don’t really want one of those.

A) it’s $30 and
b) It’s a dongle.

So I guess I’ll live without it. The pain is that since the eee PC doesn’t have a DVD drive, if I want to watch movies on it, I have to copy them over WiFi, and even at “N” speeds, you can’t beat wired ethernet.

Bluetooth – The 1000HA doesn’t come with built-in Bluetooth. You can add it, but according to the instructions this involves 10+ screws, and buying the proper part which may or may not come with the wires you need. There are a few options, but really, I’m not sure that the whole thing is worth it. Why? Well, I plugged in a D-Link DBT-120 which is a known-to-be-Mac-compatible Bluetooth adapter and it “Just Worked.” The problem is: it’s a dongle. It sticks out about an inch, which means that it could break off (taking my USB port with it) and it won’t fit in the little silicone pouch/sleeve that came with the computer unless I disconnect it, meaning that I will probably lose it.

This looks a lot better. That’s the dongle that comes with a Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks which is also Mac compatible. If I could just buy the dongle, I would, but if I have to buy the zuper cool mouse that goes with it, so be it. (Cost: $50)

RAM — It comes with 1GB of RAM, and it works pretty well. But come on. For $28 I can get 2GB of RAM (and installation should be darned easy) and OS X will be much happier. No-brainer.

Final Tally: * for a working Mac compatible eee PC: $380 including replacement Airport card * add $35-$50 for Bluetooth (on the low end you’re going to have to find the parts and install them. On the high end, you’re getting a super cool mouse and a tiny dongle.) * add $30 to upgrade to 2GB of RAM (which you don’t, strictly speaking, need but which will make it much nicer overall)

(I ended up selling my Apple Mighty Mouse which I had never really used all that much for about the same price as the new Logitech mouse, so that cost was about net-zero.)

Final Point on Price: I already had the Family Pack of Leopard, which gives me 5 legal licenses. Since Leopard is installed only on my MacBook, Powerbook, and iMac, I still had a license left over.

This machine may eventually replace the Powerbook, which I have already had to pay someone to replace the hard drive (because I can’t access it myself without taking the whole thing apart), and another $160 to replace where the AC adapter plugs in (which they didn’t fix properly). Bluetooth on the Powerbook is also flaky, as is the DVD drive. This is a machine which has been gently used (with the exception of an unfortunate “bump” that broke off part of the AC adapter inside the Powerbook) and sold for close to $3,000 (including Applecare, which covered a previous hard drive replacement a few years ago) about 4 years ago.

Do I feel badly about installing OS X on “unapproved” hardware? No I do not.

One Last Tip

Apple’s “Remote Disc” is a feature they added when they introduced the MacBook Air, which doesn’t have a built-in optical drive.

Guess what else doesn’t have a built-in optical drive?

But you can enable the “Remote Disc” feature using these commands in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true
defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

tip via MacOSXHints via macrumors.com

You may have to restart Finder and/or your computer to make this work.

The limitation is that you can’t use this for accessing anything except data (no watching DVD movies over your network!) but that’s not a bad deal at all.

That’s All For Now

Again, my huge thanks to Gregory Cohen for putting these initial instructions together and for the help/direction he gave on Twitter (He’s @iiyoyoguy on Twitter if you want to follow him there).

I tried to included as many as possible, as many as I could think of, and also adapted from an ‘acceptable abbreviations’ list at Logos.com

Shortcut Guidelines

1. End with a . when accidental triggering is possible (Use of this is probably inconsistent. If you find annoyances, let me know)

2. Shortcuts should be in all lowercase (if we’re saving keystrokes, why use shift?)

3. Even if it can’t be abbreviated, offer to capitalize it. We can’t do much about “Ruth” but we can offer to correct “ruth” (however “acts” and “job” we just leave alone!)

4. Make shortcuts as short as possible. Why type “1thess” when you could type “1the”?

5. No Roman Numerals. We’re dealing with 1, 2, and 3 here, if you want to write out III for 3, be my guest, but I’m not going to help you. Roman numerals should be stabbed to death with an icepick and kicked into the gutter (with possible exceptions for wristwatches and crossword puzzles). So if you’re looking for an “iijohn” shortcut, you’ll have to add it your own.

The biggest problem in this release will probably be cases where I used a . instead of just leaving it off, or left it off here and kept it there in some inconsistent manner. Please feel free to nicely offer corrections/suggestions.

Naming

The snippets are divided up into 3 groups:

1. “Books of the Bible - OT”
2. “Books of the Bible - NT”
3. “Deuterocanonicals (Apocrypha)”

I hope my Jewish friends will excuse the use of the “Old” Testament, it was just more convenient to write OT and NT.

They are also divided this way so that Jewish folks can use just the first group (feel free to rename it “Books of the Bible PERIOD!”).

Those who really want the Apocrypha are welcome to it. I did it mostly as an exercise in “Well, I’m already doing the others.”

“What am I getting?”

I hope that none of these snippets interfere with any existing shortcuts you might have, but if you want to see what you are getting, here’s a list of all of the shortcuts included:

• PDF List of NT Shortcuts
• PDF List of OT Shortcuts
• PDF List of Apocrypha Shortcuts

Download the .textexpander Files Directly

NOTE: You can also copy the URLs below and add them directly via TextExpander:

(or just click on them in your browser and they will download as usual)

NT Shortcuts

OT Shortcuts

Apocrypha Shortcuts

Those URLs will not change even if the snippet files are updated in the future. You can even set TextExpander to automatically update in the future, so you’ll get changes/fixes/improvements without any further effort.

Versioning

I have intentionally labeled these as “v 1.0” because I suspect there will be a version 2 (or at least 1.1!)

(Like when someone points out that I shouldn’t correct “ruth” to “Ruth” because someone might want to type “ruthless”.)

“What kind of a dunderhead are you? I can’t believe you used X as a shortcut for Y or didn’t use Y as a shortcut for X!!!”

I welcome your calmly worded constructive feedback in the comments section below.

I bought Tracey a Creative TravelSound i50 Speaker for iPod shuffle and then found myself on the Apple Store website writing a review.

Which was automatically rejected before I could post it, with this message:

Some words in your review cannot be published. Please revise your review. (please limit to 300 words)

I checked in BBEdit and found I only had 216 words.

Here are the rules for writing a review on the Apple Store:

Review Tips

• Explain why you like or dislike the product, focusing your comments on the product’s features & functionality and your own experience using the product
• Limit your review to 300 words or less
• Avoid single-word reviews, bad language, contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.), URLs, time- sensitive material or alternative ordering information
• Avoid comments about non-product related issues such as service and support, resellers, shipping, sales policies, other Apple partners or Apple topics not directly related to the product’s features or functionality
• Check back in five business days to see your review
• Read complete terms & conditions for the online Apple Store

While I chuckled as the “bad language” (I assume they mean profanity, although perhaps incorrect spelling and grammar could count too):

Here’s the original review. See if you can spot the problem:

(begin) My wife loves to listen to audiobooks.

She’d put the CD in the stereo and turn it up loud enough that she could hear it as she worked around the house.

Which meant *all of us* ended up listening to it.

First I bought her a pair of not-inexpensive wireless headphones, but even in our fairly small house, the interference was annoying and she had no way to pause it without running back to the stereo if the phone rang, or if someone started talking to her, etc.

So I bought her a shuffle.

The problem is that her car only has a CD player, no tape deck. FM transmitters can be a pain to use, so I bought her this instead.

She loves it.

It’s also small enough that she can drop it in her pocket and listen in her office (her job sometimes involves a lot of time doing fairly monotonous filing).

I was a bit concerned about the price (it’s almost as much as the shuffle!) but it works great for her.

Oh! One more thing :-)

You can’t see it in any of the pictures here, but it also comes with a little carabiner that lets it hook onto a belt loop, backpack strap, etc. She seemed to like that part too.

(end)

Did you spot it?

Me neither.

I looked for words that might seem to be triggering their automatic filter (note: this rejection was happening as soon as I pressed submit so I knew it was a computer, not a person, doing the rejection).

I suppose saying that “FM transmitters can be a pain to use” might be seen as a “off topic” but I doubted that the parsing script was that sophisticated.

I wondered if the “:-)” was the problem, so I changed it to “:”.

Still rejected. So I put the smiley face back in.

Then I changed:

Which meant *all of us* ended up listening to it.

to

Which meant all of us ended up listening to it.

and it was accepted.

That’s fairly odd, IMO.

Using * as emphasis around words in ASCII text has been around for as long as I can remember, but apparently Apple wants no part of it.

So now you know.

(P.S. - By the way, you can get it for a couple bucks less at Amazon.com where it is listed as in-stock and Amazon Prime compatible. Apple.com says 2-3 weeks for delivery, but I found one in our local Apple Store.)

UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, this is probably Apple’s way of making sure you don’t try to subvert their “bad word filter” using an asterisk.

When I first heard that Apple was thinking about releasing a version of Leopard that was (almost) nothing but bug fixes, I thought “Nah, never hapen…”

Boy I hope I’m wrong.

Lately I’ve been finding more and more “little things” that need Apple’s attention.

For example: I recently jumped on the Drobo bandwagon, and one of the things I most anticipated was being able to put my iTunes library on it and never touch it again.

I’ve lost playlists, play counts, and more due to moving my iTunes library around in the past. I want to be able to, as they say, “Set It and Forget It.”

The Problem

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t make this as easy as one might like.

Sure, it looks easy enough:

But guess what? Not everything gets added there.

For example, album art, podcasts, and mobile applications (aka iPhone/iPod Touch apps).

All of these continued to show up in ~/Music/iTunes.

The Hack

This is not a great solution. It isn’t something I would suggest that anyone else do unless they were willing to take full responsibility for their actions and hold harmless anyone who suggested it to them.

But there is a solution.

Simply put:

0) Make sure iTunes is not running

1) Create an Alias of your “Mobile Applications” folder on your external drive

2) Drag the Alias to ~/Music/iTunes (where ~ refers to your home directory)

3) Rename the Alias to remove the word “Alias” from the end of it.

Here’s a 16-second video showing you how it is done

(If you’d like to download that, right (or “option”) click this link and save it to your hard drive: MakeMobileApplicationsAlias.flv.)

4) NOTE: after you do that, launch iTunes — and none of your Mobile Applications will appear!

5) Don’t panic

6) Drag all of your applications (Note: they should all end with .ipa) from the Finder window into the iTunes “Applications” window. You may get warnings about Older versions. I just kept hitting “Replace” (otherwise the whole import seems to cancel. Another bit of Snow Leopard attention needed).

7) Give iTunes a few minutes to process the applications (it will be clear when this is finished).

8) Download any updates that iTunes tells you are available

9) Sync your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Note: you may notice that I did the same thing for “Album Artwork”, and “Downloads” and “Podcasts.” I have no idea what the long-term effect of that will be. Again, caveat emptor (if it breaks, you get both pieces and all of the responsibility. Welcome to adulthood. :-)

Another Answer

You might wonder why I didn’t just make an alias of the iTunes folder from my Drobo to my hard drive.

The answer is simple: the first time I tried it, iTunes threw an error and failed to launch.

However, when I went back to try it again (to record to error for you, gentle reader), it seemed to work just fine.

Except that I was starting from a clean iTunes slate.

That wasn’t too bad for me, given my fairly-new iTunes slate anyway, but it might be a problem for others.

The Real Answer

Of course, the real solution is for Apple to fix iTunes so that it stores album artwork, podcasts, and mobile applications wherever the user wants, rather than where Apple thinks is best.

The Unix Way

Being a long-time hard-core Unix geek, the way that I would actually do this is in Terminal.app:

cd ~/Music/iTunes
ln -s ../../../../Volumes/Drobo/iTunes/Mobile\ Applications  ../../../../Users/luomat/Music/iTunes

But I am, as I said, I’m sort of a giant geek. Or nerd. Or whatever it is they’re calling us now.

Fini

Until we meet again - adieu…

MBW has been going downhill lately, longer and longer episodes with less and less in them. I don’t mind ratholes, but how about ratholes about stuff your audience might care about?

Anyway, tonight when I was listening I decided to make a chart telling you what you can expect.

00:00:04 (What the hell is a netcast? They’re podcasts, Leo, really. Even to Microsoft. Netcasts is meaningless. Please stop saying it.)

00:00:52 Show actually begins after ads and intro music

00:03:20 Leo stops talking about cameras and intros Merlin Mann. Leo then talks about stuff that happened about 6 weeks ago on YLNT.

00:04:50 Andy I introduced and talk about the weather and some other stuff that made no sense to me whatsoever.

00:06:30 Intro Jeff Smith, who is the guy who wrote the “I’m a Twit” song. He’s apparently there because Leo enjoys the song.

00:07:50 “We ought to get to Mac news”

00:08:00 AT&T prices for iPhone!

00:08:45 What sounds like a potato chip bag being opened is apparently hail around Andy I and we go down a weather rathole

00:09:54 Leo (I guess) opens a drink directly into his microphone..

00:10:18 back to iPhone / ATT rate plan talk

00:11:50 Leo is watching the AT&T ‘iReady’ video

00:12:18 Merlin explains how people have been confused about buying a cell phone in the past

00:12:40 Someone tries to piggyback on Merlin being funny by talking over him

00:13:20 Merlin said something funny again

00:13:40 Leo non sequitor / followed by iPhone / ATT sucks discussion

00:17:?? Merlin explains how to get ready / followed by “iReady” discussion

00:19:10 Andy made a joke about “iBend iQuickly”

00:19:40 Someone does a Jar Jar Binks voice. No one should ever, ever do a Jar Jar Binks. Ever. Really.

00:20:?? Remembering life working at McDonald’s training videos

00:21:12 Leo makes a Titanic reference followed by total silence

00:21:13 iPhone rate plans and how lousy AT&T is about pretty much anything, mocking the video

00:35:?? Leo makes a Lily Tomlin/Laugh-In reference / iPhone Rogers sucks more than AT&T

00:39:03 10.5.4 release / ARD trojan isn’t fixed and there’s not much to see here / dangers of upgrading Quicktime/Pro Apps (which has nothing to do with 10.5.4 but might be of interest)

(The iPhone conversation wasn’t bad, but they spent 30 minutes on what amounts to “This video is lame and they are charging a lot more for it.”)

00:45:52 - Zimbabwe rathole -

00:47:27 - “We’re going to take a break” (from what, exactly?)

00:47:35 - reintroduces everyone, and talks to Andy I about Matlock and Andy Griffith

00:48:25 - Starts talking about Audible. If you’ve heard any MBW ever you’ve heard this same discussion. 50k titles. Leo’s pick is ‘Stuff White People Like’

00:50:35 ‘Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs’

00:51:19 Someone jokingly refers to ‘The Spartans’

00:52:09 Picks of the week begin

00:52:19 Jeff Smith - ‘what size’ http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/ ‘appzapper’ http://www.appzapper.com/ (end up talking about Waffle House)

00:54:57 Andy I - Burger King - BK Gold Card - FOR FIVE MINUTES. Leo reminisces about eating with Dvorak. What does this have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing.

01:00:30 Scott Bourne - Cocktail http://cocktail.maintain.se/ $15

01:02:48 Leo - Visigami - http://code.google.com/p/visigami/ - Flickr, Google Images, screeensaver FREE. Leo surfs for pictures of Burger King

01:05:32 - Merlin - had to leave - 40 minutes ago, and Leo is just noticing now.

01:06:24 - Leo “I’m in a daze most of the time” (No… really?)

01:06:40 - Alex - green screen visual effects - rotoscoping - which should be useful to like 0.00001% of the population and costs $1000. http://www.silhouettefx.com/roto/

01:09:50 - Jeff Smith plug - “I’m a Twit” www.RingToneFeeder.com

01:17:14 - starts saying Goodbye / talking about next week iPhone launch / 36 hours of coverage for a phone launch they said was so boring they wouldn’t stand in line. “They get in line so we don’t have to”

01:22:06 - says goodbye and plays song.

I wanted to find something reasonable for a test, and found something I think makes sense.

Scenario: I use my PowerBook and EyeTV to record TV shows for watching on the AppleTV or iPhone. After I took out commercials, the file was 940 MB (about 40 minutes of MPEG-2 video).

What I needed to do was get that file to my iMac, where I would convert it using VisualHub and then sync it via iTunes to the AppleTV.

Transferring the file from my PowerBook to my iMac over 802.11g took 15 minutes, 45 seconds.

I wondered how fast it would have been to transfer it via Ethernet, so I went upstairs, grabbed a cable off the Airport Extreme, went back downstairs, wired the two computers together, disabled WiFi on the Powerbook to make sure it used the Ethernet connection, then dragged the file via Finder. Transfer time took only 45 seconds.

The third test was copying the same file again from my MacBook to my iMac over 802.11n which took 2 minutes, 14 seconds.

So which was fastest? You’d probably say Ethernet, wouldn’t you? But, of course you have to also add into that the time it took me to go upstairs, unplug the Ethernet cable from my router, bring it back downstairs and connect the two computers.

The whole point is that we don’t have Ethernet cables handy, and we shouldn’t need them. Sure, if you’re transferring 500GB from one machine to another, get yourself an Ethernet (or, better, Gigabit Ethernet) connection going. But for casual transferring of large files, 802.11n makes a huge practical difference.

(For those who don’t know, ACT is a contact/calendar manager of the kind generally referred to as a “Personal Information Manager” or PIM. It is increasingly marketed towards people involved in sales, but its original emphasis was on relationships and that was what made it attractive to me at the time.)

My struggle was that I relied on ACT to pretty much manage my entire life for about 3-4 years, but I was now moving to Mac and there is no Mac version of ACT, nor do I expect that there will be.

I have never gotten so much response to anything I have written (well, except for the time that I upset The Cat People, but I don’t like to talk about that). Generally people ask: “So, what have you done? Did you find a good replacement for ACT?”

How much of an unhealthy devotion to ACT did I have?

Here is what I have done:

1. Used ACT on a Windows desktop computer while also using a Mac laptop. This failed for the obvious reason of needing/wanting quick, easy, portable access to the most important app in my life. The reason that you get a laptop is that you want your computer with you in more than one place. Without your calendar/contact info, that’s a bit of a problem. I carried a Treo for a long time, but that was hardly the same.
2. Carried a Windows laptop and a Mac laptop. In what can only be described as a raging fit of stupidity, I dropped several hundred dollars on a Dell Inspiron 700m. It was a nice enough computer (I really liked it, actually) but did you hear the part where I was carrying two laptops?!? Yeah, even a small and light second laptop will weigh you down. The good part was that I had instant access to my calendar, etc data wherever I was. The bad part was that it still didn’t integrate into my life as a Mac user. If I got an email on my Mac about a meeting, I’d have to fire up the Dell to make changes. This was stupid. Yet I did it for a year.
3. Tried to use my Treo instead of Windows, syncing once a day to the Windows machine. A smart person might have tried this before buying a second laptop. I am not that person. On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter, since the Treo sucked and the ACT client for Palm really sucked. I wish I could find a more dignified way to put it, but let’s face facts, it sucked.
4. Switched to Agendus on the Treo syncing to ACT on Windows. Yeah, the Treo still sucked, and Agendus routinely crashed, deleting any changes I had made since launching it. If you want to lose faith in a calendar program fast, try adding 6 new entries and have it crash, wiping out all 6, leaving you to wonder “What were the other 5?” Agendus sucked. If you’re a software developer for a calendar program that doesn’t immediately save its data as soon as possible after a new or modified entry, please either fix it or quit your job. Immediately.
5. Ran Windows/ACT in VirtualPC on a PowerPC based Mac. About as much fun as shooting yourself in the groin six times with a nail gun and then sitting in a bath of rubbing alcohol.
6. Sold the Dell 700m Bought an Intel MacBook as soon as they came out to run ACT/Windows in Boot Camp/Parallels/VMWare. This was the most promising of all of the solutions, and it worked thousands of times better than everything else, but by this point I was tired of the whole abusive relationship between myself and Windows and ACT. The company which owned ACT (which has been sold 2-3 times since I started using it) also stopped doing bug fixes, for the most part, opting instead to release annual upgrades at the cost of $129. That’s an upgrade cost, per year. They also dramatically changed the way that ACT worked somewhere around 2006, making use some separate database program, and it got really, really, really slower, and no better, and several long-standing bugs were not fixed.

Which Mac PIM apps have I tried?

In, under, and around each of these little experiments, I tried various Mac applications. I bought Daylite and tried Now Up to Date and Contact which are two separate programs, one for calendar, one for contacts. They are supposed to work together but I never quite “got it” and clearly I was not alone, because they are working on a new program called “Nighthawk” which is currently in slow-moving-closed-beta stage (for example the status page as of 4/4/2008 says:

The calendar is expected to hit beta in early March. The year/month/week/multiday/day/detail views are all working but they need to be polished. We expect the calendar private beta to be a 3-4 month process.

Sounds promising, and I will definitely check it out, but as of right now it’s a bit of a dead parrot.

There’s also Bento from Filemaker, which looks to have some of the customization features that ACT had. I have a license for Bento too, although I haven’t done much with it yet. However, if you were checking out making “The Switch” you should.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Entourage which is the asthmatic, under-developed, skinny (on features) but somehow-still-bloated little brother to Microsoft Outlook. Part of Microsoft Office for Mac, Entourage is probably the best PIM client currently available for Mac today. The upside is that 90% of Mac switchers will buy Office:Mac anyway, so I’d encourage you to check that out.

But it ain’t no ACT.

So What Is The Equivalent of ACT on Mac?

The sad reality is that there is no equivalent of ACT on the Mac.

None.

Nothing even comes close to its power or flexibility.

Here is the single biggest thing I miss about ACT: Scheduling activities with certain people. In ACT, everything you schedule, you schedule with someone (even if it is yourself). Here’s an example: say I have a meeting with John Smith about landscaping on Wednesday at 3pm. In ACT I would schedule a new meeting (ctrl+M) and the box would come up asking me for time, date, duration, who it was with (my name being pre-selected), etc. You could choose names by starting to type in the Name field and have it auto-complete.

Then, in the calendar, it would show up as:

3:00 p.m. Landscaping [Smith, John]

I could then click on the entry and have it take me to John Smith’s information, which would contain a history of all my communications with John in the past. Also, if I needed to call John (say, to confirm the appointment or reschedule it), all of his contact information was right there.

If I scheduled a phone call (different than a to-do, different than a meeting) with John Smith, it would show up like this:

3:00 p.m. Landscaping [Smith, John 614-555-4537]

I could also tell ACT how long to default for meetings, to-dos, and phone calls, and have each of them be different. I could also customize alarm lead times for each. For example, I wanted to be reminded of meetings about 30 minutes beforehand, phone calls about 10 minutes beforehand, and To-Dos I usually let remind me at 0 minutes beforehand (not 1 minute before, as some programs make you do).

None of this is difficult, but none of the Mac PIMs make it easy to connect people with events. Even if you force iCal and Address Book to link a contact with an event, you can’t do anything with it, the connection doesn’t carry over to the iPhone, and it doesn’t show up in the list of events.

ACT would warn you if you tried to schedule two things at once. It would let you do it, if you insisted, and you could turn it off, but it was nice to have the computer do some of the work by saying “Are you sure you want to double-book yourself for lunch on Wednesday?”

ACT would let you schedule To Do items at a specific time and have them show up in the regular calendar. Add this to the conflict checking and it was easy enough to block off two hours on Tuesday morning and when I tried to schedule a meeting for that time, it would show the conflict. (You could set them for “no time” if you wanted to, but I always found that if I didn’t actually say when I was going to do something, it didn’t actually get done.

Ditto for Phone calls.

In the Mac world, only meetings get on the calendar (which David Allen would love, but doesn’t work for everyone).

There was also an option to show just Meetings, just To Dos, just phone calls, or any combination. They could easily be color coded too.

Now I can emulate this with using different calendars in iCal, but it’s Not The Same and it’s Not As Good.

What do you use on the Mac?

What you need to understand about PIM data on the Mac is that you will want to have it in Address Book and iCal. Mac OS X has something called “Sync Services” which basically lets a whole bunch of different apps communicate back and forth using your calendar, contact, etc information. Although it is far from perfect, unless you use one Mac and never ever ever want to share your information, your data will be in iCal and Address Book in some way, shape, or form.

Entourage, Bento and the other 3rd-party PIM apps can add some other information, but don’t expect them to sync well. For example, Entourage has a birthday field, and you can add a birthday field to Address Book, but they do not (last I checked) sync to each other. Your best bet? Look at what Address Book can do (you can add some additional fields to what it offers) and accept that as your limited set of actions.

iCal, compared to ACT, is a pathetic joke. But it’s what I use, because it’s the lingua franca of Mac calendar programs.

Migrating Data

I don’t remember how I moved my contact / calendar from ACT to Mac, but I do remember making lots of backups and printing stuff out before I started. Even if you print it to a PDF, don’t risk not having something later.

The best idea is to get ACT to export into a CSV (comma separate) or TSV (tab separated) file and then import contact data into Address Book on the Mac. I don’t remember the details of how or what I did, but I can tell you this: expect to lose everything except the basics: name, address, phone numbers, etc.

If anyone does have specifics, please let me know. Be glad to give credit.

(ps - please note that at no time in this article did I refer to ACT as being a tough act to follow. That was not unintentional, even though it would be an apt description of the situation, it’s just far too “Oh look how clever I am” which always makes me hate the Internet.)