Apple/Mac » Woodruff Research

TUAW Interviews 1Password Developers

Posted at June 18, 2008 11:47 pm | In Media | By: Ben Woodruff

You knew I couldn’t get by without posting at least one thing about WWDC this year.

Brett at The Unofficial Apple Weblog interviewed Dave and Roustem from Agile Web Solutions about the future of 1Password (namely on the iPhone). See the interview here: http://www.tuaw.com/2008/06/18/wwdc-08-agile-web-solutions-1password/

I can’t wait until I can get an iTouch so I can actually start playing with this stuff. No iPhone for me, but an iTouch wouldn’t be out of the question.

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Tags: Apple/Mac, Software

Lock the 1Password Keychain with a QuickSilver Trigger

Posted at June 4, 2008 12:58 pm | In Software | By: Ben Woodruff

Earlier today I was looking for a way to lock the 1Password keychain using a keyboard shortcut. The easiest way I could think of doing this is with QuickSilver (namely, a QuickSilver trigger). I found this forum post that describes a terminal command that can be used to lock keychains. I put together the attached script so that this can easily be setup as a QuickSilver trigger. It’s a really simple script, only one line of code:
security lock-keychain 1Password.keychain (more…)

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Tags: Apple/Mac, Research, Software, Technology

My Experience With Time Machine

Posted at May 28, 2008 3:56 pm | In Software | By: Ben Woodruff

Last night I ended up having to do a full restore of my MacBook Pro using Time Machine. I was trying to uninstall libusb, SANE, and some other utilities that do not have proper uninstallers. I wrote a shell script that got a list of all the files added by the installer (using the lsbom command line utility) and deleted them. Unfortunately it somehow also deleted my entire /Applications folder, and who knows what else. My bad.

Luckily for me, Time Machine had just finished a backup before I started. I didn’t have much confidence / hope that it would do a good job of doing the restore, but it did much better than I expected.

I booted from the OS X Leopard install DVD and chose Restore System from Time Machine Backup from the Utilities menu. It found my My Book hard drive that is attached to my AirPort Extreme (and has my Time Machine backup on it). Logging into the drive and starting the restore was very easy and straight forward.

The restore took about 3 - 4 hours (over 100Mb ethernet). Everything looked good when I started the laptop. I logged in as usual and everything seemed to be OK. I only ran into a couple of issues. (more…)

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Tags: Apple/Mac, Research, Software, Technology

Xbox Media Center Comes to Macs

Posted at February 7, 2008 4:11 pm | In Media | By: Ben Woodruff

Via Gizmodo:

Xbox Media Center, which was originally a media center for some console whose name we can’t remember, has finally come to Macs. Why would you need this when FrontRow or other media centers work just fine natively?

SuperDuper! Becomes Leopard Compatible!

Posted at February 5, 2008 10:27 am | In Software | By: Ben Woodruff

The long awaited version 2.5 of Shirt Pocket’s SuperDuper! backup application for OS X has finally released.

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Tags: Apple/Mac, Backup

Western Digital My Book = Corrupt?

Posted at February 4, 2008 10:28 am | In Research | By: Ben Woodruff

Last Saturday I wanted to take my My Book external hard drive (400GB) to work, to share some files with a co-worker. It was plugged into my AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn non-gig version) via the USB port. I normally have that and a printer plugged into a hub which then plugs into the base station.

So Saturday I did what I thought I was supposed to do in order to unplug the drive: hit eject on my machine, and then just to make sure, logged in using the AirPort Utility and clicked “Disconnect All Users” on the drive. So I unplugged it and drove it to Avon.

When I get there my co-worker plugs it in: it doesn’t mount. I didn’t think anything of it. He is running OS X on non-Mac hardware (hackintosh). I figured it was just his machine. So I plug it into my MacBook Pro: still doesn’t mount.
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Tags: Annoyances, Apple/Mac, Backup, Data Recovery, Hard Drive, Research, Technology

So I missed the Stevenote

Posted at January 16, 2008 1:19 am | In Technology | By: Ben Woodruff

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs gave his annual keynote presentation in San Francisco today.
I was planning on watching it, but I thought it was tomorrow.

He announced some really cool products.
There was the MacBook Air, which is an ultra portable notebook (but not the touch screen all the blogs were predicting), the new Apple TV (which wasn’t surprising), Time Capsule - which is basically just an AirPort Extreme Base Station with a hard drive stuck in it for Time Machine purposes (which is cool, I might consider it in the future, if it gets good reviews), updates to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and iTunes movie rentals.
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Tags: Apple/Mac, Software

Dear Time Warner

Posted at January 12, 2008 5:15 pm | In Networking | By: Ben Woodruff

Hello,

You dial access dialer does not work with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). I’ve confirmed this with tech support. It hasn’t been updated in a very long time anyway, so it’s probably time for an update.
Or, better yet, release the PPP script so that we don’t have to use your horribly outdated proprietary dialer and you don’t have to support it. That way it’ll work with OS X, Windows, and Linux.

Note: This may need to be forwarded to someone in the company who actually understand what PPP is.

Ben

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Tags: Annoyances, Apple/Mac, Outdated, Research, RoadRunner, Software, Time Warner

Adobe CS3: ExtendScript Toolkit 2 Error on OS X

Posted at January 7, 2008 8:24 pm | In Software | By: Ben Woodruff

I was reinstalling part of Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 (Web Premium) last night, and after it had reinstalled the shared components it asked me to “Please Insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to Continue Installation.” There isn’t any CD labeled anything like that with CS3.

I found the fix here: elaine montoya » Blog Archive » Workaround: Please Insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to Continue Installation.
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Tags: Annoyances, Apple/Mac, Media, Research, Software