Cool Mac Gear

I'm not a piano player, but my wife is, so I recruited her to evaluate this very slick and attractive little music utility from D. Launay of France.

Ebony and Ivory is a freeware application that displays piano or keyboard key combinations for various chords and scales in all keys, and plays the selection for you, as well as showing the musical notation.

My wife pronounced it to be a very cool and useful tool, especially for people learning piano, but also for experienced players like herself to check out and refresh their memories on the more esoteric chords and scales.

While I'll have to take her word for it in terms of Ebony and Ivory's practical functionality, I am most impressed by the style and polish of this application. It's very nicely executed, and an amazingly professional piece of work for freeware.

To use Ebony and Ivory, just Just select options in the pop-up menus.
• The level of the chords (C,D,E,etc...) and the natural, flat or sharp options.
• The type of chords (major, minor, etc...)
• For easy scan of music scales (+) and (-) buttons are added to tune the chords and change the type.
• Two Aqua drop buttons to play the sounds.
• Two additional “arrow” icons to open the option drawers.

Ebony & Ivory is emailware.

For more information, visit:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/prime/index.html

PPP Disconnect loop

From William Baltyn

Dear Charles

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your kin.

Having received Jaguar for Christmas, I have had a few days to play around on it using the dialup connection at my mother's house.

And, indeed, I have encountered the Disconnect loop you mention in Odyssey 232. That and some appallingly slow connection rates; no doubt the millions of newly 'Netted up denizens of the UK having a play with their new toys.

The way to stop it is to select disconnect from the menubar icon, instead of the Internet Connect application. Worked for me at any rate.

All the best and keep up the sterling work.

Regards
Will Baltyn

Hi Will;

I'll have to try your tip if/when it happens again.

Thanks for the kind words, and Happy New Year to you and your family.

Charles

Happy New Year

From Kim Peacock

Charles,

As ever, I continue to enjoy your Odyssey with X. I hope you will enjoy your new iBook.

I continue to love X on my Pismo 500 with 620 RAM, especially the 10.2.3 update. I did have a short period of very strange behaviour when setting up my three partitions (9.2.2 + 10.1.5+ Jaguar). I finally concluded that my glitches were either due to a bad 512 RAM module and/or having over 1 gig of RAM which the installers did not like ( both situations you commented on in a couple of articles). I have not yet figured out which was the culprit. Nevertheless, I removed the more recent 512 megs and now all is well. I am forever mystified at how hardware can affect software (and vice versa?). It's only silicone after all!

But now I find the performance of X very satisfactory. I even prefer the very slight time it takes for windows to redraw. Call me strange but I use a very fast Windows machine at work and I hate how windows redraw BANG immediately. It's rather jarring. I like the slight fade out/fade in of 10.2.3. Strange I know.

I like a pared down system. That's why I agree strongly with one of your correspondents about Launchbar. It is the best thing to come along in yonks. You no longer need any Dock replacement shareware, or the Dock for that matter. Forget your address book. Forget bookmarks file. Everything is accessible form Launchbar. Quite amazing software. You owe it to yourself to get it.

Now the latest Chimera is out, so is Explorer. Out of my system. I had been waiting for Chimera to become compatible with URL Manager Pro's Shared Menu component. The only thing Chimera now misses is autofill for web pages and a couple of keyboard controls. It's fast, has tabs, and many other great features. Some rumours even have it that Apple will be coming out with its own browser based on Chimera.

Throw in Liteswitch for tabbing through open apps and my computer environment is extremely lean and effective. Not to mention pleasant.

One last comment about X that doesn't get mentioned enough. It is beautiful. I sometimes just stare at the GUI and say " Hat's off to the designer(s) of this superbly attractive piece of software". It blows me away!

Happy New Year to you and your readers.

Kim

Hi Kim;

Happy New Year to you, as well. I think OS X is pretty too, although I don't share your appreciation of the OS X delay. ;-)

Encouraging report on 10.2.3. After I get the iBook settled down, I'll upgrade the Pismo. At least I think I will. IApple Tech Info Library (TIL) article has occurred to me that the recommended firmware upgrade might disable OS 9.1 compatibility, and I would be sorry to lose that.

Charles

An unexpected Pismo performance upgrade under 10.1.5

From Michael Koren

Hi Charles

I continue to enjoy your quest for truth and the level of trust you create with it. Thought I'd follow up on an old conversation we've had regarding my better success with speed on my Firewire Pismo 400 Power Book under 10.1.5 (no I don't yet have Jaguar) and a few unexpected improvements in the speed of OSX on my machine.

I've always told you that while 10.1.5 was definitely slower on my 400 Pismo than 9.2.2, the speed difference wasn't enough to cause me to feel frustrated as you seem to be. Using 768 MB of RAM and an almost full 18 GB hard disk with under 1 GB free, I enjoy OSX and am slowly weeding all of OS9 apps out. After nearly 20 years of intense use of OS (was it 2 or 3?!) through 9 on various machines.

Well a few weeks ago I decided to put a 60GB disk (IBM TravelStore 5400 RPM with a 2MB cache from MCE) into my powerbook, after using Retrospect Express to back up everything. Then I created using Apple's Disk Utility 4 partitions. 10GB for OSX and related apps, 4 GB for OS9 and related, 4GB for all downloads, emailed faxes, stuffed archives of downloaded applications and so on, and the remainder for all my created files. It didn't take long to get used to, but it took a while to reinstall both system 9 and X and then I decided to reinstall all applications and discovered that I had to get iTunes to find the originals, and so on. All in all it took a full day of tinkering.

Oh yes - I installed ATI's October 2002 update (remember I asked you?) because their web site clearly states that all ATI boards of that sort - including all OEM's - could benefit - so I did it despite the few ouch's seen in the discussion groups.

Well - it is like someone bumped up my Pismo's speed! The overall perception is suddenly, 'where did that small sluggishness go to?' In other words, the whole thing feels crisper, cleaner, faster and so forth. Small lags in Office keyboard action disappeared. Even booting is noticably sped up, during those rare moments I shut it down. And I haven't even installed Jaguar yet. But it feels like I have based on what I've read. Can't wait now (and I've gotten to really want it after using it on my sister's machine).

I waited to write this because you commented on gradual slowing of your machine. I wanted to see it the same would happen but it has not as of yet after several weeks in this new state. Currently there is 6GB available (ie free) on the OSX partition, 2.6 GB available on OS9, 2.75 free on this 'danger' archive partition and 28GB on the files partition. And an unexpected benefit of doing this partition - a small pleasure - is that when rebooting and you hold down the option key (so that booting is paused to ask for what disk you wish to start up from), you are given the partitions that have OSX and OS9 (my naming of them) and the 2 others and you can change start-up disks THAT easily! (And soon I won't have to any more :-) )

Anyway, I wonder what it would be like with an 8MB buffer on my hard disk (instead of the 2MB buffer), based on MCE's claims that on the Pismo the performance boost is very dramatic. Did I read 25% disk access improvement?

Thought you might be interested. By the way, my sister (who I mentioned above) bought a new TiBook 867 GHz and I've helped her out a bit, tinkering with it much. What an awesome machine! But then after a few weeks the motherboard went bad - the ethernet specifically went bad. AppleCare walked me through all things to verify. Then they overnighted a packing box and, get this, in only 2 working days, had the machine repaired and delivered back! They turned it around the same day they got it. All during the final days leading up to Christmas. And their automated tracking system was sensational. I'm very impressed.

Michael

Hi Michael;

Thanks for the interesting report. Maybe I didn't neet to buy the iBook after all. ;-)

I know the OEM hard drive in my Pismo is a bottleneck. I have that ATI October video upgrade, and once I get the iBook percolating, I'll perhaps install it. One of the reasons I'm getting the iBook is to have a fully usable second production machine again (the old UMAX S-900 isn't quite up to the job). I've been really holding my breath theae past five months since the WallStreet died whenever I make any significant upgrades (viz. Kim's experience above). I can't afford downtime.

I've pretty well determined that the gradual slowdown issue in Jaguar was caused by FruitMenu preferences held over from the original installation in OS 10.1.x. At least, since I uninstalled FruitMenu and trashed those preferences, the problem hasn't manifested.

Happy New Year!
Charles

Speed, interface issues in OS X

From Seth Chandler

After running across one of your columns last week, I was moved to read them all. A great series. I learned a lot. One of your complaints has been about speed under OS X. I have had the same complaint from time to time, even though my 20 gig disk is only half full on my 600Mhz iBook.

I think I found a solution yesterday. After a day of downloading, playing around with and trashing shareware programs and deleting old documents, I noticed that programs were launching quite slowly -- 5-7 bounces in the Dock. They are now launching in two bounces. Here's what I did: First, fixed prebinding, using the command <sudo update_prebinding -verbose -force -root />. Second, fixed permissions by booting from the 10.2 install disk and opening disk utility. Third, ran MacJanitor's daily, weekly and monthly tasks. I have no idea which action did the trick or whether the order of operations makes a difference, but I thought I would pass this along.

You also have complaints about the interface. I agree. It's not as intuitive or as elegant. However, there are some incredible bits of software from Gideon (http://www.gideonsoftworks.com/dockit.html) that will help you. Dock-it gives you the possibility of having multiple docks and the multi-tiered menus that come out of them make getting to any file, program or document a snap. It was a real eye-popper for me. There are a couple of others that also look good, but I haven't really tried them yet.

That brings me to my second point: There's a lot of good stuff out there that is safe to try and much more on the way. The way OS X handles memory means that you can load up your system with any number of bells and whistles with little or no performance penalty, which you can't do in the Classic OS, because the extensions would be loaded into memory at the launch of the OS. Second, because nothing is loaded into the OS, buggy apps just fail, they don''t bring down the system. Third, it is much easier to write apps in Cocoa than in other environments. Fourth, a lot of powerful apps (like OpenOffice) just need to be ported to OS X, which is happening at a rapid clip -- and they are free. I am constantly amazed at what's out there. Don't like the Finder? Use another one. Couldn't exactly do that before.

I'm no expert or even a power user. But I think that OS X is really cool. I'm even dabbling in the terminal now!

Happy New Year!

Seth
Seth Chandler
Managing Editor
Greenwood Communications
http://www.greenwood.se

Hi Seth;

Thanks for the tips. I fixed the permissions recently, but I'll have to try the prebinding cleanup and MacJanitor.

Happy New Year to you.

Charles

FireWire CardBus success

From Ross Cottrell

Charles,

Just wanted to drop you a note regarding the new OrangeLink Firere CardBus I received today. It works perfectly in OS X.2.3. Disk Utility recognized it, erased and partitioned it without problem. I was able to copy over my backup files with ease. The card I received actually has 3 ports, though the photo on the box only has two. So I got a bonus port. The card literally worked right out of the box with no driver installation needed. I'm happy to report that Orange Micro has a great product for Wallstreeters who need firewire in OS X.

Regards,
Ross Cottrell

Thanks for the report Ross. Delighted to hear that it's working well for you.

Happy New Year!
Charles

OS X with SCSI Burners

From Bruce Thomson

G'Day there,

I read the following comment with GREAT interest, Charles.

"My son, on the other hand, kept OS 9 around on the hard drive of his 333 MHz Lombard PowerBook only until there was OS X support for his old SCSI CD-burner, at which point out went 9."

I would love to know how he achieved this, My G4 - with OS 10.2.2 is NOT SCSI savvy.

Kind regards
Aussi Bruce

Hi Bruce;

I don't know about OS 10.2.2. Tristan only installed Jaguar a few weeks before he sold his Lombard, and I don't think he ever tried burning any CDs with Jag. I think he only got it to work using Roxio Toast 5.x.

However, you can find more info about SCSI CD-burner support and OS X here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/drivers/scsicdrwhelper.html

and here:

http://www.elgato.com/SCSIHelper/index.html

where it notes:

f your SCSI CD burner doesn't work on Mac OS X, try Mac OS X SCSI CD-RW Helper. If you do not have a SCSI recorder, or if your SCSI recorder already works with Mac OS X, you do not need this software.

The Mac OS X SCSI CD-RW Helper fixes a minor bug in Apple's driver for devices that support the MMC standard (Multi Media Command set). Virtually all CD-RW drives shipped in the last three years support some flavor of the MMC standard.

Plus:

Breaking News, Tuesday, February 19, 2002: Apple releases Mac OS X 10.1.3 update: Mac OS X SCSI CD-RW Helper no longer needed.

Today, Apple released the Mac OS X 10.1.3 system software update. This system update fixes the bug in Apple's drivers that prevented SCSI CD recorders from being recognized correctly. As a consequence, El Gato's Mac OS X SCSI CD-RW Helper is no longer necessary. Although we haven't found any issues with just leaving the software installed, we recommend uninstalling the Mac OS X SCSI CD-RW Helper according to the "Deinstallation" paragraph below.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank the thousands of users who downloaded the Mac OS X SCSI CD-RW Helper. Thank you for all the feedback and support you've given us.

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear