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In of the Classic OS Finder features that is purported to be replaced by the Dock but isn't, at least adequately, is pop-up folders -- the ability to drag an open folder to the bottom of the screen and have it collapse to a tab with the folder's name. Click on the tab and the folder window expands to reveal its contents. When you're finished it automatically collapses back to the tab. Slick and conveneint. You can park folders in the Dock, where they reside as tiny icons that look like all the other folder icons there, involving a mouseover to see which is which. You can open them with a single click once identified, but you have to close the window manually. There are sever third-party shareware applications that bring back pop up folders to OS X and usually more than that, however, there is also a way to at least partially restore the pop up folder function in OS X without resorting to third-party add-ons. It's not as good as real pop up folders, but it does work. First, configure your folder window so it is narrow enough to make a reasonable tab. Then just drag it to the bottom of the screen, so that just the title bar is showing. 
You can line up several such "pop up tabs" just like before in OS9. 
You will now be able to drag items from the Desktop down over the title bar, and the window will pop open to receive it. Regrettably, you will still have to drag the window "closed" again manually. You can also "pop" the window open by clicking the green Zoom button. When you're finished your business, click the Zoom button redux, and the window will collapse back to its "tab" configuration. 
Clumsier than the real thing, but not a bad workaround using built-in Finder functions. ViaVoice microphone recognition in OS X 10.2 Safari shortcuts True! True! Anonymous Rant re Proving my Point Subjective Justification From D Boone: Charles, like most other readers, I've enjoyed (all of) your various columns. I know you preferred purchasing the current generation iBook for, among other reasons, the ability to boot under OS 9 to diagnose and repair in case the OS X failed. I'm ready to make the leap and replace my aging Pismo and wonder if the soon-to-be-releasd OS X repair software (Disk Warrior) negates the need for booting OS 9. Or, are there other considerations such as OS 9 applications running faster under OS 9 than OS X.
Thanks,
BTW in Santa Fe today the temp is a sunny 52 F (light jacket weather) with no snow left on the ground, but expected to return soon.
Hi Dan;
The release of OS X native Disk Warrior will remove one reason to hang on to dual booting, and if that's the only significant one holding you back, then going to a single boot Mac should be no hardship.
Personally, I have a whole bunch of reasons whay I want to retain OS 9 boot capability for the foreseeable future, but I suppose the main one is that I just like the flexibility and choice of being able to boot into either environment.
Some ambidextrous (Carbon) apps. do run significantlty better in OS 9 than OS X -- iListen being a notable example. However, I have no complaints about the speed of the Classic applications I use regularly running in Classic mode (iListen doesn't support Classic Mode). They all work fine there.
You really have to decide what you're comfortable with personally.
Snow in Santa Fe? We have about two feet on the ground here, but there are spots along my hiking trails in the woods that it is waist deep if you step off the beaten path, I bundled up and did my usual circuit (about 1 hour) yesterday. Sunny here with a predicted high of -5°C (23°F) today.
Charles ViaVoice microphone recognition in OS X 10.2 From Bill DeVille Charles: Re your problem getting ViaVoice to recognize the microphone -- the most likely solution is to open System Preferences, click on the Sound icon, click on Input, and select the ViaVoice microphone. Of course, the Andrea microphone has to be plugged in at the time.
Regards,
Hi Bill;
Yes, I've done that several times. The Andrea mic is selected, and it works fine with the little sound monitor, and also did with ilisten before I broke it by installing the 1.5.2 update. I'll let you know how things go when I reinstall all this stuff.
Charles From Jeremy Scott-Joynt Charles, mon ami, I'm well aware that there are other fora for questions like this; but I'm also aware that your mailbag has managed to find answers incredibly quickly and conveniently for such little issues, so I hope you won't mind my taking the liberty. Simple problem really. I've just come back from three weeks away to find all hell has broken loose in Macdom during my absence: new PowerBooks, new browser, etc. etc. I've been giving Safari a whirl for the past 24 hours and so far I'm very impressed. Admittedly I'm on a DSL connection, but I've seen none of the speed problems I've noted in some of your writings on the subject (produced by a very quick stampede last night through the archives); on the contrary, it's a fabulous experience. Bar one or two things. The first is probably insoluble, but one of the reasons I stuck with Omniweb despite its sometimes slow performance was the fact that you can type any part of a URL or bookmark in its navigation box and it would produce the goods, rather than having to start at the beginning of the link's name or address. That I miss. Much more important, though, is what seems to be the lack of keyboard navigation of links on a page. Tabbing (in Chimera and MSIE) and cmd-up or -down (in Omniweb) is often much easier on a laptop on the move than using a mouse or the trackpad. Where's the equivalent in Safari? This one could prove a dealbreaker.... If any readers have an idea, I'd appreciate letting us all know.
Many thanks,
Hi Jeremy;
Yes, it's been a busy month so far in the Mac orbit.
I've actually been using Safari more lately, and it definitely has its charms, although I find it buggy -- spontaneous page reloads and the like. I do miss tabbed browsing, but the built-in Google search field is very convenient. Speed-wise, it sems lightning fast on some pages and sluggish on others - dialup connection. Broadband seems to be the ticket for this browser.
Anyway, check out some of the third-party Safari hacks listed in my accompanying On Safari feature today, and I expect that Odyssey readers will also come through as usual.
Charles From Mark Abrams Hi Charles, In response to Peter's reply to my note of caution that the Minimize-in-Place installer is a hack:
I installed it in 10.2 with nothing more than a double-click, and it has remained there through the ensuing updates.
Just because someone created an installer that replaces Dock.app with a Dock.app from an early Jaguar seed with a double-click means it's *not* a hack?? The site itself notes: "This feature was removed from Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar after build 6C48, and now you can have it back!" (It also warns to backup, and I agree.) Finally, if you move one level up on the site, you'll come to the page hosting the MIP installation, titled "Mac OS X Hacks!" I rest my case. Anyway, I'm not saying this little hack is dangerous. I've used it, and it works (although you lose some significant Dock functionality, as mentioned before). I'm just calling a spade a spade, or in this case a hack a hack. ;)
best,
From Joseph DiMattio Hello Charles, It's hard to accept technical advice from anyone afraid of identifying themselves. Of course, I'm referring to "Anonymous" and his/her rant on the supposed niceties of "Partition Toolkit". I work with Windows aficionados who trumpet the merits of Microsoft's OS with the same passion - but it's still an awful OS, and I don't see myself purchasing a Wintel system solely because some highly technical people in my department recommend it. Thanks again for a wonderful and informative column.
Regards,
Thanks Joe. Anon. does identify himself with a first name but prefers Anon. for publication, as do other frequent correspondents. It isn't always the same "Anon." I respect others' desire for privacy, so that's what gets posted.
I don't doubt that Partition Toolkit is a nice and useful utility -- I just don;t see it as some sort of categorical imperative.
Glad you enjoy the Odyssey.
Charles Partition Toolkit
From Christopher Breen
Actually, it's neither. Pogue and Stauffer don't mention Partition Toolkit because it didn't exist when they were writing their books. The program was first released in December 2002. Chris
Good point!
I wasn't previously aware of the PT timeline.
However, do you think they would have mentioned it even if it had been available?
Charles From Richard Hadfield Hi Charles, Well some Kiwi driven Swiss outfit thinks their going to win. Fat chance, not with our new appendages:-) I must agree with Anon. You just don't act on advice. Like.......using MacJanitor or MemoryStick yet?.....nah! fat chance again. Is this a Canadian thing. You all so frozen solid that your idea of a good time is to repartition your drives needlessly?
From a balmy 26C Auckland.
Well, I do have Memory Stick downloaded....... It's a start.
From -10C Nova Scotia
From Anonymous Greetings Charles,
Then neither should a lengthy rebuttal to a predicted, predictable response come as any great shock. (-:
Yes, indeed, very silly of you. Especially when you had ample advance warning and anticipated need, if not for your iBook, but for your Pismo. That you hadn't already ordered it is just more preventable poor planning on your part. Even then, your impulsiveness and lack of authority wins out over your logic and restraint, once more, as you could've simply downloaded the utility, even on your slow connection, in something under twenty minutes (2.1MB-ish sit file). OK, fine, twenty minutes can be excruciating to endure while you're off eating dinner or walking the dog, but how much time did it take you to reinstall everything? And how much time more to restore everything to the point you had it?
Why must being a "journalist" (read: layman) and writing from a layman's POV mean doing everything the hard way and ignoring better solutions or augmentations? If we extrapolate the above position, you shouldn't be using Tiger Launch, TypeIt4Me, WindowShade, ViaVoice, DiskWarrior, Norton Utilities, et al.
Just what is the purpose of your column, anyway, then? As above, if not to explore OS X and all you can do with it using needed (or just plain nifty) third party software as required or desired, then it must be 'what can I do with a purely stock install of OS X and *only* Apple's tools and software'; and, if it's the latter, you blew that proposition months and months ago. I think the above statement is just another one of your convenient justifications for doing and writing about the wrong thing; I think too that the purpose of your column is much like the weather on any given day; prone to change at its author's whim, and without regard to prior statements, let alone consistency.
Maybe, and I'm just guessing here [insert sarcastic expression here], maybe these guys wrote their books last year and they went to press long before (or long enough before) FWB released Partition Toolkit in late November of 2002. That said, why neither Pogue nor Stauffer made mention of FWB's other (admittedly more expensive and somewhat more complicated) offerings that do the same, or possibly those of SoftRAID, ATTO, Charismac, VST, InTech, and others, may be due to the fact that they are assuming their audience is either too cheap or too intimidated by the idea of using slightly to more advanced tools, or, perhaps, they're not quite the authority either one of them would like to think they are. Given my respect for at least Pogue, I have to believe he was aware of the options, but chose not to discuss them; why he didn't at least allude to them (no matter how much overkill they might be) is beyond me. Not having read that particular book, I can't say (maybe he has a better disclaimer than you somewhere else in the book), but he should have said something to the effect of, "Unless you're in the mood to switch from Apple disk drivers to that of a third party utility, costing $50 and more, you can't partition on the fly without first erasing... " Now, of course, the book requires an addendum or rewrite that addresses the simplistic, inexpensive option of using Partition Toolkit, without losing the use of Apple disk drivers. Regardless, as it stands, it's just another case of journalistic negligence that harms the reader, though, no matter what the explanation for the omission. In this case, you were the victim; and, like many victims, you pass along the transgression as you unwittingly victimize others -- only in this case you were recently made "knowing".
Ah, but you do. Insertion of my aforementioned suggestion of a disclaimer would have substantial control over my -- and more importantly, the novice' -- perception, especially as it pertains to the authority, of any given article. Further still, frequent disclaimers can easily be inserted into any given prose, as well; phrases like, "I may be wrong about this, but..."; "To the best of my knowledge this is the only way to..."; "Please correct me if I'm wrong..."; such statements go an awful long way towards communicating to the reader that you are aware of and accept that your experience is limited enough that the reader should not consider you a total authority on the given subject. Yet another reason you desperately need a good editor. A qualified technical editor would catch your (frequent) errors and suggest appropriate disclaimers and corrections; even a good everyday editor would know how to alter your text (or insert editorial comments) as required.
For a well-read guy, I really would've thought you could see a sarcastic jab when you saw one. I was wrong. My sincere apologies.
Which only goes to support my earlier accusations that you should be more aware of the available options! You (you and/or your son) are out there charging people for support, and you may easily be giving false or unnecessary advice and implementation. I'm sure you're sure you did a great job, and you probably did ultimately solve their problem. However, how many times in the last eight years have you been paid, or at least advised someone, for example, to erase their entire drive in order to correct or add partitions? If even once, without also presenting a viable, if not ultimately desirable option to instead use a third party utility, you've very likely wasted that person's time and/or money. Just as now, you sit in a position of some authority, whether you choose to accept it or not, and dole out your experience as advice and as though that advice is fact. At times you describe yourself as one "who knows just enough to be dangerous", and at other times, like above, you assert your experience vast enough to be good enough. I tend to agree strongly with the former description of your talents.
Pardon me, but I'm quite certain I've read one of your articles here or elsewhere in the past that discusses your use of a laptop inside a plastic bag -- such a statement leaves one with a visual perception that is indelible on one's mind, Charles. Do you deny using, or stating the use of a laptop in a plastic bag to prevent "off-gassing" If you've since improved things, great; but, still, my jab was more sarcasm and exaggeration than factual assertion, anyway. Would you please do me, and the rest of you audience the great favor of posting some detailed pictures of your various workstations, preferably with you at work in them? I'm sure such images would go a long way towards dispelling the confusion we have in imagining your filtering arrays, and your multiple input configurations. If nothing else, I find most Mac users to simply be curious to see anyone else's setup, no matter how simple. You may even provide many a person with good ideas to address their own ergonomics. Please don't be embarrassed by the quality of your configurations, or to be wearing your filter masks for the camera. Believe it or not, I do have sympathy for your condition; I even have ongoing direct experience supporting folks who are probably in worse shape than you.
That, by the by, was why I was so astonished to see you turn down a prior offer by one of my acquaintances to configure a custom Mac and build you a custom Mac workstation. I've seen several of his company's installations, and they are pretty spectacular in terms of not only ergonomics, but looks, as well. I sure wish I could afford it, anyway, and that you just plain ignored an offer of a free one blew me away.
Indeed. It's quite a question, and quite a powerful phrase, to say the least. Yet you don't hesitate in any number of your columns under any number of circumstances -- especially when trying to justify yourself or your stated position -- of throwing around that phrase as though you are some authority on its answer. Go ahead and Google your own articles for the phrase, Charles; you'll find you use it more than you probably think; and, I think, you owe it to The Average Mac User to get a better handle on what it means before you use it again. Moreover, you need to better take into account your audience, and the effects your words have on them. Ok, then, here we go; will you surprise me with your response, or will it be yet another predictable defensive position that completely misses the point. Time to see. Kind Regards, Anon
Hi again Anon;
Impulsiveness? I'm probably one of the least impulsive persons you would ever encounter. Stick-in-the-mud is more like it. As it happens, however, my decision to reformat the iBook hard drive was arrived at fairly precipitously, as I noted in yesterday's column, due to the unexpected problems with iListen that I've provisionally attributed to having both the OS X and OS 9 System folders on the same partition. It dawned on me that this could be the first manifestation of many such problems, and consequently I made the move to partition the drive in fairly short order.
Hard drive formatting is pretty basic. Much more so then using a Finder utility or piece of application software.
Hello! *Wrong* thing?! Unwise in your opinion perhaps. You sure don't mind being arbitrarily judgmental.
But why should I have to justify anything I do with my computer to you? There is nothing terribly unorthodox or unusual about using Apple's own drive utility to format a hard drive, and what software to use for the task is hardly Sophie's Choiice in any case. Partition Toolkit has now been extensively enough discussed in this place that readers should be able to make an informed choice as to whether they will use it or not.
You're right about the timeline with regard to the books' publishing dates relative to Partition Toolkit's intro, which I was not aware of, but as you concede yourself, the authors didn't mention any of the other partition tools that were available (and Stauffer especially includes much info about a lot of other third party stuff in his book). There were no qualifications or disclaimers on the passages I cited from either book.
I see that you're now lecturing David Pogue and Todd Stauffer, who between them must have more than 50 books under their belts, on how and what they should write, and accusing them of "journalistic negligence" no less. Wow!
I think you would have to look very hard to find a Mac writer who provides as many disclaimers and explanations about where he is coming from philosophically, the equipment used, and the circumstances under which it is used, than me. Can you name one another writer who provides a detailed disclaimer with regard to their personal background, philosophical biases, and general circumstances like the one you suggested? The fact that you know as many details as you do about my personal situation attests to this. Everybody who writes brings a lot of personal baggage the process. I've never claimed disinterested objectivity. I do try to the forthright about the intellectual and philosophical filters through which my opinions are formulated and expressed.
My title at Appellinks is "News Editor." However, as a professional journalist for the past fifteen years, I've have always been delighted to work with editors who take an interest in the material and can offer a sage second opinion. I have been an editor myself, of a split run edition of a political newspaper here in Canada in the mid 90s. However, we don't have the budget here at Applelinks for that, and most of the news content, including the OS X Odyssey, tends to be compiled/written on the fly, often minutes before it is posted. Our feature columns, such as my Moore's Views & Reviews feature, are developed at a more leisurely pace.
As for Nova Scotia, I was returning sarcasm for sarcasm. I thought that would be self-evident.
Perhaps you didn't draw the distinction when I noted that "I was a part-time sales agent for this part of the province for one of the larger Apple resellers, and my son operated the only Mac service and repair business..." I mostly handled the sales and PR end. Tristan, who is a former Applelinks columnist as well, was the tech genius. Much of what technical knowledge I have today I learned form him. My point in bringing this up was to illustrate that I indeed have had considerable contact with other Mac users, refuting your assertion to the contrary. We had few customer complaints (indeed none that I can recall) when we were in business. Any telephone tech support I do these days is pro bono, and Tristan works doing Windows XP telephone support for a Microsoft subcontractor.
Were I advising anyone about hard drive partitioning today, I would definitely mention Partition Toolkit. It hasn't been a topic that has come up often. The sort of questions one usually gets are about much more mundane matters.
I do know for a fact that I have never operated any laptop computer inside a plastic bag. I'm sure that's something I would recall. I have a vague recollection that a lady I sometimes advise about computer matters, who is also environmentally ill, did try using her PC laptop inside a plastic bag, and I may have made reference to that in a column. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of. It's not a practice that I would recommend, and I don't think would work very well anyway to avoid chemical fumes.
The reason I keep the 'Books in isolation cases is so that I don't have to wear carbon filter masks (the ones I use most when I do need tham are 3M 8247 models, if that's of interest).
Here's a quick and dirty shot of one of my workstations I took a while back (the other case is quite similar). Both the top of the upper limb of the L-shape and the glass panel over the keyboard are hinged for quick access. On the extreme left you can see the ventilation duct, which feeds into a piece of 3" ABS plumbing pipe that extends through the floor into the basement. The extraction fan is at the far end of the pipe and flexibly attached to cut down on noise. Also shown are a Coutour Perfit mouse (It's a right-hander, but I often use it lefty), and a Cirque Easy Cat trackpad. The foot mouse is out of view, but it's just an old Apple ADB mouse.
I wrote a detailed description of building this case in this article: http://www.macopinion.com/columns/roadwarrior/01/03/27/ I meant no slight to your friend by declining his kind offer, and I'm sincerely distressed if he perceived it that way. Perhaps I should reconsider, However, I find this setup I have works for me, and I'm comfortable with it. Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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