Cool Mac Gear

As I have noted here before, one of the aspects of Mac OS X that I find most annoying and tiresome is its lame and flaky input device support. I find that response to mouse clicks and keyboard macro commands in OS X is consistently erratic (if that's not too much of an oxymoron), and has been from when I came on board with OS 10.1 through OS 10.2.6 with little, if any tangible improvement.

This would be frustrating enough under the best of circumstances, but it is particularly so for me, since I am afflicted with chronic health issues that make mousing and keyboarding painful, and every extra keystroke or mouse click is something I have come to dread, loathe, and begrudge, especially when my symptoms are flaring.

Under the happy synergy of the Classic Mac OS and the good old ADB connection interface, I was able to mix and match input devices with no problem, and the System response was utterly reliable. I usually use both left and right hand pointing devices plus a foot operated mouse (just an old Apple ADB mouse with and extra long cord spliced in) for clicking. This spreads the stress loads around, and lets me alternate hands (the foot mouse can be operated with either foot). An added benefit of tandem hand and foot mouse operation is that pointing and dragging by hand while foot-clicking is much faster than conventional single-mouse body-English once you get used to it.

However, trouble began with the introduction of USB, even in the Classic OS. USB input devices would not consistently support clicking with one while dragging with another, although I found that this method would still work with a USB mouse connected via Griffin's wonderful little iMate ADB/USB adapter and either an ADB or USB pointing device as the second unit, which was an essentially painless workaround, so to speak.

That is, until OS X came along. OS X refuses to support clicking with one mouse while dragging with another, even when one is an ADB device. ADB mice and keyboards and still wors fine through the iMate with OS X, but only "conventionally. " However, even native USB input device support is planning crummy in OS X. I find that devices frequently lose contact with the system after a sleep/wake up cycle. Sometimes this can be restored by unplugging and replugging the USB device. Occasionally it requires a restart. And even when the pointing device remains conversant with the system, the prevalence of misfires and necessity for double pumping is dismaying. I had wondered if this was idiosyncratic to my Pismo PowerBook, but my Book is, if anything, even more cranky about USB support in OS X. And it's not because of my using a lot of third-party pointing devices. Behavior is just is bad with Apple's own USB mice. USB Overdrive, unfortunately, has not helped either.

One workaround that has helped mitigate some of this is something I discovered by accident. I found that if I click the right button on the Wacom Graphire II graphics pad mouse, which is programmed in the Wacom OS X driver for "click and hold," then leave it activated and click with another mouse, that configuration makes it possible to subsequently click with the ADB foot mouse while positioning the cursor with the Wacom Graphire mouse. Works perfectly, and it proves that support for this mode of use is not impossible in OS X. My standard setup in OS X aspects for the past several months has been using the Wacom Graphire II mouse with my left hand for pointing, the ADB food mouse for clicking, and whatever mouse or trackpad suits my fancy with my right hand.

However, it's finally spring here, sort of, which brings pollen or at least something that tends to make the pain in my arms, hands and wrists flare up every year around this time. The deciduous trees and shrubs are just beginning to dump their load, and last Thursday all of a sudden my left wrist and thumb joint developed severe tenderness -- so painful that I literally couldn't lift a teacup without severe and serious pain. Pushing The Wacom mouse around to aggravate this, so I decided to switch to a left-handed Quill Mouse, which features "gripless" operation.

The good news is that the Quill Mouse is very comfortable, and my sore hand actually felt fairly good resting in its support channel. The bad news is that the Quill, as with every other standard USB mouse, it is not supported for two-device clicking and dragging in OS X. The Quill's own finger operated click buttons and scroll wheel are pretty good, but still no substitute for tandem mousing.

It was good that no one else was home on Friday morning while I was working on the Applelinks News, because the air around me was turning a deep shade blue as I struggled to get my work done with just hand-clicking. "How in the world can anyone work like this?" I muttered. And it's true. Even if my health problems were somehow miraculously cured, I would still want to continue using simultaneous hand and foot mousing because it's so much faster, slicker, and more efficient.

My wrist is feeling a bit better after the weekend break and some rainy weather that has presumably lowered the pollen count, and I've settled for now on using the Quill Mouse for my left hand, with the Wacom mouse for my right hand with the foot mouse when I'm doing repetitious tasks, but sparingly as I'm trying to preserve my right wrist.

I could, of course, switch back to OS 9, and go back to uninhibited tandem mousing, but I'm going to try to stick it out in OS X for the meantime.

However, I just wish Apple would get around to fixing the #&%@%$*#* mouse support in OS X.

Ditch OSX for Linux

From Ken. Cavaliere-Klick

I have a G3 600 iBook, not all that old chronologically but not all that young in computer years. It's a nice computer but I'm also a bit underwhelmed by Jaguar. It works well enough with the typical lethargy that seems to be its trademark.

Before my detour into iBooks and Jaguar I had planned to try YDL on my ancient Bondi. I probably will get around to it in the near future. X was a dud on a Bondi for the expected reasons but I did not expect fireworks either. I'm getting the idea of trying YDL on the iBook as well. Jaguar is interesting but not enough to keep me from being curious.

Panther is up and coming and the usual hype blitz will start again. I hope the focus will be on desktop productivity this time, not the ethereal "digital hub". I don't have broadband, I don't download music, make movies or even burn cd's. I do need to write, do spreadsheets and edit photos/graphics for printing. Not exciting stuff but the basics and the kind of things that computers should do well by now.

Hi Ken;

YDL is definitely worth trying out for someone with your hardware and computing focus. I installed YDL 2.0 on my former WallStreet 233 MHz PowerBook, and was very happy with how slickly the install went, and also found it quite snappy performance-wise.

As I said in my article, I am addicted to Mac OS software, but if that's not an issue for you, I encourage you to give YDL a try. It's not terribly expensive, and you can dual-boot two ways, first by partitioning your drive into Linux and Mac OS sections and retaining full Mac OS bootability, and also by using Mac-On-Linux emulation to run the Mac OS analogically to Classic Mode in OS X.

So you can eat your Linux cake, and still have your Mac OS too.

Charles

Finder Services

From Christian Grunenberg

Charles,

Just saw the comments related to WordService at AppleLinks. Well, it's not a bug of WordService. Neither a bug of any other service. It's a bug of OS X and the Carbon service system.

During login, OS X scans the file "info.plist" within all application/services packages. This file is pure XML and declares the services (e.g. menu item, shortcut etc). Depending on the number of total service menu items, the number of installed services and the version of OS X one is using, the services menu disappears in Carbon applications (like the Finder) sooner or later (in most cases if the number of menu items exceeds 60-70 entries).

So, if you need the services in the Finder, try to remove all services not necessary from those folders OS X scans during login (~/Library/Services, /Library/Services/, /Applications, /Developer/Applications etc.).

Best regards,
Christian Grunenberg

P.S: Like your Odyssey

Hi Christian

Ah! Mystery solved. I have quite a few items in Services - maybe even 60 counting the submenu entries.

Glad you like the Odyssey. I like your software. :-)

Charles

Re: Services in Mac OSX 10.2.6 Finder

From: Henry Harrison

Michael Snider's tip (in OS X Odyssey 330) did the trick. Removing WordService.service from the /Library/Services directory and the logout/login sequence, mean I now have access to services under the Finder again. Shame not to have WordService, but having none at all in the Finder is worse, so I'll compromise this way till the bug is fixed.

Many thanks for your help

Cheers
Henry

Hi Henry;

My pleasure. But see Christian Grunenberg's letter above.

Charles

Linux Browsers and iTunes

From John Dennis

Just to let you know the browser that Safari was built on was a browser from KDE which is used on Linux which you know. They also have Mozilla as well as Firebird now so their are some good browsers for Linux. As far as iTunes go I had read that Apple was looking for a Windows programmer for this. I guess it was posted on monster.com. I am not sure when they will do this, but I guess they have to port it first and make sure it works well. Since I have heard that Napster is coming back some time soon they better get on the ball if they want to sell music to Windows users.

Carbon Copy Cloner

From James Rae Smith

Hello Charles

Just to endorse Kevin Larson's point, Carbon Copy Cloner is more than just a useful item, it is utterly essential to anyone running OSX, even if they have other backup utilities such as Retrospect. The last MacUser review (accessible on their web site) said they could not understand why Apple had not already rolled it's functionality into OSX, and I can only agree. Like many of the most useful OSX utilities, fundamentally it just puts a an Aqua face onto some 100% solid pre-existing UNIX tools.

I apologise, but I am going to be rather rude now. I and others have pointed this and other utilities (eg LaunchBar) out to you many many times over the last 2 years. You seem to take a perverse enjoyment in not investigating utilities recommended by us OSXies that might make it more comfortable for you, while constantly ( and rightly ) singing the praises of things such as TypeIt4Me which add so much to OS 9. I hope you do not continue to ignore these things to deliberately increase the number of things you can complain about in your very entertaining column, but I do sometimes wonder. If you were a mountaineer your column might be titled "Everest, the hard way".

Myself I opt for the easy life.

All the best

James Rae Smith

Hi James;

Thanks for another positive report on Carbon Copy Cloner.

No apologies necessary. I have no objection to plain speaking, which I much prefer to prevarication and euphemistic evasions.

However, I have as yet, had no immediate requirement for Carbon Copy Cloner., or at least any I have perceived. I maintain pretty much a mirror image of my OS X setup on both computers for backup, and the only time I reinstalled OS X was when I reformatted the HD in the iBook when it was a couple of weeks old.

It may please you to learn that I am currently testing SubRosaSoft's DiskGuardian utility for review, and it incorporates what I take to be a similar function to that of Carbon Copy Cloner. To wit:

SubRosaSoft DiskGuardian Backup/Restore

SubRosaSoft DiskGuardian backup/restore is a tool to backup and restore every block (every piece of available storage space, split into segments known as "sectors") on your disk. Unlike most backup systems SubRosaSoft DiskGuardian can even backup many disks that are known to have physical faults (like scratched CDs, damaged hard drives, etc).

Backup Volume copies all the information from the source volume to a disk image file on the destination volume. An exact copy of the volume is made to a file on your destination disk, so if you backup your startup disk a bootable copy of it is created, with all information such as file permissions preserved.

Restore Volume allows you to select a disk image to replicate onto your volume. It is an exact copy so a bootable disk image's information is preserved, and this feature can be used to copy a bootable copy of your data back onto your volume with all information such as file permissions preserved. The destination volume's current data is replaced with the selected disk image in the Restore Volume operation.

Incidentally, TypeIt4Me adds a great deal to OS X too. ;-)

Charles

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

CM

Charles W. Moore