Cool Mac Gear

For the past 18 months I've been using TigerLaunch, a freeware launcher menu application, as a replacement for my old "Launcher" flder filled with single-clickable application aliases in OS 9. I still think TigerLaunch is great, but this week I discovered another launcher menu application that may wean me away from the tiger.

Like TigerLaunch, My Favorite Things is free of charge to anyone who wants to try it out. When it reaches version 1.0, it will become shareware.

Like TigerLaunch, My Favorite Things puts a menulet icon in the top right of your Menu Bar -- in this case a little green heart instead of a tiger. Using its menu, you can launch just about anything on your computer or on the Internet. Applications, websites, terminal commands, even your favorite email addresses are just a click away. And as the program "learns" your habits and preferences, the things you use most will be the easiest to get to. My Favorite Things will thus make it just a little quicker to get to the tools you need, and the more often you use it, the more accurate it will become.

My Favorite Things "assumes" that you will want to do things you've done in the past. You'll want to go to websites you've been to before. You'll want to use programs you've used before. With My Favorite Things, the more often you've used it in the past, the quicker you will get to it again .

The first time you use the My Favorite Things menu, it will have just a few things in it. It will show your Home folder, your Documents folder and your main Applications folder. It will also list all the applications that are currently running on your system. Click any of the Application icons to switch to that application. Click any of the folder icons to open that folder in the Finder

Many of the items that appear in My Favorite Things will have submenus. For instance, any running application will have a submenu that lets you quit that application, hide it, or switch to it and hide every other application. Any folder will have a submenu that will let you open anything inside that folder.

For example, you can open your desktop folder by moving your mouse over the Home icon in the menu then clicking on the icon for the Desktop that appears in the submenu. The computer will immediately open a Finder window that shows everything in your Desktop folder.

Now click on My Favorite Things' icon again. The menu will now be slightly longer. Your desktop folder is now an option in the menu. But there's more. Click on the Desktop icon again and then look at My Favorite Things' menu once more. The icon has moved up the list. Any time you launch something from My Favorite Things for the first time, it gets added to the menu. Any time you open something again using My Favorite Things, it moves up the menu. In this way, My Favorite Things keeps track of what you use most. If you want to launch something that isn't currently in My Favorite Things' menu, the last item in the menu is a submenu titled "My Favorite Things" which provides ways to launch many different kinds of things.

Choosing "Open File(s)…" gives you a standard open file dialog which you can use to open one or more files.

Choosing "Open Bookmark" will let you launch a bookmark from any of several popular Macintosh web browsers, including Apple's Safari.

Choosing "Open URL…" lets you do the same with internet sites or any other url you can think of (for example, mailto:feedback@oldjewelsoftware.com will create a new e-mail addressed to the My Favorite Things feedback address). You can also run a simple shell command (like top or wget, or even startx) by choosing "Run Terminal Command…". Simply follow the directions as you go, and My Favorite Things will keep track of anything you tell it to launch.

Another useful feature of My Favorite Things is that it sifts out things you haven't used in a while. You can modifiy the exact way that it does this by opening the Preferences window and choosing "Tracking". Still, there will be times that you will want to open something that isn't in My Favorite Things' menu. If you are pretty sure that you've launched something from My Favorite Things in the past, try using the "Other Things…" menu item to open it again. Choosing "Other Things…" will bring up a dialog that will let you browse through or search for anything that My Favorite Things knows about. Simply scroll through the list, which is sorted form most popular to least popular, or type in the search field (next to the magnifying glass icon) to narrow down the list of items displayed in the window.

Bug Fixes in version 0.8.2

• MFTs now records whenever the user switches to a new current application, so apps that are left open rather than launched regularly will not disappear from the menu prematurely.

• Sorting of menus for folder contents should now more closely resemble the way the Finder sorts the same items.

• The MFTs menu now displays during a click and hold, whereas before it would only respond to a click on the menu bar icon.

• Added a preference to switch on and off the display of the current application at the top of the menu. This will let people have a totally static menu if they absolutely want it.

• Fixed a problem with the "Constant" icon size controller having more size options than were actually available, thus sometimes causing strange redraw behavior.

• MFTs now reports to the user if a file laucnhed from the "Other Things" dialog fails to open because its path is invalid. Same for adding a file to the Most Favorite Things list.

• Fixed a minor display error with the status dialog that occured when the dock was set to appear on the left side of the screen.

System Requirements
My Favorite Things requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later and should run on any Macintosh that Mac OS X will run on.

The My Favorite Things beta is free of charge to
anyone who wants to try it out. When it reaches version 1.0, it will become shareware.

For more information, visit:
http://www.oldjewelsoftware.com

Re: OSX apps do not launch

From Jonathan Tyzack

Hi Charles,

In response to "Question: OSX apps do not launch From Krishna M. Sadasivam", has Krishna tried clearing the cache files in ~/Library/Caches (I believe Cocktail can be used to do this amongst other things). I believe that this is the typical "fix" for this issue when it occurs.

Perhaps it would be an idea to ask your readers for their routine maintenance and basic troubleshooting tips for OS X. Mine would be:

Maintenance:

1. Run Disk First Aid (i.e. fsck -y) every time you reboot (which is every few weeks for me - obviously, if you reboot every day, then this isn't so appealing... do it once every couple of weeks or so instead ;-)

2. Run the system cron jobs - either manually using MacJanitor, or use Cronnix to change the times to something more suitable for your typical usage hours (mine now run at 10am, 11am and 12pm)

3. Repair permissions after any third-party software installs that use VISE or .pkg formats - seemingly vital for VISE installations which, for me, invariably lead to messed up permissions on something or other.

4. Log out and back in every now and then if you are experiencing increased swapping (to clear the majority of the swapfiles).

Troubleshooting:

1. If having problems with a specific app(s) crashing or not launching - try, in this order:

a. logging out/back in or rebooting (if rebooting, run fsck -y) to see if that clears the problem, b. deleting cache files in ~/Library/Caches c. deleting preferences for that app

2. If having problems with multiple apps - try as above, but also repairing permissions first.

3. If suffering sluggish performance:

a. run "top -u" in Terminal to see if an app is hogging the CPU (if so, is it crashed? Force Quit it). If it is consistently hogging CPU, avoid using it and inform the developers of the app. b. check how many swapfiles have been generated in the /var/vm directory - if a large number, simply log out and back in to clear the majority of them. c. check the output in Console for the system log to see if a specific event is recurring continuously - is it associated with a particular app? Quit the app and/or log out, back in. d. are you running any hacks? Try disabling them to see if performance improves.

4. If having problems with networking (from MacFixIt):

"Try deleting these preference files

We previously noted this procedure as part of a workaround for users who were unable to use AirPort functionality after applying one of Apple's firmware updates.

MacFixIt reader Colin writes "I had a bizarre problem where my network settings were screwy. Although I don't use it PPPoE was checked and every time I unchecked it, it would re-enable itself." If you are experiencing a problem similar to this, or an issue where Network Preferences cannot remember other settings, delete the following files using the Terminal's "sudo rm" command: /var/db/NetworkInterfaces.xml
/var/db/SystemConfiguration/*.xml

Restart should not be required, but can be performed to ensure no other factors are hampering network access."

5. If having problems with System Preferences showing multiple icons for the same preference - delete cache files (the known fix for this particular problem).

Then there is the usual of resetting PRAM etc. For those of you with laptops, there is also the case for resetting the nvram if you are having battery life problems (see MacOSXHints.com for further info).

I can't think of anything else at present, although I'm sure there is plenty more...

Cheers,
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan;

Good suggestiions. Thanks.

My own maintenance routines are to reboot once in a while, usually only when obliged to by something like a USB support crap-out (the most frequent reason. The little memory management beta utility I've been testing has pretty much eliminated excessive pageouts as a reason to reboot, even if there are a whole passel of swapfiles created.

I also run Cocktail's suite of maintenance routines every couple of weeks or so.

Once in a blue moon I will boot into OS 9 and run Disk Warrior (I don't have the OS X version) or use Norton SpeedDisk (ditto) to defrag my OS X partition. I used to run the fsck command occasionally, but haven't had need of it for a long time. Aside from the USB dropout and a couple of kernel pancis over the past seven months (also USB related I think), this iBook has been a rock of reliability.

Charles

Applications crash or do not launch

From Douglas Godfrey

Mac OS X 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3 have mutually incompatible applications. Most of the programs in the /Applications folder will not work with any version of OS X other than he one they were installed with. This also includes core system functions that are applications such as Classic, Bluetooth, LDAP etc.

If your system has multiple startup volumes with different versions of OS X on them, only the highest version will work correctly. Whenever you boot off of any lower version (10.1 vs. 10.2 or 10.2 vs. 10.3) OS X will choose the version of any programs that are of type application from the /Applications folder on the highest version system disk.

Classic will crash on startup (the Classic UI on 10.2 is incompatible with 10.1 and 10.3 is incompatible with 10.2). Similarly, Installer, Disk Copy and other key apps are incompatible.

iApps fail silelently by quitting on startup with no error dialog.

All of this is due to a OS X/Finder bug. When Apple developed OS X they did not incorporate the OS 9 finder feature of special folders. OS 9 will not use the version of any system component or application in the Applications folder or any special subfolder of the System Folder from another disk if there is a matching file/folder on the startup disk.

This needs to be implemented in OS X for the /System/Library, /Library, /Applications and /Developer folders.

HI Douglas;

Thanks for the interesting info.

Charles

Question: OSX apps do not launch

From Paul Sexton

Charles,

The most common reason for a bounce-and-quit is a missing or corrupt library. When it happens, go to the Applications / Utility folder and open the Console application. The last couple of lines will probably say that a program failed to load and give a reason.

If it talks about being unable to find a dylib (dynamic link library) or other file, it means that something is missing or bad. The first symptom for me has generally been increasingly flaky behavior, culminating in apps that don't launch any more (the last time it was Safari.)

It's probably time to archive and reinstall the OS. It's theoretically possible to replace a single file if you have a working install of the same OS X version, (there are also utilities that let you poke around in the OS X installer package and extract files), but it's not certain to help. A good reinstall never hurts.

Paul

Hi Paul;

Probably good advice -- this said by a guy who hasn't done a cleean reinstall of OS X on his Pismo since first installing OS 10.0 back in November, 2001. ;-)

Charles

Barring the ten percent

From Richard Dalziel-Sharpe

Hi Charles,

Thanks for your always entertaining and informative articles. Referring to David Meyers' note about his company being satisfied with allowing 90% of visitors access to their web site. I have been in retailing all of my life as an employee and as a business owner and I cannot imagine slamming the door in the face of every tenth potential customer wanting to come to my store. This flies in the face of all sensible business practice.

How is the web designer to know that the very tenth person that he prohibits from entering his site is not the very customer who has money and is ready to spend. It is beyond belief to me, every customer I have had is still to me a treasure and I with forty odd years of serving them, I am never able to tell who has the money and the will to spend it. And every dollar spent is a dollar gained toward my aim of running a successful business.

Kind regards,
Richard Dalziel-Sharpe

Thanks Richard;

There's not enough of the old "the customer is always right" service ethic in business anymore.

Charles

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

CM

Charles W. Moore