Cory Collier

I recently read an article, referred to me from Digg, about ‘Why Macs Still Arent Right For Business‘, as written by Jonathan Blum. Being a Mac Convert, I feel a certain ownership of this issue. I see people argue over this sort of thing all of the time. There are some key arguments in favor of PCs, but not many.

This guy had some intial transition issues, and turned it into an excuse to write about the ‘flaws’ of switching to Mac. His company uses lame software that was specifically designed for windows, and complains about Mac not working for it. It’s a weird argument, ’cause he prefixes all of this by saying he’s been a Mac user for years. The issues he complains about are largely encountered by newbs. Either he’s a liar, or he’s playing ‘Devils Advocate’ for the inevitable issues new Mac converts will face.

While it is mega-lame, it does give some validity to his argument. Many small business ARE using terrible software, and would be faced with serious costs if they chose to change software and hardware at the same time. Remember, most business users don’t like computers. They’re a tool for doing a job they don’t want to do.

So the issue here really is, ‘Do you like your job’? because if you do, then you would want to use the best possible equipment to get it done. You would want to be as efficient at your job as you possibly could. If your job sucks however, then you probably just want to get it done and get out.

That’s sort of the “State Of Business” for much of corporate America. There’s a reason why everyone you meet loves ‘Office-Space’. It’s because most people have shitty jobs. It might seem like a stretch, but I think there’s a real correlation between Mac / PC users and folks with good / bad jobs.

Figure it like this: if your employer doesn’t want to fork an extra thousand bucks on a computer that works more efficiently for you, do you think they’re gonna provide any other incentives?

Doubt it.

Funny titles aside, I’ve had the opportunity lately to expand my devlopment horizons far beyond what I’ve previously thought possible. The MemberFuse project has required far more project management and documentation than anything else I’ve ever been involved in. Since I’m so excited about it, I thought I’d write a tutorial on how to setup Eclipse on a Mac and integrate with Trac.

For those of you unfamiliar with Trac, and / or what it’s about: Trac is a ticket management system well suited to SCRUM type software developement. Actually, Trac works well with any type of software development methodology, but it’s been a real boone for us using SCRUM.

Trac integrates with SVN, so your existing SVN login information can be used to log in to Trac. What’s more, all of your SVN changesets are logged in Trac and can be viewed as an RSS feed.

The point of this tutorial isn’t to get into a long discussion about Trac however. The point of all of this is to educate on how to get your eclipse installation to work directly with Trac.

First let’s start with getting a version of Eclipse that suits your needs. I’m a PHP guy, so I’m using Zend Studio for Eclipse. The current version at the time of this writing is (Neon beta). I’m pretty sure it’s free. However, even if it’s not, I still heavily recommend it. The download is pretty big (around 300MB) so be patient. Once you’ve got it downloaded, the installer is pretty self expanatory. If you’re not a PHP developer, I’m sure there’s some pre-made flavor of eclipse out there to suit your needs. You figure it out.

Once your Eclipse app is installed, you’ll want to get the Mylyn plugin. The Mylyn plugin is what handles the Trac connection and ticket synchronization. Anyways, you could download the package manually, but Eclipse’s managed installer works amazingly. So, we’ll use it.

First, fire up your Eclipse App. Then navigate to the following location:

Help / Software Updates / Find and Install

The install / update dialog window opens and you have the option to either update existing features, or search for new features to install. We’re installing new stuff, so selecte ‘Search for new features to install’ and click ‘Next’.

Next, you’ll get a window with a bunch of options. The checkboxes indicate existing features you already have in your Eclipse setup. We’re adding new stuff, so find and click the ‘New Remote Site…’ button in the upper right area of the window.

Here you’ll be prompted for an update site URL, and the name you wish to call it. The name you want to call it is irrelevant, but I’d stick to something that makes sense. The URL field is very important, so use the following url:

http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/eX.Y

Change the X.Y to whatever your version of Eclipse is. I’m using Eclipse 3.3, so I’d change the X.Y to 3.3.

Once you’ve got that much in there, go ahead and click ‘OK’. That closes the current window, and you’ll be back to the window with all of the options. Click ‘Finish’ and the Update Manager will attempt to contact the udpate site you’ve provided. If you’re provided the option, click the checkbox that says ‘Automatically Select Mirrors’. It just makes life a little easier.

Be careful when using this with some of the other plugins, as you can corrupt your Eclipse setup with some of the less well QA’d plugins out there. Mylyn is pretty stable, so you’ll be fine letting it do it’s thing.

Once the update manager finds everything, you’ll be prompted as to what you want to download and install. I’d use descretion here. You will require most of the packages listed. However, unless you really want Bugzilla integration (you might), I’d elect to leave that one alone.

After that, click ‘Next’ and go through the various prompts you’ll see. Basically, you’ll be prompted if you’re sure you want to install the packages, and yes, you are.

Congratulations! You’ve got Mylyn and Eclipse setup! Now, it’s time to get into how you actually use the stuff…

Click the following menu path: /Window / Show View / Other

Now, you’re going to see a new window prompting you for what type of view you’d like to see. Navigate to Mylyn / Task Repositories:

Once you’ve gotten that done, the Task Repository pane will appear (somewhere) in Eclipse. Now click the menu button in the upper right corner of the view, and select ‘Add Task Repository’

A new window will appear that prompts you for the type of task repository you want to connect to. It appears I wasn’t as judicious as I thought when I setup Mylyn myself (note that I have the option to add a bugzilla repository, which is useless for me). Anyways, select Trac, and click ‘Next’

Now you’ll be prompted for the URL of the repository and your login credentials. Go ahead and fill in the specifics of how you’re required to connect to your own Trac repository, and click ‘Finish’.

Now, you’ll want to go back to the show view menu. From there, select Mylyn / Task List.

After you’ve gotten that much done, the Task View will appear. From there, you’ll need to add a query, to get the tasks that are important to you.

To do this, you’ll need to right click somewhere in the whitespace of the task view, and select New / Query.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll get a new window (the Query Window), and all of the options will be filled with the options and applicable answers provided by Trac.

Now, you’ll see a list of tasks in the task view provided by your Trac repository. Double click one of them to see it. You’ll have a few options available to you. The most important of those options is the activation option.

When you activate a task, all files you open afterward will be added to the ‘context’ of the active task. Another awesome feature here, is that your time on the task is monitored, which is great for reporting how long some impossible Trac ticket took you to finish.

Once of the real values to this setup, is SVN integration. Everytime you commit, or merge your files, the timeline of Trac is updated, and reflects your changes via Diff view. That’s a bit off topic, and I’ll save that lecture for some other time.

A while ago, I replaced a broken screen on my macbook. It was a difficult thing to do, and after I was done, I noticed I wasn’t able to use the CD / DVD drive any longer. I didn’t really care too much about the problem, until I got Leopard, and wanted to get it installed on the machine.

So, I got some tools from my buddy Derek, and got to work on it tonight. Taking apart a macbook is a delicate thing to do, and should be taken seriously. I laughed when my wife suggested I just screws into a bag so I didn’t lose them. Ideally, one should have a clean white surface to place screws that mimics the placement of them in the actual computer.

Anyways, after about an hour of disassembly and inspection, I figured out the issue. One of the brackets that sit above the CD / DVD drive was lodged underneath the CD / DVD player. I fixed the issue and re-assembled the computer in about 10 minutes. Not bad if I may say so myself.

Then I went to install Leopard .

The first time I attempted the install, I got everything started and left the machine alone. When I went to check on it about a half hour later, I saw a large notification that the install had failed. I tried to restart the machine to re-attempt the install a few times. Each time however, the installer couldn’t find the HD to install to.

Finally, I got a notification that the HD was formatted in a way that was incompatible for Leopard. If I proceeded with the install, I was going to have to wipe the HD clean. That was a bit daunting to hear, since my wife is the primary user of the computer. If I lose something she cares about, well, I don’t have to tell you the horrors I’d face then.

So, I got out my handy-dandy external HD. It’s really just a shell with an old 120GB IDE thrown in there, but it does the job well. I got everything I could figure she might want off of the computer, and re-started the install process.

When the computer asked where to install Leopard, I recieved the same prompt as before, but this time I went ahead with the install, knowing that I was formatting the hard drive.

After the format was complete, the installer proceeded. I left the machine alone, figuring that I had a while before I needed to do anything with it. About another half hour later I checked on it, only to see another “Install Failed” screen. Now I was in a serious bind: would my wife be without a computer at all?

Well, I’ve always been one to keep trying until something gives up and works for me . So, I re-started the install again. This time however, I was happy to see that it worked! I went through the typical post-install steps, and was delighted to see my wife’s macbook successfully running Leopard.

The one issue that did come up afterwards however, was all my iLife apps were gone. I suppose I can’t complain too much about it. I didn’t pay for the original iLife apps, so I’m not out any money. But still, It’d be really nice to not have to buy soemthing I already had on here.

The new Apple OS X has finally arrived, and I can tell you one thing: Leopard was definitely worth the wait. A few months ago many of us were enlightened to the new features to be unleashed upon us. Even then, it was apparent that the wait would be worth while. Well, I’ve recently been testing the new release out, and here’s what I have:

The Install was easy! To install Leopard, insert the DVD provided, and run the installer. You’re prompted to be sure if you want to install, and upon confirmation, your machine is restarted. After the restart, an optional disk consistency runs. You can cancel this at any time, but I let the whole thing go. It took about an hour. After the consistency, the install itself runs. I was initially prompted that it would take 1 hour and 38 minutes. However, the actual install was done in under 45 minutes.

Once I started my using the new OS, it was clear that all of my previous settings had been preserved. I ran all of my critical applications, and all work fine.

 

For those of you comparing, here’s my current setup:

new 24″ iMac

And the Apps I run (not all, just the most necessary)

• Zend Studio 5.5
• CS3 Premium
• Firefox, Sunbird, & Thunderbird
• iWork ‘08
• Coda
• Transmit
• Adium & Skype

The new Dock is awesome!

I’m a huge fan of the stack concepts that have been implemented into the new dock. The default stacks are ‘Documents; and ‘Downloads’. This is great for cleaning up your desktop. I however, don’t like having all of my commonly accessed programs stuck in the dock, so I added my own stack, ‘Applications’. Adding your own stack is as easy as dragging the folder to the Stack area.

The old marker that signified a running application has been replaced by a nicer, though much less obvious, light underneath the icon. You can change this icon if you like, and there are several tutorials on how to do this already.

Overall, the Dock is much prettier than it used to be. All icons have shadows behind them, and the Dock itself reflects windows near it.

The new Finder is awesome! For those of you who don’t already know, the new Finder allows you to view files with the ‘Cover Flow’ view system. This is great for pre-viewing files before opening them. What’s even better; you can now open many files for even closer preview, without actually opening their default applications! This is a great time saver for those of you with limited system resource, who don’t want to open very photoshop file in a directory to see which one you want.

Much of the new look of finder is quite similar to iTunes. So mounted drives appear on the left much like an iPod appears on iTunes. Furthermore, unmounted, networked computers now appear the same, just without the option to ‘Eject’. Finding files and folders is cake with Finder’s great indexing capacities.

Apple Mail, is now my mail client. I’ve been an ardent user of Thunderbird for a couple years now. So I doubted that I would use the new Apple Mail, despite all the buzz about it. After trying it out however, it’s a really fun mail program. The program itself loads quickly, and keeps everything simple. There’s also a built in RSS reader (nothing new). Though I would prefer that iCal be embedded into the program, Mail’s integration with iCal is certainly good enough.

The one thing I might miss, is the tons of available plugins that are available for Thunderbird. Apple has a weird way of not directly promoting additions to it’s software.

iChat, is now my IM client. I’ve been a big supporer of Adium for a while now. However, iChat is a great IM client. iChat allows for multiple accounts, which was largely why I used Adium for so long. What’s more, video and audio chats are a snap. All you have to do is click one of the available buttons while selected on a buddy, and you initiate that form of chat.

The only thing I wish that iChat had, was the ability to send notifications to Growl. I’m a huge fan of Growl for notifications of program events, and anything that integrates with it, I always check out.

Photo Booth is awesome! Photo Booth has always been one of my favorite Apple programs that come standard on macs. That’s how I got those candid shots of Bender sleeping on the job ! With the new Photo Booth, custom backgrounds are introduced. All that’s necessary is to activate the video background, then step out of the picture. Once your background is detected, you can re-enter the photo and voila, you’re in France!

As you can see from the picture here, the background detection isn’t perfect, and could still use some work.

Spaces is alright. I’ve heard a lot of buzz about the new ‘Spaces’ feature for Leopard. I’m a little less than impressed however. Video card vendors manufacturers have been providing this type of service for a long time now. So, I’m not all to sure why there’s been such hype about the feature. Don’t get me wrong, Spaces is cool. It is a clean way of having more than one desktop at a time. However, this is not breakthrough by any means.

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There are quite a few features that I have yet to try out.

 

 

Time Machine – I know, I know. This is supposed to be an amazing new feature for OS X, and certainly worth the cost of the OS itself. There are well known bugs however, about trying to use Time Machine without an external HD already set up. What’s more, the external HD should be a large one, as Time Machine is not light on space. I’m a little pressed for cash right now, so I’ll have to try this one out later.

Parental Controls – Hey, I don’t have kids. It might still be a good idea to keep my wife from viewing inappropriate websites, but I don’t think she’d like that to much.

Boot Camp – I’m already running Parallels, so I don’t feel the need to use this. Parallels does everything I need for running multiple OS’s on the same machine.

Conclusion

As is quite evident, I’m thoroughly happy with Apple’s new OS X release. There are a few features that I wish were available, but as a software developer, I recognize the need to release a product without some features is greater than waiting infinitely to release the ‘Perfect Product’.

As always, I welcome your comments!

Recently, I’ve completed enough side work to be able to purchase the recently announced iMac. Its the next generation for iMac, and rumors have been circulating about it’s coming for a few months now.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited as an editor on TweakOSX to review the machine. I don’t know what to say about it that I haven’t said in that review, other than “wow”. This thing is absolutely incredible. I got the 24″ model, with 2.4GHz dual core intel processor, 2GB of 667 MHz RAM, and a 320GB HD.

The computer is, in a word, incredible.

Here are some pics!!!!!!!!!

Today Apple announced the immediately available Safari 3 Beta. It’s also available for Windows users. This is a huge development for Apple, which seems to enjoy invading Microsoft’s space every chance they can get. There are other new features, which bear good reason to talk about.

First, there are all of the announced changes from Apple:

1. Blazing Performance
2. Elegant User Interface
3. Easy Bookmarks
4. Pop-up Blocking
5. Inline Find
6. Tabbed Browsing
7. SnapBack
8. Forms AutoFill
9. Built-in RSS
10. Resizable Text Fields
11. Private Browsing
12. Security

These are all debatable, especially the ‘Blazing Performance’, but a few of these really stand out.

Namely, Resizable Text Fields. I checked on this, and sure enough, users can resize textarea elements in a form. Your layouts will be critical now, that the user can change the size of the containing element(s) well after your page has rendered. I wonder how many AJAX apps are going to be broken because of this.

Also, all of the form elements can be styled now! That’s a big departure from previous versions of Safari. I’m glad the ‘Safari form elements are perfect’ snobbery has been replaced with an attitude more conscientious the of needs of web developers

The next big development is the find feature. Typing in the find area dynamically pops up results on the page, as they’re found. The UI for this is amazing, and really shows the talent at Apple.

Of course the big question on everyone’s mind is, ‘How is all of this going to work on Windows?!’

Well the executive summary is: It does work, and it works well.

Tom and I loaded up Safari 3 though Parallels 3.0 on his machine running Windows XP Pro. The installer was typical Windows stuff. We were prompted to install the Bonjour Service and Apple Software Update Service for Windows.

This is another big development that I don’t think a lot of other people have mentioned yet. Bonjour is a great program for Mac, that now will be available for Windows too!?! Apple Software Update will also run on Windows?!? We’re going to be talking about this for a long time.

After we installed Safari, we encountered our first problem. For some reason (we don’t know why yet), after we installed Safari, the network adapter for Windows stopped working. We used Parallels to specify the shared adapter, and everything worked again.

The app itself looks great on windows. It’s not bound by the typical Windows frame. Safari 3 basically looks the same as iTunes already does.

It was really strange to see Safari as an option in the Start Menu:

One thing that is still frustratingly still an issue is HTTP_AUTH between Safari and Microsoft IIS servers. Even if this is a problem with Microsoft, I think the developers could figure some type of workaround for this.

Another problem I have with Safari, is lack of code-coloring in the view source window. I have yet to see a developer toolbar built for Safari (I live by Firebug), and until there is one, I’m not leaving Firefox.