I’m proud of myself today. Perseverance and research, trial and error have yielded a new way to install OS X Leopard remotely. My problem was that I own a PowerBook G4 with a broken DVD drive (long story) that I wanted to update to Leopard. To make a long story short, I used a strange combination of hardware and boot up key secrets (sooooo specific to Apple), to achieve the desired result.

I did quick research on the Internet and could not find a simple way of doing this aside from the usual forum best advice… I had tried to mount the PowerBook on my iMac Core Duo using a FireWire cable and “T” for target and then installing the system off the iMac’s drive with the PowerBook as the target installation drive.

Much to my dismay, Leopard’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Universal Binary installed an Intel personality on my perpetually “? booting ” PowerBook.

The solution was to mount a MacBook as a target Firewire drive on my PowerBook and boot the PowerBook using the”Alt”key to find a volume with an OS that would be the Leopard disk inserted in the MacBook’s DVD drive. Wow, how geeky can it get? I was running out of fingers, keyboards and wires. Are you up on your keys?

Here is a good primer for you:
On boot up  
hold the C key to start from CD 
hold the T key to put computer in FireWire Target Disk mode
hold the ⌥ key to show all startup disks 
hold the ⌥⇧⌘⌫ to start from external drive or CD

In the Finder
Pressing ⌃⌘-power will restart
Pressing ⌃⌥⌘-power will put computer to sleep
⌘-tab cycle forward through applications
⌥⌘-esc Force Quit Applications dialog
⇧⌘3 screen dump (entire screen)
⇧⌘4 screen dump (drag a rectangle)
⌘-space Spotlight

Read more for OS X keyboard shortcuts.

There is a lot more on the rixstep web site. They are programmers who chew UNIX like we chew gum. They make a couple of practical programs that they release under a suite. They are known for XFILE and CLIX that I had fun using for clearing caches. Check out Spike if you need a “real” file shredder. Outbox sounds like a very practical mailing application.

The main argument for their approach is that you should take control of your data, including hidden files. It makes sense to me. Revealing iPod_Control for example might be useful if you got your computer stolen and were left with your iPod as consolation.

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Well, so much for QuickSilver, that great app that that François described a few post down. In a recent post on a mailing list, the developer recently mentioned that the future of the application was less than certain now that he’s too busy with other projects and that the current version “works well enough” for him. He did mention being interested in the new “branch”, basically a major new version, but that’s several months or a year or so away at best.

QuickSilver on Leopard has been less than perfect. For one thing, stability lately has become an issue and while the latest beta release (b.53) is quite a bit better, it still isn’t quite rock solid. One thing to note though is that the software is now open source, which will hopefully lead to a more stable release. One developer has started cleaning up the code so this does look promising. Can’t wait to see what comes out of this.

Meanwhile though, I had to start looking for alternatives. One of them is an old favorite of mine that had taken a backseat to QS for a while: LaunchBar. While not free, it’s quite solid, does most of what QS does (and in some cases, more) and doesn’t cost too much. At 19,95$, it would be a steal if not for QS’s no-cost license. It’s still a great deal none-the-less.

The problem with these software is that they take quite a while to learn and get used to. There’s a lot of shortcut keys, hidden tips and tricks and undocumented features that make them very powerful yet very intimidating. It’s the kind of software you need to use for a while before really using the software to it’s full potential. I’d wager that most people using either software aren’t even using 25% of what they can do. I know I’m certainly in that category.

Still not convinced that you need Leopard, Apple’s latest Operating System (10.5)? You can watch this excellent video from Macworld explaining 4 different major improvements to iChat, the gauche Finder and Spotlight pair and Preview.

I think these improvements are definitely in line with being more productive on a Mac.

You can now do phrase searches in Spotlight in a tip of the Google iceberg style (a complete list of Google search operators can be found here) by putting your search terms between quote marks. You can also do quick calculations with 40 mathematical operators (geeks rejoice).

Preview allows you to annotate a PDF file on the fly and finally select its text. You can also do an alpha channel (transparency) just like in Keynote on images to detach the subject from the background. You can send an image directly to iPhoto.

iChat allows you to open multiple IM accounts at once, it has three levels of compacted views to squeeze more conversations in a given window. It can now record a voice chat and a video chat (great for podcasts).

Finally the Finder is improved with the possibility of displaying the path in the Finder window. I like the look of the new Finder and its ease of use. I especially like he way the Dock stacks up my downloaded files and my Applications. I really enjoy Spaces that enables multiple Desktops (stop laughing Linux fans).

For those who want multiple Desktops (upgrade or not) I recommend Desktop Manager, a neat little utility even more powerful than Spaces. Hope you enjoy these features, I recommend you upgrade to Leopard and do the upgrade to 10.5.1 immediately after. A clean install is the way to go, provided you have backed up your user folder previously.

Quicksilver is the greatest keyboard or mouse extension for the Mac depending on how you look at it. It is now an open source project (as soon as they get the source code it seems) so expect more features in future releases. For now you can get it here. It really simplifies your life at the Mac as it reduces greatly mouse clicking and window pane aiming and displacing.

I find myself clicking more on a Mac than on a PC.

I know it does not make scientific sense. Look the Mac is windows driven (really no pun intended) and the PC is keyboard savvy, filled with keyboard shortcuts.

I use COMMAND+Tab to switch from an application to another (this is nice when you’re in a full screen presentation and you want to surf the web for your audience) and COMMAND+H to hide an application (and its obtrusive window pane).  I also find myself searching the awkward Spotlight with COMMAND+Space bar. I find Spotlight slow and unpleasant to use when I’m frantically awaiting results that keep updating.

I took me years to structure my folders in a workable manner. Using the project’s title works best for me. All files within are then broken into subfolders (background, images, text, presentation). Most of my search requests are for recent files, a few clicks away. You can also use the Apple and Recent elements on the Finder. And that’s about it if you don’t install Quicksilver.

The fundamental difference, in terms of semantics between Spotlight and Quicksilver is that Spotlight indexes a given file’s content (except if it is crypted) and QS only indexes file names. So you can see why one does not replace the other. You need both. Quicksilver is so rich in features that you can turn into a power user in no time. Once you have mapped your favourite keys to evoke it (I use OPTION+Space bar) it allows you to quickly find an application or a file and launch it with a simple carriage return (Enter key). It does much more but you’re going to have to dig in for the rest.

If you’re like me, you have more fonts on your system that you care using. I don’t know where most of them come from. Printer drivers often come with fonts. Certain applications install fonts whether you want them or not. Other fonts are a mystery to me. They must drift on the Internet and come ashore to my computer when I least expect it. A bit like lost soxes except inverted. No matter what, you’ll like this little free application by Linotype called FontExplorer X. Like it says, it allows you to view most of your fonts in a  nice and organised way.

Allright, I was told to keep it shorter as were are not yet part of the “20 domains making up 39% of all the time spent online by US consumers“.  Just kidding.

I just feel like providing a simple Blog category for placing useful Mac bookmarks without going into great lengths about they are an important part of everyday computing. When I recommend software or links and I suggest you give it a try, it is because I use them.I’ll start with Version Tracker  the place to go to track all software updates for applications that are not necessarily part of the OS.

One irritating aspect of owning a Mac is that you might own multiple Macs with multiple system disks and that your house might not be in order when it comes to salvaging “a” hardisk needing repair. It is best addressed with using a system disk to boot while holding the infamous “C” keyboard key. Add traveling to the above example and chances are help is needed. This is when Applejack comes in. It is an alternative to fixing a Mac’s hardidsk or repairing file permissions without a system disk. Once installed, you boot in single user user mode (pressing Command and S simultaneously) and you have access to all sorts of command prompt options. Be careful with any hard disk manipulations as caches and other hidden files can really throw your system off balance when deleted. Check it out and see if it is for you: Applejack. 

A nice complement to hard disk problems (especially hopeless ones) is DiskWarrior that you can get here: http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/  

Nothing will ever replace a good backup plan executed on a regular basis. Bye for now.