..idle writings from an idle mind..

Apple have very specific design rules for applications that run on OS X — you could sum a bunch of them up by saying something like “thou shalt not fuck with how the application looks”.

With the release of iTunes 10, they’ve gone and broken their own rules with awful new left-aligned window resize and close buttons; see the attached example.

While there’s many other things to dislike with iTunes 10 (just one example .. the new application icon that appears to have been created by an junior artist lacking in time, talent or both); this one is at least fixable — open a terminal window and run the following command:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1

Restart iTunes and the buttons are back to where they ought to be.

If you decide you really prefer the new button location (what? why!?), you can reverse the above command with the following:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window 0

- zac.

Recently, I was asked to get a family member set up with a new laptop … naturally enough, I recommended a Mac. Got a great deal on an end-of-line model, but have been a little stumped with what software to put on it. It’s for general use (Internets, games, photos and so on), and it’s also for a first-time Mac user.

Beyond installing Mac OS X and iLife, here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

• Microsoft Office 2008, for working with documents
  (lets face it, both Open Office and iWork are a little bit shit)
• VLC, for media playback and weird video formats
• Perian, to help with moar of the weird video formats
• NodeToad, a really nice Internode usage meter
• PopCap Mac Pack – who doesn’t like Bejeweled and Peggle?
• Classic Solitaire – covers prettymuch all of the card games
• Quinn – Tetris clone

That’s about all I’ve managed to think of, at least in terms of important stuff. Is there anything I’ve missed? Bear in mind that it’s for general use, and I’m trying to get away with installing as little as possible.

Mexicana, oneworld’s newest member and the 4th oldest commercial airline in the world has been operating on borrowed time it seems – filing for bankruptcy protection in both the US and Mexico to stop moar planes being seized (depending on which report you read, two or three were temporarily held in Canada like this one – and another in Chicago besides); dropping long haul routes and stopping forward ticket sales do not for a healthy airline make.

It seems that the other Grupo Mexicana airlines MexicanaClick and MexicanaLink (single class domestic/short haul ops) are both still doing just fine – their lower cost base means that they’re both still profitable.

It’s never good to see an airline implode, especially not one that I really enjoyed flying with — smiling staff, clean planes and reasonable food/bev that you didn’t need to find a credit card for certainly made for some great flights — I sure hope they manage to get out of the mess they’re in. Doubt it, but it’s not played out yet.

For no particularly good reason, I decided I needed one of these gadgets – I mean, my existing mouse works just fine, but it’s not nearly as cool as one of these, right?

Apple fanboy comments aside, it’s pretty awesome. Documentation is fairly sparse (where’s my apple stickers dammit!?), however it’s nice that they actually include batteries to make the thing work (though not of the rechargable kind, sadly).

Still getting used to the best/most precise way to use it, and getting a hang of all the gestures might take a while. Definitely nicer than using a regular mouse; two-finger-slide to scroll as opposed to a scroll wheel feels more natural somehow. I’ve found that the click “action” works best on the lower half of the trackpad, so am experimenting with where the trackpad sits in relation to the keyboard to see if there is a “best” place for it.

Sadly, the download to enable the trackpad for my laptop didn’t also grant full gesture support to my laptop’s built-in trackpad. Oh, and the glass surface on the Magic Trackpad is at least a thousand times more awesome than whatever my laptop has!

Unnecessary purchase? Absolutely, but it’s nice to treat yourself every now and again

Finally managed to get around to trying Qantas’ mobile check-in function that has been rolled out across their domestic network.

First attempt at using it failed abysmally. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but for my flight MEL/BNE I got an error that it was unable to complete mobile check-in, so I had to resort to getting a boarding card at the airport.

The flight back BNE/MEL was a success — having already preselected my favourite economy seat a few days before, I went to the Qantas iPhone site and logged in to my account, selected the booking, tapped the check-in button and confirmed that I would not be carrying knitting needles on board. The end result was a SMS with a weblink which brought up a large 2D barcode (out of interest, it appears to be an Aztec Code), along with other basic flight details (name, status, seat, class, flight, date and so on).

At the airport, the phone is scanned at the gate. Apparently QF staff are under instruction to not touch the phone — you have to hold it under the scanner yourself. Scanning takes a second or so, and a docket with all of the relevant information gets spat out of a thermal printer.

There is a known gotcha in that mobile check-in doesn’t allow for seat selection — this would be a deal breaker for most (lucky dip seating anyone?), but those that have attained oneworld status with Qantas are able to select seats prior to check-in on the Qantas website.

The verdict? Surprisingly decent. If they could fix it such that seat selection is possible (and allow multiple attempts at checking in, in case you wanted to see if a better seat had become available), then I’d happily use this all the time. For now, I’ll stick to using it when I’ve been able to secure a good seat ahead of time.