I'm Back: Thoughts on WWDC 2006

I really shouldn't be writing this. I don't have the time.

That's right, intro-net. I'm back. Sort of. I realize I haven't posted anything in a while. I've been exceptionally busy. And I continue to be. But today, luck, fate and timing have conspired to give me a day that looks to be fairly free. So I'm spending my time writing my first post in almost a month.

Lucky you.

It being my first day back and all, I'm a bit rusty and unfocused. So today's post will a running list of odds and ends — things I've noticed, complaints I've had, maybe even some stuff I've been working on, and then a roundup of my thoughts on this year's WWDC. Here goes.

For starters, where have I been? What have I been doing? Well, actually, I've been on vacation. It hasn't been all fun and games though. This year my vacation was spent working on and playing in a performance at Lincoln Center. It was a long and fairly arduous process from which I'm not completely recovered. I had a dream about it just last night, in fact. But it went well, and it's over. So it was worth it. Lincoln Center, baby! How cool is that?

This has left little time for systems work, hence the lack of posts. And now that I'm back on the job, I'm having trouble throwing myself back into the fray. I always kind of lose track of where I was after vacation. And now, with three weeks left before school starts, it's crunch time. Still, somehow, today I'm the only one here. Everyone else is either sick or off. It's weird.

There were a couple things I stumbled on over the past few weeks. Really little, tiny things but maybe worth a mention. First, the final word, in my opinion, on the whole Repair Permissions saga has just come down from MacWorld. It's fairly pro-repair — or at least not anti-repair — yet Gruber seems pleased. Go figure. It's a very clearly written piece that really demystifies the whole process, and at least to mind, says everything that needs to be said. Read it and then put it out of your mind. Finally.

Second, I discovered a neat little trick in Firefox: Pressing the control button while scrolling with the scroll wheel on your mouse activates forward- and back-page. Control+scroll-up will go back, and control+scroll-down goes forward. Seems backwards to me, but it's still kind of a cool trick. No, wait, you're right... It's dumb...

Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about the announcements made at this year's WWDC. Overall, I'm a bit underwhelmed, I must admit. Maybe I'm somewhat jaded after all these years of WWDC announcements. Or maybe I really wanted there to be far, far more attention on the Finder. There was none in fact, which only leads me to believe — hope, at least — that improvements to the Finder are in the pipe, and that they were among the "Top Secret" features Steve Jobs mentioned in his presentation of Leopard.

The new Mac Pros look incredibly sweet. But then, each iteration of the pro Mac line looks exponentially sweeter, so I'm not floored. Plus, my now aging PowerMac dual G5 still feels like plenty of computer for anything I need to do. It handles it all without complaint and still feels fast. Underscoring my lack of enthusiasm, Apple now tends to release new pro hardware right after I buy my new Macs for the lab. This is fine, actually. I kind of like to stay just short of the bleeding edge here, preferring stability to speed and novelty. Getting a known quantity (we bought Quad G5s) just makes everyone's life easier. But It's hard to get excited about new hardware when you don't need any. Also, Apple has really been focused on the Intel transition, I think, so we're not really seeing many (any?) new products. Mostly what's been announced lately — and this year's WWDC is no exception — has been product revisions and speed bumps. Fine ones to be sure, but not exactly what I'd call exciting, and nothing that will change my life any time soon. *Yawn*

Some other things I noticed while watching the WWDC keynote:
Phil Schiller said, "Our [Intel] transition is complete." While Apple's transition may be complete, the transition for users is not. Apple is right to be proud of this amazingly swift transition to Intel chips. They're unbelievably good at this sort of thing, and it's one of the aspects of the company that keeps it fresh and alive and constantly moving forward. But make no mistake: the transition for users is still in progress. Many major applications are still PPC-only and must run in Rosetta, negating many of the advantages of buying new, Intel-based hardware for the near-term. And the OS is not yet Universal. This means that, in many ways, we're dealing with two separate platforms when we mix PPC and Intel Macs. Each platform must have a different OS and applications. In a lab setting this complicates matters a great deal. So, I think for users and lab admins the transition is just getting started. Once all apps are Universal and the Universal Leopard is out, then we can start to call this thing done. But as it stands, there is still a lot of work ahead.

Along these lines, as yet there has been no Intel-compatible version of Mac OS X Server. But I noticed that you can configure your new Mac Pro with Server — and the new Intel Xserves surely come with it — so apparently the Intel version exists. Where is this software? Are there two separate versions — a PPC and an Intel one, as with client — or is it Universal? The answer appears to lie at the Apple Store. Clicking "Buy Now" on the OS X Server page takes me to the store (I can't seem to get there from the Apple Store directly) where it's revealed that Mac OS X Server 10.4 is a Universal application. I'm not sure when this happened (did I miss it somehow?), but something tells me my old copy of Server won't be running on my new Intel Mac mini. I wonder if there's an upgrade path to the Universal version?

Mac OS X Server 10.4: Universal? Really? Since When?
(click image for larger view)

Another thing that struck me this summer is the fact that this is the first year I don't have to upgrade my lab systems. Sure, I'm running Software Update and updating various apps. But there is no new version of the OS, and there won't be for a while. This, as it turns out, is a godsend. With my promotion, and all the various new responsibilities and projects it entails, the last thing I need to be doing right now is testing a new — and, let's face it, probably buggy — Mac OS, and worrying about implementing it before summer's end. I have to say, the slowdown of new Apple OS releases couldn't have come at a better time for me.

The one thing that really did get to me this year was Time Machine. Time Machine looks amazing. It looks like magic. It looks like... Well, it kind of looks like a toy, actually. It's almost deceptive how childlike Apple has made some thing that, for many users, is an essential yet often vexing task. While I think the UI for Time Machine is ultra-cheesy (though no less so than Dashboard), I also think it's immediately and intuitively understandable. And for something like backups, that's no small feat. It may be somewhat garish-looking, but I think it's about twelve billion times more attractive and user-friendly than something like Retrospect. It's a look I could learn to love for it's personality. Here's hoping it works as well as it appeared to in the the presentation. No one but Apple could make backups so intuitive, so appealing and so fun. Yes, fun. Makes me almost want to lose some documents.

Time Machine: Powerful and... Fun?...
(click image for larger view)

And speaking of cheesy graphics, Core Animation looks great. I've little doubt that Core Animation will be used to great success. I've also little doubt it will be abused by bad UI designers. Can I just say? Brace yourselves for the cheese.

Spaces also looks cool. I've never been a big virtual desktops kind of guy. But once it's baked into the OS, I may end up taking advantage of it after all. It looks like Apple's done a great job with it. One thing: Some folks are complaining that Apple tends to steal existing ideas from small software developers and put them in OS revisions. I don't really think this is always fair. Here's how I see it: Apple puts out the OS. Things — like, oh, I don't know, Finder labels, for instance — are missing. In the interim, some enterprising software developer comes along to fill the void with a program that brings labels to the Finder. The people are happy. In the next OS release, Apple then adds labels to the Finder, thus effectively ending the need for the third-party solution. Suddenly people are accusing Apple of stealing the idea and putting developers out of business. But the fact is, Apple had labels in Mac OS 9, which is why people wanted them in the first place. If anyone stole the idea, it was the developer who implemented the third-party label solution. But the fact is, no one stole anything. These ideas — Finder labels, tabbed chats, virtual desktops — are out there already. Software developers know this. They know it's risky to develop apps that could someday be implemented by Apple themselves. In fact, unless you're idea is fairly original — i.e. not a web page creation tool, not system modification, not a browser — you should expect some competition. Whether that competition comes from Apple or another third-party developer makes little difference in my book. Spaces is just Apple's implementation of an idea that's been around for a very long time.

The vague demonstration of Spotlight's new features has me worried, as I always am when it comes to Spotlight. The big new feature of Spotlight (well, aside from the boolean functionality, which is great) is it's ability to search network drives. Yes, this worries me immensely. One of Spotlight's biggest issues, in my book, is the problems it has returning relevant results. When Spotlight searches my huge store of files and folders, the results I get are usually not very useful. There's just too much stuff there, and its relevance is determined — well, I don't know how it's determined, but it doesn't seem to be very accurate for most of my needs. I have chalked this up to the fact that I have a very large amount of data. Users with less data seem to like Spotlight more than I do. So my worry is, what happens when you add to this already burgeoning local data, the data of all the machines on your LAN, which in my case is about 30 Macs? Surely the boolean functions will help aggregate more sensible results, but I worry that the accuracy and speed gains of the new version will be negated by all that extra data. What I was really hoping for from Spotlight was more ways to customize and configure the app. It's possible that wish will still come true. I hope it does.

Finally, one other thing I noticed in the keynote speech. It's something I've noticed in previous keynotes, actually. Steve Jobs, at least when he's onstage, always uses point-and-click to navigate the Mac. He always uses the mouse. Now I can say with a fair degree confidence that I'm a power user. That is, I know a great number of keyboard shortcuts, and I tend to use the keyboard for as much navigation as I can. I would guess Jobs is, like, the uber-power user. And yet he always uses the mouse for presentations. You never see him use a keyboard shortcut. Never. And I just wonder why. I assume it's for presentation's sake. I assume it's to show the average, mouse-encumered user how to do things. I assume it's also just more visually interesting. But who knows? Maybe Jobs is just a freakishly prodigious mouse user.

Steve Jobs: King of the Mouse
(click image for larger view)

Anyway, as I said at the top, we're in crunch mode here, getting ready for the return of students to the lab. I'll post when I can, but expect things to be lean here for a bit longer as I actually try to do some real work.

UPDATE 1:
I've found some more information on Mac OS X Server for Intel hardware. Seems if you want to run Server on your Intel Mac you need to buy the latest, shrink-wrapped, 10.4.7 version from Apple. That version is Universal. Previous versions are not. As far as I can tell, there is no upgrade path.

UPDATE 2:
A fellow blogger tells me that the coolest stuff in Leopard is the stuff not mentioned in the WWDC keynote. This is being confirmed by other reports. I'm a bit baffled by Apple's decision not to include this stuff in the keynote. Did they think it was too low-profile? Not consumer-friendly enough? I thought this conference was for developers. And I'm not the only one who seems as, if not more, impressed by some of the unannounced features than the announced ones. Makes me really wish I had the time to attend WWDC, but it'd be a hard sell to the bosses, I can t

ell you. The timing is just terrible. Oh well.

Tiger's Inspector: A Persistent Complaint

For those who don't already know, the Inspector is a variation on the "Get Info" window that appears when you select a file and choose "Get Info" from the File menu (or press "command-i"). To call the Inspector, add the "option" key to the Get Info call — in File->Get Info, holding "option" will cause the text to change to "Show Inspector," or you can simply press "command-option-i." The Inspector differs from the Get Info window in that it shows dynamic information based on whatever file you select. That is to say, Get Info will only show you information about the file you just selected, but the Inspector will update the information dynamically as other files are selected. It's unbelievably handy. Or at least it was.

The Inspector: Once Very Handy
(click image for larger view)

There has been a bug in Tiger's Inspector that has persisted right up until the latest 10.4.7 release. In Tiger, the Inspector updates its display to show the information for any given file as normal, but the permissions information — the owner and read/write access of a given file — is not updated and remains the same as the originally selected file. The only way to get an accurate view of the permissions is to close and then reopen the Inspector on the given file, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the Inspector in the first place. I've written about this bug since the inception of 10.4. I've filed bug reports and feedback to Apple. Yet the bug remains, and it looks like it's here to stay. With Mac OS X 10.5 right around the corner and Tiger in its final stages I hold little hope that this bug will ever get fixed.

Inspector: Incorrect Values
(click image for larger view)

It's a real shame. Permissions inspection has been a remarkably helpful tool for me in the GUI, and I miss it a lot. But it also speaks to Apple's lack of quality control in Tiger, and particularly in the Finder. I've been bitching about the Tiger Finder for over a year now. It was one of the initial impetuses for this blog, in fact. I'm more than a little surprised and disappointed to find that a bug perhaps not of major importance to most users, but still one of significance, particularly to power users and admins — an inaccurate view of data — persists in the Tiger Finder to this day, over one year later. I can only hope things improve in 10.5.

Inspector: How It's Supposed to Look
(click image for larger view)

Strangely, I've heard very few people on the Big Bad Internet weigh in on this issue. I'm curious to know if anyone out there besides me has a problem with this. Am I the only one who uses — or attempts to use — this feature? Am I the only one who's bothered by the broken Inspector? Am I the only one complaining about this?

Feel free to sound off in the comments.

Send Remote Commands Via SSH

This is one of those "I'm posting it so I remember, 'cause I keep forgetting" posts. It's also astoundingly cool, though, if you didn't know about it. Which I didn't until fairly recently.

If you've ever wanted to send a command to a remote computer without ever actually logging in to that computer, ssh is your friend. Yes, with ssh you can send commands directly to another system. Who knew?

I'll keep this short and sweet. Here are some examples.

The basic form looks something like this:

ssh systemsboy@rhost.systemsboy.edu 'ls -l'

where "systemsboy" is actually your username on the remote host, and "rhost.systemsboy.edu" is your remote system. The command you're sending is contained in single quotes.

Here is an example sending multiple commands:

ssh systemsboy@rhost.systemsboy.edu 'ls -l; ps -aux; whoami'

wherein each command is separated by a semicolon.

Finally, here is an example sending a command that requires user interaction:

ssh -t systemsboy@rhost.systemsboy.edu 'top'

Note the -t flag. That tells ssh that you'll be interacting with remote shell. Without the -t flag top will return results after which ssh will log you out of the remote host immediately. With the -t flag, ssh keeps you logged in until you exit the interactive command. The -t flag can be used with most interactive commands, including text editors like pico and vi.

Sending remote commands via ssh is incredibly handy when writing shell scripts as it allows you to run your scripts locally even if those scripts are meant to effect changes on a remote machine. I just wrote a script, for instance, that sets up vacation mail forwarding for staff members. Without these remote commands I would have had to have staff members log directly onto the mail server and run the scripts from the command line, which I don't think they'd be too happy about. With ssh remote commands, I can give them the scripts and they can run them right from their Desktops. Believe me, they much prefer this.

Credit where due, all information was obtained from Rambo's post. Rambo, thanks. Whoever you are.

UPDATE:

For additional information about using this trick with variables within the remote command, see "Using SSH to Send Variables in Scripts."

A Problem with Managed Preferences

In our labs Mac OS X machines bind to a Mac OS X Server for user authentication. But this also affords us the opportunity to control certain aspects of our workstations' behavior en masse as well. And we certainly take advantage of this. The way this works is simple, and, when it works properly, a thing of beauty: Open up Workgroup Manager, create a computer list, add computers to it and then set whatever preferences you want on those systems. Just about anything you can set in System Preferences can be controlled from the server — Login Items, Energy Saver settings, and my personal favorite, Printers, to name just a few. The Open Directory host — your OS X Server — will make sure all the prefs you set in here are managed on the specified machines.

But recently I had a few machines that would simply not allow themselves to be controlled from the server. Binding was working properly, as evidenced by the fact that network logins worked. But any sort of managed preferences would not be sensed by the workstations. This is a perennial problem and historically has had something to do with mcx_cache settings not being reset by the server. But this has gotten much better over the years, to the point where it's not usually an issue. Still I tried everything with regards to cache, and no matter what I did, authentication worked but managed preferences did not. Finally, today I managed to stumble upon the solution.

Turns out there's a little quirk in the Workgroup Manager. Seems if you add the same computer to two different lists, you'll get two separate entries in your OD database — one called "computer" and one called "computer_1." I did this. And then later I deleted the original "computer" entry from the first list, and renamed the "computer_1" entry back to "computer" in the WGM GUI. This is a no-no. And it's what was causing my computer control problems, though there seemed no apparent problem from the standpoint of the standard WGM interface.

Workgroup Manager Preferences: Show Me the Records!
(click image for larger view)

The solution was to enable WGM's "Show 'All Records' tab and inspector" preference, which gives you a much more accurate view of your Open Directory database than does the standard GUI interface. Once the "All Records" tab was enabled I opened it up and looked at the "Computers" list from the pull-down on the right (just below the search field). Lo and behold, there was my "computer_1" record, but no "computer" record. Looks like the server was getting confused as to whether to control "computer" (as set in the GUI) or "computer_1" (as was actually entered in the OD database). So I deleted all references to the machine in the "All Records" inspector, then went back into the GUI and re-added the machine to the appropriate list. Voila! The machine instantly began getting managed preference settings from the server.

So the rules of thumb here are:

1. Avoid adding the same machine to more than one list. You're not supposed to do it, and it can muck things up.
2. The "All Records" tab is your friend. Look here for more accurate views than the standard GUI can provide. Edit with care as necessary.

My lesson for the day.

UNIX as Literature or: Why Visual Artists Suck at Shell Scripting

I just read a terrific article entitled "The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature" by "feral information theorist" Thomas Scoville. In it, Scoville proposes that UNIX has a certain appeal to literary types because of its reliance on text rather than image, and that the GUI has really been successful because we live in an increasingly visually oriented culture.

This article got me thinking about a few things. The first is that I wonder if the reverse of his premise might also apply to my situation. Since the advent of the UNIX-based Mac OS, I've been forced to use the UNIX command-line. Perhaps not coincidentally, I've been writing more. I write this blog. I write more instructions for my users. And I've become a much better and faster typist (I can almost touch type now). I wonder if there is a relationship between my increasing reliance on and fondness of UNIX and the fact that I now write a great deal about technology. I wonder if it's possible that the former has influenced the latter. I wonder if learning UNIX has fundamentally changed my brain in some small but important ways. Is UNIX responsible for The Adventures of Systems Boy?

The second thing I got thinking about is the idea that, if Scoville's theory holds, visual artists would tend to be pretty lousy and generally uninterested in the command-line. This effects me in a number of ways. For one, I am a visual artist. I used to paint and now I make videos. But I've also always had a strong technical side to my personality and interests, though it took me quite some time to actually warm to UNIX. (I remember my first foreach loop. That was the defining moment for me, really, as there was no way to do anything like that in the GUI.) For two, many of my freelance clients are visual artists. Most of them are fairly clueless as to the intricacies of systems or network setups, which I guess is why they need me. And lastly, I work in an art school and am surrounded by would-be visual artists. I've often lamented the inability of many of my students to grasp fundamental technical concepts, and as I've grown more dependent upon UNIX, I've found it frustrating when trying to teach people basic command-line skills. Artists, by and large, just plain tend to suck at shell scripting. I've usually written this off as people just being generally uninterested in such arcane and sometimes difficult tools as UNIX (as I was myself, initially). But Scoville's theory suggests that visual artists in particular may be especially immune to the charms of the command-line. They just might not be wired for it. I'll have to factor this into my thinking the next time I want to throttle someone for making me describe for the umpteenth time the syntax of ls. It's just not their fault.

The last thing I got to thinking about was Mac OS X. The real beauty of Mac OS X, in my mind, has always been that it unites two distinctly different — both the visual and the linguistic — ways of thinking. Mac OS X employs a visually beautiful GUI over a UNIX foundation. It's the best of both worlds in one system, equally appealing to both the aesthetes and the geeks. This is truly remarkable, and goes one more step in explaining why it's my operating system of choice. For someone like me — a visual artist with strong technical leanings who works with a multitude of other artists — Mac OS X represents the ideal operating system. And whether people realize it or not, I think this has at least something to do with its broader appeal.

I also think I may just have made the perfect career choice when I took a job as a SysAdmin in an art school.