Alternative File Duplication

I just recently discovered a handy trick. Normally, when I want to duplicate a file, I select the file and hit the command-d key combo. This will make a duplicate of the file and append the duplicate's name with "copy." So, if I duplicate a file called "test.txt" using this method the duplicate will be named "test copy.txt." And that's fine. But I almost never want to append with "copy." I'd almost always rather have the file appended with a number instead, like "test.txt" and "test 2.txt." Well, it turns out there's actually a way to do this.

Option-dragging the file within the same folder produces a duplicate file with a sequential number appended to the file name. So, select our "test.txt" file and hold option key while dragging the file to the same folder in which the original exists and you will indeed produce a file called "test 2.txt." Furthermore, option-dragging "test.txt" or "test 2.txt" in the same manner will produce "test 3.txt" and so on. The smartness abounds!

This is a much more systemsboy-friendly approach. I only wonder why it's not the default. I mean, it seems to me like this would be the preferred behavior for most people. Who knows, though, maybe it's just me.

In any case, hopefully some TASB readers find this tip as useful as I do.

Here, BTW, are the details of Leopard's file duplication methods.

Macworld Expo '09

On the whole I thought this year's Expo was about average. There was a smattering of fairly interesting product announcements, but nothing earth-shattering. This has become pretty par for the course at Macworld for a while now. Still, there were a few things worth commenting on. I think the new 17" Macbook Pro battery is astoundingly cool. It makes me want one, though I'm holding out 'til I need one. The 17" Macbook Pro may someday become my über-computer though, replacing once and for all the tower machine I've always kept. And, frankly, the fact that the battery is not replaceable is, in my opinion, completely mitigated by the fact that it's so awesome: 1000 recharges? 8 hours of life? Why would you ever want to replace it? Apple has substituted a crappy battery that you'll want to replace with a good one you won't. And it's the non-replaceability that's made the high battery quality possible. Brilliant! And the right way to go, as far as I'm concerned.

iLife '09 also looks like a worthwhile, if not terribly compelling, upgrade. In particular, I'm wondering if iMovie '09 will be good enough to replace the aging Final Cut Pro in my workflow. Final Cut Pro — once my absolute favorite piece of software — has grown somewhat long in the tooth. It's slow, ugly and a bad multi-tasker whose interface hasn't been significantly updated in, well, forever. iMovie, on the other hand, is just the opposite: constantly being updated, which can have its downsides as well, I realize. But unless Apple makes some serious updates to Final Cut Pro, I'll be looking for a simple, speedy replacement. I did this with Pro Tools a couple years ago; I got so sick of installing and maintaining Pro Tools on my system with diminishing returns that when GarageBand became capable enough I switched entirely. I now use GarageBand for all my songwriting and music recording. It works great and it works seamlessly with my $450, 24 bit Pro Tools hardware. Better than Pro Tools itself, in fact. And since that switch I've bought the unbelievably affordable iLife with every new release. So I'll be there with bells on, this year with an eye towards iMovie.

But perhaps the most interesting — or at least the oddest — part of this year's expo, for me anyway, was trying to follow MacRumors' live coverage of the keynote. About halfway through the event strange messages began appearing in their feed:

Eventually their site went down altogether. Obviously, MacRumors' feed got totally hacked. I've never actually witnessed anything like that before, believe it or not. It was a bit surreal. A bit jarring. And certainly odd. Too bad, too, 'cause I'm actually quite fond of their coverage. Fortunately, less hackable — though not auto-updating — feeds could be had at Ars Technica, TUAW and Engadget, so I finshed out the last half hour with obsessive command-r's and tab-switching. Fun stuff!

So, another — and the last — Macworld Expo keynote has come and gone, with, from my chair, something squarely in between a bang and a whimper. But then, that was pretty much what I expected.

UPDATE: I almost forgot: For online music purchases I've been using Amazon, but Apple's new DRM-free policy, announced at yesterday's keynote, might put iTunes back in the game for me. Either way, this is a good thing that will allow customers greater freedom of choice when buying music online.

Thrifty but Evil

I had my first ever Planes, Trains and Automobiles type experience this year. And I owe it all to Thrifty car rental.

It all starts way back on December 12, when I used Hotwire to make a car reservation. Since I was working through the 24th the earliest I could make the reservation was Christmas Eve, so, of course, I wanted to book something well in advance. This didn't seem to be a problem; Hotwire produced several viable options. I chose Thrifty for two reasons: 1) it was the cheapest, and 2) it was close to my house. There are a number of car rental agencies near me, actually, and I've worked with a few, but I'd never tried Thrifty, so I looked for reviews online before booking. Most folks had only minor issues, which could be said of most of the other agencies as well. So I went for it. I booked a car. I made, what we refer to in the talking biz as "A Reservation."

In case you're fuzzy on the concept, let me briefly walk you through it: When an individual makes a reservation he or she enters into an agreement that says, in essence, that he or she will give the provider of a service or resource money to procure said service or resource at an agreed upon time in the future, and that this provider should hold — or "reserve," hence the term — this service or resource for the individual until said time. Not to be too pedantic, but here's the New Oxford English Dictionary's first definition of reservation:

reservation noun 1 the action of reserving something : the reservation of positions for non-Americans. • an arrangement whereby something, esp. a seat or room, is booked or reserved for a particular person : do you have a reservation? • an area of land set aside for occupation by North American Indians or Australian Aboriginals. • Law a right or interest retained in an estate being conveyed. • (in the Roman Catholic Church) the practice of retaining a portion of the consecrated elements after mass for communion of the sick or as a focus for devotion.

As you can see, the concept of holding something, retaining it for the future use of the individual is key here, I think we'd all agree.

Unfortunately, particularly considering the fact that a large portion of Thrifty's business must surely rest on the concept of the reservation, they seem not to fully grasp the idea. For when I arrived at the Thrifty counter to pick up my car at the agreed-upon time, I was told that there were no cars available. I was told that they'd overbooked and that I would not be able to get a car for the evening. I was told that there were eighteen others in this same boat, that boat being stranded in New York City on Christmas Eve, despite having made a rental car reservation well in advance. I asked why I hadn't been notified and was told, "It's not Thrifty's policy to do that," to which I replied, "Then I will not be using Thrifty ever again."

After trying everything I knew to find a car through other agencies — literally impossible given the timeframe — I decided to give Thrifty a call on the phone to see of they were at least prepared to offer some sort of recompense for my Nightmare Before Christmas. The woman on the phone had only apologies to offer. I told her, "You do realize that if you do nothing for me, you have lost me and all my friends and relatives as customers forever, and that I will do everything in my power to spread this tale as far and as wide as I possibly can. Are you okay with that?" No response.

So, here we are.

As much as I'm tempted to conjure up all sorts of systems metaphors and analogies, I'll resist. Suffice to say that Thrifty's failure to do the one thing they're tasked with doing — providing a rental car — on a crucial night such as Christmas Eve is inexcusable. And their response to that failure is nothing short of reprehensible. Let it be known that Thrifty does not care one ounce about service or the satisfaction of their customers. For that reason alone you should spend the extra $10-20 and use a reputable agency. So far, Hertz has not let me down, and when I asked them what they do in such a circumstance I was told, unequivocally, "If we book you a car we'll find you a car." Based on that response alone, Hertz has my business for the foreseeable future.

I spent Christmas Eve alone eating tacos on the couch, fuming and watching reruns of something or other I can't recall. But in the end I managed to get home. My family ended up driving all the way here, and then we drove all the way back down, all on Chrismas Day. I am grateful to them for that, and glad we got to spend some time together, despite the major inconvenience.

iPhone Video Capture

Why is it there's still no video capture application for the iPhone? Unless, of course, you hack the poor beast. That's right, if you've jailbroken your iPhone you can get a video capture application for it. In fact you'll have your choice of two, one of which is actually free (and reportedly of higher quality). But for those of us that prefer our iPhones remain in their gilded cage, we must hobble along with still-capture only. Pffthbbt!

When Apple announced the iPhone app store, video capture was one of the first apps I expected to see. Instead, here we are, a half-a-year later, and no such luck. Too bad, too. This is the one application I'd actually pay for.

Well, this and Bowling, of course.

The Case of the Changing Case

Try copying two items whose names match in every way except case from a local drive to another local drive in the Mac OS X Finder and you'll see something like this:

This makes plenty of sense. The Finder (actually, the filesystem on which the Finder resides, in this case HFS+) is not case-sensitive by default, so it sees the file "intro.mpg" as being identical to "Intro.mpg" and therefore simply alerts the user of the presence of a like-named file and asks him how to proceed.

But the other day I got the strangest alert I've seen in a while when trying to copy a file named "Intro.mpg" from my networked home account to a local folder with a file called "intro.mpg":

Seems that, all of a sudden, we have some case issues. Now why would that be?

It appears that if the originating file comes from my network home, and if that network home lives on an NFS mount, and if the filesystem that hosts that network home is case-sensitive — all of which in this case is true — the Finder kinda freaks out. Or at least alerts the user in a very strange way. I mean, what's with that wording? I don't think I've ever read a more convoluted sentence in my life. And the options spelled out in that sentence — "skip" or "continue" — are not reflected in the language used by the buttons — "Stop" or "Skip." Tsk, tsk! And "some of these items?" Dude, it was only one item. I swear.

Actually, this last one I think I understand: Though I was only copying one Finder item, as users of non-HFS filesystems might be aware, copying between HFS and non-HFS filesystems will cause the creation of dot-underscore files, which are there to preserve HFS-specific data about the file in question. These files automatically get created and follow the file around invisibly, transparently to the user. I believe the Finder was taking these additional files into consideration in the alert. This may or may not be true. I can really only guess. But that's my hunch.

Nevertheless, this alert is abominable, if somewhat amusing. Apple still has some work to do when it comes to the wording in their alerts.

And they clearly have some work to do when it comes to dealing with conflicts on non-HFS volumes as well.

UPDATE: I've changed this post slightly for clarity.