Screen Savers and Firewire Drives

For some time now I've had an odd problem on my MacBook wherein my Time Machine firewire drive appears to spontaneously, and without reason, disconnect. No warning is produced, no error message appears. It always happens, in fact, when the computer is not in use. I leave the system on, say, while a large backup is taking place, and I go up to go to sleep. I come down the next morning to find the drive unmounted. The only sign something's gone wrong is an entry in my system log that reads something like this:

May 10 11:01:02 mrpooter com.apple.backupd[255]: Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!

Weird, huh? I know!

My Energy Saver setting are set to never sleep the machine and never spin down hard drives, though I've tried every variance of this, as per this Apple Knowledgebase thread, to no avail. The problem persists.

After reading that thread, though, I was able to narrow and eventually solve the problem. Oddly, it seems to be related to my screen saver. I've been using an iPhoto album for my screen saver for a while, and I wondered if it had to do with that. So I switched back to one of the built-in, included screen savers — Arabesque, if you must know — and it's all better now.

For a few nights in a row now I've been able to leave my machine on indefinitely, even overnight. And where this would once have certainly cause my firewire drive to unmount, it no longer does.

Finally and Finally!

Two small but exciting improvements revealed today.

1. Google has at last made some design improvements to their search results (via Daring Fireball).

I wrote about my frustration with Google's lack of design vision some time ago. It's great to finally see them trying to improve their usability and their aesthetic at the same time.

For the record, Google's in the midst of a gradual roll out of the redesign, so you may not see the changes right away.

2. Rumor has it that the next iteration of the iPhone OS will include orientation locking. What's orientation locking, you say? It's the ability to keep the iPhone screen from switching to landscape mode.

I've lamented how the lack of this feature has been one of the major bothers of an otherwise great phone experience. I'm excited to finally have the feature on my phone.

It's definitely the little things I get excited about. But then, sometimes they're what really matter most to a fella.

It Was Hurting My Eyes

I don't know, my eyes have been bugging me lately. Chalk it up to old age. But the fact is, it was getting so I could barely stand to look at my own blog, what with the high contrast, bright blue color scheme and all. So I've changed the colors. Not as exciting as the old design, but certainly easier on the ol' peepers.

Enjoy!

Thoughts on Apple vs. Adobe

The whole Apple vs. Adobe thing is fascinating to me. The fact that Steve Jobs has now personally and publicly written on the matter highlights what a big deal it is. And now the Free Software Foundation has responded with a missive on open software.

For my part I largely agree with Jobs' take and feel that the FSF response pretty much misses the mark. Jobs is essentially saying, "We want our platform to be the best, and in order for that to happen we need to exercise a certain amount of control." Though he cites certain examples of open software contributions made by Apple, Jobs never claims that Apple products are open or free. He merely cautions us not to believe the freedom hype: Flash is certainly not free either. And, in his opinion, it's bad for Apple's mobile platform. That means it's bad for Apple, but it also means, in theory, that it's bad for the consumer. As a fan of Apple products, I tend to agree.

The Free Software Foundation's John Sullivan, on the other hand, is using the occasion of Jobs' open letter to go on a lengthy diatribe about free software. This is, again, beside the point, from Apple's point of view. They're not a free software company, and they don't claim to be. What's funny, though, is the fact that Sullivan illustrates Jobs' point when he cites examples of free software:

"Fortunately, the way out of the Adobe vs. Apple cage match is straightforward, and exists already: free software operating systems like GNU/Linux with free software Web browsers, supporting free media formats like Ogg Theora."

Compare that with Sullivan's list of commercial software:

"...Final Cut Studio, Google Chrome, Mac OS X..."

There you have it, folks. Right there. It's crappy versus great. The free software Sullivan lists in his own defense of free software pales in comparison to some of the exceptional commercial software he lists. I have not found a flavor of Linux I'd ever prefer to Mac OS X, and there simply is no comparable free video editor to Final Cut Pro. It would seem that if we want our freedom we'll have to suffer for it indefinitely if we're to follow Sullivan's advice.

But again, this is all beside the point. To reiterate: Apple wants to build the best platform in the world, and Flash is contrary to that goal.

So there are a few things I keep coming back to, and they have to do with how all this is being argued. The first: every time someone clarifies Apple's position on Flash someone else counters with a completely irrelevant argument. It's usually this open vs. closed argument, which, upon any level of scrutiny, including and beyond that above, simply falls apart. But I have yet to hear a coherent argument for Flash on the iPhone OS. Maybe there isn't one. The best, most thorough coverage I've found on the matter has been, not surprisingly, Daring Fireball. Gruber's thinking on the matter, of which there is plenty, is complete and accurate and cuts through most of the crap.

The second is that there seems to be a lot of confusion over how Flash can and would be used on the iPhone OS. Adobe makes it out like they just want people to be able to watch YouTube videos. But believe me, that too is a red herring. Adobe wants people to use Flash to write iPhone OS-native applications. Adobe wants control over Apple's mobile platform. Make no mistake, this is not a battle for the web, it's a battle for the OS, the platform. But every time Adobe proponents are backed into the corner, they play the web card, which is total bullshit.

My last source of confusion (on this matter, at least) is that people are going after Apple on this at all. Until the iPhone there was never an expectation that phones should either run Flash or be open. A phone is not a personal computer. It's a phone. All smartphones are just phones. They play by a whole different set of rules. And that set of rules is much longer and stricter than that of a personal computer. No one ever complained that Nokia's phones weren't open. Or Motorola's. Or Samsung's. Why now is it completely offensive that Apple's phones should be? Moreover, there are no phones in existence today that can display Flash content because of all the reasons cited by Jobs in his letter. Google's phones don't. Neither do Palm's. So why is everyone going after Apple? It's just crazy.

When I think about it real hard, there are only two reasons I can come up with for this backlash: 1) Flash proponents know it's the end. People with a great deal of emotional stake in Flash are pissed because they realize that if Apple's hugely successful mobile platform doesn't include Flash, it will mean the death of Flash. If you're a Flash developer, that might be a little scary; and 2) People like to use one issue to talk about another issue (see above).

Until someone is able to defend Adobe cogently and sensibly on this matter I will continue to agree with Apple and Jobs. But let's be very clear about one thing: this is not about open vs. free at all, and any argument that takes that tack is completely beside the point. No, this is about nothing less than control of Apple's mobile platform. And I'd rather let Apple run it than Adobe.

Delete Unwanted Usernames from Firefox

I think this post's title says it all, but a word of explanation nonetheless.

One of my favorite features of Firefox is that it remembers usernames for forms. Anytime you type a username in a form Firefox will store it, and the next time you go to that form and select the username field, Firefox will display all the usernames it remembers for that particular form in a dropdown just below the field. It's pretty sweet.

The only problem is that sometimes the field gets populated with usernames you don't want in there. For instance, I've been doing a lot of work on a web application, and it involves logging in as various test users. But these users are only temporary, and I don't want them stored. Or, worse, have you ever mistakenly entered your password in the username field? I've always wondered if there were a way to clear these unwanted or temporary usernames, and it turns out there is.

A quick Google search was all it took, honestly. A Netlobo article contained the answer. But the short story is, to clear an unwanted username from the remembered username dropdown, simply highlight the username in the list and hit Shift-Delete.

And there you have it. Problem solved.