Apple Newbie

Mozilla Firefox 3 has been officially launched today. I use Firefox 2 as my main browser and due to the nature of my work I normally have many windows open, with multiple tabs grouped together within those windows. Firefox 2 with its numerous memory holes usually slowed down to a grinding halt after an hour or so of work, with CPU usage hovering between 60% to over 100% sometimes.

With the knowledge that Firefox 3 was approaching launch, it was getting just too annoying to bear with so I stopped using Firefox 2 for awhile and switched to Safari as my web browser. I was really quite amazed at the speed at which webpages appeared. I don’t think Safari downloaded things any much faster but it is probably more of the way it renders things.

Firefox 3 comes with a new default theme

Anyway today Firefox 3 is out, and although the main site’s access is quite intermittent, I grabbed a copy from Facebook’s Mozilla mirror - you can grab yours there too just by following the link.

I installed Firefox 3 and prepared for it to just take over the 2.0 browser’s job, with the same windows and tabs as the most recent session. I thought this would provide me with a fair comparison on browser speed in the conditions that I work in.

Firefox 3 in action, hogging all the CPU!

I am sad to say that it’s just still the same… really slow and sluggy response! The spinning beach ball icon very frequently pops up and stays there for minutes on and on, and opening the Preferences panel took a good few minutes thanks to the delayed response.

I am only sticking to Firefox because I like the way it renders web pages as well as its keyboard shortcuts that I am very familiar with since I switched to a Mac from Windows, but I think its time to learn how to be comfortable with Safari.

If you love the Expose feature and would like to see it in a web browser, check out Shiira. Shiira is an open source (under a revised BSD license) web browser for Mac OS X that runs on the Web Kit engine, the same one Safari is running on. It’s written in Cocoa and is compiled as a Universal Binary so it runs on both PPC and Intel Macs. The current version is 1.2.1.

Shiira’s Tab Expose

Some of the features you have in Shiira are RSS support, tabbed browsing, tab expose, page holders for viewing webpages in a sidebar (sort of like a split screen), page transitions if you’re using Tiger, and support for Firefox bookmarks.

Since it’s free, why not give it a shot? Check out the Shiira Project.

Apple has a built in Firewall for Mac OS X, but it’s kind of catered to the newbie, very simplified like most Apple user interfaces are.

For something more advanced, try Flying Buttress, formerly known as BrickHouse. Flying Buttress has some funky features like filtering by host/network address, protocols other than TCP/UDP, the whole range of ipfw options, per-filter logging, graphical log viewer, NAT port forwarding, different filters for different network interfaces, and so on. It basically is a configuration tool for OS X’s built in firewalling system, instead of replacing the firewalling system altogether.

It won the Best System Utility Award at the 17th Annual MacWorld Editor’s Choice Awards and Gold Award, Firewall Protection for the MacFixit 2001 Toolbox Awards.

Technically, it’s not free - the shareware costs USD$25 per machine. But you can use the “unregistered” version for as long as you want, and pay someday when you feel it’s worth it and can afford it.

Check out Flying Buttress.

Apple has launched a new software called Aperture, aimed at photographers.

Aperture has a featureset that let’s you do everything you would want to do with your photographs after a shoot. It catalogs your images, and lets you do processing and touch-ups with it. It supports RAW formats from leading digital camera manufacturers. This means you can edit your RAWs directly without converting it to some other format first. RAW editing is non-destructive. You won’t lose any of your original data that you don’t touch.
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Macworld has posted an in-depth review which compares 4 free web browser products and 1 commercial web browser or Mac OS X.

Leading the pack in the results is Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 with 4.5 out of 5. Omni Group’s US$30 OmbiWeb 5.1.1 ties in 2nd place with Apple’s own bundled browser Safari 2.0 at 4 out of 5. Opera 8.0.2 which has recently been re-licensed from a commercial product to free software gets 3.5 out of 5 and Camino (also based on Mozilla) gets 3 out of 5.

Read the review.

I use a plethora of operating systems daily and keeping up with security updates can be stressful. I subscribe to Secunia for all my security update notification needs. Very useful for a system administrator. Remember, you are your own system administrator at home!

Apple has released a critical security update for Mac OS X that solves a grand total of 10 security issues. Click here for the Secunia Advisory release and here for Apple’s security advisory.

Click here to download the update 2005-008 for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and here for Mac OS X 10.4.2. You can also update via OS X’s Software Updates.

This update also enhances some non-security related items like Parental Controls. Refer to Apple’s advisory for more information.

One of the things I miss having on my Windows workstation is Float’s Mobile Agent which I use to access my Sony Ericsson T630 mobile phone.

I’ve found a replacement for use on my Mac and I’m now a happy camper. It’s called BluePhoneElite.

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Looking for an RSS client for Mac OS X and don’t like using Safari? Check out NetNewsWire Lite. It’s the freeware version of NetNewsWire which costs USD$24.95. You can use it first, then upgrade later.

(Click to enlarge)

NetNewsWire is compatible with the Automator. You can also generate custom RSS feeds through scripting language like Ruby and AppleScript. You can also style your HTML RSS feeds from a variety of built in CSS stylesheets or just create your own.

Check it out: NetNewsWire

Being a keyboard type of person, I personally prefer using the Spotlight to launch my applications. But for someone who wants a better launcher application than the Dock, I recommend using Quicksilver.

What’s great is configured launcher buttons can not only just launch applications but actions as well. Frequently used applications or commands can be bound to hotkey triggers or they can be triggered by moving your mouse to a corner of the screen.

Quicksilver also has plugin support and there are already a few plugins written for it. For example, one of the plugins allows it to interface with the popular IM chat program Adium.

Download: Quicksilver

Google has recently released a Gmail Notifier for Mac OS X. It requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 and above. This means Panther onwards.

One nifty feature about the Gmail Notifier is it has full support for Applescript and Cocoa Bundles in Objective-C, which means you can write plugins for it.

What’s great is someone has released a plugin that makes the GMail Notifier work with Growl.

In case you don’t know what Growl is, do you remember the grey overlay icons which appear on your screen whenever you adjust your volume or monitor brightness? Growl is a tool that allows any program to display such notifications. Of course it isn’t just limited to that kind of look. It can be customised too.

Check them out today!

Gmail Notifier for Mac OS X
Gmail+Growl 1.0
Growl