Tao of Mac

May 1st 2005 · 2 min read

Taming Tiger

Whoa. Would you believe my RSS feeds have more matches for "" than for "" today?

With all the opinion posts out there, it's going to be tough not being redundant (although I have to chime in on 's horrible toolbar).

I've been fiddling with my usual list of essentials, and so far I've gotten these:

  • was recently updated, and most of the plugins I use with it too (incidentally, it can now install plugins from its Preferences, which is very nice).
  • and work fine.
  • and other application-level stuff just work, of course - it's the tweaks that might give you problems.

I've yet to try:

  • The updated Cisco VPN client (the beta I know of is 4.6.02, get it from your friendly Cisco rep or via your CIO account).
  • J2SE 5.0 Release 1. Might as well see if it's faster than 1.4.2.
  • Fink. There is currently no binary installer for 0.24.5, and I won't upgrade my without making sure I can at least recompile some of the stuff I need to get things done.
  • SideTrack or , one of which will have to work on my iBook.
  • The nightly builds of Desktop Manager (haven't checked if works or has been updated yet).
  • Compiling (the standard installer package does not have network notifications, and I need those).
  • . Can't say I seem to need it much, being a  kind of guy. And I wasn't too impressed by the "Change Type of Images" action not letting you specify a quality setting, either.
  • Xgrid. I have a feeling this might come in handy, although I really don't get why the Controller appears to be Server-only - it's not like I manage servers at the console...
  • ing my test phones. It now natively supports the (which is a shame, since I've since moved on) and can be hacked to support some missing Nokia models, but it's somewhat of a disappointment on the whole, since it can't sync to the SonyEricsson stuff I'm testing (why they make this device-specific when the phones are completely alike is beyond me). However, going through MetaClasses.plist, I see there is provision for alternative phone IDs and names, so I guess I'll have to experiment (I'll post the results when the phones become public).
  • Installing and the like on the and getting a feel for the speed of things. I've already established that 256MB is far too little for having , and (which, incidentally, has a few spiffy tweaks) running at the same time, but don't have enough "real applications" installed on it yet.

I think I'll backup my iBook and take the "Archive and Install" route later in the week, to see whether it will work with most of the stuff I have installed there (although I'm pretty sure some things will break spectacularly, especially Fink-related stuff).

In the meantime, There are fixes galore for Ruby on (my favorite is the Rails installer), and I've already established that WikityWidget is great for short notes, but not nearly as useful as VoodooPad Lite.

Oh, and if you're into graphics development, whatever you do, don't install the Developer Tools and open Quartz Composer. It is incredibly addictive, and by far the most fascinating addition to development as far as I'm concerned. Must... resist... adding... another transform...