Crazy Apple News Site

At first, it just doesn’t make sense. Apple is selling, selling XCode, that amazing—and previously free—programmer’s delight of an IDE that is the gateway to the riches of putting your programs in the App Stores.

Don’t get me wrong, XCode 4 is a massive improvement on the previous versions, with everything integrated into a single window, a massive improvement on the previous versions’ tendency to spread windows over your entire desktop and eventually into other Spaces, just because there are so dang many of them. The new debugger is faster, more intuitive, gives you good stack traces, even on multiple threads, and actually tries to trace your local variables and display them in a way that makes sense to humans, again something at which XCode 3 struggled.

So many of us purchased XCode 4 from the app store, telling ourselves that, considering how much Windows developers pay for Visual Studio we were getting off easy. And we downloaded the 4.5 Gigabyte file, and we ran the installer, and everything was good. XCode 4 was installed! Life was happy. Blithely we deleted the Installer file that the App Store dropped into our Applications folders and started tinkering around with all the new features, like Git integration and a useful timeline view of code changes and whatnot.

Then, a few days later, Apple released version 4.0.1 of the app. Well, we had noticed a few things that were kinda buggy with the initial release, so that’s to be expected. We go into the App Store, expecting an upgrade notification and…nothing. The App Store says we haven’t installed XCode 4. But look! It’s running right there! Lo and behold, deleting the 4.5 Gigabyte installer file from our Applications folder is what told the App Store that we no longer had XCode on our drive. So we download the new version—all 4.5 Gigabytes of it—and reinstall. The awful truth dawns slowly: we have to keep that stupid installer file to get our “convenient” automatic updates.

This, I feel, is too coincidental. It is clearly a joke, played upon the Apple developer community and their ISP’s. Apple is too smart to saddle their developers with a gigantic dead weight file and massive downloads for every patch release. Fortunately, they’ve given us some clues. Look at the version number: 4.0.1. Does that suggest anything to you? Looks a lot like 4/1, doesn’t it? Yep, it’s an April Fool’s day joke.

Okay, Apple, you’ve had your fun. Now let’s make with version 4.0.2 getting rid of the annoyance factors. I’ve got better uses for that huge chunk of hard drive space. Thank you.

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Asked Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week: Quicksilver.

Q: Greetings, master.  I seek the benefit of your wisdom.

A: Approach, son, and I shall impart.

Q: I just got a new Mac, and I love it.

A: Truly, you have started on the path of wisdom.

Q: Yet there’s a problem.  I don’t feel pretentious enough when I open my programs.

A: Explain, my son, and the pretense you seek may soon be granted.

Q: Well, I bought all the most self-congratulatory  Mac-only apps I can think of, like BBEdit, and TextMate, and Delicious Library…

A: You have chosen well.  In choosing two over hyped text editors and a program that shows you pictures of books you already own, you have embraced all that is most pretentious in the Mac community.

Q: …But when I open them, I have to click on the icon like some kind of 20th Century Windows user.

A: Indeed.  And you seek a way to show your Windows using friends that your Mac skills are beyond their comprehension, while at the same time demonstrating your Mac to be the key of effortless computing.

Q: Yes, master.

A: I can help you my son.  You shall achieve the pomposity you desire, but it comes at a cost.

Q: I will pay any price, if I may only show myself better than the sons of Gates.

A: The price you will pay will not be in money, for the key to your arrogance is free-as-in-free-beer, but we will speak more of the price later.  The key of which I speak is Quicksilver.

Q: Tell me more, for I crave the mastery of this mercurial software.

A: Quicksilver allows you to launch, browse, change, transform, move, edit, tweak, and inspect all parts of your system with ninja-like skill and ease, with but a few taps on the keyboard.  Indeed, a true user of Quicksilver need scarce touch the mouse again.  Yet all this power is wrapped in an interface as graceful as the fall of a lotus blossom to the face of the waiting pond.

Q: Where may I find this potent blossom?

A: Seek the black tree, and look to the roots.  Quicksilver may be found there.

Q: I shall do so master.  But you spoke of the price.  I would know what recompense I should prepare for the master of the black tree.

A: As I said before, my son, the price is not one of gold nor even of PayPal funds, but, much like the tree that must bend that it may not break, you must sacrifice your pride that you may further elevate it.

Q: What then is this terrible price?

A: Quicksilver is no longer actively developed, and you must therefore be content with software that isn’t updated every other week!

Q: Aaaaaagh!  This indeed is a price beyond compare!  How may my pride and arrogance survive in the face of such adversity?

A: That, my son, is up to you, but as you master your pride so shall you master all others.  Also, it has this cool feature that makes words show up, like, really big on the screen!

Q: Hey, sweet!

Firefox 3, the latest version of Mozilla’s legendary open source browser, is the first of the ‘Fox dynasty to make peace with OSX.

For years Firefox on the Mac has been ugly, ugly like a duck covered in oil and thrown off the back of a truck into a pile of herring innards that have been sitting by the side of the road from the toxic-waste-spewing EEA violators.  But now, all is sweetness and light.   Firefox has beautiful cocoa widgets and a new theme that looks so Leopard-y that Safari is kinda jealous.

Safari, meanwhile, is promising that good things are coming “real soon now™ ”, while the ‘Fox is running around the world like a marathon runner with a jet pack.  No, two jet packs, a transporter, and, like, a freakin’ laser cannon.  Rumors of the download site being down all morning on the big day are completely untrue and were made up by Hillary Clinton to ruin Firefox’s reputation.  Firefox is awesome.

Out-positive that, Walt Mossberg.

In a desperate attempt to create a recurring feature, we have decided to start the Friday iFAQ, a list of inFrequently Asked Questions to help you, the Mac user, get more out of your software.

Q: A FAQ for iCal? Really?
A: Yes! iCal has so much to offer that people never know about!
Q: Okay. So, here goes: How do I sync my iCal and Google calendars?
A: You can easily track your Google calendar in iCal by publishing your Google calendar in the iCal format, an industry standard format that…
Q: No no no, I don’t just want to track my Google calendar, I want actual synchronization.
A: Don’t cut me off!
Q: Ummm, sorry? Anyway, how does that work?
A: Well, if you have a .Mac account, you can have your iCal calendars published in iCal format, which Google calendar can read, so you can conveniently see your iCal events on your Google calendar.
Q: That’s the same problem in reverse. I don’t want to see my calendar in two places, I want to be able to edit it in two places.
A: Did you know that Apple pioneered the iCal format?
Q: I guessed from the name. Also, your second option costs, like, a hundred bucks a year, so it’s not really all that convenient. Look, is there or isn’t there a way to actually sync your Google calendar and iCal?
A: The strength of the Mac platform is its developers.  BusyMac has created BusySync, a convenient tool for syncing calendars over a LAN or even with Google calendar.
Q: So I need third-party software?
A: Or you could use Spanning Sync, except it costs more and has issues with Leopard.
Q: So you’re recommending slightly broken third party software?
A: Or you could just forget all about Google calendar. Forget…Forget…Foghat…Gorfet…
Q: Did you just accidentally hypnotize yourself?
A: Boba Fett…Jengo Fett…
Q: Okay, whatever.  I’ma go read TUAW.
A: Zzzzzzzzzzz……

Leap, the new finder replacement by Ironic software, advertises itself as “better than the finder” at locating both the documents you were looking for and the documents that you didn’t know you were looking for.  However, further testing has proven that Leap is better at locating documents than the actual human brain, and has therefore made the user as useless as an embarrassing vestigial tail.

“With Leap, I no longer need to use my computer,” said tehCatz66 in an online review.  ”All my documents are so easily found, I just think about them and I’m done! Thanks, Ironic Software!”  This is thanks to Ironic’s use of Bluetooth, Bonjour, and Voodoo. 

With Leap you find things based on your natural memory of that file.

says the Leap website.  Macs with wireless connections can automatically connect to your brain, then pull your memories directly from your brain, thus allowing Leap to both index your brain and know what you are looking for, both consciously, as well as subconsciously in the new beta version of Leap 2.0.  ”I won’t say there haven’t been embarrassing situations with the whole ‘subconscious search’ feature,” said Ted Leckie, one of the members of the Ironic team. ”There have.  Like that time that we were demoing the product and this girl with an iPhone walked by.  Leap was searching all the customer’s minds at the time, and suddenly the screen was full of really, really shocking images. Pure lust, in it’s most graphic form.  I mean, it’s just an iPhone!  I’ve got, like, three that I purchased with the proceeds off of Yep.  Don’t tell Tom, by the way. I told him Yep tanked.”

Perhaps the most powerful feature of Leap is the way it can 

…allow you to stumble upon not only the file you were looking for but sometimes an even better one that you weren’t looking for. 

“It’s totally true,” said another user, whose name I haven’t made up yet.  ”I was looking for my will, which I keep as a Pages document, and I found a letter my wife had written to my best friend.  I thought they hated each other, but  now I know that they’re, like, really good friends! Now I can have him over for poker on Wednesdays again! Thanks, Leap!”

Leap is available for only $59 from Ironic software, or if you have overclocked your Time Machine you can go back a couple of weeks and get it as part of the MUPromo Bundle.