shuffle March 2007 content

[Magnus]

A word from the editor
Windows Vista arrives

Why write about Windows Vista in the newsletter of an Apple User Group, you ask. It's quite simple, our world is dominated by Microsoft, currently with Windows XP, and in the future by Vista. It's something that we have to live with. We have to use Vista-running computers at some point and our Macs have to communicate with them too. Some of us will even install and run Vista on our Macs via Parallels or BootCamp. Vista means "a view or a prospect" according to Dictionary.com, which is perhaps an appropriate name. Personally I much prefer Tiger though. So Windows Vista has been launched after five years of development and it's going to affect all of us to some degree. We celebrate it by dedicating our Comic Corner to the arrival of Windows Vista. There is also an article about what is new in Vista, as well as a debate from EmiratesMac.com about Mac versus Windows. Don't worry though, this will not be a common thing, that so much of shuffle is taken up by Windows. But we will of course continue to write about Windows as it concerns Mac users. But I'm so glad I'm not the editor for a Windows user group newsletter. All we would have to write about was security holes, updates, and driver issues. And we can soon put Vista to the back of our minds because Leopard is right around the corner. The latest rumors are saying that it will be out as early as March. I would think a few months after that is more likely. WWDC is in June, which seems like a good occasion as any to launch Leopard. We have some exciting things coming up this spring and I hope you will all take part in them and help out when requested. EmiratesMac User Group is on the way to bigger and better things, but it can only happen with your help.

[Magnus]

AntiRSI forces you to take breaks
by Magnus

RSI, or Repetitive Strain Injury, is something that is a danger to all of us spending so much time working with computers. RSI can set in when you work with the same motions for a long time, like typing on a keyboard, or using a mouse. One way of minimizing the risk of having RSI problems is to take regular breaks. AntiRSI is a simple little free application that does just that. All it does is that it shows a timer in your Dock, and it counts how long you have worked. It then forces you to take a 13 second tiny break every 4 minutes and a longer 8 minute break every 50 minutes. It does this by displaying a notice on the screen and while the notice is up you cannot use the keyboard or the mouse. You can download AntiRSI from http://tech.inhelsinki.nl/antirsi/ and read more about RSI at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury.

[Magnus]

Apple seed
by Dandantheitman

The Catch-22 of all passwords is the fact that you use the same password for everything, yet it is a pain to remember all 16 of your various user names and passwords for different sites and Internet accounts. Apple Inc. has provided us, as end users, with a way of managing all of our usernames and passwords. It is called Key Chain Access. Key Chain Access is located in the Applications > Utilities folder. If you work in a network environment with a lot of Macs or you are security conscious you can store your key chain file on a USB device and carry that around with you. This way when you are in front of a foreign Mac and need your passwords for any particular reason you need only insert your USB stick, run the Key Chain Access app, push the plus button, navigate to your USB stick and select your key chain file. This is also a great security measure for when you take your Apple Mac in for repair. None of the repair staff, should they get nosy, have the ability to "borrow" your login info to access certain sites. Unfortunately the key chain will only work with key chain aware apps such as Safari, Mail and iChat. What you can do however is add a secure note to your keychain and list all of your usernames and passwords there.

[Magnus]

Review: Belkin TuneBase FM for iPod
by Magnus

If you want to use your iPod in your car to play music through your car stereo but you don't have anywhere to plug in your iPod or a cassette player, this is the thing for you. The Belkin TuneBase FM for iPod is an iPod FM transmitter, iPod charger, and iPod holder all rolled into one. It plugs into your cigarette lighter and hold your iPod up on a flexible neck so you can position it so it's conveniently accessible to you. The TuneBase supports 88.1MHz-107.9MHz and it's very easy to set frequency. Turn your radio to the frequency you want, then push up and down buttons on the TuneBase until you have set the same frequency. You can then set that frequency to one out of four programmable memory slots. The TuneBase comes with adapters to fit iPod video, 4G, photo, mini, and nano. Personally I was worried that the holder's neck wouldn't be stable enough to hold the iPod without moving it around too much, but that turned out to be unwarranted. The TuneBase holds your iPod very securely. We found the audio quality to be okay for the most part. There's definitely static once in a while, and it obviously depends on the area you're in and what radio stations are broadcasting. Most of the time, just tweaking the frequency setting made the audio quality improve. Belkin's TuneBase is not going to get you the best possible audio quality when playing music from your iPod in your car, but it's a convenient and cost-effective solution.

SIDEBAR
You can find more information about the Belkin TuneBase FM for iPod at http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=257270. The tested TuneBase was supplied by Belkin in Dubai, and it sells in the US for $79.99.

[Magnus]

Create a DashBoard Widget with DashCode
by Magnus

About a year ago a new application from Apple was leaked onto the internet. It was called DashCode and with it anyone could create DashBoard Widgets very easily. Recently Apple officially made a beta version of DashCode available to members of the ADC (Apple Developer Connection). Online membership is free and once you're a member you can download the DashCode beta from http://developer.apple.com/tools/dashcode/. In this brief tutorial we will use DashCode to develop a simple DashBoard widget that counts down to a specific date and time. Download DashCode, install it, and start it before starting on the items steps below.

1. Choose "Countdown" as your project template.
2. Click "Countdown properties" on the left hand side.
3. Click "Blink Separators" and "Do Action".
4. Enter the target date and time. I'll set it to March 29, 2007, at 18:00.
5. Click "Mark as Done".
6. Click "Set attributes".
7. Click "Attributes".
8. Replace "Untitled" with the name of your widget in "Widget Identifier".
9. Leave "Version" as "1.0".
10. Double-click "Untitled" in the "Widget name" and enter the name of the widget. I'll enter "EmiratesMac Countdown".
11. Double-click "Event label" in the "Value column" and enter the name of the event you're counting down to. I'll enter "EmiratesMac Special Event".
12. Click "Mark as Done".
13. Click "Preview default image".
14. Click "Default image preview". You can import a different picture, or edit current picture in external editor if you want to.
15. Click "Mark as Done".
16. Click "Design widget icon".
17. Click "Widget icon composer". You can import a different icon if you want to.
18. Click "Fill & Stroke inspector". Choose fill and stroke for the icon.
19. Click "Mark as Done".
20. Click "Test & share".
21. Click "Run" at the top left of the window.
22. Try out your widget, click "Stop" when you're done.
23. Choose "Deploy Widget to Dashboard" in the "File" menu.
24. Give your widget's file a name. I'll enter "EmiratesMac Countdown".
25. Click "Deploy".
26. Click "Keep" when the widget opens in DashBoard.
27. Back in DashCode, choose "Save" in the "File" menu.
28. Enter a name for your widget. I'll enter "EmiratesMac Countdown".
29. Click "Save". This saves your widget as a project. You can always open up this project again in the future to change it and deploy as a new widget.
30. Finished! You should now have your own, custom-made, countdown widget running in DashBoard.

[Magnus]

Emiratesmac.com tips and tricks
by Magnus

We continue our series of tips and tricks for how to do certain things at Emiratesmac.com. The intent is to tell our users about some of the perhaps less well known features and functions on the site in order to make their experience with the site a bit better.

Membership payments
Starting this year, membership in EmiratesMac Apple User Group (EMUG) is 150Dhs per year. There is also a 250Dhs level and for the extra payment you get an emiratesmac.net and emiratesmac.org email account, as well as web space when that is finalized. You can pay at meetings or events or you can pay online. We've signed up with 2Checkout.com for credit card processing and it's integrated with the software we use on to run EmiratesMac.com. So to pay online, log in with your account to the site. If you don't have an account (which is free) register for one first. Then go to the "User CP", click on "Paid Subscriptions", choose the membership level you want, click on "Order" and then "Order through 2Checkout". The processing after that is done by 2Checkout.

Newsletter page
We recently added a page for this newsletter, where every issue is available for download. For each issue, you can see a thumbnail view of the cover. There is a link to download the PDF file, a link to the forum thread about that particular issue, and a link to the articles from the issue that we've also put on the site.

Subscribe to RSS-feeds
In the RSS101 article in this issue of shuffle you can learn more about RSS. EmiratesMac.com offers a number of RSS-feeds and they are all conveniently available on the home page on the left hand side of the page. Currently we offer four RSS-feeds, one for the blog, one for EMUG news and announcements, one for AppleIDX, and one for the gallery. Click on one of the links and your default RSS-reader should subscribe you to that RSS-feed.

[Magnus]

Hint: Find your character
by Magnus

Sometimes you need to find a particular character and don't know how to type it with the keyboard. Apple has provided a convenient help in Mac OS X. It's called the Character Palette and it shows you all the scripts you have installed and every character within each script. You can show it from witin the the Font Book application in the Applications folder. If you have enabled the Input Menu (the International pane in Systems Preferences) you can just select the Character Palette from there. If you have to pick characters all the time, consider PopCharX (http://www.macility.com/products/popcharx/).

[Magnus]

Mac versus PC debate revisited
by Magnus

Recently an EmiratesMac user with the username Mashakos posted a controversial question on the site (Macs Suck!) with the title "Macs suck!". He said "I'm new here and want to see what this Mac phenomenon is all about" and continued by saying "a lot of casual computer users really like the Mac, but it seems to be a bit limited for the professional if you're not working at a publisher or graphic design company".

Pawan kicked off the replies by saying: "You know I was a PC person and I just recently switched to a Mac. All I can say is that it's just much more easier to get things done on a Mac out of the box. Don't get me wrong, I recently build a Quad Core PC, and just installing Windows, getting the drivers, optimizing it to my likes, resolving conflicts, etc. just takes so much time. Almost every Windows PC I build, I have to do an initial install, find the right drivers, test them out, and then put all the correct stuff into one folder, reformat the PC and load them to have it fully optimized. Its such a waste of time."

The discussion had a big element of security throughout. EmiratesMac had posted: "You won't have as much problems with security with Windows if you know what you're doing. But if you don't want to be a security expert, and don't want to have to worry about all that stuff, get a Mac." To which Mashakos replied: "I can flip that on it's side and say: What if the Mac actually becomes popular and hackers start making viruses for it? What then, Windows 98 flashbacks?"

This was countered by EmiratesMac who claimed that Mashakos argument was somewhat dubious: "I'm not sure I completely buy it [the "security through obscurity" idea]. I'm sure that if there were more Mac users it would be targeted more. But I also think that it if was as easy to hack as Windows we would have seem some viruses, worms, trojan, spyware by now. Mac OS X has been out for I think five years now and still nothing."

Dandantheitman tackled this issue with evident authority: "There are however many people who are skeptical of Apple's [Mac] OS X security, and it is more of a culture clash than anything else. On my travels I have heard many statements about Apple security and it usually sounds like this: "How can a company associated with hippies, anti war movement, happiness, and a history of poor company/client relations be good at security?" [Apple has] a great marketing team, but historically not big talkers. Only time will tell whether they are right. One security bugbear I do have with Apple is that its firewall is not enabled by default nor is its file system encrypted by default.. check out my next article in the shuffle on [Mac] OS X security for the casual user... Your entire argue behind this whole thread is as follows: "A lot of casual computer users really like the Mac, but it seems to be a bit limited for the professional if you're not working at a publisher or graphic design company." IMHO you are wrong."

Superglue interjected, breaking up the discussion with a brief but simple statement: "Macs are more fashionable & sexy." Any Mac-lover can certainly agree with that, I think.

Mashakos made the argument that there is so much more software available for Windows, to which EmiratesMac countered: "How much does that really matter? My experience is that whatever is available for Mac is generally of higher quality than what's available for Windows. Even shareware for Mac is often of an outstandingly high quality. And I'd rather have a fewer number of good apps than a gazillion number of so-so apps. I'm not saying there aren't good apps for Windows, there are, but I think for the most part the Mac ones are better."

Appleholic entered the discussion with a lot of passion: "What's this I see here - a war on our turf? I was a PC guy for 18 years, and after moving to Mac, I can safely and confidently say I have relieved my self from the pain, agony and frustration that Microsoft brings. I don't care if PC guys don't like Mac. It's not my loss, it's theirs. And we Mac [lovers] don't really care if PC guys are being convinced that we are better because we love our community and don't want PC guys to come in and ruin it for us."

Zaid entered the discussion a bit late but came out swinging hard in favor of Mac:"There you go again, how is that PC is better on 3D design, not just because you use it on PC then it is better on PC. If you are in the design industry, I would expect you to visit other design studios and see what they are using, I have witnessed a full Maya training courses where they did projects on iMac G4s, the instructor was and still a Maya Certified Instructor..."

Appleholic took up for Apple in terms of innovations: "Dude, if it wasn't for [Apple] in 1984 introducing the Mac to the world you might not have your PC..." and he continued by saying that "at the end of the day, your Windows is not impressive" and Mashakos countered: "Here's what's impressive: 3D Max with raytracing, physics cloth and liquid simulation, integrated with Poser 6 and Flash; Playing arcade games from the 70's to the 90's. Playing SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, PSX games perfectly. Playing PS2 games like Resident Evil 4 and Tekken 4. All on one machine at the touch of a mouse button; Checking out a site for a utility and not having to worry if your system is supported or not; Not having to worry about whether DivX or AVI2 is supported or not; Building a machine that can be any shape or size; Doing what you like, whether you're a programmer, designer, audio engineer, or network administrator; Buying a graphics card that can simulate water and smoke dynamics."

It's safe to say that the rest of the users taking part in the discussion were not exactly impressed by the same things as Mashakos, and the debated raged on for a while longer. But we finish off this article with what Mashakos concluded with: "I realized the potential of the Mac's x86 hardware and virtualization capabilities for IT professionals. Other than that, I already knew it was a solid platform for designers and normal users alike. If I ever find the need to get a laptop, it's definitely going to be from Apple I'm serious!"

It was a long discussion and one of the more active threads we've had on the site lately. It was also interesting, with some very good arguments made by both sides. I'm sure we'll come back to this question again in the future.

SIDEBAR
The text in this article comes from what the users themselves wrote on the site. Their comments have been edited to length and spelling but every effort has been made to keep their original intent intact.

[Magnus]

MJ visits the Mother Ship Part 3
by Mohammed

During a recent visit to California I had the great pleasure of spending some time at Apple's headquarters and some other tech companies in Silicon Valley. I wrote about my experience and here is the third and final part in which I wrap up the story.

Two days later I took the same bus and went back, trying to follow the same tracks that Misho took to see if I could get to the Mother Ship my self. And guess what? I made it. I was in front of the Mother Ship taking pictures of everything I see. Misho was at a meeting, but my other friend was not, he called me the same time I was there, and commented on the note that was stuck on his screen. He asked me how did I get inside? I told him to come down and meet me, cause I was in front of the Mother Ship. So he came down and we chatted, and took pictures with him, but then he had to leave cause of some meeting he had to attend. The same time my friend went back to work, Misho called and told me he just finished from the meeting he had, and that he has time to see me. So we met up at the company store, which was located in building one. Misho and I did a lot of shopping at the company store. I spent over $300 in Apple gear alone. I got stuff like mugs, books, t-shirts, sweaters, baby cloths, ID holders, mouse pads, and so much more. Misho, cool as he is, just flashed his ID badge to the sales person and I was given discounts. You should have seen the smile on my face that day. I must have looked like a baby boy in Toys-R-us for the very first time.

After buying all these fabulous toys we went back into his office, where he gave me loads of Apple stickers, which are hard to get, and he introduced me to the rest of his group that worked with him. They were all very nice iMen. Very welcoming people and all of them had sense of humor. Then he took me to see another friend, but unfortunately he was not in his office. He must be somewhere doing great job on something new. But the main reason why he wanted me to meet the guy, is because this iMan had Steve Wozniak's metal business card. Steve Wozniak better known as iWoz is the father of Apple. Without him and Steve Jobs all this would of never been possible. iWoz is the creator of the personal computer, and he is a man that the whole world is indebted to. With out him, Computers would never be the way they are right now. Thank you Steve for you achievements in life, for being the greatest Electrical Engineer on the face of this planet.

Anyway, back to my story. When Misho took me to his friend's office, Misho showed me the iWoz business card and gave me the opportunity to take a picture of it. This card could be found on eBay selling for not less than $600 a piece. I was honored to hold it, see it and even take a picture of that card. I thank you again Misho for all that you have done for me. Misho then drove me back to the train station where I departed for the last time. I don't know when will I ever see this great friend again, but I am hoping soon. It was painful being separated from the Mother Ship after two amazing day in it. But the only thing that kept me going after that was the amazing product I purchased from the Apple Store in San Francisco. I have spent almost $4,000 on Apple products alone during that trip. The coolest product and most expensive one that I spent on was the new 17" Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro. This is the sexiest, most powerful Apple notebook ever made. And I am writing you this article using this one heck of a machine.

This is the story of my abduction but this is not the end. This is only the beginning of a journey, a start of a new life for me. A life of being a dedicated Appleholic for the rest of my life. I hope to bring you more stories of my Apple-travels in the future. This was not the last, I can assure you. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed visiting Apple.

[Magnus]

MySQL on Mac Part 1
by Magnus

In the November 2006 issue of shuffle we published an article about how to install MySQL in Mac OS X. MySQL is a free, open source, database server product that you can install on pretty much any operating system including Mac OS X. MySQL may be free but it's also highly reliable and scalable and it's use by many of the busiest web sites on the internet, and many corporate systems as well.

This article series
In this series of articles we will look at how to do some of the basic things with MySQL, like create tables, enter information, and get information back out of the database. We will do all of this with the command line so get ready to do some typing. In this the first part we will log in to MySQL, and see what you can do with databases. I assume you have MySQL installed on your Mac and that it's working.

Quick introduction to databases
We're going to work with a relational database. If you have no experience with building databases there will be much here that is new. You will at least need to know and understand what tables, fields, records, and keys are. A database is a collection of tables. Each table holds information about something in particular, like a student, a vehicle, or an EMUG member. Every time you store some information in a table, you create a record. So to add an EMUG member to a table, you would create a record. Each record has a number of fields in it that describe that record. For example, for one EMUG member the database would need to know name, email address, phone number, etc. One of those fields is a primary key, the thing that makes one record unique from all other records. Each EMUG member has a unique membership number, as an example. Since we're working with relational databases, each record can be related to another record in a different table. For example, a student in a college is related to all the different courses he or she is taking. In a similar way, each player in a football team is related to the team, and the team is related to at least one coach.

Login
If you haven't already, open a Terminal window (Applications>Utilities>Terminal). First you have to log in to MySQL. You do this with by typing "mysql -u yourusername -p" at the prompt. This means you want to connect to the MySQL server using username "yourusername" and your password. Replace "yourusername" with your actual MySQL username of course (which you would probably have set when installing MySQL). In the example I connect using the username "root". When MySQL asks you for the password, enter your MySQL password. See code example 1.

[Code example 1]iMac:~ emiratesmac$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 8 to server version: 5.0.27-max
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
mysql> [/code]

List databases
To see what databases that are available to you (which depends on the level of access of the account you're using), you use the command "show databases;". Note that you end each command in MySQL with a semi-colon (";"). See code example 2.

[Code example 2]mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql |
| test |
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>[/code]

So on this MySQL server there are three databases, "information_schema", "mysql", and "test".

Use a database
To use a particular database you type the commando "use" followed by the name of the database. See code example 3.

[Code example 3]mysql> use test;
Database changed
mysql> [/code]

Create a database
To create a new database you type the command "create database" followed by the name of the new database. See code example 4.

[Code example 4]mysql> create database emiratesmac;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> [/code]

If a database with that name already existed you would get an error message. See code example 5.

[Code example 5]mysql> create database emiratesmac;
ERROR 1007 (HY000): Can't create database 'emiratesmac'; database exists
mysql> [/code]

To avoid getting that error message, add "if not exists" to the command. See code example 6.

[Code example 6]mysql> create database if not exists emiratesmac;
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.00 sec)
mysql> [/code]

Then MySQL will create the database is it does not already exist. If there is a database with the same name already, no new database will be created.

Wrapping up
This was the first part of our series about MySQL and Mac OS X. We covered some brief database fundamentals, how to log in to MySQL, how to see what databases you have access to, and how to create a new table. In the next issue of shuffle we will look at how to create tables within databases, and how to put fields within tables.

SIDEBAR
The database world is full of theories and concepts that you will have to be able to grasp in order for you to create and work with databases. You will have to know what table, field, relationship, primary key, etc. are. A good place to get started is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database.

SIDEBAR
Apple has an interesting article about MySQL on Mac OS X at http://developer.apple.com/business/...ket/mysql.html. There's also a good article about MySQL on Mac OS X at http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/ma.../13/mysql.html.