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Many of my suspect apps do indeed work in Leopard:

• Parallels 3.0 build 5160
• SnapzPro 2.1.1
• Little Snitch 3.0 b10
• Timbuktu 8.6- ancient, I know but I haven’t yet given it up for LogMeIn
• SoonR 1.1.8
• iStat menus 1.1- slight visual defects
• Locator 0.7.2- great front end to the unix locate service
• FileMaker 6.0v4- yes, I still have one database in the old, 2002-released, crusty, carbon application (please don’t tell anyone)

Anyone dare try installing Fink?

Update: It seems to work fine after a recompile with XCode 3.0 installed.

The following apps are currently incompatible with Leopard 10.5:

Dupin: Updated: 1.1.1 works great! crashes on launch

MacFUSE: generates errors in the console every 10 secs.  I remedied by removing the entry for com.google.filesystems.fusefs from the /Library/LaunchAgents/ folder.  Update: yes, this was the 10.5 version.

MyStrands: Updated 0.83 works great and looks good!  crashes on launch

fseventer: recognizes Leopard and disables itself

LMILaunchAgent is the hook for starting the LogMeIn internet screen sharing service.

Initial install notes:

- Quite a few scary moments upon each bootup

- Guess I should have installed fresh batteries

- The startup movie did not play on any of the three macs I’ve installed Leopard on.  if this happens to you, you can view manually by launching these two files:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Setup Assistant.app/Contents/Resources/TransitionSection.bundle/Contents/Resources/intro.mov

/System/Library/CoreServices/Setup Assistant.app/Contents/Resources/TransitionSection.bundle/Contents/Resources/intro-sound.mp3

- Something’s up with iDisk sync:

• Machine 1 presented me with a “Previous iDisk.dmg” on my desktop and rebuilt an entirely new local copy. 
• Machine 2 showed no iDisk and eventually brought it back about an hour after install. 
• Machine 3 seemed to just bring the iDisk over perfectly.

- .Mac sync is also acting screwy.  I keep seeing the conflict resolver no matter how I many times I say merge or replace.

- Overall compatibility seems excellent.

- The translucent menu bar isn’t as bad as I thought, but after changing it the included “Grass Blades” desktop picture, I immediately knew why Apple chose a dark color for the default.

- I like the upgrade overall, but everything seems a bit slower.  This is contrary to every review I’ve read.

I got my copy of Leopard (MacOSX 10.5) today and will be posting tidbits as I have time.  The first thing I wanted to know has been answered.

Time Machine does not require a dedicated disk for backup use.  You can continue to use free space for normal data storage.  Not only that but, it can use more than one drive (as long as it is formatted HFS+).

I’m getting pretty stoked about the release of Leopard next Friday.  The 300+ feature list posted on Apple’s site is much more detailed and dreamy than ever before…. 10.4, 10.3, 10.2 10.1, 10.

I came across this interesting interview with Will Friedwald, “Owner Of The Worlds Largest iTunes Collection” this morning.

I’d also love to see a “Pro” version of iTunes geared toward massive collections. But, I do think that iTunes will finally get there on its own.

Just look at the growth of the capacity of iPods: a 160GB model holds 97% more data than the original. iTunes will have be enhanced to hold a similar growth in music libraries.  iPhoto has been similarly enhanced in recent versions with exponential storage capacity updates.

For the record:

Will’s Library:
849 GB | 172,150 tracks | 809.2 days
2,935 artists | 11,561 albums
iTunes library database file - 282 MB
iTunes library XML file - 259 MB

Mine:
260.37 GB | 59,915 tracks | 147.6 days
9,778 artists | 7,083 albums
iTunes library database file - 104.9 MB
iTunes library XML file - 91.5 MB

Apparently this is the complete list of the songs to be given away by Starbucks in conjunction with their Apple / iPhone deal.  I sure hope that I don’t re-read this in November and compare my final collection… 

10/02 Bob Dylan - Jokerman
10/03 TK Tunstall - One Day
10/04 Joni Mitchell - Night of the Iguana
10/05 Keith Urban - I Told You So
10/06 Emily King - Moon
10/07 Mavis Staples, We Shall Not Be Moved
10/08 Ceu, Roda (Bomba Dub Orchestra Grateful Dub Radio Mix)
10/09 Band of Horses, No One’s Gonna Love You
10/10 Gloria Estefan, 90 Millas
10/11 Fine Frenzy, You Picked Me
10/12 John Legend, Show Me
10/13 John Fogerty, Gunslinger
10/14 Patti Scialfa, Looking for Elvis
10/15 Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage
10/16 Angie Stone, Happy Being Me
10/17 Annie Lennox, Dark Road
10/18 Brandi Carlile, Turpentine
10/19 Alice Smith, New Religion
10/20 Rogue Wave, Lake Michigan
10/21 Alice Russell, Hurry On Now (Featuring TM Juke)
10/22 Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, Grace is Gone
10/23 Sonya Kitchell, I’m In Love With You
10/24 bitter:sweet, Heaven (Nicola Conte Remix)
10/25 Greyboy w/ Sharon Jones, Got To Be A Love
10/26 Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Sacala Bailar
10/27 Rissi Palmer, Country Girl
10/28 Raul Midon, Pick Somebody Up
10/29 Joss Stone, Tell Me ‘Bout It (Live from the Bowery Ballroom)
10/30 Federico Aubele, Maria Jose
10/31 Sara Bareilles, Love Song
11/01 Hilary McRae, Consider Me Gone
11/02 John Mayer, Dreaming With A Broken Heart
11/03 Galactic, I Got It (What You Need)
11/04 Bebel Gilberto, Um Segundo
11/05 Suzanne Vega, Frank & Ava
11/06 Sia, Day Too Soon
11/07 Paul McCartney, Only Mama Knows

iPhone really needs a search mechanism.  I’ve used mine since launch day and one thing I really do miss from my BlackBerry is simple contact search. 

My iPhone has over 3000 contacts and scrolling by letter takes too long.  A simple solution was to create some new groups in the Mac “Address Book.”  That was great, but why not use “Smart Groups?” 

I setup several Smart Groups and got ready to sync.  That’s when I found out that the iPhone cannot sync Smart Groups.  What a pain!

My solution was to write an AppleScript to copy from the Smart Group “Smart Restaurants” to a “Dumb Group” called “Restaurants” which can be synched to iPhone.

Here’s my script:  (saved to /Library/Scripts/)

—
—“Copy from Smart to Dumb.scpt”
— Description: Dumps Address Book Smart Groups to Dumb Groups
— by: David F. Bills 09.29.07
—

tell application “Address Book”
if not (group “Restaurants” exists) then
  make new group with properties {name:"Restaurants"}—Create our ‘hard’ Group if missing
end if
save addressbook
set smart_Rest to id of every person in group “Smart Restaurants”—This is the name of the Smart Group
set hard_Rest to id of every person in group “Restaurants”—This is the name of the ‘hard’ Group
repeat with sr in smart_Rest
  if hard_Rest does not contain (contents of sr) then add (every person whose id = sr) to group “Restaurants”
end repeat
save addressbook
end tell

Seems to be faster to run this from the shell script than in Script Editor and it makes sense to use osascript since I’m calling via Cron at 3am nightly.

0     3     *    *    *    osascript /Library/Scripts/Copy from Smart to Dumb.scpt

Now, I just need to do my daily sync first thing in the morning and I’m up to date.  Thanks to Craig Smith and Niel for their assistance.

Will Shipley posted a well-argued opinion piece on the state of affairs at Apple, Inc.

“Apple has to always remember that simply making money CANNOT be its point of existence. The point of any company should be to make customers want to give it money, NOT to get money from customers. It’s a subtle distinction that is the difference between good and evil.”

You tell ‘em, Will.