Bill Napier Design

Both of the machines I work on are still PowerPCs. The newest being a G5, 2.3 GHZ which I got last year.

However, like everything else, I will need to upgrade. To what? Possibly a MacBook Pro. At least that is where I’m leaning most.

But a nagging question to me has been, “Will an Intel machine run Mac OS Classic?” After all, I really don’t want to give up my Classic apps.

Why? Because I can basically do all the stuff I do now with Adobe Photoshop 6, Quark 4.1, Illustrator 8, Adobe Dimensions 2, Flash 5, Dreamweaver UltraDev 4, Fireworks, etc.

Why haven’t I moved on? I have. Most of the apps I just listed I have upgraded to the latest version.

But my point is, that those old pieces of software took less Ram and still got the job done. That’s all that anyone really needs after all.

So when I get the MacBook Pro I can’t fire up Classic, eh?

Well, think again. Enter SheepShaver SheepShaver runs PowerPC emulation software with Mac OS 7.5.2 - 9.0.4 on Linux, Mac OS X (Universal Binary) and Windows NT.

Haven’t tried it yet but its nice to know its a possibility.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, said that the company had seen an “unprecedented demand” for its Mac line in the fourth quarter, selling 1.61 million Macs; the most ever in a single quarter. Apple will hold about 3% of the worldwide PC market in the fourth quarter of 2006, and that number could rise to 4% by the end of 2007

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While using Bare Bones TextWrangler app, I ran into a real problem yesterday.

By mistake I selected, Special Characters under the Edit menu in TextWrangler, version 2.1.3.

I am not registered but I’m running it a Mac OS 10.4.8, Dual 2.3 GHZ, PowerPC G5. Now, the darn thing wouldn’t go away.

Actually, I never was able to see the Character Palette window. It just flashed, regardless, of application launched. I quit TextWrangler and re-started my machine and it still popped up.

I’ve tried deleting the com.barebones.textwrangler.plist under user/library/preferences. And I’ve tried deleting a similar file under the com.barebones.textwrangler.PreferenceData folder.

I sent 2 emails to Bare Bones support email address with no reply.

So, I went to my external hard drive and replaced my Preferences with a folder from August 1 and shut down for the evening. When I re-booted this morning, no more blinking Character Palette window. Cool.

But now I had a Network problem. My preferences didn’t contain the correct IP Address, Router or DNS Servers. So, then I scrambled. Without having that info handy (or being able to talk to a network administrator right away.) I did some research. I located the IP address of the other Macs in the office and determined my address. Then got connected back to the printers.

Bottom line to this story? Save your Preferences on your back up often. Also, save your Network connection as screen captures and/or prints.

Always be able to restore everything.

Most Mac power users know that their machines ship with Apache and PHP. However, a little further research will tell you that neither are the most current version. (They just can’t be.)

But I found some (potentially) great software from a company called living-e. They present MAMP which is an acronym for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Here’s a blurb from their site …

“living-e presents: MAMP

The abbreviation MAMP stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. With just a few mouse-clicks, you can install Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X.

Often sought-after and now available from living-e AG, MAMP installs a local server environment in a matter of seconds on your Mac OS X computer, be it PowerBook or iMac. Like similar packages from the Windows- and Linux-world, MAMP comes free of charge.

MAMP is installed in the typical Mac fashion: very easily. MAMP will not compromise any existing Apache installation already running with your OS X. You can install Apache, PHP and MySQL without starting a script or having to change any configuration files!

Furthermore, if MAMP is no longer needed, it is sufficient to delete the MAMP folder and everything returns to its original status (i.e. MAMP does not modify any of the “normal” OS X).

Licensing

Similar to a Linux-Distribution, MAMP is a combination of free software and thus it is offered free of charge. MAMP is released under the GNU General Public License and may thereby be distributed freely within the boundaries of this license. Please note: some of the included software is released using a different license. In these cases, the corresponding license applies.

Philosophy

MAMP was created primarily as a PHP development environment for Macintosh computer and should therefore not be used as Live Webserver for the Internet. In this case, we recommend that you use Mac OS X server with the provided Apache or a Linux server.”

I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. But if you do, let me know how it goes.