Apple Posts

I know top X lists are almost passe at this point, but that’s not going to stop me from giving a shout-out to some of the applications that daily make my life easier: MarcoPolo MarcoPolo is a neat little application that is capable of executing actions based on a set of rules. That is, if something on the system changes (such as an IP address, power status, USB or even the light level), it can execute a series of commands (such as mounting network drives, setting the screensaver, changing the default printer, etc). It can even run arbitrary shell scripts! Why this is useful to me: At dealnews, we (the dev team) all use MacBook Pros for our development work and constantly alternate between home and office. Whenever I arrive at work in the morning, the minute I plug my MacBook into the network, MarcoPolo senses that the IP address has changed from my home and changes the default printer, mounts some network shares, adjusts the screensaver settings, and runs a few other custom shell scripts I have to set up my environment. All without having to do a single thing. When I get home, it executes still more commands to change to a remote development environment. Completely effortless. XMeeting XMeeting is a SIP softphone (and videoconferencing application, but I’ve never used the video features) that allows you to connect to a SIP server and place calls using your laptop. Why this is useful to me: At dealnews, we run Asterisk as our phone system (see my earlier posts on Asterisk). One of the many nice features of Asterisk is its standards compatibility - that is, you can use anything that can talk SIP with Asterisk. Since CounterPath has apparently decided that Leopard compatibility for their free softphone (X-Lite) is not a priority, XMeeting comes to the rescue. As a bonus, it actually acts like a Mac application and doesn’t do the stupid things that X-Lite did (like messing with the system volume). Quicksilver Quicksilver is the single application I cannot live without. On a Mac without it I am almost lost. More than just a launcher, it is a tool to help you work more efficiently. You can press Ctrl+Space and type what you want and Quicksilver will launch what you need. That’s a horrible description for how cool this app is. **Why this is useful to me: **Without Quicksilver, I am lost. It makes it literally so fast to move around your Mac without taking you hands off the keyboard. A quick hit of Ctrl+Space gives you the ability to launch programs, open files, navigate contacts and send emails, and make quick notes among many othe things that this program can do. It is essential to my everyday life as a Mac user. DejaMenu DejaMenu is a neat little program that will display the current application’s main menu as a popup menu where the mouse is whenever a key combination is pressed. **Why this is useful to me: **I use my MacBook Pro with a second monitor when I’m at the office. One of the things that has infuriated me for awhile as a Mac user with multiple monitors is the inability to have the top menu bar either on each monitor respresenting the application on that monitor, or the ability to have it move with whatever monitor the mouse is on. It’s irritating to have to go back to the main monitor when the application is running on a different one. DejaMenu allows you to pop the application menu wherever your mouse is, which makes things a little easier. Additionally, I mapped the key combination to a button on my Logitech MX-1000 to make things even easier.

There’s been a good bit of debate about Leopard’s new translucent menu bar. For me, it doesn’t cause many issues. However, some of my coworkers despise it and, to be fair, I can see the arguments that many of the people who dislike it have: it doesn’t add anything to the OS and actually makes it more difficult to read the text. Well, here’s a litle tweak that will set the menu bar back to a white background. In the terminal, you can use the following command to change the default appearance of the bar: sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.appledowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1 Restart your Mac, and voila! White menu bar! Changed your mind? Set it back: sudo defaults delete /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' Restart your Mac and your menu bar is back to being translucent.

So it’s been awhile since I’ve written. In that time, my girlfriend has moved in here with me in Huntsville and, as always, dealnews has kept me very busy. However, it has not prevented me from occasionally trying my hand at something new. A week or so ago I decided that I was going to learn Python. However, as part of my nature, I simply can’t “learn” a language without having a purpose. For instance, I have never been able to simply read a book on programming - I needed a reason. So I’ve been giving myself reasons to do little tasks here and there in Python. One of them came to me just today. I have recently moved all of my development at dealnews from the PC to a Macbook. I’ve never been an OS-bigot - always use the right tool for the job, and the Mac - which in many ways is just Unix with pretty make-up - is the perfect platform. However, I still use many of the peripherals I purchased for my PC, including my Microsoft Natural Egronomic Keyboard that I adore. At home, I still use a PC (until I can afford a new Mac Pro), albeit with the same keyboard. One of the things I really love about the keyboard is that it has various buttons that are just … buttons. They can be mapped to do anything you want them to. There are five multi-function buttons at the top that can be mapped to run programs. So I’m sitting here thinking, “self” (because that is what I call myself), “why not write a little program to run on the click of that button and go to the next or previous track in iTunes, so that changing the music doesn’t involve any more effort out of my busy programming day than hitting an additional keystroke”. But, it must work both at home and at work, meaning that it must run in Windows and Mac. Enter Python I knew from previous experimenting in .NET that iTunes exposes a COM object on Windows. With that in mind, I quickly found this page that described almost exactly what I wanted to do in Windows. So that left the Macintosh. After an hour or so of digging on Apple’s website, I found this page that described how to access the COM on the Mac - and wouldn’t you know, the functions are slightly different. After that, it was pretty easy: import sys from optparse import OptionParser platform = sys.platform if platform == "win32": import win32com.client iTunes = win32com.client.gencache.EnsureDispatch("iTunes.Application") if platform == "darwin": from Foundation import * from ScriptingBridge import * iTunes = SBApplication.applicationWithBundleIdentifier_("com.apple.iTunes") def previousTrack(): if platform == "win32": iTunes.PreviousTrack() if platform == "darwin": iTunes.previousTrack() def nextTrack(): if platform == "win32": iTunes.NextTrack() if platform == "darwin": iTunes.nextTrack() def main(): parser = OptionParser() parser.add_option("-n", "--next-track", action="store_true", dest="next") parser.add_option("-p", "--prev-track", action="store_true", dest="prev") (options, args) = parser.parse_args() if options.next == True: nextTrack() if options.prev == True: previousTrack() if __name__ == "__main__": main() So yeah. It’s kind of code monkeyed together, but not bad for someone who’s only been doing Python for a week in the evenings. Passing either a -n or -p to the script causes it to command iTunes to go forward or back. Of note, to work on Windows, it does need the COM components from the Python for Windows extensions. I’m gonna expand this script some more in the future, but for now it does what I need.