I just got myself a Magic Mouse since my not-so-old Logitech VX Nano started getting super flaky on me. It’s nice. I’ll probably keep it. But I’ve realized that I’m usually just as effective using the trackpad on my MBP. Plus the gestures work better (or I should say that they are easier to use) on my trackpad.

Anyway.

The point of this post is to say that you need to uninstall USB Overdrive for the new Wireless Mouse Software Update to take its place in the System Preferences. It took me a few reboots to figure that out. Now all is right with the world.

So long Midnight Apps. And go to hell.

I tried to load my beta of Cha-Ching 2 but was told the beta had expired and I needed to check the site for updates. I go to the site and get the latest version. Install it. Still no good. Apparently I was already running the latest beta. Luckilly they have a blog post about the problem! But, the blog post just tells me we are screwed for a bit, until they get their shit together. I feel their pain in their iPhone app being rejected by Apple (which is a whole different issue that has nothing to do with Midnight Apps), but to claim they can’t just roll out a new version of beta 99 with a different expiration date because of hard drive failures and faulty backups?! That doesn’t fly these days. Do they not use a version control system? Do they not have offsite backups? Do they not use something like Dropbox to backup their data? Sorry, guys. But if you can’t be trusted to make backups of data, you can’t be trusted to make financial software! Period. End of story.

So now I need to get my data out of Cha-Ching, somehow, and find a new home for it. Any suggestions?

[If you roll back the system date to the 29th, you can open Cha-Ching 2 and export all of your accounts to CSV files. Then set your date back and you should be good to go. It looked like setting the date back caused Dropbox to stop syncing, so I'd quit Dropbox before doing that just to be safe. And to be really safe, I'd close every app possible before rolling the clock back. Who really knows what kind of havoc that can create. However I do appear to be in the clear now.]

It started with me trying to use an PostScript Type 1 version of Helevetica Neue in place of the OS X version of Helvetica Neue. I won’t get into why I was doing this, but it’s a common problem that a lot of people have dealt with for years. Part of that process involves removing the Mac Helvetica from a couple of System folders, one of which is buried very deeply in folder after folder after folder.

The good news is that I was able to use the version of Helvetica Neue I wanted without too much trouble.

Then things got weird.

It seemed like Flash didn’t see Helvetica Neue at all anymore. Not good. Then I started to realize that NO Type 1 fonts were showing up in Flash. So after some investigating I found that Snow Leopard doesn’t support Type 1 fonts. At least according to many people on the Interwebs. But that really didn’t make sense because Font Book showed the fonts just fine. And programs like Text Edit and Pages worked fine* with the Type 1 fonts.

Then I learned that there was some new weird issues that cropped up with CS4 apps and Snow Leopard. Fonts weren’t working right (duh) and a lot of people gave up and went back to Leopard.

Seeing as how I could no longer work on my biggest current Flash project because a critical font, TheSans, wasn’t showing up in Flash, I thought I was going to have to revert to a backup of Snow Leopard or maybe even go back to Leopard.

And that’s about the time I noticed that even my True Type pixel fonts from Fonts For Flash weren’t showing up in Flash. WTF?! My font list was a lot shorter than it used to be. I had no idea what fonts were missing, but I was getting a little scared. And a lot pissed at myself because the thing that started this string of events, trying to get my big family of Type 1 Helvetica Neue to work, was just me messing around. I didn’t really need the full version of Helvetica Neue. I had decided I was going to use Futura for my new website anyway.

But before I gave up, I decided to try FontExplorer X Pro to see if that would fix things. The good people of the Internet said Font Book sucked and I should try a real font management app. Okay. Sure. Err… no good. Seems like it’s not ready for 10.6 because every time I tried to activate some fonts, it just hung and hung and displayed a colorful spinning beach ball.

Time to fix things. Let’s start by putting the Mac version of Helvetica Neue back in its deeply hidden folder and the System/Library/Fonts/ folder. Reboot. Things work fine. What? Yes, all of my fonts are back in Flash. Everything works great. In fact, even the 3rd party Helvetica Neue works in Flash.

Still, there are some mysteries left unsolved:

• Some faces, like 25 Ultra Light, don’t show up in Font Book, even though they are in the /Library/Fonts/ folder. And those fonts show up fine in Illustrator and Photoshop.
• Those same faces that don’t show up in Font Book also don’t show up in Flash. And although I see the TrueType version of Helvetica Neue in Flash, it won’t let me actually select it.
• The list of Helvetica Neue faces in Pages is identical to that in Font Book, as I would expect. So I can use either True Type or Type 1, but some of the faces, like 25 Ultra Light don’t show up.

I don’t understand it all. All I know is that restoring the system version of Helvetica Neue to its correct places in the System folders seemed to fix the major issues I had caused by removing it. And, really, that’s pretty much the only thing I wanted to share in this blog post.

∗ Some people say that the kerning or spacing is different in Snow Leopard. That might be the case. I didn’t do side by side testing; I was just checking to make sure that the fonts showed up I could use them.

Today I tried to download an update to an iPhone app and was greeted by this:

Okay, so the AIM username I’ve been using to buy stuff from iTunes isn’t allowed anymore. Lame, but I’ve also wanted to ditch that account and switch to my Apple ID. Looks like this is my chance. So, I click on the Update Account button and get this:

I click the Continue button and get this awesome response:

I get that over and over again throughout the day. When I finally got the screen I was really looking for, I was prompted to pick an Apple ID (which is just your full email address) and password. I go ahead and punch in my current Apple ID and password, hit Continue, and get shut out. It won’t let me use my current Apple ID. What?! I have to pick a new one? So I’ll have one Apple ID for the Apple Store and the Apple forums and another simply for iTunes? This is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.

Sure, I can login to iTunes with my current Apple ID and the stuff I bought with my old AIM ID will still play because my computer is authorized to do so. But what happens when I get a new computer and try to authorize it? It no longer takes my AIM ID. I’m screwed. What’s going to happen when I try to update the iPhone Apps I bought with the AIM ID? Well, it doesn’t exactly work. This is what happens:

• iTunes tells me I need to update some iPhone Apps that I bought with my AIM ID. At least I still have the 1 in the circle next to my Applications in my iTunes LIBRARY. And that Applications page says “1 Update Available” on the bottom of the screen.
• I click that “1 Update Available” button
• …and since I’m currently signed in with my existing Apple ID, I get this message:

By the way, I can’t sign back into iTunes with my AIM ID. I’m currently screwed. I can’t update my apps. Thanks Apple.

The solution is simple: Let me update my iTunes account by using my existing Apple ID. It is crazy that I have to pick another Apple ID just for iTunes. The fact that an Apple ID is an email address makes this all the more ridiculous. Make it happen!

UPDATE – Sunday, August 2, 2009

Looks like I’m forced to get another Apple ID just for iTunes, but I’ve been getting this message when I’ve tried over the past couple of days. This is beyond stupid, Apple.

I almost made a post today about some issues I was having with my iMac. I had just noticed that the visual effects/graphics on my last gen top of the line iMac was performing under my expectations. Now, this isn’t a new machine. I’ve had it since October. But recently I noticed that certain things weren’t looking as smooth as I expected or as smooth as they used to look. Two examples:

• Two specific Quicksilver panel animations were running a bit roughly. When you actually tell QS to do something, such as open an app, open a file, open a web page, email someone, etc., the panel zooms towards you as it fades out. It’s a quick transition, but I noticed that it was clearly “dropping frames” and didn’t look as smooth as I remembered it. Odd. The second QS quirk was when you cancel out of the QS panel by hitting the ESC key. When you do that, the panel squashes down vertically and stretches out horizontally as it fades out. That, too, was being rendered roughly. And as soon as the panel had drawn out, I saw, for a split second, a phantom remnant of the panel, in the size and position that it was right before you cancelled out of it. I wasn’t able to capture it with Snapz Pro or Screenflow, but it was there. Trust me!

• In Tweetie for Mac, when you are looking at a particular user’s list of tweets, you can click on their photo in the upper left of the window to see a larger version of their picture. It shows this with a really nice animation and as you close the image, it also animates away nicely, too. This animation was playing back a little jagged, just like the Quicksilver animations. Huh… And, oddly, as you closed the user’s picture, the phantom image thing happened just like it does in Quicksilver. That is, as soon as the genie effect that draws out the image completes, you see, just for a split second, the full sized image where it was just before you told it to go away. Okay, very weird, and this is clearly not a software issue. Something else is going on.

I switched over to my older white MacBook to test things out there. This MacBook is a 2ghz machine (vs. the 3ghz iMac) and has much, MUCH weaker graphics (GMA X3100 integrated graphics in the MacBook vs. NVIDIA 8800 GS in the iMac). But everything looked great on the older, slower MacBook. WTF?!

I figured there was a problem with the 10.5.7 update I had just applied to the iMac, since the MacBook was still at 10.5.6. But, after updating the MacBook to 10.5.7, the problems remained. Once again, WTF?!

I downloaded and ran Xbench on both machines to make sure the graphics in the iMac were running properly. Sure enough, across the board the iMac wiped the floor with the MacBook, usually scoring close to twice as high as the MacBook, as I would expect. For the record, the OpenGL result for the iMac was way, way, WAY ahead of the MacBook. Graphics seemed to be fine.

That’s when I tried out the Quicksilver visual effects again. And, everything was fine. It ran smoothly. No issues at all. What?! I tried the effects in Tweetie. Same deal. All good now. Um… I don’t get it. Was the graphics card in the iMac just taking a nap? Did it need that Xbench workout to kick it in the ass to get it moving? Seriously, I have no idea what just happened. But my iMac is running great again. I’m about to reboot the iMac to see if it’s sluggish again after shutting down. Hopefully that’s not the case…

-

After reboot, I’m happy(?) to report that everything is back to normal. The issue seems to be resolved. The mystery is very much not resolved, though. But, if you are having problems like this, you might want to grab a copy of Xbench and run it. It might be the kick in the pants your system needs.

Found this via Daring Fireball: Mac ownership has more than tripled, from 7.2 percent in winter 2006 to 23.4 percent in winter 2009..

This doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, it seems kind of low, although I do live in that odd part of the U.S. known as San Francisco (hey, does that maybe mean Shark’s Vagina?). When I’m at a coffee shop and see a bunch of people on laptops, the majority of computers I see are Macs. And of all the people I’ve met over the past couple of years, an overwhelming percentage of them are using Macs. As in, 80-90% of them. It’s gotten to the point that when I meet someone in the city, it seems backwards if they are running Windows.

The point being, Steve Ballmer will eventually get his head out of his ass and realize that Microsoft will continue to die out if it stays the course. And hopefully that’ll mean better things from Microsoft which will mean better things from Apple and everyone else.