$ cat /dev/brain > /dev/blog

13949712720901ForOSX

13949712720901ForOSX

Oh mighty Steve! Give us Java 6 for OSX. Now. ASAP.

Using Your Logitech Multimedia Keyboard with OS X Leopard

Logitech, an industry leader in the computer peripherals market, provides an application called Logitech Control Center (LCC) to support their keyboards and mice under Mac OS X.

LCC internally used Unsanity’s Application Enhancer (APE) which unfortunately is not yet supported within OS X version 10.5 (Leopard). APE was one of the reasons why users weren’t able to straight-forwardly upgrade their Tiger installations to Leopard, ending up with some kind of blue screen once the installation was finished and they wanted to boot into their shiny new OS. Instructions for removing APE (highly recommended before upgrading to Leopard) can be found on the Apple support website.

So far, the special keys (“iTouch”, “Search”, “Shopping” etc.) on the Logitech keyboards can’t be used with Leopard. But at least most of the Media Control buttons (skip forward/backward, play/pause and the volume control) actually work and those are almost the only special keys I need on that keyboard.

What bothered me was the fact that the key binding for the Windows/Option and the Alt/Apple/Command keys were mixed up: on my MacBook Pro, the order of the keys (from left to right) is Control, Option, Command. The Logitech keyboard uses the same labels on the keys but with the factory settings of OS X, the Windows key acts as Apple’s Command key and the Alt key is used as the Option key. This is quite strange because you’re always hitting the wrong keys when you’re often switching between “docked” mode (using an external keyboard when you’re working on your desk) and “road warrior” mode when you’re using the MBP’s internal keyboard.

Luckily, with Leopard you’re able to change the key bindings within the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane of OS X’s System Preferences individually for each keyboard that is connected to your Mac (see the screenshot below). The Logitech keyboard shows up as “USB Receiver” in the keyboards list. After selecting this from the list, just change the binding of the Option and Command keys to each other’s function and voilà — it’s working.

Logitech keyboard picture by bargainmoose, CC-licensed.

Apple Mail 3: Use GMail’s Trash Folder

So, you just upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard and all its shiny new features including Mail (version 3). And you finally managed to integrate your GMail account using IMAP (woot!) into Mail. But what bothers you is the fact that when you delete mails, they still show up in the All Mails folder on the GMail web interface because they’re actually only marked as read and archived, not deleted.

Once you set up your GMail IMAP account correctly, make sure to check the “Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox” and the “Store deleted messages on the server” checkboxes. If you want to, you may also set an expiration date for deleted mails but as GMail deletes messages in the Trash folder after 30 days, I left this option unchanged. After you close this window, navigate to your GMail mailbox in the left window pane of Mail.app.

You’ll find all your regular IMAP folders (All Mail, Sent, etc.) there as well as a list of the tags (a.k.a. labels) you’re currently using. You wonder why Trash doesn’t show up in my list? Well, I already set it up correctly, so the folder disappears from this list and appears aside of all other Trash folders.

You just have to perform a control-click (yes, you may also use your right mouse button) on the Trash folder and select “Use this folder for deleted messages” from the pop-up window.¹ That’s it! From now on, your deleted messages are moved to GMail’s Trash folder and automagically cleaned up by GMail.

1. As JBonTourand Rodrigo mentioned in their comments, the option is found in the regular menu in current versions of Mail.app. [↩]

Mac OS X Leopard: First Impressions

Finally I also got my copy of the newest, freshest, shiniest OS X version ever… I don’t know how Apple does it, but I’m one of the guys who is always excited about new Apple products.

Although I read about best practices for installing Leopard on several web sites (most of them recommended either the archive and install or the clean install option), I wanted to give the update option at least a try — some of my friends confirmed that it seemed to work pretty well.

In the beginning, the installation ran very smoothly. I was upgrading from OS X 10.4.10 with all the latest updates installed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to login after the reboot. My MacBook Pro hung at the point where the Leopard introduction intro should appear.

So I decided to wipe out the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro, performed a clean installation of Leopard and transferred my old applications and files using the Migration Assistant during the second phase of the installation from a backup I had created with SuperDuper! before. (note: it took almost 3 hours to copy all that stuff from my external Firewire drive — I really have to clean up…). But that gave me at least some time to further clean up the apartment I just moved into.

MacBook Pro power adaptor becoming smaller

For several days, I was thinking about buying a second power adaptor and a second battery for my MacBook Pro because I’m a) on the way quite often and b) sick of crawling under my desk every morning to unplug the MBP power adaptor, putting it in my backpack, driving to the office and plugging it in again (same thing in the evenings, only in the other direction).

Luckily, this might be the first time I waited long enough for an Apple product (I remember when I bought the PowerBook, the MacBook Pro and the [multiple] iPods it only took Apple a few weeks to come up with a major improved model for the same price). The quite huge power brick for the MacBook Pro has been updated (read: shrunk) and seems to be in a much more conveniant size for travelling businessmen.