In our sneak peak at the new Google Desktop for Mac, Scott wondered at Google's use of a proprietary installer. Like many Mac users, I get annoyed at installers, though I understand that sometimes they are necessary. Similarly concerned, John Gruber at Daring Fireball performed a test install and then did a file level comparison of his system before and after. As Gruber notes: "This matters with Google Desktop, because there are a lot of files, and they're installed into some interesting - if not suspicious - locations." This includes an Input Manager and some possibly questionable kernel extensions (which are likely necessary to make the full system-wide search possible). I should be clear: nobody is accusing Google of doing anything underhanded, but if you like to know exactly what's going on with your system, John's article is worth a read before installing Google Desktop.

OK, OK! We clearly have a wide range of opinions on this whole "How can I get my Mac to right-click-create new files, like Windows does?" thing. Some folks like the QuickSilver approach, some think QuickSilver is an anti-Mac-way abomination. Some like NuFile, and some like FinderPop (Update: and some, like Wired's writer, and me too now that I've tried it, like DocumentPalette.)

Some think the whole idea is plain goofy and there's nothing wrong with going into an application to create a file; others think the previous people are missing the point, because sometimes you need an starter file right here right now, and this is faster than opening the parent program and navigating to the folder you want, or using a stationery file or template.

As usual, if you want something stripped to the essentials that works really gracefully and cleanly, call John Gruber. In response to yesterday's NuFile post, John knocked off a quick AppleScript which, in combination with the Big Cat Scripts plugin and the text editor of your choice, creates a nice little text file wherever you right-click.

We're through talking about this now; does that work for everyone? Good. Enjoy your Wednesday!

I'm a Transmit fan myself, but we seem to have a house policy of noting updates of the old-school (if you will) Mac FTP client Interarchy. Well it has been bumped to version 8.5, and has a new owner: Nolobe. In addition, TUAW favorite John Gruber has an interview up with Interarchy's original author Peter N Lewis and the new one Matthew Drayton. Perhaps the most interesting revelation is that the app is still mostly written in that bane of my middle school years: Pascal!

Version 8.5 has some interesting new features like integration with the Terminal, AppleScript support, and a new Dock Menu. Check it out at Nolobe.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Like many on the Mac web, we at TUAW are fans of John Gruber's Daring Fireball. Now, thanks to Macworld Magazine, we can all hear Gruber at a session he ran at Macworld, together with his guest Cabel Sasser of Panic. As nearly always with Gruber, it's an interesting session with on the fly commentary about the iPhone (which is perforce a little underinformed), discussion about Panic and independent Mac development: definitely worth a listen (caution: the language is a little rough some times).

[Edit: Fixed Sasser's name]

John Gruber has penned an interesting observation of how Microsoft might very well have missed the mark from the get-go when they made the strange decision to take on the iPod and iTunes. Since the player's initial wiz-bang sales period is essentially over (as in: it more or less set a decent sales barometer, at least for now), John wrangles some interesting statistics from Amazon's charts on exactly where the Zune stands in comparison to Apple's players (including year-old models), as well as its ranking in the overall electronics category. To spoil the surprise: the Zune isn't doing so well. We've looked at Amazon's charts before, but as of this writing, a record player is beating out the best selling Zune on the electronics list, while iPods - specifically the small, flash-based nano and shuffle - dominate most of the top 10 spots.

John then uses this data and good ol' fashioned people watching to conclude that Microsoft shouldn't have taken what could be their only swing at the plate in producing a hard drive-based iPod; they should have cranked out a flash memory model to go head-on with the nano - inarguably the home run slugger in Apple's lineup. While I tend to agree with John, I also see a problem with going down this road: Microsoft would likely have had even less room to maneuver, and even fewer things to market ('Beam your tunes') and invent lame, dead-end lingo for - they actually refer to sharing your music wirelessly as 'squirting'. Who wants to bet how excited Steve Ballmer's kids are to 'squirt' at school?

Sure, when you look at what you're up against in the DAP market, Apple's iPod nano and SanDisk's respectable 2GB Sansa player (expandable via an SD slot, and at #11 on Amazon as of this writing) are the top dogs to beat - but what could they have offered? I highly doubt they could have fit their DRM-crippled and arguably worthless (though admittedly buzz-worthy) Wi-Fi sharing feature into a nano-sized player, even if they made it slightly larger and uglier like the Zune is to its 30GB iPod rival. A 'Zune nano' with nothing unique to offer would dry up on its own in a market already dominated by Apple, SanDisk and Creative, and Microsoft's exclusive, 3rd party bitch-slap of a music store would have even less of a leg to stand on.

In summary: I think John's right - Microsoft made a bad move in copying the 30GB hard drive-based iPod, but it was the only move they had. In this light, it kinda makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place.

It isn't newsworthy when a Windows users, formerly biased against Macs in the enterprise, changes his mind. Unless, of course, that Windows users happens to be John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School and CareGroup. This man isn't your typical user.

As part of an article for CIO Halamka tried out 3 different machines for a month each to evaluate whether they would be viable replacements for his Windows machine. The first was a MacBook (couldn't they have sprung for a MacBook Pro?), the second a ThinkPad running RedHat, and the third a Dell subnotebook running Windows XP. The twist being that after Halamka shares his thoughts with CIO magazine an expert in each machine type comments on his experiences. The Mac expert is the always dashing Jason Snell from Macworld.

The conclusion? The Dell subnotebook running OS X would be Halamka's ideal machine (he likes the fact that the Dell is smaller and puts out less heat), sadly that doesn't exist. Read the whole article for all the gory details.

[via Daring Fireball]

Since many of us at TUAW are celebrating Thanksgiving in America, I though this might be a good time to join many others in posting a few things I'm thankful for in the Mac web. Naturally, I'm thankful for the wonderful family I'm getting to spend time with, as well as an incredible wife and having a roof over my head. But in the context of TUAW, I figured I would spotlight some of the more Apple-related things for which I'm thankful. You know, the people, apps and other goodness that make my Mac experience that much more appreciable:

• The blogging team here at TUAW - No I'm not just sucking up; we have a great crew of people here that has recently expanded with the return of Laurie A. Duncan, and our newest blogger Erica Sadun. We're rocking some great content that makes me even more proud to be a TUAW blogger.
• MagSafe power adapters - kinda silly I know, but living in a house with a wife as busy as I am and a hyper-active Blue Heeler dog, this innovation has already saved my MacBook on a good number of occasions. I thank Apple's engineers for this surprise innovation on the new Intel portables.
• Daring Fireball - Yes, we pimp John Gruber's stellar musings on all things Apple, software and design quite a bit here on TUAW, but that's only because we all think he does some pretty nifty work, and his writing is a personal inspiration to me. I can't wait for Spring when I'm done with this internship and down to my final semester, with not much more than a senior thesis on my hands, which means more time to dedicate towards creating better posts and podcasts.
• Xtorrent - Aside from the mixed sentiments towards Mr. Watanabe in my last post about this rockin' BitTorrent client, I'm really digging it, and this is the first holiday trip away from home that I elected to leave the iMac running (on a battery backup, finally) with a long list of goodies to torrent for when I return.
• Keyword Manager for iPhoto - Sure, I found it just recently, but this app has quickly become a must-have for my iPhoto library. After recently acquiring a killer Canon Digital Rebel XT SLR camera, I'm getting my photography eye back and this app is proving vital for bringing some organization to my now-rapidly expanding library of 3700+ images.
• Backlit keyboards - I gave up my 1st gen MacBook Pro over the summer for a MacBook + iMac setup so I can leave the desktop machine running to render out big video and motion graphics projects. However, since my wife wants a notebook of her own soon, she promised to chip in to purchase a MacBook Pro for me in June of '07 as a graduation present, at which point she'll inherit the MacBook, and I will be reunited with one of the guiltiest of notebook luxuries that I miss so dearly: a backlit keyboard. Nevermind the recent bump to Core 2 Duo or the (finally!) re-introduction of FW800 and a DL DVD burner - I can't wait to fire up that sexy backlit keyboard.
• The Intel patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 - I spend way too much time online in this game, and I'm so thankful an Intel patch was released; so much so that it would have been at least a momentary deal-breaker if I couldn't find one when I was considering my original upgrade to Intel machines.

I could obviously go on for pages, but I gotta wrap this up sooner or later. These are just a few of the unique things I'm thankful for (besides the obvious: "Macs") during this time of thanking. What Apple-related stuff are you thankful for right now? Whether or not you're celebrating, sound off in the comments.

Brian Ford at Newsvine has served Mr. Gruber with 7 questions, all inspired by various DF posts. Spanning topics such as John's guess on the Macalope's identity, weekly Jackasses and just how useful the rumor business is, it's a short but interesting read on one of the Mac web's most intriguing pundits.

John Gruber wanted an app that would allow one to turn any command line script that accepts input into a service (you remember services, don't you? They live in the Apple menu and don't really do to much). ThisService was born to fill this need.

What the heck would you do with this free app (though donations are encouraged)? Well, you could write a script that, for example, takes the ISBN of a book and based on that returns a bunch of information from Amazon's webservice. This way you could be surfing along on a publisher's website, see a book, highlight the ISBN, hit the shortcut, and know what Amazon is selling it for. This is the first example that came to me, but the uses are pretty limitless.

John Gruber has released a command line tool called BBColors which allows BBEdit and TextWrangler users to save, reload and even share customized color schemes. BBEdit, like many code-friendly text editors, has offered a coloring system for some time, but it still doesn't allow users to save and swap out schemes for, say, different languages or simply different days of the week. John's free utility not only brings color swapping to these app's tool belts, but he also posted a few examples to help get your feet wet. DeviantART, eat your heart out.

Instructions for installation and usage can be found on Mr. Gruber's project page for BBColors.

The second round of voting is under way over at My Dream App. Vote and let your voice be heard! Plus, when you vote you get a free copy of Mori, Hog Bay Software's document organizer.

This round's judges are the cream of the crop of Mac bloggers including John Siracusa of Ars Technica, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. Oh, and somehow yours truly got invited to be a judge. Go check out the apps and vote for your favorite.

My favorite idea so far? Blossom, I've never seen an app like it and I sure hope it gets some votes.

Maynor and Elich's rewards just doubled, though the odds remain the same: Jim Thompson, a blogger who has been doing a knock-out job of dissecting this MacBook Wi-Fi hack fiasco, has offered a second MacBook on top of John Gruber's challenge to the dynamic duo. After all, what are two guys going to do with one MacBook?

In an update post, Mr. Gruber announced the doubled prize for the challenge (which hasn't been accepted yet, by the way), and apparently had to publicly explain why he believes the challenge is actually fair. Check out the post for some key snippets that lay the breadcrumbs for what could likely be one of the most significant security-related showdowns of Mac OS X's career - if the visiting team ever actually makes it to the field, that is.

John Gruber is at it again, and this time he's taken the MacBook Wi-Fi hack drama to the cleaners with perhaps the most in-depth play-by-play analysis I've seen to date (would you expect anything less?). Mr. Fireball starts at the top, even including an explanation of the various components involved (card, driver and 'third party') to make sure everyone can follow along. He covers the sensationalizing "Hijacking a MacBook in 60 Seconds or Less" article blog post from Brian Krebs of the Washington Post that started all this, mixes in some he-said she-said from the likes of SecureWorks (the company who sponsored this supposed hack at the Black Hat hacker conference) and Apple's PR response, and even finds time to toss in some thoughts on George Ou, a ZDNet blogger who is valiantly determined to go down with the ship. It's yet another fantastic read from Daring Fireball, a site to which I'm glad to say I've purchased a membership. Check it out.

Remember all that hubbub about Mac geeks switching to Ubuntu? Well, Tim Bray (one of those geeks) is back on the Mac and he thinks that it beats Ubuntu, though just barely. He lists a number of interesting reasons for why one would choose OS X or some other Linux distro, all of which seem very reasonable. He has decided to keep his data in non-proprietary formats, which means that any OS can open up his stuff which, in turn, means that he can choose whatever OS he wants. We could all learn a little something from Tim's attitude towards computers.

[via Daring Fireball]

John Gruber, a man who knows his cheesesteaks as well as his Macs, is on the scene at WWDC and is armed with his camera. He took the picture above and posted it to Flickr. Notice it says, 'Please ensure that your communications with others outside WWDC 2006, including your blogs, do not contain any Apple Confidential Information.'

We have made it people, Apple fears blogs. Or something.