Renegade Mac cloner Psystar is in the news again, with reports that Apple is finally suing their ass - and, what’s more, they want Psystar to recall all the “Open Computers” they sold, thereby reversing any pollution of the pristine Macosphere by their horrid clones. Apple argues that “as a direct and proximate result of Psystar’s infringing conduct, Apple has suffered and will continue to suffer lost sales and profits in an amount… to be proven at trial.” Good luck defending against that, boys.

But as Apple knocks Psystar down, up springs another cloner. An outfit called Open Tech - tagline: “It’s good to be open” - is flogging a range of PCs that can run any operating system under the sun, including, they claim, Mac OS X Leopard. Cunningly, they don’t preinstall Leopard - Psystar did, which no doubt was a red rag to Apple’s bull - but they certainly tell you how to.

Cloning of Apple computers is by no means a new thing. In fact, the Apple ][ was cloned way back in the 1980s. The most popular of these clones was the VTech Laser 128 (gotta love computer names in those days). Personally, though, I like the Agat best - a Russian-built clone with rugged, angular casing to endure those harsh Siberian winters. Just look at that baby!

Since that time, the Mac has frequently been cloned - legally or illegally - both through software emulation and through out-and-out hardware clones. Psystar and Open Tech are just the latest in the cloning saga.

Where’s the money?

Presumably there’s some sort of market for Mac clones, otherwise these cloners wouldn’t keep springing up. But my question is: Who buys them? Speaking as an iMac owner, I wouldn’t touch one of these with a 10-foot pole; one of the main reasons I switched from Linux to Mac was to get decent, reliable, compact, nice-looking hardware that doesn’t sound like a Hoover on heat when it’s switched on. But maybe that’s just me.

Assuming I’m a typical Mac user, that leaves Windows and Linux users (or folks who’ve never used a computer). I can sort of see how a clone would be desirable for these people - they’ve heard that Macs are nice and they’d like to try “switching”, but they don’t want to fork out for posh Apple hardware, no matter how sleek it looks. Of course, they buy one of these clones, it looks ugly, makes as much fan noise as their PC does, OS X crashes all the time, software updates don’t work, and the support is terrible. So they think this Mac thing’s overrated and rush back to Windows or Linux, never to return. What’s more, Apple loses a Mac sale in the process (and it makes most of its money from hardware).

No wonder Apple’s pissed off with these cloners. But considering how easy Macs are to clone these days, I can’t see the cloners giving up any time soon. I’d imagine Apple’s legal team is going to be very busy in the coming years. Is Apple starting to regret its move to Intel, I wonder?

In this post, the last of my 3-part series on cheap (or free) Mac web design apps, I’ll be exploring various affordable ways to upload your site to your web server.

Cyberduck

Most web servers allow you to upload your website via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). To do this, you need an FTP program of some sort running on your Mac. One of the nicest Mac FTP apps, Cyberduck, also happens to be free and open source. It supports FTP and SFTP (Secure FTP), as well as FTP/TLS (another secure way of uploading) and WebDAV, which is another protocol for uploading and managing files on a Web server. It even supports Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service), which is a data storage system for developers to use. Not bad for a free app!

Cyberduck’s interface is simple and elegant, if a little quirky. For example, it doesn’t have the standard two-pane approach of many other FTP apps such as Transmit. Rather than having one pane for your local files and another for files on the server, you just see the files on the server in the Cyberduck window. To upload and download files, you drag them directly from or to a Finder window. It’s OK once you get used to it, and saves on window space within Cyberduck, though sometimes things get tricky if Cyberduck’s buried under lots of windows.

It’s easy to bookmark FTP sites with Cyberduck so you return to the exact folder next time, and the app also features a decent Synchronize feature that you can use to keep a local and remote website in sync. Other niceties include support for Leopard’s Quick Look to preview files, and the ability to rename a file as you’re downloading it.

The latest version of the app has received some criticism on the stability front, though I haven’t had any issues with it myself. Also, the help system leaves a lot to be desired. On the whole though, Cyberduck is a straightforward, easy-to-use FTP app, and the fact that it’s free only adds to its appeal.

Transmit

The venerable Transmit FTP application ($30) - from the folks who also bring you the excellent Coda (covered in my previous post) - has lots of useful features, and in my experience is a rock-solid app. It supports all the protocols Cyberduck does, and also handles Secure WebDAV.

Transmit’s 2-pane view is nice to work with. You can view both local and remote files in List view or Column view, Finder-style. A really useful feature is folder linking: choose Go > Link Folder Navigation, and as you open a remote folder, the corresponding local folder opens as well (and vice-versa). This makes it a snap to navigate around a website’s folders.

Transmit has a nice feature called droplets for easy uploading. Control-click any folder on the server and choose Save Droplet for Folder. This creates an icon representing that current connection and folder. Just drag any file to the icon, and it automatically gets uploaded to the folder on the server. This is great if you regularly upload files to a particular folder.

I also love Transmit’s Preview drawer that lets you view any local or remote file - text files, image files, and so on - right in the Transmit window. Very useful when you want to quickly check the version of an image on a website.

Like Cyberduck, Transmit has a comprehensive Synchronize feature, which also features a useful simulation mode; however I can’t see any way to do a two-way sync, as Cyberduck does.

Another nice touch is the Transmit dashboard widget - available separately, but requires Transmit to work - which behaves much like a droplet. Set up an FTP server and destination folder, then you can click a file in the Finder, then drag it to the widget (pressing F12 as you drag to display the widget, of course). It’s not the most intuitive operation, but it does allow you to effectively hide a droplet away in a widget to save clutter.

Transmit is not without its annoyances. For example, there’s no menu option to edit Favorites; instead you have to disconnect from your current connection, or open a new window, in order to get a Favorites button that you then click. Tedious. In addition, adding a droplet for the root folder is a fiddly process. Also I don’t like the way Transmit calls local files “your stuff” and remote files “their stuff” - it’s all my stuff, thank you very much!

Despite these relatively minor annoyances, Transmit is stable, it’s easy to use, and it “just works”. If you’re after a workhorse FTP app to serve you well, Transmit’s a good choice.

Fetch

If Transmit is the daddy of Mac FTP apps, then Fetch ($25) is the granddaddy, dating all the way back to 1989. It was really the first widely-used Mac FTP application, and has built a loyal following over the years. Its development slowed for a time, causing many to abandon Fetch for more feature-rich apps such as Transmit; however, in recent years Fetch has caught up with other apps somewhat.

Fetch wins the award for cutest FTP app, with its little doggie motif (right down to the animated running dog mouse cursor during transfer operations). Like Cyberduck, Fetch is a single-pane affair, which means you need to drag files from/to a Finder window.

Although Fetch doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Transmit, it does have a simple, approachable interface that makes it easy to work with, and it’s also pretty stable in day-to-day use. It supports the common FTP protocols: FTP, SFTP and FTP/TLS. As with Transmit, it also has a Dashboard widget - in the shape of a cute bone! - that works in a similar way to Transmit’s widget.

Fetch lacks the useful folder-linking feature of Transmit; however it does have a nice WebView feature: select a file or folder on the remote server, then click the WebView button to view it on the website in a browser. Useful for checking how a Web page looks in action. Fetch also has easy-to-use View and Edit buttons for viewing and editing remote files on the fly.

I’d recommend Fetch if you like a no-nonsense FTP app with a friendly, easy-to-use interface. Another nice thing about Fetch is that it’s free for educational and charity use.

Other alternatives

There are many, many other Mac apps you can use to get files onto your Web server. Other apps worth a look include ForkLift ($30), Interarchy ($60), Fugu (free, open-source) and RBrowser (free for basic version, $29 for enhanced version).

In addition, many web page editors - such as the aforementioned Coda - have built-in FTP uploaders.

Finally, if you’re more of a command-line nut like me, there are a few free FTP apps that you can use straight from the Terminal. As you’d expect of any decent UNIX-based system, Mac OS X comes with the built-in BSD ftp client (type man ftp for help) which does the job for simple file transfers. Then there’s ncftp, which is faster and has lots more features, though it lacks support for secure FTP protocols. I’m also fond of lftp - available on the Mac via Darwin Ports - which is robust, nice to use, and has decent mirroring capabilities.

Of course, there’s also scp and rsync for secure transfers and backups, and they’re also built right into Mac OS X (type man scp and man rsync for more details). While they don’t let you browse a remote server like FTP does, they do offer a powerful way to send and receive files. rsync in particular is a very fast way to upload a large website.

So many choices! Now go forth and upload.

When it comes to web page editors, Adobe once again rules the posh end of the market with Dreamweaver ($400), which is great for both visual- and text-based page editing. So what else is available?

Web page editing software seems to me to fall into three broad categories these days:

• Text-based page editors. With these editors you essentially work with the raw HTML and CSS code. The editor may have some sort of preview facility so you can view your page visually as you go, but all the editing is done in text mode. Examples include Coda, TextWrangler, and practically any text editor you can imagine!
• WYSIWYG editors. These let you work with your web pages visually, much like using a word processor. You can enter and format text, and drag images and other media into the page. Under the hood, though, you’re still working with an HTML page, and can usually go in and edit the raw HTML if you need to. Examples include Dreamweaver, KompoZer and Amaya.
• Template-based page creators. These are a relatively new breed of web-building apps. Rather than editing HTML pages, you build your pages using templates built into the app, then publish, or export, your finished site as HTML, CSS and images. It’s usually not possible to flip to a text editing mode and edit your HTML page in its entirety. Examples include iWeb, RapidWeaver and Sandvox.

Let’s take a look at some example Mac apps in each category.

Text-based editors

Coda

Panic’s Coda ($80) is a powerful text-based HTML and CSS editor that also features a file uploader. The idea of Coda is to have all the tools you need to build web pages - a text editor, a CSS inspector, a preview mode, and an FTP/SFTP/WebDAV uploader - all in one handy package. To this end, Coda does a fantastic job; it’s intuitive, easy to use, looks great, and really speeds up the website building process.

I particularly like the Sites feature that records everything about the current site you’re editing - open windows, your position in each file, and the connection to the FTP server - in a single, pretty-looking page icon. Double-click the icon in Sites, and you’re back to working on your site, exactly where you left off. Other really nice touches include a built-in terminal window for those times when you simply have to drop to a shell, and the built-in - and very nice-looking - reference books for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. Highly recommended.

skEdit

At the other end of the text-based spectrum is the $35 skEdit. Where Coda is the Swiss army knife of text-based editing, skEdit gives you just the bare essentials: a capable editor, and a file uploader. It features syntax highlighting for most web file formats, including HTML, CSS, Perl, Python, ASP, and JavaScript - though, for some bizarre reason, not PHP. It also lets you do simple HTML auto-formatting, such as highlighting text and pressing Command-Option-B to bold it; a feature sorely missing from Coda.

Another nicety is the way you can open a remote folder on an FTP server, then edit and save the files as if they were local. skEdit also features snippets - macros that you can use to quickly do common tasks, such as turn some text into a link.

While not as full-featured as Coda, or as slick, skEdit does a decent enough job for the price.

Other worthy apps in the text-based category include Aptana Studio (professional edition: $100, community edition: free), the free TextWrangler text editor, and your favourite UNIX text editor of choice, built right into your Mac! (Mine happens to be vim.)

WYSIWYG editors

KompoZer

KompoZer is a free, open-source WYSIWYG editor with a venerable lineage that can be traced back to the original Netscape Composer. It’s not the prettiest-looking app around, but it does a great job of editing web pages. And that’s what counts, right? It’s stable, it has lots of features, and it hardly messes up your HTML at all (unlike some editors I could mention). Unfortunately it’s a bit slow on Intel Macs, because it’s only available as a PPC application (at the time of writing).

As well as full WYSIWYG editing, you can also switch to Source mode if you need to dip in and edit some HTML by hand. It also has a nice CSS editor built in, as well as FTP publishing and site management capabilities. Overall, KompoZer makes a good alternative to Dreamweaver if you’re on a tight budget.

Other budget WYSIWYG editors include the also-free Amaya and the $80 Freeway Express.

Template-based page creators

iWeb

Chances are you already have iWeb - it’s part of the iLife suite that comes with the Mac (I’m currently playing with iWeb ‘06). You might be led into thinking that you need a .Mac account to use it as it tries to force you to sign up for one when you start it up. However, this is not the case - it’s perfectly possible to publish your iWeb site to a folder on your Mac, which you can then upload anywhere via FTP.

The app is remarkably easy to use, as you’d expect from an Apple app. Simply choose a theme and page type to create a page, then add your own text and images. You can link between pages easily, and iWeb even puts together a navigation menu and RSS feeds for you. Once you’re done, choose File > Publish to a Folder then upload your folder to the web.

iWeb comes with a few ready-made themes, and it’s possible to purchase additional themes or even roll your own, though the process is somewhat daunting.

What iWeb can’t do, however, is edit existing websites. iWeb pages are stored in a custom Apple XML format, and converting to HTML with the Publish command is strictly a one-way affair; there’s no way to get that HTML back into iWeb. As such iWeb isn’t much use as an everyday web page editor, but it’s great for knocking together a quick site.

RapidWeaver

RapidWeaver ($80) predates iWeb; in fact many would say that iWeb was somewhat “inspired” by RW. As with iWeb, the basic idea is that you choose a theme, then simply drag your images and other media into the page and add your text. When you’re done, hit the Publish button to publish your finished site to your web server via FTP, or to your .Mac/MobileMe account.

RapidWeaver is more flexible and extensible than iWeb, and there are plenty of free and commercial themes available for it. You can use RapidWeaver to create a wide variety of sites, from simple static sites through to blogs, image galleries, slideshows and contact forms. What’s more, third-party plugins extend the feature list further.

I confess I’m not a fan of these template-based page creators. I don’t like the way you can’t edit existing HTML pages, or the way your website is squirreled away in these apps’ non-standard file formats. Furthermore, I don’t find them flexible enough - what if I want to create a web page without a sidebar in RapidWeaver? For that matter, what if I want to build a site that isn’t based on a predefined template at all? (Well I guess there’s always Coda for that!)

There are also a few quirks about RapidWeaver itself that irritate me: Why can’t I insert an image via a menu option? (We don’t all love dragging and dropping.) What’s with the separate Edit window? Why can’t I edit my text in the same WYSIWYG window?

That said, I’m probably not RapidWeaver’s target market. I prefer to code my websites by hand for flexibility, and am comfortable with HTML and CSS. If you just want to get a site out the door, don’t want to get bogged down in the niceties of cross-browser CSS, and don’t mind its inherent inflexibility, then RapidWeaver could be just the ticket for you. It really does live up to its name, letting you put together a nice-looking website very quickly. And the XHTML it generates looks halfway decent too - rare for this type of software.

Other apps in the template-based creator category that are worth checking out are Sandvox and Goldfish.

Summary

If you don’t fancy spending hundreds of dollars on apps like Dreamweaver, then there are some good options for you, depending on your preferred style of website creation.

If you prefer tinkering with HTML and CSS then check out Coda for a lovely all-in-one solution, while KompoZer is a good bet if you like to edit your web pages as if they were Word documents. On the other hand, if you absolutely abhor HTML and want an idiot-proof, drag-and-drop way to build your site - and you don’t mind being constrained a little along the way - then give RapidWeaver or iWeb a go.

This first post takes a look at creating your website’s graphics.

Photoshop is, of course, the granddaddy of image editors, and it’s well suited to designing websites. However, it does come with a hefty $650 price tag for the basic version. There’s also Fireworks, which was designed as a web image editor from the ground up, and is priced at a more affordable $300.

If you’re a pro then you can afford these prices, but they’re a bit steep for the average web designer on a budget. So what other options are there?

Photoshop Elements

Photoshop Elements is Adobe’s cut-down version of Photoshop aimed at hobbyist photographers, and it has a mini-me price of $90 to match. Elements on the Mac lagged behind the Windows version for a while, but Adobe recently released Elements 6 for the Mac, bringing it into line with the Windows version.

On the whole, Elements includes most of the important Photoshop features that you want for web design, such as a fully-featured Save for Web command and limited layer styles. One notable omission is layer masks, but you can cheat and use a Levels adjustment layer to get a layer mask if you need to. It also doesn’t support editable layer groups or guides, so if you open a Photoshop file containing these features then there’s not a lot you can do with them.

You can download a trial version from the above link (but beware, it’s a monster download at 1.27GB).

Pixelmator

Pixelmator is a relative newcomer to the image editing scene. It’s a Mac-only app, and integrates very nicely with the Mac too, with a lovely, snappy user interface. Its menu options and keyboard shortcuts are pretty similar to Photoshop’s, and it behaves in a similar way. Like Photoshop, it has guides, layers and layer masks, which are great for web work. It can also open layered Photoshop files.

However the current version lacks certain features of both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, such as Save for Web, shape layers, fully editable vector type layers, and layer styles. Still, the price is a very reasonable 60 bucks, and you can download a 30-day trial to see if it works for you.

Acorn

Another affordable “Photoshop lite” option is Acorn. Again, this has all of the basic image editing features such as layers, text, fills, and some pretty original filters. It also has a Web Export, though its options are somewhat limited. Also limited are its shape layers, which only allow for rectangles, ellipses and lines, and it has no layer effects to speak of. It also has trouble opening layered Photoshop files, discarding the layers and flattening the image.

In all, Acorn is nice to use and fine for simple designs, but its small feature set might cause you problems if you want to do anything complicated. On the plus side, it’s the cheapest of the commercial offerings here at just $50. What’s more, the download is a blissfully small 5.8MB, which makes it easy to try and buy!

The GIMP

Finally, there’s the venerable GIMP, a cross-platform, open-source image editor that’s been around for almost as long as Photoshop itself. It has tons of features, is very customizable, and best of all, it’s free! To use it on the Mac, though, you need to have the X11 package installed (also free). This is available on the Mac OS X DVD, or you can grab a version from the web. This Mac install guide has more details.

While The GIMP lacks some of the niceties of Photoshop - such as adjustment layers, layer styles, and clipping masks - and its user interface takes some getting used to, it’s a very capable app, and these days it does a reasonable job of reading Photoshop files. You can also use plug-ins to get some Photoshop-like functions such as layer effects. If you’re on a tight budget, want a decent feature set, and have the patience to learn its various quirks, then The GIMP might suit you down to the ground.

Online editing

Believe it or not, it’s also possible to edit images via your web browser! There are several online image editors out there - most of them free - but the one most suited to web image editing is probably Splashup. It’s nowhere near as feature-rich as Photoshop, or even Photoshop Elements, and it can’t open Photoshop files. However, it does have the basics, such as layers, layer effects, cropping, and the ability to create text, fills, and shapes. And you can’t argue with the price!

In the next post I take a look at affordable web page editors for the Mac.

I was intrigued by the title of this book, so I picked up a copy. (I haven’t read Kahney’s previous two books.)

While the book’s title is obviously an exaggeration - Kahney hasn’t been at Steve Jobs’s head with a scalpel, or stuck him on a psychiatrist’s couch - it does offer some insights into how Jobs might think about product design, marketing techniques and the user experience. It also offers a decent-enough potted history of Apple and Jobs’s involvement with it over the last 30 years (though there are other books out there that do a much more thorough job of this).

Fascinating facts

Some of the interesting things I learned from reading this book:

• When Jobs returned to Apple, he cut the product line from around 40 products to just 4 core products - 2 laptops, 2 desktops - a move that undoubtedly saved Apple from going under.
• He hates having multiple windows open. (This makes me laugh, since the zillions of windows you get with many Mac apps was one of the things that put me off Macs initially - yet now I love the multi-window approach.)
• One Apple store can make as much as 6 other stores in the same mall combined; they’re “insanely profitable”. (Which reminds me, I really must get off my backside and check out the new Sydney store this week.)
• Jobs understands what design’s really all about. “Some people think design means how it looks. But of course … it’s really how it works.“
• Apple is so secretive that no single department sees the whole product, and even the head of marketing can’t tell his family about the latest iPod until after it’s launched.
• Jobs got his family involved in a constant 2-week debate over which washing machine to buy (actually I do this as well - I’m terrible).

One good thing about the book is that is looks at both sides of Jobs and his career. Yes, he’s done a lot of things right, but he’s also made some big mistakes like the G4 Cube, which sold poorly because he misread the market. And he seems to have an irksome habit of screaming at an employee for having a bad idea, then turning round the next day and saying it’s a great idea.

Book or magazine?

The book is not without its flaws, though. For one thing, it’s repetitive; the same facts mentioned in an earlier chapter get trotted out again and again in later chapters. And there’s not much connection or flow between the chapters. It’s almost like each chapter was written by a different person (though obviously that’s not the case!). The content of the book is fairly lightweight, much like a series of magazine articles - understandable I suppose, considering Kahney’s background.

The “Lessons from Steve” boxes at the end of each chapter are supposed to offer insight into the workings of Jobs’s mind, but really there’s not much in there that you couldn’t pick up from any one of a thousand business/life management paperbacks. Examples include: “If you miss the boat, work hard to catch up” (duh) and “Don’t be afraid to start from scratch.” (I did love “Don’t listen to your customers. They don’t know what they want” though - so true, and key to Apple’s success, I believe.)

Summary

Overall, Inside Steve’s Brain is an entertaining and easy read, and I think Kahney’s probably nailed Jobs’s approach to things pretty accurately. I’d have preferred to see more substance to the book though.

Rating: 3/5.

This is all nice and reassuring - or is it? Well, not when you get errors like these appearing every couple of weeks:

I’ve seen the Unable to complete backup error on both our iMacs over the last few weeks. It’s a fairly common occurrence. I tried the trick of repartitioning using GUID rather than MBR on my Mac, which certainly reduced the errors, though I still get them.

It looks like there are quite a few other Mac users experiencing this error, too.

And what’s with that second error? The backup needs 13.8 GB, but only 20.3 GB are available? Looks like someone at Apple needs to go back to maths classes. How can I trust a backup system that can’t subtract two numbers?

Frankly I’m tempted to go back to using rsync for my backups until Apple makes Time Machine more stable. At least I know rsync works!

Nothing is guaranteed to bring the smug Mac user brigade out in force like a discussion on viruses and trojans. “Oh, we don’t get those - we use Macs!” they proudly announce. And they have a point; Mac malware is pretty thin on the ground right now. Indeed, the first virus to specifically attack Mac OS X didn’t come out until 2006 - five years after Mac OS X was launched.

Well the time for such smugness may be coming to an end. In the past few weeks we’ve had a published root escalation vulnerability, not to mention a Mac-targeted trojan in the wild that takes advantage of said vulnerability, and is evil enough to wipe the smile off even the smuggest Mac user’s face. Furthermore, Mac hackers have produced a tool to make future production of similar trojans almost trivially simple.

Maybe we’re seeing an increase in Mac malware now because Macs are getting more popular, with 80% of businesses allegedly now using them. More Macs make for a bigger, juicier target.

But Macs are secure - aren’t they?

Yes, Macs are built on UNIX, and yes, UNIX is generally pretty secure and battle-tested. But UNIX and Linux servers are compromised every day. Maybe not as much as Windows machines, but there are plenty of worms and rootkits out there for Linux. If malware authors start targeting the Mac in earnest, it’s unlikely that Mac users will get off that lightly. We can only hope that Apple starts tightening up security in Snow Leopard, as Dino Dai Zovi suggests.

Opening a file

You can open a file using its associated application by typing:

open filename

For example, opening an image file with open usually displays it in Preview, while opening an HTML file displays it in your default Web browser.

Wildcards are allowed, so you can open all PNG files in the current folder with:

open *.png

You can also specify the application to use when opening the file by using the -a option:

open -a /Applications/Preview.app myimage.png

If you want to edit the file in TextEdit, use:

open -e filename

You can even open URLs:

open http://mac.elated.com/

Opening a folder

This trick also works on folders, in which case the folder opens as a new Finder window:

open foldername

For example, you can open the current folder in the Finder with:

open .

Previewing a file

If you’re running Leopard, you can even Quick Look a file using qlmanage, a debugging tool for the Quick Look Server:

qlmanage -p myimage.png >& /dev/null

(The >& /dev/null stops debug info being displayed in the Terminal window.)

Press Control-C when you’re done to close the Quick Look window.

As with open, you can Quick Look multiple files at once:

qlmanage -p *.png >& /dev/null

You can then use the arrows at the bottom of the Quick Look window to move between each file, or click the Index Sheet button to view thumbnails of all the files at once.

More info on qlmanage, including various ways to create snappy aliases for the command, can be found on the Macworld site and on this blog.

Enjoy!

Drag the mouse around to highlight the area of the page you want to capture, then click. You can then fine-tune the area with the resize handles, and click the Add button in the top right (or simply press Return) to create the widget. Now, whenever you switch to your Dashboard, you’ll see that area of your chosen Web page right there in the widget.

If and when the Web page is updated, the widget updates too. This makes Web Clip very useful for any Web page content that gets updated frequently, such as news and sports results pages.

Here are a few tips for using Web Clip:

• You can go back and edit a Web Clip widget. Click the little ‘i’ button in the bottom right corner of the widget to flip it round, then click Edit. The widget flips round again, and you can click and drag with the mouse to reposition the Web page within the widget. You can also resize the widget at the same time. Nice.

• The widget reloads its “page” every time you enter the Dashboard, but you can also reload it at any time by clicking it and hitting Command-R.

• If the page you’re clipping is text-heavy, and you want to make your widget as small as possible, first use Command and - (minus) to make the text smaller in Safari, then clip the page. The widget remembers your selected text size. You can then revert to your normal text size in Safari.

So that’s how you create and use a Web Clip widget. What sort of things can you use this feature for? Here are 6 of my favourite uses for Web Clip:

1. Weather forecasts

A classic use for Web Clip. Visit the weather forecasting site of your choice - for example, Weather Underground or AccuWeather.com - find the forecast for your local city, and turn it into a widget. Of course, the Mac comes with a built-in Weather widget, but by using Web Clip you can get much more specialized info. For example, I’m in Sydney, Australia, and I like to have the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Sydney Radar Loop on my Dashboard, so I can see where the rain is right now:

(By the way, speaking of the BoM, if you happen to be in Australia then check out TheBom Weather Widget - it’s lovely!)

2. Webcams

Web Clips are great for regularly updated content, and what’s updated more regularly than a webcam? Find a webcam page, clip the image and make it into a widget. Then every time you flip to your Dashboard, you can check out the latest view!

Here are some webcams to get you started:

• BBC webcams of England. Perfect for nostalgic ex-pat Brits like myself!
• Webcamplaza.net has links to lots of cool webcams around the world, many of them streaming. I particularly like this controllable, zoomable cam overlooking the Opera House and Circular Quay in Sydney.
• OnlineCamera.com is another good directory of worldwide cams.

Here’s a webcam of Dartmoor in England from the BBC site, captured in a Web Clip widget and lovingly decorated with the Vintage Corners theme:

3. Photos of the day

Another great source of material for Web Clips is sites that feature a photo of the day. As with the webcams, it’s easy to select the photo and turn it into a nice widget. One of the clever things about the Web Clip widget is that it resizes itself to fit the content it’s displaying. This means that if the next day’s photo has a different width or height to today’s, the widget changes size to accommodate it. Very nice.

Some of my favourite regularly-updated photo sites include:

• National Geographic’s Photo of the Day
• Flickr’s Explore page. You get a new random photo each time you reload the page (or in the case of the Web Clip widget, switch to the Dashboard).
• The Sydney Powerhouse Museum’s Photo of the Day blog. Just Web Clip the top photo on the page, and the widget automatically updates each day with the latest photo.

Here’s my Web Clip widget showing the Powerhouse Museum’s Photo of the Day:

4. Rotten Tomatoes Upcoming Movies

Rotten Tomatoes has an Upcoming Movies page, with a useful sidebar on the right that gives you an at-a-glance summary of new films and how well they’ve been received by reviewers - perfect widget material! I just clip the Next Week section at the top to keep the widget size down. It’s nice how you can click on a movie to view its reviews in detail in your browser.

5. Comic sites

Daily comic strips are perfect for Web Clipping. Here are some great ones:

• Dilbert.com. Simply Web Clip the Flash comic strip at the top of the page. You can then move between days using the arrows in the top left, all within the widget.
• Calvin and Hobbes. One of my all-time favourites.
• Ctrl+Alt+Del. It’s geeky but I love it. The strips are rather big though - I wish there was a way to zoom images as well as text in Safari/Web Clip (Apple are you listening?).

Here’s Dilbert on my Dashboard - showing a rather appropriate strip:

6. YouTube’s “videos being watched right now”

YouTube features a Videos being watched right now section at the top of its homepage. Because it’s done using Flash, it makes a great Web Clip widget; when you click a thumbnail, the video plays right in the widget on your Dashboard! To back out of watching a video and return to the list of thumbnails, simply press Command-R to refresh the widget.

Any other suggestions?

What do you use Leopard’s Web Clip feature for? Add a comment below to let me know!

Exhibit A: Windows-style UI elements in Mac Photoshop

I’ve been using Photoshop since around 1995 (even written a nice book about it) so I feel like I know this beast inside out now. I’ve used both Windows and Mac versions heavily, and the Mac version is full of little Windows UI quirks. For example:

• Non-standard shortcut to bring up the Preferences pane (Command-K, not the standard Command-,). Just because Windows users have to suffer from the lack of a consistent Preferences shortcut, why should Mac users have to do the same?
• Non-standard shortcut to hide Photoshop (Command-Control-H, not the standard Command-H - fair enough in a way, as Command-H is used to hide stuff within Photoshop).
• Non-standard shortcut to switch between document windows - i.e. Control-Tab, not the standard (and much less finger-twisting) Command-`. This one really bugs me.
• The odd shortcut that only works in Windows (I’m thinking of Alt+I, then hold Alt and press D to instantly duplicate an image - a quirk that relies on Windows’ keyboard shortcuts for menus).

Exhibit B: 32-bit Mac Photoshop CS4

Photoshop CS4 will be 64-bit on Windows, 32-bit on Mac. ‘Nuff said. (Although Adobe blames Apple for this.)

Exhibit C: The horror of the Mac Photoshop CS4 interface

One of the things I’ve always hated about Photoshop on Windows is the “everything in one big window” interface. Well - horror of horrors - Adobe is shoehorning the single-window UI into Photoshop CS4 on the Mac! Is nothing sacred? And how will this work with Exposé? However, it looks like there will be an option to revert back to the multi-window UI. Thank flip for that.

Having said that, I confess I haven’t tried the single-window CS4 interface. Maybe it’s great, and maybe it does in fact mirror certain other Apple apps, as John Nack from Adobe argues quite convincingly on his blog. Time will tell I guess. (Many commenters on that blog post would seem to disagree. Choice quote: “I’ve always disliked the PC version of Photoshop, since it’s in a window and now you guy vomit this onto the Mac.”)

I personally don’t see the point of an app frame to block out underlying windows, especially as we now have Spaces in Leopard (if you’re really bothered about seeing stuff underneath document windows, simply put Photoshop in its own Space and you’re done.)

Then we have other yucky stuff in Photoshop CS4, such as buttons in the title bar (yuck) and non-standard window control buttons (yuck).

Exhibit D: The horror of the Mac Fireworks CS4 interface

The yuckiness continues with the Fireworks CS4 beta. According to Craig over at Cult of Mac - who describes Fireworks on the Mac as user interface hell - we have the same single-window interface, non-standard window buttons, and buttons in the title bar to look forward to, as well as no standard window resize control. My good friend and partner-in-crime, Si, recently echoed some of these grumbles, though he argues that Adobe is creating a UI that is neither Windows nor Mac. Interesting point - but if it’s true, what’s Adobe’s game-plan here? To create a new UI standard for all other companies to follow?

Exhibit E: Adobe Bridge CS3 - might as well be running it on Windows

Now I love Bridge CS3; after wrestling with iPhoto for ages I’ve finally settled on Bridge as the easiest, most transparent way to organise my photos. However, it feels very much like a Windows app that somehow got a bit lost and wandered onto my Mac by mistake.

Windows keyboard shortcuts that have polluted the Mac version include:

• Same non-standard Preferences shortcut as Photoshop (Command-K)
• Shift-click to select a range of items (admittedly quite useful, but non-standard on the Mac nonetheless)
• Return doesn’t rename a photo, it opens it. According to the Bridge Help, you’re supposed to be able to rename with the Spacebar, but it doesn’t work. What does work, however, is F2 - a shortcut lifted straight from Windows Explorer!
• F5 to refresh the window, again lifted from Windows Explorer and IE.
• F1 for Help! Even the Mac’s dedicated Help key doesn’t work!

Hmm. I’m thinking: Written for Windows, hastily ported to the Mac. What about you?

I must admit, though, that I quite like Bridge CS3’s single-window approach (except when I’m trying to drag and drop photos between folders, of course). Maybe there’s something in what John Nack’s saying after all.

Conclusion

I suppose there’s something to be said for a consistent UI across platforms. It lets users easily switch between operating systems at will. However, part of what makes the Mac so great is its standards for UI elements and keyboard shortcuts, and Adobe happily ignores many of these standards with their apps.

So does Adobe hate the Mac platform? Do they want it to die quietly in a corner, so that they only have to worry about developing for one OS? Probably not. But it does seem that they care more about making their apps play nicely with Windows than with Mac OS.

In a way, this is understandable; they probably sell more copies of Windows Photoshop than Mac Photoshop (or do they?). Nonetheless, it’s a shame that Adobe’s apps seem to have a Windows bias these days. Both Apple and Adobe produce fantastic products which enjoy a strong following among the creative community, and I feel that Adobe is doing those users a disservice with this apparently Windows-centric approach. It’d be great to see Adobe treat both Mac and Windows platforms equally.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how this situation plays out in future Adobe apps.