Grant's Space

Do you think Siri is cool? Then you probably didn’t use the original app, and you probably also never heard of the 60′s program “Eliza”.

I used to be able to ask Siri for actual information, and get real answers. I could ask it to reserve a table for two at Beausejour at 8 o’clock, and it would place the reservation. I could ask it what good movies were playing nearby, and it would show a list of movies ranked high (on rotten tomatoes) that were playing near me with a list of theaters. I could even tap to buy tickets.

But no more. Siri’s become stupid. Like tragic car crash stupid. The kids in school make fun of it (literally). And that’s all it’s good for. If I ask it to make a reservation at a restaurant at 8pm, it’ll respond with “there’s a restaurant named Beausejour near you”. Great, I already knew that. Ask it for movies and it’ll just display a list of theaters. Ask it almost anything else and it’ll say “I don’t understand”. It’s not good at scheduling, texting, or calling; not better than just tapping and typing at least.

Why does it take hackers to try to revive what used to be a great app?

I miss Siri.

I’m on the computer a lot (over 40 hours/wk), and there are a few tools I’ve noticed I have on every computer that have become a standard part of my setup.

• Firefox
  On my Mac, I tend to use Safari, but at work and on any PC I’m on, I use Firefox. Safari pissed me off a couple of days ago (Flash crashed it again again again), so I set Firefox as my default browser (I’m using it to write this, in fact). It seems that even the worst AJAX-abusing web sites work in Firefox, it’s pretty standard across all platforms, and it wraps plugins well enough that when certain Adobe products explode, the browser just displays “Sorry, the flash plugin has crashed” or similar, instead of crashing itself. Firefox pre-3.6 was frickin’ slow, but 3.6 is about as fast as Safari. Of course, I do lose syncing of bookmarks to my iPhone, but honestly I almost never use bookmarks on my iPhone.
• Lastpass
  I used to use 1Password, but Lastpass took over because 1Password didn’t work on Linux (it may now, I don’t know). I still run 1Password (Pro) on my iPhone, but that’s mainly to look up passwords that aren’t in Lastpass yet. Lastpass is web based, which makes it really convenient if you end up on a hotel computer and need to log into a web site, and may not have your iPhone handy. Of course, there’s also an iPhone app, but I haven’t gotten that yet. 1Password also requires too much setup: you need to store your password file somewhere and sync it yourself (via Dropbox, iDisk, whatever), and the iPhone sync requires you to manually run the program on your Mac and phone at the same time. See, Winbloz users just went away. Lastpass just lets you store passwords. It handles the syncing (to their servers), and is still secure, because they’re just storing encrypted information.
• WordPress
  I’ve used a lot of blogging products over the years, starting with straight HTML in a text editor. WordPress has great features, and is the standard for setting up a blog. I use the installed version, which is conveniently a 1-click install through Simplescripts on my current web host. Before this host, I installed it myself (and even wrote scripts to do installs/upgrades automatically before that was built in). Current wordpress is stable, feature-rich, and very easy to use. Themes and plugins usually work with little modification (you used to have to tweak the heck out of things to make a new theme work – “Widgets” fixed that). Updates are automatic like most desktop software these days. The Askimet plugin combined with the “Bad Behavior” plugin stop 99% of my comment spam (which is a huge problem and time sucker if you’re setting up a blog these days). WordPress lets you set up a blog very quickly and easily, and add/change features as you go. In short, it’s quite flexible, but easy to get started with. Although you can use it as a CMS to set up web sites (and I have), it’s really designed as a blog platform, so I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re trying to find a web site builder. If your web site is a blog with some extra pages, however, WordPress is fine.
• Dropbox
  This is a must on all my computers now. Dropbox’s syncing is impeccably handled, it works on all platforms, and it allows 1-click sharing of folders. I have an “Assistant Share” folder (shared with my assistant and girlfriend), a “Bookkeeping” folder (shared with my bookkeeper), and an “Accounting” folder (shared with my accountant). If I need to get tax documents to my accountant, I just drop them into my Accounting folder, and they’re on her computer immediately. Need to update some procedures for my assistant – I update the document in my “Assistant Share” folder. The syncing is immediate and I have never had a problem with file conflicts (well, I did once, but my girlfriend was copying files into her Dropbox folder and I moved them on mine while they were syncing. Even then, cleanup was pretty quick, and Dropbox didn’t break anything – just moved the files I said to move, while leaving others in place because she’d just put them there). To share a folder, you control-click (or right-click) and select “Share” (the option varies slightly depending on the OS you’re running). Works on Linux, Mac, and Winblows.
• Ubuntu
  
  
  I had to use a PC for work, and I tolerated Windows for a couple days of instability on it before I borrowed my friend’s Ubuntu CD. I still prefer MacOS X, but if I can’t use it for some reason, Ubuntu’s next in line. In some ways I even prefer it to MacOS. Software updates (for all software) are built in. You can customize the desktop to behave like Windows or MacOS X, or some weird hybrid if you want. It’s almost as stable as MacOS X (although I do run into occasional glitches that require a Google search to remedy). It’s got a good user base, so most issues you run into can be solved by Googling and following the instructions someone’s spelled out. It’s 99% an end-user-friendly OS now, including Firefox, OpenOffice, an iTunes-like music player/store (which even has Last.fm built in), and a host of other applications pre-installed. Getting new software is unique – you go to the “Software Center” menu item and search (or browse by categories such as Office, Entertainment, etc). Most software is free (open-source). Software updates are usually automatic, as when you “download” software, you’re not actually downloading an application, but installing a package description, which then tells the software update tool (“package manager”) to include that software in its updates. Fancy. To the end user, that means that the software just magically stays up to date. Plus, it’s free, and in many cases better than certain commercial equivalents. (I don’t bother with MS Office any more, as OpenOffice runs on PC/Mac/Linux).
• Netflix
  I don’t know anyone who isn’t a Netflix subscriber, but I figured I’d mention it anyway. I use it both for DVDs and to Watch Instantly on my Mac and the PS3. Netflix jumped in as part of the beginning of the switch from broadcast to on-demand content. (Tivo was the other part).

So that’s a few of my favorite non-obvious tools. I also use the iPhone, running Shazam, Omnifocus, Now Playing and Siri on my home screen. (Now Playing is there to add movies to my Netflix queue when I see cool previews). Shazam is awesome for figuring out “what’s that song”, and Omnifocus is the best GTD-based organization software for Mac/iPhone (although the lack of a Linux version is problematic for me – if there was an equivalent web-based tool with an iPhone app I’d use that instead).

I’m not thrilled with Leopard. I started this list to keep track of the bugs I’ve encountered with solutions as I find them – figured I might as well do it in public so others can benefit. I’ll try to update with links to the related topics on the Apple discussion forums also.

Update: If you upgrade to Leopard, make certain you run Software Update immediately. The 10.5.1 update fixes many stability issues and some major bugs.

If you haven’t upgraded yet, I’d advise against it unless you really need the new features (most of them can be done with 3rd party solutions in Tiger anyway).

• .Mac sync seems to have problems:
  Some, if not all of these, seem to be the result of bad data in the SyncServices cache. This solution should fix it.
  • iCal – After upgrading only empty Work and Home calendars appear.
  • iCal won’t sync calendars – errors appear in log files.
  • Syncs calendars when calendar syncing has been turned off
  • Presented dialog with changes to every Address Book entry. Many of the changes were deletions to items labeled “other”.
  • When accepted to replace bookmarks on .Mac due to a reset from another computer, attempted instead to add 400+ bookmarks to all synced computers (presented “More than 25% of your bookmarks will be changed”) dialog. Canceling and resetting from one of the synced machines takes care of this, but I haven’t tried accepting the reset on mac.com again.
• iCal won’t automatically delete past events when “Delete events __ days after they have passed” is checked in preferences > advanced.
• iCal won’t automatically delete to-do items when “Delete To Do items __ days after they are completed” is checked in preferences > advanced. (Note that this and the previous issue may both be the result of “bad data” in the file – I was checking these options to delete the bad data…).
• Logic Pro 8: Presents “Please Quit Rewire Applications” dialog when quitting when no rewire applications are running. Apple Discussion Thread. As of Jan 2008, I am no longer experiencing this. Be sure you’re running the most current version of Reason 3 or 4 and have installed all software updates from Apple. I suspect a Logic update fixed this issue.
• Safari crashes frequently. Granted I use it “hard and fast” – I have multiple windows and tabs open, tab rapidly from one to the next, often with multiple tabs loading at the same time. But, it was more stable before the Leopard install (and I was already running Safari 3 before the install). This has been more stable since the 10.5.1 update.
• Flash 9 player can’t launch the file selector (and other misc bugs): There is a beta version available which fixes the file selector issue, but still has other issues. (in particular, snocap.com’s upload system doesn’t work). It appears that the MacOS 10.5.1 update has fixed the other file selector issues (I’m still on the newer beta version, so I don’t know if 10.5.1 works with the release version of Flash Player 9)
• Force Quit frequently is unable to quit applications, or takes a minute or two to do so. This appears to either be fixed in 10.5.1 or to be related to applications affected when an external drive cannot be read.
• When Logging Out, the system will complain “Logout failed because the application ____ failed to Quit”, reporting applications that are not running. I haven’t seen this since 10.5.1.
• “Archive and Install” option apparently deletes /usr/local without archiving it.
• When a USB-powered external hard drive is used on a MacBook Pro running Leopard, Mail, iPhoto, Finder and iTunes crash frequently and cannot be force quit, nor can the system be shut down or restarted. The external drive must be unplugged. With the same drive, this did not occur in Tiger.
• Mail will crash if allowed to run for more than a few hours.
• Parallels 3.0 (build 5160) can render the system unbootable.
  After running Parallels for more than 3 hours using Netflix’s “Watch Now” feature, it started reporting low disk space on the startup volume. After 8 hours, I shut down Parallels and rebooted the MacBook pro and it would not boot. It hung on the “gray apple” screen, spinning the progress bar for over 5 minutes. An “Archive and Install” re-install made the computer usable again. Disk space remaining was 6GB according to the installer. It was 612MB before the reboot (I’m assuming the “PC” in Parallels had a memory problem and that Parallels was using a huge amount of VM space). The installer logs reported that the volume consistency check reported no problems with the startup volume.
• The system will occasionally power-off without warning. I believe this has only happened 2-3 times, when running on battery power. However, the battery still shows some charge, and there was no warning regarding battery level or system temperature. (Edit: This is a battery problem – fix is here