Apple has released Security Update 2008-002 v1.1 (Leopard): an update to the security update that was causing printing problems for Aperture users on Leopard.

Security Update 2008-002 v1.1 addresses reliability issues with the "Printer Settings..." button in Aperture 2.0 on systems running Mac OS X v10.5.2. No applications other than Aperture 2.0 are affected.

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Leopard

I use Privoxy to filter ads and other assorted nasty stuff. It runs as a proxy HTTP server, so I set up my computer so that all my HTTP traffic is channeled through it rather than going directly to the web. The Leopard version is a little different from the Tiger version and it took a while to figure out how to make it work.

First I download Privoxy. There are two pieces, the utility and the application itself. I go to the download page and under the Mac OS X section selected Privoxy 3.0.8 Universal and the PrivoxyUtility.

Then, having unpacked them I instal Privoxy and run the utility to start Privoxy running. In the system preferences I go to Network, selected my Ethernet port and click on Advanced.... to set up the Proxy tab like this:

Now all accesses by applications that use the system proxy settings will go through IP address 127.0.0.1 (my local machine) at port 8118 where Privoxy is listening. I also set up HTTPS the same way. This setting does not affect Firefox because Firefox ignores the system and has its own proxy settings.

Done. Privoxy is now filtering ads.

But sometimes I want to turn it off, or make certain sites bypass the filtering. Configuration changes are done through a web browser. By going to a special URL (http://config.privoxy.org/) I can change the way Privoxy runs. The problem I found is that by default the Leopard version does not allow configurations to be changed this way: configuration change options are missing from the page.

From the available information, it is not obvious where the global configuration file for Privoxy is located. I had to look at the installer code to learn that it is in /usr/local/etc/privoxy. I use the Finder's Go menu and selected Go to Location... to open that folder and then drag the file config onto TextWrangler. I set the string enable-remote-toggle to 1. That allows Privoxy to be turned on and off via the http://config.privoxy.org/ address. I also set enable-edit-actions to 1 so I can reconfigure the filters.

To make the configuration file change have any effect I stop and then start Privoxy via the Privoxy Utility:

Now I get the option to toggle Privoxy on and off:

The first line gives me the ability to add web sites that I want to block or allow:

In the user.action file I can add lines to allow content through. The web interface shown above just makes it a little easier than editing raw text files.

Editing the raw files involves adding and changing lines like these:

# Allow all cookies from these sites
{ allow-all-cookies }
.smugmug.com

# Turn off filtering for these sites
{-filter }
.smugmug.com
.bagelturf.com

# Allow advertising through on these sites
{ allow-ads }
.slashdot.com
.dpreview.com

#No access to these sites
{+block}
.maxim.com

It's not difficult, but takes a little while to find out how to do some basic things because the terminology is not standard and there are a lot of macros to deal with. There is a lot more documentation on the Privoxy site.

Tags: Leopard, Privoxy, Advertising, Filtering

For anyone who is trying to make an export plug-in for Aperture: make sure you keep a copy of your Tiger development environment backed up somewhere. I installed Leopard and the dev tools and found that my Random Wok plug-in would not compile.

It failed at this line:

#import <PluginManager/PROAPIAccessing.h>

in ApertureExportPlugIn.h. The PROAPIAccessing.h file is missing because it and PROPlugInBundleRegistration.h are not included in either Leopard or the ApertureSDK 1.5.5.

To fix it , I copied across the Headers folder that contains those two from a Tiger back up. The full path is /Library/Frameworks/PluginManager.framework/Versions/B/Headers. There is already a soft link for Headers that is correct. It should look like this:

Tags: Aperture, Plug-ins, Bugs, Cocoa, Leopard, Random Wok

I discovered that all the graphics in my PDF book were fuzzy if I viewed it on Leopard using Preview. Here is a screen capture of a 400 x 400 pixel area:

Using Safari to view the same page, again at 400 x 400 pixels gave me this instead:

The graphic is sharp, as I remember it on Tiger. So what is going on? Something is making Preview scale the image up and the resampling is introducing blur.

The answer is that Preview on Leopard has an extra PDF preference that is enabled by default: Respect screen DPI for scale, so even if I display at Actual Size, it's not pixel-for pixel on most screens. Once that preference is unchecked, the pages showed exactly the same way as before:

Tiger's Preview does not have this option:

And so I never have the problem on Tiger.

Update: Tiger does have the option to respect image DPI under the Images tab:

on Leopard the same option is there, and adds screen DPI as well:

But these older settings apply to images, not PDFs. And Tiger only applies image DPI, not screen DPI.

Tags: Preview, PDF, Leopard

The oddest menu in Leopard is this one:

A choice for a completely graphical and spacial concept presented to the user as a linear list of numbers.

Tags: Leopard, Spaces, Obstacles

My Aperture export plug-in, Random Wok, runs just fine [Update: not quite; see below] with Aperture 2.0 and Leopard. The version I'm using internally has some additional features and I have recompiled it using XCode 3.0, idea being to release an update as soon as I can muster the time. My big hang-up was trying to localize the plug-in. This is a tremendous amount of work and requires lining up volunteers to do the translation and much on the management side of things. So going forward I have decided to not support localization.

Note that Aperture 2.0 no longer displays a sheet to show progress. Instead, it exports in the background and progress is shown in Aperture's tasks window. Look at the bottom of the window next to the tools to see what is happening in the background:

Clicking on the spinner shows more detail:

A new feature in Aperture 2.0 is the ability to pause activity. That plus background operation makes exporting so much nicer.

[Update: A couple of problems have appeared if Random Wok 1.0 is used with Aperture 2.0. See below]

If used with Aperture 2.0 the behavior with respect to clashes with existing files has changed. With Aperture 1.5 Aperture would never supply an existing file name. However with 2.0 it does not check, and so plug-in exports will overwrite existing files with the same version name. Export to empty folders to work around.

If used with Aperture 2.0 the behavior with respect to clashes with existing random files has changed. Random Wok 1.0 will issue a warning if random files are exported that have a name clash, as before. However with 2.0, Aperture does not think that the export has finished and will show the export continuing forever in the background. This is usually only an issue if Freeze is used and repeated exports to the same place are performed. Quit Aperture and relaunch to fix.

Tags: Aperture, Leopard, Plug-ins, Exporting, Cocoa

Now that Leopard 1.5.2 is out, Aperture 2.0 is out, SuperDuper has been updated, and a host of other bits and pieces are working well, I finally upgraded to Leopard. I did an Update Install -- the least recommended, but the one I always use.

I had only one hitch: my keychain was unpopular with Leopard and it created a new empty one. I copied across my old one from a back up and used Keychain Utility to repair it and make it the default. My update precautions included getting both my back ups up to date and making a separate archive of my entire disk on a spare Firewire drive so that I can still pull data off in a year.

Leopard runs well. Very smooth and fast. A little buggy here and there (Finder's list view for instance), but entirely pleasant to use. Aperture is faster I think.

Tags: Leopard, Updates

Go grab 10.5.2! It supports the Nikon D3 and D300 as well as others.

Update: My Headline is wrong (still on Tiger here, and no Nikon). Comments are saying things like this:

Unless I'm missing something-- 10.5.2 supports the D3 and D300 with everything BUT aperture. iPhoto, Finder, Preview... all open D300 RAWs... not Aperture...

The only remaining question is whether there will be a RAW update for Tiger or not. There is also a Leopard Graphics Update available that only appears in Software Update after 10.5.2 is installed. This all bodes well for a new Aperture coming soon.

Tags: Aperture, Nikon, Leopard, Updates

SuperDuper, the application I use for my back ups has finally been released for Leopard. That was the last item I needed before updating my iMac, but I may wait until 10.5.2 is released before going Leopard, since reports are that it is close to completion. I'm sure that Aperture will appear soon after, so I'll have plenty to play with.

Tags: SuperDuper, Updates, Leopard

This thread on Apple's Aperture discussion forum includes a fix for a bug that prevents Automator actions from working correctly under Leopard. It manifests itself with the error:

-NSNull length: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0xa063f020

Berend posts this explanation and fix:

What has happened is that the Aperture Automator actions have been removed from /System/Library/Automator on installing Leopard (probably with Archive and Install).

I've been having this same issue and couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong.
The hint provided by the previous poster put me on the right track.

The Aperture Automator actions are located in the the Aperture application.

Steps to take for repairing the situation:

1. Open a Finder window and navigate to /System/Library/Automator
2. Open a second Finder window and navigate to /Applications/Aperture
3. Execute a Show package Contents of Aperture (you should get a third Finder window).
4. Now navigate to Contents/Library/Automator
5. Select everything (.definition and .action) in that folder
6. Copy with option drag to the folder in the window created in step 1.
You will be asked for the administrator password.
7. Close superfluous windows.
8. Start Automator and enjoy.

In short: copy the contents of /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/Library/Automator to
/System/Library/Automator

I've done this and no longer get the NS Null error messages. I can now access the actions and will see if they actually work some time in the next few days.

Cause: Apple Leopard Installer.
Remedy: Apple should have warned beforehand that something like this would happen and should have provided the solution.

Hopefully the expected updated to Mac OS X and Aperture will fix this.

Tags: Aperture, Bugs, Leopard, Automation

A knowledgebase article in Apple's support area states that under Leopard, using Software Update to update Aperture to 1.5.6 may fail to install. The fix is to download the update and install it manually. You can see all Aperture articles by searching for "kf8" or using this URL.

I almost never use Software Update to install updates. I use it to tell me what I need and then go and download and install the software manually. That also saves me from downloading multiple times to update all the machines in the house.

Tags: Apple, Aperture, Updates, Leopard

Clamshell Bucket: 1/800s f/4.0 ISO100 170mm -0.3ev, Canon 30D, Canon EF 70-200 f/2.7L IS, adjusted

RapidWeaver, the application I use to create this site, now has the option to generate the sidebar using PHP. I plan on taking advantage of this feature so that sidebar modifications (which includes adding new pages) don't affect all the HTML on the site and require a complete upload, 1000+ files in my case.

But switching to PHP creates a problem. Although the links I publish, such as http://www.bagelturf.com, don't specify the file extension and so will be automatically redirected to the appropriate index file, there are many links out there on the web that specify .html and those files will no longer exist. An example is: http://www.bagelturf.com/aparticles/index.html. When I replace this file with http://www.bagelturf.com/aparticles/index.php, all the links to the index.html file will be broken.

The fix to this is to use the mod_rewrite facilities of Apache. mod_rewrite allows rules to be set up that can generate new URLs from those that match patterns. The goal here is to convert all requests for .html into requests to .php. I found a couple of good sites to help me with this, here and here.

I want to experiment with PHP and mod_rewrite on my computer before making any changes on my hosting service. As it ships, Tiger has PHP disabled. I'm still running Tiger, note. The changes are slightly different for Leopard. To turn on PHP, I fired up TextWrangler and selected File > Open File By Name... This lets me type in the Apache configuration file name I need to change: /etc/httpd/httpd.conf. This file needs root access to edit, so as soon as I start to edit it, TextWrangler asks me if I really mean to do this. When I save the file it requests my password. I prefer using TextWrangler since I don't need to mess with the terminal or sudo.

To enable PHP I remove the # from the following two lines in httpd.conf:

# LoadModule php4_module libexec/httpd/libphp4.so
# AddModule mod_php4.c

Then I start Apache. This is done from the Sharing preference pane by turning on Personal Web Sharing:

If I already had Apache running, then I would have had to stop it and restart it by unchecking and then checking the checkbox.

I can check that PHP is active this by creating a simple PHP file and accessing it in my Sites folder in my home folder. The file is called index.php and looks like this:

To access it I load the URL http://127.0.0.1/~steve/index.php in a browser and expect to see a page with Hello World appear. It does, so now PHP is working.

To use mod-rewrite I create rules and put them into a .htaccess file in my Sites folder. To create the file, I again use TextWrangler and type in the following:

Options +FollowSymlinks is needed or else the rule does not work. The RewriteBase line tells Apache that my web pages live in my home folder. Without this line the access will go to the default web page for the system, which is not what I want. The RewriteRule line matches all URLs that end with .html and replaces the extension with .php. The Item as the end of the line tells Apache to give a response code of 301 (Moved Permanently) and to reload the page. This reload replaces the URL in the browser with the actual one I am using, the one ending with .php. This will tell search engines where my .html pages have gone.

There is one more step to getting this work. As set up so far, Apache will not parse .htaccess files in my Sites folder because that feature is turned off. As well as processing the global httpd.conf file when started up, Apache also parses a file users/steve.conf and by default that is set to deny access to .htaccess files.

To fix this I use TextWrangler to edit the file /etc/httpd/users/steve.conf so that it looks like this:

The edit needed is to change AllowOverride from None to All. This file applies specifically to my Sites folder and to everything in subfolders below that.

I'm done. Now I can experiment with my site by enabling PHP sidebar generation and viewing the pages locally. That's turned on in the Page Inspector:

Tags: PHP, Apache, Leopard, RapidWeaver

O'Reilly has posted another Inside Aperture podcast: Sal Soghoian talking about Leopard, Automation, and Aperture. Don't miss the previous shows listed in the sidebar, or simply subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Tags: Aperture, Podcast, Automation, Applescript, Interview, Leopard

While on the topic of backing up, it is worth noting that SuperDuper for Leopard is still not quite ready. Since RapidWeaver (used to create this blog) was updated with some bug fixes, SuperDuper is the last remaining application I need to have ready before taking the leap.

Tags: SuperDuper, Leopard, Updates, Backing Up

Drew McCormack at MacResearch has a nice example of the power of NSOperation and NSOperationQueue. His example carries out matrix calculations using multiple threads by setting up an NSOperation to evaluate each part of an expression tree.

Usually it is hard to use CPU resources efficiently and reliably, but these new features of Leopard make it simple. By packaging compute-intensive operations into NSOperation objects all the complexity is handed off to the operating system.

Notable in this example is that there is no code for locking. That's all handled automatically. There is also no code to manage dependencies between parts of the expression that are being evaluated on multiple threads and potentially multiple CPUs. Dependencies are expressed in the code, but not explicitly managed.

Since this is Objective-C 2.0 you can also see @properties and @synthesize at work. And marvel at the lack of memory management.

The site also has many other goodies for people using Macs for scientific environments including a script repository, and a Core Animation tutorial.

Tags: Cocoa, Leopard, NSOperation, Science, Core Animation, Applescript

Deric Horn gave a very informative one-hour talk at Cocoaheads at Apple in Cupertino this week covering the developer improvements in Cocoa for Leopard. There are so many improvements under the hood that it is hard to remember all of them and Deric's talk served to fill in those blanks. Attendance was very good, and there were plenty of new faces. If you live anywhere nearby it is worth a visit. We meet in Town Hall, building 4. That's the auditorium where Steve Jobs introduced the new iMac, iWork, iLife, and .Mac in August.

I recorded the audio on my Canon S3 and edited it in GarageBand. You can download the file (AAC stereo, 30MB) via the Silicon Valley Cocoaheads page.

Tags: Leopard, Programming, Cocoa, CocoaHeads, News, Canon, S3

Scott Stevenson has posted Part 2 of his series on Objective-C 2.0. He covers public properties and private setters, custom accessor and variable names, mixing synthesized and custom accessors, and providing methods at runtime.

It's all good stuff -- both the features in Objective-C 2.0 and Scott's presentation of the material.

Tags: Leopard, Cocoa, Programming, Documentation

Roadster: 1/25s f/6.3 ISO400 55mm, Canon 30D, EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8

It's been a week since I went to the Los Gatos Apple store and picked up my copy of Leopard. But I'm not running it yet. I'm waiting for three things: an update to SuperDuper, some fixes for RapidWeaver, and an update to Aperture. All have some issues, or at least the potential of issues, when running under Leopard and since these are critical applications for me, I have to wait until they are ready.

The Apple discussions have reports of some odd problems with Aperture running on Leopard. Some people cannot launch the application beyond the splash screen. Others get crashes at the same point. Some can see their images, but get a crash as soon as they try to do anything with them. I've seen some problems fixed by turning off Time Machine, but others not. It's hard to distinguish one cause from another because the hardware configurations are so different. My suspicion is that graphics drivers are at least partly involved, but people have been able to fix some problems by ignoring ownership on firewire volumes. Suggestions are that Prokit and corrupted images are to blame as well.

The menu bar can vanish too. Some people have found that font duplicates were the cause. Others find that Leopard is thinking their video card is unsupported and once they get past that the menus come back. Spaces causes some odd interactions with Full screen in Aperture, but this is not specifically an Aperture issue. It interacts strangely with a number of applications. One person had problems with a color picker preventing Aperture preferences appearing. There are clearly many ways that all manner of easily forgotten additions cause problems under Leopard.

Meanwhile I've been booting into a copy of Leopard installed on another partition and playing with it there. I've already made a snapshot of my Tiger drive that I will keep for at least six months: that's my insurance in case of corruption or my own stupidity. When I do move over, I'll do all the requisite back ups and checks, clean out my fonts, remove all the non-standard preference panes and start-up items, unplug all the peripherals, etc. and then do an update install. The next step will be to test everything that's critical to make sure I don't need to revert and go forward with my fingers crossed.

Tags: Leopard, Early Adopters, Aperture, SuperDuper, Time Machine, RapidWeaver

A couple of sites now have examples of coding under Leopard: a quick Objective-C 2.0 tutorial from Scott Stevenson, a bound NSCollectionView from Kevin Hoffman.

A good place to start exploring what's new in Leopard development is in the release notes at the Leopard dev center. You'll need an ADC membership to get it, but now the free membership works.

Tags: Leopard, Programming, Documentation

Displaperture rounds the corners of the desktop. Leopard no longer does this, and some people want that feature back.

Tags: Aperture, Applications, Leopard

I agree with Gruber. Ars has an excellent behind-the-scenes review. Leopard has a lot of polish and great tools under the hood as well as a nice shine coat on the bodywork.

Tags: Leopard, Mac OS X, Cocoa, Review

There are many changes in Cocoa beyond the obvious XCode enhancements and brand new Interface Builder. I have had scant time to delve into all of this, but Matt Gemmell has, and he has posted a long list of improvements that have been provided for us behind the scenes.

Behind the scenes views must be his forte because his about page reveals every last detail about him, down to the color of his underwear (well almost -- but it does mention socks).

Tags: Cocoa, Leopard, Socks, Xcode, Mac OS X

Los Gatos Apple Store In The Dark: 1/160s f/1.8 ISO1600 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.8, adjusted

Buying Leopard at the Los Gatos Apple store yesterday was not quite the smooth experience I had been expecting. I arrived about 45 minutes before the opening and found about 50 people in line. By 6pm there were a couple of hundred waiting, and the doors were flung open. Lots of cheering, clapping, and all that.

But not a lot of light.

The power for much of downtown Los Gatos has gone out about ten minutes to six, and there was no light in the store except the emergency lighting and the glow of iPods and laptops. And no cash registers, mobile credit card scanners, wireless networks, all the usual equipment needed to carry on business. So we were herded in in batches of about 20 while employees imprinted our credit cards by hand and wrote out receipts on paper.

I installed Leopard and the developer tools onto a spare partition on my internal drive. I ran into the problem of internal drives not showing up in the installer (fix: just wait -- it's checking the volumes. Or do what I did, fritz with Disk Utility trying in vain to make it appear). The first impression is that Leopard is smooth and fast. Animations have a snap to them. Things happen without delay.

I've been going through all my important applications looking at what needs updating and what is OK. SuperDuper isn't quite there yet. Nor is Transmit. M-Audio drivers are, as usual, way behind (and probably still buggy). My Wacom tablet is supported. Printers worked right away. I have to update Quicken, and I will update iWork and iLife. Photoshop Elements 3 is very old and may or may not work, but there are alternatives to that. OmniGraffle has a beta. Aperture has an update. NeoOffice is ready. Snapz Pro X is ready too. I'll probably move over to Leopard in a week or so.

The developer tools are greatly changed and I have a lot to learn there.

Tags: Leopard, Dark

Apple warns against using Time machine with Aperture running: "may lead to inconsistencies in the Aperture database". You can exclude items from Time Machine, but then even if this works, Aperture images will not get backed up.

I'm sticking with Tiger for a while and running Leopard off another partition to test things. One problem with doing this I have found is the Spotlight indexes are incompatible: each reboot will cause Spotlight to reindex all my drives.

Tags: Aperture, Backing Up, Time Machine, Leopard

Apple has just released an update to Aperture 1.5.6 (130MB):

Recommended for all licensed Aperture customers, the Aperture 1.5.6 Update addresses issues related to performance, improves overall stability, and supports compatibility with Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.

• Resolves some minor compatibility issues with iPhoto 7.1, which organizes images by Event rather than Roll.
• Addresses issues related to metadata and sort order when sharing previews with iLife Media Browser.
• Improves reliability of queries based on Import Session.
• Addresses reliability when recovering an Aperture Library from a Vault.

Update: Later today Apple will release the Aperture Export SDK 1.5.5. This provides only minor changes. Notably there are no new APIs provided. I am seeing reports that Aperture is fast on Leopard. I'll get a chance to try it out later today or tomorrow when I have Leopard in my hands.

Tags: Aperture, Leopard, Updates, iPhoto, Vaults, Plug-ins

I have seen reports that the 40D RAW format is supported by Leopard. Get the Aperture 1.5.6 update as well for the best experience.

Tags: Leopard, Canon, 40D, RAW

I'm reading that Leopard has leaked. Those who are reporting on it say it's fast. Very fast. Maybe that was Steve's super secret feature? Blazing speed would certainly be a good one, and you can keep it under wraps for a long time.

Update: I have seen one report that says Lightroom is very slow under Leopard. That could be because the machine was busy doing things in the background, or it could just be slow because of the way Adobe coded it.

Tags: Leopard, Apple

With all the excitement about Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in the air, it is easy to forget why we have computers in the first place: applications.

Once Leopard finally gets into the hands of mere mortals on October 26th, the application marketing dam will break. Finally all the developers who spent an extra four months polishing and tuning their recent creations will be free of Apple's NDA shackles and be showing off the fruits of their toil. It should be very interesting, and I believe will cement my belief that Leopard demonstrates OS X nearing a mature state. There will be many apps that are Leopard only. Why? Because Leopard apps can be written so much faster than was possible on Tiger. Certainly anything I write from here on out will be for Leopard.

Scott Stevenson has a sneak peek at Delicious Library, but for a few more days, we cannot see any more.

Tags: Apple, Leopard, Applications

As everyone who has not been unconscious for the last few days knows, Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard will be available October 26th at 6pm. [Update: A 380MB 30 minute Guided Tour is now available]

I plan on getting a copy just about when it comes out at the Valley Fair Apple store in San Jose that evening. I'll probably have my camera there to record the insanity as well.

I have a new firewire drive on its way that is destined to replace a now too small drive that I use for daily SuperDuper back ups. That older drive will become free and available as a play pen for my new cat friend. I plan on getting familiar with the beast for quite a while before I am sure that everything I need will run OK.

I'm expecting new RAW processing abilities to appear, either with Leopard or shortly after, but don't expect to see another version of Aperture for a while.

Tags: Mac OS X, Leopard, Apple Store

What if Apple distributed Leopard on silicon?

A DVD, and particularly a DVD drive, is a huge thing compared to the size of everything else that goes into a computer or computerized device. If Apple wants to make its laptops much thinner and smaller it has to leave out the DVD drive -- but then how do customers load software, or even boot a new version of the OS?

I believe that all the computers that are supported by Leopard have USB 2.0, so that would be the preferred method. Shipping and storage are a large part of the costs associated with software distribution, and much of that could be saved if a USB key instead of a disk and box were used. So although the silicon solution may appear expensive in raw materials the hit may be much less than imagined once the whole picture is taken into account.

Silicon distribution also has some other advantages. USB sticks can be stocked empty and programmed locally -- in-store for instance. Unsold sticks can be reprogrammed. Customers can recycle the sticks as well or just use them for their own purposes. Take them back to the Apple store once they are out of date for a refund so they can be reused.

Third party software that's sold on a DVD is a problem. But that can be solved with another computer that does have a DVD and a network link.

Tags: Crazy Ideas, Silicon, Apple, Leopard