Saturday, July 14, 2007

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (3 сообщения)

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)  RSS  The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
http://www.tuaw.com
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  • Hide the Spotlight icon in your menubar

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    If you don't like or don't use the Spotlight icon in your menubar, there are a couple of tips at Mac OS X Hints that describe how to hide or simply get rid of it. This first hint that caught my eye while browsing RSS feeds describes a way to 'paint over' the icon. While that sounds like a good idea and all, you still end up with a blank area in the menubar simply taking up space where the Spotlight icon used to be. Fortunately, Rob Griffiths, Macworld Senior Editor and Mac OS X Hints purveyor extraordinare, linked an older tip in the footnotes of this first one that describes how to properly remove the item from your menubar so others can take its place. It isn't a difficult process - you simply remove Search.bundle from /System/Library/CoreServices and restart the SystemUIServer process in Activity Monitor. Instead of deleting that item, however, I would definitely echo Mac OS X Hints in recommending either backing it up or renaming it just in case you change your mind in the future.

    Also, this only knocks Spotlight out of the menubar, cutting off your use of the quick 'n easy menu and the more powerful Spotlight window for searching. However, this in no way disables Spotlight across Mac OS X or your applications; you should still be able to run Spotlight searches from the search box in Finder windows and make use of Spotlight in any apps that use it (NetNewsWire, Mail, etc.). I tried this myself and the process went just fine, but I found that I needed to copy the bundle to my Desktop, then delete it from the CoreServices folder. Also, I needed to force quit the SystemUIServer in order for the change to actually take effect. The process restarted itself just fine, and Spotlight disappeared from my menubar. Replacing the bundle (requiring me to authenticate as Administrator) and force quitting the process yet again (oh that poor process) returned Spotlight to its throne in the absolute right of my menubar.
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  • Possible bug with iPhone synching and external iTunes libraries

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    TUAW reader Jamie Phelps has possibly stumbled upon a nasty iPhone synching bug when keeping one's iTunes library on an external hard drive. While tips like our how-tos for setting up iTunes with external drives or even an AirPort Disk work pretty well even when synching iPods with them, Jamie found that his iPhone gets the brainwash treatment when he's away from the drive containing his external iTunes library. As the story goes, Jamie synched his iPhone with a few songs and playlists, made a couple new playlists and then synched again. Hitting the road, however, and getting away from his external iTunes library drive is when the bug rears its nasty head: plugging the iPhone in while on the go caused iTunes to wipe out the new playlists and songs from the second sync operation, basically reverting them to their state before the second sync. To verify, Jamie even got adventurous and tried this whole thing a second time, once again watching iTunes blow away changes from the previous iPhone sync when the external media library isn't mounted.

    This is the first time I've heard of iTunes handling this kind of setup in a poor way; for as long as I can remember, iTunes has been clever enough to realize what's happening and and would either not sync anything to an iPod when away from the library drive, or it would actually sync any media downloaded or imported while away (as we've mentioned before, you can use the Advanced > Consolidate Library command to move all this new media once reconnected with the library drive). Since we don't really have any evidence of Apple deliberately changing this behavior for their iPods or iPhones, it makes sense for this quirk to be classified as a bug that will hopefully be squashed with an inevitable iPhone software update. But what say you, TUAW readers? Anyone else get bit? Sound off.
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  • SafariBlock: More powerful ad blocking

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    Since its inception, Safari has been able to block pesky popup ads from clogging your display, but it's fallen short when it comes to blocking ads on a web page. Firefox, with its open plug-in architecture and enthusiastic community, has enjoyed an AdBlock add-on for some time which allows users to right-click an ad section and forever filter it from that page. But what's a programmer who prefers Safari to do? Why, write a plug-in that brings the same functionality to Apple's browser, of course! SafariBlock from FSB Software (click on SafariBlock in the sidebar; I can't link directly to it) aims to duplicate Firefox's AdBlock features by bringing the same right-click-to-filter functionality to remove ads from your browsing experience. A recent update even brought compatibility for Safari 3 beta users so everyone can give it a whirl.

    It should be noted, however, that SafariBlock functions as an InputManager. The specifics of what that means aren't really necessary to delve into right now, but as far as I know, the rumor is still that Mac OS X Leopard will remove support for plug-ins that run as InputManagers when it's released (hopefully) in October. What this means for the future of plug-ins like SafariBlock is still unsure, but it seemed worthy of mentioning.
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