Speedy Mac is an application I came across the other day using a service called prMac. Speedy Mac was crated by Altomac, a software company that has three applications available on their site currently. From reading the press release Altomac sent out, Speedy Mac is described as an application designed to speedup your workflow, it is claimed that it will open documents, applications, folders and websites. Speedy Mac is sold by Altomac for a price of $27 USD, so I download the free trial of Speedy Mac and gave it a try.

What is Speedy Mac? Well it’s a program that adds an icon to your menu bar which lists recent and favorite documents, folders, websites and applications. Clicking on an item in menu will open it, Speedy Mac’s preferences allow you to add and remove favorite items. Speedy Mac is also available as a floating strip. In addition to opening files, folders and websites Speedy Mac also has a list of Tasks, which are an assortment of pre-installed and user expandable AppleScripts and Automator workflows.

Speedy Mac overall seems to be something I would have liked to know about when I first switched to the Mac, the best way I can describe Speedy Mac is that it’s a simplified Quicksilver. What I mean by that is that Speedy Mac aims to make simple tasks simpler and quicker. Quicksilver can be a little confusing to a new Mac user, and Speedy Mac seems to simplify some of Quicksilver’s most used features.

The install process for Speedy Mac is somewhat strange, in order to take advantage of all of Speedy Mac’s features you must enable assistive devices in System Preferences, something that caught me off guard and made me question the purpose of enabling this feature. When this is enabled, Speedy Mac will “watch” the websites and files you’ve recently opened and display them as recent items. Like Quicksilver, Speedy Mac launches an icon on your dock, but unlike Quicksilver, there is no option in the Preferences to hide the dock icon.

The two images above are the application icon and a screenshot provided by Altomac, below I have some screenshots of my own. I’m not sure that Speedy Mac is worth $27 USD, a lower price and I’d be more receptive of it, if you’re willing to learn a more advanced system, a free alternative is Quicksilver, otherwise checkout the free trial of Speedy Mac. I would recommend trying Quicksilver if Speedy Mac sounds like your type of app.

More: Speedy Mac on Altomac or Press Release.
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Electronic Arts hasn’t released any of the Battlefield franchise games for the Mac since Battlefield 1942, the original. Electronic Arts skipped over Mac releases of Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield 2, but the latest in the Battlefield franchise, Battlefield 2142 was released shortly after Apple and EA announced games for the Mac. This article will cover what you can expect from Battlefield 2142 for the Mac if you purchased and installed it today. To get started, we’ll cover how it runs and what current Macs will run it, then we’ll dive into some technical aspects of the game (how it runs on the Mac), some support issues and gameplay vidoes.

Battlefield 2142 runs alright on my Mac Pro, but not perfect and not as well as the PC version runs under Vista in Boot Camp on the same Mac Pro. Just for clarification, my Mac Pro is a “2006 model,” which has two dual-core Xeon processors, each running at 2.66Ghz and with a total of 4Gb of RAM. I have played the game with multiple video cards, the stock 7300GT, an add-on X1900 and the 8800GT, the X1900 had the best performance (see my previous post about the 8800GT performance issues in OS X). Unfortunately I do not have benchmark results from any video cards except for the 8800GT, which achieves around 25fps playing in windowed mode at 800 x 600 with all the settings set to their maximum (see the screenshot above).

Battlefield 2142’s frame rate goes way down when you start to enter into some action, like when your shooting at an enemy, something explodes or there is a lot of movement. The game will go from acceptable frame rates to unacceptable frame rates when this happens. If it were not for this glitch I would say the game has good performance. I suspect that having the effects cached on the hard drive contributes to this issue, while the game runs it uses only 1.5 Gb of RAM of the available 4 Gb. This is most likely a Cider issue and not a Battlefield 2142 problem. This problem seems to be amplified when the effects are close to the camera (point of view).

I have played Battlefield 2142 on a 15″ MacBook Pro with the X1600 integrated video card and it played with severe lag when FileVault was enabled but improved significantly after FileVault was disabled. If your having frame rate lag on your Mac, or have FileVault enabled with Battlefield 2142 read my earlier article on Battlefield 2142 performance lag.

The Mac version of Battlefield 2142 is being emulated using Cider, created by TransGaming. The actual application file contains the windows executable, game files and Cider, which is used to run the Windows executables on OS X. The game is playable in Windows if you copy the folders from the Mac DVD version of the game to your computers hard drive. This only works with single player, the required registry entries to play online are missing because the installation was not run. 

Since Battlefield 2142 is being emulated the performance between the native Windows application in XP or Vista and the the Mac version are substantial. In single player mode in Vista the game will achieve good frame rates at high resolutions and at maximum settings, whereas the Mac version has difficulties even being played. For this reason, if you have XP or Vista installed I would recommend purchasing the Windows version of the game instead of the Mac version, although I like the idea of more games being developed for the Mac, using Cider to emulate the Windows executables is not what I consider a real Mac game.

Hidden away inside the Battlefield 2141.app application file are the Windows files. The exact location is Battlefield 2142.app/Contents/Resources/Battlefield 2142.app/Contents/Resources/transgaming/c_drive/Program Files/Electronic Arts/Battlefield 2142 (yes, there are really two Battlefield 2142.app files, one is inside of the other). As for some of the settings and cache files, you can locate these in your home folder at ~/Library/Preferences/Battlefield 2142 Preferences/

Electronic Arts has not provided the best support for Battlefield 2142 on the Mac. When a new patch is released, like 1.4 or 1.5 (as of writing this article 1.5 for the Mac has still not been released), it takes EA weeks before it is made available for Mac gamers. When a new patch is released, all the Windows gamers and servers will update to the new patch, leaving Mac users of the game stranded. The number of servers currently running 1.4 are very low, but until 1.5 is out for the Mac thats all Mac gamers can use. The 1.5 patch was released for Windows gamers on May 30th, as of June 26th the patch is still not out for the Mac, I had a similar wait for the 1.4 patch.

My personal opinion about emulated games is bad, I don’t like the idea and I think its a lazy way for EA to make money. Until some more native games for the Mac are released I’m sticking with Windows as my primary gaming OS. I don’t expect titles like Crysis to be ported to the Mac, but when games are made available to Mac owners I feel they should be native applications.

I have prepared some videos, which are screen captures of Battlefield 2142 being played. These are at the full resolution, 1280 x 960 and shot at the best frame rate possible. As you watch one, notice the current frame rate in the upper-left corner of the video, this is the actual frame rate being displayed by Battlefield 2142. Each video is encoded in H.264.

• Screenshot of the settings used in all captures - image
• Some effects and running around - video (24.6MB)
• Distant shooting and effects - video (36.7MB)
• Fast action and close effects - video (27.5MB)
• Distant and close shooting - video (17.2MB)
• A little if everything plus system specs - video (92MB)

The Finder Path Bar is a nice addition to Finder, but it doesn’t come enabled by default. The Path Bar is located at the bottom of the Finder window and shows the path to the file currently selected in Finder. The image above is an example of the Path Bar displaying Photo Booth.app in the Applications folder.

To enable the Path Bar in Finder open a finder window and select Show Path Bar from the View menu. It’s that simple.

If you enjoyed this how-to, check out OS X 411’s other news, tips, tricks and how-tos.

Automator is a powerful application provided by Apple on every copy of Mac OS X. Although every Mac has Automator installed most users have never experimented with it, and that’s the goal of this article: to introduce you to Automator.

Automator is location in your Applications folder (/Applications/Automator.app), when Automator is opened you’ll get a workflow template chooser. Custom will start you off with a blank workflow, allowing you to add your own actions.

This is meant to be a simple article on Automator, and as such I’ll show the steps required to make a basic Automator workflow that will quit all of our open applications. (I use three primary Automator workflows, one to open my favorite applications (the ones I leave running), one to quit all applications, and finally one to put my Mac Pro to sleep.)

The workflow I’m showing you today will be based off of a Custom workflow. The screenshot below shows a empty workflow in Automator.

In the search box above the list of available actions type “quit” and Automator will show you a few actions, the one named Quit All Applications is the one we are interested in for this article. Drag the action Quit All Applications over to the blank workflow space on the right.

In the workflow pane you’ll notice a new action, the Quit All Applications action and that it has several options. 

Now we want to add some applications to the list for the action to skip over, that is, to not quit them. Click the Add… button and choose a few applications, I would suggest Safari if you are following along here. For my list I added Quicksilver and Safari, as example applications.

To get a little visual feedback, and assuming you have Growl installed, we are going to add an action named Show Growl Notification. Just as before, we are going to drag the item into the workflow pane to the right, position this notification under the existing Quit All Applications action. Give it a title and description.

You can test run your workflow by clicking the Run toolbar item in the top right corner of the Automator application (first make sure that you’ve added Safari to the Do not quit list). If you have Growl installed and added its action you’ll get a nice confirmation when its complete.

To save our workflow so we can open it at any time, choose Save As… from the File menu. Give it a name and choose Application for the File Format.

Once your workflow is saved, go to the folder you saved it to and launch your workflow. You’ll notice that by saving the workflow as an Application we can open it without having Automator open.

If you like the idea of having an application to quit all your open applications, you may want to edit the workflow to include Safari in the Quit All Applications action.

It’s easy to edit your Automator workflow, reopen Automator and choose the Open an Existing Workflow… option at startup. Choose your workflow from the list (the .app) and Automator will import all your actions. From now on when your editing a saved Automator application you don’t need to Save As…, simply saving the application is enough to update your workflow.

Automator and Quicksilver are a powerful combo, on my Mac Pro I used an add-on action called Sleep to quickly sleep the computer (I’ve found this easier than reaching for the power button or choosing it from the menu).

Apple also has a great getting started article on Automator, Mac 101: Automator.

While I was writing another post for OS X 411, I mistakenly added the word Cyrsis to Leopard’s built-in spell checker, I wasn’t paying attention, but after looking at the word more carefully (after it was added) I noticed it was misspelled. The proper spelling is Crysis, which I assumed Leopard didn’t know anyway, thats how this started… 

Most applications in Leopard that use the built-in spell checker allow you to add words to the dictionary, but not all of them allow you to remove or “unlearn” the learned words. Pages is a perfect example, it will allow you to add words to the spell checker but not remove them. Below I have an example of where I’ve added “Robetr” to the spell checker.

I’ve found two ways to remove a “learned” word from the Leopard spell checker, the first is to open TextEdit and type the word, right-click the word and select “Unlearn Spelling” from the popup (thats it, you’re done). 

If you used the TextEdit method above this is not needed (just an alternate way of removing learned words for the more curious). The second way I’ve found is to edit a file located at ~/Library/Spelling/en (en is the file name (for English I assume), and the Library folder located in your home folder). Open this file in any text editor (TextEdit even works) and remove the word from the list. Once the file is saved logout and you have just unlearned a word. This would also be a practical way to unlearn all the words known by Leopard. Note: The Spelling directory is only created if you have learned words, on a fresh install of OS X the Spelling directory doesn’t exist. It also seems that this file is not synced with the spell checker live, if you delete a name it will still show up as correct until you logout.

It appears that Apple will be including Sun Microsystem’s ZFS file system in 10.6 Snow Leopard Server. For those of us who dislike HSF+ and all the issues that are associated with it, this informal announcement by Apple on the Snow Leopard site is a welcomed change. We can only hope this will be available in the regular, non-server version of Snow Leopard.

For those who want more information about ZFS and Snow Leopard, read ZDNet.com’s article on ZFS for Snow Leopard or check out Apple’s Snow Leopard Server site, which mentions it officially. Also, Wikipedia has a great article on ZFS.

Having the ability to change the text on Mac OS X’s Login window is not an explicit feature of Apple’s operating system, it is however possible. Some of the reasons you may want to add text to your Mac’s login window are: security, lost/found and identification. Adding text to the login window is easy, simply add a key and value to a .plist file and logout. 

First you’ll want to navigate in Finder to the following location: /Library/Preferences/ (the Library folder in your hard drive’s root, not your home folder).

Click to Enlarge

Once there, find and open the file com.apple.loginwindow.plist in a text editor like TextWrangler.

Because this file, com.apple.loginwindow.plist is outside of your home folder and effects all users on your system, you must have administrator access on the computer you wish to modify.

Make a backup copy of your original com.apple.loginwindow.plist incase something goes wrong in any of the following steps.

Click to Enlarge

Insert into com.apple.loginwindow.plist somewhere after the <dict> and before the </dict> the italic text exactly how it is shown here: <key>LoginwindowText</key> Once that has been added, directly below it on a new line enter <string>Your Custom Text Here</string> Replace the Your Custom Text Here (red) with your message. Image: The text you will be adding is highlighted in yellow (the end of the line was omitted).

Save the file and logout to test your new login window text. TextWrangler or any other text editing program will ask for an administrator password when you attempt to save this file.

To remove the text you just added, simply remove the two lines of text you added.

Although this is being posted about a year before WWDC 2009 kicks off, what I discuss here is something for potential attendees to read. WWDC 2008 was the first time I attended WWDC and overall it went well for me, but I do have some “tips,” that I wish I knew before I attended. My tips are listed below, if you have any tips or questions of your own email me or post a comment below.

WWDC Registration - Register early for WWDC, get there a day early (Sunday), and grab your badge so you’re not having to wait in line on Keynote day (Monday).

The Keynote - Make sure you get in line early, at registration on Sunday, the Apple guy who was assisting me recommended I get there around 5:00am, I arrived at 6:10am, almost a full 4hours before the Keynote began at 10:00am. At the Keynote, get greedy: my friend Jason and I managed to grab seats in the tenth row (which were reserved for VIPs) because we went up to the front and the ushers pointed us to our tenth row seats. 

Lunch - I didn’t know that Apple supplied lunch until after the Keynote on Monday, everyday except for Friday Apple had lunch. The food was mostly sandwiches and salads, each day had a choice of three unique meals, which rotated daily. Tuesday through Friday Apple also supplied a breakfast with free juice and bagels.

Sessions - Most of the session rooms have power plugs, the only sessions I attended that did not have power plugs were in the Keynote room, if you’re attending more than two sessions in that room, make sure to conserve your laptop’s battery. It also helps to read the session description to see if the topic for the session is over your head or too novice.

Beer Bash - If you’re under twenty-one don’t plan on having any alcohol, Apple checked everyone’s ID, even people who were clearly over twenty-one. Wear something warm, a strong breeze in the park can chill the area quickly. Food at the beer bash is all free and at WWDC 2008 it was done to themes, like Italian and Asian; all mostly finger food.

Hotel - If you’re flying into San Francisco book at a Hotel close to Moscone West, I didn’t find out until after I arrived that WWDC was at Moscone West, I assumed Apple had all of Moscone Center (this matters because I stayed at the W Hotel, which was right across the street from the Beer Bash, but a block away from Moscone West). Each day WWDC starts early and ends late, other than sleeping there isn’t much time to spend at the Hotel.

Steve Jobs’ Keynote was THE event here at WWDC, the event that everyone wanted to attend. While many people I spoke with in line waiting to grab a seat at the keynote came to WWDC strictly to watch the keynote, many others are here primarily for the sessions and labs. See my posts: Waiting in Line @ WWDC, The line moved… A little, and On the way to the Keynote.

At the keynote Steve introduced iPhone 3G, MobileMe and Snow Leopard, all of which were in one way or another predicted beforehand. The iPhone 3G is slimmer, blacker/whiter (in 16Gb only), faster, cheaper and available July 11th. MobileMe is replacing .Mac as Apple’s syncing and online storage service, Apple also extended support to Windows computers and added push services. Snow Leopard, the next version of OS X (10.6) was also announced and should be available in about a year. See my posts: Snow Leopard is the next OSX, iPhone 2.0 Software, MobileMe, iPhone’s First Birthday, iPhone 3G and WWDC: Day Two + Snow Leopard.

 

OS X 411’s coverage of WWDC08 was superb and I wasn’t expecting to to go so smoothly. Since I’m attending WWDC as a student I was worried about even getting into the keynote, last year Apple denied access to students. Luckily, this year Apple allowed everyone into the Keynote and I was lucky enough to grab close seats. Just how close? Well, we were less than twenty rows from the front, my friend Jason guessed about ten (see the picture below for the pure awesomeness). We had the actual iPhone development team sitting in the row in front of us, I’m not sure we could have gotten any closer, VIPs were in the closest rows, Al Gore was one of them.

In addition to having great pictures I updated the site with new information within seconds of it being said and had photos up shortly after I updated the text. Although I did not cover the keynote word-for-word like other sites, I got my readers the information FAST. The person I was attending WWDC with checked sites like Engadget, and I had photos and news up before them on a few announcements (I guess there is something to be said for the “little guy”).

Yesterday (Monday) was the big day here at WWDC, the keynote overshadowed everything else offered here. Everything outside of the keynote here at WWDC is covered under the nondisclosure agreement all WWDC attendees had to sign/agree to, so I can not speak about specifics from the sessions. What I can speak about however, is Snow Leopard, the just announced version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system.

Snow Leopard - Apple’s new OS X was announced yesterday by Steve Jobs at the WWDC08 keynote. While it wasn’t covered in great detail during the keynote, Apple has posted a Snow Leopard site. The Snow Leopard site says that Apple’s focus is changing gears, from adding features, to enhancing OS X’s underlying technologies. What the “average” Snow Leopard user will see will not be new features like Quick Look or Dashboard, but instead improved applications. Snow Leopard will speed up everyday programs (both Apple and third-party applications) on your system. Whether this speedup will be enough for the “average” mac user to upgrade is something I haven’t figured out yet, my personal guess is that third-party programmers will write programs strictly for Snow Leopard, just like many are for Leopard now. This may or may not be enough of a reason for mac users to upgrade. Check out Apple’s Snow Leopard mini site for more on Snow Leopard.

Today, Tuesday was not as grand as the “keynote day,” but it was none the less informative for WWDC attendees. I took my camera with me to the sessions today, but didn’t take any pictures (mainly because nothing was worth snapping a picture of). The crowds were almost as huge as the crowds waiting to get into the keynote, and even a large queue formed outside of Moscone Center before Apple allowed us to enter.