my2cents

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/08/make-a-bootable-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-installer-from-a-usb-flash-drive/ really helped.

I was shocked when I realized how skinny Steve Jobs has become. The below picture from WWDC 2011 is seriously scary. He seems to walk on toothpick legs; just skin an bones. I’m worried, truly worried.

Steve Jobs at WWDC 2011, Jesus Christ is he skinny

More than a year ago I first spent time looking for the perfect in-ear headset. Since I didn’t have many choices at that time I put my decision off – until recently. I scanned the market again, read reviews without end, and finally selected four models for testing:

1. Klipsch Image S4i
2. Bose MIE2i
3. Etymotic hf3
4. V-Moda Remix Remote

And the winner is…hang on – we’re not there yet. Preconditions: I love music but I’m not an audiophile. I judge sound quality not scientifically (high, low, mid-range, etc.) but in simpler terms. I mostly listen to music from the iPhone while commuting. Hence, noise isolation is important, my neighbor’s phone babbling isn’t. I believe my ears have standard size more or less. Among the four chosen candidates price isn’t an issue for me, I’ll buy the “best” i.e. most suitable of these. I have no brand preference whatsoever. I’ve been using Sennheiser in-ear phones (no headset) for the last two years and I’m very happy with them.

I first unpacked the Klipsch buds. I put them on and was disappointed by the fit. In fact, they hurt. So, I exchanged the fittings with larger ones. They fit a little better. I later learned that it takes some getting used to (meaning they feel better after a few minutes).

Then I tried the Etys. Same story, just worse. They come packaged with the small 3-flange eartips and I had to exchange them for the regular grey 3-flange eartips. The fit was a little better, but since these go down the ear canal instead of just sitting in your ear lap, it still is a little odd and it hurts. It feels like the eartips are too long for my ear canal.

Already a bit worried – didn’t I say I thought I had standard-size ears? – I tried the Bose buds. Their “revolutionary design” promises super-comfy earphones. Really, putting them on is odd, they look terrible but they fit perfectly. You barely notice they sit in your ear. Pure comfort!

V-Moda Remixe Remote hurts my ear due to sharp edges

Last but no least, I tried the V-Moda. Similar story than with the first two. The “standard” eartips are the (too) small ones. That may look more stylish on the marketing photos but they hurt. The metal-edges are just too sharp. After I exchanged the eartips with the larger ones the fit was perfect – like with the Sennheisers. The eartips are large enough to keep the sharp edges away from the sensitive ear skin.

While exchanging the V-Moda eartips I noticed that the construction of the tips and the “tube” underneath it is almost exactly like with my current Sennheiser buds.

V-Moda vs. Sennheiser, where's the difference?

The first sound check was devastating – for the Etys. The best purest sound comes from Bose. The sound is nicely balanced and crisp clear, a delight. The V-Modas are a bit on the “heavy” side, an extremely rich and full sound. I like the bass. It’s not overly prominent but it’s strong. The Klipsch are somewhere between, very clear and nicely balanced sound. And the Etys? Well, they sound thin and shallow, a real disappointment.

→ The Etys are out, sorry.

So, I moved on to compare the various connectors. The Sennheisers traditionally had a 90° plug which I like a lot for various reasons. V-Moda and Bose (plus Etymotic for that matter) now use a 45° plug while Klipsch has a straight one. The straight plug is my least favorite. The Bose connector stays closest to the device, I guess it’s less than 45°.

Top to bottom: Klipsch, V-Moda, Bose, Sennheiser

Next test was noise isolation. I don’t say noise-canceling because for me canceling is active while isolation is passive. I said in the beginning that noise isolation is rather important for me. However, I wish it wasn’t because this requirement actually killed the Bose candidate. Due to their design they offer virtually no isolation, what a pity. V-Moda’s isolation is really good and also the Klipsch are not bad. The Etys offer nearly 100% isolation but this comes at a price (see above).

→ For Bose the game is over, soooo sorry.

Interestingly, both remaining candidates have the mic where the left and the right cord meet on chest level. Bose and Etymotic have the mic “box” dangling on the right cord around your mouth/chin. I compared both the mic quality and how easy the control buttons are to operate. To judge mic quality I made a number of recordings with the iPhone’s built-in Voice Memos app. If the room is quiet the V-Moda mic and the Klipsch mic perform equally. With background noise Klipsch filters more effectively. The Klipsch control buttons are easiest to operate both thanks to the nice tactile feedback and the button shape & size. V-Moda is close, though. It’s generally easier to use headphones which have the control panel on chest-level. You can’t see which button you touch when the control panel is right of your mouth. Besides, the Etymotic’s control panel’s buttons are ridiculously tiny (3mm in diameter).

Buttons (play/pause, volume up/down): Klipsch, V-Moda, Bose (back to front)

So, who’s the winner now? Well, I don’t know yet. My summary…

For anyone not interested in noise isolation I’d recommend the Bose buds: perfect fit, best sound, clever plug, just about acceptable controls. No wonder they have near perfect rating at Apple and Amazon.

Personally, I have a hard time deciding between V-Moda and Klipsch. V-Moda is more comfortable to wear, the sound is full with a tendency for too much bass, the plug is 45° and the controls are ok. Klipsch rates second in sound quality, best in control panel and mic but they’re a little less comfy to wear than V-Moda at first. On the other side V-Moda suffers quite a bit more from cable noise than Klipsch.

As many other users I was everything but pleased when Apple replaced the nice Aqua skin in iTunes 10 with an essentially black-and-white “graphite” skin.

With the modified skins published at http://macthemes.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=16805800 I was able to breath new life i.e. color into iTunes 10. I’m using the “Aqua, colored sidebar & v10 standard caption buttons” skin which makes iTunes 10 look more or less like it used to be.

Those who would want to fiddle around themselves could use ThemePark to edit iTunes.rsrc.

Looking for a more stylish iTunes icon I came across http://www.toffeenutdesign.com/goodies#itunesten which I really like.

I recently managed to mess up my Mac mini while resetting PRAM and NVRAM. I did reset them indeed but something got corrupted because the mini would hang at the blue screen with the spinning beach ball re-appearing time and time again. Strangely I could still connect to it with SSH and file sharing worked, too.

I tried lots of things such as resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) and booting from the Snow Leopard install DVD to verify and fix permissions/disk.

I found an interesting post in the Apple forum from someone whoes log file showed the same type of errors:

Login Window Started Security Agent
Login Window - Returned from Security Agent
AuthorizationRef returned errAuthorizationDenied. Exiting.

The post mentions a “corrupted authorization file” but that didn’t help me much (where is this file?). Googleing for that lead me to a blog entry labeled “LoginWindow crash” which explains things quite detailed. A second hint came from the insanelymac.com forum, thanks.

In the end you need to replace the authorization file at /private/etc/authorization with either

• authorization~previous in the same folder
• or the one from the OS X install disk at /Volumes/osx/private/etc/authorization

On Windows machines I’m used to using FinePrint to pre-process every document before it’s actually sent to the printer (2 on 1 page, 4 on 1, booklet, watermark, template, etc). From that suite of features what I miss the most on OS X is the ability to print booklets. Turns out there are at least two tools for OS X that provide that:

1. Create Booklet
2. CocoaBooklet

I tried Create Booklet and was quite impressed – it does what it says it does and it does that well. The documentation, however, is quite poor. In fact there’s none at all one the developer’s site. The DMG file contains a Quick Introduction.pdf that serves as a good documentation – if you don’t overlook it. The developer should have put the document’s content online. Then people could get a glimpse of what the tool does before they download (and install) it.

I was recently invited by Apple to take part in one of their customer support surveys. Besides the somewhat strange URL I noticed an all too familiar favicon: yes, Apple runs JBoss (Web).

Of course I played around with the URL a little…here comes the confirmation, it’s JBoss Web 2.2.1:

Looking for a way to modify the default printer presets i.e. the presets called “Standard” in OS X I came across a Mac OS X Hints article that talks about the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.print.custompresets.plist file.

However, what I found way more interesting is that apparently OS X provides a web interface for CUPS at http://localhost:631/ for the locally installed printers.

Through that interface you can nicely modify the default printer presets. Just go to http://localhost:631/printers/ -> choose your printer -> select Set Default Options in the second drop-down. You’ll be asked for an administrator’s username/password to save the changes. No surprise there.

On a new OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard the Huwei E220 USB modem (from Swisscom in my case) didn’t work anymore. The USB dongle mounts and the files on the mounted drive were visible but the Unlimited Connection Manager (UCM) installer contained in the mounted drive crashed always. It’s obviously not compatible with 10.6.

To fix this you need to download the latest version from http://www.swisscom.ch/res/hilfe/downloads/mobile/unlimited/index.htm. It still says on that page that only 10.4 and 10.5 are supported but it works just fine with 10.6, too.