Tag Archives: mac

Bloody MacPorts

Here’s what I hate about MacPorts:

--->  Fetching xorg-bigreqsproto
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for xorg-bigreqsproto
--->  Extracting xorg-bigreqsproto
--->  Configuring xorg-bigreqsproto
--->  Building xorg-bigreqsproto
--->  Staging xorg-bigreqsproto into destroot
--->  Installing xorg-bigreqsproto @1.1.0_0
--->  Activating xorg-bigreqsproto @1.1.0_0
--->  Cleaning xorg-bigreqsproto
--->  Fetching xorg-inputproto
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for xorg-inputproto

… etc.

You cannot blink without installing X11. You can’t build python 2.6 without tk, and tk requires X. In order to get a bloody scripting language, you have to install a windowing system, built in the 1980s, that’s been obsolete 10 years. Why, on God’s green earth, is anybody still using X on a Mac? Why aren’t MacPorts ports written so the default is to omit X?

Immovable iMovie

I’ve only used iMovie a handful of times, and frankly, that was too many. It gets the job done, but it’s inexplicable and bloody-minded. Here’s an example:

What happened was that I tried to import a movie, but I inadvertantly picked the wrong one. But I had lots of time to rue my error, staring at this dialog. Because, you see, iMovie doesn’t have a “cancel” button. Arrgh! That’s forgivable in an application that gets busy and makes you wait 2-3 seconds for something, but when it wants you to cool your heels for 10 minutes at a stroke, not having a cancel button is ridiculous. From the HIG:

Modelessness
As much as possible, allow users to do whatever they want at all times. Avoid using modes that lock them into one operation and prevent them from working on anything else until that operation is completed. … If an application uses modes, there must be a clear visual indicator of the current mode, and it should be very easy for users to get into and out of the mode.

Cool Software: PDF Clerk Pro

Until a couple of hours ago, I’d never heard of PDFClerk Pro. But some website or other (dealmac?) alerted me to a bargain price for it on MacUpdate. I downloaded it, tried it out, and sprang for the $25 price after about 20 minutes’ worth of fiddling.

Why? After all, I’m a Mac fanboi. And one of the many benefits of working on a Mac is that it comes with Preview, which allows you to do 95% of what you might want to do with PDFs: reorder pages, combine pages from multiple files, etc. I use Preview’s PDF-editing features 10-20 times a week, if not more. So why do I need PDF Clerk Pro?
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