What's it all about, Alfie?

This afternoon, Angelina wanted to be able to print from her iPad to the printers in the house. Since AirPrint was not enabled in Mac OS X 10.6.6+, I knew I had a few options open to me: hacking the system to enable it (it was enabled in a pre-release version of OS X), or buying one of the sub-$10 apps that allowed you to share all your printers on a Mac OS X desktop with AirPrint clients. I'm not a fan of the hacking, so I decided to give the apps a try.

When I was going through all the apps for this, I noticed AirPrint Activator. This guy used to be a hack, but now the author says this about the app:

Apple requested that I take down the AirPrintHacktivator page as they stipulate that the application is distributing copyrighted source code and/or software. AirPrint Activator is now replacing the defunct AirPrint Hacktivator application. It provide the same functionality without the use of any Apple files.

You can use AirPrint Activator as a replacement of the previous generation Hacktivator application. If present, it will take care of cleaning any Apple files installed by the previous generation Hacktivator when you “deactivate” AirPrint. It will only inject a single line in a CUPS configuration when you select to “activate” AirPrint.

I really liked that it only injects a single line int he CUPS config file. That's the kind of change I can deal with. Sure, it's liable to be broken in the next release of OS X - or even on an update to CUPS in a subsequent security update. But for now, it's possible, and if I need to learn what this change is, I can, and then I'll be able to update it myself in the future.

The next wrinkle turned out to be that my Mac Mini was sharing a printer that wasn't being shared via LPD any more. Seems Snow Leopard turned off the LDP sharing by default. Well, I found this hint and simply enabled LPD sharing again:

  cupsctl 'BrowseLocalProtocols="cups dnssd lpd"'

As soon as I did that, my old LPD-based sharing machines found the printer again, and all was well. With these two things, I have AirPrint working perfectly in the house now. I even printed out a few pictures from my iPhone for Marie who needed them for school.

Very nice.

Late yesterday I noticed that Mac OS X 10.6.7 was out on Software Updates, but I just didn't have any time to download the 300MB+ update and get everything going on my laptop. But this morning I wanted to get it installed before the day started. The big changes seem to be in the App Store - it doesn't get confused by already purchased software, and for the continual list of bug fixes, etc.

It's nice to see the update, but I know a lot of their attention is focused on Lion (10.7), and this is more maintenance than new features or cool stuff.

This morning I decided that $99/yr is only $8.25/month, and I pay more than that for my NNTP feed, so I decided that getting Xcode 4 was best achieved through joining the program as opposed to paying $4.99 at the Mac App Store. Plus, I get a lot more stuff in the Mac Developer Program - like access to radar bugs, pre-release software (if I want it), and I think it's even a decent discount on buying machines.

So I plopped down the PayPal card, and away we go! I'll be able to get Xcode 4, and while I may not love the single-editor pane interface, I'll see if I can't get used to it as it seems to be a big win for a lot of things.

Just kicked it up a notch... Nice.

This morning I noticed that Apple has released iTunes 10.2.1 and updated Java on Mac OS X to 1.6.0_24. The update on iTunes is to allow syncing with iOS 4.3 devices - the new iPad 2 and all the iPads and iPhones that will be upgraded to 4.3 this month when it's released.

The update for Java is just to bring 1.6.0 up to par with the other platforms. It's got the security fixes, the stability improvements, etc. Nice to see, given that Apple has abandoned Java past OS X 10.7 (Lion). Who knows? Maybe Oracle will botch it so badly that Steve will relent and keep delivering Java.

I've been playing with the Apple App Store a bit today and I'm really surprised at the number of apps that I use that it contains. I mean really surprised. The problem is that most of them are detected as "Installed", but if the Bundle IDs are different, as it is with MarsEdit and TextWrangler, then it's not. But in the short-run, it'd be better to have them all not recognized. Basically, if the Bundle ID exists, and it's not in the "Purchased" list, then it should be tagged as "Grandfather" or something. It's on the box, but it's not really recognized properly and won't be updated, etc.

This, in my opinion, is the biggest problem with the App Store: the inability to "import" or "register" purchased apps with the App Store so as to "fold them in" to the App Store umbrella. They could do this with a quick serial number check, or a service that Apple provides that checks to see if it's really licensed to a person... something. They really should try to fold in all the legacy folks.

But I'm guessing that they look at this as a transient condition. The next major release of any one of these apps puts me in the position to buy it from the App Store. No upgrade pricing, however, as I'm not "upgrading". But it's probably in their mind that this is transient, and will be a slight grumbling for a little while and then die down.

Maybe... but all the apps I have provide upgrade pricing, so it's not in my best interests now to buy them new. I would like to think they'd figure this out.

It's interesting, I'll give you that. The App Store is very interesting. It's still the first hours of the App Store, but there are several things I like about it, and a few that worry me. First, the things I really like about it:

• Installed apps go into /Applications, just as I had hoped. Good.
• Previously purchased apps can be detected by the App Store, and shown as "Installed". This is not universal, however, as I have BBEdit and TextWrangler from BareBones, and BBEdit was identified as "Installed", but TextWrangler was not. Maybe it had to do with the version... BBEdit was current and TextWrangler was 3.1 while the shipping version was 3.5, but still... it makes me think there's something that has to be done to the app in order to facilitate this feature.
• It's very much like the iOS store, so it's easy to find all kinds of things, but it'll soon fill with all kinds of junk, and the process will be challenging once again. Still... this is the ideal way for my Mom to get an app. It's just so simple.

I'm not sure how things will play out. For example, if you don't have the App Store app running, will it detect the updates? Probably not. It's not like the Dashboard that runs all the time, but maybe that will change in 10.7 (Lion). At that point, I'd expect them to have something small running all the time for the App Store. Then updates are "sent to you" even if it's a pull from the client, as opposed to the "push notifications" on the iPhone.

I'm surprised that as many apps of mine are already there. BBEdit was a shocker. I'm guessing Xcode isn't going out this way, but that might be a mistake on my part. I'll have to spend more time looking for what's there, and maybe it'll be better than I think.

UPDATE: Of the apps I use every day, here's the status with regards to the App Store:

I'm sure I'll be seeing a big change in these as the days and months progress. I'm just not sure how it'll pan out in the end. I'm a little concerned that this is going to be the preferred method, and that's OK, as long as the apps don't suffer. I think in the end, there will be plenty of apps that won't use this delivery system because they won't pass the rules Apple has set down.

[11:28] UPDATE: I got back news from MarsEdit support - the reason that it's not being seen as "Installed" is that the App ID used for the "direct sale" app was not available for use in the App Store version due to Apple's rules. Daniel states that there are differences in the apps as well, and he's waiting/working to see how these issues work themselves out in the coming weeks and months.

[12:26] UPDATE: It appears that this "Installed" status is a bug in the App Store. It's doubtful that the updating will work, and so it may be that I can buy new software in the App Store, but updates and upgrades seem to be out. As it appears now. Sad, but understandable. I wish Apple had made some kind of "Import..." function in the App Store that they have in iTunes to "recognize the pre-installed apps. Even if it deletes them and re-installs them from the App Store. That would have been nice.

I installed something this morning - the latest Citrix ICA plugin for Mac OS X, and then I couldn't seem to find it. I started wondering where it might be, and then wanted to see the contents of what I had installed. It's supposedly all in the Receipts directory, in on of the pkg bundles, but I couldn't remember how. So I did some digging, and figured it out - again.

The first thing is to find the receipt for the package you installed. For the sake of example, let's call this package Squish.pkg, and there are two places it will be found: ~/Library/Receipts/ or /Library/Receipts/. So look these two places and find it.

When you've found it, get to a shell and get into this receipt and find the bill of materials (bom) file like this:

  $ cd ~/Library/Receipts/
  $ cd Squish.pkg
  $ find . -name \*.bom
  Contents/Archive.bom

where the output of the find command should list the one bom file that you are looking for. Then you can list the contents of that file with:

  $ lsbom -fls Contents/Archive.bom

If you're really interested in being efficient, you can do this all with:

  $ cd ~/Library/Receipts/
  $ cd Squish.pkg
  $ lsbom -fls `find . -name \*.bom`

What I found was what I thought had happened - the Citrix client itself was updated, so nothing new was added to the system - only updates to the existing ICA client. Fair enough. But now I'm glad I have this written down so I don't have to hunt for it.

I probably missed this by a week, but today I noticed that Apple has updated Xcode to 3.2.5 with the final release of iOS 4.2 development tools. I'm not doing any iOS development (yet), but it's part of the update, and that's a good thing to have. I'm still very anxious about the release of Xcode 4 with the new features like better built-in SCM and history, and the toolset... it's going to be very nice.

This morning I updated iTunes to 10.1.1 from Software Update. The release notes said that there were a few problems with music videos, of which I have none, and something else. Again, I'm not at risk here, but it's a good idea to stay up to date as much as possible with this stuff. You never know when the syncing will depend on the version of iTunes you have.

Well... it's here! I saw on the familiar sources that iOS 4.2 was released to iTunes 10.1 and initially I was pretty disappointed that they didn't release 4.2.1 - as I know they were working on it before the release, but when I installed 4.2 it was actually reported as 4.2.1!

Sweet.

I haven't used the new stuff, but I'm sure I'll get around to it. I'm guessing that with the news that iOS 4.3 coming out next month, I'll probably find out in that time-frame. I'm pretty busy now with work and the house.

Who knows... maybe I'll get an Apple TV? Might be fun.