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A podcast about Macs done by a Mac geek for Mac geeks. Show 74. Apple finally releases 10.4.2 update, ArsTechnica claims to know real reason for Apple’s Intel switch, reports of iPod Shuffle not playing some iTMS tracks and Apple quietly steers Cocoa developers away from JAVA. John Chambers and the MacCast One Minute Tip #3: Mac Mail. A warning about changing your home folder name in OS X, what to do if your iBook Battery will no longer holding a charge, a tip to quickly discover which groups a contact is in in the Address Book, a listener looking for a true 3-button mouse for OS X, tip on viewing iTunes .pcast RSS files, a great RSS tutorial on the MacCast forum and CocoaRadio, a Podcast for OS X Developers and power users. New music, The Blame Game by Rory Breaker.
That’ll do, Donkey. That’ll do.
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As for a 3 button mouse for the MAYA listener, WACOM tablet folks make a wireless 3 button mouse to work with their tablets. It comes bundled with the tablet as well as the pen stylus. Maybee a thought…
-MattW
Concerning a 3 button mouse that works well with Mac…
I used Maya for a while and I actually used my Wacom Tablet Mouse and it worked perfectly. Its a simple 3 button mouse (middle button also a wheel) that is actually wireless with no battery (the tablet uses magenetics I believe). The buttons worked perfectly for Maya (as well as other apps – e.g. I set my middle button for Expose’).
Drawback (of course) – Wacom Tablet ~ $300.
As a side note though, My tablet was EASILY the best money spent on my computer and I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone that uses there computer for more than the basics. A Standard tablet comes with a mouse AND a pen which you can use interchangebly (The tablet recognizes what is present automatically and instantly). As I mentioned above – almost magically – neither use batteries. As a graphic designer there really isn’t anything about it I don’t like. I could go on but I will let ya’ll check it out for yourselves on their site if you are interested.
My tablet ran me $310.00 (U.S.) and has been worth every cent.
Huge props to Wacom for creating such an amazing product.
~`Andrew.,.,.
(And No – Wacom isn’t paying me either ;)
Just a quick note to say that the option-key trick in Address Book works in Panther too.
Andrew,
Actually my friend has that as his solution. Iwanted to find a mouse that worked for under $50. But I may go for the Wacom at some point in the future. Although, the wacom I use at work has the mouse with the clicking scroll wheel middle button.
What I really want is a plain, ol’ 3 button mouse, like the old logitech heart shaped mouse that I still use on my linux system at work.
I think the article at ArsTechnica is more correct than most other articles concerning the switch to Intel. It is a great read!
From everything I have read, IBM has a clearer upgrade path than does Intel. Intel has hit “structural limits” that IBM has solved (that is one reason IBM is the chip set used in game machines).
With under five percent of the computer market, maybe it is time for a big change – but don’t tell me your looking for more speed!
YAY!
What’s the subscription count on the eMacCast?
I tried the Address book highlighting feature, and it turns out that this feature works on Panther as well. Cool!
Concerning Maya & 3-button mice. I can not imagine what is the trouble there, but perhaps some problems exist. I’ve pretty much used any 3-button mice I’ve found succesfully. I never installed drivers though.
Personally, I’ve tried MS Intellimouses (Explorer and non-Explorer) and Logitech optical mice (corded Pilot mouse optical).
Works on Shake and Maya. Costs
… (something wrong with characters) … Costs less than 20 euros.
Regarding 3 button mouse, try
http://www.dvforge.com/themouse.shtml
I’m seriously considering buying one myself!
Re: Maya on the Mac
Maya has support on the mac for one, two or three button mice, but you have to set what you’re using in Maya’s preferences and save it. It will then alter mouse usage to allow any of those choices to work with a different set of modifiers to perform everything but MMB-drag on handles.
To change the options, open up Maya’s preferences and select the root category of “Interface”… at the bottom of the list is “Devices” and Mouse Tracking allows you to choose one two or three buttons for your mouse. This will at very least allow you to navigate the interface with a single mouse button (e.g.: powerbook on your lap) or use only two if they are the only ones working.
As for trying the variety of mice:
DO NOT install the mouse drivers. Logitech is notorious for rendering middle mouse buttons unusable with their drivers and OS X supports three button (scroll-wheel) mice fine without them. I have personally used MS and logitech mice on my mac with Maya and all buttons work UNTIL I install their drivers, then they are usually rewired to work as some other function.
How many developers were using Java for Cocoa development?
All the Cocoa books I’ve seen and virtually all of the sample Cocoa code on Apple’s Developer site is in Objective-C (except for some short notes about why to NOT use Java and some obligatory brief examples for those who stubbornly insist on ignoring this advice.)
Cocoa are Mac OS X-only frameworks, that is, they don’t even work with Mac OS 9. Java is all about platform-independence. This is a fatally flawed combination.
If you can find examples of apps that are developed in Cocoa-Java, I’d like to know what they are.
Regarding your iBooks slow boot after the install of OS X 10.4.2. I believe it was somewhere alone the line of updates in Panther that Apple introduced a BootCache. There is a little blurb about it at the bottom of the page here: http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_boot.html The BootCache is designed specificially to speed boot times. After an OS update it has to refresh this cache so boot time is a little longer.
I wanted to state that I have had that iPod shuffle problem as well. I am on my third one and they all do it, so there is some type of firmware issue for sure. The tracks that the shuffle freeze on do play in iTunes and on my iPod 3G 40GB fine. So I know it is not the tracks. There was an issue in the beginning where it would actually skip tracks all together. This seems to have quietly been fixed because iTunes now renames the tracks to 4 capital letters plus the .mp3 etc once it puts them on the shuffle. I have a trouble ticket into them through my local Apple Store Genuis Booth that is supposed to be escalated to Apple engineers. Plus iTunes Music Store Support knows as well and said do not redownload the tracks fro two weeks. Those guys at the Genuis Booth there were aware of the issue as well, but stated Apple has not updated them on it yet. I hope Apple fixes the issue soon. This has been happening since the shuffles came out, but the issue with music store files just started happening recently and believe me I have restored the firmware at least 15 times between the 3 shuffles I have had, plus the issue happens on firmware version 1.0 and 1.1
Anyone else having this problem?
Thanks,
Tom
On the 3-button mouse question:
I am embarrased to say that Microsoft makes a darn good product. I use the intellimouse optical -they have various flavors of intellimouses, though the optical is cheap (you can get it for $15 on sale) and it’s symmetrical so it feels the same for lefties as it does righties.
Anyway what makes the MS mouse worth mentioning is the software (called MS mouse of all things). All 5 buttons (and scrollwheel) are programmable and can be configured differently for every app (works fine in Tiger, btw).
If you can bear sending a few extra bucks to Bill Gates, give it a try.
Generally, any multi-button mouse should work in this manner, even with the driver software, given you configure it correctly. I personally use USB Overdrive, but the key is to set the scroll click to “third button” or “middle button” (nomenclature may change based upon the driver software). Another option is to disable the driver software for applications that want unfiltered mouse clicks, such as Maya.
Regarding the iBook batter with one foot in the grave… I experienced a similar problem with my PowerBook G4 Titanium battery. I purchased a replacement from Other World Computing (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/powerbook/batteries/) and have been very satisfied. I’d recommend their high capacity lithium ion batteries without reservation.
The latest OS 10.4 update really helped me out with some network problems i had between my iBook and the windows machine i still have. I sometimes had to reboot the iBook to let it recognize the shared folders. Now i dont have any problem at all.
I use the Logitech Marble trackball in OSX and XP. It is easy on the wrist and no tabletop creep…It has left and right button, with two smaller inside buttons…all programmable.
This trackball is no longer in production, but I have bought several on Ebay. If they are refurbished, you should get two for fifteen or under.
Thanks all for the 3-mouse suggestions! It seems that uninstalling logitech drivers worked to solve the middle mouse button problem. Seems strange, but I guess it works.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no true 3-button mouse that has 3-full buttons that will work for me. Unless there is a way to get an old serial/ps-2 bus mouse to work with a serial to usb adapter? I’ve tried it, and osx seems not to be able to see the mouse.
Found an interesting site that explains some of the ins and outs to do with rechargebale batteries.
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm
Adam – Thanks for letting all your listeners know about CocoaRadio! I am usually tuning in as soon as the MacCast is posted but I missed your plug. Thanks for your hard work which I can now appreciate.
3-Button Mice
I do not understand what your problem could be, unless you are still using 10.2 or earlier. If I need a mouse, I just go to any computer store and fine the cheapest USB mouse that has the features I need. Even if they do not say they work with the MAC, they will. As long as you have 10.3+ your mac will see up to 5 buttons and a scroll wheel. Just use the System Preferences to set it up, and never open the driver CD. From what has been said, it sounds like changing the Maya settings is your problem. Just be sure everything is set in the system preferences, and if that still doesn’t work, sometimes a reboot will fix it.
re: 3-button mice on a Mac using Maya
Oh, how I wish I’d found this thread before investing in more Logitech equipment. I am also a victim of losing the MMB functionality in Maya once I upgraded my keyboard to a Logitech model. (which then rewrote the driver for the mouse because Logitech’s “Control Center” is a complete-package driver) Now my MMB just mimicks my LMB and I have no track control anymore.
I could uninstall the driver, but then one loses all the apple hot-key commands like copy, paste, save, etc. so that only solves one problem while introducing another. Lame. I cannot believe they’ve been doing this since July 2005.
My other option is to buy a Mac keyboard by Apple, but Apple’s pushing their ‘we’re going to revolutionize the way you wipe your butt’ campaign, and only sells one model keyboard, wafer-thin and utterly lousy key action, which I despise. Only their marketing division thought a laptop style keyboard for regular-purpose Macs would be a good strategy.
I have installed blender and discovered I need a Middle Mouse Button on my Logitech MX4000.
My middle mouse button would only run the application switcher which I wanted to disable so I could navigate in blender. All the forums I could find said don’t use the Logitech driver, but too late, besides I use the configuration in other apps, so the solution for me was.
Map the middle button to “Advanced Click” and assign it to Click Type “Click” Button Number “8”.
Make this a config for Blender.
In the end I changed this to an easier to finger thumb button, but you get the idea.
So glad there is a way.
OS X 10.4.9 Logitech Mouse MX4000 Blender Disable Application Switcher Third Button