Competitors:

• Ommwriter
• Pyroom
• WriteRoom
• JDarkroom

Ommwriter

Ommwriter is developed because of an internal need at Herraiz Soto & Co, a digital creative agency.

I like to call it the “Zen” editor, because of its default background images and ambiance musics: they all bring the belief of zen out by subtle, “quiet” images and sounds.

It runs fast: instant launch, easy switch between applications (for a dictionary search for example).

Ommwriter

It really takes it promise of being a distraction-less text editor.

Ommwriter interface

The full interface is clean that’s true. Buttons are explicits, the scrollbar is thin but really efficient. Nice.

Pyroom

I put it there only because I know it exists and because a really nice French guy works on it.

Here is the (huge) problem: it is such a pain to install Pyroom on OS X that all urge to use it leaves me instantaneously.

WriteRoom

WriteRoom is a $25 software created by Hog Bay Software. It seems that is name is like a reference in the world of distraction free text editors on OS X.

WriteRoom

I do not really like to pay software, except if they are so nice that I can’t do without. Fortunately, I received WriteRoom in my MacHeist bundle a few months ago.

WriteRoom is really customizable: this is a great point for it. You can indeed set everything from the fullscreen colors to the auto-save frequency.

WriteRoom preferences

In addition, it can create two types of documents: plain text and rich text, which can be a really useful feature for people who need text formatting without markup syntax (such as Markdown, I highly recommend it). For example, using the rich text mode allows you to set color, font weight and many other attributes such as text alignment of your text. WriteRoom produces RTF compliant files so they are editable by any other RTF editor.

WriteRoom Rich Text

I don’t use this function because of two things. The first is that I have an heavy use of Markdown. The second is that I think this feature is out of distraction-less text editing.

One more thing I do not really like is that you need to move your mouse cursor to the bottom left corner of the screen to display informations on your document (file name, words and lines numbers). I prefer the behavior of Ommwriter: you just move your mouse (it is equivalent for me to a light gentle touch on my trackpad) and those informations appears.

JDarkroom

JDarkroom OSX integration fail

To be frank : I hate it. Firstly, it is made with Java. It is not that I dislike Java, but it leads to problems: slow performances (it is long to start, not really swinging) and bad system integration (does not totally hide when I press +tab, keeps other applications from taking focus…) mainly.

Another JDarkRoom fail (+tab)

Furthermore it doesn’t deal nice with UTF-8. For example, I opened and saved my document in JDarkroom, without modifications. Here is the result back in Ommwriter :

My doc in Ommwriter after JDarkroom

(Trust me, I don’t let my 2400 bauds modem write my documents)

Conclusion

To conclude, I have a preference for Ommwriter because of the real simplicity of its look & feel. I also enjoy its ambiance songs! :)

Note: for each editor, I used it to write the corresponding paragraph.

Software

Chrome 5.0.307.5 dev
Safari 4.0.4 (6531.21.10)

Benchmarks and tests

I ran a few tests as a matter of form.

Google benchmark
Safari: Score: 1575
Chrome: Score: 4123

Sunspider
Safari: 547.0ms +/- 10.7%
Chrome: 444.2ms +/- 7.6%

Acid 3
Safari: 100/100
Chrome: 100/100

Security check
Safari: 3 tests passed.
Chrome: 3 tests passed.

Conclusion: Chrome looks a bit faster than Safari.

Extensions

There are two features I need to have in my browser.

1. Ad blocking, done with AdBlock on Firefox.
   Chrome: AdBlock
   Safari: AdBlock too but forces me to use Safari in 32bits mode. #fail

2. Display the download progress in the dock
   Safari: built-in
   Chrome: need a revision superior to 38304 (not even in dev channel yet) #fail

Bookmarks

I use bookmarks.google.com to manage my bookmarks.

Safari: No way.
Chrome: No smart way. (strange)

#doublefail

RSS

I rarely read news feeds in my browser, yet I need an RSS feature in my browser to easily add the given feed to Netvibes (for example).

Safari: Built-in is really nice.
Chrome: Needs an extension. One is provided by Google and it does the thing really well.

Extensions

Potentially, extensions represents the chances the program may have to fulfil my eventual features wishes.

Safari: few
Chrome: dozen

Write extensions

As I love to tweak the softwares I use, writing extensions for them must be easy.

Safari: ObjC, not really well documented. #fail
Chrome: JSON+Javascript. Well documented with videos.

Web development

Both has the same Developper toolkit, but Chrome’s default view source is smarter (color/lines/links).

I hope you like The Beatles! ;)

That’s it, I’m finally tired of iTunes. On my MacBookPro, it takes close to 3 minutes to cold start, and I see the spinning ball each time I click on its window. Such a pain! I needed to find a solution, quickly (well, I’m of those guys who don’t know how to live without music). I gently  asked Google, then I discovered… Songbird!

Songbird Logo

It’s amazing, it really blew me away! First of all, it starts in less than 5 seconds! Incredible. Here is what it looked like, at my first start (right after it finished importing my 70GB iTunes library without an effort):

First start

No lag, everything is smooth. Let’s dig a bit more. In the menu bar, I found that:

Songbird strange window

What the… ? Well, a Firefox-like console in a music player? I thought it was an easter-egg. I closed it then I opened the preferences window, and I found…

This window looks familiar

A Firefox-like extension window! Wow, it looked like Songbird and Firefox are cut from the same cloth. But it’s not the end! I then discovered the built-in… browser!

It allows me to browse Songbird's extension list

And watch my beautiful weblog

And finally grab its characteristics

So, I have a Firefox/Gecko with a music player on top. It really came out of left field. What else? Remember, I left iTunes only because of its bad performances. Hopefully, Songbird has a lot of iTunes’ features:

Songbird iTunes like sidebar

Songbird coverflow-like (plugin needed)

Furthermore, I really prefer its miniplayer over iTunes’:

Songbird miniplayer

As you may have noticed, Songbird is, because of its Firefox foundation, highly customizable. So if you, like my, prefer a lighter skin, then just download it through the built-in browser! Here is the Gonzo 2.0 theme I chose:

Songbird Gonzo 2.0

So for me, slow and not customizable music players are all water under the bridge.

I recognize my not really inventive attitude, but I think there is no better summarize about my feelings.

The Apple Magic Mouse

Look

Well, just by itself, the mouse is really beautiful. I admit it would not be worse with a soft white light coming from the Apple logo, or from the sides of the mouse, but I think it looks really nice on my black desk. Furthermore its bright tactile surface reflects as a mirror does which makes the mouse “pop”.

Feel

My dear old PC mouse

My Apple computer is a Macbook Pro (of de 5th family I think. It looks like theses ones and costs me 1200 €), so it has a built-in mutltitouch trackpad which works very well. However, I missed my dear old PC mouse. You know, there is something really different between a trackpad and a mouse : the depth. The Magic mouse is really nice from this point of view: it allies the power of the multitouch technology and, with its subtle curves, the presence of a classic computer mouse.

First approach

There is nothing easier than connecting this mouse with your OS X based computer. Just power on the mouse (with a little brushed button like the power on/off on iPod Nano). If Bluetooth is enabled on your computer, a window should pop up, print you some messages, and disappear. That’s it. The mouse is running on your Mac. It’s a bit strange at first, but I got used to its smooth surface blazingly fast.

Get ready to ride

Since the mouse is available to sale, you can read everywhere that you must use MagicPrefs. That’s why I downloaded it to custom my mouse gestures. This tool is really nice (I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t provide such a software with Snow Leopard). But it has one major drawback: it doesn’t support tab (⇥) composed keyboard shortcuts. I wanted to use them for my Firefox (with ⌃⇧⇥ and ⌃⇥ to switch between opened tabs). After digging, let’s say, 2″40 seconds with Google, I found BetterTouchTool, a software similar to MagicPrefs but which is far more flexible (and it works for touchpads too). So I dropped MagicPrefs and installed BTT. Well, I can say I’ve never felt so relaxed with a computer (except when I switch from PHP to Python, but…).

BetterTouchTool

Conclusion

To put it in a nutshell, I highly recommend you this mouse. Unless you are a narrow-minded conservative fundamentalist of keyboard as the only real interface with a computer, the Magic Mouse is really pleasant and easy to use. A nice purchase in my humble opinion.

On the FreeBSD server

AFP service

The AFP protocol is provided by NetATalk, a free AFP implementation. Let’s install it with the ports tree:

cd /usr/ports/net/netatalk/ && make install clean

Add it to your configuration: add the following to /etc/rc.conf:

netatalk_enable="YES"
afpd_enable="YES"

Define an obscure setting in /usr/local/etc/afpd.conf:

"Time Machine" -uamlist uams_dhx2.so

Add your Time Machine share into /usr/local/etc/AppleVolumes.default (edit to make it fits your needs):

/storage/timemachine/    "Time Machine" allow:thomas

Finally start the service:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/netatalk start

Howl (optional)

Howl is a free implementation of the Apple’s Bonjour protocol. It’s used to spread hostnames and shares on your network. You don’t really need it, but I think it’s smarter to use it.

Install by the ports tree:

cd /usr/ports/net/howl/ && make install clean

Add to the configuration (/etc/rc.conf):

mdnsresponder_enable="YES"
mdnsresponder_flags="-f /usr/local/etc/mDNSResponder.conf"

Create the configuration file /usr/local/etc/mDNSResponder.conf and fill it:

"Home Time Machine Server"     _afpovertcp._tcp     local.     548

Start the service:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/mdnsresponder start

Needed steps on the client

Unsupported Network Volumes

By default, Time Machine only allows you to use an AirPort-based system if you want to backup your data throught your network. So we need to ask it politely to enable the support for every network drive. Grab your terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

The sparsebundle image

(source of this part: http://jakub.fedyczak.net/post/28)

Since filesystem provided by FreeBSD is not quite compatible with Time Machine, you have to create your own file system image. Use Disk Utility to create image:

• Save As: MachineNameMacAddress MachineName as read from “System Preferences / Sharing / Computer Name field”. MacAddress has to be ethernet address of en0 – as displayed in ifconfig en0 result in ehternet line – without colons. For example: jf010203040506. Always use ethernet interface. Wireless interface won’t work.
• Name: Time Machine
• Size: Custom – greater than your HD size (in fact, it’s the amount of disk space you want to allow to your backups)
• Format: I use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but I’m not sure which one is the best.
• Partitions: Single partition – Apple partition map
• Image format: sparse bundle disk image

Resulting file should have .sparsebundle extension. Copy it to your remote FreeBSD drive and you’re done.

1. First of all, you must let your system think you have an iPod. Just open the file ~/Library/Prefereces/com.apple.iPod.pllist, and change de FamilyID to 1001, then save it.

2. Open your AdressBook.app, go to Preferences, then click Account button, pick the “Sync with Google” checkbox and click the “Configure” button on the right of the latest. You will be prompted for you Google credentials.

3. One last thing. Your contacts are not sync automatically when you edit some of them or when you quit AdressBook.app. You have to set up a small script which will be executed hourly (Note: this part uses the notion of cron). Create the file ~/Library/crontab, and write the following line inside:

   @hourly /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Versions/A/Resources/gconsync —sync com.google.ContactSync

Then open your Terminal.app and invoke: crontab ~/Library/crontab.

You should be ok, and your contacts will sync every hour. Have fun.