A few days ago, my minions found an old iMac G3 at the dump. And what do you know, it was in excellent condition.

But, what to do with it? It’s ~12 years old, so its usability is limited. Then again, bringing me an iMac is like bringing me a kitten… I just don’t have the heart to send it away. :)

To be precise, it’s a tray-loading iMac revision D, 333 MHz G3 processor, color “grape”, 160 Mb memory, 6 Gb hard disk. It doesn’t have a Firewire port, so it probably won’t install Tiger (although there are ways around that); but even if it did, with meager specs like that, it wouldn’t be a happy camper.

(It still had all the original owner’s stuff on it, by the way… good thing I am not into identity theft. ;-)

I installed Jaguar on it first, but I don’t have the CD with developer tools (later to be known as XCode), so that wasn’t very useful. Most modern software isn’t available for Jaguar anymore, anyway; it’s just too old. It was nice to see it again in all its pinstripey glory, but that was about it.

So, back to Linux again. But as luck would have it, none of the Linuxen I tried worked. I mean, they didn’t work at all. They would seem to install properly, then when I rebooted, the machine just sat there, gurgling, not doing anything.

As it turns out, some iMacs need a little help showing graphics properly. I ended up installing Debian 6.0.1 netinst (the PowerPC version, naturally), tweaked xorg.conf, then manually installed XFCE at the prompt. Then startx, and it showed me the desktop without a glitch. It’s a bit slow to start, but after that things are reasonably fast.

(Using netinst, you install only the packages you want… it’s a bit more work, because some important packages like gcc, make and sudo need to be installed manually, but on the other hand, your system isn’t bogged down by stuff you don’t really need. I am using XFCE because it’s relatively lightweight, more so than GNOME or KDE, in any case.)

I am now trying to compile Chicken on it… who knows, maybe this machine will be useful after all. :)

• Make sure you have a recent version of git installed. I had 1.5.x or so and it failed to clone the Io repository correctly, quitting halfway with vague errors. 1.7.1 works fine; older versions might too, but if you encounter problems during checkout, you should probably upgrade.

• Also, should you be using Mac OS X 10.4 still (as I do on my G3s), then make sure you have the most recent XCode installed. For Tiger, this is XCode 2.5, which can be downloaded from the Apple site. (Login required, so no link.) (Of course, even if you’re using 10.5 or 10.6, it’s still a good idea to have the latest XCode.)

• To use the new build system, you’re also going to need cmake (which can be fetched from MacPorts, for example).

• Check out the latest version from the github repository. Just do a git clone; alternatively you could fetch the 2010.06.06 tag from the downloads page, but this contains the previous build system, for which most of these instructions don’t apply. (Note that this tag might still come in handy if the new build system doesn’t work for you…)

• Once cloned, you should have a directory called io. Edit io/addons/CMakeLists.txt in your favorite editor. You’ll see a whole bunch of lines like this: add_subdirectory(Foo). These are the addons that will be (attempted to be) built. Comment all of them out.

• Now run ./build.sh. Since all the addons are disabled, this should build the Io VM only. It *should* complete with no errors on OS X 10.5 and higher. On 10.4, there’s a good chance that gcc will choke since it doesn’t know what an “ulong” is. If that happens, edit io/libs/coroutine/source/power-ucontext.h and add a typedef near the top, like this. (There may be better ways to do this, but for now it will allow us to proceed.) Run ./build.sh again after the code change.

• If all went well, now run sudo ./build.sh install, which should install the Io VM. Run io from the command line to see if it works. (The build date will still be listed as “20090105″, by the way.)

• If everything works, you can now add and install addons, one by one (or multiple at once if you’re feeling adventurous). Some of them require third-party libraries to be installed (e.g. zlib, libevent, etc.) As far as I can tell, you’re pretty much on your own to figure out which libraries are needed, although there might be some clues in the source. If you use MacPorts, this is a good time to do a sudo port selfupdate, then install the required libraries before you try to install the addons. To try and install one, go to io/addons/CMakeLists.txt again, uncomment the addon of your choice, and rerun ./build.sh. If all goes well, there will be no error message and in the output you should see the addon mentioned (for example, when building the Python addon, you should see “IoPython” listed in the output). If things build properly, don’t forget to do a sudo ./build.sh install again.

• Update 2011-01-11: If you specify an addon which cannot be built, the entire build will not fail; rather, the failing addon will be skipped more or less gracefully, and sometimes a helpful message is displayed. For example, to build the Regex addon, you’ll need libpcre; I didn’t have it installed on this machine, and near the top of the build output I saw “checking for module ‘libpcre’” and “package ‘libpcre’ not found”. Also, notice that in some cases, addons depend on other addons. In the case of Regex, it needed Range to be installed, so I uncommented that as well in CMakeLists.txt.

• If an addon doesn’t build correctly, you can take a look at the files in io/build/addons/name-of-addon, or io/addons/name-of-addon, which may provide some clues as to what is needed, in addition to the output of make.

That’s it! It’s a bit of work, admittedly… although I’ve seen worse. (As usual, I find that installing some of the addons is a pain, not because of Io or the build system, but because of dependency hell, version conflicts, MacPorts issues, etc. I guess it can’t be helped.)

Hope this will be of use to someone… anyone… Also, if you know more about the build system, and have tips or corrections, feel free to leave a comment below.

“I’ve spent the day eyeing Leopard warily from my chair and web-surfing for skins, icons, and suchlike. There’s a *whole* lotta grey goin’ on there, and I’m trying my designer-y best to neutralize its depressing effects by altering what I can in the options allowed, but I cannot help but wail and gnash my teeth and remember the good old days of Kaleidoscope.”

“Now it seems to be all about conformity. What happened? Toolbars? Any color you want as long as it’s dark grey with a really dark grey but not quite black tiny little font (Hello? Readability? Not. And don’t get me started on the light grey on white documentation and website.)”

“I mean, c’mon… flat grey folders? Screaming blue menu highlights? What happened to that happy, glossy, candy-colored interface that made things look happy and fun instead of like the inside of a cube farm asylum?”

Tja. I’ve been wondering the same thing myself. I actually loved the looks of OS X when it first came out. This was in the time of the original iMac and iBook, which came in a variety of colors, and were curvy rather than blocky… very different from the beige boxes that were all too common back then. The design of OS X mirrored that: colorful blobs of goo for buttons and scrollbars, translucency, pinstripes…

Then at some point they [*] decided that everything had to be be flat, grey (or maybe black or white in the case of laptop cases), minimalistic, and (IMHO) boring. Maybe in an attempt to look more “professional”, I don’t know. Some people I spoke to seem to equate professional with unexciting and colorless, so yeah. (One exception is the iPod Nano which, in the latest wave, comes in a number of bright colors. Maybe because an iPod doesn’t need to look “professional”… :-)

Unfortunately new releases of OS X mimicked the hardware as well, and it shows. Apparently even the little apple and Spotlight icon in the menu bar had to get the black-and-white treatment.

Whaddya think? What is the reason that Apple design ideas have changed so much? And will they change back someday?

[*] Assuming that designer Jonathan Ive was responsible for both the iMac/iBook design and the current flat/metallic design, maybe there’s hope that Apple will get a taste again for non-boring designs someday.

• Schola: A social network for Latin speakers.

• The Ultimate Commodore 64 Talk @25C3: Commodore 64 in a nutshell. (Well, a sizable nut…)

• How to create custom icons for your Mac: Useful.

• Functional programming languages (lectures): Heavy stuff.

• G3 icons for Adium: How cool is that? :-)

☯ Carbon Emacs: The OS X version of Emacs that gives me the least hassle. (Your mileage may vary; there are those who like Aquamacs, for example… maybe someday I’ll give it another try and see what’s new.)

☯ MacVim: I use this rather than the newer version, mostly because it has a “drawer” which I like better than tabs.

☯ TextMate is useful as well.

(So yeah, I use these three editors and more… no Emacs-vs-Vim wars here. Emacs is my editor of choice for Scheme (and hopefully it supports Clojure as well). OCaml, on the other hand, seems to like Vim more. For Python editing, I tend to use all three, depending on my mood and the type of project. :-)

☯ Adium seems to be the best for instant messaging. I have MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, Google Talk, and Facebook accounts, and it supports them all, so I don’t have to juggle multiple messenger clients.

☯ Skype: The Mac client is a bit lacking, but it’s the only game in town, as far as I’m aware.

☯ Thunderbird: Not spectacular, but it does the job. (But if you know of a newsreader (Usenet news, not RSS) that supports easy extraction of yEnc files and the like, please drop me a note.)

☯ Firefox: Runs on OS X with few problems nowadays. In some cases, I found that Safari is faster, which is especially noticeable on slower machines. (Like a G3… ^_^’)

☯ Tomato: BitTorrent client. Maybe not the one with the most features, but it works for me.

☯ Corel Painter IX: Great to use with my new Bamboo Fun. ^_^

☯ aMule: eMule/eDonkey client that has a Mac version as well. Doesn’t look great on the Mac, but it serves its purpose.

☯ Chmox: CHM file reader. I have quite a few e-books in this format, and it’s nice to be able to read them on the Mac.

☯ Colloquy: Decent IRC client. Great for lurking in #clojure. ;-)

☯ Google Notifier: No more overlooked emails.

☯ Nocturne: Useful for hacking in the dark. :-)

☯ UnRarX: Extract RAR files. This compression format is not as common on the Mac as it is (was?) in the Windows world, but it *is* used, and also helps to extract old DOS games and such (to run them in DOSBox, perhaps).

☯ ViewIt: Picture viewer, useful if you have truckloads of manga and comics stored on CD.

☯ VLC: Video and MP3 player… still flaky, but often better than iTunes or QuickTime. Supports a fairly large number of formats.

Honorable mention:

☯ Shiira: Interesting new browser concept. At this point, there’s no real reason to use it over e.g. Safari or Firefox, but if you want something different, this may be worth checking out. Personally, I like the “tab” bar that shows little thumbnails of open pages.

Anyway, these are just the apps that see a lot of play at the moment. Feel free to post your recommendations or suggestions in the comments. :-)

My first impressions are… mixed.

I like the fact that I could upgrade from Tiger without much hassle. Everything still seems to work, including QuickSilver, Adium, Chicken, and Postgres. Most of my settings (like e.g. for Terminal) are preserved as well.

There were, however, a few changes that immediately stood out, and that I didn’t like at all.

The new look of the dock is one of them. Fortunately, I knew this beforehand, and it’s easily fixed.

I don’t like the translucent menu bar either, but again, nothing a bit of poking around can’t fix. :-)

X11 still doesn’t work (I normally would not use this at all, except that there’s a C64 emulator that depends on it). There are some articles that deal with this problem, I will have to look into that.

Something I haven’t found a fix for (so far), and which bugs the hell out of me, is the new behavior of the little “view” icons in Finder windows. There are four of them now, and you can change a window’s setting to use icon view, list view, columns, or Cover Flow. Great, except changing a view for one window means changing it *for all windows*.

In other words, let’s say my default view is icons. I go to folder A, which has a lot of documents, so I want to change it to list view. I click on the icon, then open folder B. Surprise! It’s in list view now too, and so are all other windows on your system.

Now, it’s not completely impossible to change this and set views on a per-window basis, but it’s so clumsy that you might as well forget it. In order to use icon view as the default, but use list view for folder A, I have to do the following:

1. Open folder A.
2. Press ⌘J to open the “Show View Options” dialog.
3. In the window for folder A, click the “list view” icon.
4. In the “Show View Options” dialog, now check the “Always open in list view” option. (Notice that this will initially show whichever view is the default, so it starts out as “Always open in icon view”.)
5. Open folder B (this can be any folder that does not have custom settings associated with it). You’ll notice it’s in list view too now.
6. In the window for folder B, click the “icon view” icon.

This is pretty lame, IMHO… unless I’m misunderstanding things, it was *much* easier to do this in Tiger and its precursors. So far, from what I’ve read online, this indeed seems to be the new behavior: “Leopard also has new logic for views. Unless you’ve ticked the option to open in icon view, all windows will show whatever view you have just selected in whatever window. Like it or not, that’s the way it is.” [link]

(Strangely enough, other options like colored backgrounds, seem to be automatically on a per-window basis.)

More impressions will follow as I continue to work with the system. I haven’t checked out the shiny new features yet (Time Machine, Spaces, etc). More about that later…

For the Mac, I have now finally found a program that has most of the features I need. It’s called ViewIt (and it’s shareware).  Some of the features I find very useful are:

• Drag a folder to the ViewIt window to make the program “aware” of the folder; it will display the first image found.
• Use ⌘1 to display the image at its original size (100%).  This is important because fitting the image to the screen width often renders the smaller text unreadable.
• Use ⌘F to display the image full-screen (rather than in a window).  I’ve found that quite a few image viewers don’t support this feature and the previous one *at the same time*. That is, you can view the image at 100% in a window, or cropped full-size.  Fortunately, ViewIt supports both.
• The above means that most images will be larger than the screen, so the ability to scroll (especially up and down) is crucial.  In ViewIt, this is done with Ctrl+cursor.
• Cursor left and right goes to the next/previous image.

All these features sound simple, but they’re almost mandatory for reading scanlations in a pleasant manner, yet rarely do image viewer support all of them. At least, that is my experience. A while ago, I tested quite a few, and found all of them lacking in one way or another. :-(

(Of course, if you happen to know about another image viewer for OS X that does all the above, I’d like to hear about it. ^_^)

• key lime iBook clamshell, G3, 366 MHz, 576 Mb memory (~2001)
• indigo iMac desktop, G3, 400 (?) MHz, 384 Mb memory (~2001)
• MacBook, Intel Dual Core 2.0 GHz, 2 Gb memory (2007)

Funny, how things change.

(Well. I also have a small park of older computers, like my SGI O2, Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, etc… but those don’t count. (Although the idea of running Spiffy on the C64 and then talking to it using Firefox on the O2 sounds… wicked. :-)))

While a reboot resets the original color scheme, there’s an easier way: run the DMProxy script and everything returns back to normal. (More details in the link above.)

I often found myself wishing for a more obvious cue as to which windows are “local” and which ones are ssh connections. Maybe by using a different background color?

Luckily, I found a tool that does just that: TerminalDecorator. (A serendipitous find — I was actually looking for a Scheme language module for TextWrangler, which can be downloaded on the same page.)

It’s fairly easy to set up:

1. Copy the TerminalDecorator script to e.g. ~/Library/Scripts
2. In your .profile, alias ssh to /Users/name/Library/Scripts/TerminalDecorator
3. Edit TerminalDecorator (it’s a Python script) and associate domain names with colors in the scheme_map dictionary

And voila, now my ssh sessions have different colors, hopefully putting an extra barrier between me and catastrophic failure. ;-) OK, so it’s not spectacular, but I find it *very* useful.