So, i have Lion on my 17″ MacBook pro. It came pre-installed so i didn’t have the hassle of downloading and installing it. One thing i noticed was that there was no install disk in the box. I thought this meant that i was out of luck with that pre-lion install trick of saving the files from the lion.app directory.

Checking the little white manual that comes with the mbp and it say you can boot to an installation screen even if you can’t boot normally. Hopefully i’ll never have to do that (i keep both a time machine and superduper backups up to date. I’ll google around to see about the success people are having with it.) Although OS X is stable enough that i’ve never had boot problems in the three years i’ve been using a Mac.

Anyway, Lion. After watching that guy’s YouTube rant i thought i’d have some major productivity issues. Specifically with mission control and launchpad.

Launchpad. Yeah it’s iPad like but to me it’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist on a mac. ie. launching applications. There’s already a few ways to native ways to launch apps on the Mac and a ton more for free or pay easily available. Having said that i find myself using it all the time. And to address that guys rant (re: alphabetical order) Just move the friggin’ icons around. it’s not rocket science you already do that on the iPad.

Mission Control. I admit i miss spaces the way it used to work. I had a space for the different workflows and used a program called “Docks” (which mostly works on Lion but seems to have disappeared from the weeb, so no Lion update from the googling i did) that let you assign a different dock for each space. For me mission control makes the process a little more freeform.

Oh, one more thing the scrolling reversal. Using the trackpad it’s fairly intuitive especially if you already use an iPad.

Use a mouse though and it’s mind numbingly stoopid [sic].

I was talking to another programmer last week about text editors for programming. I mentioned the sad state of editors for the Mac.

I’ve known about BBEdit for the Mac for ages and I was considering it when looking for a good text editor. Glad I didn’t. I ended up with Textmate but it falls short (more in a bit). I probably use vim more than Textmate.

I decided I want to give Tcl/Tk coding another shot on the Mac again.

First, time to hit the Activestate site again. ActiveTcl is the package to get (for windows or the Mac). Took way too many clicks to get it but that’s just poor website design.

Second, the part I was dreading. Finding a text editor that had at least syntax hilighting for Tcl/Tk and code folding. No Textmate bundle for the language and I didn’t really want to spend the time to create one (and I shouldn’t have to). I took another look at BBEdit but it didn’t what I needed either.

Back to the Activestate sit again because I know that they have an editor specifically geared for the language (and perl also). And the personal version is a great price, included a debugger also.

Much to my surprise they no longer have that version of Komodo. They now call it “Komodo Edit” and it’s free. They removed the debugger but not a big deal. I can always spend close to $300 to upgrade to “Komodo IDE”.

Anyway too many clicks later and I have that downloaded and installed.

Worth the time to download, it’s a really good editor for Tcl/Tk.

Now the part that really makes me grit my teeth. You cannot double-click on a Tcl/Tk script ie. a fully GUI script, to run it. WTF!?

I had to google to find out if/how it can be done. I think this something the ActiveTcl installer should have set up already. As I type this I still haven’t got it working yet.

Here we have a gui based os with probably the easiest language to write a GUI app in… and it can’t be done. What’s wrong with this picture?

WindowshadeX has been released for snow leopard. $15 well spent.

i can only describe my first use of boxee has s dismal failure. granted i was using it under snow leopard but there were two issues that make the program distinctly unfriendly to use.

when boxee fires up you have to login. why? what if i’m only going to access local content? is it for the “social networking” aspect? if so what if i don’t want to get or send any recommendations? dumb idea, i expect when it gets out of beta there will be workarounds from people who feel the same way.

and speaking of local content why do these media aggregators make it so hard to get at your local content? ok i didn’t read any boxee docs but it should have been relatively intuitive to set and use a local directory.

plex makes you jump through a few hoops also. but works for the local content.

and front row doesn’t even let you.

as much as i like using the command line on the mac, BECAUSE it’s a mac i like to use gui software whenever possible.

one of the first things i do on a computer i’m going to use on a regular basis is install the pager most and Vim.

i tried macvim but it was not the vim experience i wanted. i have my .vimrc and .gvimrc in the obvious places but no joy. eventually gave up on it and started using textmate.

i started using macports because there were a few linux programs i wanted to use on the mac, the above mentioned most being one of them.

recently decided to see if there were a gui for macports and found porticus. browing through the software available i found gvim. plugged in my favourite .gvimrc and now i have a real working gvim on the mac.

well that was under leopard, dealing with macports under snow leopard is something i want to tackle when i have the time to do any troubleshooting.