Half a year after Leopard has been released, we finally get an official Java SE 6 from Apple today!

Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1 adds support for Java SE 6

Thanks Apple! Anyway…

As you can see from the description:

This update does not replace the existing installation of J2SE 5.0 or change the default version of Java.

So if you want to make Java SE 6 your default version of Java, there is one thing you need to do:

sudo ln….. OK, no command line this time.

Here is the right way to do:

1. Launch /Applications/Utilities/Java/Java\ Preferences.app
2. Drag “Java SE 6 (64-bit)” to the top of the “Java Application runtime Setting”
3. Save

You could change Java Applet Runtime Version to J2SE 6 too, but please make sure you know you really need it.

Enjoy!

RubyGems just updated to version 1.1.0. Couple of the major changes are “Index updates are much faster now” and “only updates from a latest index by default”. So, time to update.

As Leopard already has Ruby and RubyGems preinstalled (Thanks, Apple!). So the default update way:

$ sudo gem update –system

will NOT work well.

Here is what you should do on Leopard 10.5.2:

$ sudo gem install rubygems-update
$ sudo update_rubygems

Enjoy!

I’ve got my Shinning super cool new MacBook Pro two weeks ago. Everything works fine until recently after some automatic updates.

The MacBook Pro I have is 2.4GHz 15′ version. I am so loving it! But the AirPort problem is really annonying!

For some reason, at the end of the day, pretty much every day, MacBook Pro wireless connection just suddenly stop working with my AirPort Extreme. But at the same time my old MacBook works just fine. Turn MacBook Pro AirPort off and on, and try to connect to my wireless network again and again. Nothing helps. Rebooting AirPort Extreme again and again just helps a little. Some logs on console:

airportd Error: Apple80211Associated() failed -6

_emUIServer Error: airport MIG failed = -6 ((null) port = 45523

Did a google search and found a lot of people do have the same problem and so far there is no good solution yet. Some of them said go back to 10.5.1 actually fix the problem, and this is a suggestion from Apple Genius. Which I think is a solution but it is for away from good. I don’t really want to downgrade as I already installed too much into my Leopard and spent amount of time to make it works smothly as what my MacBook does.

This is really pain!

Spend some more time these two days and did some more tests. Finally have good progress. But couple of the tests is really risky, such as, Leopard told me no AirPort Card installed after rebooting.

Anyway, here is the simplest but working solution:

1. Find your original “MacBook Pro Mac OS X Install Disc 1″, please make sure it is yours, not somebody else’s!
2. copy /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext from “Mac OS X Install Disc 1” overwrite to your Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext
3. After couple of seconds, Leopard will pick up your changes and your MacBook Pro will link back to wireless network again without any problem!

Yes, you don’t even need a reboot!

If you couldn’t find your original install disc 1, you still can use someone’s if them have the same model as your MacBook Pro. But make sure do a backup for IO80211Family.kext.

Enjoy!

Maxwell Rocatanski suggested Pacifist for whom aren’t as comfortable using the terminal. Thanks MaxWell!

1. Democamp Toronto 17

Democamp Toronto 17 is absolutely another great event again! More than 300 people have attended.

Only want to highlight two here:

• AskItOnline is a online survey system created by Kaitlyn MacLachlan totally on her own. It is a pretty beautiful and useful application. Kaitlyn wins the best demo prize.
• Ignite presentation “The State of Wireless in Canada Sucks” from Tom Purves could be the best ignite presentation in the history of Democamp Toronto so far. Well done, Tom!

Joey Devilla had a very detail post on the schedules, please check it out here. I believe he will post some more tonight soon.

Check out the official site of Democamp Toronto too: http://democamp.info/

2. Adobe Flex 3.0 and Air 1.0

Finally, its On – Flex 3.0 and Adobe AIR 1.0 Are Here!

3. Haxies updated! It works on Leopard!

Haxies – Love it or hate it!

In computing, a Haxie is a term which was coined by developer Unsanity to describe their products. It is a blend of “hack” and “Mac OS X”. Unsanity uses it to refer to “hacks” that are specifically designed for use with its Application Enhancer (APE) software. These are typically small interface and functionality tweaks to the system or existing applications by injecting code into programs as they load.

Until yesterday, all the haxies which come from Unsanity or other companies didn’t work on Leopard, all of them. It is a real pain for somebody who loves these little, cute and useful hack tools, such as me.

After several months hard work, the development team in Unsanity finally bring them back to Leopard today: Enthusiastic Trepidation!

Here are some of them what I use all the time:

WindowShade X. It minimizes your windows on desktop, or shades them.

FontCard. It shows a WYSIWYG font menu for your applications.

FruitMenu. It helps you easily access everything from your menu.

Menu Master. It helps you to create shortcut keys for any menu items of any your applications.

Big day today, by all means!

I was thinking about my blogging plan today. At the end I decided to start from talking more Mac things at the beginning as it is easier for me now. So, here is a rough list:

• Menu Items
• System Preferences
• Dashboard Widgets
• Login Items
• QS Plugins
• QuickLook Plugins
• Color Pickers

Then I found an interesting post about Color Pickers was just coming from TUAW.com today. So I “grab” it to here.

A color toolbox

Title is a little confuse. But the content is very valuable and make sure check what people said in comments.

Anyway, I’m not a graphic designer, I couldn’t give any professional opinions. So I just list some of them which I’ve tried and kept.

• Mondrianum
  

  Lithoglyph’s Mondrianum is a powerful plug-in that enables Mac applications to leverage the resources of the Adobe® kuler community

• Paint’s Picker
  

  Painter’s Picker puts an interactive color wheel in almost every Mac OS X application. It adds the ability to choose related colors, such as complementary colors, analogous colors, etc. directly within the color picker. It also adds more precise controls for choosing saturation, hue angle, and brightness. Painter’s Picker is the simplest way to perform complex color selection in almost any Mac OS X application.

• Shades
  

  The Shades Color Picker adds an additional pane to the standard Apple Color Picker. It is designed to help you choose colors by showing you grids of related colors. Shades uses Hue – Saturation – Brightness (HSB) color coordinates which many people find more intuitive than Red – Green – Blue (RGB) color coordinates. To use Shades, you choose a center color, a step size and a color coordinate (one of H, S or B) to hold constant. Shades then draws a grid of related colors.

• RCWebColorPicker
  

  RCWebColorPicker is a simple color picker for Mac OS X 10.0 or higher that displays the red, green, and blue values in HTML-friendly hexadecimal values. It also allows a user to restrict the sliders to only allow the 216 web-safe colors.

• Color Picker Pro, this is a stand alone application, it’s not a color picker.
  

  Color Picker Pro is a small drag and drop savvy application that aids in capturing hex, RGB and HSL color values for use in CSS and HTML production. Pull colors out of application windows, icons, your desktop or anything else that you happen to see on your display. Copy or drag and drop color values to your favorite text based CSS or HTML editing application. Store your frequently used colors, undo and redo color changes or make your colors web-safe at the press of a button. Tailor the format of your hex, RGB or HSL color values to your personal specifications.

• Tangerine, it is a color management tool.
  

  Tangerine color management software provides graphic designers and creative professionals with a unique color workflow experience. Now you can have the color you want, when you want it, how you want it. Tangerine offers new and enhanced color support to OS X.

• Color Schemer Studio
  

  ColorSchemer Studio is a professional color matching application for anyone from hobbyists to advanced professionals.

  Work with a dynamic visual color wheel, instantly explore harmony relationships and even let ColorSchemer Studio intelligently suggest color schemes for you!

• Find more by searching MacUpdate

MarsEdit is the one which I use to create my blog posts. Yes, I am writing this post in MarsEdit right now. I’ve tested some other offline and online blog editors already, and MarsEdit is the best one as far as I can tell.

So, what’s new from 2.0 to 2.1?

1. Search Your Drafts and Entries

Now you can quickly filter your posts and drafts by keywords. Just type a word or phrase into the toolbar search field, and MarsEdit will restrict the post listing to only items that contain the text you’ve typed.

2. Native Tags Support

For supported systems, including Movable Type and WordPress, MarsEdit now offers a field for capsule-style tagging of your posts. It even remembers the tags you’ve typed before, so you’ll be able to reuse them in a jiffy on future posts.

3. Improved Web Preview

MarsEdit’s built-in preview sports a sleek new default appearance, massively enhanced performance, and fine-tuned usability. Now previews update quickly and without flickering or jumping around as you edit your post.

4. Save Drafts To Server

A new Post Status popup in the options pane lets you choose between Published and Draft status. Server support for this feature is somewhat hit-or-miss, so be sure to test with something not too embarrassing!

Links:

Homepage of MarsEdit

Download from official website

More on what’s new

MarsEdit on MacUpdate

MacBreak Weekly is one of the best podcast which focuses on Apple, Mac and OS X. If you didn’t subscribe it, I strongly recommend you to do so. You can easily find the way on their homepage: http://www.twit.tv/mbw.

The hosts of this episode are same as usual: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Andy Ihnatko, Scott Bourne, and Alex Lindsay. Two of them are little sick.

The guests are Philip Ryu form MacHeist and Andrew Welch from Ambrosia. It is really interesting to hear talking from these people, who are great developers or people who are behind some big things in Mac World.

Why “MacHeist Replies”? The short story is:

1. MacHeist recently had a great success on selling $500 software bundle for just $49. The final number is: 43,815 bundles sold and $488,003 raised for charity.
2. In the last episode, MacBreak Weekly 74, the guest Rich Siegel (from Bare Bones Software, the creater of BBEdit) “dismisses the arguements” related to MacHeist bundle.
3. In this episode, Philip Ryu and Andrew Welch talked back.

It is amazing to see such a podcast could feature exactly like a old school serious TV shows!

Anyway, subscribe it and you will like it too.