I stil think the king of blog editors is Windows Live Writer.  It is a fantastic application but honestly I don’t want to have to boot up Windows in vmware on my Mac just to run it.  I spend most of my time on my Mac.  If I were on my Windows 7 desktop most of the time then it would be a no-brainer.  Don’t get me wrong, I love vmware but using those resources is just overkill for a blog editor so I went back to using the WordPress web UI.

I’ve tried Blogo on the Mac and while that was promising it appears to be a dead project as it has been on version 1.2 for a long time now and it was also lacking in features that I wanted (but it was so long ago since I tried it I couldn’t say what those features were).

I tried Ecto at some point too and it also hasn’t been updated in ages.

I’ve tried Mars Edit previously and the last version was sorely lacking in features.  It was definitely a dinosaur.  I’m now trying the new release of Mars Edit v3.0 and it’s looking promising.   The support for WordPress looks to be very nice.   I’ll be giving it a try for the 30-day trial period and see if it will be worth paying for.

Icon for the Save button is still a floppy disk, despite the fact that Apple hasn’t sold a machine with a floppy drive for a decade.

So what do you suggest they put there John?  It’s a well-known icon regardless of platform 8-year olds not withstanding.  I suspect the 8-year olds probably haven’t used a manila folder either yet the open manila folder is a standard icon for opening files.

1. A story titled ‘Apple’s “renaissance” is under way’ it is reported that the author thinks that because he is seeing Macs everywhere now that more people are buying them.  This shocking item is backed up with the claim “There’s now data to back up these observations”.  Well gee, there has been data to back up those observations for quite awhile now.  Apple has been consistently improving Mac sales quarter over quarter.   This Mac website is just seeing this now??

      Oh and of course the peanut gallery kicks in with the typical ‘People just buy <insert popular Apple product> because they want to be seen with it’.  Hate to break it to those folks but I bought an iPod, a Mac, and an iPhone because they’re the best products…not because I want to look cool (and in the case of an iPhone millions of people don’t all want to look cool.  Please.).

2. In another story titled “HTC and other OEMs prepared to challenge the iSlate” we get the brilliant little nugget: “The announcements are sure to place some price pressure on Apple: Freescale’s design is intended for retail prices in the $200 range, much less than the $600 – $1,000 expected for Apple’s device. “I’m going to bet that the Freescale tablet will be every bit as good as it’s $200-range design.  Meanwhile people will part with their hard earned dollars in droves to get the Apple tablet because Apple knows what they’re doing and they seem to be the only company that gives a damn about design and how people interact with their products.

      To be sure the author throws in: “Of course, Apple is all about the design, functionality, and user experience of their devices and software, and the capabilities of the tablet will need to show perceived value to potential customers.” just to make sure they cover their bases.  Again I find it astounding that this is coming from a website who’s main purpose is covering Apple.   Have they not noticed that during this awful recession Apple is making money hand over fist on premium laptops and desktop systems?

This is the best these guys can do?

Not much to write really. I think this upgrade went as advertised and I’m quite happy with the results, a leaner, faster machine with better features. Now only if the Windows 7 upgrade goes this easily in October….

1. Follow this blog post for the install (he also links to the bits I am here) – but don’t worry about his suggestion for the mouse driver since the VMWare tools install takes care of it.
2. Once the install is completed uninstall VMWare tools (they were installed as part of step 1 but not all of it was done..vmhgfs isn’t set up).  You might have to remount the install “CD” by selecting “Install VMWare Tools” from the Virtual Machine menu.   In any case untar the tools tarball and run the uninstaller.  The uninstaller is in the bin directory of the vmware-tools-distrib directory you created.
3. Follow the directions here for getting vmhgfs to work.
4. Rerun the vmware tools installer in the distribution directory you created in step 2.
5. Bask in the glow of a job well done

At the same time the Mac client is really awful.   The latest update has some new icons, etc. but they haven’t improved the editor functionality.  There is no ability to create lists as in the Windows client.  Given that the Mac development environment, which comes with the OS, has the source code to the TextEdit application I’m not sure why the Evernote folks can’t duplicate that functionality in their client.

To make things worse the Web client now has more editor functionality than the Mac client.   Guys, if you’re not going to at least have parity between the clients why are you bothering with the Mac client at all?

Update:  OK.  So apparently the Mac client does support lists….just not directly.  I found out that creating a note with a list in the web client results in the list being maintained in the Mac client.  When you add more items to the list numbers/bullets (I assume…I didn’t try bullets but numbers do work) increment automatically (and decrement if you remove items).   There just is no way to create these directly in the Mac client as of yet.  Very weird.

Update 2:  Ok.  According to this forum posting the Evernote folks are going to address this in the next Mac client release.  Great to read this as it might mean not having to run Windows in VMWare Fusion to get the better desktop client.

I actually tried this today before reading the article because I was getting slow syncs between the iPhone and my MacBook Pro.  I thought maybe the hub I had the phone plugged in to was USB 1.1-only (don’t remember that being the case but stranger things have happened) so I moved the USB cable directly to one of the ports on the MBP and the sync speed was far faster than via the USB hub.  I’m not sure why this would be aside from maybe the hub running at USB 1.1 speeds.

On my Windows machine at home where I have the same problem the same fix didn’t work.  Moving the cable directly to the PC didn’t result in a faster sync (and yes I have to sync with both).  I know for a fact that the USB hub on the PC is 2.0 so maybe thats the reason.