I’ve been using the new Apple Magic Mouse for a couple of weeks now. That isn’t long enough to fully judge the product, but I know what I like, and I like the Magic Mouse.

It isn’t perfect, but after using Apple’s previous attempt at a wireless mouse, the Magic Mouse is a huge improvement.

Even the box is pretty. Pretty, but not very functional. Like newer iPod packaging, it’s clear plastic and just big enough to house the product and those tiny manuals, but the mouse is stuck into the box with what is basically a self-adhesive plastic sheet, the kind they use to seal the boxes. Removing the plastic can leave a little residue on the bottom of the mouse if you’re not careful. Peel slowly!

Once out, the batteries are already installed, so it’s a simple case of flicking the power switch to get started. The power switch is similar to the hold switch on newer iPod models and much better than the plastic thing on the wireless Mighty Mouse.

Overall, the Magic Mouse feels solid and looks great. The low profile might take some adjusting to, but it seems like it will be easier on the wrist; there’s much less arching of the hand going on. The top is a clear acrylic-like material which adds a nice shine to the surface and protects the Apple logo. The aluminium base is sturdy and doesn’t flex if you have a tight grip.

The mouse has two hard rubber-like strips on the base which eliminates the horrible scraping noise of the older mouse. It isn’t silent as you drag it across the desk, but it’s far from unbearable. It will also, I imagine, not wear away as easily as the grey ring on the Mighty Mouse did.

Set up wasn’t as simple as it could have been. Pairing with my Mac took seconds, but as we’re still waiting for 10.6.2, the touch-sensitive scrolling and swiping required a software update. I did check seconds before turning the mouse on for the first time and got nothing, but checking after pairing the mouse revealed the update. Not a problem, but could confuse some people.

You can switch between left and right handed setups in the new Mouse System Preferences pane, as well as enabling scrolling with momentum and two finger swiping and setting the tracking, scrolling and double click speed.

Clicking works. I don’t know what could possibly go wrong with that. You still need to adopt a rocking motion when secondary clicking. If you secondary click with a finger on the primary “button”, you’ll get a primary click. Lifting your primary clicker finger before a secondary click solves the problem, as before, and if you’re used to the Mighty Mouse it will feel natural. The surface is sensitive to clicks in the top half, so small hands should be okay using the mouse.

Scrolling. I haven’t been able to do this for a while so it’s quite exciting. It works well and after getting over the lack of physical scroll ball/wheel, I started to really like it. Like the Mighty Mouse, it has full 360º scrolling, but unlike the old thing, it actually works perfectly. Throwing a large image around in Photoshop takes a few flicks on the top half of the mouse, although the surface is sensitive to scrolling gestures right down to the Apple logo. If you need to be more precise, smaller movements are easily made by, well, not moving your finger so much.

Scrolling with momentum is good. WIth a single flick you can move to the bottom of a long document or webpage, another flick taking you back to the top. It doesn’t work with everything though, Tweetie being a good example.

Two finger swiping is useful when web browsing for back/forward, but I haven’t used it for anything else yet. It will certainly work for moving through a batch of images in Preview or iPhoto or flicking between emails, so if you do a lot of that, it could save you some time. Like scrolling, the mouse is sensitive to swiping right down to the Apple logo.

I miss the side buttons for Exposé and I had the middle button mapped to Overflow, so getting used to using the keyboard for these things again is a little frustrating, but in time I’m sure it will be fine. Three finger swiping up/down would have been great to invoke Exposé, the application switcher or, like with the Mighty Mouse, an application of your choice.

The Magic Mouse is a huge improvement over Apple’s last effort. At £55, it’s certainly not the cheapest mouse in the world, but it’s far from being outrageously expensive. Whether it’s worth it or not is up to the individual, I suppose. If you want an Apple mouse that’s solid, looks good and lets you scroll again, and you have £55 to spend, go buy one. I’d definitely play with one for a while first though. It feels different, and the lack of physical scroll ball and buttons 3 and 4 might put people off.

Related posts:

1. Review: MindNode Pro
2. Want to see my Dock? Sure you do!
3. Mac web development made easy

Planning your next project? Throwing out feature ideas for your next web app or planning the plot for a future bestseller?

If you prefer visual, non-linear note taking like me, you’ve probably given mind maps a try. If this involves pulling out your Sharpies and scribbling away on paper, next time you might want to consider reaching for your Mac.

For software to replace pen and paper, the application must be uncomplicated and not get in the way of what you’re trying to achieve, and MindNode Pro is exactly that kind of application.

On launching MindNode Pro, you’re presented with an almost blank canvas. Just one main node and a simple instruction, “Drag to create a new node”. There is a full help section and even a link to a couple of video tutorials, but to get started, one instruction is all you need.

Rename the main node, then drag out or click the plus (+) sign to quickly create new nodes, linked to the main node by coloured branches. The new node’s text is already highlighted ready for you to type over with your own content. If you’re not a fan of the mouse, MindNode Pro is just as easy to use with the keyboard alone, navigating the map structure and adding and editing nodes with just a few easy to remember keyboard shortcuts.

You are free to arrange nodes however you please, but if you like consistency, neatly organising all nodes is easily done by selecting the nodes you wish to arrange and hitting ⌥⌘R.

The appearance of nodes and connections can be modified using the Node Inspector. Changes can be made to the font and text colour, the width, style and colour of branches and, if using cross connections, the start and end point styles. The main background colour of the mind map can be changed in the Document Inspector along with the Spotlight information, essential if you have a Documents folder full of MindNode documents.

If your thoughts require multiple mind maps but are still centred around the same general subject, multiple main nodes are supported in MindNode Pro. This allows you to create several small (or large) mind maps within the same MindNode Pro document. Nodes on unrelated branches can be linked using cross connections.

As brainstorming can often be a frantic time, you’re likely to put frequent saving to the back of your mind. Luckily, MindNode Pro has a very handy autosave feature. By default, MindNode Pro documents will be autosaved every minute, so if your Mac explodes or, more likely, there’s a power cut, you’re not going to lose many of those great ideas.

If your research includes a lot of referencing of external material, MindNode Pro allows the creation of hyperlinks to webpages and files on your hard drive, as well as links to create new email messages.

If you need to share your thoughts with others, MindNode Pro offers several export options, including PDF, PNG and TIFF, but also FreeMind, OPML, HTML and RTF. I would like to see an option to export a PDF without a background (transparent). Adding mind maps to Keynote or Pages documents is something I do quite a lot, and the white background of the exported PDF just gets in the way. I currently open the PDF in Adobe Illustrator and remove the background easily, but eliminating this step would be nice, especially for those without something like Illustrator.

I would also like to be able to embed images in MindNode Pro documents, not full-size, that would destroy the simple feel of the application, but perhaps with small icons, clicking to reveal the image in a Quick Look style window, similar to that of Finder. Files can be opened using hyperlinks within MindNode Pro documents, but if you accidentally delete or move a file you’re going to have problems. Embedding the images would be, in my view, a much better option.

MindNode (touch) for iPhone will arrive in the iTunes App Store tomorrow. I’ll be interested to see how nicely the iPhone and Mac versions play together, and will be sure to review MindNode (touch) soon after its release.

If you have used the free version of MindNode, the upgrade to the Pro version is certainly worth it, adding several new features to the basic application including cross connections, node folding, hyperlinks and node reorganising.

As a simple way to gather thoughts and develop ideas, MindNode Pro is perfect, and for less than $15 is amazing value. It’s an application that will always sit at the top of my recommendations list.

Related posts:

1. Magic Mouse: First impressions
2. Want to see my Dock? Sure you do!
3. Mac web development made easy

The Dock is special. No menus to navigate, just click the icon and go. In Snow Leopard, the Dock becomes very special indeed thanks to its improved exposé features.

I’ve seen a few of these posts recently, but most are just basic lists. That’s no good. I want to let you know what I use and also why I use it.

• Finder – A lot of people tell me that Finder is lacking in… something. I don’t know what, I like it. The sidebar is especially useful. I often drag a project folder into the sidebar when I’m working on it, it is then available in all open/save dialogs which saves a lot of time. It’s definitely speedier in Snow Leopard, and I’ve noticed a few cute visual tweaks. Rename a file and it will slide to its new position. The new icon previews are interesting too, but 512×512 icons? Why would anybody want that?
• Mail – I can’t claim to be an expert on Mac email applications, I’ve never used anything other than Mail. I manage multiple accounts (at least 6), all but one of them pushed through Gmail via Google Apps. The other is my MobileMe account. There are issues with Outlook users. Mail sends unformatted emails by default, so Outlook users with default settings receive ugly Times, not our pretty sans serif font we set in Mail. This can be solved by setting a font and colour. I do this semi-autumatically (ooh, that sounds violent) with TextExpander.
• Safari – My day-to-day web browser. It’s fast — very fast — and my bookmarks are synced with MobileMe. I wheel out other browsers only when required for testing. With Mac OS X’s Services (again, improved in Snow Leopard) it becomes quite a powerful browser. It does require Glims to make it usable, really. No option to select Google UK as my search source without Glims is plain annoying.
• Adium – Being from the UK, AIM isn’t that popular with the people I know, meaning I need something other than iChat to communicate with Windows Live Messenger users. Adium is that something. It’s highly customisable and has a few advanced features such as chat encryption. The main benefit? Nudges don’t work!
• Tweetie – Twitter. You’ve heard of that, right? Tweetie is probably the best Mac application for general Tweeting. It isn’t going to be something Twitter power users will get along with, but it does have multiple account support and looks very pretty. The ability to sort incoming Tweets into groups is needed, but there’s been no word on when this might come. 2.0 is in the works at the moment, so we can only hope groups is at the top of the to-do list.
• Chill Pill – Now, I’m not entirely sure I should even be using this. I discovered it via Bodega and hit the download button. The website still states “coming soon”. Hm. Anyway, it’s an application that integrates Feverº with Mac OS X, providing handy shortcuts, dock badging and, most importantly, Growl notifications. It is missing 1Password support, which means I need to enter my password manually if I’ve cleared my cookies recently, but this isn’t a huge issue.
• Address Book – It’s where my contacts live. Syncing with MobileMe means I only need to update my contacts once and they’re the same on my Mac, iPhone and iPad/iTablet/iPod Huge (soon!). Also helps me track birthdays with iCal (very important).
• iCal – Again, MobileMe + iPhone + Macs = hassle-free calendaring. I stick everything in here, including my The Hit List to-dos. It’s simple, fast and who doesn’t love having the date in a cute Dock icon?
• iTunes – I use iTunes to buy music, listen to music and sync my iPhone and iPods. It’s main use for me, however, is podcasts. They’re great for keeping up to date with whatever might interest you. I especially like video podcasts. The App Store is great too. I couldn’t function without some apps I’ve found for the iPhone, like um, Ramp Champ. Everybody needs some Ramp Champ in their life.
• Pages – Pages is my document creation tool of choice. It’s simple, clean, quick and has a very nice full screen mode, eliminating distractions when you just need to write. It may seem a little quirky if you’re moving from Word, but once you get its “ways” nailed, you’re going to have some fun. I own Office 2008, but I only install it for the fonts, is that bad?
• Keynote – Do you give PowerPoint presentations? You do? Please leave. Leave, or promise you’ll take a look at Keynote for your next presentation. It is, and this isn’t an exaggeration, absolutely stunning. Actually, it might not be that wonderful really, but compared to that thing from Microsoft, Keynote is magical.
• Numbers – You know that uncle you have who thinks he’s the head of the family? Thinks he’s wonderful and everybody loves and needs him? And you know that other uncle you have who is actually quite nice, but doesn’t drive a fast car or own a pet unicorn like the show-off? Well that’s kind of like Excel and Numbers. Numbers is friendly, helpful and looks pretty. It might not do everything Excel does, but if you need Excel, you’re probably working in an office and ready to take voluntary redundancy at any time. You can buy a Mac and iWork ‘09 with your redundancy cheque.
• Coda – At its most basic, Coda is a text editor. Unleash its full potential, however, and Coda is a one-stop-shop web development tool. It does pretty much everything. Site management, live previews, FTP, a visual CSS editor and Terminal built right into the app. One of my favourite features is Books. You can add any searchable reference to Coda and browse within the app, getting code hints from your resource of choice. It isn’t the cheapest thing around at $99, but if you develop websites, you need Coda.
• Photoshop – I need this. It’s expensive, it doesn’t work properly with Spaces or Exposé and without it I couldn’t get anything done. Wonderful. Despite all this, I still love it a little. The results you can get are just not possible with any other application. Don’t let Photoshop know, but occasionally I’ll just fire up Pixelmator instead.
• Balsamiq Mockups – This is an Adobe AIR application. Still reading? Okay. It’s a $79 Adobe AIR application. You’re still reading!? Well good, because it’s worth every penny. Balsamiq Mockups is, as you might have guessed, a mockup application for software, iPhone and web developers. It provides a very cute hand-drawn style, ensuring that there can be no confusion between a mockup/wireframe and a final version. It really pays for itself in the time you’ll save by using it. Really, it’s faster than using a pen and paper. Drag elements onto a canvas, edit their properties, done. I didn’t like the icon so went and stole one from another application.
• Forklift – Forklift is a great file management app. For those who don’t like Finder, this could function as a replacement, or at least a good companion. I use it mainly for FTP, batch renaming and app deletion. Its split-pane view is especially useful for moving files around quickly. As it has recently seen a price drop ($19.95) it is definitely worth picking. Apparently it doesn’t work too well with Snow Leopard yet. I uploaded this blog without any problems, so I’m not so sure where the issues are.
• LittleSnapper – This is where I collect design ideas and inspiration. It’s as easy as hitting a keyboard shortcut, selecting the stuff I want to capture and letting it scurry off to my LittleSnapper library. I sort my library at the end of every day of snapping to ensure I don’t forget why I collected something. It doesn’t usually sit in my Dock, it’s there because it’s just been installed so I thought I’d mention it. I’ll hide the icon now.
• The Hit List – I did use Things, but The Hit List pins Things to the floor and screams obscenities in its face. The Hit List is just so natural. It is lacking an iPhone app, but this is on the way, apparently. Once the iPhone app is here, I’d say The Hit List could be very close to perfect.
• VoodooPad – I use VoodooPad as my ideas and notes collection app. It works like a desktop wiki, interlinking pages automatically. Images can be embedded right inside the pages and re-opened again in Preview, ready for editing and exporting. I have a huge file for blog post ideas, and form the first drafts in there. I can also carry my VoodooPad documents around with my on my iPhone.
• Applications, Documents and Downloads Stacks – I like having quick access to Documents and Downloads. Applications was thrown down there by OS X after the Snow Leopard installation. It’s still there because it’s now more usable than before thanks to scrolling Stacks.

Dock size?

I’m quite… strange. A perfectionist, perhaps. I like my Dock to be a certain size, and dragging to resize the Dock just isn’t good enough. If you’re like me, you can use the following to ensure your Dock is the perfect height.

Open Terminal and enter the following, replacing “45″ with the size you’d prefer.

defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 45

Then kill the Dock.

killall Dock

Related posts:

1. Review: MindNode Pro
2. Mac web development made easy
3. Magic Mouse: First impressions

Producing websites on a Mac is wonderful. There is no alternative as far as many are concerned, myself included.

There are masses of tools and applications to make a web developer’s life easier, but without the basics, you’re going nowhere.

Your average PHP developer (which is what I is) is going to need, at a minimum, Apache, PHP and MySQL, as well as some kind of database managment tool.

Many people will tell you that Mac OS X includes all you need right out of the box, and this is almost true, but setting up and configuring Apache, PHP and installing MySQL and phpMyAdmin is something you’ll only want to do once. Give it a try to gain the experience, sure, then never go back there again.

As I enjoy taking it easy, whenever I set up a new Mac, I reach for two third party lifesavers, MAMP and VirtualHostX. MAMP is described as a “one-click solution” for setting up a web server on Mac OS X, providing Apache, PHP and MySQL, as well as phpMyAdmin in one easy to install package. It isn’t quite “one-click”, but it is painless. VirtualHostX is, as you might have guessed, a virtual host management application. It integrates seamlessly with MAMP and makes setting up and maintaining virtual hosts a snap – no more fiddling with httpd.conf files when you start a new project.

Both are free to use, but VirtualHostX is limited to 3 virtual hosts before requiring a license, and if you love it as much as I do, you’ll throw money at it in an instant ($19).

MAMP hasn’t seen updates for over a year, but just last week on the recently created MAMP Twitter account, an update was posted stating that a new version is on the way.

As I’ve just installed Snow Leopard, I’ll run through the installation and configuration of both tools, and show you that the Terminal is something you can avoid if you really want to.

Download and install MAMP

First, you’re going to need MAMP. Drag the MAMP (not MAMP Pro) folder into your Applications folder. As stated in the very orange background of the MAMP disk image, you should place the MAMP folder direcrly into /Applications. MAMP won’t work anywhere else (I haven’t tried to test it aywhere else, but I’ve never had a problem with it being in /Applications anyway). Eject the disk image and we’re done.

Configure MAMP

Out of the box, MAMP isn’t ready to work the way we want it to. We need to head into MAMP and configure a few things. Launch the MAMP application — found in /Applications/MAMP/ — and take a look at the Preferences.  Firstly, set up the options in the Start/Stop section. This is really down to personal preference, but I don’t like having the MAMP icon in my Dock, so I always disable the “Stop Servers when quitting MAMP” option. In fact, I don’t like MAMP doing anything without me telling it to, so I uncheck the lot.

Our next port of call is um, ports. Simply click the “Set to default Apache and MySQL ports” button and your Apache and MySQL ports will be set to 80 and 3306 respectivley.

You can ignore everything else, unless you’re using PHP 4 (why?). Hit OK, enter your password, Apache will restart and we’re done. Feel free to quit MAMP now.

Oh, while you have the MAMP folder open in Finder, you might want to install the Dashboard widget (Mamp Control.wdgt). Again, it’s down to personal preference, but I prefer starting MAMP easily from the Dashboard.

Download VirtualHostX and give it a home on your Mac

This post discusses version 2. If you’re already a VirtualHostX user and haven’t upgraded yet, find the $5 and do it, version 2 makes a great application even better.

Download VirtualHostX and toss it into your Applications folder.

On first launch, VirtualHostX will kindly ask you what you want it to do. Follow the steps in the Setup Wizard — clicking two buttons — and you’re done.

We’re using MAMP, let’s tell VirtualHostX

In VirtualHostX’s super-simple Preferences window, you’ll find one option. Set your default web server to MAMP and close the window. That’s it. Now VirtualHostX will manage all server restarts whenever we add, delete or modify virtual hosts.

Set up localhost

Now, MAMP is good, but it forces us to use its own document root, burried somewhere in /Applications/MAMP/. Take a look at http://localhost/ with MAMP running.

That isn’t what we want to see! I have a Sites folder, I’m going to use it. Instead of changing the settings in MAMP, simply add your first virtual host to VirtualHostX with the following settings.

• Domain name: localhost
• Local Path: ~/Sites (navigate to the Sites folder in your home directory)
• Enable this virtual host (you knew that one, right?)

Click the Apply Changes button in the toolbar, enter your password and we’re done setting up our first virtual host. Test the new host by again heading to http://localhost/. It should look a little different.

http://localhost/ now points at our ~/Sites folder. Good.

Set up our first real virtual host

Following the above process, go ahead and set up another virtual host. I’ll add a quick test page to the Bitbob directory in ~/Sites.

I like to use the format name.dev, but you’re free to do whatever you want here – name.site, name.testing, name.teddybear? Do whatever you feel is best.

Now, Apply Changes, head to the virtual host you set up in your favourite browser (Safari, right?) and everything should be working.

To save typing your custom domain names every time you access them, you can simply double click the name in the VirtualHostX sidebar or find them all in the Dock icon’s context menu.

Yeah but, IE?

Internet Explorer? You don’t test in that, do you? Well fine, you’re lucky. VirtualHostX 2 introduced a new feature, sharing virtual hosts over a local network. This means you no longer need to configure hosts files and other nonsense to test in IE on either a dedicated Windows machine on the other side of the house or virtualisation software like VMware Fusion or Parallels.

To get it working, simply check the “Share over local network” option for each of the domain names you want to test – it’s also useful if you want to show someone on the same network the progress you haven’t made since the last meeting – click Apply Changes and scurry on over to the beige box in the corner or kick start Windows on your Mac.

You’ll need Bonjour for Windows installed and a browser capable of listening out for Bonjour broadcasts from your Mac. Safari does this without any assistance, IE gets a new plugin when Bonjour is installed and Firefox has BonjourFoxy. Open up the Bonjour bookmarks panel in your favourite Windows browser (IE, right?) and you’ll see your virtual hosts being broadcast to all Bonjour-enabled machines on your network. Viewing the site is as easy as double clicking the bookmark.

There is one downside – the URL is a bit… odd looking, but there’s more to it than looks. If you’re using absolute links, especially with the domain name hard-coded – the WordPress default behaviour – you’ll have problems. It’s great for other projects, those where you use relative links like a good little developer, but WordPress and anything else referencing files absolutely is going to need a little more work.

For WordPress, simply setting your installation to use the “ugly” URL will solve your problem. So, in my case, I would order WordPress to use “http://aarons-macbook-pro.local.:9002″ for both URL settings. The same can probably be done for other blogging platforms, content managment systems or whatever else you might be trying to test.

I can still get quick access to my blog using the bitbob.dev domain name I set up earlier, when a WordPress link is clicked, I’m taken to the “ugly” version. For testing, this is fine. I don’t know many people who test a WordPress installation locally then transfer the whole lot to a live server expecting it to work. Permalinks and everything else I need work absolutley fine.

Because WordPress is broken and backwards in the way it handles links, I wouldn’t rely on this method for long-term testing. If that 9001 becomes 9002 overnight, your WordPress installation is going to throw a fit and refuse to work. Test your theme or plugin and get it live, just in case.

If you need to test something like WordPress a lot, the best way is still to edit the hosts file on the Windows side.  I’ll write a follow-up post on this later in the week.

And we’re done

That’s that. I’m set up and ready to start developing new and exciting things on my Mac, and testing in IE is nice and easy. Fixing things for IE, not so much.

I hope it was useful. If something isn’t clear (or more likely, is plain wrong), let me know.

Oh, by the way, the reason we set up http://localhost the way we did was to allow us to drop small tests and such in ~/Sites and access them easily via http://localhost/[name]/.

It should also be pointed out that you can aim your virtual hosts at any location, not just the ~/Sites folder. I have placed small test projects on the desktop before and set up a virtual host to access them.

Related posts:

1. Want to see my Dock? Sure you do!
2. Magic Mouse: First impressions
3. Review: MindNode Pro