How to Read Adobe Digital Editions on Mac OS X 10.5.x

I've got a bunch of old ebooks from Adobe with DRM (don't read me?) protection, which I fittingly wanted to read. I first got these books back in 2003 or 2004, and over that time I've had plenty of issues in opening them. I had to pluck around the depths of the internets at least twice before to resolve issues in opening these ebooks.

Well, I had to do it once again. I came to find out that Adobe's official position is that Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) is not presently supported." However, digging a bit further into their message boards, I found that that isn't exactly the case; you can in fact read them on Leopard, it just requires a work-around.

The work-around is as follows (thanks to Adobe forum member reklessen for posting this work-around):
        1.        Use Safari to open this page. Although I didn't personally test anything, there may be issues when using other browsers.
        2.        From the "Select a Version" pull-down menu on that web page, select "10.2.8 - 10.4.2".
        3.        Download this earlier version of Acrobat Reader
        4.        Quit all Adobe software.
        5.        Install the version of Adobe Reader that you just downloaded.
        6.        Open Adobe Reader 7.0.9.app, go to File > Digital Editions > Authorize Devices, and go through the steps to authorize the computer you're using.
        7.        Make sure the computer you are using is listed in the list of authorized devices at the bottom of digital editions accounts webpage.
        8.        Open any digital editions with Adobe Reader 7.0.9.app by either dragging and dropping the digital edition on the app's icon in the dock, control-clicking the digital edition file and selecting "Open With" Adobe Reader 7.0.9.app, or selecting File > Open within Adobe Reader 7.0.9.app.
Afterwards, ignore all of the pleas from Adobe updating software to update to version 8 or any other higher version, and you should be able to continue reading any of digital editions you have simply by opening them with Adobe Reader 7.0.9.app.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Change No. 261: No more end-to-end scrolling through application switcher

Here's a small but annoying change. Up through 10.4, when using the command tab application switcher (if you don't know what I'm talking about, press tab while holding down the command button and you'll see what I mean), you could click the left arrow when on the first (i.e., left-most) open application to go to the last (i.e., right-most) open application in the application switcher and vice versa. This was especially useful when you wanted to dig up a program that you hid a while ago (in the application switcher, hiding a program has the effect of putting it all the way to the right).

Now, in Leopard, what happens when you are on the first open application (which, by the way, is always right next to the one selected when the application switcher is opened) and press the left arrow? Nothing. It no longer rolls through to the other side. The ends of the application switcher are no dead ends, meaning you've got to click an arrow key a bunch of times to get to the right side.

You can, however, continue to scroll from right to left with the tab button and left to right with the shift + tab button, but I don't find those methods as easy as the arrow keys.

Come on, Apple! This is a bush league omission.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Change No. 296: Goodbye lookupd -flushcache, Hello dscacheutil -flushcache

Lately I've had the good fortune of having my lovely (read: slow) Verizon Avenue internet service go to crap. It was working fine (albeit slowly), but all of a sudden about a week ago it got all funky. Now I can't access my GMail via POP or IMAP, I can't send mail via SMTP, I can't use FTP, I can't sign on to any chat accounts (AIM, GTalk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo!), and I can't access the iTunes Store. And this is true across three different computers - a MacBook Pro on 10.5 and a PowerBook G4 and an iBook G4 on 10.4. In fact, just about the only thing I can do is visit HTTP websites and download my email from AOL and another account via IMAP. Verizon was typically clueless as to why there was some connectivity but some wasn't working and, as these guys tend to do, they tried to pass the buck. (The money quote from the call was "You may need to call Mac".)

One suggestion that Verizon had that did sound useful (the first person I spoke with was totally lost but the second seemed to know what he was talking about) was trying to clear the DNS cache. Now even I'm totally lost as to what that really means, but sometimes the DNS cache can mess up connectivity to the internet. This happened to me once before and I had to "flush the DNS cache" before things got back to normal. A long time ago I remember somebody had made a little Mac OS X program where you just press a button to do this. That program appears to be no more, but I recalled that you can also do this via the command line.

A few minutes of googling and I found the command: lookupd -flushcache. Entering that, however, just got me -bash: lookupd: command not found. So I tried putting a sudo in front of that, as the internets directed me, but the result was the same. Some websites even said that you might want to begin it with su, or put a su in before entering it (this appears to be a pretty dangerous stunt, judging by the dire warnings that seemed to accompany the descriptions of su, but I dove in with the reckless abandon of an overly confident advanced-but-not-technically-inclined user), but again to no avail. In fact, this put another obstacle in my path: after doing the whole password bit as required by su, the result was su: Sorry. Huh?

So it was back to hitting the internets. A few more rounds of googling had me convinced that lookupd -flushcache was right. This is, until I came across this bit in Macsploitation. After running into the same problem as me, the author, who is clearly more technically inclined than me, was digging around in his computer's man pages (I just barely fended off the temptation to insert a male pornography joke here), which apparently can tell you all about these commands, and discovered that the command to flush the DNS cache has indeed been changed.

You'll be pleased to find out that in Mac OS X Leopard you can flush the DNS cache by entering dscacheutil -flushcache in the Terminal.

And it's as simple as that.

So does anyone who is a bit more technically inclined than me have any idea as to why this might be an improvement? (I'd like to maintain my optimistic assumption that if it weren't an improvement Apple wouldn't have changed it.)

Unfortunately, this did nothing to fix my connection problem. I went to Starbucks and was able to connect to everything from their computer without a problem on said MacBook Pro and said iBook. I then went to an area covered by my apartment building's wireless network (i.e., the same Verizon connection) and was able to connect without a problem via the same two computers. Yet here, with the ethernet cord plugged directly into these computers, the problem remained. I think I've safely eliminated the possibility that it's our computers. Anyone have any idea what might cause something like this?

eMusic: Legal DRM-free MP3s for $0.33 per song or less

eMusic is a music download site that lets you buy songs in DRM-free MP3 format by means of a monthly subscription that lets you keep your downloaded songs (i.e., they don't disappear if you end your subscription) for $0.33 or less per song. Apparently they're number two behind the iTunes Store, having just hit their 100 millionth download this week.

eMusic recently snagged me with the 25 free-of-charge songs they give you to try out their service. (By the way, if you want to join, send me an email at vp at-sign vincent pace dot info and I'll invite you. If you become a subscriber, I get 50 free songs. Spread the joy (to me) this holiday season.)

Anyway, they give you a two-week trial period in which you can download 25 free songs. You have to supply a credit card, which I did. If you don't cancel before the two-week trial period ends, your subscription begins. I can confirm to you that it's easy to cancel, should you want to do so; just click on Your Account at the top of the page, click on Change Account Status on the left side of the page, and then you get to the cancellation process. The only thing I couldn't find was an obvious way to downgrade your account from premium to basic or plus (see below).

Now this isn't the typical subscription service under which your songs just up and disappear when you stop subscribing; these songs are yours to keep after the subscription ends. They're in DRM-free MP3 format, meaning that you don't have to hassle with any annoying restrictions (here they've even got the iTunes Store beat).

eMusic offers you three subscription plans, which compare to iTunes as follows:

Plan	Number of songs you can download to own per month	Cost	Cost per song
eMusic Basic	30	$9.99	$0.33
eMusic Plus	50	$14.99	$0.30
eMusic Premium	75	$19.99	$0.27
iTunes Store	n/a	n/a	$0.99

Probably the biggest drawback is the smaller selection than the iTunes Store. It seems that few major music stars are to be found, although I had little trouble digging up the ancient Bing Crosby Christmas album I was looking for. Some other big names include Ya Lo Tengo and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Clearly you can see that mainstream artists haven't ventured here yet.

However, for those classical fans out there, this site seems to be geared towards you, with classical music search options featuring right in the search mechanism of the website.

I would suggest a few improvements. By far, the most important drawback of eMusic is its lack of integration with iTunes. eMusic doesn't provide you with a jukebox program (and thankfully so, since there's very little chance that they'd be able to pull off anything as good as iTunes). When you download a song from eMusic, it's just plopped down somewhere on your hard drive and you have to put it into iTunes yourself. Back when I frequented Limewire I remember that it used to put songs right into iTunes in a new play list, something that would be particularly suitable for eMusic as well. But I would take it a step farther, by making eMusic's default file naming conventions the same as iTunes. To take it a step further, eMusic should make sure all the MP3 tags are the same as those in iTunes songs and, as a kicker, automatically download album artwork (which is not included in your eMusic download).

Overall, I'm sold. There's enough good stuff in here to keep a music lover happy, and, thank goodness, it's all DRM free. While it's certainly not going to replace the iTunes Store, it certainly is a nice supplement that has many of the songs that are on the iTunes Store.

Relatedly, here are ten good reasons why a content provider would choose to avoid using DRM and here is a list of DRM-free-content providers.

How to Make Invisible Mail Messages Reappear

I'm just getting over a harddrive death. I had to send my harddrive to get scanned and just got back the files back yesterday. I ran into a strange problem.

Apple Mail was telling me that there were a number of unread messages in any number of folders. However, when I went to open these folders, no messages were showing up.

I had no idea what was going on so I hit Google. This led me to a bunch of posts discussing disappearing Mail messages. However, nothing in any of those posts worked for me.

I took out all the contents of ~/Library/Mail/ and put them in another folder. Then I opened up Mail, followed the instructions in the pop-up window, which repopulated ~/Library/Mail/. Then I again took out all of the contents of ~/Library/Mail/ and put them aside in a new folder. I then brought back all the original files and put them back into ~/Library/Mail/. I then reopened Mail (actually with the intent of taking screenshots of my problem to post online) and everything was working.

The only thing about this is is that this was not the first time I did that, and it didn't get fixed the other times. I can't figure out what I did differently so I can't explain why this worked now but not before.

Joy to the World

Today I got my Mac back. Although I'm not fully settled in yet (the data's coming shortly on a hard disk), I'm happily no longer sitting in front of a freaking Windows computer. Sigh.

Writely: Free Internet-Based Word Processor

When reading a Washington Post article entitled Microsoft is losing some of its elbow room, which discusses some of the challenges that Microsoft is up against, I came across this little bit of info tucked away in the middle of the article:

Upstartle LLC offers an online program for creating, writing and sharing documents. Whereas the Microsoft Office suite that includes such tools costs more than $140, Upstartle's Writely.com service is free, with add-on features to be made available for a subscription fee later.

This certainly piqued my curiosity. How cool would it be to have a free web-based word processor? All my docs are saved right up there, accessible anywhere, totally platform-independent. And it's - hello?! - free!

So I went ahead and gave Writely a whirl. It's quite a promising start. It's simple and straightforward. And it does what it says it does well.

However, the big drawback is its limited functionality. Sure, it lets you type, do basic formatting, add tables, etc., but there's no way to do some of the more advanced things available in Word and other word processors, such as add footnotes, do outline numbering, and make table of contents or table of authorities, all of which would be key to me moving my legal writing activities over to this.

The second problem I see with this is the ominous "with add-on features to be made available for a subscription fee later". Does that mean I'm going to have to pay some kind of subscription to get the same stuff I get in Word? While pricing would be an important issue in determining whether I use it or not, any cost at all would make me a good deal less likely to use this service since I'm already giving up full functionality while in internetless places like the cabin of an airplane.

So what does this call for? Google. Google needs to come in and buy Writely, improve it and most importantly keep it free. This would fit well into Google's pattern of letting users create or collect content while generating revenues through ads on those pages (à la Gmail) or by simply adding the content to Google's massive database (and thereby making Google's search more effective) and trying to get users to use AdSense (à la Blogger). The synergy between Writely and Google seem obvious to me. Let's hope Google will jump on this.

Oh, and can we hurry up and get Safari support already! Switching to a compatible browser is such a pain.

Genius Bar Can't Help Me

So earlier this week I returned to the Genius Bar in SoHo. They had unfortunately been unsuccessful in resurrecting my dead hard drive.

Once again, the Genius Bar is chaos. They're overwhelmed with people. Every third person in lines asks, "Aren't there walk-ins?" to be told, "Yes, but you still have to sign up and the next space is at 4:30" (this was around noon).

I walk to the front of the loooong line and ask, "I'm just here to pick up a computer. Should I wait in this line?" The guy told me to get out my ID. So apparently I don't have to wait in the line.

Even if not in the line, it was wait that I did. The guy I talked to went and looked around for the computer. Turns out it was downstairs. Getting it from downstairs took like 30 minutes. This guy clearly spent more time talking to other people about going downstairs and getting the computer than it would have taken for him to just run downstairs himself and get it. I had to ask him, "Any word on my laptop?" He discovered that they had forgotten about me, as had he apparently, despite the fact that I was sitting at the bar right in front of him. To be fair, it was hectic, but all I was there to do was pick up a damn computer!

After a while, I noticed a computer sitting on the ledge behind the Genius Bar that looks like mine. I asked him, "Could that be mine?" wanted to get it and get out of there. He wanders off to talk with someone and tells me someone will be with me in a minute. It sounded like that wasn't mine, but it was. It sat there for like 20 minutes before anyone got to me. Then another 10 minutes or so filling out paperwork, and finally I was out of there. Something more than an hour in total just to pick up a stupid computer.

So I stand by my earlier conclusion about the Genius Bar. Knowledgeable people, poor organization.

After that it was off to another Apple-authorized repair place. At that place, they could take care of the back-up (not covered by AppleCare) and everything else. So right now my laptop is with them.

It's been over two months since my computer broke. I'm a law student and as a law student I need to use this crappy exam software which is only on Windows - ExamSoft. So, during my 1L year, when faced with renting a computer for six exam periods or buying one, it was only a bit more to buy one and that's what I did. So I've been using that computer for the past two months. Besides the inconvenience of not having any of my data, it's reminded me why I use a Mac.

So I'm praying my computer gets back to me soon. It's tough without your Mac.

My First Genius Bar Experience

Being that I can figure out most stuff all on my own, I've never needed to make a trip to a genius bar. However, the hard drive problems I've been having have been well beyond my means.

You might have noticed that the posts on this blog have been a little sparse over the past two months. Well, that's thanks to the dead hard drive on my PowerBook. Back in September, my hard drive was making funny noises. Instead of listening to these warning bells and shipping it off to be fixed, I delayed. This was disastrous. In the beginning of October, things got worse and worse, so I tried to make a back-up. However, I was getting all sorts of permissions errors and what not. I couldn't get the data off.

So I turned to my friend Juan, a programmer with a lot more computer know-how than I've got. He was able to get a lot of the data off by writing a perl script and accessing the PowerBook as a target drive from his G5. He managed to get much of the stuff off the computer, although it's unclear whether that was all of it or not. However, one of the things I was most interested in were pictures of Felicia over the past year, which were only partially backed-up. Those he was unable to confirm that he got all and he knew for sure that he missed a bunch of them, perhaps as much as 40%. The hard drive was getting harder and harder to work with, so we decided to call his efforts and see if I'd need to call in the pros.

I had called Apple Support and they told me that if I took my computer into an Apple Store, assuming the necessary drive was in stock they would be able to replace my hard drive and give the damaged one right back to me for me to get the data off of it.

So I go to the Apple Store in Soho. The page from the reservation said I should go and wait for my name to be called. I asked the people where I was suppose to go to wait for my name to be called at the genius bar. They said upstairs and on the left. So I went up. And waited. And waited. It turns out that you had to check in. Nice that anyone told me that. That was the first mark against Apple in my genius bar experience.

Eventually I get my certified genius. He starts fiddling with the computer but ultimately comes to the conclusion that nothing's gonna happen. I tell him AppleCare said I could get a new hard drive and take my old one to get the data off of it. He says that they don't do that. His manager agrees. Something about losing money... although I don't see how that pans out when you're dealing with a crapped out hard drive like mine with the only thing on there of any value being my data, which is only of any value to me. Apple needs to get its story straight. That was the second mark against Apple in my genius bar experience.

However, beyond that, things went very well. The geniuses are very helpful and hook you up with whatever resources - even outside of the Apple empire - to get what you need to get done. The ultimate resolution was that they would try to get the data off of my computer, something that would cost about $50. (Data back-up is not covered under AppleCare.) They also pointed me to another Apple-certified repair shop that could both repair the computer and do that hard-core data recovery that might be necessary if the genius bar troops couldn't pull it off. So they're in the process of fixing it now, and once done they're going to tell me the results, whether recovery is not at all, partial or complete. Then I can either opt to take it to the other place (which is cheaper than most data-recovery places) or I can just let Apple do it's business.

So ultimately I came away pleased, despite the typical corporate bureaucratic confusion between the genius bar and Apple Care and the disorganization of the genius bar sign-in process. The core reasons for going there - to get my computer fixed - were met and the genius bar people met my expectations for knowledge. Overall, I'll jot this down as a mark for Apple.

Navio's IP Rights Model v. Apple's File Purchase Model; Demand-Based Pricing

After reading this article on Business 2.0, and in disagrement with this entry on Metroxing, I realized that Navio may be onto to something here. Basically what they have come up with is a model where instead of buying the music file (à la iTunes Music Store), you buy rights to the music in whatever format you want.

When you buy "a song" (a.k.a. the rights to that song), you would be put into a central database. Thereafter you would always be known as having rights to that song. So if formats are upgraded, digital rights managment (DRM) software changes, or if you just want the song in a different format for whatever reason, the source from where you request the song would query the database and if you've already got the rights you'd be able to get another copy of it. As an added benefit, you'd always have a back-up of your song in case your hard drive disappears on you one day; your rights to the song are recorded centrally.

Contrast this to the iTunes Music Store's current format. I would assume that if the iTunes Music Store upgrades its DRM software, you're not going to lose all previously bought files; that would be ludicrous. However, what happens when the next big file format comes out? Is Apple going to retroactively upgrade all the files you previous bought? Or are they going to force you to upgrade yourself, arguing that it's no different from the upgrade comsumers once had to pay for between cassette tapes and CDs? And too boot Apple doesn't allow you to download lost files again from their servers without paying. Pricing aside, I think that it's clear Navio's rights model is superior to Apple's purchase model in terms of consumer benefit.

What would really impress me is Navio's rights package included more than just digital music player format and ringtone format. When I buy a song, I'd like access to the song, the music video, the karaoke version, the sheet music, they lyrics, the album artwork, etc. When I buy a video, I'd like access to the video, the soundtrack, the soundtrack's music videos (or just the soundtrack as in the video), the script, commentary, etc. Perhaps I never download any of that, but my rights to the music would encompass all of that. And all of these would be wrapped up under one neat price (more on determining price below).

Unfortunately, this does not seem a likely outcome. With the iTunes Music Store making a separate buck off of videos, the likelihood of the rights under the rights model being so broad seems unlkely. (The same applies to sheet music to a lesser extent, I imagine.) This means likely that the acquisition of rights will be divided into song, video, sheet music, and any other profit centers that can be sold independently. It will surely be a long time - if ever - before consumers get a simple, single-package, all-in-one solution to media.

To change the topic a bit, pricing has been in the news a great deal lately. The themes are always the same: evil record labels want more money, valiant Apple wants to protect the consumers with $0.99 songs. I'm all for cheap prices, but there's also an argument to be made to let the market function.

All you have to do is apply your basic supply and demand curve. Let's say the newest, hottest song comes out. For a period, people will pay ridiculous prices for such songs. Let's say, for the period in which a song like this is on fire, the equilibrium price point for such a song is $1.99. It may be higher, but let's just use this as an example. Before long, the demand curve will start to contract, forcing the equilibirum price to fall. Pricing could be done automatically based on the percentile of the sales of that song. The following table is an example of on such scale:

Perentile	Price
99.5	$1.99
99.0	$1.89
98.5	$1.79
98.0	$1.69
97.0	$1.59
96.0	$1.49
95.0	$1.39
94.0	$1.29
92.0	$1.19
90.0	$1.09
50.0	$0.99
40.0	$0.89
30.0	$0.79
25.0	$0.69
20.0	$0.59
15.0	$0.49
05.0	$0.39
02.5	$0.29
01.0	$0.19
00.5	$0.09

The idea here is to stick largely with the $0.99 percent formula (only 10% - the most popular songs - go over it) while a full 50% of the songs receive some discount. At the same time, those songs ranging into the cheapest price ranges would be very small so as to account for costs. In practicality, this table would have to be cut at the point where the price is too small to cover costs, and I'm not sure what that number would be. The percentiles could be calculated on a weekly basis with the prices updated one per week. This would allow less popular songs to be sold more cheaply and thus sell more (thereby pushing them up the in pricing if they break a threshold) and extremely popular songs could stay higher while the market will handle it.

The tendence of such a system would be that all songs would end up at $0.99 or below. For a person like myself who would most likely just wait for a hot new song to come down in price, this system would work well for me, while boosting profits for those supplying the music (the artists, in an ideal world, but we all know how this works in reality).