MacHack Yields Clever Tricks With Apples

gagganator writes: "Machack (that 72 hour nonstop hacking contest) has ended, and here are the hacks voted most interesting. also, Steve Wozniak spoke about everything from phone phreaking to the future of computing." Sounds like a fun event -- does anyone have any other first-hand stories about this year's Machack?

Comments

Re:Religous wars - who is the creator?

[Chris Johnson]

At the time that was a very big deal- and it _did_ trigger an incredible explosion of consumer interest. I'd agree that Woz invented the personal computer. It was a hell of a big change from the Altair scene, which was really 'obsessive crazed hobbyist' land.

Re:not to start a flame war...

[MouseR]

You have to go to the 'Start' button to shut the machine down

That's because the shutdown sequence can take several minutes on an NT Server box. So, you "start" the shutdown service.

Seriously, though, it's just shorter to just wait for the machine to crash.

Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.

Re:not to start a flame war...

[Fafhrd]

Well, the first time I ever sat at a Mac, I placed a floppy in the drive, used it, and then spent a few minutes trying to understand where should I eject it (Which eject button, kemosabe? Mac floppy drives DON'T have an eject button, which is kind of the whole point)

If a soul more acquainted with the MacOS hadn't passed by and said "Just drag it to the trash, it's ok, it won't be erased" I'd never tried it! The "logical" action associated with dragging the disk to the trash, to someone not used to the interface, would be to erase it.

Instead of "hand"...

[cr0sh]

This sounds OK, but still isn't as intuitive. If you have an icon that represents a floppy (or some other removable media) drive, I can think of a few ways to intuitively eject the disk:

1. A "button" on the icon that looks like an eject button - click on it to eject the disk.
2. Drag the icon off the screen (preferably the bottom) to eject.
3. Maybe an "Open Door" type icon, showing "exitability"?

These are just my three suggestions - I am sure there are other ideas...

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Cool hacks from the show

[sometwo]

There is a more complete review of the show at macworld.com

Here are my favorite hacks:

Some guy hacked an Apple one button mouse to make it two button. Here's a picture. Here is the relevant passage from the article:

He hands over a familiar-looking Apple ADB bar-of-soap style mouse. It's a little shiny, of course, but it looks perfectly ordinary, right down to its two buttons.

Two buttons? Yes, two buttons. Josh happened along the specs for the off-the-shelf chip that drove the Apple ADB mouse, and noted an unused pin labeled SW1. SW0 is the signal line for the mouse button...did this mean that this thing had unexploited two-button support all along?

In the end, all it took was putting in a second switch and running its two leads here and here. No re-engineering or re-design necessary. Only marginally more difficult than making toast. Of course he had to write a special mouse driver so the Mac could recognize the surplus button, but it works.

Now that's a hack.

Here's another intersting quote about John Warnock, CEO of Adobe:

And most importantly in this venue, he proved himself a hacker. His presentation software? Adobe Acrobat. Naturally, he'd stick to an Adobe product over Microsoft PowerPoint. But Acrobat doesn't really have any built-in niceties as a presentation tool. No problem...John wrote Distiller code that automatically processes a folder of data into an organized presentation. He also uses Acrobat as his format of choice for storing his collection of digital photos...again, powered by Distiller code.

The revelation of his use of Distiller came during the Q&A that followed, and invited a question: if you're unsatisfied with Microsoft PowerPoint, why not put out a new version of Persuasion, the presentation app Adobe stopped supporting a few years ago? Basically, because that requires an investment of not-considerable money and resources, and it's impossible to compete with a piece of software which Microsoft -- for all intents and purposes -- gives away.

Then why not release Persuasion's code as open-source, so someone else can update it? Not a bad idea, John mused...

There was a big opensource sermon also.

Mac drives are better. They generate events.

[Ukab the Great]

One thing that people forget is that when you're using windows (which I try to do as least as possible, mind you), what happens often when you go to the top most directory in the file browser to save something? Immediately the floppy starts grinding away. Why? Because PC floppy drives don't generate an OS event when a disk is inserted. The computer has no way of keeping a record of when a floppy is sitting in the drive. The only solution to this is to poll the floppy, which generates the most grating noise. With the mac floppy drive(which probably should have an eject button that works the same way as the ones on zip drives), every time a floppy is inserted, it generates a disk event that tells the OS "Hey, there's a floppy inside you". When there's no floppy in the mac, the mac understands it's not there, so it's not going to do something futile and useless like searching for data on a floppy disk that doesn't exist. Given, the electronics required for this elegant solution raised the cost of mac floppy drives considerably. It's one of those technical superiority vs. price tradeoffs we see so much in the computer industry (SCSI vs. IDE, etc).

Some people just don't get it

[shagoth]

For those who have attended MacHack, ESR included, there is an understanding of the spirit of what's going on. The hack show is about rediscovering what it is that makes engineering and software design fun to begin with. Sure, some hacks are derivative and some are pure presentation with little or no coding involved. Heck, some the most legendary hacks have been pure showmanship. The reason that things like the Password sniffer went over well is because of the presentation. Blackmailing the entire audience serves as excellent marketing.

Judging a hack on merits of utility or even total originality isn't fair. That's just not what this event is about. There's more here than merely recompiling dsniff to run on OSX. I would have thought that the whole thing would be fairly obvious to the slashdot crowd at large. Clearly, some get it and some don't.

Now I need to figure out why I'm awake at 6a PDT on the Monday following 72 hours with very little sleep.

Better than trash - a "Hand"

[Bitsy Boffin]

I think that following the MAC desktop theme, dragging anything to the trash (including disks) should delete/erase. I don't like the trash to eject thing.

They should also put a "Hand" on the desk, dragging anything to the hand would put something physical `in your hand'. If it's a disk, it would eject, if it's a document it would print, if it's a program it would say 'insert disk to put this file onto' and eject the disk when done.

Oh and apple, if you take my idea on board, I'll have a piece of that pie thanks :-)

Re:dedicated hackers

[Eagle7]

That makes him resourceful (read: Hacker), becuase he still manages to get a conference of use out of his laptop *before* he bitches and gets it fixed. Perhaps if we had more people like him and less like you in this world, there would be a lot more doing, and a lot less bitching. Either that, or we need to bring back reruns of McGyver and the ATeam to get the do-it-yourself, hack-it-together spirit back.

Re:not to start a flame war...

[Gordonjcp]

Have none of you ever played with the menus?
Along the top, with writing on?
"Special", "Eject Disk" or "Put away disk"
"Eject" just spits the disk out, "Put away" also removes it from the desktop (so the machine forgets the disk was ever inserted).
Jeez, you guys call yourselves hackers...

Re:Its a contradiction in terms. Mac users don't h

[Jigoku]

Your flame is so childish I'm not going to even reply to it....oh, wait a second...damn. I guess I did.

Now that you got me talking, I may as well go ahead and burst your bubble. Mac's are not the best systems in the world. Windows PC's are not the best in the world. And...here it comes...*nix systems are not the best in the world. In summary, there is no "One True System" that trumps all the others.

People like to say that they have the best of something. The best car...the best console system...the best box...the best whatever. The truth is that your definition of "the best" is not my defninition nor is it most likley anyone elses definition. This argument is so old it is not even interesting anymore. Take the old console argument, for example. People fight over which console is the best and some even refuse to buy competing consoles. Everybody's either heard it or participated in it, I'm sure.

People spend so much time defending "their system" that they never experience the other systems or they just neglect to see the perks of the other systems. Sure, everything has imperfections. But, everything has its own beauty. By being system biased, you miss out on the other systems' beauties.

Our human nature says "be the best". Darwin said "survival of the fittest", therefore implying that the "best" will prevail. Sometimes you have to put aside all that competition crappola and see the innate beauty in things. I like Windows because I like games. I like Mac's because of their attitude and photo/video editing support. I like GNU/Linux because of the GPL and the fact that for a couple bucks I can get a CD off of the 'net that has so many GPL'ed programs I have a complete GNU system for $5 shipping. If I had a lot of cash, I would have all of them.

Mac's are beautiful, Wintel's are beautiful, *nix boxen are beautiful. If they could only live together in peace and harmony. Why can't we all just get along? Now I sound like a hippy...eh, a techno-hippy I am.

Thank you Lord Hugh Toppingham for giving me something to do while I am stuck at work. I consider the use of the internet and the reading/posting at Slashdot "research" for the IT dept. It's been fun.

Succes!

[roguerez]

Looks like the contest succeeded. They managed to Dos-attack Slashdot almost contineously for the last 48 hours. :)

Re:Neat -- an equalizer

[dhamsaic]

you can burn cds with itunes under os x. that's what release 10.0.2 was for. 10.0.4 is out now. you should upgrade maybe?

you can't burn data cds yet, and you can't watch dvds, but that will be in the next release (as an employee of apple told me), which will be the last release before macworld new york. keep your software up to date and you'll be alright.