Getting OMiC ready for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard makes more problems and take more time than I thought, so today there is just a beta version I can offer you. If you are interested in it write me a line.

I’m happy that I have some customer which have large enough deployments that they use Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) to install OMiC. In such a deployment the administrator don’t want that a update dialog pop up by his users, which has most the time not the rights to perform the update.

For this cases I add to Sparkle the SUIgnoreChecks key, which the administrator can set over Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) in the application preferences file.

OMiC use Sparkle for updating since version 1.7.2, but you can’t use Sparkle do update Plug-ins out of the box. So I spend the last days do turn my home cooked solution into something which work for other Plug-ins as well. If you are interested, checkout the Sparkle subversion repository.

Yesterday I switched to PackageMaker 3.0 to generate packages. My Plug-in OMiC is build separate for Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 to support the different features.

So the simplest solution maybe offer two downloads and give user the choice which version he needs. But thanks to Metapackages and Distribution Packages the installer choice which version is needed.

So let us start PackageMaker (/Developer/Applications/Utilities/PackageMaker) …

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Many of you early adopters already ask me about the state of OMiC for Mac OS X Leopard which released last Friday. So good news first: There will be definitely a version of OMiC for Leopard!

I think it will be ready in one or two weeks, so stay tuned.

Tonight I start with my journey to Munich, where I meet TheCodingMonkeys. From Munich we will fly to San Francisco for the WWDC.

Support will be limited from 07. june until 15. june 2007. It will not be possible to answer your questions in the usual timeframe during this period. Thank you for your patience.

This will be my first WWDC, and also my first time in USA, so I’m looking forward to a great time.

Before I release a new version of OMiC, I always run a lot of tests on Mac OS X 10.3 and Mac OS X 10.4 on my PowerBook. Today I learn the hard way that I forget something: Mac OS X 10.4 on Intel Macs.

OMiC 1.7.0 was broken on Intel Macs, because of that one day after the release of it I release today OMiC 1.7.1, which brings Intel Macs support back.

Sorry for this mistake!

Final, OMiC 1.7.0 is done. It’s bring support for something called nested messages. This is one of the features which is hard to describe… because as all things in OMiC, it’s seamless integrated. So I try it with a screenshot.

For nested messages it was needed to rewrote the hole winmail.dat file parser, so if you find any regressions contact me.

Today, I would like to officially launch restoroot.org, and it brings an update for OMiC and a piece of new software.

It also brings this blog. I would like to share here with you more about mac relevant things than I can write on my other blog on java.net.

Now to the new application, currently it addresses two issues:
1. When you come from Microsoft Windows, you know and love this “Map Network Drive” Feature. On Mac OS X you must always mount manually the share, and when the server gets down, you must manually mount it again.
It is even uglier when you use a laptop, then with every location change you must redo the work.
2. Power of Airport and Bluetooth. Again, you use a Laptop to work, and at home you connect over Airport and use your bluetooth mouse, but at the company you use ethernet and so turn airport power off. And in the train or the coffee with the too small table for a mouse, you turn again airport and bluetooth off to save battery.
Currently, it is in beta phase, so please check it out and give me feedback.