Earlier this week, I found a user generated screencast showing off rooSwitch managing multiple profiles for Final Cut Pro. I got in touch with the author and chatted a bit about rooSwitch and asked if I could post his screencast. Not only did he let me post it, but he redid it to explain a little more of how he’s doing what he’s doing. The six minute QuickTime movie can be seen below:

rooSwitch and Final Cut Pro.mov

Since I’m not a Final Cut Pro user I would never have known this problem existed nor that it could be helped by rooSwitch.

Many thanks to Steve at Double Wide Post in NYC for the great screencast.

I’m obviously pretty excited about this and am glad I made it to WWDC this year. It’s really awesome to have something I made be recognized by Apple.

On with the thanks.

I’ll start by thanking my wife and our two girls. They don’t know Cocoa (yet) nor do they use rooSwitch, they do put up with me and occasionally encourage my programming habits.

Next the peers. I had a lot of help with rooSwitch from some great peers. Specifically (in first name alphabetical order): Andy Kim, Daniel Jalkut, Luis de la Rosa and Steve Harris. I actually got to go out to dinner with 3 of those 4 tonight (all but Daniel). It was my first time meeting both Andy and Steve in person.

Now the catch-all (cause I’m sure I forgot someone (sorry)). Thanks to everyone on the rooSwitch beta mailing list and all the users that provided feedback.

OK, that’s all.

Last year I ran a sale on rooSwitch for the week of WWDC. I even had business cards that advertised the sale. I still have plenty of those cards. Instead of making new cards, I decided to run the sale again. Benefit from my laziness: http://roobasoft.com/rooSwitch?WWDC=1.

If you, like me, were curious what’d happen to my username and other account info, here ’tis:

About your expired account status

You can continue to use your .Mac member name with .Mac Groups, iChat, or AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and you can access your .Mac Account page to manage your .Mac account password or update your alternate email addresses. However, the iDisk storage, web pages, screensavers, and iCal calendars for your .Mac account are no longer accessible to you or visible to others. As a courtesy, you will have access to your .Mac Mail until 15 days after your account expiration date. You will also have access to your Group Preferences page for .Mac Groups so you can arrange to transfer ownership of the group to another .Mac member for any .Mac group you own.

update 2006.09.05: SOLD!

I’m trading in my PowerBook for a bottom of the barrel white MacBook (I plan to add a 7200 RPM drive and 2GB of RAM sometime after purchase). If you need a PowerPC laptop, give mine a gander over @ eBay: 15″ PowerBook 1.67 Ghz 80GB 1.5GB SuperDrive Airport

If you “buy it now” ($1200 US) and you let me know that you read about it via my blog I’ll refund you the shipping (A $30 VALUE!!!11!!!11). I’ll also be sure to give you the coveted “A++++++” feedback on eBay (insert smilie face).

Why sell it? The PowerBook has two months left before its AppleCare runs out and I don’t want to shell out the $300 clams for AppleCare. I also don’t want an Apple laptop that isn’t covered by AppleCare. In case you’re wondering, yes, I have another PowerPC based machine (a mini), so I don’t need the PB for testing PPC bits.

I used the award winning iSale to create the post. It’s quite nice (disclaimer: I’m not an eBay connoisseur, but it seemed to make a clunky web based entry system a lot more enjoyable). If you’re going to post to eBay give iSale a try. They’ve got a pretty generous demo where you can post and monitor three items for free.

This might be common knowledge, but I didn’t know it. Oh, and this is a 15″ PowerBook G4. Not sure if this works on Mac Book (Pro)’s or not. If you have a MB(P), feel free to drop the answer in the comments.

My iMac sits in my bedroom. There are certain rules: 1) always mute it 2) don’t use the CD-ROM (it’s quieter than my PowerBook, but still annoying) 3) don’t update it’s firmware (this one is new – learned minutes ago)

I just snagged the firmware update and did the install. If your Intel based Mac exists next to a sleeping spouse, wait until said spouse wakes up before running the update. Otherwise you’ll welcome them with:

1) a super annoying “fire alarm!” ish BEEEEEP during the firmware’s initial boot (the one where the power indicator starts to flash). My mac has never made a more “something is wrong” kind of noise (nothing was wrong). 2) the Mac bootup sound. Regardless of the fact that my Mac was muted, after the firmware update was complete it gave a nice big “that update was a success” chime.

Also, if you’ve previously done the onmac.net method of dual booting, you’ll want to read this prior to doing the firmware update or the bootcamp install.

Last we heard, my fourth iPod was on its way. Well, that one has been replaced and now number 5 is here. What happened to number 4? Things were looking good. I received it on a Saturday morning and it still had some charge in it. I plugged it in, synced it and let it sit playing an album over and over. Five hours later and it was still going. Success! Then, on the way to get some pizza, I plugged it into my FM transmitter. Before I could even choose a playlist I’m welcomed with the wonderful smell of burning electronics. I pick up the iPod, confirm it’s the source of the smell and just let out a sigh. Then, to top things off, the pizza was horrible (I’ve been experimenting with pizza places lately, all disappointing).

I’ve been through four iPods and an FM transmitter, but I think it’s happened. I think number 5 is the one.

As for FM transmitters, I’m now using a griffin roadtrip ($50 on amazon) and am quite happy with it. I was previously using a Newer Technology RoadTrip! (yes, they have the same name, very different product). I was happy with Newer Tech’s model, until it died as part of number 4′s death.

I both mirror my drive with SuperDuper! and I backup some miscellaneous stuff using Apple’s Backup. One of the miscellaneous things I backup with Backup is my address book. I also sync my address book with .mac such that my PowerBook, my iMac and my mini for work all have the things I need right when I need them. However, .mac syncing isn’t perfect. This morning the sync’r asked me if it was OK to delete all my address book entries. Of course, I didn’t realize what it was asking until after I clicked OK. Next thing I knew all my iChat users switched from friendly names, to their cryptic AIM usernames. Hand hits forehead At this point I cried. Then I started thinking about the easiest way to restore. Knowing others issues with Backup, I was nervous, but realized it was my best bet. If it worked, it would take less than one minute, and it certainly couldn’t make things worse.

• Open up Backup
• double click on the “Personal Data & Settings”
• go to the restore tab
• select the latest entry
• select “Address Book”
• click restore
• watch it go.

Less than a minute later my Address Book was restored and my faith in Backup has increased. This was the first time I actually needed it, and it worked. Now, restoring my address book isn’t rocket science, so we’ll see how it fairs when/if I need it to pull a little more weight. Hopefully that won’t be necessary.

Lessons:

• read those sync dialogs
• Apple’s Backup isn’t 100% useless. In fact, for this purpose it was probably the best solution.