My first foray into the world of icon design comes in the form this replacement icon set for the Mac-only iPod transfer utility, Senuti. This huge set contains icons matching all recent iPods from the Shuffle to Full-Size iPods.

Download Senuti Icon Pack for Mac

• Supported Operating Systems: Mac OSX (.icns format, Windows .ico coming soon)
• License: Freeware for commercial and non-commercial use
• Contents: 5th Gen Full-Size iPod (black, white); 6th Gen iPod Classic (black, silver); 1st Gen Nano (black, white); 2nd Gen Nano (black, silver, blue, green, pink, red); 3rd Gen Nano (black, silver, green, blue, red, pink); 2nd Gen Shuffle (silver, blue, green, pink, orange); 3rd Gen Shuffle (silver, blue, green, red, purple) and two General Use Senuti Icons (Notes & Click Wheel)

Visit my profiles over at Interfacelift or DeviantART!

The recent (June ‘07) article over on TorrentFreak about uTorrent for Mac doesn’t seem hopeful or at least soon coming. They do have another article explaining ways to run uTorrent on your Mac via Crossover Office (beta) or Parallels.

As I migrated away from Windows I bought a copy of Parallels thinking I’d run them side by side so I could use some of those Windows-only apps like XnView and my old copy of Fontlab Using Windows apps so seldomly, I don’t like the idea of installing (and making me buy) a whole copy of Windows onto my Macbook Pro for an occasional use.

Enter uTorrent.

I had been using Azureus for my torrenting needs until Comcast started blocking resetting my upload transfers. I read that uTorrent was so much better but alas, Windows only. Well, after trying the ie4osx kit, I ended up not using the IE part so much as the intel native Darwine kit and it’s accompanying WinHelper.app. I gave it a try, downloaded the uTorrent installer, ran it through WineHelper.app and seconds later, a successful install. The real test was would it launch and better yet, access the internets? It does.

Required Parts for uTorrent on the Mac:

1] Install X11 from your Mac OSX install CD or DVD. This is necessary for running any Windows apps without using Parallels.

2] Download and install Darwine for your Mac’s CPU architecture
Mount the DMG and drag the “Darwine” folder to your “Applications” folder. Run the various wine* apps in the “Sample Applications” folder inside the “Darwine” folder. These will help better configure the environment.

Links to both Intel and PowerPC builds of Darwine:

Darwine for Intel Macs
Darwine for PPC Macs

3] Download the install package for uTorrent.
Run the install.exe and let uTorrent install to the “Program Files” directory (a hidden “.wine” folder within your home folder).
uTorrent

4] Launch WineHelper.app from the “Darwine” folder then go to File > Open, Program Files > utorrent > utorrent.exe
This will launch X11, a log window and a terminal window. You can safely close both the log and terminal windows without hurting the uTorrent process.

5] Open a torrent from uTorrent’s File menu, point it to where you want to save the file and you’re off!

Note: You can’t hide uTorrent like a normal Mac app, you can hide X11 but not the uTorrent window itself. However, you can minimize it like a normal Windows app, except it will minimize down to the bottom left of your screen, sort of hovering near the top edge of the dock. Clicking the reduced title bar will present you with a pop-up menu of options like “Restore”, “Close” “Maximize” and a few uTorrent specific options.

Note2: If the option “Minimize uTorrent to tray” it checked, uTorrent will disappear to a tiny rectangular window and icon at the top left of your screen, directly under the menu bar. This icon can be right-clicked to access all of uTorrent’s system tray icon options.

Hopefully, the uTorrent for Mac project will continue but this works (for me) in the meantime.

Sure, I’ve gotten annoyed by the eyesore of Leopard’s new Stacks feature. Looks like a jumbled mess and since the icons change based on the contents, it’s hard to tell the Stacks apart if you have multiple Stacks without constant icons. I briefly read over the modified date hack to keep a constant icon and it seems like a hassle. I wanted something quick and easy to implement so I figured out a better way. Here’s an easy tip for creating a static icon (or custom icon) at the front of the Stack.
Myself, I have four Stacks in the Dock: /Applications, Utilities, Documents and Downloads (pic 1).

When clicking on the Stack, I think the trick becomes pretty clear, as seen here
(pic 2).

This trick is simply achieved by creating a folder within the folder you intend to use as a Stack and change its name to a space character. After that, just do a Cmd+I (Get Info) on the icon you’d like to use, select the icon, copy it (cmd+c) then Get Info again on the new folder and paste the icon onto the existing folder icon. Voila! new constant icon (pic 3).

The only drawback here is you can’t sort the Stack by anything except “Name” because it will obviously sort to whatever matches that criteria. I prefer sorting by name anyway so this works out great for me and I hope it works for you too.

Every damn post or review I read states something about the iPhone’s non-removable battery. I have had my LG Chocolate phone for over a year and I have NEVER replaced the battery. I don’t know anyone who carries a spare battery with them. My girlfriend (who just bought the iPhone yesterday) and I have wall and car chargers for our phones. If you charge the battery you won’t need a spare. If there’s a problem with the iPhone’s battery it’s COVERED UNDER WARRANTY. Take it in and have it repaired or replaced. Apple is fantastic about hardware repair and support. The battery thing isn’t an issue and should not be used as a “competitive feature” other phones have over the iPhone. Seriously.