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The Unofficial Apple Weblog:

If you are in a Cocoa application and typing along, but you just don’t feel like typing the rest of the word you are in the middle of just hit the ‘Esc’ key. A menu with a bunch of different possible completions for the word you started are offered up to you in a nice, scrollable interface. Simply click on the one you want to go with and let the OS do the typing.

This is pretty slick — I know autocomplete was available in Xcode and Script Editor back in Panther, but finding it available system-wide (or, at least Cocoa-wide) is a pleasant surprise.

I’ve played with this for a few minutes and it seems a little smarter than just displaying a list of autocompletion options from the dictionary. If a valid autocompletion option for the selected word already exists in your document, that word appears to jump to the top of the list. The autocompletion option doesn’t even need to appear in the system dictionary — I opened up some source code in TextEdit and I could autocomplete method names.

Furthermore, it appears that if only a single autocompletion option exists, that option is automatically selected. For instance, I hit the ‘Esc’ key after typing “NSA” and “NSAppleEventDescriptor” appeared.

Autocompletion seems to be case sensitive, at least for words that don’t appear in the dictionary.

I’m working under the assumption that this feature is implemented for NSTextView fields. Hopefully, this is something that Carbon applications like BBEdit can add support for over time.

Update: I’ve hit one limitation of the autocomplete system built into Tiger (and probably Panther, as well) — it’s not multi-document aware. This is sort of a downer for coding, since I usually keep my header files and source files open at the same time and I like to use autocompletion was I’m writing method implementations after switching over from writing the declarations in the header files.

So, here’s at least one place where the combination of BBEdit and BBAutoComplete has an advantage over the system’s built-in implementation.

In the past 24 hours, I received what I think is my first “Why haven’t you been blogging!” message from Chris and I got meme-slapped by Michael. Wow, big day.

Total volume of music files on my computer

15.71 GB

The last CD I bought was

Crossfade’s self-titled album

Song playing right now

Nothing at the moment, but the last thing on the iPod was a live version of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or mean a lot to me

Right now, I don’t really have any songs that mean a lot to me. However, there are a few that that’ve stuck with me over the years and a few that I’m rather into right now.

• Lightning Crashes by Live
• Inside Out by Eve 6
• The Dirty Glass by the Dropkick Murphys
• December by Collective Soul
• Want You Bad by The Offspring

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton

You know, I’m not even sure if half these people know about this blog I think that means I need better advertising.

A quick note for Michael, Chris, and Lee — thanks for claiming the pretty much the whole ATPM staff!

• Larry Lansing
• Garrett Rooney
• Stoddard Panall
• Rob Colonna
• JJ Johns

Certain other people in my life need to get weblogs, simply because I’d really like to see how they’d respond to this.

After a very extended beta period (even longer than this-here weblog’s outage, but that’s another story), NetNewsWire 2.0 is finally final. Since NetNewsWire is typically one of the first three application I launch when I log in (along with Mailsmith and Safari), I’m very psyched about this announcement.

Prior to trying the first 2.0 beta release, I looked through the list of proposed features (which has since been replaced by the list of new features in the final release) and made a mental checklist of which features I thought I’d like.

Persistence seemed like it would be the biggie. In fact, permanently storing my downloaded articles was one of the main reasons I gave PulpFiction an extended trial run as my news reader of choice. NetNewsWire still doesn’t have a Save Forever option, but I’ve got currently got my Keep Items option set at 10 years.

Hmm. I should set an appointment in iCal to double-check that sometime in 2014.

Tabbed browsing caught my attention. As I’ve already indicated, NetNewsWire’s implementation of integrated web browsing was the first that I truly found useful. It’s completely changed my news reading experience. Since NetNewsWire saves your open tabs across application launches (and usually even the occasional beta crash) and main window closings, I can open a tab and come back to a day or a week later. Previously, when I had all my tabs opened in Safari, I would rush through reading the open articles for fear of accidentally losing my unread tabs.

I saw several other features that made me think “That may prove useful.” I’ve used some of these regularly (like searching) and some not at all (like scripted feeds).

There was one feature I never thought I’d use — syncing. Why would I need to sync my NetNewsWire data? I’ve got a laptop. If I’m going some place where I’ll be getting online, I’ll bring my own computer, complete with my own copy of NetNewsWire.

Then, I finally decided to do something about my PowerBook’s inability to wake from anything longer than a half hour nap. Called Apple, shipped my only working computer cross-country once more. Prior to boxing everything up, I decided to try syncing my subscriptions, news items, and browser tabs to my .Mac account. The next day, I downloaded the newest NetNewsWire beta onto my office computer and synced that to my .Mac account. Just like that, I was back in the comfortable environment of my personal NetNewsWire setup (minus some preferences that needed tweaking and a stylesheet I didn’t bother to download). A week and a half later, my parents went on vacation, so I borrowed my mother’s iBook and synced that to my .Mac account. A week after that, I got my PowerBook back. I launched my original copy of NetNewsWire, let it download my feeds, synced it back to .Mac account, and watched as 2157 unread items was magically transformed to 317.

Two and a half weeks. Three computer. Zero missed beats. Very cool indeed.

If I’m correctly remembering what I heard earlier in the week, then I should’ve taken the Over.

Seriously, I didn’t expect a game like this. I was stunned when the Pats jumped out to a 21 point lead.

I expected the Pats to have a decent rushing game. Considering the Pats had a not so grand total total of 5 rushing yards on 6 attempts, “decent” wasn’t all that strict a standard to meet, relatively. In fact, 3 of the 5 Patriots credited with rushing attempts exceeded the Patriots total from the previous Pats-Steelers match-up.

Against a tough defense like the Steelers, 126 yards is definitely a good showing. The Patriot’s final 2 scoring drives covered 10:32 and 13 of the 20 plays were running plays (13 runs, 7 passes, 1 field goal). On the final scoring drive, 9 of the 10 plays were running plays. The Steelers had a roughly 3 minute edge in time of possession, but the Patriots were able to run down the clock and score points when the Steelers cut the Patriots’ lead to 11 points.

The improved running game also kept the Steelers from sitting back in pass coverage, which may have helped the Patriots convert on several long pass plays.

The big difference in the game was turnovers. Ben Roethlisberger threw 3 interceptions and Jerome Bettis had a fumble (though it was on what would have been a failed 4th down conversion). The Patriots didn’t have a single turnover. The Pats converted the Steelers’ miscues into 24 points.

I’ve watched Roethlisberger play a few games this year and I think he’s the real deal (well, duh). Personally, I’d love to see him outplay both Eli Manning and Philip Rivers over the course of their respective careers. Overall, he had a rough game, but you can’t help but be impressed by how he came out in the 3rd quarter. He led the Steelers on scoring drives the first three times they had the ball in the second half. There are a number of quarterbacks in the NFL who wouldn’t have been able to do that.

Of his three interceptions in tonight’s game, only the final one seemed truly egregious — Roethlisberger overthrew his intended receiver and Eugene Wilson made a tremendous diving catch. Roethlisberger’s first INT was thrown a bit behind the receiver, but it was still deflected twice before Wilson came down with the ball. On the second INT, Rodney Harrison simply cut in front of the intended receiver and had basically clear sailing to the end zone.

I think the Steelers are looking good for the future. They have a young quarterback with a good head on his shoulders. Their defense is solid. They have depth at wide receiver so they can spread the ball around. They move the ball well on the ground. Assuming they can adequately manage their salary cap, I expect them to be among the AFC’s elite for the next few years.

This year, though, the Patriots are heading back to the Super Bowl, this time facing off against the Philadelphia Eagles. Thus, I think Robert Kraft will be hoisting another Lombardi Trophy above his head in 2 weeks. Of course, that prediction isn’t anything new for me.

Looks like I’m up and running again. It’s amazing how much better MT 3.1 works when it’s not using the 2.x Admin UI.

In my… zeal… to get this fixed, I forgot to back up my templates and plugins before blowing away my old installation. I think I’ve repaired most of the damage to the templates (especially the style sheet), but if anything looks munged, do let me know.

I took down the blogroll. For a while, I’d felt it was getting to long to be real useful. When I tried rebuilding my index page after reinstalling MT, I started getting errors about XML::Twig — that was the straw that broke the camels back, so to speak.

It’s Saturday night and I’m in the process of getting snowed in at this very moment.

Since I’ve got nothing better to do, I’m going to fix my MovableType install. Comments and stuff will be down while I’m working.

Now, that I’ve said I like the NFL on iTunes deal and talked about the Patriots perhaps making the Super Bowl, I guess I should share my thoughts on the upcoming Patriots – Steelers game (even if I seem to be the only person who likes the deal).

This ended up being longer than I expected, so here’s the Cliff’s Notes version — I think the Pats will win. Of course, I’m a homer and I’ve made the same prediction prior to every Pats game over the last 2 seasons. Granted, I’ve correctly called 32 of the last 36 Pats games using this approach, but that’s beside the point

Seriously, though, I do think the Pats will win, but I think the game will be close – within a touchdown. Both teams are extremely good (heck, the Steelers are currently 16-1 this season), but the Pats have a few edges.

Injuries

Back on Halloween, the Steelers pounded the Patriots 34-20. Since Bill Belichick took over the Patriots prior to the 2000 season, the Patriots are 15-4 the second time they play a given team during a single season. Two of those loses came during the 2000 season, during which the Pats went 5 and 11.

update: Here’s the stat I actually wanted to quote last night: “Bill Belichick’s Patriots are undefeated the last 13 times they’ve faced a [starting?] quarterback for the second time in a season.”

Back when the Pats and Steelers played last fall, the Patriots were decimated by injuries. Starters Corey Dillon (running back), Deion Branch (wide receiver), Tyrone Poole (cornerback), Patrick Pass (fullback), and Tom Ashworth (right tackle) all missed the game due to injuries. Starting CB Ty Law and left tackle Matt Light both left the game with injuries; neither returned (Law, in fact, ended up missing the remainder of the season).

Two and a half months later, the Patriots are much healthier than they were during week 8. Dillon, Branch, Pass, and Light are all expected to play. Niether of the Tys will be playing, but their replacements have had 10 weeks to gel and they’ve mostly acquitted themselves quite well — Randall Gay has exceeded all expectations and Troy Brown has improved by leaps and bounds as he’s received on-the-job training. Earthwind Moreland has been beaten more often than I’d like to see (to the point where Brown, a wide receiver, has passed him on the depth chart), but during last weeks’ Colts game, Moreland was benched in favor of the recently-acquired Hank Poteat.

Starting defensive end Richard Seymour may not play, as he’s still recovering from an injury suffered near the end of the regular season.

I believe the Steelers were missing one starter during the week 8 match-up, but I not certain. Perhaps one of their starting linebackers?

Ben Roethlisberger and the Patriots’ Coaching Staff

Ben Roethlisberger has definitely had an amazing rookie year. Defense-adjusted Points Above Replacement (DPAR) is a metric developed by the folks at Football Outsiders. For quarterbacks, DPAR “represents the total number of points scored due to plays where this QB passed or carried the ball, compared to a replacement-level QB in the same game situations.” Roethlisberger had the 10th highest DPAR in the NFL. Keep in mind, he didn’t become a starter till week 3 and he sat out week 17.

That said, Roethlisberger clearly struggled last week against the Jets. I can’t really say if his thumb was bothering him or if he was nervous or if the Jets defense was just that good. However, he also suffered against the Jets in Week 14, completing only 9 of 19 passes and throwing 2 interceptions. Looking at the numbers, the Jets defense isn’t that good. I’m going to point towards another Football Outsiders stat, Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). Overall, the Jets had the 14th worst DVOA in the NFL. If we look just at pass defense, the Jets fall all the way to 8th worst.

The Patriots defense is much better than the Jets — overall the Pats had the 6th best DVOA in the league. Looking at the just the passing numbers, the Pats fall to 11th overall, but that’s a far cry from the the Jets’ ranking.

I think it’s a safe bet that Bill Belichick and Romeo Crennel (the Pats’ defensive coordinator) have watched film of how the Jets played against Roethlisberger. These are two of the best defensive minds in the game and I believe they’ll come up with a game plan to exploit any weaknesses that find in Roethlisberger’s game. Furthermore, the Patriots have shown time and time again that they have the players on the defensive side of the ball to implement pretty much any game plan the coaches develop.

Kickers

If it’s a close game like I’m expecting, the game could come down to a battle between the kickers. The Steelers escaped last week because Doug Brien blew two opportunities to kick the go-ahead field foal in the final minutes of regulation. The Patriots don’t have Doug Brien kicking field goals, they have Adam Vinatieri, who’s perhaps the best clutch kicker in the game today. Between the 2001 and 2003 playoffs, Vinatieri’s lined up for 4 game winning kicks and made them all.

The Steelers are a good, hard-nosed football team, but I think Patriots are just better, the Halloween Horror notwithstanding. I’m expecting a close game. Then again, either team could decide to do their best impression of the Colts and we could end up with a blowout.

Prediction: Pats 17, Steelers 14

(The numbers I’ve sited either come from my own memories, Football Outsiders, or Pro-Football-Reference.com. The Patriots injury list from the first Steelers game came from Management Secrets of the New England Patriots, by James Lavin)

Michael’s been doing some math about the cost of keeping your software current versus the cost of buying a Mac mini and getting the software as part of the bundle. Depending on your point of view, the Mac mini comes off as looking like a fairly attractive option, at least for Michael (see Comments).

I’ve been doing my own math and the Mac mini is looking particularly attractive – I’m thinking of picking one up for my apartment instead of refurbishing my old G3 as a backup server.

The G3 would run me probably about $100 to add the 802.11g and the Firewire/USB PCI cards I’d need to support my backup plan.

I don’t know if I’d buy iLife ‘05, but lets pretend I would. The new photo editing features in iPhoto could be interesting and I’d like to play with the new iDVD as well. That’s $80 right there.

Speaking of iDVD, I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a compatible DVD burner. I think the only iDVD-compatible drive you add to a PowerBook are the internal drives. OWC sells several models of SuperDrives that will replace the a PowerBook’s internal drive. The drives start at $180 and the model that seems comparable to the SuperDrive available in the Mac mini is $190. Conversely, the SuperDrive option on the Mac mini runs $100.

I’d definitely need the Airport and I’d probably get Bluetooth as well. That’s about $130. I’d also double the installed RAM to 512 MB, adding another $75.

Unless I’m doing the math wrong, that makes the marginal cost of my Mac mini $433.

I’m certainly not going to buy the first mini off the assembly line — I’ll let somebody else work out the bugs If I’m able to hold off on buying the mini until Apple institutes an Up-To-Date program for Tiger, that saves me an additional $130, bringing the cost down to $303.

It’s certainly a little more than I’d spend to get the G3 up and running, but I’d be getting a significantly faster machine, some new capabilities, and the ability to run the latest OS on officially-supported hardware.

Associated Press:

The National Football League on Tuesday announced an agreement with Audible Inc., an online distributor of audiobooks and other spoken-word programming, to make recordings of this year’s remaining playoff games available for portable audio players, including Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod.

This is pretty cool. If the Patriots win another Super Bowl, I’ll definitely purchase the broadcast. I’m particularly impressed that they’re going to offer the local broadcasts in addition to the national feed. WBCN has run brief highlights from the Pats two Super Bowl victories, but the NFL has never granted permission for BCN to replay the entire broadcast.

Granted, the NFL’s refusal to let the Patriots’ broadcast partner replay the game might have something to do with the fact that the NFL is able to charge $10 to download the game.

Conversely, Major League Baseball offers low quality video downloads of complete games for just $3.95. However, MLBs Digital Download Services uses Microsoft Digital Rights Management, so the videos aren’t playable on the Mac, nor can you burn them DVDs for playback on TV.

So, assuming the Patriots are able to take home this year’s Lombardi trophy, the next step is to get the Super Bowl telecast onto my computer and replace the oh-so-annoying Fox broadcasters with the quality work of WBCN broadcast team, Gil Santos and Gino Cappelletti.

So, any chance the NFL will make older Super Bowls available at a later time? They certainly have the audio archived in a safe location. I’d pay to get downloads of the Pats 2001 and 2003 Super Bowl victories. I do think that the sounds of past glories would make a good soundtrack to a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

ATPM 11.01 was released yesterday, just in time to start the new year.

I’ve penned two pieces this month, some speculation about the partnership between Motorola and Apple and a review of UI Actions. I have to admit, it felt good to get writing again after two months of not contributing (note that I didn’t say two months of vacation, though :/)

A few other points of interest: Wes Meltzer review my weblog editor of choice, MarsEdit, Michael Tsai reviews the Kensington StudioBoard, the ever expanding art collection, and much more.