In an attempt to teach myself Objective C, and because I couldn’t find anything that did what I wanted, I wrote a little utility to display the currently-playing iTunes track in the Mac taskbar. Originally I had it display the full track name right in the taskbar but it was too much text for such a small space (especially on a 1440×900 screen), so now you click a little musical note and it shows you the info in a menu.

Here’s a screenshot:

The code is all in github. If you’re looking for a similar utility, and are brave enough to try my first-ever Obj-C app, you can download it here. But the freshest version will probably be in the github project.

As an aside, I was surprised at how easy it was to cobble this together having never written ObjC before. I found some good examples that I mostly ripped off, but it was still remarkably easy to have the app listen to iTunes for track changes, etc.

A few weeks ago I switched from my trusty old HP nc8430 to a Macbook Pro (MC118LL/A) that was left spare when another employee left. I mostly enjoyed using Linux but I was tired of dealing with weird quirks like having X lock up, essentially forcing me to do a hard reboot.

To transition, I copied my documents from Linux to Mac, then turned off the Linux laptop. Surprisingly I found I didn’t need to turn Linux back on at all.

Last week, I decided to put the final nail in Linux’s coffin by taking the SSD (Corsair CMFSSD-128GBG2D)out of it and putting it in my Macbook. The Macbook was pretty fast (Core 2 Duo @ 2.5 GHz) but some things were noticeably slower on its 7200RPM disk than on Linux with an SSD, especially running Windows VMs.

I booted Linux to Knoppix and zeroed out the disk, then removed it. I backed my Mac up with Time Machine, shut it down, then undid the ~12 tiny screws, removed the bottom plate of the Macbook and popped the SSD in. I booted from the Mac DVD, restored from Time Machine and went home (it took ~4 hours to restore).

When I got in the next day, the restore was complete, though I had to click “Restart” to finish, which was annoying. Everything worked fine, and I was pretty impressed. The machine was kind of sluggish due to Spotlight indexing but once that was done I was pretty amazed at the transformation. Every app opened in under 1 second. Windows VMs were super snappy. Things were going well.

But then I started noticing periods of extended hanging. In the middle of some task, I’d get the beachball and the whole computer would become unresponsive (cursor would spin & move around but I couldn’t click anything). This would last about 30-60 seconds. I assumed it was some behind-the-scenes optimization, or some residual spotlight indexing.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t gone away. Earlier today I copied a 3 GB zip file from our file server to my laptop and it beachballed me on and off (about 60-70% of the time) for about 15 minutes as it copied. What’s odd is that the transfer speeds were pretty good, it appeared to be my computer itself that was bottlenecking it. After the download completed, I attempted to unzip it and was beachballed again. I checked Activity Monitor and it was peaking at 30 MB/s, but had extended periods of zeroes. I ran iostat and got basically the same information:

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EvanMBP:~ root# iostat -Kw 3
          disk0           disk1       cpu     load average
    KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
    9.33   3  0.03     0.00   0  0.00   9  4 87  0.25 0.28 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  13  5 82  0.23 0.27 0.32
   20.00   0  0.01     0.00   0  0.00  15  5 80  0.23 0.27 0.32
   36.00   1  0.02     0.00   0  0.00  16  6 77  0.21 0.27 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  12  5 83  0.21 0.27 0.32
   20.02  60  1.18     0.00   0  0.00  17 10 74  0.19 0.26 0.32
   24.60 363  8.72     0.00   0  0.00  18 13 69  0.17 0.26 0.31
   25.40 307  7.60     0.00   0  0.00  14 11 75  0.17 0.26 0.31
   21.95 426  9.14     0.00   0  0.00  15 12 73  0.32 0.29 0.32
   82.50 352 28.35     0.00   0  0.00  17 11 73  0.32 0.29 0.32
  809.70  84 66.41     0.00   0  0.00  22  9 69  0.29 0.28 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   9  5 86  0.27 0.28 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     8.89  11  0.09   9  5 86  0.27 0.28 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   9  5 87  0.33 0.29 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  12  7 81  0.33 0.29 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  14  8 78  0.38 0.30 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  6 83  0.35 0.29 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  6 84  0.35 0.29 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 84  0.32 0.29 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  6 84  0.32 0.29 0.32
          disk0           disk1       cpu     load average
    KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 84  0.30 0.28 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  6 84  0.27 0.28 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  5 84  0.27 0.28 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   9  5 85  0.25 0.27 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 85  0.25 0.27 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 85  0.31 0.29 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 85  0.45 0.31 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 85  0.45 0.31 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 85  0.41 0.31 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 85  0.41 0.31 0.33
  384.49  10  3.85    10.00   0  0.00  12  6 82  0.32 0.29 0.32
  291.73 126 35.78     0.00   0  0.00  23 13 64  0.38 0.31 0.33
  236.65 338 78.20     0.00   0  0.00  30 17 53  0.34 0.30 0.33
  397.61  21  8.02     0.00   0  0.00  15  8 77  0.34 0.30 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  6 83  0.32 0.30 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  12  7 81  0.32 0.30 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  12  6 82  0.29 0.29 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  6 83  0.35 0.30 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  13  6 80  0.35 0.30 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  6 83  0.32 0.30 0.32
          disk0           disk1       cpu     load average
    KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  13  8 78  0.32 0.30 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  7 82  0.29 0.29 0.32
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  5 86  0.35 0.30 0.33
  148.94 124 18.03     0.00   0  0.00  18  8 73  0.35 0.30 0.33
  267.73 121 31.72     0.00   0  0.00  17  8 76  0.32 0.30 0.32
  355.54 162 56.35     0.00   0  0.00  22  8 69  0.32 0.30 0.32
  738.07  38 27.38     0.00   0  0.00  16  6 78  0.30 0.29 0.32
  512.42  67 33.52     0.00   0  0.00  20  7 73  0.27 0.29 0.32
  835.74  61 50.05     0.00   0  0.00  19  7 73  0.27 0.29 0.32
  536.83  69 36.17     0.00   0  0.00  17  6 76  0.49 0.33 0.34
  543.89  83 43.90     0.00   0  0.00  20  8 72  0.49 0.33 0.34
  720.70  59 41.74     0.00   0  0.00  18  7 76  0.45 0.33 0.33
  541.23 124 65.70     0.00   0  0.00  22  9 70  0.41 0.32 0.33
  260.54 210 53.37     0.00   0  0.00  22  9 70  0.41 0.32 0.33
  806.93  73 57.78     0.00   0  0.00  20  8 72  0.46 0.33 0.34
  874.98  43 37.02     0.00   0  0.00  13  7 80  0.46 0.33 0.34
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  4 85  0.42 0.33 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 88  0.39 0.32 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   9  4 87  0.39 0.32 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 88  0.44 0.33 0.33
          disk0           disk1       cpu     load average
    KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  11  5 84  0.44 0.33 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  13  6 81  0.48 0.34 0.34
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00  10  4 86  0.44 0.34 0.34
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 88  0.44 0.34 0.34
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 88  0.41 0.33 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 88  0.41 0.33 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 87  0.38 0.32 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   7  4 89  0.35 0.32 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 87  0.35 0.32 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   7  3 89  0.32 0.31 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 88  0.32 0.31 0.33
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   7  3 90  0.29 0.31 0.33
  347.11  92 31.29     0.00   0  0.00  20  8 72  0.43 0.34 0.33
   49.98 656 32.03     0.00   0  0.00  32 10 59  0.43 0.34 0.33
  113.45 351 38.90     0.00   0  0.00  40 15 45  0.47 0.35 0.34
  819.41  34 27.20     0.00   0  0.00  26 12 63  0.47 0.35 0.34
  686.99  50 33.76     0.00   0  0.00  18  7 76  0.52 0.36 0.34
  878.17  23 20.01     0.00   0  0.00  20  8 72  0.47 0.35 0.34
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 87  0.47 0.35 0.34
    0.00   0  0.00     0.00   0  0.00   8  4 88  0.44 0.34 0.34

You can see in the MB/s column, lots of “0.00″ followed by some bursts of ~30 MB/s. The zeros didn’t actually print at the time, but flooded the screen in bursts when the bottleneck cleared up. It seems to me like it might be some problem with queueing or caching, or maybe the SATA controller on this Mac just isn’t up to the task of SSDs. I’m not sure, but at this point I’m afraid I might have to go back to the 7200 RPM Seagate that came with the Mac. 30-second hangups are far more annoying than having lots of things be slower. Kind of a strange amortization, if you think about it. Anyway, I’ll keep looking into it, now that I know how to reproduce the problem (unzip a huge file).

Updated: A quick Google search for “beach ball mac SSD” turned up this thread which seems to be about this same problem, with a different model SSD. Also referenced in this thread on Apple.com. It feels like the problem may be due to an “old” SSD.

Updated again: Here’s someone having the problem with a Corsair 128 GB SSD: http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=91061.

Updated again: According to this post, this appears to be a problem with the SATA controller in the 2009 Macbooks. Bah.

I’ve always hated iTunes. It’s a huge pile of bloatware and it’s slow as poo. It’s like 100 mb or more for an mp3 player. I remember winamp playing mp3s when it was a 500k download. Anyway.

I keep all my music on a Linux machine running samba. This way it’s available to every machine in the house. When I had Winamp on all my machines this was wonderful. But now that I’m forced into iTunes (thanks to having an iPhone), it turns out to be a major pain. In iTunes I unchecked the box for “let iTunes keep my libary organized” to prevent it from copying the entire library to each computer’s local disk. Initially adding my library of ~4000 tracks to iTunes takes over an hour (100 mbit wire) – it would take about 5 minutes in Winamp, even reading the ID3 tags for each track as it was added (rather than lazily as the song was played).

But the thing that iTunes does that is so annoying it prompted me to write this whiny rant is:

iTunes 'Song Not Found'

If, for some reason, my M: drive (where the Samba share is mapped) is not connected when iTunes starts, every song in the library gets this “!” exclamation point of doom. If I attempt to play any of these tracks, I am given the option to locate the file. Nice in theory, but locating all 4000 tracks isn’t realistic. If I quit iTunes, reconnect the M: drive, and reopen iTunes, the ! persists. The only solution I’ve found to this is deleting the entire library from iTunes and re-adding it, which as I said, takes an extremely long time.

I have other reasons for hating iTunes, this is a blog, not a book.

I guess it’s not really a fair comparison since I’m running 32-bit Windows XP, but it strikes me as mildly retarded how much better my stupid $350 Mac Mini performs than my ~$1000 desktop. The Mac has a Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz CPU with 1 gig ram and an 80 gig HD, running 10.5.6 (or something). My desktop is a 3.0 GHz Wolfdale with 4 gigs ram and a 1 TB 7200 RPM sata drive. The Mac isn’t super speedy but it seems more responsive in everything except iTunes, and that’s probably due to all the MP3s being served off my ancient Linux box (over G wireless). Actually, I still completely detest iTunes, and think Winamp is about the perfect MP3 player. But anyway, the stuff you can do “for free” on a Mac is pretty amazing. I haven’t played with iMovie or a bunch of the other programs yet, but even just Expose is pretty remarkable.

There’s a price tag for them, of course, but if my gaming days are over then I could probably get by with a ~$1200 Macbook or Macbook Pro, or probably even a higher end Mini with some more memory in it. I’m tempted at this point to try CentOS on the desktop just so I can have a 64-bit OS. Or maybe Windows 7. Maybe after the move.

Blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I’m considering a MacBook. This is about 85% motivated by my desire to try writing an iPhone app, and apparently the SDK requires a Mac. I was thinking of a Mac mini but a laptop seems to have more utility.

I’ll have to think this over for several more weeks I guess.

Oh, and Starcraft Protoss mission 7 is quite annoying.