Broken Idle Time in 10.4/10.5

After fighting with trying to get the amount of time since a user has done something with the system, I've determined that CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType is broken. The documentation indicates that calling it like:

CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType(kCGEventSourceStateCombinedSessionState, kCGAnyInputEventType)

will tell me how many seconds since the user last moved the mouse, touched the keyboard, etc. The docs say:

The various system and app defined events do not contribute to this event type's time.

Unfortunately this just isn't true. In one app I'm working on, I have a timer that fires every 5 seconds and prints the idle time. It starts going up, but then a notification comes in and it resets back to zero without me touching the keyboard. So, this call is almost useless as I need to know when things are idle in order to perform some tasks. While some of you are saying that I can use a Carbon Event Idle Timer, it turns out that they don't work in background only apps. My only solution is to make the above call using something like:

+ (double) idleTimeInSeconds
{
	double idleTime = 0;
	double tempIdleTime = 0;
	tempIdleTime = CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType(kCGEventSourceStateCombinedSessionState, kCGEventLeftMouseDown);
	if (idleTime == 0 || tempIdleTime < idleTime)
	{
		idleTime = tempIdleTime;
	}
	
	tempIdleTime = CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType(kCGEventSourceStateCombinedSessionState, kCGEventLeftMouseUp);
	if (idleTime == 0 || tempIdleTime < idleTime)
	{
		idleTime = tempIdleTime;
	}

Thanks for the update, Fujitsu!

When Leopard came out, I blogged about a bug in Fujitsu's ScanSnap Manager software. I was unable to get anywhere with Fujitsu and almost forgot about it. However, today in trolling through their website, I saw that they had an article specifically about the software running under Leopard along with a download to a new version of the ScanSnap Manager. Yeah, I downloaded the software, gave it a try and found that it fixed my problem. However, they added a stupid feature called "Quick Menu" which brings up a half baked feature allowing you to send stuff to email, a folder, iPhoto, etc.

Too bad Fujitsu has never heard of VersionTracker or MacUpdate to post updates so that customers can actually find out about updates without having to dig through their site (which actually doesn't have a direct link to the Mac software under their downloads area).

ATMs attempting to be intelligent

Bank of America installed new ATMs sometime this year which, for the most part, are pretty user friendly. They're touch screen based (along with a physical keypad) and automatically scan in checks. You have to insert the check in the correct direction or the ATM spits it out because it can't OCR the check. While OCR does take time, it would seem that the ATM could simply flip the image and try the OCR again instead of spitting it out. This isn't rocket science to add that code:

if (!OCRsuccess)
{
	rotate image;
	do_ocr;
}

It would have saved the bank lots of money on printing "insert check this way" labels.

Quality HP Software

For years I've complained to my father about the poor quality of HP's Mac scanner software. He always brushed it off as my standard are pretty high and it would appear (to outsiders) that I don't like many programs. (There are some programs I really like and there are some that just suck; yes, my standards are high, but I'm on a Mac and I deserve the best!). Recently, he started using his HP All-In-One with his new Mac (he had been using it from his PC) and after hours (maybe days) of frustration, he contacted their support and got no where (support was on a PC reading from a script). He complained up the change and accused them of fraud/deception as they advertised certain features working on the Mac, when they clearly don't.

It was quite fun basically saying "I told you so"; I have an HP All-In-One that I bought several years ago that I only use as a fax machine and a copier; for those functions, it works great. If HP is serious about the Mac, they need to step up to the plate and re-write their software. Windows users might like the cutesy scanning app, but Mac users just want it to work like every other Mac application and integrate with Address Book (for the fax app), etc.

If their devices weren't so cheap, Mac users probably wouldn't be lured into buying them.