Posts tagged #apple

How to diagnose and control login and background items –Login and Background Items are increasingly common, and can cause all sorts of problems. Diagnosing and fixing them is better in Ventura.

Nova –The beautiful, fast, flexible, native Mac code editor from Panic.

Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it · Paolo Mainardi –Thanks to the DALL·E 2, we finally have a very nice graphic representation of the feelings of a Docker container inside a macOS environment, I will try with this article to make this poor container safe to the coast. TL;DR Link to heading At the time of writing, the only viable option to have a decent performance and a good DX are: VirtioFS to share the filesystem (Docker Desktop, Rancher Desktop, Colima) – There are still some issues.

Fig –[Pito: They make some very bold promises about this app. Take a look] The next-generation command line.

Bartender 4 – Take control of your Menu bar –

The macOS Ventura Feature that Changes the Way I Work –[Pito: Ok, for me, it’s confusing and overly busy. But maybe I haven’t figured it out yet…] I’ve tested Stage Manager for 3 months on the macOS Ventura beta and haven’t turned it off since.

Marta – A sophisticated new FInder replacement or at least supplement. Seems to be a little like Norton Commander coming back. Probably not as good though !

How to build x86 (and others!) Docker images on an M1 Mac – Jaimyn’s Blog –This is super helfpul, and fixes a problem that totally stymeed me!

haokaiyang/Mac-QuickLook: QuickLook plugins and packages QuickLook plugins and packages. Contribute to haokaiyang/Mac-QuickLook development by creating an account on GitHub. March 15, 2022 at 08:18PM

How to Hide the MacBook Pro Notch Apple’s 2021 MacBook Pro models unexpectedly came with a display notch, or as Apple calls it, a camera housing, which sits dead center at the top… December 6, 2021 at 02:31PM

The fastest way to clone an SD card on macOS – Jaimyn’s Blog If you have a raspberry pi or other single board computer and would like to make a backup of it, or even clone it to another SD card, then it can take a long time. Your first thought is to probably use the built in “Disk Utility”. Unfortunately this has issues reading linux partitions (well […] May 24, 2021 at 04:15PM

I am not sure I agree with all of this but it does make for interesting and thought provoking reading.

My Favorite Macbook Tools

These lists come and go all the time. I learned a couple of new ones so chance it out!

tags: productivity tools cli macbook

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I’ve seen commentary that it’s “disappointingly familiar”, i.e. it looks just like several other computer watches, like the Pebble or even the iPod Nano attached to a strap. Or that it’s...

I wrote recently about Fake Steve and wondered aloud how he could get away with what he gets away with. If that thread interested you at all, you’ve got to go look at the latest shenanigans that Fake Steve is reporting in his blog. He’s being offered big bucks to stop blogging.

“[snip…] He sits there with his hands on his knees. He says, I’m authorized to go as high as five hundred thousand dollars, but that’s it.[snip…] From Secret Diary of Fake Steve Jobs

Hall of mirrors. Is this Fake Steve Jobs speaking, or is it Daniel Lyons for real, or is it Fake Daniel Lyons?

Originally posted on Dec 23, 2007. Reprinted courtesy of ReRuns plug-in.

This was a fun read with lots of cool insights. If your blood pressure surges and adrenalin courses through your veins as you approach the big white electronic temple then read on. Here’s an excerpt from: Retail Therapy: Inside the Apple Store:

Let’s explore Loss Prevention. Theft hurts profit. Theft matters more with portable items of great value, like say a laptop, or a smartphone, or high-end speakers. Multiply that value by how many different models and spare parts an Apple store needs to keep in stock, and you have a few million dollars of goods on hand. Scale up more if it’s a big flagship store. That warrants not only video cameras and bag searches of employees, but armed professionals. Apple stores have the equivalent of undercover Federal Air Marshals on hand, like my friend Brock.

Good news: I looked up what the trade-in value is for my iPhone 4S 32Gig. Much to my pleasant surprise, it’s $195. Almost enough to pay for my new iPhone 5S!

Bad news: If I hadn’t stupidly engraved it, the trade-in price would be $220.

Word to the wise: Don’t engrave.

How to Use Siri – Full list of Siri Commands for iPhone, iPad, Video:

Below is a comprehensive Siri Commands List (updated for iOS6) for the new Siri Personal Assistant, optimized for mobile Safari browsers. These cool and useful Siri Commands can be used on your iPhone 5, iPhone 4s, iPad, iPad mini, and the iPod Touch. If you find this list helpful, or if you would like to add to our list of top Siri Commands, please use the comments section below.

I love this article revealing the beautiful hidden complexity of the lowly magsafe connector.

Ken Shirriff’s blog: Teardown and exploration of Apple’s Magsafe connector:

Have you ever wondered what’s inside a Mac’s Magsafe connector? What controls the light? How does the Mac know what kind of charger it is? This article looks inside the Magsafe connector and answers those questions.

Starters Guide to iOS Design:

As someone who does work on both the development and design side of iOS apps I find that many designers struggle with the transition to UI work, or with the different processes involved in iPhone and iPad app design. In this guide I’ll describe the deliverables you’ll be expected to produce, outline the constraints of the medium and introduce fundamental iOS and UI design concepts.

One of these two is from Apple and one is from Google. They both contain coupons and cards. Which is which?

James Dyson (the vacuum cleaner guy) said something which may seem obvious but is nonetheless very controversial:

“Apple’s success as a technology company is built on hardware. The current fixation with digital is misplaced.” (fromThe Real Meaning and Future of Apple’s Mantra – Designed in California)

Good article. Read it.

Did you hear that Google bought Sparrow? Sparrow is a really cool email client that I for one have been using very happily for a while now.

Did you hear the announcement that there would be no more development of sparrow?

Did you hear that some people were upset at this, while others defended Sparrow’s “right” to let themselves be sold? (Huh????)

Anyway, I am not getting into that discussion. I was selfishly sad, because I am very fond of Sparrow and I know (from first hand knowledge, m...

This interesting, and I think, correct article, makes the argument that the word ‘innovation’ is being watered downand even getting cheapened. It says, about “innovation”,

“Regrettably, we now use the term to describe almost anything. It can describe a smartphone app or a social media tool; or it can describe the transistor or the blueprint for a cellphone system. The differences are immense.” (from ...

Due to an unusual set of coincidences I have 3 different Macintosh computers in my office today so I could run performance comparisons. After a brief bit of research I came across XBench, a free, open source benchmarking suite. I am not positive that it is the state of the art, but it’s quite popular. Here’s what I found:

Mac Pro, Early 2009, with 6 Gig of memory and a Solid State Disk (SDD) (MacPro4,1)

Overall: 234.09, CPU: 198.42 Memory: 474.51 Graphics: 379.61

MacBook Air, Late 2010, with 4 Gig of memory and a SDD (MacBookAir3,2)

Overall: 126.07 CPU: 149.17 Memory: 198.90 Graphics: 159.94

Macbook Air, Late 2011, with 4 Gig of memory and a SDD (MacBookAir4,2)

Overall: 199.85 CPU: 205.25 Memory: 508.89 Graphics: 316.38

I know, you want to know the units, and I don’t know them. But still you can see remarkably that the brand new MacBook Air is almost as performant as the huge towering Mac Pro, Pretty amazing and telling.

I’ve been playing around with each of the major tablets while considering ‘my next move’ 🙂

Oddly I have not been able to find a side by side comparison of their weights. After googling for 3 minutes. So as a public service let me transcribe my notes on this vital topic.

Apple iPad 2: 21.1 oz Barnes and Nobel Nook Color: 15.8 oz Amazon Kindle Fire: 14.6 oz Barnes and Nobel Nook Tablet: 14.1 oz Amazon Kindle Touch: 7.8 oz Amazon Kindle 4: 5.9 oz

Interesting article by famous Guy Kawasaki about what he learned from Steve Jobs:

“But few, if any, of these people have been inside the tent and experienced first hand what it was like to work with him. I don’t want any lessons to be lost or forgotten, so here is my list of the top twelve lessons that I learned from Steve Jobs.” (from What I learned from Steve Jobs)

What if when I typed into the search box in Safari (Mac OS X’s web browser) the text is interpreted by Siri? I could type “What’s the weather tomorrow” and it would display a forecast for tomorrow, or type “text my wife that I love her” and it would initiate a text message to my wife. Wouldn’t that be cool?

I just typed into the search box “Is Kashi a company?” because I was in a Siri kind of mood, and of course I didn’t get a good answer. But maybe Siri on my iPhone would have known. (Update: I just tried it, and it didn’t but still, I think it’s a cool idea!)

A lot has been written about Siri (the new voice activated assistant in the iPhone 4s). I have to say that it works surprisingly well. It has been eerily accurate in properly transcribing my voice, although not quite as perfect in understanding what I am saying.

I just had a 3 message dialog with someone over text messaging using Siri. I never ever would have done that with texting previously but here I went speaking in complete sentences over text messaging and with 100% accurate recognition. I don’t know if the other guy was using Siri but if he wasn’t he must have been annoyed by how quickly I responded with a full sentence 🙂

It occurs to me that the average length of text messages might become longer and longer with the advent of services like this. I wonder if that is at least part of the reason that Apple is now bypassing the mobile operators when doing iPhone to iPhone messaging.

This is just a weird story:

“An Apple iPhone spontaneously began smoking and emitting a red glow while aboard an airplane in Australia. Passengers aboard Regional Express flight ZL319 were welcomed to their destination in Sydney, Australia on Friday by a frightening ordeal. According to the airline, a passenger’s iPhone began “emitting a significant amount of dense smoke” shortly after the flight landed, and the smoke was accompanied by a red glow.” (from Bioy Genius Report)

What I don’t get is the price. First I had to have bought the music (from Apple or someone else) and now I have to pay again ($24.95 per year) in order to make it all available over iCloud. I think I will stick with my new favorite, Spotify.

I am sure I don’t fully understand the details, but it seems to me that the essential benefit that the new iTunes provide is that I can access my whole music collection (as far as it is ‘legal’) from any device attached to iCloud. Anything else?

Well, I think the very idea of ‘owning’ a music collection is antiquated. I mean it’s evidently inefficient that millions of people have a copy of the same bits that form “Let It Be” on each of their computers....

Apparently (not sure why yet) on Android, sound effects files using the OGG format work better than those using wav or mp3. It might be an AndEngine thing, I am not sure. Anyway, here’s my result of half hour googling and experimenting for a reliable way to convert the files. I tried a bunch of things, and I finally settled on MediaHuman AudioConverter. Use it. It really works and is nice and simple.

Check this post One More Thing… from TechCrunch: "So instead I read what everyone else had to say. Some articles were excellent, many were very good, others read far too much like obituaries. More came today. I kept reading. Slowly, two things struck me. First, I’ve never seen anything quite like the outpouring of emotion that people are showing in response to this news. Second, what we’re witnessing right now is Jobs’ final masterstroke." (from: TechCrunch)

A really good article about the topic that everyone is writing about. There are dozens of such articles that I’ve read in the last day or two which I will not be linking to. But this one strikes me as one of the better ones.

This news saddens me:

“Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs resigned today as chief executive officer from Apple. His place at the top of the company will be taken by Tim Cook, previously Apple’s chief operating officer.” (from CNET)

I hope he’s doing alright and is with us for many many years to come.

Check this post A strong argument for why iOS development is winning "IOS platform competitors take note: Fledgling indie iOS dev Chris Eidhof has posted a smart list of the main reasons why a new developer finds Apple’s mobile operating system such an attractive prospect. Eidhof, who is in the process of developing his first software for Apple devices, broke down the appeal of iOS using six main points." (from TheAppleBlog — Apple and iOS News, Tips and Reviews)

For me the biggest resistance, as a developer, to iOS is that I have to learn a new programming language (Objective C) and it’s tools, traditions, and bugs. And no one on the planet other than Apple uses Objective C.

It always happens and I really try not to have buyers remorse, but: “Apple Updates MacBook Air”…

As you (don’t) know, I am teaching a course at Brandeis University about mobile and game development. So I follow stories about how to more easily create cross platform mobile apps with great interest. Check this post Adobe Software Updates To Help Devs Build iOS, PlayBook And Android Apps from TechCrunch: Adobe is today pushing updates to its application development software product Flash Builder and the open source Flex framework to enable developers to build apps for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook, following support for the Android platform (added last April).

Funny to read this:

“The story started in 2007, with the release of the first iPhone. Led by its enigmatic leader Steve Jobs, Apple gave developers their first real taste of independence from the carrier oligarchy. The iPhone’s beauty was manifold, but first and foremost, it allowed developers to build applications and sell them for a fee — to users who could conveniently tap their iTunes account to buy things through the iPhone’s App Store. This bypassed the control of the carriers, which had long dictated what phones featured on their “decks.” (from ...

Just reaching out you mac experts. I used to think I was one, but this one has me stumped.

Using Safari, every so often, while I am doing something (what?) shrinks the fonts of the page being displayed. In other words, does the equivalent of a Command/- or Command/+. It seems to have something to do with dragging the mouse while doing something else.

I know that a command-0 restores things normally. I also know that control-double-fingered-drag will enlarge the whole screen, that is, zoom in on the pixels. This is something else.

I can’t figure it out and neither can google. Do you know?

Check out this really interesting Pogue article in the New York Times: “Gorilla Glass, the Smartphone’s Unsung Hero”. Here’s a tidbit:

“It’s the screen of every touchscreen phone, like the iPhone and Android phone, plus the iPad and iPod Touch. It’s an amazing story. Corning invented this stuff in the ’60s, but didn’t know what to do with it. Then a few years ago, someone showed a piece of it to Steve Jobs. The guy dropped a piece of the glass into a bag full of keys and shook it hard; it came out without a scratch on it! Jobs immediately seized on the idea of using it for his iPhone....

Following up from yesterday’s post, in fact, I was able to get $300 for my mint condition iPhone 3GS on Craig’s list, and was able to buy a new iPhone 4 from Radioshack for $260 after tax!

So, if you have an iPhone 3GS in good condition, and your AT&T contract is up, then you should upgrade to an iPhone 4 and make $40 in the process. Cool!

So Radioshack is offering $50 off the price of an iPhone 4 for the next several days. As far as I can tell, the difference between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS is not that great, so I’ve not really been that interested. But it got me thinking.

It turns out that there are many sites that supposedly give you cash for your old iPhone. Oddly, Radioshack is offering $125, and I see sites like Gazelle.com and CashForiPhones.com offering anything between $125 and as much as $315. How can that be? I am not sure.

As current AT&T contract lock in is over, so from my calculations: $300 for the phone, $50 discount from Radioshack is $250, so if I can get $250 for my old phone, it’s a free upgrade. My remaining question is, who the heck is CashForiPhones.com and can I trust them?

I just returned from my mother’s birthday party with about 300 photos – I would say 70% of them are no good, so I selected about 40 of the best ones and then had to decide how to share them with everyone who cared.

A little bit of research produced the following options which I am sharing with YOU to save you and me some time in the future.

Note that I am on a Mac and thus I use iPhoto to store the pictures, and have an Apple MobileMe account.

Option 1: Create a MobileMe Gallery directly from iPhoto and upload the pictures. This works well but the gallery has many clever features which may confuse some of the inexperienced computer users who want to see the pictures.

Option 2: Send to Fa...

I happen to be reading iWoz, which is Steve Wozniak’s memoir/biography/whatever. It’s a very breezy easy read and fun if you follow this kind of thing. So naturally this caught my eye: “Woz then moved on to the topic of Android saying that Android smartphones, not the iPhone, would become dominant, noting that the Google OS is likely to win the race similarly to the way that Windows ultimately dominated the PC world. Woz stressed that the iPhone, “Has very few weak points. There aren’t any real complaints and problems.” (from “Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform“)

Of course Engadget may not have selected the particular headline that Woz would have liked, because he also lavished praise on the iPhone saying it has “”Has very few weak points. There aren’t any real complaints and problems. In terms of quality, the iPhone is leading.”

Check out Apple Begins Accepting Submissions for Mac App Store(from GigaOM: ** "At the Oct. 20 “Back to the Mac” event, the Mac App Store was announced alongside the next iteration of OS X, dubbed Lion (10.7). Apple then revealed that users wouldn’t have to wait until Lion’s summer release window to get their hands on the new distribution channel. Instead, the Mac App Store would be available for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard within 90 days." (from: **Apple Begins Accepting Submissions for Mac App Store)

Suddenly it comes home to roost, directly, for BlogBridge. It would be great to offer it on the Apple App Store. However it is not inconceivable that Apple would ban Java/Swing applications. If anyone has real information about this, please let me know!

This is a weird development. Java is a super well established language, why would Apple decide to stop developing it: “Apple’s announcement that they would be ceasing future development of their version of Java for the Mac has generated concern amongst Java developers.” (from: Steve Jobs Comments on Apple’s Java Discontinuation – Mac Rumors.)

N.B. Apple is not saying they are ceasing support of Java, but development of Java. I guess on other platforms (Windows etc.) the Java support and the Java cod...

Check out Actor Tony Curtis Was Buried With His iPhone(from iPhone Download Blog: "

Do you love your iPhone so much that you’d want to take it with you in the grave when you pass away? Famous actor Tony Curtis died last Wednesday and was buried earlier today in Las Vegas with a few of his favorite personal items, including his iPhone.

According to MSNBC, *“Actor Tony Curtis w...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmG9jzCHtSQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Check this post iPhones Help Cops Solve Crimes By Capturing Everything You Type, Do from The Consumerist: Cops love finding iPhones at crime scenes because the phones carry so much priceless data about your usage habits, or as the cops call it, evidence. That email you typed months back about feeling stabby when you drink? It’s still there because there because the iPhone captures everything you type to help fuel its spellcheck abilities—even emails you thought you deleted. And that’s not all. (from: ...

I think I might be entering a new phase in my music listening. I listen to a ton of music, on my iPhone, on my computer, in my car, all the time. And up to now it’s always been downloaded (purchased) music that I organize manually within iTunes. From time to time I’ve had subscriptions to eMusic and similar services. As a result I have a huge number of tracks on my computer and on my iPhone. And as my music taste develops, and I discover new artists and composers, lots of those tracks are listened to rarely.

The alternative services like Rhapsody, which has been around for a while. But I ...

This is from my OSX Activity Monitor.app. See how it shows that one process is using 659.9% of the CPU? Well I think I have two cores in this computer, but do I have 7??? I don’t think so…

Just wonderin’ — the iPod Shuffle has a really cool feature where a synthesized voice will announce the name of a song over the earphones upon request. Super useful feature on any iPod, right? Then how come is it not available on the far more powerful and expensive iPhone? Is there a technical reason or a marketing reason or some other mysterious reason?

I saw this bit today: “Apple: Will Steve Balmer Show Up At The WWDC Keynote?”. Interesting… It leads me to speculate in a different direction. What if Google is distancing itself from Apple over competition between Android and iPhone? And so, what if in anticipation of this, Apple, knowing that it couldn’t ALSO be in the business of creating a world class mapping service, decides to move native support of the iPhone mapping app from Google Maps to Microsoft Maps? Good theory?

So a friend of mine told me of his iPhone app, called Etude. He sung the praises, it sounds really cool to me. So I whipped out my iPhone and went to download the app. Wouldn’t you know it costs $4.99. I turned to him and I said, hey, “it’s not free!”. Yeah silly reaction, given how I’ve ranted myself about free and not-free. And here’s the funnier part still. He said, Oh, yes, it’s $3.00. I said, “No it’s more like $5.00”. He said, “Oh yes, we just raised the price.” I gave him a blank look.

Here’s the kicker. He said, “What if I give you $5.00 right now?”.

I still didn’t want to buy it… How does that make any sense?

The earphone/microphone that came with my iPhone is acting odd. First I thought it was a problem with my ear, then with my iPhone, but it seems to be a problem with the earphones, which I never thought of as something that could actually fail, except if I broke it physically. The sound quality is just fine, but it only gets 1/2 as loud as it should. How do I know? If I plug in a pair of brand-x earphones, I get the right sound level. Is this a plausible failure mode for the earphones?

P.s. Have you noticed that all these earphone pairs, the apple ones, but other brands too, have an unexplained tiny little clip along the wire in which you can slide another part of the wire? Nowhere is the purpose of this thing explained, but yet they all have it. What is it for???

I am not going to spend bits talking about the iFad (other than deploying my snarky nickname for it) but if you are interested here’s a (very positive in fact) review it by uber-technology taste maker Walt Mossberg: Apple iPad Review: Laptop Killer? Pretty Close.

Steve Jobs says: “I almost died” in interesting article: Apple CEO Steve Jobs joins Schwarzenegger to push organ donor registry

I just posted an update on our work on BlogBridge for the iPhone. In summary, we got many many responses to our survey and the prevailing feedback was that like most iPhone apps, people wanted it to be free (those very people also are using BlogBridge for free, very likely.) Read the whole post for the rest of the story.

I’ve been in the process of setting up a new computer and in the process, as is expected, discovering long lost files and stuff that is easier or harder to move over. I thought I would capture some of the tidbits because there might be something useful here for you

To set the scene, this is a new Mac Pro (the tower, Intel, 64bit, running Snow Leopard) replacing an old Power Mac (the old tower, PowerPC, 32bit, running Leopard.) You can stop now if you’re a PC. To the untrained eye, these computers are exactly the same inside and out. But wait.

Based on past experiences (with all computers) I decided not to let the automated process ‘move over’ the stuff from the Old to the New computer. Ins...

I was looking at the Apple LED Cinema Display 24” which, of course, looks gorgeous in the store. But it’s a little expensive ($899, which I was willing to eat.) Looking at the customer comments, they are glowing, as expected. But there are many that say that the display suffers from a very short (and specialized) video chord. Not sure how short is short, but one said “2 inches” (can’t be right) and the other one said it didn’t reach the floor from a normal height desk. The other negative that I saw, which is no surprise, is that the built in speakers are so-so. So I am wavering.

I’d like to find some options for a nice 24″ flatpanel with built in microphone and camera. Any suggestions?

A friend of mine pointed out that for some reason when he ordered is (wonderful) iPhone 3GS, the Apple Store charged the wrong amount for sales tax. In Massachusetts, we are lucky enough to pay 5% sales tax.Actually this is going up in a few days to 6.25%.

Anyway, I hadn’t reviewed my bill from the Apple Store, but, wouldn’t you know, the error shows up in my bill!

If you look at the little screen shot of my bill, indeed, this does not look like a 5% tax to me!

What do you think? 9.8%! Who do I call?

Ok so I’ve had the new iPhone for a little while now. This is my first ever iPhone and I have some questions. Maybe you can help me?

iPhone knows how to announce the album name and artist (using the voice recognition “what song is that” command.) Then why can’t I enable it to automatically announce each and every song? Why is it so dang hard to convert a DVD I own to iPhone format? I tried a bunch of ‘solutions’ using software I already have, as well as 2 or 3 utilities I downloaded. None finished successfully. All took forever. Isn’t there an easy way?

Any experts out there who want to comment?

Technorati Tags: iphone

This is from today’s New York Times Magazine. I didn’t know Virginia Heffernan was funny! “Actually, the iPhone probably sips, like a lipsticky girl with a vodka drink. It usually does things in a cute way. Whatever. At 4 in the morning, I was in bed, fighting rage. I couldn’t stop thinking about that device’s tarty little face and those yapping “apps” you can download for it. The whole iPhone enterprise seemed to require so much attention, organization, explanation, praise, electricity. I know — I know: in the morning, ...

The other day, Amazon released a free application on the iPhone (and iPod Touch.) On the surface, just another ebook application. The application is free. When you run it the first thing you do is to register it to Amazon’s web site (using your normal Amazon username and password – you already have one, right?) As far as the Amazon site goes, your iPhone is a Kindle. It shows up on your list of Kindles. And you can buy books for it. So now you can visit the ...

I read in Personal Technology (Wall Street Journal) today that Foxmarks, the handy, free utility that synchronizes my Firefox bookmarks between several computers, now works with Safari as well. Great. I tested it, and it does work just fine. This blog post is being written with another handy firefox plugin called Scribefire, which lets me post to my blog directly from a page in the browser. It works really nicely and I use it frequently. I recommend it. Unfortunately they don’t support Safari yet. So I am staying with Firefox, for now.

By the way, why am I even considering deser...

Breaking news from CNN: “Apple CEO Steve Jobs takes leave until end of June; Jobs says health issues “more complex than I originally thought.”

In case you didn’t see this, it’s kind of interesting if you follow Apple and our pal Steve Jobs: ““I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors,” Jobs, who turns 54 in February, said today in a statement. “After further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause — a hormone imbalance that has been ‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.” (from Bloomberg News)

Read the rest of the article about Steve Jobs Health. It’s basically commentary. The key is the paragraph above.

I just downloaded the new ITunes 8. It has this new thing called the iTunes Genius which seems like it is going to help me create play lists or something. Maybe it’s gonna out Pandora Pandora or Last.FM. Don’t know exactly what I am getting but I pushed the big red button and got it enabled. I got curious though when I saw the CPU pegged for a while and saw this ‘progress bar’:

Looks like iTunes is giving me a colonoscopy and sending all the results to Apple.

Now I love Apple but this gives me a little bit of the creeps. I have no secrets (that I know of) buried in my play lists.

Still.

Anyone?

itunes tags playlists colonoscopy

Take a look at that very weird looking Mac menu. I didn’t (knowingly) do anything to get it and yet every time I launch a new application it’s menus are corrupted that way. All of its menus, and with fancy animated graphics. Anyone know what’s going on? I just told someone today that Mac’s NEVER have viruses!

Apple always, or almost always, thinks through the user interface carefully and includes all kinds of deft and elegant touches that delight and amaze users. Not always though. Sometimes there’s a crazy quilt of magic and cleverness that is totally baffling.

Originally posted on Feb 15, 2008. Reprinted courtesy of ReRuns plug-in.

I saw this somewhere and I thought I would share as it seems very useful, yet obscure: Helpful Tip: To quickly reset your iPhone without wiping anything off it or retethering it to iTunes, hold the volume up button, the home button, and the lock button at the same time. Keep holding it even after the “Slide to Power Off” appears, eventually it will flash totally off and then you’ll get the Apple logo. Let go then.

(Click for enlargement)Upon updating to the latest Mac OS X 10.5, a.k.a Leopard, I noticed that Skype was ridiculously slow, hanging and doing other ugly things. A search of the web didn’t find any useful ideas, at least that worked for me. Here’s what fixed it. In Skype “General Preferences” there’s an option to “Show Address Book Contacts”.

Well I have a fairly huge address book – about 3000 people. Somehow Skype was driving itself crazy trying to show them.

Unclicking the “Show Address Book Contacts” check box solved it for me.

Look closely at the dialog box on the right. It’s Mac OS X info sheet for an attached Windows computer. Now look even more closely at the simulated screen on the image of an ugly big CRT monitor. See the BSOD?

Who said they don’t have a sense of humor?

For you slow pokes who have not yet upgraded to Leopard, my continuing experience might be of interest (then again it may not.) If you are a real slow poke you may not know that Leopard is Apple’s new generation operating system for the Mac line. My reference above to Vista is mostly tongue-in-cheek. Here’s what my log book says so far:

Tried to upgrade my old iBook G4. The DVD spent a long time making reading noises but nothing seemed to happen. Waited about 4 hours. Then gave up. Couldn’t get the DVD out – the iBook continued to book back to the DVD. Called Apple. Got a barely trained tech on the phone that really annoyed me. Finally figured it out myself.

Leopard doesn’t like getting installed on a 4 year old iBook with 256M of memory. Duh. Why didn’t it just say so?

Next upgraded my 2 year old Mac G5 tower. Went, soup to nuts, with no hiccups at all. Wonderful.

Next post: What’s different that matters in Leopard, at least to me.

Usually more on the bleeding edge than this, I decided to wait until now to upgrade my macs to Leopard which is the name of the new Mac OS X release. If anything interesting happens I will let you know. Hopefully nothing interesting will happen 🙂

Why does the Leopard update begins with an exhaustive and lengthy “checking of the DVD for consistency”? process? I haven’t heard much about DVDs getting mysteriously turned inconsistent. Maybe they are doing something else and just making up a more tolerable exuse for the 30 minute do-nothing delay.

I have a 4 year old iMac G4 notebook. I wonder if Leopard will like it.

Check out this post from Planet RubyOnRails: I doubt few of my readers have missed that Apple just released the iPhone SDK. How many read through the fine print? Bottom line is: If you want to sell apps for the iPhone you gotta give Apple 30%. Thirty percent!? Why?! Apple is making ridiculous money off selling the iPhone. The more apps the iPhone gets, the […]

(from: tirsen: Apple doesn’t get it)

Update from Pito : Seems like I jumped the gun a little. Such are the risks of blogging I guess. If you look at the ...

I came across this note that the fairly famous spat between Apple Gossip site Think Secret and Apple Inc. has been settled:

“We understand that Nick Ciarelli, the journalist who ran Think Secret, is “very satisfied” with the settlement. While it is sad that Think Secret will be closing its doors, since it was a valuable news source, Ciarelli is now free to move on to other things…[snip…]” from Electronic Frontier Foundation

It’s too bad. Think Secret was a valuable resource. I wonder where Nick will turn up next.

Check out this post from blog.payne.org: Well, I can report that Time Machine (the new back-up & restore utility for Mac OS X) works. My 364 day old MacBook suffered a complete hard drive failure, only TWO hours after completing my first full backup. I hustled to the Apple store right away, so I didn’t miss my one-year warranty window.

(from: Involuntary test of Time Machine)

I will wait just a little longer before committing to Leopard. It’s one of those, if it aint broke then don’t fix it kind of situations…

Check out this post from Mashable!:

"[snip…]The other shoe has dropped. Steve Jobs has seemingly changed his mind about how he feels towards third party development of native applications for the iPhone. An iPhone and iTouch SDK are scheduled for launch in February of next year, just after MacWorld San Francisco[snip..]".

(from: Steve Jobs’ Change of Heart: iPhone SDK on its Way!)

Everyone loves how much easier Mac OS X makes it to install software. Well sort of. It’s a place where new users easily get stumped. What the heck are those .dmg files anyway, and where’s the installer? Well this post isn’t about that. After all, it wouldn’t count as [GEEKY] if that’s all it did. Being a neat freak, I have sub folders in my Applications folder, which as you know is the default place for software to be installed (“just copy the file, what could be easier?”)

Turns out that for Apple supplied software, e.g. iPhoto and friends, the automagic software updater depends on finding them at the top level of Applications. If they aren’t there, they don’t get updated and you aren’t alerted to available updates.

Mystery solved. So if for some reason you seem not to be getting an update you know is available, check whether you might have moved the application somewhere, hiding it from the [tag]Software Update…[/tag]

Check out this post where Seth Godin gives some really good ideas about how Apple might have better handled the price change of the iPhone. See it in Seth’s Blog: ** — Free exclusive ringtones, commissioned from Bob Dylan and U2, only available to the people who already had a phone. (This is my favorite because it announces to your friends–every time the phone rings–that you got in early). — Free pass to get to the head of the line next time a new hot product comes out. — Ability to buy a specially colored iPod, or an iPod with limited edition music that no one else can buy.The key **is to not give price protection to early buyers (that’s unsustainable as a business model) but to make them feel more exclusive, not less. (from: How to spend $20 million)

I was chatting with my neighborhood iPhone (Cingular/AT&T) dealer and learned this interesting detail (which all you hard code iPhone fanatics out there I am sure know all about.) The price of an iPhone ($500 and $700) is the same whether you are activating a new service with Cingular or want to use the phone on an existing contract.

This is sharply different from any other cell phone where you get a huge discount when activating new service.

What’s the customer impact of this choice? The strategic impact?

On the one hand, I happen to be an existing Cingular customer, and so for me the policy is kind of a backwards plus: I don’t feel like I would have to pay ‘extra’ to get an iPhone compa...

I am not going to write yet another long review or commentary. But I can’t resist a few crass words:

It’s real and it works. They had 4 of them in stock at my neighborhood ATT/Cingular shop. It is indeed gorgeous. Sleek, star-trekky. It does everything you see in the ads (and I am sure, much much more.)

I don’t want one (‘yet’ – never say never). It’s a little to precious for my taste. Kind of reminds me of how I feel about $3,000 Bang & Olufson stereo gear. Beautiful for a museum but not for me.

Ok, but was it easy to use? Given that they’ve kind of invented a new paradigm for interacting with a computer, it’s darn impressive. All that functionality, yet no menus.

I have to say though t...

With all the unbelievable hoopla around the imminent release of the iPhone my thinking turns to the APPL stock price. Right now the Apple stock price at an all time high of $123.00 per share. The iPhone is coming out in one week. What will the stock price do?

Arguments for shorting AAPL:

Right off the bat, my bias and superstition is that if a stock is at an all time high, then odds are better that it goes down than up. You might say that “Buy on the rumor and sell on the story” doesn’t exactly apply here, given that it’s no rumor that the iPhone is going to come out next week. You can hardly miss it. Yes, but there are rumors that will be proven ri...

Check out this post from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): ** "Among the methods featured in the document to help ease the situation and control the crowd, is an outline of a mock conversation where AT&T store managers explain to the stores near them why they need to stay open late and what steps they will be taking to help ensure the crowds don’t spill into the surrounding stores and do all kinda damage. The document also reveals the super-secret method that will actually accomplish this miraculous controlling of the crowd. What is this miracle you may wonder? Stanchions. Yes, the proverbial "velvet rope" they use to keep people in line at events across America will be standing guard and providing security for the giant iPhone launch event."

(from**: iPhone Crowd Control)

Can we just get a life already?

Check out this post from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): This simple utility allows you "to save and restore your window placement and view options via Window Sets." You can have different Window Sets for different purposes (e.g. different projects, etc.). Just arrange the Finder windows as you’d like them and take a snapshot by creating a Window Set; later you can easily restore these settings through the menubar item (right). There are also a bunch of window management options in the Utilities submenu, such as stacking and tiling, etc.

(from: Finder Window Manager)

Check out this post from Lifehacker: TVShows offers a Mac-only take on the previously mentioned, cross platform TED (Torrent Episode Downloader), but with a somewhat improved and simplified interface. If you want to turn your computer into your own little cable box, TVShows looks like a simple way that anyone could manage.

(from: Download of the Day: TVShows (Mac))

Check out this post from Apple Gazette: TUAW points us toward a really cool iTunes plugin that does something very simple, and very well. This is really useful.

(from: DockArt – Change your iTunes icon to Album Art)

If you are a Mac user, you might find a hint or three here to help your computer’s performance. Check out “The Efficient Mac User”

A handy list: “Open Source Apps on Mac from Linux and Open Source”

Actually the funniest part of this was the headline… “Also, Apple’s Mother is Obese”

Check out this post from Gizmodo:

“It seems that LG’s not taking all this “iPhone clone” talk lightly. LG’s Head of Mobile Handset R&D, Mr. Woo-Young Kwak, had this to say when the press uttered the painful phrase one too many times:

We consider that Apple copycat Prada phone after the design was unveiled when it was presented in the iF Design Award and won the prize in September 2006.”

(from: LG Says Apple Copied the Prada Phone. Also, Apple’s Mother is Obese)

Check out this post from John Nack on Adobe:

"[…]From Victor Allen at Juxt Interactive: "I’m going to wait for the iPhone Shuffle. You just clip it to your ear and call people at random." Hah![…]"

(from: iPhone quip o’ the day, plus more from Macworld)

Check out this post from Opus Research:

iPhone may be a tour-de-force for the touchscreen, but it’s inexplicably odd to introduce a new smartphone with so few speech-based features. I can hardly express how profoundly disappointed I am that this shiny, new thing – the first must-have product since Nintendo’s Wii – has less voice processing than Tickle-Me Elmo.

(from: iPhone Lacks Conversational Aspects)

The point of the whole essay that stuck with me is the incongruence between offering a product that requires 100% visual focus and that as often as not will be used while driving a car." As he says: "With all the attention focused on the fancy, new screen and multi-touch controls, I can only imagine what the safety implications are for in-car use."

Check out this post from Lifehacker:

So you want an iPhone when it ships in June (who doesn’t?), but you’re locked into a contract with your current provider. Try Celltrade, a service that helps you transfer your contract responsibility to someone else and effectively walk away without paying a hefty penalty.

(from: Ditch your phone contract with Celltrade)

I say it’s the Newton of the 21st century. I love my mac as much as the next guy, but mac fanatics become insufferable at a certain point. Bah, humbug.

Some good mac applications referenced in this post . I particularly like Service Scrubber (never could really find a use for that Service menu, sorry!) and CocoaMySql which looks like a very nicely done graphical UI for MySql databases. Check out this post from Lifehacker: The best twenty Mac apps you’ve never heard of

If you need this tip, it will save you a lot of time. 99% likely though, you don’t need it and it will read as complete gibberish. But I feel compelled to share it because it’s totally obscure and I just spent 2 hours trying to figure it out.

Problem:

Eclipse 3.2.1 just ceased to be able to grab code from SourceForge.net via CVS. It would give an error: “Invalid argument or cannot assign requested address”

Configuration

Eclipse for using CVS on SourceForge requires ExtSSH (which means, use the Eclipse bundled SSH client, rather than some other utility that you have on your computer — don’t ask.) Mac OS X, 10.4.9, all patches applied Eclipse: 3.2.1 – brand new download

Solution:

In Mac OS X Network settings, TCP/IP, make sure that IPv6 is configured and shows an IPv6 Address.

Thanks for listening.

Check out this post from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):

Filed under: Software, Stocking Stuffers

Almost a dozen companies are offering a 20% off sale until Christmas. Rogue Amoeba, Bare Bones, Potion Factory, Unsanity and more. You’ll find a full list of participating developers at the MacSanta site.

(from: MacSanta: 20% off popular Mac Apps)

For all you mac users out there 🙂

Check out this post from Lifehacker:

Ask Lifehacker: The gift of a pre-loaded iPod

This is a really good idea! I will use it this holiday season!

I’m getting a little fascinated with Ruby and Rails so I’ve been getting acquainted with it. Just want to share a handy link with detailed instructions on how to build and configure all that stuff on a Mac. Handy if you are in the .01% of the world who cares 🙂

Dashalytics: A Google Analytics Widget For Your OSX Dashboard

If you use Google analytics (like I do) this is WAY COOL!

(tags: cooltools google analytics)

Widsense – Adsense Widget for Apple Dashboard

And if you use Adsense, this one is very cool too!

(tags: cooltools google adsense)

Yeah, why wouldn’t they? In Massachusetts, Saturday Aug 12 and Sunday Aug 13, there is no 5% Sales Tax, even when buying stuff online.

And Apple is honoring it. I don’t know, you can never be sure with Apple, they Think Different.

The Julipedia: IMAP gateway to GMail

Not sure how real or how useful this is, but it sounds important — an Imap gateway to gmail

(tags: gmail imap imap4 cool useful)

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Best Apple Blog IMO

(tags: feed mac osx apple)

YourAutoExpert.com – Home

Looks like an interesting new way to buy a car…

(tags: car buy)

This is Mac specific, but I wouldn’t be surprised if people with more primitive computers could do something analogous. Basically we create a Mail rule that matches image spam messages: “The rule is based off of Bill’s observation that these spam emails always come from a different address, and the content type header (as you might now assume) begins with multipart/related'”

Read more: A Mail.app rule for catching image spam – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

PC World’s Techlog – Windows in Mac OS X: Living With Parallels RC2

(tags: virtualmachine cool)

Tuning Mac OS X Performance

Excellent performance tuning tips for OS X.

(tags: osx performance)

AdBrite – The Internet’s Ad Marketplace

Another ad network — an alternative, I think, to Google AdWords, etc.

(tags: advertising ads)

Mac Geekery – Optimizing AirPort Connectivity

Quite interesting note about how to make wireless networks better and more performant. Mac focus, but seems to apply more broadly.

(tags: mac wireless geeky)

Goovite: Create a New Goovite

Very simple neat alternative to Evite. Not overrun with ads etc. However it looks like it’s not quite as flexibile.

(tags: evite cool useful)

AdiumBeta – Adium X – Trac

I love Adium. This is a beta of their release 1.0. I already like it better than their previous stable version!

(tags: mac soflow interesting instantmessaging)

A Face with No Name

I have problems remembering names, but luckily not with recognizing faces 🙂

(tags: interesting)

Guide for Choosing Boot Camp or Parallels to Run Windows on an Apple MacBook

Really good article comparing the different ways to run Windows XP on a Mac. There are two ways: “Parallels” and “Bootcamp”

(tags: parallels bootcamp interesting osx windows xp)

I’ve written about a very cool Safari (Mac OS X) add-on called Inquisitor. Very nice.

Well, they now have come out with Inquisitor for the web, right in your web browser. Try it out, then I don’t need to explain it. Suffice it to say, it’s verry cool!

Technorati Tags: cool, cooltool

To be honest, hardly followed the pages and pages of blog analysis of Apple’s recent release of “Boot Camp” a utility allowing users to boot WIndows XP on Macintosh Intel-based computers. Didn’t seem like that big a deal to me.

Today in the New York Times, a good op-ed piece analyzing what it may or may not mean, by Robert X. Cringely. If you haven’t followed the debate, this is a good primer:

“HELL froze over this week as Apple Computer unveiled Boot Camp, a free program that will allow its new Macintosh computers with In...

Apple just shipped 10.4.6, the latest revision to the OS X. This may be old, but I never noticed that the blue Spotlight menu icon in the top right of the screen has a little pulsing dot in the middle of the magnifying glass, presumably to tell me that it was busy indexing stuff, presumably explaining why my computer is running a little hard right now. Is it a new little touch or has it **always been there?

**

Technorati Tags: osx

Ever wonder how Mac’s OS X program launch and execution works? No? Hmm.

Anyway, here’s a fascinating article telling you more than you ever thought you wanted to know!

“As you can see, executing a process in OS X is a complex affair, and I have tried to cover as much as is necessary for a useful debugging session.” (from “How OS X Executes Applications”)

🙂

Technorati Tags: osx

Via MetaFilter: “Barbarians are at the gates, testing the locks, again.”

As I’ve commented before, Mac OS X users are (appropriately) smug about the absence of viruses on that platform. Some say it’s only a matter of time.

Here are the interesting technical details of one recent attempt.

Technorati Tags: osx

This is only a little funny because Mac fans (and I am one of them) can be very smug about OS X security, saying things like: “There has been not a single case of a virus on Mac, ever.” Hard to prove or disprove but intuitively it’s kind of hard to believe.

So when I saw commentary somewhere earlier today that Mac OS X was hacked in less than 30 minutes I hesitated to post about it, thinking that it was yet another urban legend.

But now ZDNet has picked it up, and with raised eyebrows and a smile (or is it a smirk?) on my face, I share the link to an article I just saw:

“Gaining root access to a Mac is “easy pickings,” according to an individual who won an OS X hacking cha...

I guess because deep down I am still a paranoid Windows user, my OS X is configured to automatically reboot every Saturday at 7:00am, “just to clear out the cobwebs.” A very handy setting by the way, which I wish that Windows XP also had.

Am I imagining this?

Last week I turned off my Mac – turned off the power – because I was going to be away for a week. When I returned I found that it seems to have rebooted itself on Saturday as it does every Saturday. Can this be? It was off! I dunno, maybe I just imagined having powered it off a week ago…

Technorati Tags: osx

When you’re a blogger it’s sometimes a strain to say something new about a topic that’s gone around and around. I am pretty sure you’ve seen the announcement from Apple that their next generation of Macintosh computers will use Intel processors.

Other than the industry melodrama about Steve Jobs embracing the very chips that for years he insulted, and perhaps bemusement of how Steve got that Intel Exec to dress up in a silly white costume while Steve looked cool in his traditional black turtle-neck.

But other than that, who cares that Mac’s are now going to have “Intel Inside”? I mean...

I know all this Sony rootkit/DRM stuff has made me paranoid. I loaded my Sarah McLachlan CD into my Mac (a single CD), and two different CDs appear on my desktop (see the screenshot on the left.)

One apparently is the music aspect of the CD and the other is the computer aspect of the CD. Look inside the former, and you see a bunch of AIFF files. Look inside the latter and you see a folder structure, including two executables!

Probably totally innocuous, right? Wait the CD is from Arista records. Any connection to Sony? Is it loading a rootkit?I dunno. Paranoid.

Technorati Tags: mac, sony, rootkit

Hot news for Tivo and iPod Fans. Coming soon to a computer near you!

“TiVo Inc. today is expected to announce a service that allows its digital video recorders to save programs to iPods and PlayStation Portables, further untethering television from time and place.” (from LA Times)

Also covering the same story: Associated Press, New York Times, ...

For you Apple and iPod afficionados, here’s an interesting articleabout what Apple might be up to, tying together various tantalizing hints into a good story:

“Apple’s a shrewd operator. First, its spreads misinformation from the top – like how Steve Jobs famously slagged off media centre PCs in a conference call with financial analysts last year. “We might as well make it a toaster too,” he said. “I want it to brown my bagels when I’m listening to my music,” he said at the time. “And we’re toying with refrigeration, too.” (from APCMag)

Continuing my iPod thoughts, today I read that a lawsuit has been broughtagainst Apple on the iPod nano screen scratching situation. So maybe there really is something going on. On my (recently dead) iPod, I did have plenty of mild scratching – I don’t know if the problem on the nano is any worse.

I got to see one of the new Video iPods here at Pop!Tech. Another very impressive device from Apple. The screen is larger than you expect and the picture, watching a sitcom and listening to the audio over the ear buds, was remarkable!

(BTW, in case you missed it, Walt Mossberg himself commentedon my postrecently about the iPod nano, clarifying that he didn’t write about it because of my post. Duh.)

After my rant a few days ago about the quality of new-fangled electronic gizmos I got various emails. Most interesting was this link to Walt Mossberg’s comments about the scratching of the iPod nano’s, where he says:

“If I were reviewing the nano today, I would still call it “the best combination of beauty and functionality of any music player I’ve tested,” as I did in my review. But I would include a strong, prominent, warning that it scratches too easily in normal usage. This is a real downside to an otherwise excellent product.” (from ...

A confluence of five events:

My two year old Treo 600 stopped working: Despite my best efforts to revive it. Reboots, hard resets, new software – it was dropping calls all the time and had finally become unusable. Took it to the Sprint Store where their tech played with it for 1/2 hour and came to the conclusion that it was defective. As it was out of warrantee, my only option was to turn it back in to them for a $50 credit towards my next phone. There is no repair option. There is no authorized repair facility. This is a $400 device, 2 years old. Throw it out.

My two year old iPod stopped working: Despite my best efforts to revive it. Reboots, hard resets, new software – more and ...

This is one of those handy dandy tips that you wish were not hidden, buried and kept secret:

“Hold down the option and control keys while launching iPhoto and you will be treated to a very nice set of options for trying to recover your photos that have mysteriously disappeared.”

I write this to save the next person a few hours of blind allies.

Technorati Tags: iphoto

Yesterday, this appeared on my Mac desktop:

Here’s a little movie showing you what it does.

http://s3.media.squarespace.com/production/1075723/12829350/weblogs/weblog/images/mysteryball.mov.mov

Pretty weird. It’s like a UFO.

I don’t know where it came from or what it does.

Is it a virus? Spyware? Some undiscoverable bit of Mac UI?

If you know, please, people want to know!

Update: Intrepid reader Duncan Wilcox identifi...

This is just a quickie: did you know that you can just drag and drop the URL of a Podcast RSS feed (a.k.a. an RSS Feed with enclosures) onto the Podcasts list in iTunes? In other words, you don’t need to surf the Apple iTunes catalog looking for your favorite show if you have the URL. This is especially handy if the Podcast you want to listen to has not made it to their catalog.

Technorati Tags: podcast

I came across what is supposed to be the transcript of a commencement speech given by Steve Jobs (my hero 🙂 on June 14th. It’s certainly resonates with me:

“You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years ...

I love my Mac, as y’all know. I was amused to read about Intel CEO Paul Otellini who publicly recommended getting a Mac. He was being interviewed by Walt Mossberg at the “D” conference:

‘… Asked whether a mainstream computer user in search of immediate safety from security woes ought to buy a Mac instead of a Wintel PC, he said, “If you want to fix it tomorrow, maybe you should buy something else.’ (from Mac News Network, but I saw it in several other places.)

Meanwhile, in a related story, Dave Winer sounds like he’s tempted to jump o...

Nothing to add:

“Not only will you be able to subscribe to whatever podcast you would like using iTunes, but producers will be able to submit their podcasts for inclusion in the iTunes Music Store so that people can find them” (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Technorati Tags: mac, podcast, itunes

I like to come across music from my collection of CDs that I haven’t listened to in a while. Here’s what I do:

I create a “Smart Playlist” called, for example, Folk – Unplayed

The “match query” includes Genere is Folk and Play Count is 0

As I play this list, it gets continually shorter as each song is played and removed from the list. Riff on this technique – other genres? Played once only? etc. Neat.

Technorati Tags: cool, itunes

The highly anticipated Mac OS X “Tiger” arrived in my hot little hands, and I’ve spent most of the day installing it (2 hours) and getting everything to work again (6 hours and counting.)

One of the highly touted new features is “Dashboard” which is a “not quite as good as” knock-off of Konfabulator.

One of the widgets is a ‘translation widget” to translate from one language to another. I’ve no idea whether the translation is on board or being outsourced to a web site.

It works pretty well, but you can have fun with it, by translating the same phrase back and forth.

“Why are you looking at me?”

“¿por qué usted me está mirando?”

“why you are watch...

Two of my all time favorite Mac OS X applications just came out with new releases:

Adium Xis a beautiful multi-IM-service client. It’s based on GAIM but with a true OS X user interface. For PC users, it’s kind of like Trillian but nicer! They just came out with a new version. The one thing everyone hasn’t done yet is to add Skype IM support. They are coming on strong as a competitive IM network.

Ecto is a beautiful multi-blog-service authoring tool, in other words, it gives you a nice and rich...

No I am not talking about Tiger Woods(who also is not a woman) but about the “Engineers Who Created Tiger”, according to a recent bit of Apple Marketing. (Tiger is the name of the new release of the Mac OS X operating system.) A odd image to portray, IMHO.

I love the fact that I switched to Mac. A lot of the fun is that it’s new and different. Also I like the idea that there’s UNIX beneath the skin because I wanted to get more familiar with it. Also all the applications are ‘prettier‘ to look at and that’s fun.

Of course the machine is blindingly fast but that’s just because its so much newer than the pc it replaced. It is clearly more stable than Windows XP.

But, it’s not all perfect:

It does crash sometimes, in mysterious ways. On Windows, I’d be impressed (and nervous) after about 3 days of uptime. On Mac that figure is more like 10 days. But stories about it staying up 6 months at a ...

Everyone says that the reason they like the Mac and OS X is that it’s so easy to use! I am not so sure that it’s any easier to use than Windows XP. Yes OS X has some snazzy user interface frills and it’s quite easy to use. But notwithstanding that some of these brain-dead UI decisions ** bely the reputation of unsurpassed usability**:

Where is the menu? Even with two large screens attached to an OS X system, the menu bar is always glued to the top edge of the main screen. So I am looking at a little app running in the corner of my second display, and it’s menu is at the top of the other screen. Huh?

**What app is running? ** How about this one: I can close all the windows of an a...

When things go wrong is when you start seeing some of the disadvantages of being on the 5% pc platform. Help is hard to find, alternatives are non-existent. Briefly here is the story:

I tried a ‘better’ Palm synchronizer called“Missing Sync” from Mark/Space. After using it for a little bit I decided it didn’t really have too many advantages over the standard one, so I uninstalled it. But… I uninstalled it “the wrong way.” Who knew? Who knew that there is a wrong way to uninstall on Mac?

Anyway the result was that not only couldn’t I continue using Missing Sync, I couldn’t even continue using the original Palm ...

For those who are following this narrative, this is a continuing narrative of my experiences after having switched from Windows XP to Mac OS X. One of my big concerns before switching to Mac was that it was going to be sloooooow. Of course this is an unfair comparison, between:

a 2GHz Pentium on a 2 year old Dell with 1 Gig of Memory and a brand new G5, 1.8 GHz x 2 (dual processor), with 2 Gigabytes of memory.

But you wouldn’t believe the rumors and legends out there about Macs being slow, or the fact that you can’t compare a Pentium MHz to a G5 MHz… I was worried: perhaps the Mac OS was slower or different; and anyway would it actually be able to take advantage of the dual CPU for day to day use?

The bottom line: it screams! Builds are fast, opening apps is fast, moving windows around is fast, Ripping CDs is really fast.

It’s really fast!

This is a topic of continuing interest to people who hear that I switched. Here are some general comments:

To a first order approximation what allowed me to switch at all was that I wasn’t working on primarily Microsoft (C#, .NET, etc.) software, but rather open sourc-y, java-y, unix-y stuff which found a natural home on Mac. I’ve been able to find all but one of my major, daily use applications on the mac. Either the Mac version of the same app, or an equivalent counterpart. (The missing link? Microsoft Money.) Speaking in sweeping generalizations, I think that Mac OS X applications are prettier to look at, simpler and often simplistic compared to their XP counterparts. As far as the more ...

In the continuing saga of the switch from Windows XP to Mac OS X, here is where we find our hero…. I have more or less gotten all the applications I use over onto the Mac. Almost all of them. I will be forced to leave behind Microsoft Money, X1 and Plaxo. Of all the stuff I ran on the PC, those are the only three that I miss. And in each case I can get by.

Microsoft Money – well there’s Quicken for Mac, which is analogous. But transferring the data over seems like it will be a huge mess costing time, frustration and in the end producing an unsatisfactory result.

X1 – My wonderful desktop search. I already miss it. My ...

It seems to me that all text and other Mac OS X user interface elements are a little bit bigger than their counterparts on the PC. Why is that? It seems like the same size screen fits less stuff when attached to a Mac OS X system than to a Win XP system. It’s annoying – it makes you feel less productive. I am hunting for some tweak software to adjust this but I am starting to think it doesn’t exist.

Why?

For close readers of this (yes all two of you), I was considering switching to a Mac as my primary computer. Basically I had a mac as a tirtiary computer, just for testing BlogBridge. I got to like it, and after a fairly careful study of the trade-offs, I’ve done it. As of now, my Windows box is off on a table ‘over there’ and my Mac is right here at my desk. Actually the switch happened yesterday and I’ve getting acclimated. Just for fun, I thought I’d record my experiences. Day 1-2: Basics are working. I am getting email with Mac Mail. I had to give up Trillian on Windows and tried using AVChat (the mac equivalent.) It’s ok but not that functional. Since then I’ve tried AOL IM for Mac (not too much better) but stumbled across Adium, an open source (don’t you love it?) Mac OS X-ified version of Gnu AIM (GAIM.) I just started using it 10 minutes ago, and so far, its every bit as good as Trillian was! Coolness!

I’m seriously thinking about starting to use a Macintosh for my day to day work computer instead of a PC! Can you believe it? Why?

My research so far says that a fast Mac running OS X is comparable, price performance to a Wintel computer. I’m a big fan of wonderful design and while I think Windows XP is really nice, I think OS X is just a little bit nicer. I will get a chance to learn Unix. I will get a chance to learn OS X. Change is good.

BTW, Not that that Mac is without fault – it certainly has its share of brain dead usability “features’, but all in all it’s just easier on the eyes.

But what do you care about what I use for development. The real excuse for this post is to quote you a...

You have an MP3 and I have an IPod. I want to listen to that MP3 while driving, walking, or working out. Anything that will facilitate and make it more convenient for me to achieve that is valuable. End of story. Before anyone coined the term Podcasting, and before there were enclosures in RSS, this real-life problem existed and was seeking a solution. Substitute any portable player for IPod, substitute any digital media type for MP3, and you can see that this is a far broader problem than is being argued about and discussed.

The technical approach will not make people want my mp3 any less or more. And people who don’t have a need to consume their digital media while disconnected from the net won’t care. And certainly there may be more efficient approaches for getting the media from here to there (BitTorrent).

But I don’t see how anyone can argue Podcasting is not a great step forward.

Here’s a nice bit of civic participation: the iTunes Music Store is offering single click, FREE, downloads of the 9/11 Commision Report’s Executive Summary, and of speeches from the 2004 Democratic National Convention. What a great way to make this accessible to us. Thanks!

Years ago I was a hardcore Mac fanatic. I was one of the creators of a long-gone early Macintosh application called Jazz. I programmed on a Lisa in 68000 assembly language. As I said, a long time ago 🙂 Anyway, for years I’ve been a PC guy, but still with a warm spot in my heart for Mac. Recently we got an iBook in our family and so I had a chance to reaquaint myself with how the world had changed.

After hearing disparaging remarks from Mac folks about Windows XP lack of usability and elegance I was all set to be blown away by OSX. Here some first impressions.

Yes indeed, OSX is beautiful to look at. It wows you with some nifty and novel animations. The level of design, colors, icons, etc. ...

Good evening sportsfans. There’s a new version (4.5) of iTunes for Windows. All I can see after a quick look-over is a new feature called “Party Shuffle” that appears to create a quasi-random mix, based on a few parameters. Suitable for parties, I guess 🙂