c0t0d0s0.org - Apple

Tofu

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:23:06 +0200

PDF articles with multiple columns look good on paper, but they are a major pain in the a... to read on a display under 22 inches. There is a small little tool called Tofu, which rerenders documents in a way, where you just have to scroll horizontally instead of scrolling vertically to the beginning of a column again.

You can even cut´n paste a webpage on the window to get a columned version of the text:

You loose parts of the layout, but it´s much easier to read ....

Mindmapping on Mac

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:23:09 +0200

Stefan Domanske of domanske.de pointed to a little interesting tool. Maybe you are aware of the technique of mindmapping for gathering ideas. I like this concept, but so far i prefered to use pencil and paper for this task as there was no really focussed and simple tool for it, at least not for the operating system from Cupertino. In the article "Mindmapping am Mac" Stefan talked about Mindnode. It´s a tool for MacOS 10.5 and it just does Mindmapping with a really clean interface. It´s near to the experience of using the oldfashioned paper because of the simple and clean interface. I really like this tool.

Mindnode is available for free on the website of the project, albeit there will be an Pro version in the future for purchase.

Habituation

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:07:28 +0200

What is habituation? When you borrow a portable navigation device from your brother, try to scroll through the menus and twitch through the maps like on your iPhone and think at first: "Fsck ... the display is broken" ... i want an iNav!

An established brand

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:06:34 +0200

You know, that a brand is well established in the marked, when the approx. 3-4 year old boy on the lap of his mother on the adjactent seat says: "The man has an iPhone". At least i think the boy mumbled something like that ...

The market share of Apple notebooks

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:51:36 +0200

I have a personal test for the market share of the Mac OS X plattform. I like to sit in the first wagon of the train. To get into the on-board restaurant i have to go to half the train. On this way i count the types of notebooks. 4 years ago, a Mac was a really rare sighting. On my train trip back from Berlin to Hamburg today, i´ve counted 13 notebooks, 7 of them were from Apple. I was somehow undecided about the move to the Intel architecture, but it seems that this move had paid off for the people at the Infinite Loop.

Out now: MacOS X - 10.5.4

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:31:37 +0200

Apple published an update for Mac OS X yesterday: 10.5.4. This update isn´t as large as the last one, but it still contains some important bugfixes. You will find the combo updater and normal updater at the usual locations.

Mac OS X 10.5.3 out now

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:21:34 +0200

There is a new update for MacOS X 10.5. You find the release notes for 10.5.3 in the Knowledge Base: About the Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update. And the release notes are looong ... Okay, you can download the combo update at Apples Download site. You just have to download 536 MB. In the case you already use 10.5.2 you can use the smaller Updater - just 420 MB

Jonathan is a Mac user ...

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 24 May 2008 10:03:00 +0200

White case, a black spot above the LC display, the typical monitor dongle at the side. This looks like a MacBook. Jonathan is a Mac user...

Lux

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:23:39 +0200

I want this at home:

Multi-touch is definitely one of the "next big things" in user interfaces. Work for a few minutes with an iPhone ... or: simply look at the video and you will understand. And Lux looks promising to bring that to your Mac soon. My personal favorite was the moment, when they controlled Google Earth with gestures

Thermal problems

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:47:49 +0200

Your old notebook has severe thermal problems because of a defunct fan or something like that and you need a last boot. This may be an effective solution for you: How to rescue data from an iBook with thermal problems

Comparative advertising

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:18:37 +0200

The problem with the X300 ... it runs this mediocre operation system from Redmond. Dear Levono ... you could make it smaller, you could make it faster, you could even make it silver and cool-looking ... your problem is the OS.

(via: fakesteve)

Cringely about Apples acquisition of PA Semiconductor

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:23:40 +0200

Cringely has a really interesting opinion about the recent acquisition of PA Semi by Apple. He thinks, that this move will lead us to an Apple system, where even the CPU is a custom-build circuit from Apple optimized for MacOS X. The arguments for his ideas sound quite reasonable.

Successful advertisment

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:59:53 +0200

I have to keep this "New Soul" from Yael Naim from my ears. When i hear this music, i have the strong urge to search my credit card and to buy a notebook ....

Location-aware Twitter for the iPhone: Twinkle

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:48:13 +0200

I revived my twitter account a few days ago, whe i discovered, that my prefered feedreader (Netnewswire) is capable of sending URLs to twitter with a single command. So i use twitter as a public clipboard again for links i do not want to put on del.icio.us. Yesterday i´ve found yet another really neat tool for my iPhone: Twinkle. Twinkle is a Twitter-client for the iPhone, but with a spin. You can add location informations to your tweets (the messages in twitter). Resulting from this information you can query for tweets that were published by people near of you:

Continue reading "Location-aware Twitter for the iPhone: Twinkle"

The MacBook Air and the TSA

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:57:37 +0100

Yet another reason, i´m glad that i didn´t purchased a Macbook Air yet. Now it´s up to others to explain the TSA that the MacBook Air isn´t a stylish bomb designed by Jonathan Ive

iPhone 2.0

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:05:10 +0100

Apple announced a beta program for their new Software for the iPhone: iPhone in Enterprise. The new features sound really promising for enterprise usage: From push services to a mechanism to wipe the phone from remote.

MacOS 10.5.2 out now ...

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:16:22 +0100

Apple published a new version of Leopard. You find the "What´s new" list on Apple´s website.

Coverflow in Finder

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:26:44 +0100

I wasn´t sure about the usefullness of Coverflow in Finder. But now i have a good use case for it. The pdf´s from docs.sub.com doesn´t have a speaking name (like 816-4557.pdf). I have dozens of such documents on my notebook. With Coverflow it´s much easier to find the correct document.

Story of crippled DTrace in MacOS reaches Register

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:35:49 +0100

The story about the crippled dtrace in MacOS 10.5 reached the big IT media sites.

In other words, Apple appears to think that crafty coders could use a sophisticated tool like DTrace to glean information about its DRM (digital rights management) technology and other protective schemes. That could upset media companies as well as ISVs, trying to protect their own jewels.

DTrace in Leopard blinded by proc flag

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:15:00 +0100

Adam Leventhal made an interesting observation while using Dtrace on Mac OS X and wrote about his findings in"Mac OS X and the missing probes". According to this articles, Apple do not allow the dtrace-ing of all processes. Whenever a process has the flag "P_LNOATTACH" you can´t look into it with dtrace.

Perhaps, they are in fear of disabling or examination of certain DRM functions for example. It leaves a very bad aftertaste. But as Darran Moffat wrote in the comments: "Now we just need a port of mdb so that the proc flags can be changed ."

AirMail

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:00:25 +0100

This was sooooo obvious. Steve jobs used a manila envelope to hide the MacBook Air. Some people in the States offer now something similar: A laptop sleeve made out of fleece and vinyl in the shape of a ... manila envelope.

Macbook Air

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:46:52 +0100

Wow ... the Macbook Air is really a cool device. Excellent design, the multitouch trackpad is a killer and it´s thin, really thin (at least when i see it on the webpage). It´s so thin i would be in the fear of breaking it when i use it

But i will not bite my back. The Macbook Pro was a better choice. The MacBook Air is optimized to be an ultra-thin, ultra-low-weight subnotebook. The MacBook Air has a fixed battery, Thus the Air would work until Greenland in Lufthansa Economy to the US (power sockets irst and Business Class only) . It has no Gigabit Ethernet. The graphic card is a shared-memory one (you have to wait how this works out with Lightroom or Aperture).

The only point to be jealous: The Macbook Pro looks so clumsy now ...

Before Keynote

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:25:42 +0100

I ask my self in the last few day, if it was a wise choice to buy a new Macbook Pro a few days ago. At least when you look at the rumours about the new Macbook, for example at Wired. I hope i won´t bite my back this evening.

ZFS for MacOS 10.5

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:46:15 +0100

You have 10.5 installation on your Mac and you want to try ZFS? Okay, you can download it at the macosforge. It has it´s rough corners, but for playing around with it and to test ZFS, it´s sufficient.

Netnewswire 3.1 for free

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:43:25 +0100

I read almost 300 RSS-feeds (many of them are low-volume/high quality feeds, thus this isn´t such a problem). So i started to search for an good tool for reading my feeds shortly after discovering more and more interesting feeds. Well, i use Netnewswire for years now. After playing around with some tools, i finally took my credit card and bought a license. It was the tool i missed when i was without a mobile mac.

You can download Netnewswire 3.1 for free now. Give it a try. It was worth it´s price, and for free it´s an even better deal.

iPhone

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:34:36 +0100

I have an Apple iPhone for a few days now. And while it´s doesn´t have this feature-creep like other mobiles, it´s a really usable gadget. But there is one question: There some companies out there working on phones for years now, they should now the needs of their customership. Why did it need Apple (a company without any track record in building phones) to show the rest of the competition how the GUI of a phone should look. I gave my iPhone to my brothers and sisters (we use virtually all known mobile brands, so a forgotten power supply is really problem) and all were able to use the phone within a minute or so. This is the way an ubiquitous gadget should work...

New Apple commercial: The Macbook Pro is the fastest Vista notebook

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:32:38 +0100

This was an excellent opportunity in the direction of the rest of the market. Apple wasn´t allowed to let it pass:

The background: The PCworld announced some weeks an unlikely winner in the race for the fastest Vista Notebook:

The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year--or for that matter, ever--is a Mac. [..] by a single point, but the MacBook's score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn't care less whether you run Windows.

And by the way, Solaris and Opensolaris runs quite fine on this notebooks, too. Well, hopefully enough stuff to convince my manager, that i´m still not want this Toshiba junk ...

10.5 on an Asus Eee PC

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:21:31 +0100

I thought about buying an Eee PC for presentations in A good idea for presentations?. And this idea got a little boost as there are first sucess stories in the net about an unlikely combination:Load OSX 10.5 Leopard on the eeePC.

Aha ...

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:20:04 +0100

Geht ja noch ... hätte mit mehr gerechnet ...

89%

Mac for my aperture needs

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:45:13 +0100

This would be a nice project for this years holiday season: Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800. Perhaps this baby would be a nice target system for such an endeavour ... with the somewhat weak dollar in relation to the euro and the sun employee rebates this systems get really cheap.