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Update to the Snow Leopard

June 6th, 2010 makii Comments off

After a long time and struggle I finally decided to update to the snow leopard. Remembering each and every update on my former windows systems, as well as the dist-upgrade on a deb-based system, I was really astonished how smooth the update went by. Sure, concerning the Apple software, everything works as expected, no problems there. But a lot of third-party software simply stops working, which also was to be expected. This is, I think, the big advantage of a Linux system: usually all the software in the repository, which mostly is all you need, is available in a working version, so it just continues to work. Here the minor and major problems I had to struggle with.

GPGMail

As it seems, GPGMail, a plugin which integrates a local installation of GnuPG to Apples Mail, seems to use a lot of internal API which of course is not supported officially and subject to frequent change, stopped working. The GPGMail maintainer seems to have no time to update it to the new API, but fortunately Lukas Pitschl stepped up to update it. Up to now now official release of GPGMail was rolled out, but reasonable stable versions are offered by Lukas via hist Dropbox or Github. The latest 1.2.3-v61 works for me so far. Thanks!

Macports

Having a history with Gentoo Linux I simply love the ports system, so I chose Macports over Fink to add additional Unix/Linux software to my Mac.

After upgrading Macports does will simply stopp to work with a somewhat strange Tcl error message, at least this was the case with me. Thus a sudo port selfupdate failed as well. So I downloaded the Snow Leopard version and installed it to get a working port command again. Even after this some port commands will fails, mostly due to architecture constraints of the older 32bit parts on Leopard vs. the new Snow Leopard 64bit.

After upgrading to the new Macports for Snow Leopard, the Migration page in the Macports wiki describes how to upgrade your installed ports to a new system. As I don’t need all installed ports any more I took the manual approach described, by simply removing all ports and re-building the parts I still need on my system. It needs some effort to upgrade, but with the view ports I use took just a few minutes to select the ports I need and a few hours of building while the system is still usable for other things.

iStat Menu

I like these little nerdy monitor items in the menu bar which tell me how much RAM I use, how the system load is or how much traffic is on the network. On Leopard I used the iStat menus in version 1.3, but these don’t work on Snow Leopard. iStat Menus version 3 comes as a trial version and will stop working after some time, so this is unfortunately no permanent solution. A friend of mine got a beta release of version 2 in preparation for the Snow leopard release which works well as long as you disable the update mechanism, but I couldn’t find the download link to this package.

So I started looking for alternatives to this proprietary software and found MenuMeters by Raging Menace which is GPL software. It does not look as nice the iStat menus look, and does not offer monitors for the temperature sensors, but basic Network/HD IO, CPU and memory usage are covered, which will suffice for me for now.

So much for now on this topic, let’s see if this was it all…

Categories: Mac, Technology Tags: , ,

The iPad – OMFG!!! The iPad!!!

May 1st, 2010 makii Comments off

Ok, jeder schreibt und bloggt über dieses komische iPad, das irgendwie alles können soll, oder auch irgendwie nicht. Und jetzt bietet sich mir die verführerische Gelegenheit dieses Ding mal auszuprobieren. Dann kann man ja auch Mal ein paar Absätze drüber schreiben, oder? Also dann:

Als aller erstes fällt mir auf dass der Safari auf dem iPad es nicht hinbekommt den WYSIWYG-Editor von meinem Blog hier richtig darzustellen. Das ist natürlich ziemlich doof wenn man bloggen will, und man nicht einmal den Fokus auf das Eingabefeld setzen kann… Und die Eingabe im Code-Modus ist genau so schlimm, denn man muss zwischen drei Modi der On-Screen-Tastatur hin- und herspringen um nur ein blödes Paragraph-Element zu öffnen oder zu schließen. Ebenso komisch ist es Umlaute zu tippen: hierzu muss man einfach länger auf dem a bleiben, um ein ä (oder andere Abwandlungen davon) zu bekommen. Für iPhone User ist das natürlich Usus und perfekt, die waren noch nie was anderes gewohnt. Fazit: Die Tastatur ist soweit nicht schlecht, aber effizient mit 10 Fingern erfordert Übung. Zumindest mehr als man an einem Abend rumspielen schafft. Auch wenn die Tastatur auf dem Bildschirm in etwa so breit wie die eines Laptops ist, der Winkel ist meiner Meinung alles andere als bequem und ich kann mir nur mit viel Fantasie vorstellen mit dem Gerät auf dem Schoß lange Emails zu tipppen.

So, nach zwei Absätzen der Pein bin ich jetzt wieder auf die gewohnte Tastatur meines Laptops umgestiegen. Nach den zwei Absätzen auf dem iPad hat sich doch eine gewissen Routine eingestellt. Ich konnte schon halbwegs blind tippen und sogar Umlaute gingen relativ intuitiv. Ebenso das Positionieren des Cursors im Text, wenn man sich vertippt hatte, sowie Copy & Paste. Auch wenn das alles schön und gut ist, und mit längerer Verwendung die Eingabe noch flüssiger geht: die fehlenden Umlaute auf der Tastatur (was natürlich dem Format geschuldet ist) stören den Fluss bei der Eingabe doch erheblich, und der ständige Modi-Wechsel für Ziffern oder Sonderzeichen ebenso. Soviel mal zur Texteingabe.

Mit dem mitgelieferten Safari hatte ich auch meinen Spaß. Wie weiter oben schon erwähnt weigert er sich den WordPress-WYSIWYG Editor benutzbar darzustellen. Selbiges sind mir mit einigen weiteren AJAX-Webseiten aufgefallen. So war es mir unmöglich den Google Reader zu steuern, sowohl in der Mobil- als auch in der Full-Fledged Variante. Auch wenn es solche Anwendungen sicher gute Programme für das iPad gibt sollte ein Browser doch zumindest reine HTML5+AJAX Funktionalitäten unterstützen, was Apple ja in seiner öffentlichen Diskussion mit Adobe bezüglich der Unterstützung von Flash auf Apples mobilem Betriebssystem ja als unterstützenswerte Standards angibt. Apple mutiert was sowas angeht tatsächlich zu einem kleinen Goliath.

Die restlichen Navigation ist Apple-typisch absolut intuitiv. Des öfteren habe ich mich über kurze Auswahl-Seiten wie z.B. im iTunes Laden gewundert, um dann festzustellen dass man da auch nach unten scrollen kann. Der Scrollbar (oder eine “Positionsanzeige”) wird beim Scrollen (und nur dann!) über dem Inhalt dargestellt. Diese Darstellung kenne ich auch von meinem N900, jedoch wird dort beim Laden der Seite im Browser der Balken immer eingeblendet, wird dann ausgeblendet, aber beim Scrollen auch wieder Sichtbar. Gut, das ist nicht wirklich wichtig, ich bin dieser Unzulänglichkeit aber auf den Leim gegangen.

What the iPad really is!

So, mal von der Eingabe weg zur Hardware. Unabhängig davon ist das ganze schon ein sehr beeindruckendes Gerät. Absolut sexy Format. Es fühlt sich, ohne jetzt in den Apple-Fanboy-Talk verfallen zu wollen, einfach alles Richtig an. Auch wenn es prinzipiell nur vier aneinander-geklebte iPhones sind…

Mein Fazit ist demnach: Alles in allem ist das iPad ein typisches Apple Gerät: Hard- und Software sind qualitativ hochwertig, es fühlt sich gut an und erfüllt seinen Zweck. Wie die meisten anderen Apple-Produkte unterliegt das Gerät und die Software natürlich den Apple-Typischen Restriktionen: Nur Software aus dem App-Store von Apple, den Dock-Connector als einzige, proprietäre Schnittstelle. Hiermit haben sich die Apple-Fan-Boys/-Girls ja schon abgefunden. Das heisst: Wenn man ein kleines Surf-Brett für den Balkon oder das Bett, oder ein kleines Gerät für die tägliche Arbeiten wie Mails checken oder kleinere Dokumente schreiben haben will, und natürlich zum Zocken, kann sich die Anschaffung ernsthaft überlegen. Ich bin noch unentschlossen ob ich sowas brauche.

Categories: Mac, Technology, Web Tags: , , ,

Browser Compatibility Fail

September 12th, 2009 makii Comments off

I’m known to be a big fan of last.fm. Though I’m no subscriber I found a lot of new bands I did not know before.

The more interested I was when I found out about steereo.de, a new and somewhat similar service comming from germany. They, integrated a nice player bar at the bottom of their page, and over all it’s a pretty funky page. Not, as tidy as last.fm, but it will work.

The most interesting part of this all is: They didn’t want to let me on their page. I think I use a pretty recent browser for my day-to-day portion of web surfing, but not as new as they want me to:

Steereo JS Browser compatibility check.

As it seems, they just support recent versions IE + FF, but no Safari. I thought we’ve passed this to implement major browser-dependend tweaks in our pages. As it seems I was wrong.

Flying MacBook

June 25th, 2009 makii Comments off

I hope mine does not fly away like this one day…

Categories: Mac, Sci-Fi, funny, video Tags: , , ,

Live can be so easy…

May 18th, 2009 makii Comments off

… at least software updates:

OSX Update to 10.5.7

Why is it so hard for Microsoft to implement such a update mechanism? I really was astonished: one click, one reboot – up and running. No harsh feelings, no pain in the a**. It just works. I like software like this.

Categories: Mac Tags: , ,

How to power your iPod the right way

April 20th, 2009 makii Comments off

Categories: Mac, funny, iPod, video Tags: , , ,

Show hidden files in Finder on OS X

April 13th, 2009 makii Comments off

Like any Unix system, files in OS X are hidden by default in directory listings when the names start with a dot ".". This also counts for the Finder. There seems to be no way in the Finder configuration to change this configuration, so there’s a little hack in the shell to modify this behaviour:

$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
$ killall Finder

As you might guess the first line sets the option somehow and the second line kills all Finder windows belonging to the current User. As the Desktop also is a Finder process, it will restart immediately.

defaults seems to be a small CLI to some kind of user preferences service within OS X. You can list e.g. all preferences for the current user from the finder by invoking:

$defaults read com.apple.finder

The result will look a bit like a cascaded associative array. I think there’s some more to fiddle with.

Via Lifehacker.

Categories: Mac Tags: ,

Microsoft’s “Apple Tax”. WTF?

April 12th, 2009 makii Comments off

After Microsoft’s ad starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, which was the first response to the well-known Get a Mac commercials, was kind of a flop, they recently started the Laptop Hunters series. Watching it is kind of funny. Mostly, for my part, because of the reactions of the people when they’re presented with the money for their computer-to-be.

Apart from that, the Company From Redmond commissioned, or sponsored, as they call it, an analysis from Endpoint Technologies Associates, which should transparently describe the “Apple Tax”. At the first glance the form (filled out by hand, as it seems) looks pretty convincing, stating an overall saving of more than 3300 bucks when you buy a PC instead of a Mac. Is that really true?

Ina Fried from Cnet took a closer look at the findings and is not convinced. The report states no additional license fees for the Windows systems despite the OEM licenses included in the hardware price. Where do they get there Software from? Do they use OpenOffice? Do they use copies from their friends illegally? Why do they list the (totally optional) MobileMe account? This account on it’s own bills for about $750 in the five years. I know only one person who uses MobileMe and he will discontinue it.

Sure, Apple hardware is more expansive in comparison to PC hardware, that’s true. But as the Windows Experience Blog states correctly, it’s not only about cost, but about value. I’m an Apple user for about a half year now and I think I get a lot more value for my money than for my previous laptops, which were PC systems. In germany we have two words to describe this difference. The word which describes a possibly good deal is “günstig”, which translates well to cheap as in low priced. “billig” also means cheap, but more in a kind of this product’s kinda crappy way. A lot of PC hardware in the past was “billig”, and the present one often still is. The hardware of these systems does not fit together well, the cheap ones still have a ridiculously low resolution (I will never work willingly on anything below 1400×900 on 14″ or 15″ screens). The chassis stability of Macs might be reached by Thinkpads, but the Design I think is still leading, though it is quite simply.

To the software. I had installed Windows on my previous PC systems, and I even have a BootCamp installation with Windows XP on it on my Mac. I boot it two or three times a month to play games which unfortunately are not available for OSX (Assasins Creed and Fallout 3) and don’t work with Crossover Games properly. That’s all I use it for, and, hell, that’s all I need it for. The last five years I solely worked on Unix- and Linux- based systems. And I like it. Instead of clicking around endlessly in the explorer or the System Control I have a powerful shell (zsh or bash) and I can do everything on the fast lane. For the direct functions of the operating system the clicking point is also valid for OSX. But the simple gestures on the trackpad, or the Expose configuration is so addictive I tried to switch workspaces on my Linux workstation in the office by moving the mouse pointer to the upper right corner only two days after I bought my first Mac (yeah, I know. This might become a problem someday).

The important part for me is: Mac OSX, while shiny and colorful, has a Unix foundation, which is (IMO, even if not open source), a good thing. No ugly Cygwin necessary. There is MacPorts. There is Fink. Lots of stuff I need for everyday life. And the parts which come with OSX UI are most natural and intuitive.

To the point. I like Apple Hardware and Software, because

  • It looks kinda cool. This sure is one major point why Apple is so successful.
  • The hardware is sturdy.
  • The software fits my needs.
  • There is not that much malware, spyware and other bad stuff for OSX, if any.
  • There is a usable Unix environment underneath all that glamour.
  • I am not ridicuously accurate about free software licenses, though I like and respect free software in general.

I have stopped looking into Microsoft’s operating systems since Windows 2000. As mentioned before I’ve run XP on my Samsung X20 and MacBook Pro for gaming only. This was good as I can tell you now. Having started at a new Job I need to speak with a funny Exchange Server from Redmond Industries which I could not get up and running with anything I tried with Evolution, so I continued using the pre-installed Vista. It looks good enough for now, but still is a plain continuation of the user interface concepts from Windows 95. I still have to use the embedded context menue to create a new folder. It still comes with 2 tons of funny software preinstalled which needs to be cleaned out before you can somehow work with the system. Every tool which should bring me some sane Virtual Desktop support is either broken somehow, or is totally cumbersome to use. I think this will be my next desktop wallpaper…

I wish I had a Mac.

But this would not help either, this mail setup does not work for Entourage either.

So I’m (again, for once) stuck with Windows and no light at the end of the tunnel. I think I’ll, if time allowes, play a bit more with an Ubuntu in some virtual box setup and try to get Mail access up and running with Linux. Till then I need to work around with the most sane environment on windows, which still is Cygwin, which offers a sane xterm, zsh/bash, screen and some other utilities which I never want to miss.

Comming back to the topic of this post: There sure is some kind of “Apple Tax” if you want to call it that. BUT I really really doubt that it is so high as described in the Microsoft-paid paper. My opinion is that users get more value for a higher price. Some of the added value is purely aestetic, another is less pain in the ass, as they don’t bloat up their registry with a ton of funny entries for installing software they simply want to try, viruses, malware, The Search For The Driver(tm) and other stuff. The whole software suit from Apple is much more integrated and more simple to use. Every user has to decide whether they think it’s worth the price for them. If (probably) crappy hardware with Windows works for them – who am I to judge?

Despite that, the Get a Mac ads from Apple are more conciliabe, meaning they acknowledge the strengths of the PC to some degree, even if in a comical way. Laptop Hunters is a more offensive and absolutistic approach to compare the two systems, telling the customers Apple is stealing money from them. That’s business, OK, but it’s totally unfair.

Categories: Java, Mac, Windows Tags: , ,

Not introduced at the MacWorld, but…

January 7th, 2009 makii Comments off

… funny nonetheless: This new “Apple” product is the ultimative No-Brainer:


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

"leaked" via Maclife.de.

Categories: Mac, Technology, video Tags:

Mapple Store showdown.

December 3rd, 2008 makii Comments off

Thanks, Rainer…

Categories: Mac, funny, video Tags: