Chris Blackwell's Domain

confessions of a web developer

Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category

The Coolest Computer I’ve EVER Owned

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

When I first saw Steve Jobs demo the iPad just a few months ago, I was very heartbroken. I had such high expectations for the Apple Tablet and what I was seeing just wasn’t it. To me (and most everyone else) it just looked like a giant iPhone. At first I wasn’t going to buy one but the price made me change my mind. I ordered the 32GB WiFi version for $599 USD. Because I live in Canada, I had to travel down to the US to pick it up.

Apple iPad

Touching is Believing

Within minutes of taking it out of the box and playing with it I was immediately hooked. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to use, and how much of a pleasure the simple things where such as, checking email and surfing the web. While most of the pictures show the iPad upright, in portrait mode, I find myself using it about 95% of the time in landscape mode. I just find it fits my hands better, and the interface allows me to do more in landscape.

A lot of the applications I use everyday are even better layed out on the iPad, then on the Mac itself. The Contacts app is just like using an old school paper version. You have small tabs with the letters on them so you can jump to each name. The entry appears on the right panel. The Calendar app is pretty much the same as the desktop OSX app, but still seems to have that handheld touch.

The Videos section was an interesting addition. Instead of just incorporating the Videos into the iPod (like on the iPhone and iPod Touch), they are separated into this video app. The video app is simple, but looks great. It organizes all your content my Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Music Videos, and iTunes U. Since I have so much video content I will be using with this device, I appreciate this small but important app.

Mail and Internet Usage

The Mail app was the most impressive app built-in. The simple things make it a joy to use. If you hold your iPad in landscape mode, then you have a side panel with all your mailboxes and folders. Clicking on a message or folder will display the contents on the right panel. When you turn your iPad to portrait mode, the sidebar disappears and only the message is displayed. This makes it very easy to switch between folders, messages, and then read the message you want with little distractions.

Using Safari to browse the Internet on the iPad is a fun experience. A lot of the news sites that I use to hate reading on my computer are very easy using the iPad. I can just sit back in a chair and read the news on any website, comfortably and relaxed. Some of the websites that I use with the iPad direct me to the iPhone version of the site. For example, Google Reader will send me to the iPhone version of the site, where I actually prefer the desktop view when using the iPad. Hopefully Google and others will fix this and maybe even make iPad tailored versions.

Conclusions

Don’t go out and buy one of these devices. Rush out and buy two! The iPad really is going to change my life, and make it easier for me to read, email, and browse the web on the go. These devices will change the way we use computers, and I don’t just mean the iPad. This is just Apple’s entrance into the market, but soon I expect every computer manufacturer will be joining in, because this thing is going to be a big hit.

I hope to share my love of the iPad and inform people of some of the wonderful apps that developers are turning out for this device. I can’t wait to see what the future holds in store.

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Fix for Boot Camp Problem with new 27-inch iMac

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Yesterday I talked about my new 27″ iMac and how I was going to install Windows 7 on it via Boot Camp. I touched on a problem I found when installing Windows, and that was the default driver for the ATI cards.

Windows installs default drivers after installing the Windows kernal. The problem that I experienced was that the default driver Windows installed for the ATI video card was not the correct driver and thus left the screen completely blank. I found that I was not the only one having this problem, and after some Googling around, I came upon a solution that seems to work great.

  1. Reboot your iMac and hold the Option/Alt button down to bring up the boot menu.
  2. Arrow over the the Windows install disc and press Return/Enter
  3. Navigate through the Windows install process until you come across the install options (it’s right after the language selection screen).
  4. Select the Repair your computer option
  5. Choose the C: BOOTCAMP drive
  6. In the list of repair options, find Command Prompt at the bottom and select it
  7. In the command prompt, type of the following command
    del c:\windows\system32\drivers\atikmdag.sys
  8. Close the command prompt and reboot your machine back into your Boot Camp Windows

That’s it! The ATI video driver should be deleted and you are free to install the Apple drivers and Boot Camp software (found on the OSX install disc that came with your machine).

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My Top 10 Mac Applications (2010 Edition)

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Another year has come and gone, and another set of applications have made there was into my everyday work flow. This was an amazing year for applications and four new applications have made it into my top ten list, including taking the top one and two spots away from previous top applications.

  1. Dropbox (new for 2010) No application or program has changed the way I use my computers more then Dropbox. The days of worrying about file changes and transferring files between computers are over! Dropbox syncronizes all your files in your Dropbox folder to all your Mac, Windows and Linux computers. The synchronization is so fast both ways that most files take just seconds before the changes appear on all your computers. All files are kept locally as well so you can access all your files even when you are offline. This is the one application I believe that everybody can benefit from.
    Price: FREE for 2GB, $99.95/year for 50GB
  2. LaunchBar 5 (new for 2010) is an application and file launcher taken to the next level. I was a little bit hesitant to try LaunchBar because I thought Spotlight did a good enough job, but when I finally took the plunge, I got hooked. LaunchBar can not only launch applications, but can access data within them, go through your contacts, add events to iCal and so much more. Any power user must check out this application.
    Price: 30-Day Free Trial then $35.00 USD
  3. FireFox (1st in 2009) web browser is still my favorite browser of choice. Though I am really starting to like Google Chrome, my day to day web development work is done in FireFox. The extension library is what I love most, and I would be lost without extensions like FireBug and Web Developer Toolbar. The browser is made by the company Mozilla which is dedicated to providing free open source software to the general public. FireFox has a huge community base and has thousands of extensions that are available to add to the functionality of the browser.
    Price: FREE (Open Source)
  4. TextMate (3rd in 2009) is the text editor that has been missing all my life. I just discovered this little jem last year and I still can’t believe how I ever lived without it. TextMate provides syntax highlighting for just about every programming language in use today. Using a simple drop down menu on the program’s bottom bar, you can change between languages on the fly. TextMate also comes preloaded with hundreds of code snipplets too for quickly adding text or special character encodings in. There are simple too many features to fully go into detail in this post. Please give TextMate a try today if you do anything but edit the most basic forms of text.
    Price:     30-Day Free Trial then ?39
  5. 1Passwd (2nd in 2009) is a program that keeps track of all your usernames, passwords, and form data. The program not only keeps track of all your secure information but it also includes a secure password generator that automatically fills a password request field with a very secure password and then is remembered by the program. This allows you to do what you should be doing all along which is use a different password for each website. All you have to remember is your one master password and 1Passwd will remember the rest. It is completely encrypted using the keychain and can even be synced between your various mac computers using Apple’s Mobile Me.
    Price: 30-Day Free Trial then $39.95 USD
  6. Things (new for 2010) is a personal to do manager based on the principles from David Allen’s Book, Getting Things Done. Things allows you to create Projects and assign tasks and due dates around those Projects. You can tag your tasks for quick access later, and sort them by areas of responsibilities. Things also syncs with iCal so you can have all your tasks in your iCal and Mail for easy access. There is also an iPhone application for Things so that you can carry all your task along with you, and sync when you get back to your home or office. Things has made my life so much easier and I love the simple UI of this application and highly recommend for anyone who wants to really take control of their working life.
    Price: 14-Day Free Trial then $49.95 USD
  7. Transmit (5th in 2009) by Panic is simply the best FTP program I have ever used on ANY platform. The ability to upload to Amazon S3 and Apple’s iDisk is fantastic. Transmit also allows you to sync between different folders, use tabbed site management, has dock status updates, and syncs your saved FTP sites with Mobile Me. This is a must have app for anyone who manages websites or needs remote file management.
    Price: $29.95 USD
  8. Text Expander (6th in 2009) is a tiny application that runs quietly in the background of your Mac. It allows you to enter snipplets (small text phrases) that will expand into preset text or graphic strings. For example; say you keeping having to enter your email address like bob@something.com. You could setup a key so everytime you type bob@ the text is automatically replaced with bob@something.com. You can even program in complete email signatures, and photos to pop up, just about anything you can think of. This is a great time saving application that has saved me from a lot of excess typing.
    Price: 30-Day Free Trial then $29.95 USD
  9. Tweetie (new for 2010) is a Mac only Twitter client. Twitter broke out in a big way in 2009 really going mainstream, and that in turn gave us more and more people to follow each week. Tweetie uses a very Mac like UI to help you follow your Twitter peeps. Tweetie is really good for tracking conversations between different twitter users, and a double click on a reply will bring up the entire conversation thread so you can learn what they have been discussing. This is a must have for any Twitter user who wants a more powerful way to use the Twitter stream and take the Twitter experience to the next level.
    Price: FREE (Ad Supported), $19.95 with no ads
  10. Super Duper (4th in 2009) takes care of the task that all of us seem to avoid, BACKUP! SuperDupper can be setup to make a complete screen shot of your computer?s hard drive so you can be backup within minutes of a complete system failure. SuperDuper also allows for incremental updates so you don?t have to make a huge backup file every night. Super Duper was updated last year to work with Leopard’s Time Machine.
    Price: Free for regular backup, $27.95 for advanced features

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Boot Your Mac to 64-Bit Automatically

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Apple made two decisions when launching Snow Leopard this fall. One was to make the entire kernel 64-bit, and the other was to have it default boot to 32-bit mode. I’m not quite sure why they did this, especially with their new line of macs having at least 4GB and in some cases up to 16GB. I always want my machine booting to 64-bit so I can take advantage of the extra memory and because I’m starting to use more and more 64-bit applications.

There has been the much documented solution to hold the “6″ and “4″ buttons down at boot-up, but since I reboot quite often and turn my machines off at night, I’d like an automatic solution. The best solution I found after doing a lot of Googling around was to edit a small file found in

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

In this folder look for the file named

com.apple.Boot.plist

Edit this file in a programming editor such as TextMate or Script Editor. The file by default should look like the following:

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

Change the 6th line to the following new entry so it appear as follows:

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>arch=x86_64</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Now you can reboot you Mac and it will automatically boot into 64-bit mode. If you have a better or different solution to this please post it in the comments.

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