MacHeist ending soon! Pixelmator + VectorDesigner and more for only $49!
Now that MacHeist is really filled up with nice applications (even more than on the picture above: VectorDesigner, Pixelmator, Snapz Pro X, CSSEdit, TaskPaper, AppZapper, SpeedDownload, Awaken, iStopMotion, Cha-Ching, CoverSutra, 1password and the games Wingnuts 2 and Tiki Magic Mini Golf) there is only 15 hours left to get this great bundle for just $49 at MacHeist.com! A quite large part of the revenues go to charities (currently close to $400k!).
Posted at 02:27PM Jan 23, 2008 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[0]
Leopard Spaces vs. two-monitor setup
I am a great fan of Spaces, the new virtual desktop system in Mac OS X, introduced with Leopard. It allows me to have more screen real estate on my MacBook Pro when I don't have the possibility to connect to a second monitor.
Now in my office or at home I do have a second monitor and Spaces works intuitively there as well: each space contains both monitors then, as you can see above in the right part of the image. Having a separate space management for each monitor would be too complicated, so this is just right.
But here is my problem: when I connect or disconnect the second monitor, ie. I am switching between single and multi-monitor setup, I have to reconfigure spaces each time. Because my application placement with a single monitor (eg. one for my Eclipse IDE, one for the browser(s), one for mail/calendering, one for iChat and Skype) is different from two monitors, where I want to take advantage of looking at my IDE and the browser at the same time. With a single monitor I use 6 spaces, whereas with 2 monitors 4 are more than enough. But I hate to reposition my 10+ applications two times a day.
A solution could be the concept of spaces profiles: each monitor setup could have its own profile, ie. the number of spaces columns and rows as well as the application-on-a-certain-space settings. Mac OS X already recognizes the different monitors you connect to it and remembers the exact arrangement. So what about profiles, Apple?
Posted at 12:38AM Jan 17, 2008 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[2]
Media center at home: AppleTV vs. MacMini
I am thinking about setting up a state-of-the-art media center at my home. It should have a full HD flat screen TV monitor, receive classic and HDTV TV streams, ability to record from TV in full quality with time-shifting, play DVDs, display photos and maybe browse the web. And the latest trend is to have online movie rentals - no longer going to the next DVD rental store and paying lots of money for bringing it back two days later. That's a lot of requirements 
No, actually it's easy to do that on your PC or Mac today, but getting that in your living room is kind of difficult, because you need an easy-to-use software in front of the TV (it always has to be quick and you don't wanna hassle with keyboard and mouse a lot) and a small, quiet system. Now there are quite a few answers: nice LCD TVs, EyeTV, Elgato's USB TV Tuners, AppleTV or MacMini and iTunes Movie Rentals (also in HD) (hopefully soon in Germany).
The problem now is that HD movie rentals only work on the new AppleTV, but not on normal iTunes, hence the MacMini is out of scope for that. But it offers the best flexibility for a media center and allows to run EyeTV. Well, maybe by the time iTunes movie rentals are available in Germany, it's possible to get HD on the MacMini.
Posted at 02:32PM Jan 16, 2008 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[3]
Apple Keynote: MacBook Air, iTunes Movie Rentals, iPhone 1.1.3
The keynote is over and the most notably announcement is the MacBook Air, "the worlds thinnest notebook". It has the option to include a 64 GB Solid-State Disk, but then it costs at least 2700 Euro ($2800), whereas the minimum config is at 1699 Euro ($1799).
Apart from that, there will be iTunes Movie Rentals in HD ($4.99 for HD, $3.99 for new titles and $2.99 for older ones). And an iPhone 1.1.3 firmware that mainly contains the features already leaked a few days ago. The software update already has the iTunes 7.6 update, I just grabbed it.
Posted at 08:12PM Jan 15, 2008 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[0]
MacHeist bundle: Get 11 mac apps for $49
I want Pixelmator, so if you are a Mac user, buy the MacHeist too to have all bundles activated! The deadline is January 23rd and a part of the revenues are donated to charities!
Posted at 11:58AM Jan 11, 2008 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[0]
Macworld Expo 2008 Keynote coming soon!
For everyone anxiously waiting for Steve's upcoming keynote, just go and make some predictions. Here are mine:
Posted at 07:22PM Jan 04, 2008 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[1]
Insights about the MacOSX Kernel
On the 24th Chaos Communication Congress there was an insightful presentation for everyone interested in MacOSX's internals. I suggest to read through the corresponding paper, which is better than just the slides with no audio channel: Inside the MacOSX Kernel (pdf, mirrored)
Some interesting things:
- the kernel is called XNU (XNU is not Unix)
- although it's based on Mach (classical microkernel), XNU is not a microkernel (BSD unix stuff runs in kernel mode)
- the kernel is not based on FreeBSD, but mostly on 4.4BSD
- although it runs now on 64bit machines (eg. Intel's Core 2 Duo chips), only the user mode code can be 64bit - the kernel is still 32bit
- it allows subclassing of drivers (aka ToshibaCDRomDriver extends CDRomDriver)
- since Leopard MacOSX is fully POSIX-conformant and the only *nix around that does not contain any AT&T code
Posted at 07:10PM Jan 04, 2008 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[1]
13949712720901ForOSX - Java 6 on Leopard
Unfortunately Apple did not include Java 6 on their newest incarnation of Mac OS X, Leopard. They said they would do so two years ago, but they quietly dropped it. Instead they tried to make Java GUIs look more like the current Leopard-Aqua, which looks very nice to me. But this change was done to their Java 5 implementation. As a Java developer, I'd be happy to see if there will be a Java 6 on Leopard soon, like many others in the blogosphere.
If you are wondering about the title, see here.
Posted at 05:51PM Nov 03, 2007 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[1]