OS X Code (r,s)

Posted on Tuesday 27 June 2006 - Popularity: 14%

Yes, you heard right, I’ll be back soon and I’m not just talking about new posts, no no no, something bigger is coming. I have silently developed a new blogging web application that will completely replace WordPress, the one I’m using right now. I don’t want to reveal too much right now, just that it’ll be what you would expect from a real social web 2.0 Ajax weblog. The system is based on PHP, mySQL, xajax, Prototype and moo.fx. The PHP and some additional JavaScript is written from the ground up for this project and some of the mySQL queries join up to seven tables!

Ok, enough for now. Closed beta is on its way … I’ll let you know about how to register for it later on this blog, so don’t forget to check back soon.

Fredi

Posted on Tuesday 28 February 2006 - Popularity: 4%

As promised, here are some new PopulApp feeds. One gives you some overall stats from all submitted applications (top 50) and the other one gives you the same stats just for your own apps (top 25). Of course the overall stat still needs more users for some accuracy, so please support this service if you can, even if you don’t run an own weblog where you can display the recent app feed.

The overall stats: HTML & RSS Feed

To get the stats for your own apps just take your recent apps feed url and add ‘&show=stats‘ to the end of it. As always, if you run into any problems, please let me know.

Fredi

This product was rated 3.9 (9 votes) - Vote now!

Posted on Thursday 9 February 2006 - Popularity: 5%

Finally, a third OS X Code (r,s) application, but what is it? You may have noticed the recent app list inside the right sidebar of this blog, of course I’m not updating that list by hand, it’s automatically generated and updated from my two Macs. Basically there’s a small server-side API that can be pinged from an OS X application. The API just stores the names of the submitted applications and makes them available as an RSS feed. Everything the new OS X application by the name PopulApp does is send the recent app list you find under the Apple menu on your Mac to the server-side API. So if you want your recent apps listed on your blog or website, you just have to download PopulApp, make it a start object in the system preferences and than display the feed generated by the server-side API on your blog in the same way as you would display every other RSS feed.

Now why did I name it PopulApp (from popular applications) and not something like RecentApps? It’s because there’s more to come. Right now you can just access a feed with your recent apps, but soon you will be able to access feeds that list your most often used applications, your most used applications in a specific timeframe, the latest applications you’ve newly used and there will be the same feeds for all people that use this service, so it will be possible to have a list of the most popular applications out there. Because of that last feature, it would be cool if not only owners of a blog or website could use this app. While there are services like VersionTracker and MacUpdate that have lists of the most popular apps, all they really do is count the downloads and not really the applications that are in use. Often you download an app because the description sounds interesting, but than it just starts to collect dust on your hard drive. With PopulApp it will be possible to generate a list with the most used applications and how often they were used and not just how often the app was downloaded. Additionally it would become possible to generate recommendations based on other users that use partially the same applications as you, similar to the neighbours feature of last.fm. So start submitting your recent apps now to have a good list ready as soon as all those extra features become available, features that I’m sure even non-site owners will find useful.

There’s a second application that comes with the download, it shows you the exact url of your feed and there’s some additional information in the readme. If you have any questions or additional wishes, please let me know. [download link]

Fredi

This product was rated 4.5 (4 votes) - Vote now!

Posted on Thursday 12 January 2006 - Popularity: 100%

Flip4Mac is now free! Flip4Mac is a QuickTime component that lets you play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly with the QuickTime player and it allows you to view Windows Media content with any web browser that supports QuickTime files. Even better, this is now Microsoft’s official option to play WMV files on the Mac; in other words, you can completely uninstall and delete that terrible software that came by the name “Windows Media Player”!

read more | digg story

Posted on Tuesday 10 January 2006 - Popularity: 2%

Once again there will be no live feed of the Steve Jobs Macworld keynote later today in San Francisco, but of course there are sites with live updates. I will try to post updates as well, so check back in about four hours (from this post). Here are the exact times for your city in case it isn’t listed on the pic above.

In case I can’t post updates, here’s a list of other sites with live updates of the keynote: MacDailyNews, macteens, iPod Garage, SiteLink (dashboard widget), Mac Rumors, Ars Technica Infinite Loop (IRC), Uneasy Silence, AppleXnet, Engadget and macnews.de (German).

A replay of the keynote will be available at Apple’s QuickTime site, but I don’t know exactly when Apple will post the stream, most likely a few hours after the keynote has ended.

The Apple Store is back and Apple.com updated! Info sites for the new MacBook Pro, the new iMac and the new iLife 06 apps.

Here’s the new Intel TV ad and here is the keynote stream.

Live Updates:

• 45 minutes to go: Apple Store down!
• 10 minutes to go: Seating has begun!
• 1 minute to go: .Mac services has been withdrawn, maybe a big update together with iWeb? The next minutes will tell us more.
• 9:05: Blue curtains? Blu Ray maybe?
• 9:10: Steve Jobs on stage!
• 135 Retail-Stores, 26 millionen visitors in last quarter, some stores with over a billion sales volume!
• 2005 holiday, 14 million iPods sold! 42 million total! 32 million in 2005!
• 2005 holiday, total sales of $5,7 billions!
• iTunes: 850 million songs sold, 83% market share
• 8 million videos sold, new Saturday Nightlife content
• New iPod accessoire, a remote control with FM Tuner, can be controled from the iPod, $49
• Rest of keynote about Macs!
• Talk about Aperture … video demo
• Over 1500 Widgets, new Widgets (Google …), OS X 10.4.4 will be released today
• iLife 06! Music, Movies, Photos, Blogs. iPhoto performance update. New “one click” effects, bigger library … up to 350.000 photos!
• New “Photocasting” feature for .Mac members. Podcasting for iPhoto pictures, share them over the internet. People can subscribe.
• Demoing all the new .Mac and iPhoto features … of course you don’t need iPhoto to subscribe to a Photocast, it’s just an RSS feed after all.
• iMovie demo … new effects, new audio tools, animated themes, more than one project at a time, create video Podcasts, iPod export option …
• iDVD demo … better watch this later on the video stream
• Garageband demo … new Podcast Studio … speech enhancer, new effects … creating a Podcast demo, use iChat for interviews … Steve does “8 pound iPod with 10″ screen” joke on his podcast … 200 free jingles and effects for your Podcasts
• iWeb … themes, one click publishing to .Mac, RSS … iWeb demo … Ajax features! Every browser can view it, not just Safari … Ajax slideshow viewer … integrated with other iLife apps like iTunes, iPhoto … Steve publishes the Podcast he just created with iWeb … iWeb demo over
• 6 iLife apps, $79, available today … comes free with new Macs
• 1 million .Mac subscribers
• iWork 06 … some new features
• Intel Bunny suit guy walks out … Apple and Intel is ready … nights and weekends work … Steve thx Intel … today, first Intel Mac! … and it is … the iMac! … built in iSight … Front Row …
• Same design, same price … 2-3x times faster than old iMac G5 … Intel Core Duo … each core faster than G5
• 10.4.4 and all included apps are native Intel apps! … pro apps (Final Cut, Aperture …) will be universal in March … Quark unviversal beta released today
• All presentations of today done on new iMacs … Microsoft apps are currently using Rosetta, they work fine … Microsoft here to stay for at least another five years … Office demo (Rosetta) … they work hard on making their apps native
• Photoshop faster on the G5, but Adobe is preparing an universal binary version
• All Macs will make the transition this year
• One More Thing … 2 processors in every MacBook Pro … 4-5 times faster (Kevin Rose was spot on with everything!)
• 15.4 inch, built in iSight, thinner than the 17″ PowerBook … IR sensor, remote … screen bright as Cinema displays … new magnetical power adapter
• 5.6lbs. iSight, Front Row, Core Duo, 667 DDR bus, x1600 GPU
• 1.67GHz $1999, 1.83GHz $2499 … shipping next month

Fredi

Posted on Monday 9 January 2006 - Popularity: 2%

Macworld Expo San Francisco 2006 is going to start tomorrow and this time the rumors going around are really interesting. Now I’m not going to add anything new as everything I would like to see, maybe expect a WiFi iPod, was already posted on one of the big rumor sites and I don’t have any insider contacts which revealed anything to me, but for anyone that doesn’t follow those rumor and analyst postings, here’s a round-up of round-ups to get you prepared for tomorrow:

Think Secret: Intel and New iBooks, Media Mac mini, Digital Content Partnerships, iLife ‘06, new iPod shuffle, Apple Plasma TVs and a new iMac.

Perhaps most important to keep in mind, we would not be surprised to see at least a handful of announcements that as of yet have not been reported. While on some occasions Think Secret nails virtually all of Apple’s announcements in advance—such as last year—a few announcements each year usually fly under the radar.

Mac Rumors: .Mac Update, Plasma Viiv Displays, Intel Macs, new iPod shuffle, iWeb and iLife ‘06.

Apple will not be providing a live Quicktime stream of the event. Instead a replay will be posted following the keynote address. MacRumors.com will be providing live coverage if at all possible.

The Mac Observer: Updated iPod shuffle, Intel-based Mac mini and iBook, new iTunes Video Content and Consumer Electronic Devices.

Piper Jaffray analysts, Gene Munster and Michael Olson, have a positive outlook for Apple, and expect some exciting new products at Macworld Expo 2006. Both analysts expect Apple will remain healthy thanks to updates to the Mac platform, a focus on home and portable media, and strong iPod market share.

AppleXnet: New iPod Shuffle, Intel Mac mini, iBook

This may be the most unpredictable Macworld yet, and the most exciting. Don’t forget, live coverage will be available in four languages in #apple-x, #apple-x-de, #apple-x-jp, and #apple-x-es on irc.freenode.net. See you there!

The Business Online: Low-cost laptop and cheap iPod

Despite recent legal attempts by Apple to silence US-based website ThinkSecret, which has been predicting the imminent launch of a cheap laptop, US analysts believe Apple plans to unveil a new laptop this week.

ZDNet: Mac OS X 10.5, Intel PowerBook, iWork ‘06, iLife ‘06, Bluetooth remote control, AirPort Ultra, 1GB iPod nano, Intel Mac mini and a Widescreen Intel iBook.

It’s that time of year again, time to dust off the crystal ball and prognosticate about what Apple has in store for us at the big January love-in at Moscone. So before you lay your money down for that shiny new computer, here are Jason the Greek’s Vegas odds on Steve Jobs announcements for The Big Dance.

Macenstein: iLife ’06, iPod nano with video playback and storage increase, Intel iBooks and Mac minis, PowerBook speed bump, iWork spreadsheet program, smaller iPod shuffles in various colors and The Simpsons go to Macworld.

Obviously there will be stuff we missed, but these are the things we are most confident of. All in all there’s nothing to mind-blowing, yet any new iPod announcements are sure to get press attention and the love of Apple stockholders. In addition, the threat of the first Intel Mac is sure to make this one of the most covered Macworlds in recent memory. Because of all the free publicity, we think it is extremely likely Steve will have a fairly impressive “one more thing” this year.

Bloomberg: Apple Builds Proper, Lovable iPhone, Ditches Motorola Rokr

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future,” said Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1922 for his work on the structure of atoms. With that caveat in mind, here are some headlines you might find yourself reading in 2006.

And here is a nice article about Apple keynotes in general, “Behind the magic curtain” where Mike Evangelist tells the insider secrets of Steve Jobs grueling preparation.

Fredi

PS: FoxTrot comic by Bill Amend.

Posted on Friday 6 January 2006 - Popularity: 12%

Don’t get irritated by the small version number update, just have a look at the new features, there are literally worlds between version 1.1 and 1.2:

• New Ajax like interface, but don’t worry, it still works without any server scripts!
• Overworked design with icons/buttons
• View color highlighted functions and classes
• View comments for each function/class if available
• Cross reference scan for functions!
• Class functions are now highlighted as such
• Direct links to the main folders
• Extended graphical package statistics

Here are some sample scans: WordPress 1.5.1.3, Vanilla 0.9.2.6, MamboV4.5.2.3, phpBB 2, MediaWiki 1.5.2 and Coppermine Gallery 1.4.2. I will add more over the next days.

A scan normally takes a few minutes. However, because of the nature of cross-reference scans, the time needed for a scan grows exponentially with each new file that contains new functions. Really huge packages with nearly half a million lines of code and thousands of functions can take a few hours. As always, if you find a bug, please let me know. I have tested the new version with over twenty packages, but you never know. [download link]

If you don’t need cross reference scans, the old version is still available over here. The next version will have a feature to disable each function.

Oh and next week you’ll get all the Apple and development news of the last two weeks in a shorter form, so don’t forget to come back Monday.

Fredi

This product was rated 4.5 (6 votes) - Vote now!

Posted on Monday 19 December 2005 - Popularity: 2%

Five months ago I’ve started this OS X blog here, made 248 posts since than, added 713 links and now I’m finally taking a break over the next two weeks. 2005 was definitely an interesting year for us Mac users with a lot of interesting new software, hardware and not to forget all the Web 2.0 applications out there. First of all, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year and hope you’re all back next year to communicate on this place with me. There will be a few updates to this site till than and I will release the next versions of my two OS X applications Folder Clean-Up and phpPackageScan. Especially phpPackageScan will see a pretty substantial update that’ll hopefully make a lot of php developers out there happy.

This post here will stay at the top of the blog for a while, so if you have any wishes for this place, like more application features, more interview posts, more OS X applications made by me or whatever else you may like, post them in here. Btw, if you’re an OS X developer and you want to get interviewed, use the contact form and I will get back to you.

Fredi

Posted on Monday 19 December 2005 - Popularity: unranked

Definitely one of the most interesting and useful so called Web 2.0 projects this year was digg. The two creators, Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson were recently interviewed by Christian Einfeldt from the Mad Penguin site:

Mad Penguin: Hi guys, thanks for this interview. Let’s start by talking a bit about the history of Digg. We all know a conversation with Slashdot founder Rob Malda had some kind of impact on your decision to start Digg, but what events happened before that conversation that are part of Digg’s history?

Kevin Rose: I was working at TechTV for three and a half years. It was one of those things where I always had little side projects that I was running out of the house. At that same time, I was interviewing the Steve Wozniaks of the world, and obviously, Rob Malda, and we’d get just tons of guests coming in every week that were really changing things in the industry. I originally got into TV to set up all the machines behind the scenes, doing all the networking, and so forth. If they needed an installation of a router set up or Linux installed somewhere, that was my job. I had always wanted to do something different, and kinda get out of that, so I had these little side projects and this project started initially with MacRumors.com. They had something called “Page 2,” and although I wasn’t a huge Mac fan, I was into it, because they had some really cool stuff.

Some Page 2 stories that didn’t quite make the home page, were still really interesting. They were stories that had been submitted, but weren’t quite popular enough to make the front page news. That got me thinking about all the submissions that were coming in to Slashdot that no one could see. That’s really where I started thinking about how it would be nice to give that control back to the community.

Great to see that the Mac community was one of the main sources for the initial idea.

read more | digg story

Posted on Friday 16 December 2005 - Popularity: unranked

From the Widget Rights Resource Center:

Widget rights are those basic standards without which widgets cannot live in dignity. To violate widget rights is to treat that widget as though it’s not a widget being. To advocate widget rights is to demand that the widget dignity of all widgets be respected.

The Dashboard is nothing else as a prison for widgets, mostly for widgets that did nothing wrong. For only $19.95, Amnesty, an application for OS X, removes those boundaries on your Mac forever (30 days for free)! Some comments from recently freed widgets:

“A whole new world opened for me after I was released from my prison. For the first time I’ve seen the desktop in all its clarity. It was such a beautiful experience to explore all the new possibilities out there in the free world. I was able to scale myself, to rotate myself … I was even able to make me transparent. I really love the free world and hope that all my other widget friends get released as well.”

“I was not only free, I was for the first time able to group-up with other like-minded widgets, to move with them through the new world and experience all the other cool things out there. I’ve even seen a completely different species of widgets out there, Konfabulator widgets. However, they didn’t seem to be very happy right now, they told me something about a company called Yahoo and how they didn’t treat them right.”

Amnesty even works for OS X 10.3 and there’s a free Amnesty Screen Saver, pretty cool if you ask me.

Fredi

This product was rated 4.3 (8 votes) - Vote now!

Posted on Friday 16 December 2005 - Popularity: unranked

Apple Matters has an interview up with the search and Google expert John Battelle. The interview itself isn’t that interesting, but maybe someone should tell this guy to check his Mac:

Hadley Stern: Is there anything you think Apple could learn from Google? Anything Google can learn from Apple?

John Battelle: Don’t get me started! I have to say, the most frustrating thing about Macs is the willingness to crash and restart. Yeah, I know that was supposed to go away with Tiger, but it has not. And man Microsoft Office is so terrible and non-standard and bloated and buggy, it’s hard to know where to start.

But as to what Apple might learn from Google, I’d say experiment a bit more. It’s feeling a bit monolithic over at Apple lately - it only comes out if it’s just so.
Google could learn how to handle relationships with the media and entertainment world from Apple.

Willingness to crash and restart? I haven’t had to restart one of my Macs for years, I can’t remember any such problems since the early days of OS X, and I’m testing a lot of software on my machines, many that aren’t even close to being mature releases. I’ve googled some different search terms to find anyone else that has the problems he describes, but wasn’t even able to find one. To me this sounds a lot like he has an isolated hardware problem, maybe an unstable RAM chip, a loose contact somewhere or something like that. Maybe Apple should send this guy a new Mac or we wont get any of those Google tools for our Macs.

Fredi

read more | digg story

Posted on Friday 16 December 2005 - Popularity: unranked

I don’t think this needs a special day, but well, at least it makes people remember that they should support the people that make great, free software for them, so here you go:

FreeMacWare.com would like to invite everyone to join us in Developer Appreciation Day, December 16th, 2005.

In an effort to show our appreciation for all the freeware developers, please join us in making a donation to the developer of your favorite freeware. It doesn’t have to be much. Even if you give $5, it will show appreciation for their work and let them know you’re thankful. And if there are many donors, it could add up for them this Christmas season. It may not be how some people encourage developers, but we think that it will let them know that their work is used and enjoyed by many.

Guess I’m one of those Freeware developers, but don’t send me money, link to my tools so other OS X users become aware of them … of course only if you like what I do.

read more | digg story