Morpheed » Apple

The little Leopard laptop

Steven Sande — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Hardware, Portables, Hacks, How-tos, Odds and ends, Leopard

I can always tell when I'm bored, because that's when I think up some challenge for myself. The initial spark for this challenge came when I wrote a post a few months ago about how Paul O'Brien at Modaco had successfully installed Leopard on a Windows-based "netbook". TUAW's Mike Schramm further fueled the fire with this post about an Eee PC running OS X.

Netbooks are tiny laptops with a mini price tag to match. Many netbooks sell for less than $500, with 1 GB of RAM, either a 16 - 20 GB solid state disk drive or 160 GB hard disk drive, Wi-Fi, and a built-in webcam. When you consider that these little machines also weigh about the same or less than a MacBook Air, they're a bargain. However, they usually run Windows XP or Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and frankly I'd rather have good old Leopard.

Asus has been making netbooks for a while under the Eee PC moniker, while MSI (Wind), Acer (Aspire One), and even HP have jumped into this growing market recently. It wasn't until I received a direct mail catalog from Dell featuring the new Inspiron Mini 9 that I started thinking seriously about trying to load Leopard on it.

Despite the fact that I'm sure that Apple will announce a low-cost netbook soon, I ended up buying a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook to install Leopard onto. The rest of this post describes how I did it using instructions and files found at various Web sites.

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YouTube Click To Buy Links and iTunes

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:30:57 +0000

Yesterday the YouTube team announced via their blog that they would begin incorporating “click-to-buy” links which direct users to iTunes or Amazon.com alongside videos of select YouTube partners. According to the blog, the links are intended to help scratch that “I love this song/game, I wish I could buy it right now!” itch that viewers tend to get when viewing streaming content.

Should users really dig the new in-game video for “Spore”, for instance (and not be too put off by the DRM issues), they can click on the “Buy this item” link to open a link to the purchase page for the game at Amazon.com. Music videos featuring this link (like Katy Perry’s aggressively omnipresent “I Kissed A Girl”) will direct you to the song in the iTunes store, providing Apple yet another revenue stream.
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5 (Yes, 5) Landscape Email iPhone Applications Released

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:00:15 +0000

In what must be related to an internal policy decision on behalf of Apple, yesterday saw the release of five separate applications (Compose, TouchType, Sideways, Lettera, and Wide Email) that allow you to compose emails in landscape mode.

Each application boasts the ability to type out email text using the much more user friendly (especially for those of us with meaty fingers) landscape iPhone keyboard, which should dramatically decrease the need for rewrites. The apps are not themselves email clients, more like notepads with the ability to export to the iPhone’s native mail application.

While some of the applications offer different spins on the landscape typing trick (including faux-vintage typewriter styling and the ability to send as .PDF in Lettera), all these ponies are essentially giving the same show. Why the sudden flood? A batch release of apps with similar functionality like this points towards a bottleneck in Apple’s approval process, possibly caused by an internal decision on what exactly exactly constitutes “duplicat[ing] the functionality” of Apple’s own software.

With issues like cut-and-paste on the iPhone, Apple has seemed to favor an “Either we do it or no one can” type of attitude when it comes to developers seeking to to fill perceived gaps in functionality. The inability to compose emails or text messages in landscape mode has been yet another such disappointment among iPhone owners, along with things like the lack of MMS messaging and A2DP Bluetooth support.

The release of these applications is at least a step in the right direction, and provides hope that there are perhaps elegant and functional third party MMS apps just waiting for Apple decision makers to admit they can’t do it all themselves. And please legitimize Podcaster. Seriously.

Ten fun and mostly-free iPhone apps

Victor Agreda, Jr. — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store

Here are ten apps that won't annoy you (OK, Alarm Free might) and are either clever diversions or simply fun toys. All links take you to the App Store. Check out the gallery for a preview of everything I've mentioned. All of these were free when I first downloaded them, as I'm a terrible cheapskate, but several now cost between $.99 and $1.99, which isn't bad.

Ancient Wisdom
Basically just a database of quotes from three philosophers: Lao Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi and Sun Tzu. To make it a little more fun the developers make the quotes come from cute cartoon monkeys. Not exactly genius, but fun and the quotes are, of course, pure gold. Better than a Magic 8-Ball, I think.

Newtonica Player
This simple app has you spin a mesh ball to generate a "beat" that times the pace of the electronica music. There is a surprising amount of depth to the song, simple as it is. I was able to modify the tune a bit depending on my spinning, direction and how long I kept spinning. Terribly simple but fun because of those little tonal surprises.

Fireworks
Wherever you tap your finger a firework is launched to that spot and explodes. Nice little animations, plus it works in landscape mode and offers several backgrounds. The sounds could go further, and the fireworks aren't all that varied, but again, kids love it. Put it in "fireworks show" mode and keep it in your dock for a little fun. Note: at the time I originally wrote this Fireworks was free, but it is only .$99 now, which isn't too much to ask, I think.

xCube
This is just a Rubik's cube in iPhone/iPod touch form. But it is really easy to use, provides several customization options and has an undo feature. If you've ever wanted to learn how to solve the cube but didn't want a big cubic bulge in your back pocket, here's your answer. Note: again, here's an app that was free for a while, but is now $1.99 -- still cheaper than a new Rubik's cube, but more expensive than one at a garage sale. You make the call.

Gallery: Ten Fun and Free iPhone apps

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Run Mac desktops virtually on PC servers

MacOSXHints.com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:30:00 +0000

I'm the administrator for a group of creative artists and have a number of Macs (of most all flavors) running on our network. While I love OS X Server, it remains (for me) too hard and complex to do what I need. I want an easy path to manage all my Mac users on a central server farm (preferably HP servers, since that is what our IT department has in our data center). I've heard about Mac OS X server running virtually, but only on Xserve.

My quest for running OS X virtually only led to more frustration:

I don't really want to virtualize OS X Server.
I don't need or want to manage two licenses (one on the server and one on the client).
We don't have Xserves and probably never will.

Then Bingo! I found DiscCloud -- and it works perfectly, with the help of this hint, of course! Here are some tips to help get it running:

The first mistake I made was downloading the wrong version of VMware Server. You...

Fix a Remote Desktop 3.2.2 sharing issue

MacOSXHints.com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:30:00 +0000

Since upgrading to the latest version of Remote Desktop (v 3.2.2), I've noticed that many of the computers in the client list are not 'available.' Their status is listed only as 'Screen sharing available,' and that's all I can do ... all of the added functionality of Remote Desktop is no longer available.

In our research lab, we keep all of our client computers with the same setup, but somewhat frustratingly, only some of the clients were exhibiting this problem. Inspection of the Sharing setup from System Preferences revealed no difference between any of the clients.

I then checked the firewall settings on each client. We run the default OS X firewall with the "Set access for specific services and applications" setting. It was then that I noticed that the ARDAgent application was appearing in the list of specific applications, but it was set to 'block incoming connections' (only on the problem computers). Changing this back to 'Allow incoming connections' fixed the pr...

iPhone Tech World Tour Announced

David Appleyard — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:08:26 +0000

Apple have announced a new series of developer events aimed at those creating software for the iPhone. The event will be touring various locations in the USA, as well as Europe, Asia and India, starting with Paris and San Francisco on October 22.

Attending the event will be completely free, but Apple are warning that space is limited and requesting that those interested register early to avoid disappointment. You need to be registered as an official iPhone developer to attend (this is also free, and can be done online). According to Apple, the events will allow you to:

Learn about the tools and technologies you’ll use to create great iPhone applications, then work with the experts to optimize your code, refine your user interface, and apply the knowledge you gain from the sessions to enhance the capabilities of your iPhone application.

There are full details of the various events taking place throughout the event on the Apple site, which include Introductory Seminars, User Interface Design, Maximizing Performance and a Technical Q&A. Schedules differ slightly in non-US areas, presumably due to the varying size and scope of the events.

Interestingly, this has only been announced since the lift of the NDA ban on iPhone development. Before this, it wasn’t possible for developers to freely communicate their experience and ideas between each other (meaning that a conference dedicated to that very idea would have been impossible).

Hopefully, this new series of events and invigorated communication between developers will lead to a wave of innovative and feature-packed iPhone applications.

ExpanDrive 1.3 adds FTP support

Brett Terpstra — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Software

It's been a while since we heard from the developers at Magnetk, but they've just released version 1.3 of Expandrive with some new functionality. They're calling it a beta to be safe, but it seems to just be cautious labeling; 1.3 has been very stable for me thus far. As a quick review, Expandrive allows remote SFTP volumes to be mounted in the local filesystem (similar to what's possible with MacFUSE, but with several stability and speed improvements). The biggest change in version 1.3 is probably the inclusion of FTP and FTPS as an addition to the SFTP capabilities. While it may seem strange to some, there are certainly still circumstances where this could prove very useful.

Among the other features the developers are excited about is a new system for testing network state. One of the things I like about Expandrive is its ability to seamlessly maintain a connection on my laptop when I shut it, move it and change wireless networks. Well, that capability has been improved at the system level to better detect network availability, IP address and sleep state, and I'm seeing really stable performance with it.

A second appcast has been added to support beta releases (Magnetk says they have a lot of new stuff coming up), and users can switch to it in the Updates section of the preferences. Version 1.3 resets the 30 day trial period, so if you've previously tried it and passed, you'll be able to take the new version for a 30-day spin. The trial version is available for download ($29USD to register), and the upgrade is free for current users. Release notes are available here.

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Sources: latest MacBook Pro photo is the real deal

AppleInsider — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

A photo of a mysterious notebook leaked on the Internet Wednesday is indeed one taken of Apple's next-generation MacBook Pro casing, AppleInsider can confirm. Meanwhile, some additional photos of a similar, but still unauthenticated 13-inch notebook have since surfaced.

Flickr Find: A polished weight tracking app

Steven Sande — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Flickr Find, iPhone, App Store

Having been a connoisseur of fine design since the first Mac hit the streets in '84, I'm always attracted to apps that have that certain polish that is associated with Apple products. That's why I was impressed when I went out and looked at the Flickr pool for Weightbot, an upcoming iPhone app that does one simple thing elegantly -- it tracks your weight.

Designer Mark Jardine and developer Paul Haddad expect Weightbot to be released in the next couple of weeks, and it's an app I'd consider buying just for the looks! From the bathroom scale-like Weightbot mascot (at right) to the custom controls for entering your weight, it's apparent that Mark spent some time thinking about the look and user interface of the app, and that Paul was able to implement Mark's vision.

The custom date scroller is especially attractive and functional, making it easy to see at a glance when you entered your weight as you flick through the days. I look forward to seeing Weightbot and future iPhone apps from this team at Tapbots.

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