Apple

When friends asking me for the usability concept of MacOS X, i just say "Do the most obvious". I should follow the tip myself ... i just learned how you get the menu bar from one monitor to another in a multi monitor setup: Just moving the white bar in this window to the blue box representing the correct screen. To add insult to injury: It's even written in in the window ... but who reads documentation or help texts directly in the window

That's too obvious for a unixoid mind ...

Mike Swingler of Apple announced yesterday, that Apple has started to contribute to the OpenJDK project:

I'm very happy to let you know that today we made the first public contribution of code to the OpenJDK project for Mac OS X. This initial contribution builds on the hard work of the BSD port, and initially has the same functionality. Today's contribution simply modifies the build process to create universal binary, and produces a .jdk bundle which is recognized by Java Preferences and the JVM detection logic in Mac OS X.

You will find a list of important links in regard of this project in the announcement mail.

There is an interesting joint statement about the future of Java on MacOS X:

Oracle and Apple today announced the OpenJDK project for Mac OS X. Apple will contribute most of the key components, tools and technology required for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X, including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack and the foundation for a new graphical client. OpenJDK will make Apple’s Java technology available to open source developers so they can access and contribute to the effort.

One question isn't answered by many people wanting multitasking for the iPhone/iPad: Why does an device need multitasking, when the wetware in front of the device isn't able to do multitasking at an significant scale? Just observe normal users in their habits of using computers. I assume most of them wouldn't notice, when you would modify the scheduler in their operating system in a way that the window in focus gets all computing power, as long as you give some additional cycles to the mp3-player.

There is a neat trick in the case you have an serial adapter, but no terminal programm at your disposal, your mobile data plan don't allow a larger download. Well, just open a shell:

screen /dev/tty.<whatever>

At least for a Sun ILOM serial mgnt port it works right out of the box.

PS: Don't use the original MacOS X driver for Prolific based USB/Serial converters, the open-source variant is a much better alternative (implements BREAK, installer doesn't freeze) . You can download it from the sourceforge project page.

I really like to give presentations. Thus i'm looking at new devices from the perspective "Do they make my life easier in regard of giving presentations?". And somehow i believe the Apple iPad could be the ultimate presentation device on-the-road. More than enough storage for my presentations, there is an Keynote version on the device to make last-minute-changes with a display large enough to make changes, with a Dock2VGA cable you have 1024*756 (pretty much the standard for meeting room beamers) and it's lightweight. Would be nice to carry around just such a device instead of a full notebook. I want one

Okay, Apple dropped the ball, but that doesn't mean, that no one else is capable to play it: ZFS for MacOS. At the end ZFS is opensource and it's available with a license compatible (CDDL) to the one of MacOS. So this was an obvious step after Apple's decision.

I really like Robin Harris' Storage Mojo blog, but in this case, but i'm thinking in his article Why did Apple drop ZFS he is wrong, when he thinks that the CDDL may posed a problem: Mac OS X uses Dtrace for a while now and it's licensed under the CDDL as well. So this can't be the reason. I assume some technical problems, but at Apple this includes "Steven didn't like the graphical user interface". Considering that this was a release concentrated at the inner workings of MacOS X, they didn't wanted to introduce a completely new feature to reduce potential instabilities because of newly introduced code. I don't even think a GPLed ZFS would help, given that a GPLed ZFS would introduce the same kind of problems for MacOS X than a GPLed Linux has with the CDDLed ZFS.

It doesn´t look as bad as the the battery of Kris. But ... well ... it´s the second battery in the life of this MBP. I got this battery in November 2008.

Hell ... this will be an expensive vacation: Apple stores selling iPhone 3G without a contract. At least the journey to the US is well timed ... By the way: Is there a halfway decently priced pre-paid data plan for mobiles available in the US?

Omnigraffle is one of my favourite tools. It´s one (if not the most important) reason, why i prefer to use MacOS X. People knowing Omnigraffle recognize at 10 miles distance, that most of my figures in my presentations were made with Omnigraffle.

The Omnigroup made an addition to their portfolio. I wasn´t aware of the program before, but i think it you will see the results of this new tool in my presentations, too: OmniGraphSketcher. It´s a tool with only one job, doing excellent looking graphs with a few mouse clicks.



Really fscking easy to create a graph ... the demo screencast is really worth a look and my own test took me fewer than 30 seconds. I´m impressed.



PS: The data in graph is nonsense ...

The Onion reports about the introduction of the new MacBook Wheel:



This is the notebook for the twitter generation - you don´t want to type in messages longer than 140 chars this way ...

Looks like i´m using too many small tools ...



from right to left: Spotlight, Clock, Language Setting, Volume, Airport, Bluetooth, Monitors, Spaces, Time Machine, PPPoE, Dial-In networking, Accessability, iSync, Growl, Caffeine, Twitterific, Nokia Uploader, Adium X, Jing, Camouflage, smcFancontrol)

The days of the Minority report alike GUIs getting nearer - gadget application by gadget application. FluidTunes (written by Majic Jungle Software) for example allows you to control your iTunes with gestures in front of your iSight: