Apple on Justin Carmony

XAMPP for Mac - My Frustrations & Solutions

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:15:34 +0000

These last few days I’ve been trying to get XAMPP to work on my MacBook Pro these last couple of days and it has been frustrating! It seemed I kept running into more and more problems. For those who don’t know, XAMPP is tool for developers to run a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on your machine locally. I’ve been running it on my Windows machines for years, and I have been running my production servers on Linux.

Is Apple Blinded by Style?

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:58:39 +0000

I have to add my voice to Jason D. O’Grady from ZDNet’s “The Apple Core” about the new MacBook & MacBook Pro. Jason complains:

The thing that bums me out the most about yesterday’s MacBook announcements is Apple’s move to all-glossy displays. I’ll make no bones about it – I loathe glossy displays – especially on a notebook computer.

Apple will spin it that blacks look darker and colors are more saturated, blah, blah, blah. It’s a load of garbage. How are we expected to read the screen when the glare is practically blinding? (Don’t even get me started on fingerprints).

I'm a PC - Take That Apple

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:27:38 +0000

It is about time that Microsoft answers back to Apple’s “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” commercials. The ironic thing is I am writing this from my MacBook Pro. Apple for so long started to take little jabs at Microsoft’s Windows. Their first commercials we’re pretty straight forward, but lately they’ve been getting more misleading. Here is an example:

Give me a break. Windows can come bundled with everything Mac does. The only real program I’ve been impressed with has been Apple’s Mail.app. Other then that, there isn’t anything super fantastic about their other programs. iTunes is terrible as it keeps crashing my iPhone and Laptop. Here is another one that it super misleading:

Two-Way Sync between Google Calendar, Windows, OS X, and iPhone

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:43:36 +0000

Since my wife and I got our new iPhones, I’ve been playing around with a way unify our calendars. When we first got married we started to use Google Calendar. We have three calendars: mine, hers, and ours. Its great for staying organized, especially when we’re trying to organize two lives. It worked well for several weeks, except one thing…

We had to be on-line and on the browser to view our Google Calendars. Lot of the time when we needed to see our calendar we were with family or friends without computer access. Also, when I work I have twenty or so browser windows open, and it can be difficult to find my calendar in the mix. I also am biased towards desktop client applications when I’m using them every hour of the day. So I set out on my quest to find a way to sync across all the different mediums I use. Now that I think I’ve found my solution, I thought I would share my findings with the rest of the world.

iPhone SDK 2.1 - Another NDA

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:24:20 +0000

Until Apple change’s their attitude and policies, they will never be a Microsoft, Sun, or other monolithic technology company. Why? Their NDA on the new iPhone SDK 2.1 hinders developers seriously. They are so tight lipped about everything and are such control freaks that they will never replace Microsoft. If someone asked me today if I could magically snap my fingers and have Apple replace Microsoft, I would say “hell no.” Using their Laptops and Phones is one thing. Developing blindly with nothing but half-baked documentation and a NDA shoved down my throat is another beast.

DRM vs. Users - The Good and The Bad

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 05:46:54 +0000

The other day I posted on my thoughts of Rhapsody and Yahoo Music. It seems like there has been a lot of talk about how Yahoo Music users are going to lose their music they purchased through Yahoo. I want clarify a few things:

First, Yahoo Music users can transfer their account to Rhapsody. I believe this also transfers their purchased music. Now, if your account has lapsed, I don’t know exactly how it works. I still think there are lots of Yahoo Music users will get the short end of the deal, and some lose all their purchased music. I know there are worse things in the world, but here are my thought on DRM.They

Why Are Some Open Source Advocates Hypocrites?

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:49:58 +0000

Edit: This article was intended to specifically address certain types of of open source advocates, as stated in the title. This article is not intended to label all open source advocates as hypocrites. See comments by the author below.

Today, and almost every day, I’ll read an article about a proprietary computer company (Microsoft, Apple, etc) and “open source” technologies and communities. Every time I read them I see a large percentage of “user participants” in comments, responses, etc. that make me cringe.

Alright, an iPhone App that is definitly going te cause horror stories: Friend Book

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:22:40 +0000

… Is it me or is this idea just bad:

http://lifehacker.com/398228/friend-book-to-beam-your-iphones-contact-data-with-a-shake

Here is an except about what Friend Book does:

The coolest feature without a doubt is the new “Handshake”: put two iPhones running Friend Book together, shake them up and down, and the personal contact information of the phones’ owners will be beamed through the net to the paired phones. Handshake doesn’t work through a device-to-device connection, but instead passes location data back to Tapulous’ servers - two shaking phones in the same location means it’s time to swap information.

_CGRectZero Error with UITableViewCell

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:06:11 +0000

Preface

If you haven’t agreed to the iPhone SDK License Agreement and NDA, please ignore this post, or Apple might hunt you down with their lawyers… and what a horrible death that would be.

Problem

I keep getting a build error when trying to subclass the UITableViewCell

Solution

Add the CoreGraphics.framework to your project

Resource

Found my answer at the MacRumors forums.

Mac Keyboard Quirks - Making Mac more like Windows

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:16:00 +0000

Alright, the sound of dying Apple fanboys are crying through out the internet at the posting of this entry, but there are two things I can’t stand about the Mac:

Command & Control are switched - this is a major pain, especially when using a KVM to switch between a Windows, Mac, and Linux machine. It is just crazy!

Home & End - They don’t work like they should on every other OS. I’ve never really figured out exactly what they do on Mac, but on Windows they go to the beginning or end of a line.

Apple Needs to Stop Being Misleading - Viruses & Malware

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:09:00 +0000

The other day I was talking with my cousin and she asked how I liked my MacBook Pro. She told me all the cool things she had heard. A friend of hers said that with a Mac you don’t ever need to buy anything like “Norton” cause Macs don’t get viruses. She asked me if that was true and in reality it is a two part answer.

Here is the classic ad on Apple & viruses:

Why I love ecto

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:49:22 +0000

Ecto is a blogging program that I’ve come to love and use almost daily. It has taken the hassle out of using a web interface for writing to my blog. Here are several reason why I love to use it:

1. Images

I can quickly and easily take a screenshot, or drag and drop images into by blog posts without a single worry. Using Control-Command-Shift-3 I can take screenshots and paste them directly to my blog. Below is an image I took a screenshot of and pasted directly into ecto, completely removing any hassle.

OS X and Tabs - Skipping Drop Down Controls

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:33:15 +0000

This was driving me crazy for this last week. Since moving to my new house I’ve been without internet for a week. Comcast is supposed to come tomorrow to hook up my house, but until then I’ve been mooching of relatives’ WI-FI on my Mac Book Pro. This has forced me to use it for all of my work, including web development and graphics design. However, while tabbing through forms on websites, the tab would skip over drop down boxes. Why this is the default is beyond me. It is not user friendly at all. Fortunately I found through a website how to change it. Of course the OS X elite call this change simple and easy, but I’d think it’d be easy to just have it work in the first place.

iPhone SDK - Learning the Basics by Removing the Touch

Wed, 21 May 2008 03:12:28 +0000

After looking around for tutorials on the iPhone SDK, I’ve come to a revolutionary idea on learning the iPhone SDK: Learn it by programming in something else.

The iPhone SDK, which is basically Cocoa Touch, is based of the Cocoa framework, which is used to make programs for the Mac OSX. While the documentation for the iPhone SDK is limited, and outside resources are non-existent, information for the regular Cocoa framework is very large. There are tons of books, tutorials, videos, etc.

iPhone SDK DNA - A Frustrating Issue

Fri, 16 May 2008 21:16:06 +0000

I’ve been searching all over the internet for good resources on the iPhone SDK and tutorials. I know that many times that an SDK can sometimes be a little much to take in, and that it’s documentation usually is too comprehensive for simple tutorials. It also is very important to have 3rd party tutorials for places where documentation is thin.

The documentation on how to use the iPhone Interface Builder is non-existent on apple’s site, so I searched on the internet for some insight. I found links to several tutorials, but each tutorial listed something like the following:

A New Stage in Life: My MacBook Pro

Wed, 14 May 2008 06:14:01 +0000

Well, I’ve finally crossed the bridge I never thought I’d cross. My new laptop is a screaming new MacBook Pro. It is a 17" with the HD screen, 4 GB of ram, and a 7200 speed drive.

All I can say is that it has been an adventure. I’ve been going through the simple pains of learning how to use a Mac, but I think I’ve got it down for the most part. I can see why so many people like it, and in many ways it simplifies the way a user uses a computer. I think a lot of the different aspects of the Mac are well thought out, while others (like the one button mouse) are ridiculous. Fortunately I think I’ve got the most of it down.

iPhone & Vista 64-Bit.... Finally!

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:50:41 +0000

Here is the good news finally: iPhone Supports Vista 64-Bit. It’s about time, its only taken 6+ months to get a version of iTunes that works with Vista 64-Bit. I will say that Apple seemed to be the slowest people to adapt to 64-Bit for Windows. And for every apple fan boy who said downgrade to 32-Bit…..

I have 4 Gig Ram, which 32-Bit only works with 3.5 GB, and I’m probably going to drop in another 2 Gig in the very near future. (And, more and more computer vendors are moving to make 2 GB standard and 4 GB upper end, instead of the previous 1GB standard 2GB upper end)
Within 1-2 months all my latest software was updated and compatible with Vista 64-Bit. Most aren’t compiled 64-Bit, but they work perfectly like they would on a 32-bit machine.

To everyone who said get a Apple computer for 64-Bit machine….