Archive for June 24th, 2008
Market for Original iPhones Looks Robust
News| No Comments »Apple has long been a poster child for the wisdom of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. With active trade in some of its discontinued products, such as the iSight camera (which regularly sells on auction sites such as eBay for more than the …
The Kool Kidz in Redmond are Macs
News| No Comments »Office 2008 for Mac has been selling “really well” since its launch in January, according to Sonny Tohan, CEO of Mac Business Solutions, an Apple specialist based in Gaithersburg, Md. “Microsoft finally started taking advantage of some …
O2 Offering iPhone 3G Contract Signups Prior to July 11th?
News| No Comments »Apple is set to launch the iPhone 3G on July 11th in 20 countries. Reports of the mandatory contract agreements at the time of iPhone 3G purchase have many worried about the logistics of executing this plan on launch day. When the original iPhone …
iPhone Finds the Magic Number
News| No Comments »As Pacific Crest consumer electronics analyst Andy Hargreaves notes, sales of both Apple’s iPod and Sony’s PS2 gamestation saw exponential gains in the wake of being offered below $200. Aidan Malley reports for AppleInsider on the …
Create aliases to icons via a Perl script
News| No Comments »Often I read the question “Where are all the icons on my Mac?” Here is the answer, in the form of a Perl script. Just copy and paste the below code into a new file, save it as something (findOSXicons) to a directory in your path, and make it executable (chmod 755 findOSXicons). Then use the usual techniques to start the script (i.e. calling it using the full or relative path). Here’s the code:
Password protect and encrypt Palm Desktop data
News| No Comments »If you use the Mac version of Palm Desktop software, you probably know that it does not have the ability to password protect itself. That has always irked me: I can password protect the data on my handheld Palm device, but not on the desktop side? Very lame. (The Windows desktop version does have built-in password protection (but not encryption — read below), but I can’t stand to use it. It’s just plain ugly software, as I suppose the Mac version would be, too, had Palm, and not Apple, originally designed it when it was Claris Organizer.)
Anyway, here’s a way to get your Mac Palm Desktop data protected using an encrypted disk image (EDI) (that’s my abbreviation, don’t google this expecting to find something). This is nothing revolutionary, though I haven’t seen it mentioned for use with Mac’s Palm Desktop before (the same concept has been discussed relative to the Windows version).
Of co…
10.5: A possible fix if X11 won’t launch
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I recently upgraded to Leopard after getting my hands on a MacBook (goodbye G3 iBook!), and was unable to use X11 from my clean install. After trying to reinstall X11 from my install disc as suggested in this hint, I still couldn’t use it. After looking at both the /System » Library » LaunchAgents » org.x.X11.plist, and the console errors…
6/21/08 11:16:35 PM org.x.X11[477] X11.app = /usr/X11/X11.app/Contents/MacOS/X11
6/21/08 11:16:35 PM org.x.X11[477] Unrecognized option: -launchd
…it became pretty obvious that the -launchd flag was the problem. …
10.5: Change the default X server DPI setting
News| No Comments »Starting with OS X 10.5, Apple made major changes to the included Xserver, which is now started automatically by launchd when required, and based on the Xorg server rather than on Xfree86, as with 10.4 and below.
In Tiger, it was possible specify the DPI while starting the Xserver, but for obvious reasons, that is no longer possible. I was unable to find any workable solution for microscopic fonts, until I read a thread on MacOS Forge that stated that the launchd auto-starter included in their community-supported Xserver releases actually just runs the startx command.
This is great news, because startx is a script that can be edited. So I installed the latest packaged build available from their website, then opened a Terminal window, and pulled up the startx script in a text editor: sudo nan…
Nokia Buys Symbian, Possible Google Android Delays
News| No Comments »Seemingly in a response to growing competition from Apple and Google, Nokia is buying out Symbian Ltd and will open its mobile operating system for royalty free use. Nokia will pay $410 million to buy the remaining 52% share of the company that it d…
Security management - Sophos warns Apple Mac users not to be …
News| No Comments »Sophos warns Apple Mac users not to be complacent about security as new Trojan horse surfaces.
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