vanderwal.net

OS X speed tweaks

Not that I need to tweak my TiBook with Mac OS X yet, but restoring speed to the OS X will be helpful to have within reach.

Expat help for Mac

An overview of expat will help tie the loose ends together. For those Mac heads reading you may also want to take in Life with CPAN by Jeremy Mates which puts together the missing pieces for Mac.

Need to get your hands on OS X packages. I have found this page many times and now mabye I can find it on a regular basis.

Omni Graffle out

Omni Graffle 2.0 for OS X is finally available. This includes free of charge Visual Vocab (listed in the pallette as "Garrett IA"). Omni Graffle is fast and easy to use. Now I don't think I will need Visio so much on the Mac.

Fox counters Microsoft's mistruths

After battling the crappy MS OS at work the past couple of days (it locked all users from copying files to the development server only solution was to create a new base directory and copy the old files in with the permissions set like they were on the previous folder), I was happy to see Kevin Fox' response to Microsoft's proposed hipocracy and lies. Microsoft should change their slogan to "We use fear to sell, because are products aren't worth they money you pay". The consolation is I get to come home to Mac OS X and have few if any problems, because it is UNIX at the core. [hat tip Dinah]

Apple Applause

Are you like me, a PC user for years that has just bought a Mac? Apple wants to hear from us PC to Mac converts. My biggest difficulty is the lack of keystrokes that echo the keystrokes on the PC for those of us that keep our hands on the keyboard and don't always reach for a mouse. Using keystrokes within forms in Web browsers has been a little bit lacking, but for all the great steps forward I will wait for this minor steps ahead. I wish that Real and others lacking foresight to build OS X versions of their software, would see this is the way the future of desktop and laptop personal computing. My Mac gives me so few problems it is amazing that one would call it a computer. The incredible battery life on a souped up TiBook shocks me at every turn. My frustrations with the PC are regular, but there are few frustration with the Mac. Actually the converse is true, I find amazement and great ease of use at nearly every turn.

Linux Journal offeers a great article about the state of Apple OS X written by Brent Simmons and Doc Searls (whom it was wonderful to meet at SXSW). The article gets to the core of what is great about OS X and the stability of the OS and the usability of the OS. Over the past week or so I have grown more iritated with Windows and its foibles of lack of detail in so many areas.

Apple OS X version tracker has a bunch of tasty treats I have been downloading all evening. A update to iTunes, Netscape 6.2.2, and HP printers have been a nice treat.

Apple behind the curtain

Soon we will find what Apple is hidding behind curtain number 1 at the Macworld Tokyo.

There are Quicktime clips of SXSW sessions and interviews, which includes one from the Josh Davis session. It is rough and not in context, but it does offer a good snippet of Josh and the magnetic dots.

O'Reilly Net continues its Apache on OS X series with integration of MySQL. This is one element I have not set-up as of yet and one that will make development of this site much easier and also make the development portable.

I am sitting in the Austin Airport using an 802.11b wireless connection to collect and read e-mail and to post here. The world of wireless connectivity has been kick ass this trip. The SXSWi guerilla wireless efforts by Cory (boingboing) Doctorow were greatly appreciated and widely used and many of us would offer our first child or at least a beer for his fine efforts.

Another observation of this trip is the insanely wide use of Apple laptops. They were everywhere at the conference, it was almost as if they were in the conference bag of goodies. Those of us on Mac had little problem grabbing wireless connections and were showing our pictures to others we had taken. By the end of the conference many of the Windows folks were cursing their non-compliant and non-easy to adopt laptops. Not only were the graphic folks using Apple, but the tech geeks were too (this is where I fit in, believe me). Even Doc Searls was Mac'n around. In the land of Dell, Apple proved to be king.

I am somewhat saddend to be heading home and leaving old and many new friends behind. SXSW is a place were passion for the Internet rules and sharing our passion, knowledge, and experience is what it is all about. Hair color, age, gender, skin color, or location is not important as the passion binds us together. We are all out to make the Web and Internet a better place to be. To a person we all have become much better people because of the free sharing and passion. Jack Vallenti and his trying to label us terrorists is not only poor sighted but a fat lie. We share to grow and learn. Jack only want to play his Anderson card and shred our reality. (There will be more later to clarify and to help you understand what I mean by these comments.) Liars and fear mongers are trying to steal the truth, but Austin let truth ring out. You bet your sweet bippy, I'll be back.

I love all those I met and whose paths I crossed and wish all safe journies home. Keep the passion alive.

Derek Story finally has posted his wide view of Mac OS X based on over 500 e-mails in response to an open question regarding how folks liked or disliked the new OS. Derek's write-up seems to do the broad spectrum justice. Me I love the OS and I am getting more used to it with each use. I switch between Windows 2000 and XP to Mac in the course of each day. I find less confusion based on which keyboard I am using that I did at the beginning. If I had to choose Windows or Mac at this point it would be Mac.

One thing about being a bi-OS kinda guy is that I now look for what OS software will run on. More often than not of late it is not easy to find. I guess I just assumed the Web was MS centric prior to my finding an OS I like much better. I never looked before and everything I downloaded ran. When I was running Linux I went to the Linux sites for software and the rest of the Web for MS.

It took Jish pointing to Araneae for this to dawn on me. Now I am wondering what is wrong with the Web sites with software that they don't tell you what OS their software will run on.

One more piece of the Mac OS X desire list has been filled in tonight with the Iomga driver set for OS X which gives me access to my USB Zip drive. Real Player for OS X and a functioning driver for the Zio card reader would complete much of my desires.