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The bundle that came for free

MacHeist did it again!
Usually their app bundles typically deliver a dozen Mac applications at a significant discount.
The latest bundle is even more affordable: it delivers you 6 Mac applications ($154 value) for Free!

* Mariner Write requires 500,000 total bundle participants to be “unlocked”.

My favorites?

I love WriteRoom (in fact I’m writing this very post with WR now) for its simplicity and ingenuity: it’s really “distraction-free” writing – with some pluses.
You get a Matrix-like editing screen that’s really good if you need to concentrate only on writing – and you ought to!

Since I’m an avid Twitter user, Twitterrific is a valuable tool!
Just like WriteRoom, you get a full-featured Twitter window that requires very little system resources, stays quietly in the background, allows you to perform all Twitter operations.
(regular price for this jewel is $ 14.95 – for free is a steal!)

I’m intrigued by ShoveBox and still have to fully exploit its features.
I love the idea of being able to stack up all tiny data (URLs, products, single news, snippets of code) that I get into all day.
Hope Shovebox does it in a neat way as it promises: more on this will follow!

Click there to download this free bundle offer from MacHeist but hurry up, offer end November 12th 2009!

(Each application offered represents full licenses.)

Remember that free is the perfect number!

I’ll leave the boring economic & stock details to those really interested into this [so click here to read more Apple stock news], but Apple’s shares got up to $ 205.04 – super-atmospheric price!

For us, geeks, Mac-users and -lovers, what’s more important?

New products, of course!

On Oct 20th Apple introduced so many new produts and updates I barely can name all of them here, so let’s get a list to begin.

new iMac, it’s that simple: 21.5 and 27 inches display, new CPUs up to Core i7 Quad processors, up to 16 GB Ram (from the 8 Gig previously allowed). Simply gorgeous!
Several built-to-order options for Graphics cards, CPU, hard disk units available.
new MacBook: white policarbonate chassis but with unibody construction style, multitouch trackpad, 13.3 Led display.
new Magic Mouse: almost an iPod touch or a multi-touch trackpad – in a mouse! All the mouse surface is smart enough to keep track of your gestures!
Mac Mini: despite all rumors (and death bell tolls) it’s still alive – and fine! The 2009 Mac Mini sports a faster processor, twice the RAM, energy-saving features and a lot more!

A product I’m really interested in is the Mac Mini with Snow Leopard.
A special edition Mac Mini fully loaded with 4 Gigs of RAM, two 500 GB hard disks and pre-installed Snow Leopard Server with special remote management features.
Right now it’s the best way (and the most affordable yet) to get a great Mac server for your Home/Office and to fully integrate PCs and Macs!

Most Apple product should be available by the time you read this or eligible for pre-order; here are some prices:
Apple iMac 21.5-Inch starts at US $ 1.199
Apple iMac 27-Inch starts at US $ 1.699
Apple MacBook available for US $ 999
Apple Magic Mouse available for US $ 69
Apple Mac mini goes starts from US $ 599
Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server (unlimited license) is available for US $ 999.

It’s been a month today since I installed Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro 15″ unibody (late 2008) with 4 GB of RAM.
Final judgement?
It simply works, and slightly better indeed!

A few features I loved and checked with ‘real life’ test drive (on a unibody MacBook too, thx Alex!):

Installation process

Installation process is truly pain-free and foolproof: no fear, no complex settings, no need to be OS X-skilled! Just put in the Snow Leopard DVD, double click and wait!

Installation time

Installation time: it took less than 30 minutes on the MBP and a little more on the MB.
I guess the worst part of it goes with the slowness of DVD read cycles.

Don’t touch my settings!

All settings were preserved, no data loss, no settings loss!
I found each and every icon, Finder settings, Safari cookies, documents and application history…
Just as I switched off Leopard and switched it on again: apparently no sign of 10.6 intervention!

Blazingly-fast boot time

Boot time: my MBP now takes 45″ (yes, that’s 45 seconds!) from ‘pressing the ON button’ up to ‘full operating computer’ with a desktop that’s (still, my fault) cluttered with icons! With Leopard, as far as I can recall it took at least 1’40″…
On the MacBook it takes a little more, going near to one minute to get a fully working Mac.
Try that on a Win-based PC 😉

(Disk) Space: the final frontier

Before installing Snow Leopard on my MBP, I managed to get 17 GB of free space (out of the 250 GB size of the internal HD). After installing Snow Leopard, free disk space jumped to 25 GB!
It’s the first time ever in my (computer) life I ever see an operating system upgrade that frees (that much) space!

Browser wars

I confess… I’m a hungry Firefox user with tons of FF windows and tabs always taking up more CPU % than what’s available 😉 and I’m used to Safari just as a second-choice browser (work with a lot of FF plug-ins, BTW).
Now that Safari is the only (AFAIK) 64-bit browser available on my Mac, I see that the same amount of opened web sites on both browsers gives Safari a clear edge over FF!
CPU % and memory usage is a lot more efficient!
I guess here’s where Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) gets nasty and makes the difference.

Anyway, Xmas wishlist: please, bring me Firefox 64-bit!

Airport status menu

At last, the Airport status menu gives the only information a Mac-road-warrior needs: Wi-Fi signal strength before attempting to hook a wireless network, besides the usual “lock” sign stating a closed/password-based wi-fi hotspot.

Which applications dislike Snow Leopard?

Until now, only Chromium (a not-so-official Mac porting of the Google Chrome browser) refused to launch and closes immediately.
I’ve been checking this useful list (http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/) against 10.6-incompatible software and found just a few notable missing titles.

Hardware support

All the previously supported hardware still work with Snow Leopard.
Even my phone carrier HDSPA USB key from an obscure Taiwan company with almost indie drivers (rated for 10.5.x only) and vanishing support has been working from day one.

Suggestions

Any operating system upgrade should be done with a little planning, even on a Mac.
I love SuperDuper ease of operation and power: it allows you to almost replicate a fully working system on multiple drives.
If you need a proof of this, check Ken Rockwell’s blog and his “Free New Computer” post where Ken explains how he managed a disk upgrade on a Mac Quad G5 (not Intel!).

Conclusions

Go for it!
For less than US $ 30 you can get yourself not only the very latest operating system, usually a tech-geek desire, but a really useful and powerful way to revive your system, so go and grab a copy of Snow Leopard.
We’re not expecting miracles from Snow Leopard making older Intel-based Macs fly like an 8-Core Mac Pro, but at least you’ll get someting that fully exploits your existing hardware, makes a better use of available space and… eventually frees you from staring at a boot screen.

Starting today, Mac OS X Snow Leopard is available for shipping.
Current Mac OS 10.5 Leopard users are eligible to upgrade to Snow Leopard at the very low price of $29.

Snow Leopard is a truly exciting addition to the Mac OS X line, with half the footprint of previous versions, great new features in Expose & Stacks, quicker Time Machine backup, and faster wireless network interaction. It’s the world’s most advanced operating system, finely tuned.

Quicktime X and 64-bit support just to name a few features.

I’ll be checking ’em out very soon and report about them!

Terminal usage shouldn’t deserve a boring reputation: here’ one more reason!

ASCII art has been with us as long as we’ve been using computers, and there’s a lot of great ASCII animation out there. How about watching the original Star Wars in ASCII animation?

A telnet server out there on the Internet serves up this amazing adaptation.

Just enter telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl and hit return.

You’re definitely right: it’s Star Wars – Episode IV: A new hope!

The guy behind this masterpiece is Simon Jansen: kudos Simon!

Feel lazy?
Get here and watch ASCII-Star Wars in video (losing a lot of the fun…)

By the way, this is version of Star Wars doesn’t need any video codec and is fully compatible with any OS (maybe a Commodore 64 with suitable TCP/IP stack too!).

The AdSense Notifier add-on for Firefox has always been one of my favourite extension for FF.

Starting from Firefox 3.0 although, it had several problems.

Now, with FireFox 3.5 release things have gone even worse; moreover its developer, a guy named Allen G. Holman AKA Mincus, has no longer supported its creations nor updated it blog: where are you Allen?

So, no more support from developer, Firefox 3.5 no longer installing it: what else? Living with no Adsense notifications?
No way!

So… I came up with a solution and a way to get it running like before with some help and workarounds both on Mac OS X and Windows.

First let’s get back to basics.

Here is where it all started: AdSense Notifier add-on for Firefox, and here’s the author’s web site Mincus Code.

The first help I got was LancelHoff’s blog which give some good instructions on how to operate on XPI add-on packages.
[thanks Doug Poire AKA dcphosting_services for posting it on Mozilla.org!]

Let’s open it: call Gil Grissom for Adsense.XPI!

Step #1: in first place, get yourself a copy of Adsense.xpi and save it on your desktop.

[Note all instructions from now onwards will be the same for Mac OS X and Windows]

Step #2: rename the downloaded Adsense.xpi file as Adsense.zip and unzip it as usual, preserving directory structure, in a directory called Adsense.

This is the directory structure that you should see:

Step #3: fire your favourite text Editor (on the Mac I’m in love with Smultron) and open the Install.rdf file within the Adsense directory;

Step #4: check line #33 and replace the Firefox version number according to the line below:

<em :maxVersion>3.5.*</em>

we need to fool Firefox into believing that this plug-in is compatible with any 3.5.x version.
[Note: if you aren’t willing to get into this when FF 3.6.x comes out, just put a 3.6.* version number and forget about it!]

Step #5: open nsAdsensenotifier.js under the Components directory with the text editor;

Step #6: look for line 103, replacing the following line of code:

var passwd = "";

with this code (replacing your actual password):

var passwd = "password";

This step will eliminate the annoyance of being asked again the Adsense account password;

Step #7: save all text files and close text editor;

Step #8: zip (or compress) the Adsense folder into Adsense35.xpi: beware not to include the Adsense path into the zip file! That is: no sub-folders or it will not work…

Check here the correct zip file directory structure:

Step #9: open Firefox and uninstall any previous Adsense notifier; restart Firefox;

Step #10: open the Adsense35.xpi directly from Firefox (CMD+O on the Mac or Open File – CTRL+O on Windows) and proceed as usual installing the plug-in.

There you are! Adsense notifier is up and running as usual!

Hope this helps you as much as it helps me!

Notes

I found this notable quotation:

“Anyone who uses Google ads on their blog and web site spends a lot of time checking in to see how they are doing. This has been called GAD or Google Adsense Disorder, and I definitely suffer from it.”

I definitely sign it!

Further readings: about GAD – Google Adsense Disorder and the notifier.

Please note: The following fix worked for me, however, I am offering no warranty for this information. Proceed at your own risk.

Let’s face it, when it comes to quick-and-dirty missions, there’s no better place than Terminal.
Provided you know how to use it, what to use and which parameter to feed in, you can do almost anything…

Take wget for example, that incidentally is not part of the standard stuff that Mac OS X comes with.

You can bypass almost any browser problems, you just give it a feasible URL and, boom there you are.
It’s by far the best way to get files, updates, SVNs or stuff like that.
It’s also the best way to hack your way through embedded flash videos so popular these days.

Syntax at the lowest level goes like this:

wget [URL]

You can specify a horde of options in between, output dir, HTTP auth options and so on.
My favorite is -b which runs the process into background-land and gives me command line back.

Fact is, as most *nix commands you get source code and so need to compile it.
Here’s a tip: Quentin Stafford compiled a wget so you get binaries comfortably running with Leopard.

Check his page on wget here and download wget Mac OS X-ready binaries from here.

Stop all rumors!
Apple has just updated Mac Pro, iMac and Mac Mini (after a few hours of down-service for world-wide online Apple Store).

Mac Pro -> new versions with 4- and 8-core, both with a redesigned interior,
iMac -> four versions: from 20″ (now US$ 1,199) and three 24″ versions (all with 4 GB RAM),
Mac mini -> all rumors confirmed: it’s totally revamped with NVidia 9400M graphics, in two models.
The new Mac mini sports two outstanding features:
– it’s the “greener” products from Apple ever (less than 13 W of power when idle, Apple says)
– has a crowded backside with 5 USB 2.0, DVI and mini-DisplayPort (and yes, FireWire 800!).

Long-tim friend and Mac-Guru Lux has just received his brand new MacBook Pro 17″ unibody and couldn’t stand booting anything but and 8 GB behemoth!

Here’s the complete upgrage process, taking the unibody MacBook Pro 17″ from the out-of-the-box 4 GB RAM up to full 8 GB!

[ for truth’s sake: Lux’s MBP 17 comes fully equipped with the top 2.93 GHz processor and top 320 GB @ 7200 RPM ]

First screw…

… putting them all together (tiny screws slip easily away)

Off we go! Three bigger screws and a bunch of little ones and you can finally see what’s inside.

And here we go… taking off the lid!

A full top view, from top left, clockwise: SuperDrive DL, twin fan, hard disk 320 GB @ 7200 RPM (!) and (last but not least) the huge non-user-replaceable battery!

… side view…

The battery seal.

Upper top, the RAM dual banks.

Again the RAM banks.

No RAM at all!

Again, no RAM at all!

two 4-Gigs RAM modules fitting!

Closing the cover and…

Here’s the result: “About this Mac” reveals amazing details!

Check all pictures here.

Have you been to Mars when Apple early this January announced the new MacBook Pro 17 unibody?
Time to refresh your memory, since it’s now available!

At first glance, you could easily mistake the new 17-inch MacBook Pro for its predecessor, the legendary 17-inch PowerBook G4 ( ; January 2006 ). The new model has roughly the same dimensions—at 15.4-by-10.4-by-1.0 inches and 6.8 pounds, it’s a shade wider, but a tenth of a pound lighter—and it retains the familiar aluminum enclosure and sleek design.

Inside, however, the new top-of-the-line Apple laptop incorporates not only a completely different processor, but a slew of other changes you should consider before deciding whether—or when—this is a machine for you. (you should…)

The MacBook Pro 17″ desktop replacement of Apple can also be classified as a multimedia notebook, because of its 3.1 kg and only 2.59 cm height.

Feature list at a glance:

Some of you may still remember the 1984 tv-spot (still available here).

The Macintosh 25th birthday comes in a moment critical for world economy at large, in a moment when iPods and iPhones are best known Apple products, yet the best moment for Mac OS X (still the best OS around) and MacBooks (Pros as well) are almost everywhere and recovere from single-figure market share of the 90s.

I’d just like to share Larry Magid best wishes for a 26th Mac anniversary for Steve.

On the prosaic side, Alan Zeichick post is about money – and Mac.

Last word for CNN’s story: Apple fans mark 25 years of Mac devotion.

So far I read Rafe Needleman posts on Cnet News with much interest and somewhat agreed with his point of view.

This time I don’t.

His recent post Switcher’s lament: The case against Mac has several points that may ignite discussions from die-hard Mac lovers as well as from Mac-switchers.

An example: iTunes library moving from Windows to Mac OS X.
I’ve been either too lucky or dumb, but I’ve been moving music libraries back & forth since, say, iTunes 6.
Didn’t even relied on specific apps, just copy and wait for iTunes to rebuild its library on target PC/Mac.

The User interface part of the post is simple nonsense: it’s Mac OS X interface. Period. Sometimes Windows interface is not so consistent, isn’t it?

Skype on Mac auto-starting? Happy about running Vista under Boot Camp?

I’m thrilled.
As I wrote, previous posts by Mr. Needlman made sense to me, but this family tragedy tale about a couple of MacBooks mistreating a couple of grown-up professionals doesn’t compute.

I’d like to know your opinion about this.