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Posts tagged with "mac"

Control Your Mac From iOS Using Dropbox And Applescript→

Control Your Mac From iOS Using Dropbox And Applescript

So in the past few weeks a bunch of text editing apps for iOS have been released that use Dropbox to sync with your desktop computer. I’ve been really liking Plaintext, and was wondering what I could use it for besides just plain writing text…

And then I remembered Folder Actions, which are an OS X feature that lets you set an applescript to run whenever a file is added to a folder (or deleted).

All you need is remember some Applescripts.

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Free Your Mac’s Media Keys from iTunes→

Free Your Mac’s Media Keys from iTunes

The tricks we used before were far less than ideal, requiring you to start up Quicktime in the background, or do some serious hacking to system files within iTunes.app. NoMitsu has created a one-click installer that patches the remote control daemon, the app responsible for managing the media keys. Just download the patch and double-click on it. After entering your password, your media keys will be free from iTunes’ grasp.

I installed this and it works perfectly.

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What If iChat Was One Window?→

What If iChat Was One Window?

Adium and several other clients are already part way there—they combine all the services into one list, but they still typically show one window for friends, another for open chats and a third for file transfers.

I’m finding more and more that the best way to design desktop apps is to imagine you’re building them for iOS.

Clever UI concept by Bjango.

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An API To Keep Track Of User Position in Twitter Timeline→

An API To Keep Track Of User Position in Twitter Timeline

I use Hibari on my desktop, Twitter on my iPhone, and rotate between Twitter and Twitterrific on my iPad. And the experience of Twitter client hopping sucks. That’s because when I switch from one to the other, no client has any idea where I left off in the other. I either skip chunks of tweets against my will, or need to scroll through oodles of tweets I’ve already read.

There’s a better way. And it shouldn’t be on the customer’s side to deal with. This is a problem Twitter developers can and should solve.

I’m proposing — and hosting — an API through which different Twitter clients could painlessly keep track of where users are in their timelines.

Developers: please start supporting this.

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My Must-Have 25 Mac Apps

Over the years I’ve had to mess with many OS X installations, backups, failures and restores. That’s just the usual life of a OS X geek in a place where people are scared of leaving their Windows PCs, but really would like to get a Mac. In fact, I’m quite proud of all those friends of mine I’ve managed to convince to get on the other side, but I’m even more proud of them because now they’re teaching the basics to someone else. This is the usual chain of events in a life of a standard OS X geek.

Having to deal with installations and restores, I’ve come to the point where I know exactly which apps to install depending on what that user needs, and how. A good friend of mine was so used to Firefox I had to bet (I’m serious) that he would like Safari more if only he gave it a chance. But that’s not the main story here. Over the years I created some sort of personal list of the first apps I install on a fresh new Mac every single time, right after the Network preferences are set up and ready to go. This list, which by no means used to exist on a physical side, is now embedded below for future reference (either mine, or my friends’) and you, who may find a couple of hidden gems in there.

It’s not a huge roundup, and it’s not for every one. These are not my favorite apps: these are first 25 Mac applications I install every time I have a fresh OS to play with, and they’re pretty great. You can call them my must-haves. Read more

iTunes: Apple’s Weakest Link→

The problem is that iTunes is now a pretty ancient piece of software. When it first appeared in 2001 as a reworking of SoundJam, a program Apple bought from a Californian company in 1999, it provided an elegant way of doing just one thing: getting songs from CDs on to your computer’s hard drive. But over the years, more and more functions have been added: first the management of iPods, then the Apple online store. Then iTunes became the conduit for managing one’s iPhone. The latest addition is the Ping social-networking function.

This is what the industry calls “feature creep” on an heroic scale.

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