As easy as Apple Pie

A friend told me he had dropped his notebook PC, and it was going to cost more to repair than it was worth. I advised: Get a Mac.

I started looking around for some information for him. Why would the Mac benefit his Computer Science course? Why would the Mac be more reliable? What does he need to know about compatibility? One of the articles I read was a blog post by The Shepherd’s Sons called “All Signs Point To Apple”. In the post it describes a Windows man through and through and how his simplification of Technology had lead him to Apple. “It just works” is the Mantra all Mac people have heard.
I told my friend about this, to show him its not such a leap, but more of an awakening. “Four other family members had started using Macs” I said, and it’s true. They love them now.
I also didn’t want him to get lumped with Microsoft’s Vista like other friends and family had - some so bad they had even gone back to Windows XP.

A commenter on “All Signs Point To Apple” also points to the piece by David Pogue attempting to explain the Macintosh Surge effect. It is a good follow up to try and understand this increase seen in recent months.

Personally? I think it just sells itself by word of mouth. Thats how I pass on my experiences with Macs. Maybe you too should try one out.

How the mighty have fallen

Alexander Downer spent 11 years as the foreign minister of Australia. During his tenure, had he been visiting Melbourne he would have had his cars, his people and arrangements for venues visited. Now it’s a bit different.

This morning I almost bumped into him on Collins Street in Melbourne. You can’t miss a public figure. The funny thing was that some man in the street was hurling abuse at him, but didn’t realise he was no longer foreign minister. Downer yelled something back at the man then went on about his business.

To the man in the street: Where have you been? Under a rock? Rudd’s crew are now trying to steer this ship we call the Australian economy. As for Downer, after 11 years in his position, travel over the world representing Australia, political and foreign intrigue; he’s now as much a businessman on the street as I am. It is humbling no doubt.

His replacement in foreign affairs, Stephen Smith, is in for an exciting and probably stressful tenure.

Clearcase Tips Number 03 - managing label conventions with perl

I previously showed you how to use a shell script with Rational Clearcase, to alert you when a new branch type was created.

In this post, I will show you how to use a Perl script to enforce Clearcase labeling conventions. This example is directed toward Clearcase on UNIX (i.e. Solaris or similar) and assumes you have Perl installed, working and have a basic knowledge of how to program in Perl. It is a reworked version of the windows script supplied by IBM on Developerworks.

This is a long post, but a good one if you are a new clearcase admin who needs to enforce label names.

Read the rest of this entry »

Macheist - 14 applications for $49

With MacHeist.com still selling their bundle for another 3 days, they have added a new Mac application to the bundle. VectorDesigner brings the total number of applications in the bundle up to 14, with the recent addition of the Freeverse games. If you get referrals from your friends there are another two up for grabs as well. Here is what MacHeist have to say about VectorDesigner:

With the latest version of Adobe Illustrator costing $600, it’s no surprise that the Mac community has been clamoring for a powerful, fast, and easy to use program for creating vector art that doesn’t break the bank.
Say hello to VectorDesigner. Though relatively new, VectorDesigner features an impressive feature list, including Bezier lines, vector shapes, iSight, QuickLook, and scanner integration, and a conversion tool for turning non-vector images into vector.

Valued at $69.95, MacHeist.com have set VectorDesigner to be unlocked for all customers once $300,000 has been raised for charity.

This bundle is very graphics and web design orientated, and the budding freelance designers out there can always make use of PixelMator, CSSEdit and now VectorDesigner if it becomes unlocked. You can buy the bundle here at macheist.com - I have purchased 3 of them - and 25% of your purchase will go to your chosen charity.

Macbook Air Multitouch

I am currently watching the Macworld 2008 Keynote speech, and Steve Jobs - though starting off a bit slow - wowed the gadget hungry crowd in his usual fashion.

Besides some new Apple TV innovations (limited to the US - bah!), iPhone/iPod updates and the new Timecapsule; the key component of the speech was the introduction of the new Macbook Air.

Although I run my servers on OpenBSD, I write my blog from my Mac and prefer my Powerbook over all the other computers I use. A great part of using the Powerbook is that the trackpad has the scrolling functionality built in, which once you use, you sorely miss on all other devices.

Steve tells the audience that the new Macbook Air has learnt from the iPod touch and iPhone, and it now has gestures! The major new Multitouch features are:

• Pinch to zoom just like the iPhone and iPod touch
• Two finger panning has been taken to a new level. No more just left-right and up-down but you can scroll around on your photos.
• Three finger photo “flicking” like the coverflow photo iPhone interface
• Double tap to mark a window to drag it around
• Photo rotation
• There are also a number of space saving innovations on the new hardware which Steve demonstrates

And there is more. You can see the demo videos at the Macbook Air features page

This multi touch trackpad will prove revolutionary and it should only be a short time before we see this capability on the full line of Mac notebooks. Time to upgrade from my old G4. Now where is that Apple tablet notebook, Steve?

If you have a spare hour or two, jump into the Keynote stream on Quicktime and have a look for yourself. Steve demos the multi touch trackpad at the 1:00:00 mark.