VMware Fusion 3.1

 Posted on May 26, 2010  |  Erik

A very nice update that should be on the download immediately list of anyone currently using Fusion. I just pulled it down for a seamless update (looks like they’re using the sparkle update library so it’s painless). On my MacBook Pro 13", my Windows 7 virtual machine has always been pretty sluggish, even when I don’t have all of the graphics goodies activated and the Fusion 3.1 update makes a huge difference. [Read More]

iPad on track to outsell Macs (reprinted everywhere)

 Posted on May 20, 2010  |  Erik

There have been a bunch of articles recently reprinting the estimation of the RBC analyst who has pointed out that the current run rate of iPads exceeds that of Macs. At the risk of pointing out the obvious : It costs half the price of the cheapest Mac It does what most people require of a computer (and then some) It comes with a proven, discoverable, touch based UI It doesn’t come with any of the baggage of a “traditional” computer [Read More]

Useful little cable

 Posted on May 20, 2010  |  Erik

I just found this via the ilounge rss feed and it answers the question I’ve been asking myself for a while now about the value of the 3G iPad vs the Wifi only model. Up until now the only real missing feature for me on the Wifi iPad (on order!) was the GPS. Not that I have a decent way of mounting it in the car yet, but that should make for an interesting DIY project. [Read More]

Jabberd running amok

 Posted on May 11, 2010  |  Erik

Ran into an interesting problem here recently. I was testing out the iChat server on OS X Server 10.6 just to see how it worked. No real utility for me since any local chatting can just as easily be done via Bonjour and otherwise everyone uses my google account directly. But since it’s there and I was curious I fired it up and got it working with a minimum of fuss, properly linked to the google XMPP federation, so I could chat from my google account to a locally named account. [Read More]

OS X Server L2TP VPN

 Posted on April 8, 2010  |  Erik

Whew! I just found a little tidbit that I hadn’t noticed before that enabled me to get the VPN L2TP working for me. I’d been fighting with the configuration manually for a while without success, but had theoretically set everything up properly with the remapped ports and everything. But I still couldn’t initiate a client connection over L2TP. Then I fired up the ultra simple Server Preferences (even though I use a fair number of the advanced configuration with the Server Manager). [Read More]

iPhone OS 4 Event ideas...

 Posted on April 6, 2010  |  Erik

Looks like the Apple news isn’t going to stop this week with the iPad launch. An invitation-only event to expose the iPhone OS 4 is scheduled for April 8 so all those new iPad owners will have another reason to be happy with their new purchase since it’s going to get even better. My expectations/wish list falls into just a few points: Unified inbox - very high likelihood given Steve Jobs’ curt reply to this question recently I fully expect to see Mail undergo some improvements. [Read More]

Interface metaphors moving forwards

 Posted on March 13, 2010  |  Erik

Some very good points made over at marco.org by Marco Arment, the author of InstaPaper. This is one of the things that I waffle on since many of the very elegant UIs developed for the Mac and the iPhone are based on real world objects. One excellent example is iCal for the iPad. An excellent rendition of a planner - and it seems to work. However, I agree with the the points made by Marco especially as applied to eBooks and other instances of longer, mostly unstructured text. [Read More]

Infoworld iPad Idiocy

 Posted on February 9, 2010  |  Erik

And here’s an article that will certainly be making its way into the Angry Mac Bastards podcast before long. It’s a link-baiter par excellence, with the article spread out over 5 pages of approximate 400 words per page. And it’s so incredibly light on substance and written in the lovely attack op-ed style that drives me nuts. So although I try and resist responding to this style of article, I think that there’s enough here to warrant the response to this FUD. [Read More]

iPad round 3 - Thoughts and reflections

 Posted on February 9, 2010  |  Erik

Just like Steve said during the keynote, the success of the product will be based on it’s ability to do key things better than anyone else. This, for me, has been the major problem with all of the existing tablet computers and netbooks. Up until recently with the advent of Android based tablets slowly coming to market, all you had with a netbook or a tablet was your bog standard desktop OS crammed into a smaller package with little or no effort towards adapting the way you interact with the system that took into account the limitations and advantages of the platform. [Read More]

Managing notes - a perfect storm

 Posted on February 5, 2010  |  Erik

This has become the perfect storm for tools that can all work together seamlessly to meet all of my text management needs from pretty much anywhere/anytime/any platform. The tools Notational Velocity DropBox TaskPaper Simplenote Now I know that there are some people that swear by a Evernote for this kind of thing, especially since it can handle various types of files, but I find the interface too heavy. As an old command-line kind of guy, I like having as much of my content in plain old text (granted, UTF8) since it’s the most portable and safe format available. [Read More]