Apple-Tag

Choosing an excellent keyboard for your Mac Let’s face it, Apple produces some great products, but there are two things the past years that they aren’t that good at. They can’t make usable mouses, and the keyboard is less than stellar. The laptop keyboards are ok as far as laptop keyboards go, but after you’ve tried a “REAL” keyboard, you will become a keyboard snob. Thankfully Apple stopped using proprietary connectors many years back, so you can buy any mouse for PC and use that instead. Even USB keyboards made for PC works after changing a setting, by switching the alt-command keys. But you won’t get all the unique keys for controlling iTunes, volume and other settings. The funny thing is, that if you want to find a good keyboard, you see the most extensive selection of keyboards with good, tactile and clicky response among all the PC gamer keyboards. Most of them look horrible though. I’ve been working with computers since 1979 and here’s my list of the best keyboards ever produced. And I’ll try to give some tips on getting your hands on a tremendous clicky keyboard. ...

SSD drive and extra disk for more speed, instead of DVD drive in MacBook Pro Changing out your hard disk in your MacBook Pro to an SSD disk is a great way of increase the speed of your machine. And I’m not talking about a little faster, where talking about the feeling of getting a new machine. But a SSD is still expensive and are limited when it comes to storage size. So it’s not going to be able to replace your big standard disk. The solution is simple. Replace your internal disk with a SSD disk, then remove your DVD drive and install a large 2.5" disk for your bigger files. Replace your DVD? Yes, do you use it anymore? I’m not. You need a special bracket to be able to install the extra disk, so you have to buy it. But many installation kits for replacing the DVD player also includes an external USB case to install the DVD into, so you still have access to one if you need. I bought my installation kit from Ebay for next to nothing, but didn’t include the case. As I said, I’m a modern Mac user and don’t use DVD. Hint, hint. ...

Asus PA246Q ProArt Professional monitor – Made for photographers As a photographer you need to be able to really get the most out of your images, you need a color accurate monitor. You usually have to pay a lot of money to get a good monitor that’s factory calibrated and uses a IPS panel, a panel type that is better at showing correct colors than the more common (and cheaper) TN panels. But there are some reasonably priced monitors. One of them is the Asus PA246Q ProArt monitor. It’s factory calibrated and even ships with a printout of the calibration result from the factory. You can set the monitor to sRGB or Adobe RGB 1998 color space directly on the front controls of the monitor. It’s also has fairly high resolution with 24" size 1920x1200 pixels. ...

I’ve had problems with my new iPad, where the screen would flicker when the brightness was set to a low setting. Very irritating. My first fear was hardware problems but after upgrading to the latest beta version of iOS, 4.2 beta 2 the problem is fixed! Yay! No need to replace my beloved iPad. **Update** A bit too fast, the problem remains.

Read a newer article on how to do this using an iPhone instead. I just love gadgets. That’s why it’s nice to find that I bought a Garmin eTrex a long time ago. Haven’t used it in years, but then when Apple released the latest version of iLife 09 with the map function in iPhoto I realized that it is very cool to have all the images geo tagged. So I found a program called GPSPhotoLinker, a program that downloads GPS data and pictures and by the date/time on the pictures manages to add longitude and latitude information in the picture info. When you import pictures with this information iPhoto can use that to show it on maps and make it searchable. And when you upload pictures to Flickr, it also uses the location information place your picture on a map. Very cool. ...

I’ve installed MAMP on my Mac to do some changes to my blog. I tried to set the WordPress wp-config.php file to connect to localhost:8889, but got an error that It could not connect to the database. After replacing localhost:8889 to 127.0.0.1:8889 it works. My quick guess is that permissions for the root user is set to allow connections 127.0.0.1, but not localhost. Anyway, it works now. My wp-config.php file looks like this: ...

After using Spotify for a couple of days, I must say that they almost nailed it. And I have never seen as much entusiasm about a new service among people of so different age groups. The Mac client is really nice (and fast!) This is something the music business should have come up with a long time ago. I think I bought about five songs on iTunes total. I like the idea of “owning” my music, or at least own the piece of plastic it comes on. But the chear joy of being able to just search and ad a shitload of music and start listening is exhilarating. But I have a couple of gripes… ...

Everytime (well, last night actually) when I need to do something with Applescript I shudder with horror. The syntax is actually something you forget all the time. There must be better alternatives for Apple to use as a scripting language. I agree with this article, but Python or Ruby would be a better alternative I think.

[caption id=“attachment_2955” align=“alignleft” width=“400”]©John Lillis[/caption] I got fed up with the fan that’s running constantly on my Powerbook 12" rev b 867mhz after installing the 10.3.8 Update. So here’s how you do it: Download Update 10.2.8 and use Pacifist to extract /System/Library/ExtensionsAppleADM103x.kext from MacOSXUpdate10.2.8.pkg to the desktop. Do a backup of AppleADM103x.kext from your startup disk at /System/Library/Extensions to your home folder. Copy AppleADM103x.kext from your Desktop (the one you extracted from 10.2.8) to /System/Library/Extensions, you’ll need to enter the admin password to do that. Start Disk Utility and do a repair permissions on your start volume. Problem solved. Just for good measure, reset the parameter-RAM by holding down Command-Alt-P-R at startup. My machine now turns on the fans at 148 Fahrenheit instead of 125 Fahrenheit. For some reason Apple choose to change the temperature when the fan starts on Rev.A Powerbook 12" after Mac OS X 10.2.8 from 148 Fahrenheit to 125 Fahrenheit. This gives the result that the fan runs almost constantly due to the fact that the powerbook operates normally at 125 Fahrenheit. I did this hack back when Apple changed stuff in the 10.3.2 update, and they haven’t updated AppleADM103x.kext until 10.3.8. ...

Little Snitch keeps you covered Use Little Snitch to monitor what developers of programs sends home. Then you can stop that specific traffic. More and more programs phone home with information to the software company. Sometimes it’s harmless, like checking if a newer version is available, but sometimes they also send data like serial numbers and your registration information. So is there a way for you to control what programs can do? Yes, there is! There’s an excellent program called Little Snitch that monitors all communication from applications on your Mac OS X machine and asks you if the information is allowed to be sent over the internet. ...