Archive for the ‘Computers’ Category

Macworld ’08 Announcements

Jan 15th, 08 / 2 Comments

I think the MacBook Air is a beautiful piece of industrial design. Beautiful. I probably wouldn’t buy one, but I really admire it. I bet Yingwen would like it though. It is a sexy machine that is more about portability and fashion than functionality.

I know I am a power user at heart, and I’m always going to have my eye on the higher end systems that have long-term expansion capability, but I have to say that Apple did a good job on the specs given the space limitations. For one, the soldered RAM is set to 2 GB, so thanks for maxing it out. And 3 pounds for a full-size keyboard and screen is right there about the single most important reason I’d actually consider blowing upwards of two grand after tax and add-ons on such a machine. If I were still a hard-core BART commuter, this would make it a no-brainer.

Apple TV now looks cool now that it no longer requires a computer to connect to online services and they dropped the price, but the 24 hour limitation for rental downloads is too short. Yeah I know on-demand rentals from cable and satellite are about the same duration, and the iTunes downloads are a lot cheaper overall, but the current on-demand rental durations are too short anyway. Well, maybe it’s no big deal – I suppose the difference between paying $3.99 for a 24 hour rental and $12.99 for the full rights are pretty minimal in the long run. Ultimately I think the Apple TV features are pretty cool – especially with Flickr and Youtube connectivity. I was still hoping for an Apple TV that was actually a TV, and maybe with a built-in DVD player too. Less boxes and wires and stuff hanging off the back – something I could just stick on the wall. The only remaining complaint I have is that they still to this day have not implemented subtitles. Seems like a major failure on the part of accessibility here.

The iPhone updates were welcome. I think the most significant of these is the Maps app, where it now tries to triangulate your location. It actually works! Not perfectly accurate, but it seems to find me within the range of the circle that it renders. So much easier to now use “current location” as the starting point for generating driving directions.

I don’t get why they would charge $20 to iPod Touch users to get the software upgrade that gives them the same basic app suite as iPhone. Boo. Just give it to them already. Come on.

Time Capsule seems like a great idea, and certainly makes a lot of sense when used in conjunction with MacBook Air as a backup solution. This is a nice and convenient luxury item: If I had $500 bucks to burn, sure I’d go for a 1TB box. Otherwise I’d probably look for a decent tethered backup drive. UPDATE: Now that I look around and price these things, it isn’t that much more expensive than a standard off-the-shelf enclosed 1TB drive, and if you factor in the convenience of ubiquitous wireless backups, it is an attractive offer.

All in all it was a nice suite of announcements. Couple all that with last week’s Mac Pro/XServe items, and it is actually quite a lot of cool gadgetry. Apple TV seems the most significant to me at this point, and I hope they eventually make me my Apple HDTV already.

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Apple Wireless Keyboard

Aug 7th, 07 / 2 Comments

Just a quick note about the new Apple Wireless Keyboard: It is notably more compact than its wired counterpart. More “laptop-like.” More “couch-top” like. This clearly was thought out as “hey, if we’re going to do a wireless keyboard, then what are people going to want to do with it?”

Clearly they’re going to want to sit on their couch and operate their Apple HDTV with it…

Ah, well that’s what I want to do anyway. With the addition of a trackpad, this would be a no-brainer.

Set up XML Schema as XML in TextMate

Jul 13th, 07 / 0 Comments

Odd that this was not set by default, but TextMate did not include XML Schema (.xsd) documents to be recognized as XML. No matter – TextMate is beautifully extensible. This is easy to set using TextMate’s Bundle Editor for this and any other document extension that you’d like to be recognized as XML:

  1. In TextMate, choose Bundles > Bundle Editor > Edit Languages. This filters bundles to only show language options.
  2. In the Bundle Editor, expand the XML category and select the XML language icon.
  3. The second line sets a variable for “fileTypes”. Add .xsd to the comma-separated list.
  4. Close the Bundle Editor and you’re done.

The Bundle Editor in TextMate is a really powerful utility for customizing the handling of any language coding. This is a simple example, but it certainly opens the door to much more customization and functionality.

MySQL App User Privileges

Jun 4th, 07 / 0 Comments

Here is a basic MySQL tip regarding application users:

When building applications that use MySQL, it is a best practice to create a MySQL application user that is dedicated to your app and has privileges to access only the database it is assigned.

With the latest version of phpMyAdmin, you can do this all in one step in the Add New User screen. Look for this fieldset and check the “Create database with same name and grant all privileges” box:

Database for user

You can then retract privileges from the given database, i.e. like if the app is only going to need SELECT and you are uploading tables manually, then you can uncheck everything except the SELECT box. Or maybe the user needs only standard CRUD operations, in which you can assign it SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE. As a best practice, you want your user to only have the minimum amount of privileges it needs for the app to function.

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TextMate buggy?

Jun 2nd, 07 / 1 Comment

It may be just me, but TextMate appears to be the crashy-est program in my arsenal of web development tools. It seems to regularly occur when bringing up dialog boxes, such as a find/replace box. This is starting to bum me out at close to 1 AM as I try to finish my homework…