Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/10
Press Ctrl–Option–Command–8 in your colleagues keyboard and watch them getting their inverted colours back :)
It is like the 3-finger salute on Windows, but much much nicer, as the inversion is all done on the GPU hardware :)
–jeroen
Via: How to Invert Colors on a Mac – wikiHow.
Posted in Apple, Fun, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, LifeHacker, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/03
In their infinite wisdom Apple has chosen to cripple the Apple keyboards on the MacBook (and -Pro and -Air) to default the top-row keys to not behave as function keys.
Apparently they expect people to use those keys more often for changing screen brightness, multi media playing, sound volume, than as function keys.
Maybe it is their 1 Infinite Loop address, but out there in the real world, people appreciate the function keys by default to behave, well like they are meant for: Function Keys and not having to press the fn key to use them.
Actually, some people at Apple were smart enough to make this configurable, but it is well hidden behind the phrase “Use F1-F12 keys to control software features” as the MacRumors Forums 2007 post titled “View Single Post – How To F Lock?” points out.
In the mean time however, the Mac OS X System Preferences to reorganized quite a bit, and “Keyboard & Mouse” are now to separate entries. So the steps are now these:
Press Command-Space to start the Spotlight WindowThere even seem to be some answers on the Apple discussion forums seem to hint on this, but – at the time of writing – they all conveniently show up as “We’ll be back soon” for some time now, thereby redefining the term “shortly” in the same pass:
Being in this mode, it would be soooooo nice if actually they marked the option key with the same character as they refer to it from the menus: ⌥.
They used to on older versions of the option key (even on old MacBook Pro machines). Now that would be consistent user experience…
Now people have to find the right Apple documentation on keyboard shortcuts to find out what the symbols mean.
But – though often famed for consistency – I don’t think it is one of Apple strengths.
–jeroen
via: MacRumors Forums – View Single Post – How To F Lock?.
Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, MacBook, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, Power User | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/30
If you use Mac and Windows machines, then – despite the Mac keyboards – it sometimes is handy to use Mac to remote login to a Windows machine.
For that, the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.1.1 (especially the download <g>) comes in handy.
–jeroen
via: Microsoft Office for Mac Downloads and Updates | Office For Mac.
Posted in Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Power User, Usability, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/20
One of the things hard when doing FireMonkey iOS development Delphi XE2 is that you have a multi stage process:
Basically you need to share your project files both ways between Windows and OS X.
Naturally, you would share files between your Mac and Windows using Samba. With the introduction of OS X Lion, the Samba support was rewritten, causing all sorts of problems.
One of the problems is that it uses a lot of CPU (I tried copying over a 40GB VM, and stopped because the fan in my MacBook Air was making so much noise, I was afraid it was going to take off).
I didn’t even realize it had one, but a MacBook Air has a Fan, and it vents through the keyboard :)
Now I use DropBox to share files between it. If you like that to, sign up with the URL at the end of this line. The 2GB account is free! http://db.tt/6f95UJW
And if you know a better way of sharing: please let me know!
–jeroen
Via: Dropbox – Referrals – Simplify your life.
Posted in Apple, Delphi, Development, FireMonkey, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Power User, Software Development | 15 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/16
Right after finding out VMware Fusion 4 got released, I downloaded and installed it.
Basically, there are two VMware Fusion 4.0.1 downloads:
I can’t imagine McAfee being larger than the size of VMware, and if it has the same speed impact on a Mac as it has on PCs, then don’t get it: get the light version.
–jeroen
Via: Download VMware Fusion 4.
Posted in Apple, Fusion, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Power User, VMware | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/15
My MacBook Air has arrived, a few days before VMware Fusion 4 got out and a very early preview of Windows 8 got released.
Time to move my iOS dev env from my Mac Mini Server dev env over to this fully loaded 13.3 inch MacBook Air model (A1369 with 1.8GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 / 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM / 256GB Flash Storage).
A few initial observations on the MacBook Air:
Oh well, will install it at the Embarcadero office later this week.
A few things on VMware Fusion 4:
Time to have a lot of fun :)
–jeroen
Via: VMware: VMware Support Insider: Fusion 4 is here!.
http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/?search_keywords=A1369
Posted in About, Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Personal, Power User, VMware | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/08/08
If you have a Mac, and enabled automatic login, then it is vulnerable to a FireWire password snooping bug.
Looking at that article, you should either:
–jeroen
via: Mac OS X Lion reveals passwords in sleep mode? | The Digital Home – CNET News.
Posted in Apple, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/07/29
Last week, this was big news in the Apple world: the new Mac mini will ship without a built-in SuperDrive DVD-drive leaving room for a 2nd HDD drive.
New Mac Mini has no SuperDrive, but room for a second HDD - image courtesy of Engadget
This was in fact the main reason I bought a Mac Mini Server last year: it had 2 HDD drives built in and no SuperDrive.
The last time I used optical drives for storage media since was back when I bought a ThinkPad A20p early in 2000 (yes, I’ve lived in both the Mac and PC world for decades now).
One of the first things I did back then was buying an Ultrabay 2000 HDD Adapter, so I could fit in a second HDD and ditch the DVD-ROM player.
Since then, I loaded CDs and DVDs using ISO image files usingthe Daemon tools virtual DVD drive.
The Apple Mac lagged behind on this very much, I’m not sure at which Mac OS version they finally introduced support for ISO images in Disk Utility, no later than OS X in 2007 though.
Is this big news?
In the Mac world, apparantly so, but I have lived without optical drives for using data for over a decade now.
In fact, the only two reasons I still have DVD drives are:
Looking around me, I’m certainly not alone.
Having two HDDs (or three, like the ThinkPad A31p in 2002, and the ThinkPad W70x in 2008) makes it so much easier to make backups or have more storage.
I’m glad I have being able to to that for a very long time, even on a Mac.
–jeroen
via: Apple updates Mac mini: Core i5 and i7, Thunderbolt, AMD Radeon HD, no SuperDrive — Engadget.
PS: Don’t forget to hug your SysAdmin today!
Posted in Apple, Power User | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/07/12
Good news for developers and IT engineers:
The new Mac OS X Lion EULA contains a phrase basically indicating you are a allowed to run 2 additional copies or instances of OS X Lion on each Mac already running OSX Lion.
This is a big change for OS X users.
For the beta, there were already steps on how to setup such a VM on a Mac or PC (including faking it to be the OS X Server), hopefully those steps have become a lot simpler now.
Probably these steps on how to make a OS X Bootable Installer from a USB Flash Drive helps too.
The OS X Lion release is already available to developers, and should be available to the general public really soon now.
–jeroen
via: Mac OS X Lion Supports Running Additional OS X Instances Within a Virtual Machine.
Posted in Apple, Development, Power User, Software Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/03/07
When (or when not) to buy a new Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod.
Purely based on rumours and statistics.
–jeroen
via: Mac Buyer’s Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone.
Posted in Apple, iPad, Power User | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 