Archive for the ‘mac’ Category

Cool stuff in iPhone 3.0

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Some little known improvements added in iPhone OS 3.0… Some stuff here is listed at Apple’s site but only for some context. Thanks to James O. for confirming pre-3.0 behaviors. :)

YouTube – You can login to your YouTube account to access your own favorites, but also:

  • Bookmarks in the YouTube iPhone app are merged with your YouTube favorites.
  • Your YouTube playlists and subscriptions are fully available and editable on the iPhone.

iPod

  • Podcasts no longer have shuffle as an option (which makes sense for most podcasts), therefore they will play in order without having to turn off shuffle mode.
  • Scrubbing speed is adjustable by sliding your finger up and down the screen (for instance, “grab” the slider, move your finger down, then slide left and right to scrub slowly, or slide back up to scrub more rapidly).
  • Podcasts have a 30-second instant replay button.
  • Podcasts can be played at 2x or .5x speed (I believe only Audiobooks allowed this previously).
  • Search is now available (just like Remote, and several other apps in 3.0).

General

  • Search is a double-press-home option.
  • Search targets are customizable (you can omit Audiobooks, for instance).
  • Camera app’s “roll” button shows your last pic.
  • Rotate Stock app to get bigger chart. You can tap a point to see the price at that time.
  • Notes (and possibly other places) will parse addresses for linking to Google Maps.
  • Screenshots view is integrated into the description page. Scroll down and immediately scroll left/right.

Phone app (and/or Contacts)

  • Outgoing calls have an special icon in the list view.
  • The line items with multiple calls (”Josh Forman (3)”) will list duration and time of each call in a nice table format.
  • Share Contact option emails a VCF.

Posted in iPhone, mac, tech | Comments

Universal knowledge

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

So, I’m in the Apple Store last weekend, and I’m being rung up at the back counter (Genius Bar, I guess). Here’s the scene (each number represents an employee):

1                        2
=============
3                         Me

3 walks up to 1 and asks him something. He doesn’t know so he looks it up, and can’t find it, and asks 2 the same question. 2 takes a guess (”It runs on Mac and PC, I think”)…..

Me: What was the question?
2: What does the Universal symbol mean?
Me, to 2: It runs on Intel and PPCs.
2, aloud: He knows it…. say it again.
Me to 3,1, and customer: It means it runs on both Intel Macs and PowerPC Macs.
3: You should work here.

Little did they know….

Posted in Funny, mac | Comments

Minor fix for a Konfabulator widget

Friday, July 1st, 2005

The “one-liner” widget for Konfabulator hasn’t been working for me recently (I am currently using Konfabulator 2.0.1 and Tiger). I knew that it writes a file to the /tmp directory but I don’t see it there now, so I figured that’d be part of the problem. It seems it was. Here’s what I did; use this info at your own risk!

Steps for fix:
1. Close the one-liner widget.
2. Show the contents of the widget (control-click it in the Finder)
3. Edit one-liner.kon. Line 115 reads as follows:

var user_folder=system.temporaryFolder+"/one-liner"+user_id;

This uses system variables to generate the path where OL will write its file. I simply commented it out and added this line, essentially hard-coding the path.

user_folder="/tmp/501/one-liner";

4. Save the file, close it.
5. Relaunch the widget.
6. Cheer, pump your fist in the air.

Update:
This may break after a restart or logout because /tmp/501 is removed at those times. Simply readd it (along with the one-liner subdirectory). I’ll try putting it in my home dir.

Posted in mac | Comments