June 2011
1 post
On iOS 5 & Notifications (includes MobileNotifier...
Notifications are the single worse aspect of iOS. The notification pop-up blocks what you’re doing until you dismiss it, there’s no way to see previous notifications, and it’s way less attractive and useful than notifications in WebOS or Android. Notifications become even more important when you factor in the rumored iOS 5 system-level integration with Twitter (and other services, like Facebook...
May 2011
1 post
2 tags
My iOS 5 Feature Requests
iOS 5 is due to be shown to developers for the first time at WWDC this summer, and released to the public this fall. Here is my wishlist of features I hope make it into iOS 5. Things like a new notification system, social integration, improved file copy, wireless/cloud syncing I think are necessary, and the rest of the items in bold are my top requests, in no particular order.
New notification...
December 2010
2 posts
3 tags
2010 iOS Apps of the Year
About two weeks ago, Apple posted their iTunes Rewind 2010 - a roundup of the best and most popular Apps of the year. As I did last year, it’s also time for my 2010 Apps of the Year list, but this year, I’m also adding a boos & bravos section. Enjoy!
Games of the year:
Angry Birds & Angry Birds Seasons
Cut the Rope
Reckless Racing
Infinity Sword & Epic Citadel
Real Racing
...
CrashPlan 3.0 & Mac Metadata
Two days ago, Code42 released the long-awaited 3.0 update to their fantastic CrashPlan backup application. Among the new features and changes are the merging of their paid CrashPlan+ and CrashPlan Central services, backup sets, and what this blog post is about, full support for Mac HFS+ xattr metadata! I wanted to see just how well CrashPlan 3.0 performs with regards to Mac metadata, so I ran a...
November 2010
3 posts
Alan Quatermain: Farewell urftopdf, we hardly knew... →
quatermain:
So I got an email from Apple Legal today. Long & short of it was that they were contacting me directly instead of just sending a C&D via courier since I’m a real developer working for a decent company. They told me that they believe my urftopdf implementation is derivative of theirs. I can’t…
1 tag
Tumblr thoughts & issues
There were a number of things that influenced my decision to move jeffawaddell.com to Tumblr, rather than another blog platform, such as Wordpress.com. I like Tumblr’s iPhone app and being able to post by email. I really like the ability to use a my own domai and custom themes, and the ease of editing them. It seems as easy to use as Tumblr is on the surface, there is a lot of...
1 tag
Hello Tumblr...
Over the years, I’ve used a number of blogging platforms for hosting my website and blog. Most recently, I’ve been using a self-hosted WordPress installation, but before that I went back and forth between Blogger and Wordpress.com. Even though I’ve rarely posted thoughts to my blog since the advent of Twitter and meta-blogging, there are times when 140 characters are not enough to express myself,...
September 2010
1 post
Thoughts on Apple's September 2010 Music Event
Earlier today, Apple held their annual music-related event in California and announced their new lineup of iPods (iPod Touch, Nano, and Shuffle), iTunes 10, and an updated Apple TV. Here are my thoughts about Apple’s latest announcements in easy to digest 140 character or less tweets:
On the new iPod Nano and iPod Classic:
The new Nano seems like a step-back. It’s touchscreen, but...
June 2010
1 post
2 tags
WWDC 2010 Surprises?
Tomorrow marks the start of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, which kicks off with a keynote from Steve Jobs himself. While an announcement of the next iPhone and release of iPhone OS 4.0 (originnally showed off back in April) is widly expected, there are sure to be a few surprises. Notably, an announcement of Safari 5 and Xcode 4 has been rumored over...
March 2010
1 post
2 tags
The Problem With Amazon (and Apple)
I’ve become quite annoyed with Amazon.com (and Apple) lately. Even though I’m enamored with their new cloud computing initiatives, like S3, their core business practices are increasingly making me cringe and question my future relationship with them. First, I’ll give a quick rundown. Basically, in my opinion, Amazon seems to be systematically withholding shipment of orders for...
December 2009
1 post
2 tags
My Favorite iPhone Apps of 2009
With 2009 coming to a close, and a time for giving thanks, I thought it would be a good time to talk about my favorite iPhone apps of the year. These are all apps I’ve purchased (some are/were free), and which I really enjoy or use frequently. Hopefully this short list can be of some use to others, by introducing you to some fantastic apps.
My Five Favorite/Most-Used Apps:
Reeder &...
October 2009
1 post
1 tag
Converting a .mkv to .mp4, & watching it on an...
I recently came upon a 720p .mkv Matroska video file I wanted to watch on my Xbox 360 and HDTV. This presents a couple problems. One, the Xbox 360 doesn’t support the Matroska container. Two, the video file itself is over 4GB, and the FAT32 file system on my flash drive only supports files under 2GB. So, I needed to find a way to transcode the movie over to a .mp4 container, and split the...
July 2009
1 post
1 tag
The iPhone sucks in the US, & it's AT&T's fault -...
The iPhone sucks in the US. First, however, let me preface this by saying the problem isn’t with the iPhone or Apple - it’s with AT&T (and Verizon, T-Mobile, & the FCC - read on for more). In fact, I believe the iPhone is currently the best mobile device in the world. The opposite could be said about AT&T - that it’s the worst mobile network in the world - and...
June 2009
2 posts
1 tag
The New MacBook Pro 13" vs Previous MacBook
About a month ago, I recieved a brand new MacBook aluminum unibody, maxed out with a 2.4ghz CPU, 320GB harddrive, and 4GB of memory. I love it (except for a slight ding in the aluminum out of the box), although it did take some getting use to the smaller resolution after using a 15” PowerBook for almost 4 years. Fast forward to last Monday, when Apple announced that the MacBook aluminum...
1 tag
My iPhone 2010 and OS 3.x/4.0 Wishlist
Now that the WWDC keynote has come and gone and all of the announcements have been sifted through, it’s time to discuss the iPhone 3GS. Most of the rumors turned out to be inaccurate. The 3GS doesn’t contain a front-facing camera or iChat app, nor did it drop the chrome bezel gain a light-up Apple logo, or a rubberized back (but it does have a new “oil and print resistant”...
March 2009
1 post
1 tag
iPhone OS 3.0 Wishlist (Old)
Apple will be holding a special media event on March 17th to announce the next revision of the iPhone OS, and in order to stay competitive with up and coming OS’s like the Palm WebOS and Android, there are a few things I would like to see included:
Background Apps / Multiple apps. open at one time
Exposé - a way to switch between open apps without having to go back to the home screen
...
February 2009
1 post
1 tag
My thoughts on Safari 4
Earlier this week, Apple released a beta of its latest and greatest version of Safari (4.0). Utilizing the latest WebKit, Safari 4 makes impressive leaps in standards compliance and speed, incorporating a speedy new JavaScript engine called Nitro and many HTML 5 features, such as client-side database storage. Safari’s interface also features a facelift, which in my opinion, is long overdue!...
January 2009
2 posts
1 tag
How-To: Route internet traffic through an SSH...
Say you’re out somewhere (a wi-fi hotspot) for example, and you either want to access a site that’s blocked or you want a little more security, you can create a SSH tunnel from your computer to a remote computer. If you don’t have a UNIX box at home that you can connect to, a web hosting account works great! Here’s how to do it the quick an easy way, with a GUI, and then a...
2 tags
Top Tech of MacWorld & CES 2009!
Here’s a quick rundown of my favorite announcements coming out of MacWorld and the Consumer Electronics Show:
Palm Pre & Palm’s WebOS: Serious iPhone competition! Look for a future post.
MSI Wind X320: A fantastic copy of the MacBook Air (at only aprox. $800 too!)
Sony Vaio P: An incredibly thin and tiny netbook, but expensive for what it is.
Apple iLife 2009: Looks like there...
September 2008
1 post
2 tags
Amazon Kindle 2.0 Wish List
I’ve been looking at the Amazon Kindle for a while now, and have never been quite ready to take the plunge and purchase the device for its $350 asking price. Don’t get me wrong - the Kindle is a fantastic little device, I think truly heralds the forthcoming e-ink revolution. However, there is a lot of room for improvement, and with the recent rumors about a forthcoming Kindle 2.0 (next...
August 2008
1 post
1 tag
Access your FreeNAS server remotely via SSH
After finally getting my FreeNAS and ZFS-based file server up and running, I’ve been looking at ways to access its services from remote locations outside of my home network. There are numerous ways to achieve such a feat, such a creating a VPN between your remote computer and the server. However, VPN’s typically require either special software installed on the server (which FreeNAS lacks, like...
July 2008
6 posts
1 tag
Dual core Atoms on the way
According to MacNN:
“Intel’s long-rumored dual-core Atom processor now has a fixed launch date and price, according to a late leak. The Atom 330 is now purportedly due on September 21st and will be one of Intel’s most economical dual-core chips, costing $43 for a 1.6GHz chip with both the extra core as well as a larger 1MB of Level 2 cache and the same Hyperthreading support as...
1 tag
Get the benefits of MobileMe for Cheap (or free)
I’ve been investigating ways to obtain the push email, contact, and calendar synchronization of MobileMe without subscribing to its $99 a year price. For those of you that don’t know what Apple’s MobileMe is, it is a service that offers users push email (@mac.com & @me.com domains), push calendar, push contacts, push pictures, and push bookmark synchronization to/from the iPhone and Apple’s...
1 tag
MacBook Refresh in the Works?
There has been a lot of speculation recently regarding an upcoming refresh of Apple’s MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook lines. These rumors were spurred by purported images which surfaced of a new bottom case for MacBook Pro’s which reflected some sleeker, MacBook Air inspired design curves as well as Apple’s own admission the other day of a “product refresh” later this year. Like many Mac heads,...
1 tag
iPhone 2.0 Problems: Horrible Reception?
I posted the other day about some problems I’ve experienced while using the new iPhone 2.0 software on my original iPhone. I would like to quickly revise and expand this list with one huge issue that’s bugging the *** out of me: terrible, no, deplorable, signal reception.
For the past week or so, I’ve been visiting family in Richmond, VA. I’m right in the heart of the city, a few blocks away from...
1 tag
Netbooks: MSI Wind or a Possible Apple?
Since I first read about the MSI Wind netbook back in April, I’ve been captivated. What’s not to like about it: 1.6GHz Atom processor, long battery life, and 10” screen – all at roughly 2 pounds and with an incredibly portable footprint? Adding to the intrigue, the Wind featured a dedicated overclock button, which overclocks the CPU automagically from the stock 1.6GHz to approximately 1.8GHz,...
1 tag
iPhone 3G & 2.0 Software: Problems, Updates, &...
Numerous problems and feature requests I had for with the original iPhone were fixed on the iPhone 3G and/or iPhone 2.0 software. For example, the iPhone software now supports multiple calendars, supports exchange and direct push, allows WiFi with Flight Mode, while iPhone apps. eliminates the need for Apple to create dedicated widgets for things like news, sports, or movies. Likewise, the...
June 2008
3 posts
2 tags
Gmail Labs Finally Available for Google Apps!
Wow, the Gmail Labs feature I blogged about a week or two ago has finally been enabled for my Google Apps account! So, now I have a little less of a complaint with Google. However, it would be nice if they could roll out updates immediately to Google Apps and avoid these sort of delays!!!
2 tags
Gmail Labs - Not for apps users!
Late last week, Google added a new feature called “Gmail Labs” to Gmail. It consists of a tab in the “Settings,” which allows you to add some new mini-features to Gmail. The features were all created by Google developers in their free time, and Google promises more to come. Some are neat and useful, others (like the snake game) are just ridiculous. I’m glad Google...
1 tag
Firefox 3 Bookmarks are Awful!
Like many power-users, I typically use multiple browsers on my Macs - specifically: Safari, FireFox, and Camino. During my recent experimentation with FireFox 3, I fell in love with the new staring and tagging features which are part of the software’s bookmarks overhaul, and decided I may try using it as my primary browser (bumping Safari). Furthermore, I’ve been using the Foxmark...
May 2008
2 posts
2 tags
Rsync & Solaris Problems
In my last blog, I posted some rsync test results from the BackupBouncer Mac metadata test suite, running against both a Mac-based ZFS file system and a ZFS-based Solaris server. Today, I’m going to discuss both my testing methodology and some pretty big problems I’ve ran into with rsync on Solaris. First off, I’ve compiled rsync 3.0.3 (pre2) with the fileflags and crtimes...
2 tags
Mac Metadata, ZFS, and Solaris
Ok, this does not look so good! If you’ve been following my blog, I’ve begun a project to build and explore a Solaris-based ZFS NAS server to serve as both a file server and backup server for my Mac network. After exploring various backup solutions (in a previous post), I finally decided on rsync 3 to perform my backups due to its perfect support of Mac metadata as tested through the...
April 2008
4 posts
2 tags
Home Server: Potential Problems
I’ve come up with a list of problems I will have, or could run into, as I embarking on building my Solaris-based open server in the coming weeks:
Solaris/Linux Hardware Compatibility: I don’t know whether my hardware is fully compatible (ex. NIC, GPU) with Solaris, and the Solaris Hardware Compatibility lists are incomplete. Let’s hope everything goes ok!
Bootloading: I will...
2 tags
What about TimeMachine?
In my last post on backup strategies, I completely neglected mentioning TimeMachine. So, I have decided to devote an entire post to it. For those unfamiliar, TimeMachine is a backup feature in Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” operating system. TimeMachine has some good and interesting features. To start off with, it’s heavily integrated into the OS, automatically executing...
2 tags
BackupBouncer Metadata tests
I’ve recently been experimenting with different backup tools in order to find something more effective than Time Machine to use for my daily backup. Backup-Bouncer is an amazing test suit created by Nate Gray for the sole purpose of checking how well backup and file copy tools preserve all of the different types of metadata inherent in Mac OS X. I, as most people do, consider a backup...
2 tags
New Backup Strategy?
I’ve been doing a lot of research recently to determine the best way to improve my current backup scheme, which consists of Mozy for online backups and Apple’s Time Machine for local backups. I’ve documented my Mozy issues in a different post, so I will briefly comment on my problems with TimeMachine: It’s slow, resource intensive, and unreliable; and its slow! I’m...
March 2008
1 post
2 tags
Some thoughts on Mozy...
So, I was curious to see whether Mozy (at least the Mac client, anyway) actually contained incremental, byte-level backup, such as rsync’s delta encoding algorithm. Mozy claims it does, but I wasn’t so sure. So, I conducted a very simplistic and unscientific test. I added 2.3 MB of pictures to a 100MB disk image, and Mozy backed up a total of 5.8MB (instead of the entire 100MB image file)....
February 2008
5 posts
1 tag
A 5400 RPM 1.8 Hard Drive!
Electronista has reported on Toshiba’s introduction of 5400RPM 1.8 inch hard drives with SATA interfaces. As some of you may already know, the MacBook Air (along with the iPod Classic) makes use of a 1.8” hard drive. As anyone whose read one of my interpretations of the MacBook Air, one of my main gripes (if not the main one) is regarding its super-slow 4200 PATA hard drive. So, I read...
1 tag
MacBook Air & Intel Montevino
I would like to briefly revisit two of my previous posts on the MacBook Air and Intel’s upcoming Montevino platform with some new insights
First, besides the MacBook Air’s limiting specs, it is a first generation product that typically comes with its own issues that will need to be worked out. One of the very important issues being exhibited by the MBA is taking an extreme amount of time to...
1 tag
Intel Montevino & Apple
It was reported by Digitimes earlier today that Intel next Centrino mobile chipset platform, code-name Montevina, will be released in June, featuring processors clocked at 2.26 GHz to 3.0 GHz dual core, a 1066 MHz front side bus (up from 800MHz), DDR3 memory, 2 and 4 core CPUs, WiMAX, and the all new Intel X4500 graphics processor. Montevina is the successor to Intel’s Santa Rosa...
1 tag
My MacBook Air Analysis
As most people are probably well aware, Apple last month introduced a new sub-notebook called the MacBook Air. A new addition to the MacBook product line, the MBA’s real strength and differentiation lies in its svelte size (extremely thin and only 3 pounds) and stylish design. One frequent criticism lies in the MacBook Air not being small enough, due to its 13.3’ screen and the MacBook...
1 tag
MacBook Pro Mock-Up
Spicu has come up with a very interesting, and may I say beautiful design mock-up for Apple’s forthcoming MacBook Pro update. The mock-up incorporates some of the design elements from both the MacBook Air (such as the keyboard, trackpad, and thinness) and the current iMac (rounded aluminum edges). I have to say I’m digging the rounded edges, as I absolutely love the look of the iMac. I can only...
January 2008
3 posts
2 tags
Some Thought's on Next Month's iPhone SDK
According to Steve, Apple is still planning on releasing the long and eagerly awaited iPhone SDK next month. In fact, in last week’s 1.1.3 update, we can already see some preliminary upgrades in anticipation of the onslaught of new applications, such as pagination and icon re-arrangement. I thought I would add a few of my own thoughts on the subject in anticipation.As it currently stands, no one...
1 tag
Bad Apple: Charging for iPod Touch Firmware...
Earlier this week at MacWorld, Apple release a software update for the iPod Touch, providing some new features in addition to a few applications previously only available on the iPhone (such as Weather, Stocks, Notes, and Mail). This is all great, however, except for the fact that Apple decided to charge $20 for it. Here is just another example of the greedy, anti-consumer “Bad Apple” trend that...
1 tag
Safari Wishlist
I’d love to use Safari as my default Mac browser, but there are 3 features that are keeping me from it. Two features that would be easy for Apple to add, I might add, and at least one of which (bookmark separators) should have been available in Safari from the beginning considering it has been available in every other browser I can think of for as long back as I can remember.
Bookmark...
October 2007
2 posts
2 tags
The news we've been waiting for: iPhone SDK!
Here it is, straight from Steve’s mouth:
Third Party Applications on the iPhone
Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary...
2 tags
An iPhone Quickie… 1.1.1, updates, and 3rd-party...
A few quick thoughts on some iPhone developments:
iPhone software 1.1.1 has been out for a few weeks now, and I have to say Apple did a fantastic of with the Wi-Fi store and I’m loving home button double tap (I don’t know what I would do without it)!
However, Apple has to be condemned, and harshly, for their monopolistic removal of 3rd party app hacks. I realize these were hacks, not supported...
September 2007
1 post
2 tags
My Critical Issues with the iPhone (and thoughts...
Rumor has it that Apple will be hosting an “Apple Event” on September 5 to announce new iPods and a new ringtone service for the iPhone. The addition of custom ringtones sound great and all, but there are a few more very pressing issues I have with the iPhone that I would like to see Apple address:
• Fix Yahoo Push Mail (It is extremely unreliable – better yet, add Gmail hosted push!!!)...
June 2007
2 posts
2 tags
iPhone 3rd Party App. Support - Non-Existent!
Continuing my look at Steve Job’s lame WWDC keynote earlier today - iPhone 3rd party app. support was announced. However (& get ready for this one), you won’t actually be able to load apps on it! Apperently, iPhone’s version of Safari is so good, that all 3rd party apps will be web-based, and run from inside the browser (you know, just like Gmail or Google Reader) while having access to some...
1 tag
WWDC Keynote
Ok, so Steve’s keynote today at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference was greatly disapointing, and it seems I’m not the only one who thinks so - Apple stock fell $4.30 today. He spent most of the time rehashing the same features announced at last years WWDC, with only a few new (and pretty marginal) features. What happened to all of the secret features Apple was hiding from everyone? What...