simonb.com: blog > articles tagged with mac

If you're building native extensions for python or ruby on a Mac and you get an error like:

no suitable image found

It probably means the language and extension were compiled for different architectures, i.e. 32-bit vs 64-bit or i386 vs x86_64. I use fink on the Mac and it defaults to compiling 32-bit versions. You can tell fink to default to 64-bit when you do an initial install from source but it's not as well tested as 32-bit and 32-bit works fine so why bother? However, 10.6, left to its own devices, will compile code to 64-bit versions. So…

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Apple's first store in Shanghai has opened in Pudong in the IFC Mall. All praise the Steve. We took a quick gander the other night. It was packed. "Genius" bar was full too. It is conveniently just round the corner from City Super (quality supermarket from Hong Kong, also newly opened, hey the IFC has only just opened its doors, everything is newly opened in Shanghai.) So, you can visit the Apple Store for some quality tech produce then pop to City Super for quality groceries and baking produce. Mall-tastic heaven.

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The above is a screenshot from the end of the Adobe Acrobat update process on a Mac. Adobe thinks you want to view PDF documents in your browser via their plugin. No you don't. Do you? I mean come on. Repair? Huh? Even if you've unset the "View in the browser" option in Acrobat's preferences. Anyway, notice the "Repair Setup" window does not focus. No problem, you think. I'll just click on the window and give it focus, uncheck the box, click Continue and this experience will be over. But no! No I say. You can't click on the window.…

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The other day, for no reason in-particular, I was thinking about Mac FTP programs. I had used Interarchy (formerly Anarchie) for years. But around version 9 Stairways sold it to Nolobe (employee buyout) and after that it started to crash. So I switched to Transmit. Anyway, I was thinking about FTP programs and wondering what had happened to Interarchy, since it hadn't been updated in a while, when I got an email form Nolobe. They're having a fire sale. Literally. Their offices were destroyed by fire two years ago. So that's what happened to Interarchy and version 10…

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After the introduction of the iPad last week a lot of hackers (in the Hackers and Painters sense) published a lot of blog articles bemoaning its closed nature - e.g. Tinkerers Sunset. They sound like the Four Yorkshiremen from Monty Python.

They miss the point. The argument that the iPad coming with no programming manual means that there is going to be a sudden drop in the number of engineers is totally bogus. There are enough open programmable platforms around today - far more than when I were a lad - that those that have an inkling to start…

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Here's what's on my menu bar from right to left (click on the image above for a larger version) ...

Spotlight: I hardly ever use it. I use find from the command line as it's much more specific. There are ways of turning it off but nothing officially from Apple.

Time & Volume.

Input locale switcher: used when switching the input method to type in Chinese.

Battery & Airport monitors.

iStat Menus: can't say enough good things about this free utility. It's fab. I have mine set up to monitor CPU and network but you can show other things too (disk,…

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QuickCursor is a cool Mac utility that lets you easily edit the text in a web page via a real editor application. You just select the text box in the web page, click the QuickCursor MenuExtra to select an editor, QuickCursor will copy the contents of the text box to a temporary file and open the file in your editor, hack on your text and when you save the text is copied back to the text box in the browser. Doesn't seem to work in Firefox but Safari works fine. It's open source too. Very cool. See the web page…

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In 1983 Steve Jobs in a characteristically brilliant speech introduced the Mac as the solution to IBM's dominance in the PC industry. "IBM wants it all." He says a few times. A clip of the speech is available on YouTube (embedded below):

This speech was also the unveiling of the legendary 1984 Mac ad. Shot by Ridely Scott for the agency Chiat/Day. It won numerous awards despite only being officially shown on TV once during the superbowl. Here it is (YouTube):

Fast forward a quarter of a century and replace the PC industry with the music industry and IBM…

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Ommwriter is a new full screen editor for the Mac. What makes this one different is that it includes ambient sounds (think new age relaxation and aromatherapy), very subtle keyboard sounds and interesting backgrounds. In my brief test, this post was written in ommwriter, it works well but I did find the ambient music to be too loud relative to the keyboard fx. It would be nice to have a control on the relative levels. But this is about minimalism (the fewer controls the better) and it's only a beta release. It's a very interesting project and it's good to…

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The below with apologies to Paul Simon...

Installed the new iTunes on my Mac last night

It took so long to do it I just cried

And I re-synced all my podcasts

All those Audible enhanced downloads

Still crappy after all these years

Last week Apple released iTunes version 9.0.2. I tried again to upgrade from version 7 and again it crashed. This time I persevered a little more and I've got it mostly working. Here's how I did it.

When an upgraded version of iTunes is first started, it upgrades the library too. It was during this library upgrade…

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