Archives: “apple, mac, and cupertino”

For anyone who owns an iPhone, one of the most common questions you hear from other iPhone folks is, “what apps do you use?”

Never one to pass up the opportunity to blog (AHEM), I shall take this moment to do a quick dump of the apps I currently have installed.

I tend to delete unused applications with abandon, so these are all apps that I’ve either used recently enough to warrant keeping, or are still in that uncomfortable initial “you’re new, let’s get to know each other” phase.

No links to the iTunes store, because I’m lazy, and because Apple put that rounded search field in iTunes for a reason, right?

Items whose names are in red are on my home screen, so you know it’s good stuff.

Productivity

• Things - Keeps your ass out of the fire. This is the iPhone companion app for probably one of the better/best to-do productivity applications available for any operating system.
• Appigo Todo - Things is awesome, but I tend to keep more personal stuff (grocery lists, errand reminders, etc.) in this application, syncing up to the cloud via the Remember The Milk web site.
• Ultralingua Collins French-English dictionary - Parce que je ne parle pas français très bien.
• Antidote Mobile - Idem, lire ci-dessus.
• Simplenote Awesome replacement for the built-in (and rather anemic) Notes app. This syncs with the web site and on my desktop using JustNotes.
• Dragon Dictation - “I dictated this morning using this out not forget call me I guess.” (Translation: “I dictated this line using this app - doesn’t seem to like me I guess.”)
• Convert - Very nice units conversion app with an excellent UI
• TextExpander - Sort of implements the very useful desktop application TextExpander on the iPhone, though syncing one’s text snippets to the phone was kind of PITA-y the last time I tried it.
• Google Earth - It’s the EARTH. On your fucking PHONE.

Photo-related apps

• Flickr - there are many alternatives, but this works fine for me
• CameraBag - This is the main “let’s make iPhone photos look like they weren’t taken by an iPhone” app that I use the most often
• Best Camera - Weird UI, but this has some nice effects.
• Photoshop Mobile - It’s Photoshop! On my iPhone! OMG!
• Camera Genius - I keep forgetting I have this installed, but it sure looks useful
• Mill Colour - A few people have recommended this app, but I really haven’t gotten around to using it on anything yet.
• Autostitch - Creates rather decent panoramas, such as this one.

Music-related apps

• Shazam - Indistinguishable from magic.
• CBC Radio - Doesn’t support Mobile Safari’s support for playing audio in the background (you did know iPhone 3.x supported this, right?), so I mostly use a home screen bookmark to this list of online radio streams I hacked together. Knock yourself out.
• SimplifyMedia 2 - I have a Mac Mini at home that hosts my entire iTunes library, and this application allows me to listen to it, anywhere I can access data. Worthy!
• Last.fm - I don’t use this that much anymore, but it’s good if I’m in the mood for something different.
• WunderRadio - I bought this thinking it’d solve my yen for internet radio, but it turns out using my radio streams page is more useful for me.
• Remote - Not something I use a lot at home, but it’s great at the office for controlling and requesting tunes from the work iTunes computer.
• Bloom- I rarely use this or Trippy, but they’re fun distractions and great to pull the “look how cool my iPhone is” maneuver while standing in line at Starbucks.
• Trippy - ^

Media and Words

• NFB - Amazing, especially considering this and all of the content is free.
• McSweeney’s - Yeah, yeah, Dave Eggers is boring/too hip/overrated/&c. I still find good stuff here all the time, so it works for me.
• Amazon Kindle - This (and Stanza) are both pretty decent ebook applications, though I have to admit reading an entire book on the iPhone is still a bit of a far off dream, or the domain of people with eyes much better than mine.
• Stanza - ^
• Tumblr - Good for those occasional “I am bored, entertain me” moments, but I much prefer looking at this stuff on my laptop.
• Instapaper - I fucking love this app. Seriously, it’s the one I use the most often besides the phone and Mail. Instapaper lets you grab articles and stuff you want to read later to its web site, which you can then sync to your phone with stripped-down, easier to read formatting.
• Reeder - (see below)
• Byline / Netnewswire

I was jumping between NetNewsWire and Byline for quite a while (Byline is overall better, but NetNewsWire has a few very useful features like Post to Instapaper), and am giving Reeder a try. So far, it’s quite nice, but lacks offline support, which is kind of sad-making.

Chat, VOIP, Messaging

• BeejiveIM - Arguably the best IM client for the iPhone. Way too many options, but it works great, and does push.
• Colloquy - My employer uses IRC for almost everything, and this (as far as I can tell) is the best IRC application for the iPhone. Still kind of odd in places, but nothing else comes close.
• Skype - Mostly kept around “just in case”. I use this (and the next three apps) over 3G using 3G Unrestrictor - yes, my phone is jailbroken.
• Nimbuzz - ^
• Truphone - ^
• WhatsApp - My brother forced me to install this, and then never actually uses it to send me messages. So feel free to add me if you know my phone number and send me bad jokes.
• Tweetie 2 - Lots of competition in this area, but this is the most useful / least annoying twitter client I’ve used so far.
• Facebook - Not sure where this should go, but creating a separate category for “things I use that make me feel a bit greasy afterwards” seemed a bit much.
• Prowl - Highly, highly recommended if you can take advantage of its features. Basically, this allows you to set up push notifications for pretty much any application that supports Growl. I have this set up with push notifications for my work IMAP account and my main personal Gmail account using Notify.

Utilities / Technical

• iSSH - Not used that often, but when you need terminal access to a server, it’s manna.
• 1Password - One of the essential applications on all of my macs.
• TouchPad - Gives you a virtual trackpad to remote systems - I’ve used this to control the home Mac Mini entertainment system.
• Jaadu VNC - Again, not something I use a lot, but when I need to access my system at home or when I’m too lazy to get up off the couch, this works well.
• iStat - Pushes a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo to your iPhone (stats, uptime, ram usage, blahblahblah) from systems you install the remote application onto.
• Pingdom - Push notifications and alerts for servers that have fallen over and can’t get up.
• Speed Test - Companion application for the much-loved online internet connection testing web site.

Shopping

• Amazon.com - For some reason this is only available via the U.S. iTunes store, which is stupid, but I don’t make these rules, I just have to live by them.
• RedLaser - Neat and actually useful application that takes a photo of a bar code and returns back online shopping info (prices, availability, etc.).
• eBay - Who am I kidding, I never use this site.

Files / Cloud stuff

• Dropbox - Companion app for the frickin’ awesome file backup/syncing service. Seriously, Best. Thing. Ever. (though I wish it supported more video formats, but #firstworldproblem.)
• Evernote - Companion app (I just like saying those words) for the desktop application / web service.
• iDisk - With the two applications above, I rarely use my iDisk for anything these days, but it’s nice to have an application that accesses my big Mac Cloud full ‘o’ nothing, anyway.

Games

I went through a short-lived burst of enthusiasm for iPhone games, but soon realize that i rarely actually play the damn things. I mostly keep these ones around because a) they’re enjoyable, and b) I keep expecting I’ll be stuck somewhere intensely boring one day and need the distraction.

Honestly, I don’t have much to say here - you either really enjoy gaming on your phone, or you don’t. I suppose I fall mostly into the latter.

• FlightControl
• Zen Bound
• Modern Combat Sandstorm
• Rolando 2
• Zenonia
• TheDeep Pinball

Kid stuff

Because life with a toddler is so much easier when you have the magic of an iPhone to keep them busy.

• Babysitter2Go
• DressChica
• Toddler Teaser Quizzing
• Preschool Adventure
• Preschool Music

Miscellaneous

• The Weather Network - Has excruciatingly ugly ads, but does the trick, and is “more accurate” than the built-in Weather app, if using those words in conjunction with a weather forecasting app isn’t an oxymoron.
• pzizz relax - Helps you nap. Seems to work for me, but honestly, I can never tell how much of this is the placebo effect. Then again, the ends justify the means, right?
• Urbanspoon - Find a restaurant that doesn’t suck. I’ve had mostly good luck with this application, but obviously ymmv.
• Red Rocket - Purportedly serves up schedules and such for the TTC, but let’s be honest: with the state of the TTC these days, this app is mostly just window-dressing.
• Air Canada - I installed this mostly because it’s free. You can check in and get an electronic boarding pass sent to the phone, but the one time I used this, it ended up being a bit of a pain to not have a physical copy. But for those of you who travel a lot, it may be useful.
• RunKeeper - This is a really nice running / distance exercise application, but since I switched to the treadmill I’ve mostly been using the built-in Nike app. Still, if you run/walk/ride outside, it’s really great, and syncs to an online service as well.
• Awaken - Alarm / flashlight application. I haven’t gotten a lot of use out of this, but I bought this because I use the desktop version (which works well).
• Zipcar - I don’t even have a Zipcar membership (we use AutoShare at the moment), but I wanted to install this to check out the UI.
• Inrix Traffic - This is probably getting deleted soon, but I suppose if you cared about traffic congestion it’d be useful.

Got any suggestions for any of these categories? Post ‘em in the comments.

Word on the street is that those little hacky but oh-so-useful tidbits known as InputManagers do not work in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”). Apple has been threatening to remove support for these since Mac OS X 10.5 was announced so it’s no surprise that this day may have finally come.

Unfortunately, if this is true it means the death of a lot of really useful add-ons, such as Ecamm’s iSight plugin iGlasses, hetima’s insanely useful Safari enhancement SafariStand, and Mike Solomon’s application patching mechanism SIMBL (which in itself allows developers to “hijack” applications to add more functionality as a kind of hack-enabler).

A SIMBL plugin I use all the time is Visor, developed by Nicholas Jitkoff. Visor patches Apple’s Terminal to make it available system-wide via a hotkey (ala Quake’s console window). With Visor, you hit a pre-determined keyboard shortcut and voila, a Terminal window slides into view.

I use the shit out of this all the time, and if Mac OS X 10.6 truly does kill InputManager support my muscle memory will be downright achy-breaky. So I set out to roughly duplicate this functionality using a method that should continue to work in future OS updates.

Luckily, Applescript seems to be a usable solution, albeit just slightly less responsive than Visor was (and without the slick “slide out” effect). That said, this script still works well enough for my purposes and may fit your workflow as well.

1. Download the disk image from the link above and mount it.
2. Move the resulting Open Terminal Window.scpt file into your home library’s Scripts folder (/Users/username/Library/Scripts/). There’s a shortcut in the disk image that should work.
3. Now we need some freeware assistance to assign a keyboard shortcut to run the script. Download Red Sweater’s free Fastscripts Lite application (direct download link), mount the disk image, and copy the FastScripts Lite application into your applications folder.
4. Launch the FastScripts Lite application. It’ll appear in your menu bar (the icon looks like a scroll). Click on the FastScripts Lite icon and select Preferences from the FastScripts Lite submenu:

   

5. Select the Script Shortcuts tab and double-click the (None) text beside the Open Terminal Window.scpt item. Now you can set a quick key that will run this script. I use control+option+command+0 (zero).
6. That’s it! Now you can close the FastScripts Lite window and try out your quick key. Assuming you didn’t choose one that conflicts with an existing system-wide keyboard short cut you should see the Terminal application launch and a new window activate. You also will probably want to add FastScripts Lite to your startup items so it launches when you log in.

This script should be smart enough to detect if there is a Terminal window currently open and will reuse it if the window isn’t busy doing something (running top, viewing a man page, etc.). If the current window is busy, the script will open a new tab.

I haven’t tested this that much but it works perfectly for me. Leave feedback in the comments if you run into issues, or if it’s working for you.

The eighth Firefox 3 security / maintenance release is now available and I have an optimized build available for Intel macs.

Check out the official Mozilla Firefox web site to see what’s new in Firefox 3.0.8.

Downloads and caveats

Confused why this download is called “Minefield” and has a different icon? See below.

If you really aren’t a big fan of the new redesigned theme, I highly recommend aronnax’s lovely GrApple Firefox themes which basically make Firefox look a heck of a lot like Safari. Not a bad thing in my book, but your mileage may vary.

Without further ado:

Download Minefield (Firefox) 3.0.8 for Intel

»Mirror » Mirror

Totally not required, but if you feel like donating to help with bandwidth costs, etc., I’d be most grateful. Any excess money raised will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). Thanks!

What the hell is Minefield?

So for those of you who have followed my Firefox builds, you all know the drill - those builds used the Mozilla development codename “BonEcho” because it was against the Firefox trademark to distribute non-official builds using that name or icon. With Firefox 3 the development name has changed from BonEcho to Minefield, so all of the Firefox 3 builds available from this site will be called that instead of Firefox.

As for the icon, in the past I either used the default development icon (the blue earth) or a slightly tweaked version. Minefield’s development icon changed, though, and it’s just… grotesque. Sorry, I can’t mince words here - basically someone took the blue earth icon from BonEcho and tacked on a fuse to it. Get it? Minefield? Bomb? Ahem.

With these builds I’ve reverted back to the blue globe icon instead of using the default development icon, partially for consistency’s sake, and partially because it’s still a heck of a lot better than the bomb icon.

Moving forward there will no longer be more Firefox 2.x builds - as far as I’m concerned it’s obsolete and in the past. That said, I am still chipping away at complete instructions on how to build your own optimized Firefox builds from the comfort of your own home; watch for those in the coming weeks.

As usual, please post feedback and other effluvia in the comments. Enjoy, folks!

Here’s the thing: for the most part I really enjoy and get a lot of personal value out of Twitter. But besides the annoying (but easily ignored) infiltration of Twitter by the PR/marketing webcockerati the one thing that’s harder to ignore is the “retweet”.

Retweeting (or simply “RT”) is when someone reposts someone else’s tweet. It’s really that simple. And it drives me nuts, for a few reasons:

1. Chances are if I was interested in the person being retweeted I probably follow them already, so the retweet just ends up being duplication and noise.
2. If there’s something Big and Momentous going on (see: sporting events, political brouhahas, Apple announcements, etc.), many people often retweet the same tweet, which is like #1 but even more annoying.
3. Many retweets often consist of links to “cool stuff”. For the most part I’m not really that interested as I already have enough sources for cool links (delicious, digg, my newsreader, Tumblr, etc.), and the value of Twitter for me is more in stalking staying in touch with friends than in any so-called “viral messaging”.

   I just gave myself gas typing those two words. The things I do for this web site.

4. If you absolutely had to retweet something, common courtesy would be to link to that person’s tweet rather than regurgitate the text wholesale. The same courtesy already exists for weblogs, so why not microblogs like Twitter?

So, fuck ‘em. For those of you who use Twitterrific, here’s a little application that sets up retweet blocking.

(Looking for the source code? It’s available from the project page on Github.)

Instructions on how to use this and how it works are included, but don’t worry: this is completely safe and 100% reversible. Basically, download, decompress, run, click “Block”, and enjoy your retweet-free Twitterrific.

How do I block retweets on the Twitter web site?

For those of you using the Twitter web site with Firefox or Safari there’s still hope. With the Firefox Greasemonkey add-on or the GreaseKit plugin (which works in Safari, OmniWeb, Fluid, or any other WebKit-based browser) you can block retweets with “beejaminBoy’s” No Retweets userscript. I just installed it and it’s working for me, but I didn’t write this so your mileage may vary.

Just because I have so much extra time I don’t know what to do with myself (ahem), here’s a version of Todd Werth’s TextMate theme IR_Black for MacRabbit’s new all-in-one (and as of this moment still in public beta) web development editor Espresso. For those of you who haven’t seen what IR_Black looks like, here’s a screenshot:

To install the theme, download the file below, decompress the zip file, and copy the IR_Black.css file to /Users/Your Username/Library/Application Support/Espresso/Themes

Those of you using The Other Mac OS X All-In-One Web Development Editor (Panic’s Coda) aren’t left out of the dark theme er, party either: check out my version of IR_Black for Coda.

Feel like editing these themes? Head on over to the Github public repositories and go nuts:

• Espresso IR_Black source code
• Coda IR_Black source code

The tear-inducing irony in all of this is I’m still mostly a TextMate man. I really need better hobbies.

Apple dropped the first public beta release of Safari 4 today, and installing it overwrites the old version of Safari as well as the system Webkit frameworks. This means it’s not possible to run the current Safari 3 release and the beta on the same system. That is, not possible without some fiddling.

Here’s a quick how-to get both Safari 3 and 4 beta running on the same system. You will need to use the terminal for part of this, and we will download an older copy of Webkit, which is Apple’s development builds of Safari.

(It’s a bit confusing, but there are Webkit frameworks, which Safari uses to render web pages, and a Webkit application, which is what Apple uses to test development versions of the Webkit frameworks.)

I am not responsible if this blows up your computer, causes your pants to spontaneously fall to your ankles causing you to flash your junk to the world, provokes fire to shoot out of your fingertips, etc.. Caveat nerd!

1. Download and install the Safari 4 beta. You’ll need to reboot after the install because of the system framework changes.
2. After rebooting, rename the new Safari.app in your Applications folder to Safari4.app.
3. Download the Webkit build from 11/22/2008.

   Safari 3.2.1 was released on 11/24/2008 so I’m guessing this build is very close to that version.

4. Mount the Webkit disk image and copy the Webkit.app application to your desktop.
5. Rename Webkit.app to Safari3.app and move it to your Applications folder. In your Applications folder you should now have Safari3.app and Safari4.app.

   The Safari 4 installer backs up the previous version as an invisible file located at /Library/Application Support/Apple/.Safari4PreviewArchive.tar.gz. We need the original Safari.app bundle as the old version of Webkit we downloaded will not work with the new Safari 4 bundle.

6. Launch the terminal and change directories:

   cd "/Library/Application Support/Apple/"

7. Expand the backed up archive: tar -zxvf .Safari4PreviewArchive.tar.gz. This creates a few new folders in the current directory: Applications, System, and usr.
8. You can now copy the old Safari.app which is now available the the newly created Applications folder to the top-level /Applications folder. You can either use the terminal (running the command cp -R "/Library/Application Support/Apple/Applications/Safari.app" /Applications/) or by navigating to Library » Application Support » Apple » Applications in the Finder and copying the Safari application bundle that way.

After all of this, you should have Safari.app, Safari3.app, and Safari4.app in your top-level Applications folder. To run the Safari 4 beta launch Safari4.app, and to run the original Safari 3 launch Safari3.app. You may be able to run Safari.app as well (I was able to launch it and it identifies itself as Safari 3.2.1) but I wouldn’t recommend this as it uses the system webkit frameworks, which were replaced when Safari 4 was installed.

For those of you who use Panic’s “all in one window” web development tool Coda, here is a port of Todd Werth’s excellent Textmate theme IR_Black. (Note that Todd also has an equally nice version of IR_Black colours for the Terminal - check out his post “A black OS X Leopard Terminal theme that is actually readable” for the deets.)

I’ve ported over the syntax colours for HTML, PHP-HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Here’s a full window screenshot so you can see the syntax colours in action. (The font used in all of these previews is the wonderful (and free) Inconsolata at 12pts):

To install, download the zip below, decompress, and import the files into Coda’s syntax color preference pane. You’ll need to select the matching language with the file you’re importing first, and I highly recommend you export a copy of the original colours just in case you change your mind and want to revert.

You’ll need to check off the Use Inverted Colors preference as seen in the above screenshot to get the dark background and properly match the colours.

For what it’s worth, I really want to like Coda, but Textmate’s stupidly powerful bundles and plugins keep pulling me back. Maybe by 2.0 Coda will fit better with my workflow, but for now I’ll keep jumping between TextMate, MacRabbit’s CSSEdit, and Panic’s Transmit. I have vague hopes for MacRabbit’s Coda-competitor Espresso, but what I’ve seen of the just released public beta hasn’t impressed me much, yet.

Post in the comments if you have any feedback, comments, hate mail, etc.

(Use MacRabbit’s Espresso instead? Check out IR_Black for Espresso.)

Not that anyone probably noticed, but the engine that powers the BeatnikPad (Movable Type) was having some major conniptions after I moved servers just over a week ago. Happily things seem to be working again, including comments, so one more thing is right in the world.

Since I have your attention, I wanted to confirm that there will be optimized Firefox 3 release builds available within a day or so of the official release (slated for June 17th, I believe). Firefox 3 has native form widgets built in (finally!) so there will be no more need for separate builds.

As this is a major release I definitely will build for all three platforms (G4, G5, and Intel) assuming the access I have to a G5 machine doesn’t go down.

So: web site is working again, Firefox 3 builds coming, and I am polishing off fairly complete instructions on how to build your own optimized copies of Firefox to follow soon afterwards.

That is all.

Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available and I have put together Intel Mac optimized builds, available below.

Unless Mozilla releases a major update I’ll probably skip every other maintenance / bug release as they seem to be monthly, and I just don’t have the extra time to build new releases every month. Just so you know.

I know I promised G4 builds last time and I still plan to get to these for the 2.0.0.14 release. The main issue is the only G4 machine I have is a Powerbook and it takes forever to build Firefox on it… but I’ll do my best to build for this platform when I have a spare moment.

Here’s what’s new in 2.0.0.14 according to the Mozilla change notes:

• Security fixes.

That’s it!

Download

Intel Mac-optimized Firefox 2.0.0.14

• w/ Firefoxy form widgets
• w/ aqua form widgets

G5-optimized Firefox 2.0.0.14

• w/ Firefoxy form widgets
• w/ aqua form widgets

As I mentioned about, G4 builds should be when I have some time to actually get to them.

Why is the name / icon different?

I really shouldn’t have to keep repeating this, but every time I post a new Firefox release I still seem to get people annoyed / pissed off / confused as to why these builds are missing the Firefox name and icon. So here comes the strong emphasis:

The Firefox name and icon are trademarked and cannot be used with non-official builds. These are non-official builds, so they cannot have the official branding. Pretty straight-forward. Please don’t ask me to build versions with the official branding.

As always, feel free to post your thoughts / experiences / etc. in the comments. Enjoy!

Seeing how it’s all about the quick fixes these days (with the bulk of my time taken up with more pleasant pursuits), I wanted to take a minute to spew out some random nerd potpourri.

To iPhone, or not to iPhone

I got a chance this afternoon to finally play around a bit with an iPhone, and from the brief time that I had to play with it I was very impressed. I think one thing that was really striking is how familiar the whole interface felt even though the only exposure I’ve had to its UI was via online video and some photos. Within seconds of getting my greasy, greedy fingers on it I was happily pinching and flipping and scrolling around like there was no tomorrow.

Seeing how no one has (yet) unlocked the iPhone to work on any non-AT&T GSM networks, I have to try and determine if it’s a worthwhile risk to buy one and use it solely as a WiFi-enabled iPod. One big plus is Toronto Hydro’s OneZone, which has adequate enough coverage that it could work fairly well as a replacement for Roger’s stupidly expensive EDGE network. It’s only $29 a month for unlimited access, too, so it’s not an expensive option.

The one concern I have with buying one now is the possibility that Apple may not be able to prod Rogers (Canada’s sole GSM provider) to loosen their grip on their bandwidth charges, Right now with Rogers for $5 a month extra you get