journal: mac

Mac OS X 10.5.2 released, Mac users everywhere rejoice

By Nick, February 11, 2008

You read that right. The mythical 10.5.2 update is now available via Software Update. The update weighs in at a hefty 180 MB, though some in MacRumors Forumsnote that it came in at a morbidly obese 341 MB for their particular Mac.

Updates about left and right, from the option to turn off menubar transparency to the option to turn off stacks. Mac OS X 10.5.2’s lot in life seems to be to squash massive amounts of bugs and fix Leopard “enhancements” that have been widely panned.

What’s that? You want full release notes? Here they are!

Download. Install. Visit DT and tell all.


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I’ll Take The Fast One, Not the Fastest One

By Mac Fan, February 6, 2008

It costs $1,600 to go from the Fast Mac Pro to the Fastest one, for a 10% speed increase.

I’ve been a Mac user since around 1987. The first Mac I purchased was a Mac SE/30 followed by a IIci.

I create graphics and animation for corporate clients, which involves a lot of rendering of video/3D and encoding. This all takes a lot of time. So for many years now, I have been upgrading my own personal workstation about every three years and I would normally just get the fastest Mac workstation available at the time. I think this year, I will pick the slower one.

For years, Apple would offer three main configurations of their professional Mac for people to purchase. They would typically be Fast, Faster, Fastest based on the speed of the CPU included in each configuration. They have also been known to offer a single processor version at various times, creating a forth and slowest version.

Recently, Apple has announced updates to their Mac Pro line. These include:

SlowerFastFasterFastest
One 2.8 Ghz quad core Intel processorTwo 2.8 Ghz quad core Intel processorsTwo 3 Ghz quad core Intel processorsTwo 3.2 Ghz quad core Intel processors
$2,299$2,799$3,599$4,399

So if I were to repeat my purchasing behavior from the last ten or so years, I would just go and order the Mac Pro with two 3.2 Ghz quad core processors from Apple at $4,399 and then buy RAM from someone else.

But I recently realized that the Fastest dual 3.2 Ghz quad core Mac Pro costs $1,600 more than the Fast Mac Pro with two 2.8 Ghz quad core processors and…
(Continue)


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Fun Stuff: Inside Apple HQ

By Nick, February 5, 2008

Have you ever wondered what an average cubicle at Apple headquarters looked like? Admittedly I haven’t. But if that sort of thing interests you, Office Snapshots has a collection of photographs from inside the Apple campus, including the obligatory cubicle photos (somehow I expected Apple’s cube to be, I don’t know, less mundane), a shot of a conference room, a cafeteria, and what Apple employees do for fun.

Anyway, check it out. 


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Fanurio 1.9: Time Tracking and Billing for Freelancers

By AtelierS, February 5, 2008

Atelier Software has announced the release of Fanurio 1.9, a time tracking and billing application designed for freelancers. With Fanurio, freelancers can easily organize their work, track time and create invoices.

Each time a contract is signed, just add a new client to the application and create a project. During the project, users can add project items and expenses, decide anytime if an item is billable or not, and if it should be billed using an hourly rate or a flat rate. Billable items can later be added to an invoice. When the project is completed, it can be marked as finished to hide it from other ongoing projects.

Freelancers don’t have to wait for the completion of the project to create an invoice. Partial invoices can be created anytime during a project, or multiple projects, as well as see which invoices are paid, unpaid or overdue. Fanurio uses a powerful template language that can be used to create both simple and complex invoice templates. Using a customizable template, invoices may be exported to a HTML file so they can be printed or e-mailed.

Fanurio has an iTunes-like mini view that gives quick access to the timer. The time spent on each item can be recorded using a timer or it can be entered manually. Work may be invoiced in one or more currencies and use automatic invoice numbering to save time.

Fanurio allows users to:

  • Organize work per client using projects
  • Mark invoices as paid and track those which are…
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Quick Tip: Prevent Safari from displaying PDFs

By Nick, February 4, 2008

Here’s a quickie…

For whatever reason, since upgrading to Leopard, Safari refused to display PDFs. Instead, they would automatically download, cluttering up my Downloads folder with PDF files I only wanted to look at once. I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find a checkbox or control anywhere that dictated whether PDFs should open in Safari or whether they should download to my hard drive. Some people might prefer PDFs to download directly. I didn’t.

Eventually, I got sick enough of PDFs downloading themselves against my will, so I decided to do a little searching.  Not long after, I found the answer. Since I’m a nice guy, I’ll go ahead and share it with you here.

There is a Terminal command that allows you to turn inline PDF displaying on or off. To force all PDFs to download instead of displaying in Safari, type the following into the Terminal and press return:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES

To enable PDF viewing in Safari, type this instead:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool NO

It’s quick and easy to change, but not particularly accessible. A checkbox in Safari Preferences would be a welcome addition. At any rate, my PDF-viewing sanity has been restored. wink


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