Apple | Diogo Gomes Blog

Posts Tagged Apple

I recently got a new Macbook Pro, which means I also moved to Snow Leopard (not that I couldn’t have stayed with Leopard).

I keep a Time Machine backup, and could have used it to move all my files to the new system. But since I had to many things installed which I don’t use anymore, I decided to move just my personal settings to the new system.

This constituted a great opportunity to list the applications I consider essential:

1 Password
Adium
Flip4Mac
git
Growl
Handbrake
KisMAC
Freemind
MacPorts
NetNewsWire
Office 2008
Papers
Perian
Seashore
Skype
Telephone
VLC
VMWare Fusion
Wireshark
XCode

And had to leave GPGMail out (no snow leopard version currently available)

The question now is: What am I missing ?

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Safari 4 Beta

March 7, 2009 English

So today I jumped over my head and went nutz by installing Safari 4 Beta.

I Hate it! Changing the tabs position is messing up with my productivity. Is gaining 1 extra line worth it ?

On the good side: It’s fast, and thats noticeable; coverflow is pretty but not something that again can add to my productivity.

I’ll give a thumbs up to the “Top Sites” feature, since it pretty much solves the issue of which page to use as homepage

For all that matters, I was better of with Safari 3.

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Secure Screen Sharing

February 3, 2009 English

At home I keep a MacMini Media Center which from time to time I access it remotely. Usually I do this through the SSH Server in OS X. But eventually I might need to access it through a GUI. Here comes in hand Apple’s OS X nifty tool called “Screen Sharing” which is actually a VNC Server/Client.

You can setup “Screen Sharing” at the same place you setup the SSH Server in “System Preferences -> Sharing” by ticking “Screen Sharing” and “Remote Login” respectively.

Being that my MacMini lies behind my home firewall. I have setup a port forward mechanism for the SSH protocol. As for “Screen Sharing” the solution was to tunnel it through an ssh session in order to secure my connection.

This is very easily accomplished by these simple commands:

On your client run:

ssh username@home.ip.address -L 5900:localhost:5900

This will establish a SSH tunnel which tunnels all packets from your client 5900 port to your “MacMini” at the same port (5900 is the default port for VNC services). Please note that in this example I’m forwarding port 22 (ssh server) directly from my firewall to my macmini.

Next, it’s time to connect to it using OSX “Screen Sharing” utility. To do this open a terminal and type:

open vnc://localhost/

This will most likely give you a warning “You cannot share your own computer“. No worries! Just type in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing skipLocalAddressCheck -boolean YES

Launch again the client, and everything should be OK.

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Nokia 7100 Supernova plug-in for iSync

December 28, 2008 English

This xmas I got my wife a new cellphone a Nokia 7100 Supernova which although not a 3G phone fits perfectly her needs. It has a slick design, a good enough camera (1.3 megapixel), GPRS/EDGE, support for the usual suspects (MMS, Java MIDP) and Bluetooth.

Nokia 7100 Supernova

Now comes the catch:

I completely forgot to check if it was supported by iSync.
So after the gift unwrapping I was faced with an unsupported phone with no plugin available either by Nokia nor anyone in the internet (as far as my google search is concerned).
Faced with this situation, I decided to go ahead and develop the plugin myself with Apple’s iSync Plug-in Maker. This utility is available in your system in case you have installed the developers tools in your OSX DVD. You can find it under /Developer/Applications/Utilities/.

The tool is very easy to use, and quickly enough I produced the desired plug-in, and my wife was able to sync her contacts with the phone over bluetooth. I did not test it with the USB cable (which I don’t had at the moment) nor did I test Calendar sync.

It therefore doesn’t constitute a finished work but I leave it here for any one to pickup and improve.

Download iSync Plug-in for Nokia 7100 Supernova
Download iSync Plug-in Maker Document

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Apple TV price

November 4, 2008 English

Would someone please explain to me the rational (because I believe there is one) behind the fact that the Apple TV is the ONLY product in Apple Store whose price in euros in actually higher (50%) then in dollar albeit the weak dollar ?