Software development. Tech punditry. Retro gaming.
I work with a number of younger software engineers, so occasionally I’ll say something that demonstrates a sizeable generation gap. Usually it is because I’ve mentioned the lyrics of a song from the 80s, or some early 80s television show.
The other day I found myself more than a little surprised. I was explaining something to some of the boys, …
In Mac OS X, the terms “ejecting” and “unmounting”, as they relate to removeable media, are considered interchangeable by most end users. Most people will talk about “ejecting” their USB flash drive, even though this doesn’t cause the drive to pop out like a CD or DVD. Apple explain this thus:
…Ejecting a volume may not mean that it
This week at WWDC, Steve Jobs told Mac Developers that they were offering a “sweet” way to develop applications for the iPhone. Yes, he said “sweet”. Multiple times.
Steve also told us this was an “Innovative new way” to develop applications. And that it was “Easy to update – just change the code on your own server”. Ouch! Developers were …
For those who don’t know, OS X has the concept of a “bundle”. A bundle is basically a folder that allows related resources (software code, graphics files, configuration information) to be grouped together. The most common example of bundles is Mac OS X Applications. Mac OS X applications are often bundles, known as “packages”. To the end user, in the …
I’ve been meaning to do a quick review on iWoz for a while now, having read the book back in December last year.
iWoz is the autobiography of Steve “Woz” Wozniak. For those who don’t know who this is, Woz created the Apple I computer, and founded Apple Computer (along with Steve Jobs).
Now, I’m a big fan of Apple …
Mac OS X is quite probably the best operating system in the world when it comes to internationalisation. It comes complete with language settings from all over the world, with the ability to easily switch to another language depending on user preferences. Applications have the ability to easily support languages other than the language the application was written in.
Which …
A lot of Mac users actually don’t realise that there is a “Secure Empty Trash” option for securely deleting the files in their trash.
What does this mean exactly? Well, when you empty your trash the usual way, the contents of the files are still lying around on the disk until they are overwritten by other data. This implies that, …
One of the many great things about OS X is the simple installation process most applications use. To summarise the process – “Simply Drag and Drop to Install”.
OS X has the concept of an application “bundle” (there are other types of bundles too, but I want to just talk about applications for now). An application has many files that …
[This post continues on from Part 1. Please read that post first.]
I’ve just released a new version of Universal Document. This version adds support for URLs, along with better error handling. The source code is available if you want it too (as mentioned in Part 1, the actual code is minimal).
Version 1.1 brings …
It was back in December of 2004 that I first considered the idea of internationalised (or internationalized for those in the US) documentation.
First, some terminology. Apple defines “Internationalisation” as “the process of designing and building an application to facilitate localization”. “Localisation”, in turn, is defined as “the cultural and linguistic adaptation of an internationalized application to two or more …
The way we use computers has changed over the years. Today we use a lot more removable media – MP3 players, cameras, portable firewire drives, USB key drives, disk images, iDisk, network drives. Yet, after all this time, the desktop has hardly changed in the way it works.
On the Mac, much of the desktop functions today as it did …
It is always easy to point out faults, but much harder to suggest improvements. In a series of articles I will outline ways to improve Mac OS X. Some suggestions may be considered trivial. Some may be considered heresy. Some may be considered complete and utter rubbish. Many (perhaps all) will be ignored. :-)
These are not troll pieces. I …