- Apple

GPG with Snow Leopards Mail.app

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:41:25 +0100

Lukas Pitschl released a bugfix version for GPGMail. It works with Snow Leopards Mail.app (32bit only). Grab the file http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/20215/GPGMail-1.2.1.mailbundle.zip and drop it in your /username/Library/Mail/Bundles folder. Make sure mail.app is not running. Relaunch after the file is dropped in.

you can also try the official http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpgmail/ project. Not sure if this one works yet.

How to install Macports on Snow Leopard 10.6

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:18:10 +0200

Apple will release Snow Leopard retail soon. At the time I'm writing this, macports 1.7 (known as darwinports) are not working well with previous builds of Snow Leopard. I'm sure that everything will work out of the box with macports > 1.7.1 a few weeks after the retail release of OSX 10.6 in September 2009. Make sure to install Xcode from the 10.6 DVD! It will update gcc to version 4.2. My description wont work with old gcc 4.0 from 10.5.

To improve our chance for a working ports tree, we have to use the latest subversion source code (August 2009).

1. Open up the Terminal
2. svn co http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/base/ (Wait for it to finish checking out files)
3. cd base
4. ./configure
5. make
6. sudo make install
7. sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate

I had to add /Developer/usr/bin and /Developer/usr/sbin to my .bash_profile
export PATH=/Developer/usr/bin:/Developer/usr/sbin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH

There are mailing list entries about problems with compiling python on Snow Leopard. This might change soon but be aware of such problems.

Update:Use sudo port upgrade --enforce-variants and then sudo port upgrade outdated to update all your old installed ports after selfupdate.
If you see errors like: ld: warning: in /opt/local/lib/libz.dylib, file is not of required architecture then you've to remove zlib and libiconv as installed ports and re-install it again.

sudo port uninstall -f libiconv zlib
sudo port install libiconv zlib

This may break some old dependencies. If so then you have to rebuild all related ports as well.

Add notes to PDF Files with Skim

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:06:00 +0200

A friend of mine recommended an interesting PDF tool to me. Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file. Best things are free

ClickToFlash allows you to opt-in flash by clicking

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:35:00 +0200

ClickToFlash is a WebKit plug-in that prevents automatic loading of Adobe Flash content. If you want to see the content, you can opt-in by clicking on it or adding an entire site to the whitelist.

Try control-clicking (or right-clicking) on an unloaded Flash box to access ClickToFlash's contextual menu which allows you to do advanced things like edit its whitelist, specify settings, and load all Flash on the page.

Download ClickToFlash.

Create a RamDisk with a GUI

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:30:00 +0200

Ram disk is the use of a part of read-write memory (RAM) as a hard disk. Creating a ram disk on OS X is easy with shell commands. But as we know, most Mac users prefer a GUI. Esperance DV is a module for System Preferences making a ram disk (memory disk). You can place temporary files for speed saving video, speed recording a lot of pictures, building your application with xCode,...

Brightness controls for your iMac with Shades

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:08:41 +0200

Have you ever tried to dim your iMac display? Apples iMac default brightness controll is not very satisfying.

Charcoal Design Shades is a little application that gives you fine control over how bright or dim your iMac's display is. It runs in the background providing always-available fine-grained control over the brightness of your display via a Mac-like interface. It performs this without actually changing the real brightness of your display. It applies an opacity filter to your Desktop similar to Splasms Software Brightness Control

Both tools have no power saving effect! Shades is available as ppc, intel and universal binary.

My DarwinPorts Notes

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:22:20 +0200

I assume DarwinPorts are already installed (http://darwinports.com/install/). All my examples are done with lftp a powerful command line ftp client (System: OS X 10.5.3 intel).

Update the darwin ports tree:
sudo port selfupdate

Search for a port. The search facility uses standard regular expression syntax for complex searches:
sudo port search 'lftp'

Check what variations of that port are available to use. Variants provide additional configuration options for a port:
sudo port variants lftp

See what dependencies a port has:
sudo port deps lftp

Find out which ports depends on a already installed port:
port dependents

Install a port:
sudo port install lftp

Delete all the intermediate files that DarwinPorts has created while building the port:
sudo port clean lftp
sudo port clean --all lftp

Getting Information about installed port:
sudo port info lftp
sudo port contents lftp

Show all installed ports:
sudo port installed

Check if lftp is outdated (ports tree should be up to date):
sudo port outdated lftp

Show all outdated ports (ports tree should be up to date):
sudo port outdated

Upgrade lftp port:
sudo port upgrade lftp

This will deactivate the old version and install the new. It also install the latest versions of the dependencies of the lftp port.

Just upgrade a port without the dependencies of this port:
sudo port -n upgrade lftp

Upgrade ALL installed ports (could take ages):
sudo port upgrade installed

Uninstall a port:
sudo port uninstall lftp

Uninstall inactive ports (makes sense after a port upgrade):
sudo port -f uninstall inactive

Brave poeple can use (read: man port for all options):
sudo port -fvdRnu upgrade outdated
sudo port -fvdR clean --all installed
sudo port -fvdR uninstall inactive
sudo port -fvdR clean --all uninstalled

MediaFork (a.k.a. "new" HandBreak)

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:41:59 +0100

Most OSX User know the great HandBrake video tool. It's a GPL'd multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 (h264/Xvid) ripper/converter. HandBrake was originally available on the BeOS, but has been ported over to MacOS X and to GNU/Linux. It's a great tool but it missed a few features like the recently introduced iPod features (H.264 Baseline Low-Complexity, larger size) for TV size videos.

The MediaFork project started as an independant effort to add features and enhancements to the latest HandBrake codebase and provide users with updates. The first public beta, MediaFork 0.8.0b1, was released yesterday with significant enhancements over HandBrake 0.7.1 (see the full changelog on the MacUpdate page - MediaFork’s server has been under heavy load since the release and went down).

Let’s be clear that MediaFork is not a concurrent project. It's available for OSX (UB), Linux and Windows.

iterm

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:05:35 +0100

OSX 10.5 (codename: Leopard) is knocking on our doors. It offers a lot of enhancement compared to OS X 10.4 like virtual desktop, timeshift (backup feature), ZFS or tabed terminal support.
But let's face the reality, OSX 10.5 is not available right know and it certainly takes some time until it's stable as 10.4. Also most upcoming features are available for 10.4 as well with third party programs.
iTerm is one of this tools. It gives use the possibility to use multi tab within one window. iTerm is a full featured terminal emulation program written for OS X using Cocoa. We are aiming at providing users with best command line experience under OS X. The letter i represents a native Apple look and feel of the program interface, and an emphasis on complete international support. iTerm was merged from two projects, CTerminal and TerminalX, both of which were based on JTerminal project. The current version is still in beta stage. It is however very much functional and usable.

Feature list:

Native Cocoa application that runs both on Tiger and Panther.
Native OS X user interface
Support for both PowerPC and Intel Macs
Applescript support
Transparent windows and custom background pictures
Bonjour support
Complete VT100 emulation, with additional support for most common xterm and ANSI escape sequences.
terminfo support with flexible custom key-mapping
Supports select-to-copy and mid-button paste
Supports focus follow mouse
Supports a variety of additional xterm escape sequences, including xterm titling sequence and xterm mouse reporting
Supports ANSI 16 colors, which are also fully customizable
Multi-tab within one window.
Tabs can be drag and drop between windows.
Tab labels can change color to indicate the session activities
Choose among Metal, Aqua, Adium, and Unified styles
You can send keyboard input to multiple tabs
Bookmarks for storing settings of most used sessions
You can fully customize each session, with support of macro in bookmark commands
Bookmarks can be specified to handle URLs such as ftp.
Create profiles for managing bookmark settings.
Anti-idle function that avoids disconnection because of no activity
Supports all language encodings that are available with OS X
User can specify a second font to display non-latin characters to achieve best look
Supports double-width characters, as used in many eastern Asian languages

Thanks to Cold-1 for the hint.

TextWrangler

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 03:03:00 +0100

TextWrangler is a General Purpose Text Editor, Programmer's Text Editor, Unix And Server Administrator's Tool, Powerful Text Transformer And Manipulator, Good Mac OS Citizen, Powerfully Useful Tool and FREE!
It's similar like the commercial BBEdt or Textmate.

Text Editing and Manipulating Details:

Powerful single and multi-file search & replace with file filtering options.

Flexible 'grep' style pattern-based search and replace based on PCRE (Perl-Compatible Regular Expression)

Sort Lines and Process Duplicate Lines plug-ins offer grep pattern support for sorting, extracting, and handling text

Find Differences to compare two versions of a text file and merge the differences

Run Text Factories created with BBEdit, allowing you to apply multiple text processing actions to multiple files and/or folders

Support for a wide variety of BBEdit plug-ins

Support for rectangular text selections

Built-in text transformations: Zap Gremlins, Change Case, Entab/Detab, and more

Open and save files in a variety of character sets, including Unicode (UTF-8 and UTF-16) files

Supports viewing and editing of multi-byte and Unicode text

Use of ATSUI for text rendering greatly improves handling of Unicode files, particularly those containing glyphs from disparate languages

Quick Search window

Perform incremental searches

Open and save files in Mac, Unix, DOS, and Unicode line-ending formats

Integrated spelling checker with support for external Word Services-aware spelling and grammar checkers - now uses the Mac OS X spelling checker.

Hard or soft wrap text however you prefer

Quoted text rewrapper

Unlimited Undo/Redo

Multiple Clipboards

Splittable editing windows

Auto-Indent

Footagehead

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 01:08:27 +0100

Footagehead is the third image browser I mention this week. All of them have some advantages. You have to decide for yourself which one is your favorite.

I appreciate any comment about your experiance with one of the image browsers.

Keep a lot of pictures? Need some way to browse them quickly? Footagehead is an easy-to-use image browser that does what you'd expect from an image browser, plus some handy extras.

Key features:

Consistent with the Mac OS X look and feel.

Quickly find, browse, sort and show of your photos

Spotlight support

Open images from a remote web server with the click of a button

Images can be extracted from any HTML page, or even from RSS streams

Browse remote Flickr photostream

SyncTunes

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 07:28:00 +0100

Have you ever wonder about syncing iTunes with your PSP’s, your PDA’s, and your MP3-capable cell phones. In short, many people with a Mac, iTunes and a PDA or phone with audio playback capability, or non-iPod music player. From user reports, SyncTunes transfers files that work with Palm PDAs, Sony PSP, Sony Ericsson K750/P910/W800i, no-brand MP3 player. It is probably compatible with other audio players too, except iPods which have a special database file.
A great application and it's free.

XEE

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 00:57:18 +0100

Xee is a lightweight, fast and convenient image viewer and browser. It is designed to be a serious tool for image viewing and management, with a sleek and powerful interface.

Xee works as a much more useful replacement for Preview, or most any other image viewer available on Mac OS. You can drag and drop an entire directories with pictures into Xee.

Reads and views a large number of image formats. (Any format QuickTime or Preview can open, plus several more, including PCX and Amiga IFF-ILBM.)

Very fast, and uses less memory than most other image viewing tools.

Uses OpenGL to display and scroll images smoothly.

Easy browsing through folders of images - open any file in a folder and use the toolbar, keyboard shortcuts or mouse wheel to view the other images in the same folder.

Easy copying, moving, renaming and deleting of images while viewing.

Can do lossless JPEG transforms, which us very useful to rotate your digital photos quickly without sacrificing image quality.

Full-screen viewing.

Highly streamlined interface with configurable keyboard shortcuts.

Japanese localization included.

Credits to Bassmatic for this submission.

iFeedPod

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 00:56:00 +0100

Maybe you got an iPod for Christmas and maybe you like to read RSS feeds like my one.
iFeedPod collects all the news from your feeds, and copies them to your iPod for you to read wherever you have the time (requires an iPod,iPod mini or iPod Nano with Notes facility).

Witch

nospam@example.com (Thomas) — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:45:59 +0100

Apples application switch implementation is pretty usless. The key combination "option+tab" opens just the application it belongs to. Even windows has a better app switch function with "alt+tab".
While you can use Exposé to switch windows, doing so can be very clumsy if you're the keyboard-only type of user. And don't all of these windows look just the same when they are scaled down?
Witch lets you access all of your windows by pressing a shortcut and choosing from a clearly arranged list of window titles

Moreover, you can use Witch to...

Directly access minimized windows without using your mouse

Close minimized windows without bringing them to front first

Zoom, de-/minimize, and close windows on the fly