Tag Archives: software

iOS 6.0.1 »

November 1st, 2012

Though iOS 6.0.1 is a .x.x release it actually has a fair number of bug fixes.

  • Fixes a bug that prevents iPhone 5 from installing software updates wirelessly over the air
  • Fixes a bug where horizontal lines may be displayed across the keyboard
  • Fixes an issue that could cause camera flash to not go off
  • Improves reliability of iPhone 5 and iPod touch (5th generation) when connected to encrypted WPA2 Wi-Fi networks
  • Resolves an issue that prevents iPhone from using the cellular network in some instances
  • Consolidated the Use Cellular Data switch for iTunes Match
  • Fixes a Passcode Lock bug which sometimes allowed access to Passbook pass details from lock screen
  • Fixes a bug affecting Exchange meetings

That one about the horizontal lines on the keyboard was something I thought was wrong with my particular iPhone 5. I’m glad to know it will be fixed in this update.

The rise of enterprise marketing »

September 25th, 2012

Chris Dixon has a good post about the shift from sales-driven software efforts to product-driven software efforts.

Thus enterprise software went from being about sales (one-to-one) to being about marketing (one-to-many). Marketing requires crafting a compelling message, figuring out the right channels and then optimizing. But the most effective marketing is a compelling product that can be easily tried.

But I don’t see it as a shift. Large organizations still make decisions the same way that they used to, it just just that there are far more small businesses today than anytime in history. Thus, there is more business to be had using a friendly marketing message and easy-to-use and trialable software.

Even the examples given, like Github, have enterprise-level efforts. They have sales people. And while they may paint a pretty picture about their efforts being largely about building a great product… they recognize that the buying power, in these larger organizations, still does not lay with the developers.

PJ Hyett, Co-Founder of Github:

“The remaining 1% of customers is where sales comes into play. Much in the same way support guides folks through technical questions, we needed people to guide customers through business questions. Not only that, developers within larger organizations sometimes need help convincing the people with the purchasing authority to buy the products they really, really want to use.”

So rather than calling it a shift, I’d call it the growth of small business that we’re seeing. Companies with flatter organizational structures and smaller teams than previously needed, aided by technology of course, so that SaaS companies can land a significant amount of business outside of the enterprise.

It is a boon, right now, for software developers. At every level. Product-driven software efforts and sales-driven software efforts are both here to stay. All you need to do is choose which level you want to play at and play by that game’s rules.

/via Rob Sandie.

Coda 2 going private beta

October 26th, 2011

Good news! Panic has just published a blog post confirming that Coda 2 is going private beta. As a Coda user I am super happy that they’ve gotten to this milestone.

I found a few things mentioned in the post interesting.

“Coda 2 has now been in development for about a year and a half.”

Three years ago I published an interview with Panic and they seemed to indicate that they were already working on Coda 2 but I guess they didn’t start on it officially for another 18 months. I don’t think they tried to trick us (or me) deliberately but I thought it was interesting considering how early we, the people, were asking Panic to begin working on Coda 2. Amazing insight.

So, when will it ship? Coda 2 is an extremely complex and multi-layered app, and it will take significant time to test, debug, and improve. That means there are many, many more months ahead of us — this release is important and needs to be as close to perfect as possible. So, to those of you currently camped out on the street in front of our office: you’ll need to hang in there for a quite a while still. Thanks for your understanding while we test!

For Panic to come right out and say that it will be “many, many more months” before Coda 2 will ship is fantastic for its users in a number of ways. It is exactly the reason I published the interview with them focused on transparency in software development and not just about the next version of Coda. You’ll remember, if you’re a long-time reader of my blog, how excited I was that immediately following our interview Panic reached out to ask how they could be more transparent, and a bit later they got on Twitter and started a blog.

With this post Panic has educated Coda users so that they’ll know when to expect an update to Coda. They don’t think it is coming before the end of the year but will, more than likely, come sometime early next summer (my guess). This is huge. Over the next 8 or so months if you need an application that does more than Coda currently provides – you may want to look into investing in a different application for the time being. This is a decision that, before this blog came out, would have been very hard to make. Especially for larger development teams.

Imagine starting a company with three, five, or ten developers and that you wanted a license for each of them. You take a look at Coda’s features and you know that you’re developers require, or would prefer, an editor that does something that Coda currently does not. You can now know how long your investment will take take to make a return for you. Perhaps you pick up a Coda 1.x license. Perhaps you don’t. Now you know. Before you didn’t.

If you read my interview with them you’ll know that this is not the way Panic has always operated. In fact, it may not be the way that they prefer to work. But they’re doing it anyway. For you. Noodle that a while and then go thank Panic in their comments.

WordPress for iOS 2.9

September 26th, 2011

A very, very nice update of WordPress for iOS was been released. The application for iPhone and iPad now has a simple content editor and the QuickPhoto feature can now post images from your Library instead of going straight to the camera.

Although I wish the app supported Markdown format (rather than just HTML) I’ll take it.

Just in time for our trip to Ireland too.

Update: A small, yet very welcomed update, is that the Posts tab is now the default tab rather than the Comments tab. This makes things so much quicker. Again, a very, very nice update to WordPress for iOS.

How to: Put a Mac running OS X Lion to sleep

August 31st, 2011

As I outlined in Recent software problems:

“Since upgrading to Lion my Mac isn’t going to sleep. It is frustrating as I’m the type of person that never, ever shut my Mac down. Instead I usually would just close the lid and be on my way. But, now, when I come back to my Mac the fans are spinning and in some cases the battery is drained. I’m hoping that a forthcoming update to Lion will fix this otherwise I may have to take drastic measures.”

This problem continues. However, I ran across this solution via a few Google searches.

  1. Unplug your Macbook Pro.
  2. Put the Mac to sleep (Apple Menu -> Sleep or close the lid)
  3. Once asleep, plug your MacBook Pro back in.

I’ve confirmed that this works. I’m still looking forward to a Lion update that addresses these and my other issues.

Recent software problems

August 20th, 2011

I’ve been having some software problems lately and I thought it would be interesting to jot down what they are. Or, maybe just cathartic. Fun for me more than for you, dear reader, but alas this is my blog and I can cry if I want to, cry if I want to, you would cry too if these were happening to you.

First, the problems I’m having on my Mac. Since upgrading to Lion my Mac isn’t going to sleep. It is frustrating as I’m the type of person that never, ever shut my Mac down. Instead I usually would just close the lid and be on my way. But, now, when I come back to my Mac the fans are spinning and in some cases the battery is drained. I’m hoping that a forthcoming update to Lion will fix this otherwise I may have to take drastic measures.

Also Lion related, I believe, is Mail.app is a bit crash happy. I’ll be scrawling a note to someone and poof – instacrash with no warning. And although Lion touts itself as the resumable OS and I am usually able to pick up just about where I left off this is still frustrating.

To top it off my Mac is running fairly hot. I don’t believe my fans turned on more than once a day on Snow Leopard but on Lion they don’t seem to shut off and there aren’t any processes that seem to demand it. Again, I’m hoping that a update to Lion will cure some of these things.

Next up, my iPad. Twitter for Mac is one crash happy application. I think it has a lot to do with the way it tries to handle the various types of media that people are tweeting. I’ll do a search for baking (yes, I do searches for baking) on Twitter and within one or two tweets – crash. Unlike Lion on the Mac I can not resume where I was. I have to start over. I appreciate that the team at Twitter wants us to have a unified experience for how media is displayed but it is killing the reliability if the app.

One more gripe about Twitter for iPad. I separate the accounts that I follow into Lists. So, while I only follow about 60 accounts I’m actually keeping up with hundreds using Twitter’s Lists. It’s great. Except that on the iPad app I’m very limited in the number of tweets I can load. On Tweetbot for iPhone (which is arguably the best twitter client ever built) I can go back much further in the timeline. The problem I have is that some of my Lists are rather bloated – like my Software list. I follow many accounts that relate to software that I use this way I can keep up-to-date. But I have hundreds of accounts in that list. Which would be fine if the iPad didn’t limit the number of tweets I can pull up. Give me infinite scroll!!

The App Store on the iPad is dated and I hope that Apple works very hard on making this experience much better. Back in the days of the App Store having hundreds of applications it worked well. Now with hundreds of thousands of apps it doesn’t hold up. For instance, last night I was searching for travel planning applications. For our trip to Ireland I would like to store a list of possible locations to visit based on their location. So, if I’m going to be in Killarney and I want to pull up an already curated list of places we’d like to visit I’d think there would be a good application for that. Hint: there isn’t. Back to why the App Store doesn’t work – I kept having to start my search over at the beginning. Doing a text search turned up very little so I decided to go into the Travel Category. I ordered it by highest customer rating first and then paged through 174 pages of applications. The problem is that when you view an app and then click the back button your back to page 1 without your filters stored. It’s horrible and I ended giving up after only two or three tries.

So, yeah, Apple and Twitter have some work to do – for me. I feel better, thanks.

Alfred 0.9

May 15th, 2011

My favorite launcher application, Alfred, has been updated to version 0.9. I suggest buying the Powerpack but it is free if you want to kick the tires.

Calling it a launcher application is sort of limiting. Alfred can help you play music, give you quick access to your clipboard’s history, and even help you attach files to your emails. Its absolutely great and version 0.9 is packed to the gills with new features and updates.

New Browser releases make me nauseous

March 23rd, 2011

You know that feeling you get when two of your friends ask you to do something different on the same day? That feeling in your stomach when you don’t know which one to let down? You sit there agonizing over the choice between two friends, two things great things to do!

Firefox 4 was released today and once again I’m made to feel this same nauseating feeling. Every single time a new Browser is released, well Safari, Chrome, or Firefox (we’ll leave Internet Explorer, Opera and others out of this), I’m torn between making the jump from one browser to the other.

I’ve jumped around a lot over the years. And it always comes back to one thing that determines whether or not I use a Browser every day; speed. I don’t use many extensions, themes, or add-ons in any Browser. I had used Safari before it even supported such things. Speed, however, keeps me loyal to a Browser until – inevitably – the next-fastest Browser released pulls me away.

On the outset Firefox 4 feels very snappy. Just about as fast as Chrome (if not faster) and a lot faster than Safari. Chrome and Firefox 4 are now neck-and-neck for winning my default Browser of choice. But that’s today and I’m sure that won’t last long and, once again, I’ll be left with the nauseating choice of jumping ship.

Is there a future for Mac software?

April 4th, 2010

Warning: This post may have a slight taste of jealousy when you bite into it at first but I tried my best to only use a teaspoon.

iPhone was, as Scott Forstall recently put it, a gold rush for developers. Simple, relatively inexpensive applications for iPhone that hit the top paid, popular or featured lists on the App Store have made some serious dough for their developers. This caused a lot of developers to focus on iPhone either exclusively or in addition to their offerings for either the Mac or PC. They’ve spent a considerable amount of time focused on iPhone app development.

iPad is creating a similar environment. iPhone applications are being ported over to iPad and new applications are being developed and released as quickly as possible – and exclusively for iPad. A lot of time and effort is going into building these applications and I’m sure it will mean a lot of money in the pockets of developers.

You can’t blame the developers for going where the money is but I fear for the future of Mac software and I’m even beginning to fear for iPhone’s. I fear that one day all of the great work, the great applications, the incredible design will have migrated exclusively to iPad. That may not happen for some time and people are still making some serious money on making both Mac and iPhone applications – but the tide is definitely on its way out to the iPad sea.

I sometimes sit and wonder what sort of applications could have been made for the Macintosh if, say, Apple had opened up an App Store that supported iPhone, iPad, and Mac? Would the river of money have been split into three smaller tributaries? Would people flock to the Mac the same way they have iPhone and now iPad? Arguably the main reasons people buy iPhones and iPads is the ease of finding/installing software and content. Imagine if things were that easy on the Mac. And imagine if developers were excited to build applications for the Mac again!

Apple isn’t out of position yet to make this happen. With a single move, adding Mac software to the App Store, they could start a gold rush for Macintosh developers the way they have for iPhone and iPad developers. Unlike iPhone and iPad, though, it should be just another way to download applications – not the only way to do so. This way both developers and consumers could decide how to get applications themselves and not be forced one way or the other. I think, ultimately, developers would decide to distribute their applications through the App Store because that is how users would choose to get their applications but at least they’d have the choice. Wouldn’t that be great?

But this may never happen and that is why I fear for the future of Mac software.

Finding possible duplicate photos in iPhoto using Smart Albums

March 26th, 2010

Yesterday I said that I’d share the many ways in which I use Smart Albums in iPhoto. Instead of sharing all of the ways in one post I figured I’d break them up. One of my Smart Albums helps me to locate possible duplicate photos. Here is why and how this works.

I stress possible duplicates because this Smart Album is neither fool proof nor genius. This is a dead simple Smart Album yet it seems to get the vast majority of duplicate photos in my personal photo library. Perhaps it can help you too.

So, why are there duplicates in the first place?

iPhoto has built-in duplicate photo detection on import. It warns you when it finds what it believes might be a duplicate photo to one that is already in your photo library. iPhoto does a fairly good job at this too and it is based on filename and date/time.

In my own personal experience I’ve found that 90% of my duplicate photos happened because of something that happened just prior to the import process. In some cases it was simply that my Macintosh automatically added a _1 or _2 to the photo’s filename because it already existed in a folder that I was using to store photos prior to importing them into iPhoto. This happens, perhaps, when both my wife and I are storing photos on a laptop while traveling and waiting until we return home to import them into iPhoto.

Since iPhoto does not check the binary of the photo nor does it recognize duplicates based on some sort of ‘visual’ check then some of these duplicate photos slip by. What we end up with is two, or sometimes three, photos that match each other in every way but filename.

For this specific case of duplicate photos that share everything except filename I’ve come up with this simple Smart Album that seems to do a good job at finding most of the duplicates in my photo library. Here are the rules.

This simple Smart Album simply looks for images where the filename ends in _2.jpg, _2.JPG, _1.jpg or _1.JPG. (iPhoto’s Smart Albums are case sensitive.) Usually what you’ll end up with, but you should definitely verify with your main library before you delete any of them, is a bunch of duplicate photos that have a match in your library and can probably be deleted. To delete the photos from your main library from within this Smart Album see How to: Delete photos from within Smart Albums in iPhoto.

When I first created this Smart Album for my personal photo library of around 52,000 photos it filtered out little over 1,100 as duplicates. After going through each of them to verify that they were indeed duplicates I ended up being able to delete about 900 of them. Not too shabby.

Switching from Tweetie for Mac to Echofon

March 9th, 2010

This should come as no surprise to those of you that follow me on Twitter but I’ve switched from Tweetie for Mac, which hasn’t seen an update for months, to the oft updated Echofon.

Tweetie for Mac still has a few standout features that draw me to using it – but any software that runs on a public social service that isn’t updated in months tends to fall behind rather quickly. Echofon keeps up.

All Chrome all the time

January 15th, 2010

I’ve been using Chrome as my default browser for nearly six months. It won Best Browser in my Best of 2009 list. I didn’t even realize it had been that long until I went back through some of the things I wrote about Chrome here in First initial, last name. To be more specific, actually, I’ve been using a Chromium nightly build – which is the open source project behind the official Google Chrome releases.

To keep my build of Chromium up-to-date I use Techcrunch’s Chrome-Up application built by MG Siegler and Greg Rosen.

Now that an official release of Chrome for Mac is out there it is being evaluated by some of the Macintosh community. John Gruber recently linked to someone who had tried Chrome for a week before it actually stuck. I can see why – switching browsers from Safari to Chrome won’t win you any new features. In fact, it may even force you to give up a few. But what makes Chrome better than any other browser on the Macintosh, at least for me, is pure foot-to-the-floor speed.

There are a few neat features, for sure. The “New Tab” page, arguably not as nice as Safari’s Top Sites feature, makes it pretty simple to set up a good way to get to what you want. Bookmark sync is nice. Extensions, I think, will play a huge roll in the success of Chrome – especially when it is pitted against Safari. Google has taken the right path with Extensions and how you build them, too.

But that’s about it. Here’s the one-liner for Chrome; it is really fast. Everything else is gravy.

Open a file from Terminal with Coda

December 6th, 2009

If you’re like me, you love Coda. Well, you may find the need to open a file, or set of files, from Terminal in Coda. Gregory Tomlinson has created a bash script to let you do just that.

Update May 20, 2011: It turns out that Tomlinson’s website is down. So, here is a brief synopsis of what you can do to add this functionality to your Mac.

  • Open Terminal
  • In terminal, enter: open .profile
  • Add the following lines of code
    # TextMate
    # set path and simple shell function
    export TEXTMATE_PATH=/Applications/TextMate.app/Contents/Resources/mate
    mate () {
    $TEXTMATE_PATH $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6
    }
    # svn for TextMate (default editor, end-of-line types)
    export EDITOR="$TEXTMATE_PATH -w"
    export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8

    # Coda
    # set path
    export CODA_PATH=/Applications/Coda.app
    # function roughly like 'mate .' by expanding '.' to '*.htm*'
    coda () {
    if [[ "." == $1 ]]
    then
    open -a $CODA_PATH *.htm*
    else
    open -a $CODA_PATH $1 $2 $3
    fi
    }

  • Save .profile
  • Quit Terminal
  • Restart Terminal

There is also a slightly more robust script written for Coda by Aditya Bhargava that handles a few more tidbits and it is available on GitHub.