Tag apple

Hellenic Reverse Directory Lookup Widget

Επειδή τυχαίνει κατα καιρούς να δέχομαι κλήσεις από αγνώστους και καθώς ο δικτυακός τόπος του τηλεφωνικού καταλόγου του ΟΤΕ δεν είναι ό,τι καλύτερο, έφτιαξα ενα Dashboard Widget ώστε να μην χρειάζεται να κάνω βόλτες στο www.whitepages.gr. Καθώς το χρησιμοποιώ αρκετά είπα να το βγάλω προς τα έξω μήπως φανεί χρήσιμο και σε άλλους έλληνες macheads. […]

As a company that puts $7bn a year into R&D, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders

said Sam Ramji, Microsoft's directory of Open platform solutions (what platforms again? oh the irony). $7bn on R&D, out of $12bn (net income). Not bad as a percentage, but what on earth do they do with all that money? It's no secret that most of the things that come out of Microsoft, despite the funds and manpower available to it, are, well, crap. By comparison, the total net income of Apple Inc. for last year was around $2bn and I guess very little of that went into R&D (Of course Apple is not doing any research that matters). Google, the new kid on the block, has a net income of $3bn, but it is also cultivating a research-focused working environment so it's hard to estimate how much really goes to research. Now, IBM, the worlds largest IT company has a net income of $9bn and let's not forget that IBM has very extensive research activities, but I'm certain diverts less than Microsoft to them. So, really, what does Microsoft do with all that money, given their poor record in both research and commercial software output?

See you in court!

I had been planning on getting a new Merom MacBook Pro ever since I found out about the processor more than 18 months ago. In the end I never did. Right after my last trip to London in early December 2006 I wrote a long rant about how the displays of the, then new (and still current) MacBook Pro on show at the London Apple Store looked horrible; my complaints included uneven backlight, narrow viewing angles and a grainy display. I guess I was not the only one to notice these; these are supposed to be Pro machines used by Pro people after all. So now Apple is getting sued for false claims in its marketing/advertising material regarding the quality and capabilities of its displays. It's quite reminiscent of the G4 MDD Leafblower towers when it took an organised effort, several web sites and constant 'harassment' of Apple executives to pay attention and own up to their crappy hardware. Yet with so many fanatics spending money on Apple products without paying attention to what they're buying as long as it's got an Apple logo somewhere I'm not surprised Apple keeps ignoring its customers and the quality issues of their products.

The Xcode Bugs

For reasons unbeknownst to me, Xcode has been seriously misbehaving lately. In most cases the problems had to do with its buggy parser/writer and required me to open the .xcodeproj files with TextMate and fix them. One example, that tortured me the other day, had to do with spurious compiler flags added there for no […]

Coda

First of all let me state here that I'm a huge fan of Panic. Their software is typically well-designed and extremely functional. Transmit 2.0 was the first shareware application I ever bought for OS X and I've kept an eye on them ever since. Yesterday Panic released Coda, an application that unites Web Development under one window. While I'd have a hard time abandoning TextMate --- it must be my UNIX roots :) --- I cannot but praise their work. John Gruber has a pretty good review of the app at Daring Fireball.

Why I stopped using Skype. Kind of.

I was one of the early adopters of Skype, the, now ubiquitous voice over IP application/platform created by Niklas Zennström of Kazaa’s fame and now owned by eBay. But, truth be told I never really warmed up to it. You could say it was imposed on me when its simplicitly stood there laughing at my […]

Two-finger scrolling For The Rest of Us

This is iScroll2, a modified ADB trackpad driver (based on the Darwin sources) that adds two-finger scrolling capability to those of us with older {i,Power}Books. Good stuff.

A New Era.

Just a few hours ago, Apple and EMI announced the availability of DRM-free, high bitrate tracks on Apples iTunes Store. One thing is certain: Today’s announcement is an important milestone for the media industries, but it also sets a precedent as the first major offering that disentangles technical restrictions of media and consumer rights. This […]

Νεα Ελληνική Apple IMC ο 'Γερμανός';

Σύμφωνα με σημερινό άρθρο στο Macscoop η εταιρία "Γερμανός" φέρεται να είναι η μελλοντική διανομέας/αντιπρόσωπος της Apple Inc. στη χώρα μας μέσα στο 2007. Εφ'όσον η αναφορά του Macscoop αληθεύει (κάτι διόλου βέβαιο), το βασικό μου ερώτημα είναι: θα γίνει ο Γερμανός η νεα ελληνική IMC, κρατώντας στα χέρια του ολόκληρη την αγορά και επιβάλλωντας που, πως και πότε θα πωλούνται οι Mac, τα iPhones, τα iPods κλπ. ή θα υπάρξει --- επιτέλους --- επίσημη παρουσία της ίδιας της εταιρίας (βλ. Apple Hellas) και ο Γερμανός θα αποτελεί απλώς βασικό διανομέα; Δυστυχώς, μάλλον το πρώτο..

Objective-C 2.0: The Garbage Collector

Before Java was conceived (let alone used), before C++ became the de facto application development language — certainly before it got STL and compilers worthy of mention — NeXT Inc. licensed Objective-C, a Smalltalk resembling, object oriented true C-superset, as the main language for its NeXTSTEP operating system. Objective-C and the (typically) accompanying APIs built […]