Posts Tagged ‘apple’

My OS X Lion Horror Story

My OS X Lion Horror Story

OS X Lion was released in July 2011 and includes a number of new upgrades. Some of these are very impressive, such as complex touch gestures for the trackpad. Others are more mundane, such as fullscreen mode for applications and hidden scrollbars. But all things considered the upgrade is definitely worth it.

The problem isn’t Lion, it’s how it has to be installed. You can no longer pick up an install disc from an Apple Retailer, instead you have to download the upgrade from the App Store. For slow connections this can be a nuisance, since the file is almost 4GB.

However, the main problem is that there is no discernible way to perform a clean install. Rather, Lion installs itself on top of Snow Leopard, and then deletes the installer. (Savvy users may know about the clean install method.)

Furthermore, if you have a problem … Read more…


Too much Javascript? Here comes WebKit and the new Safari

Too much Javascript?  Here comes WebKit and the new Safari

Let it not be said that I never fall victim to a web fad: AJAX, jQuery, SEO‚ I was there with bells on. So when everyone started hating Flash and doing all web animation with HTML/Javascript, I jumped right on board. I thought it was just great! You didn’t have to lose any SEO, and most importantly you never had to open that awful Flash GUI.

But have you noticed? EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT! There’s just too much Javascript on the internet these days, and it is bringing many browsers to a halt. My MacBook is less than a year old (2.1GHz, 1GB mem) and Safari has been crashing frequently. In Firefox I can only have three or so tabs open before serious lag1. While I don’t have a super gaming computer, my computer is better than the average user’s, and I … Read more…


Spaces in Mac OSX Leopard – Best Workflow

Mac OSX Leopard

At first glance Mac OSX Leopard looks like Tiger with a new, sleeker skinning. A few new applications are available, and a few others are broken, but overall basically the same thing. That is, until you discover the Spaces command.

Spaces are great, they’re like the Expose flyout but taken up a level. With Spaces, you can arrange all the windows on your screen, all the clutter, into multiple, separate areas. Each of these areas functions like its own desktop, when you use the Expose flyout, only the windows in that Space are seen. And the best part is that you can set programs to open by default in certain spaces. I love this feature, since I am always working on such disparate things. Now my web development can be separate from my web design and … Read more…


Workflow: Mac vs Windows

Workflow: Mac vs Windows

Everyone knows the value of improving your workflow. Well it turns out I work a whole lot faster on a Mac, both in web development and web design. I think the OSX developers must have thought a great deal about workflow, because Mac has a lot of great features: from much more drag-and-drop integration between programs than windows, to little things like the mouse command to fly out all windows or show the desktop (this saves me so much time). But workflow on a Mac goes much deeper than these features.

Web development is great on a Mac, since the programs you need for coding run very quickly and the terminal is really handy for doing lots of things, its really easy to move between the terminal and the finder/other programs. Also since the terminal is Shell based, its … Read more…


Mac Crossover

Mac Crossover

Well I finally broke down and bought a brand new MacBook. I’m a lifetime PC user, but with the CS3 beta looking pretty nice, I decided that it was time to make the cross-over. Now, I’ve always been able to use a Mac but I love being able to really learn the OS like you can only do when you own a machine (I’m always a little more careful if it doesn’t belong to me 😉 )

The adjustment to MacOSX has been surprisingly easy. I’m really liking the OS actually, especially dragging programs from the .dmg file to the applications folder to install them, and being able to save preference changes without restarting applications. It’s so much easier! Also I really like how it mounts everything. I kept asking my friend what he uses to mount disc images with on Mac and he … Read more…