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Archive for the ‘Mac’ Category

Ubuntu 9.04 on VMWare Fusion 2.0.4

May 1st, 2009

Happy to say that with minimal fuss I was able to get the newest release of Ubuntu Desktop, 9.04, running on VMWare Fusion on my Mac.   Five easy steps:

  1. Follow this blog post for the install (he also links to the bits I am here) – but don’t worry about his suggestion for the mouse driver since the VMWare tools install takes care of it.
  2. Once the install is completed uninstall VMWare tools (they were installed as part of step 1 but not all of it was done..vmhgfs isn’t set up).  You might have to remount the install “CD” by selecting “Install VMWare Tools” from the Virtual Machine menu.   In any case untar the tools tarball and run the uninstaller.  The uninstaller is in the bin directory of the vmware-tools-distrib directory you created.
  3. Follow the directions here for getting vmhgfs to work.
  4. Rerun the vmware tools installer in the distribution directory you created in step 2.
  5. Bask in the glow of a job well done :)
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Author: Categories: Apple, General, Java, Linux, Mac, Programming, Technology Tags: , ,

MacHeist 3: BoinxTV instead of Espresso and The Hit List?

April 5th, 2009

The MacHeist 3 bundle looks fantastic but I think they’re unlock priorities are off. Why was BoinxTV the first unlock level instead of The Hit List and Espresso? Those two applications certainly would have a wider audience than BoinxTV. Hopefully MacHeist 3 will sell enough copies to unlock those two applications. I’ll be buying my copy later to help the process along :)

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Author: Categories: Apple, General, Mac, Technology Tags:

Evernote Mac client sorely lacking

October 18th, 2008

I’ve been using Evernote for awhile now.  The Windows client is pretty good.  The editor supports ordered/unordered lists, font types, color, etc.   All of the expected things in a rich text editor are there.

At the same time the Mac client is really awful.   The latest update has some new icons, etc. but they haven’t improved the editor functionality.  There is no ability to create lists as in the Windows client.  Given that the Mac development environment, which comes with the OS, has the source code to the TextEdit application I’m not sure why the Evernote folks can’t duplicate that functionality in their client.

To make things worse the Web client now has more editor functionality than the Mac client.   Guys, if you’re not going to at least have parity between the clients why are you bothering with the Mac client at all?

Update:  OK.  So apparently the Mac client does support lists….just not directly.  I found out that creating a note with a list in the web client results in the list being maintained in the Mac client.  When you add more items to the list numbers/bullets (I assume…I didn’t try bullets but numbers do work) increment automatically (and decrement if you remove items).   There just is no way to create these directly in the Mac client as of yet.  Very weird.


Update 2:  Ok.  According to this forum posting the Evernote folks are going to address this in the next Mac client release.  Great to read this as it might mean not having to run Windows in VMWare Fusion to get the better desktop client.

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Too bad this doesn’t work on a Windows machine

September 4th, 2008

John Gruber writes that there is a fix for the insanely-slow sync of the iPhone with iTunes.  Unfortunately it only works on the  Mac :(

I actually tried this today before reading the article because I was getting slow syncs between the iPhone and my MacBook Pro.  I thought maybe the hub I had the phone plugged in to was USB 1.1-only (don’t remember that being the case but stranger things have happened) so I moved the USB cable directly to one of the ports on the MBP and the sync speed was far faster than via the USB hub.  I’m not sure why this would be aside from maybe the hub running at USB 1.1 speeds.

On my Windows machine at home where I have the same problem the same fix didn’t work.  Moving the cable directly to the PC didn’t result in a faster sync (and yes I have to sync with both).  I know for a fact that the USB hub on the PC is 2.0 so maybe thats the reason.

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Author: Categories: Mac, Windows Vista, iPhone Tags: ,