1/01/2009 13:32:33

It's an endless debate, but maybe this will help you decide:

Probably old news, but I just had to post this :-)

11/07/2008 10:44:40

Everybody needs to have at least one iPhone post these days,
so here's mine. To be honest it's not really about the iPhone but
about the bullshit story behind the fact that Apple wasn't able to sell it before.

If there's one law I like it's the law against "coupled sales", the one that
supposedly prevented Apple from selling the iPhone in Belgium.
Now, somebody please tell me, why Apple wasn't allowed to break the law
while Belgacom and Telenet have been doing it for years? You know what
I'm talking about... yes I'm once again complaining about "so called" digital TV.

I refuse to get a TV subscription, not because of the price but because I want
to use my own hardware, not their crippled systems we are forced to buy or hire.
(My MythTV system does so much more than any of those crippled systems).

So what was the real reason for Apple not selling the iPhone in Belgium?

Could someone also tell me why people are so eager to throw away their
freedom and give up the law that protects them for this gadget?

Oh and I'd like to get this of my chest as well:
I think most people love the iPhone because everything on it seems unique to them.
In reality, aside from the multi-touchscreen, other systems have been providing
similar (and more) features for years. And it won't cost you 99$ and a number of
of Objective-C books just to write a simple todo-list application either.

12/03/2008 23:55:34

We offer a full SDK which enables you to ... bla bla bla ... yada yada yada...
Seems like I won't be doing much with the 2.1GB iPhone SDK as you need to
get a 99€ certificate, live in America and be picked by Apple if you want to be able
to debug and run the applications you create on your own device.

This is what you get when you try it anyway:



As you can see the exception message is pretty useless and inaccurate.

This little brick wall is well hidden amongst the countless documents telling you
how great the iPhone / iPod Touch and the SDK really are.

Let me take this opportunity to point out that Microsoft isn't as bad as most
of you'd like to believe. (It's just cool to hate Microsoft isn't it) You see Microsoft
doesn't come up with this sort of crap. Either they give you an SDK or they don't.
And when they do you can bet it's usually rock solid and developer friendly.

Apple seems to be all about marketing and developers are somewhere at the bottom
of their priority list. Apple wants you to drop whatever programming language you're
used to, start using Objective-C instead and in return (if you buy a certificate)
you'll be able to run and test applications on your own device.
Of course you have to live with all the artificial limitations imposed by Apple and
you still won't be able to deploy your application on other devices unless you pay up.

Now consider Windows Mobile for a minute. Hey... here's the SDK oh and here's
the .NET Compact Framework. And did I mention you can use just about any
language you want? Most importantly: it's free. No license fees, no certificates, nada!

Sure it's not "open" but it's accessible and free of charge, the iPhone SDK is neither*.
(* You can get the SDK free of charge, but it's pretty useless unless you pay)

What about Android?
By the looks of it they are just hiding behind the good old "It's open source and free"
marketing trick, while in fact it's not exactly the most accessible system either.
Even the guys over at Mono don't seem to confident about it.

11/02/2008 22:06:16

I was trying to set up AFP with netatalk on my Ubuntu server to share files with my
Apple devices.  After installing with Apt the service started but I couldn't connect
to the shares. In most cases an Apt-Get install of netatalk works fine with the
exception of a warning  message on Leopard because  the standard install of
netatalk on  Ubuntu doesn't come with encryption support due to a license issue.

Because I couldn't get it to work and wanted encryption support anyway
I decided to compile from source. Normally I'd simply get the sources for netatalk,
but this guide showed me a better way of compiling packages from source on Ubuntu.
Instead of getting the latest sources, you can get the source used to build the
original Ubuntu package using the apt-get source command.


Line 2 gets the sources for netatalk from the apt-get repositories while line 3 gets the
packages required in order to build netatalk from source.
Line 4 get's extra packages required to add  encryption support to netatalk
and to be able to build Ubuntu packages.

Next you simply build a new Ubuntu netatalk package with SSL enabled:


This will compile the sources, create a package and install it all in one go.
Because we don't want Ubuntu to install a new version on the next dist-upgrade,
we'll lock the package in the dpkg selections list:


Normally the system should be up and running now,
but you might have to change a few settings.
Unlike most systems, Ubuntu stores the netatalk configuration file in /etc/default,
so you'll have to edit /etc/default/netatalk instead of /etc/atalk/netatalk.
It should contain the following:


Next you'll have to modify /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf,
my configuration has a single line at the bottom of the file:


Every line in this file represents a single server, so I only have one.
The -noddp parameter tells netatalk only to work over TCP and
not the native AppleTalk protocol.

Next you'll want to edit /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default.
This is where you define the directories  to be shared.
These shares will show up in Mac OS when connecting to the AFP server,
but only if the user has read access to those directories on the server.
Example configuration:


The first line shares the home directory for each user.
The second shares another directory on my server.
The good thing about netatalk is that it uses standard unix rights for authorization.

That's it as far as basic setup is concerned.
Please note that my solutions is based on various references I found
on the net and by no means unique. I just wanted to share the Ubuntu specific
solution as most guides seem to work for Fedora and other distros but not for Ubuntu.

After setting this up, you might want to look into Avahi
to "publish" your server on the local network.

28/01/2008 15:41:16

Mac OS is one of the most user friendly systems out there.
Sadly, iChat is not. Getting A/V to work can be a real pain.
Even without NAPT, getting it to work can be a real pain.

A good start is to figure out if either end of the connection is working.
This is why Apple has a test user for iChat/AIM. Add this
user on both Macs and you'll be able to figure out the source of the problem.
(Hopefully for your at least one client will be able to connect).

This is the test user: appleu3test01@mac.com. Simply add this user
to your buddy list and initiate an AV session. Good Luck!

Note: Supposedly ichatavtesting@mac.com is also a test user,
but he (she? it?) is always offline in my buddy list.

17/01/2008 16:58:06

By accident I stumbled across a few keyboard shortcuts on my Mac.

• Holding down the Option and Shift key while pressing
  volume up/down allows you to take smaller adjustment steps.
• Holding down the Shift key while pressing volume up/down
  suppressed the sound that normally plays with each adjustment.
• Holding down the Option key while using one of the function
  keys (such as the Dashboard key) opens the preferences panel
  for the selected function.
• Holding down the Option key while clicking on an item in
  Spotlight opens the containing folder rather than the selected item.
  

Just thought I'd share this with the world. Apple hardware always comes
in a nice, well designed box but never with a descent manual.

16/01/2008 23:51:57

For those of you who want to download it rather than stream it,
here's the podcast link. It's 1.2Gb's so I'll wait until I get ADSL.
(Which should be next week Tuesday... or so they promised).

12/01/2008 0:00:51

I've heard rumors about a new Apple TV.
It would come with some major upgrades and replace the current one.

I really hope this is a mistake and that they're talking about a software
update for the current Apple  TV. If they do release a new hardware version,
Apple simply abused us (early buyers) to test their new toy only to dispose
of it a few months later realizing they should have added more features.

They promised the Apple TV in it's current state
was simply the beginning and that software updates would bring us new
features and capabilities... if they simply replace it with a new model...

They lied!

3/11/2007 2:28:36

I managed to boot Mac OS X from an external USB hard drive.
I didn't complete the required steps to enable the network interfaces,
so I can't control it using VNC, but this was only a test.

Next I'll use an external USB hard drive with integrated USB hub.
That way I'll be able to connect an Elgato EyeTV 310 to watch DVB-S.
I should also be able to connect a keyboard then. When I do this,
I'll configure the network interfaces as well, so I can watch content
from my shared drives on the network. Here are some pictures:


Booting Mac OS X... it takes a while...

2/11/2007 23:34:14

There's a complete how-to on how to boot Mac OS X on an ATV here.
However, in order to do so, you'll need a valid boot.efi file from the ATV.

As it would be illegal to host such a file and perhaps even to link to one,
you won't find it on that page. The one option they do suggest, is to open up
your Apple TV and get it like that, but that would result in a warranty void.

I'm not going to give you a link to a valid boot.efi file either, but there's a
way to get it from  your own Apple TV without voiding the warranty.

I've got one word for you: Patchstick.

It'll enable SSH on your ATV which should be more than enough
to get what you need. When you're done,
simply reset the Apple TV to the factory defaults... like nothing happened.