blurbomac

Top 10 Open Source OS X Apps

blurb — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 20:00:26 +0000

I think I agree with most of this list. I’d have to add Quicksilver.

Making Mail.app look like Outlook or Thunderbird

blurb — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 21:07:03 +0000

I don’t know why, but Apple didn’t give users the ability to customize the view of their OS freebie email app Mail. Anybody who has used the latest Outlook (as of this writing) or the excellent open source Thunderbird has seen the beauty of a 3-column email view.

Over on the Ars Technica forums, there is a thread about Mail and widescreen displays. A talented developer ran with it and the result is Letterbox, a sweet plug-in that gives users a 3 column view.

Even if you just have a 1024 x 768 monitor resolution, the three–column view is nice for reading more of the message. The subject lines get squished, so shrink the message list font to 9 and get even more info on the page. Plus, it’s nice to be able to read the whole message.

Thanks to Merlin Mann and his flickr stream for showing me this awesome plug-in. o

Reading the news

blurb — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 13:56:58 +0000

Last year I tried a feed reader called NewsFire. I installed it at work and it was far too insane to run at work. I gave up on feed reading shortly thereafter.

When I got my iBook last fall, I decided to use a free newsreader, Vienna to see if I couldn’t have a more manageable feed experience. Vienna isn’t bad, but I decided to give NewsFire another try. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s fast in its pull down of a lot of feeds and makes getting through all that info relatively painless. It’s a cheap app, but it will stay my default news reader.

I don’t like reading blogs through feeds as much as I like looking at links, news and a few Mac software update sites and NewsFire fits my reading style perfectly. o

Power Utility in Menu Form

blurb — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 04:09:27 +0000

About 13 years ago, I purchased a great set of utilties for the Mac called Now Utilities. All of them were overkill, but there were a couple that saved my life day in and day out. They had a great dialog box add-on that gave open/save dialogs huge boosts in functionality.

It looks like PiquantMenu might be the Now Utilities of today. I haven’t had a chance to play with this utility much, but it looks like even if a fraction of it is useful, it’s gonna be a great addition to power-users’ machines. And it’s universal.

Apple Matters writes it up here. o

Steve Jobs on CNBC

blurb — Sat, 20 May 2006 18:35:19 +0000

Apple MacBook Arrives

blurb — Tue, 16 May 2006 13:41:58 +0000

It’s here.

You may not be as safe as you thought

blurb — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:44:27 +0000

This kind of recap scares me to death. Especially with valuable data at stake. Mac admins everywhere need to read this and evaluate if their processes are as bulletproof as they might think.

Backup Software Recommendation

blurb — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:38:20 +0000

This has been long overdue for the Mac. Especially OS X. Read the post here

More Dvorak Weirdness

blurb — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 23:34:45 +0000

John C. Dvorak has a history of saying bizarre things about Apple and then having them either come true or being so wrong that it’s laughable. His latest is that Apple should make OS X Open Source. Part of me loves this idea, part of me thinks it’s counter to Apple DNA. I can’t see them giving up their differentiator.

However, there is an opening. And if Apple thinks big and thinks different, certainly, the notion of a sexy open source alternative to Linux would have geeks salivating at the thought. I wonder what kinds of software would come of it.

The thing is, Apple gives away xCode, their development environment, with the OS. When you buy OS X, you can opt to install xCode for free.

I’m logging this more as a signpost than anything else. Dvorak might be a nut job, but he called the Windows move, sort of.

If you use a Mac, you must use Quicksilver

blurb — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 00:37:19 +0000

Since using Quicksilver, any Mac I work on feels naked without it. This freeware application is a must have for anybody who wants the speed and power of doing things from the keyboard. Even if all you use it for is an application launcher/switcher, it will save you time.

Here’s a useful Wikipedia entry that explains the application.

Here are a ton of tutorials to get you started on your path to better computing.