John Griogair Bell's Blog

Category: Apple

  • 90s movies 404 not found

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , ,

    I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s certainly funny. iTunes was having a little trouble today, but you know it was artfully designed trouble:

  • The ultimate ipad dock

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , ,

    A while ago, I posted my idea of the ultimate iPhone dock. and it seem only fitting that I also post the ultimate iPad dock. Honestly, I’m not nearly the first person to come up with the idea of pairing the iPad with the old-school Star Trek PADD, but I felt it needed to be…

  • The ultimate iphone dock

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , , ,

    I had an idea for the ultimate iphone dock. To heck with an iPhone pro … First, get an iPhone and dock. Then go buy an old Apple Newton eMate on eBay. Then, gut the eMate. Yeah, I know I shudder at the thought of murdering such a cute little Newton as well, but ……

  • Learn something new

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in ,

    I activated this accidentally when typing an e-mail and found out that it’s a feature. Who knew? (Probably everyone, right?) I mean, not that I’ll probably use it all that much, but … hit ‘esc’ while typing and get a completion list, cool! Doesn’t work for in HTML forms or in the toolbar of Safari,…

  • Bento

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , ,

    Ah, here it is finally. I figured there would be something like this coming from inside the Apple camp. Via “Meet Bento — Learn More” Bento organizes all your important information in one place. So you can manage your contacts, coordinate events, track projects, prioritize tasks, and more — faster and easier than ever before.…

  • The iMovies

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , ,

    Hmm … separated at birth? [see, also]

  • How does ZFS compare to Plan 9?

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , ,

    Now that Sun is being quoted as saying that the next version of Mac OS X (Leopard) will use ZFS, I thought to read a bit more about What is ZFS?: “ZFS presents a pooled storage model that completely eliminates the concept of volumes and the associated problems of partitions, provisioning, wasted bandwidth and stranded…

  • Forcing the clowns to break their fall makes high-wire act safer …

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , , ,

    Here’s an example that shows that something is messed up in the way products are priced. The article “Slashdot | Apple Turning Cell Phone Market Upside Down?” observes: Everyone assumed that Apple’s $499/$599 prices for the iPhone was subsidized by Cingular. But, it appears that Apple is not allowing mobile carriers to subsidize the iPhone.…

  • People can’t remember URLs

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , , , ,

    Via an interesting article that reminds us all that “most searched” lists are PR driven, not data driven, “Business 2.0 BETA blog network” is this comment: “They’re using search engines as navigation, typing website names or even URLs into the search box that automatically pops up in their browser.” It’s a funny thing to me…

  • NeXT machines used to spy on people too

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , , ,

    Noticed a post “Slashdot | Apple Closes iSight Security Hole” which talks about iSight being used to maliciously spy on a user. But, this isn’t new to Mac OS X hardware. In fact, it’s a problem that’s been around since the black box NeXT days. When I worked at and ISP that used old NeXT…

  • And, one more thing …

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , , ,

    In a previous post, I speculate about some products and topics related to Apple. But, I forgot one of the features I have realized I want in Apple’s iTV product more than anything else: party shuffle of video playlists. I want to be able to set up playlists or seasons or collections of shows and…

  • Speculation on Apples

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , , ,

    It’s not just a hobby, but a professional sport. However, I’m going to step up as an amateur and speculate about some things that Apple might be doing, or at least that it should be doing. So, iTV has an HDMI port. But, no Apple monitor has HDMI or HDCP support, even over DVI, I…

  • Where to keep movies? Everywhere, of course.

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , ,

    I don’t know who asked, “If you had everything, where would you put it?” However, my answer has always been, “Everywhere, of course.” So, almost under the radar, I find that iPhoto version 5 imports movies. I assume version 6 does also. Also, iTunes holds movies. And, there’s a movies folder which is where neither…

  • Old NeXT apps on intel, I wonder?

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , ,

    I was going through a box and found some CD-ROMs of old NeXT software. On a lark, I thought I would stick one in and see what happened. Well, Mac OS X recognized the app, gave it an icon, but with an overlay. Starting up the application offers that the application cannot open because it…

  • Congratulations! It’s a Design Flaw.

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , , ,

    Via F-Secure : News from the Lab “When Windows Metafiles were designed in late 1980s, a feature was included that allowed the image files to contain actual code. This code would be executed via a callback in special situations. This was not a bug; this was something which was needed at the time. This function…

  • The filesystem as database: Tinderbox, etc …

    —

    by

    John Bell
    in , , ,

    Via 43 Folders, “Les Orchard: Envisioning a Tiger/Tinderbox mashup” links to “Still Seeking an Exploded Tinderbox for Tiger » Archive » Blog » 0xDECAFBAD“: But, what if Tinderbox could surrender all of those functions up to TextEdit and MS Word and other desktop apps? What if all of the ‘notes’ in a Tinderbox document were…