hyperswitching

Ninja coder @ work

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:55:17 +0100

Ninja coder @ work

Why growl is now a paid app

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:30:46 +0100

Apple will release their notification center for OS/X, which obsoletes the need for growl.

So this is basically their only shot to try and get some money out of it.

rails_tails.sh #pow @37signals @sstephenson

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:46:56 +0100

rails_tails.sh:

!/bin/sh

tail -q -f log/development.log -f ~/Library/Logs/Pow/apps/${PWD##*/}.log

Why the iPhone 4S is a bliss for developers

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:14:18 +0200

Same display
Same resolution
Same aspect ratio
Faster cpu

A product cycle of 2 years for a device which costs around 600 euro is perfect. Especially if customers have a contract of 24 months

Why does apple show a PC on their service page?

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:17:59 +0200

http://www.apple.com/uk/buy/locator/map.html?tySearch=1&viaProduct=4&viaSpecial=-1&strCountry=NLD&lat=52.3702157&lng=4.8951679&gCountry=NL

Click on authorized service provider, and you’ll see it’ll open this popup:

http://images.apple.com/euro/buy/locator/overlays/images/aasp.jpg

RIP Steve Jobs - nt

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:23:13 +0200

Fixing default gateway for cisco vpn in OSX Lion and Snow Leopard

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:56:26 +0200

In Lion, the “Send all traffic over VPN connection” is gone. That was a good thing, since it didn’t work in 10.6

To fix your gateway (work network =192.168.252.0):

UTUN=`netstat -rn | perl -lane 'print $F[1]' | grep utun[0-9] | sort -u`

sudo route add 192.168.252.0/24 -interface $UTUN
sudo route delete default -interface $UTUN
sudo route add default -interface en0
sudo route add 192.168.252.255/32 -interface $UTUN

sudo route add 192.168.252.255/43 -interface $UTUN

Somehow, it only seems to work when I add the second bogus route. I’m not sure why.. It’s probably not 100% correct.. but I don’t care.. :-)

Why Apple is banning access to the iPhone UDID

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:32:23 +0200

Since iOS5 beta6, Apple has banned access to the iPhone UDID. The iPhone UDID is a unique device identifier which can be used to track users. Many applications use the UDID to prevent signups, but also to track users for advertising.

All around the web, people think Apple is doing this to prevent advertisements, when in fact this is done to protect the users data. Consider the following:

Joe buys an iPhone 3GS. Let’s say his UDID is 123. Joe downloads an application which stores notes on a server. Joe didn’t have to create an account with the service, as his UDID was used. All is well so far.

Now, Joe sees a great advertisement about the new iPhone 5 ;), and decides to buy it. He won’t be using his old iPhone 3GS anymore, so he decides to whipe the phone’s data, and sell it to Adam.

Joe restores his backup to the phone, and continues using it as he always did.

Adam, on the other hand is discovering the whole App Store thing, and installs anything he can find. One day he finds this note-taking app and installs it. To his surprise, the application was filled with existing notes from Joe. Joe had used the notes app to store his creditcard information and other personal stuff.

What happened?

Because the UDID will not change when whiped or transferred, the UDID is a bad identifier to track users. Apple has (thankfully) recognizes this issue, and has banned access to the UDID.

What should devs do?

Developers should use a different method of identifying people. I hope Apple will create an API for this, similar to the Notifications API. Ideally, you would be able to get someone’s apple-id, or a uniquely generated id based on someones appleid + the applicationid (+ optionally the device id).

Apple's cloud strategy part 2

Mon, 02 May 2011 16:46:00 +0200

Here’s a small update on my Apple (AAPL) - Cloud strategy:

Apple bought iCloud.com for about $4.5M
Save-state is called “Resume”
There are references about migrating your mobileme-account to the cloud (http://consomac.fr/news-1140-exclu-un-chateau-pour-mobileme.html)

Why would Apple want to move to the cloud? Hosting music in the cloud would give users more space (= cheaper devices) on their devices (iPad, iPhone, Mac) and easier cross-device sharing. Mobileme revenue was going down, because the service was slow and expensive compared to other similar services (Dropbox). Once the device-market has been saturated (read: growth will stagnate), a service is a very good way to make recurring revenues.

If apple would acquire / make technology similar to Dropbox, so that it is transparant to the user, Every mac user who spends some money on iTunes would go for this. As long as the price+Appletax is right.

I’m not sure what Apple will do with the iPod touch. Rumours are that Apple is planning a cheaper iPhone for the upcoming markets (china). That’s good for the iPhone and app-market, but it could obsolete the iPod touch. Similar to the normal and 3G version of the iPad.

Google, where are the RELEVANT ads?

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:32:23 +0200

Did anybody notice that the ads you are now seeing are only showing ads for sites you’ve already visited or specific searches you’ve done?

Google used to target ads based on the content of your site. This is valuable for advertisers.

Since a while Google has switched to the current scheme, which DOES work, because they know you were searching for specific content or a specific site. Besides that, marketing = repetition. BUT why would anyone want to pay for this? Google is not bringing NEW customers anymore. Google is not bringing RELEVANT ads to your content.

Google is basically selling advertisers customer they already have.

Anyone who has tried to do any online advertising recently will discover that it just plain doesn’t work anymore.

I know I spent almost 2K for only a hand full of clicks and about 50ct in revenues each.

"The night is still young.. .. but I’m old"

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 01:45:00 +0200

“

The night is still young..

.. but I’m old

”

- Joris Verschoor (jrz)

iPhone5 to get a trackpad instead of a home button?

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:54:53 +0200

Just read about the home-button thing from Joshua Topolsky. I think this would be a very nice addition to the iPhone. Apple knows that games are the nr1 software category on the iPhone, and the controls are still crippled for certain type of games (platformers, fps, etc)

If Apple turns the home-button into a macbook-like trackpad, the functionality would still be the same for older applications (the trackpad is pressable), but would also allow developers to have a dedicated, trackpad inputdevice, which can function as a joystick / d-pad.

It would be nice to have buttons outside of the screen. I’m not sure about the performance of the front-camera, but you could double the cam as an action-button. Also the volume buttons could be used, but I don’t think Apple would go that way. It’s a cluttered solution.

My take on the Apple strategy (or: why Apple will dominate the cloud)

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:49:06 +0200

Here’s my take on Apple’s roadmap:

Better gaming on the iPhone5 with a touchpad instead of the homebutton. The new iPhone5 will probably have a macbook-like-trackpad instead of the home button. This would be ideal for gaming, which represents the largest revenue generator on the iPhone App Store
Improve MacOS for better touch/gesture support.
Improve MacOS’s sandboxing and multi-user support
Add save-state-multitasking similar to iOS to MacOS This way, MacOS is more like iOS. It allows the OS / device to be restarted, while application data and state is saved. This is totally transparent to the user. Multi-user support will enable citrix-like application hosting.
Sell a macmini-based home server for applications and filestorage When you are able to store application state, it’s easy to transfer this state to a different machine. We will now have two ways of running an application from a remote server: 1) By using a remote-desktop-like technology 2) By transferring the application state / sandbox over to the local machine.

Both have pros and cons, and it depends on the application, device AND network which solution is appropriate.

Make it possible to use the iPad as a thin client for MacOS When applications are hosted on a macmini, the iPad could be used as a thin client for the application. My connecting the iPad through hdmi to a monitor, the iPad would serve as an input device, but the UI would be the same as the MacOS’s interface. When using the iPad itself as the screen, the application could fire up the iOS interface, while still using the same application state. What this means is that you can take your application onto your iPad, while your laptop or server is still somewhere else in the house.
Dropbox / mobileme / cloud storage Apple will for sure add cloud storage to their portfolio. They already had (mobile me), but it will probably be more like dropbox. Also they’ve already announced you will be able to stream your music from iTunes onto your devices. It’s a natural choice, especially with all the iOS devices next to your main computer.
Add cloud-based application rentals based on thin-client tech If you add up the previous points, it’s easy to see where this is going: Apple will be hosting either full applications, or just the application state, so you can access your application anywhere. Combine this with cloud-storage, and you’ve got everything you need where ever you want it. I personally don’t think that the citrix-like application hosting will be one of the things they will try to sell from the cloud, as it will be difficult to provision and pricing would be unclear. Application-state-hosting will happen.
Use saved-states of the applications to enable movement of the state to various machines / clouds. It would even be possible to use “Expose” to connect to your personal network or cloud, and transfer application state from your your iMac or cloud to your macbook, simply by dragging the application from the shelve.

I think save-state is the best decision Appl made with iOS multitasking, as it empowers so many things.

What do you think?

Adium finally gets multipresence!

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:27:42 +0200

Check out the latest beta. http://trac.adium.im/ticket/13654

Why is Amazon Cloud Drive cheaper than what developers can offer with S3?

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:51:55 +0200

Why is Amazon Cloud Drive cheaper than what developers can offer with S3?

iPhone's Personal Hotspot is sweet

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:18:08 +0200

I’m using the Personal Hotspot feature of my iPhone to surf the web on my MacBook at this moment. Turns out that 3G really is fast! This also means that safari on the iPhone is darn slow.

Charlie and the Apple Factory

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:35:54 +0200

Charlie and the Apple Factory

Secure MySQL on brew / homebrew (osx)

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:34:14 +0100

Brew is awesome. MySQL is less awesome, but it’s still good. Unfortunately, brew currently lets mysql listen to any interface. If you have no or a weak root password AND you have no firewall, you’re screwed. Fortunately, there’s a way to fix this:

Edit your ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mysql.mysqld.plist

And change:

Program/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.10/bin/mysqld_safe --bind-address=127.0.0.1

into:

ProgramArguments/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.10/bin/mysqld_safe--bind-address=127.0.0.1

After that, unload and load the plist:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mysql.mysqld.plist
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mysql.mysqld.plist

This tells the mysqld to listen only on 127.0.0.1, which should be enough for devboxes.

Google Chrome performance tweaks

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:59:15 +0100

I have around 100-150 chrome tabs open on average. most of the time, chrome does reasonably good, but at some point memory usage is insane, and cpu usages goes up.

My quest to have a better browsing experience (mac):

Go to about:flags

Disable any duplicate flash plugins.
Disable “Web Page Prerendering”
Enable “Click to play”
Enable “Enable better omnibox history matching”

Go to www.youtube.com/html5 and enable html5 videos

Not sure how it will behave after a week though

Digid.nl doesn't use an extended validation SSL certificate...

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:03:30 +0100

Our national identity service doesn’t use a Extended Validation Certificate when signing in to digid ( https://as.digid.nl/aselectserver/server).

The EV is the green bar shown in your address bar.

Why is it that the government spends millions on promoting the digid service, but doesn’t spend a couple of hundred euros extra to acquire a better certificate?

hyperswitching

Ninja coder @ work

Why growl is now a paid app

rails_tails.sh #pow @37signals @sstephenson

!/bin/sh

Why the iPhone 4S is a bliss for developers

Why does apple show a PC on their service page?

RIP Steve Jobs - nt

Fixing default gateway for cisco vpn in OSX Lion and Snow Leopard

Why Apple is banning access to the iPhone UDID

Apple's cloud strategy part 2

Google, where are the RELEVANT ads?

"The night is still young.. .. but I’m old"

iPhone5 to get a trackpad instead of a home button?

My take on the Apple strategy (or: why Apple will dominate the cloud)

Adium finally gets multipresence!

Why is Amazon Cloud Drive cheaper than what developers can offer with S3?

iPhone's Personal Hotspot is sweet

Charlie and the Apple Factory

Secure MySQL on brew / homebrew (osx)

Google Chrome performance tweaks

Digid.nl doesn't use an extended validation SSL certificate...

FAIL