I took apart an iBook G4 today. I do that most days, but today I documented it:
Category: General Tech
Lock Down that ThinkPad
To lock users out a missing notebook, the users sends a text message to the notebook with a command reading “lockdown now PC” or “PC Shutoff.” The text message sends a command to the notebook via the cellular broadband modem and, even if the notebook is turned off when the command is received, the next time it starts, the system will be locked down.
An interesting use of the widening-use of 3G in notebooks. (Note: If I was a Window guy, I would own a ThinkPad, without a doubt.)
Macs Growing in Small Business
Reporting back to investors, Needham Co. analyst Charlie Wolf notes that Apple moved from selling just 61,000 Macs to small businesses in the spring to 188,000 in the three months of Apple’s summer quarter ended in September.
The gain boosted Apple’s share of the field from a modest 1.9 percent during the earlier season to a significant 5.6 percent in summer. It was enough to not only give Apple a new level of influence but also to carry the company through a tough period: where Mac shipments to regular home buyers suddenly cooled in growth from 53.6 percent quarter-to-quarter from the spring to just 9.1 percent in the summer, the small business spike represented nearly all of Apple’s Mac growth at about 97 percent of systems leaving warehouses and shelves.
On Illustrator CS4
There are also a variety of subtle enhancements to program operation, including the ability to apply graphic styles additively. A few changes to the panels include a modification of the Appearance panel’s operation–it’s now an attribute editor, allowing you to toggle visibility or adjust parameters like opacity, blend mode, and fill color–and the addition of a basic Separations preview panel for pre-preflighting color. Adobe improved (some might say “fixed”) Isolation mode, where you drill down into objects to selectively edit, to keep from tossing you out if you deleted the only object in the isolation set. Live preview on clipping masks makes working with them a bit easier, and the Smart Guides now have little readouts that display basics like object dimensions.
Like the Obama Poster? It’s Yours
The Obamafy Photo Booth Plugin puts your face on Obama’s poster. Here’s mine.
SateStats: Search Google Results per State
This tool shows you how popular a Google search query is in each U.S. state, giving a ranking like the one you see in the left column. It then compares this ranking with other ways of ranking states, like average income or population density, using Spearman’s rank correlation. The middle column shows the results of these comparisons, with the strongest correlations listed first. High numbers (close to 1.0) mean that the rankings “line up” closely, which may indicate a relationship between the search query and the ranking metric. For example, mittens tends to be searched by users who are in northerly states (high latitude) and states with a lot of frost. Low numbers (close to –1.0) indicate a negative relationship – that is, the rankings are close to being opposites, as in “yoga” and “VotedForBush.”
Macintosh 128k Programmers, You’re Welcome
James and John of the RetroMacCast mentioned on their show this week a document titled “Inside Macintosh” they found. Here’s a bit from the preface:
I nside Macintosh is a three-volume set of manuals that tells you what you need to know to write software for the Apple® Macintosh™ 128K, 512K, or XL (or a Lisa® running MacWorks™ XL). Although directed mainly toward programmers writing standard Macintosh applications, Inside Macintosh also contains the information needed to write simple utility programs, desk accessories, device drivers, or any other Macintosh software. It includes: - the user interface guidelines for applications on the Macintosh - a complete description of the routines available for your program to call (both those built into the Macintosh and others on disk), along with related concepts and background information - a description of the Macintosh 128K and 512K hardware
The Internet Isn’t Lively Anymore
The NY Times on Google’s failed “ Lively” services:
Google portrayed the move away from user frivolity as a sound business move. “It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business,” the company said on a blog post.
In the past Google has shown a willingness to let projects linger with a “beta” tag for months and months. But the virtual experiment was apparently not worth even that effort.
Google Street View Ain’t Everywhere
Here’s a list of where it is, though. Memphis isn’t on the list.
A Key Aspect of iPhone Development
I am a big Remember the Milk user, and up until last week, was using Todo to sync RTM with my iPhone. RTM has since come out with a native iPhone app, and it’s stunning (and much better than Todo, in my opinion). Here’s the thought that led the company to create such a great app:
Building an app that simply gave access to your RTM tasks online wasn’t enough (after all, the web-based iPhone version does that already) The app needed to give you the power of all of RTM’s functionality in your pocket (Smart Lists, tagging, search, etc), take advantage of the device’s features (like knowing your location), and of course the whole thing needed to work offline too (it’s no good carrying RTM around with you if you can’t manage your tasks as soon as you’re out of phone or Wi-Fi range!).
Yes, Virginia, Prototypes Exist
MacRumors has a forum thread about a reader who just bought a used MacBook Air on eBay:
I recently picked up a used Macbook Air 1.6 The bottom case is black without any markings on it. Computer does boot up, but the battery has swollen and distorted the case. I removed the bottom of the case and pulled the battery with thoughts of purchasing a replacement battery. When looking at the connections they are different from the disassembly pictures on the web, and then most of the other internals are slightly different than on the various disassembly sites as well.
Open Radar
Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch, a well-known developer has created OpenRadar.app, an OS X application designed to help developers keep track of bugs that they submit to Apple’s internal (private, locked-away, secret) bug-tracking system called Radar.
First, little on Radar:
Radar is Apple’s internal bug tracking system. How Apple views Radar and how external third-party developers view Radar causes a bit of a conflict…
Apple encourages developers to file bugs, even those we know are probably duplicates, in order to “vote up” individual bugs and hopefully give them more priority when it comes time decide schedules.