Marksy » Software

OS X notifications

marksy — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:48:52 +0000

On the cusp of the iOS release, due today or any day now, iOS notifications is a great visual notification system on iPhone/iPad. However, OS X doesn’t have a native notification system. Growl is the closest thing we have as a notification system, however it is a 3rd party addon, and is now commercially sold in the AppStore for $1.99

Hopefully, the iOS notification system will come over to OS X, in Lion later in future updates. But realistically it will be released in the next paid-for update.

I’m surprised Apple haven’t bought Growl.

Amazon to buy webOS?

marksy — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:14:47 +0000

Remember that fantastic day when HP announced it was scrapping their newly developed tablet, and selling them off for a mere £80?

Well when that happened I thought, Amazon should buy the OS and run it as an iOS & Android competitor. Google has Android, Apple has iOS and Amazon, now with their tablet announced – it sure could use it’s own OS.

Looks like this _may_ be happening (it’s still a rumor – but still)…

via Lifehacker

Mac Bluray Ripper Pro (for Mac)

marksy — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:49:34 +0000

I paid about £20 for this great software about a year ago to backup my Bluray discs to HDD so I can watch them anytime without having to take them out of their jackets and fast forward the ads.

I did a fresh install of OS X recently and tried to go to www.macblurayripperpro.com but only got a “Welcome to cPanel” message. This means the guy that’s made the software has ruined his website or has gone and someones “taken over”. I fear that he has been chased by authorities and has tried to clean his footsteps.

However, if you are looking for the application (1.0.4 is the only one i could find), it’s okay, I have it safe served here; Mac Bluray Ripper Pro

I’d share the serial too, but I can’t find it

Watch US TV via Firefox

marksy — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:58:11 +0000

Penx just showed me a neat plugin hack for FireFox to enable watching content from the United States.

Download Modify Headers from the Firefox Addons repository, install, restart browser.

Then from the menubar, select Tools > Modify Headers. Under the first tab ‘headers’ click the drop down ‘select action’ and change it to ‘Add’.

Next in ‘Header name’, type ‘X-Forwarded-For’.

In ‘Value’ type in ’12.13.14.15′

Done. Check Comedy Central or Hulu and watch your favourite clips.

Reverse scroll (make scrolling on SL like Lion)

marksy — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 09:16:34 +0000

Have you upgraded to OS X Lion at home, but your work still is keeping you on OS X Snow Leopard? And are you getting confused about which way your scroller works??

Ever since the scroller was invented in 1990something, you would scroll down to move the page up, revealing the lower part of the page.

Now Apple have thrown up all over the place with ‘natural scrolling’. Which is the complete opposite of what everyone else has been doing for the past 20 odd years.

Lion has the ability to turn off natural scrolling on the trackpad, but not on the mouse.

But there is a fix. Pilotmoon have created a menubar app, Reverse Scrolling which turns on natural scrolling for OS X Snow Leopard. Not sure of a work around for OS X Lion, but at least you have consistency between your computers.

Digital Color Meter OS X.7 Lion [sucks]

marksy — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:58:45 +0000

For what it’s worth, Apple have stripped back DCM utility in their new OS. WTF!? I used that all the time, now I can’t copy colour, hold colour or pick in HEX?!

A chap called Matt Patenaude has made a small app called Colors which takes care of all the crap Apple failed to care about. Thanks Matt.

Xcode now free

marksy — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:49:25 +0000

Xcode development platform for Mac and iOS was originally free, which came with the OS X install disc.

Then, a couple of months back when the AppStore was released by Apple, they started charging for it, which struck a few bad chords with developers (looking at you Bacon). The download price was something like £5.

But now Apple are once again giving it away for free. Probably due to the amount of backlash they received. Good.

Download it now for free via the AppStore.

Android in-app Adverts

marksy — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 09:59:22 +0000

A game I paid for and played on the iPhone “Cut the Rope” was a fun game of trying to help a monster eat candy. Simple game, but highly addictive.

It has just been released on Android, for free – however it comes (like many Android apps) with adverts.

One game in particular, Angry Birds is great to play – however it is littered with adverts. (BTW, one way i know of to avoid this is to put your phone onto airplane mode.) Playing the game, adverts are splashed along the top of the screen – so sometimes you can’t actually see part of the game. This ruins the experience. A lot.

Image is for illustrative purpose only

Cut the Rope however uses adverts wisely. Only during cutscenes or menus. This is fantastic, because I’d be more inclined to click an advert while I’m not playing a game. You don’t want to be interrupted while you’re doing something right? But if you’re not doing anything, do probably don’t mind the interruption.

For example, if you’re on your way to work and a bit late – someone asks for a couple minutes of your time for a survey – you normally say no. But, if you’re wondering around at lunchtime, you’d be more likely to stop and do the survey.

Advertising in OS’s

marksy — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:27:11 +0000

Would you or better yet, could you use an operating system that has adverts? Google are working on their web-based OS which would probably have the usual targeted adverts based on either surrounding content or user profile data.

Mac OS would never have adverts. They even expressed their dislike for adverts in the latest WWDC, saying they’d never include it in the iCloud storage system.

Windows however, have been using it for sometime in their IM software, MSN Messenger. But why do this?! Why would you have pulsing and distracting adverts – and a fucking splash screen full of adverts when you sign in? No other IM software I know of does this. In fact – no software I know of (excluding mobile applications) use adware.

Is this the future? Is this where we’re heading? Considering the current state of free apps on Android Marketplace and App Store mostly have adverts in them. Why shouldn’t free software on your OS contain adverts?

Why? Because it’s just not done. Don’t ever do this.

Rent Photoshop from Adobe for $49/month

marksy — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:15:33 +0000

Adobe are now offering a solution for students/freelancers which sounds viable. Instead of shelling out the $US900 or whatever to keep, you can just borrow the software for a while.

This scheme seems to be targeting the inbetweener developer/designer who may have pirated the software before or installed from an agency.

I like this idea however I still think adobe are charging way too much for their software. If they made a web developers version (which only had layers, layer effects and basic shapes) for like £99 – that’d be sweet. I’d prolly even buy a copy for home. But for £550, most of the stuff I won’t even use!

link