Archive for April, 2005
I was visiting Benno, my friend who got both a PowerBook for himself and an iBook for his wife. When I looked at his running applications, I noticed “Norton Antivirus for Mac” running on his computer.
I laughed and said, that he wouldn’t need it. To this he answered, that there were indeed viriii for the Mac. I challenged him to name one. He googled and the very first entry said “Why there are no viruses for the Mac”.
A couple of minutes later I read “Move along, nothing to see here” at vowe’s flying circus.
He then proceeded to deinstall the whole Norton crap (which took an ungodly amount of time and several reboots).
Living without fear is a great feeling!
Technorati Tags: mac
April 29th, 2005
A most excellent article on the technical details of Apple’s OS X 10.4. There’s a lot more changes than meet the eye. Interesting reading on kernel locks, file meta-data, Quartz architecture and loads of other things. And a pleasant difference to the many “Spotlight/Dashboard, so-what’s really new” articles that I’ve been seeing the last weeks.
April 29th, 2005
I’m still sitting in the train from Bern to Zurich, in the business compartment (the one sporting electrical outlets). As usual there’s a deluge of laptops (mostly Dell). But within 2 meters of me are two other 15″ Apple Powerbooks.
That’s the highest density I have witnessed in the last 8 months that I have travelled this route. Is the secret plan for world domination starting to work for his Steve-ness?
April 27th, 2005
Something good is coming out of the NSA — a guide to secure various operating systems. I have cursorily glanced over the XP and the OS X guides and learnt quite a bit. This goes to my reference stack and will be thoroughly reviewed soon.
Very interesting reading!
Operating System Security
[via vowe]
April 23rd, 2005
One of the things that bugged me about writing the blog, is that I usually have time to write when I’m not online (in the train). Recently, this has changed due to the availability of fast (and expensive) GPRS/EDGE, but the prices Swisscom charges for internet access are prohibitive high.
I was toying with the idea of running a Lotus Domino based blog, but inertia has kept me from going down that route. While I’m not that happy with my current MT setup, a change is a lot of work.
And all of a sudden, Tim Bray evaluates a couple of off-line blog composers (I’m sure they can do a lot of other fancy things as well). Right now, I’m trying ecto and MarsEdit. They both work out of the box with my MT setup. I will alternate posting for the next couple of days to see, which one is more to my liking.
Maybe you even get some more posts out of this? Benefits for all around!
April 21st, 2005
I admit it. I have switched. The Mac Mini was just the beginning, since last week I have a 15″ PowerBook. I really, really like it. I will not bore you to death with all the details of why the Mac is better — you have heard those things before.
I have to keep my trusty Dell Inspiron for the Lotus Notes development I’m doing, but most of my work day is spent in front of the PowerBook.
Also, and this is the interesting part of this post (I think): Today, a friend of mine bought a 12″ iBook for his wife (phasing out an old thinkpad). He himself is strongly contemplating to buy a 15″ PowerBook (after he played with mine last night) (will replace the same kind of Inspiron I have). Last week a co-worker bought a Mac Mini after he’d seen mine (complementing his home-setup of multiple computers). After I bought the Mini, my sister-in-law ordered one for herself at home (replacing an old Win98 PC).
The Mac has to be seen to be believed. I was pushed over the edge, after rsz showed me his new 15″ PowerBook. This could be the start of something big….
Update: The guy who bought an iBook for his wife bought himself a 15″ PowerBook as well, he told me today…
April 20th, 2005
This is the view I’m enjoying right now. Looking out living room window of our holiday-flat in a [little village][1] in the mountains south-west in Switzerland. This is a really small village, some 1300 inhabitants and almost non-existent tourism. But there are sheep and goats and this village happens to have the highest vineyards in Europe, so the supply with cheese, meat and wine is endless and excellent. And the people are extremely friendly. Great area for quiet holidays or working days.
And of course there is no internet connectivity. Trying to war-drive the village were fruitless. But a couple of weeks ago, Swisscom Mobile rolled out EDGE over GPRS, which theoretically gives up-to 200kb/s on a mobile phone so equipped. I have been using GPRS/EDGE with my Nokia 9500 (one of the few phones to handle this) and in general it has been very tolerable. I see downloads of 15-20 kB/s which makes working on the web acceptable. I fear the invoice for the GPRS services though.
Working in the quiet, without my family is very productive but the weather has been gray, raining and snowing. I was hoping to do some hiking too – now I just worked (and that of course helps to pay the bills from Swisscom — and others)
[1]: http://www.visperterminen.ch
April 16th, 2005
