os-x

PGP Desktop manual proxy configuration for Mac OS X

August 11, 2005

I upgraded to PGP Desktop 9 because the new version would finally work with Eudora on Mac OS X. All I had to do was install the new version, reboot, and the new automatic mode began immediately discovering and auto-enabling my email accounts as I used them.

Unfortunately, the automatic mode doesn’t work so well if you are also using some kind of network tunnel, such as a VPN or ssh port forwarding, which is increasingly common for me as I take the laptop to clients or on the road. I thought I would document the configuration of manual proxy mode for Mac OS X users, since I found the documentation light in this area.

Read the full article →

The inevitable Apple on Intel post

June 10, 2005

Since I write about Mac OS X so often, it seems mandatory to post something about Apple’s announcement this week that they would be moving the Macintosh platform to use Intel microprocessors. Most of the insights and big ideas about this have already been written, so my thoughts are mostly about, well, me.

Read the full article →

Cocoa Eudora?

May 2, 2005

Michael Tsai brought to my attention that QUALCOMM is rewriting Eudora to update it to the latest Mac OS X technologies, etc. While it is exciting to know that Eudora for Mac OS is still supported by QUALCOMM, and even being modernized, I hope that QUALCOMM is appropriately cautious about making gratuitous UI changes. It may not be pretty, but the interface is highly usable.

Read the full article →

The definitive Tiger review

April 28, 2005

John Siracusa has written his usual tour de force review of a major Mac OS X release, this time for Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. For the technical Mac OS X user, and OS geeks in general, it does not get any better than Siracusa’s reviews.

Read the full article →

Saft makes Safari rock

April 1, 2005

I purchased Saft, a plug-in for the Safari web browser on Mac OS X, a while back, after using the demo version for a couple days. I’ve found a number of features well worth the $12 purchase price. The latest release adds yet another terrific feature.

Read the full article →

OS X Backup sucks

February 26, 2005

I was recently trying to configure automatic backups for a friend’s computer, the idea being that once a week his important files would be backed up to his .Mac account. The problem is, the backups just keep taking up more and more space on his .Mac account. Eventually it fills up. And Backup stops working.

Read the full article →

Menu bar items

December 19, 2004

Some of the most useful utilities I’ve found for my system are available as tiny “menu extras.” These little widgets, almost always compact icons, sit on the right side of the menu bar. Here’s my current Mac OS X right-side menu bar, and details on why I like each utility.

Read the full article →

Spam count so far this year

March 29, 2004

With Q1-2004 coming to a close, I thought I’d take a look at my spam situation, which has been escalating out of control. Since 12:01am January 1, 2004 I have received 22,255 spam messages via e-mail. That’s more than 250 a day, every day, for the last 89 days. Earlier in the year, the daily average was lower, which means that in the last couple weeks it’s gone well above 250 per day. In spite of these numbers, I have two things that give me hope.

Read the full article →

iDVD rocks

February 11, 2004

Last week we had a reunion of our group that went to Tequila. (Actually, it wasn’t so much a reunion as a reenactment; five people passed out at the host’s house, two of them were Rochelle and I.) A couple of days before the party, I put together a terrific DVD of the trip, using photos from all the participants, and iPhoto and iDVD for Mac OS X.

Read the full article →

Selecting the LG VX4400 mobile phone

January 5, 2004

When choosing which of the dozen mobile phones offered by Verizon that we should get as our new phone, I spent (too?) much time researching the issue. I had a few criteria that were important, but making the final selection came down to just one thing: full connectivity with my Mac.

Read the full article →

On the portability of numbers

December 29, 2003

Rochelle and I recently tested the early waters on mobile phone number portability, by switching our mobile phones from AT&T Wireless to Verizon Wireless while keeping our existing mobile numbers, in the third week that it was possible to port the numbers.

Read the full article →

Showing my Dock in public

October 2, 2003

A deceptively frivolous article on MacDevCenter has inspired a lot of people to show their Docks in public. (The Dock is an application launcher / current applications list / application switcher in Mac OS X, analogous to the Taskbar + Start Menu in Windows.) I noticed a particular commonality among many of the Docks posted, and wanted to ask about it. But before I asked people about their Docks, I thought I ought to show mine.

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →