Macgasm

Ever since the launch of the very first iPhone model people have been complaining about the battery life of their iPhones. I never really bought into all the problems, and certainly didn’t understand how it could be so much shorter than a blackberry–until I got one of my own.

There’s a massive disconnect between a typical cellular user and an iPhone user. We use our devices a lot different, and the iPhone certainly became a media hub for most. We play games, watch movies, listen to music, and occasionally take calls with them. That was unprecedented at the time, so it became fairly obvious that iPhone users would use their phones far more extensively than a blackberry user.

If I use my phone like I’d use a BlackBerry, my iPhone would easily last a couple of days before I had to recharge it. But, things have changed now, and the iPhone needs some more juice if it’s going to compete. There’s a reason a side market has popped up, and that iPhone and Touch juice packs have been selling like hot cakes.

Apple has finally took notice, and decided to do a little research about it. They’ve contacted some users, asked them to install a battery logging application on their device that lets them sync their usage with iTunes, and then submit their logs to Apple. This is going to let Apple evaluate the usage patterns of its users, and hopefully take that information to their engineers and come up with a solution.

Is it just me, or does battery technology really need a shot of adrenaline these days?

Via AppleInsider

Image Credit: fahrenheit45one and Ben Dodson

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, we talk about the bugs introduced in iPhone OS 3.1.

[01.3 MB] [0:03:50] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

I’ve been on a big GTD kick lately, and frankly, if I wasn’t I’d barely keep my head above water. I know, I know, people who bitch about how busy they are really suck! So in an effort to maximize my productivity, I’m going to recommend one app every day this week that’s helped me actually be a little more productive.

Today’s AppHider, and it deserves some praise. It’s an alternative to the much loved spirited away. What it does is quite handy. It declutters your active windows for you. Instead of having to hide applications to free up desktop space, it’ll actually hide them for you, based on the time criteria you set.

So, if you’re like me and have 5 applications opened at once, and a bunch of them idling in the background while you’re in photoshop editing up your latest web application, then this application’s for you. Less time manually hiding applications, and more time actually getting work done is always a good thing.

Thanks to Dustin Sallings for the tip, and the application!

Image Credit: aftab.

Response to some Server inquiries: Part 1

I wrote an article about some problematic items within Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which you can read here. The article isn’t the important part.  I received a comment from Cy Starkman requesting some more information with a series of questions. I’ll address a couple of them here.

“1) AFP – does it manage user connections properly, actually dropping users that are disconnected. Does spotlight work for clients.”

Snow Leopard server does actually drop the client as shown from this snippet of the Access log.

IP 192.168.X.X – - [18/Sep/2009:23:57:27 -0600] “Idle Disconnect: waynedixon” 0 0 0
IP 192.168.X.X – - [18/Sep/2009:23:57:27 -0600] “Saved for Reconnect User: waynedixon” 1252279181 84 0

The user has been disconnected, however they do still appear in the Connections Tab of Server Admin’s AFP service as shown below.

So that does actually work.

To answer the second half “Does spotlight work for clients.” It sure doesn’t appear so. What I have noticed is that the spotlight index seems to be loaded up on first login and does not search any files that have been added to the users network home drive are not able to be searched until the next login. I hope that this is only a temporary bug and that Apple fixes this soon.

While I was slacking off over the weekend Apple decided it was going to release a resource centre for developers. Maybe it’s a step in the right direction, and maybe it’ll help application developers get the support they need to go from ideas to products a little more quickly. It sure would be nice if the developers were given the tools they need to get through the process a little more seamlessly.

It seems like Apple has decided to address those concerns by putting all the top secret resources in one place. I wonder if it comes with the approval teams extensions and email addresses. It sure would be nice to hear first hand that your application’s flawed as opposed to some cryptic letter.

That being said, it’s a step in the right direction, so we’re glad it happened. Aren’t you?

Via 9 to 5 Mac

Photo Credits: Ben Dodson and heipei

Here’s yet another Snow Leopard Tip.

You know that CMD+TAB trick we’ve all grown to love over the years?  You know, the one that lets us jump between open applications quickly?  Well, now we’ve got another little trick to accompany it.

When you’re jumping through applications and stop on one, while holding down the command key, push the down arrow on your keyboard.  You’re activating expose.  So, if you have a million finder windows open and you CMD+TAB to the Finder icon, and then push the down key, you’ll be able to see every single on of them, then select one to bring to the front of the pile.

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, we talk about the release of Acorn 2.0.

[01.3 MB] [0:04:10] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

[Download This Episode]

In this episode, we talk about the updated AppleTV.

[01.7 MB] [0:05:10] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]