b.cognosco

Diffly - A New MacOSX Software Tool

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:28:29 GMT

Matt Mower has just announced the release of his first publicly available software tool for MacOSX. It’s called Diffly and is a productivity app for software programmers. Matt has a long history of developing productivity tools for niche environments. I’ve used several over the years and always found the functionality and UI to be well thought out. Diffly is the first product Matt’s released for general consumption. But since I’m not a programmer, I’m already looking forward to the next one! Congratulations, Matt.

Pain can be a great motivator (to finish your first Mac application!)

Not the best weekend on record as I seem to have developed an ear infection which is both very painful and very uncomfortable (my jaw isn't working properly). I decided that, rather than spending the day waiting in casualty to be seen by a doctor, I would take my mind off it by debugging the problem with my first MacOSX app that has been preventing me from releasing it these last few (okay 8) weeks.

So I'm quite pleased to be able to announce Diffly my first real MacOSX application written in Objective-C using the beautiful Cocoa framework.

If you're a developer, use MacOSX, and use Subversion you might want to take a look.

MindManager 6 for Mac

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Wed, 31 May 2006 22:12:39 GMT

Mindjet have released MindManager 6 for Mac. This is a big deal. MindManager, long the leading mindmapping software tool, has been a strictly windoze affair from the beginning. And while there have been some mindmapping apps on Mac OS, none has really equaled MindManager, particularly with the dynamic ecosystem of plugins, extensions, and templates that handle project management, Getting Things Done, and all manner of specialized purposes. According to Mindjet's whitepaper on the new release, version 6 for Mac files can be moved back-and-forth between windoze and Mac OS systems.

The Past Belongs To Microsoft, The Future to MacOS

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Sun, 08 May 2005 04:42:34 GMT

One of my favorite blog finds of late is Jan Tokerud's tech ronin. Jan has a management package for creative services companies called Studio Manager, and uses her blog to discuss all manner of personal technology issues. As a creative type shes naturally a MacHead, and lately shes been writing some of the best feature-specific reviews of the new functionality of MacOS X 10.4 (aka tiger).

With Spotlight, Dashboard (and its modular Widgets), and Automator its clear to me that Apple is truly building the next-generation personal computing platform one thats miles ahead of the cobbled-together amalgams we can assemble in the Windoze world. In a recent Infoworld column Tom Yeager observed that Apple has focused itself on user needs, and is screening every new OS release with user essentials as the lens.

What a change from the Microsoft philosophy. With each OS release Apple puts in more features that make me say, Of course! while Microsoft can only release security patches that usually make things worse. As Tokerud notes in her post Tiger vs. Longhorn, Small is Beautiful much of this has to do with Apples alacrity. A much smaller user base and Steve Jobs unfailing willingness to simply sluff off users who dont keep up make it far easier for Apple to break with its past and do remarkable things. The controlled hardware platform cant be ignored as an advantage here either, but more than that, Microsoft is now paralyzed by its endless drive to serve corporate America the dullest, most boring, and change-averse market in the world.

Since the release of MacOS X I have felt an impending change of platforms coming on. I have had my share of Macs, starting as early as 1986. But by the mid-1990s it was clear that Microsoft had closed every important gap in usability, and the cost of Mac hardware for the sake of religion just couldnt be justified. Especially in the face of Microsofts continued dominance of the business world. Thats just no longer the case.

With every new release of MacOS X Apple widens the gap between not only what Microsoft offers today, but what weve seen of their future. I am still torn by my combined need to stay in lockstep with my client base and take advantage of economical, standardized hardware, and the desire to once again have the leading edge tools Apple is building. Today I am, like Microsoft, stuck with a legacy of customers and applications that make that choice for me.

In his recent column Robert Cringely posits there may be a cloning strategy in Apples future for the iPod. As Cringely notes, Jobs hates clones. And I remember well the early Mac Clone experiments that Jobs killed. Im not holding my breath, and Im not sure Jobs will ever feel secure enough to allow MacOS to run on other hardware. But the economic argument is important only as long as there is essential parity in functionality.

With 10.4 the gap is starting, once again, to feel like the leap between DOS and the original MacOS. By the time Apple releases 10.6 or so there may be little, if anything, Microsoft can do to close the gap. And a shiny, new G5 (or G6?) may be sitting on my desktop.

Macintosh

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Sat, 22 Feb 2003 18:39:36 GMT

I used Macs for years -- nearly a decade -- and finally gave them up for a host of reasons. But I recently had my first encounter with OS X and the command-line interface. It's cool. Now I find this Konfabulator thing that can create almost any sort of widget within the GUI. You certainly can't do that with Windows.

Things change -- what was old is new again. The cycle goes around and maybe, now that I don't have to give up my manhood to use a Mac (we all know real men use GUIs by choice, ready to dive at a moment's notice to the command-line) I should re-evaluate. I certainly don't have any delusions about Windoze -- the OS that's just (barely) good enough.

There's still that little problem with the serious price premium (and no, I don't recognize any "status" premium -- I don't give a damn.) I've got to justify the machine on its merits. But OS X is starting to look more like a winner every day...

Konfabulator is here, Konfabulator is here!!! - Konfabulator is a Macintosh program-thing that works in OSX and was created by some Sun engineers. It's javascript, and it works with XML. If you have a Mac with OSX then just got to the site now. HURRY!. You can try it for free, and then it's $25. Konfabulator lets you create desktop widgets, which can do anything you want (i.e. have a little clock, or calender, or news). The site already has a bunch of free widgets that you can download and try out.

Leo Laporte of TechTV says these widgets are like what Active Desktop was supposed to be for Windows, "except this works." Konfabulator uses quartz technology (which is built into OSX, which allows the widget to be semi-transparent, or to fade out and other really slick looking stuff).

Oh did I mention that it uses XML and can do news feeds? Let's see, what could that mean? I wonder how long it will take before someone creates a widget for news feeds? Not long, because it is apparently pretty easy to write the widgets, even if you aren't a programmer. Goddammit. I need a Macintosh!
[Ernie the Attorney]