So here we are with a new iPhone killer… wait, the killer is late, its target is already dead! Samsung’s Instinct was supposed to go snipe the iPhone, but Apple already sent it to rest, and now iPhone 2 is coming…

Walt Mossberg on Samsung’s Instinct:

Also, the timing of the Instinct is unfortunate. It was designed to go up against the first iPhone. Sprint even has a Web site (nowisgood.com) comparing the two devices. But the Instinct will go on sale only three weeks before Apple and AT&T start selling the new 3G iPhone, the second-generation model announced earlier this week.

Just came back from a serious beer session at the pool bar, which means I missed the WWDC Keynote.

…and I caught up on the news… my take? Forget about iPhone 3G, forget about GPS support and the AppStore…

THE big thing? MobileMe.

This is THE MOBILE COMPUTING dream everybody has been prophesying for years… the famous CLOUD COMPUTING.

.Mac was a sad affair, but it was a good stumbling step in the right direction… now if Apple can get their acts together and put the resources to make MobileMe efficient, then they have the KILLER NEXT BIG THING.

Everybody has been talking about accessing your data anywhere, anytime, but it has been all theory… Now what Apple announces is basically IT. And with PUSH SYNCH they avoid the pain of having to synch your data… You create content (emails, contents, pictures, whatever) and they just magically synch over the air and become available to ALL your devices…

“It’s a kind of magic”.

[UPDATE: I just signed to be notified when MobileMe becomes available and heres is the post-signup screen:

the NEXT big thing is always UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

So I have a 500GB Time Capsule stuck somewhere in the house, to which all the Macs are backed up by Time Machine. Well, actually, my work MacBook Pro gets backed up on the TC’s internal hard drive, while all the other Macs (that’s one G5 iMac, a G4 iBook and a core2duo MacBook) are backed-up to a 500GB USB HD that’s hooked-up to the TC.
The great thing with TC/TM is that, since a couple versions of Leopard, the backups can be done over the LAN via Ethernet OR Airport. While TM does backups to external HD as simple subfolders, when you backup to a network drive, TM creates a sparsebundle disk image using your computer’s name and mac address (well, the MAC address of the network interface you used when doing the first ever TM backup of said machine).

On Monday, while TM was doing it’s hourly thing, there was a power outage in the house. When it went back live, I found out TM couldn’t backup my MacBook Pro anymore, it threw an error saying that it could not find the backup disk. I checked and could see the TC alright on the LAN, and the sparsebundle for my laptop was clearly there… So I rebooted the TC, but to no result. Them I tried to mount manually the sparsebundle: the Finder grinded away for a loooong while before giving up and throwing an error stating that the image had “no filesystem”. Yikes!

Read the rest of this entry »

YES!
The 10.5.3 update to OSX finally fixes the problem where the Aperture Library would get backed up from scratch multiple times.
In previous versions of OSX, if you had Aperture open while a backup started, Time Machine would skip the Aperture Library until you closed Aperture. Then, the next backup would do a complete copy of your Aperture Library. yes, the WHOLE Library, not just the changed files… like I explained in this post (and as Apple explained in a KBase post).

So, yesterday, after reading that the 10.5.3 update “Addresses compatibility issues with Aperture 2.” I decided to give it a go: I removed my Aperture Library from Time Machine’s exclusion list and let it get backed-up (that’s about 37GB). As soon as the first backup was done, I launched Aperture and let it open until the next backup started. After the second backup was complete, I quit Aperture and had a look at the backupd logs for the third backup… and voila! it only backed up a couple new pictures I had added to Aperture.

Thanks Apple, it took you an awfully long time to fix this (and why the bug was there in the first place, when they control the whole OS/apps/hardware???) but finally it is fixed.

About the Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update:

Addresses compatibility issues with Aperture 2.

If it indeed fixes the problem where Time Machine would do a complete backup of your Aperture Library if you had Aperture open the last time Time Machine backed-up your system, then I’d be happy… this was really a pain… too bad Apple isn’t more explicit.

As Apple states in the update’s KBase page:

About the Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update:

Includes additional RAW image support for several cameras.

Well, it would be nice to know which ones.

[UPDATE]
Well, hot on the heels of the 10.5.3 update, here’s the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.1 that brings RAW support for the following cameras:

• Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/Kiss Digital x2/450D
• Epson R-D1
• Leaf AFi 7
• Leaf AFi 6
• Leaf AFi 5
• Pentax K200D
• Pentax K20D

Note that this update is available for MacOSX up from 10.4.11, which is nice seing Apple continue to bring out updates for the previous version of OSX.

VistaPerfection 2.0:

So, like, urgh, they even have the boot screen with ugly progress bar and all.
Hmm, maybe if they have been really good, they have managed to reproduce the slowness, the bugs and even the annoying UAC behavior (maybe the iPhone will ask you for your PIN code every time you want to make a call, read an SMS or - GASP - browse the ‘net).

I can’t think of why anyone would install this on their iPhone…

Betalogue » Blog Archive » Word 2008: How to assign command-G to ‘Find Next’:

Microsoft has decided that command-G shortcut should be assigned to “Go To…,” and they won’t ever change their minds. So you have to customize Word just to make it behave the normal way, i.e. use command-G as a shortcut for “Find Next.”

“Easy,” you say. “Just go to the ‘Customize Keyboard‘ dialog box, find the ‘Find Next‘ command and assign command-G to it.” Right.

I’ve been raving for YEARS about not being able to hit command-G to go to “Find next…”… And you know what? Word’s UI is so well done I actually NEVER even managed to reassign the keyboard shortcut because… well, read the post and you’ll find out why.

p.s.: oh, by the way, I totally agree, Word 2008 is so bad.

(Via Daring Fireball.)