Posts tagged ‘software’
NerdTool over GeekTool
September 6th, 2011 at 10:18 pm by Dr. Drang
GeekTool went up on the Mac App Store on August 21, which explains why my various GeekTool posts have seen a jump in traffic. I’ve been using NerdTool since I saw this Brett Terpstra post several months ago. I had to abandon it for a while on my MacBook Air when I upgraded to OS…
PCalc 2.4.1
August 5th, 2011 at 11:50 pm by Dr. Drang
A new version of PCalc hit the App Store today. The new feature is support for hardware keyboards, which I’m sure is a big improvement for a certain class of user. I don’t happen to be in that class—no iPad, no hardware keyboard—but because it’s been a year since my last PCalc post and there’ve…
My Finder toolbar
June 17th, 2011 at 10:42 pm by Dr. Drang
When I set up my new MacBook Air late last fall, I wanted it to have a better Finder toolbar than the iBook G4 it replaced. The iBook’s Finder toolbar had accreted some utilities that I never used anymore and some that didn’t work too well—they just sat in the toolbar as a testament to…
A couple of TextExpander thingies
June 16th, 2011 at 11:19 pm by Dr. Drang
I sent out a bill to a client the other day and decided I wanted to start putting the due date for my invoices in the body text of the emails they’re attached to. The due date is on the invoice itself, of course, but I figured an extra reminder wouldn’t hurt. And being me,…
Was I wrong about iOS 5 Twitter clients?
June 12th, 2011 at 5:29 pm by Dr. Drang
A few days ago, in a post about how Apple’s recent announcements may affect third-party software, I said iOS Twitter clients are threatened by iOS’s upcoming Twitter integration. I may have had that completely backwards. Certainly Twitter satellites like TwitPic and yFrog will be hurt. These services are already taking a hit from Twitter’s alliance…
Who will be left standing?
June 8th, 2011 at 10:19 pm by Dr. Drang
Since Apple’s tsunami of announcements on Monday, there’s been much speculation on how certain third-party applications are threatened by new features built into Lion and iOS 5. The list is surprisingly long: TextExpander Touch ⇔ Shortcuts Every iOS Twitter client ⇔ Twitter integration Every simple iOS to-do list app ⇔ Reminders Instapaper and Read It…
The patent balance
June 1st, 2011 at 11:19 pm by Dr. Drang
Marco Arment just posted a well-written argument against software patents, and while I am, as I said before, sympathetic to the notion that software patents should never have been allowed, I don’t think he’s taking the right approach and I can’t let his argument go by without comment. Duty calls. Marco’s argument is perfectly pitched…
New OmniGraffle shortcuts
May 27th, 2011 at 10:43 pm by Dr. Drang
I’m not sure how many years I’ve been using OmniGraffle, but throughout that time I’ve been annoyed by a few of its choices for keyboard shortcuts. I settled into a pattern: Start using OmniGraffle, get mad at the stupid shortcut choices. Decide I can’t fix them right now because I need to get this drawing…
The Lodsys patent
May 21st, 2011 at 11:39 pm by Dr. Drang
It’s been just over a week since we started hearing about Lodsys’s claims of patent rights over in-app purchases made in iOS apps. In that time, there’s been a lot of outrage, namecalling, and misinformation swirling around the Apple-centric corner of the internet. I’ve been hoping a lawyer, or better yet, an IP lawyer, in…
Preview and screen resolution
May 20th, 2011 at 11:46 am by Dr. Drang
I’ve been messing around with Gnuplot and Ghostscript lately, figuring out ways to generate PDF and PNG plots more efficiently. I hope to have a post about that soon, but in the meantime I thought I’d mention something I discovered about Preview. After Safari, Preview is my favorite Apple-written program. It just works, serving as…
