Apple

Reading Safari's LastSession.plist

Is it just me, or does everyone see this message when quitting Safari:

"Do you really want to Quit Safari? You have a 400 Windows open that contain a bajillion tabs!"

Yeah, I can keep going down the rabbit-hole of links as good as the next person. But that doesn't mean I don't ever restart my machine (on purpose, or, thanks to unstable code). When Safari gained the ability to "Reopen all Windows from Last Session," I was extremely pleased. Let's face it: Safari can sometimes die unexpectedly.

10.6 iDisk Local Sync Location

I can't seem to find this documented plainly anywhere, so, now it will be: when you set your MobileMe iDisk to sync locally, it now creates a sparsebundle disk image in:

~/Library/FileSync/(FS_identifier)/(MobileMe_username)_iDisk.sparsebundle

You may want this information so you can exclude this path from backups or know how to mount the image manually.

C4[3] Finished Up

Presentation: Dev Tools for Sys Admins, Wed, 2 Sept 2009

I'll be giving a presentation at the Tri-State meeting of the Apple Consultants Network titled, "Dev Tools for Sys Admins." I'll be recording this talk and have attached some resources here for those attending. Bring a laptop as portions will be hands-on.

Mac Chrome: For You

***UPDATE***
Google is now placing snapshots of Chromium at:

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/sub-rel-mac/

So, I don't need to do this any longer. (And will now stop - please fetch LATEST from the aforementioned URL).
************

Google's Chrome web browser has gotten some press, certainly, but that makes it all the more frustrating for Mac OS X users as there currently is no official build. You can certainly go grab the source and build it yourself:

Macworld 2010: Thoughts

Macworld 2009 has now come and gone. The biggest news, of course, is that Apple themselves have pulled up stakes and made this show their last. The question on attendee's minds: does this finish Macworld, too? I'm sure it does not.

Sample Chapter - Utilization

Never realized that Peachpit put an entire sample chapter from Advanced System Administration on-line:

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1234969

It's actually a packed, practical chapter!

Courtesy of Peachpit, enjoy!

OS X Virtualization Not so Virtualized?

Virtualization changes everything. Well, at least, a lot of things. It is a huge change in the area of testing in particular. Being able to snapshot a test environment, abuse it, and easily return it to some known state is enormous. However, I'm having a problem getting OS X Server running under VMWare Fusion on the new MacBook Pro. Fusion itself runs fine. I can virtualize other operating systems. However, the combination of VMWare Fusion v2.0 (build 116369), OS X Server and the new unibody MBP doesn't work as far as I can tell.

Mac Microsoft Office Update and Spaces

One thing that has really irked me since OS X 10.5 shipped (and even before, for that matter), was that Microsoft Office didn't "understand" Apple's Spaces feature. Invoking Spaces while Word is running would leave document windows and toolbars strewn across different spaces and half-operable. Looks like the latest Mac Office Update, 12.1.4, fixes this.

iPhone Experiences

Been meaning to post something about the iPhone purchasing experience. On the day the iPhone 3G was released, I went to an AT&T store and placed an order for two phones, and received them 3 days later. The salesperson I dealt with was an absolute professional, and a pleasure to work with during the provisioning and transfer process (I was formerly on Verizon). Overall, it was just about the easiest process ever, which is why I've been confused by reports of people having a difficult time or still waiting in line. There's a simple remedy: go to an AT&T store.