Archive for March, 2009

DMG Compression: An Open Letter to Mac Developers

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

I am not a programmer, nor will I ever claim to be one. One thing that annoys me about shipping products for download is that developers do not take advantage of the fantastic opportunity afforded to them by Apple’s advanced compression options for disk images.

I was on my honeymoon last year, and Garmin’s RoadTrip software, at version 2.0, had some serious bugs.  I really needed to download the 2.0.1 update. I was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on a cruise ship with SLOW internet access.  I consider it a modern miracle to have internet access on the ship ANYWAYS, but I digress.  After downloading the large disk image, I ran it through DropDMG‘s bzip2 compressor and shaved something like 30MB off of the disk image file.  If Garmin had done that in the first place, they’d have cut down on the internet time I had to burn downloading the damn thing, plus they would save a little on their bandwidth costs.  I’m sure that 30MB per download of their Mac software is negligible, but still worth taking into consideration.  Bottom line is that there’s no good reason to ship a disk image that mounts as read/write, nor is there a good reason to ship a non-compressed DMG.  Devs: prove me wrong.

Now, some of you losers still running OS X 10.3 might be complaining about not being able to use bzip2 compressed DMGs.  Lucky for you, Apple still supports legacy zlib compressed DMGs.  And if you’re running 10.0 and need an ADC compressed image, you need to figure out how the hell you got to this website in the first place and SERIOUSLY re-evaluate your technological budget.

Now, this part of my rambling is going to be an unsolicited whoring of myself for Michael Tsai over at C-Command.  Not only is DropDMG one of my favorite utilities for DMG archival and processing, his other big product SpamSieve is quite possibly the most brilliantly written third-party spam filters ever made.  It is essentially seamless with OS X Mail, and support for all of his products is completely first-rate.  No other spam filter has ever worked as well as his for my use, and I cannot thank him enough for saving my inbox.

So, developers, please save your customers time and support a wonderful member of your community: process your DMGs properly through DropDMG before posting them for download.  I’ll be happy, and isn’t that really all that matters?

Posted in Apple, Ramblings, Software, Technology | No Comments »

GoDaddy Kills Kittens (I Have Proof)

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

OK, so I lied about the GoDaddy killing kittens thing.  I will say something that I do have proof of: GoDaddy is not a good deal for registering your domains.  Why? Let me tell you.

So, my wife does a little side business of wedding planning stuff and she wanted to get some domains.  We priced them out on my previous registrar of choice, GoDaddy.  $140 or so for the 4 domains for 3 years each.  Looking around for coupon codes got us a best price of right around $120.  Then, for giggles, I decided to price them out on DreamHost (my web host of choice.)  They are $9.95 each. Period. No coupon codes, no BS. Cheaper than GoDaddy.

Now, I could have received DIRT CHEAP domains by buying into GoDaddy’s crappy hosting or even crappier email services, but why would I spend more money to get a discount if all I’m getting out of it is a lighter wallet, more crap, and the domain I wanted?  Good question.

Sooooooo, I’ve decided to bail on GoDaddy.  Good riddance to their crap infested site and shady small-print marketing techniques. Imagine how cheap their domains would be if they didn’t waste resources with all of their stupid flashy animations or actresses who have to pay for breast implants.

The other thing I hate about GoDaddy, just to pile it on, is that if you make ANY change to your domain aside from unlocking it, they put a transfer hold on it for 60 days.  Good job Mr. Diligent Domain Owner for correcting a typo in your address before posting your domains for sale.  You just screwed yourself for 2 months!  Yeah, Bob Parsons is a twit, and his way of making money is kinda like trying to get your rebate from Best Buy: make it just hard enough that most people will give up and keep writing checks.  Way to go, jackass.

Posted in Douchebaggery, Jackassery, Rants, Technology | No Comments »

iTunes selling HD movies now. How about BD-R next?

Friday, March 20th, 2009

So, now that you can buy and rent HD video content from your computer using iTunes, is it not a logical step to want to view your HD content on your HDTV?  Given, one can do that if you’ve got a Mac mini home theater system or an AppleTV, but what if you just have a good ol’ BluRay player?  I think that the best thing Apple could do to introduce BluRay to the Mac is to allow burning HD video to BD-R discs in iTunes.

When iTunes music was still DRMd, you could burn it to an unencrypted audio CD and still play it on your stereo.  With the plummeting costs of BD-R drives, and relatively low cost of BD-R media, I think that now would be a fantastic opportunity to allow the conversion of the video into a (maybe even still DRMd) more usable format! Given, most of us would prefer a non-restricted format, but most folks are just looking to play their content in a format they have easy access to. Audio CD is one format. BluRay is another.

I know that licensing these things is a pain in the anus, but I believe Apple could own the market in downloadable-to-BluRay video, and it should not be underestimated.

Posted in Apple, AppleTV, Geek TV, Rants, Technology, iTunes | No Comments »

FUCK APPLE

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/03/apple-adds-still-more-drm-ipod-shuffle

EDIT 2009-03-18:
It would seem that Apple has not restricted so much as made the documentation available only to those who wish to properly license the “Made for iPod” certification mark on their products.  Assuming nobody C&Ds independent manufacturers of headphones who reverse engineer but don’t infringe on the certification mark, I’m not against this.  Sorry for the alarm.

Posted in Apple, Douchebaggery, Jackassery, Music, Rants, Technology | No Comments »

Big Frank, Little Frank, and the Nehalem Mac Pro

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

I was screwing around with a new single quad-core Mac Pro the other day and saw this on the logic board:

BigFrankLittleFrank

and thought “what the fuck is that?” I haven’t seen an easter egg, hardware or software, on an Apple product in a LONG time. I have no idea what the “Big Frank” non-socket or “Little Frank” actual-socket is. My only speculation is that the single quad-core board is the “Little Frank” and that the dual quad-core board is “Big Frank”.  I’ll speculate some more and say that maybe the connector is for the equipment testing hardware.  Any other guesses?  I love mystery ports on Apple’s boards.

This wouldn’t be the first time Apple’s used the same base board design with different connector placement depending on the model. If you have an original or ALS iMac G5 (all-white, no iSight camera) and you look at the logic boards, the 17″ and 20″ models have essentially the same board, but with the LCD inverter plugs in different locations and DIMM sockets facing the other direction. There are a few other minor differences, but one time I got a board almost-seated in the wrong size machine. I only noticed it when some of the plug locations were in the wrong place.

Back to the Core i7 Xeon Mac Pro. I wonder if the huge processor/memory board on the single quad-core machine is replaceable with the board from a dual quad-core machine with full function?  I would assume “no” because Apple rolls that way with often-unnecessary firmware limitations on its hardware.  Is there someone familiar with Intel boards able to tell me why or why not?

Posted in Apple, Mac Stuff, Technology, WTF | No Comments »

Hey Assholes: Stop Abusing Your MacBook Airs!

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Like most people who beat the shit out of their expensive electronics, when it breaks, these douchebags immediately cry about a line-wide defect necessitating a class action lawsuit.

Never mind the fact that I’ve, since the age of 14 (13 years ago, for those counting) lived out of PowerBooks from the Duo 270c on up and NEVER NOT ONCE had a broken hinge despite my not-always-nice treatment of my equipment.  Never mind the fact that the MacBook Air was the first of Apple’s portable computers to use the block-of-aluminum manufacturing technique to increase structural stability.  Never mind the fact that I saw a guy at a Starbucks walking around holding his MacBook Air BY THE SCREEN when his hinge did just what the whiny tools at Engadget are saying (at the submitter’s request, I suppose) is a defect.  The other thing I’ve seen cause the MacBook Air hinge to do just that is just plain pushing the screen back real fast, real hard and ignoring the METAL ON METAL TENSION that would cause normal people to stop pushing the goddamned screen back.  Push too hard, and *SNAP*.

Next thing you know is a class action lawsuit against Apple for not making the Unibody MacBook line strong enough to take impacts from a 5 foot drop because, you know, they’re built stronger and should be able to hold up to “normal use.”  Kind of like the human knee not being able to extend 270 degrees.  I smell a class action lawsuit against God…

Posted in Apple, Customer Service, Douchebaggery, Jackassery, Mac Stuff, Rants, Technology | No Comments »