Jon Simpson’s Weblog

My personal space for ideas & information.

Archive for the 'Apple' Category


The depths of OS X: SIPS

Saturday, June 18th, 2005

Recently, i needed to write some scripts to deal with large numbers of websites that needed screencapped, thumbnailed and uploaded. Not wanting to attempt to get Windows to peform this task, I obviously looked to my powerbook’s bash scripting capabilities to get the job done. In doing this, i was stopped in my tracks by [...]

Tiger Odds & Ends

Wednesday, May 18th, 2005

A few points (in no particular order) on the new version of Mac OS X, Tiger.

Safari: I like the new error pages a lot more than the modal error sheets the previous versions had, works much better with the tabbed browsing ‘thing’. The RSS reading is nifty but I’ve found it pretty useless as it [...]

Catching Up

Monday, May 9th, 2005

An entry to bring this weblog back to life.. About time.
I finally broke down and ordered Tiger. I read enough about it through Slashdot and several blogs that I decided it would be worth the cash. Apple’s decision to remove the Family (5 licence) pack from the education store was a bit annoying, but [...]

Replacement PowerBook

Wednesday, March 16th, 2005

Ok, so the replacement for my previously damaged PowerBook arrived today. It’s as expected, and at this point I think I’m going to wait a few days before making any sweeping statements about its functional state.
Again, it seemed just as I had got used to the iBook, the PowerBook came along and impressed me with [...]

Comparisons: iBook vs PowerBook

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005

As I was in the process of moving all of my e-mail, documents and other trivial pieces of data back to the iBook pending the PowerBook’s departure, the large difference between the two hit me. Having gone from the iBook to the PowerBook, I had obviously noticed the improvements that the new system had brought, [...]

Misfortune strikes.

Monday, February 28th, 2005

I’ll use a timeline to indicate events:
Timeline -20 days: Order PowerBook.
Day 1: Get new PowerBook
Day 2-3: Enjoy excellent new laptop & get all my docs/settings transferred.
Day 4: Find ethernet port not accepting any cables. Contact Applecare to arrange replacement.
Isn’t life great? I waited almost 3 weeks for this one to ship. I wonder how long [...]

PowerBook Updates

Monday, February 7th, 2005

So the much rumoured PowerBook updates emerged at lunchtime on Monday of last week (01/02/05), and underwhelmed the Mac masses anxiously awaiting the Powerbook G5 (any Tuesday now, right?). Not content with bringing you this ‘news’ a week late, I’ll continue with random information about how the update affected the PowerBook range, and why [...]

Macworld San Francisco 2005

Friday, January 21st, 2005

My (delayed) thoughts on the announcements from Apple at Macworld SF 2005.

Getting started with the Acroname Brainstem & Sharp Zaurus on Mac OS X

Friday, January 21st, 2005

A concise guide to cross-compiling and installing the development kit for the Acroname Brainstem on the Sharp Zaurus from Mac OS X 10.3

Living with the Mac & OS X

Friday, November 12th, 2004

A collection of my thoughts after 7 weeks using a Mac & OS X as my primary desktop environment.