You can't love iPhone more than this guy

When Witter was waiting at the counter of a Gresham, Oregon AT&T store, two young men grabbed four iPhones and ran out the front door, according to the Portland Oregonian. Witter chased after them, dropped to one knee outside the store, pulled out a five-shot Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver, and fired at the front tire of the getaway car. The car swerved, Witter fired again, and missed again.

via valleywag.gawker.com

He is a tough guy. Imagine what happens when somebody looks at his Mac screen in the coffee shop.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Put a real book on the top of your MacBook

BookBook is a one-of-a-kind, hardback leather case designed exclusively for MacBook and MacBook Pro. Available in Classic Black or Vibrant Red, BookBook brings three levels of security to your prized Mac. First, the hardback cover and spine provide solid protection from the rigors of the road. Second, the vintage book design disguises MacBook for superior security. And third, the stylish case protects you from being like everyone else because BookBook is totally original, just like you.

via twelvesouth.com

Awesome.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Why I'm not using Windows anymore (and so happy about this!)

I was trying to stay away from the holy-wars, like Mac v. PC, Linux v. Windows, etc.  However, after wasting several hours as a result of just booting up Windows, I've changed my mind.  

I do run Windows in the virtual environment.  I user VirtualBox from Sun, which is free and pretty good to use (at least for my occasional needs).  This been said, I had a need in Windows and started it up. Making long story short: after doing a few searches in the Firefox, I've got a bunch of malware shit that literally dead-burned into my Windows.  

Oh, okay it's time for a few disclaimers:

1. Despite of running inside the VM, I run my Windows copy *with* antivirus installed.  It was Avast! which actually screwed up badly.
2. I was *not* searching for a torrent.  There are plenty of BT software available natively for Mac.
3. No cracks, serials, or anything like that.  I don't use Win in my daily life, so let me repeat myself, no need for that, too.
4. I was actually looking for a freeware alternative for Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%, which were putting my Win copy into "blue screen of death".

So several hours were spent on trying to get shit of computer.  This included a set of reboots (a lot of reboots actually - at some point I felt that I'm rebooting more often than I do change something) and many-manu manual fixes, like faked DNS on the network interface, modified hosts file and a bunch of registry mess.  Frankly speaking, as of the current moment of writing this, I'm still *not* done.

I am so freaking happy not to deal with this every single day.  Despite of what you may say, Mac is a clear winner for the majority of users.  Hopefully, the major software vendors will get this message sooner, than later.  (Anyways, they are already doomed, as the SaaS is already everywhere.  But it's a different story.)

Have a nice day... on your Mac.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Apple patents ad-supported Mac OS

via fastcompany.com

I have no freakin' idea how this will work, and how useful is it going to be, but sounds cool. I believe there is a huge part of Mac users who're mostly "netbook"-type, so interrupting anything in their world would be painful, but acceptable.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Moving message in Mail.app

I am overwhelmed with many mailboxes from many of my mail accounts. I use to keep each (regular) contact in the separate mailbox, so it's easier for me to find message, when I need them. (I don't need them often though.)

I do have like 5 or 6 regular contacts whom I receiving a lot of messages from (not less then 3-4 from each one daily). Unfortunately, these guys' names are so different, so every time when I'm receiving messages and want to save them, I need to scroll the whole (left-side) list from the top to bottom to find the right person.

I'm getting bothered with that too often now. So, after a quick look around, I found two plugins that can solve my problem. The first one, which looks cooler, is Mail Act-On 2, however, you have to buy it for $24.95 (or you can still get Mail Act-On 1.3.2 for free). The other one is MsgFiler, which is shareware - you can have it for free, but better pay $8 if you find it useful.

So, starting with the MsgFiler (yes, I'm cheapo :). It comes with installer, so you basically don't have to do anything for it. After that, you need to use global keyboard shortcut configure, to setup shortcut for it.


It's pretty easy and described on the site. Make sure you don't misspell Move with MsgFiler (as I did), because you'll not be able to access it then.

Start up Mail.app, select messages, click Command-9 and see the MsgFiler window. You can start typing the name of mailbox, it will react right away and filter the mailboxes by name.


Well, it's easier then to scroll the whole list, but still something could be made better.

Okay, so lets try the other one, which is also free. It also comes with pretty easy installation. But the principle of Mail Act-On is very different. What you do, is to create a rule for every action that you want to have. Like I did, for messages from my brother, linked to o.

That was the first thing that I didn't find very comfortable. Actually, it is comfortable for some cases, but pretty limited in other.


Everything else looks pretty easy though. And much more fancy than MsgFiler.

After spending half an hour with each one, I decided to stick with MsgFiler as for now. It gives me better flexibility, as I don't want to assign a lot of contacts to the key. I know that I'll end up with map of 10 or 15 keys, and it's going to become one more big list to scroll through. I'll miss the fancy look though. ;)

Quick update: As it works out, MsgFiler starts to complain about being unregistered after the 5th message. While $8 is not a lot, I find it to be annoying. I am happy to pay for software, but 5 messages isn't enough for me to find out do I really like it and want it. It'd take a week or even more to finally settle up. (Sorry that I am so slow.) So I'm turning into Mail Act-On back.

Dashboard widgets

I'm giving a quick look at the Mac OS X Dashboard widgets. I knew that they're pretty much HTML + CSS + JavaScript piece of code, with some features on the top, but never worked with them before.

However, even while the world goes into cloud, I like the dashboard widgets and found them to be pretty useful for many types of tasks. Anyway, until the computer is not the browser (it might be so, someday, though), there is a market for desktop software.

As it comes out, you can start doing them pretty easy by using Dashcode. It's still in beta, but gave me a pretty solid impression and made them process very clear for me.

Literally, it takes only few steps to produce sample widget. More then that, you can also test it right within the Dashcode environment. I was prepared for overriding the dashboard into debug mode and placing widgets on the desktop for further development, but using Dashcode makes it much easier. (I'm still going to place some widgets on the Desktop anyway.)

The only thing that Dashcode doesn't make very easy, is how to get the link to the actual widget package. I found it to reside within the project's folder, but it looks like this is something I could just click and get from the menu bar.

Now I'm going to keep the designers and developers busy with nice picture and functionality, so I can continue playing with the widget.

I've got a new MacBook Pro today

I've got a new MacBook Pro today. It's MB470LL/A model, pretty basic one. And I run Xbench test on it. It was interesting on is it better or still the same. Well, guess what.


I didn't expect it to be something super powerful, and actually it never was. ;)

I had a chance to compare it to my old MacBook Pro, one of the first models sold in March 2006. I also worked for a few days on MacBook Air, the first generation model (which doesn't make it less attractive, though. ;)

I got a really good deal on my MBP, so there is nothing I can complain about. Besides, having no SuperDrive, only USB Ethernet, only one USB and no Firewire on-board, could bring to my life less happiness than I got with MBP. However, the MBA was for me something really interesting and worth-while upgrading. The MBP became for me just a better thing to keep my things running on.

Seriously, if you're thinking about getting a new Mac, think about getting MBA (mean, MacBook Air).

P.S. Why, the hell, they changed Firewire port again? I've got buy a new set of cables now for my camcorder and external drive. This sucks.

iTunes CyrFix: уточняю

Получил удивительно большое количество вопросов по iTunes CyrFix. На удивление, почти все вопросы одиннаковые и читаются приблизительно так:

..."попробовал(а) сегодня вашу версию iTunesCyrFix, но там нет .exe. Как запустить программу?"

Поэтому хотел бы уточнить. Да, эта программа исключительно под Mac.

Few bad things

Few bad things happened today. Well, everything started with a good thing. Apple service center (in Texas) has received my laptop, fixed it (replaced a lot of things), and sent it back. And all that was yesterday, within one day. Today, I've received a call from Apple store, telling me that I can come and pick up the laptop. That was really fast and really cool.

However, when I got home and turned it on I discovered a few, but pretty unpleasant things. The display case, when the lid is closed, in deformed and bent from one side. Not a major problem, just a few millimeters, but, damn, that was something I didn't order.

The other thing was that my display started to blink (flash), like it could not hold a brightness level. I've tried to play a little bit with brightness and it got pretty stable, however, still a pretty unpleasant thing (and a work-stopper! nobody who has got eyes should ever work on a blinking screen intentionally ;).

The last thing is over heating. The laptop got very very hot in the area between the keyboard and display (a small area about few centimeters wide) during 10 or 15 minutes. It was so hot, that I didn't feel safe when putting a finger on it. Well, I know MacBook Pro's are pretty hot things, but not that much. I had it for more then a year, so I can compare it to real thing.

Well, I came back to Apple store and told them about my problems. So, guess what, they told me to leave a laptop for one week more. What the fuck. I mean, this really sucks. While I am very satisfied with their attitude and willingness to fix things, and do this fast, I am extremely disappointed about staying without the laptop for two weeks. I also don't like the fact that I didn't have these problems before. This is something that should never happen.

AppleCare looks to be a good service, but not that good on quality control though. Hopefully, they can solve my problem pretty fast.

I am out of my laptop again. This makes some pressure for me and makes me think about getting an extra laptop for special occasions (did you say MacBook Air?). I like the idea, but it's too expensive at this moment (about $2K).

Quicken for Mac v. ?

Being out of my laptop and out of my normal work place, I just realized that I'll also miss the Mac Quicken. I'm using it pretty often for keeping my budget on track.

Today, as I realized that I have nothing now, I started to revise the available online alternatives. Well, as I started with looking for a free ones, I ended up with mint.com and expensr.com. Few minutes later, I sadly found out that mint.com is aiming very different target then Quicken. The expensr.com is somewhat closer, however, I still didn't find it to be useful as much as Quicken.

It looks to me that the accounting software needs to stay desktop application. However, it would be a terrific idea to be able to sync the online and offline versions of Quicken, so I could use Quicken for basic operations online, and still keep my desktop version for full features.

It's sad that Intuit decided to keep Online Quicken as a separate product, that is not sync'ed and not connected with desktop ones. I would be happy to pay an extra few bucks for that.