/dev/random

It looks like I need a new battery for my MacBook Pro. It only charges to 98% and according to coconutBattery, it’s only at 73% of the original capacity.
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
Resetting the SMC and reconditioning the battery several times, both in the MacBook Pro and in a Newer Technology external charger/reconditioner didn’t help at [...]

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I own both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, although I’ve been using Parallels mainly because VMware had a problem with Visual Studio and shared folders. Parallels did feel nicer running Windows XP, although it slowed down my system pretty badly, even with 4GB RAM.
Even though I was getting disgusted with Parallels’ terrible Linux support and [...]

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Cool Tools points out something I figured out years ago: almost any standard 2-prong power cord will work with the AC adapter for Mac laptops. They recommend the cord that comes with a PlayStation, but it’s a pretty common type of power cord.
I usually keep one of those cords in my laptop case, so I [...]

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I’ve written about this several times before, since I own both products. I keep giving VMware another chance because I really want to use it, but I keep going back to Parallels for several reasons.
The major reason I can’t use VMware is because it has problems with Visual Studio Team Server. I use VSTS for [...]

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Jason Snell points out that every Mac he bought cost around $2500, which is also the case for most of my Macs.
In 1984, I bought my first Mac 128 for about $2500. Next, I bought a Mac Plus, also for $2500. A few years later I bought a Mac SE/30, for guess how much - [...]

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It’s official: Absolute Software is sending me to WWDC, along with our other Mac programmer.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “I’m going to WWDC”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/04/17/im-going-to-wwdc/” });

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I still have I have 2 one Evernote invitation available for any of my readers who want one. Just leave a comment here. All of my invites are gone.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Evernote Invitations”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/04/14/evernote-invitations/” });

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Just as I suspected, a Microsoft executive admitted that Vista’s UAC (User Account Control) is designed to annoy users.
In a Thursday presentation at RSA 2008 in San Francisco, David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft who was part of the team that developed UAC, admitted that Microsoft’s strategy with UAC was to irritate users [...]

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I joined net4mac a few days ago, but so far I don’t see much point to it. This is a new “social network for Mac users”, but it’s severely limited by requiring their proprietary software. You can view public pages from a web browser, but to write anything or contact anyone, you need to use [...]

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I haven’t had a chance to do much work on mii transfer for a long time, but now that DarwiinRemote 0.7 was released, I’m taking a look at the latest code to incorporate into Mii Transfer.
My goal in this version is to avoid modifying the WiiRemote framework, but rather to extend the classes in it [...]

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There’s a major controversy about Apple’s software updater pushing Safari 3.1 for Windows with iTunes & Quicktime updates, even if Safari wasn’t installed previously. Adobe did something much sneakier with their CS3 applications. Adobe Bridge CS3 contains a full copy of Opera embedded inside the application.
The current version of CS3 includes Opera 9.2. The latest [...]

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I depend on an application where I can store snippets such as notes, passwords, serial numbers, etc. For years I used StickyBrain, but it started getting too slow & bloated, so I switched to Yojimbo, which is still my favorite.
Now I’m trying Evernote, which has some pretty unique features. Although it stores notes, it’s nothing [...]

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Here’s a feature I wasn’t aware of, thanks to MacOSXHints.com. The open command (man page) provides a -f option, which open’s own help says “Reads input from standard input and opens with TextEdit”. But, in fact, you can load the data into nearly any application. Simply combine the -f flag with the -a flag:

curl ‘http://example.com/example.html’ [...]

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XCode 3.1 with the iPhone SDK includes a very interesting new compiler, llvm-gcc. This is an alternate version of the standard C compiler based on the llvm open source project for improved optimization & CPU architecture support.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “New compiler in iPhone SDK”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2008/03/08/new-compiler-in-iphone-sdk/” });

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I finally got disgusted with my Wireless Mighty Mouse, which will only scroll up even after repeated cleanings, so I got a new mouse to replace it. None of the Logitech or Kensington mice I like are available in Bluetooth and I don’t want a wireless mouse that uses a dongle. After looking around I [...]

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Since NewsFire is now free, I decided to take another look at it. After only a few minutes I went back to NetNewsWire. Since both are free, I see no compelling reason to switch to NewsFire.
Although NewsFire is attractive and fast, it lacks many of my favorite features of NetNewsWire. Most notably, there’s no way [...]

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David Watanabe came up with a great idea to make money on the new free version of NewsFire: include three paid-for feeds that the user cannot unsubscribe from. Site owners can bid for a spot as one of these feeds, bringing Watanabe revenue while offering a great product for free.
Recently there was an uproar when [...]

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Since Scoble praised VMware, I decide to take another look at the latest version. I own both VMware and Parallels, but I currently use Parallels.
The new VMware converter made it easy to move my Parallels VM to VMware, so I was able to run my most recent Windows VM with it. Although there’s very [...]

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Rainer Brockerhoff explains how the snowball effect resulted in some of the often-criticized design features of the MacBook Air.

From what I can tell, the Air was designed from the outset to be extremely thin and rugged, while maintaining adequate battery life and performance. These considerations snowball to the extent that the battery uses up 2/3 [...]

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My AppleTV arrived today. The setup was quick and easy, although it took about 20 minutes to sync with my MacBook Pro over 802.11n. The picture quality is excellent, even though I’m using component video rather than HDMI, since the lone HDMI input on my TV is being used for my Comcast HD DVR.

SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: [...]

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