June 30, 2004
Tiger misc

I was just perusing my tiny list of blogs that I visit daily and noticed that Hyatt finally came out of hibernation. He posts a quick explanation of what a "widget" is in Dashboard, a Konfabulator-like feature of Mac OS X Tiger.

WebKit / WebCore are cool technologies! I'm excited for the possibilities that Dashboard will bring. Yes, of course I feel bad for Arlo and Perry, but as they've said publicly already, they will have time to continue to sell and develop Konfabulator for several months and then will likely have to pursue another course.

Like most developers, we hate to see this sort of thing happen. But we also appreciate the benefit to the Mac platform that cool new built-in features bring. (I won't touch the debate of where the original concept came from and who was first with what)

Back to Tiger - I am very excited about it. I think I'm most excited that Apple has given themselves almost a year to finish it up. (and I bet the developers are even more relieved than I am ;) ) All sorts of things could change during that time. More cool stuff will be added. Refinements to existing technology and features will be made. All-in-all, great things to look forward to in the Mac OS X future! Good times to be a mac user. :)

Posted by brian at 11:07 AM
June 27, 2004
The Child of Darkness Still Wishes to See Tomorrow

Labels 1.6 is ready for release before the keynote on Monday.

  • Removes the Finder menu for Panther
  • Made Labels X function with Panther
  • Labels X will now modify the stripes shown in the Finder and open/save dialog boxes while running in Panther.
  • Added options to specify whether or not to draw the name stripes or the icons with labels.
  • Now makes the ~/bin/ folder invisible when the preference pane is first opened.
  • Installs the Contextual Menu Item Module for Jaguar only now.
  • Now sets label colors and names if set via the Finder.
  • Now resets the label names to their proper label names assuming the user has not customized them before installing Labels X. If they have, only the unchanged label names are fixed. This means that Yellow is no longer Pink. Pink is now "In Progress".
  • Added a "Relaunch Finder" button. It relaunches the finder.
Posted by rosyna at 02:54 AM
June 18, 2004
Un Monde Sans Danger

So does anyone want to beta test a new Labels X? Might be released within the next two weeks (non-beta) if the testers are good enough and responsive.

If you wish to test Labels X "for" Panther, send an email to my name at this company .com.

My name, of course, being rosyna and this company, of course, being Unsanity. I hate spam.

Your full name and email address is required. You can put them both here and put a url down and no spam filter (or anyone) will get your email address.

Posted by rosyna at 01:49 PM
June 07, 2004
No More Paranoia, Awww Yeah

Whelp, it looks like Apple conveniently has decided to schedule the release of their fix for this fun security exploit to coincide with the end of my vacation. Good Apple! Yay!

A fix is currently in Software Update.

As far as I can tell based on a quick read of the ReadMe and the associated technote, this resolves all of the issues that Paranoid Android was created to protect against. So, I think it's safe to uninstall PA now.

If you'd like to uninstall it, you can do so by running the Paranoid Android installer again and pressing the "Uninstall" button. Alternately, you can disable it using the APE Manager preference pane, or you can toss "Application Enhancers/Paranoid Android.ape".

On another note, I uploaded the source code for Paranoid Android to SourceForge before leaving for vacation, but didn't have time to make it pretty or tell anybody else about it. The source is in CVS and can be found here. If you're a developer who'd like to enhance Paranoid Android, or you're looking for full source code to a working Haxie, hop into Terminal and grab the source from CVS.

I'm pretty impressed with Apple for getting this issue fixed so quickly. Based on the severity of the vulnerability, I thought it'd take 'em at least a month.

And, it's pretty cool that their fix is exactly what I'd suggested. I don't think it's because of me - it's the only obvious fix. But it's still pretty cool!

Posted by jason at 04:27 PM
ah, new toy lust setting in...

AirPort Express

These look great. Apple simplicity and elegance. Seems a bit pricey, but what new Apple toy doesn't? ;)

Ship date of mid-July though? :(

Update: As was mentioned in the comments, it's not actually pricey. I posted my initial impression, but I'm now singing a different tune. I'm buying one. :)

Posted by brian at 11:18 AM