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TheAppleBlog
TheAppleBlog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
http://theappleblog.com
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Macworld 2010: Life Without Apple

Macworld Expo 2010 kicked off without the traditional Apple keynote on Tuesday morning. The iPad event last month and the Aperture 3 announcement yesterday highlight the difference between years past and this year’s Expo. Without Apple on the floor the show is a bit smaller, but the Mac faithful are still showing up in large numbers to attend training, mingle with colleagues and see what 250 exhibitors have to show to world.

What to See

The keynote this year is not a big Apple shindig on Tuesday morning as has been the tradition, but rather a Thursday musical variety show with David Pogue of the New York Times. Pogue is sometimes clever and always entertaining and a good choice to carry the big event at Macworld Expo.

Some other feature presentations that I would recommend are the Macworld DEMO: Best of Show, Guy Kawasaki’s presentation on Revolution from the Rest of Us, and John Gruber on Friday. The recently added iPad special event on Saturday might be interesting, but I suspect that we still don’t have enough information about the device to make it much more than a rehash of Apple’s announcement last month.

Macworld Without Apple

Apple decided to pull out of Macworld because it did not like being tied to making product announcements in the first week of January and had the retail stores to let people touch its latest products. As Tuesday passed by yesterday without Steve Jobs up on stage at Macworld, I reflected a bit on what that event might have looked like if Apple had stayed in the show.

The iPad event last month and the Aperture 3 announcement yesterday were big news, but probably still not enough for a “traditional” Macworld keynote. We would have wanted iLife ‘11, MacBook Pro updates, Mac Pro announcements and more than just one hardware and one software product. I have a feeling that people would have been disappointed if Steve Jobs came out on stage yesterday with only the iPad and Aperture 3. Of course, if Apple had stayed, the Expo might have remained in the first week of January and nothing would have been ready to announce then. I wonder if Jobs had the foresight to see that there would not be any big products ready for 2010 a year ago when Apple announced that they would not be at this year’s event?

Macworld 2010 should provide a bigger stage for third parties to make big announcements and get some press attention without being upstaged by Apple or Adobe. There are some cool things coming this week, which we hope to show you over the next few days.

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Virtualization Is the Trojan Horse to Take the iPad Beyond Apple's OS

Citrix's quiet announcement that its Receiver software will allow Apple iPad users to run Windows 7 sessions via virtualization has caused some to suggest that the iPad may have much promise as a business tool. But why stop at Windows? The iPad will reach beyond Apple's iPhone OS and Windows. Read more →

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Quickoffice Adds DropBox, Google Docs support

I’ve written about my love affair with Quickoffice before, but there’s always been one issues I’ve had with it: the only cloud storage service it supported was MobileMe’s iDisk. I’ve come close to plunking down the money for MobileMe a few times, but because Dropbox works for me, I’ve been hesitant.

Quickoffice just announced its new iPhone app Quickoffice Connect which now lets you access and edit files on Box.net, Dropbox, Google Docs and Apple MobileMe. It’s available for an introductory price of $9.99, but it showed as a free upgrade for my existing Quickoffice application.

In my very brief testing, it has worked as advertised. I was able to connect to my Dropbox account, browse all the files and open a Word doc and edit it. The usual disclaimers apply: the formatting is still rough (the document I tested with has extensive formatting and fonts not available on the iPhone, so the results were a little rough), and editing documents on a small screen can be a dicey proposition.

It’s this type of functionality I think will make QuickOffice much more valuable to business users on the iPad than the iWork suite — assuming Quickoffice will be coming out with an iPad version; I’m betting they will.

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How-To: Setup a SVN Server Under OS X 10.6

Last year I took a look at a number of Subversion clients for OS X, finally settling on Versions as my client of choice for my personal coding needs. At the time, I was running a Linux server on some old generic hardware from the days before I drank the Apple Koolaid. After deciding to upgrade my wife’s 17″ iMac with the new i5 27″ model, I realized I could ditch the old Linux hardware and get some great power savings (and hence reduced electricity bill) in the process. The first task I had was moving my SVN repository over from the Linux machine (Ubuntu 9.10) to the iMac running OS X 10.6…and this is how I did it.

All of the SVN application binaries, including the server, already come pre-installed with OS X 10.6, located in the /usr/bin/ directory, so we just have a few steps to get that running.
1. Create a system user for SVN.
2. Create a new repository to store your code in.
3. Optionally create specific SVN users for submission tracking.
4. Configure the server to run automatically at system startup.
Creating an SVN user

While you could easily run the SVN sever with the root user account, for better system security it’s always best to have a dedicated user to run a specific service such as SVN. This limits any possible vulnerabilities in the SVN software from harming the rest of your system; if an exploit is used to end up with a command line ability, the attacker can only damage files belonging to the SVN user.
1. Open System Preferences and go the Accounts page.
2. Add a new standard user named svn with a suitable password.
This user will be included in the OS X login screen when you start your computer. Since there is usually no reason for somebody to log onto the desktop with this user, it can be hidden from the login screen. You can do so by opening the Terminal application and running the following command:
```
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add svn
```
If you ever do want to login as the svn user to the desktop, you can click the new ‘Other’ option that appears in the login screen and manually enter the username. On the other hand, if you don’t want the ‘Other’ option at all you can also disable this by entering the following in a terminal window:
```
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SHOWOTHERUSERS_MANAGED -bool FALSE
```
You can also delete all the default directories created under the /Users/svn/ directory if you prefer a neat and tidy file system.

Creating your SVN repository

We now need to create the specific root directory for our repository and create it using the svnadmin command by launching the OS X Terminal application and entering the following commands.
```
 sudo -u svn mkdir /Users/svn/svnroot sudo -u svn svnadmin create /Users/svn/svnroot 
```
You can now view the /Users/svn/svnroot directory and see that new files have been created to form the base of your new repository.

Creating SVN users (optional)

If you are working on your own code and you know without a doubt that nobody else will be accessing your repository, you can skip this step. However it doesn’t hurt to configure a dedicated user now even if it’s just for your sole use, so that code check-ins are properly attributed. To do this we first need to edit the svnserve.conf file and enable the passwd file for user authentication. An easy way from the terminal to edit a file is by using the nano text editor:
```
sudo -u svn nano /Users/svn/svnroot/conf/svnserve.conf
```
Remove the # from line 20 so it looks like this:
```
   ### Uncomment the line below to use the default password file.   password-db = passwd 
```
If using nano, press Control+X and save your changes. Next edit the passwd file:
```
sudo -u svn nano /Users/svn/svnroot/conf/passwd
```
Then add the desired usernames and passwords, in my case I’m adding the user ‘bed’ for myself:
```
 ### This file is an example password file for svnserve. ### Its format is similar to that of svnserve.conf. As shown in the ### example below it contains one section labelled [users]. ### The name and password for each user follow, one account per line. [users] bed = beds_secret_svn_password 
```
Scheduling the server to start automatically

OS X uses the launchd subsystem for automatically starting background services. The easiest way to configure svnserve to run automatically via launchd is by using Lingon. You can grab the latest version from Sourceforge. For more details on using Lingon see this previous article I put together, but for this task we just need to add a new User Daemon:
1. Run Lingon, click the New button and select User Daemons.
2. Fill out the dialog as follows:
  Name: org.subversion.svnserve
  What: /usr/bin/svnserve --inetd --root=/Users/svn/svnroot/
```
 <key>Sockets</key> <dict>   <key>Listeners</key>   <dict>     <key>SockFamily</key>     <string>IPv4</string>     <key>SockServiceName</key>     <string>svn</string>     <key>SockType</key>     <string>stream</string>   </dict> </dict> <key>inetdCompatibility</key> <dict>   <key>Wait</key>   <false/> </dict> <key>Umask</key> <integer>2</integer> <key>UserName</key> <string>svn</string> <key>GroupName</key> <string>staff</string> 
```
So that it looks like this:

Click the save button again and then reboot your computer to give it a test by connecting to localhost or your IP address with your favorite SVN client, ie: svn://bed@localhost. Your SVN server is now ready to be used! The SVN server will only be launched when you first try and use it, so it won’t be taking up any unnecessary resources.

Migrating an existing repository

If you’re like me, and want to migrate an existing repository from another system you can do so easily by skipping the svnadmin command in step two, and just copy the repository directory from the old system to the new system. I would advise to upgrade your existing repository first to ensure that it is compatible with the version of SVN that comes with OS X (SVN version 1.6.x). Also you’ll want to ensure that the copied file’s owner becomes the new SVN user created in step one.

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Apple Job Posting Suggests iPad Camera At Least Being Considered

Evidence continues to mount that early adopters are going to get a bit screwed with the Apple iPad, which has yet to even be officially released for public consumption. As my colleague Liam points out, that shouldn’t really be less than anyone expects, but a new job posting must twist the knife even still for those planning to pick up Apple’s first iteration of the device.

The new listing has Apple looking for “Performance QA Engineers” for the iPad Media department, and judging by the description, the job focuses almost exclusively on video and image capture and playback. It’s not unexpected, since presumably Apple has considered the possibility of putting a camera in the iPad at some point in the future, even if it doesn’t 100 percent intend to do so already, but it still stings.

The job description accompanying the call leaves little room for error about the nature of the position:

The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines.

And then later in the description of the ideal candidate for the position, things are again made fairly evident:

Familiarity with and interest in photography, video as well as media file formats is highly desirable. Experience with tuning of and image pipeline, including, but not limited to AWB, Color Correction, AutoExposure, FrameRate adjustments is a plus.

Now I’d say job descriptions rank well above patent applications in terms of predicting what’s coming next from Apple, but that doesn’t mean everything the company advertises for is automatically included in a future iteration of its products. Add the advertisement to what we already know about space supposedly existing in the iPad’s guts for a camera module, photographic evidence taken from the iPad’s unveiling, and good old common sense about how Apple operates, and it’s becoming pretty hard to deny that iPad 2G will sport still/video capabilities.

If I didn’t have a vested professional interest in getting my hands on an iPad as soon as is humanly possible, I would not be buying one this time around. It’s not an experience that I need or miss in terms of my current gadget usage, between my iPhone and my Macs. If part of my job didn’t directly involve Apple hardware, I’d have a heck of a time justifying the investment to myself, and I honestly don’t think I would use it after the novelty wore off. The consumer in me would wait until it gets more features, and maybe gets cheaper, but the professional in me is glad I don’t have to exercise that degree of patience.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:
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Psst: Want a Fast, Up-to-Date Browser for Your Old PowerPC Mac?

Still running a PowerPC Mac and hurting for some serious browser speed, up-to-date security and web standards compatibility? Being open-source applications, Mozilla’s web browsers and Thunderbird email client are open to being breathed on by third-party developers, several of whom specialize in optimization of particular versions of the Mac OS — such as Chris Latko’s Mac Intel-optimized variants of Firefox.

Terrific Results

However, for us PowerPC holdouts, a reader recently tipped me to some PowerPC-optimized Mozilla web browsers plus Thunderbird by R.P. Mozely, noting that he’s been getting terrific results and highly recommends these tweaked apps.

That sounded promising, as I’m still using two G4-upgraded Pismo PowerBooks for production work, and haven’t found the latest Mozilla gecko-based browsers to be particularly happy campers on the old laptops running OS 10.4 .11. So I keep reverting to old Netscape Navigator 9, which works nicely, but is getting long in the tooth, beginning to encounter some limitations content-compatibility wise. Of course it hasn’t had any security updates for nearly two years, since development was terminated.

Squeezing Every Bit of Speed Potential Out

Now this R.P. Mozely cat doesn’t just provide a one-size-fits-all PowerPC generic optimization, but discrete dedicated versions for G3 PowerPC 750, G4 PowerPC 7400, G4 PowerPC 7450, and G5 PowerPC 970, presumably all the better to squeeze every bit of potential speed out of each respective processor. My hot-rodder Pismos have 550 MHz G4 7400 CPUs, so last weekend I proceeded to download the G4 7400 optimized builds of Firefox 3.5.6, Camino 2.0.1, and the SeaMonkey 2.0.1 Internet suite application.

Worth the Effort?

So was it worth the effort? I think so. These browsers are definitely faster than the stock builds, performing remarkably well on the old Pismo, even when it really needed a restart to clear the memory heap, dipping into virtual memory swapfiles on the hard drive routinely.

I had been especially hopeful that the PPC-optimized Camino would work well, and it does. My seat-of-the-pants assessment is that it’s the fastest browser I’ve used on the Pismo — livelier even than Opera 10, which is no slouch speed-wise itself.

Sluggishness Banished

I’ve found recent versions of Firefox, Camino and SeaMonkey a bit sluggish on the old G4 machines, which is a big part of why I keep using Navigator 9. But that complaint is pretty much eliminated with these PowerPC optimized builds of the current Gecko browsers, at least in their G4 7400 iterations. However, for what it’s worth, I think the Camino variant is the pick of the litter.

If you’re still hanging in with a PowerPC Mac, I think you’ll thank yourself for taking the trouble to download one or more of these PowerPC-optimized browser versions.

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