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Here are posterous posts filed under macintosh...

szabcsee says...

 

My work desk is just the place of lot of inventions. Apple contra apple is just one of them

Apple contra apple

Filed under: apple, macintosh, powerbook

txc says...

  
(download)

This podcast is wrong; the one-year anniversary of my iPhone was last month!

Filed under: Apple, iPhone, John Hodgman, Mac, Macintosh, Microsoft, podcast, Tom X. Chao, TXC, Windows

Free Macintosh Secrets For iPhone: http://ping.fm/3RC53
iPhone macintosh mac tips

Filed under: iPhone, mac, macintosh, tips

Todo says...

Hei teman-teman,

 

Sekarang kalian bisa membeli komputer Macintosh dari Apple dengan harga yang lebih murah dari harga normal. Jika harga MacBook putih di toko-toko berkisar 10-11 juta, kalian bisa mendapatkannya dengan harga lebih murah lagi dengan menggunakan fasilitas diskon pendidikan.

 

Fasilitas ini disediakan secara khusus oleh salah satu Apple Reseller di Jakarta, iBox Puri Imperium . Nah, tunggu apalagi? Ayo, pergi ke iBox Puri Imperium untuk menjajaki kemungkina pembelian komputer Macintosh. Modal kalian cuma Kartu Identitas Pelajar yang masih berlaku dari sekolah atau universitas tempat kalian belajar. :)

Filed under: diskon pendidikan, iBox, Indonesia, Macintosh, Puri Imperium

ebrodeur says...

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/10/14/5-mac-applications-for-ham-radio-fans/

Filed under: ,

Although my work keeps me from spending a lot of time conversing with the world via ham radio (I'm KCØEZH, by the way), it's a fascinating techie hobby. Sure, you can use a wireless phone to call anyone on earth, send 'em SMS/MMS/email messages, tweet, blog, etc..., but there's something rather fun about trying to pluck a faint signal from someone on the other side of planet and coax it into recognizable speech or code.

Many hams are hard-core electronics buffs who like to "roll their own," so it's not surprising that a lot of ham radio operators build their own PCs from parts and run Linux or Windows. However, thanks in part to virtual machines and the general growing popularity of Macs (and iPhones) in general, there is getting to be a sizable population of Mac-driving amateur radio fans.

Follow along as I show a random sampling of ham radio apps for the Mac.

Continue reading 5 Mac applications for ham radio fans

Filed under: history, macintosh

Archimage says...

Continuing on my quick CoreData excursion, here is what I figured out and learned today  regarding actually getting your NSManagedObjects to save to a real file.   This assumes the previous post's code.

Saving your objects to the file/store is pretty straight forward.  Again, I'm just trying to get basic functionality working.   Once I have that done I can expand on my knowledge and what I try to code after I understand what is going on. 

Saving is pretty straight forward once you have the setup code done.  In the previous entry's code example, there is a comment you need to remove and implement:

//- (NSPersistentStore *)addPersistentStoreWithType:(NSString *)storeType configuration:nil URL:(NSURL *)storeURL options:(NSDictionary *)options error:(NSError **)error     // this is what you use to set up the database type, etc.  In this snippet I don't worry about it because I just want it to compile and display something.

This is my brute force code:
NSError *error;  

// Build an NSURL to our physical database file.
NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
NSString *folder = @"~/Library/Application Support/Tiny±Git/";
folder = [folder stringByExpandingTildeInPath];
if ([fileManager fileExistsAtPath: folder] == NO)
{
[fileManager createDirectoryAtPath:folder withIntermediateDirectories:NO attributes:nil error:error];
}

    

NSURL *fileURL  = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: [folder stringByAppendingPathComponent: @"TinyGit.sqlite"]];

// Now tell our NSPersistanceStoreCoordinator the type of DB you want (I'm using SQLite, you can also use XML, etc.) 
// Pass in our fileURL NSURL which is where the database will be strored. 
// There are also configurations, and options, but we can ignore this--I'll worry about those once I get this working.
[psc addPersistentStoreWithType:NSSQLiteStoreType configuration:nil URL:fileURL options:nil error:error];

Once you have the store coordinator set up this way, then all you have to do to store your NSManagedObject(s) is call:

[newContext save:error];

after you have created them and added them to the NSManagedObjectContext.  The interesting thing here is that the the save: actually forces all the objects within the context to be saved all at once.  It's all or nothing.  So make sure you only add the objects to the context that you want to end up in the database.

Just to verify that this actually did work, I went to my Application Support folder and sure enough there was a new Tiny±Git folder and within it a new file TinyGit.sqlite.  Just to see what got stored (if anything) I opened it up with SQLiteManager:

Compare this with the actual data model:

So, it looks like CoreData builds lots of infrastructure.  Just to see what data got stored I drilled into the data:

Well at least the data that I specified for my simple example in the previous post got saved properly, but there sure is a lot of extraneous stuff going on under the covers.

What do I conclude from all this?  I honestly am not sure. I'm feeling a bit more confident after seeing how relatively easy it is (although limiting) to save a context.  I'll have to see what it's like to actually retrieve/fetch data using CoreData.

Filed under: Cocoa, CoreData, database, Macintosh, SQL

Archimage says...

I've been trying to wrap my mind around CoreData.  It's a major mind-shift for me since I come from an SQL-heavy mainframe environment and SQLite.   This is what to keep in mind when learning CoreData:

  • It's not a relational-file system per se.
  • It's not based on understanding rows, columns, tables.
  • It has no declarative language (SQL).
  • It is a relationship between objects that manage various layers of the environment.
  • You need to create and manage these objects properly to create a working "object graph".
  • The XCode data model document that ends in .xcdatamodel is NOT the data model you load.  It gets compiled into an intermediate form which you then have to find and load.
  • You can't use the entities in the data model directly to create object instances.  This is not obvious from the docs, but you have to create a subclass of the entity in the model and THAT is what you use.  There is no way around this (which is a pain).  I'd like to just use the entity as is with no extra step UNLESS I want to subclass it.
  • The documentation from Apple is fragmented and assumes a lot without explaining a lot.
  • The sample code is minimal.
  • The online internet samples/tutorials are again minimal and mostly assume you want to know how to bind things rather than implement things.

Here is what I've come up with that works code wise to set up a working object graph (comments added here to help explain).  This is part of the init method.  This is a snippet and has no error handling, etc.  It works as is.

// find the location of the COMPILED xcdatamodel document named "Resource"
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Resource" ofType:@"momd"];
if (!path) {
path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Resource" ofType:@"mom"];
}
NSAssert(path != nil, @"Unable to find Resource in main bundle");

// Create a URL to the path
NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];

// Create the thing that manages the model and its relationship with the graph, point it to the compiled model document.
NSManagedObjectModel * managedObjectModel = [[NSManagedObjectModel alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:url];

// Create the thing that manages the file/db-type to use to store the data objects. Give it our object model so it knows about the entities, etc.

NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *psc = [[NSPersistentStoreCoordinator alloc] initWithManagedObjectModel:managedObjectModel];

//- (NSPersistentStore *)addPersistentStoreWithType:(NSString *)storeType configuration:nil URL:(NSURL *)storeURL options:(NSDictionary *)options error:(NSError **)error     // this is what you use to set up the database type, etc.  In this snippet I don't worry about it because I just want it to compile and display something.

// set up a context in which the objects live--think of this as a business context. You have to have one.
newContext = [[NSManagedObjectContext alloc] init];
[newContext setPersistentStoreCoordinator:psc];  // This context will use our store coordinator (database mgmt object)

// Create an instance of an object based on an entity in our xcdatamodel document.  Here it is called Recent.  Insert it into our context to be managed.
// Before this will work you need to subclass NSManagedObject -- Recent :  NSManagedObject otherwise you will get an entity not found error.
NSManagedObject * o = [NSEntityDescription  insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Recent" inManagedObjectContext:newContext];

// set up some attributes within the entity object
[o setValue:@"/path/here" forKey:@"path"]; 
[o setValue:@"Name" forKey:@"gitName"];

// Add it to an array to be bound to a control in IB.
[a addObject:o];

The actual IB bindings are straight forward if you realize you have to bind the ManagedObjectContext you created (newContext) toward the bottom of the bindings panel in IB in addition to the normal bindings.  

And this just sets up the environment and displays a single line in my table view.  I haven't actually stored anything or fetched anything off the disk.

I hope that helps someone get kick-started in CD and saves a lot of hunting and pecking to get the right sequence in the setup.

Filed under: CoreData, DB, Mac, Macintosh, SQL, SQLite

Todo says...

Bwa ha ha ha, ternyata ada juga aplikasi yang bisa membuat Mac mendeteksi getaran permukaan bumi. Di milis id-Mac seseorang mengeposkan link aplikasi tersebut. Setelah saya unduh, saya langsung menginstallnya. Hasilnya seperti di bawah ini. Foto pertama saat komputer berada dalam posisi diam di atas meja. Yang kedua adalah ketika meja sengaja digoyang.

:D, Boleh juga gagasan si pembuatnya.

   

Filed under: deteksi, gempa bumi, kreatif, Macintosh, SeisMac

Sandro says...

Mac Users: I have just published a 5-minute screer.com screencast that will show you how to find your Mac's serial number and look it up on Apple's web site to determine it's official model designation.

Armed with this information, you can more easily determine what kind of RAM and other upgrades you need to purchase when shopping at online suppliers like OtherWorldComputing (www.MacSales.com).

Filed under: Macintosh, screencast, Technology

Sandro says...

© iPhone Photography by Sandro V Cuccia

You have to really hold a gun to my head before I go into a mall ... but a rare visit to the Apple Store compels me to write a little something about the experience. (This one is in the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania).

It's truly a remarkable experience both for dyed-in-the-wool fanboys to those new to Apple. It doesn't matter what time of day or year, this place is always packed with happy people. There are people touching and holding and playing with and exploring and drooling over ... all the wonderful products Apple makes. There are kids playing educational games on iMacs, teenagers checking out the latest tunes and videos on iPods, parents talking to the ever helpful Apple employees at the 'Genius Bar,' happy shoppers walking towards the door with their shiny new MacBooks in tow. The Apple store is a microcosm of tech-happiness.

I tell my students and friends who are thinking about the switch to a Mac to spend some time at the Apple Store. There, they are greeted by friendly, knowledgeable and patient Mac specialists who will demo and answer questions. No pressure. No obligation. The one thing I hear so many students tell me is, "how did I go on for so long without the Mac?"

It will be very interesting to see what happens when Microsoft opens its retail stores soon ... it'll probably be another one of its many failed initiatives.

Filed under: Apple, Macintosh, Technology