Because I might know some soon-to-be switchers out there I thought I wanted to make a list of all the essential apps you needed on a Mac to be able to do everything you’d expect to be able to do on a PC. It turns out there really aren’t any special things. I thought about it a lot and I wanted to make a big cool list in this blog-post with images and fancy things. But as it turns out, there’s basically only 5 apps which I feel could be mentioned or get a short explanation.

• VLC – The video player. This app exists for PC as well (it’s actually kind of targeted to PC) but it should be mentioned that the Mac version is just as good. It plays every imaginable video format and you need to install this to be able to watch all your vacation videos.
• Pages – The Apple version of Word. It opens and even saves to .doc or .docx format, or you can export to PDF or it’s own format. It lacks some features that Word has like Math-formula input, but in return it has much better typography and other nice things. It’s an allround nice text editor for your normal stuff.
• Keynote – Apples version of PowerPoint. I have to admit it was a few years since I used PowerPoint, but at the time I compared the two side-by-side, Keynote was way more powerful and produces much, much better result. Much due to the fact that they have really good basic themes, classy “animations” instead of the normal PowerPoint crap and again, very good typography. It opens both it’s own format and PowerPoint files and can export to either it’s own format, PowerPoint or PDF.
• Numbers – Apples version of Excel. This time Apple didn’t hit a home-run. For business purposes as well as “programming” purposes, that is; if you want to do advanced cell-formula stuff, Excel is better. For making a home-budget or making your own Invoice or something like that, Numbers is better. Numbers is easier to use and in my opinion intended for more home-use rather than office-use. Though it does of course still open and save to regular Excel files as well as all other formats.

When I’m going to Japan I will have to live with a laptop as my only computer. Right now I use my iMac for anything serious and my laptop is just for bringing to school and friends when I want to have something to surf or code a little on. The problem is that I know my MacBook Air isn’t going to be “enough” for me if it’s going to be my only computer. I’m going to be doing a lot of photo editing, probably some video editing and just generally be using it all the time, so I want something more powerful.

New MacBook Pros

I came to the decision that I was going to buy a MacBook Pro to have in Japan instead of my Air a couple of months ago, since then I’ve been waiting for Apple to release the new MacBook Pro’s. They did so just a couple of days ago and there are some good news and some bad news. The good news is that they lowered the prices on the entire lineup and threw in some pretty nice stuff on the new 15″ models. The bad news is that the biggest update on the 13″ models were the battery, they got a new graphics card but they still have the old CPU’s. It sort of stings because I think the 15″ laptop is huuuge, but I don’t want to be stuck with an old CPU.

I’ve been very much back and forth on this entire 13″ vs 15″ issue, but right now I feel that I actually do want the better performance of the 15″, and hopefully I can learn to live with the size of a 15″ laptop.

The thing that has sort of sealed the deal is that I’ve compared the Swedish and the Japanese Apple stores for prices, and it breaks down as follows:

So as you can see the difference is quite a lot. I have a big problem with the fact that I want to buy it now. When I’ve decided I want to buy something I usually want to buy it right away, because there’s no reason to wait…

But as you can see, there’s a lot of reason to wait. I’m obviously not going to buy a 15″ in Sweden considering the price of it in Japan. But if I were to buy a 13″ in Sweden, I could add just 859 SEK to get the much, much better 15″ in Japan—that’s nothing!

In the end, there is simply no justifiable reason to buy it in Sweden, not even the better resale value of having a Swedish (and not International) keyboard when I’m going to sell it again; so I’m going to have to wait either way. And in Japan, I really cant find any reason for buying the 13″ when the 15″ is so much cheaper there.

So, bottom line. Even though I don’t like the size of the 15″ the performance is noticeably better, and the added screen size and much higher resolution might actually come in handy when using Photoshop and such. The 13″ has much better battery life and is actually portable, but I just can’t stand paying premium price for old hardware; no matter how “hardware agnostic” I usually am.

There will be some minor difficulties with having to sell this computer before I leave and then have to be in Japan without a computer until I’m able to buy the new computer there. But in the end, it’s going to be worth it to have the top-of-the-line stuff. I think.

I thought this video was so awesome I just had to share it. I have been very reserved in my judgement of the iPad. I’ve never said I didn’t want one and I’ve never said it will be “useless” or anything of the kind. The following video is an example of how easy it is to use, yet how really powerful it is at entertaining and teaching.

I think the iPad will show it’s true colors after about 3-6 months when most of the life-changing apps will have been released for it.

Just wanted to put a link here to what I think is an excellent explanation of the iPad and why it exists.

http://www.edibleapple.com/ipad-a-computer-for-the-rest-of-them/

Let me set the scene for you. The year is 2015 and most of the web have been upgraded to the HTML 5 standard. Video is delivered with HTML 5 and games are all produced with WebGL or some derivative thereof. You don’t really care about the games though. You’re a wealthy 30-something businessman with a successful startup behind you. Your new company is thriving and pushing forward and everyone is looking to you for inspiration and approval. In your small world, you are the big man.

This is the iPad. The only kind of Panel I would ever bring to the beach.

All your life you’ve never really been able to adapt to the “normal workplace”. 9 to 5 doesn’t suit you and because of your position now you can choose any time and place to work at as you wish. Today, you’ve chosen the beach in Maui, next to your summer house.

You do almost all of your business by phone, with a wireless headset you sit in a beach chair next to a short table. On the table is a drink, it’s orange-red and you think it’s a Jamaica but you don’t really know; you just ordered something sweet from the waiter who works at the bar next to your house. Next to your drink is a panel, a screen with sexy sleek application showing you a merged stream of important people on Twitter and the hottest news-sites on the web.

You get a call, it’s Phil – the economics-guy -  you know he has a pretty big presentation tomorrow and he’s calling you to get a confidence boost and make sure his slides and data seems OK. “The presentation should be in your Inbox” says Phil. You reach over and grab the panel next to your drink, putting it in your lap. You exit your news-feed and check the Inbox, it is indeed there. You open the presentation up, check over the layout and wording, you fix a couple of things and make sure the data and graphs look alright, you add a different less cheesy transition to a slide (Phil has a perverted fancy for using the star-wipe) and then send it back to him. “Just checked it over Phil and it’s alright, some minor fixes, I sent it back to you”. You talk it over with Phil and make sure he’s on the ball with everything and then hang up.

While the panel is in your lap you think you might as well check the latest numbers on your stocks and go through some more email. You log onto Facebook and update your status to “Chillin’ on the beach as usual, think I’ll go for some scuba-diving today though”.

You put on the latest episode of The Daily Show and stand it back on the table next to your drink.

Life is sweet.

I’ve been keeping quite busy the last couple of days. School takes up a lot but the little extra time I have I spend trying to make a little file upload demo in Cappuccino, which is really awesome. I love being able to code Objective-C and then just refresh my browser to see my application running in there instead of on the desktop.

Another very awesome thing is that I have now been officially approved as an iPhone Developer, meaning I can develop apps on my own phone and if they get good enough I can start selling them in the App Store. The entire application process took only 6 work-days which I have to say is very impressive! I’ve heard of people having to wait months for their licenses so that was pretty awesome. The first app up for development is essentially a phone version of DHG, which I hope can get quite awesome.

There is in fact so much awesome, that I can’t stop thinking about all of this awesome, resulting in me not getting any sleep. The upside of this is that it will result in tomorrow being very much less awesome and hopefully I’ll be able to get some sleep then.

I can’t wait till Christmas break when I’ll actually have some free time!

För första gången i mitt liv formaterade jag en Mac.

Anledningen till detta var inte virus eller att den blivit slö. Jag hade misskött terminal-installeringar väldigt kraftigt. Jag hade installerat mysql via något som heter MacPorts, som installerar saker på lite okonventionella platser. När jag uppgraderade till rails 2.3.2 så inkluderades inte mysql librarys längre och jag var tvungen att installera mysql gem’et. När jag skulle göra detta så avbröt jag installationen halvvägs för att fläktarna på datorn slutade snurra och jag var tvungen att lämna in den på garanti. Eftersom jag avbröt installationen halvvägs fanns det saker som inte installerades korrekt, vilket gjorde att de inte gick att ta bort korrekt heller.

I slutsats hade jag ett par version av mysql och ett par versioner av ruby installerat och de krockade så att saker inte ville ladda korrekt.

Det gick i alla fall smidigt att formatera om, jag skrev upp en lista med alla apps jag hade på den och installerade alla idag på drygt en timme eller två. Nu är jag up and running igen med en fräsch clean installation och allt fungerar som det ska.

Det är ungefär det här som krävs för att man ska få problem med en Mac, gör korkade saker på ett väldigt avancerat sätt och få den att gå sönder hårdvarumässigt samtidigt.

Keeping in sync sucks.

I’m not talking about keeping in sync with fashion, current events or even real life. I’m talking about having a stationary computer, a laptop and a smartphone where everyone has notes, calendars and contacts that you want to keep in sync.

My main wish right now is that I could have my calendars in sync. I want to be able to add and edit events on all three devices and have all three devices more or less automatically updated.

Now there is one marvelous feature that comes from the Apple company and that is called MobileMe. It syncs calendars, contacts, mail – even passwords you save on different devices and check this: third party application data and preferences! That is fucking awesome. But it is also fucking expensive, it’s $99 a year, which really isn’t all that much, it’s just that I’m piss poor.

So what to do when you’re cheap? I figured someone must have figured out a solution, and I recently thought I had found it. Google just recently made CalDAV available with their calendars, meaning you could sync online without having to go to the google calendar site. And i gotta tell you it works really awesomely well! I’ve set up both my iCal calendars (on both computers) with CalDAV to gCal. It just works.

But now the iPhone won’t sync properly. Since for some reason (I’ve been told) the iPhone doesn’t fully support CalDAV, I can’t edit or add events to the gCal calendar, hence all changes I make on the phone are just synced to the computer I choose to sync it with. So I’m kind of back to square one, if the phone calendar doesn’t work to edit or add I’m pretty much crippled.

I then tried NuevaSync, a marvelous free service that provides over-the-air sync with google calendar. But I pay by the MB for network traffic that’s on the 3G/EDGE band (and it is highly likely I won’t have access to Wi-Fi every time I wan’t to edit my calendar) and one simple small sync was 6kB, not acceptable.

So what do I do? Pay the 99 bucks a year?

Nu har jag fått min efterlängtade iPhone! Jag vår tyvärr tvungen att köpa den från telia, men sånt är väl livet… Jag är nöjd iaf och nu har jag börjat vänja mig vid att skriva på den också! Just nu bloggar jag ifrån wordpress egna app som man kan installera.