Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Well, I’ve used the Safari 4 public beta for a day now. I’m not very impressed with the UI changes. In fact, the tab bar is a shameless rip-off from Google Chrome. The Top Sites feature isn’t exactly original either. Apple should tuck its tail between its legs and go be ashamed of itself. They’re the ones always accusing Microsoft of copying their ideas. 
So, I’ve reverted most of these “enhancements” so my Safari looks like it used to again. The one thing I left intact is Cover Flow. Being able to visually identify pages from the history is actually a very handy feature. Also worth noting is the fact that it will not store thumbnails for secure (https:) web sites. Nor will it allow you to add such sites to the Top Pages screen. So they did actually think about what they were doing. Nice to know that they haven’t lost that touch. 
The thing I am very impressed about, though, is the new version of WebKit, Safari’s rendering engine. That thing is awesome. It will now actually let you animate any HTML element in a page using only CSS. No JavaScript or Flash required. I’m not talking about animated transitions from one state to the other, which Safari 3 could already do. I’m talking about true keyframe animations here.
Aside from the animations, it can also do pure CSS gradients, anywhere an image could otherwise be used. It also supports alpha masks, reflections, rounded corners, text and box shadows, transformations (scale, rotate, skew, translate) and more fancy stuff. It’s a shame a lot of these features don’t work in more browsers, because with some creativity, they would allow the most fantastic things to be created. Another nice feature is that it also allows SVG images to be actually used as images in CSS as well as <img> tags.
The new Web Inspector and JavaScript debugger/profiler are also very sweet. It’s a pity that it doesn’t seem to dynamically update its DOM tree view as it changes. That means I’ll probably keep using Firebug for web debugging. Its Resources view is very useful though. It uses colors to differentiate between file types, and it also shows latency in addition to the actual file transfer times.
To sum up, now that I’ve tamed it down somewhat, I’m pretty pleased with Safari 4. Can’t wait to see what the final version will be like.
Filed under Software and tagged with Apple, browser, CSS, Safari, WebKit.
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Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Besides the end-of-year bonus from my work, the tax administration office also decided they owed me some money. So I got myself an iPhone 3G today in Belgium, since they’re simlock free there. I still have a contract that won’t expire untill the summer, and besides, I don’t like to be limited in my choice of provider when buying a phone.
Anyway, I have more or less wanted an iPhone since the 3G was announced, it — the financial support that is 
— just never came up before. I got the white 16 GB model. It would be ridiculous to go for the 8 GB version, because my iPod touch is filled with almost 7 GiB of music already. As for the color, well, I just think white looks better. Don’t know why.
Speaking of that iPod touch, I haven’t got a clue as to its fate. It seems pretty superfluous now. It’s backside is way too scratched to sell it to anyone. So I think I’ll just keep it around, maybe jailbreak it and turn it into a glorified touch pad for my iMac. 
I didn’t bother to post a picture this time. I can’t imagine anyone surfing the web and never having seen a picture of an iPhone before.
Filed under Hardware and tagged with Apple, gadget, iPhone, mobile phone.
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Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
Today, I received my new 24" Apple iMac. I opted for the 2.8 GHz model, with 2 GiB of memory and a 500 GB hard drive. The full specs can be found here. Oh, and I chose the Bluetooth keyboard, because I already have the corded version. As usual, here’s a picture of the beauty:
Apple iMac
Right upon arrival, I replaced the memory (I already bought two strips of 2 GiB prior to ordering the iMac itself), so it now has a spacious 4 GiB available. After the first boot, I installed all available updates and my most used applications. I’m now in the process of making all the settings and customizations that were not synced through my MobileMe account, and Time Machine is making its initial backup. When that’s complete, I’ll proceed with installing all other apps that now run on my MacBook.
When all that is done, and I have my iMac pretty much as my MacBook is now, I’ll probably reformat the latter and give it a fresh OS X install. At which point it can finally be what it was meant to be from the start: a portable secondary computer.
Filed under Hardware and tagged with Apple, iMac, Mac OS X.
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Sunday, April 27th, 2008
Last weekend, I got myself a 16 GB iPod touch. Managed to get a nice rebate on it. They look a bit like the incredibly over-hyped iPhone, but without the chrome rim and about half as thin. That’s only a mere 8 mm. It’s a good thing it feels quite sturdy, otherwise I’d be seriously concerned about snapping it in two… So, this is what it looks like when displaying its home screen:
iPod touch
So, Ive been playing with this gem for a week now, and it’s incredible! The multi-touch interface really is as amazing as Apple claims it is. The sound is of the quality I’d expect from an iPod, and video just looks gorgeous. It’s a shame that it only supportys H.264 encoding for video, but then again, having to recode a movie specifically for it does have its advantages. I can optimize the result for the iPod’s screen resolution, which brings an hour of video down to less than 450 MiB while keeping good quality. Not too bad.
I have jailbroken the device, but that caused it to be so unstable that I’ve restored it within an hour. I’ll just wait for the App Store that Apple says will open up in June. And it is of course still mainly a portable media player, and when it comes to that, it performs like a champ.
Filed under Hardware and tagged with Apple, gadget, iPod.
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Sunday, October 28th, 2007
Last Friday, I installed Leopard, the sixth major release of Apple’s Mac OS X.
After 2 days of playing around with it, all I can say is: Incredible! Not only is it notably faster than Tiger (Leopard’s predecessor), its new features are simply fantastic. Of course, I’ve used things like backup software (Time Machine) and virtual desktops (Spaces) before, but somehow, Apple always manages to implement things just a little more streamlined and polished than the rest.
I’m very happy, and Leopard once again remembers me why I love OS X so much.
Filed under Software and tagged with Apple, Leopard, Mac OS X.
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Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
Today I received my new aluminum Apple Keyboard. I knew it would type very comfortably, because it has the same kind of keys that my MacBook has. And on top of that, it’s just gorgeous. It does have a wire, but with a keyboard that’s not really a problem since I have it laying on my lap most of the time. And with the included extension cable, it easily reaches far enough.
For those who don’t already know what it looks like, this is it:
Aluminum Apple Keyboard
Filed under Hardware and tagged with Apple, gadget, keyboard.
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Saturday, July 14th, 2007
Since a week or two ago my 20 GB 4th generation iPod died, I needed something else. As temporary substitute my phone (a Nokia N73) did nice, but a phone just isn’t designed to be an MP3 player. An iPod is. It just sounds better (with proper ear pieces).
Back in late 2004, when I bought my previous iPod, my music collection was about 3.5 GiB, so that left me with the choice of going for an iPod mini with 4 GB, or 3.81 GiB, which would barely hold all my music, or to go for the 20 GB iPod. I decided on the latter.
Now, my collection has grown by a little more than 2 GiB, totaling 5.85 GiB. So now I didn’t have to go for a bulky large iPod with a screen that’s far too big (I have my Palm T|X to watch movies on the go). The black iPod nano comes with 8 GB, or 7.45 GiB.
That leaves me with almost 2 GiB of growing space. Looking at the expansion of my collection the past 3 years, that means another year or 2. After that, we’ll see what happens.
Oh, and it’s definitely worth the name “nano”. Boy is it small. Here’s a comparison with my Apple Remote:
iPod nano and Apple Remote
The new white earbuds are still of inferior quality. They don’t even come close to actually utilizing the full potential of an iPods capabilities. But that’s easily remedied with some quality earbuds from Sennheiser, the MXL51 Street.
Filed under Hardware and tagged with Apple, gadget, iPod.
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