HKMacs

Just to let all my clients know that I recently completed the OS X Snow Leopard Server Essentials 10.6  course and passed the exam (9L0-403) and now will be offering setup of Snow Leopard Server. Records may be viewed at the Apple Certified Professional Registry (Please note – it may take a couple of weeks to be updated).

For OS X Server Setup enquiries please contact me, Vince Loden at: (852) 93486884 or by email on this page.

One of the most interesting new features I’ve found with the MacBook Pro is Apple’s new Multi-touch Trackpad. It really takes input to a new level, but takes a little getting used to. I find that some of my inputs still result in right-click type menus dropping down when I don’t want them, but I’m gradually mastering it. The secret appears to be as gentle as you possibly can. It really just takes a very light tap to perform an ordinary click. The System Preference makes it very easy to set up as it is illustrated and I strongly advise any new user to spend some time with it and keep it open for reference, change things around until you set it up the way you want.

With One Finger, you can Click, Drag, Draglock and use as Secondary Click on the left or right bottom quadrant of the trackpad. This Second Click for me seems to activate when I don’t want it, so I’ve disabled it for the time being.

With Two Fingers, you can Scroll, Rotate, Pinch Open and Close and Zoom (useful for magnifying web-pages), and use for Secondary Tap.

With Three Fingers  you can Swipe to Navigate (useful for iPhoto and picture screens in Safari).

With Four Fingers you can Swipe Up/Down for Exposé or Swipe Left/Right to Switch Applications (Command-Tab).

Of course I couldn’t resist looking around for third-party additions to increase the functionality as I use tabs extensively in Safari and Jitouch does all the things I’d been looking for, such as switching tabs, closing tabs and opening links in new tabs. It’s well worth checking it out.

Just a brief summary here of the gestures I find most useful:

One finger fixed and use another as left or right tap to go to Previous or Next Tab in Safari. One finger fixed and two fingers swipe down to Close Tab. Two fingers fixed and index finger tap to Refresh Window. Three finger tap to open a link in a New Tab.

Well, I finally got the MacBook Pro I’d been waiting for. It’s the base 13″, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB hard-drive with NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics chip. It replaces a 3 year-old 13″ white MacBook, 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM (upgraded to 2 GB), 80 GB hard-drive (upgraded to 160 GB) with integrated graphics. The MacBook served me well but is showing it’s age – sound chip working intermittently and overheating problems causing abrupt shutdowns and I need a reliable laptop to be able to do my work professionally.

It’s a beautiful- looking computer, aluminium with black glass bezel surrounding the screen and a black backlit keyboard. It has the new all-in-one glass trackpad which takes a little getting used to but has great functionality. My single clicks often turn into right-clicks so I’m trying to use tap for click. Pinching and squeezing is great for enlarging text on web pages and the four finger gesture is nice for Exposé. The screen is very bright and crisp. It runs slightly warm at the hinge but not alarmingly.

Performance is good for what it is. I would not have paid HK$2,000 extra to get the 2.66 GHz processor, but I would have liked the i5 processor found on the 15″ model but sadly not within my budget. Video plays well and it handles ripped 1080p .mkv video fine with the 64-bit version of VLC. I’m not quite sure about the claimed 10 hour battery life – I guess it all depends on what you’re doing. Just leaving the computer on with screen turned down, back-lit keyboard off and just listening for email I could well see this would be true. Intense processor activity such as ripping DVDs with Handbrake, I’m not so sure.

Overall I’m delighted with it. I would definitely recommend it over the current MacBook as it is only roughly HK$1,350 more expensive but with a faster chip, 2 GB extra RAM, Firewire 800 and larger hard-drive (and it looks nicer!).

If you think the Google searchbar in Safari is a bit limited I recommend you install a Safari add-on called Glims.

Search Engines

Glims lets you change the default search engine used by Safari’s toolbar search field.It comes with predefined sets of engines and, as expected, you can define your own from the preferences.

You may also want to see:

Adding a new search engine to Safari

Defining keywords and shortcuts for search engines

Site specific search definitions

Search Suggestions

Glims provides search and link suggestions while you type in the search field. This is very similar in concept to what Apple introduced with Safari 4. The cool thing about Glims is that you can define which sources you would like to use for the search suggestions. Among the obvious benefits, this will come in handy if you are not located in the U.S. We plan on doing a lot of improvements on this module for future versions.

Google/Yahoo Thumbnails

Glims adds thumbnails to Yahoo and Google Search’s. Again, all configurable from the preferences.

Tab Management

The two main improvements are the favicons in the tab bar and the restore of the tabs at launch. Since we are using Apple’s session manager, the tabs are currently stored without history, but we are working on this. (Not sure exactly when it will be available.)

Other improvements include; force new window to open in tabs, select the placement of the new tabs when created (right,left,…), undo close tabs… (you get the idea).

Bookmark Bar Improvement

We added bookmark separators, as well as ‘Add folder here’ and ‘Add bookmark here’. This helps when you want to manage your bookmarks directly from the bar.

Other Improvements that are also configurable from the preferences:

Full Screen – Basic full screen functionality accessible from the menu or shortcut. Again, we want to improve this.

Max Window Size – Spread the window on the whole screen, accessible from the menu.

Form Autocomplete – Force the auto completion of forms in sites that prevent it.

Dated Download Folders – Organize your download folder.

Can be found here.

Apple announced its quarterly financial results today, reporting $3.67 per diluted share on revenue of $15.68 billion with a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, its all-time highs. (Financial analysts had estimated profit of $2.07/share on revenue of $12 billion.) The company’s press release notes:

Gross margin was 40.9 percent, up from 37.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 3.36 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 21 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. [...]

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s not surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

Something I always like to see as the better Apple do, the better I can do. From my own observations, more and more people are moving to Macs for their personal use.

This is the exact reason why I would never choose to use Windows.