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Tagged: mac

I had an idea the other day that I shared on Twitter:

@mikemccracken: It would be cool if there was a way for well-used & loved GUI software to gracefully show its age, like a good leather wallet…

I still like this idea, and I loved the example that Bryan Knight replied with – the OS 8 [...]

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I share what I’ve learned about writing a Launchd agent that is mostly written in Python. This includes a link to a sample project hosted on bitbucket.

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2009-11-25 :: mike // Uncategorized
App History

I just saw Brent’s post from a couple weeks ago about an App History App – I think that’d be really cool. I especially like the screen shot idea, since I love seeing posts from a developer showing what an app looked like along the progression. It’s too easy to forget to document that kind [...]

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2009-11-06 :: mike // Uncategorized
Measuring PDFs with Skim

I love it when I can guess how to do something new in a program. Skim just did this for me – I needed to figure out how big the rectangle of text in a paper I’m working on is, in inches. I looked for rulers, and then decided I’d just see if I get any [...]

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I’d like to see a community-run version of the Apple Design Awards.

Anyone could nominate an app, and the developer community would vote on who wins, in just a few categories.

I’m thinking the categories could be a little more user-centric than Apple’s. For instance, I don’t really care about best adoption of OS X technologies, but [...]

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2009-09-17 :: mike // Uncategorized
TextShapeView

TextShapeView was another Cocoa Text system hack project I started a few years ago.

I made a view that displays a zoomed out view of a string from a text view, with indentation, along with a rectangle showing where the text view is in the file.

You can click around in the view to move the [...]

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Prompted by a thread on the ever-useful Sun internal mac-users alias, here’s a daemon that runs a script every time your network location changes:

Mac OS X LocationChanger – TECH.inhelsinki.nl.

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From @spamsieve, I heard that BareBones’ Mailsmith has a new home: mailsmith.org. It’s freeware and will be under development.

It’s great to see new life for one of the few alternative desktop mail clients for OS X, and while there’s no info on their plans for it yet, there’s some great discussion of possible features [...]

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2009-08-06 :: mike // Uncategorized

From the HN thread on this post from Garry at posterous, about product minimalism:

Teams at apple are TINY. Mail is like 3 guys. …

Two things: The thread was about how high quality software is easier without politics you get in large teams, which I agree with, and I bet that a lot of the software [...]

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From C-Command Blog – EagleFiler 1.4.7: a bunch of nice refinements.

I use EagleFiler to keep track of reference documents that I get in emails. Presentations, reports, etc – the kind of thing that would usually just get stored in the mail archive. Because I want a complete mail archive and a fast way to [...]

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