Raible Designs

Apple's new displays

Drooooollllll...

[ANN] Fire 1.0 Released

Download · Release Notes. Fire, the Trillian-like IM client for OS X, has released version 1.0. I use Fire everyday and think it's a great IM client - especially since I use so many IM accounts. I do think that iChat, Yahoo Messenger and MSN are great clients, but I prefer having one app open rather than 3.

I want one...

If this is true, and it looks like the artists rendering below - I want one.

In reality, I hope they just lower the prices on the existing ones. I'm eyeing a 23 incher, but the wife thinks it's a waste of money. Unfortunately, she's right - but that doesn't change the fact that I want one.

iChat, AIM and Skype

Ever since the latest version of iChat came out, I've been looking forward to video-conferencing with my Dad. So much, in fact, that I went out and bought an iSight. So far, it's been pretty disappointing. We can't do audio between his Windows/AIM client and my Mac/iChat client - and the video doesn't work either. It might be on his end, except that I am able to do audio on my XP machine. I hope it's just because iChat is beta software. So far, it seems like the iSight is a waste of money.

Tonight, we chatted for a few minutes using AIM and it worked - but it was pretty bad. For some reason, our machines only supported half-duplex and we both had to click a button to talk, and then again when we wanted to listen. Kinda like using CB radios. There was no two-way talk like you get on a regular telephone.

Fortunately, a friend sent me an e-mail about Skype last week - so we downloaded and tried that. I must say - Skype is very nice software and the quality was as good as my home phone, if not better. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it supports video. However, it does have an IM client built-in. Oh well - at least we got somewhere on this whole video-conferencing thing. Next step: get the video going. After that, I'll concentrate on getting the whole Windows <-> Mac thing working.

Keynote is a Monster

I bought Apple's Keynote for my upcoming presentations. As I began to install it - the System Requirements caught my eye:

• Power Mac G3 or G4, PowerBook G4, eMac, iMac or iBook with 500 MHz or faster processor (Power PC G4 recommended)
• Mac OS X v 10.2 or later (Mac OS X version 10.2.6 recommended)
• 128 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended)
• 8 MB of video memory (32 MB recommended)
• 1 GB of available disk space

1 GB of disk space?! Jeez - this sucker is huge! There's really no reason to complain since I have plenty of space - this is just the largest install I've seen in quite some time.

iChat AV can now talk to Windows users!

I've been waiting for this for quite some time now.

iChat AV v2.1 Public Beta adds support for video conferencing with the AOL Instant Messenger 5.5 for Microsoft Windows.

I've been waiting for Windows <-> Mac video-conferencing so Abbie can talk/see her grandparents all the time. My dad has been video-conferencing with my uncle for years - it's about time I got up to snuff and started using this stuff. Sweet - too bad I'm leaving for Vegas tonight and my dad is leaving for Africa tomorrow! Maybe I should buy an iSight tonight so I can talk to Julie over the weekend. Is there an Apple Store in Vegas?

Exposé for Windows

I love Panther's Exposé application. It's by far my favorite OS X application - I even find myself longing for it when using Windows. Could the wait be over? I stumbled upon WinPLOSION today, which looks (to me) to be Exposé for Windows. Anyone tried this thing. At $10, it's probably worth finding out if it works - but I'd thought I'd ask y'all first.

Can your laptop do this?

Another reason why PowerBooks rule: I starting running "ant test-all" right before I left for the office this morning. I closed the lid as it was starting Tomcat to run Cactus tests. When I got to the office, I opened the lid, and Tomcat continued starting and all the tests finished running. Can your laptop do that?

Win2VNC is very cool

I got the tip from Crazy Bob and decided to try it tonight. Win2VNC basically allows you to connect to a server (via VNC) and you can simply move your mouse onto that VNC-ed machine and voila - your mouse and keyboard are on that monitor. It's almost too cool to describe. The only issues I found where that it doesn't work well with multiple monitors. I have two monitors plugged into my XP desktop, and if I choose "West" as my direction (to switch to my PowerBooks monitor), then that works, but I can't get it onto my primary monitor - it only shows up on the 2nd monitor. The issue is better described on the user forums. The easy workaround is to go "North" to switch monitors. The other annoying bugs are no mouse wheel support and no Alt+Esc support. This thread has a few patches for this. The first patch I tried seems to work the best, with both Alt+Esc and wheel support. This other one has an installer, but Alt+Esc didn't work for me.

If you have a laptop sitting next to a desktop - you've got to try this software - it's what you've always wanted.

iLife - not in stores until Friday (1/16/04)

Abbie and I drove around for a 1/2 hour this morning waiting for the Apple Store to open at 11. When we got there, I woke up the beautiful one (she fell asleep while driving) and went into buy iLife. No such luck, it won't be in stores until Friday. Those bastards! Hopefully, this will prevent you from wasting your time like I did.