Hoy he puesto un DVD en la unidad del Macbook y a través de los botones de eject era imposible sacar el CD. Mi portátil no tiene el clásico agujero para meter un clip y sacarlo mecánicamente.

Lo que me ha funcionado finalmente es ejecutar desde la terminal:

drutil tray eject

Otras cosas que pueden funcionar son:

• Probar de expulsarlo desde la "Utilidad de Discos" o desde el iTunes (aunque no se vea el disco en Finder).
• Reiniciar el ordenador con la tecla Option pulsada, y cuando aparezca el menú para seleccionar dispositivo de arranque, pulsar el botón del teclado de expulsar el disco.
• Tirar el ordenador por la ventana

Esa pregunta me resulta, realmente, odiosa. Es una de las típicas preguntas del usuario de PC que piensa migrar a Mac pero está preocupado por las compatibilidades.

Si la pregunta fuera acerca de cualquier otro software no me molestaría tanto pero... precisamente ese... permite  que me justifique:

Estaremos de acuerdo en que, Microsoft Office, es uno de los mejores productos de los que haya lanzado Microsoft. Su calidad se ha ido manteniendo actualización tras actualización desde 1989. 

Actualmente es una de las herramientas fundamentales en la ofimática.

Pues bien, si miramos la Wikipedia, podemos sacar que, Microsoft Office, se lanzó tal como comentaba, en 1989 para Mac. Por aquellos entonces Microsoft tenía propiedad de una porción de Apple y parte del acuerdo de compra-venta era el desarrollo de este software.

Microsoft siguió con Office la estela del paquete Lisa Office System que ya en 1983 ofrecía procesador de texto y hoja de cálculo entre sus siete aplicaciones, bajo un sistema operativo con ventanas, escritorio y papelera, 12 años antes del Windows 95.

De hecho, tuvo tanto éxito el producto que, un año después, decidieron lanzarlo para PC.

Así que, reformulemos la pregunta: ¿funciona Microsoft Office en Pc con Windows?

Instalar el demonio de memcached en Mac no es tan complicado como parece siguiendo estos sencillos pasos.

Primero de todo asegúrate que tienes todos los requisitos

Requisitos para instalar Memcached

• Un compilador GCC. No te asustes! Viene instalando las XTools de Mac si es que ya no las tienes
• Descargarte el script de instalación desde topfunky

Instalación del servidor Memcached

Abre una terminal i navega hasta la ruta donde te has descargado el script. Dale permisos de ejecución y ejecútalo. Así:

chmod +x install-memcached.sh
sudo ./install-memcached.sh
echo "export EVENT_NOKQUEUE=1" >> ~/.bash_profile 

La última linea añade al inicio de tu shell la variable de entorno que requiere Memcache. Si durante la compilación ves que algo falla es que el compilador no está bien instalado. Asegúrate de bajarlo e instalarlo correctamente.

Si has instalado correctamente el servidor podrás ver la licencia o el manual de ayuda

memcached -i
memcached -h

Ahora, para arrancar memcached en mac con 100MB de memoria en el puerto 11211 como demonio haz:

memcached -m 100 -p 11211 -d

Puedes conectarte ahora y ver si está funcionando:

telnet 127.0.0.1 11211
	Trying 127.0.0.1...
	Connected to artomb.local.
	Escape character is '^]'.
	stats
	STAT pid 97257
	STAT uptime 10
	STAT time 1266004819
	STAT version 1.1.12
	STAT rusage_user 0.004421
	STAT rusage_system 0.005540
	STAT curr_items 0
	STAT total_items 0
	STAT bytes 0
	STAT curr_connections 1
	STAT total_connections 2
	STAT connection_structures 2
	STAT cmd_get 0
	STAT cmd_set 0
	STAT get_hits 0
	STAT get_misses 0
	STAT bytes_read 7
	STAT bytes_written 0
	STAT limit_maxbytes 104857600
	END
	quit
Connection closed by foreign host.

Para pararlo, tampoco sin misterios, un kill y arreando:

killall memcached

Instalar Memcache para PHP en Mac y scripts MAMP

Si quieres además integrar todo esto en MAMP para que se inicie al arrancar y instalar las librerías PHP hay un tutorial inglés muy bueno en Lullabot

Se acabó que las fotos del iphone salgan movidas!

Si tienes un pulso tan bueno como el mío te habrás encontrado más de una vez que haces varias tomas de fotografías y siempre te sale la foto desenfocada o movida. Pero tu tienes paciencia y tiras la misma foto 40 veces hasta que sale bien. El simple hecho de pulsar el botón de fotografiar hace que esa mínima presión nos mueva el objetivo y adiós foto.

Pues los señores de Stepcase Limited han creado una aplicación gratuita llamada Darkroom (esta semana pasada se llamaba SteadyCam) que se espera a tirar la foto hasta que tu pulso está estabilizado. Pulsas el botón de tirar foto y la aplicación a través de un sensor de movimiento cuando detecta un momento de paz en tu mano saca la foto.

Una vez ha sacado la foto pregunta que quieres hacer con ella, si la quieres conservar o desechar y a continuación deja la cámara preparada para otro disparo. En las preferencias puedes marcar que guarde automáticamente cada disparo.

Es un poco lenta la guardar la foto, pero se puede perdonar. Almenos hace que las fotos de iPhone se puedan ver y dejen de ser tan indecentes!

Por la barbaridad de 0,79€ existe una versión premium con funcionalidades añadidas, pero a mi con esta me vale :)

Enlace para descargar Darkroom (SteadyCam) en iTunes

When you decide that it is worth to risk your ipod touch's warranty in order to install a vast number of third party apps, you are sure to end filling up all the space dedicated to the ipod operative system. This ain't good for a lot of reasons: you won't be able to install new software and some will fail (as of YouTube not being able to create its cache files).

The Apple new toys come initially with two disk partitions:

• /dev/disk0s1 /var/root [300Mb]
  
• /dev/disk0s2 /private/var [7,3Gb]
  

The former partition (300Mb) holds the ipod's operative system and applications. The latter partition stores all the media files: music and videos. If you install the iphone applications (Mail, Google Maps, Notes, etc.) and some third party apps and games (ssh, Finder, Books, etc.) you will probably have less than 1Mb space left pretty quickly.

Here it is a quick and dirty trick to free some space by moving applications from the root partition to the media one. Courtesy from the fellows at tuaw. First of all, you need access to the itouch's shell, as you will need to execute some unix commands there. You can gain access to the shell by installing TermVT-100 (appinstaller sources) or by ssh login.

Once being at the shell prompt, you will have to follow these instructions carefuly. READ THIS ALL BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING!

• mkdir ~/Applications
  

You are creating the Applications folder in the media partition, because there are usually lots more of space there.

• mv -iv /Applications/AppNameZHere.app ~/Applications/
  

WHERE "AppNameZHere" DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY OF THE DEFAULT APPS (MobileSafari.app, MobileMusicPlayer.app, MobileCal.app, etc.).

We are moving the applications from the root partition to the media one. By doing so we are freeing space on the root partition!

• ln -s ~/Applications/* /Applications/

This makes a link between the files in ~/Applications/ (which has a lot of space) and /Applications (which does not). It fools the iphone or itouch into thinking that nothing has happened. Now that we are done, let's see how much space have we freed by typing:

• df -h
  

We probably will have 4-5Mb of free space, which is good enough to keep installing new things, at least until february (when third party apps will be finally welcomed by Apple). Hope that it helps! Of course, everything you do is under your responsibility!

A few days ago I said: ipod touch, I'll pass on this one. Can you guess what happened next? Well, it is pretty obvious... I bought one. I was extremely happy with an ipod nano 8Gb I bought 2 weeks ago, but a colleague of mine came to the office with a shinny new ipod touch, bought at the Apple store. One touch that had no TFT contrast problems, one touch jailbreaked with lots of apps, one touch with a terminal, ssh access and even an ebook reader...

I was shocked, I knew I had to buy one. My perfectly usable Nokia 770 seemed a brick in comparison.

Well, a week has gone by since and I have finally bought a touch and have sold the Nokia 770, by the same amount of bucks I paid for it four months ago.

All in all I can say that I am extremely happy with the purchase, because the ipod touch:

• Has a fantastic screen, not as sharp as the Nokia's but more vibrant nonetheless. Downgrading from a 800 to a 480 pixels wide screen has proven to be a pain in the ass the first days, but I have got acostumed now and I just don't care anymore, thanks to Safari zooming capabilities and the adaptations of gmail and google reader, my most used applications so far. 
• Has a superb battery life in terms of a pda, although it is less impressive as a music player. I am playing/demoing the touch at every moment, and a charge is lasting me a couple of days so far. It holds 5 hours of video and 18 of audio easily. Surfing the web drains battery as much as viewing a video. 
• It has few apps out of the box, but thanks to the hackers that have created exploits like iJailbreak, and the community sources that come when installing appInstaller, you can empower the touch with a web server (apache,lighttpd), ebook reader (Books.app), ssh server/client, pdf viewer, wifi hotspot finder (Stumbler), etc. Once you install these apps, the ipod touch becomes a full blown pda, not just a music player with a browser thrown in for authentication on wifi networks, in order to buy on iTunes anywhere. How cool is to restart your zope instance from the shell of an ipod touch while listening to Radiohead's New rainbow album? For me the touch scores 5 geek points.

• It has a shinny bright future as a device, I'm pretty sure it will be sold by millions and by february the customers will have access to 3rd party high quality native applications: note taking, calendar, communication, games and productivity apps will appear by hundreds, and they will be conveniently sold through iTunes as well as delivered as opensource projects. 
• The design, form factor, quality of materials and size/weight are amazing, period. The software is also as polished as it can get by not today, but future standards, something only Apple can do. 
• There is no sign of Apple branding on the front side of the itouch, which is so simple and beauty. I LOVE this Jonathan Ive's minimalism design thing.
• Finally, the multitouch interface delivers a great experience. You'll want to interact with the ipod touch at all times... It's not a novelty thing, I assure you, it will last for years.

Now let's move onto the gripes of the ipod touch, as no gadget comes without a full basket of inconveniences:

• The keyboard is difficult to operate, no matter how long you practice with it. Predictive text seems not to work, at least when writing in spanish. There is also no tactile feedback and the thumbs get tired of typing easily. 
• No copy/paste. I was aware of it before buying the device anyways, and yes, it sucks big time. Apple doesn't consider it necessary to buy songs from iTunes, which seems the only aim of providing a keyboard on the device. Oh, well, and searching youtube videos. 
• No printed user guide. Come on Apple, you are 289 euro richer with my purchase and you are unable to put a 30 page manual with a clear explanation of the ipod-touch-revolutionary-and-not-so-intuitive features... As an example, one of the complaint points of this post was about no accented characters appearing on the virtual keyboard and it took me some days to find that long pressing on a vowel was all I had to do... Expecting your clients to download a user guide in pdf format from your website is not the best way to explain how to get the most of your devices. 
• No bluetooth connection and no bluetooth headsets for such a high end music player! And you Apple do this only because you are afraid that the touch eats the iphone sales... 
• No speakers! It would have been extremely easy to put a little cheap one, as on the Nokia 770. It would make watching videos a tad more enjoyable, and the ipod could be perfect then for waking me up in the morning, or playing calendar alarms with more audio quality. Jeez, I could open my eyes every morning watching a video of Shakira... well, maybe.

Drawbacks aside, I am extremely impressed with the ipod touch, and I would say that it will be in my pocket for years to come if I wouldn't know me enough... All I can predict is that I will probably sell it when something better comes along, and I am not only talking about a simple increase of storage capacity. I am talking about an Apple ipad or a 2nd iphone version. Will this happen soon or later? I don't expect it to happen in less than a year. So I will enjoy my ipod touch during that time.

Last week I sold my 30Gb ipod video for a bargain prize, just anticipating the shinny acquisition of a new generation ipod. I was never very happy with the ipod video anyways, being the main gripe its short battery life, which could only handle 2 hours of video playback and no more than 10 hours of music. I was never able to abstract from this issue, always observing the battery meter on the screen.

I came to the ipod video from an ipod 2G, and that was such a trusty player! But the 20gb version was also bulky as hell and I was never using it on the go. I wanted portability, and I wanted video. Just the same old gadget compromises story :-) Sooo, I just sold my ipod video, an omiz bluetooth portable keyboard and a Palm Tungsten T3, and gathered enough money to buy a new hyper powerful media player. My first option was an Ipod Touch, based on this considerations:

• I would love to enjoy this new multitouch interface, as the iPhone is not still Barcelona friendly.
• The form factor is extremely attractive, what a slim and elegant device it is!
• The big screen is a plus, maybe it could substitute my trusty Nokia 770 tablet for watching videos.
• Safari optimized for a portable device, this may deliver a sweet web browsing experience from the sofa (just as it does now the Nokia 770, anyway).
• Cover flow and the pictures app may be for sure a pleasure to put the fingers upon.
• There is a huge community outside Apple with the aim and knowledge to exploit this device as a pda.
• And, well, it also works as a music player.

As clear as it was my decision, I changed it when I read there were some ipod touch issues arising from the first hands on and reviews of the product:

• TFT poor quality, awful black color contrast that ruins the video experience.
• Slower than it should synchronization with iTunes: while it takes 8 minutes to copy an 8Gb iTunes collection to the new ipod nano, the same action lasts 17 minutes on the ipod touch (ouch!)
• Battery seems to last a couple hours less than advertised (I have been there, didn't like it).
• While the new ipod nano appears to me as a logical evolution of the line, the touch on the contrary is more of an involution of the iPhone, just for the sake of not bringing competence to the successful mobile: the ipod touch comes with no e-mail client, sans bluetooth, cannot add events to the calendar, it has no notes application, no volume buttons...

So finally I'll pass on this ipod touch first edition, at least until the situation of the screen and software gets better... But I know I will jump onboard as soon as the 2nd generation or the rumored iNewton appear at the Apple stores in some months to come. Besides, I am by now the proud owner of an ipod nano 8Gb black edition, and what a beauty and complete device it is!

I have tested Safari for Windows during ONE minute, but I think I have seen it all....

While I was testing a layout in progress for a new site (appareantly was working in all browsers) I found a subtle difference.... Nothing to worry about, though (sorry for the small image):

Shame on you Apple!

Hoy he entrado en la web de apple para consultar precio del dock del iPod y me he econtrado con esto:

Aunque en el site de apple debajo del slogan hay una imágen clarificadora con dos portatiles a diferente resolución de pantalla es inevitable que a todos nos venga a la cabeza la competencia. O es que soy yo que tengo una mente sucia? A ver lo que dura :)

Las expectativas respecto a las novedades que Steve Jobs iba a desvelar ayer en la conferencia para desarrolladores de Apple que tiene lugar estos días eran tan altas que parece que algunos se han quedado con mucha hambre todavía... hambre de hardware.

Y es que Steve presentó durante largo rato el nuevo Mac OSX Leopard y habló al final de la sesión de ciertos aspectos del iPhone (que en breve se comercializará en EEUU), pero dada la gran cantidad de rumores respecto a nuevo hardware que habían estado circulando los últimos meses por la blogsfera mac, parece que se quedó bastante corto. A saber:

• Nuevos imac, con un aspecto metalizado y pantallas LED. - Nuevo MacBook Pro de 12" ultraligero.
• Nuevo tablet de Apple, a medio camino entre pda y portátil. 
• Nuevo Mac Mini. 
• Nuevos ipod con la interfaz del iPhone, pero sin teléfono ni navegador web. 

En fin, como podéís ver las expectativas sobre nuevo hardware eran bastante altas, y aunque nadie creía que se fueran a cumplir en más de un 50%, sí que parecía que todos estaban de acuerdo que como mínimo iban a caer un par de novedades. Y es que así como Steve Jobs sabe que nos tiene encandilados por la combinación casi perfecta que hace de software y hardware, también debería saber que no puede a estas alturas realizar una gran keynote sin presentar novedades en ambas divisiones.

Y sí, el iPhone es hardware y todavía no se ha comercializado, pero por extraño que parezca, ya no es novedad... quiero decir, ya ha sido presentado previamente y por tanto no produce el efecto 'Wow' de ver por primera vez una nueva máquina con la manzanita serigrafiada.

Yo particularmente estaba esperando una tablet que revolucionara la computación móvil y cubriera un segmento nuevo de mercado (para ellos)... así que me ha pasado igual que a muchos; mi gozo en un pozo.

Supongo que como hay funcionalidades de este tablet que se solaparían con lo que ofrece el iPhone, tendremos que esperar al menos un año para ver la acogida de este último y que los usos que no pueda cubrir por tamaño se vean asistidos por la aparición de un nuevo tablet... tamaño DIN A5 sería perfecto.