mundell.org » OSX http://www.mundell.org A little of this, a little of that Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:12:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 MacBook: get sharp! http://www.mundell.org/2006/06/20/macbook-get-sharp/ http://www.mundell.org/2006/06/20/macbook-get-sharp/#comments Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:43:20 +0000 Carrick http://www.mundell.org/2006/06/20/macbook-get-sharp/ I got hands-on with the new Apple MacBook today. I had hopes it would make a good machine to replace my decrepit PC at home. Wrong. As I reached for the keyboard my wrists were nearly sliced open by the incredibly sharp edge of the case.

MacBook gets sharp at the edge

What was Apple thinking? Does Steve Jobs want me to shed blood for him? Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks the sharp edge is a problem.

]]> http://www.mundell.org/2006/06/20/macbook-get-sharp/feed/ 1 Spotlight in OS X Tiger http://www.mundell.org/2004/10/25/spotlight-in-os-x-tiger/ http://www.mundell.org/2004/10/25/spotlight-in-os-x-tiger/#comments Mon, 25 Oct 2004 21:30:26 +0000 Carrick http://www.mundell.org/2004/10/25/spotlight-in-os-x-tiger/ Spotlight, the up-and-coming search and retrieval system built into the next release of OS X, code name “Tiger,” is likely going to rock. It’s looking like Google Desktop Search on steroids. If you’re a metadata freak like me, Spotlight could be a savior for when your organizational system, if you have one, breaks down. Here’s what Apple is saying about it:

[Spotlight] will come with importers for a variety of common file formats. It will be able to import meta-data from JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and GIF image files, MP3 and AAC audio files, QuickTime movies, PDF files, iChat histories, email, contacts, calendars, and more. If your application saves files in its own custom format, you’ll want to expose the meta-data from those files to users on the system through Spotlight. In order to do that, you need to provide a Spotlight Importer plug-in with your application. This consists of using the Spotlight Importer template in Xcode and implementing a single function that is bundled into a plug-in for the Spotlight system.

I’ve become quite a fan of Adobe’s Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) which provides a nice framework with which to tag PDF, JPEG, and other ubiquitous file formats with custom metadata. With XMP, I’ve been able to create a basic document cataloging system with search and retrieval functionality (more details about this at a later date.) It would be way cool if Spotlight supported XMP right out of the box, but even if it doesn’t, the plug-in capability makes it seem like support could be added without too much fuss. Can’t wait.

]]> http://www.mundell.org/2004/10/25/spotlight-in-os-x-tiger/feed/ 1