The future came and took me by surprise—it doesn't look at all like what I've been expecting:

Future, fail.

Who's there?

As Macintosh computers proliferate and AirPort Wi-Fi base stations are no longer the esoteric boxes they used to be 7 years ago, I hear more and more often the question "How can I monitor my AirPort for intruder access?". Luckily, Mac OS X is built upon UNIX, so all the tools are there, waiting to be used.

Here is a little one-liner, a shell script I wrote a number of years ago and used ever since to monitor the access on different generations of Apple AirPort base stations:

snmpwalk -v 2c -c [SNMP Community String] -Oq [Airport IP] RFC1213-MIB::atPhysAddress | grep -Eo "([0-9a-fA-F]{2} ){5}([0-9a-fA-F]{2})" | tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]" | sed -e 's/[\. ]/:/g' -e 's/[MAC address 1]/[Station name 1]/' -e 's/[MAC address n]/[Station name n]/' | sort | awk '{print FNR "\t" $0}'

Continue reading "Monitoring AirPort access" »

Back in July 2007 I reviewed here one of the first iPhone units (of its first incarnation) coming to Romania.

In July 2008, the iPhone 3G successfully launched in 21 countries around the world. On the 22^nd of August 2008, at zero o'clock, it was launched in 20 additional countries¹, including mine.

iPhone 3G launch in Romania: 22^nd of August, 0 AM (picture: Monica Popescu, Orange).

I bought it the first day. Here is a subjective account of its pros and cons noticed during the month I've been using it.

Continue reading "iPhone: the first month" »

Bug report

Problem ID: 5400784

Summary: TILDE and GRAVE ACCENT missing from Romanian keyboard of MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.4 GHz.

Expected Results: On TILDE key three signs should be present. On the left side should be engraved "`" GRAVE ACCENT and below "~" TILDE. On the right side Romanian letter "Î" LATIN LETTER I WITH CIRCUMFLEX should be engraved.

Actual Results: On TILDE key is present only the Romanian letter "Î" LATIN LETTER I WITH CIRCUMFLEX engraved in the center. No "~" TILDE nor "`" GRAVE ACCENT, were engraved.

Notes: The other keys containing Romanian letters are engraved correctly:

"Ă" key contains "[" LEFT SQUARE BRACKET and "{" LEFT CURLY BRACKET correctly, "Â" key contains "]" RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET and "}" RIGHT CURLY BRACKET correctly, "Ț" key contains "\" REVERSE SOLIDUS and "|" VERTICAL LINE correctly.

"Ș" key contains "§" SECTION SIGN and "±" PLUS-MINUS SIGN correctly.

The error is limited to the TILDE key. I'm not sure it is limited to the MacBook Pro, though.

The good, the bad and the different

My story with Apple portables [see PowerBooks post on my old Kit.blog] begins in 1999, when I bought my first PowerBook Lombard. God, that was a sexy beast! In 2002 I switched to a PowerBook Titanium and last week I bought a new MacBook Pro, to which I'm still adjusting.

This is hardly a showdown — the title could be a little misleading — the PowerBook is to old to engage in such a competition. Apple portables improved much in 5 years and the new laptop is hands-down better than its five years old ancestor — in fact, it's for sure the best Apple portable, but unfortunately I tend to be harsh with the ones I love, so I'll go on and depict here a subjective yet merciless comparison.

Continue reading "MacBook Pro vs. PowerBook Titanium" »

Apple MacBook Pro, 15.4-inch, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2 RAM etc etc etc.

Live in Bucharest

After The Rolling Stones, I got to see the iPhone live in Bucharest and it was no less amazement — "the largest commercial product launch in the history of electronics" after "the world’s greatest rock & roll band". Not a bad week.

During my one-hour geeky romp (thank you Richard, you lucky dog! I envy your guts sincerely) I made some quick notes:

The indescribably good

• I thought it's larger but it's exactly the right size • I thought scrolling it's going to have a lag, it doesn't — the interface is extremely responsive • The 160 pixels-per-inch display beats the PSP and it's the most gorgeous screen I've seen • Typing takes a while to get, but it rapidly improves • Photo gallery "flicking" is as natural a GUI (graphical user interface) can get • Pinch resizing just works both in photos and web pages • The web browser (MobileSafari) is in a class of its own • I verified and it's true, the autocorrection engine knows the word “fucking” • Screen rotation is smartly integrated right into the GUI paradigm and after a while I just used it naturally, without thinking about it.

I thought I will be able to describe it, I'm not. That's how amazing it is.

• A special note deserves iPhone's camera. I'm a heavy user of phone camera and I know how noisy such a small and cheap CCD can get in less then perfect lighting. I must say I was impressed with the picture quality iPhone's camera delivers in very difficult situations like contre-jour shots in low-light conditions.

The faintly but predictably bad

• Yes, EDGE is slow • Using it for CPU-intensive tasks makes it get hot • Come on Apple, send that copy-paste feature via software update, please!

Quick conclusion

• The GUI is as polished as the Macintosh GUI and it makes a world of difference • The attention to the details is staggering (and there are lots of little gems hidden in there, for instance deleting a note employs a minimizing effect animation, graphically throwing the page into the trash can) • Manufacturing quality is at or above the "iPod industry standard" • I'd pay double triple the price for one.

The name is misleading, it's not a phone — do not compare the iPhone with any other phone(s) you have used or seen. It's the first of a new breed.

Damn, the suspense is killing me!

Is hell about to freeze over (again) this year? You can bet your ass it is! [via Universul Apple]

The homepage announcement seems like a Macworld San Francisco keynote teaser, actually. What can be expected? Here's a rumors line-up:

• The Apple-branded Phone Mac-heads are talking about since 2002,
• The 8-Core Mac Pro,
• iTV, the device that interfaces your media content to your television,
• Leopard details regarding the "secret features" Apple has held back from the public preview,
• Hi-rez displays (via resolution-independent GUI rumors),
• iLife '07, as the suite is regularly updated at the MSF,
• Video iPod, although this rumor grew tired lately.

The keynote takes place at 9am Pacific time on January 9th, 2007.

How often do you reboot?

When terribly busy I simply quit restarting my Macintosh — for weeks — and by busy I mean heavy work in lots of applications both at the office, in presentations and at home.

Today is the 14th day from the last reboot and I guess it'll have to march on some more (in the days of Mac OS 9 something like this would've been a miracle), but it will eventually become sluggish and I'll restart it instead of isolating and killing the processes that hog the system resources or leak memory. I know the uptime-victims that would prefer crucifixion to a reboot (not talking about sysadmins here, those guys get nailed for bad uptime records), and I am definitely not one of those: I usually don't even care.

How often do you shut down / reboot the computer you're working on? Do you simply ignore this and go on for weeks? Hours?