The Command-C/V combo to copy and paste is very uncomfortable for my hands. I prefer using the ctrl-c/v spacing but remapping the keys causes other discomforts such as tabbing between windows. Why can’t it be like the other two major systems: Linux and Windows? It always messes me up when I switch to those systems.

The menu bar should go with the app! In our modern day multi-monitor configuration, I hate having Firefox on one monitor but still have to go to the other monitor to get to the menu.

Programmer’s editors. Seems to me that the top editors are ports of those built for other systems. TextMate is pretty good but it doesn’t provide a good print feature for source code which is something I expects from any editor. Yes, I sometimes do print code on tree-based product ’cause you just shouldn’t use your notebook in the tub. Right now I tend to switch between Eclipse, VIM and TextMate. I miss my Visual Slickedit.

Print Preview… why don’t all applications have it?

Spotlight is great except it doesn’t work. I use Quicksilver instead. It doesn’t support email searching for Thunderbird. Boo.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean [YES|NO]

killall Dock

Page UP: FN + Shift + Up arrow
Page Down: FN + Shift + Down arrow
Home: FN + Shift + Left arrow
End: FN + Shift + Right arrow

delete a file: CTRL-delete

This past week, I got myself an iPhone since my wife had to switch to AT&T and it was cheaper to move the same carrier then paying two separate bills. I didn’t have a strong desire to get an iPhone, but if I was to get a new phone I wanted one that was new for me to play with. My initial impressions of the iPhone is pretty good although depending on your perspective then it is either an expensive mp3 player or expensive mobile phone. It’s whether the combined functionalities justifies the price.

Having access to the internet anytime with a fully functioning web browser is no doubt… awesome. This was my #2 reason for liking the iPhone. This worked pretty well right out of the box and I had no problem connecting through the phone or getting it set up to access my home WIFI. The only thing missing is the ability to play songs from internet radio stations especially given that this is a combined music/video/phone device.

As a proud Dad, I naturally have the urge to show off pictures of my son, but I resisted the “carry 100 pictures in my wallet” stereotype. Well, with the iPhone I can be the modern day equivalent of it and literally carry thousands of pictures to show from the phone (don’t worry, I’m not carrying that many). The image quality looks good on the iPhone screen, but since I was managing my photos in Picassa, I had to create an album for the iPhone then export that album to a directory that I tell iTunes to sync. I have to do this each time I want to add a new picture. It’s a workable solution but not a great one.

Using VLC, I was able to convert my divx/xvid video to mp4 which I can copied to the iPhone and watch while I travel. The video quality and sound was excellent. I wish I could this as easily on the DS.

As an PDA device, the iPhone comes a little short and is more an phone then a Blackberry competitor at this point. Managing contacts could be easier in my opinion and the default list of apps is what you expect on a phone (calendar, clock, notepad).

As a phone, the quality is good, but the lack of a speed dial function sets it back to the stone age in that area.

As a music player, having to buy an adapter before being able to use regular headphones is plain silly.

The iPhone looks beautiful coming out of the box, but the shining silver band around the display is scratched easily even if the glass is more difficult to get scratched. It doesn’t matter though because when the border gets scratched the whole aesthetics of the device is compromized I’m talking about it being scratched by lint, folks! I had the device in my pocket (nothing else there, no coins, keys, pieces of paper, etc) for 10 minutes and it still got some scratches. I had to buy an iPhone condom to protect it from further scratches and to hide it.

Overall, it’s a good multi-function device but it’s not a PDA with a phone. It’s a phone with more advanced PDA functionality then typical phones. Or it’s a mobile media device with a phone and PDA functionality. If the iTouch had a camera, I’d probably have gone with it since my wife would already have the internet covered on her phone. The iPhone is a very good first generation device and has a lot of potential to be more in the future. I hope that future won’t be dominated by just Apple but that other companies will learn from the success of the iPhone as to what people are looking for and more.

Silicon Valley is very much about coming up with new things and creating new markets often through technology. This is a different challenge then trying to break into a existing market through an evolution of market. One of the things that the makers must demonstrate is that the new technology can work and demonstrate it’s usefulness. To do that means the 1.0 release must be stable and “just works”.

I often see teams trying to build the “perfect” product with the “perfect” interface as part of version 1.0. Engineering attention is taken away from the product technology and stability to focus on the UI. Everyone wants to have the best product out there, but in a new market nobody knows what “perfect” or “best” means since nobody has experience with it. It’s just better to make sure that what is built is built solidly and be flexible about making user experience improvements iteratively (which is easier to do in software then hardware).

Personally, I believe that User Experience and Design (UED) plays an important in product development. As Apple has shown, a good design can help take a product to the next level. However, I also feel that too much focus on UED can sometimes hurt innovation (non-UED type innovation) of a new product type. Apple didn’t invent the mp3 player. It allowed the mp3 market to develop and once the world has come to accept the need for mp3 players, Apple build a product with a design and interface that dazzled and became the leader.

So folks, if you’re trying to enter an existing market, take the time to examine the competition, don’t make the same mistake and improve on what is out there. If you’re trying to create a new market, put your resources into making the first launch stable and useful so you can grow the market.

Having an easily accessible calendar is extremely helpful. Some people use widgets/gadgets/PIMs/Outlook, etc. I generally like to have a small calendar on my desktop showing the current and following month.

With Geektools, I went with the classic Unix program ‘cal’. I have Geektool call ‘cal’ to show the current month and a second call to show the next month.

I’m getting more used to using OSX/Macbook although a few things still nags at me. I’m still more used to having the application’s menu within the frame of the application instead of at the top of the OS (especially noticeable when I’m using a dual monitor setup), and I wish Apple would allow the screen to tilt back more, and why are they so unwilling to provide a docking station?!?

The keyboard is nice and comfortable, but a two button mouse is still preferable. Overall the system runs well, but I don’t feel it’s a speed demon. For those running Windows on OSX, 4 gig is recommended. Running with 2 gig is ok, but it’s like running Windows on 1 gig while also slowing down OSX.

I like Quicksilver and Geektools and I love the UNIX underlying. The support for external display kick the butts of my windows notebooks (especially ones by HP). The dimensions of the 15″ Macbook and the weight balance is excellent. The 17″ model is too big to travel around with and the Airbook just isn’t that compelling to me. Personally, I feel the 15″ is the sweet spot in Apple’s notebook line.

Now that I’ve been using Fedora 8 for a few days, I can comment a little more on it. I’ve been regularly running “yum update” and I can see that the packages are being very actively updated. The issue of the kernel-header was resolved as I predicted as f8 caught up with the kernel in f7.

Unlike my experience with f7, once I got the system up I did not have to do much reconfiguring. The services are all working as they should and some of the apps feels like they’re running a little more robust then f7. The small visual changes to the Gnome desktop is a noticeable improvement to my eyes, but this is all subjective.

F8 feels more “modern” then its predecessors. It might not be as hip as Ubuntu, but for all practical purposes it’s on-par. I still like Fedora and while the upgrade path is not as smooth as I would’ve liked it, for those looking to perform a clean Linux install I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest that they look at Fedora.

Here are my note from upgrading Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 on a x86_64 system. The existing system is not very customized, but does pull some things from the Livna repo. It runs a nvidia video card and one of the video output is connected to a LCD TV to be used as a secondary monitor.

Following the recommendation of some of the posts online, I first did a yum update on fc7 to make sure I got the latest packages. In hindsight, I’m not sure if this was the best thing to do since it might have pulled a kernel version that is more current then the Fedora 8 version.

Right off the bat, I encountered the Upgrade Hang bug. The fix is listed in the link. When booting from the DVD, at the first menu when it asks you whether you want graphic or text installer, hit “TAB” and append the line to what is shown.

Once it finishes installing, it then reboots.

The video setting changed to using the open source nvidia driver which looks crappy on my monitor, but I figure I can always changes after I get the latest update from Livna.

Just like last time, I did a “yum upgrade” and just like last time it failed due to dependency issues from Livna packages. The upgrade is suppose to recognize third party repos, but never fully does. I had to remove them. vlc and xine to get past the dependency problem.

I noticed that there are a lot of fc7 packages still hanging around. The update didn’t have that many new packages (suspicious) and it kept trying to grab the fc7 kernel. I had to reboot the machine before yum started to grab updated Fedora 8 packages. No where did it ever ask me to reboot, so it took a while before I was able to get this to work.

Still, after the update, Livna’s Nvidia package still didn’t work. Gnome’s Display applet didn’t show the right monitor or video card and it was missing the native resolution. I was able to select my monitor manually, but it still didn’t give me the right resolution option. I finally removed kmod-nvidia so I can re-install it.

Fedora simply wouldn’t let me sett the correct resolution even after I rebooted and re-installed kmod-nvidia. This time I first to the Display applet and changed to using the vendor supplied Nvidia driver. Then I used Nividia’s (nvidia-settings, and make sure you run it as root or it’ll just tell you that you don’t have permission) app to change the display settings. Another reboot showed me an login screen that was working, but whenver I log in the resolution messes up. Finally, I just deleted all my Gnome settings and finally got things working! (I should’ve backed it up since my terminal fonts don’t look quite as good now. It’s possible I made a change but forgotten about it in the pre-F8 days).

Fedora 8 upgrade leaves a lot of fc7 packages hanging around. Most of them are orphaned packages since they either got moved to another package or no longer maintained in f8. The one remaining is kernel-headers which is fc7 but most of the dependency issues were caused by f8 packages when I tried to remove it or upgrade it. The version of the kernel header is newer then the f8 kernel that is installed… Maybe when the kernel gets above the f7 version on f8 then I’ll be able to upgrade it.

Like F7, I faced enough trouble that I wished I didn’t try to do an upgrade so soon especially since Fedora 7 was working fine for me. The upgrade process is still not as mature and it probably would’ve been easier if I just installed a fresh new copy instead of trying to upgrade.

Truth be told, I never paid too much attention to the Apple Nation. Sure, I kept up-to-date on many of the products they release, but not because they were from Apple. It was more that I wanted to see what’s the latest mp3 player and the iPod is one of the top choices, etc. This is just to say that I never paid much attention to Macworld other then read a news article here and there after the fact.

Since I got the Macbook Pro, I’ve been finding out a little more about Apple stuff mainly because I’ve been looking for software and utilities and since you can’t go to any Apple-related site without hearing about Macworld, I actually paid some attention to Steve Jobs’ announcements. This year there doesn’t seem to be much revolutionary new products coming from Apple as compared to last year when they announced the iPhone. At the same time, though, the Apple fanbois made everything sound like Apple has just invented fire.

Macbook Air? It’s a pretty neat product and while it might be something new in the Mac universe, sub-notebooks are hardly a new thing here in the rest of the world. Almost as soon as it was announced, Gizmodo did a comparison of Apple’s sub-notebook with 5 other sub-notebooks. At most in the sub-notebook category, it has some evolutionary refinements, but the Apple Nation was cheering as if they’ve never seen a light portable notebook before…