Posts under ‘Blog’

Hands-on with the Palm Pre

I’ve been sitting on this hands-on video of the Palm Pre for a week or so now, since I don’t have a suitable site to post it to at the moment. So although it’s not the kind of thing I’d normally post here, I thought I’d upload the video anyway rather than let it sit [...]

Why your MacBook runs like crap

I use a MacBook Pro as my my main computer, plugged into a desktop set-up. Like any right-thinking geek with such an arrangement, I removed the laptop’s battery to prevent it suffering from being charged all the time — the MacBook Pro is never used away from mains power and can’t be accidentally unplugged.
I only [...]

How to sync an iPhone with two computers

Unless you’re using over-the-air Microsoft Exchange syncing with your iPhone (via Google Mobile Sync, NuevaSync or a corporate Exchange server), you’re probably keeping its contact and calendar information in sync with Outlook or iCal using iTunes.
This works well enough, but what if your calendar and contact data is stored one computer (at the office, say) [...]

Safari 4’s hidden preferences

The WordPress 2.7 bug makes the Safari 4 beta useless to me, but if you’re a Safari fan who wants to stick with it, but don’t care for the cosmetic changes, head to the Random Genius blog. It has a whole list of hidden preferences for Apple’s new web browser, including one to put the [...]

Where does iTunes keep its iPhone backups?

Whenever an iPhone is synchronised with iTunes, iTunes makes a backup of (most of) the iPhone’s data. You can view the iTunes’ backup history by going to Preferences > Devices.
iTunes maintains some kind of history for successive backups, but I have no idea of the underlying logic. You would imagine that three or four backups [...]

Custom keyboard shortcuts in Firefox for Mac OS are broken

I complained at length about keyboard shortcut inconsistencies in Mac OS X the other day — an OS that’s supposedly ultra-consistent — but it appears that the Apple isn’t wholly to blame. I singled out Firefox and NeoOffice as particular offenders (largely because as a new-ish Mac user, they’re the two apps I use the [...]

Safari 4 beta bug with WordPress 2.7

The new Safari 4 beta is pretty good, as long as you’re happy with a browser that lacks most of the features that have been standard on the competition for some years (ad-blocking and saved sessions, to name but two). It is a beta though, so it’s bound to be buggy — and I’ve just [...]

How to make the Home & End keys on a Mac keyboard work like Home & End keys

When you press the cursor keys, modified cursor keys (with [Shift], [Ctrl], and so on) or [Home] and [End] keys on a Windows PC, the on-screen cursor reacts in a consistent way when it’s in a block of text, no matter what application you’re using. Its behaviour is controlled at operating system level rather than [...]

How to sync Google Contacts and Calendar with the iPhone using Google Mobile Sync

Google now offers its own ExchangeSync service for smartphones called Google Sync for Mobile, which means you now now automatically synchronise your Google Account data with your handheld over Wi-Fi or a mobile data connection.
If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch owner, this means you can now synchronise your Google Calendar and Contacts data with [...]