Programvare

Apple har ved flere anledninger understreket at de fokuserer optimalisering på det som synes for brukeren. Av og til bare for å få ting til å virke kjappere, ettersom det er det brukere til syvende og sist merker. Et godt eksempel på det motsatte er Windows Vistas filkopiering.

I nettleserverden er det (dessverre) blitt veldig vanlig å sammeligne nettleseres hastighet med benchmark-tester som gjør en kunstig test av nettleserens hastighet. Og i mange av disse, er Firefox 3 markant kjappere enn Safari 3.1. Dessverre viser aldri slike kunstige tester hele sannheten, og for de av oss med OS X (jeg setter pris på om noen tester dette på Windows også) er det fort gjort å teste dette:

1. Start Firefox 3 og Safari 3.1 side om side.
2. Slå av innholdsfiltre (adblocker, Flashblocker osv) i begge to.
3. Last en side stappfull av elementer, gjerne både Flash og bilder (jeg brukte forsiden på VG.no) i begge nettleserene.
4. Scroll opp og ned med musehjul eller scrollbar i begge nettleserene, og merk hvordan Firefox 3 kjennes ut som sirup sammenlignet med Safari!

Og før noen spør, resultatet er det samme med smooth scrolling både av og på i Firefox. Den innstillingen har strengt tatt ingenting med dette fenomenet å gjøre.

Mange bruker Twitter selv om jeg selv aldri helt har sett poenget i det. For hva skal jeg med nok et sted å sette statusen min? Jeg har problemer nok som det er med status i MSN, Skype og Facebook. Det vil si, helt til jeg kom over Mood Blast fra Circle Six Design, et kjekt lite program til Mac som lar deg sette statusen på "alle plasser" samtidig. Det ligger bortgjemt i menubaren, hentes opp med en shortcut, du skriver statusen, trykker enter, programmet forsvinner igjen og statusen er synkronisert!

En fin ting med dette er at jeg la Twitter til steder å sende oppdatering til slik at jeg kunne legge til en Twitter Badge her i bloggen. Vips, enda mindre personvern! :p Ja, man må nok huske på alle steder statusen blir postet så man ikke skriver noe man helst ikke skulle gjort... Du vet sånn cirka hvem som ser MSN-statusen din, men står den på bloggen din risikerer du at den caches ute på det store internettet for all fremtid.

A couple of things got me stumped when migrating to Mac, so I thought I'd just do a small post on them.

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It's now official - I'm a Mac user. After flirting with Ubuntu Linux for a year, watching Knut Sætre (my coworker) use his MacBook Pro and reading all the switch stories around the net I decided time had come for a change. So far, I'm definitely not regretting anything. OS X seems to me like Plug 'n Play the way it was supposed to work. Everything integrates out of the box, and I've so far never even SEEN the word "driver". I've always meant that my "work computer" should work without fiddling and never need tweaking. This was the reason I waited so long to try Linux, and this is exactly the reason I love OS X.

As those who know me might know, I love researching stuff on the net. In addition to that, I've also got a personal policy of always using freeware when it does the job - my own way of avoiding pirated software. It also helps freeware authors get a nice user mass, so I can't say I feel sorry for NOT buying commercial alternatives.

So one of the first things I did (actually before I received my black new-model MacBook with 2GB ram) was researching for apps I needed. And now, after actually testing them I figured I might publish my findings, so others could benefit from it as well. So here it is, my list of Mac OS X "must have" freewares:

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During the last couple of months, GMail has had several hiccups. And when Google homepage suddenly lost all my gadgets for two days recently, I figured I might look into the desktop application approach to organizing my life again. I've also experienced that having "tools" in the same browser that contains tabs with social networks and news is pretty counter-productive in the long run.

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When I first got a customized Firefox install demonstrated to me I was immediately awestruck by the functionality offered by extensions. Sure, Firefox isn't the fastest nor the most standard-compliant browser around, but the extensions really got me hooked (thanks, HHJ)! So I did the conversion after having used Opera for 5-6 years. And now, after half a year I find it a real pain to install all extensions every time I install a new computer. So as much for the benefit of myself as well as a public service, I thought I'd list all my extensions together with links.

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I've tried several programs to help diagnose diskspace usage. All of them were stand-alone apps that scanned a specied folder and it's subfolders, giving you various views over disk usage (folder trees, piecharts and in some cases weird block-diagrams). But today I stumbled upon Folder Size, a superb solution. What it basically does is add a system service that keeps track of folder sizes on request (with caching and change notifications) together with a new column in Explorer called "Folder Size", which behaves like the normal size column except that it also adds the total size of folders (instead of the blank space the normal size column displays). This explanation might look a bit messy, but just click the link and look at the screenshot!

After Microsoft pushed the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification (hereafter refered to as WGAN) tool out using Windows Update a lot of people cried out in despair. While I actually sympathize with Microsoft for trying to protect their intellectual property, there were several things that didn't quite sound right:

• Microsoft originally assured the press that the tool could easily be uninstalled, but this was clearly not the case.
• Without mentioning it in any documentation WGAN send information about you and your computer to Microsoft once a day.
• Microsoft itself states in the user-agreement that WGAN is beta software. Forcing users to install beta software doesn't sound like anything a qualityminded software company would do. The fact that many people has received false notifications underscores this fact.
• The description of Automatic Update clearly states that it only installs high-priority updates crucial for the security of your computer, but this is clearly not how anyone would describe WGAN.

Luckily, I have set Automatic Update to notify me before installing any updates, and I always select custom install so I can review the updates prior to installing them. This made me able to unselect WGAN for installation. Therefore my laptop is still free from spyware and beta software. I strongly advice everyone to do the same.

If however, you were one of the unlucky ones to get this piece of deceitful software on your system, I have the cure for you. Firewallleaktester.com has made a utility called RemoveWGA which helps you remove the update from your system.