MacOSX

RubyOSA - don't forget the docs!

A really quick time for anyone on OSX.

RubyOSA is a great interface to the AppleScript APIs available to most applications. The only problem with it is that the APIs of many apps are undocumented, disappointingly especially for Apple's apps, so there's a handy little command that can generate these docs for you:

rdoc-osa --name (appname)

e.g.

rdoc-osa --name iPhoto

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VIA USB PCI card unreliable on OSX

Here's a frustrating one. I inherited a PC recently that had a USB 2.0 PCI card which I figured I'd try to get to work in my Mac. The card is based on the VIA VT6212 chipset and after some searching I found official drivers for the card (that only work with G4 Macs). Well, after rebooting the Mac the card seemed to work fine - it showed up in the system profiler and I could work with devices connected to it without any problems.

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Labtec wireless keyboard+mouse for free (review)

Here's a great deal I just came across tonight. Last night I dropped a full cup of hot Barry's tea on my keyboard so, rather than sticking it in the washing machine and hoping for the best, I went shopping for a new keyboard. As it turns out, most of the keyboards on the market fail two very simple requirements:

  • The six key insert/delete/page-up/down block should be three keys across and two down.
  • The function keys should have a default action to work as a function key.

For some reason both Logitech and Microsoft got it in their thick skulls a few years ago that everyone would rather have a cramped six-key block and wanted to press a special key before the function keys worked as advertised, so for the last few years it has been very difficult to find anything else.

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AdiumX 1.0 & Yahoo problem

There's a small problem with the just-release AdiumX v1.0 and Yahoo Instant Messenger (Y!IM) accounts if you were using any of the beta releases. For whatever reason, something changed in the Y!IM configuration and the only way to get your connection to work is to remove it then add the login back in again. Go figure. Still, a minor quibble when the rest of the program works so well.

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