SynApps The Open Source and Gadget blog

I was very very happy with my SSD in my Jan'09 MacBook Pro 15" until I upgraded to a June MBP 17" and slapped my OCZ Vertex 250gb into the shiny new machine. It worked like a charm - for a while. On one rainy day after a couple of weeks of using the machine I got very erratic behavior, read errors, no boot drive at startup, regular lock-ups, very unapple behavior! Read more ...

The next big improvement in hardware technology comes from the switch from steam-punky mechanical hard drives to solid state disks. You can make the switch now if you are somewhat insensitive to, umm, money.

I tested and used 3 SSD's on my Dec 08 Mac Book Pro (2.8GHz Core2Duo, 4Gig RAM) and compared it to the 7.2k 320Gig hard drive that came with the MBP. 

Not only do the benchmarks (XBench 1.3) speak a clear language. Also it really shows in your normal day to day work. The machine simply feels much more fluid, responsive, fewer rough edges, really fast. Read more ...

MacRuby is the name of a fledgling little technology that will surely bring me a lot of fun. MacRuby is a Ruby implementation built directly on top of Objective-C, which should provide us with a good integration of the two worlds at a very slim performance cost. As both a Mac and Ruby fan I'm very excited about this, so, I urge everyone interested to give it a spin:

The curious may read an enlightening tutorial here: http://developer.apple.com/mac/articles/scriptingautomation/cocoaappswit...

The projects homepage is:
http://www.macruby.org

The other day a neighbor of mine asked me for some help getting an address book (actualy a XLS file) into a Bluetooth enabled mobile Siemens DECT handset.  Of course the software that comes with the phone runs on Windows only.

  Read more ...

It's been a while since the latest Mac and iPhone update. Here is a brief summary: You can currently buy any 8 or 16GB iPhone and make it work for your carrier without signing a proprietary new contract with anybody. Here is how it works:

1. Buy one (in the U.S. if possible because the Apple $/EUR exchange rate is 1/1 whereas the rest of the world currently does 1.56/1 - so a U.S. 16 GB ifon is 370EUR incl. taxes compared to 500 in Europe)
2. Go to http://www.Ziphone.org and Download the application for your platform (Windows or Mac)
3. On Windows, install iTunes of you haven't done so yet. Connect your iPhone to the PC/Mac. Plug in the ifon.
4. Install and Run Ziphone, Click the "Do it all" and "Go" buttons, wait for 4 minutes while watching you iPhone in awe.
5. Get a paper-clip to remove the SIM tray from the iPhone, put in yours

You are done. Once done playing check the Installer application that's now on your iPhone.

If you are lucky enough to be a German T-Mobile customer with a non-iPhone plan you have to add an entry to the carrier.plist file to allow for editing the EGDE settings of your fon. Details can be found here. Do that:
Read more ...

Don't upgrade your hacked, jailbroken, unsimlocked iPhone to Release 1.1.1 of the iPhone Firmware. Don't yet. Wait for the mouse to catch the cat.

In case you could not wait and lost the simlock break or the jailbreak or you even bricked your iPhone, it's not an expensive door stopper yet, you can go back.

Check out 9to5's guide on how to downgrade to 1.0.2. Seems Apple is getting the same deseases as Microsoft, in many ways. Read more ...

Dummyproof Version now available, says 'ngadget.

On monday a commercial version to remove the iphone SIM lock was launched. It took the iphone dev team one or two days (depending on how you count it)   to release a free version. They claim (and I tend to believe them) that this tool is not a hacked hack but a new implementation.  The unlock process  needs the usual activation/ssh hack and is nothing for the faint hearted, but works. A couple of hours ago a GUI version was released,  which I haven't tried. Read more ...

Wer Apple Mail mit OX oder anderen IMAP basierten Mail-Lösungen verwendet hat vielleicht Probleme damit, die gesendeten Mails oder die Entwürfe auf dem Server zu speichern. Dank einiger OXen und Francisco wurde ich nun erhellt, dass man vor allem "Geänderte Postfächer automatisch synchronisieren" anclickern und als IMAP Pfad Prefix "INBOX" angeben muss, etwa so: Read more ...