Riccardo Mori

iPad unboxing & comparison photos

March 18, 2012

#alttext#

Source: iPad (Third-Generation) Unboxing + Comparison Photos — a set on Flickr

Charles Starrett writes:

[…] the differences in packaging between the new iPad and the iPad 2 are small, with a different background image for the device, an iCloud badge on the bottom of the box, and the expected changes in the labels on the rear. Inside, the changes are similarly minor, with different, slightly more flimsy SIM card removal tool—included only with Wi-Fi + 4G models—being the most noteworthy difference.

My favourite photo of the set is probably the one I chose for this entry, displaying all three iPad generations.

iOS App Store finally handles multiple accounts better

March 16, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Perhaps not many people have had two Apple IDs each tied to a different country’s App Store / iTunes Store. I have, for various reasons. On my iPhone, the majority of the apps installed were purchased from my main Apple ID (ending in @mac.com), tied to the Spanish App Store; but I also have another Apple ID tied to the Italian App Store.

iOS has always handled this ‘double identity’ in an atrocious, counter-intuitive way. Suppose you have App 1 and App 2 purchased from the Spanish App Store, and App 3 purchased from the Italian App Store. One day, updates to App 1, App 2 and App 3 become available. The ‘App Store’ app shows all three updates. You tap on the ‘Update all’ button.

Up to now, what used to happen was this:

iOS asked for your first Apple ID’s password.
App 1 and App 2 started downloading and then got installed.
The update for the App 3 remained there, forcing you to open the App Store app again and tap to ‘Update’ again.
iOS asked for your second Apple ID’s password.
Instead of starting the download of App 3, iOS displayed a warning like This account is only valid for purchases in the Italian iTunes Store (I’m quoting from memory).
You tapped OK. Then the iTunes app would open.
You quit the iTunes app and noticed App 3 download was in progress and that App 3 was finally installing.

I honestly can’t tell whether this change happened in iOS 5, 5.0.1 or 5.1 but now, finally, iOS handles all this process in the logical way: when you have mixed updates pending from two different Apple IDs / App Stores, you are asked both passwords and all the apps are downloaded and installed in a single pass.

A tribute to H.P. Lovecraft

March 16, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

Source: H.P. Lovecraft, Author, Is Dead — The Morning News

Great article by Matthew Baldwin at The Morning News, written on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft’s death. If you love the work of the most famous Providence resident, you’ll really enjoy it. Don’t miss the embedded 90-minute documentary, Fear of the Unknown, by Frank H. Woodward, with Ramsey Campbell, John Carpenter, Neil Gaiman, Stuart Gordon, S.T. Joshi, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Andrew Migliore, Robert M. Price, Peter Straub, and Guillermo del Toro.

Minigrooves

March 15, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Et Cetera

Every new project I’ve attempted these past years has always required a bit of explanation: what’s behind the idea, what I want to achieve with it, how people should approach it, and so on and so forth. This time, it’s as self-explanatory as it gets. Minigrooves are portable words, which, like songs, you can carry with you everywhere. They’re miniatures you can read when you have five minutes, when you are between things, places, times.

Last summer I was admiring the work of a graphic designer and illustrator. It doesn’t matter who he is. What matters is that I started thinking: See? I’m looking at six illustrations by a guy I’ve never heard before, but thanks to these six pieces I can immediately see his talent, his style, maybe even what inspired him. Same thing with a musician: I listen to a three-minute song and I have an immediate impression; if it’s good stuff I’m hooked and want to have more of it. My art is writing: how could I do something similar?

And then it hit me: I could offer miniature stories. Minigrooves.

The project starts today. I will publish a new Minigroove every Monday and Thursday. This will hopefully give you fresh words often enough, and more importantly it will challenge my creativity and force me to write more, more often. Minigrooves has also a Twitter account.

Let’s see how it goes, and thank you for reading. Spread the word, will you?

Maintaining the application window’s size

March 13, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Software

My main Mac setup at Morrick’s Home Office is a MacBook Pro connected to an external 23″ monitor, to an Apple Wireless Keyboard and a Magic Mouse. I leave the MacBook Pro’s lid open and keep all main application windows on the larger display, using the laptop’s screen for secondary windows, tools, palettes, and Finder windows of remote servers.

As a general rule, all main windows are maximised: I like having a lot of screen estate with browsers, email clients, photo editing applications and when I write blog articles with MarsEdit (well, with MarsEdit I split the screen between the blog post editor and the preview window in a 70/30 ratio). Sometimes I work off-site, so I unplug the external monitor and take the MacBook Pro with me. If you have a similar configuration, you’ll know that as soon as you unplug the monitor, all windows will be gathered in the laptop’s main display. If there were maximised windows on the 23″ monitor, the maximisation is retained on the MacBook Pro’s screen, but since they came from a bigger screen, you’ll have to ‘reflow’ their contents by clicking the green button in the upper left corner of the window.

So far so good. The annoying thing happens when I return to my studio and revert to the desktop configuration. I plug the external monitor back in, I wake the MacBook Pro from sleep, and after detecting the second display it will automatically extend the desktop, but the windows will retain the size they had on the MacBook Pro. In an ideal world, I would just click the window’s green button and the window would perfectly adapt to the bigger screen once again, reflowing its contents correctly. But not all applications behave the same way, and that’s irritating. Mail is good, in this respect; Mailsmith isn’t (it only adjusts the height, not the width). Google Chrome is good; Safari isn’t (it behaves like Mailsmith). And so on and so forth.

By pure chance, the other day I discovered a little trick to avoid some hassle. Nothing extraordinary, mind you, but so obvious in hindsight that I wondered how I could have missed it. If you’re as annoyed as I am about the messed-up window size and contents, if you’re using Mac OS X Lion, and if the applications affected are Lion-optimised with a full-screen mode (check whether their main window has the two little arrows in the upper right corner), then activate full-screen mode before unplugging the external monitor. Lion will create a separate space for the application and will preserve its size when changing display configuration. When you’re on the move you could either use such applications in their own spaces in full-screen mode or restore them once you’ve switched displays, but remember to put them in full-screen mode again before re-attaching the MacBook to the external monitor.