Riccardo Mori

A Xserve il benxservito

November 6, 2010

Apple ha recentemente annunciato che Xserve, la sua macchina server dedicata, verrà prodotto fino al 31 gennaio 2011, poi ne cesserà la produzione. In un documento PDF chiamato Xserve Transition Guide, vengono proposte due alternative per il futuro: usare un Mac Pro o la versione server del Mac mini. Ovviamente gli attuali utenti Xserve potranno continuare a usufruire delle garanzie legate alla macchina, e Apple continuerà a fornire pezzi di ricambio per i prossimi 5 anni (7 anni nello stato della California).

Luca Accomazzi stamattina scrive un tweet provocatorio:

1: Sospesa la produzione di Apple XServe. 2: Presentando OS X Lion, Jobs non menzionò server software. Chiaro il trend o devo aggiungere altro?

E per la rete c’è chi si straccia le vesti (pochi, ma ci sono sempre).

La mia opinione? Apple sta liberandosi della zavorra, e se devo essere onesto mi meraviglia che Xserve sia durato fino a ora. È lampante che il mercato dei server non è — e non è mai stato — veramente congeniale ad Apple. Xserve è una macchina dignitosa, ma probabilmente la quantità di unità vendute non ha soddisfatto certe aspettative. In quest’ottica, liberarsi della palla al piede ha senso.

Con Xserve, però, muore solo Xserve, non Mac OS X Server. Almeno, così la vedo io. Altrimenti non ha senso avere in produzione un Mac mini ‘edizione Server’. Altrimenti non ha senso introdurre una nuova configurazione Server per il Mac Pro — peraltro con un rapporto prezzo/prestazioni mica male: il Mac Pro server è sostanzialmente simile alla versione base del Mac Pro (stesso processore 2,8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem”), ma per 500 dollari in più ci si ritrova con:

5 GB di RAM in più (8 GB contro 3)
Un disco rigido interno da 1 TB in più
Mac OS X Server unlimited client edition

Si noti che solo Mac OS X Server unlimited client costerebbe, separatamente, 499 dollari.

Diciamo che offrendo la soluzione Mac Pro Server, Apple prende due piccioni con una fava: continua a offrire una soluzione server, e non deve sopportare i costi di produzione di due hardware differenti.

È vero, Jobs parlando di Mac OS X 10.7 Lion non ha menzionato una versione server. A mio parere non vuol dire niente. Per quello che è stato presentato di Lion (ossia la punta della punta dell’iceberg) non azzarderei troppe previsioni. Di Lion si sa sostanzialmente che ci stanno lavorando, che sono in tabella di marcia, e che vi saranno alcuni cambiamenti nell’interfaccia utente. Cioè, appunto, quasi nulla.

Mi sbaglierò, ma con Xserve muore solo Xserve.

Installing Instapaper’s Read Later bookmarklet on iPhone & iPod touch

November 5, 2010

by Riccardo Mori

Software

A word of warning

[2013 update] — Since this post is still getting some views a few years after it was first published, I think it’s only fair to point out that it was written in 2010, when I was using an iPhone 3G with iOS 4. Many things have changed since then, both in Instapaper and in iOS, so this guide may be less useful than it once was.

A Visual Guide for Dummies

I hold Marco Arment in high esteem. He’s the developer of Instapaper and former lead developer of Tumblr. He is also a brilliant writer, and I really enjoy reading his technical insights and analyses on his blog.

In many occasions he has expressed his frustration regarding the installation of the Instapaper Read Later bookmarklet directly on the iPhone/iPod touch (and presumably on the iPad, too). The procedure isn’t one of the most intuitive (though personally I don’t think you need to be an engineer to follow it), but Marco is not at fault: it’s a current limitation of iOS, that doesn’t let you install JavaScript bookmarklets in a more straightforward manner. In his post titled An open enhancement request to the Mobile Safari team for sane bookmarklet installation or alternatives, Marco writes:

Most Instapaper customers install the bookmarklet directly in Mobile Safari. The process of doing this is extremely complex and user-hostile, and a large percentage of them abandon the process and are extremely dissatisfied with Safari, my app, and me as a result.

As I said, when I had to install the Read Later bookmarklet directly in Mobile Safari, I followed Marco’s instructions and everything went fine. Sure, not a one-click operation, but nothing exceedingly complex either. Anyway, since many people seem to have difficulty with it, and wanting to offer my humble support to Marco, I hereby offer this Visual Guide. It builds on Marco’s instructions and adds iPhone screenshots for each and every step. I hope this will help the less tech-savvy with the procedure.

We start here, and we’ll follow Marco’s instructions. Let’s begin by tapping the ‘+’ button…

Important Update: From iOS 4.2, MobileSafari has been slightly redesigned. Instead of the ‘+’ button, you’ll find this one (marked with a yellow circle). Don’t let this detail mislead you — apart from the icon, nothing has really changed. It retains the exact same function as the ‘+’ button.

Different icon, same function.

…This menu will appear. Tap ‘Add Bookmark’.

You’ll see this. Don’t do anything, just tap ‘Save’.

Ok, we’re back in Mobile Safari. Let’s proceed to the next step. You have to select all the text in the box on the left. To do that, tap inside of it…

…The keyboard will appear, and also a cursor where you tapped. Now tap on the text and hold…

…The magnifying glass will appear. Now release your finger…

…The Select/Select All/Paste pop-up menu will appear. Tap ‘Select All’…

…The Cut/Copy/Paste pop-up menu will appear. Tap ‘Copy’…

The text in the box is now copied.

Now we are at Step 3 of Marco’s instructions. The text we have just copied is the JavaScript code for the bookmarklet. Now we’ll have to paste it as the bookmarklet’s ‘URL’. Tap on the Bookmarks button (the open book icon).

…Here’s the Bookmarks folder. You can see the ‘Instapaper: Read Later’ bookmark we created before. Now tap on the ‘Edit’ button…

…The Bookmarks are ready to be edited or deleted. Now Tap the ‘Instapaper: Read Later’ bookmark…

Here we are. The URL field should be automatically selected, ready to be edited. We will delete this field and paste the code we copied before. To delete the text field, tap the ‘x’ icon on the right.

Now the Address field is blank. Time to paste…

Now tap and hold your finger in the Address field. First the magnifying glass will appear, then, when you release, the Paste pop-up will show up. Tap on it…

…and here’s the JavaScript code we copied a few steps back. Now tap ‘Done’. Hang tight, we’re almost there…

Ok, we have saved the changes in the ‘Instapaper: Read Later’ bookmarklet and we’re back to the Bookmarks list, still in edit mode. Tap ‘Done’.

All right, back in the regular Bookmarks view. Now tap ‘Done’ again…

Back again to Marco’s instructions. Installation should be complete. Now let’s test if the bookmarklet works. Tap again on the Bookmarks icon, then select ‘Instapaper: Read Later’ from the Bookmarks list, and…

Ta-daaah! Bookmarklet correctly installed.

Flash-free

November 5, 2010

by Riccardo Mori

Software

The other day, after reading this post by Steven Frank, I felt tempted to follow his steps:

When I heard that the new MacBook Air models were shipping without any Flash plug-in installed, the first thing I did was check to see if one of my long-standing Safari annoyances was fixed. It was.

It used to be that if you completely removed the Flash and Shockwave plug-ins, by deleting or moving them out of /Library/Internet Plug-Ins and (Home)/Library/Internet Plug-Ins, you would get alerts constantly while browsing telling you that they were missing.

No longer. Now you just get a “missing plug-in” image inline where the Flash object would have been.

If you want to do as I do, quit Safari, and move ClickToFlash, Flash Player.plugin, flashplayer.xpt, and NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave from those folders to somewhere else. I made a folder called “Internet Plug-Ins Disabled”.

But I wasn’t 100% sure. Then I read this. And finally, today I did just that, I went Flash-free too. And boy, what a difference.

John Gruber has just done the same and has written a thorough entry on Daring Fireball talking about his experience. Gruber writes:

Here’s what I did last week.

First, I disabled the Flash Player and old ClickToFlash plugins. On my system, Flash Player was in the default location: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. I moved “Flash Player.plugin”, “flashplayer.xpt”, and “NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave” out of that folder and into a new folder I created next to it named “Internet Plug-Ins (Disabled)”. All you need to do to disable them is move them out of /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. I also moved ClickToFlash (“ClickToFlash.webplugin”) to this disabled plugins folder. (ClickToFlash, if you have it installed, might be in the Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ folder in your home folder, rather than at the root level of your startup drive.)

After logging out and logging back in to my user account, Flash Player is no longer available to Safari or Firefox. This is more or less the state Mac OS X is now shipping in by default.

[…]

Without Flash installed, Safari effectively tells websites you visit, “Hey, I don’t have Flash installed”, which allows the sites to send alternative content. Static images instead of Flash for ads, for example. With ClickToFlash, Safari is effectively telling websites you visit, “Yes, sure, I have Flash installed,” but then not actually loading Flash content. I see far fewer “Flash missing” boxes in web pages now than I did with ClickToFlash.

“This is all fine and dandy” — I hear you say — “But what if there’s some Flash content I do want to see?”. Well, there are a couple of ways to do that. If you’re thinking about YouTube content, as Frank and Gruber suggest, you can install the YouTube5 Safari extension by Connor McKay. As Gruber explains:

With this extension installed, embedded YouTube videos are modified to use the HTML5 video tag rather than Flash Player for playback. This is possible because behind the scenes, all YouTube videos are encoded using H.264.

Since I don’t like extensions, and I want my copy of Safari to stay extensions-free as well, I’ve chosen the Google Chrome way. Gruber again:

But that doesn’t mean I never run into Flash content I wish to view but for which there is no HTML5 alternative. Google Chrome offers a workaround — Chrome includes its own self-contained Flash Player plugin. Removing Flash Player from /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ prevents Safari and Firefox (and almost all other Mac web browsers) from loading Flash content, but not Chrome.

So, whenever I hit a page with Flash content I wish to view, I open that page in Chrome. As soon as I’m done watching it, I quit Chrome, which ensures Flash Player isn’t left running in the background.

Before removing the relevant plug-ins, I had Safari open with 9 tabs. Most of them were light-to-medium websites, content-wise. Then there was The New York Times, which was open on its homepage, a medium-to-heavy load for the browser since there were two or three boxes with Flash content (blocked by ClickToFlash, but still). I fired up Activity Monitor, and before opening the New York Times website, Safari was using 9–13% of CPU resources (my Mac is a mid-2009, MacBook Pro 15″, with a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB RAM). When the New York Times homepage was fully loaded, Safari’s CPU usage jumped to 98–100%:

Then I closed Safari, removed the plug-ins, reopened it, told it to ‘Reopen All Windows from Last Session’, and the previous 9 tabs began reloading. First thing I noticed: they reloaded much faster than they usually do (I usually keep 6 of those tabs open, since they’re frequently visited sites, so I know how much time they need to load). Then, after the New York Times homepage finished rendering, I opened Activity Monitor again. Surprise:

I know it’s not a scientific test and everything, but I assure you that the difference, performance-wise, is definitely noticeable after removing Flash. And while before the New York Times had a few Flash-enabled boxes, now that it detects that Flash is lacking, it serves me static ads in a couple of places, and in the video section I get this:

But I can live with it, I just open Google Chrome to do the dirty work. To make things faster (and even before reading Gruber’s piece), I enabled a keyboard shortcut for the command Develop > Open Page With > Google Chrome.app, so that when in Safari I arrive on a webpage with Flash content, I just hit that shortcut and the page opens in Chrome.

Hint #1: if you don’t have the Develop menu in Safari, you can enable it in Safari > Preferences > Advanced; Hint #2: to create a shortcut for an item that it’s actually a submenu (like in this case), you just ignore that it’s a submenu. In other words, when you have to add the command description for the shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, you do not enter “Open Page With Google Chrome.app”, you only enter “Google Chrome.app”).

Reinstalling Aperture 2 under Snow Leopard

November 3, 2010

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Someone on a mailing list I follow has raised the following issue, which I was unaware of. I was able to help that person, and I thought that perhaps it was worth talking about the issue here, and help more people. (This issue was also discussed in the Apple Discussions Forum.)

The Problem

Consider the following scenario: you have purchased a regular copy of Aperture 2. Since it was introduced in February 2008, Mac OS X Snow Leopard still didn’t exist at the time, so obviously you used Aperture 2 under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Now you’re using Snow Leopard and, for whatever reason, you need to reinstall Aperture 2 from scratch. The problem is that you can reinstall your copy of Aperture 2.0, but that won’t even open under Snow Leopard. So you download the Aperture 2.1.4 Update, because Aperture 2.1.4 is compatible with Snow Leopard. But although Aperture 2 can regularly be found in the /Applications folder, the updater doesn’t update.

You’ll need a copy of the full Aperture 2.1.4, or at least of the trial version, but it has to be the full package, not just the update. It’s appalling, but you won’t find it on Apple’s Website, now that Aperture 3 is available.

The Solution

I’m sure that the full (or trial) version of Aperture 2.1.4 can be found on many ‘alternative’ places, but why not take it from a trusted source? I have found it on a Time Machine backup and I’ve decided to make it available. For a limited period of time you can download it from my Dropbox Public folder, then I’ll probably put in my iDisk Public folder, just in case. I’m acting in good faith and I don’t think I’m doing nothing wrong, but I shall remove this download if I receive some communication from Apple requesting me to do so.

— Download Aperture 2.1.4 Trial (258 MB)

[Update, September 2012] – I’ve noticed from my website statistics that this page, despite being almost two years old, gets visited rather frequently. And I also noticed that the Download link is dead because it still points to my old iDisk’s Public Folder. I’m in the process of finding a new home for the .dmg file with the Aperture 2.1.4 Trial. Thanks for your understanding.

[Update, June 2013] – The link is fixed and should work now.

MacBook Air 11" dal vivo

October 31, 2010

by Riccardo Mori

Mele e appunti

Un paio di note volanti

Ieri ho fatto un giro rapidissimo alla FNAC qui a Valencia perché ero rimasto a corto di DVD vuoti, e anche perché in fondo speravo fossero arrivati i nuovi MacBook Air per vederli da vicino.

Arrivato vicino alla zona dedicata ai prodotti Apple notavo un certo affollamento, che mi faceva ben sperare. Quando mi sono avvicinato ho notato invece che è ancora l’iPad ad attrarre attenzione (un dettaglio da non trascurare; il tavolo con gli iPad in esposizione è costantemente affollato da quando è uscito iPad, tanto che dovetti recarmi di mattina presto per provarne uno). Dei nuovi MacBook Air neanche l’ombra, o quasi.

In realtà un modello di MacBook Air da 11 pollici c’era, ma passava praticamente inosservato essendo chiuso e in stop, ed essendo collocato a fianco di un MacBook Pro da 17 pollici connesso al Cinema Display da 24.

Mia moglie e io ci siamo avvicinati, lo abbiamo aperto e ci abbiamo giocherellato un po’. Si tratta del modello con disco SSD da 128 GB. Impressioni:

La faccenda dell’Instant On è assolutamente vera. Il MacBook Air, aprendolo, era subito pronto all’uso.
La sottigliezza è sorprendente: si fa fatica a credere che vi sia un computer lì dentro.
La velocità è altrettanto sorprendente. Le applicazioni si aprono all’istante, tanto che non sai se stai davvero lanciandone una o ritornandoci su dopo averla già avviata. Ho aperto un numero sufficiente di applicazioni e il Mac non dava segni di rallentamento nel passare dall’una all’altra. Ma non so quanto sia rilevante, dato che non ho avuto tempo di fare prove intensive aprendo documenti (ho però aperto molte finestre e pannelli in Safari, e anche qui l’Air si è comportato egregiamente).
Non ho notato grosse differenze fra la tastiera dell’Air e quella del mio MacBook Pro 15”. Le dimensioni sono identiche, la risposta dei tasti mentre si scrive è praticamente la stessa (forse i tasti del MacBook Air hanno una corsa leggermente più corta, ma se c’è una differenza probabilmente la si nota dopo molto tempo passato a dattiloscrivere).
Lo schermo è buono. Come si può vedere nella foto in alto, ha una buona luminosità. E non avendo di fronte il pannello di vetro dei MacBook Pro, il problema dei riflessi è decisamente attenuato, al punto che si poteva utilizzare tranquillamente il MacBook Air anche con l’illuminazione pessima e sguaiata del negozio.
La risoluzione di 1366×768 su uno schermo da 11.6” rende in effetti un po’ più piccoli gli elementi dell’interfaccia, ma devo ammettere di non aver avuto nessun problema a navigare tra file e cartelle, a leggere documenti di esempio, a navigare il Web. Insomma, si sta più stretti, ma non c’è perdita di usabilità.
Peccato non averlo potuto soppesare: per ragioni di sicurezza il MacBook Air era attaccato al piano d’appoggio. Ma il fatto è che non ce n’è bisogno: l’Air trasuda leggerezza e compattezza.

Per fare un confronto con la luminosità di altri schermi ho cercato di scattare una foto che prendesse sia lo schermo del MacBook Air che quello del MacBook Pro e del Cinema Display disposti a fianco. Non so quanto possa essere indicativa, ma eccola qua:

Ieri avevo poco tempo e conto di tornare alla FNAC nei prossimi giorni per fare qualche prova in più. Per intanto posso dire che il MacBook Air da 11 pollici ha un’attrattiva davvero potente, e credo possa essere una seconda macchina fenomenale. E no, non è un netbook. Per costruzione, usabilità e prestazioni dista anni luce da un netbook qualsiasi.