Simon Willison’s Weblog

Subscribe

90 items tagged “apple”

2007

The Tale of the Mechanical Virus. “What I had discovered, in essence, was a mechanical virus. It infects Mac laptops and speads via the DVI adapters.”—I really hope this isn’t why my DVI adapter is on the blink. # 9th September 2007, 12:11 pm

It Is Estimated That NBC Could Not Have Screwed This iTunes Thing Up Any Worse. NBC’s request that Apple “stiffen anti-piracy provisions” is down-right scary. # 3rd September 2007, 1:42 am

The other interesting thing about the 1.0.2 update is that Apple didn’t try to prevent the hacks that are out there [...] one would have assumed that Apple would have done *something* in this release as a sort of “shot across the bow” but they didn’t, which bodes well for a future, more open platform.

Russell Beattie # 22nd August 2007, 10:08 pm

Django on the iPhone. Jacob got it working. The next image in his photostream shows the Django admin application querying his phone’s local database of calls. # 19th August 2007, 7:58 am

mobileterminal (via) The iPhone now has a GUI terminal application, which can run a comand-line SSH client. Now I really want one. # 16th August 2007, 2:54 pm

SproutCore (via) MVC JavaScript framework used to build the new .Mac Web Gallery application. # 7th August 2007, 11:35 pm

Die, Marker Felt, Die! How to replace Marker Felt in the iPhone notes application with Helvetica, via some hackery with jailbreak, MacFUSE and iphonedisk. By the time they arrive in the UK it looks like they’ll have been hacked wide open. # 16th July 2007, 10:50 pm

I heard that Foxconn—the place that makes the iPods and iPhones—consumes 3,000 pigs a day.

Bunnie Huang # 14th July 2007, 12:59 pm

The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution.

Fake Steve Jobs # 5th July 2007, 12:03 pm

Optimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone (via) Apple’s iPhone developer documentation. # 4th July 2007, 1:58 am

Safari Beta 3.0.1 for Windows. A nice fast turnaround on fixes for security flaws in the beta. # 14th June 2007, 9:56 am

Safari for Windows, 0day exploit in 2 hours (via) Once again, down to handling of alternative URL protocol schemes. # 12th June 2007, 1:30 pm

Enabling the debug menu on Safari for Windows. “Turn off site-specific hacks” is one of the menu options. # 12th June 2007, 1:18 pm

Safari 3 Public Beta. Safari for Windows. Unfortunately this kills the best excuse corporate Web developers had for getting Macs (“we need to run all our supported browsers on one machine”). # 11th June 2007, 11:06 pm

We declined to participate in the XHTML2 Working Group because we think XHTML2 is not an appropriate technology for the web.

Maciej Stachowiak, Apple # 12th April 2007, 3:08 pm

Please, fanboys, don’t send me dumb notes averring that Apple’s failure to police this use of its mark will lead to the end of its ability to stop manufacturers from producing rival MP3 players and calling them iPods. That’s a fairy tale that trademark lawyers tell their kids when they want to reassure them that they’ll have a healthy college fund.

Cory Doctorow # 12th February 2007, 2:05 pm

If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store.

Steve Jobs # 7th February 2007, 2:26 am

Thoughts on Music. Steve Jobs comes out against DRM, lays the blame squarely on the big four music companies. # 7th February 2007, 2:25 am

Apple UK Get a Mac ads. Totally awesome, they’re using Mitchell and Webb. Not sure how much Mac users will want to be associated with Jeremy from Peep Show though... # 29th January 2007, 4:27 am

Mac OS X and OS X are not the same thing, although they are most certainly siblings. The days of lazily referring to “Mac OS X” as “OS X” are now over.

John Gruber # 12th January 2007, 10:29 am

Apple doesn’t give a damn. Steve Jobs doesn’t build platforms, except by accident. He doesn’t care about your thriving metropolis. All you independent Mac developers: you’re all sharecroppers, and your rent just went up. Way up.

Mark Pilgrim # 12th January 2007, 9:51 am

AirPort Extreme. New today, but didn’t make the keynote. You can plug a USB hard drive in to it and access it over the network. # 9th January 2007, 7:22 pm

macrumorslive.com. The MacRumors ajax keynote coverage gets better every time—now they have live photos in addition to the text updates. Simple but effective. # 9th January 2007, 5:11 pm

Apple’s Next-Generation Themes. Cabel’s spotted an Apple patent with screenshots of their in-house tool for creating resolution independent user interface themes. # 8th January 2007, 11 pm

If your average iPod weighs five ounces with packaging, then Apple has moved about 21,875,000 pounds of them, equivalent in weight to 1,325 full-grown male African elephants, 35 times as many as Hannibal’s force.

Paul Ford # 8th January 2007, 1:46 pm

2006

What is the physically smallest and cheapest laptop capable of running OS X?

Apple rumors are worth approximately nothing, but there’s one going around that a ultra-slim 12“ MacBook Pro is going to be announced at MacWorld Expo some time in the second week of January; might be worth holding on until then to see if there’s any truth to it. There’s certainly a 12” sized hole in the line-up at the moment.

[... 81 words]

So long Safari?

All browsers have bugs—especially relating to fancy JavaScript stuff. Any truly complex web application is likely to run in to browser bugs, and fixing them takes a whole bunch of time. Bugs in IE and Firefox are pretty well understood, as are the workarounds for them.

[... 317 words]

2005

Providing Application Access to SQL Data in Apple Remote Desktop 2 (via) Interesting—Apple’s Remote Desktop 2 runs off a PostgreSQL database. # 3rd March 2005, 10:28 am

2004

Daring Fireball: Security Cannot Be Spun. Apple’s communication handling of the recent security problem was atrocious. # 31st May 2004, 4 am