Posts Tagged: apple

Misc — Comments
14
May 10

Python 2.5 distutils, snow leopard and xcode making gcc happy

As many Python folks have discovered, upgrading to Snow Leopard can cause some pain for development. For the most part, this involves reinstalling a bunch of things (macports, python itself and whatever python packages you use). This has been a hassle for me, but up until today it was just time consuming, rather than actually difficult. Apparently if you upgrade xcode (like I did for the new iphone stuff), unless you explicitly choose the old SDK, xcode blows it away.

So today, while trying to compile multiprocessor on Python 2.5, I got this:

Compiling with an SDK that doesn’t seem to exist: /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk
Please check your Xcode installation

Which left me staring at the screen thinking “how the f**k do I fix THAT?” After poking through every file in multiprocessor and then googling quite a bit I finally found this message on the epd-users mailing list, which got me to the promised land.

From what I can gather there are two ways to fix this. One is to reinstall xcode and choose to include the older SDK. The other (and possibly scarier, depending on your taste for mucking around inside installed stuff) is to point distutils at the newer SDK. I did the latter: in a text editor, open up:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/lib/python2.5/config/Makefile

Then find all the instances of MacOSX10.4u.sdk and change that to something you do have installed. To see them just do

$ ls -la /Developer/SDKs/

If there’s nothing there, well, then you need to install xcode or you’re SOL. There should be four places to make the change in the Makefile. Finally, the newer compiler doesn’t seem to like the “-Wno-long-double” flag, so I had to the delete that as well. And voila, multiprocessor compiled (and I hope any other Python package that I try to install that needed the gcc).

Misc — Comments
28
Jul 09

Is it me, or are monitor and hdtv aesthetics backwards?

I’ve been poking around looking at 24 and 30 inch monitors. A few things jump out quickly in this kind of search, the first is that there aren’t actually very many 2560 res monitors out there (because really, what’s the point of a 1920 res 30″ monitor?) I have no idea what’s up with that, but there’s basically five or six choices and none of them are particularly new.

The second point that just baffles me is the disparity between the new HDTVs and large monitors. You basically have the really good Dell 24 and 30 inch screens, the Apple 24 inch LED and a whole bunch of 24 inch screens from everyone under the sun, and the aforementioned dearth of 30 inch monitors.

Samsung has multiple lineups of gorgeous LED HDTVs. Now, I get it, going higher res is harder and more expensive (or maybe it isn’t? I actually have no idea, it just like HAS to be, right?) but you’re already at 1920×1080. You’re telling me you can’t squeeze that to 1920×1200 in a 24 inch format that looks like this beauty??? Really? Look at that thing and then look at every other monitor out there and explain to me why a 24″ version of that wouldn’t be by far and away the best selling thing around? What am I missing? Why does my monitor still look like it was designed by an engineer at IBM in 1982 and my TV looks like it came off a Porsche drawing board? My aesthetics are completely the opposite. I don’t care what my TV looks like anymore. My TV went from a depth of two FEET to a depth of 2 INCHES in one purchase. And you know what? I can’t tell – cause I’m looking at the TV. My monitors are a completely different story. I have three on my desk and I also use my desk to read/write upon (yes, I mean with paper). The point is that the monitors are sharing their space with my other work aesthetics and it would be great if they didn’t look like they belonged in an M1 Abrams.

/rant

Misc — Comments
5
Jul 09

iPhone 3.0 still no lock screen options except for Rock Your Phone and not even that for 3GS

I kind of went crazy with iPhone software after I got a 3GS. The speed increase of the GS is staggering compared to the original iPhone and visibly faster than the 3G. With the speed bump I found my phone much more useable and I went on an activation and app downloading craze, including activating my work Exchange account. Exchange support seems to work quite well. I basically just turned it on, set it to sync mail, calendar and contacts and, aside from now having 2 of every contact everything just worked.

Now I felt all set, I could finally discard my work blackberry (surely someone else at the office could use it…) cause I had my work mail and calendar on my phone. I could even provision new cloud servers and SSH to our VPN’d production servers, if needed. Everything was great and amazing, a mobile technology and productivity marvel.

But something was missing. At first I wasn’t sure what. I knew I kept checking my phone for new mail and that it felt annoying. So I looked at the Blackberry on my desk and it was obvious. The iPhone, even 3.0, doesn’t update the lock screen with any information. Surely this must be a setting or something I thought. No. After searching endlessly through the settings and in Google it would seem the only good solution out there at the moment is Intelliscreen. Oh well I’ll just get Rock Your Phone and jailbreak my phone and get that! Nope. Rock Your Phone doesn’t support the 3GS, at the moment anyway.

One has to think that either Apple or Rock Your Phone will rectify this in the next 12 months, but it’s still quite annoying and it makes the Exchange support seem kind of half-assed. Apple is clearly aiming at Microsoft’s enterprise dominance and leaving out something as simple as better indication of whether or not one has new mail almost feels like a silly oversight.