After setting up dropbox to sync 1password I thought “why not bookmarks?”. Well, OS X makes it easy.
What I’ve done is sym link the bookmark.plist and histroy.plist to drop box. Symbolic links work like this in the terminal,
ln -s [TARGET DIRECTORY OR FILE] [SHORTCUT]
Here are the two easy steps I used to sync Safari Bookmarks and History.
$ cd ~/Library/Safari/
$ ln -s ~/Dropbox/Safari/Bookmarks.plist Bookmarks.plist
$ ln -s ~/Dropbox/Safari/History.plist History.plist
Here’s a screenshot of the result.
To Sync, since it wont be done automatically. Just restart your browser.
Warning: I haven’t tested this extensively but it seems to work great. After a day on my work computer I just come home to restart webkit, the bookmarks then are updated..
If you find yourself getting frustrated with Handbrake constantly crashing on your DVD ripping, don’t worry. First, there are plenty of new DVDs that quit handbrake, so you’re not alone. Second there are other solutions, I’m sure how on Linux or Windows but on the Mac it’s easy.
We’ve had the Tivo HD for a few weeks now and this post has waited just as long. I initially wanted to post about the unpacking, setup and all it’s features; like a real review. Instead I’m going to make this short since the Tivo HD has been exhaustively reviewed around the web already.
Setup:
In order to get HD you’ll either need an OTA HD tuner or HD cable cards from your cable provider. I called our cable provider shortly after the online order and they stated all I needed to do was pick the two cards up from the local store, and as expected that was completely wrong. TW requires that someone to come out and spend about 1.5 hours sitting there waiting for the cards to activate after spending the first five minutes inserting the cards into the TivoHD and calling “home base”.
The experience of the cable card install wasn’t the best through Time Warner, especially since I had to call twice for them to reset the cards which resolved one card from not picking up our premium channels but we then had to have another tech come out in between sunrise and sunset to do nothing but call and get the second card to reset so the channels would show.
It also turns out that the techs for TW in our area do not work for TW directly, they’re just on contract with the company. I found this out because initially they said they don’t install cable cards on anything but TV sets. The guys were nice so they went ahead but I could see this being a huge problem since TW is required to provide cable cards but the contracted companies have policies of their own.
Luckily our cards are not Scientific America cable cards since a lot of people are having issues with artifacts and blocking. Time Warner gave us motorolla cards.
Use:
It’s a Tivo and that’s why I bought it. It’s very easy to use and very responsive. The only thing I wish they would add is PIP for the Tivo menu, that’s something I miss on the old TW moxi box and it’s just annoying to leave a show in order to get a season pass setup. With that aside it’s wonderful, did I mention it’s easy to use. The ease of use can be contributed not only by it’s navigation or season passes but it’s other features, e.g. suggestions.
I’m very surprised with the capacity the 160GB drive can hold, we have 98 suggested shows that Tivo has recorded for us and another 4 hours of HD content. It’s not like we’ll ever watch that much but the wonderful thing is if we sat down to watch TV and we had nothing pre-recorded the chances are we’re going to find something we like. Even a show we’ve never heard of could be suggested and it would turn out great.
Tivo Tranfers:
One of the best features, that we’re using a lot of since we have our Apple TV, is the ability to transfer the recordings to a computer and then export them for “archival” or playback on other devices, like an iPod. We use this a lot for Avery’s shows, this way she’s able to watch he show while I’m on the computer with her. It works on the mac BTW.
Conclusion:
If you want a PVR and you have HD I would strongly recommend a Tivo HD. The cable boxes I’ve dealt with in the past are slow and very clunky. The cost is of the box is $299 msrp but just a few days after the release I was able to purchase mine through Circuit city at $260 so I’m sure they’ll be lower this holiday. The one thing you need to expect is the subscription cost, it’s about the price of the HD box rental from your cable company (about $13). For us since we already have a Tivo the second is discounted to $7 a month (our first was already specially discounted so we’re not paying more then $15 a month).
Tivo is also actively developing new features through it’s beta programs, which I may or may not be a part of.
This has got to be the best review/article on the age old debate of Linux vs. Mac. The article is extensive but the conclusions on the topic mimic my sentiments exactly.
In the following pages, they lead a guided tour of the two OSes, paying particular attention to eight important areas: Installation & Migration; Hardware Support & Power Management; Networking, Web & Wireless; Productivity; Entertainment; Security; Working With Windows (because we couldn’t completely ignore Microsoft); and Stability, Backup & Disaster Recovery.
Which is the better OS? Only you can decide –but you’ll make a more informed decision after you’ve taken this tour, and you’ll discover you have some companions on your journey.
I will admit I have not completed the entire article, I have skimmed and read the beginning and end but it is something I want to go back and finish. I also don’t think anyone can conclude that either writer is biased because from what I’ve read the entire article plainly exposes the downsides of each platform in almost every major factor of any OS. It’s really apparent within the conclusions which they make the reader decide what’s best for them.
The conclusion of the review that mimics my take exactly (spoiler alert):
Conclusions: Linux
Linux gives you freedom on many levels: the freedom to tinker, the freedom to work without arbitrary constraints on your system setup, and the freedom to make decisions about nearly every aspect of your system.That freedom does come at a cost, though — the cost of a certain degree of effort. I haven’t yet dealt with a single Linux install that didn’t require me to edit some configuration file somewhere. That said, the amount of effort required to get the Linux system you want (or need) has gone down enormously with time.
If the freedom to use your PC in as unhindered a way as possible is important to you, that’s what Linux delivers — although keep in mind it comes with a learning curve, one that is still flattening out rather slowly.
– Serdar Yegulalp
Conclusions: Mac
If you believe that open source is a moral choice — and many people do — then buying Apple is making a deal with the devil. Apple is arguably the most proprietary hardware / software company in the industry, despite Mac OS X’s origins in BSD Unix, and the products’ compliance with many industry standards.You think Microsoft locks users in? At least with Microsoft you can buy a PC from a huge number of big and small vendors, or build your own from components. With the Mac, you buy your PC from Apple, you buy your operating system from Apple, and you’re also encouraged to buy your mouse, keyboard, display, audio device, and smartphone from Apple, all at an Apple Store where you can get Apple service.
But if you’re willing to live with lock-in, Apple is a great choice for computing. Installation isn’t a problem — Apple does it for you. Networking is easy. Productivity is a dream. The Mac offers a broad variety of entertainment options. It’s a secure platform. It interoperates well with Windows. It’s highly stable, and offers solid backup choices for the data losses that are inevitable on any computing platform.
Right now, Apple is smokin’, and its customers are happy. But if the Apple gets rotten and starts coming out with inferior products — as it did in the ’90s — its customers will have the choice of suffering, or making the painful switch to another platform.
Until then, I’m sticking with the Mac. It’s a great computer.
– Mitch Wagner
Well said…most of you know where I stand but no platform is perfect and it’s up to the user to decide what they value the most.
Yesterday I e-mailed TLAS about the conversation happening over on one of my posts. Without entirely reading the entire post they noticed a “mac fan” was criticizing them for their stance on Apple and how it clearly biased their Apple news reporting. Chris responded with,
Mac fanboys are all trolls, and well, I try not to feed the trolls.
He is obviously feeling insecure about his “Mac faith” so he needs to
attack us to rally the troops so that they can reassure him that his Mac
life style is worth basing his entire self worth around it. The sad part
is I feel sympathy for that poor man, he does not even realize thats
what he is doing. So I say let them spin their own wheels, they aren’t
getting anywhere and it’s fools like him that killed resexcellence.com.
He is the very type of person that nailed that coffin shut.Thanks anyways man! You rock,
You’ll notice he didn’t understand I was the “fool”ish “troll” that he had “sympathy” for. I had originally wrote it off because it seemed to me he was just lumping me with any mac fanatic and I wasn’t about to defend them. But it turns out that he just lumps any person in the mac community into this description.
I come to this conclusion after digging around at resexcellance and seeing Phill Ryu’s post about Bryan Lund.
I’m going to grab some of my comments form the original post here. The tweet was about how the show has a direct anti-apple stance. And with reading Phill’s post, remembering the marketing ploy and the comments about the issue it’s clear to me that TLAS motivations to keep Apple down is entirely personal.
After just a few days of using the Apple TV I’m thoroughly impressed. The major reason I purchased the Apple TV was because of all the hacking that’s been going on and with Apple practically saying, “it’s your box do what you will” we can expect some more great hacks, if running full OS X wasn’t enough. I had planned at least to install some Xvid/divX playback through a very simple hack but involves cracking the case open. Instead of jumping right into doing that I’ve instead planned to just use it as intended.
I already live out of iTunes so the unsupported codec didn’t pose a big problem. All my TV Shows have already been encoded for iPod playback so 90% of my video was ready for use. The other 10% had been movies I ripped to DivX to playback on your Heleos DVD player. I truly dislike re-encoding video especially when the original format is already compressed (divX) but I tested out a few conversions and they looked great.
It took me a day or two to export 30-40 movies straight from Quicktime through the “Apple TV” export setting on my MacPro and I’m positive that exporting this much video isn’t practical for the majority. Especially since my assumption would be the majority having more video than I and wouldn’t have a fast pc or mac that could export 10 videos at a time.
After getting all my video to a codec that the aTV supported the device shines. The one problem I have now is whether to export my future video for iPod or aTV. It should be easy since I’m not getting rid of cable anytime soon so I’ll just export any full HD downloads for the aTV (like Lost or Sapranos), otherwise all other TV downloads will go for my iPod which I use daily at work. And all movies will be exported through QT Pro or if it’s a DVD I’ve found ripping it straight to from handbrake is the ideal process.
Quality of converted HD content looks surprisingly good. I downloaded a full HD tv show and converted it’s original format to h.264 through QT pro. After streaming it over wireless, on a g network might I add the video looked great. I didn’t notice any difference in quality from the original format of HD DivX playback on my computer then through the aTV.
Another majorly mentioned drawback to the aTV is streaming HD over wireless. Some say that anything lower then a n network wont work but I’ve got a G network streaming video perfectly fine with about 5 seconds of beginning buffer and solid fast forwarding. It takes forever for iTunes to sync with it in the beginning since it sends 30+GBs of data but ever since I’v had no need to drop a cable.
In conclusion the aTV doesn’t have any drawbacks (for me), other then the minor process of waiting 30-50 minutes for converted HD downloaded video to be supported. And it’s wonderful not having to worry about burning DivX cds or finding a CD/DVD to play some kid video. With it’s simple interface we can pull up a full media library from upstairs on our TV in seconds.
Including in that library is podcasts, photos and images. Watching video podcasts is great. I only wish now that I had a faster internet connection so I can drop cable TV and just download all our HD shows to playback on the aTV. Or what would help, HD content downloads from iTunes.
I’ll still be following the Apple TV hacking scene and I’m sure they’re going to compel me to break the box soon.In the meantime I’ll order a new 2.5′ drive so I can keep the factory drive untouched.
Apple usually makes me regret my new purchases after a new rev but this time the $1500 price difference makes my Quad purchase months back easy to handle. Especially since I can go out and upgrade to the 2xQuad core CPUs with my current Mac Pro at a later time when they are less expensive.
I wonder how the 8-core price compares to other workstations, I know the quad was/is very competitively priced for what’s built in.
I’m in need of a laptop for with small form factor, 2 gigs of ram and can run fedora without any hassles. I’ve looked at Lenovo, Sony, R3 and Jared recommends this one but I just can’t find anything better then a black macbook. fedora supports the new intel macs and I’ve yet to find any compatibility issues. The form factor and design is the sealer for me, although I’d prefer the thinkpad design. And with the price being a few hundred less at around $1,500 I can’t figure a better buy.
What aI really want is a 3 gig laptop but the leap from two to three is at least $500.
A bonus would be that it still runs OS X and boot camp. So I could potentially have a triple boot system with Windows, Linux and OS X. At first I will be only running fedora and VMware, I wonder if compiz will work.
I missed my blogoversary on Sunday, thanks to my live archives for reminding me. 3 years earlier on that day I posted about “Best Buy not a Best Bet” with iBlog on Sara’s old mac laptop. It’s not a great post but it’s fun to look back and remember how that page looked so long ago in relation to this site. Best yet, it’s serves as an awesome reminder of Tim for me; telling me I needed a comment system on that old iBlog so he could coment on his experience, since that “friend” in the post was him.
