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Apple Refreshes Mac Mini – Goes Insane on Price Differences

CoCaman — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:55:19 +0000

First things first: Apple refreshed their Mac Mini computer. Nice upgrade I have to admit. But there is also a downside. And as so often it lies in the price…

Update: as journalist and Apple user Thomas Benkö just noted, are the new prices CHF 300.- higher than for the old system.

Country	US-Dollar ($)	Swiss Franc (CHF)	Euro (€)	Difference
USA	$699	CHF 798	€ 572
Switzerland	$876	CHF 999	€ 717	+ 25%
Germany	$988	CHF 1’128	€ 809	+ 41%
France	$976	CHF 1’113	€799	+ 39%
Spain	$952	CHF 1’085	€779	+ 36%
Canada	$725	CHF 828	€595	+ 4%

Of course the US and Canada prices do not include taxes (usually around 10-15%). But even with that added, the Swiss Mac Mini is 10% more expensive.
I am particularly sorry for my German friends…

Apple and iOS #fail

CoCaman — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:16:20 +0000

Steve Jobs is currently speaking at the WWDC in San Francisco. And he just announced renaming of iPhone OS to iOS. Makes sense. The mobile operating system runs on iPhone, iPad, iPod. But there is one problem.

iOS, or better IOS is an operating system owned and used by Cisco. True, go check out the Wikipedia article. I’ll wait.

So, how will Apple fix this?

Update: Thanks to Ed for the solution

“Cisco has agreed to license the iOS trademark to Apple for use as the name of Apple’s operating system for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad,” said Cisco spokeswoman Kristin Carvell

So Apple simply pays a boatload of cash to Cisco for the rights to use it. Surprised?

Apple Announces iPad Prices for Switzerland

CoCaman — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:55:07 +0000

Fresh of the ticker, these are the prices for the iPad in Switzerland. Pre-order starts on May 10th, delivering by end of May 2010.

	iPad with Wifi	iPad with 3G
16 GB	649.-	799.-
32 GB	779.-	929.-
64 GB	899.-	1049.-

(Table 1: iPad prices in Switzerland, in Swiss Francs)

Prices are roughly 30% over the US price. Not that bad in my humble opinion. Still won’t buy one

Thanks to Patrick for the list.

Apple iPad on 24?

CoCaman — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:31:24 +0000

When the iPad was publicly announced in January 2010, a producer of Fox’ tv action series “24″ reported on Twitter that they are working hard to get the iPad on the show. And now that the US launch of the iPad is less then a week away, I start to wonder, I we will see the device in action this Monday, as the fourteenth episode of season 8 is airing. Wouldn’t that be some great treat for the Apple and 24 fanboys? Watching Jack defuse a bomb with his iPad and Chloe hacking some firewall with the tablet?

Let us do some math. The last episode (ever) of 24 will be aired on May 24h. Production date of that episode will be around April 9th, several days after the availability of the iPad. That’s 45 days in between. Now lets calculate from the iPad event in January to next Monday’s episode: 62 days. Minus a few days/weeks of negotiation with Apple, it could very well be, that Apple’s iPad will have an appearance on 24 this coming Monday.

iPhone not a Trademark in Switzerland

CoCaman — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:10:01 +0000

That was surprising. According to an article in a newspaper here in Switzerland (available online in German), the iPhone, or its name, can not be registered as a trademark in Switzerland. The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property has ruled, that the word “phone” is used in the English and French languages as a word for “telephone” or “phone calls”. And the Apple typical “i” in front a product is to unclear or not defined. So could the “i” stand for “I” or for “Internet”. This means, that “iPhone” stands either for “my phone”, “I am make phone calls” or for “phone with Internet capabilities”.

Apple argued that other words led by an “i” have been approved for a trademark. The institute acknowledged that some of these names are purely descriptive.
Apple now has the right to fight against this decision at the Federal Court.

Photo (CC) by Jeffery Simpson, via @hediger

It Happened – I Turned Into An Apple Fanboy [Update]

CoCaman — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:51:48 +0000

Update: Amazon.com now says In stock on November 8, 2009 and the delivery date has shifted to November 23, 2009 – December 5, 2009. Nice

I can not explain it. It just somehow happened. After being a Mac user for over 1.5 years, I turned into a fan boy. How I can tell? Because I ordered the Magic Mouse and I can’t wait to have it my hands. But I have to wait. According to an email, arrival date is between December 1st and 10th. That is one month from now. Hell! I want my super magic mouse now!

XCode and Qt Integration

CoCaman — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:05:16 +0000

Just a few links so I will not lose them:

http://blogs.seapine.com/yan/integrating-qt-documentation-into-xcode-30.html
http://code.google.com/p/xcode-tokens-from-qtdocs/

Note: Documentation for Qt 4.5.2 was in “/Developer/Documentation/Qt/html/“.

Qt is still not as tight integrated as Java in Eclipse, but I am getting there

Ditching iPhoto’s integrated Flickr Uploader

CoCaman — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:11:00 +0000

Can you imagine how sad it is, to see your photos being deleted from your Flickr photo stream? This happened a few times to me lately. Why you ask? Well it seems that once a photo is no longer in your iPhoto Library, it will be deleted on Flickr. No matter if you just moved the library from your internal hard drive to a an external drive.
After contacting Flickr the team responded with this mail:

Our records show that these photos were deleted from your computer. If you have deleted photos from Iphoto and you have synced with Flickr, they are deleted from Flickr. Once a photo is deleted it cannot be restored.

The problem seems to be that the iPhoto Flickr uploader has permissions to delete photos. I have no idea if this is a “feature” or a bad design decision. I tend to think it is the second.

So after reading blogs and forums I have decided to de-authorize the uploader to my Flickr account and remove the Flickr albums from my iPhoto. Then I bought Connected Flow’s FlickrExport for iPhoto. Not a cheap software but I hope it is worth my money. In contrast to the built-in Flickr uploader, Flickr Export does not have delete rights to my account. Hopefully this will prevent loss of photos.

Snow Leopard Pro-Order Now

CoCaman — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:52:27 +0000

The Swiss Apple Online Store has just re-opened after being down for over one hour. And what Twitter users pre-told is true. You can pre-order Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) and it will ship by August 28 (at least in Switzerland). Of course I’ve already ordered my copy

Now Digitec needs to hurry up with my hard drive and my memory upgrade!

Here is a video that shows some of the new features in Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Breaking the Network: SSH Server as Proxy for Secure Browsing

CoCaman — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:39:18 +0000

Our university LAN is pretty restricted. You can only access the most basic ports like http (80), ftp (21), ssh (22), pop3, imap and so on. But what if you need another port like a port to manage a webserver?
After some tuning and searching we came up with the almost perfect solution. And it is very easy but effective.
All you need is

A UNIX (Linux/Ubuntu for example) server with a SSH server and your account
Firefox 3.5 (works with earlier versions)
FoxyProxy Addon for Firefox

Install Foxyproxy and restart Firefox. If you install Foxyproxy later, the windows below will look differently! You will than have to use the settings below and add regex and so on later.

First open a xterm console and enter the following command:

ssh -C2qTnN -D @

Now edit your Firefox proxy settings under

Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Connection -> Settings

In this window enter the following values:

Enter localhost or 127.0.0.1 as the server and as port the number you used in the SSH command.

I used a regex https?://.*:2083/.* that checks any URL I visit and if it matches, the “SSH Proxy” is activated. Of course the SSH connection has to be open to work. You can alter my regex and use any other port like 10000 for Webmin or 443 and that will redirect ALL SSL traffic trough your SSH server.

This works like a charm and is almost perfect. Next thing is to have the SSH connection being started directly by Foxyproxy.

Settings for non Foxyproxy users

If you do not want to use Foxyproxy, your proxy window should look like this:

Make sure you only enter the IP address or localhost in the Sockets proxy section! If you try this and it wont work, enter about:config in your browser bar and search this entry: network.proxy.socks_remote_dns and set it to true. Without Foxyproxy you will not be able to define different proxy server or use the proxy server based on rules/regular expressions. All your traffic will be routed trough your SSH server. And this could make surfing slower and your downloads even slower.

Some information from calomel.org. Thanks to Christian for testing and researching with me.

Mac OS X: Finder fails to connect to Windows File Server

CoCaman — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:12:33 +0000

I am having trouble connecting to our Windows File Server for a couple of days now. Finder always gives me this error message:

Changing my password or using the server’s ip did not solve the problem. Next I tried to connect with the command line tools smbclient. That worked perfectly. But what the hell? I want to use Finder to connect to the server.
Has anybody an idea what the problem could be or what else I can try?

Mac Support @ HSR

CoCaman — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:08:10 +0000

Wir supporten keine Mac Computer.

Problem für den Support: gelöst
Problem für mich: ungelöst

Apple Becomes The New Microsoft }(:-/)

CoCaman — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:23:36 +0000

Why?

MobileMe only works with Mail.app, iCal.app, iPhone, Microsoft Outlook. I very much doubt it that Apple will ever release an API for other applications to allow synchronize to MobileMe. And seriously? Yet another email? A @me.com? And what happened to video gallery .mac had?

On my Mac I use Mail.app, on my Windows machine I use Mozilla Thunderbird and my mobile is a Sony Ericsson. Contact and calendar sync is done via iSync to my mobile and via My Phone Explorer. Maybe it is time to call for a “notMe Challenge” (as they did for notMac Challenge).

Apple is just plain evil and all is about the money!

In contrast, Ray Ozzy and Microsoft will allow third parties and developers to develop add-ons, extensions and plug-ins to their Live Mesh Service.

Do you have a different opinion? Am I wrong? Tell me! Love to hear what you have to say.

Die ganze Welt weint : Urheberrechtsgebühr

CoCaman — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:57:42 +0000

Die ganze Welt? Nein, lediglich die schweizer Bevölkerung. Seit gestern ist definitiv klar, MP3 Player und HDD Recorder werden teurer. Wie Thomas “bö” Benkö für den Blick ausgerechnet hat (die Swico liste kopiert), wird auf einen iPod mit 80 GB ab September eine Gebühr von 40 CHF fällig. Und die Kommentare sprechen von “ohh wie ist die Schweiz teuer”, “wir lassen uns das auch noch gefallen” bohoo! Leute, vergleicht mal die Preise mit unseren Nachbarländern: Apple Hardware ist bei uns um einiges billiger.

Gerät	CH	DE	AT	FR	IT
Apple iPod 80 GB (+ 40 CHF)	499.-/539.-	605.10	621.50	621.50	605.10
Apple iPod Nano 8 GB (+41 CHF)	359.-/400.-	408.30	410.10	424.70	408.30
Sony RDR-HX950B, 250 GB HDD (+93 CHF)	516.10/609.-	616.60	659.50	n.V	n.V.

Alle Preise in CHF/Umrechnung durch den ZKB Online Rechner, am 12. Juli 2007

Der iPod mit 80 GB ist inklusive Urheberabgabe immer noch rund 10% billiger als in Deutschland.

Die Liste kann fast beliebig weiter geführt werden. Und ich bin mir sicher, dass sich kein Hersteller erlauben kann, 100% dieser Kosten an den Konsumenten zu übertragen. Und die Idee, Geräte ohne Harddisk zu verkaufen, wird sich nicht durchsetzen. Was passiert mit der Garantie, wenn ich das Gerät öffne?

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Apple iTunes Movie store launches (sorta)

CoCaman — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 14:43:53 +0000

Source: http://phobos.apple.com/showtime/showtime.html

Transporter 2
Red Eye

Check this xml for more movies

Edit:
Apple has already put a 403 (Access Denied) on the important folders…