extended attributes, spotlight and xcode screenshots

If you shall find yourself wondering, as i did, how exactly does Xcode know which device too what screenshot from the ones it manages the answer is simple, it just saves extended attributes for the files with the device id under com.apple.DTDeviceKit.screenshot.device_id e.g. [valexa@VAiMac:~] $ xattr -l /Volumes/Storage/Screenshots/Screenshot\ 2010.07.13\ 01.43.57.png com.apple.DTDeviceKit.screenshot.device_id: 5a14571ebe34512345b7345e13454a Finder being finder …

refresher on resource forks

Resource forks are a strange beast, while Apple started moving away from them (around 10.4) and migrated to HFS Attributes, software like Adobe’s Photoshop still save (can be disabled in Preferences > File Handling) file previews as resource forks, here is a refresher on how to view, find and delete resource forks. You can see is a file has …

getting positive software feedback

It has been proven that the drive to give feedback on something is strongly polarized, that is the feedback is shaped by strong feelings either positive or negative, which makes sense, the people with median feelings do not care enough to give feedback, it should come as no surprise that this mechanic is relevant to …

Off by 7%

I noticed something quite strange today, almost a year since Apple launched their Magic Trackpad their marketing materials on the website do not depict the actual device correctly in terms of proportions. Don’t get me wrong, a 7% width difference from the promotional images to that of the actual device is a far cry from …

discrete graphics and you

In 2010 Apple introduced a feature in MacBooks with the aim of extending battery life “Automatic graphics switching” that switches between using either the integrated Intel GPU  inside the CPU or the standalone discrete AMD/Nvidia GPU. The exact conditions however that make it switch one or the other were never clearly stated by Apple, and there …

iOS and vectorial artwork

Any conscious iOS developer wants his artwork to look as good as possible, and with the retina display for example we were told to upgrade our artwork to higher resolution, which involved alternative @2x versions for each file and gets daunting fast if you have a lot of artwork files, and especially if a lot …

iphone signal testing with code

Closest cell tower 1 Km, iPhone 3G, Wi-fi mode, iOS 4.0, Orange network. With device held gently by edges: signal avg 90 (outdoor, line of sight to cell tower, same altitude) signal avg 8O (indoor, line of sight to cell tower, same altitude) signal avg 60 (indoor, no line of sight to cell tower, same …

how to make your iOS device read stuff

Here is a little handy tip to make your device speak textual content with almost acceptable computer voice: Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Triple-click home to “Toggle VoiceOver” or “Ask” if you want to get a dialog asking wether to turn it On/Off (remember that tapping is done by double-tapping when voiceover …

enforcing iAd implementations

There seems to be a significant issue with the iAd implementation at the moment, the ads themselves are not cached on the operating system, and that has two major implications: 1 – ads can be disabled by the user by just turning off the network connection 2 – the user has incentive to disable ads …