apple « Irfan’s Corner on the Web

11Nov/090

Buy Cheap Storage from Google and use it for Online Backup

Today, Google has dramatically decreased prices for the extra storage you can purchase for Google Services like Gmail and Picasa. The current prices:

Screen shot 2009-11-11 at 10.25.53.png

Apple also provides upgrade options for iDisk and MobileMe Mail, however their prices are significantly more expensive an extra 60GB from Apple will set you back for an additional £59 (~ $100), while Google for 80GB charges only $20!.

So you might think that Apple's iDisk is atleast accessible from everywhere, while Google Storage can't be accessed as a drive? Think again, this is how:

For Mac Users:

Install gDisk. gDisk provides an accessible application for mounting your gmail drive on your mac.

For Linux Users:

The most popular way for Linux users to mount Gmail storage locally is to use FUSE. If your on ubuntu, this is how to do it

sudo apt-get install gmailfs
cp /etc/gmailfs/gmailfs.conf ~/.gmailfs.conf
chmod 600 ~/.gmailfs.conf

Now specify your gmail account credentials in ~/.gmailfs.conf and to finally mount the drive, just type:

mkdir gmail
mount.gmailfs none gmail

For Windows Users:

Just like for the Mac there are applications available like gDrive Shell Extension

Filed under: apple, google No Comments

13Jul/091

Strange issue in Safari 4

I've been facing this issue since the last couple of weeks.
When I open a webpage in Safari 4, the page becomes "gray-scaled" after a couple of seconds.
See the attached screenshots on what I mean.
Once I load Google News, this is the page I get.

Picture 2.png

After a few seconds, it turns into this ugly site:

Picture 3-1.png

Anyone faced this issue yet?

Tagged as: safari 1 Comment

18May/090

Apple Mail Tip: Speed up your Apple Mail

Tim Gaden has documented an excellent tip to speed up Apple Mail.

It involves optimising the SQLite database Apple Mail uses to store indexes and subject lines of emails.

You can check your current 'envelope archive' size by entering this in the terminal:

ls -lah ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index

Then to optimise it (cleans out stuff that has been marked for deletion but not actually deleted, defragments the structure, etc):

sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

Then check your envelope archive size again to see the results…

ls -lah ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index

It compacted my envelope archive down from 55MB to 50MB — not a huge increase, but the speed difference was dramatic.

In particular, my 'sent mail' folder which had been taking 10 - 15 seconds to open (8,000 items) now only takes two or three seconds.

Read the full post and many informative comments here.

Tagged as: mac No Comments

26Mar/091

Is there really a App Store refund policy? I don’t think so!

Today morning I read a blog post at Techcrunch on App Store refund policy. The article stated that "users can get a refund within 90 days, according to Apple policy". I was glad to hear that as I had purchased various iPhone apps, which I frankly did not require at all.

I asked for a refund for two applications. For one I got it, and the mail clearly stated that the refund was a "one time exception" only and all sales are final. See attached Screenshot.

Picture 6.png

For the other application I got this mail:

Picture 8.png

Both Apps were bought within 90 days, so why would TechCrunch state that there is an Apple policy? Am I missing something?

Tagged as: iPhone 1 Comment

16Feb/090

Upgraded to iLife ‘09

I've just upgraded to iLife '09. Over the next few posts, I will evaluate each component of iLife '09, with the exception of iMovie and Garageband, because I've never used these in iLife '08.

Tagged as: iLife, mac No Comments

11Feb/090

Setting up an Ad Hoc Wireless network with Internet Sharing in OSX 10.5

There are numerous benefits of setting up a wireless network with internet sharing. I set one up today, because I wanted to sync various iPhone applications with the Computer. Many applications on the iPhone sync when they are run while their desktop client software is running in the computer, and the iphone is connected via USB. One of such applications is Things. However some other applications like 1Password sync only via a wireless LAN. At my office, I have a wired ethernet connection, so I setup a wireless ad hoc network and all my iphone application sync'ed smoothly. Some other colleagues connected to my wireless aswell and enjoyed a performance of 4Mbps. On the iphone I got over 3Mbps speed, a lot faster than 3G.

Setting up a wireless connection on the mac is easy, and only two steps are requires:

1, Enable Internet Sharing

Go to System Preferences > Sharing.

Enable Internet Sharing and select the interface from which you want to share connection (In my case it was ethernet), and then select the interface through which it will be shared (In my case its the Airport, which is the default for wireless ad hoc networks). A screenshot is shown in the following picture.

Picture 5.png

2. Setup a wireless adhoc network

Go to the Airport Icon in the Desktop and select
"Create Network". Define a name, and specify a password (if you want one). The built in airport can only create WEP ad hoc networks.

Filed under: apple, networking No Comments

9Feb/090

Zinio for the iPhone is a good idea but…

I tried to access my magazine subscriptions on Zinio from the iPhone. It turns out that Zinio has a special website for iPhone users, and the website does display the content in a manner which is suitable for viewing from an iPhone.

But the actual text is horrendous. The displayed text is a compressed bitmapped image, rather than vector based text as in a PDF. This is a problem because once you zoom into the text you start seeing a lot of "noise" surrounding the text, and when you zoom out you don't see the noise, but you don't see the text clearly as well, as shown in the screenshots.

As a general rule, you should only use bitmapped based formats for static displays ie. an image sized at only 1024x780. However if some scaling maybe involved, one should always go for vector based formats, because it is redrawn at every size.