apple of my i

NTFS write on Lion or Mountain Lion

What works

Tuxera and Paragon sell paid NTFS solutions on a Mac that just work with the best performance. I however used the free version of NTFS-3G on Snow Leopard without much issues. When I moved to Lion though, there were some errors.. and MacFUSE wasn’t maintained anymore.

What almost worked

So, I tried fuse4x with ntfs-3g and while it works fine most of the times, sometimes I got errors with writing large (>1G) files on an NTFS volume. Also, automounting didn’t work fine—I didn’t bother to troubleshoot that though. If you want to try this approach, I suggest you do this through homebrew, which is a wonderful package manager on Mac.. sort of like apt-get on Ubuntu. Once brew is installed, just do `brew install ntfs-3g`. This is what I remember doing.. and I think it pulled up fuse4x, and associated kexts etc. Anyway, I did `brew remove` for ntfs-3g and fuse4x.

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Developing on jailbroken iPhone 4S (5.1.1) with Xcode 4.4.1

First of all, the intent of this post is not to discourage iOS developers from creating a $99/yr developer account. Ultimately, all serious developers would and should. This post is meant to assist hobbyists or budding developers in their initial experimentation with a jailbroken iPhone to run their own apps.. at least until the time they get into serious iOS development. If you’re an Apple developer, chances are you love Apple and so, don’t do anything that harms Apple or the eco-system (includes developers).

The post is an update to http://www.alexwhittemore.com/developing-jailbroken-iphone-ios-401/. I sincerely thank Alex for writing a detailed post that helped me in successfully running my test apps, developed under Xcode 4.4.1 on Mountain Lion with my iPhone 4S (5.1.1). As I discovered, there were a few (minor) changes required for 5.1.1 on Xcode 4.4.1 since the original post was targeted at an older version of iOS (4.x) and Xcode.  I sort of struggled to get a definitive guide anywhere on the Internet, and many stated methods just don’t work with 5.1.1. If you notice any technical errors in the post or have suggestions, please add a comment or feel free to write to me at v dot tmp at me dot com.

Essentially, there are 10 broad steps to accomplish this task. I’m not providing detailed descriptions of these steps here and assume that you understand most of it—you’re a developer after all.  If you need further clarity, do refer to the original post by Alex Whittemore.

1. Jailbreak your iPhone 4S

   You can follow the instruction at the Greenpois0n site for jailbreaking your iPhone 4S (5.1.1). Works like a charm.. but do take a backup!

2. Install AppSync for iOS 5.0+

   Open Cydia, and add http://cydia.hackulo.us as a source. I installed version 2.2 by Dissident.

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Windows Surface: Just a shallow copy

“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

And then there are those who just try to immitate, and suck at that too.

Google was able to copy iOS.. well pretty much, but hasn’t been able to steal the idea from Apple. Microsoft on the other hand is trying hard to “imitate” Apple’s moves. And so, I wonder if the name “Surface” is a metaphor or some kind of self-deprecating humor. Having said that, I do believe that even with traditional BSoDs, Microsoft will probably enjoy some success with this product, if and when it comes out. Especially, at higher corporate altitudes where air is thin and intelligent life is difficult to find, and where MS Office is the raison d’être for most.

Watching the Surface launch event was both amusing and annoying to me. The part I found hillarious was watching Microsoft talk about design intricacies: 22 degree tilt, kick-stand’s click sound, etc. Microsoft and design in the same sentence!!??? Yep, the times, they are a-changin’. And what annoyed me of course was that Ballmer was so sober. I hope this isn’t a real change, just infatuation.. I really do.

There are reasons why I feel Micosoft Surface isn’t going to a successful tablet in the consume space:

The PC Baggage

Microsoft hasn’t for some reason understood the Post-PC paradigm yet. It just thinks in terms of PCs, and even after 2003 or 2010, it continues to believe that a tablet is just another form-factor for a PC. Here’s a quote by a popular frequent flyer named Ryan Bingham or George Clooney, as most of us might remember:

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