My guess is that most Mac users have never used a lot of AppleScript. I never have and I think the reason is that I don’t want to invest the time to learn a new language syntax to occasionally automate a task in OSX. However, MacDevCenter has figured out a way to Replace AppleScript with Ruby, so now might be the time to leverage some Ruby skills to create some kickass “AppleScripts”!
The latest version of Parallels is now out of beta and available for download. There are some great new features in this version and is definitely worth the free upgrade! If you don’t already own Parallels, it is fantastic software that is worth a purchase.
Keyboard Cleaner is a simple freeware application that disables your keyboard so you can give it a good cleaning!
Mac’s have some of the simplest and most effective software applications available for any platform. Case in point is a free application by Freeverse called Think. It task is simple, hide all of the OS and any open application except for one. The app you choose to focus on is presented on top of a black background and all other open apps are hidden behind the black background. This hides all the distractions of web browsers, IM and email clients, etc. Think makes it easy to switch between active applications and even to temporarily peek into another open app. And the UI is terribly simple! Check it out!
Here is a quick little screencast I prepared that shows how the just released Parallels Desktop RC2 coherence mode just got way better. In a nutshell, a couple of small tweaks gets rid of that nasty old Windows Taskbar. Clicking on the Parallels dock icon opens up the Start Menu.
How to be an XCoder is a free open-source book by Bert Altenburg, Alex Clarke and Philippe Mougin that will help you learn Objective-C with Xcode. If you have ever had any interest in writing desktop applications for OSX, this may be a good place to start.
If you build cool hardware the community will build cool software. Apple and their community of developers are proving this with this Backlit Keyboard CPU Load Monitor. The MacBook Pro keyboard has the ability to glow in low light. This is a fantastic feature that helps you see the keys when you are in a dark room (I know, by now I should know where all the keys are). This little utility changes this behaviour by adjusting the brightness of the keyboard backlight to reflect the amount of CPU usage!
[Link via Eric D]
Safari Screenshot Compatibility Test is yet another way to test your websites in Safari. The nice feature about this service is that the result is returned in only a couple of seconds. The others I have used take up to a couple of minutes.
OK - so this is probably illegal, but who cares anyhow! Take a Screenshot of DVD Player in OS X. Apple prevents you from taking screenshots of DVD’s using the typical method of command-shift-3, but a simple UNIX command from a Terminal window will do the trick!
Your new Mac makes an excellent web application development system and a great database to power that web app is MySQL. O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter has an article that will help you with Managing MySQL on Mac OS X. Their coverage includeds installing mySQL then getting a GUI based tool to manage your databases.
