28 Year Old Apple Virgin

iPhone SDK

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:44:33 +1100

Well a while ago Apple released the iPhone SDK and I can’t wait to get into it. This allows any developer to create applications that run directly on the Apple iPhone. You can download it here:

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

There are heaps of resourses on that page to get you going. I am writing an application that requires the use of a database. iPhone applications can use SQLite which is a light, opensource database engine that writes directly to the disk which makes it perfect for the iPhone. I could not find any Apple documentation on how to use SQLite on iPhone but found this helpful little blog post:

SQLite for iPhone SDK

I’ll report back on how I have gone with my application soon.

Later,

Seb.

Clipper - OSX Clipboard History Utility

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:16:25 +1100

First of all, Sorry I have taken so long to post about clipper after I posted the video. I just chucked the video up then got distracted with other stuff. Anyway, If you’ve watched the video and installed Clipper I’m sure you’ve seen how handy the tool is. I use it all the time.

Also, sorry the top of my screen is cut off. It look like the screen capturing program that I use will not record the top menu bar of OSX…but I think you can see how it works anyway.

Here is the link to the download page: Clipper

A big Thank you to Ed Dale who twittered about this blog. It sure sent a lot of people my way. My viewership increased by 500%. It just goes to show how powerful Twitter is especially when there are internet guru’s posting about your site.

One problem with this blog is that none of my readers can post comments about my posts so I don’t get any feedback. I’d love it if this could be more of a conversation, however, Tumblr do not have this feature. Maybe since this blog is still pretty new, I could pick up and move to another blogging platfor that allows comments. What do you think? Please email me your thoughts at Sebastian.Windele@gmail.com

On the Mac front…I have been playing with Final Cut Express (FCE) and I must say it is very cool. Well I shouldn’t say I’ve been playing with it because I have actually been using it in a real life scenario. I have been editing together a wedding movie to give to my sister in law for Christmas.

The software is very good and easy to get the hang of. I watched a few tutorials on youtube and metacafe (especially videos by Izzy) and away I went.

I added titles to the movie with an awesome program called LiveType which comes with Final Cut Pro. The titles this program can create are sooo cool but I just stuck with a classic scroll in and dissolve out. It is a wedding movie afterall.

After finishing the video and titles I used iDVD that comes with OSX Leopard in iLife to make a DVD menu. It already had an awsome template for a wedding so I dropped my photos in and that was that. I burned the DVD and you would think it was done by a professional…OK, maybe that is going a bit far but its not bad for a hack.

I never got around to posting about google gadges for the OSX dashboard because I couldn’t get it to work :( I might try again later

Not sure what I’ll be posting about next but stay tuned.

Sebastian from 28yearoldapplevirgin.tumblr.com explains what the...

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:44:22 +1100

Sebastian from 28yearoldapplevirgin.tumblr.com explains what the clipper utility is, how to install it and how to use it.

Dashboard Widgets - Webclips

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:36:34 +1100

I’m well and truly up and running now. The slight hiccup at the start was a bit of a worry but I have not had a problem since. I’m still getting used to the way OSX works but have to tell you, I’m loving it.

One of the OSX features I really like is the dashboard widgets. At the moment I have:

Internet usage meter
TV guide
Gmail & Gcalendar
Weather
iTunes lyrics (displays lyrics of current song)
System Meter
PHP documentation

For those who don’t know, you hit F12 and you widgets appear in front of your running applications. There are many different widgets that you can download at http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ so I’m sure you’ll find just what your looking for there.

One of my favorite widgets is webclip. This is where you can create a live widget out of any web page or portion of a web page. Here the possibilities are endless. You could make one to watch an ebay item, to watch a stock price, to watch the music charts or anything else. Watch the video I posted that demonstrates how you can create a widget used watch a twitter blog on your dashboard. I’ll create a widget that watches my own Twitter blog at http://twitter.com/SebastianWindel (shameless plug…go ahead and follow me on Twitter).

I created the video right there on m mac using iMovie and it was super simple. I have never don any video editing before and it was very simple to quickly pick up. It uploads directly to youtube so that was perfect. I recorded the screen with a program called iShowU which was just as simple. I am loving the simplicity of the software that is made for Apple.

Next entry I will discuss how Google has just made it possible to use their Google widgets seamlessly with Apple Desktop Widgets….Stay tuned!

Mac OSX Leopard Webclip Widgets demonstration by Sebastian...

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:34:08 +1100

Mac OSX Leopard Webclip Widgets demonstration by Sebastian Windele at http://28yearoldapplevirgin.tumblr.com

My 2 day old Macbook Pro Died!

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:06:50 +1100

OK. So I got this new Macbook pro, quickly installed OSX Leopard and a bunch of other applications and began playing arround with all the hyped up Leopard features. One of the features I wanted to try out was Bootcamp. I wanted to install Windows XP via Bootcamp. “Why?” I hear you ask…Just because I wanted to see it in action. I am commited to converting to Apple OSX…Honest!

I started up bootcamp and followed the instructions as best as a newbie could be expected. I Selected a 10 GIG partition to put Windows XP on (I have since learned that this is not really enough and would use 32 GIG next time). I clicked Partition to move to the next step, poped in my Windws XP disc and hit GO. The machine was busy for a while, then rebooted to the Windows XP blue installer screen…All good. It spent a few minutes reading the XP disc then got to the screen where you choose the partition to install to. There was only 1 partition and it was 130 GIG. This seemed strange so I quit the installer. The machine rebooted and the process XP installer repeated. Same problem. I quit again, this time I held down he mouse button during startup so the XP disc would be ejected.

For a list of bootup key combinations for Macs click here.

The disc came out and I was presented with a plain grey screen. Nothing happened so I rebooted. Same grey screen…Not looking good. None of the boot key combos made any difference. I tried putting in the OSX Leopard disc and booting to that but it did not work…Same grey screen.

Time to phone Apple Support
I Apple a call and their techie got me to try a bunch of those bootup key combos but to no avail. Hesaid that the firmware must have been corupted and I should take it to an Apple service center. Noooooooooo. I have only had it for 2 days!

I took it to the service center and they promised they would look at it the next day. The next day the service technition called me to say the firmware on the main logic board was corrupt and could not be restored by any means. The machine required a replacement logic board (very expensive part). The part was ordered and installed 2 days later (at no cost to me). The hard drive also needed formating. I had to start over from scratch.

There is some info on this problem here on the Apple support forums. It says that you should check that it is XP with Service Pack 2 that you shouldbe using with Bootcamp because XP with Service Pack 1 would not work. Fair enough, I overlooked this but I don’t think it should have cost me my shinney new Macbook Pro.

I must admit that the service that Apple gave me after the thing died was very good. That is the only saving grace for this whole episode.

Now that I am up and running again, I’ll start talking about some applications I have started using and how an Apple virgin stumbles through them.

Macbook Pro Aquisition

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:05:00 +1100

This post may be a little long since I did muck arround a bit to get my Macbook Pro at best possible price, so if you are just interested in the final method/result, skip to the last paragraph summary.

As I stated in the intro, I decided to get my first Apple Mac and I settled on the Macbook Pro 15.4” 2.4Ghz setup. In Australia, this retails at AUD$3600. I also decided that I refused to pay top dollar for this machine. I never pay full retail price for anything. Where there is a will, there is a way.

The Aus dollar is very strong against the US dollar at the moment so I thought I’d try to get one from the US. The US version retails at US$2500 whic is about AUD$2700 (AUD$900 cheaper!). Now, I have imported computer gear from overseas before and had a lot of trouble getting it through customs without paying all sorts of tax and import duty on it so I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Another issue I had to deal with was that I needed and Tax Invoice with an Australian Business Number. I need this because I intend to salary sacrifice for the laptop. That means, I can pay for the laptop with my salary before income tax, thus reducing my income and income tax payable.

I sourced the machine I wanted on ebay for AUD$3299 ($300 cheaper than RRP) and the seller would handle the import, would give me a tax invoice with ABN. Not a huge saving but a saving none the less. The seller said I could pay a $100 deposit and then pay the ballance when picking it up in person. Sounds OK. I did “buy it now” and paid the deposit.

The ebay seller emailed me back a day or 2 later telling me that he had refunded my deposit because his supplier could not send him the machine so I was back to square one.

Leopard was to be released in 4 days of this happening. I rang rang my local Nextbyte store to ask them if I could order the Macbook on behalf of my mother (who is a teacher) so I could get a $300 education discount. They said yes and that I could still have a tax invoice in my own name. Great, Macbook Pro for $3300 from an Apple authorised reseller. I was all ready to purchase it when I asked them when I could come in and pick it up. four weeks was his response. No way! I wanted it now. I did a quick ring arround to all Apple resellers in Melbourne and they all had the same problem. None in stock and plenty of backorders. I phone Apple to ask why and they said that their resellers get an allocation of the machines and if they run out they have to wait. The Apple rep told me if I bought direct from Apple, it would ship within 24 hours. Done!

I decided I would buy through the Apple online store and try my luck with the educational discount. Also, a very interesting site is MoneyBackCo. This company gives you cash back on purchases from a massive number of online stores. For Apple they give you 3% cash back (GST portion is not included). The only catch is you must pay them $10 from your 1st cashback. It is legit and works well. Check the site for more info.

So I ended up paying $3219.03 for a RRP $3599 machine. I was quite happy with this. The order was placed and I waited for the call from Apple asking me to prove my educational discount eligability but it did not come. The order was placed on October 24th and I received the machine on October 26th with no questions asked!

I turned it on imediatly and was no longer an Apple virgin. Ahhhh. I could now order OSX Leopard for $12.50 using the Apple OSX up-to-date program. This arrived a few days later but since I had ordered it legitamatly, I felt comfortable installing it from a friends copy that arrived the same day as my Macbook Pro. Now I was really up and running.

Summary:
Purchased Apple Macbook Pro 15.4” 2.4Ghz that had RRP of $3599 for the price of $3219.03 via MoneyBackCo to the Australian Online Apple Store and applying the Apple Educational Discount of $300.

28 Year Old Apple Virgin

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:12:00 +1100

I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Sebastian Windele. I’m a 28 year old software developer living in Melbourne Australia. I have used windows based PC’s since high school and have never used let alone owned an Apple computer in my life. That is until now…My 8 year old noname PC died so I took the plunge and bought myself a shinny new Macbook Pro.

This Blog will follow my journey as a 28 year old Apple virgin. There is a lot for me to learn, and what I do learn I’ll talk about here in the hope that I help out many other Apple new comer’s.