Python’s for/else
Ned Batchelder: As the loop executes, the “if” becomes like a giant if/elif/elif ladder: each time around the loop adds another test of the condition, but only if all previous tests were false. The...
View ArticleiPhone Accelerometer Keylogging
Chris Foresman: Researchers at Georgia Tech and MIT have developed a proof of concept to demonstrate that it is possible to record a computer user’s keystrokes using an iPhone 4’s accelerometer. The...
View ArticleTower 1.2
Tower, my primary Git client, now has views for file history and blame. I’m not really a fan of the popovers, though. Next up, I’d like to see searching of file contents.
View ArticleClouds
James Fallows: How could big tech companies offer cloud services to hundreds of millions of people without better guarding their data against catastrophic loss? On Google’s side, one explanation...
View ArticleDropbox API
Dropbox: Version 1 adds support for apps that can only read or write to a single folder in your Dropbox. You can rename or move this App Folder wherever you want in your Dropbox, and the app will keep...
View ArticleNSCompositingOperation at a Glance
Uli Kusterer: Today I broke down and just wrote a little NSView subclass that draws an example of all compositing operations. Feel free to download this image and print it out or whatever for future...
View ArticleGoogle Reader and Mac/iOS RSS Readers That Sync
Brent Simmons: But Google Reader has just changed, and some syncing RSS readers will lose some features, and I take that as a reminder that it could change in a way that breaks syncing, and Google...
View ArticleIf Flickr Had an Ego
Dave Winer: I wish every product had a spokesperson and ego behind it like the Kindle and iPad do. Take Flickr for example. It’s way ahead of all the other Internet photo apps. But its egos, Stewart...
View ArticleJohn McCarthy, RIP
October has been a sad month for developers: Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie (co-creator of C), and now the creator of Lisp. This xkcd seems apt. Jamie Zawinski: As the inventor of Lisp, the world’s...
View ArticleiPhone 4S Camera Comparison
Lisa Bettany (via John Gruber): A photo comparison from all iPhone version cameras (first generation iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, the new iPhone 4S), a point-and-shoot camera, the Canon S95...
View ArticleATPM 17.11
The November issue of ATPM is out: Cover Sponsors Welcome E-Mail MacMuser: Death of a Salesman MacMuser: Life Can Be So Cruel PEBKAC: On the Passing of Steve Jobs On a Clear Day, You Can See the...
View ArticleAnandTech’s iPhone 4S Review
Brian Klug and Anand Lal Shimpi: To re-state the evolution that Apple has taken with this design, the GSM/UMTS 4 had one transmit and receive chain, the CDMA 4 added a second receive chain for...
View ArticleApple’s Planned Obsolescence Schedule
Adam C. Engst: It’s not so much that iCloud is itself uninterested in the past, since Lion works on all Macs sold in the last 4 years or so. The problem is iOS, and the way Apple is keeping obsolete...
View ArticleGoogle Kills Its Other Plus
Andy Baio (via John Gruber): On Wednesday, Google retired a longer-standing “plus”: the + operator, a standard bit of syntax used to force words and phrases to appear in search results. The operator...
View ArticleThe Long-Term Failure of Web APIs
Nick Bradbury: I wrote the first version of HomeSite back in 1994, and seventeen years later I can still run it on the latest version of Windows. I created FeedDemon 1.0 in 2003, and it was the first...
View ArticleWhy the Mac App Sandbox Makes Me Sad
Pauli Olavi Ojala (via Peter Maurer): It’s important to note that these entitlements are granted by Apple, not by the user herself. App developers must provide justification for their entitlement...
View ArticleArsTechnica on Sandboxing
Chris Foresman: Sandboxing is designed to prevent apps from doing things that users do not intend—e.g., an exploited app taking over the network and being used for a denial-of-service attack. “Where...
View ArticleReal Security in Mac OS X Requires Apple-Signed Certificates
Wil Shipley has an excellent post about the bigger picture: The problem Mac developers are facing is that the two that Apple is enforcing on the Mac App Store (Sandboxing and Code Auditing) are...
View ArticleAlfred Powerpack and the Mac App Store
Andrew Pepperrell: Having the Powerpack in the Mac App Store would not only bring me more revenue, but it’s also a trusted discovery channel for new users – I *know* Alfred would have significantly...
View ArticleMacworld on Sandboxing
Lex Friedman: The Many Tricks team—Peter Maurer and former Macworld senior editor Rob Griffiths—is also concerned. “As of now, entitlements for the core features of many of our apps don’t even exist,...
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