Paul Danter

SVN Client For Leopard That Fits Right In

I’m currently using a trial copy of Versions by Sofa.

It’s a nice and slick client app, that is beautifully designed and looks and feels native on the mac. I’ve been using ZigVersion, which is free for personal use, and I’ve been pretty pleased with it, but Versions has a little extra bling. There’s only a 30 trial and no free version, so be prepared to pay the 39 Euros if you can’t help yourself when it comes to great UI.

You can download your trial of Versions here.

On a side note, if you’re more inclined to use simple and functional web applications for SVN, checkout the ruby on rails app warehouse, which is now available free.

Ruby on Rails Install on Leopard

A couple of nice tips for a fresh install:

• Dan Benjamin has the most comprehensive guide online for a purpose built rails install. It can be found here.
• If you want to install a sepecific version of rails, the syntax is:

  sudo gem install -v=2.1.0 rails

• If you use MySQL rather than SQLite, you can get the fixed preference pane here.
• If you have multiple versions of rails installed and want to start a project with a previous version:

  rails _2.0.2_ myapp

  

iPhone Tethering Will Be Official (in 2009)

It looks like Apple and AT&T have decided to do the right thing and offer an official mechanism to tether your iPhone to your laptop. Hurrah.

Details will follow. You can read more about it here.

Here’s my purely academic unoffical guide to how this can be achieved today.

14 Great OS X Apps (IMHO)

What do you put on a shiny new MacBook Pro? Here’s my list of must have apps one day in (as in – the ones I can’t live without):

Here’s a quick explanation of some of the key items…

• 1Password. Handy app to keep all those online identities under control.
• Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS4 just got released, not sure I can justify the upgrade yet).
• Aperture. While iPhoto is a great app, I prefer the advanced features of Aperture.
• AppZapper. Easily get rid of the baggage left when you remove an app. I remove most of iLife in favor of the prosumer apps.
• Final Cut Express (includes Soundtrack). I graduated from iMovie a couple of years ago. I’m still blown away by the pro quality functionality offered by this app. And at a bargain price.
• Linkinus. The IRC Client that looks like it belongs on a Mac.
• Office 2008. Hey, I gotta work and that means talking the ‘open’ MS formats!
• OmniFocus. With a plethora of To Do apps available, The Omnigroup’s product oozes quality.
• OmniGraffle. Office I could concede. This is the only diagram software you’ll need. Visio, fuh.
• QuickBooks 2009. You gotta keep your ducks lined up.
• Skype. The best VOIP available. Not to say it couldn’t be better…
• Textmate. The most comfortable text editor I’ve ever had the pleasure to use.
• Transmit. Who thought FTP (and SFTP and WebDAV and S3), could be so much fun?

• Yojimbo. I can’t believe how much I use this app – it organizes my life. Period.

Hurrah! The New MacBook Pro Supports the iPhone headset!

I finally got my new MBP and it’s overwhelmingly impressive. The unibody make the whole thing very solid and I’ll be interested to see how it handles wear-and-tear.

For me, it’s the little things that count. Apple always seems to be able to pay attention to things that could be overlooked. One of the simple yet effective additions to the newly designed MacBook Pro is that the headphone input supports the iPhone-style headset. This means the Mic on the headset is also detected – so no need to carry around ugly skype accessories anymore!