Gabe Weatherhead and I had a little chat about selling stuff on the internet in general and the GroovBoard in particular. It was my first ever interview and first ever podcast. And it was fun. Go check it out. Or even better, subscribe to Generational for interesting interviews every week.

Potentially related:

• Review of Captio for iPhone
• Introducing the GroovBoard
• Email is a crappy filing system

It turns out that this app is promising buyers more features if they rate the app with 5 stars. I highly doubt that Apple is OK with tactics like this, especially since, judging by some of the reviews, the app doesn't even deliver on its promise. I wonder how long this app will remain available…

Potentially related:

• First casualties of the new Mac App Store sandboxing rules
• Some thoughts on Mac App Store approval guidelines
• Ryan Block on the Mac App Store

Ever since Apple updated Safari to version 6.0.2 it has been crashy as hell. Sometimes it crashes several times within a couple of minutes, then it runs without any issues the rest of the day. And it’s apparently not just behaving like this for me, Twitter is full of similar reports.

As a result of this mess, some users have switched to Chrome, at least until Safari gets updated again. Me included. On a lark I whipped up a quick shell script that launches Safari only if its version is not 6.0.2. If you have Safari 6.0.2 installed it launches Chrome instead.

Just copy the code below into a file, save it as plain text to your user’s home folder somewhere and hop on Terminal and run chmod +x filename to make it executable. Use it at your own risk.


#! /bin/bash

sv="$(mdls -name kMDItemVersion /Applications/Safari.app | grep -o -e '6.0.2')"
if test ${sv}="6.0.2"
then
echo "Safari still sucks. Launching Chrome instead."
open "/Applications/Google Chrome.app"
else
echo "Safari version other than 6.0.2 installed, giving it a try..."
open "/Applications/Safari.app"
fi


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I use a dual-monitor setup and often move some of Safari’s windows over to the secondary screen, for example to reference a web page while I work on something on my main screen.

It always annoyed me that Safari seemed to open new windows on the screen where the most recently opened window was. So if I opened a new window and moved it to the second monitor, new windows would always open there, even if the currently active window was on the primary monitor.

My assumption was that Safari determines the position to open a new window at by the position of the most recently opened window. Turns out, it actually determines this by the position of the window that was last moved. So, to force new windows to be opened on the primary screen even though the most recently opened window is on the secondary screen, just move a window on the primary screen a bit and a new window will open immediately on top of it.

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• Single or Multiple Screens?
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Joshua Schnell for Macgasm:

The spec problems reveals itself the best in Apple’s own App Stores. Responsiveness is sluggish when scrolling between the App listings on Apple’s front page of the iTunes, App, iBook, and Newsstand Stores from time to time. There’s stutters when navigating stores, stutters when changing the tabs in Safari, stutters, stutters, stutters. All of these things could be updated and smoothed out in a future iOS update, but right out of the box, it’s a noticeable problem.

General App Store performance problems aside, I doubt an OS update will fix these issues. As I said before: 512 MB RAM just doesn’t cut it.

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• Why I Canceled My iPad mini Order
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David Sparks gives the GroovBoard a thumbs-up.

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Potentially related:

• Introducing the GroovBoard
• Dave Caolo reviews the GroovBoard for TUAW
• Making security questions really secure

This guy is really serious about sharpening his pencils. And in case you’re wondering, he really did write that book.

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Dave:

The GroovBoard is a great device. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into its design and construction. The fact that it can accommodate the iPad in a variety of ways, hold a stylus for a lefty or a righty and secure an Apple keyboard so well makes it a very useful lapdesk/stand indeed. Plus, it’s just good-looking.

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I often find John Gruber to act out the “Apple apologist” role a bit too enthusiastically, but his take on Windows 8 is spot-on:

Windows 8 strikes me as driven by dogma — “one Windows, everywhere”.

That’s the exact impression I got from playing aroung with Windows 8 on a Surface RT.

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Very cute video by Metro Trains Melbourne.

via An Odd Geography by way of Nik Burns

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