constructive nonconformist

Mac OS X Preview Hang on Mac OS X Lion and Mountain Lion Solved by Disabling AutoTermination

Mac OS X Lion introduced iOS style automatic termination for applications. If an application is running for a long period but is inactive, the operating system will automatically terminate, close and quit, the application. With auto resume it can be invisible to the user that the application was ever terminated.

I prefer the built-in Preview app to Adobe Reader and I have the OS configured to open PDFs in Preview.

After upgrading to Lion, Preview would sometimes hang with a spinning cursor. This would happen when I already had a document open in Preview and I clicked a PDF link in Safari.

If Preview is quit it seems to AutoResume without any issue. So the next suspect to investigate was AutoTerminate.

Here’s how to disable auto terminate for Preview:

1. Open Terminal


2. Run the following command:
   defaults write com.Apple.Preview NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool yes

I commonly have Preview open and running usually with software development related material. With AutoTerminate disabled I no longer get the spinning cursor hang.

Daring Fireball Linked List: The Android Surge

From Daring Fireball Linked List: The Android Surge:

My sense is that over the next 12 to 18 months, Android will surge past Apple the way Microsoft Windows surged past Apple in the 1990s.

— Dan Lyons

Android cannot “surge past Apple [iOS] the way Microsoft Windows surged past Apple [Mac OS] in the 1990s.” Microsoft Windows was positioned as the successor to the incumbent market leader, MS-DOS. That Microsoft was successful in moving the established MS-DOS user base forward to Windows is a notable achievement and it’s a set of circumstances that doesn’t exist for Android.

Android is not standing on the shoulders of an established giant user base.

Comparing Android and iOS to Windows and Mac OS is a bad useless analogy.

FaceTime Over 3G via WiFi HotSpot

Back on March 2nd I wrote the following on Twitter:

If no available wifi but #VZW #iPhone4 with personal hotspot and #iPad2 connected to hotspot, will #FaceTime work on the iPad?

In longer words than 140 characters allow, if you find yourself somewhere where there is no available WiFi but you have a Verizon iPhone 4 with Personal HotSpot enabled and you have an iPad 2 connected to the Personal HotSpot, then, even though you can't use FaceTime on the iPhone, will FaceTime work on the iPad?

The answer is yes.

Hotspot Tethering Allows FaceTime Calls Over 3G

Update on the BlackBerry and CalDav MobileMe calendars issues

Solved this problem for my wife: BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac OS X does not support CalDav MobileMe calendars. She no longer uses a BlackBerry.

Me? I’m planning on resolving this issue for myself by dumping my BlackBerry in the late June/early July time frame.

BlackBerry Support has only been able to tell me that they don’t know when or if CalDav MobileMe calendars will be supported, but keep checking for updates. Great.

I’ll give the Support people the benefit of the doubt on this issue and assume they truly know nothing. But my guess, and this is truly complete speculation, is that BlackBerry will never support CalDav MobileMe calendars. RIM is busy circling the wagons in the corporate enterprise market which is Windows-centric. An issue for individual consumers on a non-Windows OS just isn’t going to get funded.

BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac OS X does not support CalDav MobileMe calendars

Apple had CalDav based calendars for MobileMe and iCal in public beta in July and out of beta in October. The CalDav calendars are wonderful because my wife and I can have a shared calendar.

As of December: Known synchronization issues between BlackBerry Desktop Software and the new MobileMe calendar from Apple

“This is a previously reported issue that is being investigated by our development team. No resolution time frame is currently available.”

The work-around is to create a local calendar that the BlackBerry Desktop Software can sync with. If an event is created on the BlackBerry, after syncing to iCal the calendar for the event can be changed to shift the event from the local calendar to a CalDav calendar.

Daring Fireball Linked List: 'You Already Know How to Use It'

Daring Fireball: ‘You Already Know How to Use It’

Regarding the Newton/iPad connection, I can imagine Steve Jobs telling John Sculley “Let me show how this is done right.”

rentzsch.tumblr.com: [C4 release];

I believed the best way to move software forward was to inform Apple programmers about better ways to build software — to infect the best top-downer minds with fertile discontent.

My hope was that developers would care primarily about user experience yet also be passionate about utilizing lingual and tooling advances. C4 was my attempt to push on the Apple community from the bottom-up.

With that background in place, I hope you can understand how Section 3.3.1 has broken my spirit.

— Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch
rentzsch.tumblr.com: [C4 release];

I don’t know Jonathan Rentzsch. I never attended C4. I don’t have any stake in the iPhone application development space. I understand it is easy to armchair quarterback. I understand he may not be being figurative when he says his spirit is broken.

But will all respect, ending C4 over Section 3.3.1 seems odd.

It would seem that the mission of C4, as he describes it in his post, is needed more than ever.

Trial Phone Apps

From the department of ‘Oh, I want that in the Apple App Store’:

For Windows Phone 7 applications, the Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace will support trial versions.

The Windows Phone Marketplace: A different shopping experience for a different kind of phone - Windows Phone Developer Blog - The Windows Blog:

“Marketplace now adds a new Trial API that gives every application or game developer the option, but not the requirement, to enable a single instance of their code to include trial usage limitations (like time or level) so that users can test drive the app/game they are considering.”

Update:

Clearly I’ve not been paying attention: Apple opens door to iPhone ‘freemium’ apps - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

links for 2010-03-10

• Books in the Age of the iPad — Craig Mod

  (tags: apple books ipad)

• 6 reasons why the iPad could be the 'Star Wars' of tablet computing :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andy Ihnatko

  On a scale of momentousness the iPad feels like a much bigger deal to me than the iPhone did.

  (tags: apple ipad)

• Cameron Daigle Dot Com | PodCamp Nashville 2010 Presentation

  I am so stealing the punchline.

  (tags: apple development ipad)

links for 2010-02-16

• Xcode 101: Installing the 3.2 SDK alongside the 3.1.1 SDK

  (tags: apple macosx xcode)