MacOS

Are you ready for transparency?

Running a modern IT platform is rarely an easy nor isolated task. Most platforms consist of a fairly large number of components ranging from OS level to 3. party libraries and components added in the user interfacing layers - and adding numerous integrations does make it an interesting challenge to quickly identify and correct bugs and errors. While the system complexity does pose a challenge is surely not an impossible task, as several tools exists for most - if not all - platforms to allow instrumentation of the platform and utilize the instrumentation tools to handle the platform and identify issues quickly.

ftp on OSX Lion

While it really isn’t secure at any measure, ftp is a very useful way of moving files around. Apple’s OSX have a build-in basic ftp server, but in Lion (version 10.7) the user interface seems to have disappeared from the User interface. The servers is still available under the hood if you need it. To enable the ftp-server (the availability) enter this command in a terminal window: sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.

Salvaging a deleted message from Thunderbird

Suppose you got an important mail, but by accident deleted the message – and to make matters worse, you also decided that emptying the mailbox was a pretty neat idea. Is then time to Panic? Well it might, but there is a chance you might be able to undelete the message – and quite easily if you’re on a Mac or a Linux machine. Here are the few steps, which has helped recover a lost mail or two… First close Thunderbird.

Looking forward - looking back

There are some fundamental differences in how Microsoft and Apple does things. If you haven’t been aware of them before switching from a Windows based computer to a Mac, you’ll probably notice some of them pretty fast. One of the first things I discovered is that things are more “binary” in the Mac world. If you have an external device it either works with the Mac or it doesn’t. There isn’t that middle ground from the windows world where it almost works, but not quite - or worse it works in even week numbers but not when the sun shine.

The big nothing

So, I was actually using Microsoft Windows for quite a while. My first windows was Windows/286 which was nothing like the current Windows, but it was okay somehow. Today I just realized that I haven’t really been using Windows on any of my own machines and even though Vista was released three months ago, I haven’t seen it yet. It is sort of funny, but since switching to a Mac, I’ve been spending less time keeping the machine running – debugging, tweaking and doing other odd stuff – and more time doing actual fun work at the computer – like expanding my portfolio at istockphoto.