Hello, my name is Mariusz Cieśla and my job is to make the web a better place.

Archive for the 'Apple' Category

The one and only reason I won’t buy the iPad

Published on January 30, 2010 in Apple and User Experience; 8 Comments

So, finally the over-hyped iPad is here. Thousands of Apple fans were drooling over the release and Apple “revolutionizing the way we think once again”. They shown a pretty nice tablet computer with a pretty nice user interface (far from the detail and polish that Apple got us used to, though. The lock screen for example looks pretty bad compared to iPhone and for me is the example of how user interface patterns from one device might be a very bad idea on another device). Steve said that they want to show us amazing way to browse the web, read e-books and generally do our quick daily chores like reading RSS a breeze with an iPad on your lap (even though I seen a very true opinion around the web that if the back is gonna be as hot as iPhone is during normal usage, lots of Apple fans will get their intimate parts burnt to ashes). I said – no. I’m not gonna buy the iPad, even though I own MacBook, iPhone and I generally love Apple products. And there’s only one reason for that…

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Mac tip: Make Safari open links in new tabs

Published on March 21, 2009 in Apple, Apps and Daily; 2 Comments

I’ll be honest – since Safari 4 beta came out, I totally forgot about Firefox even though I’ve been known Firefox evangelist for a long time. Why I left it then? Simple thing – Safari is much faster and now it has the features I require from my browser of choice (del.icio.us integration and working, friendly and effective web inspector, which wasn’t so good in Safari3/Webkit).

There was just one thing that I found absolutely annoying about Safari – every ‘incoming’ link I clicked in my Adium, Twitterrific or whatever else, was opened in a new window, which led to very cluttered desktop in a while. Firefox used to open new links in new tab, which was much more efficient in my opinion. As a guy who always has to hack something in his operating system, I learnt that on Mac you can do everything, but it requires one of those two – either you have to buy a $5 app that will do it for you cause it is in the API, just not in the OS *or* you have to type some weird command in the Mac Terminal to make it work. I was right. Luckily, Garcya has a fix that doesn’t require to buy a five-dollar-app, just requires you to use Terminal. Ready? Here we go!

First, quit your Safari. And by quit, I mean Command+Q, not the red button in the top-left corner. Done? Great. Now open your Terminal (if you never used before, it’s in your Spotlight, or in Applications » Utilities). When you’re in your terminal, paste in following command:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Hit enter, run Safari and voila – you can now enjoy a screen-efficient incoming links handling in Safari.

So I got into that private beta…

Published on December 22, 2008 in Apple and Apps; Closed

I’m terrible when it comes to organizing my time. When I don’t have anything to rush me and literally kick me in the butt with “You have to do it!” I prefer spending my time slacking around, playing games and doing absolutely nothing. Yes, I was born lazy and the only thing that keeps me organized are the to-do lists.

I’ve used quite a few desktop and web-based applications so far and the only one that stood out for me was Todoist, where I even have bought Premium membership. It’s not expensive and makes lots of things easier. Since I switched to Mac I started using Things, but I was not quite amazed with it – it was simple to the bone, too simple for me, there were a lot of things in Things that pissed me off, so I moved back to Todoist.

In search of The Holy Grail of Desktop To-Do Applications I found this news about The Hit List on TUAW. I read all about it and decided to ask Potion Factory for the private beta access. It didn’t take long when I got an e-mail with a response that I’ve been granted beta access and they want my feedback when I get the application. Here are some quick thoughts that I got after migrating my Things to The Hit List.

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Papa’s got a brand new Mac

Published on October 22, 2008 in Apple, Daily and Personal; 1 Comment

As I wrote in comments to my previous post, ironically right after I gone home from the office I decided to drop into iSpot to ask about new Macbooks again. How surprised I was, when I found out that they actually have the one I want (still, only two of them, they just arrived today). Not waiting much, I simply took out my card and bought it. I managed to get it with a student’s rebate (10%) and here it is, standing on my desk waiting for data migration and installing some software.

Only thing that pissed me off a bit was the fact that they didn’t have DisplayPort to DVI cables, so for a while I’m stuck with 13.3″ instead of using my 20″ home LCD with it, but I can live with that for a while, especially that I need some time to migrate my data to the laptop.

Dear Apple, get us a real customer support

Published on October 22, 2008 in Apple, Daily and Personal; 9 Comments

So, I decided to buy myself a new Macbook. For a while I planned the old MB Pro, but since the new laptop should be a good replacement for my home PC, I decided to wait for new ones because they were supposed to have nVidia’s 9xxx chips. So they arrived. I have money, I know which one I want (13.3″ 2.4G version with 4 gigs of RAM) but… yeah… I live in Poland.

What’s wrong with it? Apparently, a big chunk of our beautiful continent of Europe is eligible to buy their Macs in some Apple Store. Still, for some reason in my country where I know lots of people having Macs or interested in getting one, Apple support is a disaster. We have our beautiful “authorized reseller”, we can buy our Macs in something called iSpots or in stores that have been given “blessing” of the reseller (Cortland, RCS2 etc.). When after Polish premiere of new Macbook I called iSpot to know if I can get one, they said “No”. So I asked why. They said they don’t have them and they don’t know when they will. Hello? I think they started already and should be available, right? Apparently not. Not mentioning the fact that even with available Macbook, getting a custom one (with for example more RAM on board) can be up to month of waiting.

Pricing at the reseller? Well, this list shows that price of a 17-inch Macbook Pro in Poland is the highest in the world. We even beat Norway and Sweden, which have one of the highest wages in the Europe. That’s not really nice, especially considering the fact that I earn around 10% of a typical Norwegian wage (I worked a bit with a Norwegian company, so I have quite a good comparison).

And what about customer support for the users that already managed to wait in a month-long line and got their brand new Mac? If something goes wrong, of course, you can turn it in to the service. No problem. If your SuperDrive is down, you’ll pay half of new Mac Mini price for it. If it’s just a minor issue, most probably they will send it to the Germany, where it will be fixed. This can be up to six weeks of waiting, from what I’ve heard so far. If that’s customer support, I’d rather be not supported at all and do everything by myself (including sending my computer to Germany).

So, again. Dear Apple, could you get us some proper customer here, on the east side of the iron curtain? I heard that the curtain is lifted now and we are a part of EU too.