Patchburn Homepage Taming Mac OS X File Systems Posted by Amit Singh, Mac Engineering Manager Google is a fantastic company to work for. I could cite numerous reasons why. Take the concept of "20 percent time." Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing projects they're passionate about. FUSE makes it possible to implement a very functional file system in a normal program rather than requiring a complex addition to the operating system. One of the missions of the Google Macintosh team is to contribute to the Mac community and make the Mac OS X experience better for users and developers. The MacFUSE implementation Google is releasing today includes the following components: A virtual file system (VFS) kernel extensionA special-purpose mount_fusefs programA patch to the FUSE user-space libraryA patch to the SSHFS file systemMore details on using and developing for MacFUSE are available on the project's Google Code page. Enjoy your file systems!
A selection of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts A common complaint users of other operating systems have about Mac OS X is its perceived lack of keyboard shortcuts. Many think you have to use the mouse for nearly everything in Mac OS X. I see many people who have switched from Windows to Mac do this while muttering about the lack of keyboard commands. As a long-time Mac user and someone who likes to avoid touching the mouse as much as possible, I can tell you that this is about as far from the truth as you can get. You can in fact do just about anything in Mac OS X without ever touching the mouse. Granted, some of the shortcuts are pretty obscure since they don’t appear in menus – you have to know them to use them. In the tables below, the Option key is the key that has either “⌥”, “Opt” or “Alt” printed on it. There are many, many more (see Apple’s Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts document for a more exhaustive list of the default commands), and many are completely customisable as well.
hugin - Panorama photo stitcher MacFUSE: New Frontiers in File Systems by Scott Knaster 03/06/2007 If you're a typical Mac programmer or user, chances are your main concern with files is reading from and writing to them, opening and saving them. You probably haven't thought much about adding support for other file systems or actually implementing your own file system from scratch—why on earth would you want to do that? Well, no matter what kind of Mac user you are, there's a new development in the somewhat arcane world of file systems that's bound to be interesting to you: MacFUSE. So what's all this fuss about file systems? A traditional file system provides a way of organizing information on your disks so that programs can have access to them. Compatibility. Note that MacFUSE is not just for programmers. Now that you have some idea why you might want to use other file systems, we can talk about how. Writing Your Own File System Let's say you're ready to add support for a new file system to Mac OS X. Have I scared you off yet? There Must Be a Better Way Globals
Top 100 Essential Mac Applications Hey I love my Mac and I have hundreds of applications installed on it. As a result I wanted to do a post on what I believe are the top 100 Mac applications that are essential to any user. Each application will be split into a couple of major sections. If you want to take your knowledge of Mac apps a bit further I recommend these two books on Amazon, Cool Mac Apps and The Little Mac Book they have got some raving reviews and are probably a good read. Computer Files This section is all about programs that can be used to work with files and applications 1) AppFresh Software updater is great for Apple applications, but appfresh has the ability to check third party apps for updates. 2) AppZapper Although applications are easy to uninstall on a mac there are usually small preference files hanging about. 3) Disk Inventory X A simple program that scans your disk and visually shows what files takes up how much space, good to visualize if you are running out of space and you have some size hogs.
XQuartz - Trac Intro ¶ The XQuartz project is an open-source effort to develop a version of the X.org X Window System that runs on OS X. Together with supporting libraries and applications, it forms the X11.app that Apple has shipped with OS X since version 10.5. Latest Releases ¶ Mavericks users, please use 2.7.5 or later. Stable: 2.7.5 - 2013.11.10 Development: 2.7.6 rc1 - 2014.04.09 Support ¶ There are three ways to get support for XQuartz. OS X Software/Security Updates and XQuartz (Leopard Only) ¶ OS X Software Updates have included some of the work done by this project, but for various reasons, Apple cannot ship the latest and greatest version offered by this site. Site Map ¶ General X11 Information ¶ X11 on the Mac ¶
Top 100 Mac Apps I’ve compiled a list of my top 100 Mac apps for your perusal, since so many people have been asking for it. Thanks to Taylor Olson and Jason for helping me put all the icons and links in place! These apps are certainly Tiger compatible, and most of ’em work inside Leopard (though the VNC utilities are now unnecessary). I did my best to avoid overly popular titles, but couldn’t avoid it in some cases. A rolling list of ‘Honorable Mentions’ follow the Top 100, so… keep reading. Only one application is missing. I’m also happy to announce that both VMware and Shiny White Box are coming aboard as official video sponsors – but their presence in this list is based on app merit. Which apps did I miss – especially for Windows switchers? 7zX (Compress / Decompress 7zX Archives) ACP Suite (Ultimate OS X Power Toys Array) Adium (Universal Instant Messaging App based on Pidgin) AP Grapher (Searches and Displays Wireless Networks) AppFresh (Keeps Third Party / Apple Apps Up-To-Date) AppZapper ASCII Projecktor Bean
Polipo — a caching web proxy Polipo is a small and fast caching web proxy (a web cache, an HTTP proxy, a proxy server). While Polipo was designed to be used by one person or a small group of people, there is nothing that prevents it from being used by a larger group. Polipo has some features that are, as far as I know, unique among currently available proxies: Polipo will use HTTP/1.1 pipelining if it believes that the remote server supports it, whether the incoming requests are pipelined or come in simultaneously on multiple connections (this is more than the simple usage of persistent connections, which is done by e.g. In short, Polipo uses a plethora of techniques to make web browsing (seem) faster. What Polipo is useful for By virtue of being a (mostly) compliant HTTP/1.1 proxy, Polipo has all the uses of traditional web proxies. Because Polipo is small and easy to install (just copy the polipo binary), it has applications beyond those of traditional web proxies. Documentation Please read: Download Polipo sources