Fix Apple Earbud Problems with Earjams

I don’t know who Apple designs their earphones for, but it isn’t me. Every set of earphones I’ve ever gotten with an iPod, iPhone, etc. have been too damn big to fit in my ear. They hurt, and they don’t stay in, period.

I’m sure I must just have tiny ears (they probably came as a set with my big mouth), but I can’t be the only person out there that has this problem.
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Making Cmd-K = Search in Safari

Maybe I’m one of the few die-hard Firefox users on OS X (it doesn’t seem likely), but whenever I use Safari, it always drives me nuts that Cmd-K doesn’t go to Search.

Fortunately, it’s easy to fix.

Go to System Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse, Keyboard Shortcuts, and press the little “+” sign in the lower left to add a new shortcut. Select Safari.app as the Application, enter “Google Search…” as the Menu Title, and press Cmd-K in the Keyboard Shortcut field.

Click “add” and you’re all done.

(From 5ThirtyOne via Lifehacker)

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2.8

Installing Java 6 on Mac OS X

As I mentioned previously, installing Woopra on a Mac requires installing the beta of Java 6. Unfortunately, how to get that done may not be terribly obvious to some users (it wasn’t to me, to begin with).
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Mail.appetizer for Leopard

Woohoo! Mail.appetizer is back!.

Mail.appetizer is a great little freeware “notifier” for mail.app — the mail program that comes with Apples OS X.

What it does is pop up a little translucent window on your screen with the sender, subject and an excerpt of the message each time you receive mail. It also has buttons to mark the message as read, delete it, or go to mail to view it.
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Proporta Laptop Sleeve Review

It seems like I’m always looking around for a better laptop sleeve. I’ve been rocking a Brenthaven Eclipse II sleeve for my 15″ Macbook Pro for awhile, and it’s a great sleeve, but for day-to-day stuff, I’d prefer something a bit more lightweight and “portfolio-like”.

Enter the new Proporta sleeve.
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iMac Display Calibration

After living on Powerbooks and Macbook Pros for the past four years or so, I’m in the process of making the switch to a 24″ iMac instead. So far, all has gone well, except for a steadily increasing loathing of the display.

Everyone’s taste is different and everyone’s room lighting is different, but for me, the iMac display was way, way way too bright. Even cranking the “brightness” down all of the way, I was still seeing issues like white text on dark backgrounds “blooming”.

Fortunately, the fix turns out to be pretty easy.
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Whatever happened to Windows, anyway?

Wow. I just looked at Amazon’s top selling notebooks, and you have to get to number 6 before you find a Windows machine among them — and it’s the only one in the top 10.

1. Asus EEE 4G (Linux)
2. Macbook 2.4GHz White (OS X)
3. Asus EEE 4G Surf (Linux)
4. Macbook 2.0GHz White (OS X)
5. Macbook Pro 2.2GHz 15″ (OS X)
6. HP Pavilion (Windows Vista)
7. Macbook Pro 2.4GHz 15″ (OS X)
8. Macbook 2.4GHz Black (OS X)
9. Nokia 810 (Linux)
10. Asus EEE 8G (Linux)

You have to get to number 14 before you even find a second Windows machine.

Wow.

I’m just sayin’

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2.8

Apple TV - A Year in the Life

Being the unreconstructed Apple fanboy that I am, this month makes it officially one year that I’ve lived with an Apple TV — and it’s been an interesting year.

Unlike some folks, I liked the Apple TV straight out of the box. The form factor (basically a half-height Mac Mini) was nice, it took five minutes to hook up to my home media system, and another five minutes to set up.
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Kindle First Impressions

My Kindle arrived last night, and I’ve had just enough time with it to form some early impressions.

Physical

Yes, the thing is butt ugly. It badly needs a pass through Apple’s industrial design group. Or even Dell’s. But that’s okay, it’s early days, and you buy it to read ebooks, not look cool. That’s why you have the iPhone.

I’m a little more concerned about the build quality — the buttons, particularly the Previous/Next/Back paddle buttons, feel a little fragile. I’m not sure if they are, but I’m a little nervous about how many times I’m going to click them before they stop responding.

Worse, you can’t avoid the things. Between the big navigation buttons, and the keyboard, there is very little room to grab or hold the unit without hitting a button.

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The iPod Tax

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2.8

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