Macintosh

A few days ago a few Mac rumor sites jumped on the story of an upcoming Apple iShot digital camera. It turns out the leak was based on an incorrect answer in one of Apple’s training quizzes.

MacWhispers is still reporting that there will be an iShot camera.

For the last 2 weeks, various sites were predicting a Tuesday introduction of a new iPod, which never happened. I’m sure they’ll predict it again for next Tuesday.

FSCatalogSearch searches a volume for files matching search criteria. You can have it return any number of files in a single call, and you can call it repeatedly using the same iterator to continue searching the volume until all matches are found.

Now here’s the fun part. It’s possible that files can be added or deleted during the operation, and in that case, it will set a boolean flag and return a ‘catalog changed’ error. When that happens, the results it returns are completely bogus, including the number of items returned. The only thing you can do in that case is start from scratch with a new iterator or bail out.

I spent most of today fixing code that depends on it and making it bulletproof in all error conditions.

Is there any way for Windows XP to use rendezvous services?

I’d like to be able to connect to my PowerBook from my PC without having to specify a static IP address. It would be great if I could have XP connect to \mike-cohens-powerbook.local\ just as I can from another Mac.

We’ve gotten word from our friends at MacTeens.com that they have been hacked. Probably a case of the script kiddies, but in any event the site will be down for a few days. We’ll let you know when it’s back up and if it comes to our attention what happened.

Option-Shift K Apple Hacker Swag! [MacMerc]

Thanks to a cookie hack Jon Gales found, I was able to figure out why Safari isn’t able to remain logged into PHP-Nuke based sites and I’ve made fixes to MacMegasite & WorldBeatPlanet.

It looks like Safari isn’t handling PHP’s setcookie() function properly. If no path is specified, it’s supposed to set the cookie for the current directory. Instead, Safari is using the name of the file it’s called from as the path, so it will only work within that particular page.

To fix it, I’m specifying the path “/” for the login cookie. I’ve posted two articles detailing the code fix & a user work-around.

MacMerc has also applied the fix.

Valenti’s case might make some sense to honorable people if he worked for a moral industry. But it’s built around a lie, which he repeats often — that we’re taking money out of the mouths of artists if we don’t pay for the music we use. We’ve already figured out that almost no money goes to the artists. If you reform your industry, your moral appeal might have some weight with honest people. [Scripting News]

Skannerz is a relatively new children’s electronic toy. It is your basic “collectible” style game with which you collect skills, spells, monsters, etc… for battle with other Skannerz owners. The units can be linked for battle.

The interesting twist is that the Skannerz unit is basically a standard UPC-A symbol scanner. You are supposed to scan random consumer products, some of which will yield various items/skills and some of which yield nothing.

The unit has a built in display, obviously has some persistent memory, the ability for simple networking, a bunch of buttons, and a UPC scanner.

Sounds like some serious hack potential to me…

A Google Search will reveal a bunch of information, but nothing terribly technical yet. [bbum’s rants, code & references]

Cheap barcode scanner anyone?

It’s now fully charged and the indicator light turned green. It looks like the power problem is fixed.

I’ve been using the PowerBook for a few hours now. It’s quite a bit faster than my G4 minitower.

I’ve posted a picture gallery here and a first look article at MacMegasite.

I find that it’s getting quite hot. I had the problem where the charge indicator light remained amber even when it was fully charged. I unplugged it and ran it until it shut down, and I’m now recharging it (58 minutes left).

My PowerBook just arrived! The fedex box was very small. I’m going to open it now.