Charismatic Dog

I happen to agree with those OS X users who say that one of OS’ great strengths is the ability to load random add-ons with your application, but I have noticed the problems caused by rampant input manager spew in apps that really derive no benefit from what appears to be system-wide modifications. In Leopard Apple has started depreciating various parts of the libraries and functions programmers have used to make these application plugins. You can read some of the upset this has caused over at Unsanity. The SafariStand page is another good example of how bad things have gotten for projects that depend on this infrastructure. A new project called Plugsuit claims to have an answer to both the problem of systemwide stability and the demise of the Input Manager.

Plugsuit’s website claims that it does not use the Input Manager trick to load plugins and instead uses another method to load third party code into individual apps instead of system wide. It’s a good trick and something I’m excited to test.

While I understand concerns others have raised over the years about the stability of input manager hacks, I think it would be a shame to lose even the option to mess with the Mac OS in ways Apple never intended.

I took a shot at updating the ol’ loaner iPhone from work up to 1.1.3. This broke SyncJE good. Boo. So then I tried a different method of Jailbreaking instead of iJailbreak this temporarily bricked the phone.

A trip into restore mode and going back to iJailbreak and I found myself back in business. I then ssh’d into the machine and tried running SyncJE from the command line by cd’ing into /Applications/SyncJE.app/. Oh I also had to chmod +s SyncJE (inside Applications/SynceJE.app/). I then created a directory /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin/lib/ and /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin/arm-apple-darwin/lib/ and ran “ln -s /usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib” and “ln -s /usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib /usr/local/arm-apple-darwin/arm-apple-darwin/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib” I also ended up having to add a link between /var/root/Library/Calendar/Calendar.sqlitedb and /var/mobile/Library/Calendar/Calendar.sqlitedb

If I’m bored or feel guilty later I’ll clean all of the above up. Meanwhile, good night everybody!

Update: Here are some links related to this quixotic endeavor:

• http://raddysblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/setting-up-proxy-in-apple-iphone.html
• http://nexthaus.com/SyncJe%20for%20iPhone%20quickstart.pdf
• http://www.oscot.com/apple/how-to-make-an-itouch-with-bsd-root-md0-major-2-minor-0-work-again.html
• http://ijailbreak.com/
• http://code.google.com/p/independence/wiki/Beta14KnownIssues
• http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=26245
• http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=433598
• http://code.google.com/p/mobileterminal/issues/detail?id=72

The title should be read out loud in as nasal a voice as you can muster. Think of that Econ prof who drove you nuts talking about supply-side economics.

The good people at The Unofficial Apple Weblog shared this nice little bit from The Street claiming Mac users tend to be liberal snobs. While I’m sure Rush Limbaugh takes umbrage on the first half, it wouldn’t really surprise me to learn there’s a hint of truth to both. Still as TUAW rightly points out, some of the observations are just odd.

Lets run em down and see where I fit. The points they highlighted from the video were that Mac users tend:

• to be perfectionists — Yep. You should’ve seen what this post looked like a few minutes ago.
• to use notebooks — A laptop is worth every extra penny, although keep in mind that I currently wear six hats at work and have two desks but somehow three office locations spread across the U of M Twin Cities’ West and East Bank campuses
• to use teeth whitening products — Actually I’ve been thinking hard about this one lately, but honestly I never even got braces. Seriously you should should not under any circumstances see my bottom row of teeth.
• to drive station wagons — umm… does a Golf count as a wagon?
• to pay for downloaded music — I’m stuck on CD’s still, but it’s true I never got into Napster/Limewire/YourMom/eDonkey
• to go to Starbucks — I’ve been in there it’s true. Nothing on Dunn Bros or Border Town though.
• care about “green” products and the environment — more my wife than me, but she is working away on her new MacBook as I write this. I have to say I enjoy the fact that some of our household cleaners advise that in case of accidental swallowing: drink a glass of water.
• to own a hybrid car — If anyone wants to give me a hybrid, I’d be happy to drive it.
• and last but not least … to buy 5 pairs of sneakers in a year — 2007 was a rare year for me in that I bought both work shoes and hiking boots. That would be up from my 0 shoe purchases in 2006 for those keeping score at home. However, I am seriously considering replacing my swing dancin’ shoes this year and I might also be tempted into something as silly as a custom pair of Converse.

I’d additionally add that I am fairly liberal socially and politically but it’s a recent trend and my Republican parents are happy Mac owners themselves. I guess I’d say in general it’s dangerous to generalize and I’ll leave it at that for now.

On a completely unrelated note: ecto + NetNewsWire = happy blog fun time for Drew!