mac

Life Inside A Power Socket!

December 23, 2019 Design

This walkthrough of a ‘secret’ room behind a power outlet is literally the most astonishing and cutest video I’ve come across this year. The level of detail crammed in such a narrow confined space is on a whole new level altogether. There’s an AirCon, a red clock signifying an evening time, a refrigerator with a microwave sitting on top, and a table with a PC (that’s actually a Mac) and leaving just enough space for a mouse to fit in. There’s even frame displaying a Diploma in Karate above the desk!

Besides, the desktop lamp there’s another computer right in the front as you enter the ‘room’ with some sort of a game in progress. This set up’s so cool! Who wants bigger desks with dual monitors when we can own two PCs and in such an innocuous place; trust me, it’s like going back into the 90s! The best part about this interior is the miniature Mac on the table with an OS9 splash screen, upon pursuing some information online I found it could either be a PowerMacintosh 4400 or a Macintosh II.

It totally baffles me as to how the pieces have been constructed with such pristine detail — the table, toys, the chair, the lamp, even the blinking light on the CPU (or is it an Internet router), and everything is skillfully assembled inside the narrow interiors, behind a power socket, but looking extremely comfy! In reality, not an inch to stretch your arms but still a decent example of efficient use of the location. Like a perfect world within a tiny world.

It’s a creation of a young Japanese artist called ‘Mozu’ who designs such handmade miniature splendours. This latest build is called ‘The Secret Base of Kubito’ and the time he spent to complete this masterpiece was 4 months! It’s a personal space / an office room together, and away from the glare of the outside world. It’s a truly magnificent work of art!

Firefox 69 Brings ‘Privacy’ To The Forefront

September 4, 2019 Happenings Technology
Firefox Logo

Firefox had lost its charm since I personally began using it in the last decade but I have started using it since last year and loving the experience. Especially since it was always known to embrace the values of ‘online privacy’. It’s not that the topic of online privacy wasn’t around but since the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal blew up on our face it’s now taken centre stage in our lives. Now all of a sudden there has been a renewed interest in online privacy, securing browsing, ad tracking, and harder as it seems for companies, they are convincing their customers that their data is kept safe and not lost to some maniacal coding or business practice. Well, I’m happy that Mozilla has taken the lead in online privacy protection for others to take suit — I’m expecting at least Apple to reinforce Safari.

Firefox took an exemplary leap this week on the protection of users’ privacy with their latest update (Firefox 69) effectively making ‘privacy’ the centrepiece of its development process with a slew of features including limiting the use of Flash has been introduced, an archaic piece of program which I sincerely thought was gone, dead or buried forever but I was so wrong.

  • 100% of users now get the Enhanced Tracking Protection, working behind the scenes it keeps a company from forming a profile of the user based on the tracking of their browsing behaviour across websites often without knowledge or consent.
  • An option for blocking crypto miners was introduced in previous versions of Firefox Nightly and Beta but it’s now included in the ‘Standard Mode‘ of the Content blocking preferences today. There’s also a feature which blocks Fingerprinting scripts who harvest a snapshot of your computer’s configuration when you visit a website. This feature is not currently enabled by default (Preferences > Privacy & Security > Content Blocking > Enable Strict mode).
  • The “Always Activate” option for Flash plugin content has been removed. Firefox will now always ask for user permission before activating Flash content on a website.

A much-awaited ‘Block Autoplay’ feature has been released giving users the right to block audio and video. But the most noteworthy feature has come for Mac users in terms of battery-saving. Firefox, I sincerely believe, has finally come to rule the browser wars.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard And Mac Nostalgia

October 17, 2018 General Technology

At some level, I feel like I celebrate chaos, although, I would not like to take my share of responsibility for creating any of it, to begin with. I buy and care for my stuff like my own life and store it at places inside my home where I could find them easily as the need arises but for me, ‘easily’ is a metaphor for “ease of access”, not signifying keeping stuff organized. Though with time, I lose some of my prized possessions and it makes me feel disappointed, like this priceless DVD copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

I would have lost this precious possession forever to the sands of time but I rediscovered it quite accidentally last weekend while I was looking for another piece of valuable junk in my storeroom (ugh!!). I’m talking about this copy of DVD of Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard released back in 2009 (August 28, to be precise) and it was a shocker for me to find that one can order it online on the Apple Store, even today!

My Snow Leopard Saga

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

So Snow Leopard (version 10.6) was released in 2009 and within a year of my purchase of the then newly introduced unibody MacBook Pro that had come bundled with OS X Leopard, and I am proud to admit, that even to this day, I still operate this wonderful piece of hardware in significantly augmenting my creative workload.

If my memory serves me correctly, I had obtained this particular DVD-ROM at the Croma outlet in Malad who still run a dedicated corner for Apple products. I was super excited about the process ahead because it was my first major upgrade of the Mac OS X since getting my MacBook Pro. It’s also nostalgic in a sense because I have come so far in understanding & appreciating the MacBook Pros not just from a cult/design perspective but also for its reliable performance & technical architecture, and I believe Mac OS X is what makes the Mac line-up truly awesome. This landmark release of Mac OS X back in 2009 wasn’t meant to introduce new features rather addressing the stability issues with previous versions & focusing on better performance.

Personally, I am glad to possess an important portion from my past that marks my sheer interest in Apple products & future technology. Now it goes without saying, that I since have recovered this valuable treasure, despite accidentally, I’m holding on to it for posterity.

About Snow Leopard

  • 10.6 Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X before Apple started to add iOS elements from OS X 10.7 Lion onwards
  • Snow Leopard came on a DVD and was the last version to be sold on a disk
  • It was also the last version to support OS X Rosetta, and thus the last version that could run PowerPC-only applications
  • Snow Leopard has often been compared with its counterpart Windows XP for its widespread adoption and longevity
  • Snow Leopard is the last release of Mac OS X to support the 32-bit Intel Core Solo and Intel Core Duo CPUs
  • Although Snow Leopard has officially been out of support since 2014, you can still purchase it in the form of boxed DVD-ROMs through Apple’s online store.

Snow Leopard also set a new precedent for software pricing. While Leopard retailed for $129, Snow Leopard was just $30. This made the update accessible to customers who would’ve previously stuck with older versions of the operating system.
– 9to5 Mac

I still wish that Apple would have continued naming Mac OS after wild cats, it brought a sense of connection with previous releases. Although with such rapid releases of major upgrades means they’d have run out of cat names sooner than later.

The Mac TV Commercial That Changed The World

January 22, 2018 General

That iconic TV commercial which changed computing, the Macintosh “1984” ad, was aired this day on January 22, 1984, during the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII. It’s difficult to imagine computing before Macintosh’s GUI interaction where users worked with command-line interfaces (CLI) which required memorizing commands (I worked with CLIs once). Which also reminds me of the time when I laid my hands on my first Mac, that experience was pretty amazing!

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“1984” was a TV commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, produced by Fairbanks Films and directed by the legendary Ridley Scott. English athlete Anya Major performed as the unnamed heroine and David Graham as the Big Brother. It was first aired in 10 local outlets in the U.S. but it’s second televised airing, and the only national airing, was on January 22, 1984, during a break in the third quarter of the telecast of Super Bowl XVII by CBS. The ad was an allusion to breaking away from the conformity set by the “Big Brother” (IBM machines).[/perfectpullquote]

Cleaning Up My Calendar And The Chaos

January 28, 2016 General Technology

I signed up for a 1-hour webinar for creating a Business Model Canvas in November 2015 and I accepted a calendar (.iCal) invite for the event from my email account. It’s always convenient as a reminder with the event details now etched for eternity in my Calendar on Mac and Google. Soon after, the organizer wrote back saying there was a mistake from their side. The platform used to send the invites “wasn’t meeting the standards for a smooth broadcast”. I thought how serious could this be. My calendar displayed some unidentified entries, such as meeting invites from John Doe, also the host of this webinar, and I deleted them steadfastly. It was chaotic and I falsely thought that my tragedy has ended here.

I’m an infrequent Calendar user on Mac. But ever since this November incident, I started receiving a server connection error every time I would open it. I only realized today that this silly server mishap had rained a deluge of personal entries from John Doe’s calendar onto my calendar entries, right back up to 2011! Apart from the many recurring meetings, there was a court appearance for a traffic offense, some haircut schedules, details on flights, itineraries, and hotel stays, dinner meetings with executives, and more. Not to mention the calendar displayed time and place particulars as well. Much embarrassing as it was for me to know such intimate information from John’s personal schedule, he would be horrified to learn about this rather bizarre leak to more than 20 participants of this seminar!

I began a clean-up operation lasting about an hour, painstakingly glancing and deleting every single entry I could find until 2011 so far. Unfortunately, some of the deleted entries would have sent email notifications causing inconvenience to its participants but it doesn’t matter to me. My calendar was mutilated and my privacy has been wrecked and it led to unimaginable turmoil, thanks to some web platform broadcast which went awry. Now I only hope that John Doe doesn’t have a long-winded career and his entries don’t go far back in time. This incident has taught me an invaluable lesson, that convenience is sometimes costly.