With Homebrew, it’s very easy. Given that you tapped in with Jose Gonzalez’s php repo.
1. Install mcrypt and it’s libraries by typing: brew install mcrypt php53-mcrypt
2. add the content of /usr/local/etc/php/5.3/conf.d/ext-mcrypt.ini to /etc/php.ini
3. restart Apache ( sudo apachectl restart )
The title of this post might sound fatuous to you. The latest update to the Mac operating system, OSX Lion costs only $29, that compared to the main commercial competitor is over seven times cheaper than the full-fledged version.
But when I think of the people I know, my thinking becomes very simple: to be able to buy OS X Lion, you need first and foremost a Mac… either a MacBook, an iMac, a Mac Pro or a Mac Mini. Any of these will do the job. But buying a Mac in general isn’t the cheapest choice. It’s rather the most expensive one, in most cases (except the high-end maybe, where differences are not so relevant). In addition, if your machine is slightly old, you need to buy Snow Leopard at $29.
My point is, for many, the need of a Mac and all its features is not justified by the price: for much less they can have a simpler and cheaper machine running either Windows (for the common user) or Ubuntu (for the geekier one) that can do pretty much whatever they need to do.
And to me this is fine. Peaceful. And Apple is fine too. They still make tons of money thanks to their great ecosystem of iTunes, iPods, iPhones, iPads, App Stores etc. They create beautiful products that are more profitable for them when targeted to the higher market. And selling the hardware is their most profitable market, not the software itself (even thought Apple’s apps on the App Stores are highly profitable too) but high quality software and the ecosystem around it is what’s needed to make the machines so valuable.
To sum it up: to be able to buy the best and most affordable operating system in the world, you need to own the most expensive computer in the world. More or less…
(This post is written on my personal assumptions and I premise that I did not personally try the Developer Preview of OS X Lion)
Rumors reported that Apple already finished developing the new version of iWork apps: Pages, Number and Keynote. It was also rumored that Apple would release the new suite alongside the Mac App Store. I bet Apple will silently release the long awaited new version of the productivity suite alongside the release of Lion, instead.
I presume that the new versions of iWork ‘11 is so much depending on Lion’s new technologies that they might not make a version available for Snow Leopard. This is just my theory though.
One thing for sure is that Apple is finally making tons of money on software, with iLife and iWork apps nearly-constantly in the Top Grossing ranks of the Mac App Store. This is happening because it’s much easier for the average users to find out about these three apps. Instead of pirating them – that is what most technical users do since it’s really simple in this case – they just buy them, also because they are rather cheap after all.
So why Apple should not keep riding the wave of profits and wait for a good shift and sell a new version of the app? It’s just a marketing decision to postpone an awesome, finished product.
From Apple’s website OS X Lion feature page:
In OS X Lion, your Mac can wake up for services such as file sharing, backup, and more without the need to turn on the monitor or attached USB devices.
I thought this was worth sharing, since I haven’t read it anywhere so far.
A new collection of gorgeous pictures that are included the dev preview of the newest breed of Mac OS X. Here’s a link to download them all.
Drag files, links etc to the menubar and get a link to share it with whoever you want.
Simple and cool, handy for small stuff.
A must have. This line from their App Store page summarizes perfectly my thinking:
“The Unarchiver aims to be the only unarchiving program you will ever need, and stay out of your way.”
(click title to link)
It’s powerful geek app to maintain your OS X system, to tweak it and to clean it up. I read several reviews in the past, and seeing it now on sale on the Mac App Store with a €10 discout gave the right motivation to get it!
Maybe it’s just that tech guys like me like to do things by themselves: googling stuff and trying out procedures that might address their current issue, resulting in long afternoons spent in discovering things that are indeed technical, but at the end of the day not so worthy to have all the day spent on… that’s how I got to know Linux.
The state of the system on my MacBook Pro was a bit crazy: the graphical interface (GUI) for any app would freeze quite often, hang and get stuck for something like 30-60 seconds, to eventually release all it’s frustration in less than a second. This was started by almost any app, and would affect them all, in slightly different ways.
I tried to delete the pref file of Finder, I tried to repair disk permissions, resetting the PRAM, and some other things that i found by googling around. This issue appeared before, when I had Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) installed, and it was still there when I updated to Snow Leopard (10.6). Eventually, I decided to format and reinstall SL, and that solved the issue. But sincerely, I didn’t want to format the system again, going through the backup process and so on… unless it was for a fresh install of Lion, that won’t happen before this summer.
So, as a paying customer, I called AppleCare today because the problem was really getting on my nerves. It was quick and painless, and it seems that the problem is now solved: the guy on the phone made me shutdown, reset the System Management Controller (SMC), reset the PRAM, and then he suggested what it seems to be the winner: emptying the cache folders. It sounds stupid but I never did it myself!
Emptying both “/Library/Caches” and “~/Library/Caches” deleted more than 18,000 files, a couple of gigabytes of size. It took more than 2 minutes to empty the trash! When done, I restarted the system and it felt snappier, and most importantly it didn’t hang or freeze ever since! The problem seems to be solved (finger crossed!). In case I can try to repair disk permissions by booting the install disk of Mac OS X… but I hope that won’t be necessary to even try.
I can’t find the cause of the problem, but at least I found a solution!
I didn’t notice before that Apple’s website has a section dedicated to Lion. It has explanations and videos about the new awesome features that we will see this summer (can’t wait!).
I’m looking forward expecially for Mission Control. It seems that Apple finally made Exposé, Dashboard and Spaces work really well together. I always found it a bit odd to reach the F3 key or to use the four finger swipe on the trackpad. I feel it’s gonna become a very central gesture, considering that will control all the window-management. I really like the Launchpad idea: I don’t like to keep a highly populated dock, but I can’t help but keeping some quick-access apps in it, like TextEdit, System Preferences and so on; I think this feature will solve the problem, by setting the first homescreen with the most used apps and allowing to keep the dock as minimal as possible.
About tech drops
