How to avoid ruining your MacBook, iPhone, iPod or iPad batteries

Posted on July 23, 2010

I frequently get asked “how long can expect my MacBook/iPhone/iPod battery will last for before I need to buy a new one?” And I helpfully reply depends on how you care for it.

Lithium batteries are used in almost all modern electronics and there are some general rules to follow. Apple has a few pages dedicated to this subject on their website.

  1. Never leave it fully discharged for more than a couple of days.
  2. Always allow it to fully discharge about one a month.
  3. Li batteries have a finite number of charge discharge cycles. The more time you spend on the battery, the more quickly it will deteriorate. Ideally use it plugged in most of the day, then give it 30 mins on battery at some point.
  4. Don’t leave it in really hot places
  5. Don’t leave it in a draw for months and expect it to magically work as soon as you plug it in. You might have knackered it via point 1.
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    10 essential and free Mac applications…

    Posted on July 22, 2010

    Everyone likes lists. So I thought I would create my own list of the 10 free or ‘donationware’ Mac applications that I would miss badly if I lost them. So here we go, in no particular order…

    1. ClamAV – Free anti-virus software. Hardly ever use it, but I like the reassurance that it’s there if I did need it. Farpoint or the AppleStore might tell you to buy Intego VirusBarrier or Norton Internet Security, but really – buy a nice meal instead.
    2. Carbon Copy Cloner – Free disk cloning software. Time Machine is all well and good, but sometimes you just want to move everything, lock, stock and barrel to a new drive. CCC makes it easy.
    3. Stuffit Expander – Free file decompression software. Stuffit’s been around since I first got a Mac and 40MB was a big hard disk. Compressing files was the norm back then. Stuffit will expand every format from .arc to .zip.
    4. VLC Player – Free video player. Sometimes you find a video in some weird format that won’t play, or the audio can’t be heard. VLC can cope with just about every codec known to man.
    5. Flip4Mac – Free Windows Media Player .wmv plugin for Quicktime. Some people still insist in creating content in .wmv format. This plugin makes Quicktime able to play it.
    6. Random Password Generator – We need a lot of secure passwords for the various web sites and databases we host. To avoid repetition and security lapses this creates complex, secure passwords with one click.
    7. Palm Desktop – Apple iCal and AddressBook still can’t hold a light to this brilliant Personal Information Manager. I first got it free with ClarisWorks 3.0 back in the early 90s, and haven’t looked back since…
    8. NetNewsWire – the best RSS reader for the Mac or PC. Everything else pales in comparison.
    9. Sequel Pro – brilliant, beautiful MYSQL querying tool. Beats the hell out of phpMyAdmin.
    10. Adium – superb instant messenger client that supports all the big networks. Shame they haven’t managed to get Skype integrated yet.
    Posted in Apple | Comments Off on 10 essential and free Mac applications…

    The Apple cash juggernaut continues…

    Posted on July 21, 2010

    Despite the backlash publicity that seems to be following the iPhone 4 signal strength scare, Apple keeps piling on the record quarters of growth. This is mostly down to the massive growth in sales of iOS devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch – but hidden away amongst the mountain of your cash is an interesting statistic.

    Since 2005 Apple have trebled the number of Macs that they are selling. The “halo” effect really is working, as iPhone and iPod users lose the fear of moving to a new computer type and ditching their Windows boxes for good.

    Thinking of switching from Windows to a Mac? Want some impartial advice (we use and abuse both Mac and PCs) on whether switching makes sense for you? Why not give us a call?

    Posted in Apple | Comments Off on The Apple cash juggernaut continues…

    Using code hints in Magento e-Commerce templates…

    Posted on July 21, 2010

    When you’re using a complex web application like Magento or WordPress it’s a real struggle to remember all the functions, classes and methods that are available to you in the template files. And this means endless trips back to the documentation, trial and error, and other such in-efficiences.

    Fortunately you can speed things up a load by manually adding code hints for a variable, which then should bring up code completion hints in any half decent IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans.


    <?php
    /* @var $_product Mage_Catalog_Model_Product */
    echo $_product->getData('short_description');
    ?>

    Of course if it’s a complex object you can end up with an enormous list of methods, then you just have to pray that someone has included decent phpdoc in the Class definition (Magento doesn’t, WordPress does).

    Need some help with an e-Commerce solution? Small business looking for inexpensive e-Commerce, or design agency looking for talented freelancer in and around Bath, Bristol, Wiltshire or Somerset? Why not get in touch?

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    Enforced discipline when creating Magento Themes

    Posted on July 20, 2010

    Magento is a beast of an eCommerce platform. It has a rigid set of conventions for the location and name of your theme files. And your theme should never overwrite any of the base installation that Magento creates. So how does a developer avoid the temptation to cut corners and “fix” things by hacking around with the Core?

    Simple. Change the owner of the files to the web server user and don’t give write permissions to the user you are editing the files as. Then set Read/Write permission on just your theme folders.

    sudo chown -R www:www /path-to-site/
    sudo chmod -Rf 777 /path-to-site/app/design/frontend/themename /path-to-site/frontend/skin/themename/

    Everytime you try to hack one of the core files, you’ll be denied…

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