hypeway

Last night I attended the Cocoaheads WWDC 2009 meeting for the first time at the Apple Store in San Francisco downtown. I had the pleasure to meet some awesome Mac and iPhone developers, and listen to their fantastic presentations on how to become successful Mac and iPhone developers. The ideas and experience the guest speakers shared with the audience were just incredibly insightful and useful. This is by far the best users group meeting I’ve ever attended.

One of my favorite developers on the guest speaker list is Sofa, who developed Versions (which just won the Apple Design Awards) and Checkout. The Amsterdam design firm also created gorgeous icons for companies such as Mozilla, TomTom, and Nike. Another one of my favorite developers is 280 North, who developed 280 Sildes, a sexy Web-based presentation application equivalent to Keynote on the Mac. The development team of 280 North also created an open source framework, named Cappuccino, which aims to make it easy to build desktop-like applications for Web browsers. The framework, written in Objective-J (also developed by 280 North), is largely based upon Apple’s Objective-C and Cocoa frameworks. Even Cappuccino’s IDE, named Atlas, feels and operates like Apple’s Xcode.

Almost.at, a real-time event feeds application built using Cappuccino, is another impressive product demonstrating how developers can harness the power of Objective-J to build desktop-caliber applications that run in Web browsers.

Stanford University is offering a 10-week course on developing iPhone applications. Not only that the videos of the classes are posted at Stanford on iTunes U, the course materials, including lecture notes and assignments, are all made available online to the general public for free. Thanks to Stanford’s generosity and interest in the iPhone application development, I’ve downloaded all the class materials and I am ready to create my own iPhone app.

For some odd reasons, the built-in Apache Server can’t no longer be started after I ran the 10.5.6 system update. As a result, “http://localhost/” fails to connect to the server. When I run the “sudo apachectl configtest” command, I got the following message:

dyld: Symbol not found: _apr_socket_sendfile
 Referenced from: /usr/sbin/httpd
 Expected in: /usr/lib/libapr-1.0.dylib

/usr/sbin/apachectl: line 81: 58838 Trace/BPT trap          $HTTPD -t

I did a good amount of searching on Google hoping to find related discussions on the same issue from other users, but I couldn’t find the right answers to my problem. This problem may or may not be related to my system setup, and trying to work with Apple to identify the cause can be time-consuming. I need the Apache Server to work now locally, and it becomes inevitable to re-install the default Apache Server on Leopard 10.5.6 as the quickest solution.

Thanks to the Internet and those generous code contributors, I find this very useful shell script from a CodeSnippets post that allows me to quickly re-install the latest version of Apache Server without figuring out a lot of thing on my own. Due to its usefulness, I am including it in my post just so I always have it even if it becomes unavailable on CodeSnippets in the future. The credit of this code certainly goes to its original code contributor.

#!/bin/sh
# this re-installs the default apache server on leopard
# save code as filename.sh and give it permissions to run (see in code)
# run with ./apache_refresh.sh
# If permissions error do: chmod u+x filename.sh
# WARNING THIS MAY DELETE OR CHANGE YOUR APACHE SETTING SO BACKUP IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO SAVE

echo "*******************************   Starting Apache Server Refresh - Leopard"

#make a temp directory to work with, you can change this if you choose
echo "*******************************   Creating the source folder"
mkdir ~/Desktop/apache-temp
cd ~/Desktop/apache-temp

#get current apache version, update or change if necessary
echo "*******************************   Downloading Apache Server"
curl -O http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/apache/httpd/httpd-2.2.11.tar.gz

#if you change the apache version above be sure to change it here as well
echo "*******************************   Extracting Apache Server"
tar xzvf httpd-2.2.11.tar.gz
cd httpd-2.2.11

#you can change the default install paths, "Darwin" is the default leopard install, if you don't know what this means then don't change this!
echo "*******************************   Configuring Darwin Layout"
./configure --enable-layout=Darwin \
--enable-mods-shared=all \
--with-ssl=/usr \
--with-mpm=prefork \
--disable-unique-id \
--enable-ssl \
--enable-dav \
--enable-cache \
--enable-proxy \
--enable-logio \
--enable-deflate \
--with-included-apr \
--enable-cgi \
--enable-cgid \
--enable-suexec

#make the files
echo "*******************************   Compiling Apache Server"
make

#install the files
echo "*******************************   Installing Apache Server"
sudo make install

#backup hosts file
echo "*******************************   Backing up hosts file"
cd /private/etc
sudo cp hosts hosts.backup

#delete hosts file
echo "*******************************   Deleting Hosts File"
sudo rm hosts

echo "*******************************   Creating New Hosts File"
cd ~/Desktop/apache-temp
cat > hosts << EOF
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1	localhost
255.255.255.255	broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0	localhost
EOF

#move new hosts file to /etc dir
echo "*******************************   Moving Hosts Filer"
sudo mv ~/Desktop/apache-temp/hosts /etc

#set hosts file permissions
echo "*******************************   Setting Hosts File Permissions"
cd /private/etc
sudo chown root hosts

#backup httpd.conf file
echo "*******************************   Backing up httpd.conf File"
cd /private/etc/apache2
sudo cp httpd.conf httpd.conf.backup

#delete to httpd.conf file
echo "*******************************   Deleting httpd.conf File"
sudo rm httpd.conf

#copy httpd.conf file from originals folder
echo "*******************************   Copying New httpd.conf File"
cd original
sudo cp httpd.conf /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

#backup httpd-vhosts.conf file
echo "*******************************   Backing up httpd-vhosts.conf File"
cd /private/etc/apache2/extra
sudo cp httpd-vhosts.conf httpd-vhosts.conf.backup

#copy httpd-vhosts.conf file from originals extra folder
echo "*******************************   Copying New httpd-vhosts.conf File"
cd /private/etc/apache2/original/extra
sudo cp httpd-vhosts.conf /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

#remove the temp folder
echo "*******************************   Remove the temp folder"
rm -R ~/Desktop/apache-temp

echo "*******************************   Starting Apache Server"
sudo apachectl start

echo "*******************************   Done"

Notice the line “curl -O http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/apache/httpd/httpd-2.2.11.tar.gz” that specifies the download source. Change that to the most current version if necessary.

A post at Engadget uncovers just how much addiction a person can have for Macs. Jeremy Mehrle of St. Louis, Missouri totally pimped his basement with almost every Mac that Apple had ever made, along with iPods, the Newton, and posters. Hats off to Jeremy for having such a passion and devotion for Macs, and I think he should start bringing in tourists to his little Apple museum and use any possible donations to fund the project. Not only that this is the most badass Mac mod I’ve ever seen, it appears to be the coolest Apple fanboys hangout place.

When you read the story at Engadget, make sure to read the comments as well. I found them hilarious when some made comments on the IKEA furnitures. You can see more pictures of Jeremy’s installation at Flickr.

Wired News has a detail article on Apple products ever introduced in the past 30 years. I am really happy to see at where Apple has gotten today and I always love the Macs. During the years of being a fan of Apple, I’d owned:

1. Macintosh LC II



2. Apple Newton Message Pad 110



3. PowerComputing PowerCenter 120 (Mac clone)



4. Power Macintosh G4 400 (APG)



5. PowerBook G3/500 Firewire



6. iPod mini



7. And a few Apple stocks that have done handsomely =)

I am looking forward to having the iPhone and Macbook Pro in my collection.

Prior to the announcement of Apple iPhone this week, many fake iPhone mocks appeared and circulated on the Internet. Although none of them came close to what the real iPhone looks like, I still give them the credit for their creativity and enthusiasm.

This is a very exciting week for Apple, Inc (formerly Apple Computer, Inc), and for millions of die-hard Apple fans. At the Macworld Expo in San Francisco this week, Steve Jobs introduced the long-rumored iPhone to a raving crowd, along with Apple TV (formerly iTV). The iPhone, which combines a video iPod, a cell phone, and a mobile Internet device into one single form factor, appears to be another game-changing marketing blitz, and the market reacted very positively. Apple’s stock price soared over $10 between Jan 09 and Jan 10, and since has cooled down a little from its 52-week high at $97.

The iPhone is so impressive and irresistable that everyone can’t stop talking about it. We can find reviews of it on all Apple-related blogs (i.e. Macrumors, iLounge), and others such as Techcrunch, Engadget, TheStreet.com, and many more. Hats off to Jobs & Company! Although the device is a little pricey (4 GB model for $499 and 8 GB for $599), that won’t stop me from getting one when it becomes available in the summer. Sorry, Verizon, I am switching to Cingular in August…

Allensandra Ambrosio and Gisele Bundchen, the 2 sexy Victoria’s Secret models were spotted having some personal moment with the 2 sexy MacBooks on their laps. I wonder what these 2 celebrity models could possibly be doing with Macs? Exchanging iTunes playlists? Sharing iPhoto albums? Creating their own Dashboard Widgets? Or comparing who is the sexiest among the 4 of them? I just wish I could have been one of those 2 MacBooks…

Ha, just one day after I posted my sighting of the possible Apple iPhone, a video released on YouTube reveals the “iChat Mobile” from Apple is nothing but a piece of folded glossy paper with printed images. Thanks a lot, genius. Now I am really disappointed…

With Apple’s WWDC being only a few days away, the possible introduction of the long rumored Apple branded iPhone makes everybody anxious. Couple of (possibly fake) pix taken from the Moscone Center just show how cool and clever this gadget can be, if these pix are for real at all. I can’t wait to see what Steve Jobs has up to his sleeves when WWDC kickstarts next week.