I was looking for some way to tell if a remote machine was idle from the commandline and I stumbled across this snippet on Mac OS X Hints.
ioreg -c IOHIDSystem | awk ‘/HIDIdleTime/ {print $NF/1000000000; exit}’
returns a time in seconds and fractions thereof, ie 4.00711
Xero is an accounting web app for Mac and iPhone.
Given the difficulties AT&T’s network had coping with the traffic generated by the iPhone, I wonder if it will be able to keep up with the iPad (even after they announced the revamping of their infrastructure)? After all, Google Maps is going to have to draw a lot more tiles to show your copilot the directions as you drive along. Image sizes will be bigger, and so too will App sizes. Anyone know what size the icons are on the iPad?
What if the iPad wasn’t really the new cool device. Maybe the reason the new Apple laptop release is so overdue (statistically) isn’t because of production ramp-up, but because they’re going to release a Mac with a touchscreen, thus the MacPad 
With Intel’s new processor announcements slated for the International Solid-State Circuits Conference starting February 7th, it would seem that it’s about time for Apple to release a new top of the line MacBook Pro as the announcements usually seem to coincide (and it also coincides with MacWorldl Expo. The MacBook Pro is 242 days since the last release, somewhat over the average of 200 days.
TidBITS has a nice photo tour of the iPad launch, including pics of Xeni Jardin, Stephen Fry and some John Gruber amongst other Mac luminaries.
Daring Fireball and Stephen note that the iPad web page rendering is much faster than on the iPhone, presumably due to the A4 processor. I just want to know if it supports more than 8 pages open (which is the limit in the iPhone version of Safari).
Check out the above Stephen Fry link for his most excellent take on the iPad launch, including such gems as:
I’m not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design fixated and so on are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can’t bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire. The fact is that Apple users like me are the uncoolest people on earth: we salivate, dribble, coo, sigh, grin and bubble with delight.
Woohoo!
A 24.6 cm tablet by the looks of it. Looks a lot like the lid of a MacBook Air. Onscreen keyboard. Looks like it has the iPhone’s home button.
10 hours battery life, 680g, 16-64Gb of storage. 1GHz CPU.
No GPS? No camera?
Existing iPhone apps can run in either native size or pixel doubled. New SDK for the iPad now available.
Oh look, an e-book reader, iBooks (how come we didn’t see that coming! Looks like Delicious Library’s shelves.
iWork has been ported to the interface. Does this mean it has files? a Finder? iWork apps $9.99 each, can connect a projector with a cable.
US$499 entry point (A Kindle is US$259). 64Gb With 3G = US$829
Accessories: Keyboard dock, a nice case that can stand it up to watch movies.
Aside from the usual random speculation about Steve Jobs worldchanging release in a few hours time, there have been a few interesting articles recently, namely
I also wonder what the cool feature will be… Mesh networking? Biofeedback? Merging with other nearby devices to form a larger device? Inbuilt projector?
It will also be interesting to see if Apple launches any updates to their 17 inch MacBook Pro as they would probably always have done if they were attending MacWorld this year. Also, I predict an iPhone software update, an iTunes update and a Mac OS X update.
Now, lets sit back and see how wrong we all are…
I’ve downloaded Apple’s Security Update 2010-001 for Snow Leopard, but when I try to install the package I get told that
Security Update 2010-001 can’t be installed on this disk. This volume does not meet the requirements for this update.
Anyone else having this problem?
Bnet Australia reports that at the $9.99 price point Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars is rocketing up the App Store charts, unlike the $30 or $40 versions for the Nintendo DS or the Sony PSP version. Quel Surprise!
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