Josh Highland

Why I’m pre-ordering the iPhone 4S

by Josh Highland on October 6, 2011

iphone4s Why Im pre ordering the iPhone 4S Am I ordering the new iPhone 4S? As my tattoo says, “oh hellz yeah!”

I’m excited about the iPhone 4S and I’m going to pre-order it. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the 4s, about how “It’s nothing new”, and “It’s basically the same as the iPhone 4″.

Here are the things that make the iPhone 4S different from the iPhone 4

2x the data speed
2x the CPU (A5 processor)
7x the graphics speed
8mp camera
5 element lens
Larger camera CMOS
1080p HD video with image stabilization
Longer batter life
Bluetooth 4.0
Supports GSM & CDMA (Use it on ANY carrier)
Siri voice control
Improved antennas

So yeah I guess besides those things, the iPhone 4s is just like the iPhone 4…

I love my iPhone, ive loved them all. I’ve owned every generation produced. With each release, the iPhone gets better, and becomes a larger part of my life. I use my phone a lot. It’s a mobile computer thats always with me. As an app developer, I can basically do anything I want with it.

When I ask people who are disapointed in the 4s, what they were hoping to see, the most common responce I get it, “I wanted it to be shaped different.” Shaped different! What? OK, I agree it would be cool to have a different sized iPhone, or a slightly different shape, but if I had to choose between better speed and an updated look, I’m going to pick the improved speed 10 times out of 10… I actally USE my phone.

I think more people would have been excited about the iPhone 4s if it looked noticabley different from an iPhone 4. I really think that most people care more about the status of the iPhone and the look of it rather then the utility and freedom it provides. If the iPhone 4S had a different style back, like metal instead of glass, I feel that more people would be impressed with it. There is nothing stylish about owning an iPhone 4S. The 4S update is about the “S”, speed.

Personally, I like to think that the 4S means “For Steve Jobs”. The world has lost a great visionary. Without him we wouldnt be arguing about iPhones. RIP.

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I Don’t Always Test My Code…

by Josh Highland on September 12, 2011

If you have ever worked in a mulch-tiered web environment, you know how funny and true this is.

i dont always test my code but when i do i do it in production I Dont Always Test My Code...

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Hey OS X Lion, did you eat my Library folder?

by Josh Highland on August 9, 2011

mac lion Hey OS X Lion, did you eat my Library folder?

Mac OS X Lion (10.7), introduced a bunch of new features to the Mac platform. At the same time it’s taken away some things that experienced Mac users are used to. The idea was to remove things that the average user doesn’t need.

If your like me, you might have yelled “Hey! Where is the Library folder in OS X Lion?”, when trying to access data from the iPhone simulator.

After doing some research, I found that the folder was not gone, it had simply been hidden. Running the following command from the terminal, I was able to make my Library folder visible once again.

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

You may also need to restart finder by using this command

killall Finder && open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

If for some strange reason you want to go back to being a n00b and hide the Library folder again, you can use the following command

chflags hidden ~/Library

OSx Lion Library Directory Hey OS X Lion, did you eat my Library folder?

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Mac: Rename all files names in a directory to lower case

by Josh Highland on July 14, 2011

Just like my last post, I was working with a directory of about 1000 files. There was all sorts of problems with the way they were named. Anyone whos used a *nix type system will know that “.jpg”, “.Jpg”, “.JPG” are all very separate things. To solve the issue I was having I needed to rename all of the files in the directory to lowercase.

I fired up my friend the Mac terminal and ran the following command:

for i in *; do mv "$i" "$(echo $i|tr A-Z a-z)"; done

The code loops through each of the files in the current directory and renames it to the lowercase equivalent. fast, simple, elegant. Major time saver.

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Mac: Converting a directory of images into JPG files

by Josh Highland on July 13, 2011

Recently I was presented with a problem where I had a directory of about 1000 graphic files of mixed formats (png, gif, bmp, jpg), and I needed to convert them all to jpg files.

I tried various solutions but I ended using the following command in my Mac’s terminal.

mkdir jpegs; sips -s format jpeg *.* --out jpgs

This command creates directory called “jpgs”, and converts all of the files in the current directory into .jpg format, and moves them into the newly created “jpgs” direcotry.

It truly saved the day.

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