Mountain Lion is now available. To welcome and celebrate this new version of Mac OS, TimeBoxed is on sale: 50% off the normal price.
Discount will be available for a week, until the 1st of August.
Apple just shipped Mountain Lion on the Mac AppStore. I am glad to to tell you that the QuickLook plugin for MobileProvision files has been updated for this latest version of Mac OS.
The Release Notes of this version 1.2 can be shorten to: “Crash fix. One.“. Don’t expect new features, this is just the same useful plugin for an iOS developer.
If you did not heard about this plugin before reading this article, get an overview of its features, or learn how you can use the included command line tool.
I hope you will continue to enjoy it. Remember to share this link with your developer friends.
Have fun with the new big cat.
Screen too small? Or too many items in your menu bar? Sometimes you can’t see the left part of the menu bar.
You could buy a bigger screen. Or remove some useless gadgets from there. But you already knew that, and are not finding this solutions nice enough.
Well, you are right. Mostly. Keep as many applications as you want in your menu bar. Keep your 11″ MacBook Air. You just need to install BigBar.
BigBar adds a small gadget in your menu bar. When you click on it, it will hide the current application menus, and give all the space to this handy items in the menu bar.
No more need to switch to an application that has not too many menus to see how much time left you have on your TimeBoxed countdown, or to know the status of your DropBox (referral link) transfer.
You can move BigBar icon to the right part of your bar by holding the command key and drag and drop it.
Terminal has always been this cool kid, but a bit awkward socially. I bet it’s because he’s just shy. Let’s ease up on him, because today he has decided to talk a little with his closest friend: Finder.
Of all the toys he has, he is ok to share files he is playing with.
To ask him to do that, just type the following command:
$ showinfinder aFile
and the Finder will reveal it.
You can even ask him to show multiple files at once:
$ showinfinder aFile anOtherFile aLastFile
It works with absolute and relative file paths.
Once you get started on this playground, it can become really cool. For example, if you want to show in Finder all the png files you have on your Desktop, do this:
$ showinfinder ~/Desktop/*.png
Code source and binary file are on GitHub: showinfinder.
[Because the app of this article will be useful almost exclusively to french people, this post is also in French. Skip below for the english version.]
Je ne regarde quasiment pas la télé, mais de temps en temps, je veux voir quelque chose en live. Etant un geek assumé, je le fais généralement de mon Mac, via le flux vidéo broadcasté par la Freebox. Merci Free d’avoir tout compris !
Voici une minuscule application qui lance VLC avec la bonne URL - http://mafreebox.freebox.fr/freeboxtv/playlist.m3u – et active le mode plein écran.
Cela fonctionne uniquement si vous êtes connecté à une Freebox.
[ENGLISH VERSION]
Even though I’m not a fan of TV, sometimes, I want to watch something in live. Being a geek, I usually do it from my Mac. In France, we have a great ISP, named Free. Their box are called Freebox, and it broadcasts a video feed of most of the TV channels.
Below is a very tiny application that will open VLC, ask it to launch the correct URL - http://mafreebox.freebox.fr/freeboxtv/playlist.m3u in case you are searching for it – and activate the fullscreen mode.
Last october, I shared a plugin to QuickLook your Mobile Provision files for iPhone. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, well… it’s your choice. I don’t know, maybe in a loyal act of faith, you have decided to trust Xcode and the code signing process to Just Work ®.
I have just updated this plugin. Please welcome the version 1.1. Download it here.
Let’s chat about the new feature, a command line tool: mobileprovision.
By default, the tool will install itself in /usr/local/bin.
Here is the synopsis and usage:
Usage:
./mobileprovision [OPTIONS] MOBILE_PROVISION_FILE[...]
Options:
–udids (-u) Print a list of all the UDIDs
–quiet (-q) Do not print general informations of the profile. Useful if you only care about the UDIDs
–plist (-p) Output with plist format
–json (-j) Output with json format
and the default output:
File /path/to/file/MacMation_Dev.mobileprovision
Profile name: MacMation_Dev
Creation Date: 2011-10-21 14:20:15 +0000
Expiration Date: 2012-10-20 14:20:15 +0000
App ID: J5P3S99ZU6.*
Number of UDIDs: 14
If you only want the udids, use:
mobileprovision –udids –quiet
Let me know if you integrate this command in your continuous integration system, or find some clever use for it.
This version also brings a few improvements:
You can now see the ID of the Profile. To make it appear, click on the name of the profile (next to the green checkmark). To see the name back, just click again.
The detection of known devices has been updated to the new way Xcode stores this information. This means you will get back the useful name and pop-up bubble next to the UDID of a device that has been plugged in on to your machine. 
If you installed the new version but still see the number 1.0 in the left-bottom box, make sure you did not install the previous version for all users (in /Library/QuickLook) and this version only for you (in ~/Library/QuickLook). Mac OS X loads the version in /Library/QuickLook in priority.
I’m really happy to receive feature and improvement suggestions. Bug report, well, I have mixed feelings… but send them anyway!
Bye.
I am a fan of the Gettings Things Done methodology (GTD), by David Allen. I use OmniFocus, an application that I can not praise enough.
I am also a geek, and love shiny toys. I own and use a PowerMate knob, from Griffin. I use it mainly to control music, by taping on it to play/pause iTunes and control the sound volume.
Ever since I received it, I liked its cool flashing light. But as cool as it is, I never found a real use for it. Something so cool and attractive must have a meaning. Like the sexy glances from the girl you are flirting with. If they’d be meaningless, life would be sad. And confusing.
I wrote a script to change the light configuration of the PowerMate according to the state of my GTD system. Now, my PowerMate is breathing at the same rhythm than my life:
Can you see the life in here? At least, I definitively feel it when suddenly, my desk grabs my attention with some light flashes.
I asked Mac OS X to run this little script every 2 minutes.
I used Lingon to set it up. Click on the image below to see an example of configuration.
Click here to download the OmniFocusLightPowerMate application.
I have to go, something on my desk started flashing. Bye!
- Siri, please, tell Xcode to archive this project, and upload it to the AppStore.
- Yes, master.
- One moment please.
- It’s done. Would you like me to upload the IPA to iTunes Connect as well?
- Yes. Thank you.
The dialog above would be nice, but, we are not far enough in the future. You can use the command line to control Xcode, but Apple only provides the command xcodebuild, to build a project. There is nothing to save an IPA.
There are many scripts on the net to generate an IPA, but most of them where destined to be added as a script to be run by Xcode at the end of the Build process.
I wanted something more project agnostic, that didn’t require a configuration to be used.
I wrote a script named xcodearchive. Think of it as xcodebuild for archiving.
To use it, it is as simple as typing:
$ xcodearchive
It will automatically generate an IPA, save it on your Desktop.
By default, it also archive your dSYM symbols (you always keep them, right?).
It will do the same with your debug symbol, in a file named with enough details when you will need it a few weeks later, for example: AwesomeApp_version_1.3_20120114_17h54_dSYM_symbols.zip
It automatically reads your settings from your Xcode project. You can override some of them, if you need to.
Why is it better than using Xcode GUI?
It’s not, it is just different. …ok, it is better: more efficient, more options, which equals to a developer more happy with more time to do what is important, be it having some drinks with friends or polishing that ultimate detail of the already awesome application.
The code -in ruby- is available on github: xcodearchive
I have only tested it on an iPhone project. If you want to add support to Mac projects, I would be happy to receive a pull request.
- I received the new mobileprovision file.
- Great.
- No.
- What?
- You still haven’t added my UDID in it.
- I have.
- No you have not.
- Yes I have.
- No you haven’t.
- Yes.
- No! Why don’t you just… <loosing patience, but trying to stay polite>
- …
- Look, I’m sure. Can you generate it again?
- Ok, I will. Wait… ok, it’s done.
- Let me check. No, sorry, still not ok.
- Are you sure?
[END OF CHAT CONVERSATION CENSORED]
Sounds like déjà-vu? Probably because it is. Code signing can be a pain, but the fact that Xcode gives very little information about a mobile provisioning file does not ease things.
Let me introduce a new QuickLook plugin. This plugin allows you to get a QuickLook preview for all .mobileprovision files.
It gives you the name of the profile, its creation and expiration date, its App ID, and a sorted list of all the UDIDs included.
Before, you had this:
Standard QuickLook preview
For the same file, now you get:
For known devices, you get even more information:
The icon view in the Finder gets some improvements too. You can even see very quickly if a mobile provision has expired.
All the graphic design has been done by Vincent Bernet. I have worked with him on several projects, and definitely recommend his work. Check out his portfolio at vincentbernet.com.