Why MAMP is Better Than XAMPP?

Just thought I would post a very quick little point for those working with a local server on a Mac. It's pretty easy to set up the built in server on the Mac and do it that way, but personally I prefer just using a pre-packaged solution.

For years I've been using XAMPP. Not sure why I thought it was better. On Windows it's definitely a great choice. But on OS X it's not. The trouble is XAMPP has not been updated in quite a while on the Mac side. So, you'll be using pretty old versions of PHP and MYSQL. Also, there are lots of glitches with it. For instance, it doesn't correctly set folder and file permissions. You have to set these manually, which is pretty ridiculous.

Anyhow, I just recently switched to MAMP and it's much smoother. Everything is up to date, xdebug worked pretty much out of the box. No trouble with file permissions, and stuff is a lot more current. So, for now, avoid XAMPP on the Mac until they start supporting it properly. MAMP is good. XAMPP not so much.

Mac OS X's Finder: The Most Important Tweak to Make Search Function

Apple has made some decisions with Finder that some users might find a bit annoying. So, for instance, if you just open Finder and you hit command + F you get this window by default:

This is a completely useless result. On my Mac the search in fact chokes because so many results are found. This is almost always not what you want in a search result. So, you have to follow these steps to solve the issue and bring some sanity to Finder.

First, you need to change "search the current folder" setting in the Finder advanced preferences.

Firefox 4 on OS X--No PDF Support!!!

Thought I would just post some quick thoughts on the new Firefox 4. I installed it today on my Macbook Pro i7 in OS X (10.6.7). I made sure I didn't write over my Firefox 3 install. It was a lot of fiddling to install all my addons. My first impressions are that it's definitely snappier. However, I ran into a couple of very serious problems within minutes that make Firefox 4 a nonstarter for now for serious Mac users.

A brief review of Safari 4 Beta: Possibly the world's best browser?

I'm a recent convert to OS X. I've been a Firefox guy. Gotta love all those plugins! Although you can get Firefox 3.x looking pretty cool on OS X with the GrApple Delicious theme, it isn't integrated with services, which is a pain. Anyhow, I thought I'd give Safari and Camino a whirl. I checked out Camino and it's great too, but I find it a bit limited for my needs in its current iteration, and a bit slow (even 2.x beta). So, I started playing around with Safari 4 beta.

IBM Model M Keyboard & OS X

I just got a new Macbook Aluminum unibody. I'm loving this machine so much. But when I'm at home, I like to plug into a 24 inch screen and I love to type on the IBM Model M keyboard, probably the best keyboard ever built. I have 3 of them. Anyhow, I did some googling around to try to find a solution to remapping the Mac Command key to the right control key on the M. Most of the key remapper programs out there do not appear to support OS X 10.5.x or Leopard. Anyhow, I found a little program called PCKeyboardHack that did the trick. It allowed me to map the right control key to the Mac Command key. Obviously you could go into the preferences -> keyboard & mouse and under "modifier keys" you could map the cap locks key to command for all keyboards. Personally, I use that key. So, that wasn't a solution for me. Anyhow, download PCKeyboardHack here if you think it might be useful to you. Update: PCKeyBoardHack works with all current versions of OS X including Lion.