Installed Snow Leopard

Yesterday I installed Snow Leopard. Here is what I liked:

• Exposé in Dock
• Minimize to the same icon instead of adding extra icon to the Dock
• Loads and in general works faster
• Remembers language settings for each application. Now I can type in Russian in Skype, in Latvia in the web browser and in English in NetBeans without using language switch

What I did not like:

• Safari plugins lost
• huge icons in stacks with no way to make them smaller
• PHP 5.3 and no way to downgrade to 5.2.x

It took 1 hour 15 minutes to update my MacBook Pro. In general it was a good update.

Getting rid of PGP WDE for Mac

A couple of months ago I installed PGP Whole Disk Encryption (WDE) for Mac OS X. This software encrypts the entire hard disk and requires pre–boot authentication before allowing Mac OS X to boot. It worked well on Leopard: no slow downs, no faults, simple and effective. I like it.

Now Snow Leopard is out. PGP Inc promised to release a Snow Leopard–compatible version of WDE together with the Snow Leopard release. They failed. Instead they offered a beta program where anybody can sign up. I signed up twice. No good. Not even a single response from PGP.

PGP keeps complete silence about updating WDE for Snow Leopard. I waited for weeks but now I decided to get rid of WDE. It is a bad attitude to customers, when PGP continues to keep silence while users actively ask about the status of the software.

I decided to get rid of WDE and install Snow Leopard. If PGP Inc fails to keep its promises and ignores its customers, than I am no longer a customer of PGP Inc. That ends PGP product usage for me.

XDebug and Zend debugger play nicely together

I am very happy with Mac OS X 64–bit Zend debugger and Zend Studio. It is a perfect combination for the serious PHP developer. However I miss certain features of XDebug, such as a great error reporting.

Some years ago I tried running Zend Debugger with XDebug and it did not go: the server simply refused to start because of PHP initialization error. It was a Zend precaution against third party extensions that may prevent debugging.

Today I decided to try again and I found that it works! The only requirement is that XDebug is loaded before the Zend debugger. It will not be possible to debug with XDebug but profiling and enhanced error reporting works perfectly.

Whether it is accidental or not, I have no idea. But I really like that Zend allowed XDebug loading in parallel with Zend debugger. It makes developer's life even better.

Thank you, Zend, again!

64–bit Zend Debugger for Mac OS X is available!

If you, like me, use Zend Studio on Mac OS X, you know there were no official Zend 64–bit PHP debugger for Mac OS X. Some time ago Zend posted a true universal binary (including 64–bit version!) to the Zend Advisory Team for testing. We tested it there and it works perfectly!

Today I happy to say that Zend released this version for public use. Read the announcement made by Roy Ganor about it.

E-mail puzzle

What would you think if you have received an e–mail that looks approximately like this:

Dear Dimitri!
We found your web site and we think that you are a TYPO3 expert. We are a leading TYPO3 agency with 6 months history. Our agency lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse et lectus eget dolor fringilla suscipit. Fusce elementum orci in tellus rutrum blandit. Aenean pretium laoreet massa at gravida. Phasellus tortor lacus, euismod pellentesque hendrerit ac, tincidunt sit amet felis. Nam at est non lacus hendrerit egestas non eget magna.