Monday, July 27, 2015

OSX Web Server Folders

Something that I always forget because I don't run a web server on my Mac very often is when I go to localhost I see something different than what I expect. localhost is located here:

/Library/WebServer/Documents

While if you are editing ~/Sites then you want:

http://localhost/~yourusername

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

iOS 8.4 iPad Air 2 rotational & wake delay issue work-arounds

There are two iPad Air 2 issues with iOS 8.4 that I personally find pretty annoying and apparently so do others as you can see from this discussion on the Apple message boards.

1. Screen rotation does not work
When running on the iPad, if I rotate the screen before unlocking then screen rotation does not work. The best work around is to disable Reduce Motion:

Settings | General | Accessibility | turn off Reduce Motion.

The screen will now rotate correctly. I really don't like Reduced Motion but not rotating is even worse. Unfortunately battery life suffers.

2. Long wake delay
The only current work-around for the wake delay is to use a Smart Cover/ Smart Case (magnetic wake). I don't use a smart cover so I hope Apple fixes this soon.


There is some additional information in the message on the Apple message boards.



Monday, July 20, 2015

Small Changes in Windows 10 not for the better

There are quite a few changes in Windows 10 and I have hardly uncovered half of them. Many are for the better and many are well less than idea which is cause the majority of the people a bit of a difficult time. I thought Microsoft would have learned from their mistakes before.

Here is the right click menu on the Recycle Bin.


Notice that the "Empty Recycle Bin" is the third item down, when in all previous versions of Windows (I'm not counting Windows 8 because I don't think many people count that as a version) it was the second item.

Many years back Microsoft tested a great idea to reorganize menu items based off use. And by great I mean it was a really bad idea. Research ended up finding that people tend to remember location more than reading the words. Think of it as muscle memory.

There are many other such subtle menu items that have changed location for no apparent reason other than a new feature. A few of them I'm find with, but if Microsoft hopes to get everyone on board with Windows 10, and I think they have a really good chance of success, they need to not change the user interface very much between iterations of Windows.