Disable Itunes sync when iPhone is connected on Mac

When developing iPhone applications with monotouch it becomes very annoying that everytime you connect your iPhone to your mac it opens iTunes and starts to sync, followed by opening iPhoto.

You can disable both of these from opening:

Disabling iTunes from opening / syncing when iPhone is connected: 
Simple option in iTunes as shown:

Uncheck "Open iTunes when this iPhone is connected" and click apply.

Disabling iPhoto from opening when iPhone is connected: 
Open iPhoto. Goto Preferences:

And change "Connecting camera opens" to "No application" as shown:

Enjoy!

Setting up Git with MonoDevelop on Mac OS X

MonoDevelop on Mac ships with Git integration built in.

As an aside: My preferred source code provider is https://bitbucket.org/ because they provide unlimited free private repositories. I obviously use the same account for my open source projects as well. So this is the provider I tested.

First of all create a new git repository on BitBucket. Note down the git url as highlighted below:

Now open up MonoDevelop and select Version Control -> Checkout as shown:

Next select Registered Repositories and select Add and then in type Select Git as shown:

Next Copy paste that git url in the url field as shown, This will automatic fill most of the fields for you (cool) :

Just type in the Name (already shown in the previous image MondrianEvolved) and click Ok.

Next specify the newly added repository and select the target directory as a new directory you want created for this repository (make sure you end on /):

Click Ok, And when prompted type in the password as shown:

Your project will download. You are ready to rock and roll :

Additionally: 
Most git operations, you can now do from the context menu as shown:

And overall operations from the Menu :

commit messages:

And push changes:

Also if you are doing Git/Hg on Mac OS X I highly recommend you check out SourceTree : http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/
It picks up where MonoDevelop leaves off.

Enjoy!

Uninstalling an application in Mac OS X

The standard way that people uninstall an application in Mac OS X is to simply drag an application from the applications folder into the trash.

This however can leave preference files used by the application behind. These file are generally stored in Library/Preferences  folder (since Mac OS X does not have a concept of a registry).

To ensure that these files are also removed when you delete an application take a look at a neat little free application called AppTrap : http://onnati.net/apptrap/

Disabling reopen closed windows in Mac OS X

By default Mac OS X Lion reopens any windows that an application had open once you quit an application (command Q) unless you close the windows (command W) before quitting the application. 

This is extra annoying with preview since you open an image, Close the application, open another image and now you will suddenly have two images open. 

You can disable this option from system preferences and unchecking "restore windows when quitting and re-opening applications" as shown below. 

 

Notepad / Wordpad on a Mac

There are third party tools but by default Mac comes with TextEdit which is more like wordpad instead of notepad. 

To use TextEdit as notepad you can switch to plaintext by going to preferences and changing to plaintext mode. 

The keyboard shortcut for this is : Shift Command T 

Moving to a Macbook from Windows

My previous rig: I have been using a dell xps studio 16 as my main laptop for the past year. It has been awesome all the way. It cost only 1100$ and came with impressive specs like a quad core CPU and 1GB dedicated GPU. I primarily used Visual Studio 2010 and develop in .NET.

Like many people I feel that it was time I tried the "other" popular platform that users were loving. The Mac/iOS family. I would like to point out I already use iPhone as my main phone. I also have an iPad which resulted in an explosion in the amount of reading I got done in the past 2 years. Simply because of the ease of closing one book when I no longer feel the author or feel overwhelmed with the information and opening the another one instantaneously.

But I have never owned or even used a Mac before. And that just feels not right for a geek. The reason why I never bought one before was two fold: 

I live and breathe C#

No longer an issue thanks to Mono guys. http://xamarin.com/

I am an engineer and appreciate code beauty and code evolution. C# satisfies my urge for programmers lives being made easy by other programmers. If no ones lives are getting easier programmers aren't focusing on the right kinds of problems.

I like the freedom of hardware choice

Still an issue. But unfortunately there are some major discrepancies in my windows hardware :  The webcam on my dell was not the awesomest. But more importantly : There is a delay when I try to record and live listen audio plugged into line in. Even my P2 desktop didn't have this problem. Compare this with what mac gives you : http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/ Being a (hobbyist) musician having a system guaranteed to work (like all apple products) as advertised is a safety that I enjoy over mix and match hardware choice. 

I never put the Dell XPS studio 16 on my lap because of known overheating and motherboard frying incidents. And didn't even move around with it much because of weight and because of fear of a harddisk crash.

The macbook air is the best ultrabook you can buy right now. And the 11inch, 128GB SSD, 4GB base version is comparable in price to windows ultrabooks.

In short Macbook Air is the best "laptop" you can buy. You can make yourself a better desktop. But a better ultra-portable laptop is impossible to make on your own.