Using a VNC port other than 5900

Apple has a VNC server that only allows access to port 5900. There is no way to change it, so the client has to be set up to be routed to that port. I needed 2 ports, since my Mac has two internal ip addresses — one for ethernet and one for wi-fi — and there is no way to forward an outside request to your home router for the the same port to two different ip addresses. A second port is necessary. In order to set that up, you need to download a 3rd party VNC software, that will handle requests on other ports like 5901. Vine Server is one of those.

This way you can pick to remotely connect to your Mac through either your home networks's wi-fi or ethernet.

Same would apply if you need to access more than one computer on your network from outside.

Music: Owning vs Streaming

Streaming and owning will always co-exist. It's silly to say "iTunes will be dead now that there is Spotify" or "It's been proven that people want to own their music".

There are bands and artists and tracks that you will want to own, just like certain movies and books. And then there is music you just want to listen to — today, tomorrow, maybe next week, but not necessarily keep forever in your library, again just like certain movies and maybe tv shows that you Tivo and some books and magazines and newspapers. Really, who needs to own magazines?

Re: "Hands-On With Spotify for iPhone: Is iTunes Dead?"

Spotify for iPhone

Spotify Mobile is out on iTunes today. It needs a premium subscription in order to work, £9.99/month buys you instant access to 6 million tracks over wi-fi, 3g and offline with offline playlist caching.

Spotify in the US

In order to make it work the account needs to be registered through a UK proxy. The account is free and there is no need for an invite. Just point the browser here https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
After setting up the account, download the client here https://www.spotify.com/en/

download/mac/ or here https://www.spotify.com/en/

download/windows/

As I found out yesterday some time into using it, Spotify will stop working because of the location mismatch between where you log in from (US) and the account location (UK). It will say you are not allowed to travel for more than 14 days. In order to fix that you have to put in a UK proxy into Spotify's preferences and let it log in through it. Once it does, you can remove the proxy and it will work without it again. Remains to be seen for how long though... Using a proxy all the time is not a solution since they are slow, overused and go bad often, so you always have to search for new ones.

Safari 4 32bit vs 64bit

Looks like 64bit Safari 4 is a bit quicker than 32bit

Mac OS X 10.5.6, Safari 3.2.1: 3261.8 ms
Mac OS X 10.5.8, Safari 4.0.3 (5531.9): 824.8 ms
Mac OS X 10.6 32-bit, 32-bit Safari 4.0.3 (6531.9): 657.6 ms
Mac OS X 10.6 32-bit, 64-bit Safari 4.0.3 (6531.9): 479.2 ms
Mac OS X 10.6 64-bit, 64-bit Safari 4.0.3 (6531.9): 478.4 ms


Apple promises a much quicker Java with 64bit. Start-up time compared to Firefox 3.5 is about twice faster with Safari 4. Add-ons/Plug-ins like Glims only work in 32bit Safari.