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You want to schedule something really quickly, and you don’t have time to set up cron or other scheduling tools. In some cases, using the sleep command in Terminal might be all you need.
Here’s an example. My Mac was busy doing something, and I didn’t want Dropbox working on a big sync until it was done. So I quit Dropbox and entered this in Terminal:
sleep 3600; open -a Dropbox
The sleep command had my Mac wait for 60 minutes before launching Dropbox. The other job had finished and Dropbox launched and went to work. More on using Terminal to launch applications.
Of course there are other ways to schedule tasks. But could you implement them faster for this particular scenario?
Related:
scheduling a twitter tweet
running an applescript with iCal
terminal as application launcher
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Walking out of the Apple store I had an idea: Use a book stand for an iPad stand. I looked around inside the Sur La Table store right next to the Apple store – didn’t see any dedicated book stands but they had plenty of plate holders. I picked one up and saw the name Gibson Holder on the bottom. Found a variant of the plate stand on Amazon, the N4 Display Stand.
It’s a stable stand. The white looks ok in my kitchen. And it’s inexpensive enough to have a few in the house.
When I got mine it was under $3 at Amazon, I bought a single. It looks like they come in a 6 pack now for $8. I don’t see the single listed anymore.
Downside:
In portrait mode it obstructs the home button and the charging port. I’m almost always in landscape so I don’t really mind.
Some people might think it’s too rigid and that it might scratch the iPad. Generally I don’t worry about that stuff – but maybe you do. I carry my iPhone in my pocket without a case. Admittedly, I expected more of a pliable coating on the wire frame, but I’m still happy with it as an iPad stand. The feel is like a sturdy coat hanger.
I use it mostly in my kitchen, more photos below.
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The preview of the new iPhone OS cleans up Apple’s todo list, but there are still features I’d like to see. Let’s get right to it.
Wifi Sync. They’ve been holding this one back for a while. Downloading podcasts directly to my iPhone helped a little. But I’m still expecting full sync via wifi. At this point I don’t understand what the hold-up is.
Someone always says, “Why do you need that?” Because my iTunes Mac is in the west wing in the media closet, and I don’t want to walk through the conservatory and the butler’s pantry just to sync some tv shows before going out to the pool.
Enable FM. My gym broadcasts television audio over FM. The iPhone has the capability already, why not turn it on? I don’t consider FM a threat to apps like Pandora. Anything that gets people listening to music can’t be bad for the world’s biggest music store. Turn on the FM please.
Latitude. I’d like to share my location with certain people via Google Latitude. The web version on my iPhone doesn’t cut it. Maybe with the new multitasking services Google will give Latitude for iPhone a try. And maybe Apple will say ok.
Google Voice. This might be the most interesting. As a phone the iPhone features haven’t really changed since 2007. Except for Voice dialing.
Apple’s arguments for keeping Voice off the iPhone made little or no sense. Their claim that they were studying it (they didn’t reject it) might be somewhat true. Some of the features of Google Voice could have been very Apple-like on the iPhone – implemented with the help of AT&T. Visual Voicemail was essentially the only voice feature that initially set telephony apart on the iPhone. And it probably wasn’t easy to get AT&T to cooperate.
So – maybe Apple is working on their own version of Google Voice features.
I don’t expect to see Google Voice on the iPhone. Google and Apple are crossing the streams. Dr. Spengler said that would be bad.
Streaming to Airport Express and Apple TV. The iPhone Remote app is nice, it lets me control my Apple TV as it plays over my stereo or streams to my Airport Express. I’d still like streaming from the iPhone directly to an Airport Express or Apple TV.
Default App. Like weather, stocks, clock or slideshow. It could kick in with autolock when the phone is docked. Deactivated by default to keep things simple.
Gesture Preferences. The iPad has brightness settings in the iBook app. It would be nice to bring up brightness in lots of apps, by using a four finger swipe or something like that. Exiting an app is a long round-trip just to change brightness. Better yet: Using the physical volume button with a finger on the screen.
What else?
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