Emergency Exit

Oh, I respect linux, today I want to play a game of reversi between coding. I’m not bad at this game computer is at average level), but you cannot beat linux. On an 8×8 board I just got 78 checkers, while the computer got 4294967291. You feel so small if you face the unbeatable power of linux. After that Waterloo I depressed booted windows, where I have a chance to master solitair.

Yes, I know that this revsersi game has nothing todo with the linux kernel. I will still make jokes about.

This beta contains the first really useful plugin: iTunes control. Nearly the same as the version from ArtLebedev Studio with much better AppleScript source code :) And the covers are taken from iTunes also instead of being downloaded from amazon.
I tested the application on an Intel Mac and it works, so I deliver it as universal binary now.

Sadly a lot of working stuff is removed from this beta, because I have rewritten a lot of code.

Download

After seven months of waiting time I have my Optimus Mini Three for nearly two month now. And it is fascinating and usefull. But what is really? How it is used and what was the intention during the design process.

What is the difference between a man and a boy?
The price of their toys.

When I saw the Optimus concept the first time, my first thought was: I need it, cannot live without it any longer. I followed the (slow) progress of the device and read every news. In one of the news it was announced that the protocol specification. Instantly hundreds of games and funny things came to my mind. I always loved to program everything that can be programmed and I collected electronic gadgets since I can write C code.

I preordered an Optimus Mini Three as soon as it was possible without knowing the delivery date. After some month my girl friends began to kidding me with: you send money to Russia, but you will never get it. My intention was a small device for coding. I made Pong and Blackjack for Optimus Mini Three (both are unreleased yet).

I use the small keyboard on Mac and Windows computer. On windows I use it to control iTunes. This is very nice, since I can control my music even if I have another fullscreen application running. Since I have written my Mac drivers, I control iTunes, XCode and Expose. I never thought Optimus keyboards are so usefull. But they are.

I can start my favorite applications and control my music. What would be really handy is a plugin to select layouts. I will implement this soon.

Just another beta with some new features:
- plugins can be removed
- highlight effect for plugin drag’n'drop
- applescript plugin

I found some new bugs:
- it is not possible to use the common shortcuts in textfields of the plugin

The AppleScript plugin can be used for the most tasks. It requires some skills to use, but it is very powerful. The next plugin will be the Hotkey plugin to post key events to applications. Together with the Launcher plugin, those three plugins should cover the most common tasks.

I uploaded a new video and the new version of the application.

Artemy and his team was just a few hours slower than me The perfect time to add the nice stuff of his version into mine (:

I added the “active application” feature, which changes the layout with the active application. This is a very handy feature. I also began to implement orientations. I read in the Optimus blog that a lot of people use the keyboard in a vertical layout so my version should have this feature too. It is not finished.
I fixed the low resolution icon bug, I changed the Cocoa for icon loading code for that. I will compile and test my drivers on the Intel Mac of a friend soon. So I release an universal binary.

I will begin to write plugins now. I have some system function plugins that aren’t finished yet. I want to ask the Optimus users, what kind of plugins you need for MacOSX. Feel free to leave comments.

Download

Finally, I finished the first version of my MacOSX driver. And the best thing, you can download it this time. There are tons of features that are not implemented yet and some bugs are not fixed. But it is working and you can test it.
No more videos, no more screenshots. Download it here.
At the moment there is just one plugin availiable: Lauchner, it can start applications, open files and websites.