Cisco MeetingPlace does not like retina screens

I was preparing a remote demo for a customer today.

Our company is using Cisco MeetingPlace for such things.

During some trials I have realised that if one shares retina screen through MeetingPlace tool, it is not properly shown to other participants. In fact, it does not matter which resolution you set, as far as it is retina, remote users can only see 1/4 of your shared screen, application or window.

XBMC on Mac: Frodo is not good (yet)

I have Mac mini working as HTPC with XBMC on it. For more than a year I was using XBMC 11.0 a.k.a. Eden.

The new version, XBMC 12.0 Frodo is supposed to be great. The main feature I was missing is Ariplay. I have an external application serving Airplay server, but having it as part of XBMC is so much nicer. So as soon as Frodo has been release, I have upgraded.

All was working fine, but on some movies there was a green line at the bottom of the screen. I have started digging. As reported in the issue log, it is caused by HW acceleration. I have disabled it, as XBMC has recommended.

Then some movies have started showing distortions. It was so annoying I have rolled back to version 11. But the issue was still there. HW acceleration, disabled or enabled, seemed not to work properly. I have re-installed. Same damn thing.

Finally I had to remove ~Library/Application Support/XBMC files for XBMC to start working as before the upgrade.

My personal recommendation: if you are running XBMC on your Mac, wait till the developers fix the acceleration bug. Anyhow, the app is great, I am a big fan.

A phrase that crashes your OSX apps

There is a new OSX bug reported recently. If you are typing the following phrase: 'File:///' (without quotes), your application crashes.

I have checked it, and it's true for TextEdit, Chrome and some other apps.

Take care, guys.