Geek 2.0

This new version should fix the dreadful “Can not start sync session” that some users have reported to appear when first starting the application, making it unusable for them.

Should you have encounter this error with previous versions I encourage you to download and test this new version, and report any problem you might find.

If everything is working correctly for you, there is no need to upgrade, there is no other change made.

Why did I wait 6 months to correct this problem ? Actually, although several users reported this to me, I never managed to identify the problem from the log files I received. And I was not able to reproduce the problem on any machine I have access to (mine, my colleagues or my parents). However, since a couple of days, I have the pleasure to use a brand new Mac Book Pro. Today, I decided to start JSCalendarSync for the first time … and I received the error “Can not start sync session !”. I finally had access to a machine where the problem occurs, great. Debugging it was a matter of one hour only (mostly because I have not been browsing the source code since months), a very small error in the way I used to handle default values for the preferences file.

On the other hand : I have absolutly no clue why this problem appeared for some users only. Let’s hope this is now solved and that all users will be able to test and use JSCalendarSync.

I recently acquired a MacBook Pro to replace my not-too-old PowerBook G4 12″. I have only one thing to say : waow !

First of all, I have to be used to the size of the beast. The 15″ is much more confortable to work but this confort comes at a price, it takes more space in my bag and on my legs. I wonder how it will fit in an economy-class airplane seat.

The machine is responsive, the backlight keyboard is impressive, the screen very bright. So far, nothing to say about hardware.

As far as software is concerned, Apple succeeded at making the transition to Intel completly transparent to end users. All applications I am using are universal (NeoOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird) or Java based (Netbeans, Creator). The only non universal application I notice so far is the Flash plugin for the browsers. And because plugins can not run under the Rosetta emulator, it requires the full browser to start in Rosetta, which is not handy.

Last word on software : in two days of intensive usage, I got one kernel panic while switching wifi network and one finder crash. Is Mac OS Intel less stable than Mac OS PPC ? In 5 years, I had only one kernel panic with the PPC versions. Let’s see how it will behaves during these next days.

This week OpenSolaris celebrates its first birthday.
This article asks the question : “Success or Failure ?”
Have a look at next’s year roadmap.

I posted earlier today the second release of JSCalendarSync.
This new version adds support for secure connections (https) to the Calendar Server, although it does not verify the server certificate yet.
This version also corrects many small and large issues you reported.

Now that I have something more stable (or I hope so 😉 I will add as soon as I can the two show stoppers for most of us : the synchronization of the attendee list and the support for recurring events.

I would like to thanks all of you who have taken the time to download and test v0.1. Please continue do do so with this v0.2 and continue to report all bugs, comments or ideas.