After a fresh installation of Mac OS X Lion the startup sound (chime) was extremely loud. Every morning i was near a cardiac infarction.

There are some tools to mute it, but they are currently (September 11, 2011) not compatible with Lion or they do not work with every hardware. The first one is the StartupSound.prefPane from Arcana Research. The other one is Psst from Satsumac. A other solution with custom scripts and hooks is too low level for a Mac user.

The startup sound is using the internal speaker of my iMac. Let's turn that output volume down:

1. Open the system preferences and select "Sound" ("Ton" in german)


2. Select the "Output" tab ("Ausgabe" in german)


3. Curious, only my "Headphones" ("Kopfhörer" in german) are listed. But i want to change the volume of the internal speakers?

4. Solution: Unplug your "Headphones" from your Mac and the list of ALL devices gets updated immediately. Now the "Internal Speakers" ("Interne Lautsprecher" in german) are visible and you can adjust the volume of them.


5. Plug your headphones

=> Try it with a reboot. Silence!!!

Tags: Lion, Startup Sound, Mac, OS X, Chime

The first version of Mr. Reader is available on the App Store since a week. So far i can say, it's a huge success for me. Great thanks to all of you!

I received a lot of feedback with feature requests, tips for improvement and of course problems and crashes. It took me a lot of time to do all the support, but this is also fun and helps me extremely to improve Mr. Reader! In the free minutes i prepared the first update with many fixes and some improvements. I uploaded v1.0.1 yesterday, and it is currently in status: "Waiting For Review. A list of changes can be found on the version history page of Mr. Reader.

What are the next steps? I'm going to prioritize all entries in my TODO list, to decide what i'm going to implement in version 1.1.

Sorry, but once again:
If you have any features requests, problems or questions, please contact me by mail (mrreader-app[ÄT]curioustimes.de). I'm unable to respond to feedback posted in the iTunes App Store. Furthermore there are more then 80 App Stores world wide and i'm unable to scan all of them for important feedback. Thank you!

Tags: App Store, Mr. Reader

I started with the development of Mr. Reader (it's first name was News Squirrel) in February 2010. At this time i was employed as a Senior Java Developer and coded just in my spare time. I thought that i could publish it on the App Store with the release of the first iPad. But that was a big misjudgment.

Afterwards more and more iPad RSS news reader like Reeder, NewsRack, etc. were available and i always had the feeling that it is not competitive at this time. But, now i'm very happy with version 1.0!

As mentioned in the previous post, i quit my daily job to the end of 2010, and that gives me the necessary time to finalize the first version of Mr. Reader. The small things at the end, take always the most time!

Yesterday was the official release, after one week waiting for review and another one being reviewed. I'm surprised about all the positive feedback i've received so far. Thank you all!

Sure there are some "childhood diseases" in this first version, and i'm going to fix them as soon as possible.

Tags: Mr. Reader, App Store, Ready for Sale, Apps

It has been a very long time since I last posted, and many things changed since then. I'll try to summarize the most important things.

First my Apps
In the meantime my popular birthdays App HappyDayz! has been updated 4 times. I'm currently working on version 3.0 which supports among other things the iPad natively. My german only App Kfz-Kennzeichen! has also been updated, and gets another update after the HappyDayz! release. I released a update of My Number? respectively Meine Nummer?, that runs now natively on iPhone and iPad. My screenshot tool iOS-Simulator Cropper has been updated so frequently, i cannot remember.

Most important: A new iPad only App is on the way to the App Store. Some more details, in the next post.

Personal & Business
To the end of 2010 I quit my daily job as a Senior Java Developer - after more than 10 years - to concentrate full time on iOS and Mac development. I had the strong feeling to do the things that make the most fun and to ignore job safety. There was a lot of bureaucracy, but i mastered all and now i'm officially a indie developer since march 2011!

Die neue Version meiner App Kfz-Kennzeichen! wurde gerade von Apple freigegeben und müsste in den nächsten Stunden im App Store erhältlich sein.

Was ist denn nun auf einmal bei Apple los. Der Review hat dieses mal nur 5 Tage gedauert! Das könnte fast ein neuer Rekord sein. Weiter so Apple!

Tags: Kfz-Kennzeichen!, App Store