Mac

Wired And The iPad

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:36:28 GMT

Really interesting short video from Wired, showing off some user interface designs for iPad-centric content. While the demos appear to be running on Adobe Air (as in, not capable of running on the iPad), the concept is powerful and compelling. The sound bite of the video:

"We also think it's an opportunity to reset the economics. For the first time people may value this experience so much that they'll pay for it."

Wow, isn't that what creating a product is all about? Hope the music, movie, and even traditional print industries are taking note, because Wired has figured it out.

How To Install Windows 7 x64 & Boot Camp 3.1

Wayne Hartman — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:55:56 GMT

Yesterday I ventured to get Windows 7 running on my Mac Mini and naturally ran into quite a few problems (quite unlike installing XP). Unfortunately, I could not get the x64 version of Boot Camp 3.1 installed; it would try to install the nVidia driver and then silently fail thereafter. I also ran into the road block of not being able to install the x64 version of Boot Camp 3.0 from the Snow Leopard installation media, but found a work around. You will need the following items:

Snow Leopard installation disc
Boot Camp 3.1 x64 installation package

First, insert your Snow Leopard installation disc and open a CMD prompt As Administrator. Access your disc drive and navigate to the Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple directory. Now execute the following command: msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi This will install version 3.0 of the Boot Camp software. This may take a few minutes, but after it is done, follow the prompt to restart your machine. For the most part, everything should be installed correctly, sans Apple's most recent hardware like the Magic Mouse.

After you have rebooted, you should then be able to run the Boot Camp 3.1 setup without any problems.

Death of the Dedicated Device

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:34:08 GMT

Today Google announced free navigation for the new version of its mobile software, Android 2.0. Seems like a pretty innocuous announcement until you consider who the players are in the market. TomTom and Garmin are two of the biggest players in the hand held consumer GPS market, so it came as no surprise that their business model might take a hit. Consider today's stock graph following the accouncement:

Ouch! It doesn't take a stock analyst to point out that anyone in the handheld GPS market is going to have an interesting time staying relevant in a marketplace where a once valued (and pricey) product is being given away for free. TomTom and Garmin are feeling the pinch, but they're not the only ones. The writing on the wall here is that the days of dedicated hand held devices are numbered. Even Apple themselves are seeing it amongst their own product lines. The iPod Classic and even the Nano are seeing shrinking sales all because people have discovered that having an iPod Touch or iPhone, which in addition to being able to play music or making a phone call, offer users a vast array of useful applications that fulfill any number of functions.

Who's next? I target eBook readers. The Kindle, Nook, and Sony's dedicated reading devices are the obvious choice for extinction. Though the iPod and iPhone do not necessarily make a comfortable book reading device, one could only imagine what the rumored Apple tablet will bring. If Apple were to combine the power and extensibility of their current iPod Touch/iPhone application experience and marry it with a slick interface for reading electronic books, then it would certainly obviate the need to carry an eBook reader on your person.

Look forward to the future, kids. The power and knowledge of the world is at your fingertips and it is only going to get better.

UPDATE: Right after I post this, I read an article highlighting a Twitter dedicated device. Wow. I am astounded. So what do people do when they have this device and people embed a link to a web page? While I agree that Twitter or Twitter-like communication is the wave of the future (heck, it's already here!), why would I carry such a clunky, one-trick-pony device in my pocket? 1996 just called, they want their glorified pager back!

Initial Take On iPhone 3GS

Wayne Hartman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:38:51 GMT

Today was pretty exciting as far as Apple news goes with the announcement of the release of Mac OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard', new MacBooks, MacBook Air price reductions, iPhone OS 3.0, and yes, the iPhone 3GS. Most rumors actually turned out to be correct, such as MMS, a 3 megapixel auto-focus camera, tethering, magnometer, and video recording. Some that didn't pan out were the new matte finish (instead of a glossy back), but the most happed for, but more far-fetched non-event was the forward facing video lens. Others that I didn't find anywhere on the rumor sites included the Voice Control feature. Gizmodo posted a hands-on review of that feature and found it easily befuddled by background noise. It's forgivable because I'm not sure how much I will use that feature anyway.

Why is this finally going to be model I buy into? Hands down its the speed. One of the things I find irritating about the iPhone's little brother, the iPod Touch, is that it takes an enormous amount of processing power to render some sites I frequent, such as Slashdot. Their discussion threads can take an aweful amount of time to load, and in some instances, cause Safari to outright crash. With some more muscle under the hood, I should be able to run through text and javascript heavy sites that make previous versions of the Apple software want to cry.

More than that though are the staples of desktop computing: copy and paste. This is another realm where I'd do more mobile blogging if I could easily copy/paste links and quotes into my blogging platform. This will make things much easier to do.

On top of that, throw in the three megapixel camera and I feel like I have a replacement for my point and shoot camera. My three year old destroyed our DSLR substitute by trying to mash the lens back into the body of the two hundred dollar camera. With no external parts to do so, making the iPhone 3GS the new small portable camera makes a natural fit.

In the end I think this was a great, if not incremental refresh to an already good product, and with with this announcement they've found a new customer who has run out of excuses. June 19th, here we come.

Microsoft, Why Can't We Have Simplicity?

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:28:28 GMT

Windows 7's release is on the horizon with the debut of its first release candidate this week, but even more troubling than the repeat of the myriad versions that we'll have to sort through, most people won't be able to take advantage of the new 'XP Mode'. XP Mode allows a user to run a concurrent virtual instance on Windows XP while using Windows 7. The idea is to ease the transition of users who still need to run certain applications that are not compatible with Windows Vista or 7. That's all fine and dandy, of course, except a few caveats.

First, you have to be running Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate to use it. Then, you must have a compatible Intel processor that has Intel Virtualization Technology. If that wasn't hard enough to determine, you must also enable the hardware feature in your bios. Why all the complication? One thing I find myself asking with technology is this: Is it going to make life easier?

One of the great things I've found about running Parallels on my Mac is the ease of not just installing the software, but the simplicity of running a parallel operating system. I didn't need any special hardware. I didn't need any additional software. I didn't even have to reboot my computer.

I have not tried the release candidate yet, but I found the Windows 7 beta to be a much more refined iteration of the Windows OS. But it's too bad that Microsoft has not learned from the tactics that Apple has used to differentiate itself in its I'm A Mac campaign: Technology should make the computing experience easy, simple, but more importantly joyful for those who use one. This latest stumble is more evidence that Microsoft just doesn't get it.

Mac Mini: Hardware

Wayne Hartman — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:02:56 GMT

As I had mentioned in my previous posts, the biggest barrier to purchasing a Mac had been price. For the hardware that you get it seems awfully expensive when you match that up to a comparably equipped PC. One of the benefits of a Mini, however, are its ultra-compact size, energy efficiencies, and more importantly how quiet it is. I have a 9800GTX+ in my PC and the box sounds like a wind tunnel with all the fans that are in it to keep it cool.

But does it have any guts? I got the lower end model at $599, and I have to say that it leaves a little to be desired. I notice quite the slow down when I fire up Parallels, a virtual machine software. My system slows to a crawl and I pretty much guarantee that the cause can be traced to the paltry 1GB of memory that comes standard in the tiny box. I find this a bit troublesome simply because my PC with 1GB of RAM can handle a VM taking half the RAM just fine.

I also find the 120GB 5400 RPM drive a little on the slow side if opening multiple apps up at the same time. Parallels also chokes here because of the intense disk IO nature of keeping two operating systems functioning at once. Upgrading the hard drive to a 500GB 7200 RPM drive would likely yield favorable performance gains.

I imagine that if I were to throw in the 4GB maximum of RAM, the OS would likely run a bit smoother, I guess it's just disappointing that 1GB doesn't seem enough. I also find it a little hypocritical with Apple's consternation over Vista being on the piggy side of resource intensiveness, when their own OS experiences similar issues.

While picking up the Mini, I got a mini-DVI to DVI adapter without realizing that the Mini actually comes with one. I took it back, but then realized that I wanted to use multi monitor mode, so I ended up purchasing a mini-DisplayPort to VGA adapter. Multi-monitor modes work flawlessly and it even surprised me that I didn't have to restart the machine in order to take advantage of the second display--very impressive.

In the end, the Mini makes a great computer for doing standard things that you would on the PC. Playing serious video games either in Parallels or native Windows just doesn't work well with the nVidia 9400 graphics chip, but if you're wanting to own a Mac without being taken in by a full priced iMac or PowerBook, the Mini presents itself as a suitable introductory model and is certainly competent for my purposes including learning the OS and doing iPhone development.

Mac Mini: A Week Later

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:53:04 GMT

Last week I posted about picking up a Mac Mini for dev work. After a week of use (I only powered up my PC to play TF2 last night), I've come away with a better feel for the Mac Experience.

As much as the Apple Fanboys tout OS X's intuitiveness, I have to say that Macs would be easier to use if they were my first computer. That might sound strange, even derogatory, but there are a lot of things that don't translate well when coming from a Windows-centric view. Like I had mentioned last week, the whole deal with the home and end keys has been a struggle. For example, even after a week, I still find myself trying to use them in Microsoft fashion to go to the beginning or end of a line. I'm slowly, but steadily breaking myself of the habit.

The other issue I had is what is termed 'mouse acceleration'. This controls how quickly the mouse moves on the screen. Instead of being linear in nature, there is some 'ramp up' time to moving the mouse. This has some advantages in making very precise strokes with the mouse (something that would be very useful in say, Photoshop), but isn't very helpful for general mouse use. This is another instance of just getting used to the OS, but is an annoyance nonetheless. I overcame this issue by swapping mice with my three year old son. He was glad to get my white HP mouse and I was glad to get his black Microsoft mouse that let me install a driver to get the acceleration I was used to.

One thing that I really enjoy is the consistency in the menus. No matter what app I'm in I can expect the same menus in the same place. Apple seems pretty strict about its user interface guidelines, in this case it pays off to have apps that behave the same no matter what. I had used Safari a little bit because of some fickleness with Firefox and had to find out how to change some of the app settings. I found this by going to the 'Safari' menu and selected 'Preferences'. When I was back in Firefox, I wanted to change where downloads ended up (why the desktop by default???) but couldn't find it where those options are in Windows (Tools --> Options). My memory immediately went to Safari and I thought 'why not?' and there it was: under 'Firefox --> Preferences'. Very nice.

All and all it has been a good experience. Despite the initial frustrations in a new world, I find OS X a nice change of pace--and it's not just the glossy buttons and the smiling Finder icon. It's just a joy to use.

Tomorrow I'll talk about the hardware and how it performs.

Making The Leap To Mac

Wayne Hartman — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:24:33 GMT

Yesterday I made the leap. I had been pondering making the jump to a Mac ever since the Mac Mini made its debut a few years ago, but it hasn't been until the iPhone came out that I started seriously looking into it. The Mac's increased popularity and market share haven't hurt either, but it's viability as a development platform has certainly increased because of the appeal for iPhone apps.

The barrier to entry has always been price. The Mac Mini was a tempting diminutive box to get, but its hardware was dated and it wasn't getting the regular hardware refreshes that its siblings would get every six to twelve months. So when the Mini got a all-of-a-sudden hardware upgrade, I knew the time was right. Coming with Leopard and Apple's latest iteration of iLife, now more than ever was a good time to break into the Mac platform.

The biggest adjustment I've had to make so far has been keyboard shortcuts. I'm a big user of the home and end keys to quickly move around in text editors, so losing that one-key functionality has been a bummer. In fact, while trying to use the Mac equivalent, I accidentally navigated away from creating this blog post. That was pretty frustrating considering that I was almost finished, but I understand that there will be pain coming from a PC-centric paradigm to an Apple one.

The first piece of software that I installed was, of course, Firefox. There are a few functions that I'm used to having that Safari just can't compete with with. The first one being the JavaScript blocker, No-Script. The other is closing tabs by simply click wheeling the tab instead of having to click on the 'x'.

All in all it has been exciting to do something new and I look forward to learning something outside of my current experience.