Mac

Nice little article on the development of Mac laptops over the past 20 years. See From Mac Portable to MacBook Pro: 20 years of Apple laptops - Ars Technica.

In order of the ones I’ve owned/used…

Macintosh Portable (back in 91-93 for work) - very heavy, but the trackball worked well.
Powerbook 520c - bought one in 1995 (esp. with the ethernet) back when trackpads were new. Worked well, but sold it to get PowerMac 6100.
Powerbook 150 - best machine I’ve every had for plain writing. A keyboard you can hit, no bells and whistles. Great with Word 5.
12″ G3 iBook (White, twin USB) - got me through the PhD, but ran out of steam towards the end. Still working as a ‘netbook’ at home.
15″ MacBook Pro - day to day machine. Works well, though it’s a bit heavy to carry everyday.

Having my laptop go AWOL is something I’m always worried about. There are some useful thoughts (albeit from a Mac perspective) about minimising the damage of this over at TidBITS Safe Computing: What I Learned from Having My Laptop Stolen.

It’s been a month or so since I posted about my experiences with the Parallels and VMWare Fusion demos. Since then I’ve installed Vista on a Bootcamp partition and that seems to run nicely (though logging in takes for ever) and had a chance to use the demos to access Vista off the Bootcamp partition (though it seems to be either Bootcamp + Parallels or Bootcamp + VMWare not Bootcamp + Parallels + VMWare (obviously not running the virtual machine systems at the same time).

Both Fusion and Parallels worked nicely with the Bootcamp partition and installed their helper applications for sharing data etc. just fine. I tested out the Direct X support - useful for games and for other software that uses that graphics support - and found Parallels 3 was not good, and VMWare stuttered sometimes. The upgrade to Parallels 4 demo produced some nicer Direct X behaviour though.

At the end of the day either system - Parallels or VMWare - would do the job for me (like running Camtasia to make training videos showing how to access eLearning resources under Window). Parallels seemed to have the more integrated interface with MacOSX but did seem to suck resources out of the computer. VMWare seemed a little less integrated but felt (subjectively) less resource hungry and more snappy at installing operating systems etc. If push came to shove I’d probably go the VMWare route for my needs. (However I’ll need to run that past the people who control my budget). Bootcamp works, but there’s been a few times recently where I’d want to have Entourage and NetNewsWire running while doing Windows stuff too.

A couple of useful links that passed across my screen this week.

The first notes several sources of (free) software for plaining Windows media files of various types. It doesn’t link through to VLC, but the links there are useful too. See Play Windows media files on your Mac | Playlist | Macworld

The second is a piece of software that prevents your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Useful for quickly changing settings for presentation mode. See Lighthead - Caffeine.

So I’ve been trying our different options for virtual machines on the MacBook Pro with varying degrees of success. So far I’ve played around with the Parallels 3 demo, the VMWare Fusion demo, Crossover and VirtualBox.

Given I don’t have a spare Windows XP or Vista licence lying around at the moment (something I’ll fix in the next few days) I’ve been playing around with Windows 98 and Ubuntu distributions to see how easy it is install and run the different virtual machines.

Firstly, Crossover which effectively attempts to run Windows applications (using a WINE base) without you having to install a Window OS in a virtual machine. A nice idea but it didn’t really do the job with the apps I tried. Plus I want to record what the Windows setup looks like with something like Camtasia and having the familiar Windows Desktop helps there.

Secondly, Parallels. Easy install and worked well mostly. With Windows 98 it wouldn’t find the CD drive properly (disk image or real CD) which meant it couldn’t install the extras nor additional drivers it needed to run smoothly (like for sound and networking). Ubuntu installed too, but again the extras wouldn’t install either, though it ran just fine without them for testing purposes. Perhaps XP and Vista would work better, but it’s had a couple of strikes against it. YMMV.

Thirdly, VMWare Fusion. Again easy to install and the install of the OSs seemed to work well. It did a better job on Win98 (which is useful because I need to test course CD-ROMs etc. on old browsers and OSs. A lot of our students seem to have second-hand/hand-me-down hardware) but I couldn’t for the life of me get the soundcard to work. The appropriate drivers just gave a blue screen of death on install, though the CDROM worked. Latest Ubuntu (8.10) installed like a charm, with the extras. So, if this one plays well with XP/Vista it could be the one to pick.

Lastly, VirtualBox. Installed Win98 fine but only in basic mode - no sound etc and lo-res graphics. Ubuntu fared better and installed smoothly. If all I wanted to do was run the latter for testing then maybe that would be the way to go.

Next step is to set up a Bootcamp partition with Vista and then see how the virtual machines like Fusion play with that. In a less than perfect world I’d go with that by default, but I’d like to be testing and documenting the Windows and Linux experiences for students at the same time as the Mac experience. So far Fusion looks like it might do the job best, but we’ll wait and see.

Both VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop are a similar price but which to choose? I know VMWare has the edge (perhaps) for performance, but Parallels is (perhaps) better for integration.

Any ideas?

Has anyone had a play with the new Mac OS X friendly OpenOffice 3? I’m going to pull it down the wire but would be interested to know what other experiences people have had.

www.OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

Someone has way too much time on their hands.

Anyway, this is pretty much what I want. Smaller and more robust than a MacBook, but bigger and more capable than an iPhone, but still running Mac OS X. Desktop at work for most of the grunty work and then throw something like this in the backpack for word processing, web and email.

Cool.

Full article at Run Mac OS X on an Eee PC - Wired How-To Wiki including a video of it working.

While I won’t be owning an iPhone in the near future I was interested to stumble across this Flickr app for it created by my ‘cousin-in-law’ : Mobile Flickr, coming to an iPhone near you — Sneak.

Videos of it working over at Mobile Flickr | Apple iPhone School

Being an old UNIX programmer I love the idea of assembling your own set of small, powerful applications doing one task well rather than monolithic applications that try to do too much and fail at doing everything well. I don’t use Flickr but I like the look of this small app.

Something I didn’t know when making MP3 disks in iTunes - Macworld | Playlist | Creating navigable MP3 discs.

Ages ago (way back in 1990-91, I think) one of my flatmates had the game OIDS on his computer. It ran just fine on a Mac Plus and on the new Mac LC’s that had just come out. Good memories of the flat all taking turns to see who could get the highest score.

Any now I find that there’s a version for Mac OS X available from Xavagus Prime Software. I downloaded it and all the game playing memories came back. Unfortunately, the old game playing reflexes haven’t come back with the memories - can’t seem to fly anywhere near as well as I once did.

Related link: Oids - MobyGames

The iBook power adaptor died. After years of faithful service the cable that wrapped around the yo-yo adaptor broke, and I’ve spent a reasonable bit of time trying to find an old style iBook adaptor to plug in. However, I found one this morning and we’re up and charging. Luckily, backups had been made so no worries there mostly. I can’t belief how expensive both Apple and third-party adaptors are, though.

The G3 lives on - and is still fine for word processing, music and podcasts, email, blogging, DVDs, presentations and basic web browsing. Not so good for video play back (Flash or MP4) though - and web pages with lots of Flash items etc. tend to drag.

The screen may die in a little bit though, so it may become limited to a desk with a monitor and keyboard for chidren’s homework in the near future

Not that I’m going to buy a MacBook Air in the near future, but this might make some people think twice - Wide Awake Developers: Steve Jobs Made Me Miss My Flight.

A new documentary about Mac users and their love affair with the Apple brand. See Doco puts Macheads under the microscope - Stuff.co.nz. Trailer available here and movie web site at MacHEADS.

Related link: May the Force of the Operating System be with You: Macintosh Devotion as Implicit Religion | Sociology of Religion

A list (with pictures) of some of the times Apple didn’t get it right. Of course, the definition of not getting something right is often in the eye of the beholder (or user), and items like the Newton, Apple IIc and Lisa (all of which I’ve used) all contained elements that contributed to better designs in the future (for Apple and its competitors). I think the MacBook Air might be in this category of a niche-product that helps stimulate all sorts of developments down the line, independent of how successful a system it is in its own right.

See Learning From Failure: Apple’s Most Notorious Flops

Useful article (with AppleScript snippet) for adding some helpful functionality to Word 2008 for Mac for pasting plain text into a document. Pasting plain text is something I do fairly frequently, so I’ve filed this link away for the possible time I have to use Word 2008. See TidBITS Problem Solving: Word 2008 and the Paste Plain Text Dance.

I like databases, which means that when I see that there’s a new iTunes-style interface database, Bento, coming out for the Mac (by the same developers as FileMaker (Thanks, Matt)) I’ll sit up and pay attention. See Bento: Mac’s New Database App Is iTunes for Control Freaks:

It’s only available for Mac OS X 10.5, but there’s a preview (Alpha? Beta?) available at Meet Bento

I really, really hope it works well, though the reviewer at TidBITS Home Macs: FileMaker’s Bento: Undercooked and Slightly Fishy is less convinced.

Now, if someone could bolt a Leopard interface on top of MySQL and make it as easy to use as iTunes then that’d be cool.

Matt also notes in the comments that SQLite is lurking as part of Mac OS X 10.4 (see here).

As a Protestant Mac user working part-time at a Catholic theological college where everyone uses Windows PCs I found last Thursday’s technology section on Radio New Zealand National : Nine to Noon (Thu, 25 October) fairly amusing.

You can find the full transcript over at it.gen.nz » The Cult of the Mac, and at the end of it Colin Jackson quotes a chunk of Umberto Eco’s 1994 article The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS in which Eco comments:

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: Far away from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

(Windows is, Eco argues, like the Anglican church, at times appearing Catholic but also in places deep down quite Protestant).

The new daylight savings dates for New Zealand got missed out by Apple in their updates so here’s a link to a page with updates on it for the new DST information. DST starts this weekend in NZ. See New Zealand 2007 daylight savings update for Mac OS X.

Hat tip to: TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: Daylight Saving Time Rules Fixed for New Zealand:

BTW - I’ve been reading TidBITS since it was available as Hypercard stacks way, way back in 1990. I admire their longevity and commitment in a field that has seen many come and go in that time.

Paul Roberts posts like a “true believer”. (It’s all about computer preferences, you see).

See staring into the distance::as far as our eyes can see » Computer-geek heaven (i) - Getting under the surface of the Mac.

Related links:

• Lam, Pui-Yan. “May the Force of the Operating System Be with You: Macintosh Devotion as Implicit Religion.” Sociology of Religion 62, no. 2 (2001): 243-262. (online here)
• Cult of Mac
• And here and here.

Open Source Mac - Free, Open-Source software for OS X is exactly what is says it is - “A simple list of free, open-source software for Mac OS X.” Nevertheless, it’s a helpful wee site.