Tag: macintosh

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Apple’s New MacBook

Apple

Apple finally released the highly anticipated iBook replacement, the MacBook.

With this new (comparatively) lower end series of the MacBook line Apple has completed its Intel transition for the entire Macintosh portable line up. The only series left is the PowerMac G5 towers and the XServers.

The introduction of this new models has also see the elimination of the MacBook Pro 1.83GHz model. Apple also lowered the prices of the remaining MacBook Pro after the introduction of the MacBook Pro 17″, plus made the 2.16GHz version of the MacBook Pro a standard model, that used to be a Made-to-Order-Model.

This new MacBook also comes in a Black version that we are now accustom to with the introduction of the iPod nanos and 5G iPods last year.

There was one more rumor that we have yet to see a conclusion for, and that is the rumor of a “red MacBook” and “red iPod”. This red dual is suppose to be in support of U2’s Bono’s Product Red charity, benefiting African AIDS victims. There is one more press event this coming Thursday (Eastern Standard Time) when Apple introduces its new flag ship store in the GM Tower, 767 Fifth Avenue at 59th Street, New York City. So I guess we will have to see.

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Brand New Apple MacBook Pro 17″

Apple

Apple today released the brand new MacBook Pro 17″.

This new version of the Intel® based Macintosh notebook has again surprised the analysts who did not think Apple would be able to release a new MacBook Pro that is the same thickness as the current MacBook Pro 15″, while bringing back the old 8x SuperDrive with DVD-DL write capability.

Also another surprise to the analysts is Apple’s decision to bring back the long depended on professional FireWire 800 port to the new MacBook 17″.

To make it even more attractive, Apple have released this new Mac at the same price as the current MacBook Pro 15″ 2.16GHz, so with the extra screen size, FireWire 800 and DVD-DL writable SuperDrive, other than buyer who really do not want the extra screen space will definitely purchase the MacBook Pro 17″.

I personally hope that this aggressive pricing of Apple is a sign that Apple will lower the price of the MacBook Pro 15″ and/or bring back the 8x SuperDrive writable DVD-DL to the MacBook Pro 15″.

read more | digg story

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Running Windows XP on an Intel Macintosh (aka. “Macintel”)

WinMac

You can now run Windows XP on a Macintel. The solution was found with the contest that started it all 3 months ago. It ended with two individuals calling themselves “blanka” and “narf2006” winning the final jackpot of USD13,854.00.

The full instructions can be found at the Contest site’s How To page.

[Update – 2006.03.23] there is also an excellent video steping through the instructions at UneasySilence

There is also a new instruction where one can create the Windows XP On Macintosh Boot CD on a Macintosh without using a computer that runs Windows.

In this experiment I used an Intel iMac to create the Boot CD.

If you are going to follow my foot steps, there are much details in the Fink install that may not be obvious from following the instructions. The currently tested version of Fink on the Intel Mac is 0.24.12, and the “mkisofs” package is not available in the “stable” branch of the Fink install.

At the moment I am still investigating the “mkisofs” issue. One possibility is that the “mkisofs” package is in the “unstable” branch of the Fink release. If this is the case we must modify the “/sw/etc/fink.conf” file so that “unstable/main” and “unstable/crypto” in the TREE parameter. This will get Fink to look in the “unstable” tree for package’s source.

If you do not have a Windows XP Pro SP2 install CD but just a regular Windows XP Pro install CD, then you will need to create what Microsoft calls a “Slipstream” CD.

When the above are completed we can go back to the OnMac instructions and create the Windows XP On Macintosh Boot CD.

My first attempt to create the Boot CD failed. When attempting to use the created CD to begin the Windows XP installation, the system claims that the CD is not a valid El-Torito formated disk. II plan to try again, and when I have more information, I will announce it here. Please stay tune.

Note: Please remember that downloading the instructions and associate files is legal, but the jury is still out as to whether modifying the Windows XP install CD is legal, so be careful of the Microsoft police.

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Go For It 10.4.3

Apple released “Mac OS X Update 10.4.3” on Halloween, October 31, 2005.

I had previously advised my Macintosh friends to hold off on upgrading their own Macs until I have tested it. Now I have ran it on my PowerBook 12″ for over a week without any problems I believe that it should be safe for my Macintosh friends to upgrade their respective systems.

NOTE: The following steps are the recommended steps to upgrade any Mac OS X versions. It is especially important given the number of fixes that this Apple update included.

  1. Backup all you important files. I had always advised everyone to make frequent backups. You will thank me when time comes to recover from one of those backups.
  2. Run Disk Utility (Location: <user folder>/Applications/Utilities/) and perform a Repair Permission on your boot hard drive
  3. Download Apple’s “Mac OS X Update 10.4.3 Combo” from Apple’s web site (it should be around 109MB in size)
  4. Restart your Mac in Safe mode. To do so, all you have to do is hold down the Shift key while restarting
  5. Mount the disk image (the .dmg file) of Mac OS X Update 10.4.3 Combo and then execute the update, following the instructions on the screen
  6. After the installer ask you to restart your Mac, run Disk Utility (Location: /Applications/Utilities/) again and perform a Repair Permission on your boot hard drive

You can keep up with all the issues that others may have with any Macintosh updates or Macintosh software by going to MacFixIt.

Enjoy!

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Irresponsible Reporter of NYT

Today I read the article “My Songs, My Format” by New York Times’ Sean Captain (Late Edition – Final, Section C, Page 9, Column 1) and it erupted me to write the following letter to the Editor at New York Times (NYT).

Dear Editor,I was appalled to read such an article from New York Times.

Mr. Captain’s article is truly bias and had not explained clearly the facts about the topics he touched on. It would be very misleading to a layman reader of the article.

For example, Mr. Captain never explain the “AAC” codec (Encoder/Decoder), but instead referring it to “Apple’s format”. Implying that it is a proprietary format created by Apple. That is not the case.

The “AAC” format is part of the industry standard for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, the version that Apple promotes is AAC MPEG-4, which commonly agreed by industry expert as having a better compression and sound quality than the MP3 format.

Aside from that Mr. Captain also fail to explain the concept of “bps” (Bits per Seconds), which is also very important when talking about compression formats and particularly important when comparing different codecs. One can not compare bit rates of different codecs directly. That like comparing apples and oranges.

Mr. Captain also fail to point out that there are many other MP3 players our there which also supports the AAC format.

As Mr. Captain correctly points out that Apple is a trend setter. Like when Apple removed the floppy disk player from their computers, “Macintosh” 5 years ago, everyone was up in arms calling it a stupid move that will destroy Apple’s market share. Now we see that other major manufactures are also following Apple’s directions and removed the floppy drive as standard equipment from the computers they manufacture.

Going back even further about 13 years ago, when Apple send out all their developers resources in CD-ROM format, the critics were all calling this a bad move, which is designed to force Apple’s developers to purchase the more expensive (at the time) CD ROM player option in their Macintosh. This took another 5 years for the rest of the world to realize that CD-ROM is a much better and preferred medium by the consumers.

Apple in the past had always try their best to stick with industry accepted Standards. Some times these Standards are well established in other times they may be recently approved as Standards, and lastly Apple’s own technology is adapted as Standards (ie. QuickTime, IEEE-1394 aka Firewire aka i-Link).

For a publication like New York Times, I believe it has much better integrity that to publish something that is so misleading to the average reader that cause them to draw an incorrect conclusion about the subject. As for Mr. Captain, he should be much more responsible to verify and clarify his facts and terminologies in his article, rather than to allow the readers to do the verifications themselves before coming to a conclusion about his article.

I am sure that Mr. Captain does not intentionally want to mislead the New York Times readers. I urge you to insist on a retractile or a following clarification article to this one by Mr. Captain.

Unfortunately, due to the commercialization of New York Times online I am not able to provide the link (URL) to the actual article on NYT’s web site.

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OS X 86 available for retail… in Bangkok

OSX86

The fact that retailers in Bangkok can openly display pirated software (although made up to look very authentic), is a perfect example of why education is greatly needed in Asia regarding piracy and its effect down the food chain.

For those who knows me, they know I am not typically vocal about piracy, but in this case it is despicable for these individuals (both the retailer and pirates; they may be both of the same) to capitalize on work of the OpenSource community.

Yes, I do not condone the actions of the individuals participating in the OSX86 Project, but at least those people are not trying to make money out of their collective efforts. They are instead volunteering their time and skills to produce something in demand by the public. As Apple has mentioned before, people are not buying Macintosh just for the OS, it is the revolution design and usability of the Macintosh that people are also buying.

These pirates in Bangkok are simply selling someone else’s work. That’s almost like charging for medical services provided by Médecins Sans Frontières. I guess that’s the basic definition of Piracy!

So, in Steve Jobs’ words, should “all pirates burn in hell”?

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What Can A Mac Do?

Team Banzai

A shorter list would be “What a Macintosh cannot do?”.

Driving a SUV will be another one off that list.

The “Team Banzai” will be competing in this year’s “2005 DARPA Grand Challenge” (“Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency”) on October 8, 2005 among 39 other teams for the USD2 Million grand prize.

The team’s vehicle is a Volkswagen Touareg named “Dora” outfitted with 3 Mac Mini’s, which control the full functions of the vehicle, including navigations, decision control and motor control systems.

Note that the “brains of Dora” are just three 1.25GHz G4 Mac Mini, Apple’s most economical desktop computer. Compare that to the Stanford University entry with the same model vehicle that is controlled by seven Pentium M computers. Given that the two teams are using the same model vehicle in the same challenge, it further shows the power of Macintosh computers (with its Mac OS X) over Intel based computers.

I wish the best of luck to Team Banzai in October.

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Macs with the Badge “Intel Inside”?

IntelInside

Speculations for the past few weeks have been running high in the media and through out rumor sites around the Internet.

For the regular Apple watchers, this sort of rumors are nothing new. Similar speculations of Apple’s desire to drop, the IBM/Motorola, CPU for the Intel developed CPU had came up before.

The only difference is, this time Steve Jobs confirmed it at a keynote to a roomful of developers at the company’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco this morning (June 6, 2005 PST).

Steve job announced plans to begin delivering Macintosh computers based on the Intel processor as soon as June 2006 and to transition all Macintosh computers to use Intel processors by the end of 2007. He also previewed a Mac OS X 10.4.x (“Tiger”) system running on an Intel-based Mac to the audience.

So the in the future, seeing the “Intel Inside” logo on Macintosh boxes will be a common place.

What does this really mean? Well, I will start by talking about what it DOES NOT mean…

1. It does NOT mean that you will be able to run Mac OS on a Dell or Compaq computer purchased today or in the near future. Unless Apple is willing to release its ever protective hardware production to these companies. We saw this back in the 90’s and we all know what happen to those companies and their efforts.

2. It does NOT mean that you can build you own Macintosh using hardware parts purchased at your local electronic malls (for those of you who live near one).

Before I get to the “What does this really mean?”, I also want to touch on what may this mean?

1. Microsoft MAY create a version of its Windows OS to run on the future Intel based Apple Macintosh. Which will be yet another attempt for Microsoft to take over 99% of the personal computing world. We cannot forget those Linux users out there.

2. Apple’s Intel based Macintosh MAY be able to run Windows 2007 (or whatever it will be called then) natively (without emulation).

[Editorial: 2005.06.17 – it has been confirmed that the above 2 points are no longer relevant. Steve Jobs (Apple’s CEO) has confirmed that he will alow users to wipe the Mac OS that will be preinstalled on the IntelMac and install another compatible OS. These other OS’s includes current versions of Windows OS]

Now for what does this announcement mean to you, the average computing user (I make a very daring assumption that readers of my Blog are “average computing users”)…

1. Apple’s market share may begin to creep up; how far? If I know that I will be rich. Assuming that Apple will continue to excel in the User Interface and Industrial Design areas.

2. Apple Macintosh OS may become more acceptable in more corporate environments.

3. Apple will have a much lower cost for building these future Intel based Macintosh. Due to the massive dominance of Intel in the computing world over its competitors (AMD, and new Israel and Chinese microprocessor manufactures). Whether Apple will pass on much of these savings in production cost to its consumers is yet to be seen. Although, given Jobs’ lesson learned, the chances are high that consumers will benefit from this savings.

4. Techies who refer to PC running Windows OS as “Wintel” to distinguish those PC running Macintosh OS, will no longer use this coined term. In the future it will be just Macs and Windows. I definitely do not wan to hear “Macintel”…. eek!!

For the long time (over 11 years) users of Macintosh computers (Macintosh OS), this imminent transition is nothing new. Most of us went through the transition (pain) to the PowerPC processor back in the early 90’s.

This will mean more work for Macintosh software companies who will again develop dual platforms versions of their applications. May be some of those Windows only software companies will now rethink their “Windows only” strategies.

All in all another major even in the computing timeline.

To be honest most of the above are my personal opinions, what actually will transpire?… Time will only tell.

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Apple Brand New OS

Tiger

Just 2 hours ago Apple announced that their latest version of the Macintosh OS X v1.4 (aka “Tiger”) will be available April 29, 18:00 PST at a retail price of USD129.00.

Apple is planing events at most of its Apple Stores around the world for the launch.

You can pre-order it from Apple’s Online Stores worldwide.

The most significant enhancement in this version of the Mac OS X is “Spotlight”, which I believe every Mac and non-Mac users will find it useful. Simply put it, Spotlight allows you to find anything on your Mac without worry about where or in what format the information are stored.

To get people started with using Spotlight, Apple had included the Spotlight functionalities into the new Mail, Address Book, System Preferences and Finder. The best part is that the “Spotlight” technology is built into the heart of the new Mac OS X and not a “bolted” on functionality. This means that whenever a file is created, saved, moved, copied or deleted Spotlight is there to update its index and catalog so that it is ready for the next user query.

There are many more features, you should really check out Apple’s web site for details.

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Skype Finally Available for Mac Users

Skype

Two days ago, the growing popular software “Skype“; by the company of the same name, finally released a Beta version for the Macintosh (OS 10.3.5 and later). This is after only 9 months where our friends on the Windows, Linux and Pocket PC platforms have been enjoying the features and functionalities of VoIP with Skype.

The creators of Skype are the same ones who created one of the most popular Internet software “KaZaA“; a P2P software that people used to exchange documents, MP3, movies and images.

The Skype team further enhanced what they learned from KaZaA and introduced a bunch of other technologies to produce a VoIP client that automatically locate the shortest path between Skype users.

They also have a service called SkypeOut where you can call any telephone, either fixed line or mobile, at a very low cost.

So if you have time and a microphone attached to your computer do give this software a try, while you’re at it you can drop me a line (Skype ID: “vinko66”).