Recent Articles
AOL is still alive and releasing software
I know, I am as shocked as you. But they have released a new beta for their Desktop for Mac, which adds many innovative features that were implemented in other software a decade ago, including:
- Speed: Installs in seconds and launches fast - so you can begin browsing immediately, without signing in.
- Tabbed Organization: Tabs on browser and IM give you easy access and an uncluttered, organized view for all of your windows.
- AIM Integration: AIM is built right in so you can see which buddies are online, chat and more.
- Customization: Highly customizable toolbar makes it easy to keep your favorites right at your fingertips with access to them on any Internet-connected computer.
Are you excited yet? Is your chest pounding and is your breathing shallow and fast? Are you willing to pay $24.95 per month to keep those heart palpitations going? If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, then a)I pity you and b) click to visit beta.AOL.com and download this awesome display of computing prowess.
iPhone copy/paste proof of concept video
This is how it should work. Well done and funny to boot.
iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.
Macbook Air - remote disc OSX installer in 10.5.2
One of the questions about the Air and the Remote Disc process has been ‘how exactly does this work’?
Well, built-in to Leopard 10.5.2 is a new app called ‘Remote Install Mac OS X’, located in Utilities.
The program allows you to install OSX on an Air via the network (in the event you don’t have a USB CD/DVD drve).
Here are some screenshots of the OSX installation process via ‘Remote Install Mac OS X’ application.
Disclaimer: we don’t have an Air here at BGM HQ, so this demo ends at the actual installation point. But it is clear that the installation app is feature complete and well thought out on Apples part.
Technorati Tags: air, apple, hardware, leopard, macbook, software
iPhone 1.1.3 ’soft upgrade’ faq from NateTrue
NateTrue, the ‘rogue‘ iPhone dev team hacker extraordinaire, has put together a very handy FAQ that walks you through his 1.1.3 jailbreak. The guide is designed to alleviate the concerns of those who are contemplating the jailbreak.
So far as the ‘rogue’ comment above…the linked site has this posted about Nates release of the jailbreak:
NateTrue has recently leaked a v1.1.3 Jailbreak without the Dev-Team’s permission, getting himself kicked off the team. Against our wishes, he’s included both files belonging to Apple and patches which contain copyrighted information by Apple, making his personal release illegal and unethical. This is directly contrary to the spirit of true hacking, honorable competition, and sharing of knowledge. He’s a disgrace to developers everywhere. I’d like to strongly advise against using his system for upgrading, and make it known that the rest of the dev team does not support software piracy or copyright infringement. The method the Dev Team was/is planning on releasing allows you to perform the jailbreak without violating federal law.
Hacking is serious business. 
Barack Obama promises to stop iPod remorse
On Letterman last night Barack Obama made one campaign promise that all Apple fanboys and iPod owners can get behind: “I won’t let Apple release the new and improved iPod the day after you bought the previous model.”
Known issues with Office 2008
Found these today while researching something for work, then saw the same thing on MacOSXHints. Regardless, these are good links for anyone considering moving to Office 2008.
This is a fairly comprehensive (and surprisingly large) list of known issues in the ‘final’ product Microsoft shipped last week.
Known issues in:
I’m glad they took that extra six months* to squash any lingering bugs. Oh, wait…
*Sorry, I’m bitter because my Software Assurance expired in November 2007, so when I upgrade 75 Macs later this year it’s going to cost a small fortune.
Macbook Air: Perpetuating the myth
Which myth would that be, you ask?
You know, the one that says Apple products are proprietary and expensive and overvalued. The one that says that Apple customers only buy their products as status symbols - that they are zealots who will drink whatever Kool-Aid is poured from the pitcher that is Cupertino. ‘Apple owners have more money than brains’ seems to be the popular consensus in the eternal ‘Mac vs. PC’ flamewar, despite the mainstream success of the overwhelmingly ubiquitous iPod.
Ok, you might say, big deal…Apple just posted $10 billion in revenue. If being the company that caters to trendy eccentrics with money is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
Sure, that’s a perfectly valid way to look at it. Unless you’re one of the Mac faithful who have gotten used to the Apple of the past decade…the one that innovates and pushes boundaries and makes the impossible seem obvious. In which case you’re shaking your head and wondering why Apple is releasing the Macbook Air amid such fanfare. For that matter, look at what happened to Apples stock after Macworld…people expect more from Apple, and this time they simply didn’t deliver.
Yes, it’s a stunning, sleek machine. And yes, the dimensions and weight and design are very nice; unfortunately the rest of the package isn’t. The internet has been quite vocal about the perceived flaws of the Air: inaccessible battery, poor resolution, lack of optical drive, a single USB port, no firewire, slow cpu, small capacity hard drive, limited memory, no ethernet and on and on, ad nauseam.
But that’s not the deal killer: the price is. If Apple had released the Air as a sub-$1000 laptop (which it almost certainly could have), it would have been a blockbuster of epic proportions. Tell me you wouldn’t have ordered one the first day if this thing had been priced at $699 and $1399 instead of a thousand clams more. Tell me that the entire PC industry wouldn’t have started shaking in it’s shoes at the thought of Mom and Dad buying little Timmy an Apple laptop instead of a Dell or HP or whatever else is on sale at Wal-Mart.
But instead, they priced it at substantially more than a similarly outfitted sub-notebook, stuffed it in a pretty case and called it a day. They overpriced it, under-powered it and made it a boutique item that will one day be spoken of in the same hushed tones used when discussing the Cube. How pretty it is, they’ll say. How lightweight and elegant and sleek it is, they will coo. But alas, say these future Mac fans, it was just a generic computer stuffed inside a beautiful facade… a Boxster body astride a Kia — a golden baked ravioli stuffed with deviled ham. Ok, that was a bad analogy, but you get the point.
There’s simply nothing new in the Air, aside from the smell of cash burning holes in pockets. There is no expansion capability that will allow you to use the latest peripherals a year from now. No built-in high speed WAN option, no nth generation storage device (SSD? Puh-lease) and no upcoming standard that needs a kick-start (USB3, FW800?). It’s a plain jane computer that makes using it slightly inconvenient to the person who has just plunked down a wad of cash for it.
Initial sales might be high…we’ll have to wait and see. But unless there is a drastic change in hardware or price, long term sales are going to be anemic at best. Niche doesn’t pay the pickle man.
Which begs the question: who is going to buy the Air? Well, there are the bleeding edge people who don’t care what it is as long as no one else has it, of course.
But it leaves the rabid Mac fans - the ones who give Apple the benefit of the doubt when they release something different. But this time, we are getting burned. Because this time, instead of being able to smile and take pride in how cutting edge we are with our technology, we’re instead making the case for those who point their fingers at Apple users and deem us elitist, brainwashed sheep.
See, when we buy our iPods and iPhones and Macbook Pros, we buy them knowing that what we are getting is top of the line. That it is the culmination of dozens of brilliant minds who have taken the best concepts available at the time and taken them one step forward. That two years from now, our item is going to be nearly as valuable as it is now and that it will be able to handle whatever is technologically hot at the time. We know that the people and the company behind what we’ve purchased have combined form with function while still pushing the envelope.
With the Air, the only envelope Apple is pushing is manila.
Leopard 10.5.2, Airport EXTREME and Time Machine
[edit] D’oh! I meant Extreme, not Express. Old habits die hard…
For the past few days I’ve been tinkering with making Time Machine backup to a hard drive connected to an Airport Extreme, based on questions posed by some features found in Leopard 10.5.2.
The Airport Extreme attached drive consistently mounts and is easily written to and read from, but after choosing it as the backup location in Time Machine, it simply won’t work no matter how loud I curse at it.
Below are a few lines from the Console detailing the actions of the system when the backup begins and as it fails.
Jan 23 20:47:27 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Backup requested by user
Jan 23 20:47:27 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Starting standard backup
Jan 23 20:47:28 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Creating disk image /Volumes/wd/sm_001b63b0891d.sparsebundle
Jan 23 20:48:11 sm kernel[0]: hfs: Initializing the journal (joffset 0×747000 sz 0×1800000)…
Jan 23 20:48:47 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Backup requested due to disk attach
Jan 23 20:48:50 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Error 22 creating backup disk image
Jan 23 20:48:50 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Failed to create disk image
Jan 23 20:48:50 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Backup failed with error: 20
For testing purposes, I had done the following:
- tested using both fat32 and journaled partitions on a 250gb drive
- partitioned and formatted the drive as journaled, guid, single partition
- tested the backup locally using Time Machine - this worked
- reset the Airport, rebooted the computer
- attempted to use Time Machine on the mounted Airport partition
A few notes:
- when using the drive locally, Time Machine creates a ‘Backups.backupdb’ folder and starts writing the files
- when using the drive via Airport, it attempts to create (as seen above), a sparse disk image, as if it were a normal network drive
- testing was performed on a Western Digital 250gb Passport and an Iomega 1tb disk
- testing Time Machine to a Windows based share also failed with the same error as the Airport
So, sadly, this leaves us in the same boat we were a few days ago. Hopefully it’s just a switch that needs to be flipped when the update is released, or perhaps we’ll see the ability to use Time Machine with network/Airport disks available as a paid upgrade (a la Touch apps).
WebClipMe.com - for Touch and iPhone
Nice idea from WebClipMe.com, which offers up a gallery of icons for Touch and iPhone users who want to add home screen links to their favorite sites.
Inside the Macbook Air ‘Remote Disc’ process
As reported in an earlier article, the next update to Leopard will add a Sharing pane item called ‘DVD or CD Sharing’, which will facilitate booting to a remote optical disc from a Macbook Air (and possibly from other Macs).
The way the process works on the client side is by an agent that runs on the ‘main’ system called ‘ODSAgent’. ODSAgent, once enabled by the user in the Sharing pane, then adds an entry to the firewall and begins running. When the client machine (ex. Air) begins its boot process, it looks for the running agent on the network and finds it on the main system.
At that point it is able to utilize the resources on that disc as if it were locally attached. We did a little digging around inside of the ODSAgent app and found these strings that give us a little bit of a clue about how the agent works and interfaces with the client system.
We’ll publish more details as they become available.
ASKFIRST_MESSAGE_FORMAT = ““%1$@” on “%2$@” would like to use your %3$@ drive.”;
ASKFIRST_ACCEPT = “Accept”;
ASKFIRST_DECLINE = “Decline”;
ASKFIRST_DVD = “DVD”;
ASKFIRST_CD = “CD”;
ASKFIRST_DISC = “disc”;EJECT_MESSAGE = “You are ejecting a disc that is being used by another computer. Are you sure you want to eject the disc?”;
EJECT_SUB_MESSAGE = “The remote computer will be disconnected from your computer.”;
EJECT_EJECT = “Eject”;
EJECT_DONT_EJECT = “Don’t Eject”;
EJECT_DISSENT_REASON = “DVD or CD Sharing”;
