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Category: Apple
Apple reinvents phone, ipod and userinterface… in 1 go
I have been watching the Macworld 2007 keynote address for the last 2 hours and all I can say is:…
Jup, nothing. I am absolutely amazed by the way Apple has not only reinvented the phone (look ma, no keys!) but also the ipod (look ma, coverflow!), and maybe the most overlooked, but they reinvented the mouse!!!
A couple of months ago, I was amazed at this new userinterface Jeff Han presented . It was touchscreen based, and very intuitive. He amazed the crowds with it. At the time me and my collegues guessed that he must have had several computers working in parallel to be able to facilitate this. Now, Apple actually integrated it into the phone!
If you think a phone without keys sucks, and you think your blackberry is a great device, please take a look at the keynote presentation, I think you will want one of these. If you are too busy to sit for 2 hours watching this amazing device, or even too busy to watch the shortened version (on the same page, as the keynote, above), I’ll list some of the highlights:
- Large (and I mean LARGE) touch sensitive display all over the front of the phone
- ipod functionality, syncing not only your music, but also your photos, movies and contacts automagically between your Mac and your phone
- Runs Mac OSX, Apples operating system shipped with all macs. (Yes REALLY runs it)
- Full, 100% normal internet browsing using a new version of Safari (told you it runs OSX, didn’t I?)
- Full Google maps integration (not a crippled mobile phone version), enabeling you to view maps and satelite images on your phone, and integrates with your phonebook and other applications. Lookup where an address is, or search for the nearest Starbucks and directly phone a store from within the Google map (demo in keynote).
- Full rich text IMAP and POP3 email client with very easy to use onscreen keyboard with error correction
- Tilt sensor to enable to view anything in landscape mode by just holding your phone horizontally, providing widescreen movie viewing!
- Gesture based user interface, allowing you to navigate through the phone and zoom in and out on practically anything
- Quad band phone using GSM + EDGE standard. Currently only shipping with Cingular and AT&T and a free Yahoo! imap account. Technically possible to use in Europe using any GSM network provider, but I don’t know how the Cingular contract looks for Europe.
- Built in WIFI and bluetooth technology to connect to the internet or any network, and a bluetooth headset, and it does that seemlesly
- Random access voicemail (tap on the voicemail you want to hear)
- Priced at $499 for a 4GB model, and $599 for an 8 GB model, available in June in US, end of 2007 in Europe, and 2008 in Japan.
My list could go on and on, but these are probably the highlights you were looking for. I’ve seen Steve using the iPhone, and the userinterface is a dream. If you own a Microsoft mouse with the “heavy scrollwheel” you will know what I mean when the iPhone scrolls through the lists by giving it a swing. Amazing to look at. The Core animation of OSX is in the phone, so everything tilts, swoops and zooms like on your desktop and it is really, really nice too look at.
My guess is that by doing this and patenting it, the next step Apple will take is reinvent the desktop userinterface. Have your screen built into your desk, throw your keyboard away and touch the screen! It has been done before, but after you’ve seen the keynote you will agree with me that Apple can do it right this time.
It has been quite some time since I have been amazed by a product like this, although it will be a while before I own one because I’m afraid it will get stolen because of it’s good looks. I’m afraid it will even push the iPod out of the market a little, and Zune will be dead and gone when the iPhone hits the market…
Go and see the Macworld 2007 keynote address, and see his Steveness improvise when his “Clicker’s not working” just before he announces “Apple Computer Inc” is now going to be called just “Apple Inc”. Maybe Apple should ship this keynote on DVD. Seriously. Even if the only reason is seeing John Mayer perform “Gravity” live and unplugged at the end.
I’ll hold on to my Google and Apple shares for a while I guess…
X for Vista…
Hi, do you also think Windows Vista gets too much credit for stealing Apple’s Mac OSX, a.k.a. Tiger? Here’s a funny little movie on nytimes.com with proof that Windows is “not” an OSX ripoff. Very funny.
Airport Express works great… Until you want WPA2(AES)
I recieved my Airport Express last tuesday and had it installed as a wireless audio connection for my stereo in a couple of minutes as follows:
- Plug the Airport Express in a wall outlet.
- (Temporarily) connect it to the network using an UTP cable
- Run the Airport Administration utility (forget the wizzard, it will not allow you to setup the airport as a client).
- Setup the Airport Express to connect to your existing network (which was WEP encrypted at that time)
- Unplug the Airport Express, take it to the living room and plug it into an outlet, and connect it to the stereo (look ma, no wires!)
- Select the airtunes to be used as speaker device in iTunes and you’re all set
Read More “Airport Express works great… Until you want WPA2(AES)” »
OSX: USB Fat32 drives trouble samba
Okay, I found the answer to my problem. Mounting an USB drive on OSX which is formatted as Fat32, will not behave nicely when being accessed through samba. Trying to start multiple copy processes simultaniously will cause seemingly random “file locked” errors. I just formatted the drive as HFS+, and the problem dissapeared. This is a screenshot you’d expect when copying, but I was very happy to see it just a minute ago:
Now that I’ve cleared that problem, I can start working on the backup and virusscanning processes, and writing a nice “how to” so you can do the same with your mac mini!
I should have done this right away like I planned. HFS+ is far better than Fat32 (journalled, auto-defragmenting, case preserving, and better in preserving file integrity).
Samba shares and USB drives
I am very close to migrating the data on my bulky PC to my new Mac Mini fileserver and mounting the IDE drives in the USB drive brackets. Once I’ve done this, I will have the screenshots and data to write a nice “how to” on using the Mac Mini as a file server. There is however one slight problem which could prove to be a showstopper…
Samba test 1: local directories.
I created a directory in the root of the HD in the mac mini, and made it R/W for everybody. Then, I used SharePoints to make it available to all password-less Guest users on the network (which happens to be the default Windows user for connecting to drives without asking for a password). All was well. I could access the share, and could copy as many files from as many machines imultaniously as I wanted.
Samba test 2: USB mounted volumes.
I mounted a HFS+ formatted USB disk to the Mac Mini, and made it available to the network in the same way as in test 1. Everything seemed to be working fine and as expected, but while running some tests I discovered a strange thing: I can only copy files onto the USB drive from 1 machine at a time, 1 file at a time. When starting a new copy while allready in the process of copying an older file, one or both copy jobs crashed with a “file in use” error.
I am now trying to find out what is causing this problem. I have a firewire drive I can use to determine if it is the USB protocol or driver which is causing this problem, or if it is the fact that it is a mounted volume alltogether. If anybody has tips I’m glad to hear them. Meanwhile I’ll be searching the web…
Update
Using a firewire drive does not solve the problem. I did find some articles on fast user switching which state that only 1 user can access pheripherals at a time. This seems to be related to this problem.
Update 2
Creating a symlink to the mounted volume and sharing the link through samba will not change behaviour. I was expecting this, but tried anyway because it only costs 1 minute to test. Maybe a virtual drive would be an option. I can create virtual RAID disks in OSX, but I don’t want my setup to be complex. This will add to the complexity when recovering from a sever crash. Simple, full and fast recovery from hardware problems is my top priority.
Tryout Mac Mini as Fileserver
The past 5 years (or more, I can’t remember exactly) I have had a windows server which provided 4 “shares” or “network disks” to the users of my local network. Simplicity was it’s power. All network users would connect with the default windows “Guest” account to prevent complicated logon screens and forgetting of passwords. To prevent damage to files, all shares are read-only, except for one, where people can drop files. Only the administrator of the machine can move the files from the drop box into the different read-only shares. All files on the server were backed up twice a week to a different (physical) drive, and all drives were automatically virusscanned each day and on-access, and defragmented once a week.
My dad is also using this server (we have a wifi bridge between our homes and yes, it is military grade encrypted). A few weeks ago we ran out of diskspace (bought new cameras :-). So we bought a 320GB drive. The old server with the passivly cooled 600MHz pentium 1 processor decided it didn’t like the large drive so we had to upgrade the hardware. I built a new server from my old desktop PC, which was collecting dust because I am now a happy Mac user. When the new server was ready, it was much more noisy than the old one (more fans), and slurped 105 Watts while doing nothing, and up to 140 Watts under booting or serious disk/network access.
Just for fun, we also measured the power usage of my Mac Mini. It was using 40 Watt under heavy disk access, and only 20Watts when doing practically nothing. In sleep mode this even dropped to 3 Watts! This, plus the fact that the PC was producing so much heat that we actually started to worry about it catching on fire when placed inside a closet, convinced my dad to use a Mac Mini as a file server.
The next day, he called me to tell me he had bought a G4 Mac Mini to be used as a fileserver for around 300 Euros. I picked it up and re-installed OSX on it. This only took 30 minutes or so, and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised by the performance of the G4 in comparison with my Core duo Mac Mini with 2GB memory.
Tonight, I installed Sharepoints on it, which is a utility to efectively edit the smb.conf file on your mac. I hooked up an USB disk, and got it running as a samba share in less than 5 minutes, complete with Windows Guest login. Just now, I also managed to make one of the 2 shares readonly, which prooves that the mac Mini can behave itself exectly as the PC server I had to the outside world. This would be great, if I give it the same network name nobody will even notice that their files are now served by a Mac.
I will try to mimic my fileserver completely soon (somewhere next week) and will post a complete description of what the original server did, and what I did to get the Mac Mini to replicate that behaviour.
Now go buy your own Mac Mini G4 and some USB (or better: firewire) harddrives (with spindown capability!) and join me next week in building your mac Mini fileserver. Have a proper place and a proper backup for your files and photos!
Soon, your house will be free of PC’s… 🙂
EyeTV Export, done right
A while ago, I bought a Miglia TV max for my Mac Mini. With it, you get EyeTV, the PVR recording software. I was very happy using it, but I recently discovered that all exported MPG files are missing the last part. Arg!
This is a VERY serious bug. It also means that each and every recording I have archived on my external HD is crippled, so I can start all over with collecting series. Lucky as I am, each and every serie gets rerun after rerun on Dutch TV. They have many channels to fill, much commercials to sell and very little (interesting) new material to show.
Apple WWDC 2006 Keynote Address problems?
Trying to view his Steveness in the Apple WWDC 2006 Keynote addres? Me too, and haven’t been lucky for 3 days in a row. I actually managed to view 3 minutes of distorted, half-audio presentation, but then it died, and has given me an error 400 ever since. It’s not nice to see Apple not being able to cope with the demand. A bittorrent would be nice I guess.
In my first edit of this post I thought I’d found a mirror, but it was an old keynote. Searching on, I found a terrific tip which solved the problem of not being able to view the keynote. It actually turns out it’s the default Quicktime settings are causing the problems. Quicktime fetches the stream over UDP, which makes no guarantee over lost packets. You can set Quicktime to fetch the stream through http, which has a few advantages, such as losless transfer of data, and ability for proxy server to cache data.
To set Quicktime to fetch the video accros http:
- Go to System Preferences
- Open Quicktime preferences from the system preferences screen
- Click on the “advanced” tab
- Choose “Custom” for transport setup
- In the window that pops up, choose the HTTP transport protocol
- Close the system preferences
Now go to the WWDC 2006 Keynote address page and view the video. I just did, it worked fine, no dropped frames or audio.
Enjoy.
p.s. Tiger shipped for 80 euro’s when it was released. If Leopard is anywhere close to that same price, it will be hard to find an operating system which gives you all this, with this quality, for this price. Professional grade OS, for the price of a SuSe distribution! I love Tiger, I know I’m going to love Leopard. Since I have my Mac, my Windows laptop (which was an expensive one I might add) is sitting in a corner of my desk, covered under a layer of dust. It’s simply not good enough anymore. My Mac mini will beat it any day.
Nice Apple applications
All listed in one nice page on “Guide to OSX software for switchers”. Have fun!