Category: Apple

A Funny Mac Switcher Story

This is by far the best and funniest article I have read in the recent years.

An excerpt:

Look, you can pester me all you want, mock my stubbornness, and even point at me and laugh, but one thing is certain: I’m not buying a Mac.

For more than 20 years, I have used only MS-DOS- and Windows-based computers. During that time, I have purchased enough Microsoft software to feed a small family for a year — assuming that I could somehow transform 600-page manuals and stacks of 3.5-inch floppy disks and those annoying “Certificates of Authenticity” into edible human nourishment.

To date, I have endured 1.4 million system crashes, watched 19,874 word processing documents vanish into the ether — many of which would certainly have won prestigious literary prizes — and directed 455,391 expletives at “Bill Gates” and “Michael Dell” and “any human being remotely involved in the creation of this hideous device.”

Despite all this, every few years I replace my outdated PC with a new one. “I already know how to do everything on a PC,” I say, echoing the most popular explanation for not switching to Apple.

Meanwhile, since the mid-1980s I have seen Mac users walk around as if they don’t have a care in the world. With a playful jauntiness in their step, and noticeably fewer forehead lines, they boast about the “coolness factor” of their iMacs and iBooks and G4s. And from what I can tell, their lives are as clean and uncluttered as Apple’s elegant user interface, all smooth and logical and perfect.

Make sure you read the full article to get a good chuckle out of the column. His other articles are also peppered with great insight and original humor.

The author, Bill Shein, is the Winner of the 2005 National Press Club Award for Humor.

via [MacDailyNews]

Home Made DVD Problem Resolved

After having some issues with burning DVDs using Apple’s iDVD dvd authoring software on Grace’s slower Mac, I decided to encode the project file on my laptop and see what happens. And it turns out that CPU speed DID matter in the case of dvd video encoding, at least in this one instance. Another cool thing I found out is that Apple’s iDVD can pull source files (raw video footage) over the network! All I had was the iDVD project file on my laptop, the rest of the source files (videos and music) were all on Grace’s Mac. It was way faster to encode the DVD on my Mac pulling source materials from Grace’s Mac over the network than encoding locally on her Mac!! WOW!

So the blue flickering is gone now. Copies will be made to anyone who wants one (namely, our moms and maybe friends of Grace).

Home Made DVD for Mom

After completing my last programming gig, I took a collection of Bryan’s video clips and made a DVD for our moms. I guess Grace’s Mac is way too old (and mine is seriously running out of space), it takes forever to compress the damn thing into the MPEG-2 format that consumer DVD players recognize. It took a whole day for the poor 400Mhz G4 with 700MB+ RAM to compress two dozen 1-2 minute clips (plus the menu… etc)!! But the result is wonderful. The images I used in the background of the main menu are all moving movie clips. Each of them loops as the image panes rotate through 8 different movie clips, complete with background music. And of course, the mirror reflections below them move as well!!

Thanks for Apple’s iLife suite, putting the clips and the dvd menu together took only less than an hour (it’s the rendering and compression that really killed the process).

DVD collection of Bryan's video clips

Unfortunately, something went wrong with the menu looping sequence. The first loop of the menu would flicker with a blue tint. And this only happens to the first loop of menu selection screens (including scene selections). My cousin’s boyfriend thinks it’s either that my DVD player is picky about the DVD-R I used or that Apple’s iDVD simply dislikes the DVD player… Both Googling and Apple’s iDVD support/discussion sites also didn’t provide any clues. I am compressing the DVD into disk image now. I will try burning again using a different burning software to see if that changes anything.

Blue screen flickers

Just to make the record complete (for anyone else who’s having similar issues and for trouble shooting’s sake), similar issue happened when I used iDVD 5 with the same burner in Panther (as well as Tiger). So it’s probably not the problem with the OS, iDVD apps or their preference files. It might have to do with how iDVD writes to the DVD on that first pass which the DVD burner is not happy about… Live and learn.

Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field is Real

Steve Jobs’ MacWorld Expo 2006 keynote came and went. All last week I eagerly waited for this day to come. It’s not very cool that Apple has stopped web casting the keynote since 2003 (or maybe 2004?). But maybe the cost of keeping up with the bandwidth was just not worth it.

Whatever the reason. I intentionally avoided reading all those “live update” sites just so that I could watch the keynote in one piece and hear everything for myself. But instead of holding out, I started reading stuff from various Mac news sites.

So I read the headlines one by one…
Intel iMac with the same features but faster…. big deal.
iLife gets an update… blah… whatever.
iLife gets iWeb… yawn…
iWork gets an update… whatever… where’s the real news?
iPod gets Apple-made FM tuner… Um… two years too late…
Blah blah blah…

What a stupid boring keynote, I thought.

But then Apple made the keynote available for steaming. And Apple’s website was updated.

HOLY SHIT. I immediately got sucked into the reality of Steve Jobs, a whole other dimension in space and time. As the keynote progressed, he introduced products I’d already read about earlier. But for some unexplained reason, I felt excited, energized and wowed by everything he introduced (except the iPhoto and speed bench demos).

I have problem with one thing though…. MacBook Pro? What the hell is wrong with that name? MacBook? Com’on… give us something original like Apple’s been doing with one-word names on its applications. Or lose the “book” — that sounds so 2001!

Launching MacBook was a calculated move. PowerBook has been long overdue for a new life. And this delivered that for everyone who were just waiting for that new Intel PowerBook. PowerBook buyers are also known to be early adopters. They are not afraid of becoming Apple’s unofficial beta testers for the first generation of Intel Macs. They are survivors and fighters. Even if all the MacBooks burst into flame, they’ll get free replacements simply because they would be the same crowd who’s smart enough to get AppleCare!

It’s my suspicion that iBook will be replaced with a, quite simply, MacBook (no Pro). I believe this is a consolidation of Apple’s new branding strategy (just look at the iPod line of products) in an effort to tighten its image and focus in products. I wonder what the new PowerMacs will be called.

Out of all this, one thing did surprise me. Kyung, of all people, pledged his allegiance to the new MacBook Pro if there was ever a 17″ version. But claims OSX would be replaced by Linux and Windows as soon as he gets his hands on one.

In conclusion, Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field is for real. But I am still a little bit disappointed with what came out of this year’s MacWorld Expo (MacTV?). I will be eagerly waiting for other announcement throughout the rest of the year for that “one more thing” announcement.

Roxio Toast and DVD Burning

I must have burned 40+ DVD backups using the TDK DVD-R 8X on the Sony RW DW-U18A DVD burner with Roxio Toast Titanium 7.0. But for no apparent reason at all (no OS updates or software patches), it simply wouldn’t burn the last 5 discs on that TDK 50-pack! And it always gave me the following errors:

The drive reported an error:
Sense Key = ILLEGAL REQUEST
Sense Code = 0x72, 0x02
SESSION FIXATION ERROR WRITING LEAD-OUT

Roxio Toast DVD burning errors

So….

I know what that last phrase meant, but WTF is the rest of the crap? Searches on Google and Roxio’s support site returned nothing useful. Most people on various forums just “THINK” they know what it MIGHT mean. But nothing to decode the mysterious “0x72, 0x02” bit.

So I updated Toast to 7.0.3, fixed permissions (ah, Unix!), restarted, tried again. Failed again.

It turned out that the drive just decided it didn’t like the discs. F*cking moody DVD burners.

Make Mac OSX Support Third Party DVD Burners

PatchBurn logo I inherited a nice Sony DVDRW drive (specifically Sony RW DW-U18A) from Kyung when he went back to NYC. Unfortunately Apple has issues with “unauthorized” third party dvd burners working with its apps (iTunes, iDVD… etc) in Panther (OSX 10.3). I couldn’t burn my iTunes playlist or home made DVD movies with it, rending the drive essentially useless with those apps. Fortunately PatchBurn pretty much resolved that problem. It’s a collection of drivers and patch files to allow Apple apps to recognize third party burners. With the release of Tiger (OSX 10.4) though, the drive was supported natively right out of the box without installing PatchBurn. Nonetheless, it’s a very nice collection of patches for Mac OSX before Tiger.

New Mac Browser — Shiira

I have been test driving a new browser made by a group of Japanese geeks programmers called “Shiira“. It’s basically Safari with some nice features under its hood. Or… maybe it should be called Safari 2.5.

The best thing about this browser is its sidebar feature. It’s like using Safari with Concierge for free. Another feature I really like (though never actually use) is “Tab Exposé”. The feature basically turns all the open tabs in the browser into little thumbnails, much like what Foxposé does in Firefox. With a faster processor, the browser can even micmic page turning by using animation. It’s a nice but really unnecessary feature though.

Shiira Tab Exposé

Shiira page transition effects

I got used to the browser pretty quickly because the developers made it very easy to adopt this browser by having all the Safari functionalities already there, including access to Safari’s bookmarks! It also feels like Shiira launches and loads pages faster than all the other browsers on the Mac platform. Firefox is a dog compared to this Japanese import. Oh, and this puppy has yet to crash on me yet. Damn, those Japanese know what they are doing!

Unfortunately, Shiira also shares Safari’s downside on poor memory management. I can’t blame them. After all, Shiira shares the same render engine as Safari (and probably a few other things too). A nice full day of work out with this browser hogs almost 300MB of RAM (though its initial RAM occupation is far less than any other browser).

Whatever Apple Touches Turns to Gold

There’s a nice article on the BusinessWeek blog about Apple revolutionizing the retail check out operation.

“BusinessWeek has an interesting blog entry on Apple’s ‘iPod Express table’, where they streamline the sale of iPods in their store. From the article: ‘But the best part was that the Apple Geniuses behind the table had wireless gizmos for scanning credit cards, and Apple had worked out a totally wireless, paperless checkout process, called EasyPay. Once scanned, they advise you that the receipt will be in your inbox within an hour (since I’m already a registered Apple customer, they didn’t even need to take my email or other information).'”

But of course the process is not without its fair share of issues.

The Symbol portable computers proved to be glitchy, although lots of customers weren’t paying with credit cards .Swiping credit or ATM cards sometimes often took several attempts, and re-booting the devices was not uncommon, further slowing the check-out process. Staffers also had to take care when entering the customer’s e-mail address for the receipt– one typo and the e-mail would bounce.

At the same time, at least one store had an unsightly collection of shopping bags underneath the display table, giving the operation a thoroughly unprofessional appearance.

Regardless of the minor hiccups, Apple seems to be improving everything it touches. Rock on!

via [Slashdot]

Brush with Greatness

Reading the story of a couple of programmers meeting with bigwigs at Apple Computer vividly reminded me my own brush with greatness at Apple Computer… A tale of what might have been. Although I didn’t meet with Steve Jobs myself, I was grateful to have met the head of the hardware division at Apple.

The story is a bit lengthy (more like, REALLY lengthy). But it’s a nice read for geeks who want to kill time. I personally just picked the parts I wanted to read and skipped around.

via [Gus Mueller]

Programming on OSX with Objective-C

Slashdot effect takes center stage again as geeks from all over the world discuss Apple’s Xcode and Objective-C (a variant of C; a quick and dirty how-to here).

It all started with a simple email exchange between one programmer with Steve Jobs:

From: Nitesh Dhanjani
Subject: Re: Will XCode+ObjC ever suck less?
Date: December 25, 2005 5:27:02 PM CST
To: *****@apple.com

I look forward to the improvements! Thanks,

Nitesh.

On Dec 25, 2005, at 5:10 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:

I guess we disagree. First of all, .NET with CLI and managed code runs SLOW, so most serious developers can’t use it because of performance. Second, the libraries in C# are FAR less mature and elegant than those in Cocoa. We are working on a better implementation for garbage collection than we’ve seen out there so far, but in the end its a performance hit and an unpredictable time that is not good for some kinds of apps.

Steve

On Dec 25, 2005, at 2:36 PM, Nitesh Dhanjani wrote:

Objective C is old and clunky. Its almost 2006, and I _still_ have to look out for yucky pointers? I’d love to be able to write native apps with Ruby (or even C#!.) There are open community projects in progress that are trying to bind ruby and C# (mono) with Cocoa, but I’d love for Apple to step in and make this happen faster. Today, Microsoft seems to be _way_ ahead of the development curve – with their .NET implementation, you are allowed to code using a plethora of languages (C#, Python, VB, etc), as long as the interpreter/compiler follows the IL specification – pointers don’t matter, garbage collection is done for you – ah the beautiful world of managed code.

Having said that, most native OSX apps are still beautiful and well designed. Imagine how much better we could do if the developers had a more flexible choice of languages? I can _bet_ you a lot of OSX app developers use Objective C because they have no other choice.

Nitesh.

On Dec 25, 2005, at 3:11 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:

Actually, Objective C is pretty great. Its far nicer than most other ways of writing apps. What don’t you like about it? What do you like better?

Steve

On Dec 25, 2005, at 11:59 AM, Nitesh Dhanjani wrote:

Hi Steve

Will it ever be easy to write native OSX GUI apps? Objective C sucks.

Thanks,
Nitesh.

More geeks talking about it here.

It’s been said that Steve Jobs has a team of secretaries that comb through all his emails on a daily basis. I guess he ain’t taking chances on important messages. But it’s gratifying to see Jobs himself working on Christmas day having replied to this Nitesh guy several times throughout the day. Impressive stuff. Being a geek, a perfectionist and a workaholic at the same time can pay off sometimes.

One of Every Apple Newton Ever Made for Sale

Murdza tipped me off on this eBay auction. The auction is for one of every Apple Newton ever made. Apparently it’s a “Newton Museum” going out of business sale. 🙁

In case the auction ends when you read this blog entry, a screen shot can be found here (~1MB).

The auction brought back the good old days when Newton was still for sale. Critics said that the Newton was too bulky, heavy and ahead of its time. Well, they are right on all of the points. It was in the market at least two years before anyone even heard of Palm or Windows CE (Microsoft, again, was really late to the game). I owned one and swore by Newton’s hand writing recognition capabilities. Knowing how geeky I am, some people often wondered how come I don’t have an electronic organizer like a Palm… I used one a few years ago, and the hand writing recognition system on both the Palm and Windows CE were just so poor that I gave up trying to own one (and this was a few years after Newton was discontinued).

Apple eMate

Apple Newton MessagePad 2100

Apple was among the first company to have made digital cameras back in the mid 1990s (Apple QuickTake). I also remember seeing an Apple CD player. Before Kyung left for New York, he even gave me his Apple speakers! And of course, this was back in the days when Apple tried making Pippin game console, interactive tv set top box, Macintosh TV and a few other things. Sometimes being ahead of the time and too creative just doesn’t pay.

Good thing for us Mac heads. Steve is back at the helm now.