Hardware

• Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard
• AMD Athlon XP 4400
• 2Gb RAM
• 2 x Maxtor 320Gb IDE drives
• 1 x Sony CD/DVD RW
• nVIDIA 6600GT 256Mb PCI video card

Software

• Kalyway 10.5.2

For the install settings I used the defaults with the following exceptions:

• Added the Marvell and forcedeth drivers and used the first AMD patch.

My main aim for doing this was to see how another Mac would behave on the network alongside my Mac Pro. Once installed, I set the hybrid Mac up to allow file sharing and remote management and well... it just works! Next job will be to wipe the box and install OpenSUSE 11.1 (when it's out) with Netatalk so I can create AFP shares. The advantage of this, aside from the murky area of legality with Kalyway, is that I'll have a server that I can keep patched (I understand patching Kalyway above 10.5.2 is a good way to break it), but unlike my Windows Server I won't need a suite of security add-ons to keep it safe.

Congratulations to the guys who produced Kalyway for a very clever piece of work.

Ci siamo interrogati nelle scorse settimane sul reale significato della parola "Brick" (in inglese mattone), i rumors fantasticavano sui nuovi prodotti attesi per il 14 Ottobre: Mac Mini con le fattezze del Mac Pro, nuovi MacBook Aluminium o il tanto favoleggiato Mac Tablet.

Per molti di voi la notizia avrà dell'incredibile, (sempre che ci sia la reale conferma di ciò che vi stiamo per dire) per altri suonerà "sotto-tono", poichè risulta difficile a prima vista, capire a quale rivoluzione si vada in contro.

Ebbene sì, Apple si appresta a lanciare la prossima rivoluzione, e questa volta sarebbe progettata su scala globale: nessun competitor di netbook e PC portatili su vasta scala ha ancora la possibilità di poter raggiungere tale traguardo... Di cosa stiamo parlando? Tutta la verità sul "Brick" dopo il salto.

La notizia inizialmente fu riportata in forma anonima da un dipendente di una grossa azienda di produzione, alla quale Apple si appoggia per l'assemblaggio dei suoi prodotti. La voce dichiarò: "Ottobre sarà interamente dedicato al "Brick".

Ovviamente fu subito pane per i siti di Rumors: infinite indiscrezioni si susseguirono a tempo di record, favoleggiando su qualsiasi tipologia di prodotto che Apple poteva annunciare da lì a breve, ma nessuno di loro ha mai pensato si trattasse in realtà di un nuovo metodo di produzione.

9to5mac ha finalmente svelato il mistero: Brick è in realtà una lastra vera e propria di Alluminio di alta qualità, sottoposto ad un innovativo processo di lavorazione mediante tecniche di taglio al laser 3D e getti d'acqua, che permetterebbe per la prima volta di poter realizzare prodotti "scavati" interamente in un unico blocco di alluminio. Niente viti nè saldature quindi, si avranno portatili esenti da difetti di fabbricazione, molto più sottili e leggeri.

Le innovazioni sono in realtà molteplici: mediante questa tecnica di realizzazione dei portatili, potremmo avvalerci di prodotti con maggiore qualità, a meno prezzo (dato che il lavoro sarà quasi interamente realizzato dalle macchine), e ci sarà meno scarto (i ritagli di alluminio potranno essere fusi per dar vita ad un nuovo prodotto).

Tale innovazione porterebbe inoltre maggiori margini di guadagno per Apple, un restyling più veloce della gamma (poichè il lavoro verrà fatto sotto forma di CAD e si lascerà alle macchine) dando modo di poter abbattere i costi della realizzazione stessa dei prodotti.

La notizia, se verificata, confermerebbe la volontà di Apple nel creare i propri prodotti "in casa", e darebbe una notevole distanza in termini di design, a tutte le altre aziende che non hanno ancora a disposizione tali supporti tecnologici.

For the past decade and a half, there have been two major options to receive passive video entertainment (aka “television”) in the home.

One could choose cable service, which in our case would mean Comcast. Comcast has “basic” cable (meaning, none of the channels we watch, except the local stations) for about $30 a month, or “standard” starting at a smidge over $50.

Alternatively, one could choose Dish or DirecTV, which start at $63 for the shows we watch, plus $5 to use the DVR we bought from them. This is what we’d been subscribing to, more or less continuously, since 2000 when we first moved into our own house. Our actual cost for DirecTV is $85/month, after all the add-ons and taxes.

A few “third party” equivalents (digital TV from your phone company, for instance) have come up in recent years, but they are mostly in the same mold as the other two: a large monthly fee for a wide choice of “channels” to choose from.

But, times have changed since our household last consciously chose our source of passive entertainment. Costs have gone up; DirecTV when we first subscribed was $40 for the “Total Choice Plus” collection of everything-and-the-kitchen-sink channels. At the same time, other avenues for home video have opened up.

We sat down a week and a half ago to look into our options and ended up with a stunning conclusion: we’re dropping satellite TV completely and moving to “fully on-demand” television watching.

New Sources for Video

There are two main types of new video sources we are planning on using: pay-per-episode and ad-supported. The for-pay service of choice (simply because it works with the computers in our house) is iTunes, and by extension our Apple TV device. The ad-supported services are exemplified by hulu.com.

“Premium” shows will be bought for viewing via iTunes and our Apple TV. The quality of shows on the Apple TV is absolutely stunning, far superior (in SD at least, which is my only frame of reference) to DirecTV’s offering. A few weekends ago we noticed we’d missed the premier episode of Primeval, which we had been wanting to watch. So, we bought the premier on the Apple TV and watched it, then immediately watched the second and third episodes directly from DirecTV; the difference was highly noticeable, especially in the “matrixing” of the darks. At $1.99 - $2.99 per episode (the higher price for HD episodes, where those are available), we come out far ahead using the Apple TV’s buy-what-you-watch model for our most “discriminating” viewing; I’ll get down to dollars and cents on this later though.

“Regular” shows will be watched via one of the ad-supported online video outlets. Currently, these include:

• Hulu: Aims to be a “hub” for multiple networks’ content. Includes a smattering of movies and a lot of TV shows. Point of aggravation: it is eager to mix clips with full-length episodes, and so you never know if it really has a particular show available until you click down to the show. Major conveniences: queuing and subscriptions to shows allow us to turn it on and see what we haven’t watched yet. Episodes are up the day after they air, and remain up for “a while” but not indefinitely. Also experimenting with live broadcasts, although we’ll have to see how that goes!
• NBC: Most of this content is also on Hulu, but sometimes things will “expire” from Hulu and live longer on NBC.com (or vice-versa).
• CBS: Only outlet for CBS shows (Hulu will link over here). Major aggravations: too many clicks to find available full-length shows.
• ABC: Only outlet for ABC shows (which we don’t usually watch anyway, but this is the Lost outlet!).
• Nick Jr: Kid shows, including Dora, Diego, Backyardigans, etc.
• Adobe Media Player: Largely an “also-ran”. Nothing really interesting here, but it might fill out in the future. Downloaded AIR-powered client.

All of these are “free” ad-supported sources, and so all of them display ads at the start, end, and often in the middle of the shows. You generally can’t skip the ads, so there’s no avoiding them, although the length of the ads is much shorter than those on broadcast TV (15-30 seconds every act or two rather than 2-3 minutes every act). The ads are definitely tolerable, although the lack of variety on some shows has already gotten tiresome.

Connecting

We have three televisions which need to be “fed” content: our living room, the kids’ tv upstairs, and our bedroom tv. The main focus is of course in the living room, but the other two can’t be left out in the cold indefinitely.

In the living room, the Apple TV quite nicely handles displaying iTunes “premium” content. We can order new shows directly from the television set, and everything gets stored both locally and up on our home server. The television set has a DVI input, but that is already taken up by the DVD player’s HDMI output (which I’d prefer to keep “pristine”). That leaves a few component, composite, and analog VGA inputs as options for connecting a new source.

Obviously, to watch browser-based content we’ll need a computer with a browser next to the TV. For the downstairs set we’ve conscripted either my wife’s MacBook laptop or an old G4 PowerBook for that purpose; we generally use the PowerBook, but it also tends to “stutter” on Flash video as it’s a bit underpowered.

For both of these computers, we have a VGA adapter (the Apple MiniDVI-to-VGA adapter for the MacBook and an Apple DVI-to-VGA adapter for the PowerBook). We also obviously have to hook the headphones output up to the receiver.

On the upstairs kids’ tv, we have a computer sitting right next to it. It’s an older-model iMac G5, which sports “Mini-VGA” output (one of the few machines ever made with such a connection). Another $20 adapter from Apple, and we can output it’s screen to SVideo, which the TV up there can accept (no VGA or DVI inputs on that old CRT clunker!) The sound goes through a pair of RCA jacks, or if we forget to connect the audio outputs, through the computer’s speakers. Here, unless we move the AppleTV from downstairs (which isn’t a big deal), we can watch AppleTV premium content via iTunes’ “bonjour” networking; turn on iTunes and connect directly to our home server’s library to watch a bought show.

On our bedroom tv we are set up to move one of the laptops in and output DVI video direct to the TV. We have a little alcove up there where the DVD player sits, perfectly ready for a laptop to be set and the audio/video connected.

The next issue is the 10-foot interface. Specifically: how do we control that interface from the couch?

With the AppleTV this isn’t an issue at all. Our Harmony remote controls the little box with aplomb.

Hulu et al are not at all set up to make this easy. We have to use a mouse and keyboard to get anywhere (keyboard only to search). One option is that we have to physically get up, walk over to the computer next to the television, and click the mouse there. The other option is a little bluetooth mouse, like the Apple Mighty Mouse. For the downstairs set (and if we move the laptop upstairs), we will be using the latter option. For the kids’ set, the room is small enough that they can just get up and push the mouse button. With a bluetooth mouse, we are still lacking a keyboard; to keep us from heading across the room, we have enabled the Mac OS X “Input Menu” (under “International” in System Preferences), so a click on the flag in the menu bar and we get a floating “keyboard” on the screen. This way, the bluetooth mouse can act as a keyboard in the cases where we need one (for instance, when searching for something).

Implications

The implications of this shift are significant in our household.

1. TV is no longer “background noise”. This is a good thing – from sociological and energy perspectives – so you won’t see me bemoaning it. At the same time, though, it is a change from the status quo, and so will be difficult. We’ve already felt the sting of not being able to lay down in bed with the local news rambling in the background.
2. TV “events” are no longer available. This is the most worrying effect. Instead of local news, we can read up on the local stations’ web sites, and we can get opinion pieces from national sources. We won’t be able to participate in the “watercooler conversations” (although half the time we couldn’t in any case because the hot show was sitting on our DVR waiting for us to watch it the next night anyway). I’m excited to see if the live streaming model of Hulu’s Presidential Debates and NBC’s Olympics takes a stronger hold.

Sociologically Speaking …

The television can no longer act as background noise. That’s an alarmingly drastic change in our household. I suspect we’ll be watching significantly fewer shows overall, and be much more discriminating about which we spend our time in front of.

If we are watching an hour-long shows each night of the week, that’s 7 hours per week. Taking all 7 as “premium” shows would mean us paying $56 per month for SD quality. Obviously, that isn’t the best option here.

At the same time, the “TV Schedule” has been a major drag on us. We haven’t been able to get to bed early because shows we (Jodi and I) want to watch are aired later at night. We haven’t been able to go out for the night because some “event” show was going to be on and we’d “miss” it. DVR recordings help somewhat, but we never know where to record things because it’s hard to say where we’ll want to watch them later on.

This move forces us “off” the TV Schedule. There is no schedule any more. Everything appears at about 4:00 in the morning on Hulu, and can be watched whenever we find the time to watch it. It also forces us away from “background noise”; each show must be consciously selected from the list of available shows, and nothing just “comes on” because the other show ended (although Hulu’s queue does act that way).

At the same time, it also moves the living room centralized viewing area to a more decentralized system. It’s not much worse watching the show you want to watch upstairs or in our bedroom; we no longer have the “it was recorded on the living room DVR” excuse to force us all to watch something in the same room. I don’t see this as overly significant now; we’ll have to see if it does become a factor.

Energy-Wise

The TV consumes a lot of energy. For “background noise” it’s about the least efficient of the options available (“silence” and “radio” coming at the most efficient end).

I fully expect our energy bills to go down as a result of this shift. At the same time, there are competing factors. The following calculations are based mostly on guesses, not actual power readings, so may be slightly off.

1. The living room TV uses about as much energy as 4 100Watt bulbs when on (it has a 300W rear-projection bulb; I’m estimating the circuitry as wasting another 100W but may be over in that estimate). Having this off for three hours in the day (where it was merely background noise) is a significant energy savings (1.2kWh)
2. The computers we are using are all fairly efficient energy sippers. Adding these to the circuitry mix when watching shows adds about 35W to the overall system (0.035kWh per hour; this is a very high estimate; Apple puts a PowerBook G4 battery at 58Wh and lasting for 4.5 hours, for a run rate of about 13 Wh or 0.013kWh per hour; I’m assuming the demands of Flash use much more energy, and the battery life of our G4 when watching Flash is more like 1.5 hours, which would be around 38Wh).

So, if we watch TV under the new model for 1 hour, we will be using 0.035kWh extra, the extra energy equivalent to about 5.25 minutes of “background” TV. If we eliminate only 1 hour of “background” noise watching in the day, we are energy-positive so long as we watch less than 11.5 hours of “real” television.

Imagine two scenarios: we have the TV “on” for 5 hours in the day, and then we have the TV and laptop “on” for 2 hours the next day. Let’s compare the costs (Assuming Tier 1 rates for SMUD, rounded up to 10 cents per kWh):

• TV on 5 hours
  • Energy Used: 2.0kWh
  • Energy Cost: $0.2/day : $6/month
• TV and laptop on 2 hours
  • Energy Used: 0.870kWh
  • Energy Cost: $0.09/day : $2.70/month

This doesn’t take into account the fact that the electricity rate might go down due to our conservation (higher usage customers get higher rates), or that “2 hours” of television is almost 3 full 42-minute shows on Hulu instead of 2 42-minute shows plus 36 minutes of ads on “regular” TV. It also should be noted that we’re not taking the electricity usage of the DVR into account on the old-model side.

Overall, the monetary effect is small, but the narrow energy usage effect can be huge. We’d never dream of having four 100 Watt bulbs burning all day long just because we were in the same room! Why should we have been so complacent about the TV having been on all day?

Premium Content Cost Breakdowns

We have several “premium” shows that we want to watch. Assuming for the moment a “premium” month where all are showing every week (four episodes), this is the max monthly costs:

• Lost. $2.99 * 16 ($48)
• Heroes. $2.99 * 22 ($66)
• ER. $1.99 * 22 ($44)
• The Closer. $1.99 * 15 ($30)

The “season” costs of these four shows (bought on a show-by-show basis, not as season passes) comes to $188 over the course of the year (with a max of $40 in any particular month were all four to show four episodes that month).

DirecTV costs $85/month for us, all told, which comes out to $1,020 over the course of the year.

If these are the only “premium” shows we watch, we’ll save $832 in a year.

The other benefits are budget flexibility (money tight? Move a show from “premium” to “online” viewing), storage flexibility (these can all, unlike the DVR’d shows from DirecTV, be backed up), and a better overall viewing experience (no skipping through commercials because they’ve already been pulled out!).

But, I hear you saying, you haven’t factored in the cost of the internet connection! Well, that is true. Obviously, we’d have an internet connection anyway (we are paying $50/month for internet and phone combined), but we might want to upgrade our connection to allow for the increased bandwidth needs. Moving from 3Mbps to 6Mbps internet will cost us $10 per month, eating another $120 in the year. However, the need for this is not foregone: we haven’t had any latency or bandwidth issues yet in the week we’ve been trying this out. We’ll see, though; the phone connection is switching over to digital as well, so the overall bandwidth needs may be going up soon. We’ll see, and adapt. No matter what, though, it’s not going to bust the budget.

Assuming we move to a higher-bandwidth internet service, and add two additional shows in the “premium” bucket ($2 per episode and 22 episode seasons), the cost comparison is:

• DirecTV: $1,020
• New Model: $396
• Savings Total: $624
• Monthly Savings, Total: $52

This is the “all bells and whistles” option, and it’s still over 60% less than DirecTV!

Future Options

As I just mentioned, it’s definitely possible we’ll be expanding on this new model in a number of ways:

1. Increase internet bandwidth
2. In-house, beef up networking (saving $50/month here we can put aside funds to pay for these upgrades quickly)
3. In-house, beef up connected laptops (much less likely to happen, but a better laptop or Mac Mini in the living room without having to take my wife’s laptop away would decrease the need for “premium” shows some of the time and enhance the overall Hulu-class experience)
4. Additional “premium” shows without removing existing “premium” shows from the lineup

In addition, there are other avenues:

1. Subscription movie services (Blockbuster, Netflix). We’ve canceled Blockbuster as we just haven’t been getting $18 worth out of it each month. However, we might reconsider this once we’ve lived in this new model for a few months.
2. Upgrade to capture Over The Air HD (purchase an EyeTV USB dongle or home server for $100-200). This would move all “network” content off the “premium” cost table in exchange for a one-time cost and excepting scheduling mix-ups. It would also allow realtime viewing of local TV shows (ex, the nightly news and late night shows), should we be feeling too deprived without that.

The Future Now

This is a paradigm shift for our household. We’re excited to be moving to this new model, and definitely ready to realize the savings it will entail. Our trial week on this has gone well. I’ll keep you up to date as we move forward.

Well, I'm sure the fact that Vista sucks eggs doesn't help, but Quicktime on Windows is an unoptimized bloated monstrosity; even compared to the Mac edition. (I was hoping the article was about how my Mini feels faster than most Vista machines when it runs OS X, a fact that's definitely the case. ;-) )

iVerse, novedoso lector de comics para el iPhone y el iPod touch.

...el iVerse, es un novedoso lector de comics para el iPohne/iPod touch, con el podemos ver comics y…

Descarga videos de Youtube desde Safari sin ningun “extra” 

...hoy te enseñamos a descargar videos de Youtube en formato FLV, (que después puedes transformar a .mp4 o …

Nuevos rumores sobre las renovaciones de los portatiles de Apple. 

...Al parecer los nuevos ordenadores, los que se supene que renovaran, seran un MacBook y un MacBook Pro...

¿Un nuevo producto Apple a la vista? 

...Parece que Apple esta preparando alguna cosa nueva, ¿el que? nadie lo sabe (execepto Steve, claro)...

Ya esta disponible la version 2.1. para el iPhone.

...el software 2.1 ya esta disponible para iPhone...

iPod nano 4G ¡Nuevos juegos! 

...el iPod nano nuevo (4G) tiene 3 juegos, y uno nuevo, su nombre es...

Vista Guiada del iTunes 8 

Aqui teneis la visita guiada de iTunes 8...

Resumen de la Keynote del día 9 de Septiembre.

Empecemos con la entrada del consejero delegado de Apple (Steve Jobs, ¿quien sino?), quien dice...

Rumor: ¿Cual sera el nuevo producto de Apple?

Yo creo que sera una tabla...

iPod’s VS Mac 

 ...hay una lucha interna en Apple, la banda iPod contra la banda Mac…

Windows Vista, el mejor amigo de Mac OS X

Desde el lanzamiento de Windows Vista, practicamente todo el mundo se volco en contra de el, después Microsoft prohibio la venta de...

Programas iPod touch/iPhone 

Ahora os enseñare los programas más chulos que, segun algunos, tendrian que venir de serie con...

iDoodle2 lite, ¿quien quiere “mancharse las manos”?

...ya que eso es lo que hace esta aplicacion, su nombre iDoodle2 lite, es gratuita y...

Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates 

El video es una pasada, yo...

Tira comica 

En realida, no hace falta...

Malas noticias para nosotros, los Fan boy’s

Desde el pasado 28 de agosto, el título de ordenador portátil de 13 pulgadas más ligero del mundo ya no pertenece a Apple, sino...

• Video chat support.*
• Audio chat support.*
• An auto-adjust feature that would change length of buddy list window to number of online buddies.
• The ability to customize IM sounds/alerts with any sound file on your computer.
• Ability to put your own custom background with any image on your computer.

*Even Video/Audio support between Mac's and PC's.

Sin embargo, me han surgido varios problemas. 

Primero: para usarlo como Media Center, no tengo necesidad de un Mac Mini de última generación, así que me puse a buscar uno de segunda mano que tuviera buen precio. El único requisito es que fuera Intel porque total, el disco duro se lo podía cambiar y aumentar la memoria si era necesario (y ya de paso os hacía un tutorial :-)

Así que lo primero fue ir a la tienda de Apple y mirar en los equipos restaurados. Nada, muchos MacBook Pro, pero ni un mini.

Pensé en eBay, pero había leído de las malas experiencias de algunos oyentes de PuroMac, así que pensé en segundamano.es. Después de 2 ofertas a 2 compradores distintos, desistí. No me creo que ambos compradores sean españoles, escriban tal mal en castellano y curiosamente, ambos están de viaje por varias semanas fuera de España (y se llevan consigo el Mac Mini?). Uno incluso me dijo que estaba en Francia y me lo enviaba por barco (!). Vamos, muy sospechosos...

Así que mientras hacía esos intentos, llegó mi segundo problema: empezaron a aparecer los rumores de nuevos Mac a mediados de octubre: que si nuevos MacBook, MacBook Pro, AppleTV y un "cacharro súper-secreto" llamado Brick que los rumores apuntaban podría ser el sustituto del MacMini. 

Así que toca esperar a ver qué pasa. Lo único que pido es que en su genialidad, no se les ocurra quitar el lector de DVD del Mini (salvo que sea para poner un BlueRay :-). Tengo montones de DVDs y me gustaría verlos sin necesidad de andar digitalizando todos.

La solución: en un par de semanas (espero).

In my loft lurks a PC running Windows 2003 Server which I use for taking backups to. The license cost me enough so I'm determined to make use of it, and to be fair this has been one of my more reliable Windows machines (famous last words).

Backing up from PCs is a doddle, create a share on the server then simply 'net use' or map a drive to it and off you go with your chosen software. It would be just as easy on the Mac but for one annoying problem - the connection randomly drops for no apparent reason. I can mount the share quite happily and use it for days, then all of a sudden it's disappeared and my backup software complains that it can't access the relevant location. Reconnecting isn't a problem, I just point the Mac at the server again and off it goes, so authentication isn't the issue.

I wondered if installing AppleTalk on the server and connecting to shares using AFP rather than SMB might be better, but AFP is 'crippled' in Windows 2003 Server and so is of limited use. Sure it presents a nice little picklist of shares to the Mac user, but it doesn't support long filenames nor does it support automatic reconnection which is what I really need. In fact if your a Mac user with a Windows 2000 or 2003 Server then you're better off sticking with SMB from what I can see.

So I have three choices really.

1. I splash out on something like a Mac Mini to replace the server and just hand the drives off it in external USB enclosures. Trouble I'm looking at spending at least £399 ($720) to get one and with the present credit crunch, that will have to wait. Besides, my first Mac Mini was destined to be a media player to replace my ageing PVR.
2. I explore some way of detecting the disconnect on the Mac and then automatically reconnect. I'm sure I've seen a Mac utility that does this, it's just a case of tracking it down. Or...
3. I pursue finding a fix on the Windows side, although I don't hold out much hope.

Incidentally, I got as far as Kalyway installing successfully on my spare PC, but it failed at the first reboot - something about failing to find some plist dependency on the drive I'd just installed to. I may revisit this when I get the chance as it was temptingly close.

In essence, OSX is built on BSD and is a flavor of Unix. So the open source capability is there, just like Linux. My goal for this project with the mini is to use open source software along side of the VMWare Fusion emulator and function as an open source Mac (primarily) until tax time is over in April 2009. That means 7 months of OSX, Fusion running Windows XP (for AutoCAD), the latest release of Ubuntu (when it comes out this month), and one other flavor of Linux (to be determined).

The tax software I have used in the past is Tax Cut by H&R Block. That is the likely choice for next spring, but this year I am determined to get them done and filed before the end of February. (good luck with that, right?)

The Office Suite is Open Office 2.4 running with X11 1.1.3 - XFree86 4.4.0 installed. I also have Cog, version 0.07 (r635) installed to handle the music playing duties while I manage the blogs. I plan on looking for a program to handle my music as a library, but it has to be open source and not tied into a music store. Switch is installed to handle conversions between the WMA files and other formats, needed for my Sansa Fuse Music Player. So far, the Fuse appears as a drag and drop drive and has let me manage my music and podcasts in that way. That works well for me.

Stellarium is also an open source favorite of mine, and you owe it to yourself to check it out if you are at all interested in the night sky. There will be more added over time, so stay tuned.

My Experience

So far so good. I have been critical of Apple in the past, and still am. I believe that a computer should not just be a vehicle by which the maker locks you into their company as an income stream. That is Apples business model, but I don't have to play their game. I like their hardware, but think that most of their software is a useless waste of time. I want an office suite and productivity tools along with Internet and email out of the box from my computer manufacturer. It should be the bare minimum that we expect to make the system usable.

So to play the game my way, I take the hardware, whatever it is, and I load what I want when I want to do whatever I want with it. I don't need to download music through their channels, or have a .Mac account, or keep on paying and paying after I have made my initial purchase. I support Open Source software by contributing to it in my small way, and buying some of it when I need to. And I find that 95% of my needs are met that way. The other 5% comes from investments in software that I have already made, that run just fine in an emulator. These are my needs and my opinions. Your mileage may vary.

That's all for now. Until next time, have fun!

Apple released 10.5.5 on the 15th of September. According to Apple the update included the following improvements..

• Improves Spotlight indexing performance.
• Improves iPhone sync reliability with iCal and Address Book
• In MobileMe: improves overall sync and Back to My Mac reliability.
• Improves Time Machine reliability with Time Capsule.
• Addresses stability issues with video playback, processor core idling, and remote disc sharing for MacBook Air.

I was hoping this update would fix the long standing problem in Leopard of shared libraries not showing album artwork on the remote source. I have a Mac mini setup in my bedroom with a 20" ACD and it is very frustrating seeing a placeholder instead of actual album art when scrolling through not just Music, but also Movies and TV Shows. Please Apple, fix this problem, as "gorgeous artwork" is what you love doing!

One issue was a noticeably slow-down in performance. I do not know what to attribute this to, since my collection of data is relatively small, and I have not really taxed the machine with huge processes. Another problem was a sudden change in permissions that did not allow me to manipulate some files in the way that I needed to. It was frustrating, simply because I had a task to accomplish and this problem was keeping me from getting the work done. In the end, I resorted to transferring the files to a memory stick and sending them via email from my work account using Windows & Outlook. I do not know why two simple PDF files could not be emailed, but time constraints did not present the opportunity to test the process and engineer a solution.

But, I digress. The boredom with Ubuntu flavored Gnome may be akin to a hacking cough that is cured over time. Soon, you sort of miss the old thing. Having lived with computer problems for a long time, once they are cured there is not a whole lot that is interesting to do. Things just work, and the tinkering that was a daily occurrence with other operating systems is now just not happening.

Coupled with the fact that the Ubuntu flavor of Gnome is fairly locked down, I am simply bored with getting my work done and not fighting with my computer. It is a sickness, I know.

Enter KDE

In an effort to inject some excitement into my computing experience, I set out to install the packages required to run the KDE desktop. What I ended up with is KDE release 3.5.9 ( I just discovered that the slim aluminum keyboard number key issue is back - oh goody! Something to fix! Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it...)

Pause...

Ok, the keyboard stopped working all together in KDE, and I had to reboot and restart (enter Gnome) & restart the browser ( Firefox 2 ) to finish this. I am amazed that the post was saved in tact, considering the keyboard failure and the reboot. Oh well. As a friend likes to say, "You'll have that..."

Back to our story

So the bottom line is that I miss tweaking the computer, although I like Ubuntu & Gnome. I like the look of KDE too, and I like the plethora of applications available for Linux. Is it ready to be used as the sole operating system for the average home user? I would have to say yes. I think my experience with it this past spring and summer confirms that. There has not been much that I could not do, and with the addition of a $40 emulator (Win4Lin) I was able to run the Windows software I need.

But my desire (need?) to tweak / play / reconfigure supersedes my need (desire?) to have a computer that is 100% stable 100% of the time. And my purpose here is to tweak and test, then tweak and test some more. Like the current financial crisis, sometimes a crash is good for you. The contraction that comes from a crash creates and environment that facilitates growth. In a similar way, reconfiguring your computer with a new OS keeps the growth engine humming (for me) and as long as your data is backed up and in a portable format, there should not be any major issues. The only investment is the time required to reconfigure.

The Next Step

In the coming weeks, I will be rebuilding the Mini. I will probably shoot for a dual boot configuration and try some kind of OS X / Linux configuration using the newest flavor of Ubuntu (due out at the end of October) as my distribution of choice. Who knows? I may even try for the triple boot OS X / Windows XP Home Edition / Linux configuration just to make things interesting. So stay tuned.

I will be thrashing around the office and posting the results here as time permits. This next project may go quickly, or it may just convince me that I indeed do have some sort of sickness, and the cure may be to throw the whole works in the burn barrel and become a confirmed Luddite.

Linux has, I believe, reached the point of stability that makes it a viable alternate for the home and light business user. Ubuntu has proven to be a stable distribution, and I would not hesitate to use it on both new hardware, and as a means to breath new life into older (not ancient) machines. There are minor issue, but none that are deal breakers in my opinion.

So it's on to the next iteration of the mini, and until next time, have a lot of fun! I know I will.

Pare manchi poco all'arrivo dei nuovi portatili Apple: a testimoniarlo è una foto, scattata dall'inventario di Future Shop (sussidiaria di Best Buy), dove si trovano ben 6 nuovi prodotti Apple in arrivo e tutti con la dicitura Mac.

Best Buy non è nuova nel preannunciare l'arrivo di nuovi device Apple, difatti ogni grossa azienda deve prenotare il posto nei magazzini prima della vendita dei suoi prodotti e spesso (come in questo caso), tali "Segnaposto" saltano fuori.

Pare quindi che Apple sia pronta a rilasciare del nuovo hardware per il mese di Ottobre, forse per il 14 come testimoniano numerosi siti dediti ad indiscrezioni su Cupertino.

Fonte: Macrumors

Difatti vi abbiamo già parlato dell'avvistamento di nuovi MacBook Alluminium, ma in questo lasso di tempo si sono aggiunte indiscrezioni su di un probabile aggiornamento del Mac Mini (nome in codice Brik) e non mancano le fantasie su di un fantomatico MacBook touch. Se l'inventario di Future Shop parla di sei nuovi prodotti, non significa che essi possano riguardare solo i MacBook, potrebbero raffigurare un aggiornamento su vasta scala: quale l'arrivo di nuovi prodotti o semplicemente lo speed bump di quelli già esistenti (vedi iMac).

Una cosa è certa: se Apple dovesse avere in magazzino un corposo aggiornamento stilistico o dovesse introdurre nuovi device, ciò potrebbe coincidere con un nuovo Keynote dedicato solo ed esclusivamente ai Mac e se i rumors fossero confermati, si potrebbe assistere al nuovo evento per il 14 del mese di Ottobre.

Ma conosciamo bene Apple e le speculazioni spesso non riportano la realtà delle cose, ma tenendo conto dell'eccessivo risalto mediatico dato a iPhone in questi ultimi 2 anni, un evento interamente dedicato all'informatica, non potrebbe che trovare riscontro presso i milioni di fan dell'azienda.

Image: Macenstein

Tenetevi liberi il 14 ottobre perché se i rumors che si vanno assommando in questi giorni dovessero rivelarsi esatti ne vedremo delle belle in quel di Cupertino. Oltre al già ampiamente rumoreggiato arrivo di una nuova gamma di MacBook e MacBook Pro, diverse fonti parlano di una misteriosa One More Thing, a cui tutti sembrano riferirsi con il nome in codice di “the brick”, il mattone. C’entrano forse Rita Pavone, i Pink Floyd e la massoneria? O magari c’incastrano i templari? Steve Jobs rivelerà al mondo la propria identità di Gran Maestro del Priorato di Sion e successore di Pierre Plantard? Questi interrogativi li lasciamo volentieri a Voyager e a Roberto Giacobbo, mentre noi cerchiamo invece di farci strada fra la selva di riferimenti iconografici e musicali evocati dall’oggetto mattone per capire cosa abbia in serbo Apple per noi.

Un nuovo Mac mini.

Di questa prima ipotesi abbiamo già ampiamente discusso ieri. Ammettiamolo però: l’oggettiva possibilità che un nuovo mini faccia la sua comparsa è alterata dalla speranza: tutti ci auguriamo che Apple possa decidere di non dismettere il piccolo di casa. Un modello che ha dato molte soddisfazioni a nutrite schiere di utenti e che forse è finito troppo presto nel dimenticatoio.

HUB USB wireless

Altra ipotesi interessante arriva da Seth Weintraub di 9to5 Mac, il Mac Blog da cui questa giostra del “mattone” ha preso originariamente le mosse. Il nuovo mattoncino non sarebbe altro che un hub wireless per il collegamento di dispositivi USB che potrebbe permettere ai nuovi MacBook di non avere nemmeno una presa al di fuori dell’alimentazione. I nuovi Laptop si connetterebbero al mondo esterno unicamente attraverso le onde radio. Un’ipotesi certamente affascinante (e forse non tutti saranno d’accordo) che però rimane solamente un’illazione che ha preso spunto da un mock up pubblicato su flickr (foto sotto).

Mac Tablet, iTablet o altro dispositivo Multi-Touch

Naturalmente quando si tratta di rumors da Area 51 non può mancare all’appello il grande assente degli ultimi anni, il dispositivo che tutti si aspettano, che tutti vogliono e che Apple si ostina a non presentare: l’iTablet. Inutile dire che non c’è nessun indizio a sostegno della possibilità che il “brick” possa essere un dispositivo di questo genere. Il fatto che il modo di dire “to brick” si applichi comunemente ad un dispositivo, nello specifico un iPhone, che si impalla in seguito alla esecuzione di una procedura “non convenzionale” è un altro aspetto che non fa ben sperare.

Un significato metaforico

A metà tra il serio e il faceto, Dr. Macenstein ha suggerito che “the brick” potrebbe non indicare affatto il fattore di forma di un nuovo prodotto, come ipotizzato dalla maggior parte delle fonti. “The brick” sarebbe invece il nome in codice dato da Apple ad una serie di pratiche particolarmente aggressive, che verranno messe in campo per sferrare un attacco diretto al marketshare di Microsoft e agiranno da metaforico mattone, arma d’elezione per chiunque voglia efficacemente e rapidamente rompere una Finestra (Window). Un abbassamento sensibile dei prezzi e il lancio di nuovi prodotti potrebbero essere alcune delle operazioni che verranno condotte da Cupertino.

E voi cosa pensate si possa nascondere dietro questo criptico nome in codice?

Like many people who run their own businesses, it's more than me who needs to get at our files, so we need some kind of "server". Of course, the machines sold as servers cost an arm and a leg, because what you're actually paying for is resilience, not only, but mainly in hard disks (on the basis that moving parts are the bits that fail, and a typical PC has moving parts only in the fan and the disks) - if one hard disk fails, the machine flashes up a warning, but keeps on working, because the data is stored in more than one place.

The technology that does is called RAID. RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks", which is all very well up to a point... except that the majority of server manufacturers seem to think that the word "Inexpensive" is intended as a gag, and use expensive SCSI or even SAS disks.

Apart from using expensive disks, the other problem with nigh on all of these RAID solutions is that you need to set the "disk arrays" up once, and then not touch them. It's typically hard (read, expensive, specialist IT support person) to make arrays larger.

Those of us with normal PCs use the much cheaper IDE disks, of which the most recent generations are called SATA1 and SATA2 (the previous generations were called things like ATA-133, ATA-100 and so on.)

So, wouldn't it be nice if you could have a solution that did three things:

1. Use the cheaper SATA disks
2. Allow you to upgrade it easily, just by adding an extra disk
3. Sit as an EXTERNAL drive, connected by USB or FireWire, rather than being something that involved taking apart the PC [Yes, I know that nice servers have caddy-mounted disks that can be removed without a screwdriver, but these fall into the "expensive" end of servers]

Enter Data Robotics - who make a product called the Drobo.

I was put on Drobo by two different people I trust. Firstly, Nik Butler of LoudmouthMan had raved about it when we met up a few months ago.  Nik's got a long-term supportability mindset, as a result of having worked in IT for many years, so I knew that anything he recommended was going to be good. However, he is willing to spend long periods getting stuff to work in the first place, so a recommendation from him didn't give "just works" cred. Enter Mark McCall of AutomatedHome, who's no technological dunce, but does have an "I don't want to waste time getting stuff working - I like it just to work" mindset. His review of the Drobo also gave a thumbs up.

This meets my three requirements, and it has a funky feature that most high-end RAID arrays don't - you can upgrade it very easily.

Basically, it's a black box that plugs into your PC - it works whether you run Windows, Linux or use a Mac. The version I bought last week is the newer one that has a Firewire option, although I use USB. The front is magnetic (I assume), in that it pulls off without any fiddling, and slips back into place nicely. Once the front is off, there are four slots, and you have to put a (SATA) hard disk into at least two of them. The good news is that the drives slide straight in - there's no messing with cables or finding that you need a power adaptor cable because the power supply in your PC has the wrong fitting!

I put in a couple of Seagate drives, because I've had good experiences with Seagate in the past, though there's no particular reason why the drives should be from the same manufacturer - Drobo lets you mix and match.

Because it's copying the data onto multiple drives, the combination of two drives, each 500Gb, only gave me a total of 500Gb usable space... but the reassurance that I would never have to shell out hundreds to a data recovery firm again (I only did once!) to get back data after a disk crash makes me OK with that.

Another nice feature of the Drobo is that to upgrade the capacity, I just need to insert an extra disk, and (after flashing its lights for a while), Drobo just sorts it out - no new drivers, no reconfiguration - just insert the drive and wait (oh, and you can use the PC while it's doing it - just don't pull the disk back out until the light's stopped flashing.)

A result of this means that the economics are upside down compared to traditional RAID arrays - with them, you tend to buy the biggest disks avaialable, because the expensive part is the downtime and technician time required to upgrade. With Drobo, I stuck in a couple of 500Gb disks because they were enough, and cheap... and I can buy a 1Tb disk to add when prices have fallen another 50%... and a 2Tb disk after that when prices have fallen again...

... at that point, the Drobo's slot will be full, which is where the REALLY clever bit comes in... To upgrade beyond that, I can simply pull out the smallest drive, and replace it with a bigger one... and again, Drobo will just sort everything out.

Overall, it's an amazing bit of kit - it's "Apple-like" (in a good way), in that the packaging is well thought out, the instructions are very, very straightforward, and the product's straightforward enough that actually I was able to plug it straight in WITHOUT needing to use the instructions :-)

Full marks to Umesh at Data Robotics UK, who answered my questions, and was helpful throughout. I bought mine from CanCom, who were likewise good on the phone pre-sales, and delivered well and fast. The hard disks came from regular Mark Harrison supplier - ebuyer.co.uk.
Overall, well recommended.

Oh, and as an aside - it's plugged into my Mac Mini, which I'm finding great. My only reservation about plugging it into the Mac had been that the Mac formats the drives in a Mac-specific way, rather than in standard NTFS, like the Linux and Windows boxes can use. Hence, with only one Mac in the house, I had been tempted to put the Drobo on a Windows PC... However, Mary announced that she'd like a new PC, and would prefer a Mac, so we're now a two Mac household... This of course means that if mine were ever to fail, I could just plug the Drobo into her's :-)

We've been using Microsoft's Media Center for a few years now and have grown to like it a lot. We've also noticed that more and more Apple computers have shown up on our home network and decided it was time to get everything working together smoothly. Follow along as we walk you through the hoops we jumped through to get everything cooperating.

To make things really easy, we could have ditched Media Center and used Macs all around. One thing that the Macs lacked was a complete 10’ interface for the television. Sure, you have Plex, Front Row, and EyeTV available; while each has their merits none of them were able to give a user a complete single TV viewing experience like Microsoft’s Media Center.

MCE, as it’s commonly referred to, can play back DVDs, music, videos, and broadcast TV all from one interface using a single remote. We wanted to build a home network that would centralize all our media, provide Time Machine backups for the Apple computers, and also act as a bittorrent client and print server.

We knew we could easily set up another Windows machine to act like a server, but Time Machine only supports writing to Mac formatted drives. There is information out there that shows how to get around this, but we didn’t want to risk our backups using unsupported methods. Running a NAS box was out as well for the same reason.

A 1TB Time Capsule could have been the answer to our problem since that would support Time Machine backups, and we could plug in a FAT32 formatted USB drive for the Windows computer. The issue here would be with the 4GB file size limitation, as most of the HD shows recorded are between 6-15GB. We would need a file system that would support larger file sizes like NTFS or HFS+.

We decided to base our server on a Mac running Leopard. All the drives would be Mac formatted to deal with the large file sizes and this would allow native Time Machine backups. As long as we enabled SMB support in Leopard, the Windows computers would be able to read and write to the Mac drives without any issues.

Since this would be a fully functioning computer we can configure it as a print server as well as a bittorrent client. Our list is rather simple and shows that it doesn’t take much to get a mixed computer network up and running.

Hardware

• Mac desktop
• Client computers running Leopard and Windows Media Center
• 4 hard drives
• USB printer

Software

• Tweak UI
• Tweak MCE
• Transmission
• Reader Notifier
• Microsoft Remote Desktop Client

Additional setup information

• Working home network
• Static IP assigned to the server and MCE computers
• Wired connection from the router to the server and MCE computers
• Media Center computers should be setup with the same admin login and password and have auto login enabled.
• DVD movies ripped using the VIDEO_TS structure

Since our server would mainly be used to host the network drives, we really didn’t need the latest and the greatest computer. Our digital media hub is a first generation 1.42 GHz PPC Mac mini complete with 1GB of Ram, an 80GB hard drive, bluetooth and AirPort Extreme.

We used 3 375GB Seagate drives that we had laying around, each in their own FireWire enclosure. We also picked up a 500GB Iomega FireWire drive on clearance to act as our Time Machine disk. The reason we went with FireWire over USB was a matter of processor load. Since USB required the CPU to dictate where the data went unlike FireWire's peer to peer method we felt it was best to unload as much strain from the CPU as possible.

We also thought about using a Power Mac G4/G5 but liked the size of the Mac mini. Even with the 4 external drives, the whole thing fits nicely in our bookshelf. Whatever Mac you decide to use, just make sure it meets the minimum specifications to run Leopard.

After the initial OS install and updates, we started on formatting the drives one by one. Using Leopard’s Disk Utilities we formatted each external drive as GUID Partition, Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Next each drive was given a logical name in the order they were installed under the mini: HDD001, HDD002, HDD003, and Time Machine.  HDD001 would serve as one of our DVD drives, as well as the drive used to keep our shared music, photos, and torrents, so we created the following folders: My DVDs, My Music, My Pictures, and Torrents. HDD002 would be only used for DVDs, so that drive only had one folder labeled My DVDs. That left HDD003 to serve as the drive for recording MCE shows, so a folder labeled RecordedTV was created. No folders were made on the Time Machine drive as each Mac connecting to it would be making their own folder when doing their backups.

We then proceeded to create the different user profiles that would be accessing the drives. To make it easier on ourselves we used the same admin login and passwords from the MCE computers, but instead of making them part of the Admin group we made them part of the Standard user group. Since we used the same login for each MCE computer we only had to make one user on the server. For the Mac computers we used individual login names and password that were in use on the computers themselves and gave them only sharing accounts.

From here we moved onto enabling file sharing setting, adding each of the 4 drives, and assigning the different users to each drives. The reason why we created different logins for the Mac accounts instead of using one generic one like the MCE account was to give different access to each user. Some only needed Time Machine access while others needed access to other drives. With the different accounts we were able to specify which accounts had access to which drives. Since we wanted to be able to map drives under Windows we enabled SMB support for the MCE user by clicking the Options button.

We also wanted to log into the computer remotely since this setup would be running without a monitor, keyboard or mouse connected directly to it. By enabling the Remote Management service we can now manage the computer via another mac or a computer running a VNC client, like on an iPhone.

Our Mac came with a built in WiFi card that we used as a secondary WiFi access point when guests come to visit. It’s an easy way to get them online without us having to give out the password to our main WiFi connection.

Under Internet Sharing we selected the Ethernet as the connection we wanted to share and Airport for the guest connection. Under the Airport options we gave it a different SSID than our main connection. Now when guest visit, we can remote into the server and enable the connection, when they leave we disable the service.

The last things we wanted our server to do was automate the download of torrents. This required the installation of Reader Notifier and Transmission. Reader Notifier works with Google Reader and will automatically download the torrent file based on our RSS subscription to our torrent directory. Transmission was then set to automatically monitor this directory for new torrent files, once Reader Notifier downloads the torrent, Transmission starts downloading.

If we wanted to add a new torrent feed we just have to add it to Google Reader. Because Transmission is set to monitor the torrent directory if anyone manually places a torrent file in that directory from any computer the download will start automatically as well.

Both 2005 and Vista versions of MCE do not support writing to a network attached drive. With a few changes in the registry, via TweakMCE, we corrected this and added a few enhancements along the way.

We started by locating the 3 media center services and stopping them for the time being. One at a time we double clicked each service and under the Log On tab changed the default setting to the “This account box” and entered in the admin name and password for the computer.

With the services still stopped we launched TweakMCE and navigated to TV > Storage Location For Recorded TV and replaced the current path with the UNC path to our new server (\\OSXServer\HDD003\RecordedTV). We did this as well to the Watched Folder For Recorded TV.

In order to take advantage of having our DVDs stored on the server we also enabled the My DVDs option under the DVD menu of TweakMCE.

After saving each of our changes and exiting out of TweakMCE, we proceed to map each of the network drives we would be using making sure to use the same user name and password and selecting the reconnect at log on option. This will ensure that the drives will always be reconnected in case of reboot.

We then rebooted the computer and once back, launched MCE. Under the Videos menu we added the new drives making sure to include the 2 My DVDs folders as MCE will use this information to populate the new My DVDs menu on the home screen. Adding the network paths to the My Music and My Pictures directory also allowed the MCE computers to have access to the same content.

Like the server, we wanted to manage these computers remotely so we enabled the Remote Desktop Service. Microsoft makes a free client for the Mac and XP MCE/Pro has the remote client built in. Except for the different codecs needed to playback the various files that we wanted no further configurations were needed.

Setting up the Mac was rather quick since we would be connecting to another Mac for the drives. After launching Finder, we located the server to the left of the window. Selecting the server, we entered the shared user name we created on the server saving our login information to the keychain.

Enabling Time Machine to use a network drive is the same as selecting a locally connected drive. In the Time Machine preference screen select the Change Disk option to display all the connected drives. After selecting the drive labeled Time Machine we exited the screen, no hacks needed.

Unlike a Windows computer, OS X won’t automatically mount network drives on reboots. If we fail to mount the drives, Time Machine wouldn't be able to perform it's backups.. The easiest way we found was to create an Automator script at login to mount the drives.

Our first step was having Automator call out each drive we wanted to mount via IP. Once we had specified which drives we wanted, the next step was to have Automator connect to the server to mount the drives. Once we had verified that it was connecting to the correct drives, via the Run button, we saved it as an application and placed it in our applications folder. We then added this to the login items for each user we wanted to have access to the drives. Now on login, the script will automatically run and connect to the drives.

With our server now up and running, the MCE computers can now access the drives for movies, music, pictures, and share recorded shows. If our living room computer records an episode of Battlestar Galatica, all the MCE computers in the house can access it. Also, with MCE we now have access to all our DVDs anywhere in the house.

Because we chose to go with a Mac as a server, the Macs on our network can now back up wirelessly with Time Machine and share a printer as well.

If we had to do it over again, we would have gone with an Intel based mini as it comes with the Gigabit ethernet unlike the G4’s fast ethernet. In addition to that we should have gone with larger drives and tried Leopard's built in software RAID. Other than that, we are please with our new home network.

New Mac Mini

New MacBook

Well a boy can dream :-)

MacBook:

949€, 50€ más barato, con mayor velocidad del procesador, más memoria y más disco duro.

MacBook Air:

1649€, muy poco rebajado el "ultra" de Apple, y sin ninguna novedad.

MacBook Pro:

No hemos notado nada, pero si un ligero "bajon" del precio (no mucho).

Mac Mini:

Este si que ha sido la gran sorpresa, su precio a bajado radicalmente, y sus prestaciones han sido elevadas, un poco. ¿que significa? dos cosas, la primera es que puden quer quitarse todo el Stock de encima para el supuesto evento del día 14 de Octubre o que es la hora de bajar el precio de los Mac, su principal desventaja ante sus competidores.

iMac:

Su precio se ha elevado 1 misero €, ¿porque?, hasta 4GB de RAM (que ya tenia el anterior), 2,4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (el más bajo), con 250 Gb de Disco duro DE SERIE (el más bajo), y una Ati Radeon HD 2400XT con 128MB de serie (el más bajo) y como maximo de Tarjeta Grafica tenemos una Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS con 512MB.

Mac Pro:

Sin ningun cambio.

A Manolo Toledo de XatacaFoto, le llegó este rumor, que despadaza los rumores de la supuesta trancisión de Apple en octubre relacionada con sus portatiles.

Dicho equipo se anunciaría el 14 de octubre (¿14, octubre) en un evento todavía sin confirmar.

Vía: Applesfera

Parte la caccia allo scoop sul prossimo aggiornamento del Mac Mini: previsto un deciso rinnovo di design per il piccolo computer di Apple.

Forse per il design del Mini (ormai lo stesso da parecchi anni), forse per un probabile evento Apple (previsto per il 14 Ottobre), fatto sta che la rete comincia a sbizzarrirsi in quanto a previsioni sui futuri prodotti Apple: si vocifera infatti, che la prossima generazione di Mac Mini assomiglierà al fratello maggiore Mac Pro: stessa forma del case, nuovi componenti interni e dimensioni pari all'attuale modello.

Tutto nasce da un'indiscrezione: nelle scorse settimane si parlò di un prodotto con nome in codice "Brick" (in inglese "mattone"), tale nome venne subito associato al Mac Mini.

Altre voci invece, associano "Brick" al futuro MacBook touch, che stando a indiscrezioni, non dovrebbe tardare ad essere presentato.

Una cosa è certa: è ufficialmente partita la caccia allo scoop, e di questi tempi pare che Cupertino abbia vita difficile, in quanto a fughe di notizie sui nuovi prodotti, basta pensare ai nuovi iPod nano e iTunes 8...

Settimana davvero all’insegna dei rumors più disparati questa che è appena iniziata: oltre a novità “strutturali” per i MacBook e a nuovi modelli di iPhone 3G si legge su “iPhone Savior” una indiscrezione davvero interessante. Secondo questo sito, infatti, il 14 Ottobre, oltre ai nuovi MacBook, ci si deve aspettare anche il lancio di un nuovo Mac Mini, chiamato Mac Mini Pro. Partiamo dal concetto che si tratta di un “rumor” e che l’immagine qui proposta è solamente un “mockup” davvero interessante.

È vero, però, che il Mac Mini non viene aggiornato da quasi 14 mesi (una “stranezza” per Cupertino), e come avevamo fatto notare in precedenza, potremmo essere di fronte a un bivio: o un restyling oppure un la cessazione di produzione di questo modello: già in passato, poche ore prima del MacWorld 2008, il web era stato invaso dal fantomatico “Mac Fusion“.

La gamma attuale dei Mac Mini comprende il modello “di punta” con una configurazione ormai un pochino datata: presenta infatti un processore a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB di ram e un HD da 120GB. Certamente una buona configurazione, ma, certamente non più appetibile per i “discepoli di Steve Jobs” più esigenti. Un nuovo modello, invece, potrebbe rilanciare le vendite del “piccolo Mac di casa Apple“.

Il mockup presentato dal sito americano è davvero suggestivo: l’idea di possedere un Mac che sembra essere il fratellino del Mac Pro potrebbe stuzzicare le voglie anche di colui che già possiede un Mac Mini, magari acquistato da poco. Inoltre un Mac venduto a un prezzo accessibile, con una configurazione più attuale, potrebbe far gola a molti “switchers” che in questo modo posso utilizzare il monitor già in possesso.

Questa ipotesi di rinnovo, dunque, è davvero plausibile e sicuramente bisogna aspettarsi qualcosa di nuovo dal “cilindro di Steve Jobs“: questo rumor inoltre riprende l’idea del “Mac Brick” circolata qualche giorno fa. Vi piacerebbe un Mac Mini Pro da sfoggiare sulla vostra scrivania? Aspettatevi nei prossimi giorni, se il rumor trovasse un minimo di fondamento, ulteriori notizie circa i dettagli del nuovo Mac Mini Pro.

[via] 

Anything really! At MacDailyNews, they think it might be a Pro version of the Mac Mini. Also there are rumors that it could be a tablet-style notebook.

If you follow the NetBook trend, my guess would be a Mac version of a NetBook (really small MacBook 9'' or something but that's just me ;) )

MacDailyNews

What I mean to say is that Office 2008 is as buggy as Hell! Come on Microsoft, this is your flagship suite on the Mac, often the only exposure to your company diehard Mac users ever get. And what do you give them? Shit on a plate.

We've got this project on at the moment, and I've been trying to get it done, but Office:mac 2008 just doesn't seem to want to let me.

Let's start with the good stuff:

• Excel 2008 on my Intel Mac Mini scrolls noticably faster than Office 2004 on the same machine. So although my 2.4GHz iMac 24" is fast enough to handle the Rosetta translation from PPC to Intel without noticable performance issues, my Mac Mini clearly struggles with 2004. Exel 2008 is, once up and running, smoother on this limited machine.
• Entourage 2008 is better than 2004. It's faster, cleaner and stalls less often when syncing my Hotmail. Enough said. Way to go Microsoft.

OK, that's the good stuff out of the way, now the bad stuff.

• No Visual Basic. WTF?

Excuse me? But HTF am I supposed to run my spreadsheets without Visual Basic? Don't give me some cock and bull story about "Applescript is the standard script on the Mac, so we changed to Applescript."

Since when have you ever cared about standards, Microsoft?

Put VB back in and we'll talk some more.

• Less stable than Naomi Campbell

Excel crashed twice last night, in three hours. That's just a joke. It would stall for a second and vanish without a trace. And not just last night, but often.

• It's fat, flabby and slow

Why is it that my copy of Office 2004 running in emulation on an Intel Mac is faster than Office 2008 running native (bar the aforementioned scrolling) on the same machine?

Excel 2004 takes less than 10 seconds to boot, Excel 2008 takes almost twice as long! Come on! This is not acceptable. This is native code and it's being trounced by emulated code!

Now, it may run faster, but what am I doing that needs the speed? It's not like I'm running any cunning VB scripts... 'cause they removed it! And who in their right mind is going to develop ultracomplex Applescript macros when Microsoft themselves said they're going to put VB back in in the next release...

Sounds like they used the same programmers that made Vista.

• Bugs

There are just too many. Really. I'm not going to bore you with any but these two which have cost me considerable productivity time.

I saved a file as an XLSX (Excel XML format) and was completely unable to open it in office 2004 and Office 2003 on the PC, even with the Version 11.5 update and the Compatibility pack installed! I had to connect to my iMac at home, resave the file as an Excel 97~2003 file and try again. Strange though, only a couple of files have showed this bug... But then, that's the nature of bugs, isn't it.

Display issues is currently a real annoyance.

Check out these screenshots:

View a sheet at 100% and all is well. 

Zoom in to 125% and everything turns into hashes.

It doesn't matter if you expand a column out, the hashes just multiply to fill the gap!

It's only when you SHRINK the column that the hashes disappear and text appears.

Twiddle the width of the column a little and the text comes back.

Come ON Microsoft, this is NOT production quality software.

Solution

• There is no solution at present.

I recommend sticking with 2004, which while being a foible laden application suite is stable, predictable and reliable; three concepts I've started to take more seriously the older I've got.

I'm going to wait for a couple of service packs and try it again later. In the meantime and for the first time ever, I've reinstalled an earlier version of Office!