housekeeping update: new site and feed addresses

I have been forced to change the website and feed addresses, due to changes at my host server address krapp.org.

This is the new blog address and here is the new atom feed.

There is now also a new RSS feed here.

Smaller, lighter, faster, blacker!

So this is it, my official first post from the MacBook!



The good old powerbook will stay at home from now on, I could never bring myself to giving it away (don't even mention selling)...



Actually I am quite happy that I did not wait with the new rig until the old one died - that way I will have a excuse to keep it around, put it on the table from time to time and enjoy the best laptop keybord ever designed.

The best decription I can come up with for the new MB keyboard is "flat". Precise, neat, not bad-looking, but simply "flat". Small, squared keys with minimal resistance and minimal "squeeze".

Woz to the show!

Some time ago I blogged about Steve "Woz" Wozniak's plan to drive a Hummer to the South Pole and mentioned his affection for the Segway, a two-wheeled gizmo, which for some reason that is still unclear to the manufacturers never became such a huge success. Hmmm...

In case you have never seen a Segway, or never seen Steve Wozniak, here is a picture:



Sure, it is a visionary on a next-generation individual transport concept, but (rest of comment deleted...;-)

Pic from Wired's Cult of Mac blog

And here is a link to a Google Video of a few visionary sportsmen playing Segway Polo.

Woz to the Pole - on Hydrogen Hummer...

Following up on the subject of "strange vehicles in the wrong places" here comes another treat:

Rumour has it that Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, will be ditching his Segway temporarily to drive a hydrogen fuel cell-powered Hummer to the South Pole. James Cameron plans to film the expedition in 3D.

Woz will be part of a group that is driving several Hummers from McMurdo Station to the South Pole in December of 2007. In true Woz style, his co-pilot is Buzz Aldrin, one of the first humans to walk on the moon.

Now, if you wonder: why a Hummer? you should remember: this is an American news story, what else did you expect? Also, it is probably even beyond Woz's Segway skills to drive in a linked team*...

(*note to Non-Antarcticans: Antarctic ski-doo trips are often set up in pairs connected by a rope, should one of them fall into a crevasse)

iChat, iBlog, iWeb!

After a lot of half-hearted attempts with open-source (and badly hacked) website creation tools, I finally settled for iWeb for refurbishing my personal website.

The upside: there was a style fitting my blogger css style ;-)

The downside: it will not run on my good ol' PowerBook Wallstreet G4/500 (tuned by Sonnet)

Maybe it's time to review my options again...

(a lifelong struggle for any mac fan - a good thing the Apple online store is eternally patient).

And as a footnote to that iName mania, where everything is WHITE:

all my pages are BLACK, my powerbook is BLACK, and I will not buy a new iMac until they come in black, too ;-)

Now do not make any premature assumptions about my soul, mind you...

Mac mini portable

For a while, I considered the Mac min as backpack-portable computer, but that solution would have involved separate sets of display, keyboard, and mouse both at the office and at home. This would have been cheaper than two complete systems, and you would just have connected your home peripherals into that "cookie box" to continue working on the same machine, settings, data, in the evening at home.

An added bonus for me - apart from the significantly smaller size - over a powerbook/ibook would have been the fact that you "only" had to worry about the "cookie box", i.e. the Mac mini in its case, but not any display, which typically is the first component that suffers in laptops from transport-derived wear&tear or direct damage, say from a bicycle crash. At the same time, the advantage of a full-sized desktop display and a standard keyboard were also weighing in on the decision.

On the other hand, such a 'dual-base system' would not have worked anywhere else than at work and at home.

Eventually, I settled for the more powerful iMac (and better value-for-money, compared to the Mac mini+studio display option) for the office and my good old (but heavily upgraded) wallstreet powerbook for the road and for surfing/writing/blogging at home.

But here is a concept I just found on the web, where a Mac mini had been rendered fully portable, with batteries, display, micro-keyboard and all:



More on this project, the how and why is available on PeterGreen's .mac website, here.

An excerpt:

"Why the Mac Mini Portable?

Well, in short I wanted a machine that was really dinky to just pop in my rucksack, and while the PowerBooks/iBooks are pretty small, they still take up a fair amount of space. I wanted something with a very small screen that was more or less hand-held, and mac just don't do that [yet].

I didn't need a completely fluid response of the controllers or a crystal clear screen as the MMP [MacMini Portable] would only be used in it's portable sense to quickly integrate into someone else's system, the rest of the time it'd have it's own dedicated screen, mouse & full sized keyboard being used in the traditional 'Mini' design.
Therefore, a micro-keyboard was perfectly acceptable, I was prepared to accept a naff mouse - but managed to get an old pc laptop trackpad which I actually got working very well.

So, there was nothing for it - I had to build my own!"

Mac mini/SE and whisky PC case mod

In case you have not found it yourselves yet, here is a very technically sophisticated (but clumsily translated) description of a Mac mini built into a Mac SE casing, even using the pre-existing CRT monitor. Here is a shot from the site:



In a non-related but equally inventive story, a guy built a PC in a Ballantine which looks like this:



Oh, and in case you wondered: the first mod was done by a Japanese, while the second hails from Finland... ;-)

put on your universal-binary pants!

Time and again, Daring Fireball delivers the most well-informed, level-headed, in-depth comments on the current state of Apple affairs. In this post both the new hardware and software announced at Macworld San Francisco are thoroughly reviewed.

The author manages to give a balanced evaluation of Intel- vs. PowerPC-performance and offers a reasonable explanation why the new Intel models are in fact neither so much faster nor so much cheaper, as expected or predicted by various other fora and Mac-related journalism. [1. they are not 2-3x, but "in real life" 20-25% faster; 2. the G5 was - and still is - in fact a quite powerful processor; 3. the new chips are dual-core rather than single, and this has obvious consequences both for their pricing and for the way their performance can be gauged].

Also, the issue of the unchanged (or in the case of the MacBook Pro, only slightly improved) case design is addressed. Sure, everybody expected something completely new and different, but as the post argues, making the transition only in the interior while leaving the (so far successful and popular) exterior virtually intact makes sense, in taht it is highlighting the fact that "it is just a mac with a new, faster and more powerful processor chip". As Daring Fireball puts it: "A shift, not a schism".

But also finer points like the altered disk partition format and its possible consequences are discussed, a point that will likely be vital for those of you safety-conscious enough to have an external (FW) hard drive from which to boot a Mac in case your main system is crashed, or you need to run "your" system, i.e. your entire OS, home folder, apps, in short your whole computer setup, on a different Mac, p.e. while your main system is down, unavailable or away for repairs. This will not be possible for the new Intel Macs, unless you reformat your FW drive to fit that new partition format, which in turn will not work with your old system any more!

For those of you as "widget-happy" as myself, the newly released widgets are discussed, and the author also takes a closer look at the pros and cons of iLife '06 and explains the new features of the newest addition to the iLife suite, iWeb which are good for "the Mac on the street" but not as good as various stand-alone software for web publishing already available.

Also, iPhoto 6 and iWork '06 get their - apparently well-deserved - beating.

"iPhoto 6 doesn’t understand the first thing about HTTP, the first thing about XML, or the first thing about RSS. It ignores features of HTTP that Netscape 4 supported in 1996, and mis-implements features of XML that Microsoft got right in 1997. It ignores 95% of RSS and Atom and gets most of the remaining 5% wrong." ;-)

Finally, the Postal Service issue is addressed conclusively:

“Never would we characterize our customers that way,” Intel Vice President Deborah Conrad said in an interview.

Don’t believe it. Intel loves this ad. This ad makes Intel processors look better than any ad Intel has ever produced itself. The feeling this ad conveys is that Intel’s chips are going to be kicking some goddamn major ass inside Macs.

After such a comprehensive review of all the MWSF, it only remains for me to add both in the direction of Intel and The Postal Service:

"Remember the First Law of Advertising: any publicity is good publicity."

P.S.: Who has EVER heard of a band called "The Postal Service" before this new "rip-off" ad?

more on Mac and open source

If you wonder what is at the bottom of the Mac OS X versus Linux debate, you might like this article, fished out of mactechnews.de. The author entertains us with some of his experiences trying to get Linux to work, which is probably only amusing if you have tried - and more often than not also failed - a similar thing. But then he goes on to muse about the underlying principles and terms like kernels, distributions, GUIs (graphical user interfaces, i.e. the "look and feel" of an OS, or Operating System) and processor acronyms, also called "platforms" start popping up.

Amazingly, though, it does not get as messy as this sounds, and if you work your way through it, you can get a better picture of what these things are all about, and why a even closer merging of the powers of Mac OS X and Linux could be a good thing, especially at the kernel level, i.e. the principal structure of an operating system.

The bottom line; since Apple has already embraced UNIX and is moving towards Intel processors, it should as a next step also exchange their Mach kernel with the Linux kernel, which is a monolithic kernel instead of the microkernel that Apple is employing for their OS X.

The gain should be another performance boost and might effectively endear Apple even more to the Linux clientèle, which is probably more accessible than the Windows world if only the "technicalities" are set right.

Anyway, it is an interesting thought experiment for the more "kernelly inclined" ;-)

open source mac

Everybody (mac-crazy enough to read such a post) knows that the Mac is not really open-source. "Semi-permeable" is maybe the appropriate term... Of course, it can run open source (so do other operating systems) but the way the marketing people managed to blend "high-end hardware consumerism" with that "hack&tweak philosophy" of UNIX was a smart move.

In any case, this is a two-paged list of some open-source software download links, categorized and commented.

Quote from the website:

"Free and open-source software is good for you and good for the world."

;-)

Continued quote:

"This is the best OS X software that we know of."

;-?

Might be a useful reference list if you do not like to sift through versiontracker all the time.

Found on BBspot - the iSmack nano

BBspot on the iSmack

I knew it!

I knew it!

Steve Jobs has fallen into the dark side!

tiger on wallstreet - unleashed at last

After having installed 10.4 (Tiger) on my Powerbook Wallstreet just a few days ago (BTW: installation and and configuration was done on the original G3/250Mhz processor with 256MB RAM - and it worked...!) Why? Just to prove the point: IT WORKS;-)

And although I was expecting some trouble with all of my (exclusively third-party) peripherals, it turned out of all things only the wireless card was not supported any more (duh...).

So here I was: finally able to synchronize every last email file, every password, widget setting, you name it...and I was tied up again by the ethernet cable, forced to sit in the corner of the living room, on the floor, with wires in every direction and about two inches of "wriggle room" ;-(

Fortunately, though, I managed to dredge up another driver for my suddenly useless wireless card. The only disadvantage over the (freeware) sourceforge version that I had been using in Panther (although this was not supposed to be supported either...) is that suddenly I am requested to register that product - I am not going to tell you who is the extortionist - or else the driver stops the card after 30 minutes of use, and only becomes "alive" again after reboot.

Well, maybe this will help keep me focused and stop the long nights spent browsing and surfing and mailing and chatting.

Rationing is the new style! There is a thesis to write, a car engine to fix, dishes to be washed...

buy mac - it's safer...

During breakfast this morning, I was called by my colleagues and told that we had a massive break-in last night. And guess what: although every single door in the house, locked or not, had been forcibly opened, our entire desktop computer hardware inventory (only PowerMac's and only a single Dell workstation) is still intact!

First one might believe that was due to the wise idea to put a Kensington lock on each and every desktop machine (the SysOps even put a massive chain through the handles of some PowerMacs) but it turns out that several iBooks and even one brand-new PowerBook, which were not secured like this but locked away in cupboards, were all found, opened, and left behind;

On the other hand, several Dell laptops which were the "expedition workhorses" for windows-based sensor systems (and which were subsequently quite scratched and banged-up) and one private Acer laptop are stolen, together with some cash and stamps.

So go ahead and buy Apple: the Bad Guys don't know what's Good!

P.S.: I had my iMac secured and my PowerBook with me at home, but my Expedition Dell was taken, too, along with a Sony CyberShot DigiCam.

finally the tiger roars...

...on my good old Powerbook G3 Wallstreet (1.edition) ;-)

Yesterday, my crusty but trusty Wallstreet (1998 ed.) was finally upgraded from Panther to Tiger and from 20GB to 80GB in one go!

After I had dodged this step for months now, although it was inevitable to enable me to sync with my desktop (iMac G5) in every respect, I decided to give it a go, and here we are (that is, me and my BOOK ;-)



Admittedly this was achieved after some (cheap!) upgrades had already been installed earlier to make Panther run smoother on the 6-year-old hardware, i.e. new G4 processor card and more RAM. I also bought a few peripherals to get if not up to date so at least on the level that I need to use on a daily basis.

So I got a USB CardBus card, a FW and a Wireless (802.11b) card, a BT dongle, and finally a DVD drive to finish things. All for the total investment of ca. 250 (okay, maybe a few more) bucks.

My brother (yo, pete!) just invested in a brand-new Pb 12" as he got tired to tinker with his slightly newer Lombard powerbook that started to get old (well, REALLY old as in "several years" not like "last year's rev.)

And what does Apple do immediately afterwards: announce the next generation (duh...)

I must say that I will await this "one more thing" event (get a new line, Steve!) with a wide grin and a t-shirt:

"hardware from 1998 (500$). upgrades for 250$(ebay). Runs Tiger. Any questions?"

Mactracker - Get info on any Mac

Here is a nice tool to find your first mac, your current mac, any mac, wíth specs, and on the the fly!

Mactracker - Get info on any Mac

It is a simple database of every mac ever made, and definitely the thing if you want to live out some nostalgia and do not have the access to the net, where similar online data are availabe at:

Apple History

Apple History offers some more sorting options like "time line", "family", or "processor" etc. so check this one out, too!


I just tested both and here is what I found on MacTracker:



• my first mac: Macintosh SE (thanks, brother!) salvaged from UCSB





• my first powerbook: Powerbook G3 "wallstreet", later upgraded to G4/500, 20 GB HD, 512 MB RAM, USB, FW, BT (pc-cards)





• my first powermac: Power Mac G4 "sawtooth", G4/400





• my first iPod: iPod (click wheel) "q21", 40 GB





• my next machines: ;-)




iMac 2.0 Ghz 17" (@office), 160 GB HD, 1.5 GB RAM...



and possibly another iMac 2.0 but in 20" for home (400 GB HD, 2.0 GB RAM...) in sync with the office machine, and with a nice DVB-T option for recording a tv show now and then



and if the good ol' BOOK ever gives up, I hope Steve has the Powerbook DxP4 ready ;-)




I always liked the ultra-compact design of the 12", just the tech specs and the tiny screen were major issues for me. And oh yeah, the price for this pizza box deluxe...

Now that I have adopted my old wallstreet/G4 as a simple, robust and lean travel/mail/surf/blog machine, the 12" (with new processors, in time to come) seems to be the ultimate replacement if the 8 year old hardware should ever fail.

I guess I am just not the type of guy who runs Mathematica in the airport lounge or finishes Photoshop projects on the commuter train...;-? who DOES this anyway?