The Whole MacBook RAM Limit debacle

I had some travel day some of them without internet. It was terrible. However the company was fab, food was gorgeous. Caught up with long lost friends, and I got gifts and whiskey. It was quite funny when the internet got turned on in their new appartement all verball communication ceased for about 30 mintues. Then for the rest of the weekend we were found laptops in hand mainly talking on IM - a diatribe on the modern condtion maybe ?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=321 tried to explain this idea of RAM overlap. I found most interesting the final addendum regarding competative pricing. I would still think twice before getting an upgrade over the stock RAM in store.

I also whilst away had another watch repaired, I don't know what it is with me and travelling and watches breaking, highly annoying.

Sony profits ditch 94%

Oh that's gotta hurt.

I would like to know which set of stats they've really used to evaluate these numbers and what the Sony line is regarding the drop. I remember they claimed originally,, when the brown stuff hit the spinning air cooler that the battery recall wouldn't cost them that much. That faith obviously hasn't transfered to the investors, maybe they missed the memo.

All this at a pretty mixed time money wise. The oil supply situation before winter won't help despite during the summer months oil hit some pretty decent lows. Mid terms storming up won't help stability, especially if widely predicted George and his chaps lose control of either the Senate or the House or BOTH ?

The Nasdaq was strong recently, with third quarter numbers being up and across the board the value of the companies trading is up significantly, gross not profits. Here. MS profits were up still despite further gross slippages in Vista.

The British FTSE has been hitting some consecutive highs over recent days compared to recent years - I don't think that amrket has been up above 6K since 9/11. Which was looking perky at 6158 at one point today but it finished down back below 6000

From the archive...Apple II Piracy

What is beautiful about this video is that it covers so much history in only 7 minutes.
truly floppy disks,
CPM
WordStar
Interface cards
640K
Apple II




I was loving it, what is highly amusing is that recently I'm very into the idea of social responsibility.

That if a body, industry or the state trusts an individual they on the whole do the right thing ?

This is the argument behind the success of the iTunes Store, it wasn't the first paid for service, but it was possibly the fairest, whether that is the fair play DRM or the cost of the tracks. Compared to what is happening now with movies whereby the entertainment industry rather than the computing industry wants to charge larger sums for less products. Electronic distributions costs a fraction of shipping DVDS to stores and kiosks etc. Quality could be better yes, however that does not excuse the ridiculous markups that they want - and that can be blamed for Movie piracy continuing despite the alternatives, we shall have to see.

I do think I agree that on the whole people will do the right thing if they can and given the choice. This article from Mr. Stamatiou illustrates this point. He doesn't feel ripped off, the price is fair. Personally I think now for the price the quality should be better. This is versus the people in the video who were asking, retail, $650 for CPM.

Don't get me wrong Gary Killdall made and excellent application, as did the inventors of Visicalc - but even now I balk at paying three figures for Office. Hence I love working in education and not doing so.

Finally a link to something in British politics, the Conservative party in the UK has adopted an idea of Social Responsibility and is allegedly going to place "Trusting people to do the right thing" at the heart of their policies. Whether you believe any politician is another matter, but maybe if the Republicans used a similar mantra rather than cozying up to the big wigs in the media and entertainment lobby they'd be slightly less worried at next months midterms.

Child abuse allegations aside of course.

Do you remember the day...

Found this while bumbling around youTube - being only a year old serious mac user this film somewhat resonated with me.

More birthday goodies

Went out for lunch today to a small place down the river. Courses were wonderful, infact look out for an up and coming food review site soon.

Anyway we happened to mention to the service that it was a special birthday day, we were clearly talking about Firefox 2 day. However the service people misunderstood and when desert was delivered for the goat trader they'd added this extra touch... point at me.



So I happily received this gracious honor. Thanks also to the Maltese one who paid for a delicious lunch.

Happy FIrefox 2 day.

Well in a special birthday present to me, Firefox has released their latest offering. No more had I scurried off to get it when a network engineer I know in the UK had already sent me this. It's like 0800 there so he's probably sent me the link as his witty version of a birthday present.

Here is the report I was sent.

It pertains to JavaScript text display. Whilst he was all giddy with excitement a single flaw. I decided to thwart his evil plan. I tested it on his current fave browser, IE 7 - yeah I know.

Turns out that it's caught up in the saga of the text display box too. It doesn't quit quite so quickly as Firefox but none the less a number if seconds after loading the page in IE 7 you get this...



Now remember everyone, all browsers have security holes and we can't laugh and point at M4, it might cry, see here

As for the install of FF2 it went well, more than well. During install the routine checks for the compatability of your extensions, my colorZilla extension is fine, however and rather obviously the IE Tab extension needs an update, which isn't out yet.



I'm still not keen with the close button being on each tab, however - the inclusion of the "Recently Closed Tab" menu item inside history pretty much avails me of the ability to recover when I catch a close button by accident.



In other news, it's my Birthday - all card and comment greatfully received. And Chax the add on for Apple's iChat IM software has had an update.

Bucks' knitting circle of friends

I actually took this picture last month. I was waiting to meet someone in Starbucks, so I decided, whilst I waited, to be uber geeky and open up the macbook pro and sign on to some net based RSS reading.

However whilst I was getting engrossed, probably in some Pulpit action with Cringely I heard the growing noise. It was laughing, giggling, shrieking. All in good humor. I poked my head round the corner, to hear a particularly unsubtle shrieking about the word penis.

Expecting to find some yoofs in hoodies. I actually found something lovely. A group of adults in a knitting circle. I chatted to them for a few minutes and discovered they meet on the last Thursday of each month. After work they all head over to books, balls of wool in tow. Starbucks don't mind since they buy dirnks and snacks all night.

So I told them a bit about myself and my geeky blog, and we agreed I could take a picture and blog about it if I gave them the address. Poor folks have probably been checking since thinking me a liar. Sorry.

Here is the picture I took, the quality is dodge since it's off my phone in low light which isn't very good.



The seemed like a lovely bunch and lets face it, a knitting circle is probably a healthier hobby than drugs, booze or gambling - although I'm sure I saw one sneaking a sly snifter into his Caramels Cocoa Lite With Slim whipped Decaf Grande.

Incontinent with excitement, it's the new IE7

"Which Javascript security flaws do you want to fall foul of today ?"
"Where do you want to get spyware from today ?"
"Which standards body do you want to ignore today ?"

To many quips to little time.

Clicking through to the feature list, I found this gem



Amazing that people want security in a browser... who'd have thunk it ? Now I'm not a firefox fanboy, it's nice to develop and since I got RC3 it's more stable than RC2 however, tabbed browsing - even my father has go his head around this before MS did.

Schazam...Extra RAM

... pretty obvious overall. I'll write back with more measurements.



Some of them will be empirical, because I didn't have the foresight to test these things before inserting my stick... sounds dirty don't it.

How nervous are you...

Personally I can feel the tension...



I'm not wholly keen taking a screw driver to any of my machine, least of all one that has such beautifully crafted silver lines.

For the first part of our trick...

We'll need an assistant from the audience...



Can you guess what's gonna change... see you on the flip side...

Superfast Bluetooth on Nokia 7380

Recently during some horsing around in the office, we were taking some completely un-professional pictures around the office, not the first time (So I shall expect another complete over reaction from my line manager any day now).

Anyway, pictures were taken on a darling little Nokia 7380. This "innovative fashion statement" is, INHO, a complete waste of time. Dialing on it is impossible, everyone needs to be in your address book. Even entering a Bluetooth passcode was a chore like no other.



As you can see no keyboard or other normal telephone amenities none the less, when transferring the files from the device to my mac via bluetooth I was blown away by the transfer speed.

I've done some low level work in the past with bluetooth and use it all the time, I never quite achieve this kind of data rate though...



Which I didn't think was too shabby AT ALL. Most of the time from my SEK800i I get about 40-50 dependent on distance.



With such speeds it is interesting to note that last week, Nokia got some beef with the BT standards people with this I suppose power gains are worth while, I'd like a headset or GPS to not need charging every hour or so just cause it's paired with my phone.

Firefox RC3

This popped up last night before I left work. Haven't really explored yet, but I'll let you all know tomorrow. Right now I'm off to bed, night all.



ps I tried to publish this last night... but Blogger was being an ass.

Free ubuntu stickers

I love free stuff, I love free stuff from the web. I found this link as I recall through digg.com. Hence I'm always a little skeptical about free stuff links on digg. I assume the site got deluged by requests. This offer was slightly different as it required more than the filling in of a web form and the expectation of a free bucks coffee.

The powered by ubuntu free sticker offer required a stamped self addressed envelope. In return today I received four little stickers nd the invite to post them somewhere amusing and upload a picture.

The best place I can think at the moment is on a body part, maybe someone at works shiny bald head. Actually no scratch that, bad bad images. Instead here is a good image...





Maybe sneak it onto one of our servers... maybe on a screen featuring a Windows Blue Screen of Death with the caption... wouldn't have happened with Ubuntu.

As a point of interest I found recently out a colleague is running Ubuntu on their production desktop and coding away quite happily.

The panic of the PC or the placid complacency of the mac user

This morning I arrived at work and thanks to the indulgent nature of my boss I unpacked my own Mac Book Pro that faithfully follows me to and from work each day. On which I do most of my daily work. The occasions when I must I remote desktop the 2 feet to my PC under my desk.

This allows me to only have to faff with one keyboard, the peripheral that's actually connected to my desktop remains, through the magic of blutack, hidden mostly out of site below my monitors. The single keyboard and mouse effect works very well, the one exception if you happen to be in the UK is when mounting a drive in a remote desktop session, \\ is needed but in a remote desktop scenario one gets ## - annoying. I know some that get around this by using historical data in the map drive box to start with a template.

Anyway this simple explanation of my environ beguiles the true nature of this tale of woe. I mention it merely to point out I am a mac user in a windows world. As such I have begun to take certain features of the computer I use for granted.

Whether the argument about market share is the reason for a low number, 3 is a low number right ? A low number of viruses is the position we're in. Therefore I had forgotten, somewhat, the urgency with which a virus scare on a network must be treated.

It turns out that someone who will obviously remain nameless had opened a dirty attachment that like Pandora's box had filled our world with evil and virus ridden things began to happen.

The next big issue was that for some reason the default desktop virus protection, hadn't been updating properly or something. Hence a rallying cry had gone up to every able bodied man to update a virus scanner. The phones were ringing off the hook, women where weeping at windows (ha ha no pun intended).

Firing up remote desktop I tended to my machine for anything could contaminate it... but as the "Live Update" did it's think I reveled in the knowledge that my mac amongst all this carnage would be fine - whether or not every PC in the establishment burst into flames.



OK Bursting in to flames is more of a mac trick at the moment - but you know however many viral nasties took hold.

Vista on Parallels

Well, despite my new found love of Mac OS X. Ignoring the fact that I contemplated signing the petition against Windows on a Mac. I have to realise I live in a windows world. Hence I eventually supported the pot at onmac.net

My own efforts to rail against the Microsoft dominance include making my own code cross browser compatible. Considering options from alternate platforms, including the open source alternatives.

Despite all those efforts, I acquired a license for the "soon to be released" next incarnation of Microsoft's Windows, Vista. I already have my copy of parallels, purchased whilst still in Beta. I use it mainly for XP - however since the last update it has official support for Vista.

I prefer the idea of Parallels over Bootcamp for all the obvious advantages and given I only use it for Office apps and no games it makes perfect sense instead of rebooting.

I embarked on this adventure with my Vista ISO and Product Key, keys actually because of some admin error over at Redmond. I set up a new Parallels machine, told it I'd like an experimental Vista machine. With 10 gigs of disk and 512 megs of RAM (This is in contravention of the Parallels 412 maximum recommendation)

I pointed the Optical drive at the ISO image and booted up... worked perfect first time, here you can see the Vista boot up screen.

The horrid grey hides the beauty that is to come. With a background akin to Sony's default windows background and nothing at all like Mac OS X swishy blue affair.

The setup TAKES AGES. This could be the amount of RAM I delivered to Parallels. It could be that I continued working with Parallels in the background. It could be Vista is still a big bear in the OS stakes. With an ISO weighing in at 4.5 gigs, I reckon that's the culprit.

Vista as with all Microsoft's operating systems is delightfully polite when it's making you wait around like a spare part.

Once the install has completed and you've set up your first user, that is still an Admin despite the fact that all other decent OSs force you not to do this during setup. Linux makes the root user, then a user for you to have day to day and gives dire warning about using the root as your main account.
Mac OS X doesn't even give you root access until you hunt it down and ask it politely if it wouldn't mind giving you the loaded shotgun that is the root account.

Once it is setup, Vista attempts to rate my machine. I had read that the macbook pro is a kick ass Vista machine. Although I think it gains this accolade when using boot camp over Parallels. I've not yet managed to finish this assessment process, this is the main reason I think that lots of the spiffy Aero, not Aqua, features are disabled by default for me.


Vista was whining about a lack of drivers, here it thinks I've got a standard graphics driver, not the useful Parallels supplied add ins that allow great mouse responsiveness and the ability to run from parallels machine window to the host OS windows without missing a beat.


The Parallels team only support Vista in experimental mode. As such they haven't yet upgraded their selection of tools for Vista. Clipboard management, sound drivers etc. Meaning the tools can be installed, but you've got to use the compatibility mode of Vista to pretend the installer is running under Windows XP.


Even with these tools installed, the Experience index wouldn't run to completion. I had to force some of the "features" on like Sidebar. This is a great mix of dashboard like components, including RSS and ye olde Active Desktop like interfacing.


One of the main reason I do like XP at the moment is that I can install Napster, yes I have a membership. Yes I pay for it, yes I actually find that access to their catalog useful. Although as I've said previously - the level of full on access for my monthly deposit into the Napster coffers is declining more and more.


Everything was fine, but only fine - audio was choppy. A common parallels problem with Vista, according to the forums. I then clearly got a bit to cocky. IE 7 + Napster + USB Pen Drive got a bit too much for poor Vista and then BOOM...



That was when it all came tumbling down. Blue screens of death. Windows Vista, out of Beta on my machine CRASHING. I felt dirty, I felt like I'd betrayed my new love. Here I was defiling the clean lines, the efficient beauty of my Mac. With this Redmond filth. It wasn't even like I could use the shield of the MacBU.

Boot time was acceptable, not great, but usable. I will put my Office 2007 trial on this Vista Parallels machine. I know some are using that setup as a production machine, and are quite happy. For me it was a fun couple of hours, it was a bit of a peak into what's coming. I can use it to become familiar with that will be around the office next year.

An install of Vista + Firefox + Napster is in the region of 7 gigs. I will finish with this image of my Paralles directory listing the last three major commercial releases of Windows installs.


Windows 98 - 250 Megs (Aint that cute.)
Windows XP - 5.74 Gigs (That's got Access, Outlook and some other bits and bobs)
Windows Vista - 6.2 Gigs (That's windows and nothing else, lord knows what it'll be like with some Office bloatware)

It's your time you're wasting, not mine: Warning! Facts may appear even more true when animated on a Mac

It's your time you're wasting, not mine: Warning! Facts may appear even more true when animated on a Mac

A wonderful epistle on data presentation, helped by your hero.

New mac ads

OK I blogged about these last month, they've finally hit the Apple.com site. I think these are the funniest so far. The iMovie one made me laugh out loud.

Maltese one, Justin in a suit for you.

In other news...blocking the tubes

Google bought YouTube... who knew. I just hope when I try and send an internet to one of my staff... it gets there before Friday.

War of the worlds

It was almost like what I imagine those listening to the Orson Welles broadcast in 1938 felt like. Except I already knew this wasn't a story. It is pretty frightening to hear the words "Exploded a nuclear bomb" on the radio. The last time I heard it was when the Indians and Pakistanis where playing with this stuff.

The thing is, we at least have a handle on those nations. Certainly India, we have relations with both the North and the South of that sub-continent. That is something we don't have with this man.



We know he's not the nicest of chaps though, death camps and willful hatred of th west not withstanding. The next big questions is what is everyone's favorite talking shop going to do about it ?



Sign some bits of paper ? Try and talk them back from becoming a nuclear state ? Threaten more sanctions ? Hey these tactics have proved so popular so far, with this and every other problem that the UN has gotten involved in previously.

Not that this chap has really any more of a clue. I don't really believe that his famous "axis" speech has made any difference, lets face it - it takes more than four years to develop a nuclear device, before anyone tries to pin this situation on George angering Kim Jong Il, he's already a pretty pissed off kind guy. However the last time George got pissed at an entire country this happened, so I don't really know if he's the guy to look towards for a solution.



Whatever happens, whether China or even a new Secretary General from the South might make a difference, it's pretty much too late now. I know I won't wake tomorrow to an article like this, and my news shows this evening won't be ending like this.


Announcer:
"Next week we present a dramatization of three famous short stories.
This is the Columbia Broadcasting System."

10.4.8 Backup update

I firstly thought it was a fluke last night, or maybe that I just hadn't heard the CD spin up.

Then tonight midnight rolled around and Apple's Backup utility starts to bounce happily in the dock preparing for lift off and a quick file copy to my .mac iDisk of my "Personal Files and Settings" set to run nightly at 0030.



It was then it struck me a second time, no CD noise. It hadn't done the power on shuffle it usually performs when backup gets involved.

I don't really mind either way, I did like that noise though. Like a little reminder, my own personal metronome. One could argue there is a lower power draw then by not running those motors. Maybe this is a small part of el Jobso's master plan to placate greenpeace.

This whole CD drive noise probably interested me far too much, given I'm sat up in bed blogging about the lack of a noise from my laptop. Speaking of noises from my laptop, those people on the Apple discussion forums that claim 10.4.8 removed the his from the laptop - liars everyone of them. ;-)

night all

Colored iPods in iTunes

I was in an Apple store recently killing some time and going from one machine to another.

When I noticed that the little iPod icon in iTunes was colored. Not only that it was pretty, it was blue like one of the new iPod Nanos. Then I looked closure and found that it actually matched the iPod connected to the machine I was on.



Wanted to examine this further I hoped over to another machine I found that the next machine along had a green iPod nano attached. I fired up iTunes on that and confirmed that yep this icon in iTunes matched the connected iPod. The gorgeous little green icon.



It's not much but just a little nicety I noticed that I didn't know previously.

Gruber's New Zoom

Props to Gruber at Daringfireball for spotting this. I found it on his members only feed (Where is my tee shirt).

I have made a very quick video demonstrating it.



The video is brilliantly uploaded and hosted by youtube.com and made with a piece of software called iShowU.

This second video demonstrate the smoothing feature. It might not survive the compressions of the magic internet tubes though. I felt it was worth showing now because, whilst the smoothing during a zoom has always been available. I could never remember the shortcut to zoom, in fact it was part of a recent demo and I still couldn't remember it. However ctrl + scroll is exceptionally simple.

Fly in the face of the TSA Danger day

This is an article posted on the frequent flyer website. The paragraph that concerns me is this one

He grabbed the baggie as it came out of the X-ray and asked if it was mine. After responding yes, he pointed at my comment and demanded to know "What is this supposed to mean?" "It could me a lot of things, it happens to be an opinion on mine." "You can't write things like this" he said, "You mean my First Amendment right to freedom of speech doesn't apply here?" "Out there (pointing pass the id checkers) not while in here (pointing down) was his response."

Whilst I realize that airport are weird places regarding quite where the boundaries of countries start and end. However and indeed the constituion was written before we had powered flight, international air treaties and pass port control. Certainly however the constatution and primarily the first amendment was written way before President Bush made the Dept. homeland security and I'm sure the TSA should be aware of what it truly deems a threat. If they react like this about a carrier bag, can you imagine the size of the pee stein on this guys Fruit of the Looms if a real islamifaciest turned up - please.

My favorite online satirist has this to say about the TSA incident on Fly the Fire Eagle Danger day.



the show with zefrank

Mac OS X 10.4.8

After getting this far, I signed off my last blog. I waited like a good patient boy until I got this



I rebooted, Safari had a bit of a whine, since I had about 40 tabs open. I don't know if Safari will recover all of them. The computer went to black and seemed to take an awfully longtime between the CD powering up noise I hear and the usual Apple chime.

Chime it did and then a fairly long time with the grey spinning gear followed by an automatic reboot. Worrying not at all. It went through the motions again, this time brining me to the login screen. Once I had logged in and all the extra bits and bobs had finished doing their thing I checked my "About this mac"



I opened mail, all fine. Although it had switched my spiffy British Queen stamp back to the hawk wings.

All done. No to go and test parallels, as per those forums posts.

Updates for everything, Parallels, iWorks, OS X - lots and lots

I'm writing this against the clock, time is ticking past as recent slew of updates are downloaded and installed. Most of the iLife apps are getting an update to integrate with the new aperture.

I wrote about the iTunes 7.1 update last week. It has indeed delivered performance gains, my smart play list is pretty snappy now.



I read there was a Parallels update, build 1920. Parallels for those that don't know is the program I use to run the dread Windows in a window on my mac. This allows me access to a windows box, for testing mainly. Or running that odd application like Napster that I still subscribe to that doesn't have a windows version.

On Napster, I can't see me holding out much longer. More and more of their collection is turning into just 30 second clips. Well I'm not paying a subscription for just extracts of tracks - so that I believe will go soon.


This is just installing the Keynote update of 3.3 megs. Should still have a few minutes it's gotta download the OS update of 211 megs yet.

I also updated Vista with a few patches. Remember ANYONE running Internet Explorer, how ever fully patched your system is. You need to be aware of the new Zero Day VML exploit on Internet Explorer. Firefox, ignores this type of file. Safari and Mac OS X - well I'm not going to cover old ground.

XP When I had it open also got some new bits and bobs added. A significant update I saw was the icon that tell you you have downloaded a program from the internet. Great to see Uncle Bill has his priorities in order.



On the mac side also, MSN Messenger for mac had an update, about time too I hear you all cry. It's nice. Still doesn't have audio / video support but there is a very interesting post on the Mac Business Unit's blog over at Microsoft about this. From what I gather internally there are two audio and video standards fighting it out and the Mac Messenger people not doing anything until there is a winner.



I am quite enjoying this blog. The recent post on automation testing and color coded food alert system was awesome. Anyone who knows what I'm like at work knows I do pretty much the same think. Hanging out like a vulture on the look out for spare food.



Adium my preferred IRC client for cross service integration also had an update this week. Mainly a bunch of stability stuff. Errors that would occur in only the most obscure circumstances. In my opinion anyway.

I lost some code at work this week which is hyper annoying because it looked very cool. Investigators have pretty much ruled out foul play. It made me even more adamant I wanted a decent CVS on the server I work from. It was mainly annoying because now I'm behind whereas I thought I was on top of things for a go live in two weeks. The deadline can't shift so I now have to re do the work over again, in a rush.

I should point out that revision3 relaunched this week, with a new website and a party at everyones favorite San Francisco club Mighty on Utah street. I sound like one of the hip kids but I only know it because Google, the proud sponsors of the Future of Web apps evening party hired it out the other week whilst I was there.



I'm going to sign off now, as the Software update starts growing little green ticks and will soon want a reboot - I have a little wonder about some the mixture of posts on the parallels forums about 10.4.8 and parallels and Cisco VPN. Will report back later.