Casio PB-100

The iPad…. Well I have to start this story a little while ago. Let’s say about 27 years. In my hand is my first (self bought) computer. Model PB-100 from CASIO. It’s a calculator with Basic dialect and all of 588 bytes of RAM. For me it was sheer amazing. I had 12 bytes output. I could conquer the world!!!

Not quite. In a certain way though yes I could. This little machine was about 12mm high, 16.5cm wide and 7.1cm high. It ran on two flat lithium batteries. If I’m not mistaken CR3202′s and they lasted for ever. I COULD take it everywhere and I pretty much did.

Of course 588 bytes quickly set an end to the unlimited potential. Causing me to go down the route of bigger and more desk bound computers. The flexibility was gone but a lot of power was gained. Nonetheless I missed the days of moving around with my computer. As a little side note the PB-100 is still in use today by my father. It’s still working well after 27 years!

Apple Newton MP2000

Years and years later, when laptops already roamed the trains, planes and office lobbies, I still missed the easy portability of that calculator. It was just always there. This was the time when the PDA revolution started. In succession I had a Apple Newton MP2000, a Psion Mx5, and several Palm devices. As a PDA the Psions were top. The Symbian/EPOC OS making all the difference. The one I did regret most selling though was the Newton. It was just leagues ahead of the competition.

Anyway for all the goodness of those platforms the input methodology was their biggest flaw it was always a compromise. Battery times were good though. What killed them all in the end were two things though:

1) the Internet. The graphical and display requirements were just too much for the processing power of these small devices and the displays were too small.

2) Connectivity to the outside world. All needed some syncing software via serial cable/USB and if you had multiple PCs you were in deep trouble.

I also have to admit here that I actually don’t like notebooks and laptops. I can’t really put my finger on why though. I had quite a few in my time also including MacBooks but they jut don’t give me the portability I want. They are to big to be truly portable and too small to replace my desktop (mainly screen size that is).

Finally Apple gave us the iPhone. I have a 3GS and that immediately changed the way I communicated and what I did on the go. I must contend I am a iPhone power user of sorts. Few games but a heaps of SSH, VNC, RDP, networking Apps stuff. I also like the absolutely brilliant way it converges calendars and email. This was the first time I was really all round happy with a mobile device…..if it weren’t for the screen size.

Psion MX5 PRO

And this is where the iPad now comes in. It is the right size, weight, power class and also very important; it doesn’t do too much. There is still a space for my iMac in all this. But it allows me to be productive on the go (like now), do my email and my surfing. It also streams video quite nicely so I can use it as a sort of TV.

The iPad certainly doesn’t do away with the iPhone. It is much more complementary. I wish Apple hadn’t locked the communication between the two devices down that much. I went for the 32gb option with 3G. The middle path between space and mobility. So far that looks a good decision.

So, my experiences…. Well my first experience was short lived. After about three hours the screen suddenly gave up mid flight. Very annoying that. So I rushed into town the next day and got it exchanged *phew*. So now I am on iPad v2.0 all going well so far. Let’s start with the down sides.

1. Aluminum can get REALLY cold! But that’s rather due to our bad insulation in our house.
2. Where’s the camera?
3. Keynote doesn’t allow the use of a clicker (yet)
4. No iOS4 (yet)
5. WordPress WYSIWYG editor don’t work
6. The USB power issues it has
7. Where is the calculator?
8. Where is SMS?

But all in all these niggles are minor. The good is that it’s absolutely awesome! After searching for decades this is the mobile device I always wanted. It gives me the flexibility without the bulk. The virtual keyboard is great. Little excursion on that… I can type nearly as fast on this thing as on a keyboard. The reason is probably that I never learned to 10-finger type. I still need to look at the keyboard. My hand movements to keys is random at best but it’s not slow. From the iPhone I’m used to not needing a tactile response and I actually find the glass that Apple uses nice to touch. Another cool side effect is that you can type easily in the pitch black.

Anyway… Oh yes, perfect device. The iPad like the iPhone follows the same principle of being more of a window on your data. So your emails and calender are just aggregates of your real services like Gmail or Exchange. So the iPad actually doesn’t save your stuff locally. This, in the age of Cloud Computing, is a good thing. Our data is ever more on-line. The need to have it locally is evaporating quickly.

I’ve now shown the iPad to a few people and the response is phenomenal. It’s like a no-brainer selling this thing. Switch it on, 50% sold and use it for 30 seconds…sold. This is the kind of device most people didn’t know they have been waiting for. The use is next to instinctive, no explanation necessary. Even ardent Apple nay-sayers are sold on it. Oh and I just wrote the last two paragraphs easily on the bumpy bus. Even a netbook would have been awkward in this situation. My only problem is that I am now getting motion sickness.

So in all, I definitely see this device as a milestone in computer and interface development. I am convinced we will look back on it like we do now on the first Macintoshes. It is also a much more revolutionary device than the iPhone. Where that was evolution of a concept this is revolution. The whole expectation of how personal computing is understood will change. Maybe it won’t be Apple selling the most devices in the end but neither did the Macintosh but it still was a revolutionary product (btw has someone already hacked an iPad into a Macintosh shell?).

Have a look at the iPad if you have some unused €£¥$ lying around! Don’t if you don’t. The temptation is just too big.

“A simple hint for the new Quicktime X player. Clicking the fast forward button increases video playback speed to 2x, then 4x then 8x. 2x, however, is a bit fast to watch a video.

To increment by .1x, hold down Control and click fast forward. I find 1.3x speed works well, and is very watchable. This also works for reverse.” (link)

Thought I needed to share that. Saved my day today!

Now that Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) came out Rebecca and I decided to invest in the whole Apple product range we use. Meaning that we needed new versions for the OS, iWorks and iLife. We have 3 Macs so the family package (5 licenses) is the way to go.

This package costs NZ $479 in the Apple store. In the US it costs US $229. Google tells me that that equates to about NZD $330. Ok….so what’s the $109 difference ($41 is sales tax)??? That is definitely a bit much for postage. So this is pure additional profit! For what? Living in NZ??? Is this the living-happily-in-NZ-tax??? I honestly feel conned by Apple. And I certainly wasn’t going to stand for it. So here’s the trick on how to save lots of dough….

Go to Amazon US and get search for Mac OS X there. You will find the family pack advertised for $199 (!!) or even less. Get it shipped to someone you know in the US and then get them to ship it out to NZ. Voila, you just saved $100+.

Apple is a cool company and I love their products and will keep on buying them but if they think they can fund cheap US sales by conning the rest of the world then their outa luck. I think this should even get investigated by the commerce commission. Wonder who I write to there…

[Update] With the upgrade to 10.5.8 the sleep mode breaks. There is currently only a fix for Voodoo kernels but not the plain Vanilla ones. Very annoying this is. Maybe I’ll have to re-install.

[Update 2] I have re-installed to 10.5.6 because that gives me sleep and Atom 330 Hyperthreading. I’ll then wait & see what Snowleopard brings…

As a result they lost my business as I have now ordered directly from Apple (which I would have done anyway if I had anticipated that they’d sell it too). It’s even $30 cheaper from them.

So Apple has come through again and Vodafone proved it can’t really come to the party. The sad thing is Telecom isn’t an option either they’re just as pathetic. Wonder when we will really get a choice in this country.

As I said in post 1 I got my first inspiration from here:

http://www.osnews.com/story/21564/Building_a_Hackintosh_Apple_Can_t_Sue_You_

Basically the interesting part being able to use the standard OS install. I pretty much followed the instructions on that page. But here I’ll also give some additional hints that might make your life a little easier.

So with a USB stick, a freshly burnt boot-132 CD and the Mac OS X Leopard DVD (10.5.0) I ventured to my new Atom powered sleek SilverStone Mac (or do I call it a PC?). Before I started though I had deleted all partitions off the hard drive so that the Mac OS X installer would not have any issues trying to delete Linux or Windows partitions. This I did with a Live boot CD running Ubuntu 9.04. The Partition Editor under the System menu did the trick.

That done I inserted the boot-132 disk and started the HTPC. As promised it came up with a prompt and after exchanging the DVD the new OS was happily installing. Note to partition the drive correctly before installing though.

The install took about an hour. Create your user & stuff and you’re ready to reboot. You will still need the boot-132 CD to start into your partition until you have installed the bootloader Chameleon.So reboot now and see what happens.

*TaDa*

You have your first OS X start! Probably you’ll only see a 1024×768 resolution but that’s 100% OK.First install the 10.5.7 combo installer from Apple. You might run into a system crash when you reboot. This is due to problems with hyperthreading (HT) on the Atom CPUs. This is probably due to the processor not being interpreted correctly but I did not yet figure a way of fixing that. Maybe someone out there has a clue. To get it running you therefore have to turn off hyperthreading in the BIOS.

Now start executing all those steps in the link above. You’ll need to install Chameleon, Kexts and the other goodies. One thing the documentation sort of misses is the fact that you manually have to set the Mac OS partition to be active if none of the tools has done that for you. Details for this can be read-up here.

Should you have more than one partition the boot manager will also come up every time to ask you where to boot from. If you don’t want that read up here how you can change on the boot loader. For me it were the entries…

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>rd=disk0s2</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>4</string>

…in the com.apple.Boot.plist file.

One thing to note with the Intel D945GCLF2 board is, that the Realtek NIC is not fully 100% supported and the above description does not mention that. Get the Kext from here and install it with the OSx86 tool. All networking now works like a charm.

Finally repair disk permissions and install

If you have done all of the above you should be able to recreate this screen:

The important detail being…

If you do have the good fortune of having a SilverStone case with a display you will now need to get the display to work. the easiest way I found is by using the linked installer for LCDproc from here:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t83598.html

I also recommend Plex for the movie experience (or just stick to FrontRow for now). Perian is also a valuable asset to have for those video codecs. XSlimmer (see below) can also help with cutting down the space used by applications a bit.

The set-up has now been running a couple of days and I’m very happy. Two things remain to be done:

1. I need to get 5.1 audio to work. So far no luck (or figure out a way for the on-board digital out to work)
2. Find a way to activate the buttons and volume controller from the SilverStone case.

Although the latter is not that important to me. I’m content and am totally amazed at how well this has worked. The Atom is also a lot faster than I would have expected. It probably isn’t as fast as a Mac Mini but then I wouldn’t have expected that but it is a heck of a lot faster than my 1.42Ghz Mac Mini I had before (even with a 250GB 5400RPM drive upgrade!).

So the experiment was a success and I can now attack the final little nigglies.

From what I read this chip still holds a lot of reserves at this point in time. So the iPhone 3G [S] will certainly be equipped with more functionality as time goes by. Now the only thing left to find out is the actual CPU speed and confirmed internal memory amount. All other new features are of course cool as but for me the speed is the critical thing. I found the “old” iPhone 3G just that tiny bit too slow with its 400Mhz core. I so hope they have fixed that. From the Keynote it looks like they did but I need to wait for an official confirmation.

I think this is finally the iPhone for me.

First we need to put all the hardware together. Well…actually we first need to take it apart. The case that is. And that then looks something like this:

The case has lots of space and the mainboard can be easily accommodated. You really start to wonder if you can put two Atom boards in here….

The power supply (PSU) that came with the case has a whopping 450W which is about 4-5x what I’ll probably need. And although it is a high quality-low noise dual fan PSU it still contributes quite substantially to the noise level. I will definitely be looking for a fan-less supply in the sub 200W class. If someone has any ideas where to get these please let me know. At the bottom of the case you can also see two additional fans that can be connected up to a mainboard. They are nice and quiet and turn at about 1700RPM. For this PC though they are just not necessary.

So next step is to get the mainboard in…

Now that definitely looks like a waste of space! And if I can redo that PSU I can really fit two.

The board fits nicely and is no problem getting in but as you can see above I have a hydra problem. LOTS and LOTS of cables to connect. Since I haven’t built a PC for years now (at least nothing later than a Pentium III) I was surprised how much more cabling there is.  So here’s the shot with all cabling and drives in:

I know this isn’t the cleanest of cabling but this is kinda a first attempt.So maybe I’ll visit this again at some latter point.

One thing to mention though is the Intel mainboard fan. It’s there to cool the chip-set and not the CPU! This is THE most commented on feature of this board. Why pair a 4W processor with a 20W+ chip-set?! And the fan is annoying. It is loud and should be replaced. I’ll have a look if I can tunnel one of the back fans to it. They’d be perfect and do a quieter job of it.

Up top you can see the installed DVD drive and the HDD on the right. There’s still lots of space left for more goodies. And the final product….

Looks good and is just what I wanted. A lot bigger than the Mini but hey, this is something totally different. The next challenge is installation and getting all the fancy stuff to work. The old DVD player will also lose it’s place once I get 5.1 sound to work. On the lower left corner you can already see the blue power light. I tested the whole hardware installation with a Ubuntu Linux Live CD.

Noise levels are low but perceptible when the room is quiet. Running are the mainboard fan and the two fans from the PSU. When anything is playing the noise level gets easily drowned out. If I can re-jig the mainboard CPU and install a fan-less PSU the noise level should be less than that of the Mac Mini.

My HTPC hardware is now all working and ready for the next phase. See Part 3 in the next days.

Since I have a Mac OS X Leopard family license with two licenses left unused I thought this might really be a good idea. If it is legal I’m not sure (am no lawyer). I do know though that Apple earns on average $2000-$3500 from us every year in software and hardware. I think that warrants me going a little astray for the fun of it.

In the end I just love the tinkering. I think it’s the same genes that are responsible for grown men to play with toy trains.

So what did I do…. firstly I had to get all the components.

1. Intel Atom 330 Motherboard D945GCLF2 (from Paradigm PCs in Wellington – not the cheapest but reliable & quick)
2. 1GB Ram DDR2-5300 (had that already)
3. WD 250GB 7200RPM HDD (had that already)
4. Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-110D (had that already)
5. SilverStone LC16M HTPC case with a Task 450W low noise PSU

The SilverStone case was a stroke of luck. I got it cheap off TradeMe and it was exactly the thing I was looking for. Eventually the hard drive will be exchanged for a 1-2TB drive(s) but I am waiting for the big drives to come down in price a little and for this experiment to work before spending more money. So far I have now spent just over NZ$400 for the set-up.

The  Intel D945GCLF2 mainboard with its dual core 1.6Ghz Atom 330 processor is a sweet little thing. It definitely has its drawbacks. It only has Intel GMA950 integrated graphics, 2GB ram max, only 2 SATA ports, only one PCI expansion slot, no Firewire and the chipset could be more efficient. But it is very compatible with Mac OS X, has a plethora of USB ports (4 x front & 4 x back), is available and is dirt cheap. My research on the Internet said that it definitely wouldn’t do 1080p. Since our TV is 720p/1080i only I wasn’t too worried.

I would have liked to get one of the new Atom + Nvidia ION chipset mainboards but there’s none to have in NZ for a while and their compatibility with Mac OS X isn’t proven yet. I also anticipate them costing NZ$350 and more.

So by last Friday I had all the parts sitting right in-front of me.

(LtR: DVD, HDD, Mainboard, RAM and USB stick)

and the case…

And I must say the case is absolutely divine. It is just the right size. Has space for (at least) 6 hard drives and can be fitted with fans left-right and center. It is solidly built and the front is really nice aluminum. So I set about setting it all up. It would be a challenge to get all the switches, display and other gadgets to work under OS X.

More tomorrow….

Question is, whether it’s worth the money though. NZ$249 (family pack) is a tall order. If you’re like me and are just interested in iPhoto then it’s probably too much and you should hold out for the Upgrade Pack when Snow Leopard comes out. If you can use any of the other programs it’s probably OK to shell out so much money. It’s not really Apples fault things have gotten so expensive but then does that change things for me? Probably not. Let’s see what happens with Mac OS X 10.6.

Apple has introduced new Mac Minis, iMacs, Mac Pros and Airport TimeCapsule’s (and some other smaller stuff). All that is of course nice but…

1. The Mac Mini seems the only system worth looking at. All others are technologically not that interesting. Not much has changed. I was expecting 4-core iMacs. Mac Pro’s well are out of reach anyway.
2. Have you seen the NZ prices?????!!!!! Who will buy a Mac now? $3,300 for the smallest 24″ iMac?! That is crazy. And then Apple writes “Cheaper than ever”. Sorry guys you’ve just priced yourself out of league. Same as with the new software (iLife ’09 and iWork ’09). And that in this economy. I don’t see apple shares going up anytime soon.
3. Where’s my Jobs keynote? Or at least the equivalent thereof? That was half the fun.
4. The good. Well…they’ve finally released them and we can now get on with life.

One thing worth looking at now are the notebooks. They are cheap compared to the desktop models because the exchange rate adjustment hasn’t been done yet. They will soon though. Same goes for a new iPhone model. So buy now if you can or be happy that you bought your iMac before yesterday.

For me that was always the critical issue with VirtualBox. At work I use VMwae for most of my stuff and on my Ubuntu box I use VirtualBox. So I could never use the same VMs. Now I can! How cool ist that?! So for all those not happy with VMware Player or the VMware Server 2.x here’s your answer. I’d probably also say now that VirtualBox does snaphots too there’s no big reason for going VMware Fusion or Parallels.

I tried GIMP and it didn’t quite catch my fancy. I use it at work where I run Ubuntu but on the Mac it’s a little behind the times (not the features but the interface). So about a year back I got myself Pixelmator. At the time it was still version 1.0.x state. Even then it was already quite impressive. The current version is 1.3.2. Using most of the native and quick Apple CoreImage routines and the ImageMagic tool-set it really offers quite a bit to the amateur image editor. In Q1 2009 there will be the version 1.4 of Pixelmator and I can’t wait to see what goodies were added.

Pixelmator is not PhotoShop but it is enough for what most people need. In combination with iPhoto I think most of us have all bases covered. Pixelmator has a good chance of becoming a major contender. I hope they keep the price where it’s at currently and cater for the normal Mac users. So go and download the trial version and have a play.

1. Will the financial crisis be over in 2009?
2. How will Obama fare in is first year?
3. Will NZ change due to the National government?
4. Will Apple release a Netbook/Tablet computer?
5. Will Windows 7 continue the XP legacy?
6. Will Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) blow everything away?
7. Will Ubuntu 9.04 bring a renewal of Linux desktop?
8. Will the Ocean levels rise?
9. Will we see the breakthrough for electric cars?
10. Will Israel ignite the middle east again?

So looking forward to it…:-D

• 64-bit support on 32-bit guest OSes (not so hot for me)
• 3D support (getting warmer)
• Better Windows (who cares?!) and Linux networking support doing away with the manual TAP drivers (***YAY***!!!!!)
• Snapshots (***YAY***!!!!!)
• More speed (was it ever slow?! Ok, if they want to go even faster I won’t complain)
• Much, much more….

So go along and update. I’m sure it’s worth it. I’ll be trying it on my Ubuntu box once I get back to work….

I think the store’s definitely worth a visit. It will do a lot for Wellington Mac sales. The posh stores to the left and right fit the designer ambiente. Good choice of location.

MagnumMac Wellington will definitely suffer from this new store. In comparison they have little to offer. If I’m not mistaken The Bay is even a little cheaper. They also do the whole warranty and repair thing too.

So a good day for Macs & Apple in NZ.

Some quick snaps of the opening (click on them for larger images):

Well the answer is simple. There’s a nice Mac (and Windows!!!) proggie that will give you all that data and then some. It’s called MacTracker. I find it’s really well done and is worth a look. The screen below shows you a typical view.

I have a half ripped tendon in my right hand. It can’t be fixed and so I have to live with it as is. The problem for me is that keyboards and mice are critical.

If the mouse is too big the tendon starts to ache. I use an old IBM notebook mouse in the office and a Logitech VX Nano notebook mouse at home. As keyboards go I have now tried quite a few. First was a standard Siemens-Nixdorf which I liked for low height, good feel (after using it for 3 years+). But when I spilled some coffee over it I never got all the keys to unstick properly.

Then came a Belkin Ergoboard Pro keyboard. Great feel, 2 USB ports and great ergonomic shape. A little wide though (i.e. hand has to move quite a bit between keyboard and mouse). The problem for me was that the height and position of the hads was exactly what my tendon didn’t need.

Because I had a MacBook at the time I already was sold on the chicklet-keyboards from Apple. So I bought one of the Aluminium keyboards for my company PC. And so far so good. It’s done wonders for my tendon. The low elevation and reduced travel & impact has done wonders form my pain. It’s actually gone now (about 8 months since I have the KBD). I’ve also upgraded to an iMac at home with the same keyboard. In the office I use Ubuntu as an OS and not all keys work but I can definitely live with that. I’ve also started a little trend in the office so now there are about half a dozen of them.

All I can say is that the Apple keyboard is a godsend and I won’t be having any other anytime soon. So if you’re looking for a keyboard give Apple a good look (and while you’re at it contemplate getting the whole Mac!).

There is the BEST KEYBOARD category though. You’ll have to bring about US$1800 for the honour but it really is a monster of a keyboard. I am talking about the Optimus Maximus. Every key has a screen underneath so that you can program the keyboard as you’d like it. I’ve never seen one and I do doubt that the ergonomics are better than my trusty Apple so I think I will forgo for now. But do have a look at this wonder.