Foray into ZFS

So, as I was saying, I've installed OpenSolaris onto the old rig, which probably can't be called 'old' anymore because it's got a new motherboard, new RAM and a new CPU. I've discovered some things about OpenSolaris. It's a lot like Linux. It uses the Gnome GUI. Getting ZFS to work requires use of Terminal which is like a DOS box, only more useful, but is easy enough after a few online tutorials.

The PC has four hard drives all of different sizes. The first one accommodates the OpenSolaris install. The other three are all grouped together into a single partition that is both striped and mirrored and is also expandable! In layman's terms, it means this - those of you with large video/music/photo collections will be able to appreciate this: You have a folder shared across your network that any computer can access. It contains all your media. These are quite common now and are usually referred to as a Media Server or Home File Server. Normally when you run out of space on your hard drive you have a couple of options - delete something to make room or add another hard drive, the latter option being the one we're interested in. When you add another hard drive, you format it and share it as another folder on the network meaning you'll end up with folders like MOVIES1, MOVIES2, MUSIC.A-J, MUSIC.K-Z, etc... and that's just annoying. The ZFS feature in OpenSolaris allows you to "join" your hard drives together so that when you add another hard drive it simply creates more space on the partition. The hard drives don't even need to be the same size! On top of that, ZFS can sustain a hard drive failure, so if you have one of your hard disks crash, OpenSolaris will be able to rebuild the data that was stored on that crashed disk when you replace it with a new one!

This is very impressive technology, which is why I used so many exclamation marks. However, while there is a lot of documentation online on how to set up OpenSolaris and ZFS, getting it to play nice with my Macs over the network is insanely difficult and complicated.

OpenSolaris comes from a *nix background so it shares certain traits with UNIX, Linux and even OS X in some ways, but this very same *nix background brings with it a veritable Fort Knox of security features with dozens of User levels and Groups, and the vast majority of configuration options can only be accessed through a Terminal window using long and complicated commands. Needless to say, it's a steep learning curve for someone who hasn't had experience with Linux style operating systems and Joe Average can just forget about it.

It's a shame that getting network shares working on OpenSolaris isn't easier. Everything else was pretty much configured automatically. The network is there and configured, I can access the Internet with Firefox and can ping the other computers on the network. It came bundled with a few applications like Firefox and Thunderbird for e-mail, a package installer to get more software, a media player and everything on OpenSolaris works quite well... until you want to configure something on the system. Then it's that damn Terminal window again...

Although I've had it installed and running with ZFS for three days now, I've still yet to browse a single network share on the new OpenSolaris box, from either Windows or Mac.

Back to the forums I guess...

Defrag & Blog

It's 11:14pm on Sunday night and Cyclone Hamish is knocking at our door. It's just started to rain and the wind is picking up. The cyclone warning on Weatherzone says that it should be off the coast of Gladstone by tomorrow afternoon but by then it should be down to a Category 3.

My computer has been the source and subject of some hostility over the last couple of days as it practically ground to a halt, taking forever to do even the simplest of tasks. I checked 'defrag' and was told that I should defrag my C: drive.

That was early yesterday morning. It's been 'defragging' for going on forty hours now. It's a 250GB HDD with 21% free space - and it's 17% done!

Windows just seems to get in my way when I try to use the computer to do stuff I want to do.

Did you know that OS X has built-in safeguards against fragmentation of data on the hard drive?

Every day of your life that you waste using Microsoft Windows is a day of your life wasted.

Mac Mini + Games... Finally!

So Apple have updated the Mac Mini to include a GeForce 9400M, finally ditching the Intel GMA 950 graphics chip that let the Mini down in terms of 3D performance.

I've spoken about Apple's game console and how great it would be to have had a decent graphics chip in the Mac Mini in a previous post.

Now you can get a full-blown computer with a 165 mm² footprint that runs OS X, burns DVDs, has WiFi, bluetooth, 5 USB ports, Firewire800, optical SP/DIF audio and plays games for under AU$1050.00, freeing you from the tyranny of Microsoft and locking you into the shackles of Apple... but they're extremely well designed shackles and they feel really comfortable.

Die X-Box! Die!

Backup in time.

I worked with this guy in a computer shop a long time ago, we'll call him Dave - an intellectual, a musician, a fellow geek whom I've known for many years as a competent computer technician.  In a comment to one of my previous posts, he directed me to some nice backup software to help cope with the problems we have both experienced with Windows.

I can't see why we need to try and develop or purchase all these work-arounds for the failings of Microsoft's OS. To be fair, WindowsXP has backup software built in but even this guide to using it on Microsoft's own website says most people don't know think about backing up and even if you do, you have to do some digging to find the program to do it.  And then the whole back-up process is totally manual, requiring you to select everything you want to back up, tell it where you want to put the backup - network drive, blank CD - and then you have to set up a schedule and maintain that schedule, which few people are able to do. Also, a complete and regular backup using this method would use an enormous amount of data storage because you back up everything, every time, even the stuff that didn't change since the last backup.

Dave's suggestion was some imaging software - Acronis - which essentially takes a snapshot of the entire system which you'd then burn to a disc or save on an external or network drive. Disk imaging is usually time consuming and best for quickly performing clean installs. I haven't tried Acronis, but their site doesn't give a lot of information about how their software works. It says they have an incremental backup feature suggesting that it can identify your files that have been changed and add them to the backup which saves a lot on data storage.  

Both above methods can be stored on a DVD which makes it hard to accidentally erase the storage which can happen with external hard drives but even DVD are not infallible.

I also had a comment on my last post from an anonymous user - lets call him Mick Frank - who suggested that I back up to the cloud.  While I already keep a lot of information online under my Google account  - Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Google Video, Picasaweb - I am rather selective about what I upload to these sites.  One should ask: Do I really want to place my information in the hands of another person or business?  I don't think of these Google services as somewhere to store my backups.  They are a place to share ideas with others.  As for anonymous ftp servers, there are serious bandwidth issues for most Australians.  In this country we have limits on how much we can download with nearly every Internet plan, limited either by speed or by the amount of downloaded data.  There are speed issues.  How long does it take to send a modest 35GB backup to an FTP server on the other side of the planet?  There are privacy issues too.  Where is the server located?  Argentina?  Zimbabwe?  China?  USA?  What is to stop someone looking through all my stuff?  More to the point, will that server still be there tomorrow?  No thanks, I prefer to hang on to my data myself.

OS X has a backup feature called Time Machine. First of all, it's included with the OS and not only is it easily found, it's one of the most advertised features. This is what I needed to do to get it going.

1. Plug in a big external hard drive.
   
2. Open Time Machine
3. Turn On Time Machine
4. There is no step 4.

Now our Mac is backed up.  A complete backup.  When I import a new CD, it detects that there are new files and adds them to the backup.  When add a riff to my musical composition it is automatically added to the backup.  If the Mac were to suddenly die in a billowing cloud of smoke - touch wood - the last entry I put into the calendar, the last note I jotted on the desktop and the last web page I bookmarked are safely backed up on my external drive.

So how did I end up in the situation I described in my last post?  

Fact: 

No-one backs up until about 10 minutes after they need to.

I had even done step 1. Plug in a big external hard drive. but I still just couldn't be bothered with clicking the mouse a few more times to back up all my data.  At the time it all just seemed too much hassle...

...and then there's that tendency to erase hard drives without thinking...

Apple seem to have put data protection up front.  We all know that computers crash.  Macs and PCs alike, all are susceptible to a hard drive failure, but Apple are actively doing something about it.  Not only with the most easy-to-use backup software in the world, but even the hardware is being re-designed with data protection in mind.  Apple notebooks have the option of shipping with solid-state hard drives that have no moving parts.  Wherever there are moving parts, there is wear and with wear, failure is inevitable.  So if you have anything on your computer that is irreplaceable - back it up.  

Make up a check list.

1. Documents
2. Pictures
3. Music
4. Videos
5. Address Book
6. Bookmarks
7. Financial Records
8. Downloaded software
9. Game saves
10. Whatever else you can think of... and think hard!

Backup now... before it's too late - although, as I showed in my last post, even when it's too late it may not be too late!

The past eight years.

November 4th, 2008 was the day Obama was elected President of the United States and America, indeed the world, celebrated change after eight years of an extremely unpopular government.

November 4th, 2008 was the day my wife and I celebrated eight years of marriage.  We've had (nearly) eight years of living together in the bush.  The Australian Bush.

Eighth anniversary.  Cilla pulled her little book of irreverent information out and informed me that the appropriate gift for this anniversary is an electrical appliance.  Although it sounded unlikely to me - eight-year anniversaries have been around for a lot longer than electrical appliances and marriage has existed for even longer - she assured me that her book is correct, albeit a little modernized.  So we thought about what we wanted and decided on expanding our beloved Mac Mini with an external hard drive.  Romantic eh?  We thought so!

We found a good deal on a 1TB USB hard drive called WD Elements.  It was about $185.00 delivered and took nearly a week to arrive, but arrive it did and we set to the task of setting it up on Minnie.  

Yes.   We named our Mac Mini "Minnie".  So what?

First things first, back up docs and videos so I copied them all onto the external hard drive.  Then in a flash of wisdom we thought we'd refresh the OS X install on the Mac.  There was nothing wrong with it.  Everything worked fine, but the install was over a year old and had been upgraded to 10.5 from a pre-installed 10.4 and sort of felt a little sluggish from when we first got it.  It's certainly better than the average on my Windows machine which has had about six reinstalls in the same time period.

So a fresh install of Leopard underway, completely formatting the Mac hard disk in the process.

Wiping out everything I forgot to back up.

The iTunes collection - about 40GB of mp3 music we've collected since before we've been married.

Not a huge loss - music is replaceable and we still have our CD's and you can collect iTunes store purchases without any problems.

The big one was the iPhoto collection.  About ten years worth of photos of everything Cilla and I have done.  Wedding photos.  Pics of our dive holidays.  Photos of Merlin, our late great dane.  And none of it was backed up and all of it just got wiped.

That sucked to say the least.

Anyway, I did manage to recover just about everything.  After a little bit of googling I discovered a program called Data Rescue II and it spent about three hours last night looking at the empty bits of my mostly empty hard drive for any trace of what was there before.  Despite the length of time and the amount of stress, it was very impressive with the amount of information it managed to retrieve.  The drive was re-partitioned, formatted and had OS X installed on it and this software managed to recover all my photos and music - as well as a handful of other stuff that I also forgot to back up.

I suppose it's time to learn from the mistake.  Time Machine would probably be a good start, but backup to DVD disks is probably a safer option.  Time machine doesn't prevent some idiot formatting the hard drive!

Broken Windows, What a Pane

I've been suffering from some Windows problems lately.  

It was about this time last year that we got our Mac Mini.  We got it to replace a Windows Vista Ultimate Edition media center and it's been a significant upgrade.  For the purpose we use if for it is extremely more suitable than it's predecessor.  The Mac Mini has been a very well behaved computer, perhaps the most well behaved computer I have ever owned.  It sits in the lounge room with EyeTV and works as an Internet connected media center.  Since we've had it I've upgraded OS X from 10.4 Tiger to 10.5 Leopard, installed and uninstalled countless apps and small games, as well as played Guild Wars on it using CrossOver Games.  We've had about three or four crashes on it in the time we've owned it - all of which recovered with a reboot, but I've never had to reinstall the OS.

My Windows rig is a different story.  In the last year I've had to reinstall Windows three times because the computer wouldn't start at all.  Each reinstall requires hundreds of megabytes of security updates and service packs to be downloaded.  I've had the computer slow to a crawl and require a reboot to become usable again countless times.  I've had blue screens and random reboots.  Even though in my humble opinion Windows XP is far superior to Windows Vista, neither of them come close to the stability and usability I find on the Mac.

Then there's the hardware.  For one to own a high end PC one must have sufficiant cooling in the system.  The vast majority of PC's have fans that circulate air through the case to keep the components cool.  If one of these fail you can risk overheating your computer which can lead to irrepairable damage.  I had a chipset fan fail - it is supposed to cool one of the major pieces of silicone on the motherboard.  The fan that I got to replace it ran at a very high speed and so generated quite a bit of noise.  I could hear it's hum from accross the room with no problem, but I got used to it.   Like most background noises, after a while you don't hear it anymore.  This fan failed too after about six months but this time the failure of a $15 fan caused damage that required me to replace a $300 motherboard.  And of course the replacement motherboards available after a year wouldn't take my old chip and RAM so I needed to replace those too.  So much for an upgradable open system.  Add to this three - count 'em - three hard drive failures resulting in data loss and more downtime.  The two faulty sticks of RAM (expensive Corsair XMS gear no less) that wouldn't allow the computer to boot at all also deserves dishonerable mention.

I can see how Apple's computers are very quickly increasing their market share.  They have become competitive.  Not by making their products cheaper than the competition (although prices have dropped accross the Mac line a lot over the past few years), but by making them better.  The superior OS and wealth of really useful and fun bundled software certainly help as well.

Still, many of my friends are gamers.  PC gamers.  And although Apple build great computers, they still have quite a way to go to get the gamers on board.  Perhaps this new line of aluminium MacBooks with nVidia chipsets that has been completely sold out accross the world since it's release will help to fix the games problem.  Having a lot of computers with the hardware capable of playing games has got to be an incentive to write games for that platform.

We'll see.

Regardless.  I have written this post immediatly after having to do a repair on the Windows system because the computer wouldn't get past the loading screen.  Windows really does suck.  I can't wait to be rid of it.

OOo ahhh

OpenOffice 3.0 has been released. For those loyal readers of mine (I have no idea why I have loyal readers, I'm certainly not a loyal writer!) I recommending visiting OpenOffice.org and getting this cross-platform, fully functional and free office suite.  For Mac users this version does away completely with X11 which is nice. Those of you using Microsoft Office should seriously consider upgrading to OpenOffice.  For Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris.

OOo

Track your Laptop

There is some free and open source software that can track your laptop with that may help you get it back in the event that it's stolen - provided, of course, that you had the software installed before it was stolen and the thief is stupid enough to connect to the Internet with it. It's very new software and is still being heavily developed, but a working version of it is available for Windows and Macs.

Adeona is named after the Roman goddess of safe returns. This system is the result of recent academic research started at the University of Washington, with participants now also at the University of California San Diego and the University of California Davis. The foundations of the Adeona design — and an analysis of its security and privacy properties — are published in a research paper at the 2008 USENIX Security Symposium.

-from the Adeona home page.

Did I mention it's free?

Tech News

Couple of noteworthy tech news items...

---

Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft. Love him or hate him, one cannot deny the impact he has had on our lives. I have spent many years buying, using, fixing, playing with and even selling Microsoft operating systems and software. Although he is generally considered a lousy programmer, he was a great business man and in these later years he has improved his personal image dramatically through his philanthropy with his fortunes.

---

The Internet is about to open up to an unlimited number of top-level domain names. For a long time we've been pretty much stuck with .com, .org, .gov, or .country (.au, .uk, .jp). but now - if you can afford it you can have whatever top level domain you like. Expect to see .city (.sydney, .london, .tokyo, .nyc) and .company (.ford, .google, .microsoft, .bhp). Buying and setting one up will cost in the tens of thousands of dollars range so don't expect a .dgar anytime soon! :)

---

OS X is starting to become noticed by malware writers. Two new trojans have been discovered that can compromise the security of Mac computers. I've had antivirus software running on our Mac since we got it. ClamX is free antivirus software for OS X and has regular updates. Firewall is built in and on by default in Leopard but Safari seems to get some nasty security holes in it like Internet Explorer does! Perhaps the big companies should give up on trying to build Internet browsers and let the entire world create, build and use Firefox3.

Guild Wars in a bottle.

Well I'm impressed. I've installed the trial of Crossover Games by Codeweavers onto our Mac Mini and loaded Guild Wars into it. And so far it has progressed flawlessly! The trial is only for seven days so I've only have a week to try it out... and I've picked a week when my bandwidth is capped so I'm pretty much playing a brand new install of Guild Wars on Internet speeds comparable to dial-up and having to download each new area I walk into. It's slow... but it works!

Okay... settle down...

For those Mac owners that want to play Guild Wars, here's my specs.

Mac OS X 10.5.3
Intel Core2 Duo 2.0 GHz
2GB RAM
Intel GMA950

So that would mean that pretty much anyone with a Intel Mac, MacBook or iMac can now play Guild Wars without installing or even needing to own a copy of Windows!

That's cool.

It works on Linux too.

iPhone and WWDC

The 9th of June marked the opening of the WWDC '08, Apple's World Wide Developers Conference where they've just announced the new and updated iPhone 3G. And that's about it. They talked about the iPhone. And not much else. No Apple TV, no new touch interfaces, no iMac overhaul, no games console, a little about the next version of OS X, but pretty much it was all about iPhone 3G and the stuff they're making to support it.

So lets go over it a little bit shall we?

iPhone 3G is to be released in Australia on July 11th. Don't actually expect to get one on that day as demand is expected to outstrip supply on a scale that rivals the Wii.

Telstra don't look to have it. They made some snide comments about how Apple should stick to making computers and keep out of the mobile phone market about a year ago. Apple may be feeding Telstra some humble-pie for their arrogance.

Optus and Vodafone do appear to have it - although neither have released pricing details yet. There has been mention of a pre-paid option suggesting you could buy the phone without a contract which appeals to me - I use a telstra pre-paid phone at the moment.

The thing is with Optus and Vodafone is that their 3G networks are pretty much exclusive to the capital cities. Outside of these areas they're coverage is minimal with a 900MHz 3G which is incompatible with the 3G iPhone, so when you're in these areas your iPhone will have to switch to the much slower 2.5G (EDGE) network. Telstra have rolled out an extensive 3G network that runs at 850MHz which the iPhone 3G can run on, but so far it doesn't look like you can get a iPhone through Telstra. That means that if I were to buy an iPhone 3G to use where I live in regional Queensland, my iPhone 3G won't actually connect to a 3G network... unless I jailbreak it to work on the Telstra network. But if it's pre-paid, it shouldn't be locked to a network provider should it? I've never been good with mobile phones...

---

Anyhoo.... iPhone 3G has Google Maps with built in GPS - cool. It's got Wi-Fi Internet browsing and it's capable of playing games. A 2 MP camera is on the back and it comes in 8GB and 16GB varieties. The 8GB looks pretty much like the old iPhone except a bit thinner and has a black back instead of the aluminium back. the 16GB gives you the choice of a black back or a white back. I'd still choose black.

---

They mentioned something about the next Mac OS at WWDC too which apparently will be called Snow Leopard. Meh.

---

Games are coming out for Mac. People are pushing for development. I'm going to try out this trial of CrossOver Games by Codeweavers which will apparently let me play Guild Wars on the mac without loading Windows on it at all. More on that when I try it out.

---

The Mick Thackray Experience has been moved to Blogger. Please create or update your bookmarks.

Spore

Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, SimCity and a plethora of life simulation games is supposed to be releasing a game which looks incredibly cool. You play a "species" which starts off in the primordial ooze of an alien planet and you control its evolution all the way to interstellar travel. An amazing concept that has been executed with a stylish and intuitive interface like those we have come to know in his other games.



The guy speaking in this video is the man himself, Will Wright, taking us through the many stages of the game. The video is an hour long so you might want to fix yourself a cuppa before you watch it.

Oh, and apparently it will be simultanously released on Windows and MacOS.

Little Gremlins

My bro said that's what LG stands for. When it comes to my air-con I think he may be right. As promised our friendly service agent turned up bright and early with a shiny new bit for my air-con and spend the morning pulling it to bits and putting it back together. Apparently we're not done though, there are still some problems with it and they'll be back in the morning.

---

How does

They're over there with their stuff.

and

You're over there with your stuff

translate to

There over there with there stuff.

and

Your over their with your stuff

just because you're on the Internet?

Sure, the spell checker doesn't pick it up but that doesn't make it right!

---

Phew! I'm so hot - in a 'temperature' sense. It's ten to eleven pee em and it's boiling My aircon still isn't working. Central Queenland is cookin'. Garr!

---

Uncovered: Evidence that Mac OS X could run Windows apps soon

- By David Chartier of Ars Technica

---

And that's it really...

First Mac

I woke up on Monday morning and crawled out of bed to the computer.

Through bleary eyes I clicked Start and found the Firefox icon.

I tried to type the couriers site.

www.tmt.cp,

doh... typo - tap Backspace repeatedly.

check hand position...

stare at keyboard and blink a couple of times...

www.tnt.com.au

[Enter]

minimize Firefox

open a pdf on the desktop - the shipping order from Apple for the Mac Mini

double click to select the order number - right click and copy

alt tab to firefox

right click and paste

[enter]

.........

Onboard for Delivery - Gladstone

close eyes really tight

look again

Onboard for Delivery - Gladstone

Oh, sweeeeet... its here... over a week since the release of Leopard and it's finally here.

www.google.com.au TNT Gladstone Australia Big Book Business Directory

scroll down

TNT Express (Gladstone, QLD)

read the phone number

grab phone and copy the number off the computer screen onto the phone screen

"beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep"

[TALK]

"brrrp brrrp, brrrp brrrp, "

"TNT Gladstone, Sumdude speaking."

"Hey, I'm expecting a package for Jon O'Hare"

"Yeah, we got a couple here."

"Don't put them on the truck! See you in a minute!"

*click*

I took this photo Monday afternoon after getting everything set up... and before I dusted... Everything I had ordered had arrived ten days later. The custom built Mac Mini came with Tiger pre-installed which surprised me a little, but the lady from Apple I spoke to on the phone last Friday said that might happen. Instead I got a Leopard drop-in kit which is just a Leopard DVD in a paper sleeve packaged with the other disks.

I've been pretty busy setting everything up and fiddling with it, transferring photos and music from the Vista machine it replaces and integrating them into iPhoto and iTunes. For the most part everything went smoothly. I installed the software we have become used to (Joost, Vuze, Firefox, Google Earth, VLC) and some software that is completely new to me like EyeTV.

So far I'm impressed. It's so much nicer to use than anything I've used before. Even in the short time that I've played with it, I have already come to appreciate the integration of the core Mac applications and Front Row is so refreshing after battling with Windows Media Center.

Speaking of Front Row, the little remote control that comes with the Mac works really well. Toss the keyboard and mouse aside and click the Menu button on the Front Row Remote and the computer turns into a media center with videos and music from your own collection plus previews from iTunes and slide shows of your iPhoto collection.

The only problems with so far have been to do with networking. While the Mac connected to the network and found it's way to the Internet through my router without any help from me, it took some time to figure out how to get it to talk to the Windows machines on the network. Like most things on any computer though, you bang your head against it for ages and don't get anywhere until you see that one little thing, that one tiny little setting, that one radio button or switch, and you click it... and everything just works... and you feel like a idiot for not finding it in the first place.

So that's sorted. Installed EyeTV and can watch digital television and analogue television plus we can record stuff from the VHS player with it now. It seems to work well so far and also uses the Front Row remote control allowing us to pause and rewind live TV. Cilla gets a little worried about the space-time continuum when we do that.

I just finished recording a two hour VHS tape to put on DVD. It's almost exactly two hours long and takes up five and a half gig (5.5GB). I still have a little playing around to do with it yet so we'll see how it goes.

Since I've started getting into Mac computers and blogging about them and discussing them with friends and family I've noticed that they are being bought. Cilla's niece, Jemma asked me a while back now what sort of computer she should get and I suggested a MacBook. She took my advice and seems very happy with it. Mum got herself a 24" iMac which is just lovely. I got told that Uncle Phil ordered a Mac about the time I ordered ours - I have yet to catch up with him and find out which one. Mark the Electricity Man, Bill the Airconditioner Man and Steve the Drumming Man have all said that they intend to aquire Macs of their own. It's hasn't even been twelve months since Jem got hers. Steve Jobs said 2007 was going to be a good year for Apple. If this kind of interest in their products is world-wide I reckon that would be spelling even better times to come.

OSX 10.5 is a beautiful operating system to use. I've only been using it for two days and I can't think of a single reason why I'd want to put Boot Camp on and run Windows. Sure, some things are done differently on the Mac than they were on Windows - but some things are done differnetly on WindowsXP than they are on Vista.

So far, lovin' it!

Most reliable, best support.

With all my excitement about Apple Mac computers lately I have had people asking me questions about them. The most common question is - "What happens when something goes wrong with it?" and as much as I'd like to answer "Nothing ever goes wrong with a Mac!", that would be bullshit. No computer is infallible. That said, Macs have a track record for being substantially more relaible than any Windows machine and Apple support is second to none.

You see, I live in a city that has no Apple store. It makes it hard for locals to consider switching to Mac when there is no local outlet to offer support - no-one you can go and see face-to-face about your problems. The nearst Apple stores are about 50 kilometers north or 100 kilometers south. This is less of a concern with those that are comfortable with the Internet as a means of communication with your computer vendor and of course there is always phone support. The number of people that I know that have computers built and sent to them from online stores like GameDude and EYO proves that we don't have a problem with buying a computer off the Internet. With the half-dozen or so computer shops in town, you always have someone that is willing to take a look at you PC, although unless you actually bought it from them they're not going to provide free local support for your non-local Internet purchase. And fair enough too.

In the past five days Apple has sold two million copies of OS X Leopard since it's release and for the most part the world loves it like they never loved Microsoft's bastard child. Apple are being praised for the reliability of their Mac computers and the quality of their support. A few people are finding faults with the new OS while most others are going ga-ga over it. Some people are even trying to get Leopard running on their PC's! And while I ordered my Mac on the day Leopard was released and they still havn't even shipped it, I'm sure I'll forget all about that once it arrives...

First ever Mac purchase!

- image from www.apple.com

We just bought our first ever Macintosh computer! Sure, I've had Macs before but that was back when I was in school (Let's all celebrate in '88) and I didn't buy them, they were Mum and Dad's Macs. We didn't have OS X back in those days but we did have a pair of Macintosh II's that made all the computers my mates had look rather unimpressive. How things haven't changed! The modern Mac still makes a PC look beige.

- image from www.apple.com

We ordered a Mac Mini with the following specs.

Intel Core2 Duo 2.0 GHz
2 GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM
160 GB Hard Disk 5400rpm
Intel GMA 950 Graphics Chip with shared memory
Superdrive - DVD±R/RW
10/100/1000 BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
54Mb 802.11 g Wireless Network
Bluetooth 2.0
Firewire 400 port
4x USB 2.0 ports

And it comes with...

Mac OS X 10.5 - Leopard - which includes...

• lots of cool features!

and iLife '08 - which includes...

• iTunes
• iPhoto
• iMovie
• iDVD
• iWeb
• GarageBand

and an Apple Remote and Front Row

Because I customized the system - upgraded the RAM from 1GB to 2 GB and upgraded the hard disk from 120GB to 160GB - it's going to take a few days for them to put the order through and build me a shiny new Mac. It will prolly be sometime late next week by the time I get all Appled up.

- image from www.apple.com

I got a few things to go with it.

• A TOSLINK cable that comes with an adapter so it can connect from the 3.5mm jack on the Mac Mini Optical out to the standard S/PDIF input on my 5.1 reciever.
  
• A Elgato EyeTV Hybrid USB stick which lets us watch both analogue and digital television and also allows us to plug the ageing VHS VCR so we can record our old home moves from our video tape collection and burn them to DVD.
• An Apple Universal Dock for the iPod nano. I could've got a dock specific to the iPod nano for a bit less money but then some of our friends and family have all sorts of different versions of iPods and if we ever aquired an iPhone... the Universal Dock makes sense.

As far as I can make out, both the dock and the computer come with Apple Remotes so we may end up having two of them...-image from Wikipedia

Next Week!

We begin our adventure through the looking glass and begin exploring the world of OS X!

Happy Leopard Day!

It's here! Or at least it will be.... TODAY! At 6pm.

The news and IT sites are going crazy with news and reviews on Leopard. One thing that's consistant is that everyone is saying its better than Vista. Smaller, faster, prettier, more secure, more stable and much cheaper for the Ultimate Edition! And it's 64bit, from top-to-bottom!

We already knew all that though...

Onion

Windows is like an onion - it has many layers.

There is the hardware itself. Your computer. The physical pieces that make it up. The CPU, graphics card, sound card network card and RAM.

Then there is the "Firmware" layer, software specific to that piece of hardware in your computer.

Then there is the "Hardware Abstraction Layer" or "Assembler" which can talk directly with the hardware and firmware on your computer and simplifies the language so it can allow communication between the hardware and the Kernel.

The "Kernel" is the brains of the OS. It's another abstraction layer - designed to "hide" everything complicated about the hardware abstraction layer and give an easy to understand interface to control it - allowing control of the hardware.

Of course it's not easy to understand unless you're a very talented programmer and mathematician so it requires another abstraction layer to hide everything complicated and give the kernel an easy to understand interface. So on top of the kernel sits the operating system and on top of that sits the User Interfaces and Application Programming Interfaces for things like DirectX or OpenGL.

And then on top of that are your applications - your programs and games.

With all these translations going on behind the scenes and through layers for everything you do on your computer it's no wonder that things go wrong.

Errors happen. They're bound to.

This is the way Windows is built. An not only Windows. Most operating systems are built this way. And why not? It's logical. You start with the extremely complicated hardware and then you add layers of simplification until it's easy enough to be used by Joe Average.

"Windows and Linux are designed from the core out, which is to say that they are all about layered kernels, system calls, and APIs, with each layer's purpose being to abstract the layers below it. The layers grow thicker; when a layer gets unmanageably thick, a pretty new abstraction layer is created so that people don't have to deal with the ugly one."

-Tom Yager

Apple have always approached things differently. They start by thinking about how the user interface should be and then design the hardware and software to suit. Again I'll quote from Tom Yager's "Ahead of the Curve" - someone who has had a lot of experience with a lot of operating systems.

"Everyone plugs into OS X through the frameworks, and below that lies a stable, thin, simple, and well-documented system stack. It is not the frameworks' job to abstract lower levels of software. From a developer's point of view, the frameworks are OS X. When developers write to Apple's frameworks, they inherit cross-application integration and operational and interface consistency with no effort. For example, E-Mail, the Address Book, and QuickTime are smart, autonomous objects available to all Mac apps regardless of language and requiring no optional software."

-Tom Yager

This results in a beautiful operating system. Not only beautiful to look at and use but also beautiful to develop for. And they build beautiful looking machines to run it on.

So. Windows is like an onion. OS X is like, well, an apple.

Obsessing...

...is probably an understatement for what I have been doing while waiting for the Mac OS X Leopard release.

4 days, 23 hours, 20 minutes, 45 seconds....

44, 43, 42, 41...

Anyhoo, as I assume it works the same way in a lot of other households - expensive purchases have to be cleared with the iWife. Cilla has agreed that the media center needs an upgrade and we have decided that a Mac would be the ideal tool for the job.

The result being that I have been scouring the Internet for anything, any information, any rumor, any pictures, any video, guided tour or tutorial on Apple Macintosh computers and OS X Leopard. I have even been too busy doing that to even blog properly.

"Oh, it rained bugger all and there were some flowers in the garden. And here's a picture."

-me, lamest blog ever

Cilla washed my LindowsOS shirt with something that shouldn't have been washed with it. It's got this cool slogan on the back - "Choice. Feared by Microsoft, Embraced by The World." Suffice to say that it is now a colour that I don't feel comfortable wearing. So Cilla started looking for a new favourite shirt for me, and seeing as how Apple is the flavour of the moment, she started looking for Apple t-shirts. I like this one.

-SPLITREASON.COM

Of course, this isn't getting it out of my system, so I'm going to blather on about Apple stuff for a while. Feel free to surf on elsewhere or go play a game now...

I found this open letter from Steve Jobs sharing his "Thoughts on Music" regarding Digital Rights Management (DRM) on music. Basically he feels that DRM is useless and counter-productive to the industry, and notes that music companies still sell 90% of their music on CD without DRM anyway. It's a good read and shows that the man behind the most popular music player and most popular online music store in the world would prefer that they do away completely with DRM.

As a long-time PC gamer and soon to be Mac Switcher, I have been keeping a close eye on the expanding game scene on the Mac. It has never been a popular games platform with only a few of the most popular games ever making it to the Mac but Apple seem to be making an effort (or making an effort to be seen as making an effort) to bring games to OS X. Most recently a fairly high profile release of some games from Electronic Arts (EA) has proved that the relationship isn't very tight. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TAUW) reviewed one of those releases - Madden '08 for the Mac - and were unimpressed at how it didn't work. Not surprising though as they pointed out, EA games often don't work - on any platform.

Lucky I'm not getting my Mac for games.

OS Pricing

It's not something I'll have to worry about because I'll be waiting the 7 days, 17 hours, 16 minutes and 45 seconds before the release of Apple's Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard before I buy a Mac so it will come with it, but just for interest sake, lets compare prices between the Microsoft and Apple operating systems once again.

For the purposes of this comparison I will be using the prices from Harris Technology for the Microsoft operating systems and the Apple Australia online store for OS X.

Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard - $158.00

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition Upgrade - $495.00
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition Complete Package - $750.00

I don't see the point in comparing the lesser Microsoft OS's because they are just cut-down versions of their Ultimate Edition, but even if you go for the cheapest, most cut-down version and even if you are eligable for the Upgrade version...

Windows Vista Home Basic Upgrade - $199.00

HT also sell Windows XP Professional SP2 in the form of a "Microsoft Get Genuine Kit" for those unfortunate people who have found themselves with what seems to be a pirated "Non-Genuine" copy of Windows XP. But they only seem to offer it in a 10 pack for $2, 707.00, for pirates that have ten computers I suppose, or those dodgy little computer shops that sell $800.00 PC's.

Think about it people - an $800.00 PC with Windows on it. About $200.00 is for an OEM version Windows. So the hardware is about $600.00. You can't get an LCD monitor for under $200.00 (even from GameDude!) so the box is worth about $400.00. There has to be some profit for the guy selling it, otherwise, why would he bother. Do you really think you can get a quality computer for under $400.00?

For the love of Mr Deity, don't waste your money on crap like that! Getamac