Enterprise Mac | Tom Yager | October 2007

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October 2007

October 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Before I begin, I need to point out that I do not claim a cause and effect relationship between what I've done and the result it produced. Still, the story bears relating. Because of the length of this post, I'll offer my advice from what I've learned so that you can skip the rest:

1. Purchase an external hard drive of at least the size of your Mac's internal drive
2. Boot the Leopard install DVD and when the Tools/Utilities menu appears, start Disk Utility
3. Partition your external drive, and be sure to click Options to create a GUID partition
4. Click on the icon for your internal drive's OS X partition
5. Click "New Image" from the toolbar
6. In the destination dialog box, choose the name of your external drive
7. For image type, choose Read Only. The default is "compressed," but this is extremely slow
8. Once this completes, it's now safe to install Leopard on your internal drive

You should do this, or its equivalent, for any OS upgrade.

As I related in my prior blog, I checked into a hotel so that I could have uninterrupted, quiet time set aside for my review of Leopard. It had been my intent to blog throughout the process of installing and migrating Leopard from the internal hard drive of the MacBook Pro loaned to me by Apple. That drive had a fully working copy of Tiger.

For safety's sake, I installed first to a small external FireWire drive, a process that went exceedingly well. But with an internal drive of 150 GB and an external FireWire drive of only 18 GB, there was no point in attempting to use Migration Assistant to migrate my apps and files. Booted from the FireWire drive, I was able to navigate the MacBook Pro's internal drive, and launch applications from it, without difficulty.

I thought the wisest next step would be to do a complete backup of the MacBook Pro's internal drive to an external device large enough to contain it. So I shut down, unplugged the FireWire drive, plugged in a known good 250 GB external USB 2.0 drive and powered back up.

[mark this paragraph; you'll be returning to it] The MacBook Pro did not boot. It went completely unresponsive, stuck at the white background where the Apple logo and spinning animation usually appear. With the install disc in the drive, holding the C key down (the shortcut for booting from the CD/DVD), nothing happened even after waiting several minutes. I plugged the external 18 GB FireWire drive back in and held down the Option key to bring up the boot volume selection menu. The drive's icon appeared--neither the internal drive's icon nor the install DVD's appeared--but clicking on the arrow beneath the FireWire drive it had no effect; the button changed color to indicate its response, but after repeated clicks, nothing happened.

With only wired network service at the hotel, I had to use my BlackBerry to go to Apple's support site to find the magic key sequence to clear the system's non-volatile configuration RAM (Option+Command+P+R+Power). This caused the external FireWire drive to boot to Leopard, and once booted, icons for the internal drive and the install DVD appeared. I launched Disk Utility to check for problems on the MacBook Pro's internal drive and got thousands of notices of invalid hard links. I repeated the repair process and the internal drive checked out clean. So I set the startup drive to the internal disk and rebooted.

For the system's reaction to this, re-read from the paragraph marked above to this sentence. At no point was I able to boot directly from the install DVD at startup. However, I was able to boot from the FireWire drive, click "Install Mac OS X," and reboot from the DVD.

Using the boot DVD's Disk Utility, I asked to image the MacBook Pro's internal drive to the 250 GB external USB drive. The process failed partway through with an I/O error. I was able to install Leopard to the 250 GB USB drive, and I attempted to fire up Migration Assistant. It began assembling the catalog of data that I could import, and while doing this the system rebooted itself. Return to the paragraph marked above.

I am now working from the external USB drive. The C key still will not boot from the DVD. At this point, the files from my internal drive are visible, and that volume passes verify and repair. Now comes the task of attempting to recover essential files like e-mail and address book by hand (from the command line; doing so with Finder complains that I lack proper permission). However, I have no backup and cannot create one.

To say that this has been a frustrating exercise is an understatement. Very few things anger me more than wasted time and money, and this has been both.

Why did all of this happen? I haven't the faintest idea. I only know that prior to installing Leopard on the external FireWire drive, everything was working perfectly, and I had every expectation of a clean install and a pleasant weekend of blogging.

I can't help that some will read this as a cautionary tale. Don't. Something bizarre happened here, some juxtaposition of a hardware failure with an attempt to install Leopard. In any case, I'm frozen in state until I can recover essential files my MacBook Pro's hard drive. I have a backup image that's about two months old; perhaps I'll start with that.

It may surprise you, but this does not color my opinion of Leopard in the least. Instead of blogging my progress as I had planned, I'm moving straight to a full review, which will have no reference to this post.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 31, 2007 11:33 AM

October 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Leopard Hands-On: The Beginning

As a counterpoint to the crushing disappointment that was Vista, which emerged with only a fraction of its promise intact, Apple's OS X Leopard (10.5) is everything that Steve Jobs said it would become when Apple first placed that first unsteady cub in developers' hands. Leopard is also a thick catalog of inventions and improvements that Steve flat neglected to mention, so thick that Apple had to resort to running the equivalent of a software project change log on its site for marketing purposes. You can't possibly chew through that list. I've been testing and assembling my own list of relevant and remarkable changes in Leopard, a list that speaks to more professional and savvy Mac users as well as those who might switch (or are sure they'll never switch) from Windows and Linux.

I have to start the introduction to this series of hands-on Leopard stories with what I consider to be Leopard's most impressive quality. For its 300 changes since Tiger (OS X 10.4), the line item reading of which provokes a range of reactions from the head nod to the ear-to-ear grin, there is not one ounce of fat, no feature in Leopard that you'd opt to leave on the DVD the next time you install it. Instead, for all that's been added, Leopard remains trim enough to run on a PowerBook G4 with 512 MB of RAM. The very same OS is a robust, Open Group certified 64-bit UNIX when run on Intel Core 2 Duo and PowerPC G5 machines, with no need to buy a special edition. One of Apple's marketing lines says that everyone gets the ultimate edition of Leopard because that's the only edition there is. I'd argue that if Microsoft's Vista product tagging is the basis for comparison, then all Leopard buyers get the 64-bit enterprise edition.

Despite the fact that I'm far past this stage, the first hands-on experiences I can relate involve stability and installation.

If you're eyeing Leopard, one concern that you can cross off your list straight away is stability. I've spent several months working with Leopard as a developer and administrator. I began rolling Leopard into production on MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro and Xserve Xeon, against Apple's advice but not requiring its consent, at a point well prior to its release. I'd be testing the bounds of non-disclosure to tell you when I felt Leopard hit its stride. Instead, I'll just say that there is no need to obey the standard advice to wait for the first boatload of fixes before buying in. That's true of Windows, and true of Linux, but not Leopard. Leopard shed its training wheels a while ago.

Non-Mac users coming to Leopard will find a really simple, automated install experience, but it is more flexible than before. That's most notable in network configuration, where auto-detection of wired and wireless networks is more accurate. It's easier to enter the SSIDs of private Wi-Fi networks, and you can bypass network configuration entirely. OS X doesn't phone home for authorization, so you can install completely and permanently without exchanging registration info with Apple.

Existing Mac users thinking of taking the leap can safely take ease of upgrades and installation for granted, after they burn their most critical data to DVD or an external hard drive. Migration Assistant, which you can invoke at install time or at your whim later, transfers your user data and applications from Tiger to Leopard after what amounts to a clean install. The Leopard installer will let you do an overlay install, which updates the system software and tries to leave everything else alone. It is impossible to automate all possible cases, but I can't imagine any user who could make Migration Assistant fail. Do be patient, though. Take measures to ensure that Migration Assistant runs uninterrupted, and understand that Migration Assistant's estimated time to completion is a wild guess. In my experience, it finishes sooner than expected.

As a taste of what's to come, I'll spend a few words on what I found to be the most substantial user interface enhancement: Spaces. Spaces gives you multiple virtual desktops, and you can switch among them via the keyboard, Dock or menu bar icon. It isn't fast user switching--all desktops are the same user--but it's more lightweight, and there's no need to enter a password when you switch desktops. The unexpected killer here is that Spaces lets you target specific applications to selected desktops. So, for example, you can arrange things so that Mail always opens in Spaces' second desktop, or you can set up separate developer and productivity desktops.

I'll go on from here through the weekend and into next week. I'm holed up in a hotel doing nothing but Leoparding. To tide you over until my next hands-on dispatch, you'll find one Apple exec's selected Leopard high points in this interview, and my thoughts on Leopard from a technologist's perspective are in my Leopard: A Beautiful Upgrade column. Hang out. You're welcome to the pull-out sofa, and you get used to the noise from the Xserve.

Yes, there will be screens and video. Many, many visuals.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 26, 2007 05:40 PM

October 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Leopard blows away expectations

As a counterpoint to the crushing disappointment that was Vista, which emerged with only a fraction of its promise intact, Apple's OS X Leopard (10.5) is everything that Steve Jobs said it would become when Apple first placed that first unsteady cub in developers' hands. Leopard is also a thick catalog of inventions and improvements that Steve flat neglected to mention -- so thick that Apple had to resort to running the equivalent of a software project change log on its site for marketing purposes. You can't chew through that list. I've had months to do it, and I'll hit high points. The ones I choose, not those highlighted by Apple. I'll be on Leopard constantly through the weekend and next week, so while I may be forced to speak to the familiar here and the Mac-curious there, I'll make sure that everyone gets what they need to make informed decisions.

What impresses me most about Leopard is that for its 300 changes since Tiger (OS X 10.4), the line item reading of which provokes a range of reactions from the head nod to the ear-to-ear grin, there is not one ounce of fat, no feature in Leopard that you'd opt to leave on the DVD the next time you install it. Instead, for all that's been added, Leopard remains trim enough to run on a PowerBook G4 with 512MB of RAM. The very same OS is a robust, Open Group certified 64-bit Unix when run on Intel Core 2 Duo and PowerPC G5 machines with no need to buy a special edition. One of Apple's marketing lines says that everyone gets the ultimate edition of Leopard because that's the only edition there is. I'd argue that if Microsoft's Vista product tagging is the basis for comparison, then all Leopard buyers get the 64-bit enterprise edition.

One concern that you can cross off your list is stability. I've spent several months working with Leopard as a developer and administrator. I began rolling it into production, against Apple's advice but not requiring its consent, at a point prior to its release when I judged it stable enough. I'd be pressing against the bounds of the non-disclosure to tell you when I felt Leopard hit its stride. Instead, I'll just say that there is no need to obey the standing advice to wait for the first boatload of fixes before buying in. That's true of Windows, and true of Linux, but not Leopard.

Existing Mac users thinking of taking the leap can safely take ease of upgrades and installation for granted after they burn their most critical data to DVD or an external hard drive. Migration Assistant, which you can invoke at install time or at your whim later, transfers your user data and applications from Tiger to Leopard after what amounts to a clean install. The Leopard installer will let you do an overlay install, which updates the system software and tries to leave everything else alone. It is impossible to automate all possible cases, but I can't imagine any user who could make Migration Assistant fail. Do be patient, though. Take measures to ensure that Migration Assistant runs uninterrupted, and understand that Migration Assistant's estimated time to completion is a wild guess. In my experience, it finishes sooner than expected.

Leopard drives as smoothly as Mac users expect, but for the first time in several years, Apple has used Leopard to challenge users to change the way they work. With so little time to button this initial story up and file it, I can only point to what I found to be the most substantial user interface enhancement: Spaces. This gives you multiple desktops, and you can switch among them via the keyboard, dock, or menu bar icon. It isn't fast user switching, but more lightweight. The unexpected killer here is that Spaces lets you target specific applications to selected desktops. So, for example, you can arrange things so that Mail always opens in Spaces' second desktop.

You'll find one Apple exec's selected Leopard high points in this interview, and my thoughts on Leopard from a technologist's perspective in my Leopard: A Beautiful Upgrade column. In the meantime, stay with me through the weekend and into next week as I keep building on Leopard coverage. As I said, you'll get it all, and I promise that you'll find a good deal here that won't be revealed anywhere else.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 26, 2007 05:34 PM

October 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Why Leopard matters, plus more ZFS details

I can't assume that subscribers and visitors to Enterprise Mac necessarily follow my Ahead of the Curve blog. Pointing you toward other Mac-related content I've created saves me the effort of paraphrasing it for use here.

My recent column, "OS X Leopard: A beautiful upgrade" highlights Leopard as a turning point for Apple, Mac users, UNIX and the market as a whole. It's worth a read even if you've already decided to pop for Leopard, and even worth reading if you're sure you'll never touch a Mac. Leopard is an exemplar of user-focused design that doesn't obscure the underlying power of the OS.

My last Ahead of the Curve is a higher-altitude look at ZFS, a "why ZFS?" counterpart to the two-minute ZFS primer I've already written in Enterprise Mac.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 24, 2007 12:51 PM

October 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

How to connect to remote X11 hosts from a Mac

In my previous two posts on the subject, I explained why you'd want to use X11 to drive a host remotely, and the basics of configuring your Mac to run OS X's X11 server and to use local X11 software. Now we get to the most important step, which, once you understand the whole X11 client/server thing, is a walk in the park.

In X11 parlance, the X11 server is the software that handles communications and renders client content. The X11.app that you run on your Mac is the server. X11 applications on remote hosts are clients. They reach out to your server to tap your display, keyboard and mouse, but with far lower networking and compute overhead than full-screen remote desktop sessions require.

The toughest thing about X11 used to be arranging for X11 clients to see your server. Reaching across LAN segments, or through NATs and firewalls, was no picnic without resorting to VPN. Fortunately, some creative melding of X11 and SSH, the secure shell, gave us this gem:

ssh -X hostname

When run from inside xterm on your Mac, this command creates a tunnel from the remote machine to your X server. You have to be able to access that machine via ssh, of course, which requires that you set up sshd (the SSH daemon) on the remote box and exchange credentials.

When ssh -X connects, it will ask for a password, just as regular ssh does. Once you get a shell prompt, do this:

echo $DISPLAY

The answer should come back "localhost:10.0" unless the remote machine has been configured differently. If DISPLAY is blank, you can set it:

export DISPLAY="localhost:10.0"

Now, whenever you run an X11-enabled app in that ssh session, the application runs on the remote machine and automatically opens its windows on your Mac. You may need to specify the path to your remote system's stash of X11 clients. For example,

export PATH=/usr/openwin/bin:$PATH

is required on Solaris machines.

Once the X11 apps are in your PATH, you can go snooping around. Everything compiled against GNOME and KDE is intrinsically X Window-enabled. If your remote machine has the GNOME desktop environment installed (it doesn't need to be running), try this in your ssh session:

nautilus &

That's GNOME's file manager.

gnome-system-monitor &

is useful, too, and Firefox runs nicely on X11.

When you're offline for periods of a few minutes, your SSH tunnel will be held open for you and reconnected as soon as your LAN interface comes back up. But if you're offline for too long, your session will expire and you'll get kicked back to your Mac's shell prompt. Just ssh -X again.

X11 is much faster and more efficient than VNC for remote access to GUI apps, and once you get it down the first time, it'll be second nature, even to connect two Macs.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 19, 2007 03:43 PM

October 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The impatient person's introduction to ZFS

You may have read that Apple is baking ZFS, Sun's Zettabyte File System, into Leopard. The flavor and extent of ZFS support in Leopard is an open question. ZFS, however, is very real and readily observable in its native habitat, Solaris, as well as in its equally capable open source counterpart, OpenSolaris.

At its foundation, ZFS looks and works like software RAID, and looking at ZFS from that familiar perspective makes it seem less intimidating.

Roughly drawn, here is software RAID:

1. Physical disks are combined to create a RAID logical volume
2. A logical volume is divided into partitions (or slices) of fixed size
3. Each partition or slice is formatted with a filesystem
4. Files live in filesystems

Conceptually, software RAID looks like this:

raid_logical_volume=RAID(disk1+disk2+disk3)

ZFS uses a similar construct, but calls it a pool:

zfs_pool=RAID(disk1+disk2+disk3)

On the Mac, to manage a logical volume you fire up Disk Utility and draw out partitions. In one step, Disk Utility creates the partition table, creates a blank filesystem in each partition and assigns each filesystem the name you gave the partition. Conceptually:

size(raid_logical_volume)=100 GB
raid_logical_volume/partition_1 size=10 GB, name="jampacks" # auto-mounts as "/Volumes/jampacks"
raid_logical_volume/partition_2 size=90 GB, name="projects" # auto-mounts as "/Volumes/projects"

With ZFS, you do the equivalent of logical voluming and partitioning from the command line, and the actual commands illustrate the concepts (the # is the shell prompt):

# zpool create ZFS_pool c1d0 c2d0 c3d0 # Just striped; no data protection by default
# zfs create ZFS_pool/jampacks # auto-mounts as /ZFS_pool/jampacks
# zfs create ZFS_pool/projects # auto-mounts as /ZFS_pool/projects

ZFS_pool is an arbitrarily chosen name. You can name a ZFS pool or filesystem whatever you like. Just two commands (zpool and zfs) run the whole show.

Highly distilled, ZFS has these properties:

1. Physical disks are grouped into ZFS pools, which are the rough equivalent of RAID volumes
2. Each pool can be split into any number of datasets, which work roughly like partitions or slices
3. Files live in datasets

Yes, it is that easy, and yes, I left out most of what makes ZFS so remarkable. It's a ploy to keep you coming back here.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 19, 2007 03:12 PM

October 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

From Steve Jobs: Third-party iPhone SDK in early '08

Steve Jobs just issued a letter in response to criticism of Apple's decision to keep iPhone closed to third-party developers. The full text of the letter can be found at Apple Hot News. What follows is my commentary on Jobs' text. I have not included his full letter, only the portions on which I chose to comment. Jobs' text is set off in italics.

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users.

iPhone crackers can quit gloating. This isn't their win. It's a response to customers and alignment of policy with the state of the mobile device market. iPhone can't reach consumers like me because show-stopper apps and functionality, like TeleNav turn-by-turn navigation and Java MIDP, will never work on the phone, but work on all other devices I'd carry.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc.

Agreed. Having an SDK without tight security is as inadvisable as having no SDK. I'm adamant on this point.

Mobile devices are constantly connected to the Internet, and like PC users, most wireless subscribers haven't the faintest idea how to respond to firewall pop-ups like "Grant application xxx access to the Internet?" All a hacker needs to do is give malware an important-sounding name like "cingular_update" to get 95 percent of phone users to let it run amok.

This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true.

Correct, but for balance's sake, let's say that cell phone users assume that the cellular network is safe and secure, and that operators cultivate that assumption because it's good for business.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer.

Requiring signed apps is cool with me as long as phone manufacturers don't turn software registration into a developer tax. Nokia grants free signatures to freeware authors, and developers can self-sign software for testing, but commercial signatures cost money.

Nokia also lets users disable application signature checking on their phones.

Prior to delivering an SDK, I'd be pleased if Apple initiated support for Java MIDP and Flash Lite, both of which are extremely secure environments for local applications.

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.

Very smart.

Thank you, Steve.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 17, 2007 04:10 PM

October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

News summary and interview: Apple to release Leopard in ten days

After a months-long delay that only seemed to provoke greater buzz and anticipation, Mac OS X Leopard and OS X Server Leopard will go on sale at 6:00 PM on October 26, 2007. Apple boasts 300 new features in its Leopard client OS, and 250 new features in its server operating environment. During a harried 15-minute briefing, Brian Croll, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Mac OS X, rattled off what he considers to be the high points in the client version of OS X Leopard:

A redesigned desktop with a consistent look across applications, and a semi-transparent menu bar to allow desktop backgrounds to show through.
A redesigned Dock, a row of icons for launching frequently-used applications, with a semi-transparent background and reflections under each icon.
Finder, OS X's counterpart to Windows' Explorer, has an updated Sidebar. The customizable collection of icons for frequently-accessed folders now locates and displays network files shared from PCs and Macs on the same LAN.
Finder has gotten an overall revamping to a more intuitive and modern look and feel. The new Finder borrows its appearance and behavior from iTunes, Apple's media player and content purchasing interface, including an iTunes feature called Cover Flow that lets you flip through images and other viewable content like pages in an album. "It's really fun and useful to browse content on the PCs and Macs on your network using Cover Flow," said Croll.
Most viewable content types, such as images and PDF and Word documents, can be viewed with Finder's integrated Quick Look without launching an additional application.
To-do lists synchronize with both Mail and iCal, OS X Leopard's bundled e-mail and calendar/scheduling clients. Croll said, "We've noticed that people send reminders to themselves in e-mail."
Leopard's Mail application implements Data Detectors, which scan e-mail messages for phone numbers, e-mail addresses and street addresses. These can be added to Leopard's Address Book, located in Google Maps or copied into iCal.
iChat, Apple's bundled instant messaging client, takes on a host of new features in Leopard, including special effects from OS X's Photo Booth Web cam snapshot app (iSight Web cameras are standard in Intel-based Mac client systems). Leopard's iChat also supports the live playback of images, audio and video during a live chat, and users can share their screens for remote viewing or remote control.
Croll also pointed to several new facilities for OS X Leopard Developers: Core Animation automates smooth 2-D animation with simulated 3-D paths and transforms; Xcode 3.0 is a rich integrated development environment for programs written in C, C++. Objective-C and other languages; Xray, adapted from Sun's DTrace, lets developers monitor and profile applications while they execute without the hassle of a debugger.

Croll described "reasonable system requirements" for Leopard that reach well into Apple's legacy PowerPC platforms. Any Macintosh with a 32-bit PowerPC G4 CPU running at 867 MHz or higher can run Leopard, as can all Macs with 64-bit PowerPC G5. All Intel Macs support Leopard, and Croll said that the minimum memory requirement for all architectures is 512 MB. An optical drive capable of reading DVD media is also required.

Croll laid out the plan for upgrading recent buyers of Mac systems from Apple's currently shipping operating system, OS X Tiger, to Leopard. Apple is giving Mac buyers, including those who purchased Apple's Xserve rack server, a free copy of Leopard (for a handling fee of $9.95) provided that they purchased their systems after October 1, 2007. Customers purchasing new Mac or Xserve systems after October 26 will receive Leopard either pre-installed on their systems or as a DVD inside the box.

Boxed copies of OS X Leopard client and Server will be priced at $129 and $999, respectively. A family pack with five client licenses of OS X Leopard will sell for $199. Apple's Web site for Leopard can be found at http://www.apple.com/macosx.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 16, 2007 07:21 AM

October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

LEOPARD SERVER SHIPS 10/26 (press release)

Apple Announces Mac OS X Server Leopard

CUPERTINO, Calif., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Apple(R) today
announced that Mac OS(R) X Server version 10.5 Leopard will go on sale on
Friday, October 26, at the same time as Mac OS X Leopard. Leopard Server
extends Apple's legendary ease of use, making it even easier to take advantage
of the benefits of a server, and introduces Podcast Producer, the ideal way to
automatically publish podcasts to iTunes(R) or the web. Leopard Server packs
more than 250 new features including Wiki Server, allowing people to
collaboratively create and modify their shared web sites with just a few
clicks; and iCal(R) Server, the world's first commercial CalDAV standard-based
calendar server.
"Leopard Server is the best release of Mac OS X Server yet, bringing more
great innovations, like Podcast Producer, Wiki Server and iCal Server," said
Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.
"With new setup features that have a server up and running within minutes and
no client access licenses, Leopard Server is the ideal alternative to
complicated and expensive server offerings for small and large businesses."
Leopard Server presents new features for effortless setup, management and
monitoring of systems on the network. Server Assistant configures server
applications, network settings such as IP addresses and DNS configurations and
user accounts with just a few clicks. Server Preferences simplifies management
of users, groups and key server applications, and a Server Status Dashboard
widget remotely monitors activity and usage. Leopard Server also eliminates
the need to manually set up Leopard clients by automatically configuring
client applications, including file sharing, Mail, iChat(R), iCal, Address
Book and VPN from user information stored on the server.
Podcast Producer is the easiest way for anyone to record content,
automatically upload it to the server and convert it into a podcast optimized
for playback on almost any device, including a High Definition TV, iPod(R),
Apple TV(TM) or multimedia-enabled cell phone.
With Wiki Server, anyone can easily create and edit collaborative web
pages, called wikis, with a few clicks of a mouse. Wiki Server has 20
Apple-designed web page themes and provides a complete revision history to
make it easy to restore previous entries and merge or compare different
versions. Wiki Server can automatically notify users whenever a change is
made, keeping them up-to-date on the latest information, and users can tag
keywords to find content quickly.
It's easy to share calendars, schedule meetings and coordinate events
within a workgroup, school, small business or large corporation using iCal
Server. iCal Server is the first open, standards-based calendar server that
works with popular calendar programs which support the new CalDAV standard and
does not require client access licenses, so businesses can add users freely as
they expand at no additional cost.
Leopard Server is fully UNIX compliant and its core services, including
Apache 2, MySQL 5, Postfix, Podcast Producer and QuickTime(R) Streaming
Server, are 64-bit, allowing users to work with larger data sets and take full
advantage of the performance and processing power of their 64-bit hardware.
Since Leopard Server is fully 32-bit compatible, users can run 32-bit and
64-bit applications natively side-by-side.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard will be available on October 26 at
Apple's retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested
retail price of $499 (US) for a 10-client edition and $999 (US) for an
unlimited-client edition. An unlimited client license of Leopard Server is
included with Apple's powerful Xserve(R) rack-mount server hardware at no
extra charge. Online pre-orders can be made through the Apple Store(R)
(http://www.apple.com) starting today and current subscribers to the Apple
Maintenance Program will receive Leopard Server as part of their service
agreement. Volume and maintenance pricing is available from Apple. The
standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who
purchased a qualifying new Xserve system from Apple or an Apple Authorized
Reseller on or after October 1, 2007 for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95
(US). Leopard Server can run on any Macintosh(R) computer with an Intel,
PowerPC G5, or G4 (867 Mhz or faster) processor, a minimum 1GB of RAM and at
least 20GB of available disk space.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple
II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh.
Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its
award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional
applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its
iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered
the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 16, 2007 06:02 AM

October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

LEOPARD SHIPS 10/26 (press release)

Apple to Ship Mac OS X Leopard on October 26

CUPERTINO, California—October 16, 2007—Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X Leopard will go on sale Friday, October 26 at 6:00 p.m. at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders. Leopard is packed with more than 300 new features and introduces a brand new desktop with Stacks, a new way to easily access files from the Dock; a redesigned Finder that lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to instantly see files without opening an application; Spaces, an intuitive new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and Time Machine, an effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac®.

“Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we’ve ever released,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “And everyone gets the ‘Ultimate’ version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just $129.”

Leopard’s new desktop includes the redesigned 3D Dock with Stacks, a new way to organize files for quick and easy access with just one click. Leopard automatically places web, email and other downloads in a Downloads stack to maintain a clutter-free desktop, and users can instantly fan the contents of this and other Stacks into an elegant arc right from the Dock. Users can also create their own Stacks for quick access to folders, documents or applications. Leopard’s gorgeous new look extends to all applications, with every window on the desktop offering a consistent design theme and active windows outlined by deeper shadows that make them stand out.

The updated Finder includes Cover Flow® and a new sidebar with a dramatically simplified way to search for, browse and copy content from any PC or Mac on a local network. Content on any computer on a local network can now be searched using Spotlight™, browsed using Cover Flow or copied across the network with a simple drag and drop. .Mac members can use the new Back to My Mac feature to browse and access files on their remote Macs over the Internet.

Quick Look is the fastest and easiest way for users to look inside files without launching them or even having the application that created them. With Quick Look, users can instantly view full-screen, high-resolution files of virtually anything, even media files, from any view in the Finder.

Spaces gives users a powerful new way to organize their work by creating customized desktops which can contain only those applications or documents needed for each project, with the ability to quickly switch between Spaces with the mouse or keyboard.

Time Machine lets users easily back up all of the data on their Mac, find lost files and even restore all of the software on their Mac. With just a one-click setup, Time Machine automatically keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on the Mac.* In the event a file is lost, users can search back through time to find deleted files, applications, photos and other digital media and then instantly restore the file. If it’s ever necessary, Leopard can also easily restore an entire system from the Time Machine data on an external drive.

Mail has been updated in Leopard and features more than 30 stationery designs and layouts that look great on a Windows PC or Mac so users can easily send stylish, personalized emails with beautiful graphics and photos. Notes and To Dos help users stay organized by acting just like emails that can be easily created, saved as drafts, synced across multiple Macs and stored in Smart Mailboxes. Data detectors automatically sense phone numbers, addresses and events so they can be added to Address Book or iCal® with just a few clicks, and users can keep up-to-date by getting the latest news and blog feeds delivered directly to the their mailboxes with a built-in RSS reader.

iChat®, the easiest-to-use video conferencing application on any personal computer, offers even richer video chats in Leopard with iChat Theater, which makes it easy to show photos, presentations, videos or files in a video conference; screen sharing which lets users remotely view and operate another Mac; and Photo Booth® effects for fun distortions and video backdrops that can instantly make users appear to be anywhere they choose.

Other new features in Leopard include:

improved Parental Controls, aiding parents in managing their kids’ online activities with automatic identification of unsuitable content before allowing website access, plus time limits and activity logs that can be accessed from any Mac on a home network;
the complete Boot Camp® release, previously available only as a beta, making it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs;**
Web Clip, bringing anything that a user wants from a web page to Dashboard as a live widget;
new Photo Booth features, helping users create animated iChat buddy icons or fun effects and backdrops with still or video images;
an enhanced Dictionary with Wikipedia built in, allowing users to access up to date information on virtually any subject in a snap;
a newly updated iCal with multi-user calendaring based on the new CalDAV standard; and
an updated version of Front Row, making it even easier to play music or watch movies, TV shows and photos on a Mac using the ultra-simple Apple Remote.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard will be available on October 26 at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US) for a single user license, and online pre-orders can be made through Apple's online store (www.apple.com) starting today. The Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack is a single-household, five-user license that will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 (US). Volume and maintenance pricing is available from Apple. The standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after October 1, 2007 for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 (US). Leopard requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and is designed to run on any Macintosh® computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (867 Mhz or faster) processor. Full system requirements can be found at www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs.

* Requires an additional hard drive sold separately.
** Copy of Windows XP or Vista required.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 16, 2007 05:52 AM

October 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone batteries, $30, buy now

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Exhibit A, "non manufacturer-approved battery vents with flame (battery biz term of art) in back of car." Note headrest in top picture.

Many thanks to batteryuniversity.com for showing that $80 is cheap for a new iPhone battery.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 12, 2007 12:59 PM

October 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Getting started with X11 on Mac

Now that you know what X11 is good for, it's time to play with it. First, launch /Applications/Utilities/X11.app. If this doesn't exist, install it from an OS X DVD.

If you give keyboard/mouse focus to any X11 window, you'll get X11.app's menu bar. X11 software puts menus inside client windows. It's the price of portability.

Unlocking the Mac's X11 applications and documentation
To get to OS X's standard set of X11 applications and man pages, you need to edit either ~/.profile or ~/.cshrc to alter your PATH and MANPATH environment variables. I use bash, so I added these lines to the bottom of ~/.profile:

export PATH=/usr/X11R6/bin:$PATH
export MANPATH=/usr/X11R6/man:$MANPATH
export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0

Without DISPLAY set properly, X11 won't function. if you run into trouble, this is the first thing to suspect. DISPLAY won't match the value shown above if you're attached to a remote system. I'll explain that in my next post.

Launching applications automatically when X11 starts
There's one more file you want to change or create: ~/.xinitrc. Here's where you put the commands you want to run every time X11.app starts. At a minimum, this should read:

quartz-wm &
xterm

As a rule, launch interactive X11 applications in the background, as with quartz-wm above. That's as true for the command line as it is for ~/.xinitrc. Let the last command in ~/.xinitrc run in the foreground. When that last application exits, X11.app will either quit or wait for you to launch a new client application. Other X11 servers may reset or log you out.

X11's workhorse, xterm
Now you're ready for your first X11 app, the one in which you'll likely spend most of your time. Open up an OS X Terminal window and type:

xterm &

xterm isn't much to look at, but it has tons of command-line options; see the man page. Learn to love xterm, because it's the only terminal you can count on across all X11 implementations.

If you can't pull up a context menu in an X11 app like xterm, it might be triggered by mouse button 3. You can map virtual mouse buttons in X11.app's preferences. You can also set shortcuts for frequently-used clients in X11.app's Application menu. And you can always launch a new xterm instance by typing "xterm &" in an xterm window. Remember, launch X11 clients in the background.

Everything you just learned about xterm applies to X11 clients in general. It's not rocket science.

In the next and final part of this series, you'll learn how easy it is to use X11 to connect to remote hosts. In the meantime, rummage around in /usr/X11R6/bin. Most of the commands there have man pages, and any local client can be launched from an xterm window.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 10, 2007 09:21 PM

October 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Why Mac users should love X11

If you're not pulling X Window apps down from Fink or DarwinPorts, you might never have noticed /Applications/Utilities/X11.app. Or perhaps you've noticed it, but consider it a throwback to the 90s, one evolutionary step beyond the green screen. Give it a fresh look, because it has many qualities that other remote GUI methods, like VNC and Apple Remote Desktop, lack. For some purposes, like software development, X11 can reduce your dependence on Parallels, VMware Fusion and Boot Camp.

X11 is an elegantly simple client/server GUI protocol that allows any X Window application to run in one place but use the keyboard, mouse and display of any system. Using an X Window app from the console or from a hotel delivers precisely the same experience.

200710101527

An application needs to be compiled to use X Window; it doesn't make arbitrary client sofware, like Aqua apps, remotable (I wish). But you'd be surprised by the range of X11-enabled applications that work seamlessly over remote links with their rich native GUIs: Firefox is a great example, as is openoffice.org, but any GNOME or KDE application is inherently remotable via X11, as are all command line apps.

X11 works like magic. Any command you launch in a remote terminal connection to a host pops up a new window on your desktop, complete with Aqua trim. Grab the title bar of any X11 application on your desktop and shake it; it updates in real-time. X11 has extensions for 3-D, smooth fonts, video and most all of the GUI features you'd want. Software runs over there with the compute speed and capacity of the remote host, but the GUI renders on your display at Aqua's native speed.

If your curiosity isn't piqued yet, consider these points:

Launching a remote X11 app like xterm, X11's command window, requires only a single command from your desktop
Authentication with a remote X11 host is secured and vastly simplified by an SSH tunnel
Complex GUI applications like Firefox, along with all GNOME and KDE applications, have intrinsic X11 support and can be run remotely, as can all command line software
X11 is transparently cross-platform. It's literally everywhere, and it's usually part of the standard OS distribution
No daemon is required on the remote side. Each application makes the connection
If a network link to a remote X11 app is lost, X11 reconnects automatically. That's nice for notebook sleep/wake. By default, the connection won't survive a reboot at either end, but there's a solution for that, too
Unlike VNC and Apple Remote Desktop, X11 doesn't resend the entire display, just the changes within each window. Common operations, like scrolling, are accelerated
X11 is faster than VNC and Remote Desktop, but it doesn't preclude their use

Is X11 sounding better now? Hang in, because in part two, I'll tell you how to use it. You'll be surprised by how easy it is.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 10, 2007 01:25 PM

October 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple acknowledges iMac graphics glitch; my suggested workarounds

Lynn Fox, Apple's Director of Mac PR, rang yesterday to deliver the company's statement regarding a bug that is affecting some iMac users. According to Apple, a small number of iMac users have reported GUI lock-ups--the system keeps running, but the screen stops updating--that require rebooting the system. Apple isn't saying anything more about the cause than that it is related to graphics, and at present, it appears that rebooting is the only way to restore the iMac to a usable state. Apple apologizes to its customers for the inconvenience, and it will issue a fix as soon as possible, hopefully before the end of the month (this is meant to be reassuring? --TY). In the meantime, Apple is inviting customers that are affected by the bug to contact AppleCare for the latest status on workarounds and fixes.

That concludes what Ms. Fox shared with me, and it's all that Apple has to say on the matter until they issue another official statement. What follows are my personal thoughts on the subject.

If you're personally affected by the iMac bug, I empathize completely. "As soon as possible," much less "by the end of the month," is an eternity when you're waiting for a critical fix, but keep your perspective. This isn't the first time you've had to wait for something to get fixed. I have some suggestions to tide you over while you're waiting for Apple's definitive patch.

There are several techniques that I use to restart, or even operate headless Macs (Macs without monitors). These also work to do a clean shutdown when the MacBook Pro display fails to wake from sleep, so they should work if your iMac GUI freezes.

An ultra-clean reboot sequence, meaning one that doesn't lose any unsaved files, can usually be activated by tapping Power, then R, then Enter repeatedly, with a second or so between presses of Enter. This should cycle through open projects and documents and save them, giving them default names like "Untitled1" if they haven't already been saved at least once. You can usually locate files saved with default names by using File, Open Recent within the app.
Always leave Universal Access turned on (System Preferences, Universal Access). Command+F5 activates Voice Over, which guides you around applications. It's pretty amazing. With very little practice, you can literally drive the entire Mac interface with your eyes closed. Don't forget to turn your sound on.
Enable Remote Desktop (System Preferences, Sharing, check the "Apple Remote Desktop" box) on your iMac. You may be able to connect to your Mac GUI from another computer using Remote Desktop, Apple's commercial remote management tool, or a VNC client (like Chicken of the VNC on the Mac; there are many choices for Windows, UNIX and Linux). When you first check Apple Remote Desktop, you'll need to click the Access Privileges button, check the "VNC viewers may control screen with password" box, and enter a password. This one password will connect to your Mac no matter which user is logged in, or even when no user is logged in. Make sure you assign a password that's easy for you to remember but impossible for others to guess.

Universal Access and Remote Desktop need to be set up in advance. It's important to practice flying blind before you're actually forced to do it.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 5, 2007 07:29 AM

October 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Santa Rosa MacBook Pro review: The green and gold standard in high-end Intel notebooks

I got stung by my last MacBook Pro review which went to press before the unit started showing problems with build quality and durability. I would not have pronounced it so with confidence any sooner than this, but I can state now that today's MacBook Pro stands head and shoulders above Apple's prior flagship Intel notebooks, and sets a standard for performance, features, durability, eco-responsibility and quality that any PC vendor will find difficult to approach for a similar price.

The Santa Rosa MacBook Pro (named for the Intel Core 2 Duo chipset used in the notebook), perhaps also known as the LED backlit MacBook Pro, has earned its stripes. If this notebook had a frequent flier account of its own, it would have racked up enough travel miles in my carry-on bag to qualify for Gold status. I figure that this is a fitting milestone for writing this machine up, because by this point, most notebooks, including some from Apple, would be showing their age. This machine looks, feels and runs like it did when it came out of the box. Considering how sweet it was new, that's saying something.

Summary

Apple has transcended PC notebooks. The Santa Rosa MacBook Pro doesn't look or feel like any notebook you've ever driven, even if your present notebook is a Mac. It's built.

The aluminum case isn't just for style. It's armor in a meaningful way that practically begs to be used on a film set, on a seat-back table, on an international trip, in a photo studio, in a radiologist's lab, in an elite developer's lap or in the field for on-site news edits and Webcasts. The LCD panel doesn't show rainbows when you press on it from the front or the back. The magnetic lid latch and AC charger connector won't wear like spring and friction-fit alternatives do. The new LED backlight has wider extremes of dimness and brightness than common fluorescent panel backlights, and the glossy display is sharp and contrasty.

The keyboard is springy and the keys are firmly fastened; there's no hint of a clatter when you sweep your fingers across the keys. The trackpad is clearly redesigned to eliminate feedback from palms rested on either side. The display hinge holds firm in any position until you intentionally move it. With a higher memory capacity of 4 GB of RAM--I suggest that you take advantage of it, especially if an upgrade to Leopard is in your plans--making MacBook Pro your only computer is quite reasonable. When pricing next to a PC notebook, keep MacBook Pro's all-important discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) in mind. Integrated (chipset) graphics that use system memory for video RAM are ubiquitous almost everywhere but in MacBook Pro, but frankly, my dear, chipset graphics suck. Try smooth-scrolling a Web page that's jam-packed with Flash animation on a system with chipset graphics, and then do the same thing on a machine with a GPU, like MacBook Pro. Try doing anything in 3-D (OS X's awesome GUI is entirely 2-D, so it doesn't suffer) with chipset graphics. That kind of work will make any notebook run hot, but even when MacBook Pro heats up, it always keeps up. That's my standard.

There you have it: A true tale of "third time's the charm" producing a notebook that is the best that any non-tablet notebook vendor could create with Intel parts. You can read on for more details and insight, or stop here and know that the summary resulted from weeks of use in demanding production conditions. I am a MacBook Pro customer.

For those of you who prefer it short and sweet, this review has ended. Go in peace.

Screen time
Like another frequent flier of lore, MacBook Pro is practically perfect in every way. The LED-backlit display is more power efficient, although not as dramatically as I'd hoped, but is infinitely more eco-friendly. LEDs hit their configured color temperature and brightness immediately; there's no warm-up period. The LED backlight is radiant, paper white at its top brightness, and conference room friendly at minimum brightness. LED is simply a win over fluorescent all the way around.

This MacBook Pro has something else I've been bugging Apple about for a long time: A glossy display. I believe that gloss should be standard fare for LCD displays. Matte scatters light in both directions. It doesn't reflect, but it also blurs fine detail; a matte display, like a photograph viewed through matte-finish glass, never looks quite focused. The combination of white LEDs and a glossy surface give MacBook Pro's LCD panel the crispness, contrast and color purity that one associates with a perfectly-focused photograph. I can go on and on about the spectacular image quality for photography, video and graphics, but I'll touch on practical ergonomics instead. I often dialed back the resolution of the previous 15-inch Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro to compensate for eye fatigue after eight or ten hours straight at the keyboard. I haven't done that since switching to the glossy LED-backlit MacBook Pro. My eyes don't get tired because they're not constantly trying to fix focus on a subtly blurry display.

Put more concisely, the combination of the gloss and the Cinema Display-grade panel add up to two things I've never seen in an LCD: Black and white. Aperture on this display has reawakened my interest in product photography. I shoot for gloss, but with a matte notebook I waste a lot on preview prints. Now Aperture shows me exactly what a glossy print will deliver.

The LED backlight is brighter and darker than fluorescent. It's true white. If there is a downside to gloss, it's the lack of privacy. The display is viewable at any brightness and from any angle.

Build
I had bad luck with the build quality of two MacBook Pro models before this one, primarily related to the keyboard, trackpad and battery. The preceding MacBook Pro, Apple's first Core 2 Duo model, was most un-Apple-like in its construction, even the battery, arriving with problems and showing extraordinary signs of wear after no more hardship or usage than this MacBook Pro has endured. I'm pleased to report that the MacBook Pro that Apple is selling now is built tight.

Apple doesn't talk about the things it changes from model to model, but I'm an ergonomics wonk, and this keyboard and trackpad feel nothing like the two preceding MacBook Pro generations. The new keyboard is stiffer, requiring a much heavier touch, but the loose, misaligned keys of feather-touch MacBook Pros past have been replaced by a perfect grid of keys that support the full weight of your hands between keystrokes. The look of the keyboard hasn't changed a bit. The legends are still large and the backlighting is perfect, illuminating only the legends and not the rest of the key or the key bed. Keyboard backlighting is no gimmick. You realize that its ergonomic necessity once you have it, and I've seen no other notebook or add-on keyboard that gets it right.

The new trackpad fixes a problem I've found constant all the way back to the final two models of PowerBook. Resting your palm on either side of the trackpad used to result in spurious taps and pointer motion. Apple's goal of making the trackpad flush with the top surface has been abandoned, and you can now rest your palms anywhere you want.

I get a number of remarks from readers and gate lounge passersby that Mac notebook display hinges are too loose. Apple fixed that with the first MacBook Pro. It remains fixed, and so does the display until you intentionally move it.

Performance
No one on the planet can feel a 200 MHz difference in CPU clocked at over 2 GHz, so I wasn't floored by the goose from 2.2 to 2.4 GHz when I upgraded to Santa Rosa MacBook Pro. What I did feel, and quite dramatically, is a drop in performance for the loss of 1 GB of RAM. The previous MacBook Pro had 3 GB. My workload is rougher than average, but not atypical for power users. I discovered that for my usage patterns, 3 GB is the sweet spot for Macs. That's pretty much where Vista sits as well. If you walk away with nothing else, get at least 3 GB of RAM for your notebook.

What most people associate with computer performance is actually GUI performance, and that's where Apple has always excelled. MacBook Pro has a desktop-grade graphics processing unit (GPU), an NVidia GeForce 8600M GT with 256 MB of dedicated VRAM (video RAM). It's wickedly fast and unexpectedy power efficient. You cannot get MacBook Pro to drop a frame while playing HD video from disk. Final Cut Studio, which is extremely GPU-intensive, runs beautifully without pushing the CPU to its limits. Unique to OS X, as well as the applications written to use Apple's Acceleration Framework, is the offloading of selected non-graphics-related math to the GPU. NVidia is pursuing GPU as coprocessor technology on its own.

I did say practically perfect, and that brings up my single complaint with Santa Rosa MacBook Pro. Its power management skills are inferior to my own, which is to say that I can extend running time per charge manually to a far greater extent than MacBook Pro is able to do automatically.

The machine takes a long time to transition in and out of sleep mode, and it sometimes won't wake at all. Waking is an art for any Intel system. I've got a Toshiba tablet that wakes from sleep in one second flat and never fails, and a Fujitsu notebook that's catch-as-catch-can about it. This is the first MacBook Pro I've had trouble with, but then I've been through several OS X updates on this machine as well. Software? Hardware? I don't know, but what instabilities there are I'm sure that Apple can fix it in OS X or firmware.

Running time on battery is the last measure of notebook design excellence, and here, MacBook Pro turns in a top-tier performance compared to most PC notebooks. I judge the average running time, with a productivity workload and Wi-Fi turned off, to be right at four hours. With some careful pruning of unnecessary background processes, such that the CPU is effectively zero percent utilized between keystrokes, I can eke out five hours of typing and reading. MacBook Pro's power handling of its AirPort Extreme Wi-FI and Bluetooth wireless interfaces is poor enough that manually turning them completely off is a necessity for power conservation. Fortunately, with icons right on the menu bar, shutting down wireless is easy. Apple offers users no control over Wi-Fi transmission power or power saving modes other than an "enable interference robustness" checkbox.

The reach of AirPort Extreme, especially running in draft-n mode and paired with Apple's current AirPort Extreme base station, is exceptional. A problem that I was having early on with nearby base stations dropping in and out of sight was fixed by an automatic Software Update.

Coarse-grained power management that is largely dependent on direction from the OS is another trait common to Intel systems. I've documented the steps I take to extract five hours of battery life from a MacBook Pro. It isn't easy, but unlike Windows, the UNIX layer transparency of OS X gives users more control over CPU load. And it is entirely scriptable.

One last testament to Santa Rosa MacBook Pro's excellence is that short of tablet models, MacBook Pro is the best Windows carry-on I've got. If Dell made this machine, MacBook Pro would be that vendor's flagship Vista notebook. Power users who buy PC notebooks ought to look at MacBook Pro even if they're dead set against OS X because it runs Windows XP and Vista natively, with no compromises, and even with backlit keyboard, special hot keys, frame-mounted Web cam and gaming-grade GPU. I invite you to buy Santa Rosa MacBook Pro (get the optional 3 or 4 GB RAM), and get a copy of XP or Vista. Once you boot Windows the first time, your MacBook Pro can boot it by default. If you get into trouble, you can flip over to the OS X partition to diagnose it.

MacBook Pro is competitively priced even when the additional cost of Windows is factored in. No matter what software you run on it, MacBook Pro is a notebook that you'll take with you everywhere.

Posted by Tom Yager on October 1, 2007 09:33 PM

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