February 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Summary: Make sure you uninstall SideTrack 1.5 before doing a Tiger-to-Leopard upgrade.
Tolstoy:
I'm not the kind of guy that leaps on new operating systems before the shrink wrap has shrunk. I like to let others take the lumps of a .0 release before I subject my core laptops and workstations to the latest and greatest. Thus, I kept my 17" MacBook Pro on Tiger until this evening.
I probably would have stayed there for awhile longer if I hadn't picked up a MacBook Air. I've been using it daily since I got it, switching back to the 17" when I needed the screen space (heavy coding, lots of RDP connections, etc), and I found that several of the features in Leopard were too good to pass up, especially spaces and the spring-loaded dock folders. So I mounted an NFS share to my trusty Adaptec Snap 650 filer, and backed up all 140GB of data from my MacBook Pro. Feeling relatively safe, I dropped the Leopard DVD into the drive (making that the second time I've used the DVD drive in at least six months, maybe longer), and let the installer do its thing.
The system updated successfully and rebooted. Happy that things looked like they had gone well, I started to log in -- but had no keyboard. The trackpad worked fine, but the keyboard was as dead as a doornail. No capslock lights, nothing. Obviously, this was a big problem.
I grabbed the Air and checked some of the sites I'd seen a month or so ago discussing intermittent keyboard problems with MacBooks and MacBook Pros on Leopard. Apple had released a fix for 10.5.1, and I had nothing better to try, so I plugged in an external USB keyboard, logged in, and fired up Software Update. The 10.5.2 update came down along with a passel of other updates. The subsequent reboot... did nothing to fix the problem.
Of course, the Apple update (MacBook/MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1) was rolled into 10.5.2, so it wasn't that... and this is my main machine. My workstations are great when I need the dual 24" LCDs, but when I need to find a comfy chair and get some serious writing or coding done, I'll grab the 17" and never look back -- except that without a keyboard, it's obviously useless. I was worried.
Then I remembered that I'd installed SideTrack. SideTrack is a trackpad helper app from Raging Menace. I've used it for years to enable single-finger scrolling on Mac trackpads, along with a few other nice additions not provided with the standard Apple trackpad driver. There's currently a Leopard update for SideTrack, version 1.6, but I hadn't checked that before the upgrade. So, I did the uninstallation and the necessary reboot, and voila, all is now well.
So if you're using SideTrack 1.5 on an Tiger system, save yourself a headache and uninstall it before you do the upgrade. Now my only decision is whether or not to reinstall the Leopard-compatible version of SideTrack. I doubt it supports the newfangled touchpad on the Air, and switching scrolling reflexes from laptop to laptop will drive me nuts. Decisions, decisions.
Posted by Paul Venezia on February 15, 2008 08:52 PM
February 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)
So apparently my MacBook Air review has hit both sides of the spectrum. There are those that think it's one of the most balanced reviews yet, and those that think I'm a fanboy.
Nick Farrell's own definition of fanboy (posted in a comment on this blog) is "someone who disengages brain whenever they look at a product. Apple is largely dependant on peddling products to such types who refuse to see that the outfit can do any wrong." If that were the case, why would I write the sidebar on the migration issues at all? Why would I include the negative comments on the Air in the review, and score it below "Excellent"? I suppose that's berating the obvious, however. The fanboy sentiment cuts both ways though -- there are people like Nick that view everything from a particular company in a negative light, regardless of facts or merit.
These accusations come with the territory -- if you give a product a positive review, you're a shill for that product. If you review it negatively, you're a shill for the competitor. If this were actually the case, I'd be a rich man indeed.
I do think that Mac OS X is superior to other operating systems for a variety of reasons, from usability to security, and so on, but my main workstation runs Fedora Core 8, and my servers run FreeBSD or Linux. Most of my laptops are Macs because they give me a very functional native UNIX-based environment in a portable package, never crash, instantly wake up from suspend, and perform very well under load. I view time taken dealing with OS issues, viruses, malware, drivers, and so forth as time wasted, and I have precious little time to waste these days. The day that changes is the day I move to something better -- but there isn't anything better right now. That's why I run Mac laptops along with a few Dells running Linux.
I've seen some forums discussing the review, complete with folks running the numbers on the 50GB file transfer, claiming that I was getting only a few MB a second during the transfer. I was getting 10-11.5MB/s during actual file transfer (as I mentioned in the review), with the remaining time taken up with the other requirements of migration such as configuring user accounts, replicating settings, and whatever else is necessary to completely (and successfully) migrate one system's state to another. Raw transfer time was probably closer to three hours, and I'd transferred nearly 60GB of data when it was all said and done. I also find it odd that of everything I wrote, this sidebar has become the hotpoint. It's specifically about the migration assistant, which is a tool that I've found to be incredibly handy and a significant timesaver, but one that not everyone uses. In fact, it's only tangentially related to the Air. I do really wish that Apple had coded it to let you pick specific folders to transfer as part of transferring a user, but the thirty seconds it took me to do that manually was hardly a cause for concern.
The whole point of the review, sidebar, and my additional comments was to point out what the MacBook Air is, not what others seem to think it should be. Much like a comparison between a Ford F-250 and a BMW Z4 is relatively worthless, reviewing the Air in comparison to even a MacBook Pro is worthless -- they're two completely different products for different needs and markets. That's the whole idea.
If you want to view the Air as just another laptop, that's fine -- you're just missing the point.
Posted by Paul Venezia on February 13, 2008 10:15 AM
February 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)
It seems that Nick Farrell over at The Inquirer isn't so thrilled by my MacBook Air review. Actually, he doesn't really mention the review, opting instead to summarize the sidebar with additional commentary. To clarify a few of his points:
o- Yep, it took five hours to do the whole migration. The first 30 minutes were problematic, but the rest of the time was the two systems transferring 50GB of files via 100Mbit Ethernet without supervision.
o- The Air didn't crash -- the Migration Assistant application crashed.
o- I bought the Air myself.
o- "Fanboy" seems to be a favorite expression of someone who doesn't like to see positive comments about something they don't like. I gave the Air a "Very Good" rating, and it earned it. If it had integrated 3G and a realistic 5 hours of battery life, it might have made it to "Excellent".
o- Isn't it odd that although I'm apparently a "hack" trying to put positive spin on Apple's products, I decided to write an entire sidebar about a negative experience?
I suggest that Nick read the whole review as well as my blog comments. I'd be delighted to see him run that though his fun-house mirror.
UPDATE: Interesting. All the comments on the Inquirer post just disappeared right after I submitted one.
UPDATE: They're back, sans my comment. Curious.
Yet another UPDATE: I might suggest that anyone interested in this topic read the actual review, and my companion blog post, not just the sidebar. I wouldn't want anyone to be embarrassingly misinformed -- it's bad for the knees.
Posted by Paul Venezia on February 12, 2008 11:22 AM
February 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)
The MacBook Air finds its Nietzsche
Quite often, less really is more. One staple of computing in general is the perceived need for options. Painting yourself into a corner a lack of options with hardware or software is never a good thing, but there's a difference between that and trying to paint the room with a half-ton paintbrush.
It's no secret that Steve Jobs -- and by extension, Apple -- is very interested in pushing the design envelope. Going back a long way, except perhaps the dark years in the nineties, Apple has had a history of making big changes and taking big chances with their hardware. The Mac was really the first home computer to have integrated SCSI and a mouse. Apple computers were among the first to be produced without internal floppy drives. The Apple Newton was one of the first usable PDAs and even today enjoys a startling number of users. NeXT Computer, founded by Steve Jobs in 1985, is looked on as being way too far ahead of its' time, producing a line of UNIX-based workstations running the NextSTEP OS, an OS that is the precursor to Apple's OS X. Apple's OS X itself is a complete and total departure from Mac OS -- a move that helped reinvent Apple. The iPod, of course, was instrumental in building a whole new industry. There are more examples, some flops, some not, but they have a common theme: out with the old, in with the new, whether you're ready for it or not.
Apple's design theory seems to be "Rounded rectangles, white or silver, as few seams and ports as possible, as few cables as possible". If Apple designed a Swiss Army knife, it would look like an egg. Their products certainly are attractive, with clean lines and an overall minimalist approach. To get those clean lines, however, all those bulky ports and slots have to go. Quite honestly, I think Steve Jobs harbors a deep, personal resentment towards D-Sub connectors. That's the concept behind the MacBook Air.
In an age when you can still get a laptop with a parallel port, Apple has created a laptop with no legacy ports, even deleting FireWire from the specs. There's also no built-in optical drive. Many reacted to this with disdain, decrying the lack of an internal optical drive, fixed RAM, and limited ports as being too limited and artificially handicapping the system. I've come to realize that I don't think that's the case at all. When I thought about it, I don't really need any of those things on a daily basis, and when I do, it's rare. Perhaps desktops need lots of ports, but not laptops -- not any more. In a time when I can buy a 16GB USB2 flash drive for under $80, why would I bother to carry DVDs and CDs? If I don't use those, why do I need the drive? If I need to transfer files between systems, I can use wired or wireless Ethernet, or that USB flash drive.
I get the vast majority of my computer-based entertainment via the Internet. Music and movies, and other forms of entertainment are easy to download from iTunes, Amazon, or anywhere. Though there are subscription services like NetFlix that are PC-only, that will likely change sooner rather than later. Occasionally, I'll buy a DVD, or a CD at a vintage store, and encoding those to MP3 and MP4 is trivial using a desktop system. I then get the benefit of being able to play them anywhere, instantly. I simply get more bang for my buck with digital files, and there's no reason I'll ever go back to physical media.
I also get the vast majority of my applications from the Internet. I can't ever recall loading a CD or DVD into a Mac to install software other than an OS installation. Even when devices come with driver disks on CD, I generally download them from the manufacturer's website since the version will be newer and hopefully better. The first disc I've put into my MacBook Pro in probably six months was the Apple disc that contained the MacBook Air's CD/DVD sharing installer. I won't miss it on the Air. With Bluetooth, I won't really need more than one USB port either. If I do, there are 3" x 1" four-port USB hubs on the market for less than $15.
So as I use the Air and think on this, I gaze around my lab, noting all the random cables, connectors, components, and options. There are several PC laptops around, rife with colored ports, switches, slots, and buttons. It's a stark contrast to the lithe little laptop in front of me. It's the antithesis, and I think that's a good thing. 
Posted by Paul Venezia on February 10, 2008 08:43 PM
February 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Once in awhile, I reflect on some of the tools that I use constantly, and the fact that there's an awful lot of unsung heros out there. Last night I started thinking about it and compiling a simple list of tools and some specific people that fit this bill. Here they are, in no particular order.
PHP
This one should be obvious. PHP has developed into an extremely strong, functional, stable, and fast Web development framework. If Perl makes easy things hard and hard things possible, PHP makes everything easy. I've even taken to writing backend scripts in PHP that would have been Perl not too long ago. A recent IMAP mailbox scanning, parsing, and spam blocking database interaction script springs to mind. It's around 30 lines of PHP and works like a charm.
MySQL
Again, another obvious entry here. Where would we be without MySQL? It's far more powerful and flexible than many DBAs will admit, and scales extremely well. Think Wikipedia.
phpMyAdmin
I don't know how many times I've used phpMyAdmin, or on how many servers I've installed it, but it's simply a phenomenal tool for working with MySQL.
Linux
'nuff said.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD (and NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc) are the unsung heros of the unsung heros. I operate several high-powered and heavily-loaded FreeBSD boxes, and it's a welcome change from the cult of Linux on occasion. It might not be as admin-friendly to the uninitiated, but once you grok it, there are features in FreeBSD that you wish your Linux boxes had.
DarwinPorts
For the past 7 years or so, I've been using Mac OS X, and never have I used the Fink package system. It just seemed, well, not quite right to me. Enter DarwinPorts. I use this all the time, and find it fast, flexible, and simple.
Larry Wall
I want to live on whatever planet Larry's from. It's hard to picture the world without Perl... and we wouldn't have Perl without Larry, that's for sure.
OpenSSL/OpenSSH
The deployed base of OpenSSL and OpenSSH is probably incalculable. From my cellphone to my TiVo, to my workstations, laptops, servers, across all operating systems and devices, there's OpenSSL and probably OpenSSH. It's become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe.
Bram Moolenaar and Vim
Another hidden hero, Bram Moolenaar (et al) is responsible for the best editor ever -- Vim. It's my mail reader on some boxes, obviously my editor of choice, and my IDE all rolled into one. I've been using Vim for years and years, and probably still only know and use 20% of the functions. I'm constantly using Vim reflexes in other editors (like Microsoft Word, or in ecto, which I'm using to write this post). If I can find Vim keybindings for an app, I'll use them. Firefox already supports several, such as the / search.
There are many, many more than those listed here, but these are the ones that topped my list last night while I reflected on this post, a few fingers of Lagavulin warming by belly and my brain. Have some more? Drop me a line.
Posted by Paul Venezia on February 8, 2008 12:57 PM
February 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Dear Apple, Never mind, someone already did
There are times that I need to get my hands dirty fixing problems all by myself, then telling everyone else how to do it. Then, there are times that I post a blog entry complaining about something or other, and the solution finds me. This, thankfully, is one of those times.
While I'm definitely an OS X guy for the moment (don't screw it up, Apple... please), I was relatively upset about the essentially useless X11 code in Leopard, and posted about it this morning. This afternoon, I received an email from Tevor Zylstra with a pointer to the Leopard and X11 blog, which contains links to the Xquartz Project. There, I found an unofficial X11 2.1.3 release that fixes all the bugs I've come across with Leopard's X11, from the window focus to the Option-click pasting. Huzzah!
Either I need to do more research or less -- I'm not sure which. All I know right now is that I'm a happy guy. Many, many thanks to Ben Byer and his group. Hopefully, 10.5.1 will incorporate this update and make it official.
Posted by Paul Venezia on February 7, 2008 11:07 PM
February 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Dear Apple, please fix X11. Again.
I'll admit -- I've been reticent to migrate my MacBook Pro to Leopard. The Tiger installation on that system has been stable and reliable, and I didn't want to visit any unnecessary demons on it if I could avoid it. However, I just received my MacBook Air that came with Leopard. This has given me a few more reasons not to upgrade, unfortunately. The biggest issue is X11.
Tiger's version of X11 was cranky right out of the box, with X11 windows not gaining focus when Command-Tabbing to it, and middle clicks to paste the clipboard buffer don't work, and a few other inconsistencies. After a few months, an update was released that fixed these problems. It seems that the Leopard version of X11 again suffers from a nearly identical set of problems. The version included with Leopard is v2.0, where the version running on my Tiger MacBook Pro is v1.1.3 -- and it seems that I may need to downgrade to Tiger's version to resolve these issues, though obviously, I'd rather not do that.
The vast majority of Leopard users will never know about, nor need X11, but there's a large contingent of deep geeks that use Mac OS X and X11 constantly -- and this is the audience that greatly influences purchasing decisions made by others. It's certainly in Apple's best interests to fix these problems, especially since we've been down this road before. So please, Apple, please fix Leopard's X11. Pretty please? With sugar on top?
Posted by Paul Venezia on February 7, 2008 08:59 AM
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