EEE 1201N Updates – New BIOS & Hackintosh info
There is a new BIOS up for the 1201N - version 321 (previous released was 318). The description on the site only says "Update brightness table." so it dosen't sound to exciting.
Meanwhile, in the Hackintosh area, the 1201N has finally gotten it's own official thread over at Insanely Mac- 209533. There is now a bit more information up front about the state of OSX on the 1201N. Not much changes, no networking at all unless you swap out the WiFi PCie card.
EEE PC 1201N vs Macbook Air
I've been trying to use the 1201N as my daily machine, at least in place of my Macbook Air. There are several advantages the 1201N has over the Air, and several disadvantages
Pros
- 4GB of RAM
- Plenty of disk space
- Smaller size
Cons
- No wifi after sleep, or sometimes after disconnecting from network
- Short Battery life
- Can run Omnigraffle
- Funky trackpad
The biggest issue with the Air is the the measly 80GB hard drive, it just isn't enough space. Upgrading it in this 1st gen Air is not financially feasible, as the HD costs as much as the 1201N itself. Not having Omnigraffle is forcing me to go back to the Mac for that one app. So far OpenOffice has been great at editing the various file I'm forced to deal with at work.
Droid Maker – free ebook
I stumbled across and amazing free ebook recently- DroidMaker (the link takes you to the authors blog, where he's release the PDFs). The story is an amazingly detailed history of the formation of Lucasfilm and the evolution of what became Pixar. I done some 3D modeling and rendering in the past (using Lightwave) and it's amazing to realize that these guys literally had to invent and write this stuff as they went along.
I was initially trying to convert the PDF to an ebook for reading on the iPhone, but found that nothing will convert a PDF nicely-- but that is for another post. What I did find is that the MacAir itself is a really nice ebook reader if you rotate the PDF to the right using Preview, and then hold the Air open on your lap like a book. It's small, light and thin enough that it really makes a great reader.
Leopard as NFS Server
It's way way easy to make your mac running Leopard into a NFS Server. Check your firewall settings.
MacBook Pro – new trackpad
Just used the new MBP for about 4 hours. The new new 'all one big button' trackpad is really annoying. I had my thumb down at the bottom of the 'pad trying to click a button that just isn't there anymore. Having to remember to click the entire pad is just really.... weird. Too weird. Other than that, the machine is amazing. Incredibly fast and quick, and the screen is very, very nice.
Leopard and iDisk syncing
Upgrading to Leopard 10.5.2 fixed many sync issues with iDisk, however, is stopped syncing all together on my ibook. This ars article has some good tips on fixing sync issues w/ iDisk.
Awesome image editor for MacOSX: Imagewell
I've been in search of a quick, simple and modern image editor for the Mac. For far too long I've been dragging around Photoshop 7, simply because I know I can use it to quickly do what I want. But what I need to do is limited. I want to resize and scale photos, add text (watermarks) to them and maybe overlay one or two. Maybe take a PDF and rasterize it to a thumbnail. I deal a lot with screenshots and adding hi-lights to them is about the most complicated task I ever need to do.
I've looked at the Gimp for OSX and recently Acorn (which seems totally alien to me- couldn't get it to do the most basic things) and have been frustrated, till today. Banging away at google I hit upon Imagewell. The people at XtraLean put this app out, and it is exactly what I was looking for (and it works fine in Leopard). It has a crazy price (free for basic stuff- and what it does for free is amazing) and is only $20 bucks to unlock the more advanced features.
It easily passed my acid test- I was able to download it without a bunch of questions and i could use it right away. I pulled in a PDF and was able to quickly resize it to the size I needed and save it out as a png. Very easy and intutive. Intrigued, I went back to their site and looked around the Forums and stumbled across their concise and short screen casts, which quickly illustrate the cool things you can do with this app. I think I'll buy this one and can leave Photoshop 7 to finally wither away.
MySQL Python driver building (breaking?) on 10.5
Trying to get my mysql environment setup on 10.5 I ran head-long into the mysql python 1.22 drivers breaking with xcode 3.
from _mysql.c:40: /usr/include/sys/types.h:92: error: duplicate ‘unsigned’ /usr/include/sys/types.h:92: error: two or more data types in declaration specifiers error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1
The fixed is coved over at the Ingels 3.0. fairly simple fix, but due to my complete lack of c programming skils, one that I couldn't have come up with on my own. But edit a few lines and it complies fine. Thanks Ingles.
Lepoard Firewall – not your ipfw anymore
Browsing the net I came across a great site that answered some questions I had about the new firewall in Leopard. Using it now on the company macbook, and it's nice. Having the 4 gigs of ram helps also. My poor macbook was pushed to the limit with just 2. The site is worth checking out- there are lots of good Mac tibits.
New Apple USB Keyboard
I've been dreaming of having a USB keyboard that uses the keys in my Macbook. I've been in total love with the keyboard on the MacBook since it came out and I picked one up a few weeks later. The keyboards on MacBookPros feel like crap. The current Mac USB keyboards are also near useless- their gentle slope hurts my hands after a few days of use. Soon however, my dreams may be reality as pictures of the new Apple keyboards are leaking all over the net, and they are definitely MacBook-based. The MacBook keyboard looks like an old 1980's chicklet keyboard, however, it has the best spacing and feedback of any keyboard I've ever used.
See Apple Keyboards Compared to Old Keyboards at circa1978.com.
Newton ARM Emulation Goes Open Source
At the 2007 Worldwide Newton Conference in Tokyo on July 8th, Paul Guyot announced that his most excellent Newton Emulator for ARM, Einstein, was now open source and available immediately on Google Code. His announcement to the NewtonTalk mailing list is worth the read. One improvement that sounds enticing:
"the heavy work done these past weeks allowed me to design a new experimental module where NewtonOS instructions are executed natively on ARM PDAs. "
There have been other improvements to Einstein since last year- the biggest (to me) is the ability to cross-compile and build Einstein on your Mac while targeting the Nokia 770. No more waiting for binaries to be released. The 800 was tested and the binary didn't run-- ITOS2007 has some different libraries (from ITOS 2005 and 2006), which probably caused issues. I'm attempting to roll a build for my 770 this weekend. We'll see how it goes.
Here are my screen shots of my 770 from the release of Einstein last year.
Also announced was the release of Driver Labo, the wifi drivers for Newton by Hiroshi Noguchi. AFAIK, these are the only available drivers in the world that support WEP on the Newton. I had purchased licenses back when they were available, but since 2005 Hiroshi hadn't ever responded to requests and pleas to accept payment for new licenses. As a result many Newtons can't participate in locked-down Wifi networks. The release of these drivers as Open Source is a welcome event.
There is an overview of the WWNC '07 with some pictures of course.
iSync, Razr V3m, and Sprint: Part 2
Word around was that Apple introduced a new version of iSync with 10.4.9, and with it the promise of direct OSX support of the V3m. And Apple did add support for the V3m model to iSync, but they didn't add support for the Sprint version! It still wouldn't pair correctly with a fresh install of 10.4.9 and my razr.
Luckily however, Clockskew has been keeping pace with his excellent iSync plugins. He has recently introduced a forum, where he stashes his latest downloads for his plugins as well and support for them. The forums help, I'm sure, as individual emails to CS don't benefit other users.
I had some issues with his earlier plugin (my post here) but this one seems to work OK, with some reservations. It won't work when you choose (in iSync) to erase device and sync, which is what I wanted, as I don't trust that it won't just dupe a whole bunch of contacts in my Addressbook. iSync started to clear the existing contacts from my phone, but but quit claiming it couldn't delete them. Upon looking at my phone it had deleted all contacts save one, and thought it may be that one sticking up the works. However, when I manually deleted that, iSync still wouldn't complete the erase and move on to the merge, until I manually changed the 'on first sync' option in iSync to just merge data on device and the Mac. Which wasn't an issue now since all the contacts on the phone had been deleted.
I have yet to try the calendar syncing, since I keep most of my important calendar items on Entourage. I still have to enable the Entourage/Addressbook, iCal syncing that Entourage has introduced.
macworld 2007 Keynote
http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jan/j47d52oo/m_8848125_350_ref.mov
Sprint Razr V3m and iSync
I ordered a Razr V3m from Sprint last week since the krzr looks to be too fat, and the razr has a larger screen. The phone is nice but one of the most important features I've been lusting after is the ability to sync my contacts over using iSync and USB. All the Moto phones use USB, and have thankfully left the the old proprietary connectors behind. One problem- the Mac and iSync seem to know nothing about the V3m Razr.
These sites however, have fixes. Clockskew has nice phone plug-in available for download, that worked fine for me, until I updated the Sprint Software on the V3m. Then it stopped working (allthough the author seems to have it working with the latest Sprint firmware on his Razr....). Luckily the strange site Whopack (which seems to exist only to impart this exact bit of knowledge) has another working solution. Follow the steps at Whopack and you to can easily sync your contacts back and forth from the V3m and iSync.
And one other issue- why won't an ordinary mini-usb cable charge this phone? Now I have to drag around the adapter that came with the Razr.
MacBook update- fixed in less than 24 hours
That was fast- The Apple store called me back on Sunday night and said the MacBook was ready for pickup. I got it Monday evening and so far its been ok- but of course I don't expect anything to happen for at least a month or so. It does seem to be running cooler, according to CoreDuoTemp (which is now 1.0 btw) but that could also be 10.4.8.
They replaced the keyboard, trackpad an the upper casing again, as it had already started to get dirty, I suppose I will just have to live with it getting darker this time.
MacBook: RSS – Random Shutdown Syndrome
My Macbook suffered from RSS over a month and a half ago. After taking it into the nearest Apple Store, I had to wait about four days to get the MB and heat-sink repaired. It went to the depo and was shipped back to me. About two weeks ago it began shutting down again. It's so hard to use a laptop that randomly shuts-down.
Back to the Ardmore, PA Apple store. This time however the Geniuses seemed to know about the problem and said they could fix it in house. I dropped it off Saturday at about noon and I got a call Sunday at 6pm- they had already fixed it and it was ready for pickup.
While I was at the Apple store I got a Mini to replace my single-cpu G5 PPC, which has been nearly unusable since I got my MacBook. The G5 will turn into more of a file-server and backup, the Mini is cool and very quiet. I had to go get 2G Ram and 160G hard-drive, but the cost is still comparable to a stock white MacBook. And no RSS.
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Liliputing News
- Samsung Galaxy Tab news roundup September 2, 2010 Brad Linder
- Hands on with the Samsung NF210 September 2, 2010 Brad Linder
- Toshiba introduces super-fast SDHC UHS-I flash cards September 2, 2010 Brad Linder
- Camangi unveils two new Android tablets September 2, 2010 Lee
- Genesi launches the Efika MX ARM-based netbook for $349 September 2, 2010 Brad Linder
