I’ve been looking for a better way to do my Windows dev work at home for a while now.  I’ve explored a few different options including VMs and Mono, none of which suited the needs that I have.

I’m not someone who has to have the latest & greatest computers to get my stuff done. The things I use my computer for don’t require a whole lot of horsepower. Truth be told, the newest computer in the whole house is my three-year-old Macbook. So when it came to deciding which of the three machines in my house were going to get the Windows 7 treatment it wasn’t hard to decide.

Apple has said that they won’t be providing official support for Windows 7 on any of their machines for another few weeks, and when they do it’ll be on a limited subset of their Intel-based machines, and only for customers who’ve shelled out the extra $30 for Snow Leopard. Admittedly I’m not an expert in computer hardware, but I’ve been around the block enough times to know that “not officially supported” doesn’t mean “it won’t work”.

The first thing I tried to do was just clear some disk space and run the boot-camp wizard to set up a partition for Windows. Once again I ran into the problem of OS X not being able to reorganize the files on disk to create a contiguous partition. This doesn’t usually pose a problem with computers that have a disk defragmenting tool but of course OS X has some redimentary defrag technology built-in and thus the notion that “Mac’s don’t need to be defragged”. I call shenanigans.

Once I resigned myself to the fact that the only way I was getting back to the nirvana of dual booting was going to be to re-image the Macbook again, I backed up the system, procured a copy of Snow Leopard and got started with the process. Reinstalling OS X was about the same as with Leopard. A couple of new options but nothing earth shattering. The Windows 7 installation on the was also nothing special. Smooth and straightforward as we’d expect out of any modern OS, but it did move fairly quickly.

If you happen to be reading this before you do your installs there’s one useful piece of information in the 14 page document that Apple says you need to read before trying the scary installation of Windows on your Mac. That would be that the drivers for Windows are located on your Snow Leopard install disk. I spent about 3 hours trying to find drivers.

Even though Apple says Windows 7 isn’t supported, the included drivers on the Snow Leopard disk (intended for use with Vista) work just fine.  Windows also reports that some drivers fail to install properly, but in my case there’s nothing overtly wrong. Network, audio, video keyboards & mice are all working as expected with the exception of multitouch functionality on the trackpad. Since I’ll be using the Windows side of the machine most often when connected to a full desk setup (KVM) I’m not too worried about it.

Marketing and Markets
Both Windows and Mac enthusiasts love to evangelize about their platform of choice.  It’s human nature, we all want people to know how smart we are for choosing the best of what’s available.

As is often the case with most of these “holy wars” the smaller market tends to be more vocal, and more likely to point out all the flaws in its larger competitor.  This is certainly the case with the Apple community.  From the endless stream of “Get a Mac” ads and their YouTube parody counterparts to news releases and security firms touting the reduced target area of not running Windows, those who have and love Macs are always there to tell you that the solution to every problem with MS Windows is to simply get a mac.

And it’s not like Microsoft hasn’t provided a great deal of ammo for the pundits to use in their PR-muskets.  From the troubled launch of Windows Vista to the sad state of what is the Zune to the rather pathetic I’m a PC ad campaign Apple has certainly made up ground on the Redmond-based software giant.  Since 2001, Apple has nearly tripled their market share.  That’s a very significant jump for any company.  But let’s be realistic about what that really means.  The Mac maker has raised its market share from about 3.5% to somewhere around the 10% mark.  Even with Apple’s huge growth over the past 8 years, nine out of every 10 computers sold is running a version of Microsoft Windows.

As a result, Microsoft for their part shrugs off the attacks of the all things “i” maker, often ignoring the marketing onslaught and focusing on its target market: the Enterprise.  Does anyone remember when Apple launched the 3G iPhone, App Store and support for Enterprise features on the iPhone?  Apple certainly hasn’t made great strides into the corporate handheld market, which is something the Microsoft does better, but that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry does extremely well — but that’s a topic for another post.  Microsoft and Apple both make products which can be used in the business markets.  But time after time, companies are continuing to choose the Microsoft platform over that of Apple, a huge percentage of the 90% that Microsoft controls in the operating systems space is thanks to the purchases of large companies.  If one were to examine only consumer purchases of computers, Apple would fare much better, probably somewhere around the 20% mark in parts of the world.

The consumer market is without question Apple’s strongest.  By developing a series of technologies and services that all work well together, it’s quite possible to change over your entire home to run on Apple technology.  From beautifully designed iMacs that can sit proudly in your living room, to powerful Mac Pros that can serve content for the entire household, to AppleTV which can sit atop your HD digital cable box and serve as an all-in-one media centre, to the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule backup consoles to manage your network and keep everything interconnected.  Add to that Apple’s iTunes and Mobile Me services and you’ve got an entire suite of hardware and software that talks to each other almost flawlessly, and really does make your day-to-day computing experience much smoother.  There’s only one catch, the Apple Tax.

The Apple Tax is what those outside the Apple community call the difference between the price of a Mac, and the price of the most closely aligned (in hardware specs at least) PC.  Often times the difference between a Mac and a PC comes in between 20% and 40%, with the Macs invariably being the more expensive machines.  PC enthusiasts will shame people for wasting their money on “pretty hardware” while the Mac community talks about security, ease of use and bundled software.  Over the past three years or so I’ve come to realize that the reason this debate won’t die is that they’re all right.

My Mac Experience

When I first picked up my Macbook one of the things that excited me about the experience was the new-ness of it.  This was a computing platform that I wasn’t particularly familiar with, and since I considered myself to be something of a technology afficionado I figured I should jump in and see what all the fuss was really about.

Within hours I had posted my first blog post and was happily exploring the features of OS X Tiger.  There were a few quirks of the Mac OS that drove (drive) me nuts but overall it was a pretty good experience.  Much more polished than other Windows alternatives (RedHat, Ubuntu, Fedora) that I’d looked at in the past.  One of the strongest points in the Mac’s favour early on was the Unix-style BSD-based terminal.  This is where, for me at least, some of the magic of OS X came into play.

I’ve always been a command-line geek.  There’s no question in my mind that computers function at their best when they don’t need to worry about drawing a “pretty picture” for us lazy humans.  Command-line applications (and for that matter services/daemons) run better, and more often than not, more reliably than applications with elegant user-interfaces.  Being able to explore the world of the UNIX/Linux command line on my shiny new Mac was indeed a revelation for me.  It even led to me porting the wget application to run on Mac OS X.  This wasn’t something that I’d ever consider trying to do for Windows, though it probably isn’t much more difficult.

As time moved forward I really enjoyed my MacBook. Adding new applications to the computer was as simple as downloading them from the Internet and in most cases dragging the application to the Applications folder.  In other cases I would need to double-click an .mpkg file to run the installer.

But I noticed after a while that all the software I’d been downloading for my Mac Lab Rat segments for the old version of the podcast had really cluttered up my system.  Thankfully OS X allows you to clean up all of that mess from the installations with just the drag of a mouse.  Yep, that’s right. To uninstall an application from OS X, you just need to drag it to the trash can.  That’s much simpler than un-installing programs on Windows, right?  Well, that’s not really the whole truth.

First off, you need to understand how a Mac stores applications.  Each application is stored in a package ending with a .app extension.  This is, in reality, just a folder that contains the majority of the files that the application uses.  Dragging “the application” to the trash is really just a way of deleting the application folder.  But with many applications this doesn’t delete the entire application footprint.

There are two folders where applications store the majority of their extra files and these are the /Library and the /Users/<username>/Library folders.  Apple’s own recording application GarageBand stores over 1.5GB of files in these library folders, removing the application using the Drag-and-Drop method will leave those files on your computer.

Malware & Baddies
There’s no question that anyone who buys a Mac today, or has bought one in the past 10 years has experienced but a fraction of a percentage of the malware, spyware, viruses and badness that Windows owners have to deal with on a regular basis.  Apple touts this fact when they promote their Macs as one would expect, and as they should. The lack of these problems on a Mac is a great reason to use the system.  Mac fanboys would have you believe that the Mac Operating System is fundamentally designed to be more secure. They talk about the fact that because you’re less likely to be infected by problems on a Mac, the Mac OS is orders of magnitude more secure than Windows.  But notice nowhere does it say that there are fewer vulnerabilities in OS X than in Windows.

The reality is that with Windows’ huge market share (remember the 90% number we talked about earlier?) they are the 10,000lb gorilla.  When your next biggest competitor makes up less than 10% of the market, it’s clear who will be the target. (For those in the business of building gorilla killin’ helicopters (malware), the real target is King Kong not Nim Chimpsky.)

If you’re writing malware of any kind, you’re typically doing it in one of two ways:

1. Target companies
2. Target the highest number of people possible

The majority of malware authors choose to go with option #2: cast a wide net and see how many fish you can catch.  If your net is set to catch Windows machines, the sheer math of it will get you more infected machines than if you were to target the much smaller Mac market.  That said, with success comes difficulty.  Mac users are starting to see pockets of activity targeting OS X.  Consider the Pwn to Own competitions that security companies have run for the past few years. Invariably, OS X has been compromised at each of them, and in most cases extremely quickly. Modern operating systems are all susceptible to exploits and security holes. Even linux systems are vulnerable to attacks, they simply have the benefit of a large number of people to quickly patch holes and a user community generally less susceptible to getting themselves infected.  OS X is not an invulnerable operating system.

Software – Included and Excluded

It’s often touted that the software included on Mac Systems helps to justify the increased price tag of purchasing these machines. It does help, to be sure. The quality of the included software is quite high, and allows you to manage photos, music & email, make videos, burn movies, and record audio.  What Apple doesn’t want you to know is that there are lots of applications out there for Windows too, some of which may even be bundled with your system when you buy it.  Consistency is Apple’s strongest point. They can use phrases like “iLife comes with every new Mac”.

I’ve used every application that comes with iLife at least once.  The most frequently used applications being iPhoto and GarageBand; unfortunately I’ve not been overly satisfied with either and the only reason I stuck with them is that they were for all intents and purposes free applications.  iPhoto in particular lacked a number of features, the most obvious of which is the ability to organize images into folder hierarchies.  This has been fixed in the latest version, but I don’t feel like paying $69 for something that free apps like Picasa can do for free.

GarageBand has worked out quite well for the most part, but does leave a few things to be desired.  The interface is excellent, making creating podcasts and other recorded audio quick and fairly intuitive.  It becomes obvious fairly quickly though that this product too is targeted at a consumer audience as there are a number of audio manipulation features missing including fine grain control over cutting and pasting audio, and the application crashes with my podcast files once it gets over an hour in length.

While the iLife suite is touted as being partial justification of the increased cost of the Macs, in many cases I’ve abandoned these applications in favour of free applications that I was able to download from the Internet.  I’m in the midst of replacing iPhoto with Picasa and GarageBand with Audacity (which admittedly is missing a bunch of features too, so I’ll probably have to use both).

Coming from a Windows world, I was accustomed to being able to find software online that did what I needed my computer to do, and the vast majority of the time not having to pay for it — and let me be clear, I’m talking SourceForge, not PirateBay.  What I found in coming to the Mac world is that commercial ISVs (independent software vendors) were far more common for home-use applications on the Mac than for Windows.  Translation: If you want it, be prepared to pay for it.  Third-party developers have done a great job of writing software that has a Mac look & feel.  Apple and Microsoft both publish guidelines on best practices for developing software for their respective platforms.  The ISVs that publish software for the Mac do a great job of creating a quality product the only catch of course being that you need to buy the apps.  There is open-source software available on the Mac, but as with the malware developers. the open-source community prefers to stick to platforms where they can get the most eyeballs on their product.

Getting Things Done
This is far and away the most subjective category in my review.  There is no question that I’ve been extremely productive with my MacBook over the past three years.  I’ve written hundreds of blog posts, contributed to my online forums, remotely managed software on my websites, handled email, instant messaging, twitter, virtualization and managed my online life.  The thing is, most of the time I’m not using a Mac specific application to do those tasks.  All of my Internet activity is done using FireFox rather than Apple’s own Safari browser.  The main reason for that is that I find Safari to be a bit clumsy to use, and above all else, I miss the ability to download tons of free plugins and extensions for the browser that make my online life better.

One task where the Mac has a leg up on Windows, conceptually at least, is the fact that it’s built-in command-line interface is based on BSD.  This means that all of the default tools for handling command-line operations in a Unix environment are already present, and the most important of those for me is SSH.  Native command-line support of SSH makes administering my web servers a more seamless task, and despite the fact that it’s command-line in nature, that may be the most Mac-like feature of my Macbook.  I can get this done on windows without much effort as well, but with the Mac, this truly was built-in from the get-go.

Re-Staging Systems
I’m hard on my computers.  I always have been.  Every system I’ve ever owned prior to my MacBook has been re-staged or re-imaged about once per year.  Sometimes this was for OS upgrades, sometimes because it had become slow and unusable, and sometimes because I wanted to try a major configuration change to make the computer more useful to me.  Something that really appealed to me about the Mac from those I’d spoken to prior to purchasing it was the idea that all of this would be gone once I got a mac.  Never would I need to do the dreaded “wipe and reload” operation that I’d become used to in Windows.  The reality is, I’ve re-staged my Macbook about the same number of times (if not more) than I had originally done on Windows.

1. Bought a new Mac
2. Over the course of the first 6-8 months, downloaded every piece of Mac software I could find. Un-installing them left me with a clutter of junk in the “Library folder” for the dozens and dozens of apps I had removed. To clear this up permanently, I re-staged the computer.
3. About 6 months later, I wanted to try out the pre-release version of Boot-Camp that came with OS X 10.4.  Unfortunately after the previous re-installation I had chosen a “case-sensitive” file system — this doesn’t work well with Boot Camp.  I re-staged the computer.
4. When OS X 10.5 came out, I felt somewhat duty-bound to pick up the new release on it’s first day of RTM.  To put this on, I followed my policy with all OS updates (and the advice I had found online) which is to always start clean. I re-staged the computer.
5. I decided a few months later that I wanted to try dual-booting my computer with Windows and OS X 10.5, unfortunately I had filled up my 80 GB hard drive so much that the OS X couldn’t create a decent boot partition.  I re-staged the computer.
6. Several months later I bought a new 320 GB hard drive and promptly proceeded to load it into my Mac.  Since the Boot-camp thing wasn’t really working out anyway I decided this would be a great time to get a fresh start.  I re-staged the computer.

Over the 32 months since I’ve owned the Macbook, I’ve re-staged the machine five times.  That’s about once every 6 months give-or-take.  That’s a bit more often than my Windows machines annual re-load, but I figure two of them were due to my unfamiliarity with the Mac OS.  So three times in three years, I call that a draw.

Conclusion – Will my next computer be a Mac?
After looking at my Mac experience objectively for a couple of months as I’ve written this article on and off, I’ve come to two undeniable truths about how the Mac fits in to my life.

1. The Mac is an outstanding computer, that does nearly everything that I’ve ever needed it to.
2. For me, it isn’t worth the 30-40% premium over a comparable Windows-based notebook.

I really do love my Macbook, and I’m going to find a way to keep it running and in active service until it simply becomes too expensive to maintain (read: need to replace the battery, or a system component out of warranty).  But I also know that my next machine, which will be a replacement for the desktops in my basement will most likely be an off-the-shelf PC.  The vast majority of what I do on my computer is done on the Internet.  The applications I use on my Mac every single day are Firefox, Thunderbird, MSN, TweetDeck, TextPad and the CLI SSH client.  All of those applications are available on every single computer that I’ve ever used.  So when I buy the next system, the only decision for me as far as operating systems go, will be whether I buy Windows, or install the latest LTS edition of Ubuntu.

I decided it was finally time to put a new larger hard drive in my Mac Book. The unit is nearly two years old and was still using its original 80 GB drive. I managed to find a good deal on a new 320 GB drive from my equipment provider of choice and set about to do my own bit of MacBook surgery.

This isn’t my first forray into a self-guided MacBook upgrade. About a year ago I doubled the RAM on my second-generation MacBook. Both of these upgrades proved quite straight forward.

The first task is to make sure that you have all the necessary gear. In this case you will need:

• 1 cluttered out-of-space MacBook
• 1 spanking new big hard drive
• 1 small Phillips screw driver
• 1 coin
• 1 very small hex screw driver – six-pointed star
• 1 Sheet of paper or cloth

Now that you have all the gear you need to make this happen, let’s get started.

Step 1: Turn the MacBook over so that the battery is facing up.  Place it on the paper or cloth to avoid scratching your baby.

Step 2: Place the coin in the battery release catch, and turn to release the battery

Step 3: Remove the battery and set it aside.

This is also a good opportunity to clean around the edge of the battery compartment, and the edge of the battery. Take care not to drop any debris into the battery compartment, or the “inner workings” of your macbook.

Step 4: Unscrew the ‘L’-shaped faceplate on the inside edge of the battery compartment. Remove it from the long side first, set it aside once it’s clear.

Step 5: Extract the tab from its position folded beneath the drive and pull gently to release the drive from the casing. Continue to pull until the drive is fully extracted and sitting in the battery cavity.

Step 6: Pull the drive out and remove the screws holding on the faceplate attached to the plastic tab. In my case I needed I needed to pick up a six-pointed star screw driver which I didn’t originally have. Thank goodness for extended hours at Wal-Mart.

Step 7: Transfer the plate to the new drive. Make sure to affix it so that the tab is placed away from the pins which will dock it with the computer.
==>

Step 8: Re-insert the new drive into the computer. Push gently to ensure that it’s correctly aligned with the computer, it won’t take much pressure to complete the connection. Tuck the tab back beneath the drive.

Step 9: Re-attach the ‘L’-shaped faceplate. Start with the short end near the hard drive and work it into place from left to right. You will need to tuck into place the two pads protecting the memory modules as you work across, I used my screw driver for this.

Step 10: Replace the battery and secure it with the coin.

Step 11: Reboot your system and enjoy the glorious new freedom of lots of new disk space.

At this point you have a couple of different options. If you put the old drive into an external FireWire enclosure, you can boot from it, and clone that disk onto the new drive. This will put everything on the new drive precisely where it was on the old one, with the exception of a ton of new space.

My preferred option is to opt for a clean re-install of the system. Despite what some Mac proponents will tell you, even OS X is prone to clutter and even performance problems after enough time. If you’ve got the time, a clean re-install will allow you to take everything you’ve learned up until now and use that knowledge to rebuild a better Mac install.

So if you’re feeling at all cramped, pick yourself up a new hard drive and try out this weekend DIY project.

New iPod Nanos — No surprise here, at all.  Announced today, shipping sometime between now and Christmas, a return to the slimmer, sleeker design of the iPod nano.  The screen is much larger than the Gen 1 and Gen 2 nanos, and the ipod is now oval shaped (read: won’t sit flat on a table).  It also comes in about a dozen different colours.

“New” iPod Touches — Though not receiving anywere near the revision that the nanos did, the iPod touch now sports new side-mounted volume controls and a small external speaker.  Both of these will make the App-store games much more fun to play.  I’m sad that they’ve chosen not to integrate a microphone (though the exclusion was one of my predictions), the external volume controls will be a very handy new feature.  I wonder how hard they had to convince Jobs to abandon his “no buttons” policy?

Apple & NBC Kiss & Make up — Again, not a big surprise, NBC is returning to the iTunes store.  All your favourite syndicated NBC crap will once again be available in iTunes.  Meh…

iTunes 8 — The next version of iTunes is out, and it sports a fancy new “genius” feature whereby Apple takes a look at your listening habits and makes recommendations.  It’ll also build playlists for you.

iPod Touch / iPhone Software 2.1 — A revision of the software for the two fanciest iThings to hopefully fix the bugs and constant crashing that have plagued the devices (even 1st Gen iPhones / iPod Touches) since the 2.0 and 2.0.1 releases.  I sure as hell hope it’s stable ’cause I’m planning to get a new iPod touch to replace the one that “disappeared” somewhere in the Minneapolis airport.

So there you have it.  5 things that actually did happen, to go along with the 5 that didn’t.

There’s been lots of ideas floated around, so I figured I should jump into the mix now before the news so I can call these predictions of things you definitely WON’T see

The iPod Touch with a built-in microphone and bluetooth — This would harshly cannibalize iPhone sales, particularly given the cost of iPhone data plans.

iTunes Music Subscriptions — People like to own their music. ’nuff said.

iPhone Revisions — Not a chance, with the 3G iPhone barely 3 months old, there’s no way that Apple can justify a revision already.  The backlash from iPhone early adopters last year will be a lesson.

The “MacBook Touch” — Even though a niche of Apple fans would love to see a Mac tablet to compete with all of the Windows based tablets out there, it just doesn’t make up a large enough piece of the overall computer market for Apple to try to carve out a piece.

Beatles Music in the iTunes Catalogue — Despite recent notions from some pundits that the Fab Four’s music will be part of the “Let’s Rock” announcement, there have been far too many false alarms for this to be the case.  Besides, the music is being remastered right now and will probably go through some kind of digital release next year once that’s done.

So there you have it, the five things you definitely won’t see at the Let’s Rock announcement.  Now we can sit back and see what the all things “i” maker will announce later today.

The software included in the bundle is:

• ForkLift
• RapidWeaver
• Swift Publisher
• Marine Aquarium
• Xslimmer
• Memory Miner
• Yep
• XMind 2008 Pro
• iStabilize
• PulpMotion (still locked)

Full retail cost for the bundle is nearly $600.00, and the bundle will be going for about $50.00 USD until Tuesday.

So why, prey tell, would it be any different on the Mac?

Well, it isn’t.  At least not entirely.  When I bought Leopard last week, there were two software updates for me to do when I installed it… a mere 4 hours after its release!  2 updates in four hours?  That has to be some kind of record.

To enable the 2D Dock, open up a terminal window and enter the following two commands

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

To enable the 3D dock, open up a terminal window and enter the following two commands

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO; killall Dock

Thanks to Proton over at MacOSXHints.com for originally posting this tip!

So far I’m pretty impressed with the performance boost that I’ve gotten from the new OS.  I’ll be doing a longer post on my Leopard experience in the next couple of days.   But now… it’s time to get some shuteye. 

I called around to a few London Drugs locations today trying to sort out where I’d make my purchase, and to see how many copies each had. It seems like most LD locations only got 10 copies though several, like Brentwood where I finally went, had put in orders for many more.

I got to the store about 5:20, and managed to be the first copy of Leopard sold at the Brentwood location! (yay me! )

So here goes nothing. If for some reason I go missing, at least you’ll know why…

I was trying to figure out how I can streamline the process of getting myself back up to speed as quickly as possible.  Of course the obvious answer is to do an ‘upgrade’ installation of Leopard over top of my existing OS X 10.4.  But I’ve always been a bit anal when it comes to OS installations, I hate upgrades.  It means that all the crap you’ve got on your machine now will still be there, so I prefer to ‘wipe and reload’.

The Process

1. A few days before, I’ve done a full backup of the data which won’t change between now and ‘upgrade day’.  This includes my 26GB iPhoto Library.
2. Tonight I downloaded the installers for several of the applications I use most regularly.  These include:
   • Firefox
   • Thunderbird
   • Sunbird
   • VMWare Fusion
   • Aquamacs
   • Skype
   • Adium
   • SSHOpener
   • several others…
3. Tomorrow right before I head out to work, I’ll start the final data backup, making a second copy of my most critical data onto a network share (in case disaster strikes).
4. When I get home tomorrow, double check the backups to ensure everything’s kosher.
5. Insert the brand new Leopard disc and begin the install…
6. Once Leopard is set up, I’ll install all the applications that I have on disc, and in my downloads folder
7. Transfer the data back to the Macbook
8. Enjoy the newest commercial operating system in the world!  (for the next week until some fancy new Linux distro comes out…  :mrgreen: )

Now all I have to do is put this plan into action…

MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts) is a package manager for Mac OS X which can handle the installation, removal and updating of many tools. The vast majority of these are command-line programs. They run the spectrum from development tool like Subversion or Ruby on Rails, to network tools like bind or arpwatch.

Typical syntax for installing a MacPort is:

sudo port install some-application

A quick note about the Subversion install: you may need to ensure that your MacPorts install is up-to-date. I needed to run a “self update” of MacPorts before my subversion install would complete. See the transcript below to see what I mean…


titanium:~/Projects/WP-Plugins kdmurray$ su root

titanium:/Users/kdmurray/Projects/WP-Plugins root# port install subversion +tools


If you’re working with command-line tools on your Mac, and trying to compile linux tools from scratch, give MacPorts a shot. It will quite literally save you hours of time and frustration.

1. All the rebooting to switch OS’s would be annoying at best.
2. The partitioning magic that ships with BootCamp wouldn’t work. To use it, I would have had to wipe and reload OS X and Windows.
3. Couldn’t use BootCamp to boot from my brand spankin’ new external drive.

So the other options I was left with are Parallels and a new offering from VMWare called Fusion. Parallels has been around for a while and does a decent job of supporting Windows, and a few other OS’s as well (Linux, Solaris), but lacks 64-bit Windows support. Fusion also has similar support capabilities, but does come with some bugs as the product is still in a Beta cycle. What finally sold me on Fusion were three separate things:

1. VMWare’s support for virtually any operating system I could throw at it (including 64-bit versions of Windows)
2. VMWare’s website contains tons of pre-built “Virtual Appliances” which are self-contained operating system/application bundles which can be up and running within about a minute of the download completing.
3. Portability. VMWare has an application called VMWare Player which is available for both Windows and Linux which will allow me to port my virtual machine instances to other computers. Geek factor? Yes.

Screenshot of me installing Visual Studio 2005 on Vista in Fusion on my MacBook with the blog post in the background. For those of you interested, here’s the configuration I’ve got for this VMWare client:

• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition
• Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Edition
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• 1GB dedicated system memory
• 1 Virtual CPU (may switch to 2 for some operations (ie large compiles)

In getting everything setup there are already three unexpected features of VMWare Fusion that have impressed me. These are features that were either undocumented, or listed as missing in the last few reviews that I’ve read. The first thing that I noticed by accident is that the Command key opens the Start menu! For me, this is a major selling feature, I use keyboard shortcuts for literally everything. This feature is also missing from Microsoft’s own RDP client for OS X. The second is a bit more intriguing: when you resize the VMWare window, the resolution of the Windows Vista client is adjusted to match. No scrollbars. No distortion. Genius! Finally there is automatic drag-and-drop support for transferring files between my OS X installation and my Windows Vista installation. In fact, the two screenshots above were dropped into vista, stitched together, and then dropped back into OS X. Though it’s only been installed for a short time, I think that this VMWare environment will solve my mobile computing issues, allowing me to port a Windows installation with my Mac and live in both worlds.

If you have a file that isn’t automatically associated with a particular program, or you want to open it with a different app than usual, you can simply drag the file onto the app’s icon in the dock!

The reason I say this is unintuitive for Windows users is the infamous “You can’t drag an item onto a button on the task-bar” message. Well, I got over it and you will too!

The plugin is small, and installed without a hitch.  Within 3 minutes of my Google Search I was listening to the Canucks’ game on the Team 1040 streaming feed!

If you love your Canucks as much as I do, get Flip4Mac for your Mac today!

Members of the media are notorious for this. Reporting than an event will be televised at 7:00. Of course when you tune in at 7:00 to catch the hockey game or whatever, you get there just in time to watch the post-game highlights. Why? The game started at 4:00 for us west-coasters.

The latest incidence of this came tonight when I tried to download and install Parallels Desktop for my MacBook. When I requested an activation key (at 9:30 pm) I was given a key which had a license date starting on Feb 18th (which is still about two and a half hours from now!!) Because the server that generated the license was somewhere east of here (where it is already Feb 18th) it generated a code that the software won’t let me use for another two hours and nineteen minutes.

I will be sending a note to the Parallels support people with a link to this entry. Hopefully someone will take notice and in the future the software will generate a key which will take into account the large variety of time zones in this world. Surely a company that can make it possible to run Windows on the Macintosh can figure a way around a simple time zone issue.

While this won’t change the world, perhaps pointing out incidences of timezoneism will help to remediate the discrimination that all those of us on the west coast face on a daily basis.

The 360 degree scroll ball is interesting. It provides almost fluid motion in any direction and makes scrolling around large images or large (poorly designed ) webpages easy and intuitive.

The pseudo-multi-button feel is also interesting. The entire top shell can “click” down over the bottom plate and that acts as a button click. if you press down on one side or the other it will behave as a two button mouse, and pressing down on the scroll ball behaves like the typical centre click.

Finally, the bluetooth version of the mouse uses a laser sensor instead of the optical sensor.  This allows for more reactive tracking on those pesky polished wood (or glass, or metal or….) surfaces which have plagued optical mice for years.

Once I opened it up, I was impressed by a couple of additional features.  the bottom of the mouse has a slide-shut cover which protects the optical sensor when it’s not in use.  What some folks don’t realize is that it also disconnects the connection to the batteries so the mouse doesn’t drain power when it’s not in use.  This means that the two included lithium batteries (yes INCLUDED!) will last even longer.

All in all, I love it so far.  The toughest part for me is going to be getting used to using a mouse again, as I’ve been using the trackpad on my Dell and now the MacBook for the better part of the last three years… Ah well, as Shrek [wav] is so fond of saying: Change is good Donkey!

Most modern laptops (including all MacBook and MacBook Pro models) are equipped with a sensor which can detect sudden movements (SMS), and protect components like hard drives from damage. Well, since there’s a sensor, there must be a way to tie into it; and Ian Anthony has done just that.

And for those of you who don’t have a MacBook yet, this is just one more reason to get one.

Today I tried something new, I took it outside to work on the deck in the sunshine… All of a sudden I had glare everywhere! Admittedly LCD screens aren’t renowned for performing really well outdoors (remember the Palm m505 screen problems?) but the glare from the glossy screen doesn’t help. It’s not impossible, in fact I’m outside writing this post now. Just takes some getting used to with the glare distrac — oh sorry what was I writing? Oh yes… glare takes your eyes off what you’re working on.

All in all, with the amount of outdoor use the MacBook is likely to get, I think that the ultra-sharp glossy screen was still the right choice, just something to consider for anyone else looking into purchasing a laptop. Dustin’s review on notebookreview.com has some good screen information, particularly on the glossy vs. matte debate.

I look forward to exploring and experiencing new things in this strange new world that I’ve moved into. I would never have thought it would be so different… but it really is. This journey with me will undoubtedly bring me in contact with numerous members of the infamous Mac community. I have to say that among my macophile friends I was readily accepted and they seem to be enjoying the experience of one’s first Mac vicariously through me. Thanks guys! (you know who you are!!)