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| QEMU on OS X |
| 11.29.04 (12:01 pm) [edit] |
My friend Peter started his Mac Journey recently, and one of a few first things he did, was to explore the UNIX-side of the OS X. He installed QEMU, a CPU emulator, via DarwinPorts. I haven't used DarwinPorts myself even though I had been thinking of giving it a try; I use Fink, though. Peter did mention that packages on DarwinPorts are generally newer than those on Fink. Will check this out later.
Here is the screenshot (click for larger version):
The screenshot shows QEMU on OS X, showing first boot after installation of Windows XP, Fedora Core 2, and Debian
Thanks Peter for the screenshot!
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| Incomplete U2 |
| 11.27.04 (8:55 am) [edit] |
One of the biggest things with Apple and iTunes Music Store (iTMS) recently, is the release of U2's new album, the shiny U2 iPod, and probably the most interesting of all, the Complete U2 digital box set, which suppose to have all albums, all tracks, including rare and unreleash ones.
The idea was fine, and I know that a lot of people would be crazy buying this one, and all of them. At least James Duncan Davidson did, and had successfully downloaded the entire thing. Read his blog here, at the time of writing this entry, the Complete U2 should be the topmost.
The more interesting one, however, is the story of the opposite:
The Incomplete U2
This one is written by my close friend, who is one of the die-hard U2 fans out there. The experience he had with iTMS this time is quite a bitter one. Moreover, Apple's customer supports, which usually do the good job supporting their customers .... sucks. They handle this very poorly, and sometime even idiotic. I wouldn't wish I will one day have this kind of experience. (I had it once with Sony tech support with my first Vaio).
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| Nov. 27 |
| 11.26.04 (11:29 am) [edit] |
I went to Tokyo yesterday, didn't have time to visit the black Friday, Nov. 26 which Apple store will offer some discount prices. I'm going to tokyo again today, and hopefully I will have time to visit it. Today, Nov. 27, is 1-year anniversary of Tokyo Apple Store, and they should have some celebrating event. It might worth checking. Hope I would finish things I have to do in Tokyo before the closing time (very unlikely that I will, though). I want to see the new iPods, iPod U2 anad iPod photo.
But, I will get the new iPod photo only if I could use it for presentation. That is, if I could nicely put my Keynote slides onto it, and I usually make slides full of animation from the visualization of my simulations. Recently, there is a little shareware app that seems to enable this. However, I'd rather wait for Keynote 2.0, which suppose to come out sooner or later. (It's Apple's product, so no-one knows when).
Leaving now.
[I ended up not being to go anyway, too fed up with many things happened during the day].
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| Website updated |
| 11.25.04 (11:47 pm) [edit] |
I updated my personal website, the first time in ages. I can't even remember when was the last time I updated it, but it should be months ago (a half year should be an nicer estimation).
Check it out: Rawitat Pulam's Website
Also, in case you haven't noticed, I changed the style of this blog to match that of my website. (I still couldn't change the font of the header, though. It seems to be forcing bold face font).
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| History of Modern Mac OS; HTML verion |
| 11.24.04 (9:56 am) [edit] |
As promised, the online (HTML) version of my latest article is now available.
History of Modern Mac Operating Systems: Mac OS 8, 9, and X. HTML version
Hosted by MacDD (macdd.com). My many thanks go to the webmaster, iconmacdd, for making a nice format layout from my rich text source, a nice (but missed a word) story banner, his willingness to host my articles and the upcoming ones as well, and above all, encouraging me to write more. I greatly appreciated his efforts and his works.
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| Feeling down somewhat |
| 11.23.04 (7:50 am) [edit] |
Don't even know how to start writing this entry.
I feel a bit down just now. Well, it's because of my previous entry, my upcoming article about Mac OS history. I finished it earlier tonight, and that was a good thing. The complete version is available for download at the same link as the previous entry.
What made me feel bad, wasn't that I had finished it, nor was it not well-received by people. Actually people like it, Mac users in Thailand, especially those who are working on publishing like it. They even asked me for using it in their magazine, which was fine with me. I didn't expect any payment, I'm working on a free book project anyway.
What made me feel bad then? Well, earlier I sent one of the a very very unfinished draft of only a portion of the entire article, and they already put *that* into the upcoming magazine!
Well, I know the they had the deadline to meet, but they could have contacted me earlier so I could finalize, double check, just the portion that would be in print. There're not so many people who will read the magazine in Thailand anyway, but knowing that doesn't make me feel much better.
Just see the pre-print version (well, it should be already in print by now), and, luckily, the portion that went to print didn't change much from the time I gave them that earlier draft. I would feel much worse if they had included the most changed portion ... which is, just the NeXT (yeah, I intended to write it this way ;-) portion of the article!
I feel a bit better now, knowing that my most feared thing didn't come true: the part I spent reasonably big amount of time writing and rewriting WASN'T in press this time! (it will be in the next issue, which I could give them the complete version by then).
The latest version of my article (final) can be downloaded here:
History of Modern Mac Operating Systems: Mac OS 8, 9, and X.
HTML version coming soon!
Note to Self: Next time you send any article which meant to be published in the magazine to people, put the big NOT FOR PUBLISHING (or BETA, or whatever) in front of it.
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| History of Modern Mac OS |
| 11.22.04 (7:04 pm) [edit] |
After a lot of works, fact collections, story writing, and etc, I had finished the first draft of my "History of Modern Mac Operating Systems: Mac OS 8, 9, and X", which planned to be one of the chapters in my up-coming (free) book, "History of Modern Personal Computing".
You can download the PDF here:
History of Modern Mac Operating Systems: Mac OS 8, 9, and X
Note, the whole thing is in Thai language.
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| Microsoft: IE still up to par with others (?!?!?) |
| 11.12.04 (9:18 pm) [edit] |
A ZDnet news article: Microsoft says Firefox 'not a threat to IE'. To quote the beginning part:
Internet Explorer (IE) is no less secure than any other browser and does not lack any important features, according to Microsoft.
Oh .... my god...
Everyday we keep hearing more and more about new spyware/virus. New articles and coverages about computer-hijacking malware, about sleepless popups, about everything that keep installing itself onto computers. Many other companies admit the threat, Dell even charge the price of $39 per incident for removal of those unneeded, annoying, or even dangerous malware.
Microsoft has to get back to reality soon. Otherwise in our life time we might be witnessing something that 5 years ago I wouldn't even think of: the fall of the Colossus of Redmond.
A long time ago, Gates said "640K should be enough for everyone" and look at what Microsoft is pushing into the market right now. The latest Windows XP upgrade (SP2) alone is more than a hundred MB already, and the whole installation of Windows take up GBs of harddrive space. Longhorn, whenever it comes up, won't be fitting into 640K space either. The world had moved, and Microsoft once again needs reality check.
Or, like saying several key features are not important to IE users; reality is not important to Microsoft.
In some technical sense, it might be true that IE itself is not much less secure than other browsers. However, what IE can do is the problem.
Microsoft designed IE so that it ties deeply to the operating system; Explorer is the portal to almost everything you do in Windows. Many ordinary Windows users can't even distinguish between Explorer and Windows. The other browsers, including ones that come with OS and made by the same company that made OS, like Apple's Safari are different.
Hence, all browsers have bugs, all browsers have security holes, maybe not less than IE. But, well, none of them has privillege to destroy the operating system so much like IE has been enjoying for so long. A single, small, hole in IE could be a threat to Windows. While some even bigger holes in other browsers might not.
I completely disagree, however, with the tab-browsing.
When I first experience the tab-browsing, a few years ago with the early version of Mozilla browser, I felt there's no going back. In many applications, I also welcome the tab-interface which optimizes the screen real estate. Even Microsoft thinks so; Visual Studio.NET has the tab-interface when editing several source code files, for instance.
Bottom line: Microsoft might need to defend one of its flagship and most important product; IE. While the browser war might not be that all-important, IE itself provides a platform for many things Microsoft; including several web services, which many companies had tied their products into. IE is more than a browser to Microsoft, so it's not surprise that Microsft will defend its current IE to death.
However, what Microsft needed badly right now, is to redesign IE so that its holes could affect the operating system less. I think the world still need IE, regardless of what the FOSS zealots might say. IE ships with Microsoft operating system, which many people still using. And for many people, they will never change from whatever that shipped with their computer. You can't just knock on every doorstep in the world and convert them to Firefox. They don't know the choices.
First thing first; MS need to accept reality.
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| FreeBSD 5.3 |
| 11.11.04 (6:40 am) [edit] |
A few days ago, FreeBSD had released the version 5.3, after a few RC (Release Candidate). Get your copy here, and see the release note here.
I just finished installing it and playing with it now. Will write more about it later.
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| iPod, iProprietary? |
| 11.10.04 (9:47 pm) [edit] |
A MacDailyNews article covering an article by Rick Ellis of Internet Broadcasting Systems (IBS) at WRAL.com.
To quote an interesting part of Ellis' article:
"No discussion of music players is complete without discussing the Apple iPod. Apple's MP3 player is trendy and has lots of accessories to choose from, and it tends to hold more music than most people could ever listen to in one lifetime. But it is also a more expensive, proprietary device," Ellis writes. "Choosing an iPod is similar to buying an Apple computer instead of a Windows computer. Either you can't live without them, or you think they're over-hyped and over-priced."
I was thinking of commenting on the proprietary issue here, which we constantly hear every now and then, from various source. However, MacDailyNews (MDN) already took on the issue in much the same way I was thinking to write it myself. So I will just quote theirs here:
In the interest of clarity, we must first point out that no iPod holds more music than most people could ever listen to in one lifetime, unless, of course their lifetime is shorter than 41.67 days (60 GB iPod Photo holds up to 15,000 4-minute songs, according to Apple. That's 60,000 minutes, or 1,000 hours, or 41.67 days). We understand Ellis was trying to illustrate iPod's tremendous storage capacity. We'll leave it to you to decide if he was trying to insinuate to his readers that buying an iPod would be overkill.
Now, for the more serious issue: what's "proprietary" about Apple's iPod that can play AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF, and Audible files vs., for example, a Dell DJ that can only play MP3, WMA, or WAV files? Which one is more compatible with more formats? AAC with Fairplay DRM files from Apple's iTunes Music Store are "proprietary," according to Ellis, but WMA files with Microsoft's DRM aren't?
I'd like to add that, MDN only took only one side of the story, however. It's quite different when it comes to online music store. No other MP3 players work with iTunes Music Store and iPod won't play WMA, that many other music stores are offering.
In this case, I'll take it simply that "more" means "less proprietary", for ordinary people (even though in reality and actuality, it's yet-another-proprietary format/DRM from another company).
However, looking at the marketshare and number of units already owned by people, and how the iTMS is doing, we will have to look a little bit deeper at what that more could possibly mean. Is it the "number of players available in the market and number of music store" or is it the "number of units owned by people and number of songs sold from the store"...
In the first case, iPod and iTunes are less, the second, they are more.
Again, I'd like to quote my favourite phrase from MDN's take here again (and bold-hightlighted some words):
Now, for the more serious issue: what's "proprietary" about Apple's iPod that can play AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF, and Audible files vs., for example, a Dell DJ that can only play MP3, WMA, or WAV files? Which one is more compatible with more formats? AAC with Fairplay DRM files from Apple's iTunes Music Store are "proprietary," according to Ellis, but WMA files with Microsoft's DRM aren't?
The answers to both questions are pretty clear to me. But you decide your own answers for yourself.
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| iPod movies? NO! it's Movies on iPod photo! |
| 11.09.04 (10:49 pm) [edit] |
Time to teach old dog (well, not so old .. just a few weeks) a new trick.
Engadget.com posted an article HOW-TO: Play "movies" on an iPod photo
The idea is simple, extracting each frame of the movies as sequence of individual images and the audio as MP3 (or AAC) format. Copy them both to iPod photo and view the slideshow with images from the movies and play the extracted MP3 audio as the background music.
That's automatic ...
But the tedious and difficult, and laborious part is ... in order to keep the image up with the audio, you have to scroll through the images yourself by keep, and constantly, rotating the iPod click-wheel.
Engadget also feature the video of this "movies slideshow" in action! Make sure you check it out, it's quite cool actually.
Anyway, I think the real issue that made Apple (Steve Jobs) not making the iPod video (or iPod movies) isn't the technical ones, but the legal ones. This is mentioned somewhere in some well-written article which I didn't keep the link to, otherwise I could have posted it here.
Nonetheless, this is cool.
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| iPod in Hotel rooms |
| 11.04.04 (7:18 pm) [edit] |
From CNET article:
Dream, a new Manhattan four-star, is one of the latest boutique hotels to offer guests the use of Apple's popular music gadget during their stay. The iPods come preloaded with as many as 2,000 songs and are available for each of the Dream's 200 rooms, said Dream spokesman Andy Patrizia.
The music players, available from the concierge, come with a special cable that plugs into the Bose speakers in each room, he said. The rooms also feature 37-inch plasma televisions, digital cable and 300-count Egyptian cotton sheets. The luxuries don't come cheap of course. The Dream's rates range from $275 to $575 a night. A 20GB iPod costs $299.
A few new business and service ideas are emerging thanks to the iPod phenomena.
This could possibly help Apple increase their iPod sells; when someone get the idea how it's like using the iPod, they might consider buying it. Also, this might help strengthen the iPod Halo Effect which could help sell more iMac too.
Undoubtably, apart from iPod's quality on its own (it's a great product), we see how media and presses could help making some cultural change/some phenomena with our own eyes right now.
iPod by itself is a great product and I love mine, my girlfriend loves hers, everyone I know loves his/hers as well. But I do seriously doubt that without all the iPod-praising articles and press release, and of course, continuing marketing from Apple itself, iPod will even come half this far.
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| Mac FAQ [Thai] |
| 11.04.04 (7:10 pm) [edit] |
I had uploaded new contents onto my Mac FAQ project. The aim of this project is to be the database of answers to the questions about Macintosh, iPod, and other relating Apple products, that are frequently asked.
No, I do not think there would be much of the troubleshooting, problem-solving, step-by-step guide for doing this or doing that in my FAQ site. I think it will be more like clearing up some well-misunderstood issues, like CPU clock speed, Mac OS X and previous, Mac and Graphics.
Hence, I do not aim to list many questions with short answers. On the contrary, there will be just a few questions with good explanation as the answer.
The link is here: Mac FAQ (in Thai)
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| New Tiger features |
| 11.02.04 (12:37 am) [edit] |
Haven't written any blog for a while, had been busy otherwise sick.
Read from AppleInsider, that the new, up-coming operating system from Apple Computer, Mac OS X 10.4: Tiger, has a lot of new, noticable features in the latest build.
Links to the articles:
There are some other features that didn't make the headline (yet mentioned in the articles), including screenshots are now saved as PNG not PDF as it is currently.
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