YiBi's Life|Live Log » os x Archives – YiBi’s Numb Log

When Is iMessage Coming To OS X?

yibi — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:59:44 +0000

iMessage has been out for a couple of weeks. It’s transparent, so I don’t really seeing any real impact yet. Don’t get me wrong. I know my SMS quota will intact by the end of the month.

Now, the next thing that I’m anticipating is iMessage coming to OS X. iMessage is instant messaging. It should and has to be on the desktop.

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Why iOS And Not Android?

yibi — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:24:53 +0000

Android Orphans

A friend posted this article on my Facebook wall.

http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support

This article talks about how the various generations of Android phones are left behind while newer phones get the latest Android.

I don’t to leave this open-ended and have people think that I’m an Apple fanboy. I’m a Linux admin and I have been using Linux on my office laptop for a very long time. So why iPhone and not Android phones?

Upgrade Woes

I have never owned an Android phone. The number 1 reason is that I dislike the customizations that the individual phone makers do to the OS. The implication is that certain models will be left behind in the upgrade process. We have been this in the Windows PDA phones in the past. Because of the difference in hardware, there’s tremendous effort for the phone makers to ensure that every single model runs the most current OS. So the easy way out is to leave them behind. I forecasted this since the very first version of Android and I have been proven right all these while.

Android vs iOS

So came the Nexus One. Google supported, plain vanilla Android. I was actually contemplating getting that but I chose the iPhone 3GS. Why? My choice was very much affected by my experience on the Mac.

While I still use Linux on my office laptop, I find myself doing most of my work on my Mac. I bought my first Macbook in 2007 and after using OS X, the impression was: It just works! No tinkering. No fiddling. I don’t getting into the situation where I need to solve the machine problem even before I get down to doing work. It’s a lot of time wasted.

Similarly on the iOS, a lot of things just work out of the box. One example was configuring of L2TP over IPSEC VPN on the iPhone. It takes less than 2 mins to get the iPhone setup and connected. 3 steps to get to the configuration screen, enter configuration details and we are done. My colleague tried it on their Android phone. The first phone took us close to 10 mins to figure out how to configure the connection. He later gave up his Samsung Galaxy for a new iPhone 4.

Now Google has announced that the Nexus One is not getting the latest OS. To fair, I haven’t read the details and I’m not sure what’s the rationale. But if you look at the chart, even the iPhone 3GS gets iOS 5. While some features are not available, the major key enhancement are made available to the 3GS user. They are not left behind.

I was thinking of getting the Nexus Galaxy actually after looking at the features of Android 4, but it looks like my next phone will still be a Apple phone after all.

Internet Recovery For Lion On 2007 Macbook

yibi — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 03:38:04 +0000

My Old Macbook

My 2007 Macbook has been sitting idling since I got my new Macbook Pro in September. The old Macbook has a 500GB hard disk and tons of junk inside, so I have been waiting for reinstall OS X from scratch.

Apple has this Internet Recovery feature now with Lion, where we can install Lion from scratch without the use of a DVD like the older OS X versions. Since the intention is to clean up the hard disk in my Macbook, I decided to have a go at Internet Recovery.

The Recovery

To start the recovery, press Command+R and boot up the system. The system will come to a screen with a few options to choose from.

My hard disk contains at existing OS, so I have to go to “Disk Utility” to erase the target partition. If it’s a new disk, just go direct to “Reinstall OS X Lion”.

The recovery procedure will connect to Apple and verify the validity of the machine. Apple ID is required, so I think the procedure validates if a purchase been made from the App Store. So, for those who did not get a copy of Lion from the App Store, I suspect the recovery will fail or you might be prompted to purchase Lion on the spot from the App Store. By the way, the recovery can be done over WiFi.

The recovery downloads the packages from the internet, so the internet connectivity is important. I’m subscribed to the the M1 Fibre Broadband at home, so I’m downloading at about 35Mbit/s. The package is 3.79Gb, so the download takes about 30mins.

Once the download is complete, my Macbook reboots and starts installing the OS. This takes another 20mins or so.

The Result

After 1 hour, I have a spanking clean OS X Lion on my 2007 Macbook. Thumbs up for Apple!

More About P2P TV On Mac OS X

yibi — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:43:02 +0000

After discovering the Linux version of PPS, I went on to the other P2P TV providers to check if they have client software for other OS besides Windows. So the next one I found was PPTV, which has a web based version for OS X. The prerequisite was to have Microsoft Silverlight installed. I was skeptical because of the high CPU issue when running Flash. And I was right. PPTV did work on OS X but the trouble is that Silverlight takes up too much CPU resource. My CPU temperature went up to about 80 degree celsius when streaming contents. Bad idea.

I guess I should just stick to my iPad. Just hope that the streaming apps support Airplay fully in iOS 5. Then I can continue to watch the contents on my TV via the Airplay. :)

Anyway for the folks who don’t mind the heat on your Mac, this is the link to PPTV - http://cool.pptv.com/

OS X Lion – Natural Scroll Again

yibi — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 04:09:59 +0000

A friend wrote a long piece on why he thinks Natural Scrolling in Lion is the way to go, complete with illustrations on his theory. I particularly like his analogy of pulling pieces of paper down to your lap and you eventually run out of space.

So, is it ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’? You decide!

http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/07/macos-lion-natural-scroll.html

Some Quick Notes On OS X Lion

yibi — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:36:43 +0000

I got on the Lion bandwagon this morning like all the other excite Apple fans. Prior to this, I did a backup with Time Machine. Can afford to lose anything except for my photos.

1. Downloading the 3.7Gb package was a breeze. I have a 20Mbps link that maxed out during the download. Apple did their content distribution as usual with Akamai, so I was able to download from a local server.

2. First boot was slow. I’m using a 2007 White Macbook with 4GB ram, so I was quite skeptical about the performance, so much that I’m ready to fallback to Snow Leopard if the speed is intolerable. The worry was unfounded. After the first boot, everything speed up subsequently, even faster than Snow Leopard. I’m amazed how Apple can do this, speeding up OLD machines with NEW OS update.

3. I don’t have multitouch, but I’m not left out totally from the new LaunchPad and Mission Control. Apple lets you configure Hot Corners from the Mission Control Preference. No need to even think about it. Apple had it all figured out for their customers.

Mission Control and Hot Corners

4. The full screen Chrome and Safari needs some getting used to, but it’s a nice feature.

5. Disk IO seems to be reduced. I can’t quantify it, but I can feel that applications are loaded faster if they have been opened before in the same session.

6. One last important thing before I end my post. After downloading the package from Mac App Store, you can actually hijack the installation package in DMG package format. This package can be written into DVD for installation without going through App Store. You can also copy the package right into the target machine and perform the installation. I’m not suggesting any form of piracy though. The main reason for me doing this is to save the downloading when I install on my other Mac. It’s just $29.90 USD. I would have paid for Windows in the past if they didn’t sell it at crazy prices. The instructions are here.

These are observations for the time being after 12 hours of use. Hope the information here is useful for people who are skeptical of upgrading.

Certificate Error When Building Your First IPhone App?

yibi — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:34:11 +0000

You probably ended up here while searching for the following error message in XCode when trying to build and run your first IPhone app :

Code Sign error: The identity ‘iPhone Developer’ doesn’t match any valid certificate/private key pair in the default keychain

Before you start googling and attempt to move certificates all over, or spend $99 USD getting the developer account check the following:

Make sure you are building and running for the simulator and not your IPhone device. This is rudimentary but easily missed.

I ran into this error upon compiling a test ‘Hello World’ app. So I’m pretty sure there are more people out there running into this error.

XCode defaults to building and running on the IPhone device, which is not possible until you have a developer’s account. Building and running on the IPhone requires the code to be signed before building, which results in the error that you have gotten.

I hope you have found this before going for the last resort of subscribing for the developer’s account. And if you already did, happy programming! Hope to see your app on the App Store soon!

Is your Mac ready for Snow Leopard?

yibi — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:56:49 +0000

Snow Leopard’s finally being released today. For those who are wondering what Snow Leopard is, get a Mac. You are welcome to join the cult following of Apple fans. And for the Apple fans, I’m sure all of your are waiting anxiously for that package to arrive.

Anyway, Lifehacker has some tips of preparing your Mac for upgrade to Snow Leopard. Read the tips here.

For Adium users on Mac

yibi — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:44:26 +0000

Adium users will find this amusing..I hope. Well, at least I found it amusing. It’s a cat imitating the tone for contacts going offline.

For non Adium OS X users, Adium is a multi-protocol IM client, where you can have MSN, Facebook, Google Talk and very soon, Twitter, all on a single client. Forget the rest of the IM clients, this is better, in my opinion of course.

Why run Linux on Mac?

yibi — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:13:08 +0000

Saw this advertisement for Mac in the Straits Times today. I wonder why they want to market the Mac as a machine that runs Linux.

I’m both a Mac and Linux user. (Long time Linux user and 1 yr old Mac convert). And in my opinion, I won’t want to buy a Macbook and run Linux. I bought Mac because of OS X. OS X is Unix based and has the GNU tools that I need for work and stuff. In a certain way using OS X is equivalent to using any of the *nix operating system. The sweet spot is Apple has a wonderful interface over BSD. It replaces 90% or more of the tools that I’m using on Linux, so why would I be interested in running Linux on a Mac? I don’t need to pay a premium to run Linux. I’m still running my Linux, but on my 800 bucks Acer laptop. It works.