Archive for the 'The Daily Geek' category

The MacBook Pro and Leopard after one week

Mar 24 2008 Published by Ben Chong under The Daily Geek

I have been using a 2.4GHz Penryn-based 15″ MacBook Pro for slightly over a week. Previously, my computer was a 2.16GHz MacBook (May 2007 version) with a 13.3″ screen and prior to that, a 12″ last generation PowerBook.

How do I like the MacBook Pro so far?

Positives

The nice:

  • Large screen and resolution. With the 12″ PowerBook, it was hard to see the big picture on anything I was working on. The MacBook as a little better, but I still felt constraint by the vertical resolution. With the 1440×900 resolution of the MacBook Pro, I feel a little more liberated.
  • Disk space. I paid $43 more to get a 250GB hard drive instead of the standard 200GB (on the lowest end model). The MacBook had 160GB, which was also a build-to-order option at the time I bought it. This is probably psychological, but again, I feel more liberated in the sense that I did not have to check free space often. I spent the weekend working with Final Cut Express to process high definition video files and still had 80GB free. I would already have run out of space on the MacBook.

The “better than I thought”:

  • Weight. When you look at the specs, the MacBook Pro is only 0.4 lbs heavier than the MacBook. In practice, I do feel a little more downward tug on my bag, but not a lot more.
  • AC Adaptor size. The first MacBook Pros had a much larger AC adaptor than the MacBooks. The one I got with my MacBook Pro was only slightly larger although it had the same wattage (85W) as the older models.

The best thing about the MacBook Pro, in my opinion, is Leopard.

Okay, you are going to say that I could have bought Leopard for the MacBook and save myself a chunk of change. That’s true, but there’s nothing like having something installed from the factory. The good thing about Macs is that, unlike Windows PCs, you don’t get a lot of factory-installed junk and demo-ware that will actually slow down your brand new machine.

What I like about Leopard is Spaces. This is the old Unix X-Windows workspace concept. Think about Spaces as a multitude of virtual video monitors.

With Leopard, you can have up to 16 Spaces. Usually, that would have been a nightmare to deal with. Would you remember where you application is, after switching from one Space to another?

As usual, Apple has thought of everything. Pressing F8 will give you a birds eye view of all the Spaces and what’s in them.

Better still, you can force applications to open only in pre-defined Spaces.

For example, I have Parallels open only in Space #1. So when I want to access work email or work on Windows-based Microsoft Office applications, I go to Space #1. Space #2 is reserved for personal communications (Mac Mail, Yahoo! Instant Messenger, Skype etc). Space #3 is for Final Cut Express and iDVD for video editing work. Space #4 is for iTunes.

In this way, I am able to arrange my workspace such that there is no clutter or confusion. I can also leave all application windows open and at a glance, see everything I need to work on etc.

Leopard also provides user-configurable shortcuts to quickly switch between Spaces e.g. for times when your boss pops in when you are web surfing…

Spaces is still not quite perfect. Parallels, in particular, does funny things to it, especially when you use Parallels in Coherence mode: you keep getting switched back to the Space in which the Windows application is running. Sometimes OS X system or application dialog boxes get lost in all the Spaces and you have to go through each Space to look for them. This is especially when you are using a trialware software and it pops up a “do you want to register” dialog box when it starts up.

Negatives

What don’t I like about the MacBook Pro?

  • Heat. I have not dared to use the MacBook Pro on my lap yet. The bottom part of the machine does get a little hot. If the hard disk does a lot of churning, the left palm rest will get warm too.
  • The other thing I don’t like is the way to open the lid/LCD. This mechanism dates from the PowerPC days: you press a button to release the lid. Maybe, it’s habit, but I prefer the MacBook mechanism. With the MacBook Pro, I end up using my finger nail to press the button: not as elegant as I would like…
  • The MacBook Pro has a pair of light sensors that detects ambient lighting and dims the LCD/lights up the keyboard if necessary. The sensors are located under the speaker grills. The problem is that my hands tend to cover the speaker grills and so the screen darkens and keyboard backlight comes on at inopportune moments…

That is all the pluses and minuses so far. I think it has been money well spent. Well, at least until the credit card bill arrives…

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Virtualization and the freedom of choice (or geeking out at the computer center)

Mar 18 2008 Published by Ben Chong under The Daily Geek

UC Berkeley is the birthplace of BSD Unix, a variation of which formed the original foundation of Apple’s OS X operating system for the Macintosh (and now the iPhone).

So it was very strange to be talking to the girl at the service counter in the Haas School of Business computer center and be told that I could not connect to any of the printers from a Macintosh: the computer center only supported Windows. This was notwithstanding the fact that the Mac is one of the most popular student computers out there.

Fortunately, I was all ready for this answer. So I whipped out my MacBook (that was pre-MacBook Pro upgrade) and asked the girl:”So which Windows? XP or Vista?”  And my mouse cursor was hovering excitedly between the Windows Vista or XP icons on my desktop.

“I have both Vista and XP,” I insisted, to the bafflement of the girl who probably had never heard of virtualization.

XP or Vista?

When she was finally convinced that I could magically transform a pedestrian MacBook to a Windows PC, she gave me a flyer with full instructions on how to connect (via Windows) to one of the printers in the computer center.

That was certainly a liberating experience: thanks to virtualization, I was no longer limited by my choice of operating system.

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MacBook Pro: First Impressions

Mar 12 2008 Published by Ben Chong under The Daily Geek

I couldn’t help it. Seriously. It was either a refurbished previous-generation 2.4GHz MacBook Pro or a similar model on clearance.

In the end, my education discount won and I got this Penryn-based 2.4GHz 15″ MacBook Pro with a hard disk upgrade (250GB instead of 200GB). And it came with Leopard!

The one thing I have always liked about the Macs was the ease of transitioning to a new machine. When Apple was undergoing its darkest days pre-Jobs2 and early-Jobs2, the only going for it was the legion of fans who were upgrading from one generation of Macs to another.

So it is to be expected that this ease of upgrading is one of the best features of Mac ownership.

All you have to do is to connect your old Mac to the new Mac using a Firewire cable. Then power on the new Mac. When prompted to transfer data from the old Mac, power that on and hold the T key.

Transferring 80GB of data from my 2.16GHz MacBook took nearly two hours.

Yes. That was a long time without using a computer.

The one thing that really upset me was that the MacBook Pro was going to sleep during the transfer!!! So I could not go out to Starbucks for a coffee. Instead, I had to wait around and move the mouse once in awhile to keep the MacBook Pro awake.

The nice thing about the transfer process is that it brings over all the user accounts, user data/documents, user settings, applications, application settings, network settings, system settings etc etc.

When the transfer is done, you basically find your old environment on the new Mac.

The other problem I found was the major slowdown when using the new MacBook Pro for the first time. There are several reasons for this, including the need for Spotlight to index all the new stuff on the hard disk.

This, unfortunately, creates a bad first impression. When you fork out mucho $$$ for a new MacBook Pro, you have the expectation that you’ll be behind the steering wheel of a Ferrari. Instead, applications take forever to start up and usability ranges from sluggish to unusable.

Apple should have set it up such that Spotlight and all the other background tasks are spread out over a longer period of time. At the least, these tasks should be deferred to start at a later time. This would give the new owner a better first-use experience.

I also found out that some email settings were not transferred over e.g. SMTP server settings if you had different email accounts.

I upgraded the MacBook Pro to 4GB of RAM with a kit from ADATA in order to optimize my Parallels experience.  This was not to be! Parallels refused to start after the upgrade. It had run with the 2GB of RAM the MacBook Pro had shipped with. I ended up re-installing Parallels.

The other software  that had problems with the memory upgrade was Yahoo! Messenger. Again, I had to re-install.

Other than these few problems, my experience has been good. But I didn’t get a “wow” using the MacBook Pro compared to my MacBook. Maybe I’m jaded.

I like the larger screen. There is definitely more real estate for applications and stuff. I also found that I type better with the MacBook Pro keyboard than with the MacBook one: I made fewer mistakes etc.

Summary of Problems:

a. MacBook Pro going into sleep mode during transfer

b. Major slow down when first using the MacBook Pro

c. Not all email settings were transferred over

d. Parallels, Yahoo! Messenger had problems with 4GB upgrade

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Firefox 3 for the Mac is impressive

Mar 11 2008 Published by Ben Chong under The Daily Geek

We had Asa Dotzler from Mozilla come into class last night to look the presentations on how to spread Firefox virally.

I noticed that he was using a MacBook Pro and asked him if he found Firefox slower than Safari.

His response was: “Try out Firefox 3 Beta 4″.

I did the moment I got home and am blown away!

My main complaint about Firefox in the past was that it felt like a big fat chunk of code. It was slow to start up (compared to Safari) and just didn’t feel very smooth.

The new Firefox 3 starts up very very quickly (faster than Safari) and the user interface objects (buttons and icons) were very Mac-like.

I have just imported all my Safari bookmarks into Firefox and will use it over the next few days to see if it should become my default browser.

Asa did mention last night that the functional differences between the various browsers are getting fewer. For example, previously Google Docs would complain about a Safari browser. Recently, I found that Safari now works with Google Docs. So there is less of a rational for switching browsers at the functional, web page rendering level. Instead, market share expansion will probably come as a result of performance improvements and branding (being cool using Firefox vs being passe using IE).

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