09.16.07
Posted in Apple, Media, Tech
at 10 pm
So I got the $100 rebate from Apple for my iPhone and added that to a small monetary gift I got recently to purchase the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid which I had on my wish list for a while. The device receives HDTV signals and passes them to a Mac and works pretty well.
The one piece missing from the package is an antenna. A simple $20 antenna gets a good solid signal. Given the location of our TV, facing west out through our westward-facing windows out to the West Hills where the TV broadcast antennas are at, we could have gone with the even cheaper $10 model. Remember, in most cities, HDTV broadcasts use the UHF band, and any UHF antenna can be use. (There’s no need to get an HD-specific antenna so don’t over spend in this arena.)
The biggest problem with our setup is that the Mac Mini only has the base 512MB of RAM. Until an upgrade, a few of the highest quality channels stutter. KGW seems to be pushing out a full 1080p signal, which I think is overwhelming the RAM buffer. Whereas the KOIN and KATU feeds are at 720p and the Mini keeps up with them pretty well.
The reason I’m most interested in Over The Air (OTA) HDTV is that our analog cable signal gets horrible crosstalk and ghosting. With a lack of insulated coaxial wiring, local channels are bad to really bad. Now we can see them really in clear, sharp high quality. Next to getting Digital Cable, this is the best way to get these channels.
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07.16.07
Posted in Apple, Design, Tech
at 9 pm
“J stood in line for the Friday release and bought us each one. I am suffering from buyer’s remorse and sticker shock…mine is still in the box on my desk. I’m contemplating returning it even though I think it’s super cool. There are just so many things that I can think of to buy with the $600! Talk me into it,” -M
Well, for an old-skool Apple Fanboy like myself, there was a built-in draw to the device, but even beyond that, this goes much further into the realm of ‘tech from the future’ than any device that I’ve had the dubious pleasure of using. Palms, WinCE/PocketPC, Psions, Nokias, Sony Ericsson… You name it, I’ve probably used it and read about it and wondered “wow, if only…” about it.
The iPhone is perfect for me: I do a lot of mail checking and use the web for reference-checking. I’ve got a decent library of music (now with covers) so it’s nice to have a slice of that around. The Phone works just fine, though the $60/month is a bit nerve wracking. Also, I’m in a metro area with really decent coverage by AT&T’s cell service, and though Edge connections are slow, the WiFi makes up for it in the 90% of the time I’m at a place that I’ve set up WiFi: Home and Work.
Let’s put it this way: It’s the first cell phone worth criticizing, to paraphrase Alan Kay on the Macintosh.
Another thought: Apple’s iPhone commercials simply show the phone being used and demoed. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more realistic presentation of a product in television advertising.
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07.01.07
Posted in Apple, Tech
at 10 pm
Coolest purchase of the last few days? ThinkGeek :: Planisphere Watch: The Planisphere Watch displays the constellations visible in the Northern Hemisphere. Simply align the date and time (displayed on the edge of the bezel) and you can view the major constellations visible that evening.
It’s great! I’ve been looking for a new watch to ahve as an alternate to the solid blue Fossil watch that I’ve had for a few years. The band on the Planisphere is really sucky, (mine’s different than what they show at ThinkGeek) but I’m thinking I might be able to replace it with relative ease.
The dial’s glow-in-the-dark face was an unexpected surprise, and obviously quite a good idea for such a device. I can’t wait to get out of the city some night to use it fully.
This is the kind of watch that’s more than just a time piece. I really like something that’s a little unique and if that uniqueness lends itself to something useful, then all the better.
This isn’t quite TokyoFlash but it’s still got the little extra that I like.
Oh and I also got a new phone this weekend. It’s not bad either.
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06.29.07
Posted in Apple, Media, Tech
at 9 am
I just saw this on Boing Boing where Working Assets is asking for an iPhone boycott because of AT&T’s practices.
I just want to point out that when Apple launched the iTunes Store and got in bed with all of the RIAA labels, it was Apple who changed (so far) EMI, not the other way around. Will AT&T go green, or suddenly become a non-profit? Of course not, but I can’t think of too many companies that would be a better influence, based on their recent history, as Apple.
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06.03.07
Posted in Apple, General, Life, Tech
at 9 pm
Been working hard: day job, teaching and diagnosing a faulty USB port on the Tivo. That’s what I get for cleaning up the entertainment center’s wiring.
But, I’m happy to report that the Tivo is now happily gathering broadband content and the Mac Mini and the Tivo are now sharing a cozy little hub. I guess I can get the PlayStation 2 connected to that too, but I rarely fire the old PS2 nowadays. Perhaps a Wii might make a nice addition.
Speaking of nice additions, the iPhone is looking more and more like a a modern jackalope. Everyone wants one, but it’s going to tough to get a hold of. I’ve got my eye on a couple of prime spots that may carry it. I’m guessing that only two types of stores will have it: Apple Stores and Cingular/AT&T stores. It’s the latter that will be the best bet, I’m sure. I’m hoping that perhaps some of the third party reseller cellphone stores might have it, but on reflection, that seems unlikely.
Recent purchases at Powell’s Books include the latest issues of Home Power magazine and 2600. Both of these are the equivalent to to purchasing Architectural Digest or the Robb Report: Discussion of things that are out of reach entirely or just fun to think about.
Other items put on the Done section of the To Do list? Haircut, flexible medical account reimbursement form and scanned receipts, updated registration for the Ghia, Oil change and check up for the 170,000k Prius, some trash and boxes expelled from the my desk, repaired the toilet handle (Note: just buy the metal version. The plastic handle barely lasted a year.) Now to reformat the Mini’s new external hard drive and I’m off to bed.
Boy a vacation sure sounds good…
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04.21.07
Posted in Apple, Media, Tech
at 4 pm
I’ve been using Final Cut Studio at work with Motion 2.
It seriously rocks and this new version adds motion tracking: Motion Tracking Demo Movie in Motion 3.
I am salivating! We make displays at Planar and the ability to just drop in an image onto a monitor that’s in a trucking or panning shot would be spectacular!
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03.04.07
Posted in Apple, Tech
at 11 pm
So, I’ve been trundling down the road towards NASville for our Mac-infested home. NAS, Network Attached Storage, is enticing for a couple of reasons:
Low energy requirements: This is something I’m trying to stay conscious of with all of my new technology purchases. At this point, Amy and I have been using laptops for all of our computing needs. The last desktop tower I bought was my Blue and White G3 in 1999. That machine is on full time as a file server, iTunes server, and general storage and back up system. However, It sucks down quite a bit of electricity, at least compared to NAS devices out there.
Quite quiet: The fan noise of the G3 is muffled, sitting under a desk and we could move it to the spare room, but only if there was some spare room in the spare room. We actually keep the apartment pretty quiet so the TiVo and the G3 are really the the only thing that’s making noise as long as the refrigerator isn’t running.
Unlimited Storage: Well, not quite, but the G3 is limited to just 128 GB per the two drives that you can drop in there with the stock hardware. With an NAS I can continue to add more and more storage, depending on the device.
However, there are a number of roadblocks on the was to NASville. Mostly, of course, these are Mac-specific. Let me details the major issues:
Let me break it down like this: If you’re not using AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), you’re going to have problems. AFP is by far the most Mac-like of the network file systems that are available. Unfortunately, AFP is also one of the least commonly supported. It falls behind NFS, FTP and way, way, way behind SMB, aka Samba, aka CIFS. SMB is the mayor of NASville. The biggest problem with SMB from the Mac perspective is the restricted characters in filenames. Mac users are accustomed to naming files with abandon using virtually any character they can type on their keyboards (with one exception: ‘:’ the colon.) However thru SMB, files can’t use the following characters: ” / \ [ ] : + | < > = ; , * ? and space, and the period ‘.’ can only be used once. (This is only GENERALLY true. Later implementations that Microsoft has released have overcome most of these limits, but they have either not released the specifications, or Apple has not upgraded SMB support in the OS to the later versions.)
So what’s the problem? Well, Mac users with archives of files that they’ve named on their own machines will occasionally have some of those restricted characters. That means moving files over to the new NAS drive will require renaming the files which might be a minor issue or a huge consideration. One major issue is applications: Mac OS X applications are ‘bundles’ of files. Those internal files cannot be renamed, or else the app will be corrupted.
The other protocols have issues as well, mostly on the Mac side. NFS seems to have a number of configuration issues that you have to deal with when trying to browse to the drive and getting it to auto-mount. FTP is okay except that the Finder mounts FTP connections as read-only, so you have to use an FTP client to connect to it. (Other options: MacFUSE or Dave.)
- AFP: Best
- NFS: Tricky to set up, Mac-like to use
- SMB: Windows-native, filename restrictions.
Issue 2: File Systems and Mac Compatibility
Once the files have gone over the network to the NAS, it’s time to save the files to the drive. This involves the file structure of the hard drive that’s actually storing the file. There are a few options, but the most popular are FAT32 and NTFS. Of course there are problems with each. FAT32 was the last version of FAT that Microsoft published the spec for, but they’ve been trying to deprecate it in favor of NTFS. One of the ways they’ve done that is by not allowing recent version of Windows to create FAT32 partitions that are larger than a now measly 2GB. The problem with NTFS is that it’s so proprietary that only read access is available from the open source crowd. Apple hasn’t licensed the NTFS format from MS so Mac OS can’t do any more than read from it (if that in some cases).
Other file systems such as HFS+ (Mac’s own) or ext2 (from the Linux camp) are far less common among consumer products. The first would work great. I’m not sure about what might be usable for ext2 file systems.
- HFS+: Best
- FAT32: usable, but filenames are restricted, causing issues for applications
- NTFS: unusable, read-only
- ext2: ??
The summary
The longest single article I’ve found about NAS and Mac compatibility comes from Macintouch (no surprise). The real options from those reports and the ones I found are below. I’ve listed them in order of my preference.
- TrendNet TS-I300W (Enclosure only, supports NFS, 2 USB ports.)
- Synology DS-101j (Enclosure only, is EXT2, supports AppleTalk (hopefully AFP-like), Web server built-in. )
- Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station, with 802.11n (Connect drive via USB, supports AFP/HFS)
- SimpleTech SimpleShare (Not available without a built-in drive)
- Infrant ReadyNAS: Pricey and (some say) noisy, but full featured and multiple bays.
I’m probably going to pick up the TS-I300W in the next few days to drop the 300GB drive that I bought recently at Fry’s. The Synology was the other option of where to start and it was a 50/50 chance that I would pick one of them. The TrendNet product has ended up as the first one I’ll try. If it doens’t work out, I have high hopes for the DS-101j. The AirPort Extreme Base Station is another option and will likely be in the future of our network (once we’ve got Macs that support 802.11n).
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01.25.07
Posted in Apple, Media, Tech
at 8 pm
After an aborted Xmas purchase of the RadioShark because ClubMac didn’t cancel the order when they ran out of stock, I ordered one of the new, black, sleek Sharks direct from Griffin and have installed it and have been listening to my favorite station (KNRK). There’s not much to it, 5 pieces to note: 1) The Black Fin is metal and really feels solid, 2) the base is mirror-polished and looks great, 3) the blue lights that show it’s powered on give off that whole ‘we’re so cool we use Blue LEDs in our device, which is a bit over played, 4) a longish permanently affixed USB cord and 5) an antenna-cum-headphone jack seems as simple as I expected. It has a little loop at the end that I’m sure would make it easier to pin to the wall, but we’ll see. Right now it just limply hangs behind the rest of the entertainment center.
(Seven Nation Army, White Stripes on KRNK – Go Timbers!)
Looking around the web, some people have been having huge cows over the interface, but really it’s not that bad. But not having dealt with 1.0, perhaps that’s the difference. It’s not the best UI, in fact I wish it would just fall straight in line with iTunes. (Not because iTunes is the height of UI design, but because it’s the most familiar music player for anyone who likes to listen to MP3s.)
It will be interesting to see how it deals with the DST issue, that does seem like a no-brainer bug that should have been fixed.
I really wish I could set up the RadioShark to be a stream that iTunes could pick up. It would mostly bypass the RS software during live broadcasts, only leaving out the ability to rewind.
(I Feel You, Depeche Mode now.)
I wonder…has anyone used their RS to try and win radio station contests? If there are somewhat predictable times for ‘winner announcements’ or ‘secret word’ broadcasts, then the Shark could be a big boon.
I do hope that support for RDS might come along at some point, which would enable a huge number of really cool applications.
Anyway, as of day 1, I’m quite happy with the purchase (even in spite of the horrible plastic blister packaging), and look forward to many hours of listening.
(Sure Shot, Beastie Boys.)
The Home Entertainment Project: Connecting All Transmissions (HEP:CAT) has almost come to completion. The last bit is an NAS hard drive that can handle gigs and gigs of music and video. Look for an overview article coming out about it some time this summer perhaps.
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12.23.06
Posted in Apple, Tech
at 1 pm
So a friend of mine recently got his first Mac. A 17″ MacBook Pro and he’s figuring it out for the first time. He’s been stuck on Winders for a long time and had taken the plunge but wants to find some good software. Here’s what he’s looking for and my recommendations.
1 Text Editor for developing websites
I’m old school but in this department, BBEdit has always been the way to go for me. Other popular editors are TextMate and SubEthaEdit. I’ve seen Taco talked about here and there and it looks decent. The one thing that might really trip someone up about BBEdit, coming from the Windows world is that the keystroke for indenting and unindenting a block of text is Command-[ and Command-], rather than the common tab/shift-tab that I’ve seen in lots of Windows editors. The other difference is that the GREP search and replace is robust, effective, efficient and predictable. Regex is your friend and BBEdit has Regex in spades.
2 FTP tool for uploading said website pages
“And now these three remain: [Fetch], [Interarchy] and [Transmit]. But the greatest of these is [Transmit].” First Macinithians 13:13.
3 I-tunes – To move my music, just load to an IPod and drag it off on to the new machine?
Not quite. Couple of things here: 1) iPods for Windows are formated FAT32 (Maybe NTFS?) iPods for Mac are formatted as HFS+. This can cause some problems when switching over from one platform to the other. The transferring you’re talking about works best if you don’t use iTunes. Enable the iPod to come up as an external drive, drag all of the music files onto the iPod using the Windows File Explorer interface. Plug the iPod into the Mac and enable the same access. You should be able to copy the files off the iPod and then drag them into iTunes. Remember the iPod philosophy: the iPod is simply a local cache of iTunes. iTunes is where you manage all of your songs and playlists. the iPod is a slave to that.
4 Can I load I games like Diablo, Starcraft, etc for the PC?
Yes. You’ll need either BootCamp or Parallels Desktop. Entering the world of running Windows on Apple hardware is a strange place where up is down and black is white. Prepare yourself.
5 If so, is there anything special I need to do to play them?
You’ve just bought an Intel-based laptop. You can install Windows XP and use it as such. Nothing else is needed to my understanding.
6 How do I find other computers via our “network”? Does she have to “share” a drive or something for it to be visible?
Yes, you enable File sharing via the Sharing Pane in the System Preferences. Once you’ve turned on Sharing, everything that’s put in the Shared folder should be visible on the network. If you connect to the remote machine with an admin user name you can mount the whole drive as if it were a local drive. If you want quick access to that machine later on, I suggest dragging it to the Dock or making an Alias (c.f. Shortcut) and keeping that around.
If you start sharing stuff, you might flip on the Firewall as well.
7 I tried to install InDesign 2.0, but it said I had to have a “classic” environment. Does that mean OSX is just too advanced for that version of InDesign?
So InDesign v2 came out in early 2002. It ran under the ‘Classic’ environment, which meant it was great for Mac OS 9 and could be run poorly under Mac OS X, as long as you had a PowerPC machine. Apple, for some reason, decided that Mac OS 9 (aka Classic) an operating system that hadn’t been updated in 7 years and had been replaced entirely, didn’t need to be ported to Intel machines.
That said, there are some work arounds but I can’t say I’d recommend them. I’d really suggest getting an up-to-date version of InDesign. Adobe has made a lot of big improvements to InDesign over the last few releases.
8 We need a printer. We’d like high quality color print ability. do you have one you’ve had good luck with, and is networkable?
Virtually all of the printers out there are ‘networkable’. Windows and Mac both have Printer Sharing capabilities. If you’re looking for a printer that has built-in Ethernet or WiFi, there are a lot of options out there. I don’t have a broad range of experience with printers in recent years.
HP generally has good Mac drivers, and I’ve heard good things about Epsons as well. The best way to find a good printer is to see how they print. I’d recommend a trip down to Best Buy and see how they all fair. CompUSA has a good range as well. For more product reviews, check out MacWorld or maybe C-Net.
Amy’s been wanting me to find a good photo printer. That’s on the list for the new year.
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12.11.06
Posted in Apple, Tech
at 12 am
URL: PS2->Mac->WiFi
Thanks for your great how to page! After 2 days of internet searching and trying to configire a network adapter, I ran across your page, and got my son up and running in 5 minutes! You have saved my sanity!
Every once in a while I get a thank you note about the stuff on my site. A lot of people have problems with the direction on that page, which I mention quite clearly. It’s nice to see that some people can get it to work.
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