Apple on

Apple Thunderbolt Display Review

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:04:39 +0000

Contents

0.1 Display
0.2 Cables
0.3 Ports
0.4 Speakers
0.5 iSight HD
0.6 Gaming
0.7 Going Green
0.8 Before and After

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With the increase in travel as of late I am finding myself tied more and more to the laptop. Despite an extensive home lab with KVM switches and dual monitors, there I would sit with my 11″ MacBook Air. Simplicity was the main reason I found. Transfer files, syncing something to a new machine, etc. just was much more hassle than I needed. I had what I will call the semi-dock with my Air in which I’d sit it on a stand and then run the myriad of wires to tie it into the home desk system. GONE!

An iron fist in an iron glove – Mac/Linux Keymapping

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:28:20 +0000

This post will serve to upset both sides of the coin.

Apple users wondering why I would load an inferior OS
Linux users wondering why I spent all that extra money on Apple Hardware

I am going to skip the religious battles over OS and platform and say that if you happen to have loaded Linux on a piece of Apple hardware this post is for you. One of the first problems you will find is that your Alt+Tab doesn’t work as expected. If you follow the instructions your Command and Alt keys will work as you had hoped with the Apple Keyboard:

Civ V for Mac = Borked with Black Screen

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 10:52:07 +0000

I purchased Civ V for Mac the day it was released. LOVE…LOVE…LOVE Civilization. I had this issue after the 4GiB Download on 3 different machines and configurations that the music would play, but no graphics. Black nothingness taunted me for days. Aspyr was silent and worthless as usual and the forums sang with similar rage. Here is the fix for me on my Mac Mini and Air:

Edit “Documents/Aspyr/Sid Meier’s Civilization 5/UserSettings.ini”

PGP for Mac Whole Disk Encryption Review

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:51:48 +0000

Wanted to share a quick “how does it work” about PGP WDE for Mac.

http://www.pgp.com/mac/

This is the only solution that does pre-boot and true WDE for the Mac. The software is 189 for a yearly license or 239 for perpetual. The software itself is very “apple-ish” with great wizards and walk through for those not familiar with key based authentication and encryption. Some of the features are:

WDE for Intel based Mac running 10.4/10.5, no SL due to the 64bit kernel from the debug trace on my Mac Pro :)

bin2iso for Leopard 10.5

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:00:41 +0000

I compiled bin2iso from source for all the mac users out there. For some reason bin2iso is not in macports. Link below:

bin2iso

Unzip into a directory and chmod +x bin2iso

Recommend moving to /usr/local/bin

*\* Update 11/22/10 **

I get a ton of Google hits for this post. If you have macports or fink installed you can now use the bchunk program. The syntax to convert a bin to iso is as follows:

SheepShaver on Ubuntu

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 08:34:56 +0000

I wanted to run MacOS 9 in my Ubuntu Intrepid dev box so I went ahead and grabbed CVS. Problem was the autogen script never dumped a config.sub. Instead I took the easy route and downloaded an RPM version and used alien to convert. The one extra step to get it running is to as root ln -s /var/lib/libreadline.so.5 /var/lib/libreadline.so.4

Have fun!

sheepshaver_23-13_i386.deb

Centrally locate iTunes and iPhoto Libraries

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:28:32 +0000

You took the bite, you bought two Macs. It is a dirty feeling that you can’t wash off as you had the fact you now I contemplating purchasing a Steve Jobs black turtleneck sweater. One thing ol’ Steve hasn’t given us Mac Geeks yet is a central server. We are disposed to store things in one mac and hope for the best. You, the reader, are in luck as this geek isn’t the garden bred Mac type, but rather a UNIX type. With a little command line voodoo we will centrally locate those libraries.

Change your device alias in Open Firmware

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:33:41 +0000

If you happen to have a G4 Cube or another system with a MCE upgraded superdrive, you have the issue of dealing with the Master/Slave mappings. You loose the capability to hold the “C” and boot cdrom. Why? Well Open Firmware detects cd as your hard drive. Here is how you can change that function:

Hold Command+Option+O+F
devalias
See what is listed as hd and cd and write those down
devalias cd device-path
Replace device-path to what is listed after hd from the devalias command
boot cd with a bootable CD to verify

This is great! Look at it go! How do we make it permanent:

PPC Linux

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:09:50 +0000

Why Linux and which one? Let me take a second to review:

Debian Stable 4.0 – Too old! You can’t expect me to be spoiled on my x86 architecture with the latest GNOME and Firefox and then jump back to Debian stable

Debian Testing “Lenny” – Too new! The kernel is a step ahead of the Mac-On-Linux folks and therefore negates my ability to still run MacOS in Linux. Also had a heck of a time with my 6200 Nvidia Card in framebuffer.

My newest Mac, The Macintosh IIci

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:57:30 +0000

Hello from my IIci. The machine is fresh from the original boxes with the original manuals. WHAT A STEAL!? My mom’s one comment when it arrived was that it

Looked heavy with all those boxes
Makes a funny noise when that floppy is writing

The machine is currently sporting the original 7.0.1 with a future upgrade of A/UX 3.1 soon as the external SCSI CD-Rom arrives. News to follow on my adventures with A/UX…

Apple Mail.app and TimeMachine

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:15:59 +0000

I love Leopard! Single best upgrade I have done this year for operating systems. Vista was obviously a waste of time and Gutsy was incremental over Feisty. One thing that I have been throwing my head against the wall with is Mail.app using IMAP Gmail. I screwed up my settings and have gone through deleting the Mail in my Library and Preferences, yet no matter how many times I deleted the settings were still there. I then ran Mail.app from console and sure enough, time machine was automatically restoring the settings. While in any other case this would be great and a huge boost to a home user. A power user it just bugged me. The process is to remove Mail.app backups from your timemachine disk. Just a heads up

Xgrid and Multiplatform Clients

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:34:04 +0000

This allows you to setup a Xgrid controller without mac server edition. What is nifty is that the clients can run on other platforms such as Linux and Windows. So with the simplicity of mac you can run a cluster at the house. Here is the link for windows/linux clients:

http://unu.novajo.ca/simple/archives/000026.html

upgrade to 10.5 on mac…sweet…

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:51:40 +0000

upgrade to 10.5 on mac…sweet! time machine might actually make me backup stuff

Wine in MacOSX

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:45:50 +0000

Macports now has the latest wine. What this means is that X11+Wine = steam hotness! I will post more info as I figure stuff out.

Dang you Apple! Why must you p…

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:23:51 +0000

Dang you Apple! Why must you put iPhone commercials on when I watch TV, I am doing my best to NOT get one…sheesh!

Patchstick AppleTV Hack

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:19:33 +0000

I was really excited to have SSH on the AppleTV…why? No Clue. I am a geek. I use my Logitech remote for my roomba. This is simply something I do. Here is the steps to get the Patchstick working with 1.1 Firmware.

Find the patchstick torrent of the original version or create your own. I will not tell you where to find the torrent.
Download the AppleTV 1.1 DMG: Click Here!

Wow iPhone SDK, didn’t see tha…

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:17:47 +0000

Wow iPhone SDK, didn’t see that coming. Wonder what the community will do with it all

I love WWDC, it is an exciting…

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:13:24 +0000

I love WWDC, it is an exciting look at technology as a whole. Steve still has it! Safari on XP/VISTA is a huge move’

AppleTV and Extreme

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 07:47:05 +0000

I geeked up this weekend and purchased an AppleTV and matching router. Stay tuned for review!

Crazy Mac Mini People

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:33:37 +0000

For some reason in the twilight zone a G4 Mac Mini is still worth near it’s asking price. Why? I cannot for the life of me understand who is paying these prices for machines that are EOL. Esh! 300 is about the max I will pay for a 1.25 ORIGINAL MAC MINI. 2004 People. It has called to let you know the price was a steal then, but now is robbery.

I am getting an iMac…

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:46:12 +0000

Just which one?! I mean really all that seperates them is the following things:

1700 ATI on the 17″/20″ vs 7600GT on the 24″
- 24″ may have the option of upgrading due to the MXM port
  - Firewire 800 on 24″
    - The screen size obviously I was having a really hard time with the final decision. Is the extra 4″ screen worth 500 dollars?!?!?! Am I just that geeky? Well I found some pictures of a 17,20,24 side-by-side. For the Win…24″ :) LOOK HOW FRICKEN GREAT IT IS! I could surf the internet all the while debugging code on the SAME screen. Even better I could run the 24″ screen with my 35″ LCD Flat Panel TV. I am not sure even if I have that much desk space.