All posts in Apple

I have a feeling this post will cause me days of torment from Dejan ;), but what the hell – I always wrote the full truth, as I saw it.

As I promised in the previous post, I used first free weekend to use iMovie and iDVD and to create the DVD disk for my wedding. This went rather well, up to a terrible crush. I created the movies, picked photos and had a background music in the back of my head.

iDVD is really nice and creating a DVD with submenus and video or still thumbnails is really easy. However, as soon as I tried to enter preview, things went ballistic. Main menu usually opens, but clicking on any of the submenus caused iDVD preview to completely halts. And not only that, but it freezes entire OS. Strangely, the only thing still working is mouse cursor – everything else is unresponsive. The only way out of there is hard reset.
I also tried to skip preview and save the DVD to VIDEO_TS folder, that finished the same after a while.

Threads on MacRumors and Apple’s own discussion forums reveal dozens of people with the same problem. It seems that problem appears when iDVD tries to render the submenus, notably menu transitions. It does not happen with all themes and it seem to be dependent of the content you put in the DVD structure. I think that my experiment with saving to VIDEO_TS folder confirms this, but I can’t be sure as Mac froze when I was in Firefox sidenote: 3.0b1 works much faster than 2.0.0.9 – there is hope.

People that know more than me reported that bunch of graphic card-related errors show up in some log. It may be. It could also be that Leopard + iLife is not-yet-fully-charted territory, even for Apple engineers. Betalogue blog is a great example for that, as this post proves it.

Apple seem to have changed a good deal of subsystems in Leopard, and some are just not polished as they should be. Which is not that unexpected, when the GM build is concluded just one week before the launch date. Somehow reminds of some other software company that I know…

At this moment, “I’m a PC” guy could easily dance around “I’m a Mac guy” and punch him just for fun.

I’ve jumped the fence into Apple’s backyard. I bought the lower MacBook Pro 15″ model, with 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM and 120GB SATA disk. As someone who’s been on Windows from 3.11 to XP (with brief dive into OS/2 WARP) this is quite a change. I love Apple’s products, love the design, the attention to details.
I also love the uncompromising advancements and getting rid of the old stuff. Removing floppy, using only DVI connectors, removing modem – Apple usually did it first.

MacBook Pro itself is a great machine. It gets warm at times, in the top left corner and along the upper edge, but nothing unbearable. It’s inexplicable to me why Apple included just two USB ports when clearly there is plenty of space. Rest of the connections are great and I adore having DVI port on it. The slot-in drive makes very ugly noise when it’s sucking the disc in, otherwise works ok (although I used it only for Leopard installation). I’ll need to check for RPC-1 firmware, but I have little hope in that.

Speaking of Leopard, the disc I received with the MBP is labeled as upgrade disc. At first I thought that I’m fucked if I ever need to reinstall (that I would need to install Tiger first). As it happens, I needed to reinstall two days after buying. I’m happy to report that Archive and install went just fine from that disk, thus “upgrade” label could be just a gimmick. Whatever it means, I’m fine with this.

Challenges

I’m not an average user. I developed web sites (part of a larger product platform) for enterprise-level clients which means various custom-built stuff for Windows platform. I need to use various Windows programs and tools from the company. I need to be able to access Windows-based servers, both through remote desktop connection and through file share. I work daily with IIS and ASP (old one), possibly .NET in future, MS SQL Server.

Thus for me, switching to Mac is a path full of challenges. And since my old Windows laptop is being sold just after Mac is bought, I needed to be able to immediately continue working as nothing happened, both home and office.

This was the most important aspect of this transition. I have lots of valuable data (to me at least) and for this to be seamless as possible, I needed to switch to MBP but continue to use Windows apps as they were, until I gradually transfer all of my habits to Mac apps. That naturaly meant using virtual machines.

There were many obstacles, but now that I mostly got it, it’s time to write about it all, as I’m certain it will help someone else.
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During the current business trip to the UK, I was provided with T-Mobile’s 3G USB modem. While I was using Windows laptop, everything was nice and dandy. Connecting it to USB port was all I needed to do: it automatically installed all drivers and apps and started itself. All I needed to do was click on Connect and in few seconds I was online, with fantastic 3.6Mbps speed.

When I switched to Macbook Pro running Leopard, things weren’t so rosy. Connecting to Mac yielded “unrecognized device” or some similar error. There was nothing about Mac on the included CD.I later heard that there is in fact Mac CD in the package, I only was not given one After some searching, I found the drivers but actually getting online was a bit more trickier. Here’s the step-by-step guide.

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Dear Apple,

I really like the stuff you make. Really. I have an iPod, I’m waiting for you to release Leopard so I can buy it with MacBookPro (would be my first Mac…it would be nice if it was a 12–13″ size). My next phone will probably an iPhone (I expect that in Europe it will have 3G support). My friends are calling me an Apple defender, Apple fan, part of the cult. You know, the usual.

I also like Mac OS X design. It’s nice, intuitive, beautiful to look at. That is why for instance I use a Thunderbird theme that resembles Tiger Mail. Mail client is an application I use daily and as such it must look good.

I want you to note two distinct stuff on the previous screenshot.

First, If you haven’t recognized it, I’m using Windows XP. You are probably puzzled because you don’t see those ugly, beveled interface that Microsoft ships with it (I even forgot how it’s called). I’m using wonderful System5 visual style.

Second, you can see that my T-bird theme is not identical to what its author created. The scrollbars are not Mac OS X scrollbars, but rather the same scrollbars I see all around my Windows installation.

You see, I spent some time – quite a lot of time actually – to make my OS the way it works for me and provides me with an engaging environment. My OS is now visually great and I hate apps created by people who think that their interface taste is better than mine. That’s a subjective thing, it’s for me to decide what I like.

Which brings me to the point of this letter: please keep Mac OS X interface elements on Mac OS X. Do not bring them to Windows. They look like sh*t there, completely out of place. Continue Reading →