Kevin rose leaks Apple iPhone information on Diggnation
From Techcrunch:
According to Kevin there are two models, 4 GB and 8 GB, priced at $249 and $449. No word on whether they’ll be shipping an unlocked version of the phone as Om Malik recently reported, but Kevin says Apple is adding both GSM and CDMA radios into the iPhone, making it truly carrier-independent. The device will have a slide out keyboard, a touch screen and two batteries (one for the MP3 player, one for the phone).
Garageband wont split tracks
I have been using Garageband to edit some audio conversations. Unfortunately, I ran into a prohibitive bug that means I can no longer use garageband. I have researched online and have not seen a solution to this problem. Other users of Garageband running intel Macs have noted this issue and I think it may be specific to intel mac users. In any case, I'll have to find another way to edit my audio. Take a look at what happens when I try to trim the fat from a conversation. Here is the before image:
then I press apple-T to split the track and:
Errr, Apple, please fix this. That is not how the application is supposed to behave!
There are some others who have had the same issues on the apple support board: 1, 2, 3
Move iTunes to an external drive on your Mac – intelligently
There are a few ways to move your iTunes collection to a different location. Here is an intelligent way that leverages the *nix underpinnings of Mac OS X using symbolic links.
- Close iTunes
- Locate your music collection in the Finder (it should be the folder "iTunes" under "Music" in your home folder
- Move it to the new location! Just drag and drop, we're going to fix it in a second
- Right click on iTunes in the new location and select "Make Alias"
- Move the alias to the location your old iTunes folder is. It is probably called "iTunes alias" or similar
- Drag your old iTunes library to the trash
- Rename "iTunes Alias" to "iTunes"
- Open up iTunes and check to see that your music is still there and working!
This gives you flexibility if you need to reorganize or free up space. By creating an alias (symbolic link), iTunes treats the music collection as if it was never moved!
DICE Ipod integration in my Honda Accord
Ever wanted to use your iPod in your car? I did. In fact, a lot of people do. Quite a few cars these days are coming out with factory installed iPod integration. Others have a line-in input built in.
Background
If you're not lucky enough to have one of these, there are a few more options. The one I used to use, and I think the majority of iPod in Car users use is the FM transmitter. After doing a lot of research a couple of years ago, I ended up picking the Monster iCarPlay Plus Wireless FM Transmitter
Unashamed self promotion.
Check out these scans of an article about Onmac.net that were in the japanese magazine Ascii. Does this count as my five minutes of fame? I wonder what the article actually says...
Translation:
The Man Who Opened Forbidden Doors
...??
Skype on your Mac in Windows & OS X – Griffin iMic
The aptly named Griffin iMic
OS X Review
In OS X, it is pretty straightforward - just plug it in to the USB port and select it in your sound preferences. You can use the iMic for sound output on all sounds, or just in Skype.
It works very well as a consumer level device if you want to conference call with friends and family, or produce your own podcast. It also has stereo mic inputs so if you have a fancy stereo mic or want to use a splitter to mic a room in stereo, you can do that too! Im thinking about using it as an inexpensive way to do a podcast. There are two benefits using my external headset with this device over the internal mic. One is that people dont hear when I am typing and the other is that it my headset mic doesnt pick up all the background noise in the room too like the MacBook's mic does.\
Windows Review
In Windows XP, it's as easy as OS X. Just plug in the iMic and Windows recognizes it as an external sound input. Go into the Sounds and Audio Devices properties in the control panel. Under the "Audio" tab, you can select the iMic USB audio system for both Sound Playback and Sound recording.
Capturing sound with the iMic seems to be pretty reasonable. I have my Sennheiser PC150 headphones plugged in and my fellow skypers tell me I come in loud and clear. What's cool with skype in Windows is you can tell it to ring on your external speakers, but play back audio on the headset. This feature is not yet built into skype for Mac. We're only on 1.6 whereas windows is at 2.0 
This gadget truly adds value to my Mac setup and although it tries to look ipod-ish, it's not that stylish. I would recommend it though to anyone sick of dealing with the soundcard in Bootcamp Windows and anyone else with a MacBook who wants to use Skype or other conference software.
Building the Ultimate (cheap) HDTV PVR
I've been working on my Ultimate (cheap) HDTV PVR for a few weeks now. See the previous articles (1, 2, 3) that detail my problems. I've purchased a ton of hardware and returned a ton of hardware. Here's what I am left with and approximate prices:
- Case: Antec Sonata $80
- PSU: Seasonics S12 500w Power Supply $90
- Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor $120
- Motherboard: MSI K8N NEO4-F nForce4 $70
- Memory: 1GB DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 - Corsair Value Select $82
- Video Card: Radeon X1300 PRO PCI Express 256MB (MSI) $70
- Harddrive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300S0 300GB $100
- SDTV Tuner: Hauppage WINTV-PVR-150 MCE $50
- HDTV Tuner: DVICO FusionHDTV5 RT Lite $99
- Sound Card: AuzenTech HDA X-PLOSION 7.1 DTS Connect $125
- DVD-RW: NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI $25
- Software: Windows XP Media Center 2005 $110, uTorrent -$FREE
Total Cost: $1021
Not so cheap anymore!
Other gear in my setup
- Monitor: Panasonic TH42PX50U 42 Inch Plasma TV
- Receiver: Onkyo TX-SR601U
Mistakes Made
I've made a bunch of mistakes building my HTPC. When the computer kept rebooting / stalling, I wrongly attributed it to hardware / driver problems. My assumption was compounded when I read that people were having problems with the turtle beach montego (my original HTPC sound card). I ended up spending a lot more when I had to keep returning hardware. I now think that the problem was with the original PSU in the Antec Sonata failing. It was rated at 380w and when I ran through the Power calculator, it seemed that it would be enough for my hardware, but apparently that is not the case. Either the PSU is failing or the hardware is much more power hungry than the calculator thought.
What can you do with it?
Now that I've just dropped a grand on this box, what can I do with it?
Recording TV - You'll now be able to set media center to record your favorite shows for you in High Definition. Some pitfalls here are: you need a really strong signal. I purchased a Terk indoor antenna, but the signal is weak. I am within 15 miles of all the broadcast towers in Houston, but my directional antenna only picks up 2 stations well from inside my house. The rest of them are pretty choppy. Im going to try buying a $100 antenna and put it in my attic run a cable down to my living room.
Downloading Torrents - While my TV channels dont fully work, I've got to use uTorrent to subscribe to shows on tvRSS.net in order to get my fill. I've also got my Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD on Time Warner cable as a backup 
Music - Im not using it for music. This is when it sucks to have all your music in iTunes. It would be nice if someone (Apple ?) wrote an iTunes interface for Windows Media Center (but I cant see why they would)
Gaming - I dont use it for big screen gaming, but I can see myself getting a wireless controller and maybe installing MAME or an NES / SNES emulator.
Is it ready for primetime?
If you are an inexperienced user thinking about building a HTPC, no, it's not. Even if you are an experienced user, it may be more pain than its worth. Especially the quirks with OTA broadcasts. In fact - right now I would prefer to download a torrent of the show rather than record it over the air.
This quirkiness / lack of seamless integration is where apple really has an "in" into the living room. Steve jobs recently stated "we hear you load and clear" when asked about a potential Apple media center. The Mac Mini is a great little platform. It will be fantastic if they can integrate a dual HD and SD tuner into that package, or even have a little add on. Im a little disappointed with the inflexibility of the Windows Media Center software. It's missing a lot - such as the ability to automatically compress a recorded show to Divx. This is a relatively young product, but unfortunately, it still acts like a computer and not enough like an appliance. This is where the failing is. Things dont "just work".
Conclusion
Im not happy with Windows MCE 2005. Frankly, recording on my $12/month Scientific Atlanta 5300hd box is better than my $1000 Windows MCE 2005 box. I'd like to try and make this work by installing MythTV on Ubuntu which seems to offer more flexibility, but I am waiting for Dapper Drake to come out around the beginning of June to do it right. Im very conflicted about this right now. I want to watch TV how and when I want to watch it. I want to do it legally and in High Definition when possible. I dont want to have to pay 60 bucks a month to Time Warner Cable to watch my 5 or so shows that I can get free over the air. The kicker right now is that with my current setup, it is more inconvenient to try and record in HD over the air than it is to download the torrent. I will make this work! Keep your eyes on this space.
Surgery Complete – Reapplying thermal paste to my Macbook Pro
There have been quite a few posts around the net already on how to fix the heat issues on the first few revisions of the MacBook pro. I tried it, and it appears to work!
I followed the: iFixit guide to disassemble my MacBook. The only thing I didnt have to do was remove the harddrive. I then cleaned with Arcticlean 1 and Arcticlean 2 and then applied my Arctic Silver 5 to just the die - like apple should have done. It was really time consuming and you have to be careful... but I think it might be worth it.
First 24 Hours
My MacBook Pro still gets damn hot. I've read that the Arctic Silver takes some time to cure. I am booted into windows right now where the MacBook pro gets the hottest. I ran a very repetetive macro in excel that turned the fans on pretty high speed. That made me realize that I've never really heard the fans before.
Building the Ultimate (cheap) HDTV PVR – part 1.2
The system has continued to stall even after replacing the video card and sound card. I thought it was the HDTV tuner card and removed that. This fixed the problem for a while, but then I experienced the system freezing again. So now the question is - what is causing the system to freeze?
The things that popped into my head were:
- Processor is dying
- My motherboard is incompatible with c-media sound processors (like the ones found in the turtle beach montego and Auzentech X-plosion)
- The 380w powersupply is either underpowered or failing
Well, I decided to try a few things today to figure out what was wrong. I removed both TV tuners and watched a DVD. The system worked fine. I added in the Analog tv tuner - the system worked fine. I added in the Digital Tuner - the system crashed while playing a DVD.
Then, I removed the analog tuner and booted with the Digital Tuner. The system booted fine and was stable. I loaded the ATI TV software and played an HD stream. The ATI card fixed the problem of choppy playback, however it seems that the HD signal is stronger directly on my TV, but that is another issue.
So, prior to realizing it could be a PSU issue, I ordered a new motherboard, processor, ram and video card.
| 80699-5 | AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor (Venice) Socket 939 Retail ***Free Shipping*** | $107.40 | 1 | $107.40 |
| 241163 | MSI K8N NEO4-F nForce4 Athlon 64 Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA Retail ***Free Shipping*** | $80.99 | 1 | $80.99 |
| 80098-21 | Corsair VS1GBKIT400 1GB Kit DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory Retail ***Free Shipping*** | $80.90 | 1 | $80.90 |
| 321962 | MSI RX1300PRO-TD256E Radeon X1300 PRO PCI Express 256MB DDR2 Video Card w/TV-Out & Dual DVI Retail ***Free Shipping*** | $95.75 | 1 | $95.75 |
Those are coming on Tuesday or Wednesday and I am debating buying a PSU just in case the system still crashes. I also decided to purchase a DVICO FusionHDTV5 RT Lite to replace the ATI HDTV Wonder that I thought was giving me a bunch of problems.
Building a HTPC is not quite as easy as I thought it would be, even with the extensive experience I have in building PCs.
I wish apple had come out with their HTPC a few weeks ago when I decided to do this project. According to reports from the shareholders meeting, Steve Jobs' comments "We hear you loud and clear" may indicate that apple is working on something. It certainly wouldnt take much to take the Mac Mini to the next level.
Returning the Mac Mini
I decided to return the Mac Mini. It's a cool device and really nice and small, but unfortunately there are a few things holding it back being the "killer media box" that I envisioned it to be:
In OS X (intel)
- AC3 only supports stereo - AC3 5.1 crashes front row
- Azureus is a resource hog and not as easy to configure as uTorrent - no other alternative
- Bluetooth range is very poor (not sure if it was my Microsoft Keyboard & Mouse, or the mini
In Windows
- Everything was fantastic except it doesnt do DVI to HDMI. This killed the deal. The screen goes black when I try and boot Win XP on my TV and the OS doesnt find a screen and fails to boot.
- Internal speaker is always on - this is not a big deal, just a minor annoyance
- IR receiver doesnt work in Windows - no drivers
Do I have to return my Mac Mini?
I just received my Remote Control and Receiver for Media Center today, but it looks like I have to return my Mac Mini and go another route to my Media Center Bliss. It's a shame because the Mini has such a small form factor. If only the DVI to HDMI worked!! Damn video drivers.
Mac Mini Core Duo running Windows does not connect using HDMI
I am really frustrated that my Mac Mini Core Duo running Windows wont display an image on my HDTV using a DVI to HDMI connector. It works perfectly in OS X but someone forgot to add that functionality into the windows driver. Thanks ATI! I would love to see an update to the driver that fixes this. What an annoyance. Almost as annoying as the problems I am having with the Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse.
Microsoft Optical Desktop Elite for Bluetooth® on my Intel Mac Mini 1.66 ghz Рwhat a disappointment
I got my Optical Desktop Elite for Bluetooth® today and hooked it up to my Mac Mini. The bluetooth doesnt even reach to my couch! What gives! The total distance from the mac mini to my couch is about 8 feet. The advertisement says the bluetooth mouse and keyboard stretches 30 ft. If I use the mouse any further than 4 feet, it gets jerky. If I use the keyboard further than 5 feet, it drops strokes. This is a terrible product - something is wrong - either the bluetooth in the Mac Mini has no range, or the Optical Desktop Elite has no range. Either way I am really disappointed. I will be trying the apple mouse and keyboard for comparison.
Media Center for my HDTV
Im trying to build a media center for my HDTV based around a Mac Mini and RSS feeds for downloadable content. I've tried two methods and I am stuck somewhere in between.
Windows
I installed Windows XP Media Center Edition as well as uTorrent to connect up to my TV feeds. I purchased a remote and IR receiver since there is no driver for the mac mini yet as well as a bluetooth mouse and keyboard. When trying to connect it up to my Panasonic TH42PX50U, it showed a blank screen. I fiddled around with the configuration settings but couldnt get it to display. I then did some research and found that it doesnt work yet - driver issues
So, I tried OS X
OS X
Contrary to what I had read, OS X will play all of my content. I made a symbolic link from my movies folder to my external harddrive where all my content is and it showed up in Front Row. The playback is really good, and I have no complaints. It seems like one of the few pieces of software to download content from RSS feeds on the mac is Democracy Player. However, it isnt in Universal Binary yet and hogs bandwidth like no tomorrow. So, I cant leave it running all the time.
Neither of these solutions is great right now.
Some of the things I will try:
Windows
If I can get alternate drivers that support DVI to HDMI, then I am set.
OS X
Maybe I can install Windows XP in Parallels and use uTorrent like that. Seems kinda convoluted but it might just work! Alternatively, I can give a lot of money to Democracy Player and ask them nicely for a universal binary.
Wish me luck! Your solutions are always welcome.
Mac OS X and Xen Optimizer? Is this relationship the future of Windows on the Mac?
I had a really interesting conversation with a guy from founder of XenSource, Moshe Bar last weekend. He sent me an instant message and since these guys will may at some point be able to provide an alternative to dual booting the Intel Mac, I was interested to learn some more.
What I found out from him was pretty interesting stuff. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Xen and what it does, I will try to explain in a very high level way (which is the extent of my understanding). Xen loads right after the computer boots up, and loads into memory. Xen sits as an interface between the operating system and the hardware. This gives Xen the ability to allocate resources when running multiple operating systems; i.e. virtualization. You are able to run more than one OS, not running one on top of another, but side by side, simultaneously.
I bet some of you are thinking: What is the cost to my resources to run Xen? Xen costs you approximately 1% of your system resources to run it. Not too bad.
At the moment, the Xen guy told me that using Xen, he is able to run Windows XP Linux and Freebsd on the Intel Mac, (his iMac) but not Mac OS X. What??? Well, that's what he said. I would really like to see that. The time frame for Mac OS X running on Xen is likely 4Q '06. This, however, is his pet project and not an official XenSource project.
The other interesting thing we talked about is how Mac OS X currently interfaces with the hardware. I am really unfamiliar with much more than the buzzwords, so I will do my best to explain. Currently, Apple uses the Mach Kernel to interface with the hardware. However, "Mach" is essentially outdated and causes a lot of the bottlenecks with programs having to create a lot more processes than necessary to get the job done. The guy from Xen told me they have been talking a great deal with the Apple guys about replacing Mach with Xen. This is a really big deal! This would be consistent with reports that Apple has filed patents related to Virtualization.
The reason Apple has not switched OS X to use Xen instead of Mach yet according to the guy at Xen Moshe is because XenSource has not yet implemented the system to support the intensive graphics requirements of Mac OS X.
My prediction is that in OS X 10.6, we will see some sort of fast-user switching between operating systems. Is that realistic, or am I just dreaming?
EDIT: I have corrected this - apparrently he has not been able to run Windows yet since he says this requires Intel's VT CPUs.
Update: I referred a reporter from Computer World to Moshe Bar, the guy with whom I spoke. In this article, Moshe clarifies some of the things I was confused on. I got a few very key details wrong.
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