I’m finally getting around to it, and if the technology gods are blessing me today then I should have my MacBook setup with Mac OS X 10.5.x and Ubuntu 8.10 within about an hour and a half from now. Starting up via Boot Camp and rEFIt!
I’ve also taken the chance to completely wipe my hard drive (backing everything up first of course!), I didn’t have to because Boot Camp can nudge in an additional partition. But things have been getting a bit slow on the MacBook recently, so I thought that I’d start from scratch to speed things up in the longer term.
For those interested, I’m following the tutorial on the Ubuntu website for MacBook Dual Boot installation.
UPDATE
One hour later. Dual boot is working with Mac OS X and Ubuntu! Actually, I’m surprised how well Ubuntu works on MacBook.
Well, iTunes 8.0 has been released….
Good things:
- The new 3D Visualisations are nice.
- Accessibility features are good
Bad things:
- I really don’t like the new Grid View… nasty… I didn’t like it when cuil.com did it either
- I can’t see a use for the Genius Sidebar, I have it switched off
Also, it doesn’t seem to be much of an upgrade really. There’s absolutely nothing exciting on it. Recently I’ve been getting more enjoyment from the Jamendo and Magnatune connections that Rhythmbox Music Player on Linux offers.
Even the HD TV shows that are available, obviously that depends on whether you’ve got a connection up to an HD TV/Monitor.
I expected a lot better from Apple with iTunes 8… like Genre sameAs Genre relationships, and connecting up with wikipedia or MusicBrainz or IMDB in order to tell you about bands or movies.
Nope, not really impressed with anything other than the 3D visualisations.
Hi Everybody,
Just letting you all know that I am probably not going to be around on my blog / skype /other-web-based-service much at the moment. This is because the hard drive in my old laptop died on Thursday, it was making more noise than a the cast of Stomp! I took it to the apple store on Saturday and they are replacing the hard drive for free (because its under warrenty).
I should get my laptop back soon.
Daniel
Technorati Tags: harddrive, macbook
I am now running on Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) it is absolutely awesome! I wasn’t sure that I would be, but as a developer and general mac user I do actually like it. It took me 40 minutes to install at 1pm this afternoon.
Here are my favourite non-dev features:
- Spaces: Having linux style workspace is really nice, and very much longed for
- Front Row: seems interesting, but I haven’t explored it much yet
- New Finder: iTunes style, but it doesn’t feel like iTunes… I was a bit worried about this before today.
Here are my favourite development features:
- Objective-C 2.0: Awesome, I look forward to getting stuck into it.
- Ruby, Python and PHP installed: Ruby and Python are even built into XCode 3 with a cocoa bridge, its awesome
- XCode 3: some nice additional features
Its ashame that we’re still on Java 1.5 (aka 5), I’d like to upgrade to Java 6 (aka 1.6) - maybe I’ll be able to do that soon.
Feel free to comment.
Thanks for reading,
Daniel
Technorati Tags: macosx, apple, leopard, mac
Apple Laptops are really lovely, except for one thing:
Electric Power
The Reasons:
- The iBook and PowerBook (G4s) had a lot of trouble with the connection into the laptop, the plugs easily broke. Two of mine had the same problem, although one still worked.
- The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros have the “MagSafe” connections… which fixes the easily broke problem. However, Apple have now had endless problems with batteries. They have a scheme to replace some of the early battery models, and a “battery update” patch for some of the new ones - but they still exhibit problems. Which brings me to the reason I am blogging about this:
My Apple MacBook battery is playing about, at least I think its the battery. It seems like many people also have similar problems, and they also think that it might be the power unit. Here is the status:
- Battery doesn’t charge when I have power plugged in, this is true when system is switched on or off
- Power unit manages to power the laptop when the battery is in and when the battery is out
- Battery LED flashes when I press the button on it
- Laptop recognises that the battery is in. When it is in it says 0% charge. When I take it out it has an x, and says no batteries detected.
- The power plug LED is solid orange when it is plugged into my laptop. This is when the laptop is on and when it is off, this is also when the battery is in and when it is not in.
- Resetting the PMU doesn’t fix the issue
- Leaving the power supply to get rid of static doesn’t fix the issue
- Leaving the battery to charge over night doesn’t charge the battery
So if you happen to be one of the Apple Genius Bar guys or an Apple Technician then could you let me know what is wrong. You can leave a comment on here or email me danieljohnlewis -at- gmail.com.
Technorati Tags: batter, apple, powersupply, problems
Steve Wozniak was interviewed by the British Computer Society, the interview is available here: https://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.14923
(Steve Wozniak is a co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs is the other one)
One thing I definitely do agree about is the career advice:
Try to know inside what your internal passion is. The thing you would do if you had no pay and no job. What would you do that makes you feel good inside? And that’s what you should do, you shouldn’t follow a formula from others saying this is the way you should go and this should be your career path.
One thing I also want to highlight is in the section about “geeks”:
I would say that it’s always been a bad thing. I don’t know if it’s the same in the UK
Being a geek in the UK is not as bad as being a geek in the USA. Cliques in the UK aren’t as strong, visible and irritating as they are in the USA - and so being a geek in the UK is not necessarily a bad thing. So if you are a geek in the UK then do not worry, if you are a non-geek in the USA then take it easy on the geeks.
Enjoy!
Technorati Tags: apple, wozniak, bcs
Right, its not terribly new news. But I thought I would comment on it anyway, the guys at Sun said: THIS
So I commented on their blog: HERE
Hopefully we can sway Sun to change their minds about the Java choice - but then they are the makers of Java. I think a lot of Mac developers realise that a Cocoa build is a lot more beneficial to a development company than a Carbon build. If you have any thoughts about my opinion then please comment, if you have comments about the OpenOffice Aqua then comment on the Sun blog.
Talk soon,
Daniel
Technorati Tags: macosx, openoffice, aqua, cocoa, objectivec
Hi all,
I was getting really annoyed that Safari was the default on Mac OS X. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Safari, I used it all the time once, and some of the features in the WebKit are looking fantastic. I just mostly use Firefox for things, I’ve managed to cope for at least 2 years with Safari popping up by default… but today I decided to change it. Here is how I did it (its in an awkward place now, in early OS X versions it was in System Preferences, but in the newer versions its more difficult to find for some silly reason):
- Open Safari
- Safari Menu > Preferences (or just do command/apple and comma i.e.  z, as the keyboard shortcut)
- Then go to the General tab
- There is a “Default Web Browser” combo box, where you can choose your browser of choice.
Enjoy!
Daniel
Technorati Tags: macosx, default, browser, safari, firefox
Apple iPhone
It is absolutely gorgeous! I want one, I really want one. A couple of weeks ago my uncle Pete said that one of his friends recently got employed at Apple to do designs for a new product (his old job was at a mobile phone company), Pete said that Apple were going to make a phone…. didn’t realise I would see something this quickly, it looks so well designed with all the high-tech-geeky features I would like (my current phone has the same sort of connectivity and software features - it is an O2 XDA Mini, but the iPhone would be fantastic to have instead… it would run so much better (as opposed to the annoying Windows Mobile))
Have a look, check it out, and comment on this post any thoughts about it 
Daniel
Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, appleiphone, ipod, mobilephone, cellularphone, phone, mobile
my adoration for this phone in no way matches my love for my Beki 
Howdie everyone!
If anyone has Objective-C experience and would like to be involved in an Open Source Project then please let me know. Thankies.
I need sleep… but there are more important things right now.
Talk soon
