I’ve been a straight up Mac user for several years now and gosh darn it, I don’t know squat about Windows Vista and my memories of Windows 2000 are fleeting. So when we had to purchase Windows XP, I was left like a bewildered moose on the highway.
Why the hell would any Mac user want to install Windows in the first place? Well, there’s that ever elusive Application that is only available for Windows. Games are the likely culprit to want to dual boot using Boot Camp. For us, it was 3D Studio Max. We shelled out $199 for a fresh copy of Windows XP Home Edition, installed it, then re-read the Minimum Requirements for 3DS Max and saw Professional Edition! I almost freaked out, after two hours of returning to the World of Microsoft, I already screwed something up! Sometimes people call me a Mac Genius, but when it comes to a PC, it’s most likely that I’ll crash and burn the thing. Why is XP still $199 when it’s five years old? A brand new copy of Leopard is only $129.99 and there’s no Home, Professional, Media, etc, it’s all one great package. I couldn’t believe that there is no way to view a .DOC straight out of the box with Windows. What a crock of… at least 3DS Max turned out to run fine under Home Edition on the Mac.
So, if you were looking for a tutorial on how to install Windows on an Intel Mac, just print the directions like Apple tells you to. It was easy, but for me it required that I back up, reformat my drive, install OS X, run Boot Camp, install Windows, install the drivers for Windows, then Migrate my Apps and User information from the backed up copy of OS X to the fresh copy.
Overall, despite running into the occasional boned headed question, “Why’d they make Windows so incompatible with everything out of the box?”, my experience with Windows on a Mac only corroborates what I’ve read on blogs that the particular MacBook Pro 15″ Intel Core Duo probably once was the fastest way to run Windows on any notebook at the time. I say notebook because a MacBook Pro isn’t a laptop. Of course that’s what Apple Geniuses are programmed to tell you when you take an Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro 15″ into the store, complaining of it overheating, running over 190 degrees F. “If you computer doesn’t shut off, it’s not overheating.” Looks like when Applecare runs out on this particular MacBook Pro, I’ll be taking it into the nearest Apple Reseller to have them install a 500GB Hard Drive and fix the overheating issue, two things Apple Inc. refuses to do to my laptop. It will void my warranty if I try to do these two things. I do not trust any hardware company any longer.
What did you learn in this post? Or did it leave you with further questions?
So many people are creating videos for distribution on video sharing sites. To make a video, I obviously need source materials. These could come from original camera footage, stock footage (which can be very costly), or from videos I find online and want to sample from. This last source will be the subject of this tutorial about how to make a FLV video clip ready for editing in Final Cut Pro or even iMovie.
Since the release of Final Cut Studio 2, the suite of editing programs have become more flexible with the file formats they recognize. FLV is still a problem for Final Cut, especially in older versions. I must have Quicktime compatible files in order to edit them in Final Cut.
If I want to use footage from Youtube (or most other video sharing sites), I first must rip it from the website and download the FLV to my Mac. There are a few Firefox Add-Ons that do this. I ripped a YouTube video successfully the other day using the Firefox Add-On DownloadHelper ver.3.1.1. DownloadHelper puts a little icon next to the Awesome Bar in Firefox, so when I am on YouTube I can just click and select the YouTube video from the list. For some reason, I tried FastVideoDownload ver. 1.6.1 first and it resulted in a corrupt file. Another website to check out is FlashLoad.net, where you can download high quality MP4s instead of FLV from certain sites like Youtube, Google Video, and Metacafe.
This process gives me a FLV file with the dimensions of 320×240 on my computer. Quicktime doesn’t like this filetype (FLV) on my computer, so I use the video player VLC to watch the video. I always preview source content to make sure it downloaded correctly. I then open the shareware Application called VisualHub to convert the video from FLV to DV. I set VisualHub to “Ready for Final Cut” and make the video dimensions 640×480. This upconversion works very well for me. I use VisualHub because it is easier than Quicktime Pro and allows me to do batch conversions. An article about VisualHub can be found here at iUseApple. If I want to convert the video using Quicktime Pro I use Quicktime Export, DV NTSC, Interlaced, 640×480 dimensions.
After the conversion, I have a DV file that is 10X or more the filesize than the FLV, in 640×480.
I start up Final Cut or iMovie, make a new Project File and import the DV files (iMovie will copy the DV file to your project location, so prepare to have lots of disk space when using iMovie). All the video I import for my project should use the same video codec, DV. Final Cut replies saying the clip is not optimized for Final Cut, despite having checked the “Ready for Final Cut” in Visual Hub. I should e-mail the Visual Hub people, but it always works just fine anyways.
I then edit together all the content in the timeline.
When I am finished editing, I export the video by selecting File -> Export -> Quicktime Conversion and set it to h.264, auto keyframes, 500 kbps, fast encode, deinterlaced 640×480, aac audio @ 32 KHz, otherwise default audio settings.
Firefox 3 has been released! Will this mean the end of Firefox crashes and slow page loads on a Mac? Well, I can vouch that Firefox 3 is way faster than it’s predecessor, Firefox 2, at loading Web 2.0 intensive pages. Possibly even 2X faster, with speeds rivaling Safari. But I am not a benchmarker, so don’t take my word for it.
There are loads of useful new features in Firefox 3. The most impressive so far is the replacement for the address bar, the new “awesome bar”. Now you can type in keywords right in the bar to get to your favorite sites. You can even assign custom keywords for a particular url, or just remember a portion of the address as it stands. What’s extremely useful about this is that even as you type in a particular keyword for a site where you’ve visited lots of pages, let’s use eBay as an example. All the latest eBay listings you’ve previously visited will pop up right in the pop down menu.
Other new features in Firefox 3 include one click bookmarking, web page zooming (as opposed to just text zooming), a slicker bookmarks manager, stylish interface, better extension and add-on management, a new password manager, and the ability to view web page certificates and verify the identity of websites, while ensuring your connection is encrypted.
The new default theme Firelight is nice, although the back and forward button annoys me a bit, but the interface is more attractive than any other OS. Also, I have noticed complications with some add-ons and websites, so I imagine web developers will have to play a little catch up for the new release, despite the open beta program that has been going on for months. But nothing to completely bring down my web experience has shown up over the past 24 hours. I highly recommend Firefox 3 as the web browser of choice for the Mac. Pickup your new copy of Firefox 3 for free from getfirefox.com.
What did you learn in this post? Or did it leave you with further questions?
Don’t get me wrong, I think Preview is the best PDF viewer I have ever used. I typically forgo installing Adobe Acrobat even, since I find it loads slow and has too many features for me. But that being said, Preview is clean and simple to use, possibly a little too simple.
One feature Preview has always lacked is editing a PDF. For instance, one of my fellow grad students asked me to revise a paper. I asked for a PDF since DOC files do not always cooperate with OS X, formatting issues often arise. When I got it, I thought to myself, well how am I going to edit it now?
That’s where the free Application called Skim comes in. Skim has several features Preview just forgot about. One of them is an elegant Editing interface that allows me to mark up papers, including highlights, and notes. Some other nice features Skim has is support for the Apple remote, full screen reading, export notes to text, applescript support, the list goes on…
There are several tweaks that you may want to make to OS X that are not available in System Preferences. Windows XP users may remember called TweakUI, a downloadable utility for changing different system attributes. There are a few freeware and shareware Applications that perform the same kind of actions in OS X.
Cocktail is perhaps the best Application I have found that will tweak certain aspects of OS X. This program is shareware. The Cocktail website explains the user agreement, “When unregistered, Cocktail (Leopard Edition) and Cocktail (Tiger Edition) runs in demo mode and will expire after the tenth launch. Cocktail (Panther Edition) is distributed as freeware and does not require a license.” I usually only use this Application once after installing OS X. But the $14.95 single user, $29.99 family license price tag isn’t bad, considering all the things you can manipulate with it. Without such an application, these tweaks require an extensive knowledge of Unix.
So what can Cocktail do?
Toggle indexing and Spotlight searching for mounted drives
I wouldn’t say Cocktail is essential, but it is a user friendly App for those who wish to tweak the look, feel, functionality, and behind the scenes operations of OS X. If all you are looking for are the maintenance functions of the program (repairing Permissions, cleaning the System Caches, and rebuilding indexes, then another free solution would be the application Maintenance.
What did you learn in this post? Or did it leave you with further questions?
Applications like Napster and Limewire are outdated by todays standards. Peer to Peer (P2P) applications of the past meant you could download a file from one source over the internet. Newer innovations like Bit Torrent allow you to download one file from many sources, while uploading parts of the file to others simultaneously.
But how does Bit Torrent work? Basically, there are Bit Torrent websites out there like PirateBay.org and IsoHunt.com where you can search for files. But these websites do not actually host the file itself, instead they provide a torrent file and the service of tracking. A torrent file coordinates the download of the actual file, while the tracker hosts the communication between people sharing the file. So, you download the torrent file from a website, then use a Bit Torrent application on your computer to open the torrent file and handle the download. When you download the file, you are called a leecher. After you are finished downloading the file, you are known as a seeder. It is important to seed the file to others for a period of time, so that the file can thrive. Bit Torrent depends on people seeding the file. The more seeders, the faster the download.
This guy has successfully engineered a GPS Module to interface with the iPhone and iPod Touch, bringing true GPS to the devices made by Apple, Inc. This should be an exciting project for anyone wanting to use their iPhone as a GPS device. Imagine the ability to cache Google Map’s directions and follow the route in real time. This functionality would fit in nicely with a car holder for the iPhone. The current GPS feature Apple released in January 2008 actually triangulates the positional data based on the relative position between the device and cell phone towers. GPS triangulates position using satellites in orbit, and is thus more accurate (around 3-6 meters). Seems like the project has moved into the final design phases, so a GPS solution for the iPhone should be on the market by next year hopefully!
What did you learn in this post? Or did it leave you with further questions?
Miglia has had the same message posted on their site for months, ever since OS X Leopard was released:
“AlchemyTV and AlchemyTV DVR are not compatible with Mac OS X 10.5. We are currently working on an update that will be released as soon as it is ready for prime-time. As AlchemyTV DVR started its life in the 10.2 days (and works fine up to 10.4.11), the architecture needs profound modifications to enable 10.5 compatibility. The update is taking longer than we would really like, but rest asssured that we are working on it.”
I have rest assured for eight months now, still unable to use the card with OS X Leopard on my PowerMac G5. Whenever I try to run the software, a kernel panic happens and the little grey screen appears telling me to restart.
There is a workaround for anyone with this problem though. That is, to have a working copy of Tiger on a separate volume, so the card has an OS that will run it. Then, you could boot into Tiger whenever you want to use the card. I have this setup and it is rather cumbersome. First off, Leopard’s Spotlight constantly wants to index the other volume, so I had to exclude it from the search. And the fact that I have to boot into another OS is really inconvenient. If I wanted to do that, I would have installed Windows.
Why wasn’t Miglia testing out their card while Leopard was still under development? Miglia, please update the software for the Alchemy DVR to work with OS X Leopard!
What did you learn in this post? Or did it leave you with further questions?
After 20 years of the same old interface, Max/MSP has finally gotten a facelift from Audio Video Synthesis company Cycling74. Max 5 is a graphical programming environment for audio/video that in recent years has been copied by similar nodal interfaces found in Quartz Composer, Motion, and Shake. According to Cycling74, “Max is the way to make your computer do things that reflect your individual ideas and dreams. Version 5 is a dramatic transformation of Max that begins a new chapter in the program’s history.”
Max is a digital environment for what used to involve analog synthesizers connected via patch cords to oscillators and electronic sensors. Using Max, you can basically connect any device to your computer and use it to make music and visuals. For instance, I could use the longitude and latitude from a GPS device as a controller for music. Or, I could use Midi from a keyboard to alter the behavior of video. The possibilities seem endless with Max.
Several enhancements in the latest release include a Streamlined Interface (w/ multiple undo, zoom, and grid), presentation mode (which should make creating User Interfaces much easier and cleaner), Integrated Documentation (hopefully this will make learning Max easier), Timing (using beats and bars instead of milliseconds should make it easier for musicians), Debugging features (including tapping into what A/V signals look like anywhere in a patch), and a File Browser with Searching!
Max 5 is a packaged set of A/V synthesis objects for $699. Students can get an educational discount or a 9 month license. The Max 5 Upgrade is $199. Try Max out with a fully functional 30 day demo.
What did you learn in this post? Or did it leave you with further questions?
Very few Dashboard Widgets have an enjoyable UI (User Interface). NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who supplies weather data to every Weather Man on TV, now has an outstanding Dashboard Widget available for OS X. 7 Day Forecast, Current Conditions, Zoom Doppler, and Live Alerts combined with Quartz visual effects makes the weather reporting experience actually enjoyable. The NOAA Weather Center Dashboard Widget is designed by Cobalt Logic. I am excited to see what other offerings this designer has in store for the Dashboard…
