Rockin' the Macworld

If only I was. I'm quite excited to to see what Apple introduces in a few hours. As you may remember, four years ago I went to a Macworld. It was pretty spiffy. Take a look at the picture, for proof.

MacBook Air? Time to wait and see!

AppleCare in a foreign country

Having AppleCare is a good thing. My power adapter on my 15" PowerBook bit the dust last week. I took it into the local Apple office here in Bangalore and got it replaced. First time I've had to get a repair on this computer outside of the normal 1yr warranty. AppleCare will expire on this computer in September. Very good purchase. I'd highly recommend it for anybody that has an Apple laptop. It's that whole, piece of mind thing.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1532

Best feature in iTunes 6.0.2

The best feature in iTunes, apart from the mini-store (ha ha), is multiple-speaker support. This means I can have my built-in speakers on my computer and my Airport Express all playing at the same time.

And somehow, they're perfectly synchronized, so I've got one source playing music in multiple rooms in my house. I could add more Airport Expresses around my house to get every room filled with music.

It'd be cool if someone created an all-weather Airtunes speaker set so I could have this outside the house, or in the shower.

Windows 2000 Certificate Authority and Apple Safari

Windows Servers can act as a certificate authority. (More info: http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/1473961) I have Windows 2000 Server running at home in a VirtualPC machine on my Mac. I fire it up, turn on the certificate authority, and then try to browse to http://servername/certsrv so that I can request and download a user certificate. Doesn't work in Safari. I can't log in to the site. Works fine in Firefox.

So, I mess around with settings. Perhaps Safari's trying to use some braindead version of NTLM authentication rather than basic authentication. Nope.... the tcpdump output I captured shows it isn't. Hrm... well, what if I use the Safari debug menu (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030110063041629) to change my User-Agent so that IIS thinks I'm using Mozilla, or IE6 on Windows? Nope, still doesn't work.

Finally, I go into the event log and see this gem:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: W3SVC
Event Category: None
Event ID: 100
Date: 8/2/2004
Time: 9:30:50 PM
User: N/A
Computer: WIN2KSERVER
Description:
The server was unable to logon the Windows NT account 'bernielab\berniec' due to the following error: Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer. The data is the error code.

Safari's truly doing something wacky. I have no clue why IIS thinks Safari is trying to log on to the server (which happens to be the domain controller). Firefox doesn't pull this kind of tomfoolery!

I eventually had to go into Domain Controller Security Policy -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment -> Log on locally. In there, I added the "berniec" account to the list of users that are allowed to log in locally to the domain controller. I shouldn't have had to do this - ordinary users should have no rights to log into a domain controller. Hrm, stupid Apple.

So, after that, I finally was able to request and download a certificate. You can't directly import user certificates into Safari, but you can import them into a user's Keychain for future use by Safari. That part worked great. Keychain had zero problems importing the cert that was issued by the Windows CA. Hoorah.

G5 = Gotdamn!

Wow, so Apple came out with a bevy of announcements today. I won't repeat what's already been covered on /., but hell yeah baby. Go Apple! Please put my dual-1.42GHz G4 to shame! I'm going to look forward to upgrading to your 3GHz G5s as soon as they're available in 12 months!!! Hell yeah!

If only I'd known....

Link to image

Specs for the new PowerMacs, from Apple. Get 'em while they're hot. They aren't going to be up for long. Looks like somebody goofed.

In case anybody wonders, here are the specs:

- 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz, or Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 processors
- Up to 1GHz processor bus
- Up to 8GB of DDR SDRAM
- Fast Serial ATA hard drives
- AGP 8X Pro graphics options from NVIDIA or ATI
- Three PCI or PCI-X expansion slots
- Three USB 2.0 ports
- One FireWire 800, two FireWire 400 ports
- Bluetooth & AirPort Extreme ready
- Optical and analog audio in and out

I bet it'll be slower than a IIcx.

(I say this only to make myself better about recently buying a dual 1.42GHz PowerMac G4).

Cry.

Update (21:31 PDT): Apple's fixed the graphic. Here's a cached copy courtesy of the Gods at MacRumors.

Update (6/20 4:31 PDT): The cached copy on MacRumors is gone thanks to Apple's legal department. In any case, I believe those specs to be real. Apple legal doesn't usually ask for stuff to be removed if it's fake.

iDVD, for why do you not use my chapters!?

Video editing on my new PowerMac is very nice. Compared to my old 800MHz iMac, this new dual-1.42GHz PowerMac is a speed demon. Lately, I've been grabbing some shows off the TiVo and archiving them. The convoluted conversion process I have to follow goes something like this:

1. Download show off of the TiVo using MFSStream
2. Convert .ty source file with TyConvert X.
3. Demux resulting MPEG-2 file with bbDEMUX
4. Encode resulting .m2v file into format of my choice (DV for iDVD projects, in particular) with DiVA
5. Convert .m1a audio to AIFF using madplaywrap and MAD.
6. Normalize resulting audio file with Sound Studio
7. (optional) Compress AIFF file into MPEG-4 AAC or something smaller (if I'm not outputting to DVD).
8. Use sync-hole to combine and sync audio/video tracks between the DV file (or whatever output compressed format I chose) and the audio track.
9. Use Quicktime Pro to edit out commercials
10. (optional) Save as a self-contained movie

If I'm going to DVD, I end up with a large DV file that I bring into iDVD. The iDVD product page says that iDVD will read chapter tracks within a Quicktime file and then use them within a project. Does this work? Yes, for iMovie, no for the chapter tracks I've been added to my movies. Once I create the chapter track and add it to my DV file, Quicktime works fine with it. But, bringing the file into iDVD does nothing. iDVD doesn't even recognize that there's a chapter track there.

And, I can't take my huge DV file and import it into iMovie because iMovie has a limit to the size of clips you can import. Argh!

I wonder what I'm doing wrong here. Am I asking too much of iDVD, or is there a bug that prevents it from reading chapter tracks from files created with Quicktime Pro?

Say hello to Hephaestus...

Right now, I'm sitting in front of a brand spankin' new dual 1.42GHz PowerMac I have named Hephaestus (Greek god of smiths). Attached to it is a stunning 20" Cinema display.

This thing is unbelievable. Right now, I'm in dual-processor heaven. I could care less about PPC970 Macs. This might change in a few months, but that's alright. This thing is faster than anything I've ever used before.

And the display. Good lord! I'm going to have the display for quite a few years before I ever feel the need for another.

My older 800MHz G4 iMac is for sale. As soon as I'm ready, I'll be putting up more information about it. I'll probably put it up on eBay.

Update: Here's a pic of Hephaestus.

Today's project, completed.

Ah, it always feels good to complete a project. Today's project - swapping out the old, noisy case fan and power supply from Nicole's "Wind Tunnel" PowerMac, and replacing it with a newer, quieter set from Apple. It went pretty well, with the exception of constantly dropping small screws in the case, and then having to fish them out of tight spaces. I need to magnetize my screwdriver.

It's much quieter now, and doesn't have the whine that it used to.

15" PowerBook to not be updated?

So, I'm in the market for a new PowerBook, but not the current generation 15" PowerBook. I want to wait until Apple updates the 15" Titanium 'Book to Aluminum, like the newer 12" and 17" models. A buddy of mine in the UK heard from a friend of his who heard from the local Apple store that Apple was not going to be updating the 15" PowerBooks this year. I find that really hard to believe, and I'm going to defer to this information about forthcoming AlBooks. I hope it's coming soon. It's time to get rid of my iMac and 3-yr old PowerBook. Anybody wanna buy one of them? $1100 OBO for the iMac (800MHz G4/512MB/60GB/SuperDrive), $1000 OBO for the PowerBook (500MHz G4/384MB/20GB/DVD). BTW, the PowerBook's been upgraded with a G4/500 processor.

Ding! Your PowerBook's done!

This story begs the question.... why would you ever put a PowerBook in the oven?!

iPhoto = iCrash

Okay, so Apple released iLife today. I've been looking forward to some of the features of iPhoto, as I use it a lot. It's done me pretty well for quite some time. I use iTunes every day, and it's by far one of the best MP3 players I've ever used (smart playlists rule!). I don't use iMovie because I have no DV camcorder.

Anyway....

I installed iPhoto on my PowerBook. The install went great, and iPhoto was able to convert my iPhoto v1 library over to the new iPhoto v2 format. I get home this evening and try to do the same on my iMac. The installer completes successfully, but I can't get iPhoto to launch. It starts to launch, then shows the iPhoto window, and then crashes. Every time. I tried rebooting. I tried repairing disk permissions. I even tried using the backup of my iPhoto library I had made. No luck.

My final solution was to copy over the converted iPhoto library from the PowerBook to the iMac. This library wasn't synched up entirely with the iMac, so I had to manually import three older albums from the original iPhoto library I had on the iMac. Needless to say, I wasn't happy at the hassle I had to go through.

iPhoto 2 is not much faster than iPhoto 1. I do notice it shuts down a bit quicker, but scrolling and picture saving (i.e. after you change the title of the photo) still take a while. And what's worse is that if you have a very large iTunes music database, be prepared to wait a while for the preferences window to open. Oh, and I couldn't get a slideshow to work with a song in my iTunes database. It hung with the spinning beachball of death.

God, I hope there's an iPhoto 2.0.1 update coming soon. iPhoto 2.0 is nothing but shit in my book.

And another thing, Apple - for the love of God, please work on window resizing. Jesus H. Christ!! Your users have only been bitching about this since the beginning of OS X. You'd think that by now you'd have been able to do more about it than you have! (As an aside, window resizing speed is worse for brushed metal apps. It's a tad better for normal Aqua apps.)

Rant mode is off... for now.

If you're goin' to San Francisco....

...make sure to visit MacWorld Conference & Expo.

Nicole and I went to Steve Jobs's keynote yesterday. It was incredible. I've been keeping up with the keynotes for the past couple of years, and this one was a biggie. I won't bore you with all the details, as there are plenty of sites out there that will do that already.

The only thing that sucked about the keynote was waiting in line for it, however I did get to meet some very interesting people. And, true to the power of wireless networking and Rendezvous, an ad-hoc Rendezvous network sprung up and I was chatting with other people in line that were on the "iChat over Rendezvous" network. That was very cool. We got into line at about 4:30am, with about 50 people in front of us. The seats we got in the Esplanade weren't too great, but they weren't too bad, either.

I must get a 12" PowerBook. I've been saying for a long time that I wanted a 12" iBook, but that I'd hold off until it had a G4. Well, now the PowerBook's here, and it's beautiful. The 17" PowerBook is massive, but also very well designed. It definitely is a desktop replacement machine.

Today starts the Users' Conference at MacWorld, and Nicole and I are going to a few of the scheduled talks. Apart from that, we're going to try to do a little sightseeing, and visit SFMOMA today or tomorrow. Time to go look and see if MUNI has a trip planner.

Ah, sweet relief....

The cable's been reconnected. What a wondrous day. This means no more dialup Internet, or antenna for TV. I'm very happy.

There's still the matter of fixing the gutters, fixing the fence, and removing the tree, but apart from that we're moving right along. The electrician is almost done with his work, and soon we'll get our permanent electrical connection from Seattle City Light.

Nicole and I are off to San Francisco on Monday night for Macworld. I can't wait, although some of the rumors I've read have not been very encouraging. If Nicole's Sidekick works fine from within Moscone center, we'll probably update this journal in real time. Neat-o, eh?

Hello, you've reached my broken answering machine...

So, I get home today, and a certain gray cat had apparently ruined the answering machine. Don't ask me how, but she likes to jump up on the bookshelf the answering machine is on, so she can look out the window. Well, when she gets up there, she ends up walking all over the answering machine. She has erased the outgoing welcome message twice. I come home today and nothing works on the answering machine. The answering machine's on, but none of the buttons do anything, including the on/off button. I tried pulling the power out and putting it back in, and still the same. So, the answering machine's been tossed and I'm going to go with Qwest voicemail service again. It's $6.95/month (bleh) but I'll live. I liked it when I had it at the old place. And to think that the only reason I have a landline phone is because of the TiVo.

Watching the Screen Savers right now. I must say that the Wil Wheaton housecall was pretty good, and I'm happy to hear that he's playing around with an iBook. Of course, I'm typing this on my iMac.

So I heard rumors today, of the new PPC 7457, which sounds like a very attractive chip. I'm going to wait to get a new Mac until 1.6GHz chips are available. I want to double the performance of 800MHz iMac, on a clock speed basis (and if they come out with dual-1.6GHz Macs, that'll be even better). My girlfriend's DDR PowerMac is awesome, though, even though it has dual-867. Definitely a fast Mac.

I've signed up to volunteer in the phone bank with Rise Above It All this Sunday. Hopefully it'll go well. Monorail Yes!!!

Beware of M$ software updaters...

I can say I've never had a problem with a software updater from Microsoft, until today. I've used updaters on Windows and Macs, and all of the Windows updaters have been great. The Mac updaters also have been great, but the Office v.X 10.1.1 updater is a piece of crap, without a doubt.

I'd been following the reviews at Versiontracker, and they weren't encouraging, to say the least. Lots of people were reporting problems getting it installed, with missing library issues, and wiped out Office install directories. Well, I bit the bullet, and installed it on my iMac G4/800. It went fine, surprisingly. I was pleased.

My PowerBook's at work, so I went to work and installed it on that. Blammo, it fucked up my Office install. First I got a privileges problem with the installer. In that process, the Office Component Library got wiped out. Since I'm at work at the moment, and I don't have my Office CD, I use AFP to connect to my iMac at home. Grabbed the component library again. I decided I'd try to install SR1 again. Didn't work, that wiped out Word and Excel, leaving the original files in the trash. Well, at this point, all I could do was drag my Office folder to the trash.

Similar problems occurred on my girlfriend's PowerMac. To make a long story short - if you have these problems, there's a very simple way to get back to a working installation of Office:

1. Delete your current Office folder
   
2. Install office from the Office CD
   
3. Install SR1
   
4. Install 10.1.1 update
   

It seems that there's a problem with the 10.1.1 in the way it sees installed permissions. One person on VT said that the updater expects that the user installing the update must also have installed Office and SR1. And the installer doesn't require admin access, so OS X network admins be aware: you could have users installing this update really screwing shit up.

Long story short, be wary of any updater, M$ or not. At least this update didn't delete all of my hard drive.