Mark Gilbert’s Blog

AppleInsider is reporting that the Mac Mini may very soon be getting an upgrade, which may go further than just a drop in CPU upgrade in the existing unit.

Among the improvements destined for the new lineup are 45-nanometer Core 2 Duo mobile chips starting at 2.1GHz with 3MB of shared L2 cache, an 800MHz front-side bus (up from 667MHz), and a step up to the same Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics processor employed by the existing line of 13-inch consumer MacBooks.

Other more obvious upgrades would include a wireless upgrade to 802.11n, and possibly an optical drive change to standardise the DVD writer across the range. Whether this will happen or not remains to be seen, AppleInsider have been known to be wrong, they’ve said the Mac Mini was being killed off twice and yet it still lives on. I personally would like to see new Minis, I think they’re the perfect intro to Apple for Windows users and is how yours truly started down the Apple path.

Cheers

Two updates in the film arena today. First off Apple have announced that starting today if you’re Living in America (boo) you can now rent full films. Every major studio going ha signed with Apple, including Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, Lionsgate, Newline, Fox, Warner Brothers, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony.

30 days after a DVD is released it will appear in the iTunes store and will cost $3.99 for new films and $2.99 for archive titles.
Current HD releases will start at $4.99 with archive titles at £3.99.
All types of title will stream over the net so you can start watching straight away, and UK support will be coming later this year.

To go with all this Apple have also announced an update for AppleTV, this will bring HD support and full Dolby 5.1 surround, along with the ability to buy films directly from the AppleTV interface without a computer required.
The update will be released in a few weeks and will add the support to all existing AppleTV units.

Cheers

The next big announcement at Macworld 2008 is the new Time Capsule. In basic terms it is an Airport Base Station with what Apple refer to as a server grade hard drive inside to do Time Machine backups. It comes in two different capacities, 500Gb and 1Tb obviously you want the 1Tb version, Time Machine backups can be quite large.

This is something that users had been crying out for since Time Machine was introduced in OS X Leopard, however support for backing up to Airport connected drives was apparently removed, and now we know why.

Cheers

Well once again Macworld here and brought with it a whole host of new goodies.

First off the Macbook Air. Essentially a thinner version of the existing Macbook, but ohmygodhaveyouseenit? It is simply stunning. The features are as follows;

• 13.3″ widescreen backlit LED display
• Backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor
• 80Gb HDD as standard, upgradable to a 64Gb solid state drive
• 2Gb RAM
• 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo as standard with the 1.8 GHz upgrade option
• 802.11n
• 5 Hours of battery life

Things to note are no optical drive comes with the machine, but then at just 0.76″ at it’s thickest down to 0.13″ at the thinest it’s sort of expected, and when you realise it weighs just 1.36KGs it really is a very good prospect.

Cheers

Sadly as people may know I was a little slack on posting at times this year. I enjoyed writing my 2005 tech review, hopefully people enjoyed reading it, but when 2006 came round there was simply nothing posted. I didn’t write anything. In hindsight this was a mistake, so this year I have decided I will write a tech review, and so without any further ado, here is my 2007 tech review;

10. Windows Vista
Ooh controversial. Does Windows Vista deserve to be on here? Some will say yes, some will say no, but the fact that Microsoft managed to finally get such a large project out of the door is an achievement in itself. Although my most anticipated feature was sadly missing Vista is in most respects a step forward from Windows XP. Yes it runs slower, but then it has many more security features in place than XP. A lot of software is yet to support it, but from the bigger development houses you want to look at who’s to blame. The big boys with top MSDN accounts have had access to Vista builds for well over a year before launch and so have no excuse. While now most software is compatible only a small few developers are still whining on about their difficulties in getting their software to work.
Undoubtably Vista is the way forward, people like Dell may be offering XP as a BTO option but for how much longer? Microsoft can pull the plug on that whenever they want to, so as the saying goes, ‘Get with the program’

9. 21CN
BT’s 21CN simply stands for 21st Century Network, and that pretty well sums up what it is. With their grand plan, they are moving the UK’s old Public Switched Telephone Network based on a digital rework of old analogue technologies, over to a VoIP solution. 21CN will allow BT to completely revamp the services they offer both businesses and home users. Many larger businesses already use VoIP systems internally and the move to an IP based transit system instead of the traditional PSTN will make the whole implementation easier.
This whole project will cost BT £10 billion in capital expenditure over the next 5 years, but should set all of the UK up for faster broadband and pave the way for many more IP based services.

8. CentOS
Taking the RedHat source code, removing all the branding throw in a little love, recompile and distribute a free binary compatible RHEL clone. Sounds nice? Well it is, the CentOS guys have been doing this for quite some time now, but only recently receiving recognition for their efforts with some web hosts staring to offer CentOS on their dedicated servers as an option. I have played with CentOS and it’s a lovely distro, I have plans to use it on some servers sometime next year, and I chose it because I want RHE, but without paying for the branding and support contract.

7. Ubuntu
In 2007 Ubuntu really has gone from strength to strength and marked itself out as the Linux distro of choice for the desktop. Built in WPA detection, native NTFS read and write support, and includes Compiz and Beryl for all of you whole like your eye candy. I have used Ubuntu and it is incredibly easy to get to grips with.
As a brand Ubuntu has almost become synonymous with desktop Linux and the fact that they will send you discs to pass onto your mates isn’t half bad either. With Dell now giving its customers the option to have Ubuntu preinstalled on some of their systems I see only bigger and better things for Ubuntu in 2008.

6. Intel Quad Core
2007 was the year that Intel’s ‘Core’ chips finally completely destroyed the competition. AMD released the rather pathetic Barcelona to try to gain some point back but was met with underwhelming reviews. Having used a Core 2 Duo for the last year on my iMac I can say with certainty that Intel have the formula for success at hand, so slapping two Core 2 Duo cores together must be a step in the right direction. The thermal envelopes for the Quad core parts is generally lower than the old P4 chips, as show here and here.
With AMD’s Phenom nowhere to be seen and Intel’s quad core parts batttering Barcelona on both price and performance fronts, coupled with Intel’s soon to be seen 45nm processes, the future looks bright, and very small.

5. Asus Eee PC
An ultra-portable PC for £215? Madness you say? Not so, the Asus Eee PC tips the scales at only 928g and runs a custom Linux distro. It ships with Firefox and OpenOffice and is a great machine if, like the majority of the world seems to, all you want is a machine to do a few letters on and surf the net. It comes complete with a webcam built in, 802.11g as standard, so really what more do you want? For probably most of my uses of a computer that would be fine, since I seem to spend most of my time either surfing the net or working on documents, it only lacks in the ability to do the other part of my time, gaming and video encoding. Otherwise, it’s a great machine that deserves some great kudos.

4. Windows Home Server
Windows home server seems like one of those technologies that should be a given for Microsoft to produce. A simple yet powerful server product that can run on hardware that is well below the bar as far as current PC performance goes.
Based in Windows Server 2003, WHS makes it very simple to share and control media on both the server and the computers connected to it, as well as monitoring the health of both the network and the connected clients. Storage worries are taken care of by WHS, all RAID configs are handled easily as well as backup of the clients to the server. Microsoft really are spot on the money here, and with vendors like HP taking up the baton and running with WHS, MS are onto a winner here.

3. Google Apps
The buzz goes that Google Apps are MS Office killers. Well I actually agree with the buzz, Google’s Apps are fantastic pieces of work. Google provide most of the functionality that’s found within the Office suite from Microsoft, with Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Page Creator and Start Page all being included for the rather cheap price of nothing. Gmail, we all know and love, Google talk is based on the jabber IM protocol, Calendar does exactly what it says on the tin, Docs mimics the basic functionality of MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint, page creator is a basic GUI web page editor and start page offers a customisable home page.
All this seems a little much for a free package, but then so did Gmail when it was launched, offering 1Gb of storage while other languished around 10Mb. With Google Apps the whole set is portable, any net connected computer can be used to access the same documents, contacts and events as you would on your office or home PC. Simply put, why spend £250 on MS Office when you can have Google Apps for free and take them with you wherever you go?

2. Apple
Apple, consistently developing new products that seem to attract consumers like moths to a flame. That could be there company mantra, the iPhone has had a phenomenal launch worldwide and seen a large uptake, even though it is locked to one network in each region. 30,000 units sold in 5 days since the French launch, 500,000 unit expected to be sold in Europe by the end of the year, and Millions sold in the US, no one could say the iPhone’s sales have been lackluster. Apple also expect to sell 10 million worldwide next year but some analysts put the figure higher.
Leopard has taken off this year too, with a hell of a lot of people, myself included, queuing up outside and Apple store to buy Leopard. Apple claim 2 million copies sold in 2 days at launch, stick that in your pipe and smoke it Vista. It’s especially good going when you consider Apple estimates that there are only 21 million machines worldwide capable of running Leopard.
On top of all that though the new iPod range is stunning as usual and the new iMacs leave little to be desired, Apple made the right choice with Intel and its a decision which is playing off in spades now.

1. Nintendo Wii
Nintendo really had to steal the show here. At the end of last year they managed to create a product which by all accounts has largely outsold all the competition in such a short space of time as to be staggering. VG Chartz really show the big picture as to how well Nintendo are stomping the competition in terms of sales.
The Wii is something everyone wants to play on, when friends come over we all go on the Wii, no matter how old they are or how young. The selection of games still sadly tends to favour mini-games at the moment but things like Zelda and Mario Galaxy are starting to buck that trend. There are a lot of good things to come for the Wii, a lot of large publishers were caught off guard by just how popular the Wii was going to be and as a result they have been behind in development, but now they’re starting to catch up.
Nintendo has brought gaming to the masses with the Wii and do it all at the right price too, and so for that they take the top place in this review.

I hope you all enjoy reading this piece, please comment as you please on it, I always welcome the discussion.

Cheers

At the end of October I wrote a little bit about my experience with Leopard, and the little problem I managed to make for myself by not backing up data before an install. I also promised a more detailed look at Leopard itself rather than just my problems with it. Someone pointed out to me last week that I had yet to do the follow up, so here it is.

Personally I think Leopard is ahead of Tiger in most respects. Things are better organised and in a more logical fashion, for example, firewall settings now come under the ‘Security’ section of the preferences, rather than ‘Sharing’ as they did in Tiger. Parental controls now have their own section, rather than being hidden away in the accounts settings.

The look of the OS has changed too, the menu bar is now semi-transparent, rather than the older opaque style of Tiger, and the same applies to the Dock, it is now semi-transparent and reflective. No just shiny reflective but real-time reflective. Nice features both of them, but they serve no real purpose other then iCandy.

The bigger features include the much anticipated Time Machine, Boot Camp, and Spaces.

Time Machine automatically backs up everything on your Mac by default to an external hard drive of your choosing. It can be either USB or Firewire and does not have to be present all the time, obviously Time Machine will only back up to there when the drive is connected. You can specify which files are excluded from the backup so that pointless files are not wasting backup space. The whole process is absolutely seamless, it really is a case of set and forget. Running quietly in the background files are copied, with the oldest backup being erased once the drive gets full. Backups are done hourly and are incremental once the first full backup has run. All this leads to a solution which is much more likely to be used by the average user, which can only be a good thing. Your machine can be completely restored from a Time Machine backup with the help of the Leopard install disc, complete with permissions intact.

Spaces is Apple’s implementation of virtual desktops. The number of spaces can be configured right up to a 4 x 4 grid of them down to the simple 2 spaces. Moving between them is simple enough, control and arrow keys move you around, or click the spaces icon to see an expose-esque overview of all spaces and click the one you want to switch too. Applications can be bound to a specific space so that each time you open that application it runs in a particular space, which is a nice touch.

Boot Camp, everybody knows what it is by now, so I’ll not go into that. What I will say is that it is included with Leopard and no longer available for standalone download. It remains essentially the same as the downloadable version, but with an updated driver set and some minor bug fixes.

The interface for Front Row has seen a revamp, with the large reflective spinning thing gone, and a new, rather more minimal interface in it’s place. Personally I like it, it ties in nicely with the Apple TV interface and makes navigation easier. Some people don’t like the new design and have even reverted back to the FrontRow build that comes with Tiger, but for me, I’m sticking with it.

Printing has been massively simplified, adding my networked printer really was a doddle, I had no problems at all with all the required drivers installed automatically for me.

There have been a whole host of UNIX changes under the hood which I wont go into here, and security has been revamped, again I wont go into that here, but have a read to find out what changes have been made.

Sadly since upgrading to Leopard I have seen more crashes. Application crashes in Safari in particular I’m seeing more frequently than with Tiger, but the 10.5.1 update seems to have fixed most of these.

I’ve had only minor problem with application compatibility, and nothing like the problem users of Windows Vista have been experiencing.

All in all it’s a most worthwhile upgrade for users of Panther and Tiger, and Apple’s attractive pricing on their family packs makes the purchase very tempting for users with more than one Mac in their house.

Cheers

Well as I expected I bought Leopard on launch day. I was wanting to go away with my other half somewhere for the weekend, so Birmingham seemed like a good choice. So at 17:30 I was in a large queue outside the Apple store in the Bullring. Time went by and the Queue which I thought was big as it was, got even larger, about double the size it was when I joined.18:00 rolled round and the doors opened, and people were let in in small groups, maybe 50 at a time. I was in there earlier so I just went in, bought the family pack for £129 and got out, besides I had a table booked for dinner at 21:00.

So we got back to the hotel and I had some time, so I decided I would have a go at installing it on Kay’s laptop.  You have to understand I was quite excited at this point, being the little boy inside that I am, and I broke two golden rules. These rules are “always backup” and “repair your disk before attempting an upgrade”.Things did not go well, I ran the installer, used the disk utility to do a permissions repair but not a disk repair, chose an upgrade install and the installer stopped with an error before getting anywhere. So I rebooted and was going to Google the problem, but the chimes came, as did the Apple logo and the spinning gear, then the unit powered off. Tried again, same thing. “Shit, Kay had all her first year Uni work on there” was the thought that went through my head. I booted off the Leopard disc again and ran disc utility, tried a disk repair and it failed with an error in the catalogue file.The install would now only give me the option of erase and install, instead of archive and install and upgrade. I could not erase the drive, I hadn’t backed anything up and erasing the drive and installing a new OS would make chances of data recovery small. I had to get the laptop up and running again with no data loss, losing everything was not an option. So I tried a safe boot, nothing from that, ran fsck from the terminal on the installer disc, and still nothing. Finally I knew I would have to wait till I got home, put the laptop into target disk mode and copy the data off using my iMac.

So when we got home I put the laptop into target disk mode and plugged it into my iMac, but the disk didn’t mount. It showed up in disk utility as being available but the partition couldn’t be mounted. My only hope at this point was to try something hardcore. If the disk was appearing as a volume but wouldn’t mount I could still perform tasks on it to try to fix it. Disk Warrior was my weapon of choice and after a lot of thinking and grinding disk warrior managed to have a go at repairing the volume. To my relief Disk Warrior repaired the drive and when I turned the laptop back on it booted into Tiger. At this point I backed up the main user folder and tried again with another upgrade install. This time the install went through as normal and after a little while the unit rebooted back into Leopard.

With mine I made no such mistakes again, all data backed up and an erase and install option, after an upgrade gave problems with software I already had installed under Tiger. So I sit here typing this from Safari 3.04, not the beta with my lovely Leopard OS. It is very nice, the user interface is much more consistent than with Tiger, Time Machine makes backups easy and really is a set and forget backup solution. Spaces makes organising your desktop easy, complete updates of many applications such as Safari, Mail, Front Row, and others. Have a look at the full 300 changes at Apple’s website. Well, I’m pleased with Leopard and it was worth the wait, I’ll give a more full view after a few weeks.

Cheers

Apple have now officially confirmed Leopard will ship on October 26th at 18:00. I presume that will be Pacific time making the launch time 11:00 in the UK if they stick to the same schedule. The UK Apple site simply states October as the release date and doesn’t go into specifics. There’s time yet to get all the details out though, I’m sure we’ll know soon enough, and as usual I’ll post it here.

Cheers

I already posted about the fact that Leopard would hit sometime at the end of October, but now there is some serious momentum to this rumour. Both ifoAppleStore and ThinkSecret have had some confirmation from their sources  that October 26th will indeed be Leopard release date. Apparently a 18:00 launch looks likely as Apple did previously for Tiger. Roll on the 26th when Apple can finally let the cat out of the bag.

Cheers

According to ThinkSecret Apple OS X 10.5, known to most as Leopard could drop sometime in the week beginning 22nd October. As usual sources are not disclosed as I’m sure people may lose their jobs over the leak, but they seem fairly sure. So all being well all us Mac users should have a new kitty cat to play with by the end of the month.

Cheers

According to Apple, their new Leopard OS will feature the ability to safe sleep your OS X session when switching to Boot Camp, then when you come back from Windows your OS X session is restored to where you left off. Hardly earth moving but cool non-the-less. It’s a feature I would use, I hate having to end my OS X session when I switch back to Windows to play any games.

Cheers

No, not that sort of porn you dirty monkeys, tech hardware porn. TUAW have some great iPhone porn shots.

iPhone Gallery

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