Macintosh – Insanely Great

June 27th, 2010 at 9:30 · Filed Under Blogging · Comment

I remember that I was waiting to be accepted as a member of my school’s computer club. No Macintosh but Commodore Vic 20 with only ~~4 (or 8 )~~ 5 KB of memory and cassette tape drive. I came in contact with a Macintosh in a computer shop in 1987 and I fell in love with it too. Unfortunately, its price was exorbitantly high and I could not afford a Macintosh back then.

This video shows the young Steve Jobs revealing the insanely great Macintosh in 1984. It is so classic and what a nostalgia!

Tags: Apple, Mac, Macintosh

Dropbox – The magical USB drive

October 12th, 2009 at 9:52 · Filed Under Blogging, Computing, Mac OS X, Technology · 2 Comments

Dropbox, the magical USB drive, let’s you transfer files among computers without the need of a physical USB drive or DVD or emailing. Dropbox on Mac is the latest and coolest file sharing technology made available today.

I have been using Apple’s iDisk to sync and share files among my computers, iPod Touch (iPhone) and as well as clients and co-workers. Two days ago, I discovered Dropbox and I now find it easier to use than iDisk and it is faster! It is free for a 2GB storage or upgrade with a small monthly fee.

One cool feature of Dropbox is that when someone drops you a file in your folder, Dropbox notifies you using Growl. iDisk lacks this notification feature and usually the file arrives silently unless the sender texts or emails you.

Dropbox can work offline. Dropbox on Mac will sync your files and folders to your local hard disks and allows you to access later even when offline. The sync is done automatically.

I used to copy some files on my USB drive and take them to my clients. Now I no longer need to bring anything. Just use my client’s Internet browser to access my Dropbox and viola! The files will be transfered to my client’s Mac.

Of course, there are many ways to use Dropbox for your productivity. For example, taking your lecture notes to the lecture hall without carrying anything at all, not even USB pen drive. There are some other ways of using Dropbox, read here. But that’s not all. Please tell me if you find any other use of it.

Tags: file sharing, iPhone, iPod, Mac, sync

A hot Sunny affair

March 26th, 2009 at 3:03 · Filed Under Ada, Computing, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris · 5 Comments

I have been hesitating for another hot Sunny affair since the last one about three years ago. This is just another one I have been longing since then. The recent eclipse of Sun resurrects my overwhelming but sleeping desire. Although this happened near the time when Sun is setting, but it is never too late to do it again because Sunset is beautiful and romantic.

Will Sun set and never rise again? Here is my encounter of the hot Sunny affair.

Tags: Ada, gcc, Linux, Mac, Mac OS X, MacBook, OpenSolaris, Ubuntu, virtual machine, Virtualization, vmware fusion

Is Apple dirty?

March 13th, 2009 at 2:00 · Filed Under Blogging, Business, Computing, Mac OS X, Marketing · 1 Comment

I have been Apple Mac user since 2003 after ditching Microsoft Windows in 1998. Mac OS X is real UNIX operating system comparing to Linux which is UNIX-like. Thanks to Apple for spending quite a substantially huge amount of money to license the UNIX operating system. Ever since I had an iBook, I am getting more entangled with Mac. I shifted all my web browsing, emails, calendar, contact, photos, video, and even software development to Mac platform. Although I am still running Linux on Intel boxes and SPARC Solaris, I have become totally dependent and obsessed with Mac. I would crave for a Mac if I were to work on non-Mac.

Why?

Tags: Apple, FireWire, Mac, MacBook

Am I a Mac advocate?

May 21st, 2008 at 0:33 · Filed Under Business, Computing, Mac OS X · 1 Comment

Yes, I am!

I started to use an Apple iBook with Mac OS X five years ago. And ever since then, I do my daily works like emailing, web browsing, IM/Skype, appointment, todo, word processing, spreadsheet and almost everything on Mac. Today, I am a total Mac advocate and I also develop software for Mac. Most of the Mac applications I worked on are easily ported to any UNIX systems such as Linux and Solaris or vice versa.

I have switched many people from Windows to Mac. I have helped businesses to switch from Windows to Mac. And the result? They are happy Mac users and I am a happy Mac advocate. Supporting customers in Mac is ever easier and hassle free compare to Windows. Supporting Linux and Solaris mostly as a server together with server applications cannot be compared in that way because the application area and environment are totally different.

Although the initial investment is higher comparing to any other Wintel (Windows and Intel) PC, Mac gives you awesome user experience you can never enjoy with Wintel. The end result, ROI or Return of Investment is higher.

Read my other article about Mac in business here.

Tags: Mac

Virtualization – Installing Ubuntu Linux with VMware on MacBook

May 14th, 2008 at 13:40 · Filed Under Call Me a Geek, Computing, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris · 3 Comments

I have successfully installed 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Linux on my Mac Book. Out of my expectation, the installation was rather quick and easy compared to installing Solaris 10. I had tried installing Solaris 10 on my Mac Book. Solaris installation was successful but I couldn’t boot into it. I wondered why.

My Mac Book sports an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz with 2GB RAM and 160GB hard drive. I am too skeptical to have 2 physical partitions on my hard drive. Thanks to VMWare Fusion, I can create virtual partition with it. After I have installed VMware Fusion 1.1.1, I created a Ubuntu-64-bit virtual partition and installed Ubuntu from the ISO disk image. With VMware Fusion, I can install directly from the disk image without having to burn a CD or DVD.

Since my Mac Book is codenamed Uranus, I called my Ubuntu on Mac Book, Uranus-Zeta. The idea is from the ζ-ring of Uranus

Like Linux, Mac OS X is a UNIX like operating system. Why do I need Linux? Well, there are a number of reasons. One being you can and another to learn new things. But these are not the reasons to motivate me. Being a software developer developing cross-platform software, I do tests on multiple platforms. Having Linux to run on my MacBook means I can develop and test my software on both Mac OS X and Linux environment without switching to my Linux/Solaris boxes. Another important reason is that I see the needs to support my clients on Linux arise and soon Solaris. Having the ability to run three different operating systems on one machine can be productive and versatile for me.

The other obvious reason is that I have a Core 2 Duo. Meaning I am having two 64-bit CPUs in one processor. It will be a waste of resources if I don’t utilize the computing power I already have. Assigning each CPU to run different operating systems and tasks is called virtualization.

With VMware Fusion, I can run Linux and Solaris side-by-side with Mac OS X without the need to boot into anyone of them at one time. This is a great feature when supporting clients in Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris.

Here are some screen shots (click to enlarge) of Uranus-Zeta: