—Insert Apple Rant here

This is probably the only time you’ll hear me rant about Apple – they brought out this awesome device called the AppleTV, I was super excited by it, has a really nice interface, easy to use, tied to iTunes, and was supposed to make life easier when streaming media to my TV.  Then I found out that they want you to only use the media format they use, which kind of screws anyone with any significant amount of digital video thats not in mp4 format.  Unfortunately I fall into that category, with somewhere around 1.2TB of TV recorded for viewing at my leisure.  To re-encode all of that, I’d a. have to have a ton of extra hard drive space, and b. way too much time on my hands.  So, really, Apple, get with the times already, just include the codecs in the next AppleTV update and allow me to mount my Samba share on it and I think a lot more people will buy your device.

—End Apple Rant

Even if Apple does include these features – which they won’t – I still think a Boxee box is just what the industry needs to jump-start it.  A lot of other companies have tried to bring out media center boxes, but they all suffer from one critical flaw or another; poor ui, no networking support, poor codec support.  So, I’m putting my money towards a Boxee box when they come out – looking forward to finding more details on December 7th during the Boxee Beta release.

Boxee Blog » a Boxee Box is coming!.

In any case, there are two types of ads I’ve seen, one that features children using Vista to do fun stuff with photos.  Okay, they’re cute, and Vista works for children, I get it.  Thing they forget to mention is that those computers had better be locked down and never connected to the internet, unless of course you want to be exposing your 8 year old child to random porn popups while they’re looking at photos of their dogs.  The other type being the ones where people are sent out looking for low price laptops and pass over Macs because they’re either too “cool” or too “expensive”.  Both of which are silly propositions to make, since if you were to compare hardware in any recent apple laptop to an equivalent Dell or HP, you’ll come out at about the same price (last time I did it, I think I was $50 in).

Now again, I’d like to caution that I really enjoy Apple’s – I work on one all day – that said, I grew up on PCs and when I finally did make the switch after working at Barking Dog Studios, I decided that the platform fit me much better.  What I’m really trying to say is that someone at Microsoft should take a good hard look at your advertising campaign, and perhaps give it a once-over to remove all the BS you’re pushing on people.  Or better yet, instead of spending millions on an advertising campaign, build a product that works and works well that people will want to spend exhorbitant amounts of money on.

I should also note, that I reverted my iPod Touch back to a non-hacked state and upgraded it to the latest 1.1.4 firmware. Springboard looks strange without themes.

In any case, the SDK is installing and work is calling… will update you guys later on any small projects I decide to undertake.

http://www.apple.com/ca/retail/eatoncentre/week/20071104.html

So, here’s what you have to do to get infected:

• Start browsing for free porn.
• Land on a malicious site.
• Get prompted to install software to watch said porn.
• Choose to install the software package that you know nothing about.
• Put in your admin password when it asks for it.
• Realize you can’t watch your porn and move on.

Now, I don’t know about you, but how many mac users out there actually will install something they don’t want, and then enter their admin password to install a program they know nothing about, that they downloaded so they could watch porn. Granted, this probably doesn’t only exist on porn sites, but from the various digg articles I’ve read about it, that seems to be mostly where the trojan is popping up.

For anyone wanting more information, hit up macworld.com (http://www.macworld.com/2007/10/firstlooks/trojanhorse/index.php) for instructions on how to remove it.

I’ll start off with documenting my server-side setup a bit:

• I have LVM set up on my Ubuntu box thats formatted as ReiserFS.
• I also have Netatalk compiled and installed (with SSL libraries).
• The various required ports for AFP have been opened in my firewall.
• I created two shares under Netatalk, called “Fileserver” and “Zeke Backup”

And now, the steps I took to make it all work:

• Find a USB or Firewire drive, plug it in and format it (I called mine “Zeke Backup”). Alternatively, you could partition your drive, but I’m not going to get into that.
• Open up the Time Machine preference pane and configure it to use the drive you formatted.
• As soon as it starts its first backup, turn Time Machine off
• Close System Preferences and Time Machine if you have then open, then mount your network share (Fileserver in my case).
• Open a terminal and copy all the files (including hidden “dot” files) to your fileserver.
• Unmount your network share (“Fileserver”)
• Unmount the USB Drive
• Mount your network share (that should have the same name as your USB drive had)
• Open System preferences and turn Time Machine on.

Note: I do not recommend doing this if you aren’t on a lan with your fileserver, as the first backup will backup your whole hard drive and take a significant amount of time.

The first thing that really impressed me was the speed at which Leopard runs. Its FAST. Granted, I have a Macbook Pro Dual Core 2.4, so anything will be fast, and Tiger definately didn’t seem slow, but since playing on Leopard, I can conclude it is significantly faster. Not just that, but it also has a lot less floating beach ball of death.

I’m sure by now though, anyone who is even remotely interested has heard of the hundreds of features in Leopard. All-in-all, I’d have to say its more of an upgrade than a new operating system. There is little thats actually changed much from Tiger, and all the additions are welcome. In fact, I’d have to say that some of the new additions I think should’ve been included in Tiger, but thats just me.

Overall, I’m impressed with the work Apple has done on Leopard, and definitely happy to have it.

I’ll be writing up a bit more info on Time Machine in a day or so, as I’m working on getting it working under Ubuntu.

Anyway, I got an e-mail from Apple this morning stating that my copy has shipped and that it will arrive today! Whether or not it arrives still has to be seen, but nonetheless, I’m excited. For those of you non-believers out there, here’s a quick screenshot:

I also got confirmation today that Time machine will only work with local USB / Firewire / Internal hard drives, and will not work with network drives. I’m probably going to go hacking through the settings to find a way to make it work, simply because I don’t have a large enough external drive, but my fileserver with 1TB of hard drive space would make a great backup.

Anyway, I’m off topic already…

I was on the Apple support site, and happened to notice a “Chat Now” link next to the typical Questions? Need Advice? Call blah blah… So, I clicked on it and got a page can not be found message. Interesting I thought, thats not like Apple. I reload the page, and lo and behold, its gone, but when I move my mouse around, the link fades in. Even more interesting I think to myself… I then load the page in Safari, and the link isn’t there at all, unless I move my mouse just right and happen to get the 2 pixels the link takes up. Seems like they’re hiding a new feature on the support website.

Here are a few screenshots I took of the sites, notice the difference I’ve outlined in red.

In Opera:

In Safari:

: