Category Archives: Apple

Mac OSX and CIFS/SMB relationship

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After I had a problem transferring file over CIFS with my Macbook Pro, there are a lot of issues: stopping copying, missing files in a destination although successful operation. That was frustrated and surely I can’t give up on Samba just yet. I even have to do rsync or cp to get expectable outcome from such a simple task. By the way, after stumble across threads, KBs, I found the solution that make me happy for couple weeks so far.

Here is what I was looking for Mac OSX 10.5, 10.6: About named streams on SMB-mounted NAS

What you have to do is pretty simple, enabling named streams on Mac OS X client–yeah my machine! By opening up Terminal and type as following:-

echo "[default]" >>  ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf
echo "streams=yes" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf

That is enabling named streams as a default for all smb connection. This makes my day indeed — not worrying if copying works as it should or not.

Popularity: 2% [?]

me & Snow Leopard after first 2 weeks

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For the record, I had been using Mac OSX way way back to iBook G3; as I remember, it’s Tiger back then. I didn’t have much love for Mac OSX. That’s why I turned to Vista (believe it or not, I think it’s better than Tiger in many ways), and Windows 7. Nonetheless, destiny always plays us. I have to get a new machine after 3-year+ with X61 Tablet. X200 Tablet is my next target, but in Thailand, unfortunately, there is none available in brick and mortar store. It’s required a special order which takes like a month or so with *extra special price :( * to get which is much more expensive than Macbook Pro. Thus, I decided to get Macbook Pro with matte screen & i7. My decision of purchasing Macbook Pro is about hardware alone since I didn’t think of software as a barrier.

I won’t go through all detail right away since I still need more time to adjust my routine to suit Mac OSX to get a fair comparison. In short, pros and cons I have found are below.

Pros:

  • [software] Apple makes me believe that their trackpad is good; after I have so much love for Thinkpad trackpoint.
  • [software] OSX handle multiple monitors well (just 2 monitors so far) [Linux is way way behind Mac OSX/Windows]
  • [software] Never in love with multiple workspaces, but Spaces does the job very very well.
  • [software] OSX handle most of Google thingys well: iCal, Address Book rocks w/Google account.
  • [software] Mail app is way better than Live Mail in Windows.
  • [software] Spotlight is as good as Windows Search.
  • [software] VMWare Fusion is pretty damn good with a unity feature; it makes you believe that Windows app is native Mac app.
  • [software] Gotta love having bash shell as default. To me, it’s better than DOS.
  • [hardware] Macbook Pro looks very very nice.
  • [hardware] MagSafe should be on every laptops!

Cons:

  • [software] OSX just can’t handle copying files [from cifs to another cifs, multiple copy & paste, multiple times of drag & drop, copying files within many many level of folders] It doesn’t matter if it’s Windows’ thing. If OSX supports it, MAKE IT fully compatible. >> here is a fix.
  • [software] Emptying trash is a pain in the ass; I don’t know what they do, how secure they are doing, but there is no choice for unsecured and fast one. That’s bad enough. shift+option+cmd+del is good enough to empty everything although it might take few hours.
  • [software] iWork is useless to me–I can’t even open MS Word file.
  • [software] Microsoft Office for Mac is below par when it comes to compatibility with Windows version–It’s not OS fault, but most people around me use Windows, that makes this a con. I expect much better app-and-OS-independent here.
  • [software] Missing OneNote! there is none as good also. VMWare Fusion comes being a hero here.
  • [software] no Windows Live Photo replacement–I hate iPhoto which can do only in its own library. Adobe Bridge comes close but it’s not built for viewing tons of photo in many folders at once. Picasa has its own way of keeping all info. I don’t like that. (I stick with spacebar to preview for now.)
  • [software] a change of not showing SMB/CIFS mount on desktop in Snow Leopard is very very awkward. In Tiger, if you mount CIFS path, you will get a link on desktop. This can be achieved with ln -s, but why make this more complicated than it used to be? my bad that I couldn’t find this: firing up Sidebar Preference | General Tab | you will see connected servers show on desktop option! checked!
  • [hardware] 2 USB for top-of-the-line machine?
  • [hardware] Screen isn’t IPS-comparable; this is less than I expected. At least Thinkpad X200 Tablet will come with a better panel.
  • [hardware] no PgUp/PgDw and many buttons on Mac keyboard, but I do love having CMD as an extra.

I know that many are applications’ cons, but if I only include what OS can do, not considering 3rd party app too, it would be non real-world experience. Is there anyone still uses computer w/o any 3rd party software nowadays? I’m sure I will have a lot more to add here; wait and see.

 

Popularity: 9% [?]

Apple iPad – too big or just the right size

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Apple iPad First of all, how the hell Apple manages to get *4:3 IPS panel* at this time while no others even care to get one. Kudos to Apple for that.

I don’t know what Apple plan for iPad; some says to beat netbook to death; some says to beat tablet pc; some says to create new category; whatever that is, I know Apple will find the way to establish their products well, regardless how big market share would be. When I first saw iPad, my react is like, “hmm they really did that!? I love to buy one,” but  when I got to specification and realized that it is 9” screen; it gave me a big pause, here. 9” is way to big to consider as on-the-go device and one-hand operation, I don’t know really how I’m going to use it if I have one.

Well, it’s iPhone OS. I’m not sure if that is a good choice for such a big device like this. If it were 7”, that would be awesome with iPhone OS. I guess I gotta tryout on this. The only reason why Apple use iPhone OS I see is the thinness since it runs on ARM CPU; I can’t imagine Apple uses such a low end stuff like Atom either. Imagine that Steve Jobs claimed that Apple works with Intel specifically to have such a powerful CPU package named Atom. Nah, it just never works out well.

ipad keyboard God almighty huge on-screen keyboard! That looks good. I think it will beat any on-screen keyboard indeed and yet, it might beat Apple own real physical keyboard as well since I have no clue why the heck they have that uncomfortable, thin and no tactile feedback for bigass iMac.

On the couch, it will be one of the hell device out there—no arguement here. I would love to see how IdeaPad U1 goes too since it’s basically the same thing as iPad, just differrent OS, which Apple already proved their supremacy, while Lenovo is just newbie. However, I can’t see iPad being used anywhere else. We’ll see if my imagination is too short here.

In short, this is just one of million opinions on iPad. We’ll see how it’s going to change when iPad releases.

Popularity: 2% [?]