apple « Irfan’s Corner on the Web

13Apr/080

Certain Application cause keyboard unresponsiveness in Macbook Pro

I recently bought a Macbook Pro. I installed tons of applications on it, and suddenly I realized sometimes the keyboard became unresponsive, and even the the caps lock button won't light up, it was as if the keyboard was not powered up or connected. This of course was a severe problem and it has been widely reported.

After discussions with a friend who had bought the same model we identified certain applications which could be causing this. I removed VMware Fusion as a result. The problem became worse. In previous episodes of keyboard unresponsiveness I could simply restart and the keyboard was working. In the thread some claimed its a hardware problem but that was definitely not the case here. Because in one such episode where the keyboard became unresponsive, I plugged in another keyboard via bluetooth and strangely enough the same keys which were not working on the Macbook Pro keyboard were also not working on the wireless keyboard. Certain keys were working in both like F1-F12 keys.

So I reinstalled Leopard and did not install VMWare fusion so far the system has been working normally. I'm not sure if the problem was caused by VMware Fusion or some other software I had installed in the previous setup but removing it worsened the problem which might be a strong indicator that Fusion has some role to play in this. I hope to try out an update of Fusion.

Tagged as: Leopard No Comments

8Apr/080

Convert your VMware, Virtual Server/PC images to Parallels using the Parallels Transporter

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I've been a long time user of VMware, on the mac I believe Parallels coherence mode gives it a leg up on VMware, so I prefer it on the Mac. However most of my virtual machines are in VMware format. I googled up various solutions which included using Qemu to convert them into raw format, using some commercial tool and so on. But Parallels itself offers a solution which does not seem to be well documented.

I found it here.

1. Open Parallels Transporter in the Parallels directory

2. Choose Express, Whole virtual computer and point it at your vmware file

3. When it is done - check your disk space (it defaults the outputted files into your /application/parallels/ directory)

4. Open the new image with Parallels, ignore Windows errors and force install the Parallel Tools

5. Done - enjoy your images in Parallels

Tagged as: Parallels, vmware No Comments

20Jan/080

First Post frorm N95

This is my first post from the N95, I got a few months ago.

Its an excellent piece of technology (I esp. LOVE the Wifi), however due to the lack of a QWERTY keyboard I can't really use it for a lot of applications I use the Web for, like emailing, blogging, chatting etc.

This is what pushed me towards buying an Apple wireless keyboard. Its a another great product from Apple. I'll now try to blog more frrom my N95. I'll start off with a post for the top 10 applications native web applications for Symbian.

Filed under: apple, n95 No Comments

15Jan/080

Apple Introduces the MacBook Air

Apple is one of the few computing companies I really admire. They have the engineers, the talent, the designers and the visionary to lead them. Apple products are some of the most elegant products in the industry.
Apple today released their latest notebook, the MacBook Air. Its an amazing peace of technology and one of the first notebooks to use moderately large solid state hard drives, which surely are the future. Although the screen is just 13.3'', it comes in a higher resolution than traditional 13.3''. It comes with 1280x800, which is equivalent to my 15'' notebook! One of the innovations on the notebook is the multitouch touchpad. The touchpad has been around on laptops for years, recently they incooperated support for browsing documents and screens, now multi-touch is the next evolution. Multitouch allows us to use gestures like zoom into the screen, rotate etc...
It does not come with a DVD drive, which is a sensible move, rather supports external drives. I rarely use my DVD drive, and if I want to watch some movie or something, I copy it to my Hard disk. Normally ultra-portable PCs like the Asus EeePC make comprises in terms of hardware capability, not in the MacBook Air! It comes with 2 GB RAM and is based on the Intel Core 2 Duo 1.88 Ghz processor, just as any other notebook.

The price is a little too steep for the MacBook Air for now, but I expect price to fall very quickly as bigger and bigger Solid State hard drives are developed also as new smaller Intel processors are developed, both factors will push down the price. There are some big gambles Apple is taking with this notebook: unlike in other notebooks batteries are not user replaceable, there is no ethernet port and only one usb port. I'll buy one after 2-3 generations of the product

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19Jun/071

Safari Beta: Slowest Browser on the Windows Platform

Steve Jobs claimed that Safari was the "fastest browser" in the World. Bloggers say that he was referring to the page rendering speed, which is said to be faster than that of its rivals.

According to benchmarks carried out by Wired, Safari is the slowest of all browsers on Windows.

Get the benchmark results from Wired.

Filed under: apple 1 Comment

19Mar/0713

MacOSX finds its way onto my Desktop!

[digg=http://digg.com/tech_news/Linux_user_dumps_Linux_for_MacOSX_highlights_reasons]

I've been a Linux user for years now, I've been around since kernel 2.2.x. What I always loved about Linux is the openness, before Linux I was a windows users, and I wasn't learning much about computers because everything I used was closed source hence knew nothing about how they were made, I programmed in Visual BASIC 4.0, and thought I was the ueber-geek! LOL! Since I switched to Linux my knowledge about computer systems has multiplied, Linux is such a great learning platform, and now it has become increasingly mature to be used on Desktops.The latest distros like OpenSUSE 10.2, ubuntu etc are mature enough that they can be installed in laptops without a single hardware not being supported!

Recently I saw a Google TechTalk on the MacOSX Automator, I loved it! MacOSX Automator is an extraordinarily powerful tool which can automate workflows and not just replace scripts but also extend them (scripts can be integrated into MacOSX automator workflow). From that moment I thought I would give MacOSX a try. Although MacOSX Automator doesnt do anything which you can't do with scripts, but I loved the simplicity of the tool. In Pakistan Mac machines are not sold. So I had to go along with MaxOSX86, I downloaded a torrent for 10.4.8, and try to install it always kept restarting, I downloaded another torrent for 10.4.6, that worked!

So here is my take of MacOSX, from a Linux users perspective:

1. MacOSX has a powerful GUI and a powerful Shell

Linux has a powerful shell, and I love that, because the shell provide you complete control over the system. However, although they've made huge progress, Linux GUIs so far can not beat MacOSX's GUI. I really love the minimalist approach. Windows applications are overloaded with options and menus, unfortunately Linux applications have followed suit, however in MacOSX applications, you won't find this bloat, the menu bar on top of the window is context sensitive, and the menu options change with applications, I really like this approach.

MacOSX draws from the strength of open source, it integrates the BASH shell, and runs on the freebsd kernel, its shell programs are 90% similar to that of Linux. So MacOSX is sort of a mixture of fully GUI based Windows and Shell based Linux, and the mixture is a powerful OS, which can be used for both productivity applications like office etc., and hardcore programming and geeky stuff (MacOSX 10.4.6 ships with python, perl, php, nearly all open source software which is available for Linux can be compiled for MacOSX86). I feel that Linux users can take immediate advantage of MacOSX, whereas Windows users would have to take some time out to adapt to the OS.

Linux users have been whining since long for office productivity applications like Photoshop, Office etc. The real good thing about MacOSX is that all these application are available on it, if you have the money that is! OpenOffice.org is cool, but to be honest, I do all my writing in MS Office 2007 on Windows XP, which I run as a VM in VMware on my notebook.

2. MacOSX86 has surprisingly good PC hardware support

Before installing I thought that I might run into hardware problems, as MacOSX86 can not be expected to work natively with PC hardware, but I was in for a surprise. I tested the following: A BenQ Scanner, Canon Printer, USB external storage, Sound etc.., every single peace of hardware worked with minimal configuration, most of it without any! I recently tested Windows Vista, and I was disappointed to find that it didn't support the Intel 865 motherboard! There was no sound available, as the driver for the Intel 865 was not available either from the Microsoft Website or the Intel one!

3. Software installation is extremely Easy!

Traditionally the only way to install software in Linux was to compile from the sources, recently package managers have become increasingly more user friendly, and in opensuse 10.2, I rarely find myself compiling from the sources. YaST handles everything automatically, just add the installation sources, and click on what you want! In MacOSX software installation goes something like this that you mount some image (it mounts itself), and drag the application to the Application folder or to the desktop, it copies something and done!

These are the top 3 reasons so far, I'll keep adding them as an when I come across them. Now surely some Linux geek will come by and say that MacOSX is evil, because its proprietary, well the entire OS is not! The kernel is based on an opensource kernel, it integrates a lot of opensource software, and you can run any opensource software on it as desired. Compare this with current Linux distros, there are a few distributions which do not come packaged with some sort of proprietary software, OpenSUSE 10.2, tries to avoid it as much as possible but still upon install it prompts 3-4 times that you are about to install a non-opensource software and asks if I agree with the license, of course I do, I don't have any choice!

Since MacOSX supports all my hardware on the desktop, I have no reason to install any other OS (It replaced OpenSUSE 10.2, as my desktop OS, opensuse 10.2 however remains on my notebook). MacOSX poses a threat to not just Windows, but also to Linux because it has all the things people love about Linux (except the freedom) Apple should promote MacOSX86, while the Open Source community should learn from it and see what people love about it and emulate it, rather than emulating Windows.

Filed under: apple, macosx 13 Comments

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