Thoughtless Banter – John Bellone

Apple

Mar

iPad Update Time

Posted by JB at 11:06 pm

Well, tomorrow is officially the day that Apple is going to update the iPad. Many of these tech blogging sites are wondering if we’re going to possibly see a Thunderbolt (Light Peak) port on the iPad, or will we be seeing a SD card reader, perhaps dual cameras or how about that brand spanking new Retina display that the iPhone has been sporting for over a year? All of this shit would be absolutely great, but as someone that doesn’t own an iPad (and doesn’t plan on buying one in the near future, sans possibly developing applications) I am looking forward to one thing, and one thing only: the possibility that tomorrow we may finally see an iTunes cloud streaming service.

It is a widely known fact that Apple has been purchasing some real estate in North Carolina to house a massive data center to what they’ve told investors is for their expanding cloud services division. For the past couple of years Apple has been trying to get people to pay $100 per year for MobileMe when you can get the same services, with nearly the same Mac integration, for absolutely free from Google. Apple told its investors that this new data center is going to be strictly for MobileMe and iTunes; pray tell what exactly does iTunes need a billion dollar data center for on the east coast? MobileMe sure as hell doesn’t need it; the service is crap, and most people only pay for it because they forget to take it off their credit card after the first three months they’ve owned a new Mac.

Another point of interest is that Apple purchased Lala, a music streaming startup, and has done absolutely nothing with the service to date. Steve Jobs sure as hell does not buy companies unless he plans on using their technologies, because otherwise they would just roll their own. You can bet your dollars that tomorrow we’re going to see three things: a brand new iPad, without a Retina display, with two cameras, a bumped up processor and memory; a new take on the MobileMe offering, most likely free and including some kind of premium services ala Dropbox storage; and a cloud streaming service powered buy the Lala purchase.

If we’re lucky iTunes catalog streaming from the cloud. That would absolutely make my year. And I am about to launch a a website myself!

Sep

Apple Time Machine Backups Over Samba

Posted by JB at 8:34 pm

For the past couple of months I have been running Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) on my custom built desktop. I recently purchased a brand new MacBook Pro for use as a portable computer. All the while I have not been using Apple’s automatic backup daemon, Time Machine, and basically relying on the RAID drives on my desktop for keeping all of my data safe and secure. The desktop has been having some RAID troubles that I have not been able to diagnose yet and that got me to thinking: I should really spend some time and get this backup thing working.

I have had a NAS appliance, the D-Link DNS 323, lying around now for a couple of months collecting dust. There are many tutorials on the Internet that make this process much harder than it actually is, attempt to explain what might go wrong and finally offer no real explanation about why it is going wrong. Now, the very first thing to remember is to run this command as your user privileges. Inside of the Terminal application, execute the following command and restart your Mac.

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

What you need to do now is create a special disc image called a sparsebundle, which ideally, should be twice the size of the hard-drive that you are looking to backup. Unfortunately I do not have enough disk space available on my network for this.

First let’s go over Mac OS X Snow Leopard, where the filename of the sparsebundle needs to merely be the hostname.sparsebundle. A special XML file needs to be saved into the root directory of the sparsebundle package. If you are using Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) then the name of the image file needs to include the MAC address of the en0 ethernet interface. This is in a hexadecimal format. You can run the following commands to build the filename. The second command gets the username of the system. The format of the sparsebundle should be hostname_macaddress.sparsebundle.

ifconfig en0 | grep ether | cut -d' ' -f 2 | tr -d ':'
hostname -s

The following command creates the sparsebundle package. You can create any size that you wish. Remember the last argument of the command needs to be the proper filename depending on which version of OS X you have (see above). The first command is for Leopard and the second for Snow Leopard.

hdiutil create -size 200g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of xavior" xavior_58b035fdf8f3.sparsebundle
hdiutil create -size 200g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of xavior" xavior.sparsebundle

This step only needs to be done for Snow Leopard. You need to run the first command to get the UUID, and place it inside of the XML file. You should save the XML file in the root directory of the sparse bundle as the following xavior.sparsebundle/com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist.

ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | awk '/IOPlatformUUID/ { split($0, line, "\""); printf("%s\n", line[4]); }'

Now place the string inside of the XML file and save it accordingly.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.backupd.HostUUID</key>
    <string>UUID_STRING</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Finally, mount the location via Samba (or any other network protocol) and copy the file over into the mounted folder. Inside of Time Machine select the mount point as the disk and let er rip.

Mount selection for Time Machine

Jun

iPad, iAd and No Bandwidth

Posted by JB at 9:34 pm

Unless you’ve been under the rock for the past couple of weeks, by now you should have heard about AT&T killing the unlimited data plans for both the iPhone and iPad, then grandfathering in the iPad plans for people who buy theirs before the deadline and finally caving in and allowing a 30 day “grace” window until the deadline. If have been following that news then you most certainly have heard about the release of the iPhone 4.0 on the AT&T network and Apple’s change of tune on mobile advertising as soon as they decide to start their own ad network built in natively into the operating system. The big news obviously is the caps on data, 200MB and 2GB respectively, and how many people are rather irritated because the iPhone is built around connectivity. There has been continuous coverage on podcasts and blogs regarding how the 200MB plan is essentially crap and the 2GB plan is a necessity, but what people are not talking about is Apple is now going to be delivering advertisements to your iPhones and iPads which are going to consume quite a bit of bandwidth that you will now be paying quite a pretty penny for.

Of course one could argue that mobile advertisements have always been on the applications that are available through the App Store, but Apple themselves are toting these media rich advertisements that allow for running video, interactive games and streaming audio which out of all the possible digital mediums consume the most bandwidth. So not only are we now going to have advertisements pushed upon us, but the cheaper bill that AT&T is waving around in our faces will most likely be non-existant if these iAds push us over our bandwidth limit.

Of course Apple neglected to mention this little tidbit in their press conference earlier this week. Even though I am eligible for an upgrade on my account I think I am going to wait to see what happens with this whole bandwidth fiasco that AT&T is pulling, and more off, hoping that Verizon will get an iPhone this time next year coupled with an unlimited data plan that I can actually use in the New York City metro area. Here’s to dreams.

Jun

iPad ‘Unlimited’ Data Plan Extended To July

Posted by JB at 12:30 pm

I was reading Engadget.com today and I came across this tidbit about AT&T deciding to allow iPad orders before July 7th to continue to have the unlimited data plan. For those of you that read my iPad vs. AT&T blog post it highlights all of the points that AT&T seems to have forgotten when they first decided to change how they are going to handle their data plans. The facts are simple – most iPhone users consume between 200-500MB worth of data, and (from AT&T’s metrics) the 98% of all iPhone subscribers use less than 2GB of data per month. But what they did not include is the metrics from the month long usage of the iPad. Due to streaming applications such as Netflix the iPad itself is absolutely going to use more data.

The major data consumption on the Internet is audio and video, both of which applications on the iPad are designed specifically for, whether it be watching a movie streaming from Netflix, a baseball game through the MLB application or television through your Slingplayer – it is very clear that this device is going to overall trump the usage of a standard iPhone. You can bet your wallet that the widely popular service Hulu.com will be eyeing up developing an application for the iPad as well.

With all of these data heavy applications that 2GB cap is going to be quickly approached. Of course the AT&T suggestion is to use WiFi as often as you can, but why should you have to? This device was designed to run on battery for roughly ten hours, so why should I be tethered to my apartment, office or coffee shop? Most people purchased this device because they planned on reading, listening to music or watching movies on their daily commute into the office. Others may have picked it up to placate their children on long car rides. You’re telling us now, after we purchased the device, to not use it for what we purchased it for?

I am still on the edge about whether or not I will purchase a 3G iPad before July 7th. Part of me cannot justify spending this much money on a device that I do not see myself using all too often, but the other part of me, the commuter, sees all the ways that I can use this thing to keep my mind busy on the train into work. Yet still another half of me wants to develop some cool games for this beast. So the real question is, do I wait until later or purchase it now to take advantage of the unlimited 3G data offer? I think the answer is pretty obvious, how about you?

Jun

iPad vs. AT&T – Are Consumers The Winner?

Posted by JB at 9:56 pm

I can be somewhat of am impulse buyer. This afternoon, after I was reading more and more into how AT&T is pulling a bait and switch, I placed a few phone calls to the Apple retail stores in and around New York City. I have been interested in purchasing a device ever since I got a few minutes to play with the SDK, but what nearly set me over the edge was the fact that AT&T has decided to discontinue the unlimited 3G plan that Apple was still (up until this afternoon) toting as one of the major selling points of the device. What I found interesting is that all of the stores made a point to tell me that all models of the 3G iPad were currently unavailable, but all except the lauded Fifth Avenue store had WiFi models for sale.

What I find the most interesting is how AT&T are parading this change as being beneficial to their customers without providing any statistics on data usage for the iPad. In the press release they specifically stated that most users consume less than 2GB of bandwidth, which so happens to be the ceiling of their data plans, but the will offer more bandwidth at a $10 per gigabyte rate after that. I will agree with the AT&T findings – my bandwidth usage ever since I have owned an iPhone (since the original) has never gone above 2GB – but I have a had time believing that a streaming Netflix program won’t regularly break that 2GB ceiling.

But a part of my questions if AT&T’s motives, which absolutely are not int the best interest of the consumer, are being put in place to potentially curb a growing VOIP market with the release of Skype for 3G on the iPhone. If AT&T are able to make it more expensive to place VOIP phone calls then people are not going to do it, right? In fact, what I find completely insane is that these devices that have been heralded as the most connected, interactive and innovative consumer electronics, ever, are being hogtied by the only capable wireless 3G provider. We do not have a choice even if we wanted to. These devices, even unlocked, will not work with a similar 3G card inside due to the frequencies being different between T-Mobile and AT&T.

So this unlimited data plan that was absolutely sold as being the primary reason to purchase the 3G model of the iPad has, less than a month after release, completely evaporated. Should those of us that have purchased an iPad be up in arms? What about when AT&T decides to change your contract when you use that neat little clause that lets you turn off your wireless 3G service when you aren’t using it – the next time that you sign up are they going to let you pay $30 for unlimited coverage? Boy, am I glad that Apple has decided to make the iPad unavailable until June 7th, or else I may be asking those questions myself right about now.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to tether your laptop to your iPhone to use some of that 2GB of bandwidth that you have purchased from AT&T you are going to have to pay an additional fee that will not give you a higher cap. Anyone that is interested in voicing their opinion directly to the man himself the Consumerist blog has posted the contact details of AT&T CEO, Randall Stephenson, so have at it boys.

Apr

Mac On The Cheap, Part 1

Posted by JB at 10:43 pm

For as long as I can remember I have been a fan of free operating systems. Free as in price is always great, but I was referring to the freedom to tinker with the guts of my operating system without having to worry. Until I purchased my first MacBook I did not realize how much I would enjoy the experience of not needing to tinker with the operating system. When I ran a Windows box there was always driver updates, service packs and software enhancements that would be required in order to get optimum performance out of my machine. At least with a Mac I knew that it was going to work damn well out of the box. That’s what happens when you control every single piece that goes into your machines.

So as the title might illude this series of blog posts is about how to build a computer that can run OS X on the cheap – e.g. without having to purchase expensive hardware from Apple to get the user experience. Ever since OS X 10.4 Tiger was preloaded on my MacBook I have purchased a full retail, legal, copy of every Apple operating system. Yeah, I bitched and moaned, but I am an adult now (working in the software industry) so I can afford to drop the funds necessary to get what I want. When I purchased Snow Leopard I was never asked if I was going to install this on an Apple branded Macintosh computer, I was not required to present a receipt to prove the machine that I had purchased was capable of running Snow Leopard, thus as far as I am concerned I am free and in the clear to install this bad boy on any hardware I have accessible to me.

I am not a lawyer. Is what I have done completely legal? Maybe not. Apple does all it can to stop us from installing our purchased operating system on custom hardware. Be aware that Apple absolutely does not support this at all – you cannot call them up and ask them why your desktop motherboard’s onboard audio doesn’t work. But luckily there is an awesome community who live and breath this stuff. You’re not on your own.

So now I present you with the first installment of my Mac On The Cheap blog series. The purpose of this blog is to provide an easy-peasy way to build your own Macintosh for a fraction of the cost while continuing to perform up to snuff with the vanilla Apple hardware. You have nothing to worry about. As long as the major component inside of your build is compatible the rest should simply fall into place.

Buying hardware is key to building a custom Macintosh computer. Since Apple only supports a small subset of the available computer hardware you want to match the vanilla components as best as possible. For this reason I went with purchasing a genuine Intel processor. There are many tutorials on how to get an AMD processor running OS X, but why jump through even more hoops when Apple has already made it such a pain in the ass? Intel processors tend to also perform much, much, better than their AMD counterparts. My processor of choice for this build is theIntel Core i7-920, the consumer model of the Intel’s new architecture.

As I mentioned earlier the key component for this whole build is the motherboard. Most Intel motherboards will work to some degree with OS X, but for this particular build we want to go with an unmodified version of the Darwin kernel (the brain to the OS X operating system). What is the reason for this? When you run an vanilla kernel most of Apple’s standard updates will work without a hitch. Occasionally you may run into a snag that nukes your audio, but for the most part you do not have to worry about allowing Software Update to run its due course. I did a fair amount of research before purchasing my motherboard and I found that Gigabyte tends to a great manufacturer that is well supported in the InsanelyMac.com community. My motherboard of choice was the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, primarily due to the support of SATA3 and USB3, as well as future support for Intel’s newer processors with six-cores (twelve threads of execution).

From what it seems memory is aribitrary, but I was luckily able to reuse some DDR3 from my previous setup. With this motherboard the DDR3 memory can run in triple channel mode which vastly boosts your performance. My memory is over a year old but it is still running perfectly fine – I have four 2GB sticks of PC3-12800 Patriot Viper memory. This motherboard is able to run my memory at its full speed – 1600MHZ – without showing any problems.

The last piece of the puzzle was the video card. My previous system was designed to double as a gaming rig, so I purchased (at the time) a rather expensive set of video cards so that I could achieve SLI performance. With the addition of another hard-drive to run OS X on I had to remove one of the video cards to conserve power (and it was bit of a tight fit with the motherboard layout). The single card runs perfectly fine and is seemingly supported right out of the box. Because Apple has both nVIDIA and ATI (AMD) video cards I do not think it would be a problem to buy either, but I have been an nVIDIA man for the past couple of years. The video card in my rig is the EVGA branded nVIDIA GTX 260.

I do not believe that hard-drives (as long as you have enough space to install OS X) matter, but from what I hear over the grapevine a good number of optical drives may have problems inside of OS X. I have yet to have a need to install my optical drive (it is currently unplugged on the floor) but I doubt there would be an issue. Lite-on makes a great optical drive, and I have been a fan of theirs for awhile now. Choose your flavor, but make sure to steer clear of the Blu-ray selection for now.

That is it for the first part of this article. The next part will, of course, be assembly and installation of OS X. For that part of the process I would suggest that you pick up a decent 16GB USB flash drive for the installation and boot process. Remember a couple of things when purchasing hardware – if a feature is not available yet on a vanilla Macintosh it may be hard to have it running smoothly. So the SATA3 and USB3 on this board are not yet supported. I purchased it with the future in mind. As a forewarning, the only problem that I encountered during the installation process was getting the audio to work correctly. So be prepared for to spend some time on that portion!

As always, if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I will respond as soon as possible. For anything more technical related to the Hackintosh/OSx86 project, be sure to head on over and sign up for an account at InsanelyMac.com and start reading up on some articles!