MacBreak Tech

the MBT feed is officially borked. thanks everyone for writing to tell us. we have notified the authorities. the peoples are working on it.

note from Ben: “it looks like a bad cut and paste job.”

sorry about the no new podcast in a while. everyone has been busy doing something. Kenji is on the right coast. Ben is upgrading some code. Craig is getting a new jorb. And John is galavanting about the west coast working on something fun. it all boils down to not much time for any of us to make a useful recording. it’s not like there isn’t lots to talk about. like for example:

G4 NAS drive part 2
getting Back to my Mac to actually work
Print to the Internet
ZFS one year later
and more coding, server and hacking stuff.

With the WWDC just a month away we’ll also start planning the who where for pinning down experts that might be attending the week of geek. anyway don’t hold your breath. it won’t be until the middle of the week at least until there’s a new conversation. in the mean time make a back up of your doorbell (aka phone) or learn to sync it so it’s done automagically.

see you on the other side… OWT!

Making a business around Macintosh can be fun and profitable. Just because Apple as a store doesn’t mean that you can’t make Mac the center of your business. There are many ways that you can can make money from Macs: support, training, service, or making things with your Mac.

Remember, don’t quit your day jorb.

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 Making Mac Your Business [72:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (452)

Why hack a G4 into a NAS drive. First off, NAS means Network Attached Storage. It’s basically a big hard drive you can use from any of the computers on your network. After years of service the G4 is nearing the end of it’s life. Apple raised the bar with Leopard dead-ending the earliest machines requiring 768Mhz and a modern GPU. With two exceptions (yikes and sawtooth) the G4 line has gigabit ethernet which gives you fast file transfers if you wired network supports this speed. Many commercial NAS products don’t have gigabit ethernet or charge a premium for the faster model.
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 G4 NAS Drive part 1 [67:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (369)

Using iWork in ways never intended.

[show notes to follow as usual. please stand by.] 

 

 Alt iWork [73:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (521)

Learning programming is fun and for the most part easy to do. You need to set your expectations to meet this task because for some people it will be a hard road. But fear not, there are lots of ways to learn and examples to follow. Whether you learn in a more traditional classroom or on your own it will take a while for programming to sink in. Mostly because people aren’t used to thinking this way. Because everyone knows how to use a list it’s not a big jump to make something more complex.

Programming a Mac offers lots of different choices. The best part is so many things are free to use without restriction.

The outline and links mentioned in the show are just a click away. 

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 Hello World [79:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (496)

Why?

Why not.

One Machine not 3.

On a MacBook you have all your environments.

What?

That one thing you need to run for legacy.

Compatibility Checking

Some fun game.

Anything really.

Reviews are already WILDY out of date

http://www.macworld.com/article/55484/2007/02/vmwarevsparallels.html

Why an emulator and not BootCamp?

BootCamp requires a partition.

Emulators don’t need a physical disk.

Side-by-Side

Use Spaces to hold a whole window.

What choices are there for emulation

vmWare

Parallels

DOSbox

Cross Over

http://www.virtualbox.org/

Wine

MAME

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33091

https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=176560

SCUMM

What runs?

Windows

Linux

Solaris

DOS

Installation

licensing

Windows XP

Vista

Windows installs faster than Windows on hardware.

Performance

http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.24/24.02/VirtualizationBenchmark/

Zork 1, 2, 3 .exe

http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html

Visicalc

http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm

Asterisk

http://asterisk.org/

Gizmo Project

http://gizmoproject.com/

 

 Emulating just about Anything [55:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (478)

Purchased music from iTunes

on more then one Mac (up to 5)

Sharing music on

one computer

the home and office computer

more then one computer in the same house hold

Airport Express

Squeeze Box

http://www.slimdevices.com/

Turning on Sharing in iTunes.

doesn’t sync music just allows you to play it.

Syncing iPods. 

http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/

itunes spelled backwards

iPod Extractor

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12739

floola

http://www.floola.com/modules/wiwimod/

an extensive list of other tools

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iPod_Managers

Conversation about drm’d AAC files

Consolidation (thoughts)

use the old Mac to store all the music.

set up VNC screen sharing

or load Leopard on it to screen share to it.

 

 Sharing Music [47:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (501)

Origin of the myth.  Dispelling the scary myth.

Macs are toys not good for “real work”

origin: Mac 128

changed: Mac II

today: UNIX based architecture very versatile.

Mac’s are for dummies.

origin: it’s really easy to use a mac. real computing is done with the command line

now: most of todays work is done with a GUI. 

http://lowendmac.com/lab/75.html

Mac is Expensive

origin: Mac’s were expensive. Quadra 950 retailed for $8K

now: there will always be cheaper alternatives to a Mac that on the surface seem cheaper. if you compare similar spec’d computers you will find a similar price. 

Market share isn’t big:

origin: Wall Street analysts that see success only as home runs

now: market share is a huge myth

look at specific markets to get an idea of true share

graphics development

movie industry

multimedia development

web development

_______ doesn’t run.

origin: lots of titles don’t run on a Mac.

now: Once you go Mac you can go Back and run whatever you want

depends on what you are doing.

content creation - no need to have two platforms

accounting - runs better in windows

Emulation can be done with:

Parallels

vmWare

CrossOver

<a href = “http://www.dosbox.com/”>DosBox</a>

2 Button Mice

origin: One button mouse.

now: second button and scroll wheel supported since OS 9 with the introduction of USB.

no standard ports: no parallel. no 9 pin serial.

origin: the 8pin serial port wasn’t hobby-ist friendly. hacking parallel is easy.

now: more input options then ever before.

usb to parallel

    to serial

    various controllers

http://sourceforge.net/projects/k8055mac/

Velleman K8055 USB I/O

    midi

    USB overdrive

http://www.usboverdrive.com/USBOverdrive/Information.html

    X10

    Xbox 360 driver

http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controller/OsxDriver

    KeySpan

http://www.keyspan.com/downloads/

Big Sponsor Plug

Not good for accounting.

myth: Macs don’t have accounting software

now: check with your accountant first.

acctvantage

http://www.acctvantage.com/

MYOB

Inuit

You need Mac Specific _insert_whatever_here

hard drives

displays

printers

RAM

Mac is not compatible with the corporate network.

origin: NetBIOS, Novel, VINES and other networks didn’t have Mac drivers

TCP/IP doesn’t care what you are.

http://www.macvspc.info/websitePDFs/MACvsPCCombined.pdf

Mac’s are chatty on a network.

AppleTalk Phase 2, included with System 7, reduced the chattiness significantly.

  http://www.mac-guild.org/appletalk.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleTalk

Don’t play games.

origin: the Mac had a Black and White screen until the Mac II which cost about $5K when it was released. so there weren’t that many games. 

dark castle, glider, solitaire, flight simulator.

truth: Mac’s don’t allow writing to the metal

now: lots of games but not always the newest games.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/games/

DS, PSP, xbox, ps3, ps2, Wii, Cube, N64… may be a better choice.

 

 Myths [106:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (660)