Archive for the 'Mac OS X' Category

VMware Fusion Beta - Virtualization for Mac OS X

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on December 22, 2006
in Mac OS X, Software, Startups and Technology
. 0 Comments

Looks like VMware Fusion Beta is now Open.

The "Fusion" codename is used to describe the project that is, basically, putting VMware Workstation type capabilities onto the Mac OS X operating system. From their web site:

The new VMware desktop product for the Mac, codenamed Fusion, allows Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X. It is built on VMware’s rock-solid and advanced desktop virtualization platform that is used by over four million users today.

With Fusion, you can run traditional PC applications on your Mac: if you need to run PC applications, you can now do so by leveraging the power of virtual machine technology.

Here’s the message I received with the announcement:

We are excited to announce that the Fusion beta program is now live. Fusion is the codename for a new VMware desktop product for Mac that will enable Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows and Linux, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X. It is built on VMware’s robust and advanced desktop virtualization platform that is used by over four million users today.

You can find detailed information about this new VMware product, answers to frequently asked questions, links to download the product, release notes, etc. at: www.vmware.com/fusionbeta.

We ask that you give us candid feedback on the software and documentation. If you encounter problems while testing this release, please submit a bug report by clicking on Service Request located in the Quick Links section at: www.vmware.com/fusionbeta.

We also have a discussion forum where you can interact with the product team and other beta users to discuss product features, post questions, exchange tips and tricks. You can access the forum by clicking on http://www.vmware.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID=371.

With Fusion you can now run any of the over 360 virtual appliances available at the Virtual Appliance Marketplace (http://vam.vmware.com) on your Mac. Virtual appliances are pre-built and pre-configured applications bundled with an operating system so they can run on any hardware or operating system.

Best regards,

The VMware Fusion Team

Happy Holidays!

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Kernel-based Virtual Machine hits Linux

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on December 14, 2006
in Mac OS X, Open Source, Startups, Technology and Venture Capital
. 2 Comments

Many congratulations to my good friend Moshe Bar and his team over at (stealth-mode startup) Qumranet. Techworld reports that the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) project has been accepted into the 2.6.20 version of the Linux kernel distribution.

KVM is an Open Source kernel driver that basically allows a Linux kernel to host virtual machines, as plain old Linux processes, that can run Linux or Windows (or other x86-based operating systems). It runs only on hardware that support Intel’s VT instruction set (which is fine) and will soon support the AMD-V instruction set as well.

This is cool for a number of reasons.

  • It’s Open Source, released under the GPL.
  • It basically turns the Linux that we all know and love into a "hypervisor".
  • Linux-as-hypervisor makes sense because Linux already knows how to manage devices, memory, processes, multi-cores, etc.
  • VMware ESX is, essentially, a "hypervisor" - a small kernel, built on Linux as it turns out, that boots to load other guest operating systems in protected space. Could Linux + KVM be a credible threat to VMware ESX? Perhaps, someday. But the KVM team has a ton of work to do to get there.
  • Yet another confirmation that out-of-the-box virtualization is being completely commoditized.
  • Xen is an external hypervisor which lives outside of (below) the Linux kernel. At present, I am a bigger fan of hypervisors that live within a commercial operating system (like Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X), rather than below it (like Xen).

For more information, check out the KVM Whitepaper. It is well written and explains the differences between the Xen approach and theirs. Also check out the KVM Sourceforge Project page.

The KVM team has done a very nice job, and I really like the architectural approach, but they have a long way to go:

  • Fraser Campbell reports that KVM was "decided slow" when he tried it.
  • Currently only supports uniprocessor guest operating systems.
  • The Linux commit of the project included the following comment: "Performance currently is non-stellar due to the naive implementation of the mmu virtualization, which throws away most of the shadow page table entries every context switch." Not good. Workarounds for this included waiting for new releases of Intel and AMD processors that supported nested page tables. That would be a 3+ year wait for a new processor spin to end up in the hands of paying customers.
  • Of course, none of this matters in the enterprise if you cannot manage it… Hmm. I wonder where Qumranet will fit?

Unfortunately, the "KVM" acronym is a horrible one. It makes me, and likely every other datacenter person, think of "Keyboard Video Mouse".

Qumranet has received VC funding from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners.

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Adobe Contribute 4 Review

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on December 7, 2006
in Blogging, Mac OS X and Software
. 5 Comments

I completed my free 30-day trial of Adobe Contribute 4 in November.

I’m a blogger, not a serious web designer.

For me, as a blogger, I found Adobe Contribute to not quite be there yet. I will not be spending $149 to buy this as a blog editor (way over-priced for the blogging marketplace). I would like to see Adobe come up with a special edition which is really focused on being the best blog editor on the planet, at a very low price point. I think they would find a large and growing market for such a piece of software. Adobe Contribute can do it, but not in its present form. The blogging support felt more like an add-on to an already-existing product. I would be happy to be a beta customer for a true blogger-focused offering.

Here are the rough notes I took while kicking the tires on Adobe Contribute:

  • Crash == Lose Article!
    While writing my first large article, Adobe Contribute 4 crashed on me (I’m on a Mac), losing all of my hard work. Not nice. As a result, I’ve learned to save the document after every paragraph. I don’t want that to happen again. I would expect a publishing tool priced at $149 to save my document while I type and not lose data during an application or operating system crash.
  • The WYSIWYG editing is both too good and not good enough.
    The editing window is designed to look like how the article will look when it is actually on the blog. As a result, you get a giant screen filled with static blog junk all around it, which limits the working area for the article itself. That’s not really how writers want to write. Why can’t I turn off that part of the WYSIWYG and just have a box for the article that is WYSIWYG?
  • Formatting is unnecessarily restricted.
    I can’t center a paragraph, for example, so it makes it impossible to center a picture on the page. I think this is some limitation or bug with how Contribute interprets the CSS of my blog template (I use Wordpress). Still, it’s pretty annoying.
  • Where’s my cursor?
    At least on the Mac, I frequently cannot find my cursor, or the cursor is shown as being one space away from a character, but pressing Delete will erase the character instead of the space that was shown. Very annoying.
  • Multiple categories not supported for an article.
    I’m not sure that Contribute has full support for the MetaWebLog API. You could only specify a single category for a post. What? So, I had to edit each article in Wordpress after submitting it. Also, there’s no way to enter in Trackbacks to ping. What?
  • Bullets don’t look right.
    Could be another CSS interpretation problem, but my bullets have bad formatting while entering text, but appear correctly on the blog.
  • Spell-check is not performed automatically while I type.
    I have to ask for the spell-check to happen before I publish. That’s just another step in the workflow that I shouldn’t have to remember to do (and would often forget). Make it automatic with the squiggly red line under misspelled words, please. For $149, I completely expect this.
  • Insert Link or Image often fails with nasty error message.
    I start every article by inserting an image. After inserting the image, I would no longer be able to enter in a Link (anchor). I would receive a nasty "region" error message, implying that I was tring to edit something in the static part of the page. The workaround was to save the article and reload it.
  • Trackback support weak or completely absent.
    Trackbacks should be figured out automatically in the background, based on the links that I enter into my article. This would be a killer addition to the product for bloggers. The tool should determine the trackback address to use for each article that I link to.
  • Safari integration lacking.
    On the Mac, Contribute only support Firefox 1.5. I couldn’t get the toolbar support to work on Firefox 2.0 or on Safari.
  • Problems connecting with one of my wordpress.com blogs.
    I’ve got a test blog on wordpress.com that is separate from this blog. Contribute could not connect to it because I use a different user-id to edit that blog. Contribute expectes the user-id to match the name of the blog, or something silly like that.
  • Wrong installation path.
    Contribute installed into "/", rather than "/Applications" folder. I think I figured out that the Contribute installer application was different enough from the typical installer applications that, strictly speaking, this was my fault. However, I think Contribute should follow installer prompts in a way that follows the norm.
  • Adding an Image by dragging?
    I was never able to add an image by dragging it directly into the article. Furthermore, I could not add an image to an article by browsing to the page and selecting it. Contribute only allowed me to add images from my local hard disk. I.e., it was not nearly as helpful as it could have been for image management.
  • Setting publish date for the blog article?
    I found no way to set or change the date of an article.
  • Publish from Microsoft Office capability is Windows only.
    Why? I’ve got Microsoft Office on my Mac, too…
  • Integrates with NetNewsWire!
    I was pleased to find that Contribute integrates with NetNewsWire. However, the integration was pretty simple and I didn’t like the format of the articles/links that were chosen.
  • ##TITLE## with ##CONTENT## added as an entry to my RSS feed
    When i did my first post, there was a phantom entry made that ended up in my RSS feed, but not on the website itself. I have no idea why.
  • Can’t insert a bitmap "bmp" image?
    Contribute does not appear to be able to handl .bmp images. That’s unfortunate, and required me to convert the images manually.
  • Not a Mac Universal application at present
    That didn’t bother me, since I’m on a Power Mac, but for $149, it should be Universal by this time.
  • Firefox extension did not work with FireFox 2, and crashed Firefox 1.5.
  • How do I edit raw HTML?
    I could not find any way to edit the raw HTML that was being generated. I sometimes need to do that to properly embed videos or other media.
  • Trackback URL is NOT a list of Trackback URLs that you should notify of your post!
    Apparently, their use of Trackback URL is just to specify where other should trackback to this particular article. I leave that up to the Wordpress application, so I’m not sure why they exposed that field, but neglected to expose the list of trackbacks that you’d like this article to ping.

On the plus side, I did like the auto-resizing of images.

Contribute is a nice piece of software, but I just don’t see it being a match for the blogger community yet. Hopefully Adobe will take another crack at it, and fully embrae the Mac audience, which sorely needs a professional-grade blogging tool.

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Zimbra Collaboration Suite 4.0

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on November 12, 2006
in Gadgets, Mac OS X, Mobile, Open Source, Startups, Technology and Venture Capital
. 0 Comments

Previously, I’ve talked about how my Nokia E61 smartphone does not seem to work correctly with the IMAP IDLE support offered by my Dreamhost email server. I contacted Dreamhost support about this, and they tell me that it’s not their fault. It must be a bug in the Nokia E61 IMAP client.

The problem is that the Nokia E61 Email client, when connected to my Dreamhost email server via IMAP, refuses to download new email automatically. I have to specifically ask it to do so. Having grown tired of that, I decided to give Zimbra a try.

The problem with Zimbra is that if you are a Sole Proprietor and only need a single mailbox for your business, trying out Zimbra can be a pretty costly experiment. Lots of the Hosting Partners that support Zimbra charge big setup fees and large monthly fees for Zimbra Mobile support, which I needed for my Nokia E61 to have full access via the Nokia Mail for Exchange (ActiveSync) client.

Having found no love from the Hosting Partners in the US, I moved on to the UK. Simply Mail Solutions offered the full Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 4.0 Network Profession Edition with support for Zimbra Mobile and iSync synchronization for my Mac iCal and Address Book contacts. They offer this with $0 setup fee, the ability to purchase just one mailbox, and for the low monthly price of under $8 (US). Competitors in the US were charging setup fees more like $99 and monthly fees of over $20. Simply Mail Solutions won the business.

What was even better was that their customer support was excellent. Keith over at Simply Mail Solutions set up my account and took very good care of me.

If you are looking for Zimbra mailbox support, check these guys out. Tell them I sent you.

I will return later with my reactions to the Zimbra product.

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I Hate Spam: Mac OS X Edition

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on November 12, 2006
in Mac OS X, Software and Startups
. 1 Comment

I Hate Spam.

I get lots of SPAM email — about 75 SPAM email messages per day.

As a result, I need a good SPAM filter.

In this edition of the I Hate Spam series, I wanted to introduce you to the best darn email SPAM filter that I have found for the Mac OS X operating system. SpamSieve.

I’ve tried both SpamAssassin and DSPAM on my Dreamhost email server. They continue to let SPAM messages through, no matter what I do to “train” and configure them. I have even gone so far as to run my email through SpamAssassin first, then DSPAM second and only deliver it to my inbox if neither believes the message is SPAM. Even doubled up, SPAM continues to get through. More on this in a separate article.

However, I have found a great tool that runs on my Mac OS X laptop and does an excellent job at filing away the SPAM. Not perfect, but pretty darn close, and much better than the combination of SpamAssassin and DSPAM described above.

Don’t even bother using the built-in “Junk” folder that Apple includes with Mail.app. It, too, is Junk. Instead, get SpamSieve. It’s cheap, well integrated into Mail.app, and it just works.

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MacBreak: The Road To 1080p

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on October 31, 2006
in Blogging, Mac OS X and Startups
. 0 Comments

+

MacBreak is a video podcast for the Mac crowd. Professionally done:

The only Macintosh video show you’ll ever need. Mac experts Leo Laporte, Amber MacArthur, Alex Lindsay, and Emery Wells talk about everything Mac, including hardware, software, pro apps, and tips. Shot in 1080p high def, because your Mac deserves the very best.

Alex Lindsay, Chief Architect at Pixel Corps, took care of the behind-the-scenes action:

The Pixel Corps is a guild for the next generation of craftsmen… digital craftsmen.

Alex did a great tutorial on why they filmed MacBreak in 1080p with a green screen. If you are into video, wonder about the difference between Black & White and Color TV, have never heard of “4 1 1″, “4 2 2″, or “4 4 4″ (and wondered what your DV camcorder records in), check out this nicely done walk-through.

Download the MOV here.

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Can Adobe Contribute To My Blogging?

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on October 30, 2006
in Blogging, Mac OS X and Software
. 2 Comments

I’m a Mac.

I mean, I’m a Mac user.

And a Blogger.

A Mac Blogger in search of the best WYSIWYG blog editor for Mac OS X that will allow me to create, edit, and manage my Wordpress blogs while online and offline.

I’ve been using Qumana and have been mostly pleased with it. Especially given the price (free!). I wrote about my initial experiences here. Qumana has always been a bit rough around the edges, but I have found sufficient work-arounds to justify my loyalty.

The Qumana problems came with the official 3.0 release. For some reason, the Mac version of Qumana 3.0 does not display the image dialog for me. I have submitted the bug to the Qumana team, including the Java stack backtrace showing the error, but one of the Qumana lead Mac programmers has recentely quit. I.e., I am S.O.L. and on my own.

I noticed that Adobe had recently released Adobe Contribute 4. So, I downloaded the 30-day trial (for the Mac) and decided to give it a go today.

My first impression is not great.

But, let me get some time under my belt and we’ll let you know how it goes.

Stay tuned!

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Firefox 2.0: It’s Not You… It’s Me, Baby

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on October 30, 2006
in Mac OS X, Open Source and Startups
. 0 Comments

I broke up with Firefox today.

“Foxy” and I had been seeing each other, exclusively, for over a year now. So, it has certainly been a long-term relationship.

At first, it was a fast-paced romance.

Lots of extensions to try, and themes to suit the mood.

Even Greasemonkey.

But lately, things have really slowed down.

Foxy took over my memory. Leaks, they call it. My poor system was forced to swap itself silly.

It seemed like Foxy didn’t want me to visit other websites; see other pages; use other apps. Was it jealousy or something else?

Surfing became a drag.

Instead of play, we took to arguing over performance.

The yelling increased. We found ourselves talking about topics when we should have been talking about the issues.

The promise of a “2.0″ version appeared to be the only thing holding us together.

But, the core issues remained, even with the plastic surgery.

I was as much a part of the dysfunction as Foxy.

It had to end.

I’ll go on Safari now.

Sure, there may not be as much glitz and glamour.

No Greasemonkey.

But surfing is no longer a drag. I can use other apps; see other pages.

Thanks, Foxy.

It was fun while it lasted.

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My Dream App is, well, Dreamy

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on August 23, 2006
in Mac OS X, Software, Startups and Venture Capital
. 0 Comments

Take a walk over to My Dream App. Right Now!

I think of it as American Idol meets the Shareware market.

So, here’s the business model.

If you have a great idea for the Mac OS X platform, but no way to build it or hire a team to build it, you can submit your idea to My Dream App right now. This thing was announced all of 2 days ago and they’ve received 1572 ideas submitted so far. Incredible. You have until September 1, 2006, to submit your ideas, so get on with it!

At that time, the My Dream App team will pick 24 ideas from the list - what they think are the best (and implementable) ideas of the bunch. The top 24 picks will be announced between September 4 and September 15.

Starting September 16, the elimination rounds begin. From September 16 through October 23, the voting is turned over to the user community (registered on the web site). Five, count ‘em, 5 eliminations rounds later, the top 3 winners are selected (all by popular vote).

The top 24 picks all win a prize. The first 6 eliminated get an iPod Shuffle. That’s hardly a prize. The 3 winners get a MacBook Pro laptop and 15% of the NET profits from the sales of the shareware product that is subsequently built and brought to market.

What I like about it:

  • Great idea that is getting lots of traction
  • The Forum discussions about many of the submitted ideas are FASCINATING; truly a demonstration of the openness of Web 2.0 users. The ideas are already being refined, compared, discussed, and improved.
  • If the concept is proven to be solid, it can be easily extended to other platforms (Windows, Symbian, PalmOS, Linux, Solaris, SaaS).
  • Could imagine building this into a marketplace for programmers and ideas. Just because you are a great coder does not mean that you know the killer idea (and vice versa). You would think that O’Reilly would be all over this.
  • The ideas themselves are not big enough to support a VC-funded business. That’s expected, as the target is the Shareware market. However, the My Dream App concept, with some tweaks I discussed above for scalability, could build a nice-sized business and, what I like, is that it could build applications that change the world.

What I don’t like about it:

  • The My Dream App guys exclusively own your idea if it is selected. I understand why they did this - they are running a business, and this term makes the legal issues very clear and concise. However, I think it is a bit onerous and they should have stated it as "you own your idea and have given us an exclusive license to bring it to market as a shareware solution for the Apple Macintosh".
  • You get 15% of NET profit, but nobody has defined the accounting that goes into calculating the profit (i.e., what are reasonable and usual expenses, who pays for the developer, etc).
  • They only have to pay you for the Apple Macintosh version. The implication is that if they take your submitted idea (which you gave them, remember) to another platform, like Windows, they would owe you nothing.
  • I personally feel that 5 rounds of elimination are too many rounds. I would do: 24 to 12, 12 to 6, 6 to 3. Resulting in 3 rounds of elimination.

I intend to watch this closely (and, hopefully, will be picked to judge as I’m a big Mac user and fan). I wish these guys all the success in the world. Fun stuff!

Anyway, this has had some great blog coverage. TechCrunch, Paul Stamatiou, O’Reilly Mac Devcenter Blog, binarytales, MacUser.com, Pomcast.com, Manual Web Crawler, anshuljain, FixYourThinking, Mac1

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Nokia E61 and iSync

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on August 17, 2006
in Gadgets and Mac OS X
. 8 Comments

I’ve had quite a few people write to me in response to my post about the Nokia E61 Smartphone. Some have asked how I got it to work with iSync on my Apple Mac OS X system. Here’s what I did. It works for me, but you should exercise extreme caution whenever mucking with stuff like this (up-to-date backups of everything, etc).

I am running Mac OS X 10.4.7 with iSync 2.3.

  1. Take a look at this post
  2. If you don’t speak German, it basically is telling you to download this link
  3. Within that download you will see:
  4. If you still don’t speak German, you should:

    1. Quit from iSync
    2. Drag the Orange folder to the Red folder and drop it
    3. Start up iSync
    4. Add your device, as usual

This will put the "mactomster.phoneplugin" folder into the /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns directory for you. iSync should then be able to find your Nokia E61, including a lovely icon matching the device.

This may also work for the Nokia 3250, Nokia 5500, Nokia 6130, Nokia 6233, Nokia 6234, Nokie E50, Nokia E60, Nokia E70, Nokia E71, Nokia E72, Nokia E73, Nokia N80, Nokia N91, Nokia N92, Nokia N93 as well.

I have no idea what will happen when iSync 2.4 comes out or OS X 10.4.8 is released. You are on your own! Please add comments here to clarify any of the instructions.

Many thanks to Tom’s Website for Symbian and Apple.

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