Smalltalk with James Robertson

My MacBook Pro is happier:

Now to see if my Windows VM is happier with 4 GB of memory....

When I fired up my Windows VM (Parallels) yesterday, here's what I saw as it booted - it stayed like this while it was in windowed mode:

I ended up shutting the VM down completely (rather than suspending it), and that made the issue go away. But what the heck was happening?

I updated Parallels to version 6 - I'll be traveling for work soon, and I thought it would be nice if at least some of the Windows games would be available to me - the Xbox will be here while I'm away, sadly. The initial experience was less than thrilling.

The download and update seemed to go ok, and the migration of a Windows XP VM went smoothly as well. Then I suspended the VM and tried to quit Parallels - and that's when things got weird. The keyboard became unresponsive, and there was no way to switch to other apps. The Dock was still working, and I could start things - they just wouldn't come to the front. Really odd. Without the keyboard or terminal access, the only thing I could do was a hard reboot.

After the reboot, everything seemed fine - my VMs fired up and suspended just fine, and Parallels was well behaved. All I can figure is that part of the install/update process left things in a weird state. Not a huge surprise with VM technology, but odd. Anyway, if I end up installing any Windows games, I'll post on how that goes.

Technorati Tags: vm, parallels, parallels 6, windows

I've moved from one Windows box to another many, many times over the years, as the one i was using got old and needed to be replaced. Invariably it was a painful experience, requiring me to track down every blasted install disk (later, CD/DVD) I had and manually re-installing everything. Getting data to the new machine typically meant some kind of backup/restore or network transfer; there was never any automated support. For all I know, Windows 7 is better at that, but I haven't looked.

What I do know is this: moving from one Mac to another is the simplest thing I've ever seen. I walked into the Apple store yesterday, got a new 13" machine, and brought it home with a Firewire cable (I could have used my LAN, but the direct connection was faster). I followed the migration assistant instructions, and about 3 hours later (maybe less; I went to the gym in the middle of all that) it was done. I reset the Cincom machine to a base Snow Leopard install, with all the data on it erased, and had a new machine that is - for all intents and purposes - the same system. All the software works, all my settings were preserved... it's fantastic.

I realize that a Windows box costs less money, but boy - the time sink aspects are another thing entirely...

Looks like OS X and IOS are converging to some extent. Gizmodo reports:

Mac OS X Lion is another step in the road to a new—or better said, renewed—computer interface paradigm: Modal computing. And along the way, Apple is taking some of the most successful parts of iOS, like the App Store—with automatic installation of applications—and the springboard—rechristened launchpad in Lion.

For most people, having an app store right on the desktop is going to make life simpler. For IT admins and a lot of software vendors, it's going to create a lot of heartburn, especially when Microsoft inevitably follows suit.

Technorati Tags: osx, ios, app+store

Well, the latest Mac update does improve graphics performance in games - I've been enjoying the way Dragon Age: Origins looks with the update. However, a problem that's cropped up periodically with that game is still there - the complete lockup. I was playing a few minutes ago, and boom - the game reported an exception, then came back up. Then.... it just locked up hard. Couldn't break out to anywhere from the keyboard, and when I looked from a different machine, it wasn't on the network anymore, either.

All the joys of Windows :)

Technorati Tags: games, DAO

I love the way Apple updates things. I have iMovie '09, and I was getting ready to put together a montage video from Camp Smalltalk London. I have a bunch of stuff that was processed by QuickTime and.... iMovie has no idea what it is. A quick check of Google shows me that lots of people have hit this - and one solution is to export into the .dv format.

What I want to know is, what kind of idiot at Apple decided that standard export formats from QuickTime ("Export For Web") aren't recognized by iMovie?

Technorati Tags: iMovie, QuickTime

I have to wonder whether John Gruber has even heard of Firefox, much less ever run it. After all, it's a cross platform tool for multiple operating systems; it must suck, and I'm sure that no one uses it.

And yes, I did note the issue of 3rd party dependence yesterday, but I really don't think Apple had to pull out the nuke to swat this fly.

Technorati Tags: fanboys, apple

Phillip Greenspun notes that a "vanilla pc (netbook) can be had for the same price as the lowest end iPad, and has a lot more in the capability department:

During a discussion today about potential iPad sales, a friend and I got distracted by reflecting on the tremendous value delivered by a vanilla PC. Over on the Dell Web site right now, a basic 15″ laptop costs $499 and includes 320 GB of hard drive and 3 GB of RAM

However, it also has a lot more in the "personal administration" department. Plenty of my daughter's friends have PCs, bought instead of Macs for price reasons. These are all non tech folks; they are also constantly beset by problems - printers that don't work, virus infections, and then lost data due to their (mostly inept) attempts at cleanup.

This is where the phrase "time is money" comes to mind, and it's where I part company with people like Cory Doctorow who decry the iPad for not being a hackable device. Here's the thing: most people neither want or need a hackable device. What they want is a device that disappears into the background and lets them get work done. Most Apple products achieve that far, far better than their market competition

Does that mean that the iPad will win? No, because - like the PC space - price does matter. I stopped worrying about price at the point where I realized that my time had more value, but there are people for whom the differential is far more significant. I get that; I'm just (happily) not in that camp anymore

Technorati Tags: iPad, apple, netbook

Well, the laptop (2007 era Macbook Pro) updated to 10.6.3 just fine, but the iMac got itself into a bit of a block; it rebooted with a black screen, but it was running (Finder found the system, and I was able to ssh into the box). A reboot seems to have gotten its attention. Came up, and the only issue was a delay in my lunch's arrival :)