Smalltalk with James Robertson

After the last update of Parallels (Version 5.0.9344.558741), I noticed a really weird thing happening with file system access - quite often, I wasn't able to write to the working directory. This is a Windows 7 VM, with shared directories -meaning, "Documents and Settings" is actually "Documents" on the Mac. A reboot of the VM seemed to mostly deal with that, but VisualWorks still has problems. If I try to run an image from the shared area, I get really bizarre results - the UI Painter acts like it generates multiple methods, for instance, but they end up looking like one method - and attempting to edit code fails badly.

I'm thinking that the file system isn't responding to VW as VW thinks it should. If I use a non-shared area - I created a new folder under the virtual "C" drive - it all works fine. I wonder if anyone else has seen anything like this, and has an answer...

Technorati Tags: visualworks, windows

Is the Mac poised to become mainstream?

Apple could account for 25 percent of the 2010 desktop market, researchers suggest.

Spotted in Engadget:

A Mac mini with HDMI. Makes sense, right? Well, it hasn't to Apple so far, but it looks like it just might be ready to change its tune. That's according to AppleInsider, at least, which has it from "two people familiar with the matter" that prototypes of a Mac mini with an HDMI port have been seen making the rounds in the usual inner circles.

If that's more than a rumor, then the next generation mini might well make sense as a digital hub.

Technorati Tags: tv

I woke up this morning to an interesting thing - no USB drives (I have three attached) were showing on my Mac's desktop. I remembered that last night, when I was unhooking from the wired to wireless network (to move the Mac to the living room), the three drives wouldn't unmount - they stayed grayed for eons before I just gave up and unplugged the usb hub. I got the standard "you didn't eject" dialog, which I ignored, having seen it before.

My guess was that the service that handles that crashed, but Googling didn't turn up much - it seems a lot of people had USB issues with Tiger, but nothing relevant to me showed up. So.... I just rebooted. That cleared the problem, but I still wish I knew which service was involved - I likely could have just restarted it.

Technorati Tags: usb, external drive

My wife's Macbook (now fairly old, I guess) seems to be having a problem - while the battery has power (there's a button you can press to check on the white macbooks), the machine isn't actually getting any. So it's off to the Apple store for an appointment today - it should still be under AppleCare, so at least it won't cost me an arm and a leg...

Microsoft has finally relented, and will ship Outlook as part of the Mac Office site in 2011. What does this mean? It means that many of the petty incompatibilities Entourage had go away, and Outlook junkies can freely move to the mac and bring their tools along for the ride.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, office, outlook, entourage

This sounds good:

More specifically, people familiar with Friday's beta say it includes an update to QuickTime X that, when finalized, will improve security and compatibility while simultaneously enhancing overall reliability. The release will also include tweaks that aim to enhance the performance of Apple's 64-bit Logic pro audio suite. Other planned improvements include better compatibility with third-party printers and OpenGL-grounded applications, those same people say.

The bigger question for me is this: will they restore the export capabilities that 7.6.x had? I still use that version because it's better than the new one.

Technorati Tags: qtPro