Maclord's Blog

I just bought a 15″ Retina MacBook Pro and solely for the purpose of development for IBM Websphere suite of products, especially IBM BPM and ODM (aka Websphere Operational Decision Management). IBM BPM consisting of heavy-weight components based on a process server built on top of Websphere Application Server 8, requires very powerful hardware to work with efficiently. But all these products require Windows, Linux or UNIX operation systems, so I needed to setup Bootcamp on my new Mac to install and run Windows 7 for these tasks. (This is another story I will be sharing on my IT blog soon.)

Since the new Macs no longer ship with any software installation discs, everything is downloaded from the Internet inlcluding OS X software as well as Bootcamp support (Windows driver software for Mac hardware). As a loyal Mac OS X Snow Leopard user who has been resisting to upgrade to (Mountain) Lion for a long time, with my new Retina MacBook Pro, I had no choice, but to get used to working on Mountain Lion. This includes the Bootcamp utility Mountain Lion edition (as I call it) which requires to download the Bootcamp (Windows support) drivers online (and on the fly) while setting up Bootcamp on the Mac.

In my experience, downloading the Bootcamp drivers from some Apple server took more than half a day. In order to avoid such a time loss (or any possible new Apple madness) next time  I’d set up Bootcamp, I backed up the downloaded the Bootcamp drivers, and then I decided I’d share the near-1-GB folder zipped in a single file with the rest of the world for download via my web site which is hosted on reasonably fast servers with high bandwidth (courtesy of Ozar.net).

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Apple discontinued development of their Safari web browser for Windows, and the last version of Safari they have ever released for Windows is 5.1.7. While the latest version of Safari for the Mac was 6.0.3 as of this writing with a few enhancements and the removal of the built-in RSS reader, the Windows version (which was left at 5.1.7) is not likely to be maintained by Apple any more.

There’s no direct link to download Safari for Windows from Apple’s web site either, so I decided to make it easy for those who would rather download it from here.

Safari for the Windows PCs is still a cool browser with some nifty features such as HTML 5 support, fast page rendering, advanced security and privacy options, 3D top sites view showing the most frequently visited sites, history viewing with page snapshots as cover flow, the ability to search through history as well as bookmarks, a robust web page elements inspector, a sleek RSS reader where you can adjust the feed length with a slider bar, an optional developer (tools) menu, and many more.

The Problem

I’ve had a problem using Apple Magic Mouse on a 64-bit Windows 7 on my new iMac‘s Bootcamp partition. It was that I couldn’t use the Magic Mouse in Windows installed on iMac. As a matter of fact the magic mouse was not even showing up in Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers in the beginning. In my case I’m using Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) and Windows 7 (x64) Ultimate on the Bootcamp partition.

In Windows 7, to add a Bluetooth device, you simply click Add a Device  and then Windows should automatically recognize the device and show an icon representing it in the Devices window then allowing you to select it to be installed (i.e. its drivers).

I also have an Apple Wireless Keyboard which functions just fine on Windows 7, but the Magic Mouse used not to until I figured out the following:

Somehow when the Apple Magic Mouse is paired with your Mac first, it may become impossible to make it usable with Windows 7 on the same machine when started up from the Bootcamp partition. Even if you manage to locate it in devices and select it for installation, you may see a message like “Connecting to the device…” forever, but no progress.

The Solution

If you are suffering the same problem of not being able to use your Apple Magic Mouse in Windows (Bootcamp) on your Mac follow these steps: Read the rest of this entry »

What is iPad?

The iPad is a tablet computer which is expected to be a breakthrough product developed by Apple. It features multi-touch interaction with print, video, photo, and audio multimedia, internet browsing, e-mail messaging, eBook reading, and runs most iPhone OS apps.

What does iPad look like (really) ?

There you go – pictures from actual product photography all over this page. Also, see right below to watch Apple’s iPad advertorial video in Flash video format. If you are viewing this on an iPhone, you may want to go to Apple’s iPad web page to see the video in QuickTime format.

iPad’s Technical Specs Overview

The device has an LED-backlit 9.7-inch (25 cm) color LCD display and uses a virtual keyboard for text input. Its operating system is expected to be called iOS in the near future while currently it is strictly based on the iPhone OS therefore capable of running most iPhone apps.

iPad Pricing

iPad prices for models in the United States range from $499 to $829 depending on the amount of storage and inclusion of 3G access.

• Prices in U.S. dollars. International pricing will be announced at a later date.
• 3G data plan sold separately.

When will iPad be shipping?

Wi-Fi models shipping in late March.
3G models shipping in April.

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Apple's New Home Page Jan 27, '10

Time will show if tonight’s announcement, which is due in about an hour from as of this writing, will mark some milestone in the history of computing, electronics, technology, etc.

Apple’s home page theme has – most probably intentionally – not been updated for a couple of months now – not even on Christmas or the new year unlike before. I’m sure they will replace the main theme which has been showing off the big iMac screen displaying Star Trek with the new long awaited innovative Tablet device what we tend to call the iPad and we are yet to learn whether it’s really called iPad or iSlate or what-so-else-ever.
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Photo courtesy of Engadget.com

Apple is yet to announce a new tablet device on January 27th, 2010. The long-awaited device which gossibers called names such as Touchbook, iTablet, iSlate and iPad, etc, according to Steve Jobs, is the most significant invention of Apple in this century.

Over the recent years, despite the ever-growing popularity of the NetBook market over the existing portable computer market in which Apple has highly popular notebook products such as the MacBook and MacBook Pro, Apple had declined to enter the Netbook arena. Instead, Apple chose to develop a new tablet product which was thought to resemble Amazon’s mono-chrome eBook reader Kindle or so suggested the ongoing rumors, especially after the success of its smart phone-hand-held mini-computer combo iPhone and iPod touch.  A more recent report by Macrumors stated that Apple was working closely with the New York Times and some book publishers on an eBook reader app – obviously targeted for the new tablet device – and maybe for iPhone and iPod Touch as well.

Due to certain ongoing legal issues, the name of this new tablet device was uncertain at the time of the drafting of this article, but the last two enduring candidates for the device name were iSlate or iPad – the latter of which is most likely to be announced tomorrow.

What good is an iPad for?

With an iPad, you can read eBooks, eMagazines, e-publishings, etc, play 3D games (like those on the PC and the PSP), surf the Internet, watch TV and videos in HD, do word processing, spreadsheets, page layout and animated presentations using the iPad version of Apple’s iWork software which is a simpler and easier-to-use rival of Microsoft’s Office software. iPad makes use of both wi-fi and 3G for connectivity.

iPad Photos

The wi-fi only model of iPad (very identical to Wi-Fi + 3G models)

A lot of rumors, speculations and gossips kept going on about what the iPad was going to be like as well as many concept illustrations were found all over the Internet.

You can view some of them below:

The iPad Concept Art and Photography

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iPhone does not support Adobe Flash, because it does not comply with Apple’s policy about 3rd party apps may not install software on iPhone which limits all application adding/removing on the iPhone OS to be handled by the App store.

Betanews.com reports that Microsoft worked with Apple for streaming video to an iPhone from a Silverlight-based platform, on a special note by Microsoft’s User Experience Platform Manager Brian Goldfarb.

“The promise of Silverlight is that it’s a cross-device, cross-browser, cross-platform solution, and it works the same on Macs as it does on Windows,” Goldfarb said.

The argument of iPhone supporting Silverlight was born in a demonstration event where an H.264 video was played on an iPhone using Microsoft’s Silverlight video streaming wirelessly.

Although having a Microsoft stream on the iPhone at a first glance suggests that Silverlight might be an alternative to Flash on the iPhone, this seems to have nothing to do with a client-side plug-in – thanks to the <VIDEO> tag introduced in HTML 5 which is supported by Safari (including iPhone Safari) even YouTube videos can be streamed on the iPhone.

Thank you, Brian Goldfarb, for your play of words to advertise Silverlight and causing confusion, and admitting that  at Microsoft, you work with Apple.

I saw today on MacRumors that  iPhone finally gets the long awaited “copy and paste” feature.

One of the major sources of the flash news,  Diggnation, a live video show by Kevin Rose, the co-founder of Digg, iPhone’s next generation operating system and its new features including the “copy-and-paste” is revealed. (Warning, strong language in the video!)

What’s more, other sources such as Engadget and Ars Technica also report that Apple has invited some select media members for a special event held in its campus in Cupertino on March 17th. This special media  event will give a preview of the next major operating system upgrade for the iPhone  namely iPhone OS 3.0 and “copy-paste” is among the new features as well as the rumored MMS and tethering.

Unlike the “copy-and-paste” function which is very likely to come true, the rumored upcoming features, MMS would finally offer iPhone users the ability to send photos or multimedia by way of SMS, and tethering would allow you to share your iPhone’s internet connection with your laptop computer via wi-fi.