Maclord's Blog

One of my favorite things on the Mac was having a recent version of Java and a Java Development Kit (JDK) pre-installed on Mac OS X until the release of version 10.7 Lion. On Snow Leopard, the 64-bit version of Java 6 came already installed.

With MacOS X Lion, however, Java does not come out-of-the-box and you have to download and install it manually (or via the Apple Software Update) – except in rare cases where you upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

The first package of Java 6 for Mac OS X Lion for download & manual installation can be found on the following link: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1421
The download size is about 62.5 MB and gets you Java SE version 1.6.0_26 (64-bit of course). Although this one is not be the most up-to-date version, once you have it on your system, you would be prompted to upgrade automatically next time Apple Software Update is run.

As for JDK 7 for Mac, it will be available directly from Oracle, maybe even through the App Store – no official announcement on the latter, though, so far, but stay tuned for good news!

If you are a Java developer who wants to do Java development on Mac OS X 10.7, here are a few not-so-tricky steps to follow to get going:
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If you ever run into a disk image in .daa format, and you need to access its contents on Mac OS X, DAA Converter for Mac OS X is what you need.

DAA Converter for Mac OS X is a free utility for converting DAA & GBI disk images to ISO format so they can be accessed on your Mac.

DAA Converter is a native GUI application which wraps the command-line tool, DAA2ISO / GBI 2 ISO, by Luigi Auriemma.
It runs on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther or later. I have tested it on Mac OS X Leopard which works just fine on 10.5, too.

Just drag the icon of any .daa or .gib disk image onto the application’s icon, and the conversion process will instantly take place – an .iso version of the disk image will be instantly created on the same directory as the source image file.

You can download DAA Converter for Mac OS X (117) here or visit the downloads page.

Popular among Windows PC users .Uif is an alternative disk image format to others like .iso, .img and .bin-.cue couples.

You can open and convert UIF disk images on Mac OS X using one of the following disk image utilities:

1. Uif2iso which is a cross-platform command-line tool developed by Luigi Auriemma.
2. Uif2iso4mac a GUI application by Torsten Curdt . Uif2iso4mac is built upon  Luigi Auriemma’s uif2iso command line utility with a Mac graphic user interface adding basic functionalities of a real Mac app like drag-and-drop and a menu bar i.e. choosing an image using the File > Open menu.

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Although a beta version of the new, popular, long-awaited web browser Google Chrome for the Mac has already been released, the download page file has been removed from Google’s own search results.

Luckily I had downloaded a beta version and already using it. You can download it here for your own hands-on experience on Google Chrome on your Mac.

Download Google Chrome for Mac (latest beta) (305) for Mac OS X (supposedly for Intel only)

Google Chrome is made possible by the Chromium open source project and some other open source software.

You may also want to look into

Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard

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.

The following article which describes how to setup Windows Live Hotmail account on your Mac’s Microsoft Entourage e-mail client app, was taken from a web page on Microsoft’s web site. The method described can also be applied to Apple‘s Mail.app to use Hotmail from within Mail on Mac OS X (tested only on Leopard at the date of this writing). Alternatively you can download and run a small utility app called Mail Setup which is claimed to run on both PPC and Intel Macs – this program can setup most e-mail accounts for you including but not limited to MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL / AIM Mail, Gmail, etc.

Windows Live Hotmail accounts, including free accounts, can now be set up in Entourage as POPA common type of Internet-based mail account. Examples are Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. After you add a POP account to Entourage, messages from the account appear in the folder list under On My Computer.

Important
All Windows Live Hotmail accounts must be set up in Entourage as POPA common type of Internet-based mail account. Examples are Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. After you add a POP account to Entourage, messages from the account appear in the folder list under On My Computer. To set up an account, follow all the instructions in the following sections (you cannot use the Entourage Account Setup Assistant for Hotmail setup).
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CHM stands for Compiled HTML, and it’s used by Microsoft Windows for help files, documentation, magazines and eBooks.
There are a lot of eBooks – some being even Mac-related – in .chm format while Mac OS X does not come with any built-in .chm viewer.

There are some 3rd party CHM file viewers for the Mac, though, and some of them are absolutely free:
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What is VNC?

VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing, and it is a desktop sharing system with a graphic user interface which allows you to connect and control a remote computer over a network or the Internet. Thanks to the RFB (Remote Frame Buffer) protocol it’s using, VNC applications send the keyboard and mouse events to a remote computer on the network (or the Internet) who’s screen is being shared, and it relays back the updates.

RFB (Remote FrameBuffer) is a simple protocol and since operates at the framebuffer level, it can be used on all operating systems with a GUI including Windows, Macintosh (Mac OS X) and Linux. Although RFB started as a very simple protocol used by VNC and its derivatives, it has been improved so as to support file sharing, advanced compression and security techniques in its development cycle.

Why VNC is used and How

With VNC you can display the screen of a remote computer on your own computer in a window or in full screen mode, and using your own keyboard and mouse on this screen, you can control that remote computer as if you are sitting in front of it. All actions taken on the view of the remote desktop on your computer are performed actually on the remote computer itself.

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This page features all the essential software you need to install on your Mac enabling you to play all major video formats including DivX, XviD, Windows Media Format (wmv), mkv, flv, etc.

Flip4Mac WMV Components for QuickTime

Flip4Mac WMV Components allow you to import, export and play Windows Media video and audio files on your Mac. Flip4Mac WMV plug-ins can be used with most QuickTime based applications, including QuickTime Player, iMovie ’06, Final Cut Pro and more.

Optimized for High-Definition Playback

Windows Media® Components for QuickTime has been highly optimized for Power Mac G4 and G5 and Intel computers and supports playback of high-definition Windows Media video files.

Upgrade to Advanced Features

Windows Media playback is provided free of charge. By purchasing an upgrade directly from Flip4Mac, you can import Windows Media files for editing and create Windows Media files for distribution. To learn more about these advanced features, visit the Flip4Mac Web site.

System Requirements

• Mac OS X version 10.3.9 or later
• QuickTime version 7.0 or later (7.1.6 or higher recommended)

Download Link: Windows Media Components for QuickTime by Flip4Mac (438)

Perian

Perian is an open source plug-in which enables QuickTime to play several popular video formats not supported natively by QuickTime on Mac OS X. It is largely based on the FFmpeg project, as it uses libavcodec and libavformat. It also uses liba52 and libmatroska.
Perian aims at providing a single package to provide all your playback needs. It is a collection of QuickTime components incorporating several libraries:

• libavcodec, from the ffmpeg project, along with code from the old FFusion component:
• MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2
• DivX
• 3ivX
• H.264
• FLV1
• FSV1
• VP6
• H263I
• VP3
• HuffYUV
• ffvhuff
• MPEG-1 & 2 video
• FRAPS
• Windows Media Audio v1 & v2
• Flash ADPCM
• Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska)
• MPEG Layer II Audio
• libavformat, from the ffmpeg project. along with AVIImporter.component:
• AVI file format
• FLV file format
• libmatroska, along with matroska-qt.component:
• MKV file format
• Subtitle parsing
• SSA
• SRT
• liba52, via A52Codec
• AC3 audio

Download Link: Perian (334)

VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is the ultimate cross-platform software, yet open-source and free, which enables playing of all major video and audio formats including MPEG-4, Flash video (.flv), MPEG-2,  H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, and AAC, as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

It also can be used as a streming video server as well as a video format conversion utility.

Mac OS X version can be downloaded from the following link: VLC Media Player for Mac OS X (universal binary) (275) (28 MB)

The Project’s web site featuring more info and downloads for other platforms such as Windows and Linux can be reached from here.

You can add the possibility to write / modify NTFS files on Mac OS X now thanks to MacFUSE from Google Code and NTFS-3G from Erik Larsson. MacFUSE allows you to extend Mac OS X’s native file handling capabilities via 3rd-party file systems. As a normal user, installing the MacFUSE software package will let you use any 3rd-party file system written on top of  MacFUSE, such as NTFS-3G from Erik Larsson which will allow you to not only read NTFS volumes, but also give you the ability to write (finally) to NTFS volumes. In order to have the functionality MacFUSE and NTFS-3G must respectively be installed on your Mac (and the system be rebooted after respective installation). MacFUSE can be downloaded from the following address: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/ or the cross-platform utilities section of OzarWEB downloads

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