Monday June 2
 
14:48
 
When Will Real Multi-Touch Come To The Mac?

When I bought my iMac, I had one concern: that it will soon be replaced with a multi-touch iMac.

In the end I went ahead with the iMac on the basis that the MacBook Air multi-touch is limited to the trackpad, and the MacBook doesn’t even have that.

But…

When I put my iMac in to be repaired (don’t ask!), the iMac was described on the repair form as “iMac Early 2008″. That looks very much like there will be a new iMac model this year.

Then this article, found via Eyal’s blog, talks about multi-touch coming in Windows 7. Another sign?

If Window 7 is anything like the PANTS of XP Tablet or Windows Media, Apple will have nothing to worry about - but I’m sure that they will want to get in ahead of Microsoft and have a proper touchy-feeling MacOS X out there to capitalise on the anti-Vista sentiment - I was faced with having to resort back to a Windows only world this weekend and I didn’t like it.

The main challenge I see is the screen: the coating on my Kohjinsha SA1 leaves the screen looking fuzzy; I’m sure Apple will want to keep a glossy screen and have it touchy. They will also surely want to modify the OS so that it can take real advantage of touch - rather than the Microsoft pen based approach.

What would be really cool is if the iMacs could be upgraded to multi-touch. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds - the new iMacs have a removable glass cover over the display. That glass could easily be swapped over for touchy glass.. :)

Wednesday May 28
 
19:35
 
PC On Mac On PC - II

I came into work today, set up the LG Mac, and got a bit of a shock: working Bluetooth PAN.

That made for a very happy day. I smiled and beamed as I surfed the net using Safari on Mac OS X, while sharing the connection to Windows XP via VMWare Fusion. I smiled and beamed even more as I hooked up a second LCD and found I could extend the desktop. With two displays, I could run full screen XP on one display and Mac OS X on the second display. Splendid.

The day of the virtual machine has really come. I now routinely run Mac OS X at home (on my iMac) with XP running in a virtual machine - and it is not even close to noticeable that XP is running on a simulated PC. There is no lag - no slowdown. I can burn even DVDs from XP using Nero with no issues. It’s nice.

Why bother? Well one thing I like is the separation of risk. My “life” is the Mac - it’s where I surf the internet, chat, listen to music, watch movies.

The virtual machine running XP is my sandbox. My Korean sandbox. It’s where I run all those Korean apps that don’t work on the Mac - such as the KTF app which lets me send and receive Korean SMS messages.

The great thing is that whatever I install under XP, it doesn’t affect the Mac at all. That may seem obvious - but it’s deeper than it first seems.

While XP bloats with background processes over time (especially from Korean websites) and there’s nothing you can do except try to manage it - now I can switch off everything XP related at the touch of a switch, just by closing down the virtual machine. When in a Windows only world, I sometimes wished there was a “switch off all the background crap” button. Now I have one.

Or if I want to try a new application I’ve downloaded from the internet, I can simply fire up a second XP session. I can try out the software and if I don’t like it, never install it on my main XP session. Less crap from installing and uninstalling over and over. Sure I could do that by having two XP installations on a PC rather than two virtual PC installations - but here I can have both running at the same time, drag and drop files between them, pause them. I can create new virtual machines easily, cloning from standard installs.

If I have a friend staying, I can give them their own XP virtual machine. When they want to use the computer, I simply full-screen that virtual machine - and they instantly have their own machine. I don’t need to worry about them accessing my personal data. They don’t need to worry about me accessing their personal data - we simply delete the machine when they are gone. I could even install XP in Korean or Japanese or whatever language so that they don’t have to struggle with English.

So I’m pleased to have this virtual world running on my LG Mac. I’ve tried running VMWare under XP, and it just doesn’t have the same fluidity and speed. On Mac OS X, it just works.

The only downside today? The “sleep” hack I found for the LG internal keyboard doesn’t seem very reliable - sometimes not waking from sleep, etc. Since I use a USB keyboard at work anyway, I’m happy to accept just leaving the internal keyboard and sleep alone.

Wednesday May 28
 
15:06
 
How To Delete A GPT Protective Partition

I reformatted one of my USB hard drives as Mac OS Extended format the other day to try as a backup for Time Machine, and today converted it back to PC format. Stuck on the beginning of the disk I found a 200MB “GPT Protective Partition”.

I’ve no idea what it is, but I know it’s not necessary. Being space conscious, I wanted to remove it - but I also wanted to remove it on “safety” grounds: it causes problems with Partition Magic (which can’t even reinitialise the disk), and, I think, XP. I don’t want to copy files onto that disk and then later find out there are problems accessing it because of the GPT Protective Partition.

Here’s how to remove it:

1. In XP, run: cmd
2. diskpart
3. list disk
4. select disk # (the number from the list)
5. clean
6. In XP, run: compmgmt.msc and select Disk Management
7. Look for the disk which says “Not Initialized”, right click, then select Initialize Disk
8. Select OK to confirm
9. Right click on the Unallocated space and select “New Partition…”
10. Partition as required

Did this help you? Did it save you hours of your precious time? Then consider sending me a few bucks - not only will it make me happy, but it will help keep my free site The Korean Blog List running!

Tuesday May 27
 
22:45
 
PC On Mac On PC

How cool is this? My LG LW25 laptop running NATIVE Mac OS X - ie, running Mac OS X on a plain old PC.

Not only that, but within Mac OS, my old PC setup (C: drive) is now running as a “Virtual PC” under VMWare Fusion.

PC on Mac On PC. Lovely!

This is all thanks to Kalyway 10.5.2 (one of the ways to install OS X on a PC) and VMWare Fusion (virtual machine software). The only pain is internet access - I can’t get the Mac to talk Bluetooth PAN with my phone. I can, however, get Bluetooth running under VMWare Fusion and access the internet via my phone that way. I need to work out a way to let Mac OS share the internet connection.

Notes for anyone with an LG LW25 wanting to attempt this (and who has found this page from Google):
- The keyboard does not work during installation - you need a USB keyboard.
- After installing and booting into Mac OS X, you need to Sleep and then Wake Mac OS X. The keyboard will then work. All LG laptops have keyboard issues with Mac OS X at the moment.
- Internal Ethernet LAN and Wireless LAN do not work. I believe there’s a project in place to get drivers for the Wireless LAN working (it is standard Intel). Most people simply buy another LAN card (one that is known to work) and install it.
- Sound is working.
- Sometimes hangs during shutdown - not a big deal.
- I tried Leo4All and others, Kalyway is the only one that I could get to work with the keyboard, sleep, and sound. Make sure you click Customise when installing to select the correct drivers (eg, Intel 950 graphics card).

Friday May 23
 
18:22
 
How To Video Chat With A PC User From The Mac

It was surprisingly difficult to find a way to video chat with PC user from the Mac.

Apple provide iChat - but that’s pretty useless. The only PC client iChat will video chat with is AIM - and who uses AIM outside the US? From the reports I’ve read, even that compatibility isn’t great - with iChat only working with certain versions of the AIM client. In the end, I ruled out AIM - I didn’t want to have to ask my friends to install AIM, go through all the hassles of getting an ID, and then find out it doesn’t work.

Ideally I would have liked something which worked with MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger), because all my Korean friends use MSN for video chat. So far the only way I have been able to video chat with MSN users is to run XP using VMWare Fusion - that works, but it is sluggish, and it seems to use only the center part of the iSight image.

What I wanted was something that would work reliably and effortlessly. I would need to get my friends to install a new chat client to be able to talk with me, so I wanted something which “just works”. In the end, I found three options:

1. Yahoo Messenger (to other Yahoo users only - video chat doesn’t work to MSN users).

2. Skype

3. Sightspeed

Since I use Skype anyway on the PC, I went with Skype. It’s a bit of a heavy client, but it works well - and that’s what matters. Plus, these days many people have Skype installed anyway for international calling.

It is slightly surprising, though, that iChat is so limited. In my view, Apple should do more to make it easy to communicate with PC users. It doesn’t project a good image of the Mac when Mac users are forced to say to Windows users: “Mac doesn’t work with XXX.” It only reiterates the image that Mac is limited.