Snow Leopard is messing up with bluetooth

It looks like new Snow Leopard, and that after installing latests build, which was pushed via Software Update, seems to have problems with bluetooth...

Everything works perfect when computer is switched on, or woken up from the sleep state. However, when "safe sleep" is used (known as "hibernation" in Windows), where computer's memory is saved on the hard disk, and computer effectively switched off, it looks like our bluetooth isn't being revoked , and becomes unavailable, at least from the icon in the menu bar...

in order to switch bluetooth on again, I need to either reboot Macbook, or enable it in bluetooth preferences panel.

Weird...

OpenDNS is blocking gay pride site

I was very dissapointed discovering today, that OpenDNS, which I am using for my corporate internet DNS, along with it's simple content filtering feature, is categorizing Dublin's Pride Parade website (http://www.dublinpride.org/) as "Sexuality"... in the meantime however Sexuality cathegory is being defined by OpenDNS as:

"Sites that provide information, images or implications of bondage, sadism, masochism, fetish, beating, body piercing or self-mutilation."

Interesting definition, having in mind one of the patrons of parade is Dublin City Council...

iPhone 3G S and Adobe Flash...

I couldn't help but wonder, does the "S" in iPhone 3G S (apparently "S" stands for speed) is "S"-enough to run Flash?

I remember processing power being a main reason for lack of support for Flash standard in iPhone. Which is a shame - being definitely one of the best web browsing devices (within mobile phone market at least) lack of support for one of the most popular standard was bit disappointing.

One would hope, that with brand new brain, and extra battery life, Apple would put their game together with Adobe, and at last release support for Flash within Safari. I wouldn't expect however this to be application available within AppStore, it's more likely another iPhone OS which would come with new Safari. Then again I dare to say, that introduction of Flash technology would deserve something more than just 3.1 ... Is it not more of a 4.0 revolution?

Will we have to wait?

iPhone 4G then...?

New iPhone 3G S released!

So, the big day have finally come. iPhone 3G S has been released. At least in US, UK and few other places around the globe. Internet is pumping with reviews, videos, demos and pictures of and made with new toy. People waiting from early hours outside of Apple stores waiting to sign their soul and wallet for next two years, over new mobile phone. I would say the feeling, the atmosphere of the entire event must be amazing. Bunch of fans standing outside the gorgeous cube on 5th Avenue, in the shadow of The New York Plaza... would love to be there, not for the phone itself, but for the experience...

In Ireland we not only have to wait till next week for new iPhone. There are no Apple stores here. Sitting outside O2 store on Grafton Street at early hour, along with drunks and smell of piss all over town is hardly something people are looking forward to...

Maybe next year...

Apple Inc.

What I love about Apple is that every time they improve their product, they add the only thing I was missing in it's predecessor. What I hate about Apple however is that every time they improve their product, they add the only thing I was missing in it's predecessor which I purchased just couple of months ago. And now as a reasonable person with limited disposable income, I can't justifying spending €1500 for SD slot. And no firewire, brighter screen or digital compass will change that...

The problem is, that I told exactly the same to myself just before i upgraded my white MacBook to unibody one, and iPhone to it's 3G version... sometimes you just can't say no to the little half eaten fruit :)

European Union without Internet Explorer... again...

So Microsoft decided to get rid off IE altogether from Windows 7 shipped within European Union... but guess what - EU is still not happy. What's even better - neither is Opera...

Yes, that's true, everyone wanted MS to add selection of browsers to their operating system. Of course they do! But that's not fight with monopoly - that's just taking advantage of it! Also, that would (or at least should) cause even more problems and arguments. Who is to make a selection of browsers to be added to Windows? Why some browsers would be included? Why some browsers would not be?

Move Microsoft made is not only considered "nasty", but also most likely something that would never go ahead with. Now, I wouldn't be so sure. I am trying to place myself in Microsoft position. It's less than four months until premiere of my brand new operating system, I spend millions of dollars and two years of development time on. I am in the middle of antimonopoly argument with one of the largest markets in the world. Why would I want now, so close to my big day, take on responsibility for 3rd party apps? And I would need to take responsibility on, because if one non-technical person buys a PC with Windows 7 preinstalled, and for some reason find let's say Opera crashing - he won't go "Oh, Opera is crashing, I better download [place your favourite browser here]". He'll go off and say: "This PC I bough is c**p. It's running Windows".

I don't want to sound like Microsoft fan, I am just trying to say, that if I was running Microsoft, I would do exactly the same thing.

I am also true believer in fairness. If Microsoft would be forced to remove its browser, or offer choice of alternatives, so should be Linux, MacOS and all other operating systems out there... And with trend in browsers market share looking like THIS, it's really hard to talk about need for such actions...

MacOS X 10.6 Preview, day two. SSD anyone?

Another day of using Snow Leopard. So far I love it, however I am really disappointed with lack of Dock Expose in this build. I would really hope this would be at least as good as Aero Peak introduced in Windows 7, but again, simply can't test it :(

You can hold mouse button as long as you won't, but you won't get Dock Expose :(

OS start-up

Another change I noticed, comparing to MacOS X 10.5 is a booting up time. Unfortunately, despite of what we've heard during WWDC, it's hard to call it an improvement. I tend to keep my MacBook asleep as opposite to switching it off, however when I do, I never waited longer than 15 - 20 seconds for my login screen to appear. Now however, since upgrade to 10.6, I have a questionable pleasure of staring at Apple logo alone for minimum of 30 seconds, before first signs of desktop appear. Now in all fairness this could be due to operating system still being under heavy development, as well as fact of me upgrading from Leopard rather than performing fresh install. I would expect most Apple users to follow upgrade path though, so I hope boot time is going to be radically reduced before hitting Golden Master. Hope, hope, hope :)

What am I missing???

One of the features I read about, and I am pretty sure that was implemented in one of the developers builds, was "Restore" option available for files within Trash. It supposed to work the same way as it does in Windows - restore file to its original location. After quick check - this feature seems to be missing from 10A380 build. :(

No "Restore" option for files in Trash...

I remember back in 2000, when Steve Jobs, demoing MacOS X for the very first time, showed us fancy animation of window being minimized down to the dock. I distinctively remember him showing us Mission Impossible movie being minimized and saying:

"Pretty cool, huh? [...] and we are going to make it so you can even watch them when they're in the dock."

Well... when? It's 9 years later, and it still didn't happen. What did happen however was that Microsoft added this very cool functionality in 2006 to Windows Vista, and greatly improved it in Windows 7. And it's not about watching video in the dock I am talking specifically. What I would love to see is real-time window preview down in the dock. I am bit intrigued, that this has been omitted first two years ago when dock has been redesigned into 3D, but also again during Finder rewrite, or at least during changes being made to the Stacks...

On top of all the new technologies in the back of Snow Leopard I couldn't help but wonder... did anything change in regards to Solid State Drives? This is another area where Microsoft prepared plenty of improvements for it's upcoming Windows 7, not only boosting performance, but also wearing off such drives by reducing it's I/O operations (some of them are specifically enabled when SSD drive is detected). Of course, MacOS by design is much lighter for our I/O than Windows ever will, however before I let Leopard put it's claws on my brand new €600 SSD drive, I would like to know that something has been done to assure that I'll enjoy my investment as long as possible... Any comments on this, Apple?

Snow Leopard, day 1.

I eventually installed Snow Leopard Preview, build 10A380 on my Unibody MacBook 13". I decided to go for upgrade of my current Leopard enviroinment as opposit to clean installation, so that I could easily tell differences as well as test all my applications.

Installation

I kicked off setup from within Leopard (i don't think that was possible before?). First about 10 minutes of install happened here. Then my computer restarted and installation continued for another half an hour or so. To be honest: it did took a while. A good while longer than installation of Windows 7...

MacOS X 10.6 on my baby-Mac

After installation was completed, I was welcomed with my login screen and new Snow Leopard wallpaper. Inspired by Leopard one, though bit different :) after login however, all my settings were kept, including wallpapers (well, duh!)

First impression

First impression: nice :) system feels faster, more responsive. Activity Monitor showes lower CPU usage when idle. Good start :)

Memory usage - just after boot "wired memory" is just above 700 MB. Can't remember how much was it in Leopard, but it looks much more than it used to be on the graph. I noticed also, that when Leopard was showing my 4 GB of memory, Snow Leopard is showing only 3.75 GB. Now I am wondering, is this same thing with addressing memory space, as we know from PCs and older Macs, or it's simply subtracting 256 MB of memory shared with GPU...

256 MB missing vs 10.5. where did it go?

Safari 4 64-bit

I like new Safari 4. In Snow Leopard it seems to be even faster! Running in 64bit, it completed entire SunSpider benchmark with Total time of 503 ms (almost half of 32 bit version time, which received best result out of all web browsers)!!! Very impressive. Another, my favourite benchmark however, Futuremark Peacekeeper give Safari 4 in Snow Leopard only 2999 points (with Safari 4 in Leopard scoring close to 5000!). Some of the video transformations were clearly less smooth here, than in 32 bit version.

Another new feature of Safari (which apperently is shared with Finder as well) is keeping plugins as separate tasks. And that seem to be working great - in Activity Monitor we can see CPU usage of ie. Flash Player. If it crashes (or we kill it, to demonstrate the point:) it won't take down our browser (and all open tabs!) with it, will simply cause flash animations to be replaced with "missing plugin" icon. Pretty neat and very useful! It's worth to notice, that Flash player is running still in 32-bit mode. Also, most recent version available on Adobe website is 10.0.22.87, while the one which came with Snow Leopard is reported to be 10.0.23 .

10.0.23.1 installed...

...but 10.0.22.87 is the latest available...

I played around with QuickTime which is pretty cool too. 64-bit, seems to be much faster, clearly with hardware acceleration. I watched HD video file with CPU usage not going above 15%. Amazing. Well done, Apple!

Time Machine

I decided to take a backup of my Mac, using same disk I used for my Leopard. I not only had no problem with taking backup (8.3 GB of changes (!) ) but I also could access and restore files which were backed up with Leopard. We loooove backward compatibility :) especially when it comes to backup of our precious holidays photos!

Most visible change in time machine is, that instead of sometimes taking for ever "Preparing for backup" we can see exactly how many % of "preparation" has been done:

Security

There's quite interesting new feature hidden under Security icon of System Preferences. It let us choose after what time of computer being in sleep mode/or screensaver being running, we'll be prompted for password. It's small, but for someone like me, who loves saving life of my LCD by disabling screen constantly, or just often putting my Mac asleep, I love to have option to set it up for ie. 5 minutes. So that if I just open laptop up within 5 minutes of closing it - i won't need to go through login screen :)

Summary

Generally applications are starting up much faster, and general experience is really pleasant. Most of build-in applications has been recompiled in 64-bit mode. One of those omitted, is unexpectedly DVD Player, which still runs in 32-bits. Unexpectedly, as I would hope DVD Player will be one of those applications benefit from all new technologies of Snow Leopard, and surprise us with 1% CPU usage while playing DVDs :)

Still not sure is SL going to be Windows 7 killer however... What I like the most in new MS operating system is how dramatically they managed to improve managing of many windows. Now I would expect that new Dock Expose would be at least as good, but at the moment I can't tell. And that's because... [keep reading]

Some people were asking, is Developer Preview a Golden-Master. I really don't think so :) It appears that it's not even build we saw during WWDC. It lacks Dock Expose, also QuickTime icon is still same as in 7.x , as opposite to nice wallpaper-looking one we saw during WWDC...

still old QuickTime icon...

This is what I noticed over first few hours of using Snow Leopard. I'll keep it on for couple of weeks. We'll see how it goes :)

Snow Leopard

I am bit nervous about the new operating system from Apple, Snow Leopard. I know MacOS is "better" than Vista, however using at work Windows 7 RC for the last few weeks showed me that Microsoft learned something and created really solid piece of an operating system. I am bit worried, that new, improved Snow Leopard may simply not be enough of an upgrade to win with Windows 7. Time will tell of course. In the meantime I'll try to put my hands on Snow Leopard preview build, to see how much actually changed...