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Tag Archives: Mac
MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro 13
Advantages of MacBook Air:
- .19″ less high
- 1.5 fewer pounds (not counting optional super drive)
Advantages of MacBook Pro 13″:
- Faster processor
- More RAM
- Larger storage capacity
- Built-in SuperDrive
- More input ports (1 FW and 2 USB vs. 1 USB)
- Twice the battery life
- Out of the box $300 cheaper
Everything else is exactly the same or at least comparable (see below for full comparison). I don’t see any real reason to consider the Air.
In fact, I have to say that a middling netbook — say, an Asus, MSI Wind, or Lenovo — running Debian would fit my needs just as well nowadays. And at least $1000 cheaper.
- .76″ high
- 12.8″ wide
- 8.94″ deep
- 3.0 pounds
- 1.86GHz or 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
- 1066MHz frontside bus
- 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM onboard
- 120GB 4200-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive or 128GB solid-state drive
- Optional external USB MacBook Air SuperDrive
- One USB 2.0 port (up to 480 Mbps)
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
- Up to 5 hours wireless productivity
- Starts at $1499
- .95″ high
- 12.78″ wide
- 8.94″ deep
- 4.5 pounds
- 2.4GHz or 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache
- 1066MHz frontside bus
- 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 memory; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 8GB
- 250GB or 320GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive; optional 320GB or 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive, or 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB solid-state drive
- 8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
- One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps), two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps), SD card slot
- NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
- Up to 10 hours wireless productivity
- Starts at $1199
Tagged hardware, Linux, Mac, tech
2 Comments
You c-a-d!
Note for future reference:
If you are using Mac OS X’s text-to-speech capability to, for example, create a command line tea timer, the voice will refer to you as a “c-a-d” rather than a “cad”. Very old-fashioned, wanting to spell out the curse word!
Viz:
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Tagged Mac, tea, tech
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Before installing Linux on MacBook Pro
Read these articles before starting. If you have links to other resources or your own suggestions, please post them in the comments below.
Ubuntu Documentation: “MactelSupportTeam/AppleIntelInstallation”
Suggests keeping at least a minimum Mac OS X partition for installing future firmware updates. Seems sensible to me, not to mention for other applications.
Ubuntu Documentation: “MacBookPro4.1 and Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty”
Info on various hardware features and whether they work or not. Most things listed as “works, with remarks”, with a couple of “works out-of-the-box.”
Ubuntu Documentation: “MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages”
Welcome to the entry-point for Ubuntu on Intel CPU-based Macintosh Computer (Mactel). This page covers all supported versions of Ubuntu, cross-referenced to all Mactel types and hardware revisions.
Ubuntu Forums Apple Users
Discussions for users who are using Apple Intel or PPC based systems with Ubuntu.
Mac|Life: “Install Linux on Your Mac”
And here’s how to go about setting up the partitions properly. Uses Mint, but it’s the same difference.
Continue reading1,535,022.7 Terabyte PNG?!
So I had a PNG image file that I wanted to scale down. As usual, I opened it in Preview.app, went to “Adjust size…” under the Tools menu, and changed the pixel width to like 500 pixels, with the height changing automatically with the aspect ratio.
That’s when I noticed the rather astounding “Resulting Size” display below:
Ahem.
After a couple of retries just to make sure, I wound up converting it into a JPG first then resizing. I’ve never seen that glitch before. :)
I wonder what would have happened if I’d actually resized it! Would my computer have burst into flames, taking down the Internet with it as it pulled in millions of processing hours attempting to compute the resulting image? We’ll never know!
UPDATE: Unable to resist my curiosity, I tried to resize it, but it just vibrated once and stayed the same size. Anticlimactic! The GIMP resized it without any issues, so I’m assuming it’s a bug in Preview. I will file a bug report with Apple.
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Tagged Mac, PNG, tech
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Quicksilver compatibility with Snow Leopard
I was curious about whether or not the indispensable utility Quicksilver is currently compatible with Snow Leopard. A googling produced this thread over at the Google Groups for Quicksilver.
The quick answer is “yes and no.” ;) When last I scanned the thread, things were narrowing down to potential plugin issues which can be mitigated by moving the Application Support folder for QuickSilver aside and then adding plugins and what not back in one-by-one until the crash-causing culprit is found. See this FAQ for more info on doing that.
YMMV.
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Tagged Mac, Quicksilver, Snow Leopard, tech
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Where are Mac OS X Spaces preferences stored?
While the options for Mac OS X’s Spaces are set in System Preferences, you won’t find them stored in the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist file.
Spaces are part of the Dock subsystem (like the Dashboard), so that’s where you need to look: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
Unfortunately, those Apple .plist files aren’t just text any more, so you’ll need to open it the Property List Editor found in /Applications/Utilities although you can just use the Terminal like this:
open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
to bring it up automatically. You’ll find Spaces referred to as “workspaces”:
- workspaces
- workspaces-app-bindings
- workspaces-cols
- workspaces-rows
How do I reset Spaces preferences?
To reset a particular item, delete the appropriate row, then save and close the .plist file. So, for example, if you wanted to clear out all the apps you have assigned to various Spaces, delete the “workspaces-app-bindings” row.
Once you’re done deleting stuff, you could log out and back in to reset the Dock process and thus Spaces, or you can geek out on the trusty Terminal again. First, find the process number of the Dock:
ps ax | grep dock
You’ll see something like this:
134 ?? S 4:44.40 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock
That first number, in this case “134,” is the process ID number for the Dock. Use this command to “kill” and relaunch it:
kill -HUP 134
Enjoy!
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Tagged Dock, Mac, tech, Terminal
5 Comments
How to get Mac OS X system info via the command line
I always forget about the system_profiler command in Mac OS X. It gives you an exhaustive list of hardware and system details for the machine you’re on — or a remote server if you’re logged in via SSH.
It’s the CLI equivalent of selecting “About This Mac” under the Apple menu, then clicking on the “More Info…” button. With that in mind, you’ll probably want to pipe the command to a pager like less, so you can go screen-by-screen with leisurely space-bar taps:
system_profiler | less
will do the trick. Or, if you have a GUI editor that includes a CLI command (like TextMate),
system_profiler | mate
Of course you could always save the details directly to a text file with
system_profiler > profiler.txt