Tips on clean install of Snow Leopard

So this week, I installed Snow Leopard on my iMac and MacBook Air. I decided to go with a clean install this time.

Found a nice guide at Cult of Mac - How to upgrade to Snow Leopard the right way

Spring cleaning

The Cult of Mac article mentioned Singular and Omni Disk Sweeper for cleaning up your Mac before the install. Singular seemed to get stuck for me during scanning, so I gave up. For sweeping I used Grand Perspective.

Preparations - Easily forgotten things

Deactivate your accounts on iTunes

Backup lessons downloaded and purchased via Garageband

MobileMe users' benefits

You paid for a MobileMe account? Time to make full use of that. This time around, I used MobileMe to hold the iCal and Address Book data. So no backing up there.

MobileMe users also get access to the Backup application from Apple. With this, you can easily backup and restore your email, Keychain, and Safari settings (bookmarks, but more importantly, all those autofill data and stuff). So in summary, used Backup for:

• Keychain
• Mail
• Safari

Apps where data are in the clouds

We surely need more of these in this world! Makes life a lot simpler - just enter your account, and everything is synced. For me, I only have two apps:

• Evernote
• Netnewswire (a wonderful free RSS reader for Mac and iPhone and syncs with Google Reader).

And the apps with data that have to be manually backed up...

These include:

• Bento
• Delicious Library 2
• iMovie
• iPhoto
• iTunes
• iWeb
• Things
• Together

And finally, those documents

Here's where I sweep my computer and gather up all my files and documents created with:

• GarageBand
• Logic
• iWork
• Microsoft Office

Dump everything in one folder, and after the install, put them back in their new house.

The process

It looks like Apple has decided to hide the erase and install feature to make things more friendly for users. While doing to, it has made it not so friendly to those who want to start out on a clean slate.

Users will have to manually boot up their computer with Snow Leopard DVD, use disk utility to erase the hard drive, and then perform the install. Anyway, it's no biggie.

Overall things went pretty smooth. There was a slight hiccup with Air. (See my previous post for that). Enjoying the new Expose features and the minor improvements. Programs are working snappier (which could be due to the clean install, and not so much Snow Leopard).

After the install

Two things I did in particular after the installation this time.

• Use Bento to create a database and keep track of serial numbers of programs
• Installed Shades so that I can dim my iMac screen. (Why can't I dim my screen on my iMac?!!! Please Apple, fix this!)

Programs I decided not to install yet

I decided not to install iShowU, Skitch, Wiretap Studio. I'm going to see how far the new QuickTime and screen capturing can take me.

Adding a mobile monitor and web cam to my Mac Mini media center

This is part 4 of Transforming a Mac Mini G4 to a Media Center.  Links to the last three parts of this series is at the bottom of the post.

Most of the time, I stream the video contents of my Mac Mini to my iMac or MacBook so there isn't really a need to connect my Mac Mini to a monitor at all times.  Most of the time, screen sharing will let me do whatever I need for the Mini.  Still there are times I still need to use a monitor with it and it's troublesome to reconnect a external monitor to it.  I could go out and buy a switch to switch the monitors between my computers.  And I remember I had this small LCD screen.

Hooking the Mini with Mobile Monitor Color LCD Screen InterAct for GameCube

I bought this a long time ago, and haven't to put it to good use ever since I packed it away with my GameCube.  This could serve as a monitor for the Mini I thought!  So I dug it out.  It seems like it's still working.  

Now I just need to get the necessary cables to connect the Mini to it.  For that I will need a  DVI to Video Adapter, which is around 20 bucks.  Here's  a picture.  

Now I hooked everything up, and everything appears to be working.  The screen is really blurry. So to make things legible, I dropped the resolution to 640 X 480.  The text is still not crispy enough for typing or web surfing.  Front Row works nicely, and I can get video and music to play.  I could also watch TV using the connected TV tuner.  It's really not great quality to spend long hours watching video on it, but nice for trailers and YouTube videos perhaps?

Connecting a webcam and installing Skype

Since I had a Logtech webcam (QuickCam Ultra Vision SE) lying around, I decided to connect it to the Mini as well.  I would then be able to make video calls with the Mini as well.   To do so, I installed Skype.  

And here we have it, I can now use my Mac Mini G4 to:

• store and stream music and video
  
• play music and video using Front Row
  
• watch and record TV
  
• make video calls through Skype
  

And here is all the software and hardware so far:
Additional Software:

• Activate Front Row
  
• Perian
  
• Skype

Additional Hardware:

• DVI to Video Adapter
• Mobile Monitor Color LCD Screen for GameCube (InterAct)
• Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision SE
• Keyspan’s Front Row Control
  
• iPod touch and iPhone with Remote app
  
• Elecom USB 4 Port Hub
  
• Yamaha NX-U02
  
• TV tuner from I-O Data
  

Other:

• Enabled Mini for Apple Remote Desktop so I can screen share with Leopard
  
• Use an nice Mini icon for the user picture
  

Mac Mini G4 Media Center Project Links:

• Part 0: Upgrading the hard drive of Mac Mini G4
  
• Part 1:  Remotes, Front Row on Tiger, and other stuff
  
• Part 2: Screen sharing with Tiger, USB Hub
  
• Part 3: TV Tuner
  
• Part 4:  A mobile monitor and a webcam 
  

Sony Type P transit ads and display photos

On my way to buying a new hard drive for my Mac Mini, I saw some transit ads and a little booth demoing and promoting the Sony Type P.   Positioned as a "Pocket Style PC,"  it's supposed to fit in your pocket.  I still have to say, you need some big pockets.  

I did fiddle with it.  It's small compact and light.  The keyboard seems like a reasonable size to type on.  I think the screen size is still to small to do computing personally.  I say, drop the keyboard and make the screen multi-touch.  Kinda like a super-sized iPod touch.  Cough... Apple.  

Photos below:

Woo, the white one!

It's supposed to fit in your pocket.  If it does, you sure don't want to sit on it.

The ads.

They had a TV there playing some ads and stuff.

VAIO type L – Sony VAIO’s answer to iMac

The VAIO type L is a shiny white all-in-one computer currently on sale in Japan. There are two models – 20.1 inch and 24 inch.

What’s special?

• Built-in TV tuner that supports HDTV – It’s capable of recording two channels simultaneously and comes with basic DVR features. 
  
• Comes with a Blu-ray Disc Recorder 
  
• You can connect a PS3 to it with an HDMI cable
  

In a nutshell, with this VAIO type L, you can:

• Watch and record TV (comes with a remote)
  
• Use the monitor to play with your PS3
  
• Watch and record Blu-ray discs
  
• And of course, use it as a PC
  

Take that iMac!

The 24 inch starts at around 180,000 yen (around 1,800 dollars) in Japan.


Source: Sony type L (24 inch wide / 20 inch wide models)

The $999 MacBook White

What does the Apple Notebook keynote event mean for Shiny White Gadget lovers?
Apple announced new MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and new Cinema Displays today. TUAW has coverage of the event and you can see the event on Apple’s website. Everything seems to be glass, black, or aluminum in the announcement, so what does it mean for the shiny white gadget lovers?

The MacBook White
Luckily, the original white MacBooks are not going to be discontinued. They are renamed to MacBook White on Apple’s website, and are now available for $999.

The basic specs are:

• 2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
  
• 1GB DDR2 Memory
  
• 120GB hard drive
  
• Intel GMA X3100 graphics
  

You can find more info and details are Apple's website.  One thing I like the MacBook White over the new MacBooks is that it has a FireWire 400 port.

If you always wanted that white MacBook, it’s now $999 on Apple's online store.

The Shiny White Office Version 1.0

One of things I really want to do is to build a shiny white home office. In this blog post, I present you with version 1 of the shiny white office. The following would be the shiny white  gadgets to build one:

• Computer: White MacBook
  
  
  
  
• Input Device: Wireless Mighty Mouse and Wireless Pro Keyboard (old version because it’s whiter)
  
  
  
  
  
• Scanner: Fujitsu ScanSnap S300M
  
  
  
• Phone / PDA: iPhone 3G – 16GB white model
  
  
  
  
• Speakers: Yamaha NX-B02WH – White Bluetooth stereo speaker from Yamaha
  
  
  
  
• USB Hub: Podrea’s PH-D4-FW or PH-D3-FW– White USB hub – 4 port
  
  
  
  
  
• Pen Tablet: Bambo Fun – White model
  
  

What’s missing?

• Backup solution: 
  I came across the HDC2-U1.0 (product info page in Japanese) in an electronics store last week. It’s compact and encloses two hard drives. It’s available in 1TB and 2TB models, and best of all it’s silver and white design would be perfect for a shiny white office. 
  
  
  
  The problem is it has no fan although on its website it claims excellent heat conductivity. From what I’ve read, it gets pretty hot. And overheating is a concern since these drives would probably be used when the computer is on. 
  
  This means the search for a white external hard disk is still on. 
  
  
• Monitor:
  After using dual monitors, I can never go back. Problem is I haven’t come across a nice looking white monitor yet.
  
  
• Printer:
  Last time I visited the electronics store, I think I saw some nice white printers. Have to look into it some more. 
  

That’s all for now!
If you have any suggestions to add to the shiny white office, please let me know!  

Mac: Spring cleaning my MacBook + Using iMovie ’08 with an external hard drive

Having found out that my Mac Mini (PowerPC G4 1.42 GHz with 1GB of RAM) can’t run Logic Studio, I have no choice but to run it on my MacBook (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM). So I needed more hard drive space, and decided to do some spring cleaning on my MacBook.

Trying to find out what’s taking up so much space
After researching a bit, I found a MacWorld article talking about utilities that would help me figure out the files and folders that are taking up space. There was WhatSize and OmniDiskSweeper, which weren’t free. I decided to try out GrandPersepctive, which was free.

Understanding what’s on your hard disk visually with GrandPerspective
GrandPerspective maps out your hard disk visually. It groups the files by folders visually, and files are represented in blocks. The bigger the block, the bigger the file.


It’s a very nifty app and helped me find out what’s taking up a lot of space rather quickly.

What’s going to take up space in the future?
With that I located the big files and folders and got them transferred to an external drive. Planning for the future, I realized the biggest storage eaters will be movie projects and presentation files.

For presentation files, I've decided just to keep all presentation files in one folder so I can always keep an eye on it. So with Spotlight, I pulled up all my Keynote presentation files and moved them to one folder.

One might ask why I didn’t use smart folders. I intended to, but I found out that you can’t sort/filter by size in smart folders. Hope that gets changed in the near future.

Getting iMovie ‘08 to work with external storage
Now for the movies, what I want to do is like iPhoto, where I can have the files on a separate hard drive. I fiddled with iMovie ’08 a bit, but couldn’t figure it out. So I did some research and came across this article from Apple.

According to the article, Event files are what’s taking up space. You want to avoid moving the Event files manually as you would break the connection to existing projects. The article contains a section called Moving Events, which has step-by-step instructions to move Events in iMovie '08.

The hunt for external storage begins
Since I decided to keep movie files and other bigger files on an external drive, I’ll need a new backup solution that can backup my MacBook and the external drive. In particular, I want to avoid clutter on my table as well as additional power cables. Right now, my top candidates are the G-Raid Mini and G-Raid. They're both compact and can be powered by USB / Firewire. The only bad part – it’s not white! Oh well, I’ll shop around, and maybe I’ll come across something that’s good and shiny white.

Links

• Byte Breakdown @ MacWorld
  
• GrandPerspective
  
• iMovie ’08: Moving iMovie footage to another drive
  
• G-Raid
  
• G-Raid Mini
  

Awesome User Experiences: MacBook and Headphones

Awesome User Experiences is a new series of posts on really cool user experiences. If you have any awesome user experiences with gadgets or anything, please share it!

I’d like to start off the series with MacBook and headphones. I think it works with any Mac that has OS X, but since I haven’t really confirm it on any other Macs, I’ll stay with the MacBook. Let's begin!

Lousy User Experience:
Remember those times when you plug in your headphones, and when you attempt to play something, your ear is blown out by the loud volume.

Awesome User Experience:
When you plug in your headphones in a MacBook, the volume level is automatically lowered so that you won’t blow out your ears.

It appears that whenever you plug in your headphones, the volume level is changed to an optimal level for your headphones. So even if your volume level is originally muted, after your plug in your headphones, the volume level will be adjusted. This makes sense since it is assumed that if you plug in your headphones, you want to listen.

It is also nice to know that if you unplug your headphones, the volume will return to what ever it was before. If it was muted, it will return to the muted state. If it’s on full blast, it’ll return to full blast.

Neat, heh.

Mac: Running Windows XP with VMware Fusion on a MacBook

I finally got VMware Fusion after my friend nagged me for a few weeks. I already run Windows XP with Boot Camp, and I wasn’t really sure how VMware would make things better.

After trying it for a few days, I regret not having installed VMware earlier. I realized that having to reboot to switch to Windows was such a hassle. Being able to run both OS X and Windows simultaneously is really nice. For example, I can now access my iCal while working with stuff on Windows.

Here are the things I like about VMware so far:

• It automatically recognized my Boot Camp Partition, and pretty much set everything up by itself. 
  
  
• I can easily drag and drop files between Windows and Mac. 
  
  
• I also really like the Unity feature, which allows me to run Windows applications as an application in Mac. This means you can minimize Windows apps to the dock and switch between windows using Exposé. 
  
  
  
• Copy and paste between Windows and Mac.

My MacBook is 2.16 Ghz with 2 GB of RAM, and Windows XP has been running smoothly. There have been some glitches. For example, the Unity feature has some problems with dual screens. VMware wouldn’t allow me to drag a Windows application window to my second screen. It’s minor, and overall, I have to say, I’m quite impressed with VMware so far.

Related links:
VMware Fusion Website

Freestyle Solo Keyboard: It’s a keyboard split in half!

I saw this one in Mac Fan (Japanese magazine about Apple stuff). The Kinesis Freestyle Solo keyboard is separated into two halves so you can space out your hands when typing. It comes with hot keys and uses a USB cable to connect to your computer.

It’s also great for traveling since it’s like folding your keyboard in half. Too bad it’s not wireless.

The Freestyle Solo comes in white for the Mac and black for PCs, and can be purchased for 99 dollars on their website.

Link:
Kinesis Freestyle adjustable split keyboard homepage

FMV-Deskpower F/A50: Fujitsu says we got style too to iMac

This shiny white computer from Fujitsu comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse to keep your desktop clean. Plug in the power adapter and you’re ready to go.

It’s all about the design

• The stand is built from stainless steel
  
• To preserve the smooth surface, this PC doesn’t come with the conventional buttons. The power button, DVD/CD eject button, and brightness controls are all controlled through touch sensors. 
  
  
  

Basic specs

• 16-inch wide monitor and allows for swivel, tilt, and height adjustment
  
• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor – T8100 (2.10GHz)
  
• 2GB ram
  
• 250 GB hard disk
  
• Wireless LAN (IEE802.11b/g)
  
• Built-in stereo speakers
  
• Wireless keyboard and mouse
  
• Windows Vista Home Preimium with SP1 aand Office Personal 2007 Service Pack 1
  

On the right side

• DVD-R drive
  
• USB connector
  

On the left side

• PC card slot and SD memory card slot
  
• Mic input and headphone output
  
• 2 USB 2.0 ports
  

On the back

• 2 USB 2.0 ports
  
• LAN port
  
• Power plug
  

The Deskpower F/A50 has a suggested retail price of 169,800 (about 1,700 dollars). If you order from Fujitsu’s online store (Japanese), you can get it in pink and also customize the specs for a lower price.

If I weren’t an Apple fan, I might consider this computer. However, they really need to come up with a better name. Who’s gonna remember FMV-Deskpower F/A50?

Link:

FMV DESKPOWER (Japanese)