Part 2: FreeNAS Configuration, Time Machine Backups, etc.

It's been about a month since I devised my backup strategy for my mixed network of Windows, Mac's, and other machines. You can read more about that in Part 1. In this second part, I wanted to provide an update on some of my experiences with building a FreeNAS server, how I generally configured it, and some of the issues that I ran into along the way. I will also take a few detours (as usual) along the way.

First things first: building the FreeNAS server.  There is a lot of good information "out there" and I read the freenas.org documentation. This was a great starting point. In fact, just about everything I ever needed to get up and running was posted there. Once I was a little closer to my design, I posted on the forums and asked for feedback.

This was my general process for coming up with the design:

1) I created a "map" of my current devices and data storage needs, as well as any potential new needs over the next few years. I made a diagram in Microsoft Visio that helped me. I was actually a little bit surprised by how many devices I had on my network.

2) Armed with a good diagram, I was able to visualize and estimate my storage requirements and planned growth. I've accumulated almost 1 TB of personal video and photo footage over the past 5 years on my current "live" storage, which doesn't include tons of video projects that I've archived (especially raw footage). This is the "important" stuff.  With my newer camera equipment (which uses larger formats), I suspect this will exponentially grow over the next 2-3 years. So I estimated about 6 TB of working space should be the minimum.  

I also want room to expand. With FreeNAS, I can either add an additional drive array, or upgrade individual drives themselves one by one. (FreeNAS upgrades work something like this: power off, upgrade a drive, reboot; allow new drive to sync; rinse and repeat until all drives are upgraded process and then expand the volume).

3) Last but not least, I had to consider my network... will I have enough bandwidth?  I have a 1 gigabit network. However, there are possible scenarios (eg, if I am editing on my Macbook Pro while streaming Media Center to 2-3 computers) that might put stress on it. Fortunately, this wasn't an immediate concern but something I may have to look at in the future due to another project.

After doing some reading and determining my "desired" set up (Raid Z1 as I mentioned in my last update), I then started making a list of components that I would need. This was probably my favorite part of the entire project!

System Component Requirements: 

1. Memory- The machine should have enough horsepower and memory for a 6 TB setup.  Based on research, I opted to go with 16 GB of RAM, although 8 would have been sufficient. With the price of memory quite low, it was an easy decision to go for the extra. Also,FreeNAS is more dependent on RAM than anything else. I went with Corsair PC3 12800 memory (2x8gb). 

2. CPU - From what I read, FreeNAS doesn't really need much CPU. Many people get by using a Celeron or even a Pentium 4 chip. I opted for an Intel i3 2105 which had a good price/performance point at the time of purchase. I didn't want to scrimp too much on CPU in case I wanted to re-purpose the machine at some point.

3.Case & Cooling - I wasn't entirely sure where I would put my FreeNAS box. I initially thought I might want to have it out in the open near my desk, so aesthetics and quiet operation were a priority. I opted to go with a Fractal Design R4 case which was a little pricier (a little over $100) but met my criteria. It had the right balance of drive space, configurability, and most importantly cooling.  I also added an additional Zalman 120mm fan so all the hard drives would get good airflow.

4. Motherboard - FreeNAS recommends an Intel chipset. I've had pretty good luck with MSI over the years, so I decided to go with an LGA 1155 model: Z77A-G41. It is also "military grade reliability". In the forums, a lot of people also tend to go with ASUS or Gigabyte. 

5. Power Supply - After all my years of building PC's, I've learned to never scrimp on the PSU. I am also a big fan of having good access to cables. Hence, I went with a modular Corsair 750W CX750M.  Yes, quite a bit bigger than what I probably needed, but I'd rather have the room for expansion.  It came with all the SATA power connectors needed.

6. USB stick-  FreeNAS is installed on a USB stick. It doesn't run from the HDD directly. I picked up a "slim" SanDisk Cruzer. You can barely even tell it's plugged in.  Some people opt to get internal USB headers, but I didn't want to spend the extra money, and figured I may need to swap it out in case the USB fails.

7. HDD's - I went with 5 Western Digital RED 2 TB Hard Drives. The "RED" brand are a bit pricier but are designed to be on 24x7, and used specifically for NAS. 

The overall price of the system was around $1100.  By comparison a Synology DS412+ would have been at least $600 just for the cabinet, and another $500 for just 4 hard drives- as that is the max. I would have probably saved a lot of time and research going with the Synology, but I would have had more limitations and less disk space available. 

Building the system took me about several hours on a Friday night.  Murphy was "in full effect" and just about everything that could go wrong did, including the PSU not being connected to the motherboard and me pulling out my hair wondering why it wouldn't post. I also had to make a late night last minute run to a local "screwdriver shop" (Computer Discount) to pick up some SATA cables and an extra fan, as the MSI motherboard only included 2 cables and I needed 5.

Making a bootable USB and copying over the FreeNAS disk image was also a little tricky. I wasn't able to get the USB to boot when using my MacBook Pro, so I had to use the PC (and diskpart to the rescue- the sucker didn't want to format properly until after I fully wiped it).

Other than those minor issues, it was fairly easy to get up and running.  Below are a few screenshots from my configuration, taken from the FreeNAS web GUI along with some brief explanations. The general process goes something like this: create your ZFS datasets, then your ZFS volumes, and then set up your sharing (windows, AFS, etc.)  You also need to add users / groups to access.  The rest is pretty much taken care of for you- it's really quite simple to get up and running.

General Setup with FreeNAS

After booting up FreeNAS, I was immediately able to see my drives using the web interface.

Next, you need to create your ZFS data set. I created one primary data set that used up the entire drive space. It is called "BigDisk" (really creative, eh?).  With 5 2TB drives I get a little over 6 TB of usable space. That is because there is some redundancy built in when you use the ZFS Raid Z1 file system, which allows for any one disk to fail at a time (which you can then recover by replacing).  

I created several volumes under the main ZFS dataset as follows:

Media contains all of my video and photography, TMBackup is where I host my Mac "time machines", and WIP is where I keep a scratchpad for my video editing projects. 

FreeNAS also gives you the ability to set up quotas for each of your volumes, and you can easily see a snapshot of how much space is being used:

After you have your shares set up, you can easily add windows (CIFS) or Apple (AFS) shares, to name a few:

You can also set up iSCSI, FTP, and many other services. Some are easier to set up than others, but I didn't encounter any problems in my setup. One thing is for sure: there is quite a bit of capability that FreeNAS offers. Hopefully the above gives you an idea of how easy it is to get up and running!

A note on Performance: I was also hoping to get 100 MB/sec (yes, that is MegaBYTES with a capital B) over the wired network. I'm happy to say that I'm easily getting that and it's more than fast enough for me to do video editing from my Macbook Pro, straight from Final Cut Pro. The possibilities are pretty much endless. The reliability has been rock solid so far, with 0 errors and it's pretty much been up since I've turned it on with an occasional power down when I was putting in the APS.

Current State of Backup Strategy... 

Fortunately, I have been able to get just about everything working that I posted about in my last entry:  FreeNAS, "dueling" Time Machine backups (one to my Time Capsule Router, one to the FreeNAS), etc.  I was also able to get in on a New Years deal for CrashPlan, which gives me 4 years of unlimited cloud backup storage.  I've been able to back up about 600GB so far and have a ways to go, but most of my important files are now securely in the cloud.

Now onto my next project... which is kind of TBD for the time being. I've got a few things in the hopper and will probably know more in a few weeks. Check back soon!

Adventures with SSD's, Hard Drives and Backups (and Happy New Year!)

The holidays were quite busy in 2012. I took a bit of a break from my blog accordingly. Here we are in 2013 now, it's hard to believe! Happy New Year!

I last blogged about some key upgrades that I made to my 2011 17" MacBook Pro- including a 512MB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD and 16 GB of Ram. While my system drastically improved in terms of performance, the reliability factor seemingly dropped. Prior to the upgrade I can remember running "uptime" (terminal command) and seeing a time of 70 days- meaning it had been that long since my system had been rebooted or shut down. That is some rock solid reliability! Post upgrade, I was getting occasional lockups and system freezes primarily when browsing.  I was lucky to get 3-4 days of up time without a freeze.  Not so cool. Disclaimer: I upgraded the components myself and did not take them to the "Mac Cafe" (local Apple screwdriver shop that is an authorized Apple dealer). I do have Apple Care but from what I understand, you don't void your warranty if you do these simple upgrades yourself (so long as you can put the original stuff back in if you have any issues).

Anyway... the week before Christmas, everything came to a head. My SSD decided to bite the dust after apparently one too many crash.  Timing couldn't have been much worse, as I had a wedding that I was going to be shooting the Saturday before Christmas (Dec 22).

Other than the occasional freezes, the symptoms of my machine leading up to the crash came on suddenly and without any real warning. I restarted my MBP and I couldn't get past the grey screen with a progress bar. In fact, the MBP would shut down after about 30 seconds. I quickly went to Apple's support site and found out that this issue indicated a bad hard drive. A lot was going through my mind at that point:

• What all am I going to lose?  
• Will my backup will really work? 
• What about all my videos and photos that only live on my MBP that I hadn't yet backed up...

Then I quickly got a little frustrated:

• This drive is only 3 months old!
• I'm never buying another OCZ product again...
• WHY ME?? WHY NOW??

My mind was racing. I was subconsciously calculating the gigabytes of space of HD videos and Photos that I had done since the switch over from my previous Seagate Momentus XT drive. In my panic, I had forgotten that the majority of my raw video footage (at least) was stored the other HDD that I put in my Superdrive bay.

Then I remembered back to similar crash a few years ago. My 500 GB Seagate Baracudda drive "gave up the ghost"- which also happened to be the exact day of our wedding anniversary (Sept. 4th). The drive itself was less than 6 months old. Apparently the batch of HDD's that mine came from had an issue with Teflon coating coming off the heads of the drive, which eventually rendered the drive useless. I had several hundred GB of home video footage on that drive. I lost footage from some really cool video short movies that I made for a church youth group lock-in. Fortunately I still had all my mini-dv cassette tapes, so I was able to re-import those (which took about 3 full days!).  I could have used a hdd recovery service but they wanted almost $1500... just not quite worth it for what I lost.

Fortunately, I (somewhat) learned from that mistake and purchased 2 1 TB external Seagate drives and started a poor-man's backup with some custom written batch files. I started backing up all my photos and videos to this drive and still am using this solution today. But that solution was mainly intended for my PC, and not my MBP...

Fast forward back to my current dilemma.  I decided to immediately pull the SSD from the MBP and test it externally to see if it was the issue, or if my MBP had another problem. Fortunately I still had my previous HDD laying around in an enclosure. I popped the old drive out, set it aside, and then placed the SSD drive into said enclosure. I connected the drive from my Windows 7 machine and no dice. I also tried connecting the SSD with a USB to Sata cable... nothing. The SSD was definitely kaput.

The truth settled in. My SSD was *toast*. I might have lost my videos and/or photos. I might have lost programs and applications that I had installed.Final Cut projects of some WIP videos.  Ugh... I didn't know for sure that I was going to be able to get my data back. HOW COULD I LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN? Well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad- after all I was using backups, but wasn't sure how reliable they would be. No time like the present to find out!

I quickly googled to see how to restore a system from my Time Machine backup, which was my best shot.  My "plan B" would be to utilize my HDD from prior to upgrading. My "plan C" would be to utilize my backup prior to installing that drive, which would have been basically how I ordered the machine. I found an article on Apple that was very straight forward. However, there was a slim possibility that I wouldn't be able to restore my system if I had chosen to exclude system files.  I didn't remember what I had excluded at that time.

I popped in my previous Seagate Momentus XT drive in the main HDD slot. Viola- success! No more grey screen with progress bar. That confirmed that the SSD was the issue, and deal with that later. Of primary importance was getting my system back.

Per the Apple instructions, I held down Command-R during boot. It found my Time Machine backup, which was stored on my Time Capsule. I quickly came to another dilemma because I only had this drive on hand  (which also contained my system prior to upgrading to the SSD). I would need to "have faith" in the Time Machine backup or settle for my system state as it was when I upgraded several months prior.  In retrospect, I made a pretty hasty decision. I probably should have went to Best Buy and purchased another Seagate Momentus XT ($120 or so). Nevertheless, I decided to "have faith" and wiped my backup drive in order to restore.

The time machine initially indicated it would take about 6 hours to restore over the network.  Luckily, I have a 1 gigabit network. Overall there was 400+ GB that needed restored.  I was a Nervous Nelly for the next few hours as the process went on. After about 2 hrs, the time machine restore was complete. I was immediately concerned, thinking that perhaps not all my data was there. From 6 hrs down to 2? Why? The skeptic in me immediately thought not all my data was going to be there.

After the Time Machine completed the restore, the MBP booted up.  The first thing I noticed was the spinning wheel- which I hadn't seen since my SSD upgrade. I did a few checks and immediately saw an application that I had recently installed on my task bar, so I knew that my backup was current. I then went to check my video folder.  Everything was there! That's when I remembered that my videos were on a separate disk, so there was really nothing much to worry about.  Next was checking iPhoto.  When I launched the application I was a bit concerned. Apparently, the thumbnails do not get backed up, because it had to generate thumbnails for all my "events".  I cancelled out of that and went to browse my events... Fortunately, everything was there as well.  The "last backup" time on my MBP was visible in the top menu bar, and it read about 1 hr before it crashed.  CRISIS AVERTED!

As you can see, there was a lot of drama in my SSD fiasco. I'm not a big fan of drama, especially when it comes to my own data. While I am very thankful for my Time Machine backup, I still feel a little exposed. I have countless hours of video footage and photographs that I do not want to lose.  After tweeting about some of my issues, I began exploring better backup options. @kpett pointed me to a nice article from @shanselman. I like his philosophy: make 3 copies of anything you care about, use 2 different formats, and have an offsite backup.  I am going to adopt a very similar strategy.

An old but wise SysAdmin once told me- "Never let a good Crisis go to waste". I don't enjoy invoking this mantra in most situations, as I'd rather avoid the crisis all together if possible. But there is some truth to it: a crisis is often the catalyst that can lead to a change in behavior.

Consequently, I'd like to end on this note: I have decided to make a New Years Resolution. I'm going to have a solid backup strategy for 2013. In my next entry, I'll share my massive overhaul plan (currently in process) for my new backup strategy.

A few other comments to tie up some lose ends: I still experienced system freezes after replacing the SSD with the old HDD.  I decided to run some memory tests. Everything checked out. I came across a few articles that suggested  swapping the memory slots. Since I've done this, I'm going on 5 days with no freeze ups. That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it seems to have corrected the issue- pretty much a new record in uptime since my upgrades.

As far as the SSD goes, I shipped the drive out on Dec 19th. I'm still waiting for the RMA. My machine is painfully slow again, but I'm still able to be productive. Cash flow is a little tight right now, but I may purchase another 512 GB SSD to have on hand (probably from another manufacturer) in case I have another situation.  The SSD has a 5 year warranty on it.

OSX Mountain Lion Upgrade Adventure

If you are closely following Apple, you've certainly heard about the latest OS update released this past week on July 25th - Mountain Lion.  The upgrade was only $20 and there are a lot of new features. I upgraded last evening and wanted to talk a little bit about my experience...

First, I'll give my perspective on the new stuff and reasoning for the upgrade. One of my favorite features is the ability to mirror your Mac to an Apple TV device.  The apple TV's are around $100 or so at most stores. The idea behind Apple TV is that you can easily share videos and multi-media, rent videos from the Apple Store (for a pretty reasonable price), stream Netflix, etc. 

I've been using an Xbox 360 to do this currently and it has done a great job.  However, every time I turn on my Xbox 360 I fear the "red lights of death". I've already had that happen to me with 2 other Xbox consoles (one of which was still under warranty).  Another issue with the Xbox is that you have to pay for your membership just to get on line and use apps like Netflix, which also have an additional cost.  The benefit is that I can use my Zune Pass service for all the music, which gives me basically any song I care to listen to for $15 / month (as well as 10 to keep "permanently").

Now, one of the cool features about Mountain Lion is that with an Apple TV (and a Mac 2011 or newer) you can mirror anything on your screen to your Laptop. This eliminates a lot of the fus with trying to locate media content on a separate device as in the case of the Xbox (it's a real annoyance to try and find what I'm looking for, especially with the amount of content I have).  On the Mac, I can use the familiar navigation of the file system and easily get to the content I want.  I know of other people that put a Windows Media PC in their living room to do something similar on the Microsoft platform, so this isn't necessarily ground breaking... But the nice thing with the Mac is that you can do it without all the clutter and wires that the PC would require.  Nay sayers might argue that you could have a similar experience on Windows using the Media Center, but I find that interface a little clunky / irritating (see point above about file system navigation).

Another great point is that you could use subscription services like Hulu for free, and play that content on your TV.  In the case of Xbox, iPad, or other devices, Hulu charges a monthly fee to use them.  This makes it even more tempting to "unplug" from traditional cable TV and get only the content you want. I'm not quite there yet, but I can see that happening in the next 3-5 years based on all the new content services out there.

There are many other mountain lion features that I think are beneficial, especially since I have an iPad and iPhone.  There is tighter integration and Apple touts "you can go from one device to the other".  For example, if you are browsing on your iPhone, the "Cloud" will allow you to resume on your Mac.  It also claims to make sharing content/links/etc a bit easier with social media sites.  These features are nice but I don't see much value personally.

In the end, I decided to upgrade because I want to be up to date on the latest version.  It was only $20 and that is a one time charge. I can also put it on my wife's Mac for no additional cost.  Given the "200"+ features (many of which I probably won't use), being current, Air Play, and the low cost... it was an easy decision.  Especially when you compare to Microsoft, who charges an arm and a leg for an upgrade (and per PC at that), this was a no brainer. Hopefully Microsoft will take a page out of Apple's book and maybe even turn themselves back to profitability in the near future.  But I am guessing Windows 8 will go for a pretty penny by comparison (which I will probably also do on my PC).

Now for the adventure...  I was harkened back to my PC days a little bit on this particular upgrade.  First I purchased and downloaded it through the App Store.  That was no problem.  Once it downloaded, it asked me which drive to install it on. I was a little puzzled because the last time I did an upgrade, it just went on my main drive.  I mistakingly picked the wrong hard drive because I couldn't remember what the name of my boot drive was.  After the upgrad started processing I realized "woops, that's my video drive, I don't want to install it there" and turned off the Mac to my better judgement. It rebooted and said it could recover the install... but I didn't want to do that. I did have a moment of panic but was ability to use disk utility to set my original main drive as the active boot. I breathed a sigh of relief and cleaned off the install files from my video drive, and then tried again. (Had to re-download, which is slightly over 4gb for the install).

This time I paid closer attention and tried to tell the installer to upgrade the main drive that had Lion installed on it. I got an error something along the lines of "This is a Time Machine Backup drive".  I was a little confused... After about 20 minutes of googling the error, I came across an article that indicated that the installer will not let you upgrade the drive if there is an active time machine backup going on.  I then explored the backup folder and did indeed find that there was a time machine backup that I had started back in September of last year (not long after I got my Mac). I had actually aborted that back up but the files were still hanging around.  The "fix" was to delete the backup.backups folder where the in-process backup was.  I shelled out to terminal and tried doing an rm -rf (a unix command to delete the files) but it told me the files were locked by the system and I couldn't delete them.  I did some more googling and found that I needed to use the tmutil to delete them.  Success!  This was not a very pleasant experience, and it hearkened me back to the PC days. However, in the grand scheme of things it was pretty easy to clean up.  I really don't know why Apple would prevent you from installing if a time machine backup was still in process. I guess they figure better safe than sorry.

After that, things were quite simple. The installer defaulted to my boot drive and I was able to finish up.  It took roughly 30 minutes.  The "last minute" was the longest, taking probably at least 5. After that it rebooted and my wall paper changed to the new and updated Milky Way galaxy image. Had it not been for that, I wouldn't have even noticed that I upgraded.  I later found the notification icon up in the top menu.  Everything else seems to be about the same, so far.

So I'm pretty excited about OSX Mountain Lion, but it doesn't seem to be a major change so far. I would encourage anyone wanting to upgrade to do it just so you are up to date, and especially if you are considering an Apple TV.  I haven't yet purchased the Apple TV but I plan on doing so once my budget recoups from another recent project which I plan on blogging about next.

As always, thanks for reading!

Adventures over the Spring and Summer

Time for another Mac Adventure! It's been a few months and sorry I've slipped on my updates lately. I've had a few things going on that have been higher on the priority scale... Spring soccer with the oldest, busy work schedule, and vacation!  Those things are out of the way now and the summer is on its way in. Granted, June is always a busy month- two birthdays to celebrate, father's day, etc.

Now the Mac Adventure! Forewarning: this is a pretty long post. The content of this section is video / media related where I will be talking about video cameras, dslr's, and software.  Skip down several paragraphs to read about general mac stuff and my opinion on some of the WWDC 2012 news from Apple.

Recently, I filmed a wedding of some friends at our Church. I am now in the process of doing some video editing with Final Cut Pro.  I've known the couple for quite some time (since they were as tall as my waist anyway...) so I wanted to do something "extra special" for them.  I took a little more video footage than normal, including the bridal shower (which normally I do not go to!) as well as the rehearsal.  Got some great footage and also used two different cameras to collect it.

So far there have been a few challenges. Perhaps the biggest one has been with the low light capability on my cameras. I have been a little spoiled lately with my Canon 7D (though for pictures, not using it for run-and-gun video situations).  It has extraordinary capability and can take virtually noiseless pictures at 3200 ISO.  This means that low light, especially when shooting with an f 2.8 or wider aperture is not a problem (I got some great shots from a dance recital end of April).  At any rate, video cameras are not always so great. I usually shoot with my JVC GZ-HD7 which is now a pretty dated camera- but it was one of the first to do "Full" tapeless High Definition video. It has a 3 CCD sensor so the image quality is very good.. but not so in low light.  The auto-gain (in layman's terms, gain is similar to ISO on a camcorder) is very bad and typically saturates the picture with a reddish hue. I tend to shoot video without the gain on because it just doesn't look right, and it's very difficult to correct in post production.

So... I decided to shoot some footage with my "b-cam" (if you can even call it that), which happens to be a Kodak Playsport. The image quality is surprisingly good, and acceptable for something informal like a rehearsal dinner.  Unfortunately, the "scene" during dinner was extremely low light and I ended up with a lot of noise coming out of the Kodak.  The noise was so bad I thought I was going to have unusable footage, but I found a product called "NeatVideo" which has a great noise reduction filter and plugs in to different video camera software including FCP 7.  The filter did a great job and at some point I'll post a before/after (but you can see good examples of this on the site as well).  Problem #1 was solved, and now I'm currently on my way to dealing with Problem #2.

Problem #2 is with my JVC GZ-HD7 video camera. Unfortunately, this problem is due to a design flaw, and exacerbated by age. While my camera was cutting edge when I purchased it 5 years ago, it's getting older and the problem is becoming more pronounced. After the camera is going for a while, the CCD gets pretty hot and eventually, the "dreaded white dot" appears on the picture.  This wasn't so bad a few years ago when it was just one dot and came up after 2-3 hours of use.  However, after reviewing my latest footage, there is more than a few white dots, and one of them happens to be right smack in the middle of the picture!   Fortunately, there is a video filter out there that allows you to replace bad pixels by interpolating the ones bordering them.  Needless to say I am experimenting with this filter.  I found a great article and a sample here, using FXScript.

Given my issues with my video cameras, I think it is finally time for me to replace my trusty JVC. I've been researching the Canon XF100 since October of last year and I think I will be going with it. Apparently, the BBC has it on it's list as an approved camera for doing broadcast quality video. Slashcam (where I frequent) rates it very high, it seems to do very well in low lighting... etc. I think it will be the perfect camera for me.  There is also a JVC successor (the HM 150), but it appears to have the same "dreaded white dot" issue.  I frequently visit and post on dvinfo.net which is a GREAT resource for anyone that works with video a lot- coupled with slashcam, it's kind of like the video camera version of dpreview.

So... a lot of multi media work going on right now.  I haven't even touched on some of the other activities I'm planning, but I'll go ahead and list them here:

- Hungary Missions Trip - video and pictures, coming up in July
- 3 on 3 Soccer travel team
- Someone on the soccer team requested me to take pictures of a few softball teams they coach
- Cheerleading Camp
- Tumbling classes and associated performances
- Misc. stuff this summer (birthday parties, pool parties, etc) 
- Midwest Geobash (assuming we make it)

Shaping up to be a lot of work!! But looking forward to it.

WWDC 2012 News & Update.
Unless you've been living under a rock lately, you probably heard some of the recent Mac announcements.  Here are some of the ones that jumped out at me:

• Retina displays for the new Macbook Pro's! Usb 3.0!   Glad to see this new direction, but I'm certainly not going out and buying a new one any time soon. Especially since the new 15" models are almost the price of the former 17" models. Not enough value there yet.
• No more 17" MBP's (though I'm not sure if that will stay the case) - Makes me happy that I picked the last model year up.
• Apparently, no update this year for the Mac Pro or desktop stuff in general, but supposedly that will come next year - no big surprise to me, as this stuff is more targeted for niche professionals and Apple is probably not making a huge amount on this market segment.
• Mountain Lion will be $19.99 and released in July. It includes new cloud features, etc and AirPlay mirroring and may finally get me to purchase an Apple TV.  That means I'll be able to watch full screen Netflix videos without getting Mac-burn on my knees, and/or not having to power up the Xbox 360!

In general I think the news has been good. It looks like CEO Tim Cook is doing a fair job so far.  I think time will tell if Apple will keep the "cutting edge" reputation. I'm sure there are quite a few articles out there that are analyzing his every step and playing the "WWSJD" angle (what would Steve Jobs Do).

With all that news, I think I am planning for a few new Mac Adventures this year- some are still on the plate from last when I first got my Mac.

• Eventually get a thunderbolt SSD drive. I'd like something for when I'm working on videos. This will help immensely when doing the rendering in FCP.
• Replace my seagate hybrid drive with a full SSD internal drive. Prices are really starting to come down now. Once I can get a 512GB SSD for around $300 I may do so. As I write this, they are still around $400 but dropping fast.
• Reconsider "Zune" and embrace iTunes.  Zune just doesn't play well on the Mac platform, and I've noticed the selection on the Zune Pass is getting worse and worse. I may dump it for iTunes.  On the other hand, I like where Windows Phone is headed (I might consider a Win Phone 8 when they come out).

Well that is about it for this post. Hope you've enjoyed it, and I plan on being a little more regular with my postings this summer. I think I'll have a lot to blog about.

Adventures with Cable Modems

I've been a bit busy, and February was a short month (granted it was leap year)- that is my excuse for not updating recently. Nevertheless, I'm going to try and get caught up with some of my latest Mac Adventures in this entry...

In the dead of winter I find it extremely important that my internet connection works well. Around our house, there could be up to 3 or 4 people using an internet connection at any given point in time.  Usually at least that many people (or devices) are doing so in the evening hours and on weekends. It's just really cold in Northwest Ohio and there isn't much else to do apart from the occasional indoor sport.

Consequently, in February I had a few situations arise that reminded me of how important my internet connection was to me. This is where the adventures began.

Sometime in early February, I received the annual "here's your new bill" from one of my Internet providers, Buckeye Cable System. This greatly aggravates me, because the internet access I was paying for (via cable modem) was truly awesome, but the new price wasn't.  5 millisecond ping times and 80% of the time I got the full 10 mb/s that I was paying for.  Unfortunately, the price of this internet connection more than doubled- from $25 to $55.  Even worse- since I was an existing customer, I couldn't qualify for the promotional price which was now $30 or something. Instead, they reminded me of their policy- "you can't use our services for 6 months to qualify for promotional pricing". Apparently they'd prefer to lose me as a customer than let me pay an additional $5 / month. Terrible business model... (sorry, I'm getting a bit off topic).

At any rate, I decided that was enough and decided to cancel. Thus, I would need to rely on my other internet connection provider, Time Warner aka Road Runner. They also provide my cable TV and phone which I've seldom had any issues with.

As you can probably infer, there is a lot of back story here. Telling that story would only serve the purpose of further raising my blood pressure so I will summarize: I decided to order the alternative internet connection because Time Warner's was lousy. After many initial support calls (why is it always slow after 5pm and on the weekends?!), the technician was honest enough to tell me that there was a problem, but nothing they could do until enough customers complained. He even gave me the scoop- a head unit in one of the offices needed to be replaced. 

At that point I was able to complain enough to get a refund of the Internet portion of the bill that month, but I ultimately threw in the towel and decided paying $25 for an alternative connection was well worth it. However, $55 is not.  

Fast forward to the end of February. I decided to give the old "bundled internet connection" on Time Warner a try.  Up until this time, I had been pointing my wife's laptop to this connection, so I knew it worked- she didn't complain too much.  For the first week or so it seemed to be working fine. But before I knew it, Saturday came around and I was trying to stream some videos.  Sure enough, my typical 10 mbit connection dropped down under 1 mbit.  

Obviously I was a bit irritated. I called Time Warner to see if there was any issue, but nothing on their end seemed to be amiss.  I went down and checked my hard-wired PC and ran a speed test from there and I was still getting around 10 mbit.  Something just wasn't adding up.

At the time I wasn't really thinking about it as scientifically as I should have been. I was hoping for a quick fix so I called Time Warner again and asked if there were any options for upgrading my connection speed. After going through about 3-4 different people, I finally got connected to the competent "tier 3" which could answer some of my questions.  I was on the "standard" plan which meant I would occasionally get burst speeds of up to 25 mbit or so when the bandwidth was available. Otherwise I could expect "up to" 10 mbit. That was pretty consistent with the speed tests that I had been running, and there didn't really seem to be an issue whenever I tested from my hard lined PC. Unfortunately, there were two levels above me that got prioritized bursting (turbo and super turbo, or something like that).  But there was some great news- I could upgrade my modem to a DOCSIS 3.0 and get a 30 mbit connection for only $20/month more.  That ended up being $5 less than my previous "alternative" connection and 3 times the speed... I was a little suspicious but I decided to pull the trigger anyway.

There was a minor fiasco where I lost my internet connectivity for about a day, because they upgraded my line before they sent the modem. I called in to have them revert the connection back, and in the process I later found out they also took away my package pricing deal (how does that happen?!) but was assured it would be corrected (I'm not holding my breath).  

Just this past week the modem showed up and I installed it with relative ease.  Now I've got a 30mbit consistent download pipe, along with a 5mbit consistent upload. It's truly awesome- I've never had a connection this good.

On a side note, I am just amazed at the lack of customer service in the industry. The terrible service is  consistent across all the cable companies that I have ever had the displeasure of getting service from.  In any other non-captive market, these companies would be long out of business....

Back the this adventure.  Congratulations if you've made it this far! :)

Unfortunately, my connection problems aren't over yet!

Despite having the new 30 mbit pipe, I am still having problems (only via wireless) achieving those speeds. When I am on the first floor, approximately 20 ft or so from the router, I can get 30mbit.  The signal strength is about 40%. But just about anywhere else in the house I get a lot less.  

This post is getting a little long so I'll summarize once again: it turns out my old trusty DLink DIR-655 might be on its last legs. This is a wireless N router I picked up a few years ago with hopes of it being able to stream HD (which it couldn't do- at least not with 25MB ABR video files).  I ran iStumblr to try and detect wireless signal strength.  The next door neighbors have about the same amount of signal... And they are a good 30-50 ft away from me on both sides.  

Fortunately, I have an old Wireless-G Linksys WRT-54g that I was also using for my "alternative" connection and it currently seems a lot more reliable in the more distant parts of the house. I also made some parabolic antenna that help with the range. Since it is running DD-WRT, I also boosted the transmit power.  I dusted off the cobwebs and plugged this in and it is getting me by for now- though with the speed tests I'm typically not getting more than 12mbit in the furthest reaches of the house. 

So it looks like I might be on a quest for a new wireless router.  Airport Extreme looks like it may be my next one- but I'm not eager to shell out $179 right now.

A few links from this post that you may find helpful:

iStumblr - great tool for checking signal strength on the Mac.

SpeedTest.net - where I check my bandwidth speeds

Wifi Windsurfer - a cheap DIY wifi antenna  extender you can make (took me about 10 minutes w/ some card stock and aluminum foil). Works great with the WRT-54G

DD-WRT - linux based firmware, a great way to keep your old routers going. Works with a lot of older routers, and especially with the Linksys WRT-54g variety.

 

A helpful switching utility

It sure is cold in Ohio today- we were nailed with our first major snow last night. I'm guessing around 3" or so.  The kids are outside playing it in, and the wife is busy working this morning. I thought I'd take advantage of the time and post about a useful utility that I found, which should make the switching experience a bit easier.

I have a feeling that I will be focusing more on "how to switch" in the next few blog entries, but first a little background (you'll probably guess where I'm going with this). My wife has been using an ASUS laptop that I purchased almost 2 years ago.  The keyboard was starting to get very sticky and in my opinion was almost unusable (I am sure my kids sticky fingers had absolutely nothing to do with that)... Fortunately, I had purchased the black-tie coverage at Best Buy, and I am just within the 2 year warranty period-- so I am getting a brand spanking new battery and clean keyboard to boot.

My wife's her Birthday is Feb 1st and-- you probably guessed it-- I decided to get her an early present: a new Macbook Pro 13.3 inch.  I was going back and forth between the Air and the MBP. Best Buy was going to knock off $400 off the still-in-stock (but slightly older) i7 model of the MBP so I decided to go for that.  Given the sticky keyboard situation with the ASUS, I also opted for the black-tie w/ accidental coverage warranty on the MBP.  The 0% for 18 months also helped. Consequently, it's a win-win-win: my daughter's ancient Dell SC420 is just "too slow" for Webkins so the ASUS will be a suitable replacement and I can finally retire the old beast.

On a slightly less positive note, the timing of taking the old ASUS in for a cleanup job probably wasn't the best. She had a pretty tight work deadline for getting a word document done. I installed the latest Mac Office 2011 software, but she was having a tough time figuring it out (I think she had Office 2007 on her laptop previously). The screen is also a tiny bit smaller and she is still getting used to it. She did pretty well getting through a lot of it, and certainly enjoyed the new and improved "Facebook experience" the night before, but in the end she got frustrated to the point she had to revert back to the desktop PC.  Her biggest frustration was the annoyance of the maximize button not maximizing the window to full screen.

Fortunately, I came across a great app that helps with the more familiar Windows experience a few weeks ago: Moog.  Moog provides an extremely simple way to maximize your window, and looks like the best option in the app store (is also  rated 5 stars).  Reasonably priced at $4.99, I finally decided to give it a shot.  It is well worth the $$'s and works seamlessly.  You simply hover over the green maximize button and you have the option to maximize your screen, easily snap it to the bottom, left, right, or top.  Simple and well done, I applaud the developer that designed it ("Many Tricks").  I noticed this developer has a number of other utilities, including "Witch" that provides a slick command-tab interface.  

Screen shot of Moog:

Looks like it's about time to go check on the kids! Hope you enjoyed my update.

Mac Adventures in the App Store

Today I decided to redeem a few of my iTunes gift cards that I received for Christmas. I didn't really tell anyone what I wanted this year, so I got lots of gift cards. I'm actually pretty happy with that so maybe I'll stick with the strategy for next year :)

Before I talk about the apps that I downloaded, I have to take a moment to vent. Apple iTunes has always been frustrating to me. I have been using it with my iPad since I got one almost 2 years ago when they were first released. My biggest complaint about the App Store is that it isn't very intuitive, particularly when it comes to purchasing or downloading an app. One would think that apple would want to make it an easy and intuitive experience... but there have been a few gotchas.

I'll bring up my iPad App Store story once again, because even after all this time it still irritates me and I want to make a point. You may remember my earlier post about having gone through a few defective iPads, mainly due to the sync not working or giving out after a short period of time.  In addition to the hassle of trying to return it and find a new one, there was another frustration that quickly followed-  re-loading my apps through the App Store.

At that time there was no cloud backup, so if you didn't back up to your PC or Mac, you were in for a headache when you wanted to reload your apps to your new device. Well you guessed it- I was in for a painful reloading experience. At that time, the only way to re-load apps would be to find all my receipts/ purchases and "re buy" the apps.  However, if you had already purchased the app you wouldn't get charged.  Needless to say, this was a very manual process and due to the way app purchases work (there are the "in app" purchases, and the buy from the app store purchases) you can very easily make a mistake and purchase the same app twice.   Let me illustrate- Sound Hound was an app that I originally downloaded the "free" version for.  When I decided I wanted to purchase it, I did so within the app.  I completely forgot how I had purchase this by the time I went back to the app store. I found Sound Hound and purchased it. I fully expected not to be charged, but you don't find out it has already been purchased until after you click buy.  NOT INTUITIVE.  Sure enough, I was charged again for the app.  Fortunately, I complained to apple support and got my $3 back. The rep kindly pointed out that the Sound Hound I had downloaded was Sound Hound with an infinity symbol by it, not the original Sound Hound free and in app upgrade, which is why I was charged again.  Wowzers, how was I supposed to remember that?

Anyway, today I was contemplating a purchase from the App Store for my Mac. I signed in, redeemed my gift cards, and went to buy an app for 3.99. After typing my password in, I was prompted again for billing info.  As if I had never entered the codes in.  Hmm, that's not right!  There was a little message in red text that said something about entering in my security code again, but not really any good explanation. It certainly seemed that it was trying to charge my card for this purchase.  Bahh!  I did some quick googling and didn't find anything useful. I then proceeded to email apple support- why do I need to enter my credit card info when I have a credit?  In fairness, they responded a few hours later and gave what I thought was a pretty a lame-o reason: apple is all about security. Since this was the first purchase I was going to make on the app store from my Mac, I needed to re-confirm my credit card security code.  AFTER that, I could utilize a different form of payment, ie, my app store credit from the gift cards.

Blech!  NOT INTUITIVE.  Why not have a message that says something like that right on the page? Why not make me re-enter my credit card when I downloaded several other "free" items?

Anyway, I guess it isn't a huge deal, but it just bugs me about how UNINTUITIVE the app store still is. On the flip side, I am very glad there is a Mac app store, which makes it very convenient to download.

There is much more venting that I'd like to do because of the App Store policies when using it in a Corporation, but I will save that for another day.

Let's change the tone and get on to a more positive note!

Apps that I just downloaded that seem to be pretty slick:

1. FreeMemory - A freebie that is a very useful "menu bar" app, letting you easily see memory usage. This is especially useful when running VM's, and also when you are not sure what apps are hogging memory.

2. Caffeine - this is another freebie. It forces your make to stay awake indefinitely (or different intervals).

3. There will be many many more downloads of the freebies!

Paid apps that I am considering:

1. Moom - it lets you hover over the green maximize window button.  It presents another pop up menu that allows you to easily maximize to the full screen, similar to what happens on a PC when you maximize (by default, maximizing windows just makes them somewhat bigger).

2. Air Display - lets you add a second monitor wirelessly. I downloaded this for my iPad (it was free) which works with a Windows 7 machine.  Before I buy this app ($20) I want to find out if I can basically share a monitor between a PC and Mac, which would be very useful.  Currently I am using Chicken of the VNC when I need to go back to my PC (which is admittedly rare). Chicken of the VNC is horrible from a resolution / color perspective.  It would also be nice to let the PC have the ability to use a monitor, and have the Mac take it over when needed.

3. Again, many more... so much out there to explore!

Happy New Year- The Mac Adventures Continue

I had a brief hiatus on the blog due to a) the holidays and associated hustle/bustle, b) some minor health issues (out of commission for a few weeks), and c) Modern Warfare 3 / Skyrim on the Xbox 360 (a guy has to get some down time!).

The good news is I am back in the swing of things and thought I would do a "Happy New Year" post, along with what I've been up to over the last few months.

You may remember my last blog left off on my joys with using Final Cut Pro (version 7). I have continued to dabble and play around with media editing- including video and photo. But I've also been continuing to all but eliminate my PC from the mix.

For the month of December I have to admit I reverted back to the PC on occasion.  The PC has the larger screen and I found myself jumping on it vs. opening up the laptop. There really wasn't any reason other than enjoying the nice big screen... and one other semi-critical thing: the printer driver. Tis the season to print coupons... as much as I hate to waste paper.

Since I had some time off at the end of the year, I decided to make a couple more adjustments to my setup. I went over to best buy and purchased the adapter to extend my desktop to the larger screen.  It's still not quite the same because my keyboard is on the laptop screen... but now I can easily do browsing, netflix, etc.

After that I decided to try and get my Lexmark Prevail 705 Pro printer going. I had some difficulty trying to figure it out myself (similar to the PC) so I gave the technical support chat a try. I was up and running within 5 minutes.  Great experience and I really appreciate Lexmark's customer service. The printer seems to work just as well on my Mac as it does my other PC's.

I also finally took the plunge and found a great price on a memory upgrade $40 for 8 GB. I'm still patiently waiting for external thunderbolt drives for my VM's, but those aren't quite out yet (at least according to the Best Buy salesman).

On a related note, I did some ASP.NET development from my VMWare Fusion in Unity mode... It worked great, even with only 4gb RAM. It was good enough to write a small web application (single web form), complete with debugging.

Still quite happy with the purchase and I don't have much reason to keep the PC on at this point. It's still there for a few things like the Microsoft Zune software, because I havent' taken the time to load that into VMWare Fusion yet. It also has the external USB drives tethered to it for backing up over the network. I think I may leave it primarily for that task for the time being, at least until I get a good USB hub that I can easily plug in to the MBP.  Would be nice if there was a good docking station solution so I don't have all the cables to contend with.  Apple has a nice monitor that is thunderbolt and has a lot of USB connections so that may be the answer- I would just need to plug in my thunderbolt and power adapter and be all set. But then that's more $$$ that I don't want to spend right now... :)

It's good to be back and I plan on publishing a few more articles.  What is coming next?

Well..

One of the things that I look forward to every year is a conference called codemash (http://codemash.org).   This conference was started several years back and I had the fortune of being one of the people that helped with some of the initial ideas (I think it was Drew Robbins who got everyone on a conference call to hash out the details of the v1.0, if memory serves correctly). I think the first year there might have been 150 or 200 in attendance. The event has grown to over 1200 (probably 1500 by the time you add in all the speakers and vendors) and registration sold out in 20 minutes this year.  I am not involved in the planning but did some speaking in the early years on topics such as ASP.NET and Agile, and have been an attendee ever since. It's great to see how the conference has grown over the years.

Anyway, I digress and I'll get to the point. The attendees that go to Codemash are a varied bunch. Other than enjoying bacon and hot sauce, the whole point of the conference is not to get religious about which programming language is better... in fact it is just the opposite. It's to see what other technologies are doing, how to leverage some of those concepts, and of course to meet some of the sharpest / most interesting people in the industry.  Many of those people use Macs (even the .NET guys like me) and tend to be innovators. So, I'll be keeping an eye out for anyone using an MBP.  Who knows, maybe there will even be an "open spaces" topic for people wanting to learn more about development on an MBP.  I will be taking notes and plan to post what I hear / learn on this blog.

And yes, if you see me there I will most certainly have my MBP and will be leaving my Windows 7 work laptop in the room (if I even take it at all).

Happy New Year and enjoy 2012!!!

Video Editing & Final Cut Pro

One of the more significant reasons I decided to get a Mac was because of my video editing issues that I often experienced on the PC.  Below is my story and I hope it gives a little more insight into my experience and reasoning.

I have been filming videos ever since 2002. Back then I purchased my first Sony video recorder in anticipation of our first child, Kaitlyn.  It proved to be a great purchase and I captured many moments of her, and countless other events (Christmas parties, Weddings, Birthdays, etc) since then.  That was quite a few years before HD came out and I was pretty content with the camera.

Going even further back... I can remember my grandfather (Dad's side) first introduced me to a VHS camera when I was probably around 10 years old. He was always the guy with the camera whenever we had family events, particularly on Christmas.  As my Dad tells it, he was always more excited than even the kids were growing up and having Christmas morning. So it made a lot of sense that he would spend much of his time filming from the chair in the corner of the living room when we went to visit Grandma & Grandpa.  I suppose my Grandfather first got me interested in doing video. In a way, I think I have picked up the torch- now it is me sitting in the chair taking everything in.

Fast forward another 8-10 years to College. I was involved in a campus ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ.  Every now and then we decided to create some video skits. These skits usually became epic works that years later were still talked about.  A good buddy (and roommate) of mine would spend countless hours at the PC using Ulead Studio, his Packard Bell doing basic video editing. I learned a lot about working with video through this process.  I also learned that 30 seconds "is an eternity" on video and you have to work hard to fill it up with something interesting...

Not long after I graduated college I found myself still quite interested in the whole AV/Video thing. Being a long time computer nerd as well, it made perfect since for me to be at "the intersection of computers and video".  Some of the things I dove into were Windows Media Center (the early version that was an add on to the OS) and programming... with the vision of having all your media at your finger tips on your living room TV, as opposed to looking at a computer screen in the damp, dingy, dusty basement.  Media Center ended up being a pretty pivotal piece of technology and allowed me to display all my old school videos on my TV.

Things changed again in 2006.  High Definition was finally affordable, though I was definitely an early adopter of the technology.  I picked up a JVC HD video camera that did "full HD" which turned out to not really be full HD, but 1080i (close enough).  The video quality on this camera was stunning but it came with a big price... disk space and huge cpu needs. The camera itself has a 60GB hdd which ends up holding about 4 hours of video.  For several years, my computer was a bottleneck- it was really difficult to do much with the footage.  But that was OK- recording the files and simply watching them were good enough most of the time.

A few years later Intel came out with the i7 chipset which finally meant I could easily edit and render video without having to wait several hours while doing so.  I built a PC and experimented with several different NLE's (video editing tools) including the latest version of Ulead Studio and Sony Vegas. During that time I had some great "use case" footage- including the Youth Lockin where we filmed about 10 video skits.  The total footage was well over 8 hours, but each video ended up rendering around 5 minutes or less once I cleaned them up and put into content.  They were quite the hit at the Church and are still talked about today. For some reason, people just love to see themselves in videos! :)  I've also done several weddings, rehearsal dinners, church events, family vacations, etc. over the years.

Although the PC generally did the job, I would get the occasional lock up or freeze and lose my work. Certain file formats (like .MOV) would not import well from the lower end camera that I had picked up to take on Disney trips (rather than lugging around my larger camera).  This was frustrating me and I started to look around and consider my options.  With everything going on in the Apple World, and having known for many years that a lot of the "pro's" use Mac's for video editing, I thought I would at least get more educated about it.  I didn't have to look too far.  There was a new couple that started coming to our church and they were both very talented.  Tom teaches a class at UT on Video / Multimedia... and his wife Cheri plays piano professionally for the Toledo Opera (and joined the music team).  I talked to him several times about some of my challenges, especially after seeing some of the exceptional video work he has created for our Church.

As you may have been following my Mac Adventures, you know that I haven't really reported too much on the video experience simply because I haven't had that time until now.  Well, I've finally got a chance to get hands on and I am here to tell you:

THE MAC ROCKS FOR VIDEO!!!!

I am using Final Cut Pro, iMovie, iPhoto, and a few utilities. But it is so amazing working on a Mac to edit video.  Coming from Sony Vegas / Ulead in the past it was quite easy to come up to speed for basic editing with Final Cut Pro (version 7).  I found a web site that also greatly assisted me:

http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/finalcut

I have been able to successfully edit my high definition MPEG 2 camera footage as well as my low end camera that creates .MOV footage.  One downside is that I have to convert all my MPEG 2 footage into .MOV in order to get Final Cut Pro working how I want, but that conversion is very quick and I can't discern any loss of quality (huge!!)!  To convert, I am using a utility called MPEG Stream which is apparently available on both PC and Mac.  If I want to create a slideshow movie with photos, I use iMovie.  The best thing about all these utilities is that the Mac gives you complete control over what format your video is in across all these tools.  That means there is no conversion, stuttering, lag, or other general ugliness when working on a video. No drivers, codecs to mess with, etc.

It just works!

So the verdict is in... it has been totally worth the switch. If I wasn't convinced before, I am now! I spend a lot of time working with multimedia and now I can do so in a very nice environment.

Going on a month...

I have been a Mac user for one month now and wanted to take a moment to blog more of my experiences and views as I have gained more experience and knowledge on this platform.

First off, it is hard to believe it has been a month! I've done a lot on my new machine since then, but there is still quite a bit that I want to do. For the last week or so, I have all but shut down my home PC. I consider myself just about fully switched now.

Disclaimer: I am still using my PC at work. I don't really have a choice in the matter because of our network / security / whatever policy.  Since I use the PC at work it helps further polarize the differences between the two.

Latest observations:

1. Using a Mac feels like a "treat'. After I get back from work I smile when I think about using my computer. It's not just blah, more of the same like what I get at work. I tend to approach it in a different way- it's not just about getting something done, it's also about the experience. 

2. It has been fun to show other people (family, friends, etc).  One of the first thing that they notice is "all those icons" on the bottom of the screen.  I really like having everything at the touch of my finger.  The more I use the icons to launch an app, the less I want to use the start menu on the PC.  It just makes more sense that way.  

3. I find myself somewhat disappointed by lag when I am running my Windows VM. However, I think this will be pretty easy remedied when I upgrade the memory. Still haven't gotten around to that yet- my wallet needs a break for a bit.  

4. I'm starting to notice that there are a lot less apps "out there" for the Mac as compared to the PC.  That's ok because I'm running a Windows VM but... there are some things that I would expect to be out there. For instance, there is an iPad application out there that allows you to extend your desktop to the iPad wirelessly (displaylink). Ironically, there is no Mac version of it.  Another one is a gmail download utility. I take some of these tools for granted on the PC.

5. Portability is great, even for a 17".  Battery Life is not as good as I hoped- seems like I get about 5-6 hours tops. I am sure my extra upgrades are contributing to the lower battery life- it's advertised as up to 7. Still not bad, especially compared to my work PC which is half the power and about the same battery life. 

6. I am definitely taking more notice of other "Mac users" that are out there. I often wonder "why are they Mac users?" I notice pictures on Facebook, links from twitter, comments on blogs, twitter, etc. My initial stereotype of "Mac people" seems to be a little off: more eccentric, pop-culture lovers, etc. I'm finding that there are quite a few people similar to my background- developers, musicians, etc. A bit of right brain and left. It also includes people who just don't want to accept the mainstream / mediocrity from the PC experience. 

I'll close off the entry like this: is it worth getting a Mac? After the first month, I can definitely say "Yes!". I have been really happy with my decision and continue to enjoy it.  Despite my best intentions, I still haven't been able to get real deep in some of the functionality that I originally purchased the Mac for... ie, video editing, music editing, photo editing, etc. But from what I am experiencing so far it is doing a fine job and I am learning new things on a daily basis.

VMWare Fusion, Unity, and VS.NET 2010

Update:

I've finally gotten around to it!

Windows 7 VM is installed, up and running in "Unity View" and VS.NET 2010 running as an application. I was asked how this worked on a Mac (on twitter) so I thought I would blog the steps needed.  There is more than one way to do this of course, but I chose to do it with VMWare.  Another way would be to use "Bootcamp" to do your own bootable Windows 7 partition, but what fun would that be?  You could also use Parallels, which I hear is also pretty decent.  Or, if you are really daring, you could just go MonoDevelop and not even utilize the Microsoft IDE... (note to self: future topic for another post)

Pre-requisites:

1. For the steps below, you need VMWare Fusion. I am using version 4.0.  

2. You also need a valid Windows 7 and Visual Studio .NET 2010 license key.

General steps:

1. Create a new VM, using the Windows 7 64 bit choice. Go with the default 60GB option. To use Unity, make sure you pick the scary "sharing" option, not the isolated one. It sounds dangerous because it is.  This means that your shared mac documents could potentially get infected by windows virii and malware.  (See step 3 below to help protect).  A sacrifice for a seamless experience, but it's worth it for me. 

2. Install using an ISO image (click "continue without disk" on first screen). I used Windows 7 64 bit ultimate. 

3. After installing Windows 7 and after several VM reboots, you will then have the opportunity to install other apps like usual. Before proceeding (the average windows machine is infected in 10 minutes if not firewalled) I recommend:

 a) Installing Microsoft Security Essentials. Free download for Microsoft, and one of the best anti-virus scanners out there.

 b) Installing all the Windows Updates that it recommends.

 c) If you ever install Adobe products, make sure you religiously update these as well. Apart from "promiscuous browsing", most virii originate from these products and lack of a patched machine.

4. After completing all of step 3, obtain Visual Studio 2010.  I utilized the "web installer" from MSDN.

5. Run the web installer. I went with the default options, which includes installing C++, F#, and SQL Server Express.  Some may not want these features to conserve on space.

6. After the install, you are pretty much ready to go!  Open the VMWare menu and select the "View", and check "Unity".  This will enable whatever applications you are running to be viewed in a window that is very "Mac like".  It will also minimize the application in your task bar.

7. It's not a bad idea to close your shiny new VM and make a copy of the file.  This will allow you to revert back if you happen to hose your Win 7. If it gets infected by a virus, you can easily delete it and revert back to your fresh copy.

Screenshots:

The windowed view- everything appears to be a normal Mac application.

The taskbar. You can see the VS.NET 2010 "infinity" icon parked right next to the VMWare one (red and blue boxes)

Other tips / thoughts:

You can make your "home" directory for your source code point to your shared files.  That means all the source code will co-exist on your Mac. In the event that you have to re-install your VM you will still have your source. I am also using Timemachine and that means it will automatically be backed up by default.

Have fun!!!

Of VM's and Switching

I am now up to two VM's on my MBP. This is all part of my multi-step program to switch to the Mac. :) This is just about the final step in my master plan...

The first VM is Windows 8 Developer Preview.  It's a great way to check out some of the new features that Microsoft is coming out with. However, it is not anywhere near ready for "prime time"- and seems to be best viewed on the Samsung tablet.  The reason I say this is because the Metro UI is very difficult to use with a mouse.  It is also extremely laggy in a VM- I can only stand about 5 minutes working with it, but it's good for the purpose it serves (preview!). The second VM is Windows 7, along with Visual Studio .NET 2010. It is also running in "unity" mode which means I put Win7 apps on my Mac taskbar and run them seamlessly. However, that also opens up the possibility for my Mac Files to get corrupted by a Windows virus since the documents and network are shared.  To be on the safe side I downloaded Windows Security Essentials- a fairly lightweight but comprehensive virus / malware scanner.  The lag on the Windows 7 VM is barely noticible, but I still need to upgrade my ram to 4GB.

I am now getting down to brass tacks and in the process of handing down my PC's.  For me, this is the true litmus test of making the switch. I've had my PC and its 24" screen quietly humming away in the background.  After wrapping up the installs of my other "must have" apps on the VM I will finally complete the process.  Fortunately, there is not much I can think of that I can't do on my Mac that I could on my PC.  I suppose one thing would be utilizing my Blu-Ray drive, but I could pull that out and make it external.  I only use the blu-ray for a few things: 1) burning blu-ray data discs, and 2) burning blu-ray videos. I can do both on the Mac if I make the drive external.

The other needs are pretty straightforward:

1) Visual Studio .NET - a requirement for doing .NET development. Not available on the Mac platform, unless you are using something like MonoDevelop. I haven't tried that yet but I will some day.  It looks quite a bit like the IDE on Windows. VS.NET 2010 will be going on the VM.

2) Microsoft Zune.  The software is only available for Windows.  I am using ITunes, and have been since the IPad. I am starting to like it more but I feel a lot more comfortable with the Zune UI.  Plus, I am paying $15 / month for the privilege of virtually unlimited, legal music downloads and 10 tracks I can keep "forever", per month. Not a bad deal at all.  This will also go on the VM.

3) Microsoft Visio.  Incredibly useful tool for drawings. I use this on occasion for things like re-modeling, layouts, etc. I don't believe there is a Mac version available. Another one for the VM.

4) My backup scheme.  Currently I use a batch file to backup all the documents, images, videos, etc that are strewn across my various computers on the network.  I also have two 1TB USB drives plugged in to my main PC which is basically a kludged up RAID.  Since most of my work will be done on my Mac, and it's a little more impractical to connect/disconnect with a laptop, I will leave that connected to the PC and utilize it remotely. I already created a "timemachine" backup share that my MBP will use to backup apps and files. This will automatically fall into the backup and get mirrored.  I'll start scheduling the backup/mirror to run at 3AM so I get everything.

Since I am not using this for work, that is about it.  There are a handful of other utilities that I use on occasion with the PC, but there are either Mac versions or suitable replacements.  For instance, FileZilla is a great FTP program that is open source and available on Mac.  N-track studio is an awesome multi-track recorder that I run on the PC, but so is GarageBand, Adobe Soundbooth, or Soundtrack Pro. Paint.NET is good but Adobe Photohop is awesome. Final Cut Studio is great for videos and will easily replace Sony Vegas.

One final thing: I need to be able to utilize my Dell monitor so I can have dual screens. Apparently, I purchased the wrong adapter at Best Buy because it won't fit into the display port connector. I am going to have to figure out which one to get. 

Superdrive to HDD - Update

For those of you following the "Saga of the Superdrive" I wanted to post an update.

I was losing a little sleep over the matter because I kept having a recurring though: I spent all that money on a shiny new Mac and now I've got a stripped screw of my own doing. I am a person who likes closure (or as my wife puts it, obsessive compulsive).  Consequently, I was compelled to go to the Mac Cafe and show and tell my feebly failed attempt at unscrewing the Superdrive.

Please, help me! I felt like I had a load on my shoulders and the only recipe was more cowbell a trip to the local Mac Cafe. So.. I took off a little early for lunch and made the 15 minute or so Trek to Talmadge Rd, in Toledo, OH- which happens to be the only store within 60 minutes (as far as I know) that can service Macs. I walked in with my head held in shame but figured I had nothing to lose- they seemed willing enough to help on the phone call the day prior.

After waiting in line behind an elderly gentleman who apparently had a relic from the 90's (an old iMac) that finally gave up the ghost (the mac, not the gentleman), I was graciously greeted. I plead my ignorance: I was just trying to unscrew the Superdrive and before I knew it, the screw wasn't turning!  I'm sure it was a tale that has been spun many a time... Within a few minutes, Nick took my Macbook back and did a quick triage. He quickly declared that "it was pretty bad" but the other experienced technician could probably work his magic.  I crossed my fingers and paced around the store for what seemed like an eternity... and after that eternal 5 minutes, I heard a voice proudly proclaim "I got it!". I eagerly walked up to the technician desk and was greeted by what I can only refer to as my new hero. He proudly proclaimed "You need to get a good screwdriver like this from Sears".  I promptly replied "I just ordered a set from <company name>" to which he replied "Nah, those won't work".  Doh. Good thing I only spent 5 bucks or so.

After that I asked them about the Warranty- am I ok? Nick said it would be no problem. They found a replacement screw that fit the bill.  I asked him a few questions about Apple Care and decided to take the plunge- Mac Cafe can also service the computer if I ever have problems in the future. They seem to be a little more lenient than if I were to take it to Apple as well.  Even better, they were cool installing my optical / hard drive kit and it only took them 30 minutes to do so.  I am sure I could have pulled it off assuming I could find the right screw driver set, but they seem to be pretty reasonable for doing installs and were very helpful. I'm definitely pleased with the overall experience and plan on going there in the future.

This adventure cost me a little mo money, but that's the way it is with Apple. Despite that it was a pretty good experience. The drive is running well but my VM of Windows 8 still chugs. Next on the list: mo memory.

Superdrive HDD Upgrade = Supermess?

Time is flying with the Macbook Pro since my last update. I've been a little busy this past week and haven't had as much time to putter around like I was hoping to... But nonetheless, this past week I ordered a new component for my MBP- the Superdrive caddy. Thus a new adventure to blog about.

The superdrive caddy allows you to put an internal sata hard drive in it.  My reasoning is that I will get improved performance of VM's (which will then live on that drive).  Case in point: I am running the Windows 8 preview but it is dog slow, so anything I can do to help eek out performance will be helpful.

I ordered the caddy sometime last week and it arrived yesterday. It was late in the evening (had another soccer game), but upon returning I figured I'd give it a crack.  I had the screws off the case in a few minutes... Everything was going well until I started unscrewing the first screw that was helping hold in the superdrive.  I started cranking my phillips head and noticed the screw wasn't coming up. Instead, it was stripping away the screw head.  I quickly backed off and decided I'd better not do any more damage. I think the head might still be usable but it'll be pretty close if it is.

I didn't think much of it- decided I'd call the near by "Mac Cafe", which is an authorized reseller / repair shop (the closest Apple Store is in Ann Arbor, about 1 hr away). I've been in there a few times and it's not a bad place, but they seem a little pricey and don't have any "non-standard" configurations unless you special order (ie, nothing you could upgrade to on the Apple web site). At any rate, I called them and explained my dilemma... the first thing the guy told me was that I probably voided my warranty.  I almost laughed out loud I was so surprised- what a shocker! He just about lost a potential customer- but then told me he'd check with the technician and see.  Fortunately he changed his tune and told me they could take a look and potentially replace the screw, and depending on how bad it was, possibly even free of charge. Whew, that sounds a lot better.  He rattled me a little bit- so I googled up the Apple Forums and searched for "stripped screw" to see what other people had experienced.  I found a few examples where people had similar worries about violating warranties, but had no problems when they took it in to Apple.  Thank goodness.  If that was really the policy this will be my first and last Mac. I've been handling computer components for quite some time now- and Apple's "high end" but flimsy screws should not be cause for me to have an invalid warranty.  Sheesh.  In retrospect, it makes sense that a company specializing in "professional" service repair would try to scare customers into using their service vs. attempting to do it themselves, but come on. Spare me the sensationalism.

Something he also mentioned was that if I ever did have to send it in to get it fixed and had the Apple Care, they would want me to swap out all the components to the original apple ones. With my current plans, that would mean my system drive and superdrive replacement would have to come out. I was also thinking about buying the cheaper non-apple memory.  That seems a little bit of a hassle and I'm not sure if that is really the case, but I am going to try and find out what the official policy is.

So I am still on the fence about taking it in. I decided to pony up $10 or so to get the OWC toolkit, which comes with all the correct screw drivers. While the one I am using was able to get the case open without issue, I figure it'd be best to get a set that are designed for the MBP. I will give it another shot once those arrive, and if at that point it doesn't look promising, I may take it in.

A week or so later...

I've been able to log a lot of hours on the new MacBook Pro and am still quite pleased with it.  I haven't really been able to get as much done as I had hoped, especially in the multi-media editing department.  The "honeymoon" period of breaking in my new Mac is still in force, but I am definitely getting to learn its weaknesses and find myself frequently wondering how to do X and Y like I have taken for granted on the PC.

Anyway... here are some more impressions.

1. Safari is kind of lame. I've been using it on IPad so I already knew this, but I thought the experience might be a little better on the MacBook Pro.  I downloaded Chrome and feel more at home now.

2. I am digging the multi-touch gestures.  So much so that I was trying to find a way to get them on the PC.  The two finger scroll (vertical scrolls window, horizontal scrolls desktop) is fantastic. Three fingers brings up the "dashboard" which is similar to holding Windows Tab.  One annoyance is the lack of a right click button on the track pad. I went out and purchased a really cool "magic mouse" that gives me multi touch and also the right click (caveat: right click is actually not a button, just a click on the right side of the mouse, which is all one surface) The quality of the mouse seems very solid, but my $20 logitech corded mouse on the PC performs just as well, minus the multi-touch.

3. Apple accessories are expensive (yeah, no surprise). The aforementioned mouse was about $70. It is Bluetooth, but similar "PC" versions are about half the price. Granted it also looks like a "piece of art" so I guess I am paying for form as well as function. The wife is going to notice my additional purchases soon so I better prepare my defense. :)  On the plus side, I did find some generic components that should be sufficient- a miniport to DVI adapter ($20 vs the $40 Apple wanted), an internal hard drive bay that fits in the superdrive slot for $20, etc.  Some components are worth scrimping on, but it also somehow feels wrong- the Apple logo is important to Mac owners.

4. There are a few annoyances, but one that particularly irritates me.  It generally takes a good 10 seconds for my internet connection to be recognized after I wake the computer, even though the screen turns on instantly. I checked online and it sounds like this was not the case for some of the earlier versions of OSX, like Snow Leopard.  The 10 second delay occurs whether I'm using a direct ethernet connection or wireless.  Not a showstopper, but I usually open a browser window first thing and I get the "Internet is not connected" message.

5. The "task bar" on a Mac is great. I can jam many many icons there and don't have to try to hunt for applications on my desktop and/or start menu.  Spotlight is also a simple way to find an application that isn't on my task bar (command space).

6. I really like the way the top menu (file, edit, etc) is "context aware". It changes based on the application you are in.  Similar to what Microsoft is doing with Office these days, but much simpler.

7. Mac OSX's unix shell is great. It's using a Bash shell, which I spent many nights working in back in my college days. I find myself running a lot of familiar unix commands, particularly the other night when I was trying to get a new web site launched (along with some DNS configuration changes).

8.  Installing applications was not intuitive at first. I had to download a "DMG" file and then drag the application into my apps folder.  After doing it a few times, I've come to appreciate the simplicity of it.  I also don't have to worry about "crud" in a registry, generally speaking.  Most apps seem to be content to live in the applications folder without spreading out on the hard drive.

9. The laptop is actually quite easy to lug around. It weighs only slightly more than my work laptop, which is a Dell i7.  It also fits in the same bag, despite being 17".

10. The build quality and especially the aluminum chassie continues to impress me. I haven't had it out much, but when I do I tend to get the "hey, that is a nice laptop" type comments. Unfortunately, the downside of people noticing is that people notice.

11. People that know me say "woah, you got a Mac? I thought you were a PC guy- Why?" I may need to develop my elevator speech and give them a business card with my blog url on it.

A lot of adventures a head of me. I'm not sure where I'll be in another week! I'm still having a lot of fun exploring and learning the new system.