adinoto's blog

A friend of mine gave me this link on this Gruber site; and this time this is way too far. In short Bill said that Apple copied Vista feature because Microsoft is busy fixing security, and show it earlier 😀 … and even said that they invented File Edit View Help menu found on original Mac in 1984.

Hahaha… my advice “Bill, this stategy will work… if only… all the old school generations vanished, please repeat this strategy in 2070 when new generations started to forget the history. This is way too early :D”

Salah satu announcement yang paling significant dari event MacWorld Expo di San Fransisco Januari 2007 lalu adalah keberadaan iPhone. iPhone merupakan suatu smartphone yang revolusioner yang memperkenalkan banyak sekali konsep human-machine interface yang tidak pernah terbayangkan bagi para produsen, let alone bagi para pengguna. Apple menggabungkan iPod, Phone, dan Internet Device ke dalam suatu perangkat all-in-one bernama iPhone.

iPhone memperkenalkan multi-gesture touch, yaitu penggunaan lebih dari satu jari untuk mengontrol touchscreen dan meninggalkan stylus. Dengan 2 jari anda dapat men zoom-in photo dengan hanya menggerakkan jari anda menjauh dan menggerakkan ke arah yang berdekatan untuk fungsi zoom-out. Namun apakah eksotisme yang ditawarkan dalam iPhone merupakan segalanya bagi perangkat yang diberi nama iPhone ini? Tentu tidak.

Bagi saya, iPhone merupakan suatu stepping stone bagi Apple untuk berubah dan merubah citra dari sekedar sebuah perusahaan komputer yang terlalu kental digambarkan sebagai perusahaan yang memproduksi komputer dengan harga kelewat mahal, tidak kompatible, dan memiliki pengguna fanatis. Setiap perangkat iPhone dimotori oleh stripped down version Mac OS X, yang berarti Apple siap meluncurkan just about anything berbasis embedded Mac OS X ini. Isn’t that exciting?

Bagi semua orang, apabila ditanya sistem operasi apa yang paling banyak digunakan di dunia, maka saya yakin hampir seluruhnya menjawab Microsoft Windows. Mungkin kebanyakan masyarakat luput untuk melihat bahwa sistem operasi yang paling banyak dipergunakan di dunia justru sistem operasi yang hampir tidak kelihatan yang menggerakkan seluruh camera digital yang ada di pasaran saat ini. Sistem operasi ini bernama TRON. Dengan adanya “Embedded Mac OS X” yang memiliki kemampuan Core Image, Core Animation, dan support terhadap multigesture dan banyak lagi, saya tinggal memimpikan saatnya Apple akan meluncurkan camera digital sendiri dengan memanfaatkan sistem operasi baru ini. Bagaimana dengan scanner? All in one Scanner dan home devices? DVD players, home entertainment devices? Yang jelas Apple adalah sejenis perusahaan yang tidak bakal mengeluarkan devices yang plain dan old school, don’t expect a plain scanner in Apple business (Hi Canon!) or printers (Hi HP!), expect a whole new devices you won’t ever imagine. Now that’s call innovation!! Kudos to Apple development team!

Congratulation Steve. You’re heading into the right direction.

Regards,

Adinoto.

Today’s one of the hottest news for mac community is the arrival of Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Beta) which will run natively on Intel architecture. Without further wait, I grab the beta from Adobe sites for both Mac and PC version. The mac version has a bigger footprint near 700MB and the PC version is only 350MB. I got two friends coming to my place this afternoon carrying their MacBook Pros Core Duo well I guess it’s a nice thing to have a head to head between Adobe Photoshop CS2 (running under emulation with Rosetta) and the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 Universal Binary, and a PC version on my lowly Intel Pentium D (Dual Core) 2,66GHz.

bigger image click here

Here’s the test:

We open up the Sample files called Sunflower.psd and resize its resolution to 1000 dpi from original 72 dpi. It will increase the image size from 414KB to a 107MB in size! That’s a suitable size for professional image editing or everyday Photoshop’s user.

Then we have to perform a Radial Blur to harness its power, and squeeze the Photoshop and machine into its limit. We added up amount of 30 instead of the standard 10 in the Radial Blur contest.

Here’s the result:
1. On MacBook Pro Core Duo 2,13GHz running Adobe Photoshop CS2 (non Intel native) running under emulation, it took a whopping 4 minutes and 13 seconds to complete the test, while
2. It took MacBook Pro Core Duo 2,13GHz with Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Universal Binary, native Intel build), only a 34 seconds to complete the test.
3. It took a Pentium D (Dual Core) 2,66GHz with Adobe Photoshop CS3 with Vista RC2 a minute and 22 seconds to complete the test.

So I would say it’s a huge productivity boost for MacBook Pro (and Mac Pro) users to switch to this new Adobe Photoshop CS3. Good jobs to all of you at Adobe!! This is only a glimpse and short review for all of people who’s wondering how the CS3 would perform on their current Intel Mac.

While the comparison with Intel Pentium D is not representative since Core Duo is way much faster chip than Intel Pentium D, but overall it will show you how fast the new chip is.

*this test took 2 packs of cigarettes and 3 teriyaki and lots of cola’s, and did not harm any MacBooks nor batteries 😛

Lots of people buy Mac today and run Bootcamp or Parallels for their compatibility with zillions Windows applications. Since newest Apple portables and desktops build around Intel chips this is practically a feasible solution. It runs circle around older Windows emulators like Virtual PC, SoftWindows, GuestPC, or Boch on PowerPC Mac, since the emulators would lost its power translating Intel instructions to PowerPC instructions set.

Running Bootcamp or Parallels does not excite me much anymore. I’ve tried that before 1,2. With the new MacBook Core 2 Duo (an 64-bit Core processor from Intel) I’m wondering how to get Vista runs native on that little baby.

The differences between MacBook and standard PC is that Mac adopt EFI instead of standard BIOS PC currently adopted. This would be a slight problem few months back since none of x86 Windows support EFI except the Windows XP 64-bit Edition (x64). But Apple has added a patch (comes from onmac.net?) that emulates BIOS on EFI.

Now it’s time to boot up a Vista x64 (64-bit) on this MacBook Core 2 Duo. It boots, but it can’t install 😀 Another problem arose. Apple adopts a newer disk layout GUID partition table instead of MBR disk. Yaik! And to make the problem more complicated, Microsoft does not support GUID partition table on any consumer’s Windows except the Windows Server 2003 for Itanium machine.  🙁

With little tweak, I got the machine running 😀 Here’s the screenshot. Should I call it MacVistaBook?

Impression:

I’m not impressed by Apple’s reluctant not to put a right click on any portable Mac. And we need a hardwire Eject button for DVD-ROM found on any Macs. Still no drivers for Atheros AR5008E (newer pre-n AirPort Extreme that suppose to work 540Mbps), iSight, Bluetooth, and got problem with Sigmatel HD Audio. But the sounds work ok on 32-bit Vista, still no go for WiFi, iSight and Bluetooth since Apple does not supply a driver for Vista on BootCamp. I even flirt around with Windows Media Center 2005, all the drivers from Bootcamp works fine (it’s no surprise since Media Center is XP family). Well, I guess I just give a 6.0 score for this purpose, and it’s time to get back to my IBM ThinkPad T43.