Archive for the ‘Mac’ Category

I run skype though my Apple MBP – and use the popular “Call Recorder” software to capture my “interviews” or what I call “chinwags”. One annoyance to me was how quiet I seemed on the chinwag compared with my interviewees. This was despite using a professional podcasters microphone from Samson. Anyway, one week whilst chinwagging with Simon Seagrave (of TechHead fame) – Simon pointed out that sometime in Windows, it “helps” you by reducing the sound level on the mic to stop a booming affect. Sure enough, when I opened the System Preferences and Sounds – as we talked I could see the recording level down…!

Intially, I thought I would be able to stop this using the “Sound” option perferrences – but it seems like my flavour of MAC OS X doesn’t have this option, but others do…

It seems like Windows has a similar option – but its name and location varies from one version of Windows to another…

It turned out the culprit was Skype which has “Automatic Audio Gain” feature – which lowers level of the microphone in a call. It also transpires that in previous version of Skype on the Mac,  you had the ability to switch off this feature – in the new versions the GUI option to do this has been “depreciated”. Anyway, after some concerted google-wacking I found this blog post:

http://www.bartbusschots.ie/blog/?p=609

This blogpost explain how you could edit Skype XML file to switch the darn feature off…

Thank you, Bart!

Note, if you are on Windows – you would go to: Tools -> Options -> Audio Setting and uncheck “let the skype adjust my audio settings”

I recently made the move over to using an Apple MBP, and was able to find the full Mac Client for my new laptop. The wheels came off when it came to licensing. Seems like I had temporary license on my MBP which when it expired wouldn’t be cleared. It took some google-wacking to find how to clear the cached temporary Microsoft CAL and Citrix CAL before I could connect again. So partly for my own future referrence, and partly to help others I thought I would document this process…

Firstly, started by clearing out the BUCKETS for non-windows clients which is held on the Citrix MetaFrame/Presentation Servers. This is located in the registry in \HKLM \Software \Citrix \MS Licensing followed by the Bucket ID

Next on the Mac, delete the CitrixID file held in Macintosh HD/Users/UserName/Library/Preferences/Citrix ICA Client/

Then finally, for good measure delete the contents of the Windows location for licensing (used if you RDP into the Citrix MetaFrame/Presentation server this located in /users /Shared /Microsoft /RDC Crucial Server Information

Well, if you follow my blog regularly you will know I recently moved over to the darkside – and acquired a MacBook Pro. According to some I did this just at the wrong time – just as Windows was going to get wonderfully better in the shape of Windows 7. Well, that doesn’t really help me does it. Look I’ve spent the money on the darn thing now, so there’s no point in really saying that is there. I don’t think my pals at Dixons (the “Best Buy” of the UK) would really pony up the refund.

So I wanted to share with you my experiences – I think this is the 2nd or 3rd week of use. Firstly, performance. The MBP (MacBook Pro) certainly feels much quicker than my old Windows Vista notebook. I’m not sure if that’s a fair comparison – given that Vista was universal recognized as Windows ME in disguise. Plus the old Windows Vista laptop had only [!] 2GB of RAM, and the MBP has 4GB. The are both dual core (AMD vs Intel). I was thinking about this the other day. Nearly every CLEAN install of Windows is pretty quick to be honest – the trouble is OVER TIME, they gradually grind to snails pace. So, I guess a more fair comparison will be in 1 years time – is the MBP as quick or does it like Windows get clogged up with the grit and grind of every day use.

Secondly, I opted for Microsoft Office for MAC as the office sweet (deliberate spelling mistake by the way). Of course some Mac-Whores would and have instantaneously condemned me for my choice. That’s not an “Apple” program its a Microsoft one – as if Apple are the ONLY source of applications for the Mac. They point to iWorks and or OpenOrifice. To tell you the truth I opted for the Microsoft Office for Mac after asking some Mac-Philes via twitter whether it was worth it – to which they said yes. BUT… I’m afraid Entourage (Outlook for the Mac) does crash, as does Word and Excel. They aren’t quite so bad as the Windows one’s but not much better. Anyway, like the MBP I paid for the darn thing, so I’m addiment its I’m going to use it. My main reason for sticking with MS Office on the MAC – was to make the move from PC to Mac smoother – and thought introduce another layer of file formats – would make exchanging data between the Mac to PC would be harder.

On the upside. iTunes is noticeably better on the Mac. The other thing I’m loving is the native support for PDF. So I don’t need a secondary application for PDF generation like I did for Vista – that’s handy when submitting purchase orders and invoices. It’s no slouch on the PDF front either – with the ability to protect the PDF and handle metadata.

The other thing I like about the Mac is how easy it is to install and de-install applications. That’s always been a PITA in Windows. Basically, in most case you download a .DMG file (this is a Disk Image format – like .ISO) which is then mounted – and then the install kicks off. In most case you just drag and drop the application within the DMG file – to your applications folder. If you want to “de-install” you drag it to trash. Some installer do come with an engine to get you to accept an EULA/License String – but in the main all they do is copy the .APP file to the Applications Folder. Neat. Here’s my hit list of applications I’ve downloaded and installed in the three weeks I’ve been a MBP user:

Vienna – http://www.vienna-rss.org/vienna2.php

DivX – http://support.divx.com/

FireFox – http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html

Flip4MAC – http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/flip4mac.mspx

MacICA_OSX – I forget where I downloaded this from now. It’s appears to be no longer around on Citrix’s website. It’s looks and feels like a “Program Neighborhood” for Apple MAC. You create an ICA file with all the right settings, then it gets loaded in the ICA engine. I was however able to find a copy here

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/its/remote/mac.htm

RDC – http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspx

Skype – http://www.skype.com/download/skype/macosx/

uTorrent – http://www.utorrent.com/downloads/mac

VMware Fusion – I think you know where to find this!

Yahoo Messenger – http://messenger.yahoo.com/mac/

ClassicMACFTP – http://www.nchsoftware.com/classic/index.html

On the downside – I notice there’s no native support for .FLV files on a MBP until you find a free player like Eltima’s free player:

http://mac.eltima.com/freeflashplayer.html

That flash support is quite important to me – especially when I create videos. Generally, if you recording the screen and doing narrations and want something better than youtube.com and zoom-ins – your talking .flv formats – unfortunately both MP4 and Windows Media – are far too large to be considered acceptable for streaming. The trouble is finding an on-screen recorder that saves/exports to flash natively. I tried two as an eval – Camtasia for Mac and ScreenFlow for Mac. Neither support .FLV conversions. But out of both them – ScreenFlow seemed to have the best export functions, integrates very nicely with the iSight camera – and allows you to re-size the video during the export process – just not into a .flv format. SO, it looks like I will have to find some application that takes MP4/Mov/. Personally, Screenflow wins – and what’s more its on $99 compared to Camtasia for Mac which was $149, but is currently $99 on special offer.

So as you can see FLV support beyond the web-browser is a little bit thin on the ground with a MBP.

My move over to Mac hasn’t been painless. I’m still struggling with keyboard shortcuts which mainfests itself on a number of levels. Firstly, there isn’t a direct mapping of popular keystrokes in PC to Mac. For example in Windows to copy is [ctrl]+c, whereas in mac is it’s MacKey+C. Where that becomes tricky is when your in a RDP/ICA session – and you want to cut and paste data from one to the other. You find yourself having to use two different keystrokes. Secondly, is when you need to send from a MBP keyboard particular keystrokes to a RDP/ICA session. For example:

F11 – which is used to confirm things like a reboot in ESXi

Alt+F1 – which is used to get to the Tech Support Mode in ESXi

Insert Mode – which is used when I use vi to edit text…

Don’t get me wrong the keystrokes are there – sometimes I’ve had to google-wack them – other times, I’ve had to change the keystroke options (say in the HP ILO) to get the right keystroke sent.

The other slight annoyance is sometimes the keystrokes aren’t consistent. For example MacKey+ is usually the thing that replace [ctrl]+ in most case. But if you want to kill ping from the Terminal application its [ctrl]+c.

I guess the easiest thing to say is Mac is just different, and different takes time to get used to.

Well, last week I made the leap into the great unknown. After using flavours of Windows since version 1.0 – I decided I’d had enough. So from Birmingham Airport (UK) I bought MacBook Pro 13″ with copy of Microsoft Office for Mac. Don’t worry, I haven’t completely lost it – and won’t be becoming a MacBore or LinuxBore. But I wanted to report my experiences and tips and tricks along my journey of coming to grips with the new environment.

Why the change of all those years of being a “Window Guy”. Well, I have this idea that our relationship with technology/ISVs is like a marriage. When you first get married your in the flush of your first love – and sure there are bad things about the new person in your life, but you overlook and forgive those. Then as the years roll-by those bad things seem to become more and more noticeable. The way they do the dishes or slurp their tea start to grate. So it is with technology. When you first get your new toy you love the thing, but as the days/weeks/months/years/decades(?) roll-by the technology begins to really annoy you. That’s how things ended up with me Microsoft Windows on a PC. I got to the point that whenever I saw “Not responding” when Explorer opened or when I changed an IP address – that I want to put my fist through the monitor. So in truth my decision change was as much an emotional one, as a technical one. My relationship with Microsoft had reach ‘irretrievable breakdown’ – we weren’t really talking to one another in the end. Now we are firmly in the divorce courts of technology, with the lawyers fighting over the spoils. I’m sure that in 15 years time I will be saying the same about Apple….

So what have my experience been so far? Well, I’ve tried my best to do everything in the last week using the Mac. In truth in the first couple of days I spent most of my time copying files, setting up email accounts, importing bookmarks, setting up my iPOD with iTunes (which is much, much better on the Mac!). I wanted to avoid running Windows applications as much as possible. Although I have downloaded and installed VMware Fusion 3 to run Windows XP. To be honest it was more because I wanted to see what its like – than really needing to. Most of what I need to can be done with the Mac, and I have RDP for Mac, VMware View4 for Safari set-up – so when I do need to get to my remote lab environment I can. I did download the full Citrix ICA Client ‘Program Neighborhood’ (yeah, I know they call it something else now) but in truth that’s mainly for legacy reasons – from here on in I’m going to use VMware View 4 and virtual desktop. My plan is try and get the native PCoIP client running under VMware Fusion – so I can have a PCoIP experience from my Mac. The web-based client support for Mac doesn’t support VMware Fusion.

So, so far so good – what have been the downsides – and challenges yet to overcome?

• Keyboard Strokes - The Mac Keyboard is different but similar to a Window Keyboard. And the instinctive urge to press some conjunction keys is still there – even though there isn’t a 1-2-1 mapping. I’m using the mouse and menus more than I would normally… must print out a page of the keystokes and print it above my desk until the become second nature. This is part made more complicated by my View4, RDP and Citrix sessions having their own keyboard shortcuts – its possible to get in a bit of muddle
• Right-Click Trackpad – a lot of people complain about a lack of right-click environment – to be honest I don’t know why Apple don’t just enable this by default. You have to go into System Preferences, Trackpad and tick of an option called Secondary Click, and ask it to be in the ‘Bottom Right-hand corner’ – and then away you go
• Screen Capture – Apple’s ‘Preview’ comes with its own tools for grabbing parts of the screen. In Windows I used snagit – which is much better – under Fusion. I’m kinda of reluctant to go out and buy a dedicated screen capture utility – but I can see in the long run – I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and purchase – some screen capture/video thing for the Apple…
• Entourage – Is part of MacOrifice. It’s fine as an email client – but I don’t rate as much as Microsoft Outlook. For start I can’t check my hotmail with it, and it doesn’t appear to have RSS Feed support like Microsoft Outlook 2007 did. I quite like all my **** being in one place. I need to do some research on this – so I might be able to find a plug-in for both hotmail/RSS feeds – so I have one place to go. There real problem with Entourage – is despite it being a Microsoft mail client – there is NO import facility for the Outlook PST format. To be honest this was the biggest pain the arse I’ve had so far. The work around is to install Mozilla Thunderbird on the old Windows PC – then use it to import the mail/settings/address book. Once imported (it did take a long time with my 9,000 items!!!) You can then open the mail store in Thunderbird to get to the mail. Each folder in outlook becomes a separate mail file – and you can rename the inbox files to have a inbox.mbox extension – drop them on a removal hard-drive and import them into Entourage.
• UPDATE: I did manage to get my hotmail in Entourage even though MS say you need an extra special hotmail account to do it. I think I’ve had my hotmail account so long it was upgraded to Plus (or some such status) – which meant it worked with Entourage after all. Problem solved…
• iPAQ and Windows Mobile - The Mac has no support for Windows Mobile and Synchronization. That was going to be first step to getting my address book. Nothing doing. You have buy special software to get Windows Mobile enable PDAs to sync with Mac. As is my iPAQ is nearly 4years old. It was one of the first phones to have touch-sensitive screen, wifi, bluetooth and satnav. Anyway, its on its last legs – and I’ve secretly be harbouring a desire for an iPhone. My provider, VodaFone get the 3G enable version of the iPhone in the new year which is weeks away. So I plan to switch away. I also plan to get the TomTom cradle for the iPhone. It’s pricey, but boosts the GPS signal and comes with all the usual hands-free, mute music for turn-by-turn instructions and phone calls.
• Pricey Accessories – Before I bought the MacBook Pro I took a look at some of the accessories – and more importantly their prices. You know, look I’m prepared to pay the mark-up for the MacBook Pro. It’s a quality product blah, blah, blah. But I mean £50 for a fucking mighty mouse – who is hell Apple kidding? £20 quid for DisplayPort to VGA adapter? The piss-de-le-resistence is of course, the £1K+ LED 30” inch cinema display – a must have item for all “creative professional” (my arse!) look I know LED will be great, but I’m sticking with my old HP SVGA flatpanel and VGA connector for the time being. I almost bought the wireless keyboard and mighty-rip-off mouse on the apple store when I was in Norway the other week. Unfortunately, every time I selected a patrotic “British” keyboard, the basket updated it to a German keyboard. Are they trying to tell me something here…?