» Apple

My first month with the iPad

danbrinkmann — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:57:16 +0000

First off a little background, other than a first generation iPod nano I have never purchased any apple products, in fact I even uninstalled iTunes and used 3rd party software to sync with windows media player. It would be a fair statement that I have not been Apple friendly.

I pre-ordered my iPad the day it became available on the web, I bought the 32GB model, a dock, and the apple case. The day the iPad was to arrive I sat by my front window and waited for the UPS guy to show up…I even took a picture of him as he was walking up to my front door.

My role of a Solutions Architect at Lewan is one where I spend a fair amount of time taking notes, from webcasts, vendors, training, customers…I deal with a lot of data. In the past I’ve used numerous methods to stay on top of it all: blog posts, rss readers, Twitter, and my least favorite…paper notes in a very nice leather…but heavy, notebook. Enter the iPad…since the iPad arrived I now take most of my notes on the iPad, I check most of my RSS feeds and twitter via the iPad and usually from the comfort of my couch while browsing thru the channels on TV. I do much more consumption of data on the iPad, my laptop is still my preference for creating new data and large amounts of typing. Sure, people say it’s just a different form factor than a laptop, but that makes all the difference. My fiancée didn’t understand why I needed an iPad either and why I wouldn’t just use my laptop…now I have to hide it to keep her off it.

There is just something wrong about using a laptop with the screen opened up in front of a customer…it seems unfriendly, so I’ve always used paper. At home the portability of the iPad means I take it in every room I go in to. The instant on is certainly better than sleep or hibernate on a laptop.

My favorite apps? Evernote, Twitterrific, GoodReader, Citrix Receiver, NewsRack, Sonos, and Netflix! The biggest enabler of the applications I use is their ability to store their configuration online so that moving between devices is seamless.

I think our view of the cloud may be a little fuzzy, at least for now. What the cloud has done for me is made irrelevant the device I use, whether a windows pc, my phone, or my iPad, my data and applications that I use are all there at my fingertips…after all, that is the only value we in IT really hold…applications and data, everything else is waste.

My next purchase for the iPad…a 3G one. It turns out the iPad has changed my life so much I NEED it to be connected to the internet (and my data) from everywhere. Maybe at the end of May I can post another blog post about my first month with the iPad 3G. I heart you iPad…I’m even considering a MacBook now…yikes!

http://www.twitter.com/dbrinkmann

@dbrinkmann

Filed under: Apple, XenApp, XenDesktop

Release: Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac Build 9344

djlaube — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:06:28 +0000

Parallels Desktop was updated back on the 10th, but I just noticed it, so here’s the release notes on what’s been updated and what’s new.

http://kb.parallels.com/8139

Summary

Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac build 9344 includes changes that improve performance and enhance compatibility. This update is highly recommended for all users of Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac.

Obtaining the Update

Updates for Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac are available via:
- Parallels Desktop in-product updater
- Parallels Website

To install the update, do one of the following:
- Choose Check for Updates from the Help menu.
- Choose the update you want to install and click Install.
- Download the update build from the Parallels Website and install it manually.

When you first start your virtual machine after installing the update, please update Parallels Tools in it.

Additional Information

This update includes the following new features and enhancements:

Guest Operating Systems
- Google Chrome OS support.

Performance
- Improved performance of WDDM driver.
- Improved performance of virtual machines with Mac OS X Server v10.6.3 and v10.6.2 guest operating systems installed.
- Compatibility issues with Parallels Internet Security installed in virtual machines running on Nehalem-based iMac and Mac Pro were fixed.
- In a clean installation of Windows XP, My Computer opens without delay.
- Waking Mac OS from sleep doesn’t affect the Coherence performance.
- Improved virtual hard disk caching mode.
- Spotlight indexing enabled in Mac OS can no longer influence Boot Camp virtual machines booting speed.
- Other performance improvements.

Integration
- MacLook fixes and improvements.
- Enhanced appearance of the menu in Crystal mode.
- Correct handling of text copied from Mac OS and pasted to a non-Unicode application in the virtual machine.
- Mac OS Desktop Aliases for Windows applications work properly.
- USB Flash devices and CD/DVD network drives can be opened in virtual machines by double-clicking their icons.
- Shared Windows applications are opened correctly when the virtual machine is suspended or paused.
- Improved support for Windows Live Mail.
- Improved handling of shared folders used by OneNote 2007, ProShow, and Marvin Sketch.

Graphics
- Improved support for OpenGL in Linux virtual machines.
- Improved graphical performance of RealFlow in Ubuntu virtual machines.
- Artifacts like transparent 3D games windows in Ubuntu virtual machines were fixed.
- Improved graphics in Perforce client.
- Switching view modes while working in Autodesk Inventor does not cause graphical artifacts like black screen.
- White areas of the screen no longer appear in the Tin Soldiers Julius Caesar game.
- Problems with video in Internet Explorer 8 when Aero is enabled in Windows 7 were resolved.
- Other graphics improvements.

Network
- Enhanced compatibility with Cisco VPN.
- FTP upload speed increased.

Filed under: Apple

VMware Acquiring Zimbra

djlaube — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:17:50 +0000

I thought this was interesting.. VMware announced Tuesday that they are acquiring Zimbra, makers of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite that is well known for a Linux and Mac OS email server, shared calendar and collaboration software (think Microsoft Exchange but for the Linux & Mac)..

A good write up can be seen over at the Tuaw Blog, here:
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/13/zimbra-and-vmware-get-married-cloud-shaped-kids-expected/

VMware Press Release:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/zimbra.html

Posted in Apple, Virtualization, VMware

Release: VMware Fusion 3.0.1

djlaube — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:07:25 +0000

Fusion 3.0.1 was released this morning. For those running on 3.0, the auto-update-check should let you know that a new version is available. You can download the new version here.

Sure hope this improves the performance with Fusion. I’ve actually switched over to Parallels Desktop v5 as it was way faster for me. I’ll reimport my VM into Fusion and will report back how things look.

Thanks to VMGuy.com for the detailed info below.
As always, here’s the what’s new from the release notes:
VMware Fusion 3.0.1 is a maintenance release of VMware Fusion 3. It is a free upgrade for all VMware Fusion 3 customers, and provides the following enhancements and fixes:

Highlighted New and Improved Features

Faster 3D performance, with Windows Experience scores 20-80% faster than before on Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Reduced time for resuming virtual machines
Supports import of standalone VHD disks into VMware virtual machines
Supports import of Parallels Desktop 5 virtual machines into VMware virtual machines
New 64-bit native networking subsystem to match the 64-bit native engine
PC Migration Agent and Migration Assistant Improvements
Adds support for Windows Server 2008 R2
Installer localized into all supported languages
Shows progress that VMware Tools are being installed in last step of migrating the PC
Does not automatically show the PC Migration Agent application in the resulting virtual machine
Adds only one network adapter to imported PC virtual machines
Unity View Improvements
“Always On” Applications menu defaults to the active virtual machine, and if more than one virtual machine is running, the menu defaults to the one that has focus
Fixes a problem in which the “Always On” Application menu was not populated in some cases
Improves the Aero-in-Unity experience with better interactive performance and easier readability of window titles
Improves Unity view interactive performance for 32-bit Windows applications running on 64-bit Windows operating systems
Ability to dismiss system tray menus in Unity view with only one click
Small mouse wheel scroll increments work correctly in Unity view
Fixes keyboard focus issues in Unity view when multiple windows are opened and closed
Fixes a problem in which Adobe Fireworks, Photoshop, and some other applications would drop out of Unity view, causing the Waiting for Unity window to appear
Fixes a problem in which VMware Fusion would fail when processing very large icons from Windows applications
Fixes a problem in which VMware Fusion could not create Windows applications in the dock for those with really long application names
Shared/Mirrored Folders Improvements
Outlook 2007 preview works with Mirrored Folders enabled
Applications no longer crash when saving exceedingly long path and file names with mapped drives
Saving files in shared folders with a PC using ZoneAlarm antivirus software no longer causes Windows to fail
WDDM (Windows Vista and Windows 7) Graphics Improvements
Windows Experience graphics scores are 20-80% better than VMware Fusion 3.0
Greatly improved HD video playback for Windows Vista and Windows 7
Older games (including Diablo II, Homeworld, and others) play now on Windows Vista and Windows 7
Windows Media Player no longer stretches video
Fuzzy text in Windows Aero is fixed
Interactive performance on ATI video cards with Aero is greatly improved in combination with Mac OS X 10.6.2
Windows 7 no longer boots to an incorrect resolution

General Graphics Improvements

Fixes fuzzy text in WPF applications
Improved 3D performance
Linux Improvements
Adds support for Ubuntu 9.10 32-bit and 64-bit editions, including Easy Install and Unity view
Fixes choppy sound problems with newest Linux guests with kernel version 2.6.30+
Fixes Easy Install problems when double quotes were used in password
Improves Tools support for latest 2.6.z kernels
FreeBSD Improvements
Prebuilt modules for FreeBSD 8.x
Mac OS X Server Improvements
Faster boot times for Mac OS X Server guests
Other Fixes and Improvements
Multicore support for Windows 7 works correctly for all editions of Windows 7. Previously it did not work for Windows Home Premium, Home Basic, and Starter editions
Fixes a performance problem in which Spotlight would continually search the Mac for virtual machines when the Virtual Machine Library was left open, causing slow downs
Fixes a problem in which the VMware Tools included with VMware Fusion 2.0.5 would not be updated correctly
Fixes a problem in which it was not possible to use a CD drive on certain hardware-specific versions of Mac OS X 10.6.1. This is also fixed by upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.2
Fixes a problem in which the ThinPrint driver would cause printing problems in 64-bit Windows Boot Camp partitions
Favorite virtual machine opens correctly when launching VMware Fusion 3
Contains a fix for Link State Propagation for bridged networking that previously failed, in some cases, after installing VMware Fusion 3.0
Fixes a problem in which you could not switch Spaces desktops away from a full-screen virtual machine if the Full Screen view title bar was hidden
Fixes miscellaneous memory leaks in the VMware Fusion UI and during AutoProtect snapshots
Speeds up navigation in the Virtual Machine Library when you have 10 or more virtual machines
Removes console log spew by VMware Fusion Helper
In the Preview window, the View mode buttons show enabled and selected state
Fixes black flash when suspending a virtual machine in Single Window view
Virtual Machine Library and Preview window previously had poor quality for European language users

Posted in Apple, VMware

Sharing an External Drive Between a PC and a Mac, exFAT Discussion, Results

Lewan PS Admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:46:54 +0000

I bought a new external 500GB USB drive for my laptop, which happens to be a Mac that I also run Windows 7 in a Virtual Machine. I wanted to be able to use this external drive on my Mac to store files such as larger Virtual Machine’s, software, etc while at the same time keeping the ability to be able to read this drive from a Windows machine without installing any software on the Windows machine. This lesson shows how exFAT as well as other format types stacked up for this purpose and what my final result was.

Why this Post?

I began to Google for my solution which brought up a ton of forum and blog posts that had different ideas. Thus the reason for this lesson so that someone might benefit from what I tried, as I know the ideas and things tried by others that I found were useful to me.

Why Not Use NTFS?

I’m currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.1 which can read NTFS volumes but not write to them natively. So I started to investigate other file system types to see what might work the best.

Why Not Use FAT32?

The USB drive that I bought actually came preformatted with a FAT32 file system. I thought this might work great, however I started copying a 10GB Viirtual Machine file to the drive and it immediently failed with an error. A quick search turned up something which I haven’t had to deal with in a long time… FAT32 filesystem has a 4GB file size limitation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT32#FAT32 So, that definately won’t work for what I’m trying to do as I have a ton of files (VM files, ISO’s, etc) that are larger than 4GB.

What about exFAT?

I stumbled across the new exFAT file system (also referred by some as FAT64) in some blogs when searching how to share an external drive between a Mac and PC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT It sounded like the possible answer. exFAT is a newer file system that can be used by the newer versions of Windows (e.g. my Windows 7 VM) but the question remained, can Snow Leopard read the exFAT file system with out a lot of work? A lot of blogs didn’t think so but none that I found actually tried it. So, let’s give it a shot!

New Blank Drive

Here’s my new blank drive ready to be formatted with whatever filesystem I’d like. Let’s try exFAT.

Here are my options under Windows 7. Since I only have 1 disk, I can only choose "New Simple Volume".

Beginning the New Simple Volume Wizard.

Choosing the volume size, which we’ll allocate the full space.

Assigning the drive letter. In this example, we’ll use "E".

Choosing the exFAT File System type.

Changing the volume label so I can identify the drive.

Summary screen for the new exFAT file system.

exFAT in Disk Manager

Here’s the newly formatted volume in Disk Management. Everything looks good so far.

exFAT Drive – AutoPlay Options

Here are the autoplay options when I plugged the newly formatted exFAT drive in. Notice you can use this new filesystem for backup and for ReadyBoost, just like a NTFS volume can.

Connecting exFAT Drive to a Snow Leopard Mac

I think this screenshot says it all. The Mac didn’t know what to do with this drive and wanted me to "initialize" it — which would erase everything on the drive if I proceeded with that option. I selected "ignore" and that’s basically where trying to use a exFAT drive on a Mac stops. I searched numerous forum posts and blogs and there just isn’t a good solution yet. Perhaps sometime in the future, I’m sure we’ll be able to use exFAT.

What was the final solution?

Since I really wanted the ability to use my drive on a Windows machine, I went back to NTFS. It’s a great filesystem and I figured if I could get my Mac to beable to read and write a NTFS filesystem, that would work great. I ran across basically 2 solutions that you can use for this.

#1 – Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X – http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
Paragon looked like it would work great so I downloaded and installed the trial version off their website. Performance seemed good. I was able to now read and write to my NTFS formatted external drives. At only $19.95 (Fall Special right now), it didn’t seem like that bad of an option. Yet, I ran across the other solution on a blog, which is free. So let’s examine that one.

#2 – NTFS-3G for Mac OS X – http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/
NTFS-3G was referred as a Paragon alternative without the cost. So this got me interested. I removed Paragon from the system and installed NTFS-3G. After a reboot, I was able to read/write to my NTFS drives, and without paying anything. Performance in my very simple file transfer tests seemed right on with Paragon’s test results. I copied over 85GB of data to my brand new 500GB external drive, which is formatted with NTFS and everything seems to be working like a champ. I’ve also taken the drive and presented it to my Windows 7 machine and it worked great on there too. The only "gotcha" that I’ve ran across so far is that you need to "Safely Eject this Hardware" from within Windows or you’ll get a complaint by NTFS-3G about data integrity. I’ve usually tried to always remove external drives with that method, so that doesn’t really change anything for me.
The direct link for the free version of NTFS-3G is down on his blog a little bit. It looks like they are releasing a paid version called Tuxera NTFS, but NTFS-3G is still available. As of this writing, the latest version is NTFS-3G 2009.4.4, found here: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/catacombae/NTFS-3G_2009.4.4-catacombae.dmg?use_mirror=

Posted in Apple

DropBox – Online Sync, Backup for Multiple Computers

djlaube — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:09:26 +0000

I found this really useful program called DropBox. It’s another Beta program that’s taking a “cloud” approach to storing files and data. It looks to be for home/SMB use but I’ve found it very useful so far. You can use it on Mac, Windows or Linux and store your files online and sync all of the files between computers (for those Mac users out there, think .Mac or MobileMe functionality, without the Apple pricetag). It also does versioning (for backup sake), as well as un-delete and all that jazz. You can also share files with users by giving them a direct link to folders or files, say for a team project or something.

http://www.getdropbox.com/

Hope it’s useful to you!

Posted in Apple, General Storage, Windows

Creating a Bootable ESXi USB Stick on a Mac OS X

djlaube — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:59:25 +0000

This is a great how-to from Scott Lowe’s blog. It walks you through creating a bootable ESXi USB stick on a Mac.

Great for using ESXi on servers with no hard drives in them and great for learning/seeing ESXi in action.

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/01/08/creating-a-bootable-esxi-usb-stick-on-mac-os-x/

Posted in Apple, VMware

VMware Fusion versus Parallels

djlaube — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:13:40 +0000

I found this PDF comparing Fusion with Parallels. Yes, it’s from VMware, but I like that is has a lot of consumer reviews in it, not just VMware saying that they are the best (which if you do some searching, MANY are saying Fusion rocks over Parallels).

fusion-v-parallels-one-sheet

Posted in Apple, VMware