Colin Charles Agenda

I tried running Inkscape and it wouldn’t start. It seems that OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) doesn’t ship X11 any longer, and you have to use XQuartz.

You’re then forced to log out & log back in. Once that is complete, Inkscape and others work again. This problem doesn’t exist with The GIMP any longer as that is now native. Here’s hoping Inkscape moves with the times too.

On OS X Mountain Lion, df now has lots of extra inode information. This is the new default according to the man page (turning on -i). The workaround to get the old df output is simple – just use -P. So df is now aliased as: df -Ph

byte@lovegood~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2   465Gi  237Gi  228Gi    51% 62130995 59797234   51%   /

byte@lovegood~$ df -Ph
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2   465Gi  237Gi  228Gi    51%    /

Much friendlier.

Yesterday I unboxed my new MacBook Air 13″ (full-spec) laptop. I used a USB3 disk to backup via Time Machine the old laptop (which maxed out at USB2), and then did a restore using USB3 last night and today it seems that the laptop is ready to use. This is my first experience with OS X 10.8.2 as well – I was previously on 10.7.5. What did I have to change?

1. I had to re-login to Dropbox, but at least it didn’t have to perform a full sync (there was some data exchanged, but it wasn’t the entire Dropbox folder).
2. I had to re-login to Google Drive. This required a full sync as the old folder was not recognised as an original.
3. I had to make sure settings for iCloud were sane again (as there was a popup).
4. I was asked to re-download MsgFiler and login to the App Store.
5. I had to change the caps lock key to become a control key manually again.
6. The Mail.app version changed and it has to reimport/reindex messages again (this takes some 1 hour 15 minutes on my machine with 33GB of mail).
7. The F4 key for some absurdity goes to an application called Launchpad (that makes it look like an iOS device). I used to have Dashboard on F4 and I much prefer that. It seems the only way without a third party app like Functionflip is to press Fn+F4 to get my Dashboard. I think this is rather silly of Apple – changing muscle memory is difficult.
8. My scroll continued to work from the old settings (I’m no fan of a natural scroll).
9. Time Machine allows you to “inherit backup history”, thus using the same drive that brought you over to be the new backup drive.
10. There now exists a Notification Centre. A little odd thinking that iOS styled notifications have made it here. Do I still need Growl which constantly reminds me that there is a (paid) update waiting?
11. Seems the screensaver and the lock after it has been enabled needs to be re-enabled.
12. CrashPlan would not work as you need Java SE 6 so you’d have to install it – seems odd that Apple decided to drop this rather significant piece of software. Then again, considering who drives ownership, and the recent security scares…
13. sudo tmutil disablelocal – the local backups were enabled again, and I only want Time Machine to have backups to an external disk.
14. I couldn’t print as there needed to be new printer drivers. Many apps had to be updated in the App Store. Gasp.
15. Turn off most notifications with Notification Centre. I really don’t want to be “beeped” when mail comes in.

Initial impressions of the laptop? The machine is fast. It has a lot to do with the SSD disk, as well as the 4-core i7 processor. Out of the box, the battery capacity is meant to be 6700 mAh, though I’m getting 6669 mAh. Battery life is one of the strongest reasons why I picked up a 13″ over a 11″ – I just didn’t want to have to deal with flaky batteries a few years down the road… 7 hours brought down to say 5 is manageable, but 5 hours brought down to say 3 is annoying.

Another reason is resolution. Using a 15″ MacBook Pro to a 13″ MacBook Air has no change in resolution for me either – its all 1440×900. It seems 512MB of virtual RAM is reserved for the Intel graphics card (so I guess this Air won’t suffer the same fate as the first ever MacBook Air which was dog slow in terms of graphics).

Its good to note that the Thunderbolt port is also MiniDisplay compatible – all my old cables work. The only catch is that it is no longer on the left side of the laptop but the right side.

The announcement for Mountain Lion came quite a while ago so I’m definitely late to the game. However one feature that excites me the most is AirPlay to an AppleTV. You can already do this AirPlay mirroring with an iPad (which I’ve not tested before). But why is this big for laptops?

Every respectable hotel I stay at has an iPod/iPhone dock. It may be from Bose or from some third party, but whatever it is, there is a dock. It started as an iPod dock, and now its pretty ubiquitous since many folk have iPhones. Solves the carrying a charger problem as well.

Many hotels I go to now have a DVD player. Some even have a BluRay player. I never use these devices. I watch TV sure, but I don’t carry physical media with me.

Imagine if every hotel room has an AppleTV? No more watching crappy Pay TV but mirroring my screen with some streaming video. Or just watching stuff off VLC (I hope AirPlay works with VLC).

You’ll say that no hotel will want this. But no hotel wanted to provide fast Internet either (long distance calling killed by Skype, Pay TV killed by streaming movies, etc.). It becomes a necessity after a while. In fact many hotels now give you a free Pay TV movie per stay if you’re so inclined.

I wonder if Apple will go into the projector making space? Or if AirPlay technology will be licensed to projector makers. After all, imagine seamless sync of your video out via AirPlay to a projector, with no cables whatsoever? Great for presentations, and one dongle less to carry.