After trying Livejournal for a couple years, I am going to be moving my blog to Wordpress. It's got a lot more tools and addons, it's mobile-friendly and its not full of Russian spam. Sorry, LJ, its been fun!

My domain name will be forwarding there soon, but in the meantime, here it is:  alexkaloostian.wordpress.com

I have been working off of a 13" MacBook Pro for about 2 1/2 years. I recently decided I wanted to lighten my load, so I opted for an 11" MacBook Air. A lot of people thought I was nuts, and I had my reservations myself. But it was a refurb, and it was a really good deal, so I was confident I could return it or resell it if I couldn't stand using it.

Well, I have been working with my new MacBook Air 11" for a week and a half now, and I wanted to share some thoughts because a lot of people have asked me. Full disclosure: I have a MacMini at home that I keep my considerable music, movies and photo library on. I also have MobileMe so I can connect to it remotely from just about anywhere. So this review will be written about the MacBook Air as a second computer.

The short review: 9 stars out of ten. Very, very happy with my decision. So heres the longer review:

Size & weight: huge difference. Obviously its slim and light, but you don't know just how much of a difference that 2 or 3 pounds makes until you carry it around. i can quite comfortably rest it on my lap in any position, or even hold it with one hand and type on it while I carry it around. I tried out a 13" air and it actually felt too big. :P its a perfect size for opening up on a train or plane and I can carry it under my arm and barely feel it. My poor iPad, I havent used it since I got this thing.
Battery: a lot of people are moaning that the battery in Apple's latest laptops are shorter, but it's mostly due to Apple changing the way they measure. I can easily get 6 hours of heavy work off of the 11", often much more. It must be using some sort of new, or at least effective, manner of throttling: I noticed the other day I had 2 hours left, but after reading 2 hours of PDFs, I was up to 6 hours left!  Also, it's nice that the AC adapter is the smallest one yet, barely bigger then the original iPod adapter.


Power: Sure, the processor is still last-gem, but I dont notice a slowdown in anything I do. I can even run Final Cut and Motion at "acceptable" speeds. I sure wouldn't want it as my main editing station but it's more than enough for a quick comp. Even Warcraft runs better than my MacBook Pro! It has the same graphics chip as the last-gen MacBook Pros, which was one gen better than mine. Heck, with a lot of people complaining about the graphics in the latest 13", this might be BETTER at graphics than that.

Storage space: the speed and battery life of the SSD more than makes up for the diminished storage space. I got the upgraded 128GB model, and after installing Adobe Master Collection CS5, Final Cut Studio*, a whole host of other commonly used apps, my whopping big 20GB Warcraft folder, AND syncing my iDisk locally, I still have 60GB left. Thats more than enough for storing stuff day to day, as long as I keep it relatively clean.

*I did put Final Cut Studio's 50GB library of extras on an external drive, But I use them so rarely it's not an issue. If Im using Final Cut Studio at all, its to edit something or create something original in Motion. If I really need the library items, templates or music looks, I can plug in the drive.


Screen: As the 11" screen is higher res, its actually bigger than my 13" pro was, so I don't suffer there, either. Im actually surprised: the whole thing doesn't feel smaller than my 13" did. I don't feel limited or like Im looking at everything through tunnel vision. Im quite happy all around.


There are a few down sides: I miss the light up keyboard a lot. I haven't missed an ethernet port yet, but I think I will. And I miss Firewire. Not for plugging in drives as much –all my FW drives have USB as well– but I miss it for migrating and transferring large libraries via Target Disk Mode. It's not something I have to do a lot, so it's tolerable to copy everything to a drive and then to the laptop. But if the next Air has Thunderbolt, I'm SO there. I also have not missed Ethernet yet, but I probably will. A $29 adaptor will fix that. Again, something that could be potentially fixed with Thunderbolt.


So, can the 11" MacBook Air serve as a competent laptop? Absolutely, provided you have another Mac, or at least an external drive to store all your stuff if you're a packrat. I'd have to think twice if this was my main machine, though. Even with an external drive and a second monitor, its not QUITE up to snuff for long editing jobs or storing my whole iTunes library. But how many of you wouldn't have a second machine these days? 60GB left over is plenty to throw a few movies on for a long trip. I would definitely recommend the 128GB drive though, and NO Mac should have 2GB of RAM, so get the upgraded version because you cant add RAM later. Thats a bummer, too. But you don't HAVE to order online: Apple Stores carry this particular maxed-out model with the bigger drive, more ram and the faster Processor. cash-n-carry.

Is your Mac taking too long to wake from sleep? Or do you have a MacBook Air (jealous) with a small drive and you need all the storage space you can get? Leopard & Snow Leopard now save the contents of your RAM to disk before sleeping so if your computer loses power, you won't lose the contents of memory. Here's how to change it:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3
"0" is traditional sleep: the contents of memory will not be saved to disk, and power will continue flowing to your RAM, to maintain what's in it when you wake up. If your computer loses power or your battery dies, you will lose all unsaved changes and you will have to re-boot your Mac.

"1" is hibernate mode: Memory will be saved to disk and power will NOT continue flowing to your RAM. This will take even longer to sleep and wake but your computer will use even less power when asleep. Note that the sleep image file on your hard drive will be as large as your installed RAM: if you have 4 GB of RAM, thats 4GB saved to your disk. That's a lot if you have only a 64GB SSD.

"3" is now the default for laptops: this will keep power flowing to your RAM, and save the contents of memory to disk in case your power goes out.

After changing this setting (at your own risk! Don't blame me if you lose unsaved changes when your battery dies!) You should delete the sleep image to reclaim that hard drive space. Delete /var/vm/sleepimage as an administrator and you're done.

There are even more tricks you can apply if you read the man page for the pmset command, for example, this setting can be configured differently if you are on a power supply or battery, and automatically switch, or you can disable sleep if a remote process is logged in, like screen sharing or ssh. Cool.

I only just heard of this, and I haven't tried it out myself yet, but SO MANY people ask me if there is a decent way to practice for Apple's certifications tests, I'm posting it here. Peachpit has created their first (of many, they claim) study guide apps for iPhone/iPad. This one is for the Snow Leopard 101 course and features questions & answers right from the book, which should be similar in content and difficulty to Apple's certification tests. Support Essentials. Check it out at the link below. $5.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/test-yourself-for-mac-os-x/id412646736?mt=8

Last year we discovered that OS X Server 10.6 has a teensy tiny issue where it corrupts the Kerberos passwords for all users when restoring an OpenDirectory archive. Yikes. I posted a script that will fix the issue, basically deleting all the Kerberos AuthenticationAuthority attributes for all users above a designated user ID and replacing them with a new password.

I have been shown a much simpler fix: If you have restored from an OD archive and your users can no longer authenticate with Kerberos, type the following in the terminal on your server:

sudo slapconfig -kerberize -f diradmin

Where "diradmin" is your directory admin name. Then authenticate with your sudo password and your diradmin password. This will generate a NEW Kerberos AuthenticationAuthority attribute for every user with their existing password. Thats it, no step 2. The only catch is, it also keeps the old, broken AuthenticationAuthority attribute; you'll see both if you dscl. But it has been working beautifully for us so far.

I often get questions about keeping the clock in sync when booting between Mac and Windows on a Boot Camp equipped Mac. Here's a pretty simple article that can help:

http://kdmurray.net/2009/11/01/fixing-bootcamp-clock-issue-on-windows-7/

Every time I teach an OS X class, I like to mention a few utilities I can't live without. With the Mac App store coming, it will now be even easier to find and download apps.. and I wanted to take the time to review the apps that I cant life without at the moment. I hope you enjoy some of them too. So here are some of them, in no particular order:


You love OS X, but every once in awhile theres some little setting that drives you crazy and you wish you could change it. Like the TimeMachine backup interval time. Or showing invisible items in the finder. This Preference Pan collects dozens of secret settings in one clean, easy clickable interface. Free!


Proton Pack Server
An easy way to create .plist files for ASR Multicast streams. Free!



Visor
Hide your Terminal app and call it up with any hotkey you want. Free!

As you may or may not have heard, Apple announced Friday that come January 31 2011, they will no longer be selling the Xserve. A lot of people have been asking me questions so I wanted to give my opinion on the matter.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Apple, and I don't know any more than you do. Honest. This is just my speculation based on past experience.

I think this is a dumb move. But I don't have all the facts- for one thing, I don't know how many Xserves Apple has been selling, or what their profit is on them. A lot of the people who have been complaining to me about this don't own Xserves and have no plans to buy them, so theyre just blowing hot air. On the other hand, there are a lot of people out there who DO, and they are understandably concerned.

I truly believe Apple is still committed to OS X Server as a platform. Remember, this is Apple, not– they don't make premature decisions. This is the company that kept selling AppleTVs for years even though there was no interest in them. And APple only just released the Mac Mini Server this year, to lots of attention. Apparently they have been selling very, very well. Apple would not have announced a new server product if they knew they'd be ditching the whole server platform.

Also, Apple recently contracted Unisys to push them into the corporate sector. This is the biggest news I've ever heard about Apple's commitment to business and it gives me a lot of confidence.

So where does that leave us? The Mac Mini server and Mac Pro server really are good, if not better solutions, for the majority of people. Lets break it down:

Xserve	MacPro
Less powerful	More powerful
More expensive	Better value
2 expansion slots	3 expansion slots
3 drive bays	4 drive bays
1U	6U
hardware monitoring of fans, temp, drives
Lights Out Management
user-replaceable parts
Serial port
redundant power supplies

So Apple has some upgrades to do to the next MacPro to bring it up to par. It doesn't look like we will be seeing a 1U replacement, so get used to making more room in your rack, but the MacPro is better performance for better money, only helped by the economy of scale. The big loss is lights out management and hardware monitoring. that would be pretty easy to add to the next MacPro model, no? We can hope.

Also, this is now the only Mac you can put RAID and Fiber cards into, so if you have an XSAN or you are thinking of building one, make room for these giant towers or buy some Xserves while they last! You can move cards from an Xserve into a MacPro.

Don't need the power or space that a MacPro takes up? how about a Mini?

Xserve	Mac Mini
Better power, more RAM	Less power, only 8GB RAM
3.25" drives	2.5" drives
3 drives	2 drives
2 expansion slots	no expansion
more power	better power
more fan noise & airflow needs	better cooling
1U	2 units per 1U
redundant power	integrated power
user replaceable parts	user replaceable nothing (except RAM)

People might initially scoff at a Mac Mini as a server, but think about it: how many times have you REALLY needed redundant power supplies and lights out management? How many times have you swapped out a motherboard? Yes, some of you have, and do that all the time. Some of you run TV stations and need 60 servers in your data center. And to you people, sorry, you're kinda screwed. But the vast majority of Apple's customers are small businesses without these kind of needs or expertise. If their server goes down, they bring it to the Apple store and lose a days worth of work and deal with it. For these people, the Xserve is overkill and the Mac Mini is ideal.

The Mac Mini doesn't have as much processing power, I know. But how much power do you really need? Look at your CPU graphs in ServerAdmin. LDAP, File Sharing, NAT, DHCP, DNS; these things aren't processor intensive, they are storage intensive. Get a Promise SmartStor or buy external storage and connect it to one MacPro with a RAID card and let the Minis do everything else. We NetRestore dozens of Macs every day with a Mac Mini in each of our offices. For the price of one Xserve you could have 1 Mini for OpenDirectory, 1 Mini for AFP, and 1 mini for Mail, Apache, etc. Worried about spare parts? Spend $700 more and you have an entirely new Mini you can keep as a spare. Restore from a backup and its back up & running faster than replacing the parts in an Xserve yourself.

So to sum up: I believe Apple still has a phenomenal server OS solution they are still committed to. For the majority of you, the Mac mini is a better server solution anyway. If you need massive power for video transcoding, number crunching or Final Cut Server, the MacPro is a better value, at the cost of shelf space. And for the rest.. sorry, you're screwed. Lets cross our fingers that we see something new next quarter.

The Final Cut Server user app is a Java app, so it behaves a bit differently from other Mac .app's. For one thing, it doesn't like being shared by multiple users on the same mac: this is why it wants to default to your Desktop, and not your Applications folder. If you save it to your Applications folder, and another user logs into the mac and tries to launch it, it won't run.

Uninstalling is a bit tricky as well, simply deleting the app icon isn't enough. You have to delete the Cache files and Java as well, then you can re-download the app from the server. I have created a handy little Automator action to do all of this for you. It will look for any instance of an app called "Final Cut Server in the user's home folder or the Applications folder and delete them, as well as Java cache and final cut server cache. You can run it as-is or dissect it in Automator and alter it to suit.

here it is.

If you are on a tight budget, www.macsales.com still offers the best selection of drives and accessories at the lowest price, but if you want the best, the best just got cheaper.

Being a video editor, I have needs for tons of storage. Plus, I'm always troubleshooting and imaging machines in classrooms and on the road, so I need lots of portable storage. It's bad enough I have to travel with 4 or 5 hard drives; I can't stand carrying around a tangle of wires and power bricks too. I have raved about G-technology before, but they got bought by Hitachi last year and I was afraid they would lose their luster and become just another tarnished name badge on a mediocre product.

I have good news- not only is G-tech still making kickass stuff, but they have just released my new favorite hard drive.


This is, as you can read for yourself, the new G-Drive Mobile. It finally fulfills everything I wanted in a portable hard drive: its quiet, its built like a tank, and its sexy. Also, it has 2 FireWire800 ports: this is a big deal now that most Macs only come with one port: I need a drive with 2 ports so i can daisy-chain. its been hard even finding Firewire Drives any more, and nearly impossible to find any with two ports: and most that do, have one 800 and one 400 port.*

2 Firewire800s, and a USB port. nice. Also, its bus-powered: no power brick necessary. G-tech DID have a drive like this previously, the G-drive mini. I've got one, albeit in it;'s older incarnation with 1 800 and 1 400. But My complaint was the styling- it was all sharp edges and heat dissipating ribs, and it scraped the holy hell out of anything else it shared my laptop bag with. The G-drive mobile is smooth, curvy and very, very nice. And a better price, to boot: $150 for 500GB. Pricey compared to USB drives, but reasonable for Firewire, and much cheaper than their stuff used to be. I'll probably be getting a second one and retiring all my old drives soon.


*Why is FireWire better than USB?

1. USB and USB2 are master/slave: the CPU has to handle the copying of data. Firewire is peer-to-peer: two devices can transfer data without needing a CPU, so your computer performance won't be impacted during a large transfer. Even though it is 400mb/sec, Firewire400 is consistently faster than USB2 at 480mb/sec, and FireWire800 is obviously faster still.

2. Also, being peer-to-peer means you can do things like boot into target disk mode and troubleshoot a Mac without booting the OS.

3. Firewire provides more power over the bus: some larger USB hard drives require a power brick to run, but you can power 1, 2 or even more FireWire hard drives over the same port.