You might want to hold off on the unless you’re already experiencing problems like some new MBP users are. My latest not-so-scientific numbers show its a risky bet.

Check out my older post on the topic…

The graph is basically the number of positive to negative comments made on MacRumors.com.

Some totally useless statistics…

Apple released the 10.5.5 update the other day and while debating whether or not to run the update I threw together this graph. It’s basically the number of positive/negative comments on MacRumors for each point release of OS X from 10.4 and 10.5 to-date.

Anyway, while not the best reception for a release, 10.5.5 is tracking to be pretty average (46% being average and 10.5.5 at 50% as of today). I’m still at 10.5.2 as I skipped 10.5.3 because of the complaints and then just forgot to update since everything has been running so smoothly. It’s interesting to note the bad run from 10.4.6-10.4.9. I wonder if there were internal issues at Apple at the time or something to correlate it with.

Note: the 10.4.8 story was combined with the 10.3.9 release for whatever thats worth.

So, I finally decided to clean up this site and upgrade WordPress. Unfortunately, that took lot more effort than I ever anticipated. Apparently, 2.5 was a major restructuring of how things work. That would be fine for the average user but I’ve made many customizations and optimizations over the years and it took quite a bit of recoding to make it work in the new system.

The good news is that the new system has a much better layout for customizing pages that I can see will make upgrading in the future much easier. Everything seems isolated in the themes folder under your specific theme. I still have a few things that I should probably clean up in the main directory but, I’m already 20 hours or more in and I don’t feel like coding anymore. At least comments, rss, etc… are all working again. Although, there will probably be a few missing layouts…

So I thought it might be a bright idea to illustrate what has to be one of the more over complicated HTPC (Home Theatre PC aka. PVR, Tivo thing, etc…) setups ever, mine… Ok, probably not, I’m sure plenty of people have crazier setups. But, it does surprise me how reliable it has been, even with so many computers involved. So how does it work? Magic! Ok, maybe not but something like this…

SageTV controls most of it. But, after trying numerous 1394 (a.k.a. FireWire) cards I never managed to get Windows XP, the Scientific-Atlanta SA-3250HD STB, and Charter Cable’s crappy signal to get along. Magically (Apple did create the standard for 1394) it just works without anything special on a Mac. So, FireWire is plugged in to the Mac, Sage TV controls it, all HD and digital channels go through the Mac and get recorded to the main media server/raid as raw MPEG-2 TS (transport streams). SD signals get recorded directly to the RAID through a Hauppauge PVR150 in the Windows box. All channels SD and HD are controlled through the 1394 (no infrared blaster silliness).

The great thing about this set is you get pure digital recording and playback all the way to the display. Digital cable -> Firewire digital files -> HDMI TV. The only other systems that work like this are DirectTV TiVo, some dedicated cable/sat. company PVR’s and Cable Card based systems. Unfortunately, after many years of unencrypted goodness, earlier this year Charter turned on 5C encryption on all HD pay channels. Note 5C is the digital encryption for the HDMI not the encryption that protects which channels you get which I believe is DigiCipher 2.

So what does the future hold? FIOS TV and the Hauppauge HD PVR Model 1212 likely. Unfortunately, this may mean losing pure digital recording/playback. But, I would regain recording of all HD channels.

The future is more likely the Internet and Bit Torrent. It’s really too bad for the studios that downloading bit torrent TV shows are often higher quality, more convenient and let you build collections as compared to the ‘legitimate’ offerings (Hulu, NBC online etc… and even recording SD/HD TV from cable/sat). But, this is a rant for another time…

Update: For completeness I added my parents Mac Mini to the full diagram (click the image), it runs Front Row Apple’s not so good PVR software, its slow over the Internet, but I believe that might be something about Samba. She can watch movies via the remote mount to my RAID and I put aliases in her Movies folder in her home directory.

So being the lucky guy I am, both my parents and I both have FIOS 20Mbit Bi-directional internet connections (actually they may have a slightly lower tier). So after the 50th time I had the conversation “You should really see this movie, tv show, etc…”, I got to thinking it might be cool to connect our networks in order to allow them to share my media library/HTPC.

Unfortunately, getting my father to reconfigure his home network firewall is pretty much a non-starter. So I had to find a more creative solution.

So here it is, a quick how to get Samba connected over a reverse ssh Tunnel on OS X.

SSH Tunnel
sudo ssh -N -p 222 -c 3des user@domain.com -L 222/127.0.0.1/139>

-N detaches terminal for ssh tunnels
-p is the port - you probably don’t want to use 22 since you already use that
-c encryption type - 3des is the default blowfish is faster if CPU time is an issue
remote user/domain

(direct from the man page)

-L [bind_address:]port:host:hostport
Specifies that the given port on the local (client) host is to be
forwarded to the given host and port on the remote side. This
works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the local side,
optionally bound to the specified bind_address. Whenever a con-
nection is made to this port, the connection is forwarded over
the secure channel, and a connection is made to host port
hostport from the remote machine.

Ok, now you have a tunnel, the next step is mounting the remote drive.

Mount command
mount -t smbfs //user:password@127.0.0.1:222/remoteshare /mountpoint


To make this run at login, put it in a text file, chmod it executable and then put it in your login items.

Great! Final step, how to make the connection persistant. Enter launchd.

`launchd` is a unified, open source service management framework for starting, stopping and managing daemons, programs and scripts. It was introduced with Mac OS X v10.4/Darwin v8.0, and is licensed under the Apache License.

Unfortunately, you need to make a launchd plist and launchd is a bit of a bitch, so its much easier to just go get Lingon by Peter Borg it’s free, it works and you won’t have to learn launchd.

Now you have a great persistent remotely mounted Samba title over SSH.

Notes:
1. The mount command is a simple terminal script, but you may need to put a delay in the script if the connection isn’t up before the login runs the mount script. There is probably a way to get launchd to handle this but I haven’t spent the time to figure it out. So if the session disconnects it will automatically reconnect but not remount the drive.

2. The 1.83 GHz Mac mini doesn’t seem to have enough CPU to playback and receive HD content over the SSH tunnel (works fine if you download, then play). I may try to use blowfish to see if it improves playback. Normal SD divx/h.264 seems to be just fine.

I’m interested to know if anyone has any suggestions to improve this setup.

So if you ever wondered what happens if you screenshare in a loop, here is a nice fun picture =)

People will argue until the end of time whether or not widescreen is better than traditional 4:3 monitors. Personally, I believe most webpages and most documents are much taller vertically than they are wide. So you want the most vertical space possible. I’ve heard the argument that with widescreen you can have two vertical documents simultaneously. But, nothing prevents you from having to vertical documents with even more vertical space on non-widescreen monitor. 1600 wide is really no different than 1680 wide when viewing two documents at once.

So at the end of the day, what really matters is how many pixels get on screen and for any user who’s been around since the days of CRTs, for the most part widescreen has been a big downgrade not an upgrade. If you are buying a monitor for the first time in today’s market I can see how widescreen would not seem like a downgrade. But since most CRT users came from using either 1280×1024 or 1600×1200 the equivalent widescreen models have been downgrades.

Historical Upgrade path: Resolution Pixels 640×480 307200 800×600 480000 1024×768 786432 1280×1024 1310720 1600×1200 1920000

Widescreen upgrade path: Resolution Pixels 1280×800 1024000 1440×900 1296000 1400×1050 1470000 1680×1050 1764000

I would argue that most users who had CRTs at 1280×1024 looking to upgrade to a LCD would have preferred 1600×1200 rather than 1680×1050. Unfortunately, widescreen monitors were much cheaper in comparison. Only recently in the last couple years have 1980×1200 become available at consumer prices. So I would argue that for the most part widescreen monitors have been downgrades rather than upgrades for anyone who has had a high-resolution CRT.

More recently 1920×1200 models have come out and they are still pretty pricey, some examples of very high rez monitors…

Todays higher resolutions: Resolution Pixels
1920×1200	2304000
2560×1600	4096000

For me, when it comes down to it, maximum pixels on the screen means more to me than anything else. So 1.92MP is better than 1.76MP any day of the week, so i’ll be sticking with 1600×1200 until I decide to upgrade to a 1920×1200 model.

So as a techie, my biggest complaints on the iPhone (besides the inevitable scratches that will drive everyone nuts to the point of class action lawsuits) are…

1. No 3G high speed network support. EDGE is 2.5G and barely acceptable for the type multimedia this phone is capable of.
2. No expansion. A simple SD card slot would make your 4G unlimited gig…
3. Battery not removable.

So I got to thinking about it and so far no one has said how long the ‘exclusive’ Cingular thing will be. It could be as short as 6 months maybe a year at the most.

The second thing I thought of was, hey this is standard apple operating procedure. Release a product that is amazing in every way but a few, then 6-12months later ‘blow everyone’s mind’ by adding all the missing features and forcing everyone to upgrade =)

So the lack of HSDPA/EVDO is because 6-12 months later they’ll announce ‘iPhone Pro’ with a removable battery and HDSPA and twice the memory or SD card slot or similar. It will also fix the crippling xyz bug that all the first gen owners are inevitably going to complain about (buzzing, hissing, or some other odd glitch that really drives 1% of the users mad).

Anyway, i’ll probably wait for the 2nd gen, cause my Treo700p on EVDO does 95% of the functionality with 1% of the stability and 5% of the fineness.

My 2 cents…

So I was in Fry’s Electronics today and I wanted a 16foot USB Repeater cable. Its basically a 16 foot USB cable (the maximum the spec. allows) and a little bus powered hub on the end. Anyway, after searching the “USB Stuff” isle for about a minute I realized it was on another isle. No problem, ah…the “USB Cable” isle, hmm product 1. $39.99, ah another one, crap $39.99. I was also looking for a plain extension. 10Ft $12.99…ouch…

So after about 5 minutes of digging, I give up and start wondering again. Out of the corner of my eye on a random isle, ah, mixed in with the Firewire cables, a few lone USB cables. Found the SAME 16foot extender $14.99 and the same one bundled with a 10foot and a 6foot cable for $19.99!

Aye…I feel sorry for all the poor saps who just pay full price…

Check out the picture, yellow is HALF the price of blue!

Canon Pixma IP8500 and the Epson R800

This article is a tad old, but its still very relevant. I recently decided that my cheap ass Canon S520 (paid $50 refurb at Frys) is lacking compared to modern printers. I also recently started doing more photography and decided it might be nice to have a nice printer. Tom’s Hardware did a nice review of the 3 current $300-400 range printers from Canon, Epson and HP. Anyway, so sum up…

The Canon and the Epson were very close and better overall than the HP. The Canon IP8500 had the edge in Speed. The Epson R800 has its edge in better Quality and print Longevity (uses pigment based inks instead of dye based). The Epson also had a couple little features I think might be nice the canon doesn’t, roll paper, firewire, and better fine art paper selection. The Canon on the other hand has pictbridge (lets you print from memory cards), duplex printing (double sided) and a user replaceable printhead. The Epson print head is not user replaceable, so if its damaged or clogged and can’t be cleared using self-cleaning it needs to be sent in for repair. Although, I hear in the latest models this is less of a concern, I would use your printer occasionally to keep the heads clean and follow the directions when replacing ink. I’ve also heard one of the caveats of any of Epsons printers is that if you switch print qualities they tend to go crazy about head cleaning and in general they tend to be fussy if you don’t use them often.

I hear the Canon prints can have some color variation compared to the Epson’s when viewed in different lighting conditions, as well as they tend to be a bit exaggerated which can make printing portraits (which have subtle skin tones) a little challenging. On the other hand your average pictures will look brighter and more vibriant.

From pcworld’s review, they both seem to have almost identical photo print costs.

A. So if you need the extra speed and want to sacrifice a very small touch of quality for a nice boost in speed, the Canon is your man.

B. If you demand the highest quality and want fade free water resistant archival quality prints on a variety of papers and follow the directions to keep your heads unclogged the Epson is a winner.

After taking a look at some print samples from both printers, its very very close. I would need to have identical prints to really tell you which one is better, but it does look like the Epson has the edge. Its detail from its 1.5picoliter drop size just seems to edge out the 2picoliter drops on the Canon.

I think for most users the feature list will be the deciding factor since they are so close to each other in quality.

P.S. Ok, I take it back, after reading tons of additional reviews I think the less hassle of the Canon is winning over the archival inks of the Epson. They simply clog too often from user reports than I think is worth it to me. I don’t print every day and I don’t want to waste $10 in ink warming my printer up every couple of weeks.