10.4-10.5.6 Updates Graph

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.

10.5.6 Update

10.4-10.5 Updates Graph

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.

HTPC Setup

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.

FIOS Fiber Connector

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.

Everyones new talking point

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…

Intel Inside

So if you haven’t heard, yesterday 6/6/05 Apple announced they are moving from the PowerPC CPU to Intel based processors. If I hadn’t heard it from the horses mouth (Steve Jobs) and if he didn’t do it at WWDC (their annual World Wide Developers Conference) I wouldn’t have believed it. Its been rumored for more than 10 years, but this time its real.

My good friend Damien wrote an interesting piece you can read here…
Live from WWDC: Apple switches to Intel. What does it all mean? (By Damien Stolarz)

My understanding is that in the short term, nothing is really changing. In the long term there are many industry ramifications, but to the consumer, it really doesn’t matter. It means some faster Mac laptops and a different logo on your CPU.

For the consumer:
1. You will still need to own a Mac to run OS X (according to Damien Stolarz quoting Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller) . Yes, I’m sure there will be interesting hacks to make them work on non-apple machines, but that won’t be supported.
2. Initial non-fat(compiled for both CPU’s) binaries (applications) will run slowly on Intel based macs using “Rosetta” apple’s emulation layer.
3. Interestingly, also according to Damien Stolarz “Schiller said Apple wouldn’t do anything to preclude people running Windows on Intel-based Macs.” Meaning windows fans of the Apple laptops/desktops can run windows.
4. Apple will ship Intel based macs Jun 2006.
5. They will continue to update and create better/faster PPC based machines until at least 2007.

Long run questions:
1. Will it mean cheaper Macs? Unclear, but it will at least allow it to happen if Apple chooses to.
2. Will it mean lower quality support from apple? Unclear, but bigger markets are harder and more expensive to support.
3. Will they still innovate? Absolutely, in fact partnering with Intel is probably the best way Apple can drive the industry to support new technologies. Bluetooth, 802.11, 1394 Firewire, USB…apple didn’t invent all of them, but they certainly drove the industry to use them.
4. Will it mean worse Stability? Probably not, they’ve been compiling OS X (every version) and all of the Apple Apps (iTunes/iPhoto/iMovie/etc…) for both Intel and PPC for the past 5 years secretly.
5. Will it mean worse Security? Unknown, A Windows virus might run fine inside an emulated environment. Could it get out?
6. What will it mean for 64-bit computing? Good question, since they are going to keep making PPC’s until at least the end of 2007, Intel could easily come out with a 64-bit chip by then, and really we don’t know what the first chip will be. The development box is a 3.6Ghz P4 for what its worth…

Stay tuned…

iPod 2100mAh battery

Batteries are getting better. In the last few years manufactures have been able to up the capacity of batteries for portable electronics. Typically manufactures of electronics tend to use up this power by either shrinking their devices (smaller batteries) or adding power sucking features (big color screens, etc…). The good news for you, is 3rd party companies are making new batteries for your old devices.

Have a 1st or 2nd generation iPod? It originally got 10hrs of battery life. Now it gets up to 24hrs (20hrs+) with a NewerTech2100mAh battery for only $39.99! Not bad, they also have a slightly lower power 1800mAh model (15-19hrs) for $29.99 at the same place.

Another example, the iBook 500mhz started with a 3300mAh battery, my wife’s model has a 4000mAh battery and you can get a 4800mAh battery now. So if you have an old laptop with pathetic battery life, look around you may be able to breath new life in to those old laptops with a high capacity battery.

P.S. For the technically challenged, there is a service that will do it for you for $79.99 with 24hr shipping.

This is not ment to be an all inclusive guide to installing OS X, it
isn’t supposed to be a tutorial either, nor are any of these necessarily required.
Its merely a checklist I like to go through. I hope some of you find it useful.

If anyone has any suggestions/additions, feel free to leave a comment.

Things to do when installing OS X