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Posts from the ‘apple’ Category

20
Nov

Mobispine’s iPhone MMS application – for the world?

 
We heard yesterday that Telia customers might be getting an MMS app for their iPhones, and that it was being developed by the carrier themselves, with plans to launch in the next two months. Well, today we’ve gotten word that Mobispine is likely the developer of said application, and that they have plans to offer it to carriers all over planet Earth. Mobispine says that the app will be branded to each particular operator, and distributed via Apple’s App Store, but we don’t know when all of this is going to go down. Now we’d just like to meet the caveman owner of the iPhone pictured above who needed to be told (on November 15th!) that “Obama will be our next president.” Read
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19
Nov

Apple: Snow Leopard release in Q1 2009

Apple’s Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies Jordan Hubbard spoke at LISA ’08 last week. LISA (or Large Installation System Administration Conference) is a technical conference targeted at engineers and system administrators. This year’s conference invited Apple’s Jordan Hubbard to speak about the evolution of Mac OS X from large servers to embedded platforms. While technical readers may find the content of Hubbard’s presentation slides (PDF)quite interesting, the most surprising revelation is a more specific target date for Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): 1st Quarter 2009.



When Apple first previewed Snow Leopard at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2008, they simply stated that Snow Leopard would ship “in about a year” from the announcement. A Q1 release would deliver it earlier than most had expected and makes it conceivable that we could see a demo or announcement at Macworld San Francisco 2009.

Apple has said that they would be focusing on both quality and performance in Snow Leopard. In particular, Apple has made it clear that there will be efforts to improve support for multi-core processors and GPU processing. These improvements will help developers more efficiently use these capabilities that already ship in Macs.

Read – PDF Presentation



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19
Nov

MMS-capabilities coming soon to a Swedish iPhone?

The oft-bemoaned lack of certain, um… capabilities of the the iPhone is forcing individual companies to take desperate measures, it seems. It’s not entirely clear, but MacWorld says it’s confirmed with Telia that the Swedish-Finnish carrier’s developing an MMS-enabling app for the iPhone. MacWorld says the app will hit the market in the next two months, which is great news for everyone in Sweden. If you live anywhere else in the world, however, you’ll just have to continue on, rueing the day you ever encountered Apple’s MMS-spurning, copy and paste-hating handset.

Though the source is Swedish, it’s entirely reasonable to believe that this’ll spread across all of Telia’s markets (and the world?). Read 



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18
Nov

Apple’s 24-inch LED Cinema Display is now on sale



November is here and it looks like Apple just pulled the retail trigger on its 24-inch LED-backlit Cinema Display. While it still says “ships: November” Apple just added the “Add to cart” button allowing you to place your order with standard 5 business day, 2nd day, or next business day shipping. $899 takes home a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, DisplayPort, built-in iSight camera / mic, integrated stereo speakers, 3-port USB hub, and MagSafe adapter for your like-equipped MacBook. Sure, it’ll look great next to all your Apple gear but you can get a similar panel (if not exactly the same) or better with more expansion for a lot less.

Read 


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17
Nov

Microsoft Office headed for the iPhone in 2009



No, this is not a new set of applications you’ll have to download via the App Store. This version of Microsoft Office will be a set of web apps that will be accessible through various internet browsers such as Internet Explorer, FireFox and even the Safari browser on the Mac.



It’s actually meant for internet users in general and not just the iPhone, but considering how Apple’s little mobile phone is such a great portable internet device, the implications of having such an application available for the iPhone simply cannot be overlooked. With the Microsoft Web Office suite, iPhone users can definitely do more on their beloved mobile device than just playing games and listening to music or watching YouTube videos.
A private technology preview of this Microsoft Web Office will be made available towards the end of this year, but the exact public release date is yet to be known. 2009 has been mentioned as its debut year. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that it doesn’t follow in the trend of Windows 7 which has been plagued with one postponement after another.

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16
Nov

Mac Pro with Core i7? Q1 2009

Digitimes reports that Intel is planning on launching the Xeon 5500 and Xeon 3500 series of server CPUs in the first quarter of 2009. These new processors are based on the Nehalem architecture which has been officially branded as Core i7.

According to Digitimes, Intel will launch ten CPUs for the Xeon 5500 series with the high end topping out as a quad-core W5580 running at 3.2GHz. Processor speeds of the remaining 9 models range from 2GHz to 2.93Ghz.

Apple has traditionally used the Xeon server-class processors for their Mac Pro line. The current Mac Pro uses the Xeon (“Harpertown”) 5400 series processors and is due for an update. Despite comparable clock speeds, the Nehalem-based processors have been shown to offer clock-for-clock performance improvements up to 29%.

16
Nov

MacBook to a Mac Pro Ultra mini?

How I converted a “dead” Apple MacBook to a Mac Pro Ultra Mini
 A Little Background:  I was given a “dead”  13″ MacBook that had water poured on it.   After taking it apart and testing I found that the motherboard was still good but everything else was dead.   The screen, dvd drive, battery, hard drive, ram, left speaker, CPU fan, top case / keyboard all were fried.  Water seems to be a very good tool in making an $1,100 paper weight.A few hours of solder / hot-gluing I got it up and running with new ram and a new hard drive.  I re-soldered the cooling fan and the right speaker to get them working. The left speaker connection was dead on the motherboard.  The airport card “sees” wireless networks but fails when trying to connect, but the Ethernet port worked.  I ran the unit for a few weeks with an external monitor with no problems.  It works great as a multi-media machine for my LCD TV.Browsing the web I found a Mac Mini Mod to make it look like a Mac Pro.  I started thinking it might be fun to make 20% of a MacBook look like Mac Pro Ultra Mini.  Looking at the motherboard I found it was slightly larger than a full sized hard drive.  Next I found a few external hard drive cases that looked like a Mac Pro.  The first one I found was the iomega UltraMax Pro 33744 Hard Drive.  I couldn’t find a retail site  that sold just the case and at almost $450 was not an option. Then I found the Macally G-S350SUA Aluminum External Enclosure for only $40.It looked like a Mac Pro, front mounted power button, & all aluminum case.
The PDF manual and all the specs I could find listed did not specify the overall case size.  I enlarged the PDF to the actual size scale using the FireWire port to judge scale.   The MacBook’s motherboard is  4.83″ x 7″ inches and doing an estimation I found that the board just might fit in the case.  I also found a Flickr set that had these images.  Looking at the construction I figured I could mod the case to support the motherboard and still have it open up if needed for service.
Once the case arrived (UPS lost it for a week) I set to work taking it all apart and seeing what I had to work with. Click on the images for a larger view 


What i've got to work with HD frame What i've got to work with HD frame
DSC_4913.JPG
Size Problem Current Sata HD control Board
I quickly saw the motherboard wasn’t going to fit without cutting off the bottom of the HD case.  I did see that the case would be tall enough with the legs to house the motherboard.  I also measured for thickness to see if  the notebook hard drive would fit once the motherboard was mounted.  Next I cut parts off of the inner hard drive mount so that all ports would be accessible from behind.  After a few extra cuts and grindings I was ready to attach the motherboard.
Looking at the old Macbook case all the motherboard support mounts were molded into the plastic case.  I decided to reuse some of the plastic, removed all of the metal frame, and cut it down to size. Next I placed small holes in the plastic near the hard drive mount holes on the external hard drive mount frame.  I then zip-tied the old case to the frame.   I was going glue or screw it in place but this gave me some adjustment room if needed.  You can see the cut case and frame below.


Old macboook case attached to Extranal HD Case Frame Reuse old Macbook case for screw mounts
Old macboook case attached to Extranal HD Case Frame Old macboook case attached to Extranal HD Case Frame

 
You can see the first dry fit below

 Tight Fit

Next came cooling.  I placed 3  1/2″ holes on the top for the cooling fan.  I placed the metal on a wood box to support it while drilling with the drill press.


Cooling fan hole location Holes for cooling
Mother Board Mounted  

Once all was aligned I tightened the zip tie and tested for strength.  Finding all was well I moved on to the next step of the power button.  You can see in the images below a small ribbon cable.  The cable runs to the keyboard / track pad / power button / and top-case.    Tracing the power button leads back to the ribbon cable was done with a voltage tester.   I found that if you went from the ground to the fourth pen from the left it would bring up the shut down message box.  This is important because I had the power setting set to “power up” after a power failure.  If I had ever done a shutdown instead of a reboot I couldn’t have powered the notebook back up.  Finding the leads was easy compared to connecting  them to the power switch on the front.  As you can see below they were very small.

Ribbon Connecton under touch pad Ribbon Keyboard / Mouse / Power button Connection to MB
Ribbon Connecton under touch pad  
Carefully removing the ribbon connection under the track pad and then removing the extra pins,  I soldered the red lead to the 4th pin.  I then scraped off some of the protection coating and soldered the black wire to the ribbon’s ground wire.  I did not connect the green wire which powers the blue LED built into the power button. The LED is much too bright when the lights are out in my living room.

Modified Power Button
 
After covering the connections with a hot glue gun I did several tests insuring  a good connection and that no short-circuits were occurring on the other pins. Side note:  I solder about as well as I weld, both are not pretty but they hold :)

Next step was to mount the hard Drive.   The original configuration used a long cable for the SATA connection so I had some options.  My first thought was about heat so I did not want to mount it above the cooling fan.   Looking at the old case the hard drive is stored inside a metal frame.  Removing  just the “cage” I made a few holes in it.  I used longer screws in one of the CPU heat-sink and the wifi card.    I added some hot glue to the bottom where any contact might be made to prevent shorting.  This still allowed the unit to slide into its  housing while providing a strong mounting spot.   I ran before and after temperature tests using Hardware Montior and found the new configuration runs just a few degrees hotter.


HD frame mount close up HD Mounted


HD Mounted 

 
 You can also see I mounted the magnetic power connection on top of the Ethernet port.  I also temporarily added electrical tape to the top of the ram and board to keep down the chance of electrostatic sparking from the desk.  The working right speaker & “sub woofer” are also mounted up front.   The IR and white LED where damaged by the water.
Last I slid it back into the outer case and put a small bar with a screen on it in the center of the back of the case to keep the outer and inner case parts from moving.    That was it!  I now have a Ultra Mini Mac Pro.   I’ve watched a few HD Movies and did some stress test to make sure it would not over heat and all is well.    After a  week or so I’m going to take the out case down to the local high school and use the laser etcher to place an Apple logo on the side.   I will post the finished photos here along with more shots of the finished case.

All Done!All Done!
 
Some might say this is over kill but it could be worse.

16
Nov

How to: Enable 4 Finger Gestures on pre-October 2008 MacBooks

I can confirm the four finger gesture is possible on pre-October 2008 laptops, and I currently have four finger Exposé and Application Switching working on my January 2008 MacBook Air.

(This required hacking Apple’s installer to ignore machine checks to avoid the “Mac OS X cannot be installed” obstacle. The method to do that is here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=371302 )

This got the latest, slightly updated 10.5.5 system (with the energy efficient bulb in the System Preferences) on my first generation Air.

However, I was disappointed it didn’t show “Four Finger gestures” in the Trackpad system preference, just the old standard gesture. I had a hunch it was possible though, so…

I then examined the kernel extension “AppleUSBMultitouch.kext” (the one installed with the new 10.5.5 unibody OS X).

This Info.plist of this kext contains several entries for what looks like different makes of trackpads. I noticed that some of them had two keys that the others did not:

TrackpadFourFingerGestures


TrackpadSecondaryClickCorners

I didn’t know which model trackpad my Air has and it didn’t really matter, as I copied those keys to all entries.

Once the AppleUSBMultitouch.kext was modified (and permissions restored), I rebooted and, hey presto!, there is the Four Fingers entry in the System Preferences.

Four finger Exposé on my January 2008 MacBook Air now works just as it does on the unibody MacBook.

(Secondary click, where you click the bottom right corner of the trackpad to get a right-click, is also there, but only seem to work in combination with the Air’s physical button – haven’t worked that one out yet, and don’t really care as I am used to soft two finger clicking for right-click.)

I suspect this would work on all later model multitouch trackpads. 

Source: MacRumors Forum

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