They just updated their MacBook and MacBook Pro today. Being one of those guys who follow processor technology closely, I was interested if they shifted to Intel’s new Penryn line. Now I simple Core 2 Duo T8100 would have sufficed in their detailed specs but instead Apple decides it wants to tell you that it uses a 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo. Which could be a T7700 or the new T8300.

To figure out which one it is I had to depend on the L2 cache size since that was the only extra information I could find on the stupid Apple.com. So using that now I can tell that the base MacBook comes with a T8100 and the upgraded one sports the T8300. But why do I have to rely on that? Seriously? Why can’t they say that the MacBook Pro can now be upgraded to the T9300?

So if a laptop manufacturer, decided to start using similar (or same) parts that are already used in the Mac Book line, they can in fact make a laptop that would be able to support Mac 100% (minus the EFI BiOS of course). Now wouldn’t that be something? A laptop built for Windows and Linux, all of a sudden just happens to support Mac completely if you can get around the EFI issue. Now that, as yours truly already state, is just a matter of finding the right image.

After that Google was my best buddy in trying to figure out how I can get parts of the laptop activated under Macintosh. This is mainly since Apple only supports a strict subset of the entire hardware market.Anyway, Google has given me the solution to get my Ethernet working (modifying a kernel extension file), and also lead me to a forum discussion where some guy is working on trying to get the Wireless driver to work. I thought that was the last bit, but soon I discovered that the built-in mic and the audio ports don’t work. No news on that front yet.

All that aside, though I have had a pretty decent experience with Leopard. Just today I got Vista and Leopard both happy side by side. And this post is actually made from Leopard There are some things I love about the Mac. The graphic, the finishing – in one word it’s just marvellous. Then there is Mac’s all famous dock, Spaces and Adium. After using it for the last few days, I can see myself be happy under it. The *nix commad shell by itself is very welcoming.

On the other hand, keyboard navigation through the things could be a lot better. On the laptop I hardly use my mouse. I tend to use keyboard short-cuts for hoping between things. Though on many occasions the keyboard access to things beats Windows, the whole Enter to rename, Enter to trigger a selected button, Space to trigger a focused button and Flw+O to open a Finder item is quite annoying. But I can live with that.

I think I’ll keep Leopard on my laptop. It does take away 17 GB from my document partition, but hey it’s pretty

Welcome

Hackintosh

Apple QuickTime, the leading media player from Apple always required you to buy the Pro version before you can watch your movies in Full Screen. Yeah, I know what you are thinking but no I’m not kidding by any standards. It is good to know that now they have finally come to their senses. From 7.2 onwards QuickTime’s Full Screen option is available in the Free version!

(CoverFlow image courtesy of agenturblog.de and frame is from a shot of Kenwood DDX6019.)

That will be awesome. And then throw in Bluetooth to talk with your phone and a WiFi (or other wireless) to sync. Oh heaven. You wouldn’t even have to take it out of the car. Just go to your iTunes and log into your iStereo and sync. Wala. All of a sudden you have a stunning in car system. I wonder if I can get a iPhone and then hack it up to be my next car stereo…

P.S> It would probably need a DVD-ROM in there somewhere… just in case.

First, the good things. The interface has been changed, even though the basics are still there. Those who said that’s it’s the same yet not and is hard to explain it, obviously fell for Steve’s jabber instead of actually looking at it. The first thing that you see is that everything looks cleaner. Check the play list screen shot on the right; it is now more organized and spaced out to not feel cluttered.

One big thing in 7.0 is the emphasis of cover art. It is just one of those things that Micro$oft is working on bringing to Windows Media Player (WMP) 11. I guess Apple beat them to the punch again. The most amazing thing is that, there is a layout available in iTunes that looks exactly like the one in WMP. I guess Steve’s gonna claim that Redmond stole that one also.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, then check out the following screen shot. This is the cover art album list layout in iTunes 7.

And this is what it looks like today in Windows Media Player 11 Beta 2.

Except for the funky reflection effect that Apple started from FrontRow, the list ideas are almost identical. Though, this feature might have been a copy, the following one is just one of those Apple effects that make you go whoa.

The cover art flip browser (brought to you by CoverFlow), that allows you to flip through the cover around as if you are flipping thru the photo album. This feature is just neat, though it did come with a high price at least for me. The cover art features replaced the browse feature iTunes had since version 4.0. Now apart from just searching my albums by name, I can not really just pick one from the list and listen to it. That’s a feature that I used a lot. And I mean a lot lot. When you have about 10,000 mp3s, it is just one of those simple features that you really love. (Thank you Dan for letting me know where the option was).

So, any of the cool cover art funkiness are pointless if your music files have no cover art. You’d just get stuck with the music symbol. That is until you tell iTunes to download them for you. I really applaud Apple for coming thru with this one. Letting users who have mp3s of the songs that they sell to download and set the cover arts. It just makes the iTunes cover art browsing a bit more meaningful.

On the flip side, however, iTunes 7.0 is a better memory hog that it’s predecessor. While iTunes 6.0.5 used to start with using 45 MB of memory, 7.0 starts with 65 MB, at least on my machine. When I was playing with it last night and told it to download cover arts for me, it kept creeping up until it hit 101 MB and froze everything. I had to kill iTunes to let Firefox start. It was that bad. I think I was more effected by it as ever since I got 2 GB of memory installed, I dropped the virtual memory that Windows usually uses. It sux when a new version of a loved software would go sluggish.

Overall the interface redesign really makes you love it more. The iPod screens have changed and now you don’t need to download the iPod Updater every time as iTunes can update your iPod when required. Which, of course, means no more me walking my younger sister thru all that mess. So other than the memory hoggability and slight sluggishness, it’s a very nifty upgrade. I’d probably suggest slower computers to stick to an older version.

Also the new iPod lines look great! Gotta get me a new shuffle one of these days. I personally didn’t care much for the Video iPod or the iPhone, so not disappointed here!

Well fortunate for me, I have found a workaround thanx to PlatnetAMD64 forums. Someone if the forums have found out that you can follow the following simple steps and have 6.0.5.x running. Unfortunately, you need access to a machine with 32-bit Windows.

1. Make sure you have a previous version of iTunes 6.0.x installed on your Windows x64
2. Install iTunes 6.0.5.x to a machine running 32-bit Windows.
3. Copy all files in 32-bit Windows machine’s Program Files\iTunes to your Windows x64 machine’s Program Files (x86)\iTunes.
4. Done.

I did say run iTunes and not install iTunes, you know. The installer still blocks it, even in compatibility mode.

Previously version iTunes version 6.04 would actually install in Windows x64 and bitch everytime that it has a CD recording problem. If you didn’t want to live with all the whinning all you had to do is get the right drivers. However, that option is gone all bye bye now. Just start the installer and chose your language and it would tell you ever so sweetly how it just can’t support Windows x64.

What’s even more awesome about this is that, their download page fail to mention that they don’t consider Windows XP Pro x64 as a Windows XP edition. Sweet. So you download this big file becuz iTunes whinned at you that there is a new 6.05 version and then you try to install it and wala! No go.

Thanx for the warning Apple!