One for the toolkit – DiskWarrior for the new MacBooks

Since replacing the Macbook recently with the 11.6 Air, I had noticed that beyond the clone backups and the cloud syncing, if the worst should happen with the on board SSD, I'd have no DiskWarrior get out clause.

A quick surf around what Mac users with the no optical drive on the Macs do in this scenario, revealed a relatively straightforward answer which I thought I would share:

• In this case, use a Mac which does have a SuperDrive on board
• Insert the DiskWarrior DVD into the SuperDrive
• Insert a good quality USB key (probably 2-4Gb storage) into the Mac
• Fire up Disk Utility
• Format the USB key as 'DiskWarriorDVD' to get it ready
• Move to the Restore tab
• Drag the DVD of DiskWarrior to the source field
• Drag the USB drive of the DiskWarriorDVD to the destination field
• Click Restore

Simply use DiskWarrior to create a bootable USB key for DiskWarrior
— perfect in the toolkit for the new MacBooks

That's it. Store the USB key somewhere you can remember.  If the worst should happen and the MacBook does not fire up.  Insert the USB key and press and hold Cmd + O until DiskWarrior has fired up.

Toolkit updated :)

Mountain Lion – Adding Value

Lighter, faster, iOSified –  with lots of polish.
Behold OS X Mountain

With my iMac being a 2008 edition, Mac OS X has had 4 OS upgrades over the last 4 years, going from Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and culminating in this weeks release of Mountain Lion.  Windows in this period of time has had Vista and Windows 7, not withstanding service packs.

In terms of day to day experience, Snow Leopard was certainly the memorable release in terms of speed and ease of use between Leopard and Lion. 2011's Lion, I was always troubled with. Slow to start up and generally less than satisfying as an user experience.  I started to think that future demands of the iMac would no longer be up to the task of future OS X releases, due to the sluggish nature of Lion.  Essentially I've been planning an iMac replacement, sporting an SSD in the next 12 months.   

I also wondered if this was justified, since one should be able to get very good mileage from iMacs. Notwithstanding the SSD, which I believe is essential as time moves on, upgrading to Mountain Lion has revealed that Lion's engineering performance was likely to be the source of the problem as much as hardware specs and expectations on my part. With no metrics or benchmark to hand,  Mountain Lion contains a speed bump which is markedly positive and reverts the iMac performance back to the Snow Leopard days. In addition there are 2 other things which are stand-out of this release for me

Safari – this was surprise. It now has the Chrome-like omnibar and it's damn fast. I mean faster than Chrome. Yes, I said that.  It's also more likely to be more stable and less memory leaky or be the cause of white screen crashes. And that's with Flash still enabled. With Xmarks to keep by bookmarks in tow, Chrome has just been overthrown.  I didn't see that one coming.

Airplay Mirroring – restricted to my 2011 Macbook Air, I can finally stream FoxSocerTV and Hulu to the big screen (I've given up on it ever coming to Boxee).  And I've been pleasantly surprised, the scaling on Airplay mirroring to my Sony flat screen looks nice and is perfectly watchable.  Not HD, but decent quality watchable.  Of course, AirParrot has been around for a number of months and replicates the Airplay mirroring feature for pre 2011 Macs of all sizes.  Using AirParrot, my iMac does take quite a performance hit on the CPU, due to the lack of support in the then ATI graphics chip GPU for encoding and scaling which is of course is now built into the Sandy and Ivy Bridge processors of latest Mac lines. 

Beyond that, I'm ignoring all the other useful features such as Notification Centre, iCloud support, Gatekeeper security and integrated sharing with Twitter for  most OSX updated apps added to all the other iOSification touches. But you can read that across the dozens of other great mainstream reviews like this one at Ars.  

All this for £13 ($20). Now that is what I call added value.

Home maintenance

In the last few months, I'd noticed an increasing number of system freezes on my iMac 24 from late 2008. As you will all know, these sorts of things feel generally random and happen at the wrong time when producing or creating something - so they are especially annoying.

The odd one every few months is okay, but in recent weeks web browsing, on-line gaming with Football Championship Manager or editing in iBooks has seen a frequency of freezes get to the stage of being particularly troublesome and worrying. My overall aim for the iMac 24 is to see it through the next 12 months into 2013 (dreams of a retina display iMac + SSD). This summer it will see its fourth OS upgrade in the form of Moutain Lion, and the Mac will probably be a a bit slower again as  result.

Wondering if something was up, it was time to run the key checks on the disk and other subsystems. In terms of quick checks, I did the usual repair permissions with Disk Utility.  But another freeze occurred afterwards,which suggested to me with all the spate of freezes which required power recycling, I'd need to do a directory rebuild using DiskWarrior.   Since doing that, the iMac has felt a bit snappier.

DiskWarrior is an essential utility and well worth the investment

I also took the opportunity to upgrade TechTool Deluxe which came with AppleCare to TechTool Pro 6, which now provides a range of background preventative monitoring tasks as well as range of test across al subsystems across the machine (disk, memory video memory,etc).  It's certainly a comprehenisive tool and again another one worth the considered investment in self-maintenance before calling for the vendor repair option.

TechTool Pro 6 is a worthy tool for a wider range of tests

So far, so good. Beyond, some directory damage to some minor directories, all looks good.  From a browsing standpoint, I decided to disable Flash on Chrome and leave it available on Safari when I do need to watch Flash based content.  It's good to know that HTML5 video has come on leaps and bounds as the preferred video content standard since the advent of iOS and Android devices.

So, time will tell if this has made the difference and if I'm sitting on a major hardware failure. While a disk verification runs in my scripted SuperDuper backup clones of my hard drive on a monthly basis, I think a quarterly directory rebuild in DiskWarrior is the task I'll add to my schedule from now on.

Recording iOS app demos

I've used Camtasia Studio in the past to better serve customers with quick fire demos for applications which I think customers should know about and use.

At the same time, and ahead of Mac OSX Mountain Lion this summer, developers have been reverse-engineering AirPlay and have found ways to get it working seamlessly between iOS devices and Mac.  MacStories picked out AirServer is a solid app which did the job and behaved well. About £10 to purchase outside of the Mac Apps store, but damn, this is useful.

Combo with Camtasia? I can now record demo's from iPhone and iPads mirrored on to the MacBook Air or the iMac and have Camtasia running in the background to capture in the background. It's post record editing, if you didn't know..is excellent.

I suggest you check it out for yourself.

A conundrum — MacBook Air vs iPad

I've been lightly using the new MacBook Air 11.6 inch for nearly 3 weeks now.  I like it. For a laptop, it has the speed and performance which was lacking on my old MacBook. Seeing how I also have the 3rd generation iPad, it's been a case of working out when I use the MBA and when I use the iPad.

I have 2 distinct use cases across all of my devices. Reading and light written updates (Consuming) and then Writing and administrator stuff (Creating).  The day job is separate and is Wintel PC based and is not included here.

Consuming
The iPad (and iPhone) are now my most used tools keeping up to date with news and managing transactions on a daily basis. iOS apps represent the easiest and more enjoyable experience in dealing with the web via my staple of daily apps; for example - Tweetbot, Reeder, FlipBoard, The Times, Guardian for iPad, FT, alongside Safari and Sparrow. Mobile banking across the main UK banks now can be done through their iOS apps dependent on how comfortable you are with a) the respective banks 2-factor authentication and application security and b) where you are in terms of connectivity (tip - I never bank on a non-authenticated Wifi spot. Even then, I'll use a VPN connection for more security). Jumsoft Money rounds off a finance application for keeping an eye on bills, spending & investments. In terms of managing the range of tasks and projects, Due and OmniFocus are now the apps of choice. Entertainment is  covered by IMDB, BBC iPlayer and of SkyGo.  Out of reach is Hulu Plus which I leave to the desktop.  Of course, as an app addict, there are countless others which I use and am not mentioning here.

Also in this use case are the lighter types of updates which involve typing. These are mainly tweets and small documents using DocsToGo for DropBox files and the iWork set for iCloud files. Nothing complex, just general stuff to knock out. Comms-wise, this is rounded off by FaceTime and Skype video calls. WebEx will be added soon, since the office is adding this facility.  Blogsy is a new app which I will be be trying out for blogging creation fairly soon.

Creating
On the MBA (and iMac in the office) tweeting is taken care of by Osfoora.  Sparrow for mail.  Chrome for browsing,  Reeder for RSS feeds and office stuff through an array of apps such as Office 2011 for Mac, Evernote, Mindjet MindManager, OmniFocus, Due and ConceptDraw.

In this use case, I feel most confident on the MBA in getting stuff done when I'm on the move.  All key document creation is saved for the MBA. Key system admin tasks also are saved for the MBA or the iMac if I'm at the home office.  Again, there's a myriad of apps I occasionally use which I'm not mentioning.

Video streaming (particularly Flash based services such as FoxSoccer.TV, Hulu and Vudu) happen in this space.  It will be even more interesting when we get Airplay mirroring via the Mountain Lion this summer.

Conundrum
So why the conundrum? Since by use cases, it seems pretty clear cut. Essentially, it's about the gap in experience between the products.  I recognise it's always easier to be coloured by the newer product.

On the one hand, the MBA is a pure delight to use and the best laptop I've ever used.. The illuminated keyboard is great. It's essentially narrowed the gap on the better parts of the iOS world, with SSD performance to provide instant on capability with a battery that covers about 5 hours worth of juice.  It has a solid 16:9 display. It boots within a minute or so and is portable enough to slip into the man-bag or whatever you want to call it nowadays.  I'm writing this post on it right now.

However, the new iPad as I shared previously, has set a new standard for display quality and UI performance. It feels strange to say how iOSification from the mobile world, is now affecting the perceptions and expectations of the traditional laptop - no matter how perfectly formed and great to use the MBA is right now.

I now view the ability to do some level of direct screen gesturing on the MBA as a must have. I want voice Siri voice control of apps and common tasks. I want to see the iOSification of apps via my Pad and Phone data available on my MBA. Dare I say it, the lack of Retina display leaves the MBA somewhat lower in value in my perception of things.

On the iPad side, a better access to a Mac-like keyboard is required to be better able to handle the more full-fledged document creation side of things. Of course, the apps and cloud integration aspects need to compatible with each other to allow the user to choose where to access their stuff, regardless of device (read Dropbox and iCloud need to talk to each other).

Apple are clearly working on this. As OSX and iOS are distinct and separate, their experience must be unifying for the user.  Mountain Lion is a clear enabler of this direction.  Additionally, it got me thinking, perhaps an Apple execution of the hybrid PC & tablet is really where Apple and other hardware makers are ultimately going with the same mobile chipset and OS across all form factors in portfolio. The first to market have been Lenovo and Asus with Android and Windows variants, but as we know this is never just about the hardware.  From an Apple standpoint, it's the sort of story that gets the usual  rumour & speculation. Strategically it would make sense for Apple to combine its OS and applications platforms across multiple mobile devices as a longer term goal. Each of them with emphasis on voice, touch and typing for either consumption or creation. It may also pave the way for other utility devices and applications to be added into the ecosystem in order to strengthen it. Windows 8/SOA anyone?

For now, my distinct use cases, I think I'm fine to swap between the MBA and iPad, dependent on what I need to do at that moment, where I am and what kind of connectivity I'll have.  I'm sure Apple wouldn't have it any other way :)

Moving a MacBook on — doing it right

In taking on the MacBook Air, I needed to shift the older black MacBook from late 2008. A solid  performer, but it was heavy and could not be expanded any further without considerable expense. And with SSDs and Intel Core i5 or i7 processors now widely available, it was starting look long in the tooth. Ordinarily, that was all fine, but when Apple says that many features of Mountain Lion will not make the cut for a machine which is less than 4 years old, you know it's time to reach for the resale door.

Of course, the laptop was always carefully looked after to maximise future resale value.  It actually sold for 55% less than I paid for it, which in itself if amazing given the rate of technology change in general. In preparing for its sale, there were 2 things I wanted to ensure:

1. It handed down to the next Mac user still imputing quality by providing them a brand new Mac experience
2. My data and applications were wiped in the process

In the past, based on Leopard or Snow Leopard, this would be easier to do with the install and wipe options on the OSX DVDs. In this case of Lion, not so as there is no longer any install media supplied. A quick search around identified a range of articles to achieve the goals in mind. I used this one since it had the fewest number of Terminal steps to follow.

Voila - all worked nicely. Thanks to Mark for his checks and observations on the Terminal commands.

The upshot is that while the data on the hard drive has not truly been securely trashed to full disposal standards, the terminal commands pretty much delete the admin user data while avoiding having to do a full reinstall of Lion. Of course, there is a chance that the data could be recovered through the likes of DiskWarrior, but I would say that a) new MacBook user would be unlikely to do that, b) I have the buyers address anyway ;-) and, c) if the buyer lost it to an expert user, then perhaps there's a data loss issue. A risk I'm willing to accept.