A long long way from home

If you want a good and thorough review of the MB Air, please go here. This blog post is mostly a load of BS.

In the MWFS ’08 keynote Steve Jobs presented Apples very much anticipated new Ultra-portable, the MacBook Air (MBA). And behold, a sleek, sexy, glossy, aluminium sheet of pure goodness!  Or is it really? In 2005 Dell came out with the ultraportable X1, and I was wondering how that three years old machine holds up to the newest and greatest from Cupertino.

Left: Apple MacBook Air. Picture from Apple.com.
Right: Dell X1. Picture from notebookreview.com

Size. Size matters, no matter what they say.  MBA  is boasting a thickness of 0.4 to 1.94 cm, while X1 is 2.5 cm all over.  Since it is a square world I use the thickest measurement when calculating volume. So, the MBA is 1.94×32.5×22.7 = 1431.235 cubic centimetres. X1 clocks in at 2.5×28.6×19.68 = 1407,12 cubic centimetres. Winner:  Dell X1.

Weight. Matter has it (yes, a phun). And since the MBA is 1.36 kg and the X1 is 200 grams less at 1.140 kg the winner must be the X1.

Screen resolution. MBA has 1024000 square pixels, while the X1 has only 983040. But, when you measure screen size vs number of pixels you get that the MBA has 1024000/13.3 = 76992.5 pixels/inch, while the X1 has 983040 /12.1 = 81243 pixels/inch. This means the MBA has a big screen with low pixel density, and since I really dislike it when hardware doesn’t fill it’s full potential (also look at the size of the edge around the screen on the MBA – it’s huge!) the winner is the X1 again.

Connecting extra peripherals and such. USB: X1 2, MBA 1. Ethernet: X1 1, MBA 0. Modem: X1 1, MBA 0. VGA: X1 1, MBA 1, DVI: X1 0, MBA 1. Audio jacks: X1 2, MBA 1.  Firewire: X1 1, MBA 0 (!).  SD and CompactFlash card reader: X1 1, MBA 0. The MBA’s lack of built in ethernet, VGA and only one usb connector plus it’s heavy reliance on extra dongles makes the X1 the winner once more.

Connectivity. X1 has wifi b/g, 1 gigabit ethernet, bluetooth and a modem. The MBA has a/b/g/n wifi and bluetooth. It must be mentioned that the MBA has 802.11n that is now becoming increasingly popular.  It also has EDR. But still, lacking a gigabit ethernet port is the reason the X1 is yet again victorious.

Drives. The MBA proudly toutes an optional 64GB SSD, which normally would be a “wow, omg, gimme!” – but as usual with Apple and upgrades I am betting that  getting a 64GB SSD for the X1 on the open market is much cheaper than upgrading the MBA to the SSD.  And talking about drives, the X1 comes bundled with a optical drive, while the external USB MacBook Air SuperDrive is an option. Because of the bundle and Apples over-pricing of upgrades the X1 come out on top.

Power. Intel core 2 duo 1.6GHz versus a Centrino mobile 1.1GHz? Come oon. MBA totally owns that. But in order to get CPU power you will need battery power. And the MBA battery is not easily replaceable. With the X1 you can bring a few six cell batteries with you and use your laptop all the way to where you are going, while when the MBA is dead it must be plugged into an electrical outlet. Replaceable batteries is a much more on-the-go feature than heavy CPU power, so the ultraportable power price goes to the X1.

Availability. The X1 is no longer manufactured. However, you can pay $535 for it by pressing the “buy it now”-button on ebay and have it shipped to you in less than a week.  The MBA has 2-3 weeks delivery time according to Apple, but I would not be surprised if it would take 6 weeks to get it in your frisky little hands. However, as the X1 has reached the end of it’s production life the MBA must be declared the winner by walkover.

Memory. The MBA wins this with it’s 2BG vs 1.25GB maximum capacity.  It looks like the memory chips on the MBA is onboard chips that are not replaceable, so when a RAM chip fail you must get the machine to the apple repair shop, while with the X1 you may just get a replacement RAM chip and pop it in. I said the MBA won, but it did not.

Ok. I guess I could go on and on with this. The key points are that the X1 is smaller, lighter and has a wider range of possibilities than the MBA. If I were to leave my 15″ MacBook Pro at home and go ultraportable and had to choose between a three years old design and a brand new super slick designer laptop I would choose the old one. Does not look that good, but is more practical. I am quite disappointed that Apple could not outcompete that three year old heap of silvery plastic, but they will probably sell quite good on their good looks and impressive thin-ness.

I forretningsverda er det blitt slik at det er vanleg å topp-poste. Dette medfører at istadenfor ein vanleg tekstflyt lyt ein begynne nederst i eposten og lese oppover for å få med seg heile historien. Personleg brukar eg utruleg mykje tid på dette i høve til å kunne lese ein korrekt sitert epost. Difor oppmodar eg alle om å legge til denne vesle tankevekkjaren i signaturen sin – på fritt vald målføre:

  A: Fordi det er heilt motsett av den måten menneske vanlegvis les tekst.
  Q: Kvifor det?
  A: Topp-posting.
  Q: Kva er det mest slitsame i epost og på news?

  A: Fordi det er helt motsatt av den måten mennesker vanligvis leser tekst.
  Q: Hvorfor det?
  A: Topp-posting.
  Q: Hva er det mest slitsomme i epost og på news?

  A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
  Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
  A: Top-posting.
  Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

Meir om det same:

http://audun.norblogg.net/2007/01/10/sitering-av-epost/
http://home.online.no/~vidaandr/news/OBSquoting.html
http://antibiomatika.net/usenet/quoting.html

I started using Linux in 1997, and fell in love with virtual desktops right away. A real productivity-booster. When I turned to Mac OS X in 2006 after a hard breakup with Linux on my laptop one of the first things I installed was VirtueDesktops. It worked very well, and  I used it all the time.

Then came Leopard bringing not gifts, but Spaces. Spaces is one of the worse implementations of virtual desktops I have seen.

1. Impossible to turn off the animations when switching desktop. Theese animations tend to get slower during the day also.
2. Impossible to have more than 4 columns of desktops
3. When you Cmd-Tab around in your applications you also switch desktop. With the whole animation and all this is horrible. Just ask Nick Santilli over at theAppleBlog.
4. You may not set up your own keyboard shortcuts for direct access to each desktop. You must live with <Modifier>+<Number>

The first three annoyances are something I cannot remedy that easily. But number four is something you may actually do something about! Or at least, there is a workaround.

Enter Butler.

Butler is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. Like launching applications. It’s much like QuickSilver in many ways. The Butler website has some challenges as I write this, so I enclose the install DMG here.

Download Butler:  butler.dmg.zip

Now, for the setup. I want to have a grid of 4×2 desktops. I want the upper row to be accessible with Cmd-Esc to Cmd-F3, and the lower row with Cmd-1 to Cmd-4.

So, what to do?

* Start Butler.

* Modify your spaces settings. Set the “Switch directly to a space” key to be Option, as you want Cmd as your future hot
key, and Control is convenient for having as the real spaces shortcut. See illustration below.

* Configure/Customize Butler. Add a new Keystroke Smart Item.

* Then add a name to it, like “Workspace 1″. Also give the keystroke that you want Butler to generate.

* Now select the “Triggers” tab, and give the hotkey wanted for switching to that workspace. I prefer my first workspace to be on Cmd-Escape:

* Repeat the process for all your desktops/workspaces, then go back to System Preferences and make the hot key for “Switch directly to a space” to be Control (^).

Voilá. You now have your own hotkeys for navigating directly to a desktop in spaces.

I have now switched to Leopard, and wanted to test out the much anticipated Time Machine that supposedly makes backups a breeze. So I happily plugged in a empty USB drive, Time Machine asked me if I wanted to use that disk as a backup disk, and then it started backing up my data so that I can easily restore them… or not.

You see, I am one of those paranoid geezers that like to keep their files encrypted in case someone steals their laptop. So I use Apple’s built in encryption, FileVault, for my home folder. And it seems Time Machine does not play as nice with FileVaults as it does with non-protected data. Time Machine itself states, albeit not in that exact wording, that it sucks with FileVault:

Another thing that annoys me with Time Machine is that you cannot make bootable backup disks with it. When your laptop gets stolen or your disk crashes and the customers are calling you every ten minutes the luxury of just plugging your USB/Firewire disk in, boot from it and have your complete work environment ready is pretty priceless. I’ve been there. Spending time reinstalling may not always be an option.

My current backup scheme that allows for this consists of two parts:

• Using RsyncX for backing up my entire system. This approach has the same caveat as Time Machine – I prefer to log out and back in as a second Admin user in order to successfully unmount the sparsebundle (sparseimage in Tiger) that holds my home folder, so that I am sure that it gets backed up properly. There is one “problem” with this – I only get the latest snapshot of my complete system. I can live with that, as I can boot from it. This method is not new, I used this howto from 2005 to get it rolling.
• Using plain rsync over ssh to get incremental backups of my home folder. I used a slightly modified version of the “backup to a central backup server with 7 day incremental” from the rsync examples page. Since this runs over ssh to a server at home I may take backups while on the run with my laptop, so I do not have to lug around the extra USB drive in order to get backups done.

The combination of theese two methods makes restoring my system in case of a disk replacement as easy as two rsync commands after I boot from my USB drive:

1. Rsync the entire contents of the USB drive into the new disk after partitioning it. The backup USB disk is, needless to say, also the perfect rescue tool.
2. Log in as my FileVaulted user and update my home folder from the server via ssh.

However, if bootable backups is not a priority and you are OK with carrying the extra Time Machine backup disk with you and risk getting BOTH your laptop and your backups stolen – then Time Machine is for you. Also, if you are a home user with a desktop Mac Time Machine is also probably perfect for you. But as a laptop user with security needs Time Machine is not an ideal solution. The rsync setup is also more of a hack, and could be more seamless.  Any hints towards a seamless, fast restore, backup regime for security-minded laptop users is greatly welcome

In previous iterations of the feline OS we had to rely on SSHKeyChain in order to get a working ssh-agent setup that was global to all applications and not only for the current bash instance.

With Leopard the environment variable $SSH_AUTH_SOCK is set automatically, and the ssh-agent is managed by launchd (I think). SSHKeyChain may still prove useful for setting up tunnels, but I see no point in waiting for yet another application to start at login.

If you have been using SSHKeyChain you must remember to go into it’s Preferences and Uncheck the “Manage (and modify) global environment variables” ticker, otherwise SSHKeyChain will override the OS settings – even if it’s not running.

The actual adding of ssh keys is a bit non-intuitive for people used to doing ssh-add. Just using ssh-add <keyfile>  will only add the keyfile to the current session. If you want to never type your passphrase again, but let ssh-agent get your passphrase from Keychain every time you try to use the ssh key/identoty file you need to have a few things in place:

* Your <identity>.pub must be present in the remote accounts $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys file

* You may use this syntax from the command line to add the key: ssh -i <identity file> user@host . I guess you may do this from the Keychain Access application in some way too, but I was not able to find out how. There must be a slicker way.

So, I used this command in my terminal to add my “lolcats” private key/identity to my Keychain:

ssh -i lolcats lolcat@hostname.tld

And up came this dialog window, voilá: