Monday, October 19, 2009

One Reason NOT to upgrade to 64bit Mode in Snow Leopard

VIRTUAL MACHINE SUPPORT!

After posting the roundup of issues with the release along with the hint on how to force 64bit mode a number of readers and colleagues noted that VM support was absent in the musing. After some post analysis it does appear that the Virtual Machine market in the 64bit host arena is very weak when it comes to this support.

Crossover Mac (the WINE port), has a number issues while VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, and Parallels may not even launch and this is not to mention the few others that are in the consumer market. Suggestion for now. If you need to run a consumer virtual machine on your Mac, then wait to force your copy of Snow Leopard to boot into 64Bit mode. Let it run in 32bit mode and you will be fine for now. Those who use these tools in the enterprise will find that the running VMware Fusion and Parallels does have support under the Snow Leopard Server version but this would not be something a consumer wants to tote around on a MacBookPro.

Stay tuned more to come

-ZuCom

Monday, October 12, 2009

Boot Snow Leopard into 64Bit Mode

The default mode for the new Snow Leopard install is 32bit mode.

Want to change that and upgrade to 64bit.

Simply change one line in the  /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist file and your Macintosh will boot into 64bit mode.  With most recent Mac's you'll see a significant performance improvement , of course the more memory you have the better and results may vary.  You can always switch back using this method

FROM THIS
________________
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple$
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Kernel</key>
        <string>mach_kernel</string>
        <key>Kernel Flags</key>
        <string></string>
</dict>
</plist>
________________

TO THIS
________________
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>arch=x86_64</string>
</dict>
</plist>
________________

Any text editor should work or you can simply use PICO by typing the following in terminal along with your root password.  

sudo pico /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

-ZuCom

Posted via email from robertzullo's posterous

Snow Leopard Roundup

Well it's been over a month now since Apple released "Snow Leopard" (version 10.6 of it's popular operating system OS X). From first reports, the upgrade seems to be a non-event for most. Two enterprise clients (those with at least 1000 upgrades) are reporting a 98% success rate on the upgrades while the power user community (the hardest group to win over) is reporting satisfaction ratings in line with past upgrades.

The roundup of popular issues and potential fixes:

BLUETOOTH
Several reports that Bluetooth devices fail after the upgrade. While ZuCom has not seen this in volume we can validate that deleting the devices and re-paring quickly solved the problem

NETWORK
In most cases we've seen no issues however some wireless network profiles needed the password (WEP Key, WPAx Password, etc.) re-entered

HOME FOLDERS
CNET has reported that "several" users have lost there home folders and even posted a detailed account of how to restore the home folders. While we've not seen this at all, the potential may exist, and especially in consumer environments where setup profiles can "drift" from the norm. Another reason to do a full backup before you do any upgrade.

GPG-Mail
The wildly popular open source GPGMail v1.2.0 plugin for OSX Mail.app does not work in Snow Leopard. This is something that was found in the later beta's and remain's a major problem in the Power User community. At issue is the use of an undocumented API in the mail bundle that is no-longer supported in the new v4 of Mail. A developer has posted an interim fix for the community which can be downloaded here. Simply unzip this file and copy it to the /Library/Mail/Bundles folder and re-start Mail and your back in business.

More updates will be posted as they come in. As usual Apple has made the upgrade process painless and smooth. Considering this upgrade is for most the first time they will migrate from a 32bit to 64bit platform it's been relatively quiet. This is a feat that many accomplished technology leaders expected to bring a litany of problems but has really been a non-event. Kudos to Bertrand Serlet and team for getting this one right. If you haven't made the jump yet, just back things up and pounce (pun), from all accounts it's another non-event with many benefits.

-ZuCom


Friday, October 09, 2009

Apple, the iPhone and Mobile, The Barbarians are at the gates.

It's hard to argue with the success that Apple has seen in it's mobile platform. Entering it's third year on the market the iPhone continues to to break new ground and is as popular as ever. Some pundits say that it's just savvy marketing coupled with great timing, others believe it's the leading edge of a revolution. As with most things when history looks back at this time it will undoubtedly fall somewhere in-between, but one thing is undeniable, .....with success come the barbarians.

In no particular order, there is Google developing a very similar looking phone called the Android and has accompanied it with an Application Store similar to the iTunes App-Store look and feel. Palm has come out with the PRE and claims to have a developer platform that rivals Apple and Google, not to mention the virtual plethora of others.

Outside of those beating down the hardware path there are software giants who are keen to get in on some of the spoils. Many of the corporate software giants have been forced to play by new rules in order to get past the proverbial "gates". Rules set by mobile carriers, platform SDK owners and hardware limitations, something these giants aren't used to dealing with. The revenue and market shift to mobile is palpable and thus a few of the big boys have found ways to capitulate. Still others have chosen to take matters into their own hands. This week Adobe announced that Flash CS5 would support the creation of native iPhone apps. As of this writing it's unclear if this is a defection or something that has been condoned, but suffice it to say that many foresee a day where tightly controlling the move to mobile won't be possible, and we may be seeing the first signs of that coming.


-Robert Zullo
ZuCom



Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Project Management Quote of the Week

"You can't be neutral on a moving train"
- Howard Zinn

(actually that's the name of his book).


Great test to tell if a project is moving of not.