4 posts tagged “apple”
I remember watching QVC back in August of 95 when they were showing computers running Windows 95 for the first time. I bought my first copy at the local Target (an upgrade from Windows 3.1). I remember how exciting it was to install something so new and different. Back then, the mac was in sort of a dead zone. Microsoft had the excitement up. I had read about it in some computer magazines, but prior to main stream internet usage, there wasn't much beta testing going on like there is today. I am writing this post from my Windows 7 RC1 machine in my home office.
I say this as I was thinking about the upcoming release of Snow Leopard this Friday. I woke up Monday morning and checked all of my common news sites from my iPhone as I do every morning. When I discovered Apple announced the Friday ship date and opened pre-orders, I immediately placed my order. I also got in on the Windows 7 pre-order for $49 and will be expecting the promised October delivery.
As I await both operating systems, I can't help but think about the similarities between the two and the historical importance both companies have had. I remember what a big leap it was going to Windows 95. Looking back, its often criticized for its many stability issues, but it was no doubt the OS that changed everything for me. Apple's OSX was also a game changer. To completely redesign an entire platform was a bold move, but something the struggling company had to do. What I'm getting at, however, is the profound impact these changes have had.
Every so often something comes along like the Internet and changes everything. We now live in a world where the browser is becoming more important than the operating system. As I look forward to both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, they seem to be rather minor updates compared to the big sweeping changes we saw years ago. Not that we aren't seeing fantastic progress today, I just think that most of this progress is coming from other areas, such as web applications and mobile apps. The iPhone was a game changer. Snow Leopard is a welcome addition for $29, but I think the OS is starting to become transparent. While both OS's are very attractive with glassy looks and subtle transitions, the changes are very much cosmetic. While some "under the hood" changes are nothing to scoff at either (video decoding on the hardware for OSX) we aren't really seeing "new features" anymore as much as improvements and further transparency. I think the price reflects that both companies see a day where the OS is really just the way for our online applications to access our hardware. Perhaps we will in some way come full circle to the days of thin clients.
Cloud computing is clearly taking over. I happen to believe Microsoft may be in a better position to embrace this than Apple. Making Office a cross-browser compatible web app? I never would have expected that from Microsoft. I am already finding it easier by the month to move between my Mac and Windows machines because more and more of my information is being stored in the cloud. My e-mail is all routed through Gmail, my data is synchronized on multiple machines, and the rest of my life resides on my web server, on Evernote and I remember it all using Remember the Milk. Do any of these things change by upgrading to the newest operating system? No. So why was I so anxious to do so? I'm going to Windows 7 because it seems to be a little faster and prettier on my multi-monitor setup and it lets me add lots of gadgets to my desktop for all of the web services I use and news I consume. Did I get it for the e-mail client, movie making capabilities or bundled software? No. In fact I have used Firefox for so long, I wouldn't notice if IE wasn't even included (No pun intended for Europeans). In short, its more transparent than its fat bloated predecessor. Do you think its just a coincidence that Snow Leopard is touting speed and reliability over new features? I don't think so. They know that users want the OS to get the hell out of the way and just work. If we could embed it into a chip, that would be great. Just get me instantly to my browser and give me some heads up display info for what I want to see the most and I'm happy. Transparency equals beauty. Just tell me the fastest way to my cloud and I'll run whatever. Perhaps I don't really think we are at this stage quite yet, but I do believe we will get there.
That said, I'm still excited. I'm a tech fan. I spend way too much time listening to TWIT and reading the tech blogs. I have an extensive gadget profile over at GDGT and I'm always hopeful to witness the next game changer. Until then, I'll be happily switching gears awaiting the announcement of the next big cat (what comes after snow leopard anyway?) and the Windows 8 beta.
January 13, 2009
To: sjobs@apple.com
Dear Steve,
Well now I really hope you get this message because it took me a long time to type it. For some reason my iPhone only works in portrait mode for typing an e-mail. I guess that is not a big deal since I can only connect with Edge on my new 3G iPhone. No biggie, I'll just send this from WiFi as soon as I figure out how to type in the 64 character WPA key in portrait mode. If there was only some way to do that more easily, like if I had a magical way of pulling text from one screen and putting it back on another screen.... oh nevermind, Im in fantasy land. Anyway, how are those push notifications coming along?
Beau
Sent from my iPhone.
In repsonse to the Engadget article:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/16/apple-announces-final-macworld-steve-jobs-wont-deliver-keynote/5#c16152216
I am personally disappointed to see it go. Apple has been ramping up their own special events for a while now and everyone gets excited about those, but for years MacWorld was the one big event other than WWDC that we expect big things. I can't help but think it has to be hard for Apple to knock one out of the park every year in January, but lets not underestimate the power of this event.
While its value as a trade show may be limited and the explanations of the online and retail stores trumping the need for a trade show make logical sense, I can't help but think that the nostalgia and nearly un-rivaled coverage they receive from this one event is something that is hard to value. How many companies other than Apple can systematically pull this off every year and get the attention that they do? I don't know the cost involved for attending MacWorld, but it would have to be awfully high for this to be dropped. This makes me question why they chose to do this. Special event coverage doesn't occur on a pre-defined schedule, so I would think they would at-least want to replace MacWorld with their own event every year. I guess we'll see.
Ok, so I have updated this for Take 2 and Leopard. This is more of a rought draft, but it worked well for me. Please comment if I have missed any steps since I am writing this after the fact. One big change from the original article us you can let Disk Utility do some of the work for you now. Also, I just skipped the restore partition to keep it simple since that was the source of many problems.
Connect your Apple TV drive in Leopard. Remember disk1 may not be the name of your drive.
From the terminal: Wipe out and re-create the partition structure
sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
sudo gpt destroy /dev/disk1
sudo gpt create /dev/disk1
Create the OSBoot Partition
sudo gpt add -b 888872 -i 3 -s 1843200 -t hfs /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
sudo diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" OSBoot /dev/disk1s3
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
Create the Media Partition
Go to Disk Utility and format the Media partition - Name it Media and use the rest of the free space on your drive.
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
Restore the OS image to the drive
Download it here:
http://mesu.apple.com/data/OS/061-3561.20080212.ScoH6/2Z694-5274-109.dmg
to your desktop.
sudo dd if=/Users/username/Desktop/OS.dmg of=/dev/disk1s3 bs=1m
Now Bless the boot file
Notice how the OSBoot we are blessing is OSBoot 1 because it is on Disk 1.
bless --folder="/Volumes/OSBoot 1/System/Library/CoreServices" --file="/Volumes/OSBoot 1/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi" --setBoot
Now pray and let me know if you are successful or not so we can make this article more useful.
--ORIGINAL ARTICLE IS BELOW
I titled this appropriately after destroying all data on my AppleTV and learning the hard way how to rebuild the drive with no backup or spare AppleTV. The process does not take very long, but I had a hard time finding all of the info in one place and I don't know anyone else currently that owns an AppleTV that I can borrow.
Assumptions / Caveats:
1. My guide assumes that you will remove the drive from your AppleTV.
However, this could be done without removing the drive by booting from
a USB drive with OSX (Sorry, you'll have to search for this elsewhere).
2. You will need to download the Apple OS 1.1.dmg file (The latest at the time I am writing this) which contains the OSBoot data. Luckily, Apple provides this file at http://mesu.apple.com/data/OS/061-2988.20070620.bHy75/2Z694-5248-45.dmg. You can also use version 1.0 if you happen to have that DMG image, I have verified it works as well.
3. You will need an Intel Mac and a USB cable or external enclosure to connect the AppleTV drive to you computer. I used an old 40gb IBM TravelStar hard drive in my test.
4. I don't know if this is crucial, but to be safe I downloaded an app called Spotless that lets you turn Spotlight off termporarily while doing this.
5. I did not restore the recovery data, therefore my guide lacks this step, although the partition is there. From my readings, it looks like you can do this by renaming the DMG you downloaded from apple above to OS.DMG and copy it to the recovery partition / reset its permissions to 777 after you finish this guide by using a patchstick, or possibly even do it right after you create the partition. I don't know and I hope someone will post this in the comments. However, this guide should get you back to factory state and a working AppleTV otherwise.
6. When you are in the terminal, you should be running as root, or you need to add sudo in front of the below commands.
Instructions:
Follow the instrctions on removing your AppleTV drive (if you need to). Basically, peel the rubber off the bottom and remove the 4 case screws and the 4 drive screws with a torx screwdriver ($6 - Lowes).
1. Connect the drive to your Intel Mac with your USB connector.
2. We need to know which drive it is, so open up the terminal and type:
Pay attention to which disk is your usb disk. On my Intel mac, my internal hdd was disk0, so my USB was disk1. Throughout this document, be sure to substitute your correct disk id or you may blow away your hard drive.
diskutil /list
3. Now we will completely destroy anything on the drive to start with a blank slate. When the finder asks you to initialize the disk, just choose ignore.
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
gpt destroy /dev/disk1
gpt create /dev/disk1
4. Next, we need to add the OSBoot partition with the following command and then unmount it.
gpt add -b 888872 -i 3 -s 1843200 -t hfs /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
5. Now, we need to determine how much space is on your hard drive for your Media partition. Look at the line directly above Sec GPT table. This is the starting number and size of the partition. Don't get these wrong.
gpt show /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
6. substitute the words START and SIZE with the numbers you got from step 5.
gpt add -b START -i 4 -s SIZE -t hfs /dev/disk1
7. Now we are going to prepare the OSBoot and Media Partitions.
8. Next, we will copy the image you downloaded from Apple to the OSBoot partition 3. This will take a few minutes to copy. You could also do this from the disk utility by choosing restore and dragging the OSBoot partition into the destination box. However you choose to do it, make sure it is done before proceeding. You can't mess around with the partitions once you create the EFI and boot partitions because Disk Utility will mess the order up.
diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" OSBoot /dev/disk1s3
diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" Media /dev/disk1s4
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
9. Now we need to create the EFI parition and the Restore partition.
dd if=/Users/beauford/Desktop/2Z694-5248-45.dmg of=/dev/disk1s3 bs=1m
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 69632 -t efi /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
gpt add -b 69672 -i 2 -s 819200 -t 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk1
10. Finally, we need to bless the drive so that the AppleTV can boot it (This is one big line).
bless --folder=/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices --file=/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi --setBoot
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
11. Unmount the disk and put it back in your AppleTV and boot up.
Credits / References
The guide I wrote is from many hours of searching other sites, newsgroups, etc.. I want to offer credit to the following sites specifically:
awkwardTV
Prepare a hard drive article: http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Prepare_a_Hard_Drive
Info about the recovery partition: http://forum.awkwardtv.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=839
Cisco & Friends (English Version) - How to create a USB Patchstick: http://www.cerof.net/2007/10/19/piccola-guida-alla-creazione-di-un-patchstick/#more-99
MacRumors Forums - http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=320839
AppleTV Hacks
Hack the AppleTV without opening the case
http://www.appletvhacks.net/2007/04/03/hack-the-apple-tv-without-opening-the-case
Removing the drive - http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/03/violating_my_apple_tv_war.html
