Apple

So after looking into RAMDISK as an awesome way to get hyper fast workspace, I began to realize what the issues were with modern day RAMDISK and why it is that it’s not very popular.

First let’s make a ramdisk. Easy enough, OS X is unix based, so let’s just map some RAM off to a device. Then format and mount it. The process it outlined here:

http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/23/create-a-ram-disk-in-mac-os-x/

Next let’s do a few speed tests. First, a standard SATA 7200RPM drive (seagate) nothing fancy, but no slow poke either.

Sure enough, the results are as expected. Sequential writes are decent, averaging out at about 35MB/sec. Random writes are weaker though, due to the mechanical nature of the drive.

Next let’s take a look at the RAMDISK. We begin to start measuring things in GB/sec here. Scores of 1336 on an XBench test are pretty insane. Overall, just plain incredible.

So what can we use this in the real world?

1. High bandwidth video capture or rendering:

Sounds intriguing, as reading or writing to disk large HD files can be difficult on traditional HDDs.

2. Use as a photo storage while photoshopping

Would offer rapid access to all your images while loading.

3. Large file transfer over network etc.

If the bottleneck is the disk like I insist it is, then file transfers should be exactly 1.0GBps – overhead

So what happens really?

1. In video application, the problem lies within the size of the Ramdisk. While if you had a large capacity for storage of video captures or render, your’e still limited in terms of capacity. If you’re working with a video that is smaller than 1-2GB in footage or render size, then chances are the render times won’t be too terrible, that is, assuming you’re not doing anything intensive. However most applications who are working with large intensive files are going to load them into RAM first anyway and then work with them, especially if you have the memory to spare that you’re making ramdisks in the first place. So really, there’s no advantage there.

2. Next, we have a similar roadblock here. Photoshop loads your images into RAM anyway so by loading all your work files into a ramdisk, then opening them, they might load quickly into the application, but you’re better off ejecting the ramdisk and letting photoshop use the memory itself once everything is opened, which is really just a waste of time.

3. On the other hand, large file transfers seem to be quite good. I was able to transfer a 653MB TOD over SMB, gigabit, jumbo frames from jQuad ramdisk to MacBook ramdisk in 10 seconds flat. That’s about 65.4MB/sec. That’s about 0.5Gbps. I’m sure if I did some better tests with HTTP and other protocols, doing multiple tests I’d get a better result of .6 or .7, but overall it was quite impressive. In comparison, HDD to HDD did so in about 22.5 seconds, which is about 0.2Gbps. Pretty impressive increase.

But after considerable thought, it’s virtual memory and intelligent applications that killed the ramdisk. Before the time of virtual memory, (and system 7 and 8

didn’t have it as I recall) your system basically would have to use memory as carefully as possible, because once it was full, you basically were told to close applications and try whatever you wanted to do again. (If you want to experience such nostalgia, disable page file in Windows, it’s a party and a half) but nowadays the operating system just writes out to disk any memory that isn’t going to be in use (such as background applications) so that it can be given to the application at hand. Because applications can now use just about as much memory as they want, they do. Most applications now will simply load the entire file into RAM and work with it from there. As a result, it’s really only the initial load into the application that the hard disk is penalizing your speed.

Now one of the other downsides of virtual memory and it’s effect on ramdisk performance is that once another applications starts to request more memory that is currently available, the system will start to write memory to disk to offer it to the application. In this case, RAMdisk is not actually clear from this dumping to disk, and so if Photoshop decides to use more memory, then the system will simply write out your ramdisk the hard drive, and all of the sudden your hyper-fast temporary space is back on the disk and not so speedy anymore (that is, until it is restored to memory.)

All these factors contributed to the ultimate demise of ramdisk on the consumer desktop. While it’s still very useful for nimble linux live discs and to my knowledge Google uses it extensively in their server technologies, ramdisk will most likely stay a benchmark dream rather than a useful tool for high performance computing.

So I don’t think I’ve given a full review to my iPod Nano yet, but I will make a quick note on some cool features (a complete review is yet to come.)

One neat feature that I really like is the sleep timer. I regularly use my iPod to put me to sleep , and it’s a great way to keep it’s battery alive by the next morning. For those of you unfamiliar, it essentially turns off your iPod after a set time.

Now, by no stretch of the imagination is this a well designed feature. Something it is missing is: exact times, fade out at end of time (nothing like about to fall asleep and it CLIPS right off) but I did notice that if it isn’t going to be able to finish the song in time, it won’t start it, which is pretty neat.

I will complain however, that it no longer displays the time remaining on the playback screen like it did in previous generations.

One thing I never really thought of is just to use an On-The-Go playlist, let it play through, and then just let it put itself to sleep.

Either way, I though it was some neat functionality. Thanks again !

Well it’s been about a day and a half with Leopard, and after reading a few reviews, I’m happy with it.

While it has it’s little quirks, and Apple unnecessarily removed certain functionality for some arguably ineffective functionality, it still is a significant improvement over Tiger, and it’s growing on me.

Overall there’s no real grand features, but lots of polish, which is still really great. Most of the advancements occurred “Under the hood” at the API and Programming Level, which means while Leopard isn’t SUPER fantastic right now, it will be soon as developers discover the great new technologies emerging.

I’ve compiled a list for things I hate and love about Leopard below.

Annoying things in Leopard:

• MDS still can’t be turned off (MDS = spotlight service), although spotlight is a lot fastetr
• iTunes has skipped twice in the past half hour. It never does that. I think it might be the single-coredness of my first install.
• Stacks are a bit pointless, but fairly useful.
• Spaces are ok, but are more like switching around too much. I think it will come in handy for when I’m not in full desktop mode with dual display, but I can see using it with FCE and stuff
• Maudio doesn’t work in any way (yet)
• The Menu Bar is a bit dark when there’s a dark background, but it’s less distracting, however there’s a “star” right where the application is right now and it’s driving me up the wall. For those of you dying for a hack for this, you can always just make 20 pixels along the top of your desktop background white (or black for a consistent silvery look) and you’re done. No special apps or defaults writing required.
• Time machine shows a status bar all the time when it’s backing up…maybe that’ll go away, but it’s ticking me off. Also, it didn’t exactly work the first few times, but I think it is now.
• Notes folder randomly takes time to “Load” (Spinny thing) even though there’s only one note, wtd? UPDATED: I hate Mail notes and Todos. I am not using them whatsoever.
• They did some weird thing with the bezel interface, making volume controls etc, harder to read. I’m pretty sure the drop shadow is gone.

Things I love in Leopard:

• Scrolling background windows
• The fact that when i’m done this note, I can just hit send. UPDATE: Not really, I went back to stickies.
• Time Machine is SOOOO awesome.
• Coverflow is neat, but not as useful as i thought it would be. We’ll see. Ars Technica goes into details about the UI changes in the Finder, but I find it pretty good.
• QuickLook is excellent. It even does SVG! 
• FrontRow is better….I guess. I wish I could use the same keyboard shortcuts, and also, I hate that it’s not the fwoosh it used to be. Also, it pauses iTunes when it launches. wtd is that? I don’t like it.
• Instalations made with Installer now do the iTunes “Complete” sound when they’re done. Also, an obnoxiously large green check mark shows up. Great.
• Mail.app is like Apple Outlook. I love it. Sort of.
• The new network preference pane are excellent.
• iCal, Mail, and pretty much everything is very quick. 
• Terminal updates are nice, but I still like iTerm
• My MacBook speakers actually have decent volume now UPDATE: Maybe not, I think iTunes was just preamped.
• AirPort finally shows secured/not secured in listing
• AirPort seemed to connect to networks really fast…
• Not only does “Scroll another window” work, but you can also right click a non active application, VERY useful for when say, you ahve a window on a second monitor, move your mouse over to the window, have something selected and right click to copy it. Amazingly, it works! AWESOME!!
• Cool feature: the checkbox in todo lists changes to an alert box when it is overdue
• Photo Booth effects are neat, the hacks are neater.

* Overall very solid.

One reason why I like the Mac platform as a whole is that Mac developers communicate properly.

OSS

In the open source world, if you have a software problem, you go into the land of mailing lists or forums and try to ask someone who happens to know anything for an answer. 50% of the time the project has gone dead and no one's around to reply to your messages. The other 25% of the time the developers are "too busy" to help with support, or they are just a bit on the snobby side. You also end up with tutorials and FAQs that are completely overtechnical or underwritten and hard to follow. You end up with nothing but trying to figure out the problem yourself, which, can happen, but not always. Not to downplay OSS, I use it daily and love it, but "support" can be an issue.

Windows

Most "proprietary" or freeware !OSS software are explained insanely elaborately. For example, video converters (mostly shareware) are all ducked up with 5 paragraph long explanations of functions in some humongous Windows help file. It takes you 10 minutes to find the help article you were looking for, and then you have to spend 10 minutes readnig the whole thing only to find out "oh, it's in the TOOLS menu" or something of the like. Overdocumented.

Mac

On the Mac however, it's more or less shareware-esque companies. They understand Apple KISS philosophy and explain things as straightforwardly as possible. Help files are clear, and if you DO ever have a problem you can email them and they'll send you a friendly reply. If you bought the software, you get what you pay for.

I just noticed this after a few issues with GNU screen. I wanted some information on how to use it and the GNU Homepage about it is laughable. It gives this weird technical explanation for it and then the "more information" link leads you to some random GNU-Land page that was clearly written by an Open Source evangelist. Your best hope is to find a random blogger who wrote a GNU screen primer about it, which I did.

I've used Windows and have been baffled by some freebies out there. Either there's absolutely NO documentation or way too much, and on the Mac I've had few complaints.

Ok, so I don't have an iPhone so I totally don't have the right to give it my review, but I can still have an opinion.

Basically from the vast reviews I've read, I think that overall it works very well, and all in all, as advertised. As for this insane hype around it, I agree with [http://leoville.com Leo} on this one, that basically everyone hates their phone for the most part. It's awkward to use, the screen sucks, and they wish they didn't have to carry their iPod AND cell phone at the same time. This sums everything up into one device, and everybody went banana's over it.

In regards to these little software annoyances. (eg. Keyboard can't go landscape 'cept in Safari; Mail app sucks, Bluetooth is headset only, No Flash/Java) are…just that. Software annoyances, that most probably will be upgraded as time goes on. We know they will actually push out software updates, because they kept their word for Apple TV and delivered YouTube as a bonus.

Of course the question is, "Am I buying one?" and for now the answer stays no.

• Doesn't work in Canada (yet, and some have shown ways to circumvent that. I still need a phone though ;-))
• Apple is literally pocketing almost double the actual price of device, which means as they get less greedy and they sell more of them, prices have to go down. Plus like the iPod I can see there being an iPhone Mini (don't know about the iPhone shuffle though!)

Some of my other complaints such as lack of video recording on the camera, and other features are upgradeable and I see Apple updating the firmware very soon.

So here's what's happened.

1. Apple has lost it's mind and released Safari for Windows.
2. Apple announces THE SAME Leopard features at WWDC
3. Apple redesigns their website

and a few other things…

Obviously you can see my disappointment in seeing Safari on Windows. Sure, it makes sense. You're going to have millions of people in just a few short weeks using iPhones and it would be crazy not to offer a parallel browsing experience on their PCs. And after all, Apple is a great Windows developer.

I'm also not to impressed with the Leopard feature demonstration. They're basically just showing the same features over again, and I wish Jobs would show us the other 280 instead of reshowing us the ones he showed us at MacWorld. I'm still excited for Leopard because while careening around the Leopard mini-site I found some intriguing features, even subtle ones, like a great new DVD player and an improved Terminal.

I also like the new website, well done Apple. It's also great that Leopard will be $129 across the board. Yay.

It's also great that iPhone supports third-party apps. If it turns out I can bring one to Canada, I would probably switch to Rogers and drop the 500 dollars for one.

What I really missed from the Keynote was:

1. iWork & iLife. Seriously where the duck is Apple's mind here? It's halfway through '07 and you still haven't released new iSuites
2. ZFS. The revolutionary new Filesystem that Sun themselves declared Apple was going to use wasn't even mentioned to my knowledge. Is it there or did they trash it at the last second?
3. New Macs. I don't know why I expected new Macs, but I did. I would like to be blown away with something super thin, powerful, and efficient, and I haven't.

Anyways, maybe I'll change my mind after watching the official Keynote video, but right now I'm not impressed Steve. Or did I just set to high of expectations? Oh well…

Well it's been exactly a week since the click of death visited my house, and since then there has been a lot of waiting and frustration with other operating systems. I've taken a tour around the world of Operating Systems in the past week, and am glad that I call the Macintosh my home.

Things are returning to normal faster than I thought they would. All of my music restored absolutely beautifully thanks do Senuti, (http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/) and I'm slowly restoring all my programs and settings.

I'm certainly glad this whole ordeal is over, and I am enjoying the fresh start.

Have a good weekend everybody!

Well it’s been almost a week, and I’ll have my MacBook returned to me in a couple of hours. It’s been hard being without my white bundle of joy, but I have learned a tough life lesson that’s for sure.

As I said before, I lost all photos after September 12th. I’m a bit sad about what that means. I did lose quite a few nice winter shots that I didn’t get around to uploading.

What I really learned is that it’s not about the past. While I was having my mini-fit, my dad told me that you just keep moving forward. You take new pictures. Now that I think about it, half the fun is taking the pictures and seeing people’s faces when they see what you’ve done. If I had been working on joleblog for a month and had no backups, it would have been time for some real sobbing, but it’s a few re-writable documents here and there.

It’s about what’s happening now. The present. The only thing that’s important is what is linked to the present. Meaning: if I lost an essay that hadn’t been handed in, the present still matters. But really the idea that somehow all documents should be archived, sure, that’s nice, however it’s not important. It’s nice to look back at photos or pieces of writing, but you keep a few here and there, not all of it.

So as I get excited to go pick up my fresh start on computing, my (late) new years resolution is this.

“So I tell you, don’t worry about everyday life -whether you have enough food, drink, and clothes. Doesn’t life consist of more than food and clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t need to plant or harvest or put food in barns because your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are. Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not. And why worry about your clothes? Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you? You have so little faith. ofSo don’t worry about having enough food or drink or clothing. Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern. So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:25-34)

Well it's been 24 hours without my MacBook, and it hasn't been very nice. I've been dragging by on my Ubuntu Box and Windows. In the past few weeks I have been thinking about Windows Vista and Linux as my primary desktop operating system, just because I've gotten a bit bored with how well (the OS at least…) runs on my Mac.

So I got forced into it. Now, when it comes to Ubuntu, I think it's great. Of all the linux distro's I've installed, it is by far the easiest, and the package manager is beautiful. It runs fairly fast on my 1.2 GhZ Celeron, and worked with my D-Link 802.11 card "out of the box" so to speak. Inkscape and GIMP run wonderfully, and even the OpenOffice runs pretty well. Where I ran into problems was with music management.

There has been lots of talk about Linux possibly taking over some of the desktop market, and it's entirely possible for it to do well in a basic office environment where web/email/wp is all you need. But any average user will want to manage their MP3 player and listen to music on their computer. To my surprise, Rythmbox, which is a GNOME music player bundled with Ubuntu (they even just call it "Music Player" for clarity) didn't even support MP3, nevermind AAC. Now I get where Ubuntu is coming from. They want to prove that an OS can be fully operational without proprietary software, and being a proprietary codec, they didn't include the MP3 library.

But honestly, who uses ogg-vorbis? If I had an MP3 player that played it and a software manager that worked well enough, I would. But my shuffle won't play it, even though I can download the latest episode of TWiT in Ogg format. To me that's a real set back.

Just in general Rythmbox didn't work very well. The error were vague, and often inaccurate. Linux is great, but this is why I have my Mac to balance out my media needs.

Returning to our family's PC, I watched as it slowly logged onto my user that I probably hadn't used in months. Chuga-chuga-chuga. It really doesn't run very quickly. The scariest part trying to fix Windows and speed it up, is that it's so hard to figure out what's going on. I won't even start on the registry this time, but similarly, is "svchost.exe". Yes, it's that nightmarish process that is always eating up most of your RAM and CPU all the time in your process list. But the worst part about it is every program in the world has it's own service. iTunes, F-Secure, and Adobe for example, all have "QuickStart" programs that sit there and do nothing.

This wouldn't be a problem, except that there's no way of tracking back these services. When Windows Update is screwing up the Download of Microsoft Office Vulnerability Rollup Pack 2007/01 (There's a great name right there), you only see in your process list "svchost.exe" is maxing the CPU. So you go into this huge list of "Services" that mostly just say "Don't turn this off or nothing will work" and are usually awkwardly named. (I've since figured out that anything starting with "fs" must mean F-secure) But how do you know which one is killing my CPU?

Unlike UNIX based OS's, Windows just groups processes together for no good reason. These things have been going on since NT, and being Microsoft they won't break compatibility for Adobe or whatnot who uses those service API's.

Anyways, I'm just pointing out that Vista will be a great improvement, and many Mac users are welcoming it with great praise as a much-needed upgrade to XP, but underneath it all, there's still the registry, svchost, and all those Windows nightmares that haunt XP and NT.

The withdrawal is on in full force. My knapsack feels too light without my 'Book in it, and I am missing my podcasts dearly. Waiting…