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- How-To: Image OS X and Boot Camp to a New Mac
You get a new Mac and even though you know you should, you don’t want to start over from scratch and reload the whole system. To make matters worse, you have Boot Camp installed and really don’t want to start over on the Windows side. So, here’s how you can image both OS’s to a new machine using free tools.
You need to download the Carbon Copy Cloner and Winclone software packages. CCC was created by Mike Bombich and has been used for years to clone Mac machines. It is the standard tool for this job. Winclone is made by Twocanoes Software and this is what we will use to image the Windows Boot Camp partition.
Let’s Get Started
Lets start off with Winclone first. After you install the app and run it for the first time, it will tell you it needs to download and install NTFSProgs. Click the download button and install NTFSProgs by following the wizard. The NTFSProgs software allows Winclone to properly read NTFS formatted partitions.
Now run Winclone again and select your Boot Camp partition in the Source dropdown. You can write some notes in the Item Description field if you’d like. When you’re ready, click the Image… button.
It will prompt you for a name and location to save the image to.
Now we wait for Winclone to do its work. When it’s completed, this dialog box will appear. You can now quit Winclone.
Carbon Copy Cloner is a little different in that it can image from your old machine to your new one using a Firewire or network connection. For this tutorial we’ll use the Firewire method. Setup your new machine and connect a Firewire cable between the two Macs. On the new Mac, hit the power button and hold down the “T” key on the keyboard until you see the Firewire symbol on the screen. This boots it into Target Disk Mode where it will act as if it’s just an external Firewire hard drive. On your old Mac we need to launch Carbon Copy Cloner. Your Source Disk drive is your local drive and the Target Disk is the Firewire drive. Click the Clone button and off we go.
After CCC is finished, reboot the new Mac and it should be identical to the original. From here on out, we are done with the old machine. When we imaged the Mac partition, we also brought along the Winclone image with it so now we can restore that image on our new Mac. Launch the Boot Camp Assistant in the utilities folder to create a new Windows partition.
Launch Winclone and click on the Restore tab. Click the Select Image button and browse to your Windows image. Mine was in the Documents folder.
Restore it to your newly created Boot Camp partition.
You know have a new Mac that’s a complete clone of your old one, Boot Camp and all. Windows will probably complain, as it always does, about drivers. Just insert your OS X DVD while in Windows and let it re-install the Boot Camp drivers for you. Of course, starting over from scratch is cleaner but sometimes you just don’t have the time. Proper cloning offers a reasonably quick solution.
Переслать - Rumor Has It: Next-Gen iPhone Named, Dated and Described in Korean Newspaper
The rumor mill surrounding the Apple tablet is so intense as to possibly beat out the hype surrounding any other Apple product to date, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only one being talked about. Today, a Korean source reported details about the upcoming iPhone revision, which many expect to arrive in late June or July.
Telecoms Korea reported on a story by South Korean local newspaper ETNews that details the hardware capabilities and some new software features of the upgraded device. The story also maintains that the iPhone will indeed by named the “iPhone 4G,” despite it not looking like it will support 4G network connectivity.
The newspaper article cites internal sources at both KT, the exclusive iPhone carrier in South Korea, and Apple Korea as having provided the information. I suppose it’s possible that Apple is more willing to authorize product leaks from internal sources in the Asian market, where competition from established veterans like Samsung can be especially fierce.
While the list of new features doesn’t get into specific detail about things like megapixels or processing power, it still provides a tantalizing glance at the future of Apple’s little smartphone that could. According to ETNews, the iPhone 4G will offer up to twice the battery life of the 3GS, something that will come as welcome news to those of us who seem to have their devices plugged into the wall more often than not. Two camera modules will also be used, one of which will be front-facing to make video calling a reality, and not just the one-way kind currently made possible by Fring.
Video calling will initially be introduced in the Korean market, according to the paper’s sources, probably because the network infrastructure already exists there to use it, so it makes sense as a test market. The phone will also possibly support mobile TV, which is popular in Asia but has yet to truly appear here in North American markets. Hopefully Apple is also working to bring this feature to handsets on our side of the world, as I would really love to have TV access while enduring especially long commutes.
Lastly, the article claims that KT will be offering test models of the new device to corporate customers in April or May, prior to the official launch. This is the one detail in this particular rumor report that strikes me as odd. As far as I know, Apple keeps a very tight leash on its pre-release devices, limiting their distribution mostly (if not exclusively) to internal testers and executives. I doubt very highly that it’d authorize one of its carrier partners to go handing out the hardware before it hits the street, whatever the intended reason.
Переслать - By the Numbers: Running Windows-Based MMOs On the Mac
For 90 percent of my daily toil, OS X is the best platform for me. I use it during my day job, freelance writing, school, graphic design, and the usual goofing off everyone does. However, there is one glaring desire missing: I play Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs), and the Mac-native offerings are slim. I’ve had to result to running games in emulators, virtual disks, and Boot Camp partitions, and after running some numbers I thought I’d share my findings with you.
The Games
I play the following MMOs: World of Warcraft, EverQuest 1 and 2, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Of these, only WoW and Warhammer have native clients. Which means I'm forced to use some sort of emulation to play them. A commenter on Liam's Windows 7 piece said, "You bought an Apple computer so use the Apple software. If you want it so bad go buy a PC." For me, Apple and OS X are fantastic for my productivity needs, but when it comes to gaming, sadly, it's still a Windows world.
The Emulators
Fortunately, all is not lost. Once Apple went to Intel chips, running Windows in some sort of emulation became possible. For a gamer like myself, it became a saving grace that let me enjoy OS X for my daily usage, but lets me have my games and play them, too. For the purposes of testing, I played games in the following programs:
- CrossOver Games 8.1.3. CrossOver is a Wine-based emulator, so you're not actually running any Windows code; it's all handled via the app.
- Parallels Desktop 4 version 4.0.3848 with a Windows 7 virtual,
- Windows 7 running in Boot Camp on OS 10.6.2. Unfortunately, Parallels can only access a Boot Camp partition officially supported by Apple, so I was unable to test Parallels directly accessing Boot Camp.
These were all tested on a 2.26 GHz 13″ MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and at native 1280×800 resolution.
The Results
Costs
For Boot Camp, Windows 7 Home Professional is $199.99. CrossOver Games is $39.99. Parallels is easily the most expensive. Windows 7 Home Professional is $199.99 and Parallels is $79.99.Setting Things Up
Boot Camp: This is the easy one. Since Boot Coomp runs Windows natively, installing all the games tested was very easy — albeit time consuming since they each had to be downloaded off the net.
Parallels: Again, very straight forward. The process takes a little longer since it's running in a virtual environment, and Parallels needs to install the Parallels Tools after the setup. I had no issues installing the games. Really, for all intents and purposes Parallels is just like running Windows.
CrossOver: Well, the install is quick — you just install CrossOver like any OS X program. Getting the games to run…well, that's a different story. While there's a decent compatibility listing on Codeweaver's site, since CrossOver is a Wine emulator results are very mixed. If an app has a Gold rating from Codeweaver, it'll install and run well. Unfortunately, none of the games I tested received Gold ratings so installation was challenging. With DDO and Lord of the Rings, the actual installer won't work; you'll have to download the full client off a third-party site. After that, a program called Pylotro is required to launch the game — it's a custom front end someone wrote to handle the launcher duties. There’s no guarantee an installed game will keep working, either; a previously working EQ2 broke in a patch of CrossOver.
Load Times
Frankly, the load times were the biggest source of agony during my tests. Not because of the load times, but because the results were hard to sort out because of a lot of variables. Every game is an online-based game, so, to get my character in the game I had to pass an authentication server, several load screens and a character select. Therefore, Internet latency and a whole host of issues come to play.
Here’s how I got the numbers. I loaded all the games and timed from when I started and stopped when I was able to control my character in-world. With Parallels and Boot Camp I also added the boot times of the required OS to the chart. I did this three times and averaged the results.
I did notice an odd thing in Parallels: if I rebooted my Mac, the load times for both the OS and the game were significantly longer. However, after further testing I noticed that if I loaded Parallels/Windows 7 and immediately launched a game, the load results were almost double the value above. If I let the OS “sit” for a few, the load times were normal. Rather than report those numbers, I’ll just say this: a watched OS never loads — go get your beverage and snacks while Parallels loads and by the time you’re done the game will load faster.
In-Game Performance
Boot Camp: Unsurprisingly, the performance here was the best. At high I was getting around 40 FPS, and the game just flew. No issues.
Parallels: I’m actually amazed gaming performance under Parallels was decent. With graphics settings on High (but shadows turned off) I was getting around 20 FPS average. Turning down options like view distances got the FPS closer to 30. I noticed no major issues outside of a slight stutter when loading a crowded area. Both windowed mode and full-screen worked fine. As an added bonus, you can set Parallels to share your OS X and Windows home directories, so any screenshots I took went right into my OS X Documents folder for easy viewing.
CrossOver: The performance was about half-way between Parallels and Boot Camp. I was getting just over 30 FPS in the games. There were, however, some significant trade-offs. Neither DDO or LotRO handle windowed mode well — once the window loses focus, you can’t click inside the window when you get back to it. Also, there’s a big issue with LotRO where the screen will go black forcing a reboot. I was able to get around both issues by forcing the virtual to run in a window. The game would think it’s full screen, but the OS treated it as a window. This way I could have access to Skype and if LotRO crashed it didn’t take the entire OS down with it. As I mentioned earlier, a previously working EverQuest 2 install broke with a recent patch release of CrossOver.
Conclusions
I used to be a huge fan of CrossOver due to its overall speed and low footprint. However, I’ve had enough and will be deleting the files. The final straw was EverQuest 2 breaking. While it’s cheap, getting a lot of games running is a gigantic hassle and there’s no guarantee they’ll keep working. As an aside, the community on the official forums is very helpful, and just about every issue someone’s had is at least addressed, even if there’s no solution.
For now, I’m running my games in Parallels. While the performance isn’t as great as in Boot Camp, the convenience of not needing to reboot is a big bonus for me. Often, I’ll game when taking a break from a project and I’d like to not have to reboot. As an added bonus, it’s very easy to resize the virtual disk in Parallels. It took less than 5 minutes to add another 32GB to the virtual disk (in Boot Camp, I’d have to repartition and reformat). I’m really surprised at how well these games ran in Parallels. Version 5 claims to add better support for Shader Model 3, so I’m planning on upgrading.
I’m not deleting the Boot Camp partition, though. Once Apple releases official support for Windows 7, I plan on re-paritioning it to a 100GB partition and have Parallels access that directly. That’ll cover me for the best of both worlds: for every day gaming, I can load Parallels, but if I need it, I can reboot and use the same install files in Boot Camp.
Переслать - Rumor Has It: LED Flash Destined for Next iPhone
They say the best camera you own is the one you have on you right now. So, unless you habitually carry a high-end DSLR on your person everywhere you go, your best camera is likely your iPhone. And that's not exactly something to brag about, given how disappointing the iPhone camera can be.
That might be changing. According to AppleInsider, Apple is in the market for an LED flash manufacturer:
Apple in recent months has moved to procure significant quantities of LED camera flash components that could help the iPhone maker’s next-generation mobile handsets produce superior image and video captures in low-light situations.
People familiar with Apple’s initiative claim the electronics maker is seeking allotments of LED camera flash components in the tens of millions for delivery during the 2010 calendar year, meaning future iPhones — and possibly the iPod touch — are the most likely recipients of those parts, due to their sales volume. Those same people say that Philips’ Lumileds Lighting sector is believed to be the front-runner for Apple’s business and may have already secured the design win.
It's all good news, of course, but I won't hold my breath. It took two years for Apple to upgrade the iPhone camera in any significant manner, and even now with the 3GS 3.2 megaxpixels and video recording, the camera is still a colossal waste of time.
The 3GS might be the fastest iPhone yet, but the camera app is still painfully slow. If you're taking an impulse shot with your iPhone (let’s say your cat is doing something unbelievably hilarious and you really must capture it right now, this second) the chances are you're going to miss the moment. The virtual iris takes an age to 'open' as the camera app (and all its auto-stabilizing algorithms) are loaded into memory. And then there's the issue with light; unless your cat is doing its unbelievably hilarious thing in the garden, and it's a blazingly-bright sunny day, and it’s not moving around very much, you're unlikely to get a good photo. Frankly, the iPhone makes for a lousy point-and-shoot camera.
"But I didn't buy my iPhone to take pictures," you might say, "That's what I have a real camera for!" And that's true… except for those times when you don't have your 'real' camera on you. And it is those moments — when your iPhone takes just long-enough to be roused to readiness that your cat loses interest and wanders off — that you curse Steve Jobs and all who work for him.
I've always found this paradoxical; for a company that prides itself on not making crappy products, that strives to guarantee a rewarding user experience time after time, it has given us consistently rubbish camera functionality in what is, without a doubt, one of its highest profile products.
Turning Point
I'm hopeful that, if true, this rumor marks a turning point, and that Apple is focusing (pun intended) on the camera hardware and really aiming (sorry!) to do something worthwhile with the camera on the next iPhone. The expected upgrade would be a five megapixel sensor with a super-bright LED flash. Other mobile handsets (such as the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One) already offer these specs, while Nokia and Sony Ericsson have been producing decent camera-phones for some years now. But what if Apple was to surprise us and really upgrade the camera with something far more compelling; how about a real glass optical assembly — not a cheap blob of resin atop a CCD? Or what about greatly-updated, super-responsive camera software that puts even dedicated point-and-shoot cameras to shame?
Of course, a significantly improved camera means larger hardware, and Apple is never going to tolerate a noticeable increase in the iPhone's dimensions. After all, rightly or wrongly, the perceived benchmark for consumer electronics progress is about getting things smaller, thinner and lighter.
A Difficult Place
AppleInsider adds:
[Rumors indicate Apple] has placed orders with OmniVision, its current supplier of CMOS image sensors, for as many as 45 million 5-megapixel parts for the next-generation of the handset due by late spring. The company is also likely to leverage the iPhone’s ambient light sensor, in addition to providing a software switch, to ensure that the LED flash won’t interfere in photos where it isn’t needed. […] And since the same LED flash can also be operated as a continuous light source, it would be suitable for proving light to enhance iPhone video recordings as well — not to mention closing the book on the numerous, dinky iPhone flashlight apps proliferating the App Store.
Apple is now in a difficult place with the iPhone. The company is committed to its traditional vision of producing products that are functional and beautiful, and it simply won't compromise on style; if an improved camera means a bigger iPhone, it just won't improve the camera until the technology fits its desired form factor. But, in the meantime, that leaves customers frustrated that their super-expensive 'smart' phones aren't nearly as smart as the competition.
Переслать
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