shuffle November 2006 content

[Magnus]

A word from the editor - The journey is the reward

Welcome to the first issue of EmiratesMac shuffle, the newsletter of the EmiratesMac User Group (EMUG). It’s the first publication of it’s kind in the Emirates, and we hope it becomes a regular feature in the lifes of anyone interested in Apple and their products.

“The journey is the reward” is the title of a biography about Steve Jobs by Jeffrey Young published in 1988. Obviously the book only deals with the early years of Apple and Jobs and doesn’t cover his remarkable comeback in 1997 and the success the company has had since. It is however a great read and I love the title of the book and the sentiment that the process you go through is more important than where you end up.

For me the process of EmiratesMac started when I began blogging about Mac stuff in the Emirates in late 2005. Never did I in my wildest dreams think that within a year the site would have several hundred registered users, that there would be a User Group, and that we would publish a newsletter and a podcast.

This has definitely been a wild ride. The site has gone through some major changes and we’ve had incredible spikes of traffic a few times from being able to publish stories with wide, international appeal. With more users and functionality comes more responsibility and time required to manage and develop the site. These challenges is something I look forward to and I hope to be able to make as many users as possible happy with what the site has to offer. That said, the site only gets as good as the users on it and what we do is largely driven by user input. If you do have any views, suggestions, or questions regarding the site, please don’t hesitate to send me a private message or email.

It wasn’t long ago that the user group (EMUG) was finally recognized by Apple. And I say finally because we submitted the application back in May, so it took quite a while. We certainly appreciate Apple’s support and we look forward to working together with Apple and Apple IMC Middle East to spread the word about Apple’s products in the region. This type of community organization is not a very common concept in this part of the world but we hope we can in some humble ways help make it more common since we think it’s a wonderful way to get people together to help each other out and have fun.

This is the first edition of our newsletter which we call shuffle. The name is partly an homage to Apple’s iPod model, and partly a good fit for what we intend this newsletter to be - a little bit of everything in an uncertain order, all rolled into one. We hope to make shuffle a monthly publication and we hope to be able to print and distribute it through stores in the UAE. To this end we’re looking for sponsors and advertisers so if you’re interested, please let us know.

We are also hoping that EMUG members will consider writing material for the newsletter. As you can see already for this first newsletter some members have generously dedicated time and effort to producing articles for everyone to enjoy. Some have even committed to having recurring columns in the newsletter, which is wonderful. We hope that many more will over time contribute and make this newsletter a good addition to the web site and the podcast, as a source for information about Apple and their products, with a focus on the United Arab Emirates.

As this is our first newsletter we’re still feeling our way through the whole processo of producing something like this. We certainly appreciate your feedback, but please keep in mind that we’re very new at this.

Magnus Nystedt
Founder and Administrator EmiratesMac.com

[Magnus]

Review Nike+iPod sport kit
by MacUAE

As soon as it was announced, I ordered the Nike+iPod accessory for my iPod nano. A few days later I got a call from the courier company so I picked up after work. And I read somewhere that this gadget makes jogging fun. Let’s see if that’s true.

With the help of Lego Steve, I unpacked the box of my new iPod accessory! Examining the box, I was amazed by how small this thing was. As with all Apple products, the quality is instantly evident. By the way, Lego Steve wasn’t surprised.

So what’s inside the box? There’s the little red & white sensor that goes inside the shoe and of course, the little receiver that plugs into the nano to help you with your workout! My first reaction was that this thing is tiny. After the amazement had subsided a bit, I plug the receiver into the nano and instantly get a new menu selection.Ohh Goodie! Under the Workout menu, you can practically pick what type of workout your want. Either by Time, Distance or Calories.

Curious as I am, I tried to plug the receiver
into my 5th Gen. iPod and I got an error message. So this thing is specifically made for the nano. No surprise there really.

After a quick look through the manual I decided to try it with my jogging shoes. Note that the sensor is made to work with the Nike+ shoes which I didn’t have. Unable to locate my shoes, I decide to use my ‘other’ jogging pair.

As instructed in the manual, I place the sensor in the shoe with the help of Lego Steve for perfect adjustment inside the shoe. Holding the nano in hand and ready to try it out, I chose a quick 20 minute workout. As expected the sensor and receiver communicate instantly and I am off jogging in my apartment. Lego Steve picked the album and the display updates with the distance, pace and also time. Three minutes later, I decide stop and see a final report of my workout. Good! 21 calories in three minutes.

Overall, Nike+iPod is a great way to workout. The system integration is amazing and really keeps you informed of your workout performance, while listening to your favorite albums. I haven’t tried the online rating system, so I can’t say anything about it. My impressions are 90% Positive, only Negative is that it currently requires the Nike+ shoes to work. So if you need to workout efficiently and have fun doing it... get the Nike+iPod... costs around Dhs 110 from Amazon (plus shipping). Highly recommended by Lego Steve!!!

[Magnus]

Installing MySQL on Mac OS X
by Magnus

You can download and install MySQL on your Mac if you want to try it out or perhaps develop something for an application or web site. It’s not as complicated as it may sound. Here’s what to do.

Download MySQL 5 from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#downloads.

Doubleclick the two installers and the prefpane, in turn to install them.

This will give you a new preference pane from which you can stop and start the database server and see whether it’s running or not.

Download MySQL GUI Tools from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html.. This is a set of three applications with which you can develop MySQL databases and manage MySQL servers. Once downloaded, drag the three applications to your Applications folder or wherever you want to put them.

Start the MySQL Administrator application. It will ask you to connect to a MySQL server and login. Enter “localhost” for “Server Hostname” and “root” for “Username”. Leave “Password” blank.

Click on “Connect” and you should be logged in and connected.

Click on the “Users” icon at the top of the window.

Type in the password you want to use for the root user on your MySQL server in “Password” and “Confirm Password”. The root user is the “super user” with access to everything on the Server so be careful with the root users details.

Click “Save Changes”.

You may also want to create a normal user account that you use for your databases. It’s not a good idea to regularly connect as root as that poses serious security issues.

Quit MySQL Administrator.

Now you should be able to connect to your database with your new access details. Try the MySQL Query Browser, for example.

In future newsletters we will take a look at how we can work with a MySQL database.

[Magnus]

Switching to Mac
by Aditya

Its been more than a month since I bought my Apple MacBook Pro. I have just switched from Windows, and this has been a completely new experience.
It did take a lot of persuasion from other Mac owners for me to buy my notebook. With every Windows user trying their best to dissuade me from buying a Mac, it does take courage initially to buy one; especially if one is a student like me and had to chip in some portion of the money from his own savings.
People who had never touched anything apple other than an iPod used to lecture me why not to switch. I believe the only reason they do that is because they themselves have not experienced what it is to be on a Mac. I have yet to find a Mac user who does not like his computer. Though I do not know, how many “I hate Windows” sites exist on the internet. I bought my notebook solely on the advice of people who had already used Macs, and the fact that BootCamp was released. So that acted as a safety cushion, I could always revert to Windows if I didn’t like the new environment.
My fears were all allayed the very first day I used my notebook. The GUI is not a sore in the eye, but infact a real treat. The interface is very intuitive. There is even a “Switching from Windows” section in the help. I do not recollect a single instance when I could not figure out things either on my own or with the OS-Help. It feels nice to simply surf the net without being reminded rudely to download hundreds of megabytes of security updates for the millions of viruses, worms, trojans, etc. that exist. It is a nice feeling when you are not told every minute that “The computer has recovered from a serious error” or when your applications shut down with all your unsaved data. This thing is stable, reliable. It does not eat my mind up for things it should not.
The looks of Apple products are something to die for. The illuminated Apple logo on the cover is the envy of all my friends. I already prefer Keynote to Powerpoint. In fact, I cannot believe how quickly I have got accustomed to this. Yesterday, while working on a friend’s computer, I was clicking on the left side of the application window to close it.
To be honest I still do use Windows once or twice a day. This is only for games or for AutoCad. In essence now there is no software which I cannot use. I believe one of the major issues with people who want to switch is compatibility, especially if he or she does not have another Windows machine. BootCamp easily resolves this. So does Parallels. But if you are thinking of switching, then trust me you will never feel like using Windows again unless you are forced to. Sure the notebook that I am working on is far from perfect, it does have heating issues and the speaker quality is not good enough, but this is closer than the rest. Though in the Middle East, the Apple also turns out to be quite on the higher side, when it comes to prices too.
Two friends of mine who stay with me also have bought Macs. They too had no Mac experience but seeing how it works first-hand on my laptop they got convinced enough to buy one. Needless to say they are as happy as me. The best way to gauge any product is to ask the users themselves. To cut a long story short, I am loving this.

[Magnus]

Tips and tricks for EmiratesMac
by Magnus

We’d like to think that EmiratesMac.com is a fairly easy site to use, but as we get more users posting more stories, there may be somewhat overwhelming to try to keep up with everything. Here we offer a few suggestions that may help you keep up with what’s going on and make your life easier.

New Posts
On most pages on the site there is a button you can click on with the test “New posts”. That will show all the posts that are new since you last logged in on one convenient page.

Login problems
If you have problems with logging in, and you’re asked repeatedly to log in even though you already did, chances are it’s a cookie problem. Log out from the site and delete all cookies, then try to log in again. Some users have reported this problem when they’re connecting from corporate networks behind routers, proxies and other networking equipment.

Gallery
Most people love to look at photographs and pictures. That’s certainly also true for EmiratesMac users so we introduced an advanced Gallery section to which any registered user can upload photos and pictures.

Change view
When you’re looking at a thread in the forum, you can look at the posts in that thread in different ways. There’s a button named “Display Modes” and by clicking on it you can chose between three different view modes. The standard is the Linear Mode. Threaded Mode can be more effective when looking at a thread with a lot of posts.

RSS feeds
RSS feeds enable you to conveiently keep up with what’s new on the site. Basically, anything new that’s been posted will show up on your computer without you having to do anything. Right now we offer four RSS feeds:
Blog (http://feeds.feedburner.com/drupal/IVKW)
Reviews (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Emiratesmac-Reviews)
EMUG News and Announcements (http://feeds.feedburner.com/usergroupnews)
Podcast (http://feeds.feedburner.com/emiratesmacpodcast)

Safari is capable of subscribing to RSS-feeds. For some other suggestions go to Comprehensive list of RSS readers.

[Magnus]

AppleCore - what do you do with your OS X?
by Dan

What do you do with your OS X ? My brother describes it as a ‘pretty’ operating system that hardly ever crashes, is made by apple computers and is only used by graphic designers and video editors. One of my BSD user groups describes it as an OS with massive potential, a great command line interface (CLI), but it is a shame it is not open source. Apple describes OS X as “ the world’s most advanced operating system... a virtual toolbox chock full of cleverly integrated features — all atop a rock-solid UNIX foundation [FreeBSD]... the most innovative, stable and compatible operating system on the planet. Period.”

What does all that mean ? Is a pretty operating system just for graphic designers, is it UNIX ? Is it FreeBSD... Or is it really the ultimate operating system that can be used by any professional from any walk of life, as apple proclaims it to be.

In order to understand apple’s present and future operating system - OS X we need to understand its past. OS X was a massive leap from OS9 from a architectural and graphical point of view. OS X used a new graphical window manager called Aqua and used the NeXT step XNU Kernel. ( After several failed attempts to produce a new release of the Mac OS, Apple decided to purchase NeXT, a technology company owned by its co-founder - Steve Jobs in 1997, and creators of NeXTstep and Openstep).

NeXTstep was based on FreeBSD and used the Mach microkernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University.) NeXt provided OS X with kernel threading, Pre-Emptive Multitasking, memory protection, and a UNIX like base.... Apple provided NeXTstep with its user base its sales and marketing engine and its colourful past.

FreeBSD is a derivative of NetBSD, which it itself was based on the University of Berkley’s Computer Science Research Group’s (CSRG) BSDlite 4.4. Bell labs the original creators of UNIX, sold UNIX to AT&T, who in turn licensed UNIX to the University of Berkley’s SCRG for a minimal fee. The university students then began ‘hacking’ the UNIX code and began providing AT&T with patches and updates to the original UNIX code provided to them. Wind the clock 10 years and many substantial code revisions later. Berkley released their ‘new’ Unix code to the world, for free. Unless you didn’t own your own media to copy it, in which case you had to pay for the media. AT&T were unhappy with this and launched a court case to prevent Berkley releasing their Berkley Software Distribution (BSD). After a code audit it was concluded that only 6 lines of the original AT&T UNIX code remained in Berkley’s distribution. The 6 lines were removed, and later re-written and Berkley released the code as BSDlite, and AT&T’s court case was dismissed by the judge.

Bringing us back to the original question, what do you do with your OS X ? The OS is as Apple had intended it to be, an operating system designed to be used by users from all walks of life from system administrators to generic computers users, video editors to graphic designers, and from computer programmers to gamers. Each profession and person can and should find something about the operating system that appeals to them. This is what makes the OS that much better. Software developers appreciate OS X for its strong open source background and its commitment to projects such Cocoa, Ruby on Rails, PHP and MySQL. System Administrators have the ability to pull up a command line interface and have access to powerful tools such as openSSH for secure remote connectivity. Video Editing and graphic design has also always been one of apple’s trademark vertical markets. The introduction of OSX and Apple’s digital life style has increased the amount of number of video editors world wide. Applications such as final cut pro, which initially were snubbed by video editors for more mainstream applications as AVID and Adobe Premier are finding their way as a mainstream video editing tool, and not just an application for amateur home editing.

So the next time you see yourself sitting across from another fellow apple user, don’t just grin because they are using an apple as well. Walk over and ask them what do they do with their OS X ? you might just be surprised...

[Magnus]

Review: iPod U2
by Magnus

The iPod U2 Special Edition was first introduced in October 2004 and seemed to be an instant hit with consumers. In June 2006, Apple updated the U2 iPod to be in line with the 5th generation iPods.

The iPod U2 is really the standard 30Gb 5th generation iPod with some cosmetic differences. Since the functionality of the iPods is well know, we’ll just mention what’s different with the U2 iPod.

The most obvious feature is that the U2 iPod is black including the back. The first edition U2 iPod had a clear metallic back but the new one but now even the back is black. It’s still metallic and one drawback of the dark color is that it seems to pick up grease like from fingerprints incredibly easily. You will be constantly wiping off your U2 iPod if you want to keep it clean.

Apart from the black color, the red click wheel is a significant eye-catcher. And on the back is perhaps the most unique visual characteristic of the U2 iPod - the band members’ names engraved into the metal.

An exclusive bonus available only to owners of the iPod U2 is a 30 minute video featuring music and interviews with the band. With your purchase you get a coupon that you can use on the iTunes Music Store. Whether that will actually work in the UAE is still uncertain.

The U2 edition has a suggested retail price of 1399 AED. The regular 30Gb you can get for 1229 AED according to our AppleIDX. That’s quite a difference in price. Is the difference worth it? If you’re a U2 fan, I would say it definitely is. If you’re just a regular iPod listener it’s more doubtful that it’s worth it, unless you buy one just to make sure you have one to complete your collection.