Category Archives: Apple

VMWare for the Mac

December 22, 2006 By in Apple, Mac, Programming, Technology Leave a comment

Finally! VMWare has rolled out a beta version of its virtualization software for the OS X as promised, and its called Fusion (Beta). I’ve already used the Parallels Desktop on my Mac and it was good; but I know I can expect much more from VMWare :)

Here’s a list of features that VMWare claims to offer with Fusion:

  • Create and run a wide variety of 32- and 64-bit x86 operating systems on OS X without rebooting. You can simultaneously run PC applications next to your OS X applications.
  • Leverage Virtual SMP capabilities to gain additional performance improvements. On any Mac with dual-core processors, you can assign multiple CPUs to your virtual machine to gain additional performance for CPU-intensive workloads.
  • Access physical devices from the virtual machine: read and burn CDs and DVDs, and use USB 2.0 devices like video cameras, iPods, printers, and disks at full speed. Even devices that do not have drivers for OS X will work in a virtual machine.
  • Drag and drop files and folders between OS X and virtual machines to easily share data between the two environments!
  • Leverage the cross-compatibility of VMware virtual machines. VMware virtual machines created with existing VMware products are all cross compatible, including virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, VMware Player, VMware Server and VMware Infrastructure 3.
  • Run any of the 360 virtual appliances available from the Virtual Appliance Marketplace .

Downloading the 111MB DMG right now, can’t wait to try Gentoo on it!

Using your iPod on Linux

May 22, 2006 By in Apple, FOSS, Hacks, Linux, Technology Leave a comment

It’s pretty bad that Apple doesn’t give a version of iTunes for GNU/Linux. Not surprising though, considering Google, which in-spite of sponsoring stuff like the Summer of Code does not provide any of its software for GNU/Linux either!

So I set out on my endeavour to somehow get some MP3′s playing on the brand new iPod. First try was YamiPod, because it supported last.fm. Alas, it just didn’t work. In an effort to be extremely user-friendly, the makers of YamiPod completely forgot usability. I just couldn’t get it to detect my iPod. In all fairness to them, they probably expected the iPod to have been used before, which was not true in my case.

Leslie’s recommendation, gtkpod, however makes no such assumption. Upon running the software it automatically created a /mnt/ipod directory. When I plugged in my iPod, it didn’t mount it though. That wasn’t such a big problem. After a simple `mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/ipod’ (it’s sdb2 for the iPod Nano, sdb1 is the system partition where all the firmware is), all I had to do was File->Create iPod’s directories, and I was good to go!

I then added some MP3′s using the nice UI and then synced the list. After a few minutes of data transfer (USB2.0), I unmounted the iPod and then… music to my ears! Pretty simple, at-least much simpler than what I expected it to be.

Another word of advice. When you plugin your iPod, it will continue flashing “Do not disconnect” even if it is unmounted. The trick here is to use the ‘eject’ command: `eject /dev/sdb’.

gtkpod and eject were available on the Gentoo Portage tree by the way, which made the process even more awesome. The only thing missing was the last.fm plugin. Which I should probably spend a few days in making anyway.

So for anyone wanting to use their iPod with Linux, I’m all for gtkpod. Thanks to Leslie and of course, the gtkpod team :)

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