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barnskiblog

Barney's blog. Just a load of old shite really.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Sod the iPhone, I want an rPhone ;)

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The iPhone is now out in the States, so the reviews are coming in at last. There's a roundup here, and overall it's good news. I haven't bothered with them all, but if you have to choose one review, I'd suggest David Pogue's.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

I haven't watched it yet, but the WWDC 2007 keynote video stream is here :)

Friday, June 08, 2007

The main reason that Apple's switch to Intel was great for me was virtualisation. I mean, fast, multi-core OS X laptops and workstations rock, but the killer feature for me is that I can now use a Mac full-time, as if I need a Linux or Windows machine for a specific task, I can boot a virtual machine. And I love it. :)
Anyway, the main contender in the Mac virtualisation space has always been Parallels desktop, as this is the only mainstream, supported, final-release product available right now. I have to say, it's very good and I use it regularly for running Windows XP at work. Their Coherence mode was killer when it first came out too.
However, I have long been a fan of VMware for virtualisation. I make big use of VMware Workstation at work, and VMware Server all over the place (still can't believe that VMware Server is free!). We also do the full-fat, enterprise-grade VI3 stuff for a living, which is unbelievable if you've never seen it. For this reason, I've also been using VMware Fusion on my Mac, as I can painlessly boot up VMs that I've built on other VMware hosts.
VMware Fusion is still in Beta, but I prefer it to Parallels for four main reasons:
1 - It supports more guest Operating Systems (and has much better support for Linux).
2 - It has advanced features that Parallels does not (Virtual BIOS and 64-bit guest support amongst them).
3 - I use VMware elsewhere and like the easy portability of my Virtual Machines between Mac, Linux, Windows and ESX hosts.
4 - VMware Fusion is just more polished; the GUI transitions in Parallels are well-conceived but poorly executed, with jerks and ugliness, whereas in VMware they are simple and smooth. After a while, VMware just smacks of quality in ways that Parallels doesn't.
This week has seen some interesting developments; just as Parallels released Desktop 3.0, VMware have released Fusion Beta 4. Even more interestingly, Parallels 3.0 now supports snapshots (one of my previous gripes), and VMware now does Unity, which is like Coherence. Once again though, VMware show how this is done properly - Unity just does it so much better than Coherence (YouTube Video here).
As Jimbo said to me, it's entirely possible that we'd never have seen Unity if it hadn't been for Parallels and Coherence, and don't get me wrong - VMware Fusion is not perfect, but I am pretty confident that when we see a final release it will be the superior (and probably more expensive) option.
For now though, I'm continuing to use and enjoy both.
Update: My initial experience is that Unity does not work with a Vista or Linux; only with XP. :(
Also, check out this digg article for a whole load of comments that echo my opinion: "Parallels does it first, VMware does it right".


Also, Apple have released a fourth iPhone ad, which has me drooling even more than before. I mean, that thing is slick, right?!


I'm sure most good geeks have now watched Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interviewed live on stage together at D5. However, if you have some fat bandwdith and spare disk space, you can now get the hi-res video as a 1GB free download from iTunes (there's also an audio-only version).

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Camino 1.5 is out, and they have a new site to go with it, which is very slick, I must say.

Monday, June 04, 2007

How do they do it? - Apple have just released three iPhone Ads and after watching, my enthusiasm for the product and desire to own one have been fully rejuvenated. The thing just looks so gorgeous.
Nobody else has this effect on me; I guess only Apple have the style and the product to get away with it...... ;)

Update: TUAW seem to agree that these ads are great :)