Monday, 21 July 2008

More Mac Intro Movies...

Just found more Mac intro movies.


Music featured:
10.0 to 10.2 (Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar): Kruder & Dorfmeister - Sofa Rockets
10.3 (Panther): Röyksopp - Eple
10.4 (Tiger): Weevil - Bytecry
10.5 (Leopard): Honeycut - Exodus Honey

Looks like Apple has an ear for electronic music.
Couldn't find (legal) download links to the songs from 10.0 to 10.4, so just remember that Google is your best friend...

Saturday, 19 July 2008

Leopard's Intro Theme, Exodus Honey

After you install Leopard, the first thing you will see is its opening movie. I found the opening theme catchy enough, and with a little Googling, I found the full track. It was from a song titled "Exodus Honey" by Honeycut, a small band from San Fransisco's Bay Area. If you're a fan of electronic music, just like I am, you may be delighted to know that it's available for download.

And don't worry about illegal mp3 downloads. Although at the iTunes Store and Amazon.com it's priced at $0.99, it's totally legal and free to download here.

Aaah, nothing beats quality music, especially when it's free... :)

One more thing, the original intro movie and sound is located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Setup Assistant.app/Contents/Resources/TransitionSection.bundle/Contents/Resources/ on your Mac (Tiger and Leopard), named intro.mov and intro-sound.mp3.

Monday, 14 July 2008

Motorola E6 Flash

Unlike my first Motorola phone, which I have already flashed 5 times within the first week of ownership, I went easier with my current phone. But after more than a half year, I just couldn't resist the temptation. So, last week I finally flashed my Motorola ROKR E6 for the first time, and upgraded the firmware to a newer version. And I don't have any regrets, because the phone became more responsive, faster, and sounds better, too.

I guess that the main reason why it took me so long to finally flash it is Motorola's EZX. As you might already know, it is Motorola's version of Linux for their mobile phones. The first thing I did after getting the phone was get a console app for it, and of course, you could already do a lot of modifications and customising with the console app, without the need to upgrade to another firmware. So, I guess I was content with meddling with the phone's settings through the console for a half year.

I don't think that's something you can get with any Symbian phone, so a big thank you to Motorola for bringing Linux to the world of mobile phones...

Now, if Motorola would somehow release their SDK to the masses, that would just be... superb...

Monday, 7 July 2008

Grooooowwwl... GMA900 and Leopard

Far and wide I have searched in vain for intel GMA900 drivers for Leopard. Until last week, when I found a thread on InsanelyMac, where user Andy4Life found a simple but effective way to enable support for GMA900 on Leopard.

I finally got Leopard up and running with full hardware acceleration on my trusty old Acer TravelMac 2423NWXMi. A few months ago, when I first installed Leopard, I was appaled by the lack of support for the GMA900, which means that I can't run applications that require Core Image and Quartz Extreme (that's like 50% of apps on the Mac), thus rendering it almost totally useless. Since I'm already limited by the CPU only doing SSE2, while SSE3 emulation isn't 100% perfect, having more apps rendered useless is a big no-no. That's why I've reverted to the old, trusted, aging Tiger, where I was only limited by the lack of SSE3.

Well, back to the topic. Andy's fix was to edit your drivers to include intel's GMA900 Vendor and Device ID (which is 8086-2592 in my case).

To make things short, you just have to open /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelGMA950.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleIntelGMA950 file with your favorite HEX Editor application, and replace all occurences of "86 80 A2 27" with "86 80 92 25". Once you've done that, delete the /System/Library/Extensions.mkext file, and restart. Done!

One thing to note is that there are some artifacts, but they are minor, and I can live with that.

Almost forgot to mention. If editing the AppleIntelGMA950.kext file wasn't enough, try replacing AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext with the one attached it the forum thread mentioned above.