Just a quick link today. This one is for the list of keyboard shortcuts from Apple. It's really meant to discourage programmers from using these standard key combos for their applications. Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, OSX, Productivity, Tip, Trick
The latest revision of Parallels Desktop for the Mac is running butter smooth on my Mac Pro with 2GB of RAM. No hangs or crashes. In fact, right now, I'm using Ecto for Mac to write this post while watching DL.TV Episode 100 and installing software updates on Windows XP. To be more specific, the update is for my Sandisk 4GB flash drive. I can't recommend this drive enough.
Parallels has just released RC2 of Desktop for Mac. While the Mac Pro received some love a few weeks back with a beta release, Parallels has put some real quality into this release candidate. Not only is it compatible with Vista and developer builds of Leopard, but there is no longer a RAM restriction. Parallels was only recognizing 3GB before. I have to ask myself though, are there people out there with $2K of RAM in their Mac Pro that do not have a PC sitting under their desk to run windows on?
Apple’s been working away patching the Mac Pro firm ware again. I just installed the firmware patch they had from earlier this week and now today I get this:
I’m not sure what these provide yet. Here is what the installer says: “The SMC Firmware Update adjusts fan behavior in the Mac Pro. The updater application will be installed in the /Applications/Utilities folder. Please follow the instructions in the updater application to complete the process”.
I’m an avid reader of Anandtech’s reviews. They do a great job and aren’t afraid to push the limits. This week they swapped out the stock Xeon processor in a Mac Pro for a pre-release quad core from Intel. You gotta love those guys. How many of you would pry out your processor from a new Mac Pro let alone put in some pre-release chip in it’s place. Thankfully Anandtech has huge balls and Mac Pro owners now have an easy upgrade path in the future.
I’m not sure if any other Mac Pro users out there are experiencing this, but my apple issued mouse is acting wonky. It will randomly move the cursor and activate Expose. I’ve tried two different mice on both my G4 Powerbook and Mac Pro. It is definitely something with the Mac Pro (or maybe the apple keyboard it is plugged into).
Technorati Tags: Apple, Hardware, Mac
It’s looking very much like 2GB of RAM in the Mac Pro simply is not enough. With any other computer that would not be a big deal. $100 would solve the problem. But oh no…not for the illustrious Apple Mac “Pro.” It will cost a painful $300 for another 1GB. Sure the computer is ultra quiet. I’m sure those special heat sinks are helping. But my god, $300 for a measly one GB of RAM?
If you are running the new Parallels RC on a Mac Pro you may have come across this little message when you boot up Windows:
If you read the Parallels support blog about this there’s some help from the user base that indicates you have to put your machine to sleep after reboot in order for this vt-x support to be available in Parallels.
It does work. Before putting the machine to sleep, it took about 1 minuet for Windows XP Pro to startup.
Well, I have to hand it to them, the Parallels team pulled it off. Today they announced that a new release candidate is available that enables Parallels to run on the new Mac Pro. I just installed the update. After a minor warning that a virtual machine already existed (from my previous attempts to run Parallels) the rest of the VM startup went smoothly. I created a 12GB hard disk for the VM and allocated 765MB of RAM.
I’ve been doing some research (which means Google and surfing the web) on the options for upgrading the video card in the Mac Pro. So far I’ve only heard of limited success with off the shelf cards. Here’s a quick summary.
x1900 xtx has been reported by ONE person GeForce 7900GTX only works under Windows with BootCamp PC version of x1900 xt is claimed all over not to work on the Mac Pro SLI on the Mac Pro will only work with BootCamp
