Meeting Notes - Apr 21, 2004

What's New by Mike Yocom

New Apple Software
Application Servers Update 1.0 - Upgrades various Java application server components.

iChat AV 2.1 - Adds support for video conferencing with the new AOL Instant Messenger 5.5 for Microsoft Windows.

iPhoto 4.0.1 - Increased performance faster importing, smoother image viewing and easier Rendezvous photo sharing.

Security Update 2004-04-05 (10.3.3) - Delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users.

Security Update 2004-04-05 (10.2.8) - Delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users.

Xserve RAID Admin Tools 1.3 - Simplifies setup and monitoring of storage volumes.

Xserve Remote Diagnostics 1.0 - Xserve Remote Diagnostics 1.0 Update.

Wireless Keyboard/Mouse Firmware Update 1.1 - Improves Apple Wireless Keyboard and Mouse performance and reliability.

Xgrid Technology Preview 2 Pools CPU resources.

Apple Final Cut Express 2.0.3 is Apple's reduced-set video editing tool. This update fixes an issue with some cameras caused by conflicts between timecode breaks and dropped frames, resulting in incomplete capture. It also improves QuickTime movie export when there is blank video in a sequence.

Apple has updated its AirPort software components to version 3.4. AirPort 3.4 provides: improved antenna output control, enhanced logging from your base station which is compatible with syslog, performance improvements for WPA security implementations. Apple AirPort Extreme 5.4 is base station firmware that includes the same enhancements and is included in AirPort 3.4.

Apple announced updates to three of its four pro software packages, as well as a fifth, at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference:

DVD Studio Pro 3 will be available in May. It adds Alpha Transitions, a Graphical View, and the ability to scale HD.

Final Cut Pro HD — version 4.5 — extends FCP with the ability to capture, edit, and output broadcast-quality HD video, without any additional hardware.

Shake, the video compositing tool, was updated to version 3.5. This version adds shape-based morphing and warping, "shape shifting" special effects, distributed rendering for both Shake and Alias' Maya. It is available for Mac OS X, Linux, and IRIX.

The new Motion software package allows the interactive animation of text, graphics, and video. Multiple filters and particle effects can be instantly previewed. "Behaviors" allow movement like graphite and wind to be added to type and graphics without using keyframes.

Xsan was also announced at NAB. Xsan is a Storage Area Network (SAN) file system that provides high-speed access to centralized, shared data. Metadata controller failover, Fibre Channel multipathing, file-level locking to allow multiple systems to concurrently read and write to the same volume, and bandwidth reservation are all planned.

Software Notes
Small Tree Communications today released its 802.3ad Link Aggregation networking software, which "enables true enterprise class network solutions by bonding or trunking multiple Ethernet ports on a single computer into one virtual interface. Read More.

According to a FileMaker TechInfo article, the outline and shadow text styles are not supported in FileMaker Pro 7. This is due to a lack of support in the GDI+ engine used by FileMaker Pro 7.

Hardware News
Apple updated the eMac line on April 13th. CPU clock speed was increased to 1.25 GHz — up 25% — the ATI Radeon 7500 graphics card was replaced with an ATI Radeon 9200, USB 2.0 was added, the memory subsystem was improved from PC133 SDRAM to 333 MHz PC2700 DDR, and support for an optional, internal Bluetooth module was added. The new eMac is available in either a $799 USD version with a 40 GB HDD and a Combo drive, or a $999 USD version with an 80 GB HDD and a SuperDrive — both have 256 MB of RAM. Interestingly, in a couple of different places on the Apple website the SuperDrive is listed as being able to write to DVD-R at 8x — twice the speed of the current G5 — added fuel to speculation that an upgrade of the Power Mac line is imminent.

Apple continued the refreshing process by simultaneously updating both the iBook and the PowerBook lines on April 19th. (Which means the XServe, eMac, iBook, and PowerBook have all been updated, which just leaves the iMac and Power Macs.)

The iBook features faster processors, twice as much L2 cache — 512K — which provides an additional speed boost, and, for the first time, a 4x SuperDrive is optional. A minor milestone was passed in that all of Apple's computers now run at at least 1 GHz. Three configurations are available: the low-end with a 12-inch screen, a 1 GHz G4 — up 25% — and a 30GB HDD for $1,099 USD, the middle system with a 14-inch screen, a 1 GHz G4 — up from 933 MHz — and a 40GB HDD for $1,299 USD, and the high-end system with a 14-inch screen, a 1.2 GHz G4 — up 20% — a 60GB HDD, and AirPort Extreme (IEEE 802.11g) for $1,499 USD.

The PowerBook also features faster processors — 1.33 and 1.5 GHz G4, as opposed to 1, 1.25, and 1.33 GHz — AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth on all models, and 64MB of VRAM — 128MB is optional in the 17-inch model. The 15- and 17-inch models also got new graphics hardware: ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 vs. the 9600. Five configurations are available: 12-inch with 1.33 GHz G4 — up 33% — 60GB HDD, and a Combo drive for $1,599 USD, 12-inch with 1.33 GHz G4 — also up 33% — 60GB HDD, and a SuperDrive for $1,799 USD, 15-inch with 1.33 GHz G4, 60GB HDD, and Combo drive for $1,999 USD, 15-inch with 1.5 GHz G4, 80GB HDD, and SuperDrive for $2,499 USD, and 17-inch with 1.5 GHz G4, 80GB HDD, and SuperDrive for $2,799 USD.

Lycos reports that Hitachi, the sole commercial manufacturer of 1-inch, 4 GB hard drives, has announced they will be increasing production of the 1-inch hard drives to meet current demand. Although neither Hitachi nor Apple have confirmed that Hitachi makes the hard drive for the iPod Mini, that this statement comes shortly after Apple announced delays of the iPod Mini due to hard drive shortage points in that direction.

Problems
Virex 7.5b1 is reportedly having conflicts with the following applications: Adobe CS products, MYOB Account Edge, Final Cut Pro, and most Email Clients. In virtually all cases, removing all traces of the application and reverting to version 7.2 resolves the problems.

Following installation, AirPort 3.4 is reportedly causing noticeable reductions in signal strength and range. The problems do not appear to be isolated to any particular version of Mac OS X, nor are they restricted to Apple-branded wireless hardware.

Reuters reports that the price of memory chips is rising at its fastest rate in more than four years. The price rise is related to at least two factors: Some manufacturers have run into problems using the latest production technology, and many have switched from making basic memory to flash memory for camera phones and digital cameras. Read More.

General News
Apple won a Best of Show award at Bio-IT World Conference + Expo for its recently announced Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics. Read More.

New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) will deploy 1200 G4 iMacs across 140 registry offices. Read More.

KTVX ABC 4 News in Salt Lake City recently adopted Final Cut Pro for all of its nonlinear editing needs in news, production and promotion. It has transformed its newsroom workflow and its work force. Read More.

Sony has announced a new range of removable flash memory cards designed to read data four times faster than current memory media. Read More.

Cool Stuff
WiebeTECH has a product called G5 Jam that allows two additional hard drives to be installed in a G5. The G5 Jam includes a replacement air baffle that preserves the original air flow and works as a heat sink for the extra drives, a Serial ATA (SATA) adapter card to control the extra drives, and covers the space normally used by PCI slots 1, 2, and 3 for full-length cards — short cards can still be used in these slots. Read More.

A Japanese company called Bird Electron has announced that they will begin producing solar iPod chargers in May. The charger systems include a built-in battery, which charges up during the day and then charges the iPod during the night. Bird Electron estimates that it takes two good days to completely recharge an iPod. Read More.

The most sophisticated of the three new Sony Ericsson models on show in London on Wednesday is the Z600--a clamshell handset with a 65K color screen, a built-in camera, and Bluetooth compatibility. Sony Ericsson also showed off a small remote-control car that could be driven via a Bluetooth handset. The Bluetooth Car-100 attracted plenty of attention at CeBIT, and there are now plans to create a limited run of several thousand more. Read More.

Mike's entire presentation including a complete list of new Apple and third-party software since March, new Apple hardware releases, Apple retail news, and other Apple related topics can be found in the "Mac Managers Meetings - Previous Notes " section at: http://www.macos.utah.edu or select from the options listed below:

X11 Overview & Demo by Pieter Bowman

General Information
X11 successor to X10 developed during the mid 1980s. You used to have to download the source, compile it and then configure it for your needs. X10 and now X11 has grown so much that unless you really know what you're doing, you had get it from a vendor like Apple, don't compile it yourself.

While Sun, DEC, and IBM were the originators, development was carried out by a number of minor players. Development slowed a bit until the xfree86 people started to push it.

X implementations are now available for any platform now including Windows. In the last five years, the X.org Foundation has been the guiding body of future development of X.

Architecture
Architecture of X has always been based on the idea that the window and system should not be tied to the physical machine. Both should be available on a network-wide environment.

This means that the X windowing system is composed of two parts, the client and the server. Traditionally, most are used to "Client" to be the desktop and "Server" locked away in a closet somewhere.

In X11 these rolls are reversed X Server sits on desktop talking to the mouse, or the display, or the keyboard. The client can sit anywhere in world as long as you can communicate with it via TCP/IP and/or DECNET (which is not widely supported anymore).

Architecture of X has a number of critical operating pieces, the Session and Windows Managers together with X Server build up the working environment for the user:

• Session Manager - Logs you in and starts up apps including Window Manager.
• Window Manager - Allows you to interact with system and implements windows menus. (NOTE: X apps will have their own menus within the active window. Its all a part of how the app is generated and run).
  

Issues
There are issues with how X apps "decide" how they look and feel in terms of the fonts and colors used.

Traditionally X apps use X Resources which come in form of a file in a user directory or system file. It can also be based on a set of defaults copied into app or a set of defaults that operate externally to it in some system file. Another location to store resources is in X Server itself.

The X server recognizes font information and passes it onto the clients. X recognizes a broad range of font types including true type and bitmap. Originally only bitmap fonts were recognized. Fonts come out of the system's directory structure of X or the user can specify font directories in their own home directory. To access fonts this way gets to be a bit funky in how the files are distributed through X.

X is integrated to some degree with products like Open GL for higher quality graphics. Pieter has had trouble getting Open GL demos to run so there may be some support issues for X based Open GL apps on Mac OS X.

Security
X is network-centric so security is a big concern. X and X11 security is not exactly boor but its not really all that great. To a certain degree, it is trusted that the network is generally secure. Security is based on either "cookies" or host authentication. The "cookies" are certificate-like but are not validated. In general, host based is pretty good unless multiple users can authenticate and log into the same machine. Basically this creates a situation where any one can technically gain access to X Server.

If someone can make connection to the X Server, they can access any of the events such as mouse movement and keystrokes. Technically, this person can then monitor authorized users' activities behind the scenes. The intruder can monitor keystrokes for passwords or PINs, monitor private work, etc. The intruder can redirect the "focus" of the X application so making it essentially "commandeered" away from its operation by an authorized user.

On a Mac when you open an X11 port you can Firewall that port and it's secured. The security can be broken, however, if two people can log on at the same time. If there are no other active services and its an "isolated" desktop you are relatively secure as X11 runs on one port.

SSH can provide some additional security for doing remote X clients because it supports X11 connection forwarding. Since SSH is encrypted through the network, you can have X connections encrypted without using VPN or similar secured connections.

Buliding X Applications
In the past, this has involved using tools that are quite often OS specific. Newer development tools are designed for greater widespread distribution. They are not as platform or operating system based. Unfortunately, the viability of these tools are not available on Mac OS S but are wanted

Upside: When done well, the app is thing of beauty.

Downside: When done poorly, well... There are certain instances where the app developers are not as "clean" in their planning and in their subsequent development so the operational results can be quite interesting.

Java apps on remote machines have very poor performance. The native version of Maple for OS X can be run on Solaris. When it is run on Solaris and displayed remotely on an X Server, the new Java based GUI has speed and performance issues especially over network.

How about an X native version of emacs running on OS X?

Operation
X apps can be launched from terminal.

X took to the idea that a three button mouse is ideal. Left Click is generally select and copy in one motion. Middle Click is paste. Right Click allows you to extend the cut/copy operation. For these operations, no additional keyboard commands are necessary. Depending on the X apps, in the windows you can combine mouse buttons with meta keys such as the "Control" key for more functionality.

Because X is network-centric, network instability can be a problem. For example, sitting at home with a cable model can get interesting because of latency issues. Overall, a reasonably stable network will work well. It is recommended that users save and save often. Or use X apps that can be programmed to automatically save at regular intervals.

The Window Manager can be configured to run as the foreground app no matter where the mouse pointer is. This means that where ever the pointer is, that area gets keyboard/mouse priority.

X clients want to know where the display is. This is typically set by an environment variable called "display". In order get displays forwarded to remote machines, it sets it up transparently for the user. The user can can also set it up outside SSH by knowing the IP address of remote machine.

On Campus
In a normal campus environment, departments require their students to use specific specialized apps. Because they are specialized, however, they are usually available only in the department computer labs.

This creates a situation where one app is needed by large volume of students in labs that are small and have limited hours. One solution is to run these apps remotely so that they can be accessed either from home or from a larger, general use computer lab.

If departments or programs are requiring that their students use X apps, and they would like them more widely available to the students, please let us know so we can see about having the app distributed in our labs.

Contact us here.

In addition, some departments don't have the funds to run a X Server. They can "use" or "rent" space from another department and then run their software remotely.

USB Flash Drives Overview by Mikio Moriyasu

USB Flash drives represent one of the hottest trends in microsized portable data storage devices. This shift away from the magnetic storage media found in floppies and Zip disks towards nonvolatile electronically encoded Flash Memory, however, has gone under-the-radar. With several companies manufacturing or marketing them, one has to ask "What are they?" and "How reliable and safe are they?"

Mikio's presentation is based on a more detailed evaluation he conducted for the Student Computing Labs Mac Support Group. His complete report is available for viewing on the Mac Managers web site in the "Mac Managers - Documentation" section at: http://www.macos.utah.edu. You can also select from the options listed below:

TechTool Pro 4 Overview by Scott Doenges

Built from the ground up in Cocoa, TechTool Pro 4 is designed for stable and efficient use with Mac OS X. In addition to its existing suite of repair and diagnostic features, Version 4 features disk optimization, emergency volume creation, and S.M.A.R.T. tools.

Scott's presentation is based on a more detailed evaluation he conducted for the Student Computing Labs Mac Support Group. His complete report is available for viewing on the Mac Managers web site in the "Mac Managers - Documentation" section at: http://www.macos.utah.edu. You can also select from the options listed below:

Open Discussion
Big Buy 2004 - Time for people on campus to think about what their hardware requirements are for the next year. Factors to consider:

• The price point/per machine
• The type of machine (Power Mac G5s, iMacs, Laptops, eMacs, etc.)
• Desired features or modifications
• Desired accessories
• The number of machines
• Are people willing to sacrifice a monitor for a better CPU?
• People who need displays: Flat-panel vs CRT
• Are Zip drives still a necessity
  

If you are interested in participating in this year's big buy, it is important that you contact Richard Glaser with your needs and questions as soon as possible. We'd like to get this underway.

Contact us here.

Upcoming Events
macosxlabs.org Webcast - April

• Subject: RsyncX 2.0
• Presenter: Kevin Boyd, University of Michigan
  School of Art & Design, University of Michigan
• Moderator: Peter Hoffman, Apple Compute
• Viewing Instructions: Click here for instructions on how to view the webcast archive.
  

NECC 2004 - Jammin Jazz with Technology

• Location: Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, Louisiana
• Date: June 20-23, 2004
• Registration Information: Click here
• General Conference Program: Click here
  

Apple World Wide Developers Conference 2004

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Date: June 28-July 2, 2004
• Registration Information: Click here
• Technical Tracks Information: Click here
  

macosxlabs.org Webcast - May (Tentative)

• Subject: Print Accounting - UniPrint
• Presenter: Pharos Software
• Date: Tuesday May 18th, 2004
• Viewing Instructions: Click here for exact times and viewing instructions.
  

For a complete list of events scheduled between now and the next Mac Managers Meeting please click here.

If there is a topic you would like to see discussed at a future Mac Managers Meeting, please let us know here.