Archive for the ‘IT Industry’ Category

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Pimping my MacBook Pro late 2008 – Part 2, installing a SSD as second disk and boot drive

Monday, September 5th, 2011

This is the second part in my posting on “pimping my MacBook Pro, late 2008″. In Part 1 I briefly explained how I upgrade the ram to 8 GB.

I’ve finally found a couple of hours to write something up about this experience, it was fun (reminded me the old days when I liked this sort of tinkering with hardware). If you’re not afraid of taking apart your laptop, and that you can keep steady hands in the process, then you can install an SSD on your MacBook Pro and enjoy the gain in speed.

Before I go any further, I must warn you that this little operation can risk damaging your computer, there are lots of warnings about electrostatic hazards. There is also a risk of tearing the fragile wiring that link your DVD drive to the motherboard, because although fragile they are tightly clipped to their connectors. If you really want to give it a go, be sure that you are comfortable doing this. Otherwise I advise that you get an expert’s help. I hope to have warned you enough, DIY’s are always at your own risk.

If I didn’t scare you enough then read on.

I researched a bit more about SSD options, I’ve seen many reviews and all sorts of postings on the subject, in the end I covered the last miles myself and that is why  I thought it worth writing this down. I chose to buy a 60 GB disk as that was just at the sort of price point that I considered reasonable, it cost €76 at Mycom.nl. I thought if I were to buy a larger disk that would be much more expensive then there would be no point in keeping both disks. The first hurdle was to find the bracket for installing the disk in the bay reserved for the DVD drive – Apple call it the SuperDrive, in case you didn’t know that. I could buy it in the US for $79 dollars and pay the taxes here when it arrived. So I ordered again via Amazon US, they have it in their marketplace but the dealer is actually OWC themselves. The package was delivered 14 days later (the site originally suggested 8-10 days delivery from the US), and the Dutch customs charged me €22.57 (ouch!).

I thought the operation would be quick, but it wasn’t all that quick, the partial cloning of my hard disk took almost 3 hours to shift over 35 GB of files.

The first pictures of the SSD installation process.

Picture of OWC Data Doubler was delivery packageHow the OWC Data Doubler was delivered to me Pictures of the screwdrivers that shipped with the OWCScrewdrivers that shipped with the OWC Picture of the SSD taken out of the bulky packageThe SSD taken out of the bulky package
The SSD and the OWC Data Doubler bracket ready to useThe SSD and the OWC Data Doubler bracket ready to use The OWC Data Doubler installation manualThe OWC Data Doubler comes with a detailed installation manual The SSD mounted on the bracket, ready to be installed on the MacThe SSD mounted on the bracket, ready to be installed on the Mac

When the preparation was done, it was time to replace the DVD drive with my new disk.

 

My MacBook Pro opened, battery removed cover still onMy MacBook Pro opened, battery removed cover still on The two fragile cables that must be disconnected from the SuperDriveThe two fragile cables that must be disconnected from the SuperDrive Performing a sensitive disconnectionPerforming a sensitive disconnection

If no mistakes was made so far, you really didn’t break those wires (I’m glad I didn’t), then you should end up with something like this.

SSD fully mountedSSD fully mounted The SuperDrive, no longer useful for meThe SuperDrive, no longer useful for me

Putting back the lid of the MacBook Pro is straightforward. Time to boot up the machine.

I’ve run out of time today, I will post the last part of this experience next time, it will be a short one focused on the tuning I had to do to get things working properly.

Posted in Computing, DIY | 2 Comments »

A/B Split testing a major platform: Windows re-imagined

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

This is the most significant sign yet that the IT industry is admitting we are heading to a post-PC era, Microsoft’s last drop makes this quite clear. In this blog of Sinofsky (yes, it’s a Steve’s World), Microsoft is saying that Windows 8 may run without even loading Windows OS. The new OS is definitely positioned as a post-Windows OS, Windows+ perhaps? Once marketing settles on a name, I think it may not even include the word “Windows”.

This is Microsoft on the offensive, big time. Such a bold move must be aimed at taking the wind out of the sails of Google and Apple. HP’s stutterings indicates that they are no longer in this game, certainly not focused enough to be a contender in a post-PC market.

As I read it, Metro platform (and not just the UI) will be the default boot experience for Windows 8, this will surely not allow any traditional Windows applications to run. That should relegate the traditional Windows OS experience to a secondary role (if you really insist in having it, you can have it but we’re not pushing). It doesn’t take a pundit to imagine what that means: this is how Internet Explorer trounced Netscape, it was the default browser on the PC. Microsoft could not possibly be doing this lightly.

Where is the A/B split testing then? Well, it’s a two phase testing as I see it. By announcing the decision so early in a blog posting, Microsoft is asking the community to comment. If there is any significant outcry, then Microsoft would be vindicated that the masses badly wants to stick to the Windows experience. If not then the new OS may launch with Metro as its default experience, at that point a second split testing kicks in. If Metro UI is a runaway success, it’s game on in the new era. Microsoft stands to win whatever the outcome.

The only group that may have some hesitation here would be the partner ecosystem, folks who have invested their soul into the traditional Windows OS experience might be nervous. But I suppose there is not much choice here, the industry is no longer ruled by the laws that prevailed when vendors decided what users would be getting.

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Posted in Architecture, Computing, Innovation | 4 Comments »

Certified IT Architect, an attempt by The Open Group to raise the profile of this profession

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

The Open Group released a Certified Architect program, I learned about it on a recent blog post by Mike Walker. Since this is work from The Open Group, it’s going to spark reactions from friends and foes alike, depending on the side of the proverbial fence where people sit, it is either going to be dubbed “nice job!” or just “a completely skewed piece”. I don’t know, everyone’s entitled to his/her tastes.

By calling it IT Architect however, I am wondering if The Open Group intentionally limited the scope of what this entails. Professor Guido Dedene might have said that it should be more about Information Systems Architect, which is broader and more hollistic than just IT Architect. And I would agree with Pr. Dedene, because I think that mastering the technology alone isn’t sufficient to help solve business problems. If the mastery goes beyond Technology, then I would argue that IT is a reductive qualifer.

IT Certification may have gained some undue bad reputation because of some people misusing (abusing) the term. I have come across people walking around with all sorts of certifications yet you’d find that their knowledge and actual experience wouldn’t stand any proper scrutiny. I’ve even known people calling themselves architects when they didn’t have the faintest clue as to what the terms may signify. Those are certainly a few bad cases that shouldn’t be allowed to ruin the reputation of this profession. This is also not to say that certification isn’t useful, it clearly is a plus when walking to job interviews where the paper is what people value first and foremost.

Mike Walker’s blog gives a nice overview of The Open Group’s Certified Architect program, people starting up in the field would do well to get informed in this manner then chose their path diligently. Efforts of this kind are definitely a welcome contribution to the profession of Architect in Information Technology (IT) – I shall say Information Systems (IS) field.

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Posted in Architecture | 1 Comment »

Pimping my MacBook Pro late 2008 – Part 1, install 8 GB Ram

Sunday, August 21st, 2011

If you’ve got an oldish (mine is late 2008) MacBook Pro, and you don’t have say €2000 to spend, there is a way to give it a new lease of life if you do have say 10% of that amount of money, which is €200. Upgrade two essential components that play a vital role on the machine’s performance: the memory and the boot drive (hard disk).

Sure the latest processor will help if you run video editing software or some computation intensive software. But for most common usages, performance bottleneck starts with memory access. If your computer has enough memory to run everything you need, you are unlikely to see performance problems. If it must access the disk at some stage, then that is a second tier of performance bottleneck that you need to address. Most of the time, once you’re past the initial application load time, having decent memory will give you a nice performance boost.

So starting with the memory upgrade, I looked for sources and found the following items from Amazon €65,8:

I ordered both items from Amazon UK, they took 3 days to arrive. I shut down my laptop, waited about 10 min for it to cool down, opened it up, removed the modules that were already there and replaced them with the new modules from Kingston. The instructions for upgrading memory on your MacBook Pro from Apple Support page are very straightforward.

The whole operation lasted for about 15 min, including time to dust my machine. It was a child play, and it made a difference already. I now scarcely have to wait for something to complete. And the result can be seen in the third picture on this post, above.

I have ordered a bracket for installing a second hard drive in the machine. I expect it to arrive in the coming days. I’ll publish Part II of this post once I get the kit.

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Posted in Computing, DIY | Comments Off

Twitter open sourced a really useful web front-ent toolkit, it’s called Bootstrap

Saturday, August 20th, 2011

Timing sometimes can be a strange thing, it can be nice when it works in your favour.

Just as I’ve started creating my own web UI toolkit, I get the news that Twitter open sourced their toolkit called Bootstrap. The timing couldn’t be any better for me, for the following reasons:

  • A few months ago I had come to the conclusion that 960 Grid System was a great choice for structuring web pages in a scalable manner
  • I’ve checked out lots of resources for creating nice looking page style elements, via Mashable, and I have yet to find the one “killer toolkit”. So, I’ve been reluctantly looking to make my own – with my non-existing front-end design skills, that was going to be exciting
  • Two of the projects that I am working on at the moment have now got embryonic style elements, it was time to dress them up a bit
So you can imagine the smile on my face as I went through Twitter’s blog this morning. Technical folks can’t design UI, and that’s good news for everybody. The trouble is though, technical people are often allowed to make UI design decisions, often for the lack of a better alternative (or awareness). With a toolkit like Twitter’s Bootstrap, I think those of us who can’t afford their own front-end design teams would hugely benefit by simply adopting it. The worse effect that this have may be to help reduce the amount of frankly “offending site designs” that hit the web regularly.

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Posted in Web design, web development | 5 Comments »

Github is becoming a cloud IDE, very cool

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Github is gearing towards becoming a cloud IDE, that is promising. Given their meteoric rise, and how well they perform, this will be pretty cool eventually. In a recent rant, I didn’t exactly flatter the existing raft of IDEs. And I think this evolution of GitHub supports (just a bit) my rant, that the incumbent IDEs aren’t working hard enough for developers.

People with fixed workstations, people who are using desktops that are seldom turned off or infrequently turned to other purposes, may not appreciate the value of having a svelte development environment. But the semi-mobile development folks, web developers, would probably rush to try out this new feature.

On a similar but entirely different vein, WordPress made blogging super easy and we all know the results, a massive success well beyond its initial target group. Drupal made web content management a breeze, and they are scoring big names quite regularly. PHP made web development affordable for the masses, this drove its widespread adoption. Ruby endeavoured to “bring the fun into development”, the results are there for all to see, an entirely fresh movement: frameworks like Rails, Sinatra (and Scalatra for Scala), Grails, Play, all were somehow inspired by the movement that Ruby created.

I see the current trend in Cloud IDEs taking a similar path to the technologies cited in the previous paragraph, some of the cloud IDE providers will eventually make it big and people will flock.

I now have my eyes on Node.js, that may be another silent(?) revolution in the making:

Imagine building apps with JavaScript, or let’s say Node.js, and HTML5 for example, using a Cloud IDE, deploying on cloud  environments. That may be enough to hit a respectable 80/20 balance, where a lot of the regular functionality surfacing is quickly built using these technologies, the heavy lifting and differentiator stuff is built using the more traditional technologies. If adoption follows, or shall I say as people start reaping benefits (or just following the new hypes/trends), then we could be looking at a totally new development technology landscape.

Is this too far fetched? Who knows, I’m curious.

Posted in Innovation, Programming | 1 Comment »

Possibly a turning point for the Android platform

Monday, August 15th, 2011

Here is a kind of move that I’ve been expecting to happen for some time: Google CEO Larry Page explains reasoning behind Motorola acquisition (spoiler: patents). If Android momentum were to be (at least partially) helped by its positioning, uniting some of the players that might have been losing out to the iPhone, then one of those parties would want to wriggle themselves out of such status quo some day. That’s a thought in my mind since the introduction of the Android platform.

This move by Google may be adding to what I see as (an understandable) confusion building up around the Android platform. If Android fragmentation should accelerate, then Microsoft’s Windows Phone is set to score some points.

UPDATE: After reading tech news about this topic, I think this article from AllThingsD is well worth checking out (be sure to also read Kara Swisher’s post, linked in the same article): Google’s Motorolla buy has Wall Street selling.

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Posted in IT Industry, Mobile | 1 Comment »

MacBookPro late 2008 running OSX Lion, is the best computer setup I’ve ever had

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

I’ve yet to have any issue with my MBP late 2008 edition running OSX Lion. This is the best computer setup I’ve ever had. If only I could get SSD on it (due to reseller’s shoddy order management) it would just be awesome. If no MBP ships in September then I think I’ll get the latest MacBook Air, move all my virtual machines to various cloud providers,  then I’ll be all set for the best productive work and pleasurable computing experience.

Everything about my setup is pleasing, from the way it behaves every day to the way it looks. I like the way everything looks and feels, every button, every control. One particularly nice feature is the way the windows lost the bulky chrome, they now only show useful content. Making scrollbars disappear when you’re not scrolling is cool. No more clutter. The windows displayed on my screen feel as if they were real-life thin silver plates up in the air for serving content. It’s just posh. I didn’t expect the level of polish that I’m enjoying now, so that’s a really nice surprise.

The polish of OSX Lion along with the way I tend to run lots of things simultaneously really show the age of my hardware, 4GB RAM and 3 years old. This is why I want to see how it performs if the boot drive is an SSD. But clearly for my daily use, an Intel i7 and 8 GB RAM with SSD is the way to go.

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Posted in Computing | 1 Comment »

Ars Technica virtually treats the same topic as me, one day apart

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Today I read the article below by Ars, and I couldn’t help but notice how similar it’s theme is to my post of a couple of days earlier. Funny coincidence: Ask Ars: Windows everywhere, or Windows nowhere? What is Microsoft’s “single ecosystem”?

Obviously I was just expressing some thoughts, no research done to back it up. But they are professionals, if you are interested in this subject then you may find more information on Ars Technica’s web site.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Computing, Innovation | Comments Off

OSX Lion experience suggests that a single unified iOS is the next version

Sunday, July 24th, 2011

My experience with the upgrade and running OSX Lion is very positive so far. It feels stable, confident and trustworthy. The only surprise was that Java runtime wasn’t available right after the reboot. I had to google for a link to a separate download, I feel that was a little obnoxious of them. Other than that, I have a stable and fast OS. Since I removed Flash plugin, upgraded Skype, and now only rely on Google Chrome for flash functionality, I have a very good setup indeed. The fact that my esoteric collection of software runs so far without a glitch, without me having to tweak anything, suggests that OSX Lion builds on a solid and a stable API, most probably enabled by Snow Leopard.

It’s hard to imagine Apple maintaining OSX Desktop line and iOS in parallel, I reckon only iOS will ship in the future and the device where you run it will determine its runtime persona: mobile, desktop, server. For companies that cannot port their products to the new unified model, OSX Lion would become their Rosetta.

I’ve read a post on Windows 8 which indicated that Microsoft is already moving in that direction, a single unified OS for all platforms.

The implications of this change in the industry, lead by Apple, is that the AppStore model will become prevalent. When we reach that point, organisations with large IT teams dedicated to platform support will start looking derelict. Those would still remain the largest number, but they may find it really hard to remain competitive.

Why is it that Apple is seemingly succeeding with a vision that once was actually Microsoft’s pioneering idea: one platform for all your computing needs? They surely didn’t have more money or available potential talent than Microsoft.

Looking a little further, adding Facebook and Google to this mix, the battle for control of the consumer mindshare and purse (indirectly corporate mindshare and purse) is truly exciting. I think most of the mainstream press would have us believe in a zero sum game, which I think is just the same game really: seeking control of the mindshare. Analysing the full spectrum of all the tech titan battle grounds is beyond this posting. I’m only looking at the front where Apple is causing a storm in at the moment.

With all this going on, I have hard time engaging in debates about the definition of things like architecture, enterprise, business, any combination of those. I’m not sure what problem such debates will solve, especially when denial is ingrained in many contributions. I think the only viable debate to be had is the one about “the future of computing“, and that gets my attention.

Posted in Computing, Innovation, Leadership | Comments Off

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