Author Archives: J. ΞPSTΞÏN

[Pre] Palm Pre to Ship with Adobe Flash Soon (Upd.)

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Adobe released a video yesterday featuring the Palm Pre running Adobe Flash. Adrian Ludwig from Adobe Labs shows websites running with Flash Player 10.1 beta on the semi-official iPhone challenger Palm Pre.

In their official press statement Adobe say

“A public developer beta of the browser-based runtime is expected to be available for Windows® Mobile, Palm® webOS and desktop operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux later this year.”

Developers may sign up for notification about the Adobe Flash beta for the Palm Pre.

Interestingly neither this statement nor the statement on Adobe Labs include a single word about Apple’s iPhone or the iPhone OS X. Could this mean Flash will not come anytime soon to the iPhone?

While letting those rumors dwell, enjoy the Palm Pre video featuring Adobe Flash…


The Video is courtesy by Adobe 2009.

» Adobe’s press statement on BusinessWire.com…
» Adobe’s statement on Adobe Labs…
» Adobe Flash for Palm Pre notification registration…
» Adobe TV featuring the Palm Pre (currently unavailable)…

[Pre] Marry me again: WebOS 1.2.1 syncs to iTunes 9.01

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A couple of days after their latest release of WebOS 1.2 Palm released WebOS 1.2.1. Now the Palm Pre is again synchronizing with Apple’s iTunes 9.0.1. Since iTunes version 8.2.1 with every update Apple is trying to stop Palm from syncing their Pre with iTunes. As we’ve seen in the past, all those attempts by Apple don’t last long. According to Precentral.net the Palm Pre uses Apple’s USB idVendor string to fool iTunes into thinking the Palm Pre is an iPod.

The WebOS 1.2.1 update features:

  • sync photo albums with iTunes
  • reducing size of photos on the Pre
  • bugfix for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 sync

The update is 38MBybte in size and will be transmitted automatically on the Pre – at least in the USA.

[Pre] Palm Pre Hacked to Support Video Recording

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PreCentral reports that some devs managed to run a video recording software on Palm’s new flagship Pre. The software currently only supports 320 x 480 as resolution with 30fps.

But as the Pre supports up to 720×480 there is hope that we will soon seen DVD like recordings just from the Pre. The video format seems currently only badly formatted, that is why people recommend using VLC to play it.

[Muzaq] Anti-Pop Consortium Release New Album

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Six years after their last EP “Antipop Consortium vs. Matthew Ship” the british alternative Hip-Hop group Antipop Consortium releases a new album: Fluorescent Black.

After breaking up for doing solo projects in 2003, they reunited in 2007 and said in an August 2007 interview that they reunited with the intention of touring and releasing a new record. The time has come.

» Go here to pre-listen the new album.

antipopconsortium

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[Pre] Palm Pre Release Date for Germany

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October 13th will be the day many people have been waiting for. The official iPhone competitor by Palm will be released in Germany. The Pre will be exclusively available from O2 Germany.

According to their latest information the Palm Pre will also be available without subscription for about 480€ (=700US$). There is currently no information about upcoming special Palm Pre O2 tariffs.

In Great Britain and Ireland the Pre will be released on october 16th.

In contrast to T-Mobile’s german iPhone tariffs, O2 Germany is gonna allow VoIP applications like Sipgate or Skype (via german Heise.de News).

[Games] A Pseudonym for Bugs = Monopoly City Streets

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Monopoly – a game that almost everybody knows – has been revived and redesigned for the virtual sphere as “Monopoly City Streets” (MCS). As many other news services have already written thousands of pages about it, we’re not gonna repeat it here. To summarize: it seems this game is fun for many millions around the globe.

Sadly although the makers have already taken actions against issues and problems by upgrading hardware and by resetting the whole game to enable everybody to start anew, there are aswell technical as social issues unsolved all over.

I for example have today bought an 8 million street and built some little houses on it. See here how you can become the leader of the game with an 8 million street. And no, I was not cheating. I enjoyed playing with real competition until this happened:

monopolycalculationbuga
monopolycalculationbugb

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So how often does this happen? I wrote an error report, but how many other people do that? The most logical consequence would have been to sell the street immediately to get the cash transferred for real…

[Muzaq] In Memoriam Stephen Biko

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32 years ago. On September 12th, 1977 Steve Biko was tortured to death in a Police Office. Steve Biko was a non-violent Anti-Apartheid activist. On his 1980 album “Melt”,  English musician Peter Gabriel dedicated this song to Biko:

[MacOS] Comprehensive Gigabyte Hardware Specification List

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With the advent of Snow Leopard many users have issues installing it onto PC based hardware. Well this is not very curious, since a PC is no Mac. Anyway as Gigabyte motherboards proved to be very close to the original Apple Intel specifications many people decided to buy those boards.

With the release of Snow Leopard DSDT patching seems to have become a must. Installation attempts will most likely fail without it. The intention of this list is to provide comprehensive information on the most used Gigabyte motherboards.

The original idea for this list was by a guy called ximekon (find original list here on InsanelyMac forums).

Model North- bridge South- bridge LAN Fire- Wire Audio BIOS Link Last Check
P35
P35-DS3L P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC888 F9 08/29/2009
P35-DS3 P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC889a F14 08/28/2009
P35-DS3R P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC889a F13 08/28/2009
EP35
EP35-DS3 P35 ICH9 RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F4 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3R P35 ICH9R RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F4 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3P P35 ICH9R Gigabit Yes ALC889a F6 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3L P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC888 F6 08/28/2009
EP35-DS4 P35 ICH9R RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F6 08/28/2009
EP45
EP45-DS3 P45 ICH10 2 x RTL8111C -,- ALC889a F9 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3R P45 ICH10R 2 x RTL8111C yes ALC889a F11c 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3P P45 ICH10R 2 x RTL8111C yes ALC889a F8 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3L P45 ICH10 RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F10 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3LR P45 ICH10R RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F2 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3 P45 ICH10 RTL8111C yes ALC889a F8 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3P P45 ICH10R RTL8111C yes ALC889a F9 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3L P45 ICH10 RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F5c 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3LR P45 ICH10R RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F5 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3R P45 ICH10R RTL8111C yes ALC889a F9 08/28/2009

you cant see this line, do you?

The Golden Gigabyte Model Rules

  • if last character of the model name is a “number” or a “P” (i.e. EP35-DS3 or EP45-DS3P etc.) it means ALC889a audio chipset
  • if last or penultimate character of the model name is an “L” (i.e. EP35-DS3L or EP45-DS3LR) it means ALC888 audio chipset
  • if last character of the model name is an “R” (i.e. P35-DS3R or EP45-UD3LR) it means SATA Raid controllers
  • The P35 or P45 strings in the beginning are fairly self explaining I suppose (P35 always with ICH9 and P45 always with ICH10)

Your Help is Wanted

Weather these rules nor the list above might be 100% accurate. It is only what I found on the net and summarized from the list above.

  • If you derived a DSDT.aml clean from a BIOS (like using Koalala’s DSDT patcher) and you fixed it for OSX86, you may post it in the comment’s section – don’t forget to tell how much RAM you had while compiling the DSDT.aml (Don’t add individual graphic or wi-fi strings. Just add onboard-devices like onboard-audio and onboard-ethernet.)
  • If your board is not on the list check Gigabyte’s pages and post the specifications in the comments section below.
  • If your board is listed but details above are wrong: please post it in the comments section below.
  • If you know the LAN chipset of the board and it is not listed precisely above (saying Gigabit) please post it in the comments section.

Please always crosscheck with the official Gigabyte specification page for your model (links to your model are included in the BIOS column) before adding a dsdt.aml or anything that could burn your BIOS.

[MacOS] Is EFI-X illegally using 3rd Party Program Code?

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About a year ago a company called ASEM released a device called EFI-X. This device has been claimed to be capable of booting several Microsoft Windows versions and Mac OS X Leopard.

Legal concerns

From the beginning there were question regarding the legal status of the device. But ASEM claimed the device is legal, although it circumvents Apple’s binary protection using Apple’s copyrighted secret operating system keys (OSK1 and OSK2).

Technical issues

Anyway EFI-X devices had some issues. Many forums reported about problems with Bonjour and sharing in general. In the meantime articles from the official EFI-X support forums have been suddenly disappeared. Customers reporting issues or solutions and workaround to severe bugs have been banned from EFI-X support forums – our own help article to recover almost lost data was removed aswell and one of our members has been officially banned from their forums (the reason was this article in october 2008).

Examining EFI-X in deep

Now some frustrated customers who are on the other hand technologically very familiar have examined the EFI-X device in deep. One of the main points AsereBln found: in contrast to what EFI-X is stating: “Our approach is entirely different, (..) all our code and development is our own only” – they seem to be using program code that has been developed by the OSX86 community though. They seem to be using “Disabler.kext“. Moreover another user (RezRov) found out the EFI-X Windows update software seems to be violating the LGPL as it incorporates a modified USB device library (libusb-win32).

Use of possibly unlicensed 3rd party program code, possibly illegal use of Apple security keys, and customer support below grade for a 170€ (250US$) commercial product that seems to be the summary about a year after product launch.

Lessons learnt

We suppose end users should be aware of this possible hassle. Only an original Apple Mac is really hassle free and 100% compatible to a Mac. But if you are technologically interested and have the time and motivation search the OSX86 communities for setups. The OSX86 forums are full of knowledge and willing to help. But remember a PC won’t ever be 100% compatible to a real Mac.

[MacOS] Snow Leopard 10A432 Seeded to Devs / Release in August?

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According to Mac4Ever (french) the Snow Leopard 10A432 version seems to be the Gold Master (GM) release, meaning this is the final release-to-manufactoring (RTM) version. Although latest rumors (german Golem.de) say Snow Leo might be released in late August, newest information tell release is in September.