apple

Everywhere I looked people were recommending the use of either Handbrake, VisualHub or iSquint to make videos iTunes compatible. They all work but require fiddling with settings, iTunes hackery and obviously aren’t from Apple. One would be forgiven for thinking that Apple didn’t approve of this sort of importing given that these tools existed for this very purpose. Little did I know QuickTime has been exporting to iTunes forever, making it possible to convert downloaded movies into iTunes compatible formats so you can load them onto your favorite Apple device. However, this export option has always required the Pro license of QuickTime. At least that was the case until Snow Leopard and QuickTime X.

In Snow Leopard the plain old QuickTime Player has a Share menu which lets you export any video that QuickTime can read into iTunes formats for iPod/iPhone, Apple TV and “Computer”. The shared videos are added to your media library and can then be synced with whatever device you choose.

Three easy steps:

1. Open the video you downloaded in QuickTime X
2. Click on the Share menu and select iTunes…
   
3. Choose the output format of your choice, keep in mind QuickTime will not scale your movie up, so your choices are limited based on the current resolution of the movie. You’ll find that only True HD movies (1080p+) can be exported to Computer format. Don’t worry about it, just choose the best option it gives you.
   

That’s it! Nice and easy.

For those interested in the actual output resolutions, the answer is it depends on the source resolution. By and large the iPhone/iPod size will try to constrain the width to 640 pixels. Apple TV will attempt to get close to 720p and Computer will attempt to get close to 1080p.

It started with a failed time machine backup. I had just bought an Airport Extreme and decided to plug my time machine drive into the USB port on the Airport. About 20% into the backup, time machine failed with Error -8062/Error -36. It failed on multiple files and I had to exclude them from the backup before it would move forward. Wondering what the hell was going on I tried to copy one of these files. Finder couldn’t copy it either giving a rather generic Input/Output error.

At this point I started thinking something was seriously wrong. The first thing I did was verify and repair permissions using Disk Utility. It found errors, and said it fixed them, but when I verified again the errors were still there. Not very helpful. Next I tried the much vaunted DiskWarrior. At $100 it isn’t exactly cheap but it came highly recommended. In order for DiskWarrior to scan your disk it shouldn’t be the boot drive. A bit of a problem since my MacBook Pro’s main drive was the one that failed. Using my other “Mac” (wink wink, nudge nudge) I used the nifty Target Disk mode of the MacBook Pro to mount the drive. DiskWarrior found something and said it was fixed, but I wasn’t convinced.

My paranoia was now in top gear and refused to let me rest after DiskWarrior’s all clear. I decided to buy Drive Genius 2  which offers a low level surface scan (also $100 but offers a competitive upgrade from DiskWarrior for $75). When you buy Drive Genius they give you a link to a bootable DVD image (unlike DiskWarrior that mails you the DVD, seriously Alsoft, get with the times). This DVD allows you to side-step that pesky boot disk problem. Unfortunately my MBP’s SuperDrive was on the blink. Enter my trusty 3rd generation 40 gig iPod. Using Disk Utility I restored the downloaded Drive Genius image onto the iPod and booted up my MBP using it.

Drive Genius started doing its thing and almost immediately discovered bad sectors on my hard drive. It was slow going so I decided to leave it on all night just to see how many errors found. In the morning it was still at only 9% scanned with over 100 bad sectors. Clearly this disk was breathing its last breath.

So, I have a hosed time machine disk because in moving from plugged in to my mac to plugged in to my airport, the old images were wiped off the disk in order to support backup over the air. I have a primary disk that is failing big time and probably not capable of giving me a solid backup.

Luckily for me, this is not quite as bad as it sounds. While time machine is nice and does a decent job most of the time, I don’t trust it too far. I use SuperDuper for real backups and I have had that going fine for a very long time. Push comes to shove, all my data is also backed up on Mozy in case a fire or something happens and everything in the vicinity of my computer dies.

Yesterday my Mac came back from having its drives replaced. I booted it in Target Disk mode and plugged it in to the other Mac. Opened Disk Utility, mounted my SuperDuper incremental backup and hit restore. 3 hours later everything starts up perfectly and I am back where I began. No fuss, no drama.

I love it when things work the way they are supposed to.

By now I’m sure everyone knows that Apple is going to be making macs using Intel’s x86 architecture chips. I’m not going to bang on about how surprising and impossible the whole thing is because its actually not that crazy.

OS X is built on FreeBSD. Now as far as I know FreeBSD will run on anything that can understand zeroes and ones including Intel’s x86. In fact I’d say 90%+ systems running BSD are on Intel or AMD chips. Why is it such a stretch then that Apple built this compatibility into OS X? You can’t change the core and the core is compatible. In fact, you could say it would be foolish NOT to support it… cause you never know when you might need Intel. So Apple have obviously had the warm blanket of being able to switch to Intel and have done a decent job of keeping quiet about it for the last 5 years.

Cringely weighed in with his usual wild predictions claiming that Intel and Apple are going to merge. In this case I think he’s wrong. In fact, I’d say that this time he’s absolutely batshit fucking loco. Why would big blue piss off 95% of their business? Just because they are unhappy with Microsoft’s tactics? Why would Intel cut off their nose to spite their face? Also, if Intel are even thinking about Apple it would be an aquisition, not a merger. They’d also need to pry control from the icy grip of Steve Jobs’ cold dead hands. He definitely wouldn’t be on stage hugging the CEO of Intel if he was going to be Jobs’ future boss.

No, the real reason is just what Jobs declared at the WWDC. IBM aren’t playing ball. This is hardly surprising given that they’re moving further and further from the desktop business and deeper and deeper into hardcore servers and gaming consoles. All the signs point to this, from the sale of it’s PC business to Lenovo to developing the Cell processor for the PlayStation 3, its obvious IBM’s focus is no longer on the desktop chip market. The only reason it has a tenuous foothold in the market in the first place is, you guessed it, Apple.

Sorry Bob. I think you got it wrong this time around.

Saw this on Business Week. I think the man raises some valid points. Apple products have long tempted me to switch from the hell that is the PC world but the pricepoint has always been a tad too high. I tend to “convert” to PC terms and find that I usually get a far better deal.

Of course I’m still waiting for the day that Apple finally decides to release their OS on the PC platform. How I shall enjoy removing Windows from my system. MUHAHAHA!

Holy moly! I have got to get me one of these!