Tag Archives: vmware

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Another Leopard Wart

I have VMWare Fusion on my Mac for one reason, and one reason only: connectivity to my day job’s office. I don’t use it often, but when I do, it’s usually important.

Tonight, I’ve been trying to hit some of my lesser used applications after loading both my MacBook Pro and Doc Oc with Snow Leopard, and switching both of them to 64-bit mode. When I hit VMWare, it yelled at me:

VMWare Warning

We are not amused.

I went to VMWare’s site, and found them proudly touting experimental support of VMWare on the 32-bit kernel, and apologetically saying that VMWare running on the 64-bit Snow Leopard kernel is hard: “The transition to the 64-bit kernel of Snow Leopard is a major undertaking and something that we are taking seriously as we plan future products.” I’m sorry that it’s hard, but I expected more.

And I’m sure this is coming across as whiny, but I look at it this way. I have 64-bit ready hardware that I paid a gob of Benjy’s for. I have a 64-bit ready OS that’s been at the public dev forefront for many, many months. Yet, still I can’t get the kind of 64-bit love for my tools and toys as I could on the Windows platform. (Shudder.)

I get that not every app needs to be 64-bit. I mean, do I really need a 64-bit LOLcats screensaver? (OK, so maybe I do, but that’s a problem on my end!) But when big tools like VMWare and Photoshop are lagging on this front after so much lead time, well, I guess I expected a bit more than nebulosity at this stage of the game. I’m not knocking the tools — they are great — but I do have a bit of a struggle with the product planning. None of this 64-bit stuff should’ve been a surprise to anyone.

It’s simple. I drank the Kool-Aid, and want my gear to live up to the hype. I want it to just work.

Apple Existence, Photography

Crossing the Streams

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been battling printing issues, trying to print some contract work on canvas through my Epson R1800. To say it hasn’t gone well is giving the experience too much positive light.

As I researched the issue, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one seeing dark prints with the R1800, and not just on canvas. I’ve seen that with other media, but I “band aided” the problem by increasing the brightness of the ready-for-print images. Not elegant, and shouldn’t be necessary, but it worked… generally. However, that process didn’t translate well onto canvas, and after blowing through a roll of canvas, and a lot of ink, I was still no closer to printing canvas correctly.

One of the interesting things I noticed was that the Windows-based folks weren’t having this problem. In fact, some folks would bring the same image up on their Leopard-based Mac and a VM-based Windows XP environment, see exactly the same thing on the screen, but get different print results. And the results on the Windows side were spot-on.

The more I read, the more I decided it was time to put VMWare Fusion and Windows XP on my MacPro.

A quick run up the road, a little time spent installing, and I’m close to having XP on my Mac. For printing. Crazy, eh? I truly have crossed the streams! 🙂