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ok, I found this site that explains how to install the Magic Trackpad drivers on a non-bootcamp Windows machine: labnol.org/software/apple-magic-trackpad-with-windows/14158

Senseful

hey Kyle, when I go to your link, it shows me 15 videos... which one are you referring to?

Kyle Cronin

@Senseful Apple patents a lot of concepts that never make it to market

@Senseful sorry, it's the October 2010 one

Senseful

that's true too

Kyle Cronin

I thought the link went directly to the video

Senseful

it just opens up a webpage for me

thanks though

Kyle Cronin

6:53 PM

Yeah, I don't think Apple will reverse their stance on touchscreens on MacBooks very soon

but you might want to wait for the iPad 2 to see if it might meet your needs

Senseful

the problem with the iPad is that it will never be a full PC (e.g. I can't develop on it). I have the first gen and it's far too limiting.

Kyle Cronin

True, the iPad is best as a companion device

I currently have a MacBook Pro, but if I had the money I'd get an iPad and a powerful iMac or Mac Pro instead

Senseful

what size screen do you have?

Kyle Cronin

I have the 13" MacBook Pro, but I also have a Henge Dock hooked up to a 24" screen when I'm at my desk

don't get me wrong, it works great, but I'd really like two separate devices

Senseful

I'm trying to do the opposite... I want to minimize the amount of devices I have

what's the reason you want two devices?

Kyle Cronin

7:02 PM

Well, when I'm out, I'd prefer something more portable, and when I'm at my desk I'd prefer something more powerful

I guess I could go for an Air instead of the iPad, but I think that, for the most part, the iPad would do fine

@sadmicrowave any luck?

Senseful

I'm hoping that the MacBook air will be powerful enough as a desk pc

Kyle Cronin

For most purposes, it probably will be, especially with that speedy SSD

Senseful

yeah

I was told that the SSD in macbook pro's (optional upgrade) is slower than the SSD in the Air's

sadmicrowave

for some odd reason when I just plugged my bluetooth dongle into another pc and followed the same instructions found online and executed earlier it worked...so now I have to figure out what...if anything..I did differently @kylecronin

Kyle Cronin

I think I read that somewhere too, and I think it has to do with the fact that it doesn't have to go through the SATA interface

@sadmicrowave maybe your other computer didn't have the drivers for the bluetooth stick?

sadmicrowave

7:10 PM

but the drivers are autoinstalled when the bluetooth stick is inserted....

I literally touch and do nothing for them to be installed

Kyle Cronin

oh, ok, it's been a while since I've used Windows

I just remember fighting with Windows XP to get it to recognize a bluetooth stick I had

sadmicrowave

yea its a hassle..i love my mac in that regard

Kyle Cronin

same here, it's one of the reasons I switched. need to reinstall the OS? sure, not a problem. with windows, you had better hope that you haven't used your product key too many times...

sadmicrowave

thats not an issue - I'm on my work computer

Kyle Cronin

Hm, could that be why your Bluetooth stick isn't working - that your company has prevented drivers from being automatically installed on your machine?

sadmicrowave

7:17 PM

nope..because the second machine that it works on is also a company machine

Kyle Cronin

then I'm afraid I'm out of ideas, sorry

besides, isn't most of the value of the Magic Trackpad the Mac's gesture support?

Windows probably doesn't support much more than pointing and clicking

sadmicrowave

thats all I'm looking for

Kyle Cronin

I guess what you'll have to do is to try and figure out what the difference is between the two computers to try and isolate what's preventing yours from working

sadmicrowave

working on it

Senseful

@KyleCronin don't you just love PC's?

sadmicrowave

7:31 PM

F* no - I know that wasn't intended for me but I just HAD to comment...

why do you think I'm trying to turn my PC into a mac by using mac keyboard and mouse....

F.Y.I I got the trackpad working...

Kyle Cronin

@Senseful god no

@sadmicrowave congrats

sadmicrowave

I guess I wasnt doing something right in the bluetooth setup...weird...but now it works

Kyle Cronin

You should ask your employer if there is any way you can switch to a Mac

sadmicrowave

there isnt

I would love that....but I am switching to ubuntu Linux very soon...even though its not corporate approved..I'm justing going to emulate windows on a virtual box to keep them happy

Senseful

sorry, that was supposed to be a sarcastic remark. I hate having to deal with issues like the one you're having, @sadmicrowave.

sadmicrowave

7:34 PM

@senseful - I knew it was supposed to be sarcastic..but I couldn't help but jump on the 'hate'-wagon

Kyle Cronin

@Senseful I know, it's just hard to reply sarcastically as well

Senseful

haha

sadmicrowave

next I need to see if there is a way to edit the sensitivity of the trackpad...

which will be hard considering windows thinks I'm using a regular mouse lol

calavera

can i jump on the hate-wagon too?

Kyle Cronin

sure, hop aboard

calavera

7:48 PM

it's the first time i've had to setup a win box since i got my macbook pro, and i wanted to puke

i started setting up a win7 vm for development last week, and i realized i just can't do win development anymore

it's the first time i've had to setup a win box since i got my macbook, and it made me want to puke

Kyle Cronin

details?

calavera

sucks too, because i have a corporate laptop with win7 setup how i want it, and i have to return it in a week :/

well once i had the OS installed

i went through and started checking out the scheduled tasks and services and all that

and it took me literally hours to make sense of all the stupid crap ms has running for absolutely no reason

plus IE crashing every other time i opened it to download programs

and i've gotten used to package managers for my software and i was appalled that i had to download old-ass binary distributions for everything :P

Kyle Cronin

the only thing IE should be used for is downloading Chrome

5

calavera

or firefox :)

but i agree on principal

however my company is a very particular company that doesn't really care too much about browser compatibility internally

Kyle Cronin

well you could use IE for your company stuff and Firefox for everything else, right?

calavera

7:55 PM

so basically every internal website i need to visit... something won't work in ff

yup that's what i do

still sucks though because if i set my default browser to ff it opens all links i click in outlook in ff

so company emails i have to copy the link then paste into IE

Kyle Cronin

wow, that's annoying

calavera

don't even get me started on outlook/office :)

Senseful

just get the IE tab extension and configure it to use IE for your company's URL

calavera

you know what senseful... wtf didn't i remember to do that??

i used to do that but i never reinstalled it since the last time i re-imaged

the only problem with that is they have about 100 different urls, but i'm sure i could just do it by all intranet domains

where were you a few months back? i'm leaving in a week :)

Senseful

that's another reason I like Chrome better than FF... it can save your extensions to your account so you never need to remember to download them.

calavera

7:58 PM

chrome actually works a lot better on the intranet than ff

a lot of the company sites actually work in chrome

Senseful

lol

Kyle Cronin

any reason why you're sticking with FF then?

calavera

i actually started using chrome a lot for awhile, but the mac version is missing some of the stuff that the windows version has

so i got tired of using chrome on windows and ff on mac

Senseful

when did you last try it on the mac?

I'm using a PC and mac side by side with Chrome on both and I don't notice any differences

calavera

i guess i'm also really old-school/loyal/stubborn as far as sticking with ff goes

a couple months ago

Kyle Cronin

8:01 PM

I've been using Chrome since the betas on my Mac

calavera

the main thing is that the trackpad gestures don't all work on chrome like they do in ff

Senseful

I don't have a trackpad, so I wouldn't know

calavera

and if you right click the back button, you don't get the list of history

Senseful

yeah, that still happens, you have to press and hold

calavera

well in ff, if i do 3 finger swipe up or down it will go to beginning or end of page

doesn't work in chrome, and i use it all the time :/

shit, you can hold down and the history comes up??

wow i really love you senseful, you're my new best friend :P

just tried it and it works :P

Kyle Cronin

8:05 PM

to get to the top or bottom of a page I just use "home" and "end" on my keyboard

calavera

i guess i just figured because right click does it on windows that it just wasn't implemented on mac

ya if i'm at a desktop i use keyboard almost exclusively

however i use my macbook more than a desktop anymore so i use trackpad a lot

one really great reason to use ff:

vimperator.org

now that's the way i like to browse when i'm using keyboard :)

Kyle Cronin

fn+up is home, fn+down is end on a MacBook keyboard

apparently <kbd> doesn't work in the chat

calavera

i still don't really have a good handle on the fn key usage on os x

i use a lot of vi style re-bindings so i can keep my fingers on the home row

so i don't use a lot of the default stuff

Kyle Cronin

chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/…

2

calavera

nice!

i'll have to get that running

platform independent?

Kyle Cronin

8:11 PM

seems to be

calavera

very cool... well you guys have convinced me to give chrome another shot :)

Kyle Cronin

installed and works on my Mac

I initially switched to Chrome because Safari was hanging on me

like sometimes 30-40 seconds

it was brutal

calavera

ouch, you ever figure out why?

Kyle Cronin

no, it was really weird

I tried resetting everything, removing extensions, etc and it persisted

it's probably better now, but I've gotten used to Chrome and I don't want to go back

calavera

i've never really used safari

the shortcuts were all different from what i was used to

i think installing ff right away on my mac really helped me ease into os x

Kyle Cronin

8:15 PM

did you try Camino?

calavera

considering i hadn't used a mac since like 96 until early this year

ya i did on an old powerbook

it's pretty nice but it didn't have extension support so i didn't use it much

it was faster than ff or safari on the powerbook though

but opera beat them both, it was actually usable

Kyle Cronin

I think Chrome is Intel-only

so it wouldn't have even run

calavera

yup

Kyle Cronin

but for me, Chrome has always been among the fastest

calavera

i would've used chrome but couldn't because of that

Kyle Cronin

8:18 PM

what system do you have now?

calavera

it's the i7 mbp

Kyle Cronin

Hi @garikapati and @Am1rr3zA

nice

garikapati

Hi Kyle

calavera

so honestly i don't notice much of a difference between the browser's in speed

Kyle Cronin

I also like that Chrome is self-contained - it has its own version of Flash, etc

calavera

8:20 PM

hey @Am1rr3zA, @garikapati... welcome

garikapati

I didn't read full chat yet, but I fin Chrome on my MBP is good and it takes less memory compared to Safari and Firefox and it's fast too

calavera

the tab processes are nice too, although ff kind of has that now

firefox is a memory whore

garikapati

@calavera Congrats, I see you are an Admin now !

calavera

but i've found that chrome isn't really that much better

@garikapati thanks!

Senseful

Chrome has it's own PDF reader too... which is important on a PC since Acrobat Reader has so many security vulnerabilities.

calavera

8:24 PM

very true... i don't even use acrobat on pc

on mac though i love preview

Kyle Cronin

Preview does a lot more than people think

Senseful

it's funny how much better preview is than acrobat reader

are you using foxit reader on your PC?

Kyle Cronin

I never really liked Foxit

I've always set people up with Evince

Senseful

hmm, I'll have to look it up

calavera

no i use cutepdf or something

can't remember the name tbh

i do so little web browsing or document viewing on my pc though...

all i do is code and test on my win machine

Kyle Cronin

8:27 PM

I love how you can print to a PDF on a Mac

It's a pain point when I'm using Windows that it can't do that

calavera

i hook my laptop up to my network, turn on its vpn, then remote to my laptop from my macbook :)

Kyle Cronin

You should virtualize your Windows instance

calavera

@KyleCronin: i love that... i print web pages and such to evernote all the time

@KyleCronin: i actually have, but i've had too much work to have time to get the smart card stuff working on it so i've just stuck to the path of least resistance

and now that i'm leaving it's not really worth it

Kyle Cronin

where are you going?

hopefully someplace that's more Mac friendly

calavera

i don't have a destination unfortunately

but i'm working a contract and it's up at the end of year

Kyle Cronin

8:30 PM

ah, I see

calavera

i could take another contract with the company but i really don't want to because of all the stuff we've been talking about :)

so they're my last resort if i don't find anything else within the next couple months

Kyle Cronin

well I hope you find a better place

calavera

i know i will

thanks

i'm pretty confident i'll find something cool though

Kyle Cronin

remember there is careers.stackoverflow.com

might be worth it to post your resume there

calavera

ya i actually found that last month and put my cv up

haven't got much there yet, i've had a lot more luck with linkedin so far

Kyle Cronin

8:35 PM

I found it... you work for Microsoft?

calavera

:P

garikapati

@calavera do you do .Net development ?

calavera

you said it, i didn't :)

Kyle Cronin

I feel so... betrayed...

calavera

hey i'm an independent contractor :)

@garikapati: i do... but even more c++ development than .net

lately i've been doing a lot of powershell work

Senseful

8:37 PM

your avatar is so misleading haha

calavera

hahaha

garikapati

why I am asking is, my friend has a MBP but his skilset is Microsoft technologies..

calavera

it's not misleading to me... my heart is very far away from windows now :)

garikapati

so with Bootcamp Win XP installtion + VMware fusion is a good solution ?

Senseful

why would you need both? don't they basically do the same thing?

calavera

8:39 PM

i didn't really like vmware fusion but i'm a big open-source guy so i use virtualbox

Kyle Cronin

I'll second VirtualBox, it's quite good

calavera

i don't have a whole lot of experience with vmware... vbox does everything i need so far

Kyle Cronin

the only thing I wish it had was host to VM networking, and vice versa

calavera

the thing is that my windows dev is all done on my corporate laptop but i don't do any windows dev whatsoever outside of work

garikapati

@Senseful the reason is don't have to reboot to login to WinXP. with Fusion, it can boot the bootcamp installation and can still use Mac

calavera

8:42 PM

@KyleCronin: doesn't vbox actually have that?

mine shows 'host only adapter'

Senseful

@garikapati so you can boot up into windows via bootcamp when you need full power, and when you only need a small little thing on Windows you can use fusion?

calavera

i haven't tried it though

Kyle Cronin

ah, I should have clarified

with host-only you can access the host, but not the internet

with NAT you can access the internet, but not the host

with bridged you can do both, but it requires assigning the VM an address on the actual network

I'd like to have my VM accessible from the host, but also have it able to access the internet

calavera

oh so you want internet, host access, but no address on the lan?

Kyle Cronin

a good example would be an Ubuntu server VM where you want to update packages, etc, but also use it as a server for testing purposes

yeah

Parallels does it, and I think VMWare fusion does it, but I haven't been able to get VirtualBox to do it

calavera

8:44 PM

maybe you could do that with a mix of network adapters in the vm

like use one adapter set to nat and one set to host-only

garikapati

@Senseful I think we can get enough power even in Fusion/ Virtualbox for .Net development.. isnt it

Kyle Cronin

hm, don't know why I didn't think of that

garikapati

I don't have a good experience with these so no idea...

calavera

@garikapati: it depends on what you're doing but a vm works quite well on a multi-core machine with at least 4GB or ram

visual studio is kind of a resource hog but it seems to work ok for me

as long as you're not running 10 programs on your mac and in the vm at the same time :)

@kylecronin: it sounds like one of those things that the commerical packages put in as a nice-to-have feature to make things easier

Senseful

If I want bootcamp and VM, can I use the same Windows installation with Virtualbox? Or do I need to install Windows twice?

calavera

8:47 PM

i bet vbox developers were like 'screw it, they can add extra adapters' :)

Kyle Cronin

@calavera and I wouldn't mind that, except that it's not mentioned anywhere in the documentation

calavera

@Senseful: tbh i'm not sure... i've seen threads about it but i think you have to convert the existing bootcamp to a vm beforehand, so it's not 2-way

don't take my word for it though

@KyleCronin: there's definitely some things about vbox and it's documentation that could be improved

Senseful

Any idea if the other solutions (e.g. Fusion or Parallels) allow that feature?

calavera

i'm pretty sure both do

check out their websites... i'm more sure that fusion does, not quite as sure about parallels

garikapati

@calavera yeah the MBP has 4GB RAM

@Senseful @Senseful I just installed it once i.e. on Bootcamp partition. With Fusion I can boot into the same partition if I want to login while using Mac. If I want only windows, then I can normally boot into Bootcamp.

calavera

8:53 PM

@garikapati: that's what mine has and i set my windows vm to use 1.5GB. works just fine once the vm's hard drive starts filling out and it stabilizes

Senseful

Thanks for the info

Kyle Cronin

by the way @everyone, we could use a bit of a bump in our questions per day metric, so feel free to ask questions on Apple even if you know the answer

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