Earlier than expected ? Apple could release Snow Leopard soon !

Apple has wrapped up works on the Snow Leopard and rumours from various sources in the Internet predicts that they may release Snow Leopard sooner than the expected dates.


John Gruber a famous blogger (http://daringfireball.net/) predicted that Snow Leopard might be on sale by Friday August 28. And various other Internet sources expect that Snow Leopard will be out by the last week of August.

Several other Apple-Centric web sites reported that the company had wrapped up the development of Snow Leopard. The very famous rumour site MacRumors reports that it had confirmed that Apple tagged a recent build as the likely release (golden master) candidate.

However Apple has not yet revealed Snow Leopard's on-sale date.

Instead of creating a new Operating System, the engineers at apple enhanced the existing OS features to make a great thing even better. I had a chance to test run the Snow Leopard Developer preview before a few months, even at that early stage of the operating system it was so stable and faster than its predecessors. However let us wait and see how they are going to amaze us all.

NB : Even thought I'm a full-time Linux user these days, I love OS X for its greatness, simplicity and its simply superb features.. I am damn sure that I'll give a try when it comes out with the all new features.

Xubuntu : Mount your OS X Partitions!

Xubuntu

Xubuntu is a light variant of Ubuntu with a simple interface and Low resource usage (more like a cut-down version of Ubuntu for low end machines). The User Interface (Xfce) is clutter free and simple. But when I installed it in my Mac Mini, I was not able to access my bluetooth keyboard (instructions to setup yours) and OS X Partitions. Mounting OS X partitions in Xubuntu is easy; let's have a look at it.



Creating a Mount Point

A mount Point is the place where you can mount the Partitions. Just create a directory where you want to mount your OS X partition (I created a mount point in my Desktop).

• mkdir ~Desktop/your_drive_name_here
  

Now we need to find the partition where the OS X data are stored. fdisk command can be used to find information of your OS X partition.

• sudo fdisk -l

Mounting the partition

Mounting is not a hard job in Xubuntu.

• sudo mount -t hfsplus /dev/sda3 ~/Desktop/your_drive_name_here

Now everything is done,you can start using your OS X Partition in Xubuntu.

Unmounting the partition

To demount the partition you need to unmount it manually.

• sudo umount your_drive_name_here

NB: If you wish to automate mounting process, you just need to edit the fstab file and your partition information there.

• sudo gedit /etc/fstab will open fstab file in gedit (use vim instead of gedit, if it is not available in your machine).

find-out the below information within the file.

• #dev/sda3
  /dev/sda3 _mountpoint hfsplus defaults 0 2

here replace /dev/sda3 with your Mac Partition information obtained from the fdisk -l command and replace _mountpoint with your mount point directory. Now you can save the file and reboot the machine. You'll have the partition mounted automatically when you login.

Enable Root user in Mac OS X

Certain times we need to enable the root account in the Mac OS X for installing certain XII applications or some other Applications. But root user is disabled and not accessible by default in the OS X.

How to enable "root" user in OS X

Open the Utilities folder located in the Applications Menu, You can open it using Mac to Go -> Utilities or Shift+Command+U will open the Utilities folder for you.


Open the "Directory Utility" from the Utilities folder (There is another program called Directory, but don' confuse yourself with both of these."Directory Utility" is different from the "Directory" ).


Click on the "Click the lock to make changes" to activate the administering mode.


Enter your user name and Password in the prompt.



Now go to "Edit" Menu and click "Enable Root User"



Enter a new password for your "root" account in the pop up box.


Click on this lock button again to enable the lock for preventing further changes.



Now everything is set and you are ready to go.You can start using your OS X root account!

Ubuntu : Setup your Bluetooth Keyboard

I have a Mac Mini with Apple wireless keyboard and I use Ubuntu.This tutorial may help you fix your Wireless keyboard problems with Ubuntu.This is a pretty easier task.

This tutorial will work with all bluetooth keyboards.

Discovering the Mac address of our Keyboard

We need the mac address of the keyboard to complete the setup. I'll use keyboard_mac_address which you should replace with your keyboards Mac address.Make sure your keyboard is on and ready to be visible in the computer(turn it on and press any key).

Now open the terminal window and run the following command

hcitool scan

the result will be some thing like :

Scanning . . .

keyboard_mac_address keyboard_name

here the keyboard_mac_address will be the mac address (e.g. 00:00:00:00:00) of the Keyboard and the keyboard_name will be the name of the keyboard.

Adding Keyboard to the configuration files

now run sudo gedit /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf in your terminal to open the configuration file in root mode.

a file will be opened in gedit, now you need to add the following lines to the end of the file.

device keyboard_mac_address {

name "keyboard_name";

auth enable;

encrypt enable;

}

You need to replace the keyboard_mac_address with the actual mac address of the keyboard and keyboard_name with the actual keyboard name.

Restart the Bluetooth service

Now we need to restart the bluetooth services

run sudo /etc/init.d/bluez-utils restart in the terminal window

Pairing the Keyboard

sudo hidd --search

As soon as the keyboard_mac_address appears, you must enter a PIN code into the keyboard. It must consists of numbers not using the numpad.Type this keyboard in to the keyboard and press Return (Enter).A window will pop asking you for the number you just entered on the keyboard. Certain times my Apple wireless keyboard connected without this PIN code entering.

Enabling automatic reconnection

type sudo gedit /etc/default/bluez-utilz to access the configuration file in root mode.

Find the code HIDD_ENABLED=0 in the configuration file and replace it with HIDD_ENABLED=1

Now you can reboot your machine and hopefully they will be automatically connected.

Tip for Xubuntu Users

by default gedit is not available in Xubuntu and Xubuntu users must replace bluez-utils with bluetooth . Everything else is exactly the same as described