I hate DVD as a video format. It deserves to die, NOW. Preferably painfully, like with knitting needles through the ears. I lost several hours this weekend to trying to burn one of these motherfuckers and ultimately failed.

iDVD, the craptacular Apple DVD creation software, refused to recognize VOB files as valid media so I had to convert them to AVI first (VOB files are the native format which DVD video is encoded in, so a DVD creation tool should really recognize them).

Converting to AVI was done using the free sofware Handbrake, and was wonderfully fast, converting a two hour movie in about 20 minutes. Converting the movie back to DVD took 3 hours and 40 minutes. And then it failed.

And then it failed again.

Also, iDVD has no additional compression settings to squeeze content slightly larger than 4.2 GB into a size slightly smaller than 4.2 GB… meaning it demands a Dual Layer disc when a single should suffice.

And on a vaguely related note I paid $20 in fines to my local video store recently for keeping two of their shitty scratched silver discs (and some bad photocopied covers) out a couple of days longer than I was supposed to. Boy, that’s sure going to make me drive back in my 2 tonne car sometime to pick up some physical media again next time I want to see a movie. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll download that movie next time, because it will be better for me and the environment.

Here is some ammunition for Apple haters who are sick of people smugly declaring OS X the best operating system evar:

Ok, I’m out, I didn’t make it to 10 this time… I was going to bitch about the full keyboard not having a Fn key on it (to modify behaviour of F1-F12) but then I noticed it does; just in a very different spot to my laptop… * chagrin * I also have to take back #2, sort of; If you hold down Control as well you can get multiple item info in a single pane– I still think that should be the default. And yes ok #3 can also be mitigated by holding down the mute button while your machine boots– but that’s a pretty damn annoying requirement (you actually have to hold the button down until you see the Apple logo on the screen).

BTW I know that some of these points are more hardware related than OS specific… Sosumi!

(Leopard is a strange looking word. It looks so much like leotard that I want to pronounce it LEE-oh-pard)

It’s kind of surprising how much Apple junk I have now, considering that I’m a Windows programmer. A quick review of the Apple products I have owned over the past few years:

Macbook 13"

iMac 24"

4 iPods – nano 1st gen / nano 2nd gen / nano 3rd gen / iPod Touch 8GB

Airport Express, with the over-hyped 802.11n*

Various accessories, multiple keyboards and mice including both Bluetooth and USB versions

<this space reserved for 3G iPhone>

One real pain is that I now have 4 operating systems running on any given day; Tiger + WinXP on the Macbook and Leotard + WinXP on the iMac. Keeping them all synchronized and not losing track of data is getting to be a bit of a problem. I had a quick google for synchronizing tools and tried Chronosync briefly, until it informed me it was so badly crippled that I would have to buy it before I could even decide if I wanted it… so screw you, Chronosync, you just lost a customer by acting like some asshole software vendor from 1995.

I’d love to use the built-in rsync command but unfortunately I only have a genius level IQ so am not confident enough to try it without help. If someone who already uses it can point me at a simple example of how I can synchronize two home folders (ie the home folders on each Mac) which doesn’t involve tarballs or gcc I would greatly appreciate it.

__________

* I was glad when Apple updated the Airport Express to include the latest protocol, but to be honest I hardly notice any speed improvement over my generic Netgear 802.11g router. Also it appears the audio-out feature only seems to be available in iTunes and not FrontRow (even when playing music). I believe there is software out there to enable Airtunes as a generic sound device, but installing miscellaneous third party apps is a hobby I have grown out of– JUST WORK DAMN YOU! Also also there is no way to tie Airtunes volume to system volume, so I can’t use the Apple remote to adjust volume when playing music, which means fiddling about with two remotes (and this is particularly painful when using multiple speaker mode, since the levels on the iMac and Airport Express really should be linked for this).

I succumbed to an itch last week and went and bought myself a 24" iMac. With Apple desktops still significantly more expensive than a similarly specced PC, I justified this to myself on the following grounds:

• With a new iMac I can run both Leopard (MacOS 10.5.x) and Windows on the same machine. This new machine also has a nice HD screen (1920 x 1200) and pretty decent stereo sound built-in, so I can also use it as a replacement for my crappy TV and stereo.
• PCs are ugly and noisy and I HATE THEM I HATE THEM!

I’ve been using PCs for eighteen years now and they never gave me the pride of ownership, nay, the smug self-satisfaction of the well balanced all-in-one iMac. A PC is always an ugly box, either boring and beige or black and silver and embarrassingly blinged out with superbright blue LEDs. And they’re noisy. And by the time you have them set up there are cables everywhere. And the keyboards are enormous and clacky with 50 extra knobs and multi-media buttons jammed into them.

The iMac is the quietest computer I have ever owned, in fact even quieter than my MacBook, which emits a faint high-pitched whine from its fans. The iMac does have a small amount of fan noise but it is more a low thrumming sound and you will only notice it if you eliminate all other noise sources in your immediate environment. So this thing is the ideal media center for my reasonably small living room. All I need now is the bluetooth keyboard and it will be perfect (with a bluetooth keyboard and wireless network the only cable required is the single power cord).

I have had a few issues which I should just point out to balance my enthusiasm:

• Leopard (OS 10.5) is more tacky looking than Tiger (10.4). Also I’ve had a few crashes and even managed to somehow lose my Dock bitmap for a session too, so I suspect it’s not yet as stable as Tiger.
• Inserting DVDs in the vertical slot drive is rather dodgy, because unless you lean around the side of the screen you are basically doing it blind. Also when the discs are ejected they don’t protrude far enough, so I find myself touching the disc surface in order to grasp them properly.
• When I first powered it up I noticed that about a third of the screen was actually foggy/blurry. At first I thought this was residue from the plastic wrapping on the screen, but after a bit of rubbing I realized that it was actually on the inside of the glass – Yikes! A quick google for iMac + condensation quickly revealed that many others were encountering similar problems (and in varying states of distress about it). Fortunately I am way intelligent and understand that condensation evaporates in warm air, so I pointed a fan heater in the general direction of the machine for a few hours and the fog went away (has not returned since). In looking it up I learned that the glass screen of the iMac is in fact held on by magnets, and easily removed with the aid of suction cups (or even a plunger!), but I didn’t actually need to go so far. The fact that it’s not actually sealed explains how moisture can get in there in the first place.