Patching Panther for Daylight Savings Time
As you may have heard, Daylight Savings Time is changing this year in Canada and the United States. While most operating system vendors have released patches that include the new rules, Apple has only released a patch for 10.4; users using 10.3 (or earlier) are going to have to deal with incorrect clocks for a few weeks each year.
However, I’m going to outline a way to get older versions of Mac OS X to understand the new Daylight Savings Time rules, provided you’re foolhardy enough to replace some system files with system files from 10.4.
Update: The method below only patches the zoneinfo files; it doesn’t update the ICU information that applications (like Mail and iCal) use for time-zone information. Ian Comfort’s patch does both (and is far easier to use). Check it out at http://www.stanford.edu/~icomfort/panthertz/.
What’s Needed
You’re going to need some files from a Mac running 10.4.6 or later. In particular, you’re going to need a copy of the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo — this is where Mac OS X stores all of its information about timezones. I’m going to assume you have a copy of these files in your home directory under zoneinfo/.
Warning
While I’ve tried this on both 10.3.9 and 10.2.8 without any problems, it’s entirely possible you could damage your system by following these instructions. I strongly encourage you to back up your system before proceeding. I don’t take any responsibility for anything that results from following these instructions. Except for praise. I like praise.
Getting Started
Open up the Terminal application (it can be found in /Applications/Utilities). If you didn’t already know that, stop and rethink what you’re doing. You may be in over your head.
Copying the Files
First, back up the contents of /usr/share/zoneinfo/:
cp -r /usr/share/zoneinfo/ ~/zoneinfo.backup/
This will create a backup of /usr/share/zoneinfo/ in your home directory under zoneinfo.backup/, just in case something goes wrong.
Next, figure out what file you’re going to replace:
ls -al /etc/localtime
You should see something like:
jfpoole@monolith:~$ ls -al /etc/localtime
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 34 Sep 22 01:32 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern
We’re not going to replace /etc/localtime, we’re going to replace the file /etc/localtime points to (in this case, it’s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern.
Copy the appropriate file from the zoneinfo directory into /usr/share/zoneinfo:
cp ~/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern
You may need to use sudo to get the copy to work properly.
Checking Your Work
Once you’re done copying the files, run:
zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
If you get dates in early March and early November, then you’re done! Congratulations! If you get dates in early April and late October, the something’s gone wrong. Horribly wrong. Double-check that you replaced the correct files, and that you copied over the correct files from the 10.4 machine.
Wrapping Up
That’s all you have to do to get a 10.2 or 10.3 machine to understand the new Daylight Savings Time rules.
Geekbench 2.0 Private Beta
I’ve been working on the next major version of Geekbench (tentatively called Geekbench 2.0) over the past few months, and I’ve reached the point where I’d love to have some beta testers bang on it to see if it breaks. If you’re interested in helping out and
- you’re running Mac OS X 10.4 (or later) or Windows XP (or later)
- have time to install and run new builds of Geekbench once every couple of weeks
- have time to send feedback saying what you like (or dislike) about Geekbench
then send me a note at geekbench2beta@geekpatrol.ca. Also, it’d be great if you could let me know what hardware you’re planning on using for testing Geekbench; I’d like to get as many different hardware configurations as possible.
If all goes well, I’ll send out the first beta build later this week.
Update: I’ve got enough beta testers now. Thanks everyone!
Windows/386 Promotional Video
A Microsoft-produced video explaining the benefits of Windows/386. Pretty dry until the 7 minute mark when the production is taken over by crack-smoking monkeys.
Five Things Wired Doesn’t Like About the iPhone
Unless you live under a proverbial rock you know that Apple introduced the iPhone this week. Most people are fawning over it, but Wired has taken a few minutes to point out things they don’t like about the iPhone.
So I thought I’d answer their points, just for fun.
1) Cingular. They’re North America’s largest cellular network, so it makes sense for Apple to deal with them. But it would have been far better if Apple had taken on the carriers’ chokehold on handset provisioning wholesale, and simply sold unlocked phones.
I like the idea of breaking the cell companies monopoly on phones and dictating their features (or at least which features will be available), but have you ever tried to get support from a cell company for an unlocked phone? It’s, err, unpleasant even when you have a popular phone.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to take the power away from the cell companies but I’m not convinced that even Apple has enough clout to do so, at least not alone.
2) 8GB Flash drive. For many, it will be more than enough, but the iPhone won’t kill the iPod until drive sizes start matching the needs of MP3-era music libraries. My fear is that Apple will stick to its guns and stick with Flash media as it grows to 16GB and beyond, but a second-gen iPhone with magnetic storage is an obvious upgrade path.
I agree that 8 GB isn’t that much for an iPod, but the iPhone isn’t an iPod it’s a phone, and 8 GB is more than any other phone on the market that I’ve seriously looked at and I’m sure it’s music and video capabilities are better and easier to use than everyone else too.
3) Built-in battery. Apple’s bothersome tradition of non-user-servicable batteries continues. There’s no reason to do this, frankly, aside from the kind of implied “we’re aesthetic obsessives” claim that Apple still gets away with.
I’m still on the fence on the whole integrated battery issue. On the one hand it would be fantastic to be able to buy new batteries for my iPod or iPhone but on the other hand it would almost certainly mean larger sizes, and the iPhone is already plenty big.
4) No 3G. Fast internet is the horse, 3G is one hind leg.
I agree. Hopefully it’ll be in the next revision, but for now EDGE is pretty OK.
5) With all those features, a QWERTY keyboard stashed within (somehow) would be the perfect way to turn this little beast into Apple’s answer to the UMPC: a cheap, fully-featured computing device in addition to a phone and music player. Even a clamshell…
A built in QWERTY keyboard might be cool but there are two reasons that it wouldn’t work in the iPhone.
- It’s not as cool as the on screen touch keyboard.
- It would make the unit bigger, and as I already mentioned it’s plenty big already.
iPhone Dev Kit
Someone’s gone and leaked pictures of the Apple iPhone Dev Kit to Flickr. Go take a look before they get taken down.
Sun Ultra 20 M2 Video Upgrade
I broke down and upgraded the video card in my Sun Ultra 20 M2 from the integrated video chipset (an ATI ES 1000) to an ASUS nVidia 7300GS video card.
While I understand the merits of integrated video, the ATI ES 1000 isn’t a particularly great integrated video chipset; it’s image quality isn’t all that great, and it’s only a 2D graphics adapter. Plus it’s not an incredibly common chipset, so it’s not supported (or supported well) by a number of operating systems.
Rather than buy a Sun-approved nVidia Quadro video card, I grabbed a PCI-Express card from my neighborhood computer store, installed it, and it just worked. Awesome! I’m kind of disappointed, though, that I needed a screwdriver to install the video card. While I could open the Ultra 20 M2 case without a screwdriver (thanks to thumbscrews), I still needed a screwdriver to secure the video card’s metal bracket to the case. C’mon, Sun, Dell figured out how to do this without screwdrivers at least five years ago!
So, if you’ve got an AMD64 Sun workstation (like the Ultra 20 M2) and are thinking of upgrading the video card, it seems that consumer PCI-Express cards will work in Sun workstations; there’s no need to buy Sun video cards.
Macworld 2007 Product Impressions
iLife ‘07 and iWork ‘07
What? What happened to iLife ‘07 and iWork ‘07?
Apple TV
Apple TV looks interesting — it streams iTunes content to your TV. What’s also interesting is that it doesn’t support standard-definition televisions, only enhanced- and high-definition televisions. If you’re like me and you have an old TV, you won’t be able to use Apple TV. I can’t figure out if that’s a bad thing or a good thing; I mean, it gives me an excuse to upgrade my TV, but at the same time I’m not looking for an excuse because I’m happy with my TV. Really, the question is do I want an Apple TV in the first place?
Airport Extreme
Airport Extreme, Apple’s wireless router and access point, has a new form factor (it kind of looks like an Apple TV), a new wireless technology (802.11n), extra LAN ports, and lets you turn external USB (not FireWire!) hard drives into shared network drives. Awesome! I’m disappointed, though, that the extra LAN ports are only 10/100 Mbps instead of 10/100/1000 Mbps, considering how easy it is to saturate a 100 Mbps network with a hard drive, and that every Mac Apple ships comes with Gigabit ethernet.
Apple iPhone
Apple iPhone looks amazing. I’m not completely sold on the multi-touch interface (if for no other reason than the lack of tactile feedback), but it certainly is an interesting idea. It also looks like the iPhone is the first cellular phone in a long time that comes with decent software (namely OS X). Plus it’s a video iPod. Plus it’s a Blackberry. Plus it’s a camera. How can you go wrong?
Oh, right. It’s expensive ($500 to $600 with a two-year contract), won’t be available in the States until June, and may not be available at all in Canada. Crap.
Branding
There are some interesting comments over at Brand Naming about the Apple TV name:
I think Apple is probably going with “[apple logo] tv”. The apple symbol, like the nike symbol, has proven strong enough to stand on its own and still be pronounced “apple tv.”
By doing this, I believe Apple leverages the broad awareness of its logo, given its huge market share. Consumers are also increasingly connecting the Apple brand name with entertainment. In fact, many get there music, and now movies, via iTunes, which has become the 5th largest music retailer in the U.S.
Even though it makes sense for Apple to use the Apple symbol as part of the product name it’ll take some getting used to since Apple’s never done it before. Plus typing tv is a lot more work than typing Apple TV.
Speaking of branding, I’m surprised no one’s made a bigger deal about Apple switching its corporate name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc, especially considering this Macworld (Macworld!) didn’t feature any new Mac products.
WWDC Videos on iTunes
This might be old news to some, but people with an ADC Select or ADC Premier membership can watch sessions from WWDC 2006 on iTunes. So, if you weren’t able to attend WWDC (or even the Leopard Tech Talks) you can still catch a lot of the technical content on iTunes.
There’s really no replacement for being at Stump the Experts in person, though.
flOw
flOw is a fun Flash-based game I discovered last month. flOw features an odd little creature with a disproportionally large mouth; you move this creature around, getting it to eat smaller creatures and fighting larger creatures. Eat a red creature and you dive deeper to fight larger creatures. Eat a blue creature to dive shallower to fight smaller creatures. It’s pretty straightforward.
What’s interesting about flOw (besides the fact that it looks and sounds amazing) is the entire game mechanic is based on the concept of flow, the sense of entanglement we get from an activity that is neither too hard nor too easy for our skills. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal has an excellent summary of flOw and flow:
Ms. Santiago, the USC classmate and business partner, says that’s the stage of gaming now. “We have a generation of people that grew up playing games, love games, but just don’t have time to play these hardcore games anymore,” she says.
How do you hook such an audience? Mr. Chen’s solution stems from “flow theory,” a psychological concept first developed by Claremont Graduate University’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow, he explains, “is a mental state where a human being is totally engaged in an activity he is doing, where he is so involved that he loses track of time and space.” In sports, broadcasters call this “the zone,” that rare time when an athlete excels by forgoing active decision-making in favor of unconscious instinct.
If you’re lucky enough to have a PlayStation 3, you’ll be able to download an enhanced version of flOw for the PlayStation 3 soon from Sony’s download service, which puts the Flash-based version of flOw to shame.
Geekbench 2006 Updated (Build 286)
The latest build of Geekbench 2006 (build 286 for those of you keeping score at home) is now available for download. This isn’t a terribly exciting update; it just adds support for Windows Vista.
Speaking of Vista, I’ve got to say it’s not as terrible as I thought it would be; after using it for a day I already prefer it over Windows XP, if for no other reason than Microsoft has stripped the cute “My” prefix from almost everything in Vista. Still not sure whether I prefer it over Windows 2000, though.
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