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Want to be able to run Windows applications on Mac OS X without a virtual machine?Apple computer users have used virtual machines programs such as Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion to run Windows on their machines for ages now. Apple even implemented a feature called Bootcamp so that Mac users can install Windows on a second partition of their storage drive and boot up to it as a second operating system. But, what if you want to run Windows’ .exe programs directly from your Mac operating system? This has been impossible until now. In the Mac App Store, you can download an application called WinOnX. This application doesn’t require you to have any instance of Windows on your computer. Instead, you can download .exe (executable) applications to run directly from this program virtually. So in simpler words: you can run Windows applications on your Mac computer without Windows installed.
Here’s how:
Download WinOnX from the Mac App Store. It will cost you $4.99. After downloading WinOnX, find a .exe program that you wish to run, for example, Mozilla Firefox for Windows and download it. Once it downloads, you can double-click it to run it like you could with any .app application on your Mac computer. WinOnX will run you through installing and using the Windows application like you would on Windows, only on your Mac instead. Running Firefox for Windows on your Mac will yield this look:
This option will cost you some money, but it uses a lot less disk space for Mac users. If you have a solid state drive like me, you may select this option instead of dual booting in order to save storage drive space. Redmond Pie recommends that you just buy a new PC to install Windows programs on, because Mac is beautiful on its own.
Name: WinOnX
Price: $4.99
Version: 1.0.1
Developer: Hisham El-Emam – NES Software
Editor’s Rating: 3/5Alternatively, you can try the free application: WineBottler.
According to a image sent in to MacRumors, iCloud support may be coming to Snow Leopard users. As you can see in the screenshot above, the .Mac preference pane in a previous OS X’s System Preferences reads: “You will no longer be able to sync with this machine because you’ve upgraded to iCloud. iCloud requires a computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.9 or later for Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks.”
This message appeared in OS X 10.4 Tiger after a developer updated his MobileMe account to an iCloud account. The notice appears to be the first indication that OS X 10.6.9 is in the works. Presumably it will only include minor bug fixes and provide limited iCloud support for Snow Leopard. CurrentlyApple states that iCloud will require OS X 10.7, but that is presumably for the more advanced Documents, iTunes Match, Photo Stream, and Backups features. It’s reasonable to assume Apple isn’t going to lock non-Lion users out of their @me.com email addresses.
Apple today released OS X 10.7.1, the first maintenance update to OS X Lion. The update is available via Software Update and Apple’s download pages.
The 10.7.1 update is recommended for all users running OS X Lion and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability and compatibility of your Mac, including fixes that:
- Address an issue that may cause the system to become unresponsive when playing a video in Safari.
- Resolve an issue that may cause system audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out.
- Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections.
- Resolve an issue that prevents transfer of your data, settings, and compatible applications to a new Mac running OS X Lion.
For detailed information on this update, please visit this website:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4764.
Apple has also released a version of OS X 10.7.1 specific to the latest MacBook Air and Mac mini models, adding a few additional fixes.
- Resolve an issue where MacBook Air may boot up when MagSafe Adapter is attached
- Resolve an issue causing intermittent display flickering on MacBook Air.
- Resolve an issue that causes the SD card slot in Mac mini to run at reduced speed with SD and SDHC media.
Finally, Apple has released a separate OS X Lion Update 10.7.1 (Server) update for those systems with Lion Server components installed, improving the reliability of the Apple File Service, and a unique OS X Lion 10.7.1 Update for Mac mini 2011 (Server)update including all of the OS X 10.7.1, Lion Server, and specific Mac mini changes.
Apple has been seeding developers with builds of 10.7.2 to prepare for the launch of Apple’s full iCloud service later this year, but the company did not provide any builds of OS X 10.7.1 for developer testing.
We’ve already caught a glimpse of Apple’s proposed science fiction museum new campus in Cupertino, but screen grabs just don’t do this behemoth justice. A recently released set of renderings of Apple Campus 2, as it’s known to the city of Cupertino, however, give it that proper otherworldly glow. According to the accompanying proposal, the building will take up a measly 2.8 million square feet, contain a 1,000-seat auditorium and research facilities totaling 300,000 square feet. Really? Is that all? If architectural renderings are your thing, hit the source link for some building-plan booty.
Seems apple is moving forward with iCloud wich just opened up for developers…
Apple officially launched iCloud.com for developers and inconspicuously announced the pricing of extra storage for those who need more than the free 5GB given to every user.
The web-based front-end of Apple’s iCloud service adopts the iOS look and feel completely, going as far as using the iOS notification bubble design to inform users they don’t have a developer account when denying them access during login. The only new app for the service appears to be a Web app for iWork that outlines users iCloud-stored Keynote, Pages and Numbers documents.
Also, Apple finally unveiled the pricing of extra storage for users who need to go beyond the free 5GB everyone is allotted. Users will be able to get a full refund on their extra storage purchase if their order is canceled within 15 days of upgrading, or 45 days after an anual subscription is renewed.
- $20 a year/10GB extra storage (total 15GB)
- $40 a year/20GB extra storage (total 25GB)
- $100 a year/50GB extra storage (total 55GB)
MacStories.net put together the nice graphic below comparing Apple’s iCloud to Dropbox and SugarSync’s cloud storage pricing. Apple’s pricing is nearly identical to Dropbox and SugarSync offers 30GB and 60GB plans that are $10 more than Apple’s 20GB and 50GB offerings. However, this isn’t really comparing Apples to Apples though. iCloud is much more than an online hard drive though. It syncs contacts, music, email, documents, photos, and other documents across a users full array of desktop and mobile devices.
However, iCloud is still more expensive than Amazon’s Cloud Drive. Cloud drive offers incremental storage upgrades of 20GB, 50Gb, 100Gb, 200GB, 500GB and 1000GB, all for a $1/GB or half the per GB cost of iCloud. Also, for a limited time Amazon isn’t counting songs uploaded to users’ Cloud Drive accounts against their storage space.
Source: Macstories
Basically, you first create a share on your Linux/Windows for your Time Machine backups to go. I called mine “macbackup” and gave my user full permissions to the folder as well as set it to replicate so that I have a redundant backup of it.
Next, open up a terminal window on the Mac and switch on the magic preference
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Now, mount the share on your Windows Home Server using Finder.
Back in the terminal window, you now have to create a sparse bundle file. Take a look at the links above for more information, but basically you type a command like the following
hdiutil create -nospotlight -library SPUD -size [size_in_gigs]g -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname "Backup of [hostname]" -verbose [hostname]_[mac_addr].sparsebundle
Replacing [size_in_gigs] for the size you want to constrain time machine to use, [hostname] for the machine name of your mac and [mac_addr] for the mac address of the interface you want to use for the bacup (usually eth0 as doing the backup over wifi will take a while)
I used something like the following command:
hdiutil create -nospotlight -library SPUD -size 250g -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname "Backup of martinmbp" -verbose martinmbp_002332c5437e.sparsebundle
Then copy this over to the mounted share using something like
cp -r [hostname]_[mac_addr].sparsebundle /Volumes/mackbackup/.
Now, go to System Preferences, Time Machine and select Change Disk.. Pick your WHS share that you have copied the .sparsebundle to and then leave for a long time if this is your first backup.
Seems to be working for me. I’ll report back and edit this answer if I find any issues with it. Mileage may vary as Apple obviously left this functionality out for a reason, I’m assuming it is a technical one rather than a ploy to sell more Time Capsules so we’ll see what happens.
Update:
Been using for few days so far and seems to be working ok. A couple of caveats:
- Reports of issues if you put the machine to sleep while performing a back-up. I did this as a test and had trouble getting the back-up volume to un-mount. In the end I had to reboot the machine to release the lock on whatever file was causing the issue.
- Problems if trying to restore from Time Machine backup using System CD. Because you have to set a preference to get the machine to pick up unsupported devices like Windows Home Server shares, it is unclear if you can restore a whole machine from the System CD that doesn’t have the preference set. Personally I have a few whole image backups that I have kept around that I could restore from an external disk so this hopefully won’t be an issue for me – the Time Machine stuff is really just an incremental backup. However I still need to test the restore process
One of the developers on the Windows Home Server team, Gautam, was goofing around on a Mac during his off hours and put together this awesome set of instructions and screenshots for running the Windows Home Server Console on a Mac.
This article describes how to configure your Mac to be able to get the Home Server Console on it. You will need to Download and Install Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac.
If you already have it installed, you can skip to Configure it to Connect to your Windows Home Server Console
Download and Install Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac
1. On your Mac, go to the Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac website [microsoft.com].
2. Click on Download Remote Desktop Connection Client 2.
3. On the bottom right side of the page, in the Details section, scroll all the way down.
4. Click on your preferred language to start the download.
5. Once the file downloads, the Remote Desktop Connection Wizard should open up. Step through the wizard.
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6. Eject the Remote Desktop Connection by right clicking on the icon on your desktop.
7. Great! Now you are ready to configure the Remote Desktop Connection Client to connect to your Home Server.
Configure the Remote Desktop Connection Client 2 for Mac to connect to the Windows Home Server Console
1. Open Finder. Click Applications in left menu. Click Remote Desktop Connection.
2. Type in the name of your Home Server.
3. In the File menu, click on Save As. Save your file. It’s easiest to save it on the Desktop.
4. Go back to the File menu and click on Edit Connection. Select the file you saved in the last step.
5. In the Login tab type –
a. User name: Administrator
b. Password: Your home server password.
c. Domain: Name of your home server.
6. In the Display tab, change the Colors to Millions.
7. In the Applications tab, make sure Start only the following Windows-based application when you log in to the remote computer is checked and type the following for Application path and file name: C:\Program Files\Windows Home Server\HomeServerConsole.exe /b
8. In the Security tab, select Always connect, even if authentication fails.
9. In the File menu, click on Save.
10. Now, right click on your recently saved file, click Open With, click Other…, scroll down and selectTextEdit. Click on Open.
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11. Change the number below DesktopHeight to 675 and number below DesktopWidth to992.
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12. Save the file and close it.
13. Now, click on the file you just saved to connect to the home server!
14. If you are unable to connect try connecting using your IP address of the home server.
To find your home server’s IP address, log on to the console from another computer. Go to Settings, Remote Access, Router Details
Open the file like in the above step and change the connection string to the IP address. For most of you it should be something like 192.XXX.X.XXX
