cross-platform posts

Filed under: Desktops, Enterprise, Software, Cool tools, Education, Snow Leopard

LANrev speeds mass deployments of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

by Steven Sande (RSS feed) on Sep 15th, 2009

When you only have a handful of Macs in an office or household to upgrade to a new operating system, it's no great problem to run around with the installation DVD and upgrade one machine at a time. But when you're supporting a large office or school environment, it's impossible to take the time to manually upgrade each machine. That's where tools like Apple Remote Desktop and LANrev come in handy.

LANrev 5.2 has been released today, with full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard. LANrev uses a proprietary imaging process that saves the home directory and OS settings of each machine during an automated OS deployment, so that the users are back up and running as quickly as possible afterwards.

IT professionals can not only roll out Snow Leopard faster using LANrev, but the application also tracks Snow Leopard machines for asset inventory and provides for remote management of Macs. LANrev has an asset inventory for storing license numbers and purchasing information, which is critical for audits. LANrev can track the location of stolen Macs and provide law enforcement officials with information to locate and recover the machines. For those who are concerned about power usage, LANrev does automated power management of large Mac installations, putting Macs to sleep or shutting them down when they're idle.

Unlike Apple Remote Desktop, LANrev works in cross-platform environments, so it's useful for situations where a small group of Mac users may exist in a Windows world -- or vice versa. No pricing info is available on the LANrev Web site, so be sure to contact one of their distribution partners if you're interested in this professional administration tool.

Tags: administration, cross-platform, LANrev, mac os x 10.6, MacOsX10.6, management, snow leopard, SnowLeopard, software

Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Video

VLC 1.0.0 released

by Robert Palmer (RSS feed) on Jul 7th, 2009

While being a useful tool for several years now, VLC has finally reached that first pinnacle of software development: 1.0.

VLC is an alternative media player for Mac, Windows and Linux that handles a wide variety of media file formats without requiring additional software (like Perian) to be installed on your system. It can also be used as a server to stream video on higher-bandwidth networks.

Personally, I think it's handy for things like making still frame images of DVDs, or capturing video from your EyeTV tuner. Anytime I have to send QuickTime or MP4 video to PC or Linux users, I recommend they download and install VLC to watch it.

The software isn't for everyone: If you're already familiar with VLC, the upgrade is a solid one. Performance is good, and the feature list is tough to beat. If you've never used VLC and you're happy with QuickTime Player (thank you very much), then feel free to pass this one by.

Binaries for VLC 1.0 are available for Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X Leopard (and developer previews of Snow Leopard). Source code and other, older packages for PowerPC and earlier versions of Mac OS X are also available.

Thanks, Chris!

Tags: cross-platform, media, perian, playback, player, quicktime, video, videolan, vlc

Filed under: Open Source, Developer

Cocotron: bringing Cocoa to Windows

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Oct 28th, 2008

Cocotron is a potentially exciting open-source project that "aims to implement a cross-platform Objective-C API similar to that described by Apple Inc.'s Cocoa documentation." What this means is that, in principle, Cocotron would allow an OS X Cocoa app written in Xcode to be easily cross-compiled for other OSes, particularly Windows.

Of course that in principle still leaves open a bunch of practical difficulties. The guys over at Magnetism Studio (developer of FileMagnet for iPhone) have a great account of how they used Cocotron to port their Mac FileMagnet Uploader to Windows. Of course it wasn't as easy as pressing a button and having a Windows executable pop out of Xcode, but after suitable adjustments (particularly to get rid of Mac-specific code) it did make a Windows version possible. In any case, Cocotron seems poised to make cross-platform development a much less costly and time-consuming process for Mac developers.

Cocotron itself is a free download and released under the MIT license.

[via Daring Fireball]

Tags: cocoa, cocoatron, cross-platform, developer, xcode

Filed under: Software

Back To My Mac alternative: TeamViewer

by Steven Sande (RSS feed) on May 30th, 2008

Back To My Mac got you down? After the 10.5.3 update, all BTMM is telling me is what I already know -- my Comcast-supplied router is old and doesn't support NAT-PMP or UPnP. iChat Screen Sharing works, but really needs someone on the other end of the connection to activate it. Yeah, Timbuktu has been available for years, but who knows what Motorola is going to do with it in the future? MacHelpMate is wonderful for supporting clients, but what if I just want to access my own Mac when I'm on the road?

TeamViewer is a popular GoToMyPC-like app that was Windows-only until May 28th, when the Mac client was announced. The application is free for personal use, which is nice for those of us who want to get "Back to our Macs" but can't get BTMM to work or don't have .Mac accounts.

I gave the freebie service a test last night, accessing my home iMac from my MacBook Air over a Sprint Mobile Broadband connection. Setup was simple: I installed the application on both Macs, then wrote down the ID and password generated by TeamViewer on the iMac. I left TeamViewer running on the iMac, then went out to dinner.

While enjoying a few beers, I popped open the MBA and fired up TeamViewer. I told it to connect to my iMac, gave it the ID and password, and was rewarded with complete control of my machine at home. TeamViewer works well for remote control, file transfers, and blasting presentations out to co-workers. For commercial use, TeamViewer sells licenses varying from $249 for six months, or an unlimited license for $1399. If you're a system admin who needs to control both Macs and PCs remotely, TeamViewer may be the app for you. Download TeamViewer here and see if it works for you, too!

Note: Quite a few commenters (and our own Mike Rose) also recommend LogMeIn as a free/paid option for remote control of both Macs and PCs.

Tags: back to my mac, BackToMyMac, cross-platform, remote access, RemoteAccess, software

Filed under: Multimedia, Video

iChat video now cross-platform in 10.4.9?

by Michael Rose (RSS feed) on Mar 19th, 2007

Loyal reader Nik spotted this interesting tidbit on the .Mac tips page last week:

You can also chat with anyone who has an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) screen name and uses a chat client that supports AIM, whether on a Mac or PC. (For audio or video chats with PC users, you need Mac OS X v10.4.9 installed on your computer.)

Cross-platform video chats without using the AIM client? Eeeeexcellent. (Of course, Skype video is free and quite good, but this is cool too.) If you can, try it out and let us know what you see; we'll post screenshots if we get it working.

Update: Some clarifications coming in via the comments now. iChat <-> AIM video and audio was working with versions of AIM prior to v6, but not since. The 10.4.9 updates to iChat may restore the video functionality for the newer AIM clients. For a very, VERY thorough walkthrough of the cross-platform video chat config (including links to download AIM 5.9 if needed), check out this page at MVL Design.

Thanks, Nik!

Tags: cross-platform, ichat, video

Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity

MacDrive 6 - read/write Mac-formatted drives and discs on Windows

by Alberto Escarlate (RSS feed) on Mar 26th, 2006

If, for one reason or another, you just can't get around having to work on a PC either at school, in the office or elsewhere, MacDrive for Windows 98 - XP might alleviate some of those daily headaches you've been having. Recently updated to version 6, MacDrive enables Windows to open, read from, write to and even format Mac OS-formatted discs and drives (HFS/HFS ). While this includes hard drives, CDs, DVDs, floppies (uh, what's a flop-y?), Zip, Jaz, SyQuest and more, CD and DVD burning is only available for Win 2K, 2K3 and XP.

The beauty of MacDrive, or so Mediafour's website boasts, is that working with HFS/HFS drives is completely seamless once the software is installed - no learning curve, no extra steps. While I (fortunately) don't have a Windows machine to test this, Mediafour offers a free trial (form link). MacDrive costs $50, and Mediafour offers a 30-day "Love it or Return it" money-back guarantee.

Tags: cross-platform, harddrive, hfs, macdrive, mediafour, windows

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