Doom 3 via VNC

We have now permanently moved to EmiratesMac.com and will not be posting anything else at this site. Please join us at the new site where we continue to post on anything concerning Apple, Mac, and iPod in the UAE. We also provide discussion forums where you can discuss issues, ask for help, or comment on what’s going on. See you there!The attached screenshot shows Doom 3 running on a Mac mini as seen from a Powerbook connecting to the mini using Chicken of the VNC. Although the practicality of something like this is questionable at best, it’s fun to see that it works. Or works for a few seconds I should say, as soon as the mouse is moved, or a key pressed, the screen turns into total noise. Perhaps it could be tweaked for better performance but I doubt it would be useful. Doom 3 is barely playable on the mini, let alone over VNC ;-)

Google Dashboard Widgets

Google has released three Dashboard widgets. They’re pretty cool, take a look.

[posted with ecto]

Al Shamil with Mac

We have now permanently moved to EmiratesMac.com and will not be posting anything else at this site. Please join us at the new site where we continue to post on anything concerning Apple, Mac, and iPod in the UAE. We also provide discussion forums where you can discuss issues, ask for help, or comment on what’s going on. See you there!

It seems like many Mac users who want to connect their Macs to the internet using Etisalat’s Al Shamil connection run into trouble.
Often it’s Etisalat not knowing much about Macs or other problems. So I thought I’d put together this page with some information about what to do and think about.

Etisalat has a list of modems of which most are USB modems meaning they connect to the computer via USB. A problem with this is that it often requires a software driver installed on the computer and Mac drivers are not always available. Besides that point I wouldn’t want to occupy a USB port just for the internet connection when I can use the ethernet port for that. USB was not made for networking, Ethernet was.

In fact Etisalat even writes:

The minimum recommended PC configuration is:
- Pentium Class PC
- 128 MB RAM, 20 GB Disk Space
- 10/100 Ethernet NIC or a USB port
- Microsoft Windows 98/ME/NT 4.0/2000/XP *
or:
Apple Macintosh with an Ethernet port

So you need a DSL modem that uses Ethernet. We’re connected with a Linksys WAG54G with Al Shamil 2Mbps DSL at home and it works fine. The WAG54G is a DSL modem and wireless router in one and it does not require any software installation at all and it connects to the computer via Ethernet. In fact it has four ports for connecting computers via Ethernet. Since it’s also a wireless access point you can connect computers wirelessly to the internet using 802.11g. Etisalat even has a installation guide for the WAG54G.

Even though the WAG54G is a wireless access point you don’t have to turn the wireless on unless you’re really going to use it. It can work perfectly fine as a wired router with the wireless functionality turned off.

Finally I should point out that having a router between your computers and the internet is a very good thing and something I warmly recommend to everyone. A hardware router can protect you from many nasty things that exist on the internet.

Update: This seems pretty funny considering they advertise the Al Shamil service by showing a Mac.

VoIP handset for Mac?

We have now permanently moved to EmiratesMac.com and will not be posting anything else at this site. Please join us at the new site where we continue to post on anything concerning Apple, Mac, and iPod in the UAE. We also provide discussion forums where you can discuss issues, ask for help, or comment on what’s going on. See you there!

I got a question from a reader about a telephone handset that would work with Mac and The- Free- VoIP- Service- That- Everyone- Is- Using- And- Whose- Website- Is- Blocked… nudge, nudge. I have seen a few handsets in stores that should work with The-Service but they are most likely all for PCs. I know of one such phone but I have no idea if it could even be bought in the UAE. So let’s help out here – do you have a phone handset that you bought in the UAE that works with The-Service that you plug into your Mac?

Broadband tuner

Via MacDailyNews comes the announcement of a new utility to tweak broadband performance:

Apple has released Broadband Tuner 1.0 which allows you to take full advantage of very high speed Internet connections that have a high latency (5 Mbps or greater). The installer tweaks some system parameters. There is an optional uninstaller that can be used to restore the settings that were in effect at the time just before the system parameters were changed. What does the Broadband Tuner do exactly? The installer increases the default values for the size of the TCP send and receive buffers. With larger buffers more data can be in transit at once. A startup configuration file is also updated so that these changes will persist across restarts. The system parameters are sysctl variables that are set as follows: net.inet.tcp.sendspace: 131072 net.inet.tcp.recvspace: 358400 kern.ipc.maxsockbuf: 512000 This change has a system wide effect and is applied even if the network is not high speed connection with a high latency, with the exception of modem connections for which the system uses small default TCP buffer sizes. Broadband Tuner 1.0 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Interview with iStumbler creator

Over at Net-security.org there’s an interview with the creator of iStumbler Alf Watt. iStumbler is a “wireless discovery tool” with which you can find wireless access points.