Updating iMac to Mavericks and Parallels Desktop 8

Last week I decided to make the jump and update my iMac to Mavericks. After using Microsoft Windows for years, I was a little nervous about such a major update. The download was about 5GB, which took about 40 minutes to download, then it needed to install. My main concern about the update was that I use Parallels Desktop 8 to run a Windows XP VM machine and that after the update there might be some issues with this. After the update I was surprised how little had changed and that everything just worked fine, including Parallels Desktop. Just wanted to write a quick blog entry to say that I had no issues with this update.

Parallels Desktop Review

I have had a iMac for a few months now and I love it. I moved over from a Windows XP PC with no problems, apart from one. I needed to access my work PC remotely using RDP, but I could not get it to work, when I worked for a previous company it worked fine without any problems, but after doing some research and contacting the people in-charge of our network I found out that they do not allow Macs to RDP on our network. The solution to this problem was to use a Windows VM (virtual machine) on the Mac.

I bought my iMac with a copy of Parallels Desktop because I thought I might need it and I had some software that would only run in Windows. I installed a copy of Windows XP and could RDP to my work PC without any problems. I found it really easy to setup and run, and it runs so much faster than my previous PC, this is partly thanks to the iMacs higher spec, but I run a Windows XP VM on my Windows 7 work PC which has a similar spec and it is over 10 times slower (Sophos could be the cause).

Here is a list of features I really like (Pros)

• Quick to start up and shutdown (seconds not minutes)
• Coherence allows you to run Windows applications in the Mac desktop, I generally do not use this, but it is a nice feature.
• Windows icon in Mac dock which lists Windows applications to run, basically the Windows Start menu program list.
• Multiple VMs.
• Specify the number of CPUs and amount of memory to use (RAM), I have it set to a single CPU and 1GB of memory.
• Loads of settings which I need to explore further.

Usually when I review something I put the Pros and Cons, with this software I have not found any at the moment. This is a great piece of software and makes the jump from Windows to iOS a lot easier and more gradual. You can have all the software you are use to on the virtual machine and as you get more comfortable with iOS, gradual move over.

Delphi XE4 - The future of software development?

I have been working in software development for 15 years and have seen some changes, but nothing as much as what has happened recently. Over the past few years we have seen the explosion of Apps onto our smart phones, tablet computers, Smart TVs and more choices when it comes to operating systems. With all these new devices with varied screen sizes, different interfaces and different operating systems does software development have to change?

Firstly it depends on the type of software you want to develop, if you are developing traditional desktop applications then the current suite of languages and environments works well. But if you foresee that in the future you want to develop for other platforms and devices what options do you have. Here is a list of possible options all most likely require developing the business logic in a web service, depending on what software is being written.

• Develop the apps in native code for each type of device, for example xCode for iOS.
• HTML5, produce the app like a web site.
• Embarcadero Delphi XE4, allows you to develop for both and deploy natively.

From these options it depends on the business which one is chosen, recently Facebook has been open in its development of a mobile App and said it tried HTML5 and failed to deliver a suitable one, and now believes in developing in native code. HTML5 does however seem like a good solution from a cost perspective, developing for each mobile platform requires more resources, time and management. 

The ultimate software development solution in my mine would be to combine the advantages of both, and develop in the same IDE, but deploy to multiple devices natively. Embarcadero's Delphi XE4 from what I have seen so far seems to be getting close to this. I have seen demos of developing iOS Apps on a Mac in a Windows environment, which can then be built and run on the Mac and deployed to an iOS device. This also means you can develop standard Windows software and web services in the same IDE, so all the code is done in the same development environment.

One issue with Delphi is that there are not many developers using it, but this is not that much of a problem seeing as it is very similar to C#, and I manage to switch between the 2 fine. So anyone who is competent in C# or another similar OO language should pick it up fairly quickly.

One downside of Delphi is the price, it is more expensive than other options, but taking into account cost savings of time and resources it most likely will recoupe this cost fairly quickly.

I have not yet started using Delphi XE4, so cannot give a full review of it, but at this moment it looks like a very exciting product that shows where software development needs to go. I will keep this blog up to date with more news of Delphi XE4.    

Broadband speed tests between Apple and Windows

The IPS I use at the moment is BT Infinity, which sells itself as a high speed broadband supplier. I thought recently I would try to check what speed I was getting

Below are some results of speed checking web sites. I concentrated on just the download speeds and on both iOS and Windows I used Google Chrome as the browser.

Speedtest.net
Apple - 37 mbps
Windows XP - 3.19 mbps
Android App - 14 mbps

BroadbandSpeedChecker.co.uk
Apple - 34 mbps
Windows XP - 3.38 mbps

I was surprised to see such a difference in the results. The results are the best I could archive and are not the average, but you can see a clear difference between Apple and Windows. I tried the speed tests on 2 different Windows XP machines and got similar results, so concluded at the time that it was not the hardware.

The following day, I looked at just using my Mac with a Windows virtual machine installed, here are the results:


Speedtest.net
Apple - 19.8 mbps
Windows - 17.8 mbps

BroadbandSpeedChecker.co.uk
Apple - 13.5 mbps
Windows - 5.9 mbps


You can see that the following day the speed was generally less, this could be the time of day and other factors, but these results are using the same hardware, just different operating systems to run the browser. Speedtest.net web site does seem to get very similar results, which would hint that different hardware (same router) could make a difference, but with BroadbandSpeedChecker it seems that different operating systems also make a difference.

In conclusion I think these speed testing web sites are a useful tool, however I am still not confident on how accurate they are and do not understand why Apple iOS gets such better results.

Screen Capture MAC

I use both Windows and Apple computers and I needed to find the best way to capture an area of the screen on my iMac. I thought I needed something like Cropper which I use in Windows, but have discovered iOS has it built in. Here are the following capture options I have discovered:

1. To capture an area of the desktop, press cmd+shift+4, this will give you a cross hair where you can select and area of the screen, this will save the image as a png file on the desktop.
2. To capture a application screen, press cmd+shift+4, to display the cross hair again, now hit the space bar and the icon will change to a camera and will select areas of the desktop.
3. To capture the whole desktop, press cmd+shift+3.

I thought this was great that Apple has included these features in iOS, I bet I will find some more useful features the more I use iOS.