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Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 1:16 PM

Apple’s newest iMacs are a fast set of machines and run Windows faster than any PC I’ve ever used, but unfortunately, Apple has yet to update Boot Camp with the required drivers to support the latest and greatest components. Mac OS X ships with the necessary software and works as expected, but Windows XP is met with some trouble. Right away, you’ll notice that your graphics resolution is set to a paltry 800×600, and you have no sound output as well. Here’s how to get those systems working until Apple can provide an “official” fix:

Graphics Drivers
Visit nVidia and download the “GeForce 9M Series (Notebooks)” driver package, as this is graphics chipset in the Early 2009 iMacs. Run the downloaded setup utility, next-next-nexting your way through the steps, and reboot at the end when prompted. Upon restart, you’ll be able to properly max out your display to the iMac’s native resolution.

Audio Drivers
Boot Camp 2.1 actually ships with RealTek HD audio drivers, as evidenced by the lack of a yellow exclamation mark for this system in Windows’ Device Manager, but they don’t seem to work properly, since there’s no sound output.

Visit RealTek, whose website is flaky at best, and download the “High Definition Audio Codecs” driver package for your OS. In this instance, I downloaded “Windows 2000, Windows XP/2003(32/64 bits) Driver only (Executable file)”, since I’m running Windows XP Pro SP2. Run this setup utility as well, rebooting again when done. After restarting, you should be greeted with Windows’ standard login sound, confirming the install worked.

Hopefully my poor experience with Windows XP and Boot Camp on a new 24″ iMac will help someone else!

Update: The Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard disc includes Boot Camp drivers for these iMacs. The Snow Leopard disc shows the OS installer when inserted and viewed under a Mac OS X system, but shows Windows drivers when viewed in Windows (it’s a “hybrid” disc). Just run the setup in Windows right off the disc, and you should be set.

Posted in Mac, Tips | 4 Comments »

Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 10:56 AM

After a long wait, Widerbug 1.3.3 is now available! Thanks to an excellent tutorial, it includes automatic update abilities to keep up with widescreen revisions, as well as the latest Firebug changes. Install it now, or visit the Widerbug page.

Posted in Hacks, Programming | No Comments »

Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 9:24 PM

If you’re like me and still use Apple’s .Mac-bundled Backup utility over the hefty Time Machine, you’ll like this one. I’ve added a few more QuickPicks to my 2005 QuickPicks post, including SSH keys, .bash_login, Apache configuration, and Xcode settings.

One of these days, I’ll get a Time Capsule or other Time Machine compatible device, but for now, Backup works great as a lightweight little app that does what I need it to do, and is fairly extensible with QuickPicks.

Posted in Mac | 1 Comment »

Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 11:59 AM

If you’ve downloaded my iPhone and iPod Touch icon Photoshop template in the past, you may want to re-download it, as a larger version has been added. It now comes with the standard 57×57 iPhone springboard template as well as a 512×512 version for producing iTunes-ready artwork.

Posted in Photoshop, iPod | 1 Comment »

Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 1:55 PM

If you’re an avid fmTuner user, or just have a need to make some flat music album covers pop off the page, check out Rogie King’s in-depth tutorial on how to make gorgeous web-ready image overlays. Complete with a free set of covers you can use anywhere and the necessary CSS (even IE6 fixes), Rogie’s tutorial will have your displayed albums looking shiny and spectacular in no time!

Posted in Photoshop, Tips | 2 Comments »