Joys of Google Calendar - in Gmail and the toolbar

I've become a Google Calendar fanboy.

Now that Spanning Sync has integrated our glorious family domain Google Calendars with OS X's pathetic and lethargic iCal I can view my work and home calendar, Emily's calendar, and the Google Calendars for Minnesota Special Hockey and more.

I can view and edit them on any browser, and on my iPhone. (Albeit with a once daily sync, please ask Apple to open the iPhone Calender API and invite Google in.)

It's fantastic; the work/home calendar integration is almost worth the pain of my Palm to iPhone conversion by itself.

Now I get the bennies, like attaching my calendar to the Firefox Toolbar or embedding my unified Google Calendar Gadget in the sidebar of my Gmail view. Even iGoogle is getting interesting now that I can create a portal with all my embedded Google Gadgets [1].

Thanks Google.

[1] Which would even more useful if Google's directory would clearly separate Google-authored gadgets from the rest of them!

Update 11/7/08: Had to swap out Google Calendar Sync and swap in gSyncit.

Parallels to VMware - my experience

As part of my move from 10.4.11 to 10.5.3 I switched from Parallels (Windows 2000 VM running Office 2003 and MindManager to VMWare Fusion (updated 5/30 for 10.5.3). Here's how it went.

1. Uninstall Parallels prior to the OS update. Don't delete the VM files (Win2K.pvs and W2k.hdd on my disk).
2. Update OS.
3. Download latest version of VMWare Fusion (not the beta though). You need to be a registered user to do this.
4. Install VMWare Fusion.
   
5. Download beta version of VMware Importer tool and install (requires Fusion be installed).
6. Find the Parallels files - Win2K.pvs and W2k.hdd. Drop the PVS file on the importer. The importer then converts the 3.1 GB Parallels file to a 3.4 GB (10% larger) single file stored in a Virtual Machine folder in current_user/Documents. (After I'd finished the entire install, however, the VM file was 4.4 GB, a 33% increase.)
   
7. I double clicked on Win2K (my VM name) and Windows 2000 SP4 launched. Fusion shows an inline reminder to install the VM tools, but after a LONG startup and restart (for Win2K this is a new machine) Fusion installed them automatically. I saw a Windows dialog requesting help with an unrecognized device -- ignore those and let the Fusion tools install and Win2K restart.
8. Shutdown Win2K after this initial install (good practice after initial config), in future just suspend it.
   

After the conversion and setup Win2K SP4 goes from shutdown to running in 30 seconds on my MacBook. Much faster than XP, much less Vista! Of course one would usually suspend the OS when done, not do a shutdown.

How to uninstall Parallels Desktop for OS X

Uninstall is not an OS X strength.

It's not quite as bad as OS/2, where nothing could be uninstalled, but it's not good. (Note to self: this was a bad sign about how finished OS/2 was. Don't forget this.) Perfectly behaved apps can be simply deleted, but those are less common that one would imagine. Even Apple apps aren't all that well behaved.

Applications like Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion are particularly worrisome. You know these things are messing with the deep OS.

The good news is that there is an uninstaller -- it's in the DMG file. The bad news is that it's surprisingly hard to find out about this. Google failed completely, and it took several searches through the Parallels kb to find this article (VMWare Fusion was marginally better at providing the same info):

KB #5027 - What is the recommended policy of updating to Mac OS X Leopard with Parallels Desktop installed?

... Please uninstall Parallels Desktop from Mac OS Tiger using the program's Uninstaller script located in the distribution package (.dmg or CD) before running Leopard update. Keep in mind that you should use Uninstaller of the same program version you have installed or newer, using Uninstaller from the outdated package may cause unexpected issues with removing the program. The uninstall procedure doesn't affect your existing Virtual Machines.

BTW, this is the first place I read that you should uninstall Parallels before upgrading to 10.5. I'm battered enough to routinely clean out complex things before an OS update, but I suspect that most Parallels users, geeky as they are, missed this.

Yes, I am now moving to 10.5. It's not just that 10.5.3 finally came out, it's also that I really want the parental time-limited access controls.

With 10.5.3 I'm switching to VMWare Fusion -- mostly because the people I read like it better. I've already noticed, however, that Fusion is much pickier about Windows OSs than Parallels. It won't work with older versions of Windows 2000, for example. A point for Parallels I've not seen mentioned elsewhere, but since I've already bought Fusion I'm going to give it a try.

Parallels global sharing: now an XP virus can destroy your Mac

By now quite a few people have noticed that OS X Parallels beta allows a non-admin user to read-write-delete anything on the drive. A recent statement on the Parallels blog feels a bit defensive:

The Official Parallels Virtualization Blog: Upgrade your XP virtual machine to Vista with RC3

Global Sharing shares the your entire Mac file system. It is important to note that Global Sharing is DISABLED by default.

A malign XP process can now destroy an entire OS X system. I don't understand why there's not more of a fuss about this. Of course I'll disable "global sharing", but the affair forces me to recognize how extensively Parallels bypasses OS X. I wish Apple were interested in doing a virtualization layer that respected the primary OS ...