However, lately I realized my iPhone tethering is no longer working. The Macbook cannot see the phone in Network Preferences, and iTunes spits out an unknown error (0xE800006B). I did everything from resetting my settings on the phone, and deleting iTunes’ plist file. Nothing worked! Every time I plug my phone in, the same error message pops out… didn’t know what to do.

I eventually realized the problem was caused by the 64bit kernel and the lack of proper driver support for it… and apparently iTunes (as of 9.0.2) was not rewritten like most other apps for Snow Leopard.

That made me wonder… Apple has a Windows 64bit version of iTunes but not a Mac version?  What is going on here?

Anyway, I thought I’d let the world know since this problem isn’t documented by Apple.

I think the guys from gdgt just compiled the source from the Chromium OS project… and using this as bait to increase traffic to their site. Anyway, they did an ok job and you do have to register on gdgt to download it.

Here are some screenshots of Chrome OS.

The OS looks extremely similar to the Chrome browser, and it is basically a complete standalone version of Google Chrome. This early developer build has very little configurable options… actually apart from those security and web related options you get from the Chrome browser there are only options to enable Tap to Click, and some mouse/touchpad sensitivity settings.

From the screenshots you will notice that ChromeOS detected that it is running on a laptop computer and it has a space to display battery levels. You can also config timezone settings. The only problem was that the screen resolution was locked to 1024 x 768 and could not be changed.

Page rendering performance was also quite poor, possibly due to the lack of 3D acceleration from the VM. This is very noticeable as you scroll up and down, and when you have a Flash movie loaded.

That’s right, Flash is supported! Youtube works… but the performance is horrible, and again probably due to the lack of graphic acceleration.

From what I can tell from this early development version of Chrome OS, I’d say that Google has done a great job of moving from desktop computing to cloud computing, and bringing desktop applications to web applications. From the start, you login with your Google ID and everything you see is generated and supported by the cloud… and of course the courtesy of an active connection to the Internet.

Aside from the buzz it has generated, Chrome OS is not going to be too useful to the average user right now. Especially when you have Windows or MacOS preinstalled on your machine already. Maybe it will make more sense for low-power netbooks, but even then it will be useless without access to the Internet.

Short answer… Fresh Install > Upgrading

Long answer… it depends on how the upgrade went and what you are looking for. I recently did an upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard and noticed very little problems. the most noticeable problem was the long bootup time… and I know that Snow Leopard had specific optimizations to decrease boot time. Furthermore, I had some apps that were incompatible with Snow Leopard… so I finally decided to give the system a good wipe and install from scratch. and since then… all the problems have been solved… especially after installing the 10.6.2 update. Just always remember to backup your data and apps before wiping things out. Time Machine is very useful in this respect.

On the Windows side, I successfully upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 without a glitch. The two systems are extremely similar under the hood, and I did not notice any problem after upgrading. I even did a clean install of Windows 7 and noticed no improvements. To be fair, I didn’t have anything installed in Vista anyway… just Office and Adobe CS.