iMedia

ok… it has certainly been a while since I wrote on this blog, but no time like the present to return!

Why now? Well… my friends… this time I am again complaining of the media. And this goes far beyond just the hype machine. I mean, HELLO??? Occupy Wall St coverage? ANYONE? I digress.

This is actually about the newest iPhone.

Seriously cannot believe how under impressed people are with the newest iPhone. Why?? Because it DOES NOT LOOK DIFFERENT! That is the ONLY similarity between the 4 and the 4s. Why are people so mad about the design factor? Because our rotten and disgustingly over hyping media pumped you all up. This product is easily Apple’s best phone offering. Strong, FAST, Worldly, AMAZING camera, CRAZY BAD ASS Voice Recognition… Siri-ously!

I must run but those are the words I have thus far. I will be writing much more often from now on.. I promise. No, really… I will!

Snow Days

As the weather warms and the sun comes out here in SF, it finally Snows for Mac users everywhere. That is to say that Apple has released their latest big cat named operating system, Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). With it Apple has picked up Leopard (OS X 10.5), cleaned it out, dusted it off, and sped it up greatly for all Intel Mac users. Plus, they have dramatically reduced the price for us too! ($29 for a single user and $49 for a family pack (5 users).) Sorry to say that anyone with a non-intel Mac (iBooks, PowerBooks, PowerMacs and G4 Mac Minis) will not be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard. However, now is a great time to upgrade your old hardware and go Intel.

One problem that may affect users though is software compatibility. Some of your third party (non-Apple) software may not work with the latest release of OS X. Generally speaking, a good majority of your higher end software (ie, Adobe, Microsoft…etc) will work without a hitch. It’s more along the lines of the little pieces of software that will fail to work. I, for example, loved a little piece of software called Letterbox (As it stands the developer of Letterbox has a 4th beta version posted, which seems to be working rather well for me.) which allows you to have your emails preview pain show to the right of your email list. Unfortunately it was rejected by Snow Leopard. To be fair to developers, Apple did really jump the gun on the release date of Snow Leopard. That move undoubtedly left developers dangling in the wind by cutting off roughly a month of further testing on their software.

Overall though, Snow Leopard is a gorgeous piece of work. It truly is what Leopard should have been from the get go. The developers at Apple redesigned 90% of Leopard’s internals. Which means Snow Leopard is heavily streamlined and even more visually gorgeous then its predecessor. Snow Leopard is not at all an entirely behind the scenes redesign, there are quite a few little tweaks to what you and I see and use everyday. I have been using Snow Leopard on my MacBook since the early Beta release back in June and I am still finding nice enhancements constantly. Some of my favorites are:

-Dock Expose allowing users to click and hold on an applications icon in the dock to get a view of all windows open for that app, and thereby get to the window you are after with ease.

-I am also a huge fan of the ability to resize items in the finder with a handy slider at the bottom right of the finder window.

-Another nice enhancement comes to Stacks (Stacks is a Leopard-introduced feature of the dock which allows quick access to folders placed next to the trash can icon). You finally have the ability to scroll through a folder’s contents and click into folders within a folder to get to its contents. Also a nice touch is a back button so you can go back to the previous folder you were in.

– Quicktime X has a fantastic, albeit simple, feature that allows you to record a video of actions you make on the Mac real time. Which is a great way to help out family and friends with their most vexing Mac problems.

There are many more little tweaks and improvements that make Snow Leopard wonderful experience, but I won’t be going through them all.

By far I believe that the number one thing you will notice from the get go is speed. I have, of course, installed it on all the machines that are active in my house: a Mac Mini 1.66 core duo, a MacBook 2 gHz core 2 duo and my girlfriend’s MacBook Pro 2.4 gHz core 2 duo. The MacBook Pro was the last machine to receive the upgrade. That being said, my MacBook, after the upgrade was equal in speed if not faster than the MacBook Pro, prior to upgrading the MacBook Pro. Needless to say I was rather pleased with this factor. Next to get the upgrade was the Mini, that bumped it up to equal or slightly greater than my MacBook, prior to upgrading the MacBook. The last computer to get the upgrade was the MacBook Pro, that computer is now SCREAMING fast, incomparably so. The speed bump is worth the price of admission alone.

How did Apple developers achieve such performance, you might ask? Well I will tell you. WARNING: this part is gonna get techie. The main speed boost comes from switching from 32 bit processing to 64 bit processing. To be fair not all Intel Macs can benefit from this as they cannot all handle 64 bit processing. What does 64 bit processing mean? That means that the processors can do the math of processing at almost double the speed of 32 bit processing. Also 64 bit processing means that your computer can handle a nearly infinite amount of RAM. RAM is responsible for allowing you to run more applications at once, aka multitasking, plus it does give a bit of a speed boost as well.

The next reason I am about to give for the speed boost in Snow Leopard is a debatable, yet I believe it to be true. What I am referring to is the slimming down of the system software installed to roughly 7 GB, as opposed to an 11 GB Leopard install. They pulled this feat off by removing any code for Apple’s pre-Intel computers (Power PC Macs, aka PPC), hence the reason older Macs are not supported by Snow Leopard. It is in my belief that without all of the code for the PPC computers, Snow Leopard has to shuffle through less code and thereby improving speed as well. As I said though, this is debatable. One thing I do know for a fact is that when you install Snow Leopard over a Leopard install you gain up to 15 GB of storage on your internal hard drive, which is always a lovely thing in itself!

If you couldn’t tell from reading this post, I am a HUGE fan of Apple’s latest operating system (OS), Snow Leopard. It is, in my opinion, the best OS Apple has released to date. At $29, it is by far their cheapest offering as well. So, what are you waiting for? Go on out and grab yourself a copy today! If you need help with the install, don’t hesitate to call DandyMac if you are in the SF Bay Area!

iPhone Batteriness

Ok, so I grabbed a new 3GS iPhone on day one of its release, switching from a 4gb original iPhone. Obviously I am very pleased with the general speed of the 3GS. I love that the performance of my already owned apps has dramatically increased in speed. Having 3G has also been a more-than-welcome network speed increase as well. iPhone OS 3.0 has brought the phone up to par with all smart phones by adding a ton of great additions to functionality. (cut and paste is FANTASTICALLY implemented.) So what is my number one complaint about the 3GS?

Just like most of you out there, the number one complaint I have thus far is battery life. My original iPhone’s battery lasted me all day on moderate to heavy use. I wouldn’t have to charge the battery until I came home from my 8 to 10 hour work days, which seemed like a problem to me at the time. I was excited to think that my 3GS would outlast the original iPhone. I mean, Apple did indeed tout greater battery life at the WWDC Keynote address, right? Well I am here to state that they were so so very wrong as far as I am concerned. I now leave for work in the am, with the same amount of use and I have to recharge the battery at about 1pm, as it is half-way spent by then. I have noticed that after the half-way mark, the battery drains rapidly from then on. Half-way spent by 1pm?! That is better battery life? Even with location services, 3G and wifi turned off on my 3GS, my girlfriend’s 3G iPhone with all network and location services on, still outlasts my 3GS. This, my friends, is a sad statement about the new 3GS’ battery life.

However, my girlfriend’s 3G is getting less battery time then it did before updating it to 3.0. Does this suggest that Apple failed to optimize the performance of the new iPhone OS? At first I was convinced I had a malfunctioning iPhone, it just seemed wrong how fast the battery would run dry. All posted specs on the 3GS seemed to point to a longer battery life. Those who have cracked open the phone have reported that the battery is 6% larger physically than the 3G’s battery. Which would suggest that it would have a greater life span. I was convinced that my 3GS was a lemon, not an Apple. Matter of fact I am still uncertain what the real case is. Another oddity is that the performance of my girlfriend’s 3G, with iPhone 3.0 running, has become more sluggish then before the software update. Which may be a signal that the culprit is indeed iPhone OS 3.0 not being properly optimized.

Now, I fully understand that it is a new OS and a new piece of hardware, and they have bugs to work out. Apple, more than most computer companies, is very fast at releasing updates and bug fixes. As I understand iPhone OS 3.1 has been seeded to developers already, which backs my belief that they are working on fixes. I am pinning much hope that they are indeed going to address this battery catastrophe in OS 3.1. I do hope that I am not let down by the mothership.

So, my questions to you are:

Do you have a 3GS? Are you experiencing horrifying battery life? Do you think it’s the phone or the OS? Are you hoping for a remedy with OS 3.1 too? What are us rabid iPhone owners to do??

Let me know your thoughts please…

Thank you in advance! DandyMac is off to save Mac users from their troubles.

Maconomics

As it stands in our current economic climate here in the good `ol US of A, we are almost all strapped for cash. I would guess that there are a bunch of us out there that would really like to get a new Mac with a bigger hard drive that might even be faster, I mean really who wouldn’t? Trouble with that is that a new Mac is pretty expensive, which is not easy to swing these days. What is one to do?

Well, I will tell you exactly what you can do, and I do this all day every day for people just like you. The most affordable way of achieving the bigger hard drive and more speed is to upgrade what you already have. This can be done for a fraction of the cost of a new computer. In many cases it will run about $300-400. Most people I talk to are surprised that it can even be done, let alone how much cheaper it is than buying a new Mac.

So what can be done to an older Mac? The first thing you most likely want is the bigger hard drive. Having more room for all of your files, music, movies, photos, applications and everything you download is always a good thing. Depending on what type of Mac you have, you can go as high as 1 terabyte, which is a LARGE amount of storage space. To give you an idea of how much it would cost to upgrade the hard drive in your older (or even newer) Mac, it would cost about $50 for an 80-gigabyte drive and up to $100 for a 500-gigabyte drive for a Mac laptop, depending on the model. If you have a desktop Mac it can be an even cheaper upgrade and you can add much more space: up to 1 terabyte for as little as $119. Installation should run about $100 or less depending on what kind of Mac you own. So for less than around $200 you can have a much larger hard drive for storage. (prices gathered from http://www.otherworldcomputing.com )

The next thing you can do to give that old Mac some new life is upgrade your RAM. RAM stands for random access memory and it serves two basic functions. The first is it allows you to open more applications at the same time without bogging down your workflow. The second thing it does is add more speed to the Mac. The two in conjunction really makes a huge difference in your Mac’s performance. Again, this is a rather cheap investment that really pays off. For example if you have an iBook G4 (purchased in late 2004) you can max out your RAM to 1.25 gigabytes for $50 (OWC), if you have a 2.4ghz MacBook Pro (late 2007-early 2008) you can max our your RAM to 4 gigabytes for $60 (OWC). Installation on most Macs is very simple and you can find instructions at otherworldcomputing.com as well. I cannot recommend this upgrade strongly enough, you will love your old Mac all over again!

The final thing I can recommend to spruce up the old Mac is to upgrade the system software. The system software is how your computer runs, it’s also what gives your computer more functionality and features.  This upgrade can be a bit more of a challenge because not all Macs can be upgraded to the latest operating system from Apple (OSX 10.5 Leopard). To make things more challenging it is rather difficult to find the operating systems prior to the latest. If your Mac is under ten years old, odds are you can run up to OSX 10.4 Tiger. (Because this is an older operating system it is more costly than the latest operating system. I ran a Google search for it and found this to be the cheapest: (OS X 10.4), although I do not know about the reliability of the source.) If you have a Mac that has an 867 mhz processor or greater and at least 512mb of RAM ( you can find out what processor speed and how mach RAM you have by clicking the little Apple menu in the upper left corner of your desktop, then click ‘About This Mac’) you can upgrade to the latest from Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard for about $129. I do not recommend doing this yourself unless you really know what you are doing,  have done it before, and have backed up your data.

Before you go running out and buying these products it is essential that you know what kind of Mac you have and how far it can be upgraded. There are many variables involved in picking the right parts to upgrade to. That said, I recommend talking to someone like DandyMac (shameless self-plug!) who is a certified Apple Technician and Consultant before making purchases. Buying the wrong parts and trying to install them can be disappointing and even dangerous.

So for now save yourself some cash in these hard times and upgrade that older Mac. You will make you and it much happier by doing so. In these trying Maconomic times you can extend the life of your older Mac with very little expense and start saving for your next new mac at the same time. As a small hint to those of you who can actually afford to get a new Mac, I would strongly suggest that you hold off until the next round of hardware updates are released before you buy a laptop. The desktops are the way to go right now if you are considering buying new.

UPDATE: During my nromal morning scouring of my favorite mac news sites I stumbled upon this article from Macworld .com:    Opinon: Which is better for your business, a Mac or a PC? This guy has his own take on the economic times we are in and how his choice of computer helped his company. Perhaps a bit off the topic but it’s still great!

iWebbiness

As it stands, I have designed my business’ website (www.dandymac.com) with Apple’s iLife web building app, iWeb. For the most part I feel that it’s a beautifully designed, easy to use piece of software. Apple does a fantastic job making it simple to create a basic website for “the rest of us.”

If you do not need anything terribly complex or have a blog that is at all customized, it is great. I, however, do want to have a customized blog that fits the rest of my customized site (i.e. I did not use an iWeb template). Unfortunately, I had such a woefully difficult time doing so that I had to create my blog here in WordPress. I must admit that WordPress has made it very easy to get it going quickly.

The main problem being that since I created my site from a blank page in iWeb, I cannot just save it as a “theme.” Therefore, each time I wanted to create a new blog entry I had to completely redesign the page before I could even type into it. This could get tedious quick and be a huge time-waster. The other problems I found with blogging in iWeb were the text color options for titles and date could not be changed, and the inspector leaves a lot to be desired for editing the blog page.

Otherwise I found that iWeb was a breeze to work with and fully customize a web site. It takes very little understanding of web design or any sort of coding to get a great site up and running. With the use of their built-in “themes” it really is a basic no-brainer. All you really need to do is drag your own media into the pre-built pages, put in your own text and you are all set. Thanks to iWeb 09, publishing is now a breeze as well, even if you have your own domain name and host already. The best method yet, in my opinion, is to have a mobileme account and publish right to it with no setup.

For those who may want to really get down to the fine details of the look and feel of your web site, the inspector is your best friend. With it you can change the page layout sizes and colors, you can change the text as though it were a mini word processor, you can add graphic effect, change the size of your page elements (pictures, video, sound…), create hyperlinks and their rollover colors, play with Quicktime file settings and much more. They really did a nice job with it for the most part, yet as I mentioned before the blog controls could be better.

One of the things that I have found immensely useful is the widgets and media side panel they have added in the 09 version. Here you have easy access to all of your movies, pictures and audio always there or hidden if you desire. Also you have a widgets tab where you will find a Google maps widget for adding maps to your page,  a Google AdSense widget for putting adds on your site you get paid for if people click on them, an iSight widget that lets you use your built-in iSight camera for immediate pictures or films and a couple others. The most useful one is for adding html snippets to your page: you can check this out by looking at the form on my website (www.dandymac.com). I added that with some html code with great ease and I think it looks and works fantastic.

Overall, I would say that iWeb is a very solid, stable, easy to use, feature-rich application. Especially if you are not a web designer and just want to put together a highly functional and visually appealing site in a very short period of time. I find it falls right between the likes of Sandbox and Freeway. The added ease of media access, full iLfe/iWork integration, widgets at your side, and publishing to your own domain with a single click make iLife 09 worth the price alone.