OS Xp?

So here’s the thing, I am obviously an over-the-top fan of Apple products. As of the past few years, ever since Apple switched to Intel, I have found myself working on Macs that run Windows. As much as I generally despise Windows, I cannot help but appreciate one thing about the Microsoft OS, which is the fine grained control you have over most pieces of software and Windows OS as well. (Although it may be a bit to much control, as it allows one to possibly mess up the OS badly.)

So, my thoughts have turned to the fact that Apple has been building quite the pile of cash over the past few years. What if, and this may seem like a silly thought, but what if Apple bought the derivative Windows OS (or Microsoft altogether, for that matter.) and integrated it perfectly into their OS X offerings in the future? I would love to see OS X have much more access to fine grained controls over what the machine does or does not do, and how it does it. Sometimes I cannot help but feel frustrated by the lack of control one has over OS X.

So what do you think? Maybe OS Xp or Snow Leopard 7??

Well, just a thought anyway! Happy Mac-ing out there.

Did I mention that I cannot wait for the iPad??

Too iPad, or not too iPad, that is the question!

Wow what a week of Apple fantasy and fury!! It’s been a long while since I sat down to blog about anything, yet this subject positively SCREAMS out for it!

So, after months of unbelievable science fiction worthy hype around the fabled tablet machine from Apple, that day has finally come. It comes in the form of the iPad, a rather unique take on a tablet computer. Where does one begin when one hasn’t even seen or touched one in person?

That, my friends is quite simple! One starts with the insane amount of web based, flittering and fuming, reactions to the embodiment of the hype. I am absolutely flabbergasted by the outpouring of lambasting and bashing that is happening online. I can’t recall there ever being such visceral reactions to a device…. oh wait yes I can! The comments and articles I have read in the past 24 hours are EXACTLY the same reactions that were to be found during, at least, the 24 hours following the announcement of another “destined to fail”, “no Flash” having, “typing on glass”, “no 3G!?!” having device known as the iPhone. You remember that thing that made it nowhere, changed nothing and left people feeling cheated?!

The iPad is, almost literally, no less game changing a device than the original iPhone, or iPod touch for that matter.

First Thoughts

Being human as the rest of you out there, I am certainly not immune to the hype, rumors and “analytical theory” that always creeps up around an Apple media event. What will it be? What will it do? What will it look like? what is it?? Naturally, being that I am an Apple Certified Consultant and Technician, I was immensely intrigued, if not ludicrously excited about the infamous tablet device that was possibly headed our way yesterday morning (Jan 27th, 2010). This thing was, according to all of the above mentioned sources, going to change the world! Yet I have learned one thing about Apple events from the past, which is to keep myself grounded in expectations. Yet the hype machine was in FULL blast leading up to the event yesterday here in San Francisco. They had hit an all time high of hype this time.

Now, when the event finally rolled around, I was practically foaming at the mouth in anticipation. I could not wait to see what would unfold. So I saddled up to my MacBook with a cup of coffee awaiting the “live-blogging” of the event to begin. (Honestly, what I do not get, AT ALL, is why there is no live video coverage of the events. In this day and age and with Apple’s media strength, why must we rely on people blogging with, if you are lucky, still images of the item(s) in question?) There I was all ready and eager to read away. So I fired up Safari and headed to my regular Mac news sites with several tabs open, one for each site. Even a couple of tabs open for the likes of the New York Times and SF Gate to chime in. I was READY!

What happened next was ultimately frustrating. They all seemed to be starting nice and smooth before the event, which was ok. Then the event began, and that’s when the troubles began across the board! This, if I am not mistaken, is 2010, is it not?? So my main question was, why is the entirety of the Mac news world having SUCH a difficult time getting this info out. What I noticed immediately is that a few of the heavy hitters were using the same “Live Event” web software to do their blogging, and it wasn’t working for ANY of them. The system completely choked. Then there were the less than immensely popular sites I check out that were using their own servers for the live blogging. The problem there was that the servers they were using could not handle the kind of volume that was needed for this event, and they too choked HARD. I found myself yelling at my screen, switching between Firefox and Safari to no avail, and switching between the three Macs in my home, again to no avail

The big savior of the morning for me was Engadget, those guys had it going smooth as silk with great images popping up at a furious rate. They did a hell of a job keeping up with the volume and the system barely hiccuped with the volume. So a huge thanks go out to the folks at Engadget for their coverage, although I could have done without their opinions on what was happening  on stage. Overall though I rather enjoyed their coverage.

The i—WHAT??

On to the big event, “the Latest creation”, The iPad. Hmmmmmmmm what a curious name they chose?! I was really digging the name iSlate that the rumor mills had made up for it, but no they went with the iPad. In itself it is not a horrible name, matter of fact it really seems to fit naturally with their naming convention of their portable devices. What struck me initially was that it was awfully close to iPod, which I inevitably called it several dozen time over the past 24 hours. iPod has been a part of our culture since 2001 and it’s name just rolls right off of your tongue without effort. Needless to say I am on the fence about the name.

Just to make a quick observation about the comments and a few articles I have read out there, I must say the following. One thing that never even came close to entering my mind was that the name iPad would be synonymous with a feminine hygiene product, the maxi pad. I mean I suppose I could see how maybe a woman would catch that before a tech hungry guy would. However, this has led to an enormous amount of comment posting that is, to say the least, in excusably immature. It really seems like 14-year-old boys have taken over the comment boards on most articles about this unique device. Could we maybe try to at least act like adults on these things?? Ahhh well, maybe I am just turning into an old man. I digress.

I waited for… THIS!?

All naming, commenting and hyping aside, the event finally rolls on smoothly. Upon first seeing the iPad I was, of course, not surprised at the sheer beauty of the design. The iPad is without a doubt stunningly gorgeous! Yet I could not help, initially, thinking that it definitely looked like a large iPod Touch with an awkward black bezel around the bright and beautiful screen. I thought, “Wow, what a waste of screen space?!” Mind you I only had still images of the thing just as the rest of your out there. Then I said to myself “just wait to see what it does.” So that I did, I waited for the specs of the device itself, I waited for demos of what the great Hype machines out there were touting, a mashup of Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the iPhone OS. I waited for mind altering software to be present on the iPad…. I waited!

The first half of the presentation was all about the Web Surfing, which was a nice thought. (Again there was no way to see how it actually worked by looking at still images on a blog.) Then Steve talked about the email, and I was rather pleased to see that they had truly redone the mail interface from the iPhone/iPod Touch. To me this was all very nice, yet I could only think “Yeah, OK we get it, It’s is a beautiful web experience. NEXT!!” My impatience was setting in strong at this point. And then the stills of Jobs lounging in a chair on stage demoing the iPad started rolling in. Cool but kind of odd. (Jobs looks like a skeleton, by the way, definitely to be expected considering his recent health problems. Yet he definitely had more color than he had the past few times we had seen him.)

Next Jobs introduced Scott Forstall to talk about the SDK (Software Developers Kit) and the App Store and what they meant to the iPad. I thought, “Now we are getting somewhere!” So the iPad could handle “nearly all apps on the App Store,” awesome, great news indeed. The stills, however, were showing the apps on this big black rectangle with the apps running in their native iPhone screen size…. kind of lame looking really. Although it did give you a sense of the size of the iPad itself. Then came the pixel doubling effect available to all iPhone apps, which make the apps fill the screen of the iPad, a nice touch indeed. That is until you see a text based app like FaceBook in the pixel double mode, the effect makes the text look exceedingly large and awkward. Mind you this is all still being seen by me through still images on a blog, but i got the idea.

Here I am 45 minutes into this event and all I could think was, ” I waited for… THIS!?” A big iPod Touch!?!?!? I also rolled through many of the sentiments expressed by the angry commenters out there. Such as “No Camera?!?!?!?”, “No Flash Support?!”, “Where is Snow Leopard on this Thing????” I was steaming myself up beyond belief. I thought, “this is no tablet computer at all, just a big ol honkin iPod Touch. WTF?? “This is the revolutionary tablet computer sent from the mouth of God to the hands of Steve Jobs??” HA!! what a waste, I thought.

The Game Changing Moment(s)

The next people to show up on stage were four App developers that had been asked to demo what they had been able to put together for the iPad in just 2.5 to 3 weeks. This was now starting to get interesting. First up was The New York Times, and what a lovely job they did on the App for the iPad. I have the iPhone app already, and many times throughout the day I will jump over to the site for news. Both of which are excellent experiences. This iPad app is already shaping up to be quite the over the top experience for readers. (Again I am still in still images on a blog here.)

Then came Gameloft, a company that has about 60 apps on the App store as it is for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Not only that but I own 6 of their titles on my iPhone and LOVE every one of them. These guys do typically derivative titles based on many popular games for the X-Box, PlayStation…etc. They do them so beautifully, that you end up forgetting you are on a tiny iPhone screen, and you become fully immersed in the worlds they create. Love them! So I was very excited to know that Apple featured them as an iPad developer. From the stills I saw, the game  looked SWEET! (Did I mention I only had stills on a blog to go by?? hahahahaha!)

Next up was the folks over at MLB.com to show the Baseball game they worked on for the iPod. I am not really a fan of sports in general, but I know enough about them to get by. That being said, their offering looked wonderful, incredibly well done. The graphics looked very nicely polished and the game play, I imagined was just as nice. They had even mentioned that you could get live playbacks of the game while still in the game itself. Very nice use of the screen real estate! Like I said though, I am no sports fan, so whatever.

Finally the people from the legendary gaming house EA sports popped up to demo their work in the form of a car racing game. Again, not a huge sports fan, but I looooove me some driving game. This one appears to be no slouch either. But that was my only opinion as you cannot tell what they, or any, of the developers mentioned here did with the interaction and general feel of the products with still images.

Jobs then popped back into the limelight with the introduction of iBooks and the iBook store. Simple idea, you download books from the iBook store right to the iPad and they instantly show up an the graphical bookshelf within a small time frame. Then you tap a book to open it up. There are definitely other options for book reading out there, like the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook. Yet in my opinion they are severely limited and awkward things to use. Plus they are primarily in black and white only. From the images I saw the books look AMAZING in the iBook app. They actually look like a printed book right down to the pages and book bindings. When you turn the iPad to landscape mode you see both pages of the book in full glorious color. They have also included two buttons where you can skim chapters and also change the size of the font. A lovely design and a great way to read a book!

What came next was what really shined through as making this iPad stand apart from the iPhone/iPod Touch. Phil Schiller took the stage to talk about an Apple App worked on specifically for the iPad, iWork. I personally find the suite of programs indispensable on the Mac. I do all of my business writings and documenting with it. I find that it is a vastly greater user experience than the dominant, only because 95% off all businesses use it and are afraid of moving away from it, MS Office. On the Mac, in my not-s0-humble-opinion, iWork is the only way to go for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. Though I will admit that it not really suitable for everyone’s needs.

Phil told us that the iWork team completely redesigned the entire suite specifically for the iPad, and boy did they ever! From what I could tell at that point yesterday, Apple’s team had truly outdone themselves! The suite looked amazing and supposedly worked as smooth as you could ever imagine with the touchscreen of the iPad. This suite, to me, was what made the iPad more of a workhorse than the iPhone/iPod Touch. Bravo!! Finally!!

The Specs

Naturally, as a Mac Tech and Consultant I was ever so excite to hear about the innards of the iPad. I must say that I was a bit disappointed at how little time they spent talking about the actual specs on stage. The website has much greater detail if you are into that sort of thing, and I am! What Jobs did say though was rather intriguing. He casually said that the chip that makes the iPad move was “our own custom silicone” and barely touched on what that means. What it means, though, is that early last year Apple acquired a company called PA semi, which made processors, and called it their own. Thus the A4 Apple 1ghz chip was born, and it’s the heart of the iPad. It handles the processing, the graphics, the Wi-Fi and the accelerometer all in one little chip. Quite impressive I would say.

The screen is a 9.7″ capacitive touch surface, backed by LED and ISP technology. That means that it is less power hungry, brighter and has a a very wide viewing angle. The trade off on the shape of the iPad is that instead of a 16:9 aspect ratio (what you might find on your flat-screen TV), they went with a 4:3 aspect ratio (what you would find on all older TVs). I am not sure that is a bad thing, otherwise Apple would have had to make the iPad a much more awkward device to hold and use. The glass they went with is similar to that of the iPhone 3GS in that it is oleo-phobic, meaning it repels oils on our fingers and faces making it easier to clean.

The iPad will ship in six different flavors. First there are three sizes of storage, 16gb, 32gb and 64gb. You can get these three sizes with two different options either with Wi-Fi only or with Wi-Fi and 3g built in. nice enough options, yet I would have liked to see a built in SD card slot to expand the storage options. However, we all use iPhones/iPod Touches with the same, or smaller amount of storage built in and that suits most of us just fine. Especially considering that most Apps are very small in size. Media that we put on the devices are what consume the most amount of space.

The more interesting and thoroughly exciting part of the announced specs was without a doubt, the PRICE!! Most “analysts”, as well as the press were expecting it to be priced at $1000, as did I. Then Steve drops the entry price of $499!!!!! This, of course is for the 16gb option with Wi-Fi only, still a fantastic price indeed! Then if you want to add 3G to the iPad you simply tack on $130 to each model. The thing about the 3G is that the service here in the US will be handled by…  wait for it… you guessed it Verizon, shoot actually it’s AT&T. Which you may know from my blog post, I am NO fan of. Although I must admit that the 3g here in SF has definitely improved since my posting about them. The two things that make being tied to AT&T again are the prices ($14.99 a month for 250mb, or the most likely more popular choice of unlimited data at $29.99 a month. Verizon charges a minimum of $50 a month for there 500mb a month plan, so it’s quite a deal.). The other, and perhaps more phenomenal thing is that there is NO contract attached to this offer. That means, come and go as you please, or if Apple ever gives other carriers the option to carry their devices you can switch without termination fees. That is HUGE for AT&T!!

My really big disappointment regarding the iPad is the lack of connectivity. The only connection points are the headphone jack and the standard iPhone Dock. Which limits things quite a bit. As a technician that means the device really fails for me in my work. Yet it does keep things much more simple for the user. So it’s a trade off that I am willing to accept. I mean what can DandyMac do about it anyway??

Apple also talked a bit about the accessories they will offer, they have a simple dock for it ($29). They also have a much more appealing dock ready to go for it, this one has a full keyboard fused to the dock and has some special function buttons related to the iPad itself ($79). The more interesting offers to me are for connecting a digital camera (do we really need to say digital before camera any longer?) or an SD card, the devices plud directly into the dock connector and therefore protrude from the bottom of the iPad. I am uncertain whether or not Apple has decided to allow the SD card reader to allow for extra storage for the iPad or not, would be REALLY sweet if they did. (The pair of connectors sell for $29 combined). Also Apple is offering a case designed by them which not only acts as a case, but it also doubles as a stand for the iPad. Meaning that you can stand it up in portrait mode by folding the case back and you can then put it in landscape mode too for easier typing ($39). I would imagine the case will most likely not do that well when the third party accessories start pouring out of the woodwork. Yet I still think it’s a nicely designed case.

The Real Mental Shift

Now that you have labored your way through my immense postings. I must say that at first I was a bit disappointed in general with the iPad, as I and thousands of others have said, it seemed like a Huge iPod Touch. But then last night I decided to check out the QuickTime video Apple posted of the event. I spent the afternoon contemplating what they had released, back and forth between “it’s cool!”, and “what the hell would I do with it?” WOW!! You really cannot get a good idea of what the iPad does until you watch this video, the stills are nice but NOTHING like watching it in action! (Not to mention what it must be like to actually hold one and use it!!)

The video shows a GORGEOUS piece of work, I mean it is large and polished looking, and it fits in with their design motif on the Macs. Suuuuuper thin (0.5″ thin), weighing in at 1.5 lbs, with a LARGE 9.7″ screen that is BRIGHT! When you watch Jobs surf the web, although still a bit odd, you really see what they mean by “the best web experience.” It is a full web browser with beautifully designed “modal” drop-down and pop-up windows for bookmarks and the like. It moves FAST and smooth as well, proving that Apple’s A4 1ghz chip really can SCREAM!

Then he shows of email, AMAZING design again!! It’s what you would want your iPhone to look like when checking and writing emails. Matter of fact, I am now wishing that OS X Mail looked like email does on the iPad. I did not catch whether it has a unified inbox function (for more than one email account), but what I saw was glorious! I would buy the iPad based on that fact alone. Yet it kept becoming more and more amazing as I watched the video.

Next up was the other two communication tools we rely on so dearly, Calendar and Address Book. They have completely redesigned both apps to look nothing short of stunning. Almost as though you have actual physical books right in the device shielded under glass for protecting their glory. You get Calendar views of not only daily, weekly and monthly views like we are all too familiar with (frustratingly so for some of you out there), you can also have your daily schedule on one “page” while having the weekly or monthly view on the opposite page. Something MANY of my clients dream of having on their Macs at work or home. It looks to be a far more functional version of the Calendar App as well. Address Book has garnished the same respect and overhaul as well. Though it was not really showed as much, so the features are a bit more uncertain at this point.

Then the Apps portion I talked of earlier in my postings came around. Forstall is not my favorite presenter, but he does OK in this event. The real stars were the developers I had mentioned earlier as well, The New York Times, Gameloft, MLB.com and EA sports. These guys did highly impressive work in a VERY limited amount of time. Most impressive to me were the Apps from The New York Times and Gameloft, these guys really leveraged the technology of the iPad to a beautiful height. The Times app really looks like their print edition, right down to the grain of the paper. Plus, forget Flash kids, they have embedded video into the pages as though it were printed like that, the videos look wonderful!! Navigation was rather impressive as well. I will own that app when it hits, no doubt in my mind.

Gameloft solved the obvious problem of playing a game in a device of that size with that wide black bezel between your hand and the screen. (The iPod Touch and the iPhone both have screens that go to the edge of the devices so you have easy access to the screen) There first solution was for on-screen controls, many games out there utilize this functionality as the means to move about the environment, pick things up, drop things, jump, choose weapons or tools, fire weapons…etc. There answer was to allow the user the option of placing those controls wherever is most comfortable for them, a very nice touch (pun intended). Next up they came up with a method for dealing with multiple objects, in the game they showed it helps you deal with many enemies at once, by drawing a circle with your finger around the enemies and then the guns take over and take out all of the enemies at once. GO GAMELOFT!!

Now for the iBook App, what a beautifully designed App for reading! It sounded nice during the live bloggin, but it is a different experience to see it in action. The books look beautiful, just as they did in the stills. But what you don’t get from the blogging is the action of the app. You can tap either side of the book to “turn” the page or you can use a finger to, as fast as you like, flip through the pages. It is incredibly elegantly done. You can also, with the tap of a button, change the font size or even navigate through chapters. Kindle be damned people, this is a close to the real thing as you can get. The iBook store is laid out much like iTunes and you can get a book to the phone FAST, depending on your connection speed of course.

I could go on for days here. iWork is a completely different beast when you watch the video as opposed to the blogging. They did a simply SUPERB job of completely redesigning the suite for the iPad. Really, this is reason enough for me to pick an iPad up. I am blown away by the design and usability of this old friend of mine, iWork!! My fingers are aching over here…

SOOOOOOO

In conclusion (I know, FINALLY!! hahahaha!), I have done a 180 degree turn on my thoughts of the iPad, simply by watching the video.

These are my caveats with the people out there complaining at any given chance:

1. The non-existent camera. This device to me does not at all call for a camera. While I suppose I could see the benefit for say video chats, I do not see how this could be effectively implemented. The size of it and the way one has to hold it would make for some very shaky video chats. Also to use it as a still camera would be a nightmare. Think of how hard it is to hold the iPhone camera steady to get a clean shot. As an Amateur/Pro photographer I will always prefer an actual camera for that task.

2. No multitasking. Wow, where to start. First off you CAN multitask with Apple’s own Apps. Second, Do you really want to bog down a device by allowing many apps to run at once?? There are reasons behind Apple’s choice to not include multitasking on the iPhone/iPod Touch and now the iPad, that reason is… PERFORMANCE!! I could understand if it took sooooo painfully long for an App to quit or launch, but that is just not the case. The Apps are light, responsive and FAST. Not a deal breaker in my opinion. Until the technology of multiple processors can happen in these small devices, there is no point in enabling multitasking. Get over it or Move On!

3. Read or Watch the event. Nowhere is it stated that the iPad would REPLACE your laptop or your iPhone. As a matter of fact in the first five minutes Jobs explains (not to mention, he spelled it out literally in black and white!) EXACTLY what the iPad is designed for:

BROWSING

EMAIL

PHOTOS

MUSIC

VIDEO

GAMES

EBOOKS

People please, THINK BEFORE YOU POST!!

The iPad is a huge leap in personal communications and internet technology. While it does have an obvious big brother to the iPod Touch feel about it, it seems to me after much personal deliberation, that once people get their hands on it (just like with the iPhone) they will no doubt WANT one of them for themselves.

Also, If you are basing what you feel about the iPad on what you read yesterday during the announcement, please take some time to watch the quicktime video of the event. It really really changes your perspective about it. If you listen to what Jobs says about what the device is intended to do, the iPad is SPOT ON!! I cannot wait to give it a shot! I will doubtlessly, and cannot wait to, end up owning the iPad!!

Oh, and p.s.: Flash is a serious resource drain! What really needs to happen is that Adobe needs to pull there collective heads out of their, let’s say, backsides and rethink that monster to make it more friendly for mobile devices. Then, and only then, do I see Apple adopting that ancient technology. Granted it is used all too often on many websites, but that is no excuse for poor design laziness on Adobe’s part.

As a side note, please notice that Firefox mobile has removed flash support as well.

WAKE UP ADOBE!! You guys are resting on your laurels, which always ends up hurting more then helping.

to the commenters blaming Apple, if you want a less slick and slower device, then go with Android (not that there is anything at all wrong with Android, I am actually a fan. But it does really slow the speed of web use on those devices dramatically. Apple’s goal is to have the best user experience possible, period. They are not willing to compromise speed, battery life and ease of use for the ability to run Flash based web technology. To be honest, neither am I. The real future should indeed be an implementation of HTML5, already in use by Apple, Google and You tube… It’s time for a change kids. Not to be too corny but, Yes We CAN!!

Both Developers and Users, take control of what you want!! Viva HTML5!!

Long Live the iPad!!

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!

Back it up!

It would be safe to say that you most likely treasure a good majority of what you keep on your Mac’s hard drive. What is a hard drive, you ask? The simplest answer I can give you is that a hard drive is where your pictures, movies, music, and documents are stored in your computer. The slightly more complex version is that a hard drive consists of a thick, CD like disc, a circuit board and an arm with a laser. From the moment you start up your computer it begins working; the disc spins, the arm passes back and forth from the outer edge to the inner edge and back, at precisely the same time the laser scans the disc while it reads and writes data to and from the disc.

You probably now have hundreds, maybe thousands of precious photographs, music and even movies stored on the hard drive. Maybe you even have invaluable documents and other personal and business information on it too. Increasingly more everyday we do things with our computers and save things as we go.

What’s the worst that can happen? Well, in an instant, without notification, it can all be lost to the mechanical failure of the hard drive. At best case you can have it recovered via software tricks, however at worst case you will not be able to get any of your cherished data back from the dead hard drive.

What can you do to prevent this from happening? First thing I will tell you is that it is not a question of if the hard drive fails, it is a matter of when it fails. The only thing you can really do to prevent losing all of your pictures, movies, music, and documents when a hard drive fails is to have your computer’s hard drive backed up. Meaning, make copies of the contents of your hard drive on to an external hard drive, perhaps on multiple DVDs, and/or having it backed up off-site (using an online backup storage website).

How do you go about doing this? The easiest thing to do is, if you have Apple’s latest operating system (OS X 10.5, Leopard), to get ahold of an external hard drive (preferably one with a Firewire connection if your computer can handle it), get one as big as you can afford. ( I recommend Western Digital (although their portables are not so great), or OWC for excellent quality and reasonable prices.) Then hook the hard drive up to your Mac,  almost instantly Apple’s built in back up software, Time Machine, will ask if you would like to use the hard drive to back it up, to which you will answer, yes. Then Time Machine will take over and make one initial full backup from your hard drive, from then on it will make hourly backups of any changes that you have made on your computer. Recovery from this method is usually very simple, however Time Machine is not 100% reliable. The backups have a tendency to become corrupt leaving you out of luck when you need to recover your data.

The software I tend to recommend for most home and small business users is called SuperDuper. This creates what is known as a “bootable” clone of your hard drive. Which basically means that you can run your computer from the clone that SuperDuper makes on your external hard drive. A very powerful option for times when disaster strikes and you need your computer immediately. Not only can it produce bootable clones of your hard drive, you can also schedule it to do so as often as you need. It also does a much better job at creating a backup that does not take up too much room than, say, Time Machine does on your external hard drive. All this and more for a mere $27.95!? It’s an absolute steal for the peace of mind you gain!

I could go on and on about backup strategies, but the most important thing I want to convey is that you get a backup strategy and use it. This will prevent you from the horrid pain of losing your most valuable data. I spend mornings as a Mac Technician in a Mac repair shop called PowerBook Guy, where the #1 thing we deal with is hard drive failure and replacement. I cannot tell you how many tears I have seen from clients who lost all of their data because they failed to backup their data. It’s always a painful loss. So prevent it and BACK IT UP!

One last thing I will state about hard drive failure and replacement is that, you should not panic and run out to buy a whole new computer if it happens. Hard drive replacement is a fairly inexpensive repair for a computer. I am talking under a couple hundred bucks in most cases, which is a lot cheaper than a new Mac. So, especially if you were wise enough to back up your computer, there is no reason to panic when your hard drive starts clicking and making grinding noises. When that happens, just give DandyMac a call, or send us an email and we will get your Mac back for you!

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!

Virtualization

When it comes to running Microsoft Windows on a Mac, there has never been a better time to do so. Ever since Apple switched to the Intel architecture the desire for running Windows on a Mac has come to full (virtual) reality. Now more then ever this happens with great ease, speed and power. This is not to say that it comes without issues and growing pains, it simply means that it actually finally works. Which enables people to only buy one computer and have the best of both worlds, the PC for business and the Mac for everything else.

Back in ’06, when Apple made the switch in processors to Intel, people were very excited that running Windows on a Mac could happen. So much so that there was a contest launched by OnMac.net to see who could come up with a way to do it. By March 26th, 2006 the contest was over, and we all were the winners. It was through this win that Apple unleashed Boot Camp which allows you to restart your Mac into either OSX or WIndows. This was fantastic although limited as you had to chose which operating system you wanted to use and you could only choose Windows as your second operating system.

That’s when things really took off. The next big thing to happen was the ability to run Windows on a Mac right from your Mac’s desktop, which treats Windows (or any other operating system you might want to use) as another application without having to restart into your chosen second operating system. This was a GIGANTIC breakthrough. Thanks to companies like Parallels or VMware you can now have two operating systems running at the same time on one Mac.

My preferred choice in software makers ended up being Parallels. Their product was very strong and worked very well. They also managed to bring great updates to their software to allow for some truly remarkable features, such as “coherence mode” which allows you to have the Windows Task Bar and Mac’s Menu Bar running on the same desktop seamlessly. I have sworn up and down on how great the company is and has been to all of my consultancy clients. I am not saying here that there is anything wrong with VMware’s Fusion which essentially is the same thing, I just have preferred Parallels.

Unfortunately I do believe that I am changing my preferences. Parallels just released version 4 of their Desktop For Mac software a few months back. I must say that at first I was very excited about it, they made the interface very Mac-ish, finally, and it is beautiful to look at. The problem comes when you actually run the software. It was so highly unstable that it froze every hour and interupted one of my best client’s work so often that I had to roll it back to version 3. Not that there is anything wrong with version 3, I was just extremely disappointed that Parallels released version 4 in such an awful state. It was simply not ready for prime time and they should have waited to release it until it was.

So for now I will have to recommend Fusion’s VMware for people who are looking to get started running Windows on your Mac.I do believe that Fusion has a very nicely designed piece of software, and it has always had a more Mac-ish look and feel. The one thing that really makes it stand out for me is that Fusion has support for split screen work, in other words across two monitors. It does appear to at least be more stable than Parallels version 4, yet I am not thoroughly convinced that Fusion is more stable than Parallels version 3.  As I said before though, Fusion and Parallels are very similar products and do essentially the same thing: enable you to run Windows (or any other operating system) on your Mac as though it were another application.

The next great leap for me in this multiple operating system on one computer idea would be if both Apple and Microsoft could somehow see past their egos and do what would be best for all of us, combine forces. This would enable the fine grained control one gets with Windows and the ease of use and fun of OS X. I may be far from reality on that thought, but it certainly would be dream of a computer platform. Imagine being able to install any application you want on one computer without the hassle of restarting into a different operating system or running virtualization software to make it happen. Ahhh to dream.

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.