Updates

A few program updates…

  • There’s a new 360 dash out. It works a bit quicker than the old one and has been slightly reorganised, for the better in my view. It’s caused a bit of a problem for EA games though which i don’t think are fully resolved yet. DivX & XVid playback now fully supported which is nice as well as a slew of small changes throughout the system. Video Marketplace launches Dec 11th in UK – will be interested in comparing HD quality with Sky & BluRay. With these updates the 360 is finally rivalling XBMC for functionality, while blowing it out of the water for HD. Shame about the noise. And the DVD upscaling – so poor!
  • For Mac users wanting to stream the new video formats to the 360 Nullsoft have updated Connect 360. fast work from the devs to get this out the day after the dash update.
  • Yojimbo has finally been updated with a few new features while hopefully addressing a couple of Leopard bugs. Even though Together has been upgraded I still prefer the features in Yojimbo – and .Mac syncing seems to be working again. Woo!

Random Stuff

  • Picked up a new router as the old Linksys was starting to misbehave with Xbox Live. The D-Link DIR-655 has performed admirably since purchase with no issues to report. The wireless N has also increased speed for the laptop and has a far better range than the G Linksys. Gigabit ethernet has also increased speeds from the NAS and web sites and downloads are also a lot snappier. A great purchase!
  • Turned 34 last week. Getting old. Fast.
  • Spaces on the laptop works really well.
  • Still not bought an iPhone 🙂 Getting over the initial urge is the biggest hurdle on holding off for version 2. Christmas is next followed by official app’s in Feb.
  • Leopard is performing well although there are a few niggles here and there like images not dismounting or Finder taking a while to refresh. Nothing big really.
  • Four shopping weekends to Christmas – not got a clue what to get.
  • Weight loss still progressing well. I’ll do a proper progress post later in the year.
  • Some job changes at work are in progress. Hopefully. Maybe. Probably.
  • If you miss OS X hierarchical folders then OldFolder is for you.
  • The new Worpdress plugin update feature is great. Makes managing plugins a lot easier than it used to be.
  • Shut down Forza Leagues this weekend. We put a lot of effort into it but unfortunately the game and the small community let us down really. It still niggles just how much people demanded from the site and the admin team but put little back in themselves. It’s the first time I helped to run a community site and it’s an experience I don’t fancy repeating soon. Once bitten.
  • Still got a really nasty cold. Tiredness now gone but the snot hasn’t.
  • COD4 is the new Halo 2. The abuse and shouting before a game is tiring. If the dev’s could have picked up one thing from the beta or Halo 3 it should have been a quick method of muting and no way of hearing the other team until AFTER the match. Still, it’s a great game and the upcoming patch should address the small issues the game currently has.
  • OmniFocus now available. Looks nice and integrates well with iCal and Mail. Need to see how it stacks up against iGTD which is free and includes .Mac syncing.
  • Car passed it’s MOT with little trouble. I’ve had the Focus for six years now. While I’d like a new car, I don’t really need one so I’ll have it for a while yet I’d imagine.
  • Only four more weeks at work before I stop for Christmas break….and three weeks off. Bliss.

Recommended Mac Apps – Updated

I posted a list of my favourite Mac app’s almost a year ago. With advent of leopard and some badgering from other’s, here’s an updated list of what I would install on my mac.

delicious.jpgDelicious Library
http://www.delicious-monster.com/
$40

I’ll admit this is a very non-essential app but was the first I bought for the Mac. Delicious Library allows you to catalogue, store, rate and search your music, films, games and books. There are many other media cataloguers out there but none look so good as Delicious Library or carry out the task with such elegance. Using the iSight I can scan in media barcodes for easy compiling of the library. The virtual shelf allows for browsing of titles, the app comes with spotlight support, a widget for easy title searching and option to export the library to iPod. There isn’t much in the way of web exports though (although the DeliciousSQLExport utility allows for exporting of the library to MySQL) and you can’t add your own media types. Coming soon is Delicious Library 2 which promises a fancier user interface, publishing and sharing capabilities and support for a lot more media types. Can’t wait.

YojimboYojimbo
http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/
$39.00

This was the first app I installed after Leopard. It’s an app that groups together miscellaneous items into one place. You can store text, rich text, PDF’s, serials, passwords and web page snapshots. It’s support tagging and also folders/projects and I’ve found it invaluable over the last few months as I took on a number of projects in my own time that needed a fair bit of management. It also support Spotlight searching and importantly for me, .Mac syncing. This means the Yojimbo library is the same on the desktop and laptop. As it uses the same storage method as Aperture there are some compatibility issues with Time Machine but I’m sure these will be addressed over the next month or so.

Continue reading “Recommended Mac Apps – Updated”

Leopard Thoughts

I’ve used Leopard for around a week now (seeing as I didn’t pirate it) which has given me time to get used to the new features on offer. I’ve pulled together some thoughts below on the main features that impact me but for a detailed review read Ars Technica’s Leopard review. Their Leopard review is the best (and longest) I’ve seen not only covering the obvious new features and graphical changes but also what has altered under the hood.

First Impressions
On logging in to Leopard you notice the most obvious visual change – the new pseudo 3D dock. Instead of a flat dock as in Tiger the icons are displayed on a pretend three dimensional shelf. Reflections of the icons are shown on the shelf as well as any windows above the dock. The icons are no longer bound within the dock and can encroach on your app’s. In Tiger small black triangles indicated the currently running app’s but they have been replaced with blurry glowing lights which don’t stand out very well against the shelf.

Tiger Dock
Original Tiger Dock

Leopard 3D Dock
New 3D Leopard Dock

I like my graphical flourishes as much as the next geek but when they come at the expense of usability then it grates. The new dock tells me less than previously and takes up more room. Move the dock to the left or right and you get a far more usable dock – if only you could swap the dock when placed at the bottom of the screen to this. There’s no default option but a variety of ways to solve this are available.

Leopard 2D Dock
Leopard 2D Dock – far more usable

The next new feature is Stacks. Continue reading “Leopard Thoughts”

Upgrade

Leopard

So today was mostly spent upgrading the iMac to Leopard. All went well. In fact it was relatively painless which is more than can be said for my calf which I’ve aggravated again just walking about town. I don’t think I mentioned this but I tore my calf last week playing badminton. 10 days later and it’s still sore(r) but then I knew it would take a while to heal properly.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a Leopard post. Well I’ve not really had chance to play with it much so I’ll get the laptop done tomorrow and then take a few days to mull over what has changed. It ain’t all good you know!

A Year with the Mac

It was one year ago today that I took delivery of an Imac, my first ever Mac. While I’d had an iPod for a couple of years and used a Mac at university, this would be my first time away from pc’s and Windows. While the learning curve was steep’ish I took to the Mac really well and even though I’m still learning I’m now a fan of the Mac operating system and the hardware that Apple make. While Apple products are not to everyone’s taste and they are always accused of being expensive I can’t see me moving away from the Mac platform anytime soon.

The hardware has been great so far (touch wood). I was slightly apprehensive about buying an iMac due to it’s all in one non upgradable design. However I’m a console gamer now and have no real need to upgrade the hardware a bit at a time. The hardware’s most impressive feature is how quiet it is. You hardly notice it’s on which I certainly can’t say about most PCs that I’ve owned and used. One year on and it still feels fast as it did on day one even with new software that’s come out over the last couple of months that usually push up requirements.

The iMac is used every day and wakes from sleep in a couple of seconds while taking the same time to sleep at the end of the day. It sure beats the experience I’ve had using Windows and the slow start-up times or slow times when setting the machine to sleep. Even when i have to reboot for software updates and the like, the start-up times have remained consistently quick. It’s obviously slower than day one due to the apps I launch at start-up but it doesn’t slow down as much as Windows does over time. I guess what I’m trying to say is…it just works. Always. Not had a problem yet. I’m not saying there are no problems, but I’ve had none…yet.

One issue I do have are Apple mice. They really do suck. I bought a wireless Mighty Mouse and I lasted three weeks with it before putting it aside and plugging in my Logitech. From reading elsewhere seemingly Steve Job’s hate’s clicks and buttons but really – only having one mouse button is really limiting. The Mighty Mouse has a virtual right click and also a squeeze click but I found the squeeze was difficult to do and the virtual right click awkward as you had to lift from the left click for this to work. The Mighty Mouse is now an occasional laptop mouse…very occasional.

The operating system is also a lot more user friendly than XP and although I haven’t used Vista enough to be sure, I’m off the mind that it has a better set of features than it too. Through the use of Expose, Dashboard, Spotlight and Preview I find that day to day tasks are more easily carried out on a Mac than on a PC. I can get more things done and I’m also more pleased with the end result. It’s very hard to put into words why it feels and works better, but it does. I also make far more use of the built in app’s like Mail, Address Book, iCal etc than I did on Windows although I think Vista built in app’s are far more useful than XP’s. The O/S is also more fun than Windows and looks/feels a lot more stylish and has a lot of polish. Again not a big feature but it’s another little plus point. Oh, no spyware or virus worries either. It’s also about to get better (I trust) with Leopard coming out in the next month or so. What helps the O/S and Apple are the third party app’s found on the mac.

Some of them are Mac only exclusives and it’s no secret that I craved a couple of the app’s so much that they helped seal my move to the mac platform. Many are tightly integrated with the mac platform so much so that they feel like part of the O/S which I can’t say for many app’s on the Windows platform. Another little push came from Parallels, virtualisation software that meant I could move to the Mac but be safe in the knowledge that a fast and fully working XP was merely a button click away. I also think there’s a myth surrounding third party app’s. Before I switched I was told by a few people and also a lot of blogs that there isn’t as much shareware/freeware/third party on the Mac platform. While that’s true from a quantity point of view I’ve found the quality and range of app’s to be excellent and there is nothing that I feel I’ve missed in moving platforms.

So there you have it. A happy switcher one year on. During that year I’ve also seen a couple of friends move to the Mac who also have similarly positive experiences. Maybe it’s the Apple halo effect, maybe it’s the positive press that Apple garner on the web or maybe it’s just that the alternative to Windows and PC hardware is a better end user experience – can so many people be wrong? There are definitely some issues, it’s not a platform for everyone (gamers for example) and not everything is wonderful but in general a Mac makes for a great home computer that I would highly recommend. A few months after buying an iMac I also bought a Macbook Pro which again has been a good investment. Next Apple product will probably be an iPhone but not the first version. I reckon I can hold off until a 3G phone comes out in 2008. My only regret about switching a year ago is this…I wish I had done it sooner.

JBL Creature II’s

Creature IIMy old external speakers failed so I picked up some new speakers for the iMac yesterday. The JBL Creature II’s have picked up a lot of good press over the last year so i was confident of a good sound. However I wasn’t prepared for just how…bad they sounded. I always thought the left/right speakers were too small and my gut feel looks to be right – they were very very poor.

No matter what settings I used I either got a very tinny sound with some or too much bass, or I got no treble at all with the same mix of bass. Very disappointing and they were returned this morning for a full refund. I did luck out though – the old speakers have started to work again (they were throwing out a lot of static with no inputs) so that will do for now. However I’ll keep my eye’s on these Audioengine A2’s (cheers Shakeel for the tip) as they look ideal for my needs.
as they look to be exactly what I’m after and they’ve had good reviews so far. Just not out in the UK yet.

So despite good reviews elsewhere, from what I heard with my own ears I would recommend staying well away from these speakers.

Apple comes to Glasgow

08:10 – Myself, Graham and Roy meet-up and head towards the Apple store. The plan was to get a breakfast, get to the store before 9, enjoy the opening and for Roy to buy one of the new iMacs. We walked down and could see around 100 folk queued up already. Looks like it was going to be popular. We strolled around looking for food like desperado’s. Central station came to the rescue. Tasty (but expensive) bacon rolls later we headed back to the queue.

08:35 – Back in the queue we start to look around and notice…geeks. Obviously quite passionate and loyal to the Apple brand but the geek quotient per square yard must have been higher than even Maplins during a new catalogue launch. The most ardent fanboys could be spotted quite easily. The queue had also grown to around 300 odd people with more arriving thick and fast.

08:45 – A cheer goes up as the doors to the store are finally opened. Seemingly they were left closed even during last nights friends and family invite – they had to use the side door – as they wanted the doors to be opened for the first time this morning.

08:53 – All the staff come out to cheer the folk in the queue. The queue cheers back. A nice if slightly cheesy touch. You could see that the staff were pretty pumped up for the opening as were some of the people in the queue who looked visibly excited.

DSC03297.JPG

09:00 – Doors open, massive cheering and the people at the front start to enter. As the queue starts to move we get our first view into the store. As people enter they are cheered on by two rows of staff handing out free t-shirts. The cheering continued for everyone entering while we were in the store as well. Lot’s of energy and built up quite a good atmosphere.

09:15 – We’re in. I feel a bit embarrassed at the cheering but no matter – we’re here – lets get buying.

09:15-09:45 – The store is very nicely modernised. It feels a bit basic in some areas especially when you walk in and see the basic display tables with lot’s of iPods. However it feels spacious and the glass staircase is a triumph. I’m sure on a normal day the store will feel a lot less cramped than it did today. Roy did pick up his iMac and myself and Graham bought one of the new keyboards.

09:45 – Leaving the store and the queue still has at least a couple of hundred people in it with more still joining. Roy gets congratulated by members of the queue for his purchase. is there any other brand that attracts this loyalty? Looking around at the the trendy clothing stores what must they be wondering? Why didn’t their opening attract hundreds on a damp and dreary Saturday morning? Imagine how busy the iPhone launch will be!

Roy leaving with new toys

So a great store and I’m glad there’s now one in Glasgow. It will make buying far too easy though. Although I was at first put off by the whooping and cheering it’s actually nice to see something a bit different and also to see such a passionate user community get a store to match their enthusiasm. Can’t see the same happening at a PC World launch for example. The staff themselves seemed helpful although understandably busy. I also liked the mobile till units that the staff used – makes purchasing a lot easier. Damn 😉

As for the keyboard, it’s a lot comfier to use than the existing one that came with the older iMac. It’s also helps accuracy, I guess as the keys actually have more space between them. I also prefer the shorter throw each key has. Not a bad way to spend £30 seeing as it’s the primary interface to the iMac. I’ve lost the wireless keyboard but gained two fast USB 2.0 ports that are easy to get to. I can understand why people were concerned initially about the keyboard but after spending a couple of hours with it I’m convinced that it’s a better design. Hopefully it won’t show the keyboard fluff as badly as the last design.

Almost forgot, full set of pictures from this morning available on Flickr.

.Mac Web Galleries

After all the hype I decided to try out the new Apple web galleries so I uploaded my first album. The upload speed seemed pretty sluggish as did the loading of the actual album on visiting the web page. Presentation on the website is superb though and it’s a great way of showing off your photo’s.

First .Mac Web Gallery

One of the nicest ways of viewing the album is using the carousel. This is like coverflow in iTunes and allows you to scroll through the pictures. Only annoyance is it takes a while for pictures later in the album to get the high res sharper version of the photo so you can spend a while looking at fairly fuzzy pictures. Another feature I like is that as you move the mouse over the album photo in the gallery page it flicks through the images in the album – very slick and mirrors the functionality seen in iPhoto.

While many have seen this as a Flickr competitor for me they are two different beasts. .Mac Web Galleries allow you to easily upload albums of photo’s (and also video’s) and let your friends view or download them. Flickr lets you do the same but with far more disk space and has a whole community supporting it with forums, groups and commenting. It also has far stronger tools for editing sets, albums and also supporting geo-tagging. One feature that .mac has got is photo uploading – letting people upload photo’s to your album which then sync back to iPhoto. I find that pretty odd as thats something I don’t think I would ever use. Due to space and speed alone I’ll be sticking with Flickr – be nice to see them up their game when it comes to presenting albums though.