macBlogger - Apple Mac Blog

If you are on the road as much as I am you are not always able to get to the internet in a comfortable way. On a mac you are even more limited because the airport card doesnt scan that much. Now with coconut WIFI things get easier.

CoconutWiFi displays you a small aqua-bubble at the top of your screen which indicates whether you’re in range of a wireless network or not.The app also tells you if the wireless networks in your range are encrypted or open, so you won’t miss the next open wireless network any more.

There are some more nice apps. Those i will try to cover that in the upcoming posts.
Btw suggestions for nice software (preferable Open Source) are welcome.

Robbert

I’m not a big fan of any of the US or UK based Apple Mac adverts. This one gets my goat a bit.

It leads you to believe that all Macs ‘just work’ out of the box. The only Mac which actually works out of the box without any configuration is the iMac range.

One power cable is all you need to get started, the mouse and keyboard are then naturally plugged into the unit but there are wireless options available for both keyboards and mice via bluetooth. Both the Macbook and Macbook Pro are laptops so obviously they are good to go but they don’t really count because all laptops share this same amazing feature! The Mac Mini comes without a monitor, keyboard or mouse so that’s a non starter and of course the Mac Pro comes packaged minus a monitor.

So technically there is only one Mac which comes ready ‘out of the box’.

The PC in the advert above explains to his eager Mac friend that he can’t play because he needs to download some drivers, wipe the trial software from his system and finally he needs to read the manual. When I first booted up my iMac I had to update the software and I also had remove some trial software from the system, ironically the trial software in question is Microsoft Office.

I didn’t get a proper manual with the Mac either. I didn’t even get one of those annoying little tours which drive me nuts whenever I setup PCs in work. When the Mac was fully operational I actually sat in my seat looking at the screen trying to figure out if any tutorial or short video clips were going to appear to assist me. No. Nothing appeared. So what did I do? I consulted the tiny manual which accompanied the box. It contained very little information. Luckily enough there is a PDF which contains a good bit of detail available on the hard drive called the iMac Users Guide (spotlight is great for searching). I hate reading manuals on monitors. I would have printed the manual but I don’t have a compatible printer for Mac.

Mmm, I wonder if I was using a PC would I have this problem? I could probably go online and download a driver.

Apple Macs aren’t as ‘out of the box’ as they let on.

There are unconfirmed reports speculating that Apple are about to close up shop on two of their most affordable desktop releases. The young and headless Mac Mini and the 17″ iMac are soon to be binned. One of the major barriers for potential purchasers of Mac systems is price. Macs have always been dubbed as expensive hobbyist toys (or along those lines anyway).

The Mac Mini, which is currently available onwards from ¢629 to ¢809, was meant to accommodate those who were financially restricted.

There is some speculation that Apple conceived the Mac mini under pressure from shareholders who wanted a sub-$800 Mac, but never really saw much in the design itself. It’s almost as if the mini stood in direct contrast to Apple’s fundamentals from the get-go.

I’m surprised at Apple’s decision, if this is true of course, because the Mini has great potential. I don’t think it’s been marketed as well as what it should have been. For money you can attach a Mini to your front room TV and use the TV screen as a monitor. This will allow you to not only browse the net but you can also use the Mini as both a DVD player and as a Hi-Fi system. The Mini is also very portable and can of course be hooked up a normal PC monitor and can be used as a desktop.

Introducing Apple TV.

This little guy has stolen the limelight from the Mini but it’s nowhere near as feature rich and powerful as the Mini. There is nothing on the Apple TV that you couldn’t do with the Mini. It doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s just poor marketing. They should have evolved and promoted the Mini more instead of introducing a sub standard off shoot of it.

I’m not a happy camper. I was looking forward to tracking the development of the Mini in the hope of some day soon purchasing one and using it as a home entertainment system.

When the time came for me to choose which iMac I was going to purchase there were only three options. A 17”, which I thought was a bit small by today’s standards, a 20” which I ultimately bought and a 24” which I couldn’t afford and felt it was a bit of over kill. Those extra 3” over the entry level 17” are a godsend. Not only for the improved screen size and the more cinematic feel but also because the 17” looks set to be discontinued.

The decision to axe the smallest iMac comes as display prices continue to track downwards, making the cost difference for Apple between a 17-inch display and a 20-inch display almost negligible. Demand from display customers for larger sizes coupled with more productive manufacturing plants in Asia have been the guiding factors in those lower prices.

Eliminating the low-end iMac will also improve logistics for Apple, which will need to track and stock considerably fewer parts.

This is surprising if true. It doesn’t seem logical to remove the entry level iMac and replace it…..well…with nothing. I realise that the iPhone is the new darling and it requires a lot of TLC but you would hope that Apple would have an affordable desktop solution on the market in the not too distant future. Apple are getting a lot of good press and more and more home users are making the switch. Not all of them can afford to pay more than ¢1,000 on a system. Apple are raising the bar on price but they’re not satisfying growing demand. Removing the Mini and the 17″ iMac is a dangerous move.

This weekend I ventured down to Waterford to visit some friends, I was accompanied by my Macbook. Chris has being contemplating splashing out on either a Macbook or Macbook Pro as a direct replacement for his laptop. One of his colleagues in work uses a Macbook Pro and he has fallen for its charms. My Macbook is the one with the lowest spec of the range and he had concerns as to whether it is powerful enough to use for development purposes, i.e for Photoshop and all that lark.

Mac enthusiasts harp on about the ease at which you can convert a Windows user to Mac by simply allowing them to explore a Mac’s features. If you give a toy to a kid and take it away they will probably end up in tears. Chris didn’t cry but he looked disturbed when Damien wanted to play with the Mac. Then Linda wanted to play with the Mac and Damien went into a huff. Larry got in on the action as well. He installed Vista on his Compaq on the same weekend as I visited; lets just say it didn’t go well. They were enthralled with the Mac. They each want one. It’s easy to fall in love with OS X. Damien has become so infatuated with the Macbook that it is on his hit list of purchases. He is trying to decide between it and a Dell lappy running Ubuntu. Get the Mac! We can be macBuddies.

The good news for Chris’s issues with the Macbook’s spec is the recent development which sees Apple  doubling the RAM on the least powerful Macbook. It now stands at 1GB. That’s more than enough for processor intensive applications such as Photoshop/Flash etc…

I’m going to upgrade the 512mb’s of RAM on my Macbook in the not to distant future. I have zero tolerance for egg timers or spinning rainbow circle things (I’m not sure what the egg timer is called on the Mac). Some boards.ie Mac users have recommended Crucial as a supplier of Mac hardware. It’s easy to know why based on these prices. Less than $90 for 2GB’s of RAM. I can’t believe it!

The Apple website provides some information on how to calibrate your Macbook’s battery for increased performance. The article on Apple’s site explains that the MacBook’s ‘battery has an internal microprocessor that provides an estimate of the amount of energy in the battery as it charges and discharges. The battery needs to be recalibrated from time to time to keep the onscreen battery time and percent display accurate.’

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
3. Disconnect the power adapter with the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, you will see the low battery warning dialog on the screen.
4. Continue to keep your computer on until it goes to sleep. Save all your work and close all applications when the battery gets very low, before the computer goes to sleep.
5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

Here are some more tips which will help preserve your MacBook’s Battery Life

1. Disable Bluetooth if it’s not in use. Simply right click on the Bluetooth icon and select ‘Bluetooth off’
2. Disable your Macbook’s Airport if it isn’t in use either.
3. Turn down the brightness levels.
4. Close unnecessarily opened applications.
5. Alter your Energy Saving settings. I have the display set to timeout after 30 seconds of inactivity and the Macbook to go into sleep mode after 2 minutes of inactivity.

It was only after about a month of steady Mac usage that I first noticed the # symbol missing from the keyboard. I had to do a double and even triple take to confirm that the key doesn’t feature exclusively on any of the numerical keys. It’s a bit odd that it doesn’t feature as it is frequently used in web design to declare colour values.

To display the # symbol press the option/alt key and 3 at the same time.

Magic!

Hi guys. It’s always awkward writing the first few posts but I have decided to open up and give a brief introduction about this blog and my own background.

I am a recent Windows to Apple immigrant. Up to approx two months ago I had never purchased any product named after a fruit. My previous PC was custom built and featured a dual boot between Windows XP and Ubuntu. I pieced that PC together approx four years ago, as a result I was in need of an upgrade.

Vista was just about to hit the market in a blaze of glory……the blaze was caused by it crash landing. It was receiving a frosty reception from all corners. It’s clear that if you want to run Vista, your PC needs to be very high end.

From looking at video casts of Vista in action, and from using it first hand at the Microsoft launch of Vista in Crooke Park, it became clear that MS obtained a lot of inspiration from Apple’s OS X operating system. I estimated that to setup a PC capable of running Vista efficiently would cost approx £1,200. Why spend that much on the imitator when you buy the originally amazing OS X?

Ultimately, it was MS’s inability to make a suitable Operating System, which drove me to Mac.

I have being using Windows most of my life. During college, at work and at home, I have endured them for too long. My college days are behind me but I’m going to be using Windows based systems in work, I can’t get past that. Using PCs became so boring to me. I wanted to try something new. I didn’t want to be stuck in front of XP both at work and at home. I wanted to differentiate between working in my office and working at home on my personal stuff.

I purchased a 20″ iMac from the Apple Store back in Feburay. Since then I also picked up a 5th generation 30gb iPod Video player and a MacBook. A wireless Mighty Mouse accompanies my MacBook and I also have an Incase laptop bag.

macBlogger is where I’m going to post about my experiences with running Apple products. I’m fairly new to Apple software and hardware so you can expect a lot of noivce-y posts but I wouldn’t rule out some techy posts in the near future as I become more familiar and adventurous with Apple systems.

If you would like to post about your own experiences with Apple, then please contact me. I would love for more people to become involved with macBlogger and for them to be able to share their pleasures. I spoke to Robbet Hamburg (MAC OSX)a few months ago about contributing to this blog and he was interested at the time. Hopefully he is still willing to provide some assistance.

As you have probably already noticed, I have a main blog available at Cormac Moylan dot com. There is a small Apple-Mac section on that blog, however this blog is now fully dedicated to my experiences with Apple Macs.

This site is hosted on Worpdress, it uses iTheme as its template and is hosted in Ireland by Blacknight Solutions.

I hope you enjoy macBlogger.
Cormac