macBlogger - Apple Mac Blog

Apple announced a revised 32GB model of their increasingly popular iPod Touch last night. A few of the guys in work are lucky enough to have the 8GB and 16GB models and I have recently fallen in love with them (the iPods, not the guys).

I didn’t want to dive into purchasing a Touch when they were first released because of the small hard drive size but the 32GB model will more than suffice for my music collection. I currently have a 30GB video iPod and I’m yet to fill it up.

I’m giving serious consideration to purchasing the 32GB Touch.

Mmmm, do I need it? Mail, Safari, Wireless Connection, Maps, Youtube, extra 2GBs of space on top of my current iPod, Coverflow, iTunes, Touch Screen Interface, Notes….. all nice things.

My flatemate is going to New York in a forthsnight time. I checked the price difference between purchasing the 32GB Touch in Ireland and America and it boiled down to a €140 saving if I asked him to pick me one up on the sly.

32GB Touch from the States = €320 ($499)
32GB Touch from Ireland = €459

I knew when I purchased my MacBook that the 512MB of RAM which it came with wouldn’t suffice for my needs. I held off until I could justify upgrading the RAM as I have the luxury of owning two Macs. I use my iMac for anything intensive and my MacBook as a second machine. As my iMac is home alone in Cork and I’m up in the “Big Smoke” of exotic Dublin, the time had finally come to upgrade.

And thus began a little bit of research into the matter of upgrading RAM on a MacBook..

The first thing you need to do is to find out what type of RAM comes installed on your MacBook. You can check this by clicking on the Apple Icon and by going to ‘About This Mac’. The second row will indicate the type of RAM you have. In my case I have 2GB 667 HMz DDR2 SDRAM (previously I had 512MB).

Once you know what you need to buy you need to find a reseller. Steer well clear of Apple when buying RAM. A quick search for RAM at Applestore.ie indicates that 2GB of RAM would cost me €290!

Crucial are by far the cheapest supplier of RAM. I purchased the same 2GB of RAM which Apple had priced at €290 for €70. That’s more than a 400% difference in price.

The Crucial website is extermely user friendly when selecting your product. They have a step by step ’shop assistant’ which guides you to the correct product before checking out. Be sure to avoid any confusion by double checking your processor type when selecting your model as there are Intel Core Duo and Intel Core 2 Duo types available.

RAM has never been cheaper so go for as much RAM as you can afford.

I ordered my 2GBs of RAM on a Tuesday evening from Crucial’s American based store and I had the package in my hands on a Friday morning in Dublin! I was extremely impressed with their speedy delivery!

The actual RAM installation was an absolute breeze. The only thing you should be made aware of are Apple’s use of tiny screws. You will need a screwdriver such as a Phillips size 00 screwdriver to complete the job. There is an excellent guide on how to install RAM on a MacBook on apples’ site.

When placing the RAM within the slot be sure to apply firm pressure in order to get it into the bracket provided. If you place your fingers at either end of the inserted RAM and if you notice that you can slightly nudge the RAM then you haven’t applied enough pressure.

I have a single GB of RAM on my iMac and no doubt I’ll be upgrading that in the not too distant future as well.

Steve loves his keynote presentations!

Mr. Jobs is currently in the middle of giving his presentation at the Apple Media Event where he is raving on about the updated iMacs. The iMac range is to be built from aluminum and glass and will come in two sizes, 20″ and 24″ and has four models in total. There is no 17″ but the iMacs will have an entry-level iMac, two mid-range iMacs and a top of the range iMac.

The retro looking iMacs are getting tanked up on hardware too…

• 20-inch, 1680 x 1050 LCD
• 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 1GB RAM
• 250GB SATA
• 8x SuperDrive
• ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT

• 20-inch, 1680 x 1050 LCD
• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 1GB RAM
• 320GB SATA
• 8x SuperDrive
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

• 24-inch, 1900 x 1200 LCD
• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 1GB RAM
• 320GB SATA
• 8x SuperDrive
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

• 24-inch, 1900 x 1200 LCD
• 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 2GB RAM
• 500GB SATA
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory

Check out the Specs page on the Apple site for more info.
Update: The Euro prices are after coming through!

The entry level iMac is priced at $1,199 (€1,199.00), the mid-range at $1,499 (€1,449.00) and $1,799 (€1,749), while the top of the range iMac will cost $2,289 (€2,219.00). We will have the Euro price later..

The new keyboards have the same brushed steal look as Pro range and the keyboard is 3 times as narrow as the current one. I’m not sure what the new mice look like.

The images above were posted on a thread on a Mac Forum I go to. When more information (and a video) is made available, I’ll post them up.
Edit: The images are taken from Engadget. They are live blogging the media event.

The new iMacs are available to order as of today, but we’re not certain if it’s US only. The Apple store is currently closed for business while they update, so the new iMacs must be going global. The iMac page on the Apple site hasn’t been updated yet with any information from today’s media event.

I’m getting sick of updating this post. I’ll come back to the new iMacs once the dust has settled.

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.

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!