October 23, 2004

My Free iPod

As a perk for being an editor at ForeverGeek, I got to put my referral link on our main Free iPods entry, which comes up in the top five when you search for Free iPods on Google. So obviously it got a lot of traffic and a lot of sign-ups through it.

After placing my order on 9/11/04, I received it yesterday on 10/22/04, so it does take a while to receive. But hey, it’s free so I’m not complaining.

If you are interested in getting your own free iPod, just go to FreeiPods.com and sign up for an account, complete one of the free offers (I recommend the Blockbuster one because it’s free and easy to cancel online), then get 5 friends to do the same thing. Once you do that you can place your order for the free iPod. You don’t even have to pay for shipping. The entry at Forever Geek has a lot more details, if you are interested.

Update… Now Gratis is offering free Photo iPods. You have to sign up 10 people, but the iPod Photo is worth $500 and has a 40gb hard drive, so it’s pretty a pretty sweet deal too. Sign up here

Here are some pictures of mine:

July 26, 2004

Apple eMac for Sale

Sold!!

I have put my 1ghz Apple eMac up for sale on eBay. It’s set at buy it now for $700, or less than that for bidding of course. Shipping is $46 with insurance, since it’s a 63lb. box.

It’s my first auction on ebay, so I don’t have any feedback, but if you regular this blog you know who I am anyway. :)

It’s a great little machine, I just upgraded to a dual G5 and don’t need this one anymore.

Bid on the eMac at eBay

July 18, 2004

My new G5

When I placed the order for my G5, Eric at Apple Sales assured me that it would be here by Friday, and he was correct. So I took half the day off from work so I could be here when the FedEx man arrived, and would have more time to play with the new machine and wouldn’t have to wait until 6:00pm to see it!

It was here when I got home, so after running around in circles and giggling like a little school girl for a few minutes, I opened the box and got everything setup. Here are a few pictures of my setup as it is now:

In the top picture you can see my eMac which I’m still selling, my 19” Mitsubishi Monitor, Klipsch speakers, etc.

The second pic obviously shows the pretty little G5.

And in the last one you can see the G5, my external LaCie 160gb Hard Drive, the Subwoofer for the speakers, my battery backup, the EyeTV, etc.

Setup

Setup was of course a breeze… I just unboxed it and plugged in my MX700 wireless mouse, the USB hub, power cord, keyboard, etc. It came with a DVI -> VGA adapter so that I could use my CRT out of the box. One thing that was kind of limiting was having only 2 USB ports on the back. That pretty much only leaves room for the keyboard and mouse, though usually you’d plug the mouse into the keyboard I suppose. But luckily I had a USB hub already, so it wasn’t a problem. Before I hooked it up I just had to pull the latch on the back and pull down the side door to see the insides of the machine, and man, it is the most beautiful computer innards I’ve ever seen. There are no cords hanging all over the place, everything is just where it’s supposed to be. Everything is easy to access and can be inter-changed by only pulling a lever. Truly amazing.

Speed

In comparison to my eMac and Powerbook, well, there is no comparison. This is one speedy computer. All programs respond instantly, even Garageband, iPhoto, etc. I haven’t spent much time in Photoshop or Dreamweaver yet, but the time I have spent with them, they seem very responsive and fast.

I ripped a DVD, and when compressing the video to fit on a CD, it was going at around 1.8x, almost twice as fast as real-time. On the eMac it usually compresses the video at around .7x or .8x. So instead of taking all night to compress, it only takes a couple of hours. Compressing the audio for a feature-length movie took about 9 minutes, whereas on the eMac it usually takes 25 minutes.

The “xBench”http://xbench.com/ scores for the G5 were around 201, whereas on my powerbook they were under 100. And during the G5 testing I had Safari, Mail, iChat, iTunes, and Quicksilver open.

Needless to say, this machine is really fast and is worth every penny.

Halo is quick and good looking. I can run it at 1280 x 1024 with no skipping frames at all. It’s very smooth and fluid. Doom 3 will be a different story of course, but for anything less than that, this machine smokes.

If you’re looking for a Mac and already have a screen or don’t mind purchasing a Cinema Display or a cheap CRT, this is the Mac to get if you can afford it. The G5 is on a totally different level than the G4’s in the other Macs, plus you have the option to upgrade the machine that just isn’t that possible with the eMacs and iMacs.

July 12, 2004

Dude, you’re getting a G5

I woke up Sunday morning and thought to myself “Hm, I wonder if I’d qualify for an Apple loan today?”*. So I filled out the online approval form, and wonder of wonders, I was approved. So my next thought was, “Hm. Now that Apple has given me all of this money to spend, I should probably buy something!”. So I went to the Apple site and started looking around as if it had been my first visit to the site. Things look a lot different when you actually have a chance of buying them! I skimmed past the iMacs, as they aren’t much faster than the eMac I have now, plus there will be a new one coming out in September. I already have a Powerbook, so the Powerbooks and iBooks were out. I already had the eMac and it’s too slow. So, that left me with the G5! My credit line was for $2,000, so that was also my budget. The cheapest new G5 is currently $1,999 for a dual 1.8ghz G5 with only 256mb of RAM and a 80gb hard drive. That is just silly for a machine of that speed. 256mb of RAM for a dual processor G5? How silly!

So I next set my eyes on the Apple refurbished store, where they feature computers that have been returned, or damaged and later repaired. They have all of the same warranties as a brand new machine, and they are eligible for Apple Care as well. And some say you actually have a better chance of getting a good machine because you know they have been personally inspected, whereas brand new machines coming off the line may only be checked for quality every 10 or so machines. (that number is a guess, I have no idea how the quality control process works) The refurbished store showed me a shiny new dual G5 1.8ghz machine with 512mb RAM and a 160gb hard drive. It’s twice the machine as the brand new one, and for only $1,799! I think this is because it is a “Revision B” machine, whereas the new 1.8ghz machine is a “Revision C” machine.

I added the machine to my shopping cart quickly because while I was shopping around on the Apple store, the 1.6ghz G5 disappeared! I didn’t want my machine to disappear before I could buy it, so I went ahead and added it to the cart. But when I did, it said that it would be shipping in 30 days! This was obviously not acceptable, because I am not a patient person when it comes to waiting for new Macs to arrive at my house. So I called the Apple store and spoke with Eric, who assured me that it would ship on Monday! I went ahead and completed the order through Eric at the Apple store, because he said he got a commission and begged me to let him place the order for me. After he looked up my loan number, he gave me my order number, and sent my new beast of a Mac right to my door!

It should be shipping out today, and will arrive on Friday, as it’s coming ground from Sacramento.

I will be plugging it into my new 19” Mitsubishi CRT monitor, which I’ve been using as a second-monitor for my Powerbook. I’ll post pictures of “the Opening” for the 2 of you that would like to see it.

So, now that I have the King of All Computers on the way, I will be putting my eMac up for sale. I’ll post it here to see if there is any interest before throwing it up on eBay for the masses. I’ll post details and pictures of the eMac soon, but in case there is any early interest, it’s a 1ghz G4 with 256mb of RAM, 80gb hard drive, CD-RW, all original cables, the original box, manuals, etc. It’s in perfect condition. I’ll throw in iLife ‘04 as well (the boxed version). I’d like to get $675 out of it, but if someone makes a reasonable offer it won’t necessarily be refused.

*Actually, my wife and I were talking about selling my iPod and buying a 40gb one because my music won’t fit on my 10gb one anymore, and she suggested I try to apply for an Apple loan. I didn’t think I would be approved, because I wasn’t approved the last time I tried, but I did anyway because I always do what she says. :) So, thanks honey! Hope you don’t regret making the suggestion!

May 05, 2004

iTMS Music Video Extractor

I haven’t mentioned the new version of iTunes (4.5) yet, but it has some cool new features, especially the new hi-res Quicktime music videos and movie trailers. But as it is now, you have to download them every time you want to watch them.

Not anymore!

iTunes Extractor allows you to save the quicktime movies to your hard drive with a single click, after the movie has finished downloading. It works like a charm!

I’m not sure if it’s against Apple’s terms of service to save those videos, so you might want to grab that app before it “disappears”.

April 24, 2004

Mac users are going to hell.

This is probably the funniest thing I’ve read in ages… Evolutionism Propaganda (Scroll down to the Apple Macintosh sub-heading)

This company is well known for its cult-like following. It isn’t much of a stretch to say that it is a cult. Consider co-founder and leader Steve Jobs’ constant exhortation through advertising (i.e. mind control) that its followers should “think different”. We have to ask ourselves: “think different than whom or what?” The disturbing answer is that they want us to think different than our Christian upbringing, to reject all the values that we have been taught and to heed not the message of the Lord Jesus Christ!

AAAAAhahahahaha… Seriously that is just too funny. The article says that Apple computer is promoting darwinism and satanism because OSX is based on Darwin, the old Unix OS. It also runs “daemons”, and has a “secret code” to set permissions called chmod 666! Holy crap. Seriously that is just the funniest thing I’ve ever read. Read the article. Seriously. It’s absolutely hysterical.

Thanks a lot to SkinnyJ for the link! You made my day!

April 12, 2004

Virtual PC

I’ve been using ieCapture lately to test my web sites on Windows browsers, and it’s been working great. There are a few faults though, mainly that you can’t scroll the page or interact with any mouseovers, and the service can be a little slow if a lot of people are using it at once. I’m certainly not complaining though, it’s a fantastic service and I thank Dan Vine every time I go there by clicking on as many ads as I can, but I needed something a little more flexible and speedy, so I got Virtual PC setup on my 12” Powerbook with an installation of Windows 2000.

If you haven’t heard of Virtual PC before, it’s a software application that emulates a Windows PC. The Virtual PC software actually only emulates a PC processor, and has nothing to do directly with Windows. You have to buy Windows separate, and can install any flavor of it that you like into your little “Virtual PC”. You can also install other PC operating systems like the PC version of Linux. (And by PC I mean an Intel/AMD computer).

I installed Windows 2000 because XP is bloated and slow, and because of the speed decrease when emulating a completely different computer platform, I wanted to have all the speed I could get.

I had heard that Virtual PC was pretty slow, but I am actually pretty impressed with its speed on my Mac. You definitely couldn’t run any 3d games on it with any playable frame rates, but for productivity apps like the MS Office suite and other general business applications, it would work just fine. It’s also great for testing web sites, because all of the browsers run very well on it.

As you can see in the screenshot, I have Safari running on the Mac, with a Virtual PC window open running Firefox, Opera, and IE 5. With a bit of hacking, I can setup IE 5.5 and IE 6.0 to run on the Windows system as well. This means I can test my sites on basically every popular browser with full interactivity, scrolling, javascript interaction, etc. all from a single Mac laptop! I could also easily install a Linux partition into Virtual PC and test sites on Mozilla and Konqueror for that OS as well. I’m still pretty amazed that this is possible.

I’m sure there are a lot of features and possibilities of this that I haven’t fully grasped yet since I just installed this last night, but even for the sole purpose of testing sites, this is a really great thing to have! And that’s probably what I’ll be using it for 99% of the time anyway, as I’ve never really come across a Windows application that I just have to have that isn’t available on the Mac.

The screenshot I showed is of Windows running in a window, but you can also run it full screen, so it would be like working on a regular PC laptop, even though it’s actually a Mac. You can easily share files between the Mac and the Virtual PC OSs, and Windows easily accesses the network connections as well. I haven’t tried printing or anything like that yet, but I would imagine it is possible and easy to setup.

So if you are a web designer looking for a way to test your site cross-platform, look no further than a Mac running Virtual PC. And if you have thought about buying a Mac in the past but were afraid you’d lose your favorite program, or have a Windows-only program that you have to use at work, now you have no excuses!

March 26, 2004

DLO Jam Jacket Mini Review

I’m just reviewing all kinds of stuff these days!

We got one of these DLO Jam Jacket Mini cases for Jenee’s new iPod Mini. You can order them on Everything iPod if you decide you want one. They have a lot of other different kinds of cases as well, and they shipped out my order the next day after I ordered, so they seem to have pretty quick service.

I couldn’t find any decent pictures of the case, and it’s in California right now with my wife so I can’t take any at the moment. I hate it when e-commerce sites don’t have good pictures. That’s one downfall of the Everything iPod store, their pictures are terrible.

Basically it is just a silicone sleeve that you squeeze onto the iPod. The entire top is open, allowing you to access the headphone jack and hold switch, and this is also how you slide it on. Then there is a hole for the scroll wheel, and a hole in the bottom for the dock connector.

It’s easy to put on, just stick the iPod in it and pull it on like a sock. A very grippy, sticky sock. You wouldn’t want to wear a sock like this, but it’s good for the iPod.

The silicone is maybe an 1/8th of an inch thick, and provides good shock protection from minor bumps. My big iPod doesn’t have a case, and I’m always worried it’s going to damage it by sitting on the shelf in the Element when we go over bumps. This case would absorb most of that shock. It won’t protect it from major drops very much of course.

It also makes the iPod “sticky” because of the silicone, which keeps it from sliding around in the car, or being accidentally brushed off of a table or desk.

The hole for the scroll wheel fits just right and allows complete access to all of the controls.

You can still plug the iPod into the sync cable with the case on, which is nice. I’m not sure if you can set it in a dock or not with it on though, because I don’t have one. I would guess that you can’t though.

This case is also cheaper than most, at only $20.

So what isn’t to like about it?

• You can’t use the belt clip that comes with the iPod when you have the case on, because of the added size.

• Other accessories like the Dock connector may not fit properly with the case on.

• It’s kind of a pain to take off because it sticks to the iPod so well.

• The thin layer of silicone that covers the screen sucks and makes it really hard to see the screen. We may cut it out of ours, because it’s just not worth it.

• Because the silicone is so sticky it picks up dirt and dust a lot and looks dirty pretty quickly. The part covering the screen is really really sticky. The part covering the body isn’t so bad.

• The case mutes the color of your iPod, and covers up any custom engraving you had put on it.

• There is nothing covering the dock connector when you aren’t using it, which could allow dust and grime into the fragile workings of the connector.

But overall it’s a nice little case, and pretty affordable as well.

iPod Mini Mini-Review

My wife has occasion to listen to an iPod more than I do (she drives a lot, and also works at a quiet little retail shop where she has plenty of time to listen to music), but I didn’t like sharing mine (10gb 3rd Generation) because I might need it sometime. So the only logical solution was to order one just for her. So we did.

As you can see, not only is my wife really, really hot, but the iPod Mini is really fuckin’ small! Sure, when you read the specs a 1/2 inch may not seem like much, but when you hold it in your hand it really does feel Mini. I’m totally jealous.

Obviously the only drawback is the lack of storage (in comparison to the other iPods anyway. 4 gigs is still a hell of a lot of space for a device that small). I have about 8 gigs of music, so I need to stick with my 10 gig model for a while, but if they release new Minis with say a 8 or 10 gig hard drive soon, I will definitely sell mine and go for the smaller size.

Not only is the iPod Mini fiendishly small and cool looking, it’s also a lot more functional than the “big” iPods in my opinion.

Controls

As you may know, the “big” iPods feature four buttons across the top of the device that control the menu, play/pause, and next/previous tracks. They are also extremely sensitive, and can be pressed on accident just by trying to pick up the unit. It’s also easy to press the wrong button when trying to find it by touch with your thumb. There is no click when you press the buttons, they are instead activated as soon as you lightly touch them.

The iPod Mini has the buttons built into the scroll wheel itself due to size constraints (it’s really small!), but they also make an audible and “feelable” click when pressed. The scroll wheel is still touch sensitive, but all of the buttons click when you press them. This makes it a ton easier to navigate and use the iPod Mini without looking at it.

The hold switch (on the top of the unit, to keep the buttons from being pressed) is also much easier to use than on the “big” iPod in my opinion. On the big one you have to slide the switch with your fingernail or press down really hard to get it to move because it is almost flush with the surface of the iPod. But the hold switch on the iPod Mini sticks up a little more and has sharper edges, allowing you to easily “catch” the edge of it with your thumb and operate it.

Casing

The case of the iPod Mini is much nicer than it appears in pictures. I was a little unsure about all of the wacky colors when the Mini’s were first announced, but when you see it in person it is actually quite nice. (I still don’t like the looks of the gold one though!) The back of the case is the same material as the front, so it doesn’t scratch and show fingerprints like the shiny chrome backing of the original iPods. Since we ordered directly from Apple, we got free laser engraving on the back as well, which looks like it was done with the same machine that does the etching of the Apple logo and other wording, so it matches perfectly and blends right in with the rest of the design.

Software

As far as I can tell the software for the iPod Mini is exactly the same as the originals. One difference I noticed is that when the iPod is ready to be disconnected from the computer, it shows a big check mark on it saying that it’s ok to disconnect it. I don’t think the originals had that.

One irritating thing is the reset controls of the Mini though. According to Apple, you have to plug in the iPod to a wall socket in order to reboot it, which seems a little silly. My wife’s has gotten stuck once since we’ve had it, and we couldn’t figure out how to reset it. I’m not sure if she ever figured it out or not yet (she’s out of town so I could only walk her through it over the phone while she was at the airport). Hopefully the lock-ups will be very infrequent, or we may be calling up Apple to see what the problem is.

Extras

The Mini comes with a nice belt clip, which is easy to slide on and holds the device pretty tightly. You of course still have to be careful not to brush up against something when it’s on your belt and scratch the screen or metal casing. It also comes with a Firewire cable, as well as a USB 2.0 cable which most Windows users will use. The original iPods only came with the firewire cables, forcing you to either by a firewire card for your PC, or buy a USB 2.0 cable at an extra cost if you had a Windows machine.

There is also a wall-plug included in the box. You just plug the firewire cord into the little power adapter, and plug it straight into the wall to charge it. You can’t plug the USB 2.0 cord into the power adapter to charge it, so if you use that cord to sync to your PC, you’ll have to carry the firewire cable as well if you want to charge the iPod without plugging it into a computer.

Value

A lot of people complain that the iPod Mini is too expensive in comparison to the 15 gig model that is only $50 more. This is a valid concern if you have 10 or 15 gigs of music in your collection, but if you are just a casual music listener, or don’t mind manually managing the songs on your iPod rather than storing your entire collection on it, the iPod Mini is definitely an option to consider.

The size difference is significant, despite what you may first think after reading the specs on the Apple web site. If possible, look at an iPod Mini in person before saying “Oh, it’s just a 1/2” or so smaller than the original iPod, that doesn’t matter”.

The iPod Mini also comes with more accessories than the 15 gig model, including the USB 2.0 cord, and the belt clip.

Overall this is a completely incredible little device, and is worth every penny of that $250.

Leave it to Apple to make something as incredible as the original iPod look obsolete and “huge” in comparison to the new iPod Minis.

March 08, 2004

Apple’s Robot Repairmen

To my joy and astonishment, my firewire ports have started working again after they stopped working from what I guess was a power surge.

I rebooted the eMac again the other day after installing a system update, and I happened to notice that my iPod said “do not disconnect” which means that it’s mounted to the desktop. So I moved some windows out of the way, and sure enough, there was my iPod! I plugged in Cyclops, my firewire hard drive, and it came up as well, good as new.

My only explanation for this phenomenon is that there is a very small robot living inside of my eMac. This robot’s primary job is as a hunter. A hunter of dust bunnies. He patrols the insides of my computer looking for dust bunnies, and occasionally a herd of dust bunnies. Then he gets out his bunny hunting gun, and blows their damn heads off. The robot then takes their carcasses to the dust bunny disposal hole in the back of the computer, and ejects them from the premises.

Occasionally however, the robot has another duty. He is also a trained Apple Certified Repair Technician. So when my firewire ports died, and he had a break from killing dust bunnies, he floated over (yes he can float) to the firewire ports on the side of the computer and cleaned them, re-soldered some wires, checked the circuit-board, etc. After a few hours he had it all fixed up and notified me that his work was complete by popping up a window on my screen saying I needed to install the latest Airport software. He even notified me that I would have to reboot when the installation finished, because he knew that’s when I would notice that he had fixed my firewire ports.

I really don’t understand why Apple doesn’t make this robot repairman known to more people. It seems to me that it could be a really great feature to market and encourage Windows users to switch to the Mac. I mean it would all but eliminate the need for a dedicated IT staff and/or outsourced computer repairmen.

So if you’re in the market for a new computer, consider the Mac with its robot repairmen. Computers will invariably break down over time, whether it is a Mac or PC. The difference of course is that the Macs now come with their own internal IT staff to keep everything running for you.

I’m not sure if the robot repairmen come in every model of the Macintosh. I imagine there are different models of robots in each model of Mac though. For instance the robots for the Powerbooks and iBooks are very very small. They don’t float either, they crawl because there isn’t a lot of airspace in the innards of an Apple Laptop. An easy way to check to see if you have the robot repairman is to feel the left palm-rest of your Powerbook. If it is warm, you have a robot repairman. That is his living room where he spends most of his time.

The G5 also comes with a robot repairman, but because the G5 enclosure is so large, the robot is much larger. And because the robot is larger, he makes more noise, which is the reason for some of the loudness problems reported by a few G5 owners. He also creates a lot of heat by keeping himself floating inside the case, which is why the G5 requires so many fans. One for each room in the Robot’s “house”.

So before you file class-action lawsuits and go around complaining about the heat or noise of your Apple computer, consider what you would be giving up if you eliminated that noise or heat. If you think about it for a minute, I’m sure you will find that the small inconveniences are well worth the benefits.

March 01, 2004

Electricity Hates Me

The power went off then right back on this morning, and it may have surged as well. I turned the eMac back on after the power came up, and “Cyclops” my 160gb external hard drive wasn’t mounted to the desktop. I turned it off and on again, rebooted the eMac again, nothing. I plugged the firewire drive into the Powerbook, and it came right up, so luckily the drive isn’t fried. But I think my Firewire ports are. I tried plugging the firewire drive into both of them and it wouldn’t mount. I plugged in my iPod and it will charge, but it won’t mount either. I’m going to reinstall OSX tonight and see if it could be a software issue, but I doubt it. I’ve been wanting to reinstall everything anyway, because I installed a ton of software when I first got the Mac to try everything out, but there is a lot I don’t use anymore. So I want to start over now that I know more about the system.

If it’s not a software issue I guess I’ll have to call Apple and see what it’ll cost to fix. I don’t have Applecare on that machine, and I don’t think a power surge would be covered anyway. :( Sigh. I have bad luck with electricity.

I bought a 650v surge protector/battery backup from Apple this morning just to try to keep it from happening again. So now I will have 30 - 45 minutes to finish my work, save everything, and shut down before I lose battery life. It’s also a good surge protector, and has an unlimited warranty on any equipment hooked up to it. But I don’t really know how well those warranties stand up. I’m sure it’s quite difficult to actually get them to pay. But stopping the computer from just clicking off when the power goes out should be a lot better than what I have now, which is just a $30 power strip/surge protector from Office Depot or something.

February 25, 2004

Fun Safari Tip

Here’s a fun tip for Safari users that I learned by reading my new OSX book…

If you are several directories down in a site and would like to go “up” a few levels, instead of deleting text from the address bar and pressing enter, just hold Command (the Apple key) and click on the title bar of Safari (at the very top, where it says the name of the site). It will show you a list of of the different levels of the site hierarchy like you see in the screenshot.

Take a look at the screenshot for an example of it in action, it’s kind of hard to explain.

This also works in the Finder and several other apps, and is quite handy.

February 05, 2004

iChat AV 2.1 and AOL IM 5.5 are friends

Finally, Apple and AOL have both released updated versions of iChat AV and AOL Instant Messenger 5.5, and the video conferencing features of both are compatible with each other! To my knowledge, before today the only instant messenging app that supported cross-platform video conferencing was Yahoo Messenger, and the quality was pretty bad. Besides that, no one uses Yahoo Messenger anyway, so if you wanted to video chat with a Windows user, you had to both download Yahoo Messenger for that purpose alone. Now it’ll be a whole lot easier since iChat users can video chat directly with AOL IM users. I hope the quality is as good as iChat to iChat videoconferencing, which is very very good.

Download the new iChat

Download AOL IM 5.5

Update
I installed the new versions of each software on my Powerbook and the Windows machine here at work and tried it with my USB Webcam, and the quality is definitely not as good as iChat to iChat conferences. It’s not as good as Windows MSN to MSN conferences either. But it’s better than nothing, and it’s nice to have another way to video conference with Windows users at any rate.

January 25, 2004

iTunes Music Store

I just bought the Lord of the Rings soundtrack for my wife off of the iTunes Music Store… Just had to post about how great it is! All I had to do was search for Lord of the Rings, click Buy Album, and within two minutes it had downloaded all 19 songs — an hour and nineteen minutes worth of music. After that was done I plugged in my iPod and in a few seconds I had the whole album in my pocket ready to take with me. I then made a Lord of the Rings playlist and burned it to a CD as an archive and so my wife could listen to it in the car when I had the iPod. The whole process took less than ten minutes, which is 5 minutes faster than I could have made it to the store. I’m amazed again and again at the integration and ease of use the Mac provides.

Another example of this is when you have a song playing in iTunes and then start an audio chat in the iChat program, the Mac automatically pauses the song on iTunes so that the person you are chatting with doesn’t just hear a loud song playing in the background. It’s funny how Microsoft showed something like that in their Athens prototype computer, and seemed to think it was one of the most revolutionary ideas ever. That was back in May and they were showing it as an example of how computers could work in the future. But of course that technology is obviously already available on every single Macintosh computer today. Hooray for Apple!

Oh yeah, the Lord of the Rings soundtrack is good too. :)

Thanks to MichaelP for reminding me about that iChat pausing feature

October 16, 2003

Gamepad Companion

Word on the street is that some people are having trouble getting their gamepads to work with certain emulators on MacOSX. So I did a little searching and found GamePad Companion for OSX which allows you to map your gamepad to keyboard or mouse buttons, and even control the mouse cursor with the D-Pad on a gamepad. Cool! This should actually give you even more flexibility than just using a normal gamepad with the software because it’s fully customizable. For instance I would imagine if you are using VisualBoy Advance, you could set four buttons on the controller to do normal game functions, then have an extra one setup as the shortcut to save or load, or maybe take a screenshot. Awesome!

I can’t wait to try VisualBoy Advance on MacOSX… I just found out about it yesterday and downloaded it for the PC. It’s amazing! It emulates the GameBoy Advance, letting you play pretty much any GBA game right on your computer. Click on the picture to the right to see a screenshot of it running while I was writing this post! You can even set it to record a DivX movie of you playing and everything. It has a ton of options. Very impressive. I hope it is as good on the Mac as it is on the PC.

Update
It looks like USB OverDrive could also be used to fix the gamepad problem on OSX for emulators. And some people recommend using it anyway, as a replacement for the sometimes less-than-good drivers some companies use for OSX.

September 26, 2003

MacStumbler

MacStumbler is a program that looks for wireless access points, and gives you a lot of info about them. You can also use it in combination with a GPS device, to take the coordinates of wireless access points and map them out. This will go great with a 12” Powerbook. I’ll be able to easily find some wireless internet access everywhere I go! :)

September 18, 2003

Fractal Screensaver

Fracture is a fractal screensaver for Mac OSX. It seems to have a ton of options for tweaking the fractals, and produces some pretty awesome looking stuff, judging by these screenshots. It uses anti-aliasing to produce pretty high quality images, unlike the Windows fractal screensavers I have seen in the past that look like crap. You can configure the colors and algorithms it uses, and even save a picture of the fractal to disk.

Update I tried this at a friend’s house this weekend and wasn’t very impressed… It appears that it just shows screen shots of fractal designs that have already been drawn. I thought it would show them being drawn and stuff, so it isn’t as impressive as I thought it would be.

August 14, 2003

Keyspan Digital Media Remote

If I ever get the EyeTV, this is little gizmo is a must-have I think. It’s a tiny remote control that you can use to control iTunes, EyeTV, the DVD player, etc. This way I won’t have to reach all the way across my desk to change the song or TV channel, I can just press a button on my remote control! Technology is great…

Griffin Technology PowerMate

The Griffin PowerMate is a very slick little knob thing that you plug into the USB port on your Mac or PC to control things on your computer. It can be rotated, pushed to “click” and also “click and turned” to do various things in various programs. The obvious thing is to control the volume on your computer, and when you do this, the glowing light on the knob will grow brighter as the volume is turned up, and dimmer as the volume goes down. When your computer is asleep the light pulsates. How cool is that? It’s like your computer’s very own little heart beat.

You can program the functions of the PowerMate to any key combination that you can do on your keyboard, allowing you to use it for just about anything you can think of. Scrubbing video in Final Cut Pro and iMovie, or scrubbing audio in a sound app. Scrolling long web pages if your mouse doesn’t have a scroll wheel, enlarging and shrinking the brush size in photoshop, etc. Looks like a really fun and handy little tool.

August 13, 2003

Typeit4me

After Default Folder X, Typeit4me will probably save me the most time in my daily routine. We have like 4 different email addresses at work, so I can just make a shortcut for each signature to send out with messages. Plus saving URL’s and commonly typed words for our plaques and trophies and such. Very handy.

Default Folder X

Default Folder X is probably one of the nicest looking apps I’ve seen on the Mac. Not that its graphics are astounding or anything, it’s just so useful looking. I spend way too much time flipping back and forth between directories in Windows. It make saving and opening files in several different applications per job a real pain in the butt. This will probably save me more time than any other application, ever. Why isn’t there software like this on the PC?

Dragthing

Again, I haven’t used the Dock in OSX yet, but apparently some people find it lacking. This little app increases its usefulness quite a bit, and Zeldman seems to think quite highly of it, so it can’t be too bad.

Dragthing

Enigmo

Enigmo looks a lot like Sierra’s The Incredible Machine except with much prettier graphics and an overall better look experience. I used to play the Incredible Machine when I was the 8th grade, and it was great fun. Can’t wait to be able to try this new “version” of it. It seems to get some incredibly good reviews as well…

Launchbar

I don’t think I can completely understand the possibilities of Launchbar until I have had the chance to install it and use it for a while, but it certainly looks promising and looks like a real time saver for power-users. Can’t wait to try it out and see what all the fuss is about.

Transmit

Transmit is one of the slickest looking FTP programs I’ve ever seen, and I can’t wait to be able to use it. FTPeel is another possibility, though Transmit is probably more feature-rich and stable, considering FTPeel just came out.

Color Consultant Pro

Color wheel programs are very handy to have around when trying to pick color schemes for your site, and Color Consultant Pro looks like a great one. I’ve used ColorSchemer in the past on the PC, and it was quite good. This one looks to be even more detailed and flexible.

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire will definitely be what I use for my News aggregator on the Mac. I am using Newzcrawler on the PC right now, but I still don’t like it very much. I will probably also eventually purchase the pro version of NetNewsWire, and use it to post to my Blog so I can have spellcheck, offline writing, etc. This is definitely a best of breed application, and there really isn’t any other choice for news aggregators on the Mac as far as I can tell.

Image Well

Image Well is a tiny little program that sits at the top of your screen, which allows you to drop image files onto it and resize them, add borders, crop and rotate them, or upload them to your iDisk or an FTP server automatically. You can even take screen grabs with the program, crop them add a label, and upload it.

This will be really great, because a lot of times I just need to crop, resize, or rotate and image, and I really don’t want to have to open up Photoshop to do something so simple. Plus at work I normally send proofs to the customers by taking a screenshot, pasting that into Photoshop, cropping it, adding labels, etc. Then emailing that to the customer.

It would be nice if Image Well allowed you to easily email people the file as well. Maybe they will add that feature later.

CSS Edit

I’ve been using Topstyle on the PC to code my sites recently, but CSSEdit looks like it may be a decent replacement for the Mac. I don’t think it is anywhere near as full featured as Topstyle, but it’s only $15 and at a 1.0.1 release, so I’m sure new and better features will be added continuously. There may be other programs like BBEdit that would work for all my text editing needs on the Mac however. I’ll just have to try them all when I get a Mac.

Detour

Detour is a very handy looking little application that allows you total control over the sound settings and volumes in all of your MacOSX programs. Mute the sound from Safari so it doesn’t interfere with the music you are playing on iTunes, or make only the iTunes sounds go through your main speakers, so you don’t get a loud announcement when you get mail or an iChat message. For only $12, it’s definitely worth it to keep those crazy system error alert sounds and other notification sounds from scaring the crap out of you.

Watson

Though Apple’s Sherlock is basically identical to Watson, I will still be buying Watson when I get a Mac. Partly to support the “little guy” and partly because rumor has it that it is faster, and has more features than Sherlock. Plus if I get the EyeTV to record TV shows, I’ll want to use Watson to do the scheduling.

Watson looks really handy to me, and I’ve never been able to find anything even remotely similar to it on the PC. I think it will make some things so much simpler than having to go to 15 different web sites for everything.

Some of the features it offers that I will definitely use:

Site Search
Search Epinions.com, the Internet Movie Database, lyrics, the New York Times, etc, all from one standard interface. You get to see the data you want without all the distracting ads and other junk they put on their pages.

Recipes
Search recipes of all kinds from the Watson interface. Most recipes even include preview pictures and everything. Perhaps it will enourage my wife and I to make more healthy and nutritious foods! (yeah right)

Google Search
Search Google. Probably won’t use this one very much, as Google is integrated into Safari, but I do like the way you can save searches.

Image Search
Much nicer and more consistent interface than the Google Image Search that I normally use, plus it searches multiple sites at once.

Movies
Very very nice. Order tickets online, view showtimes and trailers directly in Watson. Even add the movie “appointment” to your iCal calendar with a single click!

Package Tracker
Probably won’t use this at home much at all, but will definitely be handy at work, so that I don’t have to go to three different carrier’s web sites to see where a package is. Plus it seems like every time I try to track a package, the interface has changed and I have to waste time figuring out how to use their site.

Phone Book
Yes, yes yes! I can never remember which phone directory site I like, and some even block Opera, so it’s always a pain to look up phone numbers. This will give me a simple, consistent interface to use all the time. It even supports reverse lookup! And when you find the person you need, one click adds them to your system-wide address book, incredible!

Reference
I use Dictionary.com quite a bit and it will be great to have a simple interface to interact with it. You can also search the Bible, the World Fact Book, etc.

Yahoo Browsing
I can’t stand the Yahoo homepage, way too much crap on there for my taste. When I feel the need to browse the Yahoo directory, this will definitely be the way to do it.

Zip Code Lookup
Again, this will be handy at work if someone forgets a zip code or doesn’t give us a city. Will save me a trip to the unfriendly USPS web site.

All of that for only $30 sound like quite a steal to me. Plus they are always adding new features and things to search. All together a great looking product.

EyeTV DVR

The EyeTV Digital Video Recorder by Elgato Systems is quite a cool little device, from the looks of it.

It’s a small box that attaches to the Mac via the USB port, and to your TV via the standard Coaxial cable, or the RCA inputs. The device allows you to watch live cable tv (or broadcast, or satellite) TV on your Mac, as well as providing TiVo like functions such as pause, fast forward, record and rewinding of live TV. You can also plug your analog camcorder, video game console, VCR, or other RCA jack capable device into the RCA jacks, and record from those devices as well. The only problem with this is that there is a 1.5 second delay in recording, so you’d probably die pretty quickly if you tried to record gameplay footage from your GameCube. But hell, I’ll probably try it anyway.

There are no montly subscription fees like there are with TiVo, which is the main thing keeping me from buying a device like TiVo. I just can’t justify paying a monthly fee for cable, a monthly fee for Netflix, and a monthly fee to record live TV.

You can record shows with the click of a button after finding it in the online guide at TitanTV. However some of the reviews I’ve read said this service is slow and buggy, plus it only works with EyeTV directly if you use Internet Explorer. And I am planning on using Safari or Camino when I get a Mac, not Internet Explorer. Another option is to use Watson (see the TV listing screen in Watson) to do your scheduling and browsing, which is the best idea yet. I’ve never used Watson, but I love the idea of it, and the interface for browsing the TV listings looks great. After finding a show you want to record, just hit the watch or record button in Watson, and it will automatically setup EyeTV for you.

After recording shows with EyeTV, you either leave them in EyeTV format to view in the EyeTV format, or export them to Quicktime files to be viewed on any Mac. You can also burn them onto a VCD with Roxio’s Toast, and watch them on most home DVD players. There is also a way to export the video to iDVD to make full DVD’s, though this process is much more complicated than burning normal VCD’s and requires third-party programs to work.

The EyeTV software is also compatible with the Keyspan Digital Media Remote, allowing you to change channels, change the volume etc, from across the room.

The new version of the EyeTV software even allows for simple editing, which lets you easily crop out commercials or save only a snippet of an on-air interview or your favorite sports play.

Elgato Systems even recommends using the QCast tuner to broadcast the video from your Mac to your PS2 wirelessly! This would allow you to have your Mac sitting in your office, but watch the recorded TV shows through your PS2 in the living room. Technology is amazing…

All of that for only $200 seems like a pretty darn good deal to me.