Yesterday or sometime early today, Apple released their latest slew of updates to the public touching upon four aspects of general Mac usage. iPhoto, iLife, iMovie, & iWeb were all updated. Here's what Apple had to say about each. 

• iPhoto v7.1.4 77.1mb: "This update contains new holiday greeting card and postcard themes for use with Apple print products. This update also addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues."
• iLife Support v8.3 5.5mb: "Life Support provides system software components shared by all iLife '08 applications. This update improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues. It is recommended for all users for iLife '08." 
• iMovie v7.1.4 39.8mb: "This update addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues."
• iWeb v2.0.4 36.3mb: "This update addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues."

Needless to say, the meat and potatoes of this update pack goes to iPhoto who got holiday greeting cards and the like. Overall, not a very exciting release in the least but an update none the less.

Enjoy!

Then. I was hoping that the new MacBook Pro would sport the new technology and new design. The current MacBook Pro design borrows a lot from the 17-inch PowerBook G4. As a matter of fact. All current Apple's MacBook ad MacBook Pro has the somewhat "dated" look.

Rumors about the new MacBook Pro design hit the series of tubes a few week prior. Intel's announcement on their quad-core mobile processors fueled the speculations even more.

In addition to that, during Apple's earning conference call a new mystery product was mentioned. A product that competitors can match. A product that would be sold at a lower profit margin. Apple already has the product and it is ready for launch in several weeks if they chose to do so.

I for one hope that the Apple would release the newly redesigned MacBook Pro with quad-core processor at a lower price point.

In addition to that, Apple has been working on a new Mac model to fill in the gap in their product line. Somewhere in between the iMac and the Mac Pro.

Another completely unfounded rumor us that Apple is looking into partnerships with one or more major PC manufacturers for a Mac related product. Please take this one with a truck-load of salt. For now, it is a part of Apple branding strategy.

Sifting through the rumors, I am still waiting for the newly redesigned MacBook Pro to replace the original MacBook Pro Core Duo.

Dang, if I knew when. But black looks good.  Does that answer your questions?

Globe is probably mulling over the profits it will generate once its post- and pre-paid plans for the iPhone 3G come out, and I expect the lines to be as long and far as any LRT station nowadays.

Who says dem Pinoys are suffering the economic malaise eh? Buy gulay, yesterday, some chap bought two Macbook Pros right off tipidpc.com and never batted an eyelash.  Do you know how much those things cost?

Yeah, I do.  I'm using one.  Cost half a car, I tell you.  So mine is guarded just like one.

Oh, and the 3G? It'll cost half of your child's college education.  But who cares? You Pinoys think rich anyway.

Yes, I was talking to myself.

Today was our shortest day by far, just 111 miles. 40 miles from Kingsbridge found us at Exeter, we'd got there via Totnes, Newton Abbot and the A381, before hooking up with the A38 for a short burst to the M5. Luckily, we just were only on the motorway for 4 miles before heading off along the south coast, past Lyme Regis, Seaton and Dorchester.

We stopped off at the Bovington tank museum, which was great, but lead us into some pretty deep conversations about the state of the world, why the tanks were used, and the future of Europe; along with Felix's military service, always an interesting topic as someone for who the military is an alien concept.  it's the little differences in experience and points of view that keep the world interesting.

From Bovington it was just a short blast down the road, the five miles to Wareham, where we had a wander around the town, before heading to our hosts house in Worgret, where we were met with chilled beers, good conversation and a stonking BBQ.

It's getting late now, so we'll sign off., Rest assured that tomorrow we'll upload all the photos, edit this so it's readable and charge you all money for reading it!

Night all, O&F

My main quandry at the moment is whether to buy a new laptop or just "revamp" one of my current models, by adding more Ram and rebuilding the OS.  Currently the laptop I've been using the most is my Dell Vostro 1700.  Now this is a beast of a laptop, which spec wise is excellent, 3GB Ram, 220GB hard drive, 256MB 8600 dedicated graphics, running Vista Home Premium.  The problem is the build quality isn't in my opinion very good, the battery rattles, and it has done since day 1, it is what I term as plastic fantastic.

Now what I do want to do is use VMWare for lots of development work which I have coming up, as well as for some training, as I'm going to need a server and a couple of clients, I figure why not go virtual with them?

I've been reading a lot on Keith Comb's blog (http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2008/06/04/my-lenovo-thinkpad-t61p-now-has-8gb-of-ram.aspx) about him fitting his Lenovo T61p with 8GB Ram, now of course I know for the OS to see more than 4GB it has to be x64 and not x86 as I'm currently using, but I figure for a small cost I could increase the Ram in my Vostro 1700 go x64 on the OS, which would be Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit edition.  Maybe the Vostro might see more than 4GB Ram, who knows, reading Keiths Blog it does seem possible as he tried this on a T61p and a HP 6910p.

The main candidates for my affection are a T61p or a Macbook Pro. 

The T61p at the moment in the UK seems to be rarer than rocking horse poo at this present time.  Build quality of Lenovo's seem to be second to none.  I've had one as my main laptop well a T61 provided to me by my last client and my current client, one running Windows Vista Enterprise Edition 32 bit, and the latest running Windows XP Professional SP2.  Personally I think this would be a good fit with VMWare, especially if I managed to bumpf it to 8GB Ram.

Macbook Pro, I love Macs, now don't get me wrong, I'm a Mac fan, my problem is that sometimes when I try to do something with a Mac it takes me slightly longer to do it than it would on a Windows machine.  For example running some Windows Virtual Machines in Parallels.

Now one of my problems is that I tend to use these machines quiet a lot on clients sites, and sometimes it can cause an issue for example in the past I have had comments passed to me by collaboration partners, MS for one, about the fact I used a Macbook during a kickoff meeting for large Vista rollout project, even thought the machine was using bootcamp and had Vista Ultimate installed on it. :-)  So for this a T61p would fit into the corporate environment a lot easier than a Macbook Pro.

Now I should add that one of the other reasons that I'm thinking of getting rid of my Vostro is that I simple don't believe that it can cope with being lugged about every day, and go through the amount of travel which I do, mainly due to the poor build quality.  One thing is for sure I use Dell kit for some of my clients and I would never, ever recommend Vostro laptops to them, although I have used Vostro desktops in some good combinations with PowerEdge servers.  So why I bought one I don't know...well I do know I saw T9300 processor, 3GB Ram and a £619 price tag inc vat :-)

On Keith's blog he mentions that at the moment he hasn't been able to get his Macbook Pro to function with 8GB Ram, so this could be a none starter from the beginning...I'll keep you posted.  Any comments from people who've used T61p's or Macbook Pro's greatfully received.

But the thing is, when I hacked it, it made the worst sounding sound that I have ever heard, it was like scraping a chalkboard with sharp like finger nails.  And it told me to plug in, even though it just said not to.

It has a very gorgeous screen and engineering!  I do miss being able to change tracks and volume without having to look at the unit, but I guess it is something to get used to.

Now the thing is, with all this fancy and expensive gear, would I bring it with me on my travels?  Food for thought.

One I get started on a computer session, doing this, doing that! - I cannot stop. The simple fact of life is that there is always something to do as I run 3 operating systems, have 2 portable hard drives and masses of music, absolutely masses! I doubt I will ever get it all on my Mac or on my PC...

My task to start with was to import 6 audio books onto my Mac, so that I could convert them to into audio book format with the new software I got a few days ago 'Audio Book Converter' which is simply fabulous! It's just bloody tedious and time consuming and as I have been doing that for a total of 3 hours tonight, I am now totally brain dead and bored out of my skull.

One new audio book I am delighted to have on my Pod and my MacBook now is this:

I've also converted and installed another 5 audio books tonight. I now have a total of 11 audio books on my Pod and I am half way through listening to a very tense thriller by Harlan Coben called 'Tell No One' - thrillers or specifically 'crimepsychological thrillers' are my favourite books to read. The grittier the better! This book is fab!

Synopsis

Eight years ago David Beck was knocked unconscious and left for dead, and his wife Elizabeth was kidnapped and murdered. For the next eight years Dr Beck re lived the horror of what happened that day every day of his life. Then one afternoon, he receives an anonymous e mail telling him to log on to a certain web site at a certain time, using a code that only he and his wife knew. The screen opens onto a web cam and it is Elizabeth's image he sees. Is it a practical joke? But as Beck tries to find out if Elizabeth is truly alive and what really happened the night she disappeared, the FBI are trying to pin Elizabeth's murder on him, and everyone he turns to seems to end up dead...

I?ve also managed to get all my Evanescence CD's into my Mac and onto my Pod tonight too...I am currently listening to the 'Evanescence - Origin' album.

I also had to phone Apple.UK today! Bloody Dot.Mac is going through the changeover from Dot.Mac to the MobileMe service - a service that is quite fabulous as it syncs up your mobile with your PC and you Mac...although I won't get the full mobile services on my cellphone as I have a Blackberry rather than an iPhone.

My Mac email has been down all day whilst it's all changing over and when it was back up I then had to change all the settings in my Mac, my PC and my Blackberry :::Tedious:::

Then of course I set about importing all the audio books and then some more music :::Tedious:::

AND FINALLY I ma now using TIME MACHINE to back up my entire MacBook Pro to portable hard disc.

What the hell did I do with my life before I found computers?

I KNOW! I had a life!

LOL

On another note, I watched Taggart tonight - propped up on my orthopaedic pillow as my neck is giving me 7 types of gyp and I feel like strangling myself, just to put me out of my misery. I am damn sick of neck pain and I can't wait for the day when it stops bloody hurting. I cannot remember life before the crash when my neck didn't hurt. At least all this updating, messing about, importing and phoning Apple took my mind off my pain for a while.

So, due to neck pain and having loads to do with my Mac tonight, I have been pretty damn BORED!

La La La La La La (just waiting for TIME MACHINE to finish!) La La La La

La La

Ah, it looks like finally TIME MACHINE has finished it's stuff....time to relax ~smile~

So yeah, today I have spent most of it BORED!

I think I may just sleep in tomorrow until lunch time, so I have less time to be BORED tomorrow. That's assuming I am going to be BORED tomorrow!

I feel so bored, I am assuming I am going to be bored tomorrow, how bad is that? lol

read more | digg story

For a company that doesn't talk about future products, Apple spent a lot of time Monday talking about this one. Oppenheimer mentioned this product transition at least four times during the call, hinting at "state-of-the-art products at pricepoints our competitors can't match" and adding coyly -- and illogically -- that he couldn't talk about it.

So, of course, that set off a round of overnight speculation. See, for example, here.

Could it be a revamped Apple TV? No, that's a product that sells in numbers too small to account for the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to do that kind of damage to Apple's gross margins.

Could it be the long-awaited tablet Mac? No, that would be a new product, not a product transition.

Could it be a revamped iPod line, with iPod touch-like controls and solid state drives to replace the old hard drives? That's more likely. After all, Oppenheimer warned of the same kind of product transition costs at this time last year, and what came out of it was the iPod touch.

Could it have something to do with the MacBook line? That's what Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster suggested in a note to clients Tuesday morning. Overhauls of the MacBook and MacBook Pro are overdue, he pointed out, and delivering them just before school starts -- perhaps at prices starting at $999 -- would make a lot of sense.

On the other hand, Apple (AAPL) is a company that thrives on dropping hints and then clamming up, letting fevered speculation do the work of softening up the market.

Maybe that's what Peter Oppenheimer -- taking a lesson from his CEO -- was really up to.

I had blogger in the past but really didnt have a use for it. I found that I wasn't using it because I'd often forget about it and no one knew my address. Heres where the new plan comes in. Tonight wordpress for iPhone was released. Yup, thats right, I have an iPhone. Not because im a snob who has to get everything expensive, but because I'm a huge apple fan, CS major (hoping to make apps for the iPhone ASAP), and kind of a nerd when it comes to technology.

With wordpress' app for the iPhone I'll be able to keep up on a blog. So whoever wants to read it go ahead. It'll be here so view it.

My goals are to add pictures in the future and maybe start writing better.

Another thing I almost forgot is that today it is my best friend Mack Kolarich's birthday. 

Mack and I have been best friends ever since elementary school. Mack is one of those guys who you always knew would be successful one day. He was always in the honors classes, knew what he wanted, and often aimed to make it a reality. Mack is also pretty stylish, but in a masculine sense (think Armani), humorous (has a similar sense of humor which always makes hanging out fun), and we have other mutual interests (like cooking and women). Anyways to honor his birthday I'm gonna post one of our posters from our RAGBRAI adventure the summer of 2006 where we ran "Mack and Drew's Energy Stand"

mackdrewstandposter (Warning: PDF)

Outra prova é que Apple comunicou a cadeia de lojas Best Buy que receberiam envios muito limitados de MacBooks nas próximas semanas. E além disso, a recente saída dos novos Intel Montevina faz com que todos suspeitem.

Teremos MacBook e MacBook Pro novos dentro de poucas semanas? Eu não estranharia, até porque computadores como o MacBook necessitam de renovação urgentemente.

Via Applesfera.

Chouette ambiance in the House here :)

I have seen this video on Youtube late 2007, back when I was weighing my options if I should buy a Mac or stick it out with Vista.

Alas, I bought a Macbook Pro after Leopard came out. This latest version of OS X made me switch, but even after switching I still haven't mustered enough courage to post a video response to explain my reasons.

Hey, I know I am not obligated to do so but I am compelled to share my reasons because I am loving the experience and I would want others who are on the brink of ditching their PCs to have another opinion to help them decide.

We'll here are my five main reasons:

• I have been a long time PC user and have been longing since to try something new. I first got my hands on a computer back during the days when DOS was king, then went through the transition to Windows and its many iterations and have been since frustrated by the way it worked.  I knew there were alternatives but I cannot seem to get a good grasp of Linux and the Mac was still way off my budget.

• Love Apple's design philosophy. I am an Architect an I have a natural affinity to design. Apple's minimalist and functional approach very appealing and largely contrasting with XP's colourful interface which strain my eyes.

• Overcame the "Mac's are expensive" mythology. After seeing a lot of Youtube videos from the likes of Kost, DRBUK, emeek77, garethhallnz, among others (btw, thanks to you guys!) I did my own price comparisons and alas! I found that Macs aren't really as expensive as we all thought out to be. I am lousy at keeping past record of my work but I will try to recreate that spreadsheet so I can show you how this myth got busted on my book.

• Vista drove me crazy. The eye candy was good but it was straining my eyes, I found a lot of "new" features in Vista that have been with OS X for a while (active thumbnails, I believe I have seen on a very old keynote a few years back when the aluminium Macbook was introduced; and gadgets!? c'mon) and for some reason I get this feeling that their directory structure have been modified to behave like that of Linux, it's like I am browsing through a Linux variant, which is weird. And yeah, I was annoyed by this little pop-up asking me to click it every time I do something, it feels like Vista does not trust me or eerily close to those annoying web advertisement that won't go away.

• 1GB = 512MB system memory?  This really escapes me. How come a new laptop that supposedly has newer technology and better specs performs like a system that I had five years ago? Aren't upgrades suppose to make things better and move a lot faster?

That's just about it...I ditched Vista (gave to my sister, who was very happy at first :D) and bought a shiny new Macbook Pro. Happy with it so far and it made me not want to get bootleg software.

Next, I will share my joys and bits of frustration about my being a Mac newbie.

           The final bill came to 2,800 dollars. It included the Macbook Pro, Photoshop for Mac, Iwork, Ipod Touch, 250 GB Harddrive, 4 GB of Ram, and the rest. If you are looking for a laptop and are stuck, feel free to leave me a comment and I can help you out. I am going to college, and one disadvantage is getting used to the word documents and all.

          A feeling of thankfulness overcomes me when I see what I have been blessed with, and I pray that I will be able to pay my parents back. I am forever in debt to my parents for all they have done, both financially and more importantly all the love they have given me. Materialistic possessions satisfy the human mind and emotion for a specific amount of time, but the love overcomes and ferments into an infinite love tied to the beautiful mirage known as life. It is an immortal feeling of the sort when a loved one indebts us with the great gift of sacrifice and giving.

         An old proverb goes; Give and forget, but take and forever remember. One must never forget the gifts of others not for their value, but for their sentimental validity. For the love is not transferred in money nor gold, but only in a simple appreciation and compassion for one another that the gift symbolizes. Symbolism is what life is all about, because nothing here is permanent in life, so it is all a facade representing and symbolizing an intangible and infinite forever.

           Do not look at the fabric of life and its trials on the surface, because one will miss the intricate weave of each individual thread that creates the overall beauty. Live deeply while appreciating the scent of a temporary and sensory life limited by time and law.

I have a feeling I'm going to have to get DiskWarrior or something to see if I can save any of my files on it. Each time I try to open that drive the Finder goes into "not responding" mode. Then when I relaunch the finder, the laptop's hard drive is no longer visible, and it doesn't come up every time I try to boot it in targeted mode.

So, as far as writing goes the past couple of days, I've been using my G4 again. Wow, I didn't realize how much I hated the keyboard on this one now. I'd been worried about getting used to the one on the laptop. The machine is also only an 800 mHz machine. That's about 1/4th the speed of the laptop and boy does it show at times. I now know why the kids scream when I suggest they Google something on this one instead of stealing my laptop.

I've kept up with my journal entries and I've even done my web goals for the week. Where I've been struggling has been actual writing time on the WIPs. I knew this week was going to be hectic so I'd decreased my goals drastically this week. I've been working about an hour instead of two each day. The past two days this has meant taking a notebook and a pencil and taking notes on what to expand upon and how to flesh out Lord Barrington's storyline in Revealed. Yup, still working on doing that, but thanks to the workshop with Diana Peterfreund, I've gotten a few ideas on how to do that.

It's not as satisfying as working in the file making changes like I had been before the laptop flaked out the other night, but it's still productive and necessary work.

Keep those fingers crossed and thanks for all the hugs and commiseration the other day! Hopefully back with good news sooner rather than later.

Je me pose donc la question pourquoi ? Est ce juste un effet de mode ? Une volonté de se démarquer des autres ou au contraire de ressembler aux autres startupeurs ? Ou est ce simplement une volonté d'être pragmatique ? En effet, les produits Apple sont connus pour être plus "stables" et plus simples d'utilisation. Pragmatisme ou effet de mode, tel est la question.

So I went searching and found this:

How do you move Audiobooks to your iPod?

Do you rip to iTunes®, then carefully move every imported track to a special playlist before syncing with your iPod®? If so, you already know what that means. Hundreds of confusing track names show up on your iPod and clutter up your iTunes Library, making it harder to find actual music. There’s no way to save your place and come back later. And, if you forget to change the Importing settings in iTunes, your Audiobook tracks take up way more space on y our iPod than necessary because the human voice often needs less than half or even a quarter of the storage music requires.

Now there’s Audiobook Builder, the easy way to quickly import your Audiobook CDs (or tracks that are already on your Mac), organize them and output one or two files that your iPod recognizes as actual Audiobooks. The results are automatically sent to a special playlist in iTunes, and when you sync with your iPod they appear right where you’d expect - in the Audiobooks section. No more wading through hundreds of confusing files on your iPod. No more wasted space. And no more losing your place - it’s saved automatically each time you listen to your favorite Audiobooks.

Audiobook Builder - the ideal tool for moving your Audiobook collection to your iPod.

Download it here:

http://www.splasm.com/audiobookbuilder/index.html

I downloaded this into my MacBook Pro last night and used it for the first time to convert an Ian Rankin audiobook I had borrowed from the library.

The software works beautifully and is very easy to use. It effortlessly and quickly imported the MP3 files already in my iTunes into a single audiobook, complete with chapters, book-marking (useful in that you don't need to remember how far you are into 'reading' the book) and front cover graphic.

When I synced with my iPod classic, I found the audiobook imported under the 'audiobook' section and when I played it on my iPod I could bookmark and go back to exactly where I had finished 'reading' it.

Fabulous!

This is for Mac OSX only...there is one available for Windows that is *free* but I haven't tried that as my iPod runs from my Mac, not my Windows/Linux dual boot PC.

In this video you can see Steve Jobs on Macworld San Francisco 2006 Apple presentatio.

Apple CEO talk there about the Megasafe Power adapter and Video Conference Quality.

In TCSMACS Online Store you can find two versions:

• MacBook 2.2 GHz 1GB/120/SD/13" 699 inc Vat
• MacBook Pro 2.4GHz 4GB RAM/320GB HD/15" 1199 + Vat

I so look forward to getting back into the Mac World. My first laptop was a Mac (back then it was called a Powerbook). I worked all summer before I went off to seminary so I could buy Mac's first active color screen on a laptop. It was a wonderful computer, but after seminary I ended up going to the Windows platform. Mac did not have all the great stuff that it does now and I bought into the mass hysteria that all the practical software was on PC's. Well re-enter Steve Jobs, fantastic marketing, rabid mac disciples, an incredibly stable and efficient platform designed for creativity and production...and I am so there.

So once again, thanks to my friend who supported my ministry in a very tangible and incredible way and made this a very happy day! And those of my friends out there who are in the Mac community. I'll be giving you a call for tips.

Next morning I found it with a blank (i.e. black) screen and the dreaded message "No boot device can be found". First thought: "it has rebooted". Second thought: "and it cannot start". I press the power switch to turn it off, wait 5 seconds (they say you need to wait for the capacitors to discharge ;-)) and switch it on again. Dell logo, first boot messages, and click, click, click, click, click...

The hard disk was clicking. The click of death, as they say. Clicking noises inside a hard disk only mean one thing: there is something mechanical going wrong. I could visualise the disk heads landing on the platters and leaving a trailing trench and lots of nasty particles scattered all over the place. My precious data!

Backups? Yes, of course I do backups. But not every day. I would back up my data every day in a production environment, but for my home stuff I considered that weekly backups were enough. I have been thinking about buying some kind of low-cost NAS device for a few months, because doing backups to DVDs is a pain. I even considered buying a DAT tape unit, but they are expensive. So my backup policy at that glorious morning when my hard disk crashed was, more or less, weekly backups to DVD.

That was the policy. The crude reality was other. My last backup, which I hastily recovered from the cupboard, was dated on the 15th of May. Almost one month of lost work. Yes, I know this is my home laptop, but I do a lot of .NET development (mostly experiments and nerdy stuff), writing and emailing. Damn.

So I sat down, grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen and outlined my disaster recovery plan. Two steps: first, send the broken hard disk to a data recovery service place; second, get a new hard disk. Wait a moment. My laptop is already 4 years old, and even with a new hard disk it would not be much faster. So, why not make of this disaster a perfect excuse to buy a dazzling new machine?

After some minutes googling around, I decide on dtidata, a data recovery company that looks good. They say they don't charge you a cent if they don't get your data back, which looks reasonable to me. On getting a new machine, I spend five seconds pondering the possibility of buying a MacBook Pro and then jump straight into the Dell configurator. I've always been curious about the Precision mobile workstations, or whatever they are called. They are sexy little beasts. Well, not that little, since the Precision M90, the one I fancy, starts from 3.8 kg. But the 17-inch screen and the 2-GB RAM well deserve it.

I have shipped my broken hard disk, conveniently wrapped in bubble plastic (they call it "packed air"), and I have ordered a Precision M90. I only hope they can recover my data.