Classic Mac

Why mobile phones need to change!

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 02:50:00 +0000

An interesting experiment tonight drove home the point that Steve Jobs made with the introduction of the iPhone which was that the existing manufacturers of mobile phones need to wake up and improve their products.

I decided that I wanted to transfer a couple of files off my Blackberry Curve 8310 to my MacbookPro. Unfortunately, Macs and Blackberry's have never played terribly well together if you looks at the discussion forums at Crackberry.com you'll see numerous posts to this effect. To RIM's credit they have struck a deal with PocketMac to enable users to get a free copy of their software for synching Blackberry's with Mac's. Unfortunately this leaves Mac users behind in the software upgrade cycle since RIM's own desktop applications only run on Windows machines (obviously now with Bootcamp, Parrallels and VMWare we at least have the option of running the app. on an Intel Mac with a Windows install). However, personally I prefer to stick to OSX and would like to see RIM stepup to the plate and more aggressively support the Mac platform.

Regardless I opted to utilize the Bluetooth connectivity on my Curve to transfer files from my Mac. I was able to get the devices to pair and recognize each other. However the one thing that wasn't intuitively clear was how the Blackberry was to receive the file once I initiated the transfer on my Mac. To Steve Jobs' point most of the mobile handset operating systems out in the wild today aren't particularly user friendly or intuitive. Eventually, I was successful and must say that the file transfer was easy once you knew that you have to set the Curve to receive or send via Bluetooth. Maybe there was another option to enable it to automatically accept connections and files from my Mac but it wasn't exactly evident.

In comparing my use of the iPod Touch things operate very much the way you'd expect on a Mac and a user with a little exploring can easily maximize their use of the device. The iPhone has ushered in a new era along with the Touch not only in terms of a touch driven interface but in terms of a highly usable operating system. As we saw by the scrambling this year at the mobile industry tradeshow 3GSM the mobile handset vendors are in catch-up mode. It's interesting that in a 1.0 device Apple has been able to put all of these vendors on the defensive and forced them to face up to the fact that most of the user experiences on mobile devices pre-iPhone were plain awful. Let's hope that this intensified competition will kick-start vendors into actually spending on getting improved user experience for mobile users.

"The Little Kingdom" by Michael Moritz

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:53:00 +0000

I just finished reading one of the earliest biographies of Apple and its founders. Former Fortune reporter Michael Moritz was granted access to Apple's inner circle leading up to the 1984 launch of the Macintosh by Steve Jobs. After having read a number of books that cover Apple's history if you're a fan or even interested in the background to Apple's launch this book offers a good perspective. More so than Apple Confidential 2.0 and various biographies on Steve Jobs (e.g., iCon)
The Little Kingdom puts into perspective the role of Apple in the early development of the personal computer industry.
As you work your way through this book, Moritz outlines an interesting portrayal of how the computer industry operated in its infancy. He offers up a more detailed description of Steve Wozniack's background and experiences and how they influenced the design of the Apple I and Apple II. Additionally, he offers perspective from Woz's peers as to his gradual withdrawl from the business in the early 80's. If you're an Apple fan I'd pickup a copy of The Little Kingdom for a quick read to gain some interesting insights into the background. Don't expect a tonne of exciting insights into the workings of Apple relative to other discussions.

Time Capsule - Home Storage & Backup

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:54:00 +0000

We've come a long way from the days of the Classic Mac and Fat Mac to where we are today in terms of processor speed, OS reliability, and most of all disk space. Going back to the early 80s I can remember the time when storage was treated as a precious commodity and while I'm glad I don't have to watch every megabyte I use up - I fear that we're heading for trouble. In previous posts I described the rapid pace at which I've been burning through storage space on my MacBookPro.

The good news I see some positive benefits on the horizon:

TimeMachine - with the release of Leopard OS X now contains a built-in easy to use and configure back-up system. To-date I've been running Leopard and using a TimeMachine back-up with a Western Digital MyBook connected via Firewire 400. At this point I've partitioned the back-up drive in two segments: i) for TimeMachine and ii) for backing up some Audio files. I will say that Time Machine is a bit of a disk hog so depending upon how much data you want to back-up a bigger drive is better.
TimeCapsule - one of the more interesting announcements from this years MacWorld is the launch of TimeCapsule - essentially a combination wireless router (Airport Extreme) and a built-in harddrive (in either 500GB or 1TB sizes) that enable over the air back-up of any Macs in your home. After checking the prices of 1TB drives at Costco on the weekend it would seem that Apple has the pricing right on this device avoiding the typical "Apple Tax" that Apple fans are forced to pay. The only area of uncertainty on the web at the moment is whether the TimeCapsule drive must be dedicated to TimeMachine back-ups or whether it can be used as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. The consensus at the moment appears to be that its for TimeMachine alone.
Other NAS drives for home use - A number of NAS drives exist targeted at the home market with a number of new devices being launched earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. My thought here is that given the growth in the amount of digital content that we're all generating and wanting to keep at home the idea of a NAS that is a central file store within the house is a great idea. I see both NAS options such as the Drobo or Apple's TimeCapsule as solving the biggest headache for most users which is the need to have an external hard drive plugged into your laptop and the hassle of accessing external drives across multiple machines. It seems clear that wireless connectivity to your back-up drive is definitely the way to go.

At this point I still have storage space and time left to pick an appropriate option but the next move upwards in drive size will see me heading the way of a home based NAS.

Disk Warrior For Leopard Released

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:44:00 +0000

Good news to those that made the switch as the independent software developers are now catching up with the fall release of Leopard. Apple rushed the final seeds of Leopard through the field meaning that when the Gold Master finally went out in late October the development community was left with next to no time to react. As a result a number of my favorite apps still need to get updates to function properly under Leopard.

The good news for those that utilize Disk Warrior from Alsoft they've released a fully Leopard compatible version of the app. head on over and check it out.

I'm still patiently waiting for a Leopard compatible version of SuperDuper! the great full disk backup utility but as they say patience is a virtue. Quite frankly while lots of people continue to push the folks at ShirtPocket software for a release of a Leopard version of SuperDuper - I for one am willing to give them time to deliver the quality product we've come to expect from them. Let's face it there is nothing worse than producing a back-up program for critical data that doesn't stand up under fire.

MacHeads The Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:31:00 +0000

Just got a heads up on "MacHeads the Movie" a documentary about the Mac community which is due to be released shortly. The movie promises to cover a history of the Mac and features interviews with a number of well known MacHeads including:

Raines Cohen, Co-Founder of the first Macintosh user group BMUG,
Guy Kawasaki, former Apple Evangelist and savior,
Bruce Damer and Galen Brandt, owners of Digibarn Computer Museum,
Shawn King, host of Your Mac Life,
Adam Engst, publisher of the first Apple newsletter,
Leander Kaheny author of Cult of Mac,
Andy Ihnatko Chicago Sun-Times' technology columnist,
Daniel Kottke Mac engineer and the first official employee of Apple Inc,

Having read a range of books on Apple and the development of the Mac this documentary looks like it could offer an interesting twist on the topic of what makes Apple and Mac such icons. Simply put it seems like the team at Chimp 65 Productions is onto the answer which is the community of Mac users. Given that its been the devotion and help of other Mac users that make using the computer far more enjoyable than working on a PC - I'll be interested to see how this documentary comes out.

Testing out Eneloop batteries with Bluetooth Keyboard & Mighty Mouse

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:41:00 +0000

If you're like me and have grown weary of swapping out other rechargeable batteries or worse still using disposable regular AA or AAA batteries in your gear this will hopefully offer a solution. Sanyo's Eneloop rechargeable batteries are one solution that I'm currently testing as a way out of my current battery woes. I found that a number of different big name brand rechargeables don't seem to hold a charge terribly well and for a short period I was stuck using Duracell disposables. When they finally gave up I purchased a package of Eneloop's after reading some commentary on the web regarding their performance. Basically Sanyo has developed a brand of rechargeable battery that offers the following claims:

Longer life with slower drain
No memory effect meaning that you don't end up with rechargeables that need to be thrown away in less than a year
Ability to use any quality NimH charger to recharge the batteries.

So far so good - I'll keep you updated with how well the Eneloop's hold up over time.

MacWorld 2008 - High Expectations Lead To A Let Down

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 03:34:00 +0000

Well the keynote came and went on Tuesday with the usual amount of media attention and fanfare. Apple fans walked away with: Macbook Air a new ultra portable laptop, Time Capsule a wireless router/500GB or 1TB backup drive, updates to iPhone and iPod Touch software and the U.S. launch of iTunes Movie Rentals with support from a major new software revision for AppleTV.

Lots has already been written about Macbook Air so I'll point you to a number of the reviews and photo galleries elsewhere. I'd only focus in on three items that are of interest in this laptop for me with regards to the future direction of Apple technology:

Integration of additional gestures in a Multi-Touch Track Pad. No shock here following the success of the iPhone and iPod Touch expect to see hardware manufacturers seek to include multi-touch technology. Overall the state of advances in the PC market in terms of new user interface has been pathetic at best over the past decade with limited progress. Multi-touch represents a positive step towards improving usability and I'd think we're just at the beginning.
An optional Solid State Hard Drive (SSD). While it's still very early days for SSDs as a replacement for traditional magnetic media the future is clear. Yes, there is still a massive price gap that needs to be narrowed but I'd expect that we're now on a clear trajectory toward seeing SSDs go mainstream over the next three to four years.
The exclusion of an onboard optical drive. Apple is helping to lead once again if we think back they made early moves in helping to initially drive 3.5" floppies mainstream in the early 1980s, helped kill floppies off a decade later and now the exclusion of the optical drive on a Macbook Air points the way to the next wave. While we're still years away from seeing the disappearance of CDs and DVDs its clear wireless downloads are the wave of the future.

TimeCapsule - actually represents another great addition to the product line and while the pricing is a little high it is does not represent the usual excessive Apple tax that exists on other Apple products. Given that we now have TimeMachine built into Leopard and it offers a very capable way to ensure timely protection of your files this is the next step to help ensure you don't lose data. At the moment laptops are finally overtaking desktops and we're seeing Apple innovate to alleviate some of the hassles that exist when you use a laptop as your primary machine. For example, you are forever connecting and disconnecting the Firewire or USB connection to an external hard drive to enable Time Machine to function. TimeCapsule removes that hassle by enabling wireless backup of your data through a combined Airport Express and high capacity hard drive offering home users simple and relatively affordable network attached storage (NAS) to protect the data on all your Macs. The big question for me will be the speed of back-up and any performance issues but clearly wireless backup and central home data storage is the way things are heading over the next five years.

Overall, a successful MacWorld in 2008 but not the blow-out that we experienced in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone. I still expect that 2008 will be a busy year for Apple and Mac users - expect updates to the iPhone with a 3G version or major announcement around the 3GSM Conference being a solid bet, updates to the Mac product line most likely with the MacbookPro and Macbook - presumably getting speed bumps, and later in the year a revision to the iPod lineup with capacity increases for the iPod Touch being a given.

"Apple Confidential 2.0" by Owen Linzmayer

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:11:00 +0000

For those that are looking to brush up on their Apple history "Apple Confidential 2.0" is a great resource. Owen Linzmayer lays out a comprehensive examination of Apple from it's founding until early in the current decade. He covers the firm's inception and background on Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack, the Apple I, Apple II, birth of the Macintosh and various models, the Newton and more. Having read a variety of books about Apple and key members of its management team over the years - Apple Confidential does the best job of offering an unbiased view of key events that bring us to where we are today. While there is repetition of some of the famous stories - Linzmayer does a great job of laying out a wide-array of facts about Apple. Even if you've read other Apple books you will be able to find new facts that you didn't know if you read Apple Confidential 2.0.
For Mac fans that would like to know more about the history of some of the most significant developments in Apple's history this is an easy and engaging read. One area for those that are into collecting retro-Mac's Linzmayer does a great job of assembling some useful references including timelines of various Mac models. Overall, if you're into Mac's and want to learn more pick-up a copy of Apple Confidential 2.0 you won't be disappointed.

Leopard - Webclips a Useful New Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:54:00 +0000

One useful feature that is included as a native part of Leopard is the ability to build a custom widget that is displayed in Dashboard. In Safari v3.0 a new icon appears in the toolbar
(a pair of scissors with a dotted box) that once clicked on allows you to select an area of the current web page to be monitored. Once you've selected the area you click the ADD button which puts a new Widget on your Dashboard. There are limited formatting options at this point in terms of the type of box that the web clip is displayed in. One thing that would be useful would be the ability to label the Widgets.

Overall, a small feature that previously you needed to use third party software and a couple of hacks to have this functionality. At this point I'm still experimenting with web clips having setup two 1) to monitor the current inventory of refurbished Macs on Apple's online store and 2) to monitor the ongoing auctions of vintage Macs on eBay.

Ditch DVD Player for VLC!

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:07:00 +0000

I encountered an interesting issue last night that has converted me to a user of VideoLAN otherwise known as the VLC media player. I'd borrowed a DVD to watch which did have some light scratching on the surface of the disk and when I put it in my Mac the default media player from Apple DVD Player took over. As the disk started to play the scratches conspired to ruin my fun by causing the video to freeze up and ultimately resulting in DVD Player crashing. After several tries I was about ready to throw in the towel on the idea of watching this DVD until I remembered downloading an open source media player called VLC. I ejected the DVD and launched VLC then selected the disc to be played and success! I'm not sure of the reason that VLC was able to play the disc but I'm guessing that the codecs used by VLC enable finer control of the DVD drive. Regardless this experience has converted me to a VLC user.

To get your copy of VLC check out their website which offers a free open source product with support for Mac OSX Intel, numerous Linux distributions and Windows.

Great moments in the development of the Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:37:00 +0000

I've reading and listening to podcasts relating to stories about the development of the original Mac from a number of the original developers. In particular, Andy Hertzfeld lays out a large number of stories in a folksy style that detail development of the hardware and software from the Lisa to the original Mac to the Mac Plus. I highly recommend a visit to Folklore.org to catch-up on the back-story behind the development of some of your favorite classic Macs. If you like the stories checkout Macintosh Folklore Radio podcasts where Derrick Warren reads a number of these great stories.

Back-up Back-up Back-up

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 01:11:00 +0000

Just a reminder now that we're in 2008 take a couple of minutes and beyond your regular back-up routine. My suggestion is that you should take the time to burn your current iTunes and iPhoto libraries to DVDs and store them in a safe place at home or even better off-site. DVDs are dirt cheap with Boxing Week deals easily had so there is no excuse not to back-up that valuable data.

Top Rumors for Macworld 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 01:07:00 +0000

Update - I wanted to come back to this post after finding this nice article over at Daring Fireball about the opportunity to make profit or lose on trading Apple's stock around the hype of the MacWorld keynote - see that post here

Ok since we're now past Christmas and the New Year is fast approaching its time to round-up all of the speculation relating to the expected product announcements for Steve Jobs MacWorld 2008 keynote on January 14th. I'd expect that given all the recent iPod launches ahead of the holiday season that MacWorld will have a focus on updating and refreshing the Mac product line.

Here is our list:

Ultra portable Macbook - At this point it looks like its a pretty good bet that you'll see the introduction of a slim version of the Macbook presumably running Intel's latest mobile processor. See this Mac Rumors post for a good summary of various opinions. The proposed laptop is expected to feature a solid state hard drive. My call on this one is that we'll see the ultra portable with an on board NAND flash drive (likely in the 60GB) range given the cost I'd expect we'll see a price point around $1,500.
An update for the Mac Mini Ok this one is more in the hope category on my part since I think the Mac Mini fills a great all purpose role in the Mac product line. My thought would be given the number of people that have moded the Mac Mini to act as a media centre it would be great to see an update for the Mini and eliminate the AppleTV. Basically very similar form factors and far more flexibility with the Mini.
3G iPhone Update? Given that a number of Apple's carrier partners most notably AT&T have let the cat out of the bag on this one I think you can expect an announcement either at MacWorld or the 3GSM (telecommunications conference) regarding a 3G capable iPhone. My money is actually on a launch coincident with 3GSM - likely just before at an Apple event since Apple has traditionally not played well with the rest of the industry at events run by others preferring not to share the spotlight with competitors.
Tweaks for the Macbook Pro & Macbook & iMac. I'd expect that you'll see a series of spec changes as Apple refreshes the product line with new Intel processors.

Send me an email with your thoughts.

iPhoto08 & the growing storage challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 15:50:00 +0000

So you're facing a dilemma the amount of content on your hard drive is growing at a pace that will soon have you needing to upgrade your internal hard drive. It's been a long-time since my first days of using a Mac where I've had this issue. In this case what's driving it is the rapid growth in my iPhoto library based on a couple of choices: 1) my decision to shoot any photos or movies from out digital camera at the maximum resolution possible (given that NAND flash memory is cheap and plentiful there is really no excuse here) and 2) my decision to keep a lot of the duplicate shots that would normally be trashed since the pictures have greater value than the disk space. My thinking behind these decision is driven by the fact that disk space is relatively cheap versus the content. However, as we start taking movies at an increasing pace and I begin to spend more time editing and publishing using iMovie08 the speed with which I've been consuming disk space has accelerated significantly. Rather than wait till I approached the capacity of the 120GB drive in my Macbook Pro I opted to take action now. Two factors drove me to seeking out interim solutions till SATA drive prices drop further: the first is the increased number of steps that you need to undertake to upgrade the hard drive in a MBP vs. my old Macbook, and secondly a desire to save some money and to try and fully utilize the external drives I have at home.

As I dug around the web for potential solutions the one surprising thing that I found with iPhoto is while its an easy to use tool for a beginning photographer it still lacks the ability to easily create and manage multiple iPhoto libraries. The latest release of iPhoto'08 enables you increase the size of your iPhoto library over prior versions but still remains very light in terms of functions to managing the actual library of photos. I realize that iPhoto is created for the beginner and that Apple isn't looking to clutter the application by pushing it towards Photoshop and other higher end applications but there is definitely the need to enable it to work with multiple libraries natively. You can get iPhoto to choose the library you would like to work with by holding down the Option key as iPhoto loads bringing up a dialog box that enables you to pick the library of your choice.

As I searched around the web a number of potential options came-up:

1) Was to undertake a manual replication of my iPhoto library as described in this blog post at Kassblog.
OR
2) The other option that I came across was a great shareware application iPhoto Library Manager from Fatcat Software. It turns out that iPhoto Library so far addresses my need to replicate my library to an external drive so that I could archive the movies we've created which have consumed the majority of disk space. While we wait for Apple to get its act together and update iPhoto to handle the surge in data contained within our libraries and the need to split libraries over multiple volumes/drives. While this still isn't the ultimate solution that I'd like which is to be able to have both libraries show-up in the sidebar of iPhoto on launch it will do for the time being.

Leopard - a little too early...

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:37:00 +0000

Update - a great thread at ehMac.ca regarding external device support unlike Vista there do not seem to be any major drive issues with Leopard.

When I returned to the Mac 2 years ago I thought that the days of Sad Macs and Bombs were well and truly behind us. However, with the most recent release of Leopard I must admit that like others I've been suffering from Apple serving up an operating system that isn't fully cooked. We could list out a full range of excuses that resulted in Apple opting to ship an OS that had a number of bugs in its witness the recent spate of security patches and updates to address wireless issues for Macbook and Macbook Pro users.

Overall, I think that the improvements introduced in Leopard apart from Tiger while the 350 features listed on Apple's sight in some cases seemed fairly small I've found a number of pleasant surprises that have been useful including:

Preview - a beefed up version of the built-in viewer means that you can now easily annotate PDF documents and do basic image manipulation without having to dig into Photoshop or another app.
iChat - the addition of an improved iChat theatre for sharing pictures, movies and slideshows during a video chat is a definite bonus along with the ability to enable a remote user to take control of your Mac without installing Chicken of the VNC.
Automator improvements are fairly notable as the number of built-in commands supported has grown and you have the ability to record a series of tasks as you perform then. Also the ability to create automator actions that more heavily leverage the web is a real bonus.

What I've found frustrating is the on-going battle between my Macbook Pro and our D-Link router where the Mac intermittently seems to lose the Internet connection despite being only twenty feed away from the router. I've also experienced a series of snags when running Firefox and while it works most of the time I'm seeing the spinning beach ball of death more frequently than I did under Tiger (which was an extremely stable OS). I have no doubt that Apple will remedy the bugs that were introduced by the changes in Leopard. Here's hoping that we'll get the release of 10.5.2 at Macworld in a couple of weeks or shortly thereafter!

Back to the Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Thoughtful Wheaten) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 04:05:00 +0000

I just finished listening to a fantastic podcast Macintosh Folklore Radio which brings back great memories of the original Macintosh. The stories were written by Andy Hertzfeld and read by Derek Warren and offer an entertaining glimpse into the development of the original Mac and some of the antics in getting the product to market in 1984. I guess to properly introduce this blog that's where we should begin with my own first computer a Macintosh 128K which shipped with one on-board 3.5" floppy disk drive and an Apple Imagewriter dot-matrix printer. Along the way I inherited another external floppy disk drive and eventually took this Mac in for surgery to have an upgrade to 512K.
I grew with the Mac and it got me hooked on computers. Over the next decade I owned both an original Macintosh and a Macintosh SE working with a wide variety of popular applications (e.g., MacWrite, MacPaint, WriteNow!). I migrated from the original operating system (yes System 1.0) up until version 7.5 in the early 1990s. At that point I was forced to switch over to using a PC and that is where we found ourselves until approximately two years ago. Finally, fed-up with the horrific experience that is Windows and an operating system that proved to be a constant pain I happily returned to the Mac. In this blog my plan is to take many of the Apple, Mac and iPod specific posts from the thoughtful-wheaten.blogspot.com and place them in a Mac-centric environment. Here goes...