Category: Mac

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5 Things That Got My Attention at Macworld Expo 2011

It's been two years since I attended Macworld Expo. I missed last year due to being out of the country. I also have to admit that I didn't really expect the show to last after Apple pulled out two years ago. However, to my pleasant surprise the show is still strong.  It's hard to gauge the show's actual success because trade shows in general are down. With the economy, internet and live webcasts of press briefings people don't feel the need to go to trade shows as much as they use to. I was asked to speak at this year's conference on "Digital Publishing from InDesign to the iPad." My class was on the last day, Saturday afternoon and while the class wasn't overflowing, there were a good number of attendees that were very interested in the topic. So much so that even though I ran over about 10 minutes, no one moved. Everyone stayed til the very end and many participated in a good Q&A session. I was happy with the class overall and have no complaints.

 

What about the show floor?

Macworld is both a Conference and an Expo. The show floor was open throughout the entire show. Walking the show floor is always a treat for me because I always find at least one product that I'm very interested in and had no idea it existed. It also gives me a chance to meet with developers/vendors face to face that I've corresponded with over the months/years. I can't compare this year's show to last year's show because I wasn't there last year, but this year's show was definitely up beat. On some days it was actually hard to get through the aisles because of all the people. 

 

Isn't it just iPhone/iPad Case World now?

There have been many jokes made about Macworld becoming "iPhone Case World". I certainly have felt that way in the past as in years past there were a ton of vendors on the show floor selling nothing but cases for iPhones and iPods. While there were certainly several options to get a case or holder for your iDevice this year too, it didn't feel like one big case tradeshow. There was a good mix of solutions for the Mac and for iDevices too. While most of the big companies don't exhibit anymore, HP was there with a sizable presence showing off their printer line including their AirPrint capable printers. 

 

5 Cool Things

Whenever two Macworld attendees meetup the question usually comes up "did you see anything cool?" While there wasn't anything that totally blew me away, there were lots of little things. I look at this show as the show you would goto to get "accessories" for your Apple product or iDevice. In other words without Apple you won't be learning about the NEW Apple ________, but you will see many nice add ons in terms of hardware and software. In no particular order, here are 5 things that I saw that got my attention:

 

Dolly Drive

There was a lot of buzz online and in person about a new Cloud based backup service called Dolly Drive. What makes Dolly Drive unique is that they have figured out a way to allow you to use Mac OS X's Time Machine backup feature to the cloud. Now you can do your hourly backups offsite. There are of course a lot of questions that come to mind and the company is new. I spoke with them and will be working with them on testing and reviewing the service. Stay tuned for that. However, it does look promising for those looking for a way to be able to backup and restore files while on the road.

Learn more at their site here.

 

LensPen for your Laptop or Mobile device

I was already a fan of LensPen for my camera lenses. However, I had no idea that they offered solutions for cleaning my laptop and mobile device displays. I picked up a Laptop Pro and ScreenKlean

See their products here.

 

iFusion

More and more people are giving up their landlines and just using their mobile phones. Certainly this is not the first product of its kind, but I liked the aesthetics of it. iFusion lets you dock your iPhone and use a standard handset while you're at your desk to make/receive calls. It's unclear how well this will work or not work, but It caught my eye. I also pinged them about a multiple handset wireless solution to replace what I have now.

Learn more here.

 

OWC SSD Solutions

Other World Computing was on hand with a fairly large presence and while they sell a lot of things that I'm already familiar with this was the first time that I got a chance to check out their SSD replacement hard drive solutions. The one that caught my eye is Data Doubler solution that replaces the optical drive in your MacBook Pro with a second hard drive such as an SSD. With a Solid State Drive you could use it to load your operating system and applications while keeping your original drive for the bulk of your data. This would drastically reduce boot times and application start times.

Learn more here.

Check out their shootout here:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shVhpKnzfp4

 

 

iGrill

Whenever I see devices hooked up to (fake) raw meat I have to stop and look. 🙂 The iGrill aims to provide a temperature monitor for you food that has a bluetooth connection to your iDevice/App to let you know when your meat is done or needs to be turned over. Wow! OK, um  I guess. I have no interest in this product as I don't grill, but I gotta give 'em credit for providing the ultimate geek device for the home. The iPod toilet paper dispenser looks on with envy 🙂

You can learn more about iGrill here.

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Review: Nvidia Quadro 4000 for the Mac Pro

I never really used to pay much attention to graphics cards in the past. I figured that the stock video card would be more than enough for my needs. I'm not into hardcore gaming where I would need a high frame rate or rendering lots of 3D work. I've also never really had any complaints with the standard video cards that came with my systems in the past. However, this year when I upgraded my 4 year old Mac Pro to a new 12 Core Mac Pro system, I knew that I was going to replace the stock video card. With the introduction of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and the Mercury Playback Engine I knew that I would want a compatible video card to take advantage of it. With Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro it has support for the Nvidia Card's CUDA chips and GPU acceleration. This means playing back multiple layers of HD video with effects in real-time without having to render first. Sign me up!

 

The New Nvidia Quadro 4000

Although I had a loaner Nvidia Quadro 4800 card (their older discontinued card) that worked fine in my new system, I was anxiously awaiting to see the next card they were working on for the Mac Pro. The New Quadro 4000 for Mac (yes it's for PC too) is better in just about every way over the older card. First off it only takes up one slot instead of two like the previous model and the stock ATI card that came with my Mac Pro. Secondly there is a built-in DVI port and a second port in which you can plug in either one of the two supplied dongles. One dongle gives you a Display Port for Apple's and other manufacturers newer displays and the other dongle provides a second DVI port to drive a second display.

Although I'm perfectly happy using this card to drive my existing 30" Cinema Display, it's nice to know that if I ever have to go to a new display with a Display Port connection, I'm all set. Installation was pretty easy. Install the Driver first! Then just open the case unplug the old card and plug in the new one. It did leave an "open" hole (the old card took up two PCI spots) in the back of the machine as Apple doesn't ship a spare cover. I was going to scrounge around my house looking for one (as I'm sure I have a few), but decided to stick an OWC USB 3.0 card in that slot instead.  

This new card is not only slimmer, but also better on power consumption while providing a 30-40% speed improvement over the previous model in intensive graphics work and has more onboard RAM. Again my main concern was more around Video Editing than scientific computations. So my first question to Nvidia was "how much faster is it in Premere Pro CS5 over the previous model?" The answer was "about 10% faster." What this means to you is that if you have an existing Quadro 4800 card, there is very little reason to buy this one! However, if you're in the market for a NEW card to replace the stock ATI card then this is a great choice. It's less expensive than the previous model and like I said it's faster, uses less space and consumes less power. Full Specs Here.

 

Putting it to the test

People that do video editing know what it's like to have to render an effect or scene first to preview it before you can move on to the next edit. If you didn't have to render the scene/effect then your editing is going go much much faster. Although the built-in "Software" Mercury Engine in Premiere Pro CS5 works well on a fast system. Having a compatible Nvidia card with CUDA support simply blows away everything else out there on a desktop system!

I recorded this quick video to show the Mercury Playback Engine in action. Rather than do a typical screen recording using software, I wanted to show the real performance without the screen recording software processing in the background. So in this case I setup a video camera pointing at the screen to show the playback in real-time. Enjoy!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foLxsL5RU6k

 

You can get the Nvidia Quadro 4000 for Mac here for $1,195 or here (thanks Brian Stone for this incredible find) for only $761.78!

 

You can get Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 here.

Download the 30 day trial here and play.

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Parallels 6 is Fast!

Parallels 6 above running Windows 7 64bit Ultimate Edition and Windows XP on a Mac Pro/Mac OS X 10.6.4  running Photoshop CS5 Extended – click the image to enlarge

Most of my day to day work is done in the Mac OS. However, there are times when I need to run Windows app/utility here and there. I can remember the days when I used to carry two laptops for work. I had a PowerBook for doing demos to Mac customers and an IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpad for doing demos to Windows based customers. Once the the MacBook Pro hit the scene I was quick to jump on board because I could now use this one laptop to run both Mac and Windows Apps. Apple allows you to enable a feature called "Boot Camp" right in the Mac OS itself. With Boot Camp you setup a partition (size of your choosing) and natively install a copy of Windows (not included) on it. Then you can choose to boot up the computer in either OS and Windows running under Boot Camp is just as fast as running Windows on any other similarly spec'd PC. While you do get to run Windows as fast as your Mac hardware can, you have the disadvantage in that you can only run one OS at a time. In other words while you're booted in Windows in Boot Camp, you don't have access to your Mac apps. This is where virtualization Apps come in. The two top contenders are Parallels and VMWare's Fusion. I've had experience with both Apps in their latest versions and given the choice I'd go with Parallels.

 

When you have two apps that basically do the same thing, you have to look at "how" they do it?

Both Apps are great and both apps have very similar feature sets. Although I get to use VMWare's Fusion at NO COST TO ME because my company has a site license and offers it to any employee that needs it, I prefer to use Parallels (and buy it out of my own pocket). Both Parallels and Fusion allow you to use Windows on top of the Mac OS. This means that you are running both OSs at the same time and can launch apps in either. Both are going to run a bit slower than running natively in Boot Camp if for no other reason, they are sharing resources with the Mac OS running at the same time. However, being able to run the occasional Windows app without rebooting is worth the small performance hit. Both apps allow you to either run Windows from a "file' on any hard drive (including an external drive) or even use your Boot Camp Windows installation. So if they both seem to do the same thing, what makes one better? SPEED!!! Parallels with version 6 continues to have the advantage over the competition with SPEED! No other way to say it other than it just runs Windows FASTER. According to Parallels, version 6 is up to 80% faster than version 5. It's 64 bit and boots Windows more than two times faster than Fusion 3.1. Parallels 6 scores more than 2 times better on 3D graphics than Fusion 3.1.

 

It's running so fast as a matter of fact that I may never use Boot Camp again

Continue reading “Parallels 6 is Fast!”

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Apple Announces the Mac Pro Update I’ve Been Waiting For

My current "work horse" Mac is my NEW MacBook Pro core i7. Don't get me wrong, I have a Mac Pro in my home office. However, my current Mac Pro is the original Mac Pro introduced back in 2006. That's ancient in computer years. Before that purchase I was usually upgrading my tower with every other release (about every 2-3 years). Over the years I wasn't seeing significant enough performance gains to spend the money. Then they introduced an update in March of 2009 that made me think it's time to upgrade, but I just kept putting it off. Now that my favorite Adobe Creative Suite Apps are 64bit enabled with the CS5 release I knew it was time for some new hardware. The problem is  I just didn't want last year's models. So once the new MacBook Pro core i7 came out, I ordered it (from work) day one! When I got it, I ran a speed test against my Mac Pro and was wowed by the fact that it BEAT IT! Granted that really shows just how fast the new MacBook Pros have become, but what it really showed me was just how slow my old Mac Pro was. So I waited and today Apple Announced the Mac Pro update I've been waiting for. Although there was no new case design, that doesn't bother me. It does seem odd though that Apple (a company focused on design) would continue use virtually the same design they introduced with the Power Mac G5 back in 2003!

 

There are 3 new configurations, Dual Core, Quad Core (8 cores) and Dual 6 Core (12 cores)

My only debate is do I spend the $5 grand on the 12 cores or settle for the 8 cores ($3,500). My gut tells me to go 12 core simply because I don't upgrade my tower as often as I used to and the faster the machine I get the longer it will last me. I have a little bit of time to think about it because Apple is not even taking orders yet. They're saying "August" for availability. I'll likely bite the bullet and go 12 cores to have the fastest Mac rendering speeds I can get. As far as video cards go I'll replace the stock ATi card for an Nvidia card to take advantage of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5's accelerated Mercury Playback Engine. <-this was a sneak peek video before CS5 was announced.

Continue reading “Apple Announces the Mac Pro Update I’ve Been Waiting For”

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My New MacNews blog

As many of you know I'm a Mac user and usually a fan of Apple's products. There a many times that I would post more about Macs, iPhones and such here, but I try to keep an even balance because I realize that there are a fair number of Windows users here too. So unless it's a hot new product introduction or major update, I tend to just let it go by. 

Back in August of 1986 (yes that's 23 years ago), I founded MacGroup-Detroit. I've been the president of this organization for 23 years. It's a very active Michigan based users group with roughly 500 members. For the last 20+ years we've had a monthly newsletter called "MacNews". About a year ago we went from a printed publication to a PDF online only publication. This was working OK, but the more I thought about it the more I started to wonder "why?" Why go through page layout just to deliver electronic information electronically? So a couple of weeks ago the monthly newsletter was converted into a daily blog. This way, the writers can post content whenever it's ready, the information can be more timely and the members can subscribe via their favorite RSS readers.

Continue reading “My New MacNews blog”

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New Macs, New Mouse, New Remote, & New Base Stations

magicmousehero

Yesterday Apple released the highly anticipated updates to the iMac and Mac mini just in time for the holiday shopping season. They also introduced a completely new entry level MacBook and some speed bumps to the AirPort Extreme Base Station and Time Capsule wireless devices. Not to mention a new Bluetooth mouse and aluminum remote.

 

You can get all the details you'd ever want to know about these products at apple.com. So I'm not going to waste time going into too much detail here. I'll just do my usual take on what I think about the new products. So let's get to it:

 

The New iMac

09imacfam_front

I must say WOW! It's time for a new iMac at home so needless to say I was waiting for the rumors to come true before I bought and I'm glad I did. You now have a choice between a 21.5" and 27" (LED) iMac model running the new intel i7 processors. You can even get a Quad core processor now in an iMac which is pretty amazing. I went with the 27" 3.06 GHz model with 8GB of RAM (expandable to 16GB) to replace an aging 20" iMac Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) iMac at the house. The new iMac also has a built-in SD card slot on the side just like the new MacBook Pros do. I'm really looking forward to this speed boost. These new models have such impressive specs that I would dare say it may hurt Mac Pro sales for those who were just buying the Mac Pro for speed and not expandability. Unfortunately Apple is still defaulting to the little keyboard without the numeric keypad, but at least you can order the full-sized one (when ordering your iMac online) at no additional cost! Full details/specs here. Also check out the snazzy New Remote.

 

The New Mac mini

0903macmini_front

It's been a long time since the Mac mini got any love. Well today the Mac mini got a nice update. Faster processor (which was a given), but also twice the RAM for the same prices as before. The surprise here was a new Server config. As luck would have it, I was in the market for a Mac mini to replace my Power Mac G5, which I use as a file server (Drobo connected). The Power Mac runs fine, but it's big and sucks up a lot of power, not to mention the noise it can make when the fans get going. I already run Mac OS X Leopard Server on this box. So when Apple introduced a Mac mini with two 500GB drives and Mac OS X Snow Leopard (unlimited users) for less than a grand, I was all in. Full details/specs here.

 

New "Magic Mouse"

magicmousehero

Apple is using its multi-touch technology and giving it to each new Mac in the form of a bluetooth wireless mouse. We're back to a one button surface, that is configurable to have a right (or left) click for contextual menus and scrolling. No more ball to clean! Thank God! This new mouse comes with the new iMac so I'll get a chance to play. Full details/specs here (including a movie on how it works!)

 

New MacBook

09macbook_hero

Apple replaced its entry level MacBook with a newly designed unibody 13.3" LED model. This new model doesn't have any major surprises although Apple has once again removed the Firewire port. Let the riots begin! The other thing that this model marks is the fact that now all of Apple's portables and portable devices have sealed batteries. Although the new MacBook boasts a 7 hour battery (I'll believe it when I see it), if the battery runs down you on a long trip you don't have the option to swap it out. You'll have to charge it or use an external solution such as the HyperMac battery. However, even with these limits, it's a sweet little box for less than a grand. Hey if you need Firewire (I do) then this IS NOT the one for you (or me). That's why Apple sells MacBook Pros that DO have Firewire. Full details/specs here.

 

25-50% faster AirPort Extreme and Faster Time Capsule

06apextreme_front

Apple has done some tweaking to make their wireless base stations and backup solutions faster. Lord knows that the Time Capsule can take all the speed gains it  can get. So again this is a welcomed update. The prices are the same, but now you get faster performance and the same dual band capabilities as before. Full details here.

 

If you've been putting off upgrading, now would be a good time.

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Apple WWDC Keynote Video posted and a few more things…

phil

Apple has posted today’s Phil Schiller keynote from WWDC. See the video here.

A couple more interesting tidbits from today:

Upgrading to the iPhone 3GS may cost you more than you think. The $199 and $299 prices for the 16GB and 32GB models are the prices NEW customers or customers eligible for upgrades will pay. As you know, you signed a 2 year contract when you got your existing iPhone 3G (if you did it on AT&T). The policy for upgrading at a reduced rate is typically 18 months. So even if you bought your iPhone 3G on the day it was announced, that’s only 11 months ago. Most likely you won’t be able to upgrade for those prices. You can check your eligibility right on the Apple Store online or log onto your wireless.att.com account to see your upgrade eligibility. Those on the original iPhone should be all set as your two year contract is almost at an end (provided you bought on day one in 2007). Prices could be as high as $599 and $699 for early upgraders. Which, by the way at that point you’d be better off signing a NEW contract, canceling it, and paying the early cancellation fee of $175.

iphone3gsupgrade

MobileMe get’s some much needed love. Every year many customers ask themselves, “why am I paying for this?” Each customer has his or her own reasons as to why they deem the service worth the price. For me, I like the syncing of info between all my computers. I like the syncing of data (except Contacts, maybe I’ll try it again after 3.0) with my iPhone. I also like the hosted web stuff and email. However, with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3.0 you get new benefits. First of all Apple showed off “Find my iPhone”. This feature allows MobileMe customers to locate a missing iPhone on a map. If that iPhone happens to be in your house, you can even send a command to it to ring even if the ringer is on silent! You can also remote wipe a lost or stolen phone so that your info is no longer on the device. Although I wish this feature would actually password lock the phone so that it couldn’t be used or randomly wipe it so that the thief couldn’t really use it. Yes, I know about serial number blocks that the carriers can do, but this is much more fun. It also seems like iPhone users will FINALLY be able to access their iDisks and the data stored on them, with an upcoming iDisk iPhone App. Also in case you missed it, MobileMe now syncs your notes from Mail and soon from your iPhone running the 3.0 update.

AT&T is the weakest Link

I’m typically not one of those users who likes to bash the carrier. All of the carriers have issues! However, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated by AT&T’s apparent inability to keep up with their growth. The iPhone has been missing some key features like MMS messaging and data tethering since day one. These features are probably not hard to implement. As a matter of fact we’re getting them in iPhone OS 3.0 next week. The problem is that AT&T says that MMS messaging won’t be available until “summer” and tethering, well, um it will come to0 at some point, with additional fees. No wonder other countries laugh at us when it comes to our data networks. Oh and don’t get me started about the crippling of the SlingPlayer app to only work over Wi-Fi! If the iPhone was available on multiple US carriers, AT&T would be forced to compete for our business. However, with this exclusive multi-year deal, AT&T gets another free pass. AT&T do me a favor: stop advertising your network if you can’t actually do anything on it!

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Updated MacBooks, iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone 3Gs and more

iphone3gs_4up

I thought I’d give a quick recap on today’s announcements since my friends are already ringing my phone off the hook anyway. 🙂 There certainly was no shortage of announcements from this morning’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote. Of course you can go to apple.com and get all the details of each and every item. This post is just serve as a quick recap for those that just want to know “what’s new?”

–

Updated MacBooks/MacBook Pros

Apple updated the specs on the 15″ MacBook Pro, 13″ MacBook (now Pro) and MacBook Air while at the same time reducing the prices!

The 15″ MacBook Pro now gets the same built-in battery as it’s 17″ sibling, boasting 7 hours of battery life. It can be configured with up to 8GB of RAM as well as a 500GB hard drive. Probably the most controversial move here is that they removed the ExpressCard Slot and replaced it with an SD card slot instead and they replaced the removable battery with one that’s built-in. The new prices are $1,599, $1,899 and $2,099.

The New 13″ MacBook Pro. The MacBook has been upgraded to MacBook Pro status. It now features an SD slot as well, configurable up to 8GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive, and it now has a FIREWIRE port! Apple has seen the error of its ways in this regard. Probably the most exciting feature of the 13″ MacBook Pro is the price. The 7 hour battery is also built-in on this model. They start at $1,199 which is cheaper than the older model which had less features.

Lastly the MacBook Air gets a price reduction as well. Now the MacBook Air starts at $1,499.

See the new MacBook Pros here.

–

Safari 4.0 Now Available

The Safari web browser had been in beta for the past couple of months and now it’s officially available in its release form. It was already available via the Software Updates when I ran it a few minutes ago. I’ll have to see if they fixed a couple of the bugs I was having in the beta. Namely, posting links on WordPress on this very blog. Apple bills it as the fastest web browser on any platform.

–

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

As you might expect, the spotlight was on Snow Leopard today. Apple showed off a miriad of enhancements and the one that got me most excited was the Microsoft Exchange support which means that I’ll finally be able to say goodbye to Microsoft Entourage for work email. There were all kinds of other neat UI enhancements to the Finder and the OS in general. The big focus was on 64bit as well it should be. Lastly, Snow Leopard will be available in September for only $29 for existing Leopard users. That has to be the lowest OS price that Apple has ever charged since they’ve been charging for OS upgrades. Snow Leopard is only for Intel Macs!

–

iPhone OS 3.0 Update

No surprises that Apple also showed more about the iPhone 3.0 update, which had already been previewed. It’s going to fill many of the gaps that the iPhone has had to date including MMS support, Tethering, Cut, Copy & Paste, background notification for 3rd party apps, Turn-by-Turn directions, peer-to-peer gaming, etc. This update will be FREE to existing iPhone users ($9.99 for iPod touch users) and available next week on June 17th! Yes, you know where I’ll be that day. 🙂

–

New iPhone 3GS

The most anticipated news of course was the new iPhone hardware. Today Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS. The main points are:

  • Faster processor
  • 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
  • 3MP Camera with better low light, auto focus and macro modes
  • Video Capture, trimming on the iPhone, share via email, MMS, YouTube, or MobileMe
  • Voice Control
  • Compass App
  • Nike+ support built-in
  • Hardware Data Encryption
  • Better battery life

Available Friday, June 19th – 16GB model (black or white) $199, 32GB model (black or white) $299

8GB iPhone 3G now only $99 and available today!

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WWDC ’09 Live Feed

These guys are attempting a live video feed of the WWDC News. Kudos to them and very cool if they are able to pull it off!

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It’s WWDC Day

keynote

It’s that time of year once again! Today kicks off the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. As usual, it’s anyone’s guess as to what Apple will actually introduce today. Here are the latest rumors and possibilities:

  • iPhone 3.0 software update
  • New 3rd generation iPhone 3g – hardware (16GB & 32GB models)
  • Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
  • Cheaper ($99 or $149) iPhones (4GB or 8GB)
  • Larger “tablet” sized iPod touch type device
  • More powerful MacBook Air (4GB RAM, integrated 3G wireless) to compete with netbooks
  • MacBook updates with 3G wireless capabilities
  • iPhone Movie/Videos direct downloads

As usual, this is only speculation/wishful thinking and nothing is definite until it actually happens. The keynote kicks off at 1PM ET. Popcorn in hand, let’s see what’s what?