I'm learning to love BT Openzone. In a "I'm starting to really really hate BT Openzone sort of way". Since a BT Openzone hotspot comes "free" with every BT router, there are rather a lot of them dotted around the place, they show up like weeds every time your computer scans for available wireless networks. Leaving aside the fact that fairly regularly my own BT broadband bandwidth isn't exactly up to snuff, I'm not keen on the idea of random strangers helping themselves to what little I sometimes have so I feel I should expect others to feel the reverse.
But that's not my main gripe.
Out and about with my iPhone I do rely on the speed and connectivity of the 3G network. So why, in 3G areas can I not always send and receive mail? Because my iPhone has detected and glommed onto an openzone network, which appears open but in fact requires a log in and credits to actually use. So I can't. Nor can I send any mails until I manually switch wireless off on my iPhone. Which means I have to remember to switch it back on when I get home. And that should I stumble upon one of the dying band or hippies that still believe in open wireless networks I can't use that without remembering to switch wireless back on.
I'm sure there's not a lot to be done about it. BT seems intent on rolling out BT Openzone and the new nano cells will only make things worse. Here's hoping Apple can offer an option to block Openzone networks from clogging up my phone.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Saturday, 21 November 2009
24 hours @ tescos
My local Tesco store (Cirencester) is open for 24 hours. I wonder what it's like to spend 24 hours in a giant supermarket?
Annual BBC TV charity event Children in Need provided the impetus for me to find out. 24 hours in a 24 hour store. Obviously if I had just asked them, they would have said yes, sit in the corner out of the way, see you same time tomorrow. There's no fun in that and if CiN has taught us anything it's that fun equals donations. So I decided to try to do the 24 hours without telling them. But how to raise money?
The obvious answer was twitter. The whole idea seemed right up twitters street. Easy for people to follow what I was up to, tailor made for updating people on my progress plus the whole hiding out while under surveillance seemed like a good twitter meme. The only real problem would be rising above enough twitter noise to get people to spot what I was up to, which in the days leading up to the event seemed to be a rather big problem. Handily I had a couple of high profile twitterers up my sleeve to help.
So, at 7.45 Friday morning my wife and a couple of doubting kids dropped me off outside the store and I shuffled in. So far so good. I had thought that the first 12 hours should be easy since the store would be full and I would just melt in. Boredom would be the biggest problem, oh and the awful coffee in the cafe.
Tesc staff were also doing their bit for CiN, with a 12 hour treadmill and cross trainer marathon. 12 hours? pah! amateurs. I have to say though they were expending far more energy than I was. I was reading a magazine.
Time to unveil my twitter secret weapon. A couple of tweets from Robert Llewellyn and Dom Joly (both with many many thousands of followers and Macs that I keep humming) and twitter seemd to start to take notice. The mentions and retweets started to come. People were following. Throughout the day tweets from @bobbyllew kept turning up, along with boosts in the followers for me. And donations too. The target was £500.
The whole day was routinely predictable. Coffee, skulk, tweet, retweet, read. Massage aching legs. Rinse and repeat. Gradually it started to get dark.
At 6 my daugter arrived to help out. Together we wheeled a trolley round the store and did a huge Tesco shop. Then we wheeled the trolley round and put it all back in the right places again. Mr Mark Sunner (@marksunner) popped in with a recharge for my flagging iPhone. While there he contacted a few friends and rounded up a load of extra donation. Then the cafe shut. Damn.
I felt that just hiding in the loo would be cheating since I could just curl up with a book and sweat it out. Likewise stepping outside for fresh air but remaining under the canopy. I asked the followers but they wee 50/50 on this so I stayed inside. Going a bit mad.
One follower had a bringht idea. Get me to perform tasks, in exchange for donations. SoI slipped some fruit into a shoppers basket. Priced up various items, hunted down the cheapest socks (£2 for 5 pairs) and the most expensive item in the store (Sony HDTV) which proved to be my undoing.
For 16 hours security had failed to spot me. However a man shuffling round the high value items and fiddling with a phone late at night was too much for them to miss. Although I didn't know it at the time they were now trailing me via camera and strategically placed staff.
By now, really really bored, I went over to the magazines for a read, and tired I slumped down behind the rack and read a nit of BBC Focus magazine. Unknowingly this put me in just about the only place in the store where the cameras could not see me and security found this just too annoying.
The late night security guard wanted to know what I was up do, Damn! Busted! The deal said I had to come clean so I did. She called the manager, who called the staff over who though it was all a thoroughly good laugh. They all agreed that the day staff should have picked up on me. Glad they didn't though. Would have lost me loads of donations.
It's a strange place a night Tesco's is. After 12 hours I both wanted to carry on and so badly wanted to be found. Being in the store so long was strangely depressing. Is it the same if you work there. I really hope not.
This morning, after a bath and scrub I have totted up all my online and offline donations and I'm happy with my just over £1000.
It was a good twitter experiment but it also proved that even a good twitter meme is hard to promote. It was great to have so much support from so many people though and the immediate interactivity with donators made it much more interesting than just having a collection bucket.
Well done everyone. Quick nap now.
Annual BBC TV charity event Children in Need provided the impetus for me to find out. 24 hours in a 24 hour store. Obviously if I had just asked them, they would have said yes, sit in the corner out of the way, see you same time tomorrow. There's no fun in that and if CiN has taught us anything it's that fun equals donations. So I decided to try to do the 24 hours without telling them. But how to raise money?
The obvious answer was twitter. The whole idea seemed right up twitters street. Easy for people to follow what I was up to, tailor made for updating people on my progress plus the whole hiding out while under surveillance seemed like a good twitter meme. The only real problem would be rising above enough twitter noise to get people to spot what I was up to, which in the days leading up to the event seemed to be a rather big problem. Handily I had a couple of high profile twitterers up my sleeve to help.
So, at 7.45 Friday morning my wife and a couple of doubting kids dropped me off outside the store and I shuffled in. So far so good. I had thought that the first 12 hours should be easy since the store would be full and I would just melt in. Boredom would be the biggest problem, oh and the awful coffee in the cafe.
Tesc staff were also doing their bit for CiN, with a 12 hour treadmill and cross trainer marathon. 12 hours? pah! amateurs. I have to say though they were expending far more energy than I was. I was reading a magazine.
Time to unveil my twitter secret weapon. A couple of tweets from Robert Llewellyn and Dom Joly (both with many many thousands of followers and Macs that I keep humming) and twitter seemd to start to take notice. The mentions and retweets started to come. People were following. Throughout the day tweets from @bobbyllew kept turning up, along with boosts in the followers for me. And donations too. The target was £500.
The whole day was routinely predictable. Coffee, skulk, tweet, retweet, read. Massage aching legs. Rinse and repeat. Gradually it started to get dark.
At 6 my daugter arrived to help out. Together we wheeled a trolley round the store and did a huge Tesco shop. Then we wheeled the trolley round and put it all back in the right places again. Mr Mark Sunner (@marksunner) popped in with a recharge for my flagging iPhone. While there he contacted a few friends and rounded up a load of extra donation. Then the cafe shut. Damn.
I felt that just hiding in the loo would be cheating since I could just curl up with a book and sweat it out. Likewise stepping outside for fresh air but remaining under the canopy. I asked the followers but they wee 50/50 on this so I stayed inside. Going a bit mad.
One follower had a bringht idea. Get me to perform tasks, in exchange for donations. SoI slipped some fruit into a shoppers basket. Priced up various items, hunted down the cheapest socks (£2 for 5 pairs) and the most expensive item in the store (Sony HDTV) which proved to be my undoing.
For 16 hours security had failed to spot me. However a man shuffling round the high value items and fiddling with a phone late at night was too much for them to miss. Although I didn't know it at the time they were now trailing me via camera and strategically placed staff.
By now, really really bored, I went over to the magazines for a read, and tired I slumped down behind the rack and read a nit of BBC Focus magazine. Unknowingly this put me in just about the only place in the store where the cameras could not see me and security found this just too annoying.
The late night security guard wanted to know what I was up do, Damn! Busted! The deal said I had to come clean so I did. She called the manager, who called the staff over who though it was all a thoroughly good laugh. They all agreed that the day staff should have picked up on me. Glad they didn't though. Would have lost me loads of donations.
It's a strange place a night Tesco's is. After 12 hours I both wanted to carry on and so badly wanted to be found. Being in the store so long was strangely depressing. Is it the same if you work there. I really hope not.
This morning, after a bath and scrub I have totted up all my online and offline donations and I'm happy with my just over £1000.
It was a good twitter experiment but it also proved that even a good twitter meme is hard to promote. It was great to have so much support from so many people though and the immediate interactivity with donators made it much more interesting than just having a collection bucket.
Well done everyone. Quick nap now.
Saturday, 14 November 2009
24 hours in Tesco's
My local Tesco is open for 24 hours so, I thought it might be neat to try to spend a whole 24 hours in the store and to raise some money in the process.
Now, if I asked I'm sure that Tesco would say fine, but that's not fun, so I'm not going to be asking, just staying. If anyone asks me what I'm doing hanging around the store, then that's it, game over.
I'm guessing that during daylight it's not going to be hard to mingle with the crowds so I'm certain a good 12 hours will be easy, but dull. But what happens as the store empties. Will they spot me? Will they care.
I'm planning to update the world at regular intervals via the magic of twitter so anyone can follow along. Just check for @drhappymac on twitter.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
27inches small
My first iMac had a 13 inch screen, my last TV had a 27 inch one. Now, it looks like the computer has started to catch up with the TV since the new iMac boasts a huge 27in LCD. OK, so TV screens have grown much much larger, but 27 inches, on a computer screen. Why?
One clue as to where Apple may be going with this is in the fact that the 27in iMac models are available with a standard VESA mount, allowing them to become wall mounted. No VESA mount is available for the 21.5 inch model. The second clue is in the redesigned Apple remote, now bigger, easier to use and looking much more like a proper media remote.
When it was launched the Apple TV was described by Steve Jobs as a bit of a hobby. Development of the ATV has proceeded at a leisurely rate since then but the hobby does now appear to be bearing commercial fruit. Running a cut down version of OS X the ATV has long been a popular target for hackers who have opened it up to a variety of uses not officially endorsed by Apple, but not frowned upon either. Apples other tiny media centre, the Mac Mini also has a history of use in the home attached to the TV. Now, with the 27in iMac all the functionality of the ATV and the flexibility of the mini has been rolled into one large screen object.
Once on the wall the 27in iMac is essentially a HD TV, DVR, DVD player, music centre, movie download centre AND a computer. The edges of Apple's move into the living room may still be a little rough but as a version one product, it's still pretty compelling. Six months ago, Apple analysts were predicting an Apple branded TV set. I looks like it's just arrived.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
How very very annoying.
Because I spend a lot of time loading fresh installs of OSX in 10.4 and 10.5 flavours onto customers Macs following drive replacements or upgrades I don't really have the time to sit through the time it takes to install from the original DVD. Leopard in particular can take a long time to install on slower macs.
Instead I keep a disk image of each installer on the server and use that, much much faster that way. Until now. Until I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Snow Leopard.
I twigged that somethng was wrong when the second MacBook in a row refused to boot following an install, showing the flashing folder icon that means no bootable drive or system detected. Hmm, two new drives in a row with defects? Not likely.
By the time I was doing the second install I had forgotten that following the first failure I reverted to using my SL install disk. This time it clicked. When running Snow Leopard, the installer will happily run and install all the files on the new drive, however it then renders the new drive unbootable (I trying to work out how). So far my options are to have a handy 10.5 partition on my MacBook Pro (or a 10.5 drive to boot from) so that I can install direct from it again, or revert to using my 10.5 install DVD and drinking more coffee.
Time to put the kettle on then.
Instead I keep a disk image of each installer on the server and use that, much much faster that way. Until now. Until I upgraded my MacBook Pro to Snow Leopard.
I twigged that somethng was wrong when the second MacBook in a row refused to boot following an install, showing the flashing folder icon that means no bootable drive or system detected. Hmm, two new drives in a row with defects? Not likely.
By the time I was doing the second install I had forgotten that following the first failure I reverted to using my SL install disk. This time it clicked. When running Snow Leopard, the installer will happily run and install all the files on the new drive, however it then renders the new drive unbootable (I trying to work out how). So far my options are to have a handy 10.5 partition on my MacBook Pro (or a 10.5 drive to boot from) so that I can install direct from it again, or revert to using my 10.5 install DVD and drinking more coffee.
Time to put the kettle on then.
Friday, 31 July 2009
Does the world need an Apple tablet?
From the hype surrounding the iPhone you would think the world would be clamouring for Apple's much rumoured and seemingly oft delayed Tablet Mac (or SuperiPhone if you will). Are Apple about to repeat the iPhone trick with the tablet and will the world go crazy again.
Netbook sales are still on the up and up. On the face of it it looks like somewhere Apple should be (and no the Air is not a netbook in any way shape or form). Personally I think that we will see a tablet but Apple needs one more that the rest of the world does.
Since the iPod arrived and took the world by storm Apple has been seen as THE innovator in mass market consumer tech. No other company can take a device that the market has never seen before and make it part of everyones lives. Releasing an Apple netbook sounds like a great idea. A small cheap computer that introduces more people to the Macintosh. Great. But not actually innovative as such.
Now a tablet. A 7 or 9in touch screen tablet, that's more like Apple. A tablet fits the Apple innovation bill perfectly. If Apple release a netbook we've seen it all before and that's just not Apple. A tablet that actually works as part of your daily life, that after six months you can't imagine how you ever survived without it, that's an Apple product.
The world might not need an Apple tablet, but Apple does. Which is why I think we'll see one eventually (probably early next year).
Netbook sales are still on the up and up. On the face of it it looks like somewhere Apple should be (and no the Air is not a netbook in any way shape or form). Personally I think that we will see a tablet but Apple needs one more that the rest of the world does.
Since the iPod arrived and took the world by storm Apple has been seen as THE innovator in mass market consumer tech. No other company can take a device that the market has never seen before and make it part of everyones lives. Releasing an Apple netbook sounds like a great idea. A small cheap computer that introduces more people to the Macintosh. Great. But not actually innovative as such.
Now a tablet. A 7 or 9in touch screen tablet, that's more like Apple. A tablet fits the Apple innovation bill perfectly. If Apple release a netbook we've seen it all before and that's just not Apple. A tablet that actually works as part of your daily life, that after six months you can't imagine how you ever survived without it, that's an Apple product.
The world might not need an Apple tablet, but Apple does. Which is why I think we'll see one eventually (probably early next year).
Thursday, 25 June 2009
The great iPhone price gouge?
Welcome to the UK, happy land where consumer electronics cost more than almost anywhere else. It's been a feature of computers and tech that the price of an item in teh UK will not so much reflect the current GBP/USD exchange rate, as be a direct pound for dollar exchange. You pay $99 in the US, we pay £99 in the UK. So far so rippy.
Now that we are all used to this stage of affairs companies have started loading the UK price on top of this, citing exchange fluctuations and other excuses. it's a fact of life. Here are some examples, taken from one of the worst offenders, Apple that illustrate the point. Exchange rates as of today (24th July 2009 are in brackets)
iPod touch 8GB - $229 (£139) UK price £165
Mac Mini 2.0 - $599 (£364) UK price £499
MacBook - $799 (£485) UK price £749
You see how it goes. However even this sort of free cash looks small compared to the price gulf we in the UK face when looking at the new iPhones.
The iPhone 3G is now available in the US for $99. Pretty cool yes. That's a £ price of 60. Who wouldn't want one at that price. Apple would clean up. Except, here in the UK we don't pay £60. We don't even pay double the equivalent price in pounds. We don't even pay TRIPLE!! We pay £342.50 a massive hike over the US price. The 3GS fares little better, US iPhone fans pay $199 for their new phones, that's £121 british pounds. I suppose we should be thankful that we only have to pay just under 3 times this for our phones.
The current 3G is obviously just an excersie in stock clearnace and will probably not be with us for too much longer (certainly in the US). However in the UK it may be some time before Apple clear these, certainly while they insist on fleecing their UK customers to such an unforgivable extent.
Now that we are all used to this stage of affairs companies have started loading the UK price on top of this, citing exchange fluctuations and other excuses. it's a fact of life. Here are some examples, taken from one of the worst offenders, Apple that illustrate the point. Exchange rates as of today (24th July 2009 are in brackets)
iPod touch 8GB - $229 (£139) UK price £165
Mac Mini 2.0 - $599 (£364) UK price £499
MacBook - $799 (£485) UK price £749
You see how it goes. However even this sort of free cash looks small compared to the price gulf we in the UK face when looking at the new iPhones.
The iPhone 3G is now available in the US for $99. Pretty cool yes. That's a £ price of 60. Who wouldn't want one at that price. Apple would clean up. Except, here in the UK we don't pay £60. We don't even pay double the equivalent price in pounds. We don't even pay TRIPLE!! We pay £342.50 a massive hike over the US price. The 3GS fares little better, US iPhone fans pay $199 for their new phones, that's £121 british pounds. I suppose we should be thankful that we only have to pay just under 3 times this for our phones.
The current 3G is obviously just an excersie in stock clearnace and will probably not be with us for too much longer (certainly in the US). However in the UK it may be some time before Apple clear these, certainly while they insist on fleecing their UK customers to such an unforgivable extent.
Sunday, 31 May 2009
That's Digital Quality
Listen to those funny old recordings of old music on those 78rpm records. laugh at how tinny they sound. Recently recordings have been unearthed of the oldest recorded sound known, from 1860.
From this point on the quality of recording human sounds has increased in leaps and bounds. In the same fashion the quality of our recorded images has also improved substantially, from the early blurred and faded images through to colour taking in moving images along the way. from 186o onwards we have added colour, sound and movement, stereo, 3D, IMAX, HD TV, multi mega pixel cameras. The history of human recording is a long upward path of ever better quality. Until now that is, and strangely the death of quality is part of the modern digital age.
When the CD was introduced in the 80's audiophiles waxed long and hard over the supposed reduction in sound quality compared to their beloved LP's. In truth they had a point, but a marginal one. CD's offered audio quality that was acceptable to the vast majority of music and lovers and sales of both CD's and audio systems boomed. But can the same be said of our modern equivalent, the downloaded mp3 file.
The vast majority of mp3's come direct from the internet and, in order to speed up download times, the rate at which they are recorded is truncated. The original iTunes standard of 128Kbps (kilobits per second) has been increased to 256Kbps but both are a long way short of CD quality (320Kbps). In addition most mp3 content in consumed on portable devices via cheap headphones, while on the go.
While flat screen HD screens are becoming the norm in homes, younger consumers of video content are just s likely to watch on smaller screens, attached to laptops or even portable video devices. Streaming video content via YouTube and others is compressed to allow for download even HD movies from iTunes suffer from compression artifacts. Meanwhile back in the old fashioned word of traditional broadcasting, digital TV promises more and more channels, until bad weather cuts the signal off, resulting in freezes and drop outs in the signal that good old fashioned analogue never suffered from.
And what about photography? Surely modern mega pixel digital cameras offer good solid increases in quality. Well again, many photographers would beg to differ. Digital is certainly more convenient but it has taken until only very recently for the latest 40Mp and better digita backs to rival medium format film. Most amateur photographers will save their snaps as jpeg images, without thinking they are throwing away vast swathes of digital information and dumbing down their images. More savvy snappers may keep files in RAW format, but again loose quality when they convert to 16bit in photoshop, and that's before we look at uploading files to Flickr and similar for sharing.
The merging of TV and internet looks like it will only increase the move to lower quality content. While most people automatically equate the word digital with quality, what they actually mean is convenience. The digital age has resulted in an explosion of content and the ability to share this content and view it anywhere and any time. But almost always at a severe price in terms of quality. Digital content is not so much high quality, or even good quality but almost always good enough quality. Content trumps quality pretty much ever time, especially for younger consumers.
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Many years useful service
Mac users can often be heard to remark how reliable their Macs can be, and how much longer a Mac can last doing useful work compared to a PC. Certainly I see a significant number of clients that are quite happy with their older hardware. Mostly this translates into G4 towers, which are the Abrams tanks of the Mac world; heavy but basically indestructible. They may not set the world alight but they get the job ( mostly dtp in publishing) done. As well as G4 towers I see plenty of G4 laptops as well as a smattering of G3's including a couple of clamshell iBooks that their owners wouldn't swap for anything else.
Software seems to get upgraded more regularly, well it does cost less than a new Mac. It's rare that I see anything older than 10.4, and on the rare occasions I come across machines running 10.3, we soon get that sorted.
Sometimes however somethng comes along out of the blue. On Friday I got a call from a local engineering company whose Mac was playing up. Expecting to find an office iMac I was surprised to be ushered into the main workshop and pointed towards a large sheet metal machine (a Strippet to be exact). Next to the machine was a control station, and upon opening it up, the Mac controlling it was revealed. A Mac IIcx, running System 6. Happy in it's isolated existance this Mac had been controlling the Strippet every day for over 20 years before finally sucumbing to a logic board fault that caused it to shut down after 5 minutes.
The control software for the Strippet was written specifically for System 6, so no upgrade is possible. As a result the hunt is on for a replacement IIcx.
While diagnosing the fault it became apparent that System 6, while ancient, exhibited one major advantage over OS X. From pressing the power key to the Strippet software being up and running was less than 10 seconds. With multiple restarts, testing under OS X would have been tedious in the extreme. OK so the whole OS was contained within 2Mb of RAM (the Mac had 5Mb in total), but the black and white icons of System 6 were a real trip down memory lane.
Next time I'm tempted to wish my current MacBook Pro into an early grave I will remember all those tired old IIcx's around the world, still giving excellent serice as they approach 25 years of age.
Software seems to get upgraded more regularly, well it does cost less than a new Mac. It's rare that I see anything older than 10.4, and on the rare occasions I come across machines running 10.3, we soon get that sorted.
Sometimes however somethng comes along out of the blue. On Friday I got a call from a local engineering company whose Mac was playing up. Expecting to find an office iMac I was surprised to be ushered into the main workshop and pointed towards a large sheet metal machine (a Strippet to be exact). Next to the machine was a control station, and upon opening it up, the Mac controlling it was revealed. A Mac IIcx, running System 6. Happy in it's isolated existance this Mac had been controlling the Strippet every day for over 20 years before finally sucumbing to a logic board fault that caused it to shut down after 5 minutes.
The control software for the Strippet was written specifically for System 6, so no upgrade is possible. As a result the hunt is on for a replacement IIcx.
While diagnosing the fault it became apparent that System 6, while ancient, exhibited one major advantage over OS X. From pressing the power key to the Strippet software being up and running was less than 10 seconds. With multiple restarts, testing under OS X would have been tedious in the extreme. OK so the whole OS was contained within 2Mb of RAM (the Mac had 5Mb in total), but the black and white icons of System 6 were a real trip down memory lane.
Next time I'm tempted to wish my current MacBook Pro into an early grave I will remember all those tired old IIcx's around the world, still giving excellent serice as they approach 25 years of age.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Man that's a cool phone
Slim, attractive, easy to use. The coolest phone I own. That's my iPhone obviously? Well, yes, at the moment it is but I was actually thinking of another phone. One that popped into my head while listening to various tech podcasters fighting over which phone was better, Blackberry, iPhone or G1. My old Ericsson T28.
I've always had a soft spot for Ericssons design style from way way back and the T28 perhaps represents the pinnacle of that. It was super small and super slim. The flip out microphone and cover worked in a satisfying chunky manner and clicked back with a quality noise. Battery life was excellent too. I always felt great using that phone. OK, so like all Ericssons the actual call quality was poor, something that all ericsson phones suffered from until Sony came along.
But still, I recon that I could actually survive using that phone today. Certainly it wasn't 3G but it would still work on the current network. And I'm sure it would provoke as much comment as my Phone, not that that's a real driver. The T28 came from an earlier cleaner mobile world, one less cluttered by MMS, video mobile e-mail. A world that I in some way miss.
I've always had a soft spot for Ericssons design style from way way back and the T28 perhaps represents the pinnacle of that. It was super small and super slim. The flip out microphone and cover worked in a satisfying chunky manner and clicked back with a quality noise. Battery life was excellent too. I always felt great using that phone. OK, so like all Ericssons the actual call quality was poor, something that all ericsson phones suffered from until Sony came along.
But still, I recon that I could actually survive using that phone today. Certainly it wasn't 3G but it would still work on the current network. And I'm sure it would provoke as much comment as my Phone, not that that's a real driver. The T28 came from an earlier cleaner mobile world, one less cluttered by MMS, video mobile e-mail. A world that I in some way miss.
Saturday, 28 February 2009
The future of Music on your computer?
iTunes competitors come, and iTunes competitors go. The number of startups that promised to overturn Apples enormous advantage in on line music is almost as large as the number of Nigerians that promise to make me a millionaire. The one thing they have all had in common until recently is their singular lack of success.
Generally, the reason for this is held to be Apple unique one, two punch combo of the iTunes store and the iPod. Any service that offers music that is not playable on the mighty iPod is effectively doomed.
Which is why the Amazon store works. The easy to use downloader throws mpeg files (that will happily play on your iPod) dirctly into iTunes. The quality is better that iTunes, the DRM is absent and the choice is huge.
Now, there is another pretender to the iTunes crown. Spotify offers the lure of free music on your computer. OK, there are restrictions. It's streaming not downloading but for home or office based computers the ability to access effectively limitless music for free is a real boon and great for experimenting with new musical discoveries.
I've been listening to spotify for a few days and I must say it works great. Apart from the Beatles, pretty much everything you need is there and the streaming is flawless so far. I can easily se Spotify becoming the default day to day music browsing platform. The service is ad supported, currenly ads are few and unobtrusive but Spotify plan to up the ad content. Hopefully not to a point where it becomes annoying.
On the move on my iPhone (or Touch) last fm offers streaming music too. Again this works well and allows for experimentation. Last fm also gives gig and artist data, which is nice.
Balancing this triple Amazon, lastfm, spotify combo against the iTunes store it's beginning to look like the era of iTunes dominance may be beginning to end.
Generally, the reason for this is held to be Apple unique one, two punch combo of the iTunes store and the iPod. Any service that offers music that is not playable on the mighty iPod is effectively doomed.
Which is why the Amazon store works. The easy to use downloader throws mpeg files (that will happily play on your iPod) dirctly into iTunes. The quality is better that iTunes, the DRM is absent and the choice is huge.
Now, there is another pretender to the iTunes crown. Spotify offers the lure of free music on your computer. OK, there are restrictions. It's streaming not downloading but for home or office based computers the ability to access effectively limitless music for free is a real boon and great for experimenting with new musical discoveries.
I've been listening to spotify for a few days and I must say it works great. Apart from the Beatles, pretty much everything you need is there and the streaming is flawless so far. I can easily se Spotify becoming the default day to day music browsing platform. The service is ad supported, currenly ads are few and unobtrusive but Spotify plan to up the ad content. Hopefully not to a point where it becomes annoying.
On the move on my iPhone (or Touch) last fm offers streaming music too. Again this works well and allows for experimentation. Last fm also gives gig and artist data, which is nice.
Balancing this triple Amazon, lastfm, spotify combo against the iTunes store it's beginning to look like the era of iTunes dominance may be beginning to end.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Mac Collecting
Given that people will collect anything (ceramic frogs, beermats, fingernails) it's not surprising that older Macs should attract they eye of the collector.
But just how collectable are these older Macs and if they are which ones should you be holding on to?
They answer to the first part is, at the moment, not very. With the exception of the Lisa (which wasn't really a Mac), the chances of getting any real cash for your Mac is pretty remote. But, jut say, you're cleaning out the back cupboard and you DO come across a hoard of old Macs, which ones are worth the time and effort to put on ebay?
As with most things collectable, the early examples are worth the most. In this case you'll be looking for an original Mac, the 128K from 1984. This mac came in the original iconic case which failed to house any kind of hard drive (floppy drive only). It's meagre spec doesn't stop it from being the most collectible Mac. Other Macs may share the same case, but it's the 128K that fetches the big bucks. Expect to get around a hundred pounds for yours.
After the original Mac everything else vintage is small beans, you can pick up Mac pluses for around £50 and classics for a bit less. All the other models are pocket change.
The original iMac exploded onto the scene in 1998 making it over ten years old now. It was an immediate hit and its design inspired a thousand copies and turned blue plastic into an industry. A bondi blue iMac makes a great piece of decoration, and since it can run OS X 10.3.9 you could even use it from time to time. You could get around £50 for yours on ebay.
There is one Mac however that had collectable written all over it from the day it came out, the 20th Anniversary Mac, or TAM. Created to celebrate er, 20 years of Mac . With only 12,000 units built, along with looks that echo the current iMac, the TAM can fetch as much as £800 on ebay.
So, you won't get rich collecting Macs but the flip side is that for little money you can build a collection of interesting personal computer milestones.
If I had the room my Mac collection would certainly contain the following:
original Mac 128K
Mac portable
iMac 233 Bondi Blue
G3 tower
20th Anniversary Mac
Monday, 5 January 2009
If it's Tuesday it must be MacWorld
Tuesday the 5th. MacWorld 2009. The last show with Apple in attendance and the first without his Steveness at the keynote helm. The internet runneth over with gushings on why SJ is not doing the keynote, ranging from: "he hates you and he doesn't want to speak to you" to "he died seven years ago man. There was a picture of him in Newsweek without any shoes on so it must be true".
Despite all that the fact is that it's all down to the Schillmmeister on the day, but what will he be introducing. After the high of the iPhone last year and before that er, the iPhone, what can we expect to see?
Ranking in order of how shocked I'll be if it happpens and in reverse order:
Mac Mini. New shiny and revised. It may come in a new form factor (think TimeCapsule in aluminium) or it may stay the same lovely mini. Whatever, like Christmas 2009, it's coming. Faster, bigger drives, DVi and new DisplayPort.
Snow Leopard. More sneak previews, not the real thing.
New iMacs. Faster processors, more better, but essentially just the same.
MacBook Pro 17 in. Joins in the unibody fun. Plenty of rumours on this but no shouts of surprise from me if this one fails to appear. The 17in shows al the hallmarks of joining the ranks of the unloved products in Apples lineup, though Steve uses one apparently.
And in the no way corner:
iPhone nano. Yeah right, just what apple need to cannibalise iPhone sales with a cheap feature poor copy. Nope.
NetBook. Rumours of web site stats showing browsing by an unidentified Apple product with a screen size betwen that of an iBook and an iPhone. Maybe somewhere in Dr Applesteins lab it exists but not at MacWorld.
iHoover. Cleans as it sucks as it cleans. Available in silver or beige.
Beatles on iTunes. No seriously.
We'll see on the day. Oh and one more thing... nah, just kidding.
Hello 2009
OK, so that was a long one. Surely anyone should come back from that extended Christams break fighting fit and ready to go. (cough, hack, sneeze). I need a holiday.
OK so what happens next? Well firstly I have decided. No really really decided that this blog will henceforth be daily. Even if it's only a few words. I'm out and about every day so I really should have more to say about the life of an itinerant Mac fixer upper, even if I edit out all the stuff that will loose all my clients! Lets see how we go. Even if nothing happens I'll try to put up a small snippet of Mac info that may be useful to someone somewhere.
So, what happened recently. Well a rare trip to the local pub just before Christmas found me coincidentally meeting one of the four people that I actually managed to follow on Twitter, which was interesting. Out of a randomly assembled group of four people, all four turned out to use Macs in their work. Several beers later and some interesting plans were mooted. Keep em peeled between now and Easter for stuff happening in the podosphere* as a result.
The DHM mobile failed to make it though the holidays, detonating its engine in Devon on New Years eve, so the hunt is on for a new, estate sized, dog carrying diesel car. This one will get stickered with the DHM logo to within an inch of its life.
OK, enough for a Monday morning. Happy New Year to all.
* I claim this. It's mine.
Sunday, 7 December 2008
Get your contacts out of AOL the easy way.
If you've been an internet user for a long time, you will probably remember a period in the mid nineties when every delivery of mail contained a few bills, maybe a letter; and around 26 small cardboard enveloped containing AOL set up CD-ROMS. Thankfully it seems that the shiny plague has past, but the legacy of 10 years of intensive marketing is that a lot of internet users started out using AOL services.
While AOL can, and has, served as an easy and safe introduction to the web and e-mail, most users eventually graduate to other more flexible (and open) providers for their mail. Now, AOL doesn't like t loose it's hard won customers without a fight, so they work hard to improve their service, offer features that help users and generally make AOL on line such a great place to be that only an idiot would want to leave, oh wait, no, actually what they do is make it so hard to move your data away from them that grown men have been known to break down in tears. I mean how hard can getting your e-mail contacts, that's YOUR email contacts out of an AOL address book. Well, funnily enough, almost impossible is the short answer. Well it's a business model.
Anyway, our windows cousins have a couple of options in the form of applications that will collect your AOL data for you, but short of running windows on your Intel Mac, OS X users are out in the cold here.
Luckly, there is a sneaky beaky way of getting at least some your data out of AOL and into a more usable form, and here's what you do.
Your first port of call is social networking site Plaxo. You will need to set up a free Plaxo account. Who knows you might even like it there. Once set up, Plaxo offers the insanely useful option of importing your AOL contact list. This is a good thing. 30 seconds later, all your AOL contacts will be safely Plaxo'd.
Plaxo, being a good web 2.0 citizen is all about sharing, and they DO offer the option to export contacts. In the almost universally accepted csv format. (Catch up Apple). In the contacts section is something Plaxo call sync points. Here you can sync data with all common mail apps such as gmail, yahoo mail and apple mail (via address book). You can also do a simple export into a csv file.
And that's it really. 1) set up Plaxo account. 2) Import data. 3) sync to Apple address book, or wherever.
Really AOL, it's not that hard. You can't keep customers by chaining them to an account. Personally I can't see any reason why a Mac user would want to use AOL apart from the fear of loosing years and years of contacts. And now you don't have to worry about that.
While AOL can, and has, served as an easy and safe introduction to the web and e-mail, most users eventually graduate to other more flexible (and open) providers for their mail. Now, AOL doesn't like t loose it's hard won customers without a fight, so they work hard to improve their service, offer features that help users and generally make AOL on line such a great place to be that only an idiot would want to leave, oh wait, no, actually what they do is make it so hard to move your data away from them that grown men have been known to break down in tears. I mean how hard can getting your e-mail contacts, that's YOUR email contacts out of an AOL address book. Well, funnily enough, almost impossible is the short answer. Well it's a business model.
Anyway, our windows cousins have a couple of options in the form of applications that will collect your AOL data for you, but short of running windows on your Intel Mac, OS X users are out in the cold here.
Luckly, there is a sneaky beaky way of getting at least some your data out of AOL and into a more usable form, and here's what you do.
Your first port of call is social networking site Plaxo. You will need to set up a free Plaxo account. Who knows you might even like it there. Once set up, Plaxo offers the insanely useful option of importing your AOL contact list. This is a good thing. 30 seconds later, all your AOL contacts will be safely Plaxo'd.
Plaxo, being a good web 2.0 citizen is all about sharing, and they DO offer the option to export contacts. In the almost universally accepted csv format. (Catch up Apple). In the contacts section is something Plaxo call sync points. Here you can sync data with all common mail apps such as gmail, yahoo mail and apple mail (via address book). You can also do a simple export into a csv file.
And that's it really. 1) set up Plaxo account. 2) Import data. 3) sync to Apple address book, or wherever.
Really AOL, it's not that hard. You can't keep customers by chaining them to an account. Personally I can't see any reason why a Mac user would want to use AOL apart from the fear of loosing years and years of contacts. And now you don't have to worry about that.
Sunday, 5 October 2008
World Wide Words
Streaming video, it's the darling baby of the internet, or maybe it's HD movie downloads, or flash animation. Whatever it is it seems to be pictures, moving pictures. However there's something else that I've been enjoying on the web and it is infact words.
There are many ways to get words from the web, some cost money but most are surprisingly free. Starting with the most expensive, we have audio books, principally from Audible.com who have an enormous selection of titles to choose from, covering tech titles, sci-fi, biography, in fact anything you can find in dead tree format you can probably find on Audible. It's not however what you would call cheap. Good value, but not cheap.
Luckily for the more "cost concious" amongst us there are many other ways to get an audio fix for free, without resorting to Limewire or other dodgy file sharing shennanigins. Apples iTunes offers easy access to the world of podcasting, spoken word episodes on pretty much any subject under the sun. Rapidly graduating from the obvious (Apple casts, Dr Who casts etc) it's easy to find plenty of meaty subject matter to keep the ears and brain happy on car journies to and from DHM customers. I can heartily recommend the Astronomy Cast, you will never learn more about our universe so easily.
But podcasts are not iTunes only spoken word trick. This one has been a feature of iTunes since the beginning and is almost univerally ignored. See the little "Radio" tab in the left hand side bar? Click it. You will find radio from around the world. I myself am partical to radio stations from Americas deep south, mostly for the between song ad breaks. Slip into a world of second hand car salesmen, corner cafés and other Americana.
Finally don't forget the feeds from actual radio stations. The good old BBC offers its Radio 7 service, where you can access a weeks spoken word content in one go.
Don't be seduced by the lure of the movies. Let spoken word into you online life.
Mind you, on the movies front, big props to the BBC, who have, with little fanfare made their iPlayer service available on the iphone by encoding content into quicktime rather than the desktop versions flash based content.
There are many ways to get words from the web, some cost money but most are surprisingly free. Starting with the most expensive, we have audio books, principally from Audible.com who have an enormous selection of titles to choose from, covering tech titles, sci-fi, biography, in fact anything you can find in dead tree format you can probably find on Audible. It's not however what you would call cheap. Good value, but not cheap.
Luckily for the more "cost concious" amongst us there are many other ways to get an audio fix for free, without resorting to Limewire or other dodgy file sharing shennanigins. Apples iTunes offers easy access to the world of podcasting, spoken word episodes on pretty much any subject under the sun. Rapidly graduating from the obvious (Apple casts, Dr Who casts etc) it's easy to find plenty of meaty subject matter to keep the ears and brain happy on car journies to and from DHM customers. I can heartily recommend the Astronomy Cast, you will never learn more about our universe so easily.
But podcasts are not iTunes only spoken word trick. This one has been a feature of iTunes since the beginning and is almost univerally ignored. See the little "Radio" tab in the left hand side bar? Click it. You will find radio from around the world. I myself am partical to radio stations from Americas deep south, mostly for the between song ad breaks. Slip into a world of second hand car salesmen, corner cafés and other Americana.
Finally don't forget the feeds from actual radio stations. The good old BBC offers its Radio 7 service, where you can access a weeks spoken word content in one go.
Don't be seduced by the lure of the movies. Let spoken word into you online life.
Mind you, on the movies front, big props to the BBC, who have, with little fanfare made their iPlayer service available on the iphone by encoding content into quicktime rather than the desktop versions flash based content.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
iPhone mania - the update
OK, so that was hard. Thanks not only to the expected supply issues but also O2's almost totally opaque business upgrade policy and computer systems, it seemed like I was never going to battle through!. However, big kudos to the nice folks at the O2 shop in Stroud, Glos, who texted me when they had stock come in (unlike Cheltenham, who took my details several times and threw then directly into the pit of despair). Not only did they still have phones when I arrived at the store they diligently upnpicked all of O2's best efforts to roadblock my upgrade and I left the store with two 8 gig phones (one for me and one for Mrs Dr Happy Mac).
One quick session with iTunes later and both phones were up and running. So, do we join the ranks of the converted? Of course we do. It is quite simply the phone I have alwaysw wanted. It does the basics better than my old (!) Nolia n95, I can call, be called, look up contacts text etc, all more easily than before. I love the visual voice mail and once it's done with being a phone I can listen to my music and podcasts. It's also fantastic to hold with great hand feel and weight.
Family DHM have just returned from a field in Oxfordshire, having road tested our new tent and the iPhone was a real boon, pulling my mail from out of the air, allowing us to book cinema tickets for a rainy afternoon and even plotting my route to an emergency on hols call out via the google maps app. Battery life is a bit short though, but then my n95 was shocking like that too.
I could go on, but I guess the internet is full enough of glowing iPhone reviews. The main thing is, I got one. As could be guessed the low points of the experience were all about the O2 service (not you Stroud guys). Lets hope now the rush has died down that people are getting a better first impression of Apple and its products. It's worth the hassle.
One quick session with iTunes later and both phones were up and running. So, do we join the ranks of the converted? Of course we do. It is quite simply the phone I have alwaysw wanted. It does the basics better than my old (!) Nolia n95, I can call, be called, look up contacts text etc, all more easily than before. I love the visual voice mail and once it's done with being a phone I can listen to my music and podcasts. It's also fantastic to hold with great hand feel and weight.
Family DHM have just returned from a field in Oxfordshire, having road tested our new tent and the iPhone was a real boon, pulling my mail from out of the air, allowing us to book cinema tickets for a rainy afternoon and even plotting my route to an emergency on hols call out via the google maps app. Battery life is a bit short though, but then my n95 was shocking like that too.
I could go on, but I guess the internet is full enough of glowing iPhone reviews. The main thing is, I got one. As could be guessed the low points of the experience were all about the O2 service (not you Stroud guys). Lets hope now the rush has died down that people are getting a better first impression of Apple and its products. It's worth the hassle.
Sunday, 13 July 2008
iPhone...what iPhone
Dateline Friday July 11th. The day that rabid PR executives worldwide had decreed to be known as I-day, or iPhone-day, or perhaps frI-day. Who knows. Whatever, big business had successfully managed to smuggle enough mind altering chemicals into my coffee to ensure that I would decide to join the day one gang and become one of the iPhoned.
So how did I do. Initial efforts had gone poorly, very poorly. As a result of registering my interest with )2 I was the luck recipient of an e-mail instructing me to click on a link. Checking my content filter were set to "stun" I clicked. A mere hour had elapsed since receipt of the mail, but this proved to be too long. The phone that makes Jesus look like an amateur magician was sold out online. Already. It looked like it was going to be a store vist. Me in an actual Apple line. Would there be mimes to entertain us. Would we bond with fellow line travellers, making friends for ever, peopl ewho when we mailed each other with our phones would look at the little signature "sent from my iPhone" and smile with warm rememberance?
A totally fake excuse of collecting some t-shirsts meant that I had a reason to head from Cirencester to Cheltenham, via the girls school. Luckily for me the girls are great gymnasts so I didn't actually have to stop the car, simply eject them on the move in the general direction of school. The road to Cheltenham is narrow and twisty, and had my car been fitted with TOW rockets or machine guns would have been littered with the burning shells of cars that were driving just. too. slowly. Still 9.30 was a good time to getr in line.
The quick walk from car to O2 shop took me past the Carphone Warehouse outlet, where a mini queue was already in place, should I divert. No. there it was the holy grail. Some red police tape, a few cones and... the queue. A nice lady even came out, counted us and pronounced all of us in the line as blessed, well as blessed as people who are denied 16Gb phones because they only had 8Gb models in stock could be.
But, what cruel fate was this. Another, not nearly so nice lady asking if any of us were business customers. Me!! I'm an importnat business customer, in line for two handsets!! Me!! No! No!! NO!!! "I'm sorry sir, we can't process business customers today. We've made this totally arbitary decision, sorry!"
And that was that. The scant solace of my t0shirt collection failed to remake my morning. O2 are now out of stock for weeks, but the Cirencester Carphone Warehouse is gettng more in on Tuesday so it looks like a plan B is scheduled for then.
Updates on Tuesday.
So how did I do. Initial efforts had gone poorly, very poorly. As a result of registering my interest with )2 I was the luck recipient of an e-mail instructing me to click on a link. Checking my content filter were set to "stun" I clicked. A mere hour had elapsed since receipt of the mail, but this proved to be too long. The phone that makes Jesus look like an amateur magician was sold out online. Already. It looked like it was going to be a store vist. Me in an actual Apple line. Would there be mimes to entertain us. Would we bond with fellow line travellers, making friends for ever, peopl ewho when we mailed each other with our phones would look at the little signature "sent from my iPhone" and smile with warm rememberance?
A totally fake excuse of collecting some t-shirsts meant that I had a reason to head from Cirencester to Cheltenham, via the girls school. Luckily for me the girls are great gymnasts so I didn't actually have to stop the car, simply eject them on the move in the general direction of school. The road to Cheltenham is narrow and twisty, and had my car been fitted with TOW rockets or machine guns would have been littered with the burning shells of cars that were driving just. too. slowly. Still 9.30 was a good time to getr in line.
The quick walk from car to O2 shop took me past the Carphone Warehouse outlet, where a mini queue was already in place, should I divert. No. there it was the holy grail. Some red police tape, a few cones and... the queue. A nice lady even came out, counted us and pronounced all of us in the line as blessed, well as blessed as people who are denied 16Gb phones because they only had 8Gb models in stock could be.
But, what cruel fate was this. Another, not nearly so nice lady asking if any of us were business customers. Me!! I'm an importnat business customer, in line for two handsets!! Me!! No! No!! NO!!! "I'm sorry sir, we can't process business customers today. We've made this totally arbitary decision, sorry!"
And that was that. The scant solace of my t0shirt collection failed to remake my morning. O2 are now out of stock for weeks, but the Cirencester Carphone Warehouse is gettng more in on Tuesday so it looks like a plan B is scheduled for then.
Updates on Tuesday.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Make the most of mail
Web apps such as Firefox and Safari seem to have inspired people to both create and use a wide range of plug ins that are designed to customise the users experience to help specific browsing styles, but maybe because it's such a workaday program most people seem to use Apple Mail as it comes, straight out of the box. While basic mail (and particularly Leopard Mail (mail3) makes a pretty good job of your e-mail there are a few ways to make the mail experience more useful. So here are a few additions to mail that you might find useful.
First off, Letterbox. This plug in changes the standard mail view to three side by side columns ratehr than stacking the preview window under the mail list window. On wide screen monitors (and Mac Book Pros) this makes much better use of your screen real estate and can save lots of time, particularly when scanning long lists of mail.
Growlmail is part of the hugely useful Growl suit of plug ins and add ons that allow a range of notifications of events happening on and to your Mac. Growl mail will notify you via a pop up window of new incoming mail, and give you a heads up on who it's from.
Similarly, MailAppertiser is another flexible mail notification plug in. A dark smoked effect pop up window displays new incoming maeesages plus their content for a specified amount of time allowing you to decide wether to ignore or deal with any new messages. Mail Appetiser is available for both Tiger and Leopard mail.
With many more plug ins available to fulfill specific tasks, it should be worthwhile investigating how you could improve your mail experience.
First off, Letterbox. This plug in changes the standard mail view to three side by side columns ratehr than stacking the preview window under the mail list window. On wide screen monitors (and Mac Book Pros) this makes much better use of your screen real estate and can save lots of time, particularly when scanning long lists of mail.
Growlmail is part of the hugely useful Growl suit of plug ins and add ons that allow a range of notifications of events happening on and to your Mac. Growl mail will notify you via a pop up window of new incoming mail, and give you a heads up on who it's from.
Similarly, MailAppertiser is another flexible mail notification plug in. A dark smoked effect pop up window displays new incoming maeesages plus their content for a specified amount of time allowing you to decide wether to ignore or deal with any new messages. Mail Appetiser is available for both Tiger and Leopard mail.
With many more plug ins available to fulfill specific tasks, it should be worthwhile investigating how you could improve your mail experience.
Friday, 6 June 2008
10 hidden gems
OK so you;re getting the basics but you can always learn a wee bity more. Here (quickly) are ten handy hints that you might not know you can do with OSX Leopard (or other versions of OS X)
1) Time Machine. It works great on files but did you know you can use it from inside apps such as iPhoto. If you've deleted a needed photo it's no problem. You can entrer the time machine interface while running iPhoto, navigate back to the missing image and restore it right back into your library.
2) Application switcher. I love it but almost no one I speak to seems to even know it exists. To switch betwen running apps simply hold the command (or apple) key and hit tab to cycle through each app via a big icon bar in the middle of the screen. Holding the shift key reverses the direction of travel through the apps.
3) Spotlight as an application launcher. Thanks to the speed boost in spotlight under Leopard you can now youe it as a great application launcher without cursing the speed. Click on the spotlight icon. Type the first few letters of teh application you want to launch (three or four letters usually does it) and hit return. Bingo open application.
4) Create quick and easy movies in Photobooth. Need to send a video message to a friend. Open Photobooth, select the video button and away you go. Short videos that you can send via e-mail or share on the web are just a single click away.
5) Summarize text. One of the little used system wide services in each applications pull down menu. Select a large body of text in any application or on th einternet and select summarize. OS X will present you with a short summary of the contents of the text.
6) Screen zoom. Eyes getting tired. Need to see what that tiny dot in the corner is. Just hold the control key down and move your mouse up ( or use 2 finger scrolling up on newer Mac portables) and teh screen wil magically zoom in. Reverse process to zoom out.
7) Quick clean up. Need to close everything in a hurry. Don'rt waste time clicking on the red close button on every window. Just click on one button while holding the option key and all open windows will instantly close.
8) Colour code your window backgrounds. Sounds odd but it can help differentiate project windows. Open a window and select icon view. Then select view options and select colour (or even picture) from the buttons at the bottom of the menu
Enjoy!
1) Time Machine. It works great on files but did you know you can use it from inside apps such as iPhoto. If you've deleted a needed photo it's no problem. You can entrer the time machine interface while running iPhoto, navigate back to the missing image and restore it right back into your library.
2) Application switcher. I love it but almost no one I speak to seems to even know it exists. To switch betwen running apps simply hold the command (or apple) key and hit tab to cycle through each app via a big icon bar in the middle of the screen. Holding the shift key reverses the direction of travel through the apps.
3) Spotlight as an application launcher. Thanks to the speed boost in spotlight under Leopard you can now youe it as a great application launcher without cursing the speed. Click on the spotlight icon. Type the first few letters of teh application you want to launch (three or four letters usually does it) and hit return. Bingo open application.
4) Create quick and easy movies in Photobooth. Need to send a video message to a friend. Open Photobooth, select the video button and away you go. Short videos that you can send via e-mail or share on the web are just a single click away.
5) Summarize text. One of the little used system wide services in each applications pull down menu. Select a large body of text in any application or on th einternet and select summarize. OS X will present you with a short summary of the contents of the text.
6) Screen zoom. Eyes getting tired. Need to see what that tiny dot in the corner is. Just hold the control key down and move your mouse up ( or use 2 finger scrolling up on newer Mac portables) and teh screen wil magically zoom in. Reverse process to zoom out.
7) Quick clean up. Need to close everything in a hurry. Don'rt waste time clicking on the red close button on every window. Just click on one button while holding the option key and all open windows will instantly close.
8) Colour code your window backgrounds. Sounds odd but it can help differentiate project windows. Open a window and select icon view. Then select view options and select colour (or even picture) from the buttons at the bottom of the menu
Enjoy!
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