Archive for the 'Apple' Category

What will Steve carry down from the mountain?

January 4, 2010  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

I’m not one to get into rampant speculation. I’ve seen too many “credible reports” of future Apple products turn out to be completely wrong. But I had to link to this story about the Apple event scheduled for January 27th because it has one of the best photo Jobs I have ever seen.

What will the event bring? I am hoping it’s something closer to the iPhone than the MacBook Air. Depending on who you talk to, the MacBook Air was either revolutionary or evolutionary. It certainly had an amazing portability. But it didn’t quite reach revolutionary status for me because it was missing a certain something.

That “something” – found in the iPhone – is the ability to look back after you’ve owned the product for a while and say, “I never imagined that this feature would be so important to me; I can’t live without it.” If Apple does release a tablet on the27th, I hope it can lead to that kind of change in my life.

New Macs (as if you didn’t know)

March 4, 2009  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

Apple announced new Macs across the entire desktop line yesterday (Mac Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini). I’ve been in the market for a new iMac, so these updates are very welcome (although with the economy being the way it is, the rush to buy one has subsided just a little).

Still, there’s lots to like about the updates. I am most impressed with the changes to the Mac Mini. The Mini has long lagged the iMac in four key performance-related areas: processor, memory, memory speed, and hard drive speed. Now it looks like we’re down to three. The Mac Mini and the iMac both sport a 1066MHz front side bus. Prior to Tuesday’s updates, the iMacs raced along at 800MHz while the Minis were saddled with a 667MHz FSB. Unfortunately, the Minis are still limited to 5400rpm hard drives. That may have made sense at one time, but now 7200rpm hard drives are even available on Macbook Pros. It’s time to let the Mini catch up.

The iMacs saw a nice boost too. The big shock for me was the switch from two 20″ models and two 24″ models to a single 20″ model and three 24″ models. For me, the 24″ model never made sense before. For the price of the cheapest 24″ iMac, you could almost buy a 20″ iMac and a 20″ Apple Cinema Display (this model has since been discontinued but it was still available when I purchased my current iMac). If you’re willing to step outside the Apple Store and buy a non-Apple display, you could definitely have made that purchase. I would much rather have two 20″ displays side-by-side than a single 24″ display. The reason for this seemingly crazy pricing situation is that Apple bundled better processor and graphics into the cheapest 24″ iMac. If you don’t need that extra horsepower, the larger monitor becomes a very pricey upgrade.

Now things are entirely different. The cheapest 24″ iMac comes in at $1499 with a larger hard disk and more memory. But I can see lots of people wanting to upgrade to 4GB of RAM (a must in my opinion!) and 640GB hard drive (320GB is becoming “small”). Upgrading the 20″ iMac to comparable RAM and hard drive brings the price to $1374. In my opinion, $125 is a small price to pay for the larger screen real estate.

I don’t have much to say about the Mac Pros. My last true desktop was an 867MHz Mirror Drive Doors PowerMac. I can get so much done on a laptop or iMac that I would be wasting my money to buy a Mac Pro. Still, I enjoy pricing one out occasionally to see what kind of ridiculous specs and prices are available. A dual 2.93GHz, 32GB RAM, 1TB HD model currently rings up at just over 12 grand. At least there is free shipping.

Macworld 2009: How Did You Make Out?

January 6, 2009  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

Ever since I have owned a Mac, I have always considered Macworld to be like a second Christmas. I can’t wait to find out what goodies Apple has for us under the tree. Even though we knew we wouldn’t get to see the showmanship of Steve this year, expectations were still pretty high. 17″ MacBook Pro? Mac Mini? Time capsule turned into some kind of home server? There were more misses than hits in the predictions, but we made out pretty well. This is what caught my attention:

  • iWork 2009. I use Pages for quite a bit, and have been looking at Keynote and Numbers more and more. Even incremental updates are much appreciated. Status: Ordered and already shipped!
  • iLife 2009. iView Media Pro (now Microsoft Expression Media) was one of the first programs I bought for Mac OS X when switching. Back then iPhoto seemed little more than a toy. It’s been making progress now, though. And, while it still doesn’t seem to be a “serious” photo database, it’s starting to have enough toys that I am getting interested. On top of that, my pile of miniDV tapes is growing, so iMovie has some appeal also. Status: Still thinking.
  • FileMaker Pro 10. Okay, this one slipped out a little before Macworld, but it’s close enough to count. I am excited about this update. Script triggers. SMTP mail. Themes! (a 21st century interface – if you’re a close reader of this site you’ll know how much that means to me) Status: Ordered, but hasn’t shipped yet.

Hopefully we’ll see the Mac Mini updates in a few days. Historically Apple hasn’t announced minor updates like that at big events like Macworld. So we still may see a Mini bump soon. Has anyone come across third party announcements at Macworld that excited them?

Accessibility on Mac OS X

September 10, 2008  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

Daring Fireball clued me in to a new section of Apple’s website dedicated to accessibility. The site has a lot of information, including features on Mac OS X, iPhone, and iPod. Some of the tips explain regular Mac OS X features that also have application to making the system more accessible, so it’s worth a look even if you don’t need the accessibility features.

Cupertino, We Have a Problem

July 11, 2008  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

This week’s big launch hasn’t gone so well for Apple. MobileMe – scheduled to launch late Wednesday night – was down well into Thursday. MobileMe webmail still doesn’t work for me (although I had a few glimpses of it yesterday).

The iPhone 2.0 launch hasn’t gone so well either. I was elated to finally see the message from iTunes that I had an update to download (after repeatedly being told that no update was available). That excitement was short-lived as the update failed rendering my iPhone currently useless. Clicking on my iPhone in iTunes gives me one of several error messages. The reports coming in seem to indicate that 3G iPhone activation is running into trouble too.

It hasn’t been a good couple of days for Apple. Hopefully I’ll get it working and be able to visit the App Store by tonight. Then I can go shopping and post some screenshots.