How to set up more than one USB microphone or headset so you can record multiple people each on to their own GarageBand track.
This week on MacMost episode 31 we report on the iPhone hitting the UK and German markets and the iPhone to hit France on Nov. 29th. We wish the online Apple store a happy 10th birthday and announce the iTunes Wi-Fi store going live in the San Fran bay area. We also report on the comments made by Michael Eisner about Apple. We continue our Hot Tips segment and show you how to set apps to auto startup. We feature Hero Envy in our Podcast Salad segment and suggest Stumble Upon as our Must Download. For more go to MacMost.com
Gary, Jay, and Eve talk about new rumors like the tablet Mac, an ultra-portable Mac, and iPhones in China. They talk about the new iPod game “Phase.” Jay gives some computer equipment recycling tips.
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As cool as Macs are, eventually they become obsolete or give up the the ghost. They also tend to acquire peripherals and accessories that also cease to function and/or become obsolete. This is an environmental concern because a landfill is no place for consumer electronics of any kind. Unless you prefer your drinking water with heavy metals.
Apple is very responsible in that if you buy a new computer you can check a box on the order form and they will send you a shipping label, and they will pay for shipping back and recycling your old Mac. Just one of those things that makes Mac ownership special.
Over the years, my garage has become filled with old Macs, monitors and accessories. And I do mean filled. So over the last couple weeks I’ve been deaccessioning. First I brought some old Macs (some still functioning) in to be used as props on the MacMost podcast set. Next, I cleaned off my G4 Tower, installed OS 10.3.4 and iLife on it and gave it to my niece and nephew to make music on. Cross them off my Christmas list.
Still I had five monitors, two boxes of old SCSI accessories,ADB tablets, mice, and keyboards, a couple old PC CPUs. I called a local electronics recycling center and found that they wanted over a hundred dollars to take my stuff away. So what to do? Freecycle.org to the rescue! Freecycle is an online service set up in many cities where you can go to a Yahoo group and post stuff you need to get rid of for free, and If somebody can use your stuff they email you, claim it, and pick it up. Woo-hoo!
So I posted a list of what I had left and found someone, who likes hacking together old computers and reselling them for cheap. My stuff is gone, I can see parts of my garage floor, and hopefully most of that stuff wont get thrown away, because there is no away.
Victor Cajiao may be the host of the Typical Mac User Podcast, but according to him, he’s, “never been a typical geek.”
“I’m a switcher. I actually started doing a podcast back in 2005, doing a ‘Typical PC User Podcast’ at that time. I had been working with PC’s all my life.”
But all of that changed in October of 2005 when he bought his first Mac, a Mac Mini. Cajiao was drawn to Macs, largely because of the community of users.
“I had never really quite found the PC community, so it was really attractive to me. So I said ‘Ok I’m going to buy one of these and kind of dip my toe in the water.'”
“Wow, there was just no looking back after that,” he said.
Soon he had purchased a 20″ iMac, and in January 2006 he started the Typical Mac User Podcast.
“I’m going to just start something that focuses on people like me, people that are new to the Mac,” Cajiao said about starting his podcast.
He had plenty of computer experience to bring to his latest project, even if he was new to Macs. Cajiao has been an IT professional for a Fortune 500 telecom company for about 20 years. He’s also worked as a professional saxophonist in the Los Angeles area.
“I’ve found the Mac to be a really good instrument to write music with. Specifically, I use a program called Reason by Propellerhead which is really kind of an all in one suite for writing music and it makes it very simple to do so,” he said.
In additional to his Typical Mac User Podcast and writing music on his Mac he also has another podcast called Immigration Tales that deals with immigration and people’s personal stories of immigration. Cajiao immigrated to the United States from Cuba when he was nine. His family is also what what got him into podcasting.
“The Typical PC User was based upon a 70 year old aunt of mine who I got to sit down in front of a computer and she loved horses and within three hours I was able to show her what the Internet was and that she could use that technological instrument to research her passion and I just saw this sparkle in her eye,” he said.
“I went: Wow, if I can do that for her, then you know there are probably 10 other people like her that are typical in that way,” Cajiao said of teaching his grandma.
He adds, “I think that pertains to the Mac as well. I think the Mac is so much more accessible to people like my wife. She was a PC user forever and I was forever having to be tech support for her.”
With a hint of jealousy he notes, “She actually got a Mac before me. I convinced her to buy a Mac before I ever had one.”
Surprised by the outcome, Cajiao describes a change in his household duties.
“All of a sudden, I saw her doing things on her own that I couldn’t believe. This is really cool. My support time has gone down 30 percent, she’s learning things and she just kind of experiments,” he said with relief.
But converting posed some challenges for Cajiao when he got his Mac also.
“I think at first the eye candy helped. I was definitely influenced by the whole iPod generation. When I got to the Mac, I had to learn how to think more simply. As a PC user I was over thinking a lot of things that on the Mac are just very intuitive,” he said.
“I had to have some shifts of approach into the OS and into the desktop and into the Finder. It was those little things that I had to kind of work through,” he said of his first interactions with the computer.
“But then, what I was getting back aesthetically, and literally gaining back in productivity was more than making up for any of those frustrations because I found myself with the time to be more creative,” he said.
Cajiao passionately describes the learning experience with Macs.
“I was able to explore the world from the eyes of a Mac user, and then I was hooked,” he said.
“That, plus the community. There was never a time, never, ever, ever, when I had an issue or a problem that I couldn’t reach out to the Mac community, whether it was in forums, or even my listeners, that was the beauty of it, is I never came into this as a know-it-all or a guru,” he said.
Most Mac users would probably agree that there is room for everyone from recent converts to seasoned experts within the Mac community.
Cajiao further describes the connection between Apple and its community of users by saying, “It’s really interesting to me that we have this entire body of people who are probably more hippies than not, that are willing to absolutely follow ‘The Man,’ when ‘The Man’ is Apple. It’s a really interesting relationship between corporation big business and the cult of Mac.”
But the cult of Mac is no longer just about computers, as Cajiao readily admits.
“Especially today with the iPhone being the next entry vehicle to Apple, with Leopard being the next entry vehicle, with the Apple TV being the next entry vehicle, that’s going to get people to come over (to Apple),” he said.
Cajiao adds that, “Vista has done wonders for Apple.”
He believes that the future looks bright for Apple.
“I think there are going to be many more typical Mac users coming (to Apple) than there probably have been anytime before this,” he said.
He hopes that the community won’t splinter into two groups, the old Mac users and the new converts, iPhone and Apple TV users, etc. Because after all, it was the community of users that ultimately turned Cajiao into a convert just a couple of years ago.
If you’ve got a FaceBook account, you can now join MacMost at FaceBook! Just go to http://macmost.com/facebook and then click on the “Add to my Products” link on the right to become a MacMost fan. We’ve got some behind-the-scenes photos there, and will post some more soon.
This week on the episode 30 of MacMost we report on the iPhone hitting the UK and Germany, MacBook upgrades, iTunes and Quicktime updates, and Eve Online for Mac. In our Quick Tip we show you how to create a favorite fonts collection. We introduce you to Swajana in our Podcast Salad segment and suggest Senuti as our Must Download. For MacMost Loot we ask you to submit your favorite tips to win a prize.
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Gary, Jay, and Eve talk about using Leopard, including installation and features like Spaces and Time Machine. Other topics covered include the new Google Android mobile operating system, using Google apps like gMail, and rumors of a Mac tablet computer.
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Leopard? Crap. I just installed Leper on my laptop. Pieces just started falling right off.
In this Special Episode of MacMost, We introduce you to our top ten new features in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, including Spaces, TIme Machine, Mail, iChat, Stacks, Widgets and more.
by Gary Rosenzweig
Let me start by saying that I was very unimpressed by Tiger (Mac OS 10.4). As an OS, it was great, but it didn’t offer me anything I needed that wasn’t already in Jaguar (10.3). Maybe a little more stable. Maybe a little faster. But for $129 I wanted more.
But Leopard is a different story. I feel there are significant new features here. I love it and won’t be wasting any time upgrading all my machines to it.
The Finder
The new look is very clean and functional. I like how the Devices, Places and Search for sections on the left can be toggled. The column view is my favorite way of viewing a Finder window and it seems very snappy in Leopard.
There is a new coverflow view that looks like how you flip through albums in iTunes. This is pretty useless unless you have a folder full of pictures.
There is also a new Quick Look feature in the finder. If you select a folder and press the Quick Look button at the top of the finder window, you just get some basic info about the folder. But if you select a file, such as a picture or a text file, you get a preview of the contents of that file. In fact, you can expand it to full screen. You can also leave this semi-transparent Quick Look window open and select other files and it will instantly change to show a preview of that file. So you can use it as a quick slideshow, not only of pictures by other documents.
Spaces
This is my favorite feature of Leopard. I really need this. Spaces allows you to have multiple desktops and easily switch between them. You can put windows on any desktop and move them around. You can view all of the desktops and choose one, or switch between them easily.
This will make my workflow a lot better. I can have one space for Mail and regular browser stuff, like news and information. Another space will probably be where I work with development apps. Then I can have one for server work like FTP or Dreamweaver. Then maybe a fourth for quick miscellaneous work. I’ll probably figure out the best way to use it as I get used to it.
Mail
For me, the simple addition of Notes to Mail is huge. Notes are little documents in Mail that aren’t messages — they don’t get sent to anyone. So it will allow me to keep track of phone calls and meetings alongside my mail messages. All my communication in one place.
Mail also has some improved archiving features. I like to archive my mail often, so this will save some time and effort.
Including the To Do list in Mail as well as iCal means that I’ll probably use it more. Hopefully this To Do list will sync with an iPhone app at some point as well.
Stacks
A lot of attention has been given to this little feature, but it really isn’t anything special. You could already put folders into the Dock and expand them to select an item. This is kinda the same thing, just prettier and a little faster.
That said, the little but of speed might make the difference. I may end up using Stacks more than I did Dock folders in Tiger.
Time Machine
When I first read about Time Machine, I though: “Nice idea, but I won’t be using it.” The reasons were that I have too many big media files, and that I like more control over my backups. But Time Machine may have won me over with its ease of use.
To get it working, all you need is an external hard drive to totally dedicate to backups. Then plug it in, turn on Time Machine, and you’re set. Now everything will be backed up in hourly archives for the last day and daily archives for the last month.
And it just works. This means instead of my three-times-per-week manual backup, I’ll have a very comprehensive backup system, and I don’t have to do anything. I’m in.
Web Clip Dashboard Widgets
This is a really cool new feature. You can create your own Dashboard widgets from sections of Web pages. So you can visit your favorite sites and create news, weather, sports and other information widgets. I was even able to create a Twitter widget by just selecting the “What are you doing?” form in the page. Now I can update Twitter from my Dashboard.
There are probably a million uses for this.
Dictionary
Yes, Dictionary. I love dictionaries. Did you ever check out the front of your dictionary? the printed one, I mean. It usually has all sorts of cool information about language and such. Well, if you haven’t you can now since that front matter is part of the Leopard Dictionary app.
It also has Wikipedia, a Japanese dictionary, and a special Apple dictionary. I can see them adding more in the future too. Maybe even third-party dictionaries.
The DVD Player
Some great new features here. You can zoom in on the video, save bookmarks and clips. The clips function is pretty advanced. Not sure how I will use it yet, but it works well.
Front Row
A lot of people have opted for a Mac Mini over an Apple TV to run their home entertainment system. After all, you can theoretically do everything on a Mini that you can on an Apple TV, plus play DVDs and surf the Web.
Well, it looks like Apple doesn’t mind that configuration at all, as the new Front Row in Leopard is basically Apple TV on your Mac. You get everything you get with Apple TV, plus the whole computer part. It even looks the same and works with the remote control.
Photo Booth
I know a lot of people love this little app. If you do, then you will really love the virtual green screen feature. It takes a picture of the background and then uses it to cut out the background behind you and put anything else — like an aquarium or ski slope. Lots of fun.
Spotlight
This seems more useful than before. I’m not sure if it is faster, or that it simply has a few new options. One of the things I always hated about Spotlight is that it didn’t easily let you search for just file names. It still doesn’t, but it has a new “what” category that makes it more obvious how to search by name.
Boot Camp
So, technically, Boot Camp is part of Leopard. However, most Tiger users that want Boot Camp have been using it for a while.
Boot Camp is fantastic, of course. Not because I want to run Windows. But simply because I want to play games. My MacBook Pro makes a great game machine if I boot into Windows and use a two-button scrollwheel mouse. Dell has lost a sale, as I didn’t update my “PC game machine” this year with a new model, instead just using my Mac and Boot Camp.
There are lots of other improvements as well. the Font Book utility is better, iChat has a bunch of new features, Preview also has better handling of PDF files, and even TextEdit now has grammar checking.
Best of all, nothing seems to have taken a step backward. This happens so often on both Apple and Microsoft OS releases. It took us a long time to get back some of the cool functionality in OS 9, for instance. Heck, Stacks could be considered a replacement for the spring-loaded folders that OS 9 had.
But all-in-all I’m pretty happy with the OS and look forward to using it on all my machines within days.
Gary, Jay, and Will talk about Leopard and give their first impressions. They discuss features like Space, Stacks, Time Machine, Parental controls, folder sharing and Finder changes.
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In MacMost episode 29 we report on the upcoming Leopard release, and Apple’s rosy quarterly earnings report. In our Quick Tip we show you how to enable Tabbed Browsing in Safari. In our Podcast Salad segment we feature the Short Order video podcast and our Must Bookmark is MacTeens.com. For MacMost Loot we ask, “Who created Hypercard?”
Mac lovers aren’t that difficult to find, but a Mac loving Monk, well those are a bit more obscure. Sean Patrick is just that. He’s a formerly ordained Theravadin Monk and the owner of Boulder Mac Repair in Boulder, Colorado. He has been using Macs since 1985, starting with a friend’s dad’s 512K.
“I would go to his house and play with it everyday. I just fell in love with it,” Patrick said. “Throughout school I always had the ability to work with them, I just couldn’t afford one,” he said.
Patrick later developed an interest in graphic design, an industry that has virtually always been dominated by Macs.
Eventually, he purchased his first computer and now, “I probably have about 60 or so in here. It’s like a small museum,” he said about all of the Macs in his shop.
Patrick’s love affair with Macs continues today. As the solo owner of Boulder Mac Repair, he spends his days tooling around on the computers he loves while dreaming of returning to the place he loves, Cambodia, in the near future. His love affair with South Asia developed after he went there to study Muay Thai, a martial art practiced in several South Asian countries. He left the country for a new start after losing his job as a web programmer during the dot com bust.
“I lost my job with everyone else, I was a web programmer,” Patrick said. “What am I going to do?”
“So I left the country.”
And on every trip he’s made to Asia, his Macs made the trip with him. When traveling he uses them to send emails, write, manage photos and videos.
“When I went to Asia the first time I had a clamshell iBook, the graphite edition,” he said.
Traversing another continent with his Mac has reinforced why he loves them so much. Patrick said, “Most of the time they haven’t even heard of it. A lot of the countries I go to like India, Cambodia, Burma, they haven’t even seen the Apple logo. I travel kind of shoe string style, so it’s not something I really flash.”
Traveling can really put a computer to the test.
“I love having my Mac, because even in Thailand and Burma, I was able to keep that computer running for 90 days straight,” he said of their stability. “I didn’t have to restart it once.”
“This is traveling hard, in the back of pick up trucks and staying in $2 hotels.”
Stability can also be proven closer to home.
“There’s a computer at my house, my Mac Mini that’s been on for 7 months without a restart,” Patrick declares. “That’s not unusual. You couldn’t do that with Mac OS 9. You’d be restarting everyday,” which is why he likes many of the changes introduced with OSX.
“I know that I can get on there and it’s stable. I can keep programs (running) for 15 days,” he said.
But stability isn’t the only thing he likes about Macs.
“Personally, what I like is the combination of high design, the aesthetics of the cases,” Patrick said. “Macs aren’t just pretty on the outside, they’re also pretty on the inside.”
Patrick also said he loves, “Just how elegant the user interface is. It’s very intuitive for new users.”
“For Unix users it’s very powerful,” as well. Macs have a broad reach and are powerful tools for users ranging from beginners to experts.
An expert himself Patrick has been repairing Macs in some way or another for the last 12 years. Professionally, for the last 3 years.
“I was pretty much that guy that people would call to get free repair work done,” he said, which prompted him to start Boulder Mac Repair when he returned from his most recent trip to Asia.
“I’ve had the shop open on Broadway for a year now. Each month my work has nearly doubled exponentially,” Patrick said of the success of his business. Part of that success may be accredited to support of his business by the local college students and the Boulder community as a whole. At times, he has as many as 20 or 30 iPods in a week in his shop for repair. Fortunately, he has a full time iPod repairman on his staff to handle that aspect of the business. But his success may also be accredited to his strong sense of the impact of money and greed on people, gained from living in a Monastery during part of the time he spent in Asia.
As his website states, “I’m not trying to get rich off of this gig, and the discount rates I charge reflect that. I’m just trying to live a simple, joyful life.”
It seems that is what Sean Patrick has been able to do.
In addition to all of the repair work he does, he mostly uses his Macs for media and communications. He listens to music, watches movies, sends emails and browses the internet, among other tasks.
Gary, Jay, and Will talk about the October 26 release of Leopard, Leopard features, iTunes DRM, the Amazon MP3 store, Greenpeace, recycling computers, Netscape 9 and Mac browsers.
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