MacMost: Blog Posts

Maybe it it’s the geek in me, But I like dials, gauges, graphs, and blinking lights. Whether it’s my car or my computer I like to pretend I know what’s going on with it.
I like deciphering the blinking lights of my OBDII reader to learn that, yes, I am going to have to buy an O2 sensor for my car soon. That’s why I like The Activity Monitor on my Macs.

I’ve read in a few places how the “Xbox 360 Live Vision Camera” might be a good replacement for the no-longer-sold stand-alone iSight camera. With Leopard (and Tiger 10.4.9) you can now use a variety of standards-based Web cameras with Macs. Just plug-and-play. And at $33 at Amazon.com, this Xbox camera seems like a bargain, and people are reporting excellent quality.
But after getting one, I was very disappointed. First off, the camera is manual focus. That puts it down a step from most other Web cameras. It is 1600×1200, which is nice, but the resulting quality at 640×480 is poor compared to the built-in iSight in iMacs and MacBooks.
It does plug-and-play, but I couldn’t get it to work with iMovie or PhotoBooth, as it only wanted to use the built-in iSight. I did get it to work with WireCast and QuickTime Pro.
The big show-stopped for me was the color quality. Very poor. The color was way off and no amount of lighting seemed to fix it.
So, this might be a good, cheap Web camera for chatting or having fun, but not for making any video.

The Web browser market is starting to look like the stock market. Currently Firefox’s stock seems to be going down and Safari’s is going up. Opera seems to just hang in there and IE for Mac is trading as a penny stock.
It’s got to the point that I have both Safari and Firefox open most of the time, just so I can navigate sites that don’t support one or the other. Maybe, I’ll have to have yet another browser open now. Flock is a new web Browser whose raison d’être is to consolidate your Web 2.0 rock and roll lifestyle.
Flock uses tabs to keep tabs on your various social networking sites. Your Facebook ,Twitter , Flickr, and You Tube friends and timelines are all under the People tab and your Flickr, Photo Bucket and You Tube photos and videos are under the Media tab, and You can sort all of your RSS and other feeds under the Feeds tab. Other cool features in Flock are an accounts tab to keep track of all your web accounts and passwords, and you can post to your blogs and upload photos all within the browsers interface.
All this stuff is cool, but maybe it’s just shyness, but I’m not quite ready to make Flock my default Web browser… yet.
First, it takes about an hour just to configure the thing to work with all your sites and once you’re done with the ordeal, you kind of wonder if you could have done the same thing in Firefox with tabs and an add-on. Secondly, I’ve got to put it through it’s paces as a plain ol’ web browser to see how compatible and fast it is before I trust it as my main browser.
I have run into one snafu trying to get it to log onto my blogs to post, but I want to figure it out a bit before I declare it a bug.
If you are heavily social networked, Flock may be your new browser, Saving you time logging onto all those sites, so that you can waste more time networking.
Flock is available as a free download at flock.com.

Okay, I usually don’t blatantly promote software. Nor would I usually steer you to another Mac site. But this is too good of a deal to pass up, if you are at all interested in DJ software.
There are several good DJ mixing applications out there, the big three are Tracktor DJ Studio, Ultramixer and DJay. Of the three, Tracktor is the big-boy Pro app but at $280US list price, it’s definitely beyond the budget of the casual DJ. UltraMixer Pro has most of the features of Tracktor and goes for $230US and while I like UltraMixer’s interface better than Tracktor’s in most aspects, UltraMixer is obviously a cross platform port, There is nothing Mac-like about it’s interface or menus. Finally there is the little engine that could. If you like spinning with two turntables and a microphone DJay is the app for you! It has a cool two deck interface and all the controls are Mac-like and intuitive, and at $50 US its a bargain.
So here’s the deal For today only (February 20, 2008) Djay is available as promo deal on MacUdate.com for $24.99.
Even if don’t catch today’s deal, if you have any interest in DJ software you should check out the trial download of DJay at the DJay website.

It seemed like “never” was when Neverwinter Nights 2 for Mac would be released. First it was November, then December, then January, then March. But now it looks like we’ll get it a bit earlier than March as Feb. 26 has been set as the date.
Neverwinter Nights is the successor to the Baldur’s Gate series of games and both are directly related to real Dungeons and Dragons, which means a little nostalgia thrown in with good RPG play. You can also create your own adventures, which for some RPG-obsessed people like me, is even more fun than playing.
I loved the Baldur’s Gate games on Mac years ago. I couldn’t wait for the original Neverwinter Nights to come out on Mac, so I bought it for Windows. I regretted that decision, since my main computers are Macs it meant that it was too much of a bother to switch to a PC to play. So I didn’t get my money’s worth out of it. Now with Boot Camp and Parallels, it was tempting to get the Windows version of Neverwinter Nights 2 many months ago, but I’ve been holding out as to not make the same mistake.

You might think that the staff of a big Mac site like MacMost would get all the new Apple products for free. I only wish it were so. So in the grand scheme of the tech ecosystem, I have to decide how much of my paycheck I’m going to recycle into Apple products and I have to decide which product I should be saving my pennies for next. Here is my current thinking.
I’m not much of a cell phone guy, but I do like the idea of the internet in my pocket, so the iPod Touch seems like it would be a really cool thing that I would use all the time, and I could even pretend I had an iPhone, and look cool, without the monthly commitment. On the down side is that it only has WiFi access (read, no driving and surfing) and my wife would probably take it and then I’d have to buy another one.
Our G3 iceBook is all but dead, it gets a case of the blue screen about a minute after booting, So it’s time to replace the iBook with a MacBook. I’m not much of a traveler, but when I do, I need my computer. Or rather, my wife needs my computer. This is because the entire social network of Second Life will falter if my wife is away from it for more than 24 hours. So iPod internet will not do, we need to be able to run Second Life. Downside to buying an MacBook? First is I know the day I buy one, the NEW MacBooks will be released, Actually that’s why the new ones aren’t out, Steve is waiting to see my purchase order for the current model before he releases the new one. Oh, and if I buy the MacBook, that blows my budget for the year and my wife would probably take it and then I’d have to buy another one.
Finally There is the Logic Studio, Logic studio had half the features, was harder to use and cost twice as much a year ago. Now it’s half the price, has tons of new features, includes Soundtrack Pro 2, a bazillion new Appleloops, and most of all, it got a new intuitive interface that mortal musicians can understand. The downside is that my wife can’t use it and therefore probably wont approve the purchase.
And finally I could just buy my wife the new iMac to replace her G5 and bask in the warmth of a happy wife and wait till next year for the next version of Logic studio.

Apple announced that they had dropped the price of the 1 Gig iPod Shuffle to $49. $50 is the price point that technology essentially becomes affordable to anyone. That means that kids are going to get real iPods for their birthdays instead of cheap knockoffs from companies like Creative and SanDisk. That in itself is going to be a huge market.

Adobe announced Director 11, which is the software that allows developers to make Shockwave content. Shockwave is the browser plug-in that is used in multimedia and gaming. It is considered more powerful than Flash, mostly because of its 3D engine that uses OpenGL on the Mac to present real 3D — the type you see in big games.
But for a while, Shockwave really hasn’t been available on the Mac. Shockwave 10, the current version, was released in 2004 and does not work on Intel machines. You could get it to work by setting either Safari or Firefox into Rosetta mode, forcing them to work like PowerPC applications on Intel machines. But most people didn’t bother.
With the release of Director 11 in March should come Shockwave 11, which will work on Intel Macs. So Shockwave will be back. You can see lots of example of Shockwave content at the free online games site GameScene.com.

So I’ve got Leopard and so I have Boot camp, and I bought a copy of Parallels to run Windows on my Mac Mini. The only thing I haven’t bought is the Windows OS. I want to get XP Pro But I’m having a hard time finding a boxed copy for less than $130, the same price as Leopard. Vista Ultimate is more like $250 new. Hmm… only one flavor of Leopard, which is pretty much ultimate by nature. Since Microsoft has announced that they will end production of XP on June 30, I’m faced with the choice of buying a soon to be obsolete (in Microsoft’s own words) OS or one that is rather buggy and tends to break hardware (hence it’s nickname Hasta La Vista).
Infoworld is circulating a petition for Microsoft to continue XP production, but what Microsoft needs to do is make a smarter, leaner single flavor of Vista that is the same price as Leopard (Yeah Right!)
While the Vista sucking issue is bringing users to Mac OSX and various flavors of Linux in droves, I need to get Windows just to run some obscure Windows only shareware apps. In fact, come to think of it I might even be able to get by with XP Home edition, that should cost less than Leopard.

I must admit I did a spit take when my 9 year old granddaughter looked over my shoulder while I was doing some work in GarageBand and said “That what we use to make our podcast, Pa-Jay, do you want to see my Podcast?”
“Actually, it’s a Vodcast. Go to my school’s website and I’ll show you,,” she continued. Sure enough when I went to the Fox Hollow elementary school’s website, There was the third grade Podcast page, and there was my grand-daughter showing how to make cookies for all the interwebs to see. Her classmate and best friend, Maddy shows how to make chocolate ice cream from vanilla with a bit of alchemy involving cocoa powder. Phillip shows us how to get a girlfriend. Apparently the trick is to buy a potential girlfriend a ring for exactly $114, But first you have to look cool by wearing a long-sleeve button shirt and don’t tuck it in.
Technically the students are using Apple’s GarageBand to make “enhanced” Podcasts. All of the podcast have a title and a series of still images with a voice-over by the students and background music from the royalty-free music included with the iLife suite. And then thy are publishing the Podcasts to the school’s website using the iWeb application.
Apple is making a serious impact in higher education with it’s iTunesU initiative. It’s nice to see that podcasting is being used in primary education as well.
As a person that makes podcasts for a living it’s nice to know that at least my grand-daughter knows what I do, even if the rest of the family hasn’t quite figured it out.

Rumors of blu-ray drives on Macs starting way back in mid-2006, but so far nothing official from Apple. You can get a 3rd-party blu-ray drive for your Mac, and Toast already supports Blu-ray drives. Also, look to Steve Jobs’ other company, Disney, to see that they have been all into Blu-ray for some time. Plus, Apple has been on the

I’ve been coming across this term “predam iPhone” recently. If you do a Google search for Predam iPhone you quickly get this idea that it is an unlocked iPhone. Sometimes it is spelled “prodam iPhone.” It is a strange word, at any rate.
Apparently you can buy them on eBay, or from all sorts of weird sources. They even come in huge quantities, like I’ve seen pictures of a whole palette filled with these things. I found one source that says that predam means “break” or “unlocked” and I’m guessing that these are found in a lot of black markets in countries that don’t have the iPhone yet.
This did get me thinking as to why Apple still only sells iPhones in Apple and AT&T stores. Why not on Amazon.com, Best Buy and those multi-brand mobile phone stores? After all, Apple needs to reach that 10 million goal by the end of the year. More stores can only help.
I was recently in an Apple store and I overheard people who were not Mac fanboys like me talking about “Have you seen the iPhone? It is so cool! I think I need to get one. Me too!” etc. I think that salesfolk at mobile phone stores and electronics stores would love to push a $400-$500 device that practically sells itself.
Now, the reasoning I thought that Apple was going with to not sell in other stores was the unlocking problem. They wanted to keep close tabs on each iPhone that goes out the door. But obviously that is not working if there are so many unlocked iPhones floating around, and pages of “predam iPhones” are clogging the net.

It may be surprising that Rush Limbaugh has Mac Pro computers, but it’s not so surprising that he would think that he deserves concierge service from Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Limbaugh appealed to Jobs during his radio program on February 12th.
“‘Mr. Jobs, please help me.’ I know we don’t agree on anything. You love Algore — and by the way, I’ve got no problem with him now, but can you put me to somebody that can get this going, because I know it’s gotta work for most people. What am I doing wrong?”
Mr. Limbaugh said that he was a fan of Apple’s computers but has been having a problem on the computers since upgrading to Leopard. After the OSX 10.5.2 update failed to solve his problems, Rush felt it was time to directly appeal to Jobs for tech support.
Limbaugh didn’t disclose the exact nature of the computer problem, but said “Mr. Jobs, please, I just ordered six brand-new Mac Pros: four for me and two as gifts; maxed out, Blu-ray drives. I’ve loaded ’em up. Our whole office here is Mac, and I just want it to work because I love them — and these two things that aren’t working would seem to me, as a novice, to be a simple fix, but they’re not.”
Rush’s broadcast engineer, Mike Maimone said, “You don’t understand it. Jobs has you tagged. He’s making sure your computers don’t work. If you put out this appeal to Steve Jobs and ask him to help, his reply is going to be, ‘Mr. Limbaugh. Do us a favor and endorse Windows.'”

Perhaps the McCain campaign statement that they didn’t want an endorsement from Rush, would also apply to Apple.

There is a rumor based on a leaked AT&T document that we may soon have the ability to tether our iPhones to our laptops. The rumor looks pretty weak, so I won’t go into it here. But tethering is something that Apple and AT&T should consider.
A lot of my business friends have either a mobile phone or some sort of card that they can use to connect their laptops to the net from virtually anywhere. In addition to providing connectivity in places that don’t have wi-fi, it also provides security in a world where account IDs and passwords are sniffed from public wi-fi hotspots.
The type of people that would have both an iPhone and a MacBook (me!) are exactly the type of people that would want them to tether. The added value would be huge.
Now you might say: what good is a Edge-network-speed connection to a MacBook. The answer is: infinitely better than no connection. Even at slow speeds, it would allow you to get your email and check on critical information.
The iPhone should be the premier phone of choice for “the connected,” but it never will be until it has this key feature.

Do you want to sit-in on lectures from some of the most prominent professors at the most prestigious universities? You can at Apple’s iTunes U. iTunesU harnesses the power of podcasting for education.
By simply going to the iTunes Music Store in iTunes and clicking on the iTunesU link you can access courses and lecture from hundreds of colleges and universities. You can listen to Astronomy 101 at Stanford or the Philosophy Of Love at MIT, all without touching the parents nest-egg.
Course lectures aren’t the only thing at iTunesU. How about Mozart’s requiem sung by the Duke choir or art exhibitions and discussion from the Museum of Modern Art or video guitar lessons from Little Kid’s Rock?
While you may not be enrolled or paying tuition or have a diploma to show for it, you can say that you took engineering coursework at MIT and still pass a lie detector test.

Okay,they did the iTunes Music Festival London last year too, but that doesn’t make this years iTunes Live: London Sessions any less provocative.
According to Apple:
“Over 11 magical evenings, starting on Thursday February 21st, 2008, iTunes will host a series of unique recording sessions. More than 25 of the world’s most talented musicians — including KT Tunstall, José González, Tom Baxter, Roísín Murphy, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Spiritualized and many more — will perform solo and collaborative sets in London’s legendary AIR Studios. The performances will be recorded and sold exclusively on iTunes in March.”

By recording live performances and selling them it erases any doubt that Apple is indeed in the music biz. Hopefully, the blokes at Apple Corp. records are too busy counting their money from last years settlement. to notice this new turn of events.
BTW, looking at the artist pictures on the Website, since when did Nick Cave start sporting the sleazoid mustache?

So you may have heard that there is a rumor going around that the Adobe Flash Player is coming for the iPhone very soon. But I’m inclined to doubt it.

I updated my Apple TV the moment I got home tonight. The update was fast and went without a hitch. Take 2 includes a new menu interface that seems simpler, but otherwise has the same functionality. But of course there are the new parts: renting movies, Flcker and .mac photos, getting podcasts directly from the net, and the ability to buy music from iTunes directly, without a computer.

Apple has never encouraged anyone to modify their computers in the slightest way, in fact, dire threats of warranty violations abound at every turn. So that’s why its strange to see Apple actually linking to mod sites on the Mac Mini page.