MacOnMacs: Canadian iPhone to use Rogers Wireless

Posted on 26. Jan, 2007 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 4 Comments

I thought I’d post this because I was asked about it in a recent comments thread:

Well, it’s looking pretty likely that Rogers Wireless will be the carrier for the iPhone in Canada. There’s been a slew of different reports on this (MacNN and many others) and I think yesterday’s CrunchGear post probably cements it, quoting an official Rogers rep as saying:

“Rogers is actively working with Apple to launch the iPhone in Canada as soon as possible and will be the exclusive provider of the iPhone in Canada.”

This makes sense because Rogers is the main GSM network provider here, but a quick peruse through the comments threads of various articles (like John Wiseman’s blog and the MacNN story referred to above) certainly shows a lot of displeasure at the prospect (including some insane price calculations for service that I can only hope are far off base). I’ve only used Telus in Canada, so I can’t really offer any firsthand opinions, aside from agreeing that telecommunications competition in Canada is not what it should be.

MacOnMacs: Judge your “experts” wisely

Posted on 25. Jan, 2007 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 4 Comments

I just finished reading the Wharton Prof. (Widely) Misses Point of Apple Name-Change on Wired’s Cult of Mac blog. The title of the article is a little misleading in that the name change argument is just one of three major points brought up by the writer about how wrong-headed people can be when evaluating technology products. The three points Wired disputes are:

  • Design is just about being cool (relative to the iPhone);
  • People will be disappointed by the video quality of the Apple TV (talking about how 480p upconverted to 720p is somehow lacking compared with most people’s viewing habits); and
  • the titular Apple dropping “Computer” is a sign of surrender (drawing some terribly false conclusions about why Apple Computer Inc. has become Apple Inc.).

I think the Wired writer makes some very compelling points and really demonstrates that people need to take some of these “expert opinions” with a serious grain of salt (see: every iPod-killer article ever written).

I’m not being an Apple fanboy here, this kind of uninsightful reporting is done all over the place, but I think this shows the value in knowing whose content you’re reading and, even if you find them reliable, backing this up with a little exploration of your own. In any case, just wanted to draw your attention to this PLUS Wired’s Cult of Mac blog is great reading for all you Mac-heads out there, so you should check it out.

MacOnMacs: Final Cut Pro Tips – File Locations and Organization

Posted on 25. Aug, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 1 Comment

Most of my MacOnMacs postings are general tips, applicable to just about anyone. However, as I’ve gotten further into video editing, I’ve searched and found a lot of different Final Cut Pro and related resources that have helped me a great deal and should be of use to any up-and-coming video production types out there. As there are a lot of people with a lot more experience than I have in this area, I thought I’d just provide some links to some helpful articles I’ve come across, so here goes…

As I was cleaning up from editing the second installment of my tsunami reconstruction quarterly documentary series from Sri Lanka (see the RebuildAmpara.com videos in the News section of that site), I realized that there were a lot of files hanging around and I wasn’t exactly sure where they all were and what they all were for. Thankfully I found a great article on the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group site explaining Final Cut Pro file locations and what’s stored in them.

What this caused me to realize is that I’ve been editing without a very well-developed plan for how my files were organized so that I could keep track of them and archive them easily. Thankfully, Final Cut Pro guru Larry Jordan has, in addition to a lot of other excellent info (I would recommend subscribing to his free monthly newsletter), a great article on Organizing and Archiving your Final Cut Pro projects.

I’ll keep posting these tips as I come across them and I’d love to know of any great tips or links to tips that you guys might have, so comment away! :-)

MacOnMacs: Ejecting CDs/DVDs

Posted on 20. Aug, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 6 Comments

I thought I’d put a quick little post up on this subject, as I know I’ve repeatedly had to figure out how to eject an uncooperative CD or DVD from my Mac’s drive. Here are a few steps in order of ease (obviously don’t type in quotes where you see them below – type in what’s in the quotes :-) ):

  • If you don’t have an actual “Eject” button on your keyboard (it should be in the upper right hand corner), try pressing and holding the F12 key, which can be assigned the eject function in some circumstances.
  • Can you see the disc’s icon in the Finder or on the Desktop? Drag it to the Trash in the dock (which will change from a Trash icon to an Eject icon).
  • If this doesn’t work then see if you can select Finder->File->Eject (command-E) to eject it.
  • You can sometimes eject a stuck disc from another application. Try using the eject button in iTunes (bottom right hand corner) and/or, if you have Roxio’s Toast, then try Recorder->Eject (command-E) in Toast.
  • Do you have a Mac with a tiny hole to one side of your disc tray? Straighten out a paperclip and stick it in this hole to manually eject a disc.
  • If your disc is still stuck then open up Terminal (in Applications/Utilities) and type in “drutil tray eject” to eject the disc. If you then need to close the tray, you can type “drutil tray close”.
  • Still no luck? Time to haul out the heavy guns and restart this bad boy. Restart your Mac while holding down your mouse button (I guess this would be the left button on a multibutton mouse) until it finishing starting up.
  • One last chance here. Restart your mac but hold down command-option-o-f (that’s for an “open firmware” startup). At the command prompt type in “eject cd” and press return. Type “mac-boot” and hit return to finish starting up.

Hopefully one of those will get your disc out, as I’ve never had a stuck disc where at least one of those options didn’t work. If you know of any other options then please share them with other readers here by posting a comment. Good luck!

MacOnMacs: Running Windows on Your Intel Mac (Part II)

Posted on 09. Aug, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 3 Comments

Thought I’d update on my previous Running Windows on Your Intel Mac post in the wake of some news in the last couple of weeks…

For those of you who see Windows video games as the last thing holding you back from diving into the Mac world, check out TransGaming’s recently announced Cider, “a sophisticated portability engine that allows Windows games to be run on Intel Macs without any modifications to the original game source code”. Pretty cool stuff!

The UK’s RegHardware site has just published a good article on running Windows on Mac: BootCamp vs Parallels Desktop, which is a good supplement to the comparison in my previous post on the subject. Speaking of which, there is also a new beta for Parallels Desktop that improves USB support, graphics, along with other improvements and bug fixes.

In other news, another big player VMware readies virtualization software for Macs. And as another choice comes in, a previous choice is taken away: Microsoft has finally bowed out of this battle, announcing that it will be shelving its Virtual PC for Mac. Frankly, I’d just as soon have a third party developer doing this stuff anyway, as Microsoft seems to be slowly digging itself into the ground with the enormously delayed Vista and other less-than-successful projects recently.

I’m certainly in line for an Intel Mac now that the new towers have been announced, so I’ll hopefully be able to give you a first-hand account of how some of these things work pretty soon. Until then, these posts can serve as a bit of a guide for you ;-) .

MacOnMacs: Apple WWDC 2006 – Keynote Address

Posted on 07. Aug, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 6 Comments

I couldn’t let the day end without posting on this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference that opened today in San Francisco with a much (as always) anticipated keynote address from the man that Business 2.0 magazine calls “easily the greatest marketer since PT Barnum” – Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Down to the meat of the announcements:

  • Mac Pro – the “fastest Mac ever” and replacement for the aging PowerMac G4/G5 towers has finally arrived. Keeping with the simplifying of Apple’s product line of late, the Mac Pro is a single, but highly customizable, entry. The basic model is $2499 and sports two 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors, but a dual 3 GHz option (add $800) is also available giving a reported performance boost of 60-110% above the 2.5 GHz PowerMac Quad G5 model before it. Although the Mac Pro’s enclosure is essentially the same as the G5′s, the additional space that was needed for G5-related heat issues is now used much more effectively to provide space for up to four 500 GB 7200 rpm hard drives (up to 2 TB of potential storage space), room for a second optical drive (up to 2x SuperDrive), 3 full-length PCI Express expansion slots, up to 16 GB of RAM, and more.
  • Xserve quad Xeon 64-bit server – the last piece of the Intel puzzle was replacing the G5 Xserve, which has been done with this two Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor-powered computer running at up to 3 GHz. The next generation 10.5 Leopard Server OS for the Xserve was also previewed, and includes a Wiki server, iCal Server, Spotlight Server, and a Podcast Producer component (I’d like to find out more about that one).

But even more exciting than that, which seems somehow impossible for a Mac geek like myself, we have our first taste of what comes next in our mighty OS (watch the QuickTime movie clips at the top of these pages – great way to get familiarized quickly while also seeing interface aspects) …

  • Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 preview – as much as I’ve been waiting for the Mac towers to finally go Intel, I find myself very impressed with where the next generation of the Mac OS X is going:
    • Time Machine: Windows does have something similar, but this back-up and system recovery solution is implemented stylishly and effectively. A quantum leap from Backup, this may be the application that makes it easy enough for the general public to backup their computers regularly without the stress and hassle we’ve come to expect of such things.
    • Spaces – a beautiful virtual desktop implementation that allows a single user to separate their desktop into multiple “spaces” while providing easy drag and drop functionality for windows, along with quick access to applications in any “space”. I’ve used one of these since my SGI days at Mainframe, and I’m happy to see it now standard in the Mac OS as well.
    • iChat: iChat has just become a truly worthwhile app for me. There are some frills added like video backgrounds and PhotoBooth-like effects, along with other more functional additions such as tabbed chatting for multiple .Mac, AOL, IM, and Jabber accounts. But the two ground-breaking things here are iChat Screen Sharing, which allows you and a friend to both take control of one of your desktops (which is shown on both computers) so that you can both collaborate on projects while hearing each others voices via an audio chat, AND iChat Theater, a virtual presentation room which allows you to make presentations via iChat of Keynote slides, photos from iPhoto, or content from any iChat-enabled application, accompanied by a video/audio feed of you “playing host”. This is the kind of stuff that helps answer the question of “why would someone use iChat” – I’ll for sure end up employing both iChat Screen Sharing and iChat Theatre in my work, and as far as I can see I can’t think of another “chat” application that combines such practical elements to such good effect. Good work iChat team!
    • Mail: Mail just keeps getting better, and although the incorporating of elegant HTML templates to the email writing process is well-done, I think I’m most excited about the addition of Notes and To Dos (which are incorporated as a core Mac OS service) to the mix here. RSS via email is another perk.
    • Spotlight – finally we will be able to Spotlight search across Multiple network volumes and other Macs. Quick Look technology will also allow you to see previews (e.g. watching a QuickTime movie, seeing an Address Book contact, viewing a PDF, etc.) of documents in the preview graphic overlay without even opening an application. Plus, Boolean searching has been added. All solid evolutionary changes that might make Spotlight a little more highly regarded in my book.
    • Dashboard – I have to confess, I’m not a Dashboard user. I’m not sure these changes will make me become one but they seem sort of cool :-) . First off, Web Clip lets you visit a site in Safari and click the ““Open in Dashboard”” button to make a continuously-refreshed widget of that webpage or part of that webpage (it’s crop-able). Secondly, Dashboard will sync across multiple computers through .Mac now. And, thirdly, although this news has been around for a bit, Dashcode will let anyone build their own widgets.
    • Other: iCal will support calendar sharing and some other features through the CalDAV standard; Alex, Mac OS X’s newest voice synthesis is sounding remarkably human (take a listen on the page); Core Animation aids developers in the production of sophisticated visual effects; and, with Leopard, OS X is truly a 64-bit OS.

All very cool stuff. Mac Pros and Xserves are out now, Leopard (with some other surprises – funny keynote moment alludes to the fact that Longhorn has copied enough OS X things for now) will be out in Spring 2007. I, for one, can’t wait.

MacOnMacs: Running Windows on Your Intel Mac

Posted on 15. Jun, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 1 Comment

I just came across this article from NotebookReview.com which compares running Windows on your Intel Mac using Boot Camp (in Beta now but to be included in the next Mac OS X release) vs. using Parallels. It’s an interesting read and should be helpful for any of you out there who are wondering about the best way to be able to use Windows on your Intel Mac.

The crux of the matter is that Boot Camp requires that you actually reboot your computer into Windows. However, at that point you are actually running Windows (and only Windows – Mac OS is not running) “natively” on your Intel chip, which provides better support to hardware and a much faster computing experience for gamers and people who are using more intense programs under Windows. For those of us who use Windows primary to do things like check out what our websites look like on Internet Explorer (yuck! :-) ) or to troubleshoot email and other simple problems for others, then Parallels “virtual machine” is probably sufficient. Using a virtual machine opens Windows in what looks like just another application Window, doesn’t require a reboot, and keeps Mac OS running as your primary OS. Although this isn’t as speedy and responsive as running natively, it provides a much easier solution for situations where we want to see BOTH Windows and Mac OS at the same time. Microsoft’s Virtual PC is based on the same concept.

Don’t forget that with any of these solutions you will still need to own and install a licensed copy of Windows XP. Boot Camp and Parallels are just programs to help your Mac run Windows – they don’t actually INCLUDE a Windows OS with them. This brings us to the biggest reason why I ended up uninstalling my old copy of Virtual PC: Having another OS on your hard drive eats up a LOT of space, which is something to consider if you either don’t have much HD space or if you just don’t end up using Windows very much (which, thankfully, is increasingly easy to do with all the great programs out for Mac now, as well as the growth of Web 2.0 apps that are platform independent). Let me know how it all works out for ya! ;-)

MacOnMacs: GarageBand 3 Podcast/Movie Tools Crash

Posted on 03. Feb, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 13 Comments

NOTE: This failed to publish last night, so I’m reposting it now. :-)

I am extremely disappointed with the GarageBand 3 update in iLife ’06. It’s not that I don’t think the new podcast or movie scoring tools aren’t great, it’s that I can’t use them – at all – trying to do so just results in a nasty crash. I can start a “New Music Project” without any problems, but when I select “New Podcast Episode” or “New Movie Score”, GarageBand goes ahead and starts loading in a bunch of stuff until it freezes on “Loading ‘projectName’ (Equalizer)…”. At that point, GarageBand freezes and needs a “Force Quit” to close. I know there will be people that leap up, as they always do, to defend Apple as not possibly being able to predict and test all use cases, but I’ve seen enough complaints about this particular issue that I have to point the finger at Apple for not doing enough testing before releasing this to the public.

I’ve tried the recommendations that I’ve found on the web…

  1. Flip4Mac, the free software that replaces Microsoft’s discontinued Mac support of .wmv files, was rumoured to be a problem (although apparently the latest update fixed this), but I uninstalled that to no effect;
  2. People also talked about there being an issue with some unsupported media types that get accessed through iLife’s new Media Browser, which is built in to some of the new apps. It was suggested that you remove all your video media to somewhere other than your Movies or home folder to test this. I did them one better and created a fresh account, but to no avail. Besides, the Media Browser seems to work just fine in iWeb, so I doubt this is the problem.

Those are the main tips I’ve seen out there, but they’ve gotten me nowhere (hopefully they’ll help some of you, though). I was so excited about using both of these great new tools in GarageBand, as they incorporate two things that I do professionally: making podcasts and scoring videos/film. If anyone has some other recommendations that you think might help then please let me know. Until then, I will be waiting for an update from Apple that I don’t even know is going to come.

MacOnMacs: iPhoto ’06 – Fixing Permissions & Sharing

Posted on 31. Jan, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 1 Comment

I recently installed iLife ’06, which has some great improvements but still has some bugs that I hope are addressed soon. One thing that I know a lot of people have faced after installing iPhoto 6, launching it for the first time, and then starting the requisite library update, is a message telling you to repair permissions on your iPhoto Library folder (and its contents) due to a lack of proper permissions. Here is a quick way to do this:

  1. In the Finder, select your iPhoto Library folder (usually in the Pictures directory in your home folder) and press command/apple-i (File->Get Info);
  2. From the resultant popup, open the “Ownership & Permissions” section and the “Details” section therein;
  3. Make sure that you’re either…
    • the Owner and the owner’s Access is set to “Read & Write” OR
    • a member of the correct Group and that that group’s Access is set to “Read & Write” (see more about this below)
  4. After you’ve verified that the iPhoto Library has the proper permissions (as detailed in the last point), click “Apply to enclosed items”;
  5. Relaunch iPhoto and, god willing, you will be able to now do the upgrade without further problems!

Another issue that is ongoing with iPhoto is having multiple users on the same machine be able to share and edit the same iPhoto library. Maybe there are some welcome changes in iPhoto ’06 to address this, but I don’t think so (at least not to be able to edit photos as well as view them). Here is one (of several) way to do this:
NOTE: There is one step in the process I outline below that is a little technical, and that’s creating a new group. I won’t go into too much detail on this now but I’ll tell you where to start off.
WARNING: Make a backup of your iPhoto library in case of unexpected results.

  1. In the Finder, select your iPhoto Library folder and move it to Macintosh HD/Users/Shared;
  2. Select your newly relocated iPhoto Library folder and right-click->Make Alias (or File->Make Alias);
  3. Move this alias to the Pictures folder in your home folder and then remove the ” alias” part of the name so that the alias file itself is now named simply “iPhoto Library” (repeat this step for the other users on your computer);
  4. At this point you should be able to open iPhoto (and, if necessary, select the above alias as your library) and it will follow the alias to the Shared folder to see the library contents. One problem – all the users may not have permission to modify the files in the library;
  5. One solution to this is to create a new group (I call mine “sharedUser”), which you can do through the Applications/Utilities/NetInfo Manager app;
  6. This is the part I don’t want to get too deep into b/c you need to have some idea of what you’re doing here (if you’re not sure then research this online a bit first). In a nutshell, highlight “groups” (probably in the second column) and click the “New” icon in the upper left corner (you may have to click on the lock at the bottom of this window to make changes). Here is the “Property” – “Value” pairs I used…
    • gid – 201
    • name – sharedUser
    • password – *
    • users – (username1, username2, username3), which should open to show “Value(s)” of…
      • username1
      • username2
      • username3
  7. Now that you have a new Group including everyone you want to share your library with, we’re going to go through the process we did in my first tip. In the Finder, select Macintosh HD/Users/Shared/iPhoto Library and hit command-i (File->Get Info);
  8. Under “Ownership & Permissions”->”Details”, select your new Group from the pulldown (in my case, “sharedUser”) and set its Access to “Read & Write”;
  9. Now, with your access properly set to allow for any users in that group to both read (view) and write (edit) the iPhoto Library folder in the Shared directory, be sure to click “Apply to enclosed items” to make these changes to ALL the files in this folder.

Not exactly a simple process, and I really think Apple needs to work on a way to make this kind of stuff easier. I tried making an Automator script that would do this, but I couldn’t find all the settings I needed in there – if you know of a way to use Automator to change permissions then please let me know.

Hope that helps to make your move to iPhoto 6 (with its intriguing Photocasting feature) a little simpler! I’ll be putting some more posts up here as I get more familiar with the new iLife ’06 apps.

MacOnMacs: A look back at 2005 (and ahead)

Posted on 18. Jan, 2006 in All, Blog, MacOnMacs | 4 Comments

Now that we’re a couple of weeks into 2006 and I’ve had a chance to fully absorb January’s Macworld event, I thought we could take a look back at Apple’s 2005 – one of the biggest years for the company to date:

  • January 11th – iPod shuffle/Mac mini – Apple’s first flash based iPod and Apple’s strongest contender yet to nudge PC users into the Mac’s warm embrace.
  • January 24th – iTunes Music Store downloads = 250 million (about one million songs per day).
  • February 23rd – 2nd generation iPod minis – including a new 6 GB model.
  • April 29th – Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger ships.
  • May 10th – iTunes Music Store expands in Europe (total countries = 19).
  • June 6th – Intel processor announcement for 2006.
  • June 28th – Podcast directory debuts in iTunes Music Store.
  • July 18th – iTunes Music Store downloads = 500 million.
  • August 24th – iTunes Music Store in Japan (total countries = 20).
  • September 7th – iPod nano replaces popular iPod mini.
  • October 12th – iPod with video/iMac G5 with Front Row and remote/Music videos, TV shows, and movies debut in iTunes Music Store (total shows = 5) – fifth generation iPod release accompanied by ABC/Walt Disney deal which allows purchase of video content through iTMS. Front Row and remote opens the door to Mac “Media Centre”.
  • October 19th – iTunes Music Store in Australia (total countries = 21).
  • December 6th – Eleven shows added to iTMS (total shows = 16).

A lot of great announcements in 2005, and an increasingly successful Apple along with it. I’ve got a few things I’m still waiting for in 2006:

  • Intel Mac desktops (given the name change for the Intel MacBook Pro, I hesitate to use the term PowerMac);
  • Intel Mac laptops (probably just called MacBooks);
  • Native releases of pro and other applications for Intel Macs (come on Final Cut Pro!);
  • Dual-booting of Windows on the Intel machines (even if it makes me feel “dirty” :-) );
  • Video iPod (not iPod with video ;-) – flip the current iPod 90 degrees, put a larger widescreen display on front and maybe the controls on the back/side, and, very importantly, increase the native file resolution so that I can watch shows from my iPod Video on my TV at a decent quality);
  • Front Row 2.0 for all Macs (more responsive and more fully implemented – lets see additional control and customization available, display of artwork in Music section, and a lot of bug fixes);
  • Apple Remotes for all Macs (I don’t want to have to hack around this any more!);
  • Apple-branded Phone (ROKR just didn’t cut it, guys – let Apple actually design the phone and UI this time, please!);
  • AirPort Express with streaming video (and it’d be awesome if it could act as an Ethernet bridge as well);
  • iTunes Music Store expands to include more video content in Canada and elsewhere.

Those are my hopes for what lays ahead, what are you guys looking forward to? Let me know in a comment!

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