New MacBooks and MacBook Pros

In what is basically a simple refresh of the product line, Apple put out new Macbooks and Macbook Pro's this morning, with each one getting new processors.

The MacBook Pros got a multitouch trackpad inherited from the MacBook Air, and instead of having two models of 15" laptop, and one of the 17"...  there is just now one model of the 15, and two of the 17.  So clearly Apple is going towards "bigger is better".  The second 17 offering simply more screen resolution.

Each laptop possess 802.11n capability for the fastest wireless, and of course an ethernet jack as well.

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New MacBooks and MacBook Pros

In what is basically a simple refresh of the product line, Apple put out new Macbooks and Macbook Pro's this morning, with each one getting new processors.

The MacBook Pros got a multitouch trackpad inherited from the MacBook Air, and instead of having two models of 15" laptop, and one of the 17"...  there is just now one model of the 15, and two of the 17.  So clearly Apple is going towards "bigger is better".  The second 17 offering simply more screen resolution.

Each laptop possess 802.11n capability for the fastest wireless, and of course an ethernet jack as well.

 Subscribe in a reader

Posted from Engadget.  Take a look at the "In Stock Date" and the "Out Stock Date".  I guess it's easy to see when the new computers are coming and when they are leaving.

Yep, new Macbook part numbers are in Best Buy's database

Filed under: Laptops

Our tip jar, it brings us so much joy -- and it brings you, dear reader, this printout of what's purported to be the Best Buy database listing for one of those heretofore-unknown MacBook model numbers. You'll note that whatever MB402LL/A turns out to be, it's said to be in stock on March 2nd, which is just a few days away -- but also note that current MacBook Pros have MA-series model numbers, while the regular MacBook has traditionally carried the MB designation. That's interesting, but we doubt a $1,999 MacBook is about to surface -- besides, the current MacBook box is 15 inches square, smaller than the 19 inches listed here. (Yes, we measured.) As always, we'll see when we see -- come on Tuesday, you're almost here.

Posted from Engadget.  Take a look at the "In Stock Date" and the "Out Stock Date".  I guess it's easy to see when the new computers are coming and when they are leaving.

Yep, new Macbook part numbers are in Best Buy's database

Filed under: Laptops

Our tip jar, it brings us so much joy -- and it brings you, dear reader, this printout of what's purported to be the Best Buy database listing for one of those heretofore-unknown MacBook model numbers. You'll note that whatever MB402LL/A turns out to be, it's said to be in stock on March 2nd, which is just a few days away -- but also note that current MacBook Pros have MA-series model numbers, while the regular MacBook has traditionally carried the MB designation. That's interesting, but we doubt a $1,999 MacBook is about to surface -- besides, the current MacBook box is 15 inches square, smaller than the 19 inches listed here. (Yes, we measured.) As always, we'll see when we see -- come on Tuesday, you're almost here.

Mossberg previews Lenovo's 'Air-killer' X300

I read this article about Lenovo's (Thinkpad) MacBook Air 'Killer' X300, and kinda threw up in my mouth a little bit.

So let's take a look. This thing has 3 USB ports (as opposed to the MacBook Air's 1), it has a DVD Drive, (Air doesn't), has Wifi, and an optional 3G or GPS receiver, a removable battery (air doesn't -- well, easily) and not one, but TWO mouse pointing devices.

So there are pros and cons.

Lenovo --
Has more USB, Apple could do with more USB devices.
DVD Drive, I think Apple did the right thing here and killed the DVD drive. In fact, I think that they will kill off the optical drive in all systems and start shipping their software on USB sticks. Think about how much THAT would save in shipping costs.
Removable Battery -- Okay, well, I'd like to have the ability to easily swap out the MacBook Air's battery. So I kinda have to agree with it.
The Lenovo is thicker, uglier, and really Lenovo, wtf is with TWO mice? The red stick and the trackpad? I have never met anyone, ever that likes the red stick. The trackpad has become the standard, please get with the program. I remember seeing a laptop not too long ago that had the stick, the trackpad, AND the damn trackball. 3 mice. Seriously. Knock it off. Go with the trackpad it seems to work.
Has a slot for a 3G card. Now THAT is what the Macbook Air is lacking. They need the express card slot.

MacBook Air --
Sexy. The Lenovo is the typical Thinkpad ugly ass computer.
Simple. It's a damn Mac!
Lacks more USB
Lacks Optical Drive (so what?)
Lacks Removable Battery

Bottom line, it depends on what you are looking for. Personally I'd like the MacBook Air, but there are too many drawbacks. However, I'd buy it simply because it's a Mac and I refuse to use anything else as my desktop (well, I'd use a bsd or a linux distro as well I guess, but given the option, I'd use a Mac 100%). But I have a Macbook pro. I love this computer, I am writing on it right now. I think the MacBook Pro has it going on.

There is a certain demographic that the MacBook Air is aimed towards, and I think it will sell well in that demographic.

In other news, the same website is reporting that Best Buy is out of the 15in MacBook Pro. Which usually means that Apple has a new one right around the corner. Thinner? Sleeker? Better?

The Secret of the Time Machine-Assisted Hard Drive Swap

Gizmodo published this article this morning.  I thought it was brilliant.

There's never been a better time to void the warranty on your MacBook and upgrade to one of those sweet 2.5" WD Scorpio 320GB drives. That was what made me throw caution to the wind and attempt a Time Machine-assisted swap. The good news is, it works as billed. You get a bit-for-bit transfer to the virgin drive with minimal fuss. The bad news is, if you don't use a little trick we discovered today, you probably won't get it to work at all.

I said "void the warranty" and I meant it. The process I went through today means it'll be harder for me to complain to Apple if things get weird, so be cautious! Given the experience I've had, I think HDDs will soon be given easy-access panels, like RAM has, because swapping a 2.5" SATA turns out to be straightforward, and the software, at least as far as Apple goes, is ready for novices.

The key here is that there's no preparation needed for the new drive. As long as you've backed up your old drive to an external disk using Time Machine, you can prepare for the grand opening. I won't bore you with gory details, except to say that I found a good bit of guidance from this dude's blog. 
The Process
Once you open up the system and swap out the drives, you can set the old drive aside, hopefully never to use it again. Assuming all went well, you restart the system and insert an OS X Leopard installation DVD. You won't need the OS installer on it, but you will need it to act as mediator between the Time Machine backup drive and the newly installed blank drive. Once it boots up (you may need to manually restart to get it to work right) follow these instructions CAREFULLY:

1. Choose your language.

2. At the main screen, choose Disk Utility from the Utilities pull-down menu.

3. Select the drive itself and click on Partition.

4. In the Partition menu, select 1 Partition and Options... where you choose GUID Partition Table. Click OK then Apply, then say "yes" to whatever warning comes up.

5. Once you have reformatted the drive, close the Disk Utility window.

6. Do Not Go Forward. Instead, when you see the main Welcome screen, click the Back button, which takes you to the language select page. It sounds silly but DO IT. This shakes the system into action.

7. Once you have reselected your language and are back on the Welcome screen, click Utilities and select Restore System From Backup...

8. The process should go smoothly from that point on. You simply select appropriate disks to copy your chosen backup data from your Time Machine drive to the new internal drive, as shown in the following sequence:

The Back Story
Originally I tried my swap without first clicking back to the language page, and the installer could not find my new hard drive. Disk Utility saw it and happily formatted it with the GUID partition, but even on the second pass, the installer wouldn't show it as a target option. All I got was this hollow emptiness:
I spoke with Jeerun Chan at Western Digital and asked him to try the same process, which yielded the same results. Then I tried it with another virginal hard drive, this time a 160GB SATA from Seagate. Between the two of us, we ran this test on three different configurations, with the same negative results.

The obvious but depressing solution was to just run the Leopard system installer, then use the migration tool to back up from my Time Machine drive. It's fairly smooth, and smart if you want a clean install on your new drive, but it's boring: it takes a few steps, and they're all obvious. I wanted a bit-for-bit dump from backup to new drive, fully automatic.

As I was installing Leopard on my second drive, the phone rang: it was Jeerun with the crazy back-button technique. I don't know how he thought to do it—I don't even think he knows, but the fact remains: when you have formatted your destination drive and are on the Welcome screen, click the back button and the process will work. If you don't click it, well, in our experience, it seems you will fail in your objective.

Obviously, this won't work if you don't regularly do a full system backup in Time Machine. If the omitted folders in your Time Machine options include system files, you won't be able to do this.

In truth, it might make sense to backup only personal files, especially since this process requires a Leopard install disk even to write the whole image back onto the new drive. Chen swears by SuperDuper, which is perhaps a better pro technique, one that doesn't require a system-install DVD. Still, I wanted to see if this major boast of Time Machine was all that it was cracked up to be. It is, and the end result will be tasty, as long as you don't forget that one little catch.

As with my last Time Machine HDD discovery, this one involves a little hocus pocus. While this method works, you may have your own trick, or a more scientific approach. If so, please share it in the comments below, and spare any fellow Mac users a frustrating afternoon.

Thanks to Jeerun and Heather at WD!

The Secret of the Time Machine-Assisted Hard Drive Swap

Gizmodo published this article this morning.  I thought it was brilliant.

There's never been a better time to void the warranty on your MacBook and upgrade to one of those sweet 2.5" WD Scorpio 320GB drives. That was what made me throw caution to the wind and attempt a Time Machine-assisted swap. The good news is, it works as billed. You get a bit-for-bit transfer to the virgin drive with minimal fuss. The bad news is, if you don't use a little trick we discovered today, you probably won't get it to work at all.

I said "void the warranty" and I meant it. The process I went through today means it'll be harder for me to complain to Apple if things get weird, so be cautious! Given the experience I've had, I think HDDs will soon be given easy-access panels, like RAM has, because swapping a 2.5" SATA turns out to be straightforward, and the software, at least as far as Apple goes, is ready for novices.

The key here is that there's no preparation needed for the new drive. As long as you've backed up your old drive to an external disk using Time Machine, you can prepare for the grand opening. I won't bore you with gory details, except to say that I found a good bit of guidance from this dude's blog. 
The Process
Once you open up the system and swap out the drives, you can set the old drive aside, hopefully never to use it again. Assuming all went well, you restart the system and insert an OS X Leopard installation DVD. You won't need the OS installer on it, but you will need it to act as mediator between the Time Machine backup drive and the newly installed blank drive. Once it boots up (you may need to manually restart to get it to work right) follow these instructions CAREFULLY:

1. Choose your language.

2. At the main screen, choose Disk Utility from the Utilities pull-down menu.

3. Select the drive itself and click on Partition.

4. In the Partition menu, select 1 Partition and Options... where you choose GUID Partition Table. Click OK then Apply, then say "yes" to whatever warning comes up.

5. Once you have reformatted the drive, close the Disk Utility window.

6. Do Not Go Forward. Instead, when you see the main Welcome screen, click the Back button, which takes you to the language select page. It sounds silly but DO IT. This shakes the system into action.

7. Once you have reselected your language and are back on the Welcome screen, click Utilities and select Restore System From Backup...

8. The process should go smoothly from that point on. You simply select appropriate disks to copy your chosen backup data from your Time Machine drive to the new internal drive, as shown in the following sequence:

The Back Story
Originally I tried my swap without first clicking back to the language page, and the installer could not find my new hard drive. Disk Utility saw it and happily formatted it with the GUID partition, but even on the second pass, the installer wouldn't show it as a target option. All I got was this hollow emptiness:
I spoke with Jeerun Chan at Western Digital and asked him to try the same process, which yielded the same results. Then I tried it with another virginal hard drive, this time a 160GB SATA from Seagate. Between the two of us, we ran this test on three different configurations, with the same negative results.

The obvious but depressing solution was to just run the Leopard system installer, then use the migration tool to back up from my Time Machine drive. It's fairly smooth, and smart if you want a clean install on your new drive, but it's boring: it takes a few steps, and they're all obvious. I wanted a bit-for-bit dump from backup to new drive, fully automatic.

As I was installing Leopard on my second drive, the phone rang: it was Jeerun with the crazy back-button technique. I don't know how he thought to do it—I don't even think he knows, but the fact remains: when you have formatted your destination drive and are on the Welcome screen, click the back button and the process will work. If you don't click it, well, in our experience, it seems you will fail in your objective.

Obviously, this won't work if you don't regularly do a full system backup in Time Machine. If the omitted folders in your Time Machine options include system files, you won't be able to do this.

In truth, it might make sense to backup only personal files, especially since this process requires a Leopard install disk even to write the whole image back onto the new drive. Chen swears by SuperDuper, which is perhaps a better pro technique, one that doesn't require a system-install DVD. Still, I wanted to see if this major boast of Time Machine was all that it was cracked up to be. It is, and the end result will be tasty, as long as you don't forget that one little catch.

As with my last Time Machine HDD discovery, this one involves a little hocus pocus. While this method works, you may have your own trick, or a more scientific approach. If so, please share it in the comments below, and spare any fellow Mac users a frustrating afternoon.

Thanks to Jeerun and Heather at WD!

MacBook Pro Goodness

I bit the bullet.

I went out this weekend and purchased my first Intel based Mac. I didn't buy the first gen (or the second gen for that matter) MacBook Pro (MBP), simply because, usually, it's a bad thing to buy Apple hardware in it's first gen. (Except for the iPhone currently)

But the MBP is excellent. It's not hot, it runs fast (even with it's stock 2 Gigs of RAM), and works flawlessly. The MBP had Tiger on it when I bought it, but came with a Leopard install disk, which is nice.

The only thing that I had problems with was, my old wireless card from AT*T was PCMCIA. The new MBP's have Express card slots. So, I had to get a new card. Which the guy at the store, let me tell you, was a prick. Dude, obviously, if I come in, ask for an exact model number for a laptop card, tell you I already have an account (which he had to verify, because he didn't believe I already had a SIM card), I have obviously already looked to see if my computer supports it.

He insisted that OSX was not supported and the card wouldn't work. Well uh, no, it's not supported by AT*T that doesn't mean that it's not supported by the card manufacturer. (Option) What a tool, anyway...

I get the card home, plug it in, and wtf. The lights are flashing.. huh? What did I do wrong? Oh, I had the SIM card inserted backwards. My bad.

Flipped it around, and it worked fine. In fact, not only did it work fine, but Leopard has NATIVE DRIVER SUPPORT for it. No loading 3rd party software, no wierd communications spyware... err.. manager i mean... It just works. Nice little toolbar access to the card. Very nice.

Anyway, I gotta go order my other two Gigs of RAM for this thing, so I can love on it some more.

MacBook Pro Goodness

I bit the bullet.

I went out this weekend and purchased my first Intel based Mac. I didn't buy the first gen (or the second gen for that matter) MacBook Pro (MBP), simply because, usually, it's a bad thing to buy Apple hardware in it's first gen. (Except for the iPhone currently)

But the MBP is excellent. It's not hot, it runs fast (even with it's stock 2 Gigs of RAM), and works flawlessly. The MBP had Tiger on it when I bought it, but came with a Leopard install disk, which is nice.

The only thing that I had problems with was, my old wireless card from AT*T was PCMCIA. The new MBP's have Express card slots. So, I had to get a new card. Which the guy at the store, let me tell you, was a prick. Dude, obviously, if I come in, ask for an exact model number for a laptop card, tell you I already have an account (which he had to verify, because he didn't believe I already had a SIM card), I have obviously already looked to see if my computer supports it.

He insisted that OSX was not supported and the card wouldn't work. Well uh, no, it's not supported by AT*T that doesn't mean that it's not supported by the card manufacturer. (Option) What a tool, anyway...

I get the card home, plug it in, and wtf. The lights are flashing.. huh? What did I do wrong? Oh, I had the SIM card inserted backwards. My bad.

Flipped it around, and it worked fine. In fact, not only did it work fine, but Leopard has NATIVE DRIVER SUPPORT for it. No loading 3rd party software, no wierd communications spyware... err.. manager i mean... It just works. Nice little toolbar access to the card. Very nice.

Anyway, I gotta go order my other two Gigs of RAM for this thing, so I can love on it some more.

Full Disclosure

In the interest of Full-Disclosure for this blog and everything I’ll let you know where I stand.

-- I love Macs and everything Apple. Don’t care what you think, it all works for me. Don’t have any problems admitting it, even if one of my best friends thinks I am a tool because of it. (WuTang)
-- My first OS was DOS, first computer was a Tandy 1000 SX bought from Radio Shack. My OS progression has been:
DOS
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME + NT
Windows XP + 2000
Redhat Linux
Mandrake Linux
Slackware
SuSE
OSX

That’s not all the OS’es I know, that’s just the ones I’ve personally had loaded on my systems.
-- I have an iPhone, iSight, Mac keyboards, docs, Mice..
-- I have a 3G iPod
-- I have a PowerBook G4
-- I have a PowerMac Dual G5 2.0
-- My wife has a MacBook Black
-- I work for Sourcefire, we make Snort, it’s the best company I’ve ever worked for, and I love it. I believe in our products and our philosophy of customer service. I work in the Professional Services department. Which means I am half sales, half technical, and another half jack-of-all-trades. (Which is 3 halves for you doing the math) It’s a great job, I have great management. I travel ALOT and actually, as I said in this post I am off the road for a year to work with one customer.
-- In my spare time I grade GIAC Gold papers for GIAC.org which is affiliated with SANS.
-- In my other spare time I am a handler with the Internet Storm Center. It takes a lot of time, and we get a lot of email.
-- I wrote a chapter of a book. I edited a another chapter, but my edits weren’t included in neither my bio or the other chapter (even though I was paid to do the edits).
-- The book sucked. Even my chapter had errors in it. (TCP Conversations do NOT start with a “FIN” wtf!) The publisher took the rough draft (read: not the final edits) of all the authors and published the rough drafts, this is because the publisher for the book quit in the middle of the process, plus Syngress (the publishing company) was bought out, so I am sure there were some things lost.. There are a couple chapters in the book that are excellent, and it’s worth the purchase. But on a elementary grading scale of the book, I give it a C-.

Anything I forgot? Leave a comment. If you are going to write about me in your blog, leave a comment on my blog pointing to your post!

WWDC

Well, as you can probably guess, alot of people have written me asking what I think about the stuff that Mr. Jobs presented this morning at the WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) in San Francisco, CA.

In case you are sleeping in a cave, he announced a few things: A new desktop, new Finder, Safari on Windows, Dashboard, Time Machine, Spaces, blah blah, and some other stuff.. Let me talk about a few of these

New Desktop: Thank God. Unified them, transparent menu bar, reflective Dock. Stacks? Um, okay. I’ll use it, it’ll be nice, but didn’t someone else have that?

New Finder: THANK GOD. The present Finder sucks, so I am glad they did this. However, it occurred to me that some of the stuff like searches that are for ‘Today’ and ‘Yesterday’ can already be done with Smart Folders in Tiger. Seriously, give it a shot. I’ll wait.. Well, maybe I won’t. The things I did like alot were the features to be able to instantly search via Spotlight and ‘browse’ via Finder the other computers on my lan (which you can do now, it’s just alot better in Leopard), and the ‘Back to my Mac’ feature. The ability to connect to your home PC no matter where you are. NICE. I will be using THAT one alot. Cover Flow? mmm.. okay. We’ll see.

Quicklook: Nice. The ability to look at files w/out having to open their app. Nice.

iChat: Nothing new here except the picture superimposing. Kinda nice. I already use iChat alot, so these features will be nice. I use iChat to communicate w/ my wife and baby while I am on the road. Makes up for me being gone (a little bit).

Safari on Windows: More on this later, but this is kinda cool.

Dashboard: Steve, we saw this last year. Boring.

Time Machine: Nice feature, except, again... we saw this last year. Boring.

Spaces: Multiple Desktops? Um, how long have Linux/other *nix’s had this? A long time? yes. How did Mac make it better? They made it prettier. That’s all. Boring.

All the other stuff: Boring. I’ll talk about what I think about Safari on Windows in a sec.


Things that WEREN’T Covered, and probably should have:

Mail -- Yes, we saw a bunch of this last year, Stationary (whoop de do, Outlook has had stationary for years, and it’s irritating, Apple just made it easier to use and prettier) However, Mail supports Notes and ToDo’s now (this we knew last year) it also integrates RSS feeds (nice), and it auto-recognizes Addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses in the text of an email and allows you to auto-create an Address Book entry for that person (nice). It also recognizes dates and auto-creates (with the help of a drop down) events in iCal. Nice. Watch the video linked to see. Leopard++

iCal -- Another one of my daily apps, iCal got better. Inline editing (instead of in the side PAIN -- pane), unified interface, nice. Like it. Leopard++

Parental Controls -- Nice. Alot better. I don’t know how this lines up against Vista, but this will be a welcome addition. Leopard++

Boot Camp -- Ehh.. Kind of expected native Windows apps running parallel w/ OSX ones. Not having to reboot to use Windows Apps. I tried to predict this, apparently the Leopard developers don’t read my blog.

Photo Booth -- Ehh. I don’t use it. I don’t care.

DVD Player -- Good. The other one was ‘just okay’

Overall -- okay. I’ll buy it for 129.00.

Now, why do I think Jobs introduced Safari for Windows. Lets look at the situation here. Let’s say Windows people are afraid to switch to a mac because they don’t know how to operated the interface. Okay. Safari and iTunes are the Mac apps on Windows. Both are different in their own special way, each having a nice interface.

The new Finder in Leopard is just like iTunes. Compare em, go ahead. Safari is exactly the same on both platforms.

IMHO -- I think Apple is making a play here for switchers. Don’t be afraid to switch to OSX, have you used iTunes before? Then you know OSX. Done. Everything in OSX will look like an app you are already familiar with.. okay? No more excuses. Oh, you have an app that doesn’t run on OSX? Boot camp, thanks.

I think this is targeted at the potential switcher audience. Good luck.

I’ll still buy Leopard, and I’ll still buy the iPhone. I like them both. But I am buying Leopard for the Back to my mac, intra-network computer access in Finder, Time Machine, Mail, and the new iChat. That’s it.

What did you guys think?

WWDC

Well, as you can probably guess, alot of people have written me asking what I think about the stuff that Mr. Jobs presented this morning at the WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) in San Francisco, CA.

In case you are sleeping in a cave, he announced a few things: A new desktop, new Finder, Safari on Windows, Dashboard, Time Machine, Spaces, blah blah, and some other stuff.. Let me talk about a few of these

New Desktop: Thank God. Unified them, transparent menu bar, reflective Dock. Stacks? Um, okay. I’ll use it, it’ll be nice, but didn’t someone else have that?

New Finder: THANK GOD. The present Finder sucks, so I am glad they did this. However, it occurred to me that some of the stuff like searches that are for ‘Today’ and ‘Yesterday’ can already be done with Smart Folders in Tiger. Seriously, give it a shot. I’ll wait.. Well, maybe I won’t. The things I did like alot were the features to be able to instantly search via Spotlight and ‘browse’ via Finder the other computers on my lan (which you can do now, it’s just alot better in Leopard), and the ‘Back to my Mac’ feature. The ability to connect to your home PC no matter where you are. NICE. I will be using THAT one alot. Cover Flow? mmm.. okay. We’ll see.

Quicklook: Nice. The ability to look at files w/out having to open their app. Nice.

iChat: Nothing new here except the picture superimposing. Kinda nice. I already use iChat alot, so these features will be nice. I use iChat to communicate w/ my wife and baby while I am on the road. Makes up for me being gone (a little bit).

Safari on Windows: More on this later, but this is kinda cool.

Dashboard: Steve, we saw this last year. Boring.

Time Machine: Nice feature, except, again... we saw this last year. Boring.

Spaces: Multiple Desktops? Um, how long have Linux/other *nix’s had this? A long time? yes. How did Mac make it better? They made it prettier. That’s all. Boring.

All the other stuff: Boring. I’ll talk about what I think about Safari on Windows in a sec.


Things that WEREN’T Covered, and probably should have:

Mail -- Yes, we saw a bunch of this last year, Stationary (whoop de do, Outlook has had stationary for years, and it’s irritating, Apple just made it easier to use and prettier) However, Mail supports Notes and ToDo’s now (this we knew last year) it also integrates RSS feeds (nice), and it auto-recognizes Addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses in the text of an email and allows you to auto-create an Address Book entry for that person (nice). It also recognizes dates and auto-creates (with the help of a drop down) events in iCal. Nice. Watch the video linked to see. Leopard++

iCal -- Another one of my daily apps, iCal got better. Inline editing (instead of in the side PAIN -- pane), unified interface, nice. Like it. Leopard++

Parental Controls -- Nice. Alot better. I don’t know how this lines up against Vista, but this will be a welcome addition. Leopard++

Boot Camp -- Ehh.. Kind of expected native Windows apps running parallel w/ OSX ones. Not having to reboot to use Windows Apps. I tried to predict this, apparently the Leopard developers don’t read my blog.

Photo Booth -- Ehh. I don’t use it. I don’t care.

DVD Player -- Good. The other one was ‘just okay’

Overall -- okay. I’ll buy it for 129.00.

Now, why do I think Jobs introduced Safari for Windows. Lets look at the situation here. Let’s say Windows people are afraid to switch to a mac because they don’t know how to operated the interface. Okay. Safari and iTunes are the Mac apps on Windows. Both are different in their own special way, each having a nice interface.

The new Finder in Leopard is just like iTunes. Compare em, go ahead. Safari is exactly the same on both platforms.

IMHO -- I think Apple is making a play here for switchers. Don’t be afraid to switch to OSX, have you used iTunes before? Then you know OSX. Done. Everything in OSX will look like an app you are already familiar with.. okay? No more excuses. Oh, you have an app that doesn’t run on OSX? Boot camp, thanks.

I think this is targeted at the potential switcher audience. Good luck.

I’ll still buy Leopard, and I’ll still buy the iPhone. I like them both. But I am buying Leopard for the Back to my mac, intra-network computer access in Finder, Time Machine, Mail, and the new iChat. That’s it.

What did you guys think?

DCR-SR40 on OSX

How to get your Sony Handycam DCR-SR40 to work on OSX:

When you purchase the DCR-SR40 Sony Handycam, it has a link in the instruction book on where to go to purchase software to be able to use the camera with OSX. It is NOT free, and second of all, the software is absolutely horrible.

Do NOT for one second think that you can use firewire with this camera either. Nope. Also, do not assume that this camera will work with iMovie or iDVD, because it won't. Why? Well, first of all it's USB, (OSX needs firewire with Digital Video Cameras, even HDD based ones)

It won't work, it won't work, it won't work. Don't buy the crappy software suggested in the manual.

The problem is, the video that is stored on the camera is in Mpeg-2. Well. That sucks.

Steps to get it to work:

1. Plug the Camera's dock into the Mac.
2. Plug the Camera's dock into the electricty.
3. Record something
4. Plug the camera into the dock.
5. Turn the camera on, and put it in VCR mode (the bottom LCD light)
6. Press the "Burn to DVD" button on the Dock.

This will mount the Video Camera into OSX.

7. Open the "NO_NAME" drive, present on your desktop.
8. Navigate through the folders until you find the mp2 files that are named something like "M2U00001.MPG".
9. Drag and drop this file to your desktop (you can erase it off the camera if you want)

Quicktime will NOT play this file, you have to up convert it mp4

10. Download and install "ffmpegX", a free program, and all the tools that go with it. (You will need mplayer)
11. Drop "M2U00001.MPG" file into ffmpegX, and then select what file type to convert it to on the right (I suggest 2-pass option for H.264)
12. Click "Encode"
13. Whenever later (a long time if you have a slow puter...) it will spit out a file, that file you can do whatever you want with (into iMovie, iDVD whatever)

OR!!!!

Return the camera, pay the restocking fee, and go buy the Panasonic PV-GS300.

I suggest the latter.

DCR-SR40 on OSX

How to get your Sony Handycam DCR-SR40 to work on OSX:

When you purchase the DCR-SR40 Sony Handycam, it has a link in the instruction book on where to go to purchase software to be able to use the camera with OSX. It is NOT free, and second of all, the software is absolutely horrible.

Do NOT for one second think that you can use firewire with this camera either. Nope. Also, do not assume that this camera will work with iMovie or iDVD, because it won't. Why? Well, first of all it's USB, (OSX needs firewire with Digital Video Cameras, even HDD based ones)

It won't work, it won't work, it won't work. Don't buy the crappy software suggested in the manual.

The problem is, the video that is stored on the camera is in Mpeg-2. Well. That sucks.

Steps to get it to work:

1. Plug the Camera's dock into the Mac.
2. Plug the Camera's dock into the electricty.
3. Record something
4. Plug the camera into the dock.
5. Turn the camera on, and put it in VCR mode (the bottom LCD light)
6. Press the "Burn to DVD" button on the Dock.

This will mount the Video Camera into OSX.

7. Open the "NO_NAME" drive, present on your desktop.
8. Navigate through the folders until you find the mp2 files that are named something like "M2U00001.MPG".
9. Drag and drop this file to your desktop (you can erase it off the camera if you want)

Quicktime will NOT play this file, you have to up convert it mp4

10. Download and install "ffmpegX", a free program, and all the tools that go with it. (You will need mplayer)
11. Drop "M2U00001.MPG" file into ffmpegX, and then select what file type to convert it to on the right (I suggest 2-pass option for H.264)
12. Click "Encode"
13. Whenever later (a long time if you have a slow puter...) it will spit out a file, that file you can do whatever you want with (into iMovie, iDVD whatever)

OR!!!!

Return the camera, pay the restocking fee, and go buy the Panasonic PV-GS300.

I suggest the latter.

The Macbook Pro finally gets updated

Link It's about time.

YEAH!

The Macbook Pro finally gets updated

Link It's about time.

YEAH!

Apple to update Laptops?

Apple Insider link

Friend of mine, Jim, pointed this article out to me. Looks like Apple is about to update their MacBook Pros. I'm not really prone to blogging rumors, however, I really hope this one is true.

Apple to update Laptops?

Apple Insider link

Friend of mine, Jim, pointed this article out to me. Looks like Apple is about to update their MacBook Pros. I'm not really prone to blogging rumors, however, I really hope this one is true.

For my MacBook Pro readers

Hey all. If you have a MacBook Pro, 15in type..

You may be entitled to a brand new battery. Click here, and go get it

For my MacBook Pro readers

Hey all. If you have a MacBook Pro, 15in type..

You may be entitled to a brand new battery. Click here, and go get it