Here’s a nice litte guide to upgrade the memory in your beloved Mac. It more or less covers it all.
Besides that, it’s iPhone Mania these days. Apple says the phone can be activated from home - via iTunes. If you consider buying an iPhone, here’s a good overview of the total costs. If you’re cheap, here’s how to minimize your costs when buying an iPhone.
Today, when I turned on my computer at work and started Google Reader, the first headline to hit me in the face was the news about Apple delaying Mac OS X Leopard until October. The delay is due to lack of engineers on the iPhone project which is scheduled to June. Apple decided to move engineers from OS X Leopard testing and bugfixing to the iPhone project to meet that deadline. Originally, Leopard was scheduled for a 2007 spring release, but now that’s history.
I can’t put words on my disappointment. Ever since I bought my iMac, I’ve looked forward to Mac OS X Leopard, and now I have to wait another six months. Bloody hell! For five or some minutes I sincerely hated iPhone and all its importance, but hey, the iPhone IS a cool project, and I guess the stakes are high for Apple on this one.
Not long after the announcement, the rumours about why Leopard is delayed start spreading. Some believe that Apple wants to finish a special implementation of Bootcamp to support MS Windows Vista directly in Leopard. I find this hard to believe and even disappointing if true. Leopard is (presumably) so much better than Vista that MS should be supporting Leopard more…
Another rumour that is more likely to be true says that Apple needs to delay Leopard due to the advanced and top secret features Leopard is supposed to be featuring. A fair reason. Apple has promised us some highly advanced stuff in Leopard, and of course things can get a bit out of hand.
However, I believe one of the reasons really is what Apple says it is; iPhone. The iPhone project is very risky business for Apple, and although most people gasp in awe just hearing the word “iPhone” (meaning Apple alredy has sold a gazillion iPhones just by showing it off), the product still needs to be in top shape to win the competition with other mobile phones on the market. Especially market analysts tend to give the iPhone a rough time.
When the first disappointment is swallowed, The Unofficial Apple Blog has a nice list of reactions to the sad news. To sum up: calm down, it’s not the end of the world.
Google has revealed a page with Mac versions of their software. At this moment, Google has the following programs to offer:
These programs are not all equally useful and not all need the same presentation. We all know Google Earth, for instance. If you don’t, I suggest you stop reading this (but of course bookmark the page for later use ;-) ) and head over to Google Earth and download the program. It is that good.
Google Toolbar is very nice if the built-in Google functionality in Firefox isn’t good enough for you. I had some problems with Firefox 2.0 and the toolbar some months ago, so I’m actually not using it at the moment. However, I plan to give it a try as soon as I have some time on my hands for testing.
I haven’t got any experience with Picasa Web Albums and therefore I can’t tell you whether the uploader is any good. Try it out yourself, if you’re a Picasa Web Albums user. I use Flickr instead. Feel free to post your experiences as a comment below.
The Google Desktop is in my opinion useless on Mac. I’ve only tried it on Windows XP, where it is very useful because the built-in search functionality in Windows XP is everything else than … functional. But Windows XP doesn’t have Spotlight and Dashboard which do the same as Google Desktop. I wouldn’t use Google Desktop but if you have another opinon, please let me know.
Now, Google SketchUp is a great program and this I have seen up and close. A friend of mine is waiting for his new appartment to be built. To kill time he found out that Google SketchUp could help him visualize the appartment. He scanned the house plan into his computer and imported it into SketchUp. Here, he could tell the program everything about the appartment, and voilá: SketchUp delivers a full 3D model of the appartment. This isn’t all of it; once the model was ready he added textures to floors, walls etc. and he found models of furniture (in the program) that resembled the furniture he already had or considered buying and that way he was actually capable of furnishing the appartment long before it was ready. Now he already knows where to put the TV, tables, the sofa and so on. On top of it all, you can take a “walk” inside the house to see what it is all like. It should also be possible to enter coordinates and directions and see how the sunlight will be at different times of the day and year. Very cool. This is of course not the only thing SketchUp can do, but it’s the one thing I’ve seen it used for.
I haven’t tried Google Notifier either, but I have a Gmail account and I guess I also have a calendar somewhere. Maybe I should give it a shot and try it out some time. Especially online calendars need to be very convenient and at hand before I want to use them - maybe Google Notifier can change this.
Please feel free to add your experiences with some of these programs in the comments below.
I’ve taken a look at a few of the most interesting Apple related blogs and gathered what they have to say about EMI and Apple working together on DRM-free music. To recap, EMI announced that they are selling all of their signed artists as mp3 with no limitations and a higher bitrate. To help this along the way, EMI have made a deal with Apple to sell the music in iTunes as DRM-free (or “FairPlay-free”) AAC-encoded music at 256 Kbps.
I must admit that I focused on two blogs/newssites but on the other hand they have quite a lot to say. First, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has some predictions related to the deal that are both obvious and somewhat interesting. Will the price model in iTunes move on to a more flexible one with new music costing a higher price than older music? Interesting, I’d say. My biggest concern is how big the difference will be.
TUAW also has a good article summing up the pros and cons about upgrading your existing iTunes music library to the new format. This is a good one if you’re uncertain whether you should take the offer or not. You could think that upgrading is only an advantage but the article has some good points to take into consideration before you click that button.
The AppleInsider has been productive and has four good articles about the subject. First of all, their article about the press release is very descriptive and informative. Also, AppleInsider has transscribed the Q&A session following the press release Monday afternoon. This is a good place for more in-depth information and details about what changes are coming to iTunes. Lastly, they have an analysis of the future of the iPod market and how this new deal will affect it. Opposite to what critics have said before the announcement, analysts believe that the iPod will increase sales as a result of the deal. Critics think that Apple are risking giving away a great market share because music from iTunes now can be played on other music players than the iPod.
The fourth article from the AppleInsider is just 99% related to the EMI deal. Almost a year ago, the Norwegian Consumer Council complained about how Apple isn’t playing nice by forcing its customers to use Apple hardware to play their legally bought music. Now, they applaud the new deal with EMI and suggest others to do the same.
There is no doubt that the EMI/Apple deal is a great moment in modern music history. Consumers have been taken much more seriously this time. I think EMI are right to work together with Apple on this one. iTunes already has a huge amount of users, so the new product is more or less laid right under the nose of a big percentage of online music consumers. If I was given the opportunity to buy a DRM-free file at a higher bitrate today, I’d do it, and I’m certain that many others feel the same way.
When - not if - this is a success, other record labels have to follow suit.
In half an hour you can listen to a live webcast from the Apple and EMI press conference where the two companies will tell us about their future cooperation. Rumour has it, Apple is finally allowed to sell the Beatles’ music in iTunes and EMI will ditch DRM. I think they have more stuff up their sleeve and I’ll almost bet they’re going to present a new Beatles special edition iPod like the U2 version.