MacBook Air: Why won’t it die? | Macworld

MacBook Air: Why won’t it die? | Macworld:

The News for December 13th (well, some of it)

Good Morning, Mac Users!

First up, our arch frenemy Microsoft released an iPad version of its One Note program. Speaking as one who has used the M$ Office version of this, you should jump on it. One Note is a really good program and it's free. At least for the initial acquisition. Thank you, 9 to 5 Mac..

From Appleinsider comes news that Apple is planning to use part of its Scrooge McDuck-sized cash reserves to buy Anobit, an Israeli flash memory company. Anobit has founds ways to enhance NAND flash memory and Apple is reportedly already a customer.

From AppleInsider comes news that the MacBook Air sales continue to grow. A new 15 inch model reportedly is in the works and will join its 11.6" and 13.3" siblings early in 2012. Meanwhile, PC Makers are scrambling to compete with the MacBook Air through the "Ultrabook" initiative.

Now for iPad news. The Taiwanese industry newspaper (and gossip monger) Digitimes reports that the iPad 3 is on its way within the next 3-4 months. Hopefully the high resolution Retina display is coming, too.

A recent report out of Japan claimed the iPad 3 may actually be slightly thicker than the current-generation iPad 2, though the reason for the purported increase remains unknown. The device will, however, reportedly still be compatible with Apple's Smart Cover.

Citigroup says it will launch in February 2012. Cross your fingers!

And it's December 13th, which means it's time for the 12 days of Christmas!

Apple is making a TV set

According to Bloomberg, Apple now wants to make a TV set. The iTV? Jeff Robbin, who developed SoundJam, the genesis of iTunes, will head the effort. Steve Jobs considered Mr. Robbin so valuable he wouldn't let TIME magazine release his last name in an article, for fear that a competitor would steal him away.

Jonny Evans of Computerworld speculates about the ipad 3

Go here for speculation about the iPad 3.

Defeat the Hackers and don't give them access to your Lion Passwords

Apparently Apple goofed and allowed the changing of passwords without requiring the administrative password. Bad mistake.

But Lifehacker.com has instructions on how to deter possible hackers. Go to here for the whole story.

Joey Rule will present at our August 2011 meeting

MacValley's upcoming General Meeting on August 3rd will feature Joey Rule of MacTalk. Joey is the Director of Sales and Training for MacTalk (www.mactalk.com) and he is very familiar with iPhoto. I had a phone conversation with him, and the two words that came to my mind as we talked were energy and professionalism.

Especially when Joey told me, "It's so great to teach people that want to learn. I'm looking forward to this presentation."

Wow! What enthusiasm this guy has! And he sure has it all together. This kind of presenter is what makes MacValley's General Meetings memorable.

To find out about MacValley's General Meeting time, location, and to download a Google map, go to: macvalley.org/meetings

It's here at last!

Lion has finally come to the desktop. I will not attempt to review it, because (1) I don’t have a machine to run it on, and (2) far better reviewers spent weeks reviewing it under non-disclosure agreements. Now they can release those reviews.

I’d start with the PC Magazine review. Yes, that bastion of Windows succumbed to Lion’s charms. It comes down to “you’d better have a good reason for running Windows, because OS X is just so much better.”

If you’re just too kool for skool, check out Wired magazine’s review. They said, “It’s OK...but it tries to be too much like iOS” And you say that like it’s a bad thing!

Finally, if you want every little detail about OS X, go to John Siracusa’s review over at Ars Technica. He gives the interface the kind of detail an art expert would give to a possible new Rembrandt. He’ll answer all your questions.

Actually, he won’t answer all your questions, so here are a few answers since the release this morning.

Physical media from Apple? Yes, indeed. Apple will sell you a USB stick with Lion on it for $69.99 starting in August. Of course, if you don’t’ feel like spending that much, go here to Lifehacker to learn how to make your own installation DVD or USB flash drive.

Just remember-Don’t install Lion just yet. Make the installation media following the instructions and a couple of copies of the installer on other media for safekeeping. “Other media” means another partition or even better, a whole different external drive >8 Gb or larger.

Once you’ve done that, Then Proceed to the moment of installation. I’ve seen an installation of Lion and it’s so simple and elegant and fast.

Even if you don’t plan to upgrade to Lion just yet, Apple has goodies for you today. A new version of iTunes, 10.4, and a new version of Safari, 5.1 for Snow Leopard and 5.06 for Leopard. Alas, nothing for Tiger.

Lion Watch for 7-11-2011

Lion draws nearer. Today, Apple sent a nice e-mail to Mac developers, asking them to submit Lion-specific applications for the Mac App Store to Apple. They also released updates to iLife ’11 to enable full-screen Lion support.

In other news, the World Wide Web Consortium has put out a request for “prior art” that would invalidate patents Apple got for parts of the HTML5 standard. W3C wants the HTML5 standard to be unencumbered by patent trolls or even members of the W3C (ahem, Apple!). Hence the family fight.

In a case of “get it before they ban it”, if you want a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable to hook your Mac up to a HDTV, hurry up and get it before they disappear. HDMI Org, the group that oversees HDMI specifications, has deemed Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cables outside of its standard and will not allow them to be sold.

And finally, HP plans to take on the MacBook Air with an ultra-thin notebook of its own. Intel came up with the idea of “Ultrabooks” which would measure less than an inch in thickness and sell for under $1,000. Intel claims that ultrabooks will account for 40% of the chipmaker’s consumer laptop products by the end of 2012. Initially using existing “Sandy Bridge”, the market should heat up once the next-generation “Ivy Bridge” processors, with 3-D microprocessors, come on-line.

Lion Report for Saturday, 07-09-2011

Good evening, this is your Lion report for Saturday.

Lion did not come out today.

I put links to two blog postings from SubRosaSoft regarding turning the Lion GM installer into a bootable installer for a >8GB flash drive and a DVD up on the MacValley Twitter feed.

Stay cool. See you tomorrow

Tom Briant

Big Lion Presentation coming July 6th to MacValley

This Wednesday, MacValley will present me, Tom Briant, on the topic of getting ready for Lion 10.7.

I will cover whether your system can handle Lion.

I will then cover about what to do if your life depends on Office 2004 and Quicken 2004. For those of you still using Appleworks 6.2.9, yes, I will cover what to do to keep it running. You really need to upgrade, though.

Come with your questions about Lion. The July Voice should be up later this afternoon, so read the articles and come with your questions.

MacValley's Office 2011 presentation on June 1st, 2011

MacValley will have a presentation on Office 2011, focusing on Word 2011, on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011.

Elena-Beth of the Apple Consultant Network will show us how to make best use of Word 2011. If you have questions about Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook for Mac; bring them, too.

OS X News-10.6.5 just released

OS X 10.6.5 came out today. Your editor took the plunge and installed it.

He installed the default installer that Software Upgrade makes available to you. It's 517 Mb in size.

The installation went smoothly. I did not observe any glitches.

I would expect the Apple Servers to get a lot of traffic tonight. So you may want to wait until the weekend to install 10.6.5. I'll keep posting any features or problems that I notice.

Tom Briant

iPad everywhere except Costco

You may have read that the iPad is coming to, oh, Target (now), Walmart (in November), ATT and Verizon stores (October 28), and of course, your Apple Stores and Best Buy. Where can't you find the iPad? Oh, and don't forget Sam's Club warehouse stores.

Oh, Costco. According to iLounge.com. Apple and Costco failed to come to terms. Costco will just sell the rest of its iPods and that's it.

Welcome to America, Linus Torvald!

This news was buried inside MaximumPC magazine. Linus Torvald, the father of Linux, recently became an American citizen.

Thank you, Finland, for sharing him with us.

The December issue of the Voice will contain an article on using Linux, particularly Ubuntu Linux, with your Mac. Why would you want to use Linux? If you have an old Windows XP box around, like I did, converting it to Linux can add years to its life. You can't run Windows 7 on it, but you can run the latest version of Linux on it.

And Linux is the antecedent of Android and Chromium, two operating systems from Google that will give Apple iOS competition. The iPad is the king of tablets right now, but Android and Chromium look to give it competition. And nothing fuels Apple like competition.

In the meantime, America and California can drink a toast to this new citizen.

Is it too late to nominate him for Senator on November 2nd?

Tom Briant

Editor, Macvalley Voce

Apple holding event October 20th

Apple announced that they will hold an event to announce OS X 10.7 at 10:00 AM, 10/20/2010.

His Master's Voice Gets an Update-the iPad comes to Target

Target will start carrying the iPad on Sunday, October 3rd. Lots of people who wouldn't go near an Apple store will now have reason to take a peek at the magical and revolutionary iPad.

Apple should do a cross-promotion with Justin Long (Mac), John Hodgman (PC), and the Target bull terrier. I'm imagining an update on the classic RCA Victor His Master's Voice graphic, where the dog listened to the Victola? How about a dog listening to an iPad?!

No news yet on the rumor of a mini-iPad in time for Christmas. Nothing would surprise me, though.

This latest move by Apple, though, shows it intends to get out ahead of the game. Can 7/11 be far behind? :)

Blog for Tuesday 9-21-2010

Tuesday Blog 9-21-2010

You all remember the Dilbert cartoon where Wally fools his Pointy-Haired Boss into believing that an Etch-A-Sketch is his new laptop? To reset it, Wally tells P-H B, you need to hold it and shake it!

Well, you can make your iPad into a 21st Etch-A-Sketch with an Etch-A-Sketch app and (!) the official Etch-A-Sketch case from Headcase. It even has knobs (non-functional, unfortunately).

The Etch-A-Sketch case costs $39.99, while a real Etch-A-Sketch costs $17.99.

On the topic of new vendors for the Mac, not the i-Devices, but the real Mac; Adobe announced Photoshop Elements 9 for the Mac and Premiere Elements for the Mac. Heretofore, Premiere Elements was only available for the Wintel machines.

Each application costs $99, but you can get both together for $149.

Let’s get back to the iPad for a moment. The built-in Movie application only plays a few video formats. To play other formats, Windows formats, even odd-ball formats, you need something like VLC Player. And guess what? VLC Player for the iPad is now available in the App Store. No need to jailbreak your iPad.

Earlier this year, we had a demonstration of MacSpeech from Nuance. Well, MacSpeech is now Dragon Dictate. If you already bought MacSpeech, you should get an e-mail shortly.

Well, that’s it for right now. What news have you got? Comments are open.

Read All About It! The Voice is Up for Members.

MacValley News 9-1-2010

The September Voice has been posted on the Web site.

Read All About It-Our September presentation on Web Security. Dull? Wait until some hacker swipes your credit card and goes to Vegas! Also, the return of Ken Gruberman in October to MC the presentation of Panorama by Provue Software. Panorama is a wickedly fast database.

For November, it's elections and Elena-Beth Kaye's iPad presentation.

Cristael's Corner-Cristael talks about our Fall lineup of presenters.

The Life of Briant-The editor gives a list of ten things in Response to Microsoft's PC versus Mac campaign.

The iPad Column, written by a guy who doesn't even own one. This month, Special Guest Columnist John Moltz of Crazy Apple Rumors breaks the story of a serious design flaw in the iPad.

Ant and Frankie P. of MacYourself.com gives their list of 16 things to do when you get a new Mac.

Robert Mohns of Macintouch compares Apple's Magic Trackpad to Wacom's Bamboo Touch Tablet.

Stickies on Your Mac! Not the paper notes, but the Stickies program built into your Mac and how to use it to full effect.

Members Only Discounts! Our Apple Ambassadress Fran Cohan has rounded up good stuff for us members.

Who won the good stuff at last month's prize drawing? Read and find out, then show up to win yourself!

It’s the Annual March of the iPods!

Tomorrow, September 1st, Apple holds a music-themed event in Cupertino. The invitations show an acoustic guitar with the cutout in the shape of the Apple corporate symbol. So what does it portend?

The End of the Apple iPod Classic?

I loved my Apple iPod Classic holding all my music with lots of room to spare. So will Apple stop making them?

Prognosticators are divided. The advocates of keeping the Classic point to the niche market of enthusiasts who rip their music in uncompressed or lossless compressed formats for maximum fidelity. They enjoy the all the space a hard disk offers. It would cost a bit more to replace hard disks with flash memory for the same capacity.

The advocates of killing the Classic think Apple wants to make all the devices use flash memory. It’s faster than a hard drive.

What New Features to Add to the various iPods?

Prognosticators believe Apple will bring out a new iPod Touch. The question is: Will it have a front-facing camera so that it can participate in Facetime, Apple’s video chat between iOS devices technology? Have to wait and see. Other suggest that a camera is coming, but only on the rear and recording video in standard definition. So maybe next year for front-facing high definition cameras on the ‘Touch.

What About iTunes?

Apple should bring out a version 10 of iTunes tomorrow, too. Prognosticators have wish lists of new features:

They’d like the whole iTunes for Mac rewritten to speed it up!

They’d like wireless syncing between your Mac and your iPod

They’d like more cloud integration, so you don’t have to store all your music on a local device.

They’d like iTunes to include a separate category for home movies, apart from iTMS bought shows.

They’d like to read the book they bought on the iBooks store for their iPads on their Macs, too. Kindle has apps for both the Mac and the iPad. Why shouldn’t Apple?

We’ll Just Have to Wait.

Tonight is not the night to buy a new iPod. Millions of aficionados and prognosticators will sneak looks at Apple’s presentation or the coverage by various blogs. Sadly, my employer expects me to do non-Apple related work tomorrow, so tune in Thursday for the next episode of the MacValley Blog.

Welcome to the new MacValley blog

Welcome to the new MacValley Users Group blog - supporting Apple Users since 1985.