Micro$oft jacks up the price of Office 2011 and how to install a free alternative.

Updates from Around the Web

Microsoft just bumped the price for Office 2011 for Mac up $20.00. No improvements, but you shell out another $20.

Editorial statement: Dude, find out if your employer has the Microsoft Home User Program as an employee benefit. For $9.95, I downloaded and installed Office 2011. Not some sleazy pirate download, but direct from the Redmond mothership.

If you want to contribute $20 toward independent software development, go to Neooffice.org. After donating to the development of NeoOffice, you can download version 3.3. At heart, it is OpenOffice.org; but OpenOffice.org optimized for OS X. They’ve taken out the Java code used in the past and replaced it with native Cocoa code.

I notice that the ArsTechnica.com Web site suggests LibreOffice.org as a free alternative to Office 2011 for Mac and Office 2013 for Windows. A word of caution: LibreOffice uses Java, so check to make sure you use the latest version of Java. The one patched against unwanted intruders.

I went on Macupdate.com to find this latest Java update, pushed out to deal with Chinese hacker attacks.

If you use the Oracle version of Java, check your Java control panel. You will find it at the bottom of the Preference Panes in the Other category. Here’s mine, as an example.

Once You’ve Got Java up to date, on to LibreOffice

You downloaded LibreOffice 4 and went to install it. Then you saw this:

To temporarily get around this. control-click or right-click on the LibreOffice app in your /Applications folder.

You see the Open selection at the top of the pop-up menu. Click on that and you should get this:

Click on “Open” lets you run LibreOffice on your Mac. You only need to do this once.

In other news….

Could Apple be readying a Retina MacBook Air?

tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog

The Retina Mac Pro has a lower price-lowest of all at MacMall

If you want the lowest price on a Retina MacBook Pro, go tothis link. Applesider.com and MacMall have teamed up to shave the price down on the Retina MacBook Pro.

The high-end models of MBPs and Windows 8 notebooks have diverged. Apple offers you the high resolution of Retina displays, but no touch screens. Windows 8 high-end notebooks offer you touch screens, but no upgrade in screen resolution.

Again, this blog believes that Apple has the right idea for a touch interface. A touch interface on a desktop computer means stretching your arm into an uncomfortable position. Right now, I use the Magic Touchpad on the tabletop. It’s very comfortable to use.

As I’ve also written before, IT departments in corporate America would go nuts if they had to deal with screens covered in fingerprints. “For God’s Sake, Don’t touch the screen!” has been a commandment of theirs ever since when .

Tom Briant

Media Manager, MacValley Blog

Woz praises Samsung and other Apple-related news

Friday Apple Rumors: Woz Knocks Apple as 'Somewhat Behind'

He praises Samsung for making 'great products'

Samsung has emerged as Apple's primary competition

http://investorplace.com/2013/02/friday-apple-rumors-woz-knocks-apple-as-somewhat-behind/

Apple says iTunes song downloads hit 25 billion

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-says-itunes-song-downloads-hit-25-billion-2013-02-06

Apple Becomes Largest Mobile Phone Vendor in United States in Q4 2012

http://blogs.strategyanalytics.com/WDS/post/2013/02/01/Apple-Becomes-Largest-Mobile-Phone-Vendor-in-United-States-in-Q4-2012.aspx

Thanks to Arnold Woodworth for forwarding these links to us

iPad Maxi and MS Office

Apple will start selling a 4th generation iPad with 128Gb storage. Nothing updated on this model except for the doubled storage.

Apple will market this product toward professional users, such as architects with 3-D CAD drawings of skyscrapers and jumbo jets and doctors with MRI/CAT whole body scans. Of course, you home consumers who itched to put all their music on an iPad are welcome to do so.

The cost? $799 for the Wi-Fi only version and $929 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Get it at the Apple Store in your local mall, online at the Apple Online Store, and at selected Apple 3rd party resellers.

The Reselling of New Wine in Old Bottles

Microsoft announced Office 2013 on Tuesday, January 30th. This product is only for Windows 7 or 8.

Microsoft has also announced Office 365, a subscription service allowing users to install Office on up to 5 computers at home or office for $99.99/year. This applies to both Macs and Windows.

Windows users get the new Office 2013, but Mac users get Office 2011-which many of them already bought.

Looking at the comments for this articles, many users expressed dissatisfaction with this arrangement. Several mentionedLibreOffice, a free office suite derived from OpenOffice.org.

Another problem for Microsoft is that their user’s requirements and needs don’t march in lockstep with each upgrade. If Office 2003 worked for them, they don’t see any need to upgrade immediately to a later version. I used Office 97, which I got free at a Microsoft seminar in 1996, until Microsoft’s Home User Program (HUP) offered me a better deal for Office 2007 through my employer. It cost me just $9.95!

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog

Hewlett-Packard strives to mend ties with Apple users and 10.9 is in the works.

From the floor of Macworld/iWorld comes a report that Hewlett-Packard would like to make amends and sell you a compatible printer.

Traffic from Macs running 10.9, as yet unannouncedby Apple, continues to grow. Will Apple announce it in Februrary, as it did 10.8?

Speaker of OS X,the 9th beta of 10.8.3 has been releasedto developers by Apple.

Get Media Master Server, but Avoid the iPad app

Ned Scott of Team XBMC Wiki deserves the credit for discovering this gem in the Mac App Store.

The gem in question is Media Master Server, which is a simple WebDAV server. You have to get it from the Mac App Store, so you must have at least one system running 10.6.6 or better.

It is an Intel-only application and I got it to work with 10.6.8 and 10.7.4 and 10.8.2. I tried copying the app to a partition running 10.5.8, but no luck.

I noticed that the iWork apps on my iPad could log into external file servers. They had to be iDisk (dead as of June 30, 2012) or WebDAV (what ?)

I did extensive Google searching on setting a WebDAV server for OS X. 9 out of 10 times, the answer came back, “Prepare to modify configuration files for the Apache Web Server built into OS X. This will not be easy.” So coming across Media Master Server was a Godsend. Bless you, who took the time to write this app.

Why would you want to use WebDAV? It allows you to access your Mac’s own Documents folder(s).

Compared to every other set of instructions I found for setting a WebDAV server, MediaMaster Server is dead simple. Just go to the Mac App Store from Snow Leopard or Lion or Mountain Lion, search for MediaMaster Server, and install it. It is a FREE app on the Mac, although there is a companion paid iOS app. For our purposes, though, we just need the Mac app portion. I will say something about the iPad app in a moment.

First of all, you have to set it up. To begin with, select the directory you want to share. (Figure 1)

As you can see, I set my root directory to my Users/thomasbriant directory (or folder), allowing me full access to all my user files on my iPad.

Next, I went to settings to set up my user name and password and the specific port I wanted to use. (Figure 2)

I left the password at the default “ipaduser” and the port at the default of “8000”. I also selected Secure HTTP.

On the iPad side, you’ll have to enter your full IP address, which will look like “https://111.222.3.44:8000” You will, of course, enter your own iP address instead of “111.222.3.44”

You’ll have a line to enter the username, which you can change. You’ll have a line to enter the password, which you have to make up yourself. (Figure 3)

The first time you do this, you may get a message about an invalid WebDAV certificate. Just please OK and proceed.

Next, you get a box showing all the directories you can access. (Figure 4)

Now for the Media Master iPad app-Two Thumbs Down

The free server app works great. I experienced no problems logging into my Mac Mini’s /Documents directory.

Since I had some gift credit on the iTunes Store, I decided I would try the iPad app for $3.99. Bad move. The app comes with no help to set it up. All the reviews of this app on its iTunes page were negative.

So having lost $3.99 to experience, I advise you to use the Media Master Mac app. It’s free. Avoid the paid iPad app. The developer needs to include help with it. At least a link to a Web page!

Thomas Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley UG

Business Practices of Amazon and Apple

Amazon is satisfied with low margins, and Apple Turns over its inventory at an extraordinary rate.

(h/t to Arnold Woodworth)

An interesting article on Amazon's business strategy

http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2012/11/28/amazon-and-margins

This article is several months old, but still interesting.

Wow! Apple Turns Over Its Inventory Once Every 5 *Days*

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/wow-apple-turns-over-its-inventory-once-every-5-days/257915/