Floobydust about iPads and Tablets

Floobydust is a term I got from a National Semiconductor book. It relates to miscellaneous pieces of information. So here goes.

1. Intel takes seriously the rumor(s) that Apple is considering switching from Intel chips to their own A-series of chips. At least for the MacBooks.

2. As I have written before, Apple has probably tested every chip they could find in a prototype MacBook/MacBook Air. It’s a long process, though, from building a prototype with wires sticking out to a sleek model ready for production and the Apple Store.

3. If you hear rumors that Apple wants to license or acquire software to enable OS X software written for the Intel chips to run on the A-series chips; then you should pay more attention to the rumors of a shift in hardware.

4. And if this shift in hardware does take place, remember this time to upgrade your software during the 2 to 3 years after Apple introduces the new chip.

5. Now on to the iPad and those other wanna-bes. Yang Yuanquing, CEO of Lenovo the Chinese PC maker, thinks his company has a chance in the tablet market. After all, Apple only goes after the $499 and up price points. He would like to go after the sub-$499 price point. Lenovo plans to bring to market Windows and Android tablets.

6. Now I assume that Mr. Yang knows how much it costs for Apple to build an iPad 2. He knows how much of a profit margin Apple gets per iPad 2. He knows that Apple’s iPad strength not only depends on the iPad’s software, the iOS that underlies it and the plethora of apps that you can get for it at the online App Store. He also knows that Lenovo would need to get the intellectual property you can get on the iPad, such as copyrighted books, music, movies and video. And games, too!

7. So…we will see how Lenovo does against the iPad. Go ahead, put up a pallet of LePads against a pallet of iPads and see which one sells faster at Wal-Mart.

Artists Needed for Macvalley's Fall

I want your passions!

We have arrived at September, traditionally the season of fire danger, Santa Ana winds, and sending the kids and grandkids back to school. We steel ourselves for the approaching holidays in November and December. Some of us even plan to go skiing.

Right now, though, I want to know about your passions connected with the Mac. What do you use your Mac for? Even if the Mac is not central to the task at hand, I want to know about it. I’m not concerned about Mac technical proficiency.

I WANT YOUR PASSION!

Dale Carnegie the motivational speaker discovered years ago that if a speaker has a passion for his topic, their passion will grab the audience’s attention. They’ll get swept along as the speaker rhapsodizes about azaleas or collecting MatchBox cars or using the Mac to catalog their collection of 78s. Excel may not be that interesting, but what if your Excel spreadsheet include Enrico Caruso?

You may say, “I’m not a good writer.” That’s OK. I’m a good editor. Send your article to me and between us, we’ll improve it. Only the most arrogant professional writers think their writing is beyond improvement. And those writers generally end up in the round file.

Your article doesn’t have to be black and white text. If you prefer photographs or drawings, send them to me. If you think in terms of PowerPoint or Keynote slides, I’ll work with them, too.

And if you want to write under a pseudonym, that’s fine, too.

Holiday Humor Writing Submissions!

If you have a favorite piece of holiday humor about any holiday from Labor Day to Easter, I’d love to have it. Right now, I just recycle submissions from my cousins. My cousins are great people, but your cousins are great people, too. What have they sent you in terms in holiday humor? What have you sent them?

Take Control of Your Paperless Office-A Review

Most of us still have printers with our Macs. We still receive paper mail. We still get flyers for pizza joints stuck on the apartment door knob.

HELP! How can we cut back on the amount of mail we receive? How can we process the paper we already have, split between legal necessities, treasured mementos, and that manual that came with the appliance we sent to recycling 3 years ago?

Joe Kissell of TidBits and Take Control e-books has written such a book. An e-book, in fact. For $10 for the hoi-polloi, and less for the members of MacValley; you get a 125 page PDF full of hints, tips, and ideas for keeping paper from flooding our desktops and even our floors.

The name of the book is Take Control of Your Paperless Office (1.1).

In the first section, Joe describes how he (and now YOU) can cut down the amount of paper in your household. He also states right off that he describes tactics and strategies best suited for a home or small office. If you want to free a large organization from the onslaught of paper, Joe wishes you well—but this isn’t the book for you.

With that in mind, go through the book. The book has a Quick Start section, describing the kind of tools you want to get, such as quality hard drives with a multi-year warranty.

Joe describes the file format that lies at the heart of the paperless office, the searchable PDF. Adobe Acrobat will create this kind of PDF that you can search through with Apple’s Spotlight. So will OS X with its PDF option on the Print dialog.

On the Windows side, a bevy of freeware or shareware “Print to PDF” pseudo printer drivers. I use CutePDF myself. If you use Linux, you would use the “Print to File” option.

Joe also describes how to keep down the flow of paper documents and converting them to searchable PDF form. This means documents such as bank statements, payroll statements, bills from the DWP/SoCal Edison, catalogs from Lands End, and miscellaneous what-not. Joe now lives in Paris, and he also describes the steps he took to ensure that his American mail would not fall afoul of the “famously flaky French postal system”. Even if you don’t plan to buy more electronics to digitize your paper, this section alone is worth the $10 if you plan to drop off the grid.

Now for the main event.

Getting a document displayed on a monitor into a searchable PDF is easy. Getting a letter you wrote and printed to your Dad 20 years ago is harder. Especially if you lack the digital file or never had one in the first place.

Joe goes into deep detail about your options for an optical scanner and the accompanying software to transform the paper into a searchable PDF.

To begin with, he tells you that the flatbed scanner you bought for scanning in photos is not the best scanner for dealing with all that paper. You want a Document Scanner. He describes the various brands and models of Document Scanner. These scanners will scan both sides of a document. They also don’t scan at super-high resolution, as super-high resolution only amplifies the “noise” such as erasures and coffee stains on the original. Be warned, if you want to buy a suitable document scanner, such as a Fujitsu ScanSnap, it will cost more than $59.95.

Joe then goes into detail about the software you need to transform a scan into a searchable PDF. Fortunately, the Mac has several good options. Joe describes them and gives you the one he uses personally.

Finally, Joe goes into detail about your handheld iOS/Android options for reading without paper. He discusses reading magazines and newspapers on handheld devices, taking notes in meetings on handheld devices and marking up documents sent to you for review.

What about receiving and sending FAXs? Joe discusses that, too. What do you do now that the Mac doesn’t include a built-in modem? OS X 10.7 won’t even work with the Apple USB Modem! Don’t worry, you have options.

So for $10 or less, you have a valuable resource for weaning yourself away from paper. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to use my shredder.

Take Control of Your Paperless Office by Joe Kissell

The Sweet Spot for Macs

I read a posting on PCMag.com today, which discussed how to downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard. Why would you want to do that? Because Lion is in its awkward infancy as a consumer application, that’s why. Microsoft Office 2011 apparently has troubles with it. If you use a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that connects to your Mac using the AFP protocol,…you need to wait for an upgrade of some sort. Apple changed the rules regarding AFP and apparently some hardware vendors didn’t get the message. Or shell out the money for the Lion Developer Previews.

Which brings me to my point: If you bought a Mac between 2007 and June 2011, your Mac now lies in the lucky Sweet Spot, where it can boot both Lion and Snow Leopard. All those peripherals that depend on Snow Leopard’s retention of the Rosetta technology for PowerPC programs are still good with Snow Leopard. But you can also take a document that you needed Snow Leopard to acquire and use the new features of Lion upon that document.

In a sense, you’re back to where many users stood after the introduction of OS X. They needed their Classic OS programs to work. Unfortunately, some of those Classic OS programs only worked under full-blown Classic, not the OS X Classic environment. So you had to dual-boot between the two operating systems. As time went on and people didn’t upgrade old vital programs, those machines that could dual-boot became rarer and rarer, and more sought after.

So if your Mac can run both Snow Leopard and Lion, hold on to it! You have a valuable Mac .

I’ll bet this situation will occur again when Apple decides to switch processors from Intel to? I didn’t say it would be the ARM processors used in the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad and I certainly don’t know when. Based on Apple’s past pattern of behavior, though; I would say a switch would happen if Intel can’t wring out of the silicon the performance that Apple desires…and someone else can.

If that switch happens, remember to start updating your programs. Apple’s operating system will only retain the ability to run the programs for the Intel processor for a finite amount of time. Don’t be caught off-guard like the users of Quicken have been.

You Can’t Go Home Again

The PCMag.com article also makes another point. The new MacBook Air and the new Mac mini require drivers in the new Lion operating system to run. You can’t run Snow Leopard on these new machines. So I hope you didn’t get rid of your previous Mac if you need to need old programs on it. Did you check the Roaring Apps.com site to see whether your vital program would run under Lion? If not…how will you bribe your kid or spouse to return the old machine? All I can say at that point is “Powermax.com”

Trackpad versus Touchscreen

Apple clearly differentiates between its computers with touchscreens, the iOS models; and the computers with trackpads. For those of you who want to try out a TrackPad, get over to the Apple Store and try out the Magic Trackpad, which Apple has placed by all of its desktop models. It’s sweet, as the kids say.

Windows computer makers, by contrast, have begun offering touchscreen desktop models. Both H-P and Dell offer all in ones with touchscreens in the basic system or as an option.

Which fashion of touch input device will users prefer? (I should mention the Wacom Bamboo Touch tablet, which has a USB interface and works with either Macs or Windows) I find the trackpad more convenient. I also have my monitors located at least a foot back from my head. Your mileage may vary.

A lot of pundits and ordinary users reference the touchscreens in the movie Minority Report. As I recall, Tom Cruise stood next to the displays, not sitting; and stood within a few inches of the display. I would compare it to working at a chalkboard or an easel.

I would also compare costs of the opposing touch devices. The Magic Trackpad cost me $70, with the Bamboo Touch going for $59 or less. A touchscreen monitor, on the other hand, costs a lot more than a comparable monitor without the touchscreen feature.

I will say that the two modes may come together. I can envision a 24” monitor that functions as a tablet when set on an easel. You would use it for graphics functions or presentations. Later on, you would set it in its cradle on your desk, where it would function as a conventional monitor. You might use a smaller tablet, a 7” to 10” size one, as a trackpad in this mode.

Any other ideas? E-mail me at thomasbriant@me.com

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.

Is the Wait for Lion finally over?

Macworld reports that Tim Cook, Apple Executive, said that Lion would appear in the Mac App Store July 20th. He said it out loud and on the record.

So two things to say.

1. Your editor will not attempt to download Lion ASAP. He has only a 2006 MacBook Core Duo. He has to wait until next spring to buy a new Mac Mini.

2. So comment away on your experiences with Lion. Fill my in-box at thomasbriant@me.com with screenshots. Annotate them with the new features in Preview.

3. Regarding comments. I love them! But if you submit them during the day, from 7:00 am to 5:30 pm; I won't get to post them until I get home from work. And my place of work seriously frowns on blogging from your work computer. And no, I don't have an iPhone to do this at my desk. But I'll have them up by 9:00 PM.

4. So let's hope that Lion really and truly comes out tomorrow. I hope Apple rented as much server and bandwidth as they could afford. And they have the kind of serious cash that talks in these kind of situations.

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Voice and associated media