schmenzer speaks!

My son likes phones. He pretty much gravitates to any phone so the iPhone is nothing special to him but pushing buttons is. On the iPhone there is really only one button to push so he has at it. Well, the other day he picked up the iPhone and it was locked and he rapidly pushed the home button a few times and it brought up the iPod controller! I didn’t know it did that, thanks little buddy!

Reminds me of another feature I found by accident. In fact, I even went to the Apple store to find out what it was and those guys couldn’t tell me. Seems when you have a song paused on the iPod function the name of the song shows up under the time instead of the date. I think this must have been changed with the 1.1.1 update because now the song name, and album cover as well, shows up only when the iPod is playing.

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Over 300 new features and several that are major and will change the way you use your Mac.

If Time Machine lives up to its billing as a way to go back in time and restore and file on your system the usefulness of a backup solution just got easier.

The new finder looks interesting but I’ll have to wait to see how it works and feels to give an objective opinion.

Spaces may prove to be cool. For me, the ability to define different workspaces for different tasks should make me a bit more productive. At any given time I am likely to have 18-22 apps open apps and bunches of windows. If Spaces can help me stay a bit more organized that would be a good thing.

If I heard about Quick Look in the past it must have blown right past my memory circuit. With tens of thousands of files I produced on my Mac having a way to breeze through them sounds cool.

I am looking forward to a faster and better Spotlight as well. I recently began relying a lot more on the systems “Find” features rather than trying to take the time to file every doc in a hierarchal folder system. I now toss every document in the same “Document” folder, all still Photos and graphics in the Pictures folder, Music in Music and Movies in Movies folder. That covers about 95% of my filing. So far so good. By keeping the folder sort on “Most Recent” and using Spotlight to find groups of documents on the same subject, I think I am saving some time.

I’ll probably have to upgrade even if it were not for any other feature that Boot Camp. I have one, and only one, program I HAVE to run in Boot Camp. It is an RC Simulator called RealFlight G3.5. Doesn’t work in Parallels.

So, I pre-ordered my copy at Amazon for $109. You can too!

“Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard” (Apple)

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If you are looking at schmenzer speaks! on an iPhone you should be looking at a theme specifically formatted for easy and fast viewing on your iPhone. I got the Wordpress plugin that automatically detects an iPhone request for a page and then displays it using the appropriate iPhone formatted theme from http://iwphone.contentrobot.com. If you have visitors who access your Wordpress blog from an iPhone give this a shot. It does not affect viewers using other browsers who will still see the normal theme. Pretty cool!

Now I am on the hunt for the admin access tool that is formatted for doing blog posts from the iPhone!

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone

First, let me say that I am overwhelmingly happy with the iPhone, especially the phone, calendar, contacts and Safari parts. And, I never really expected to use the iPhone as a primary iPod but now that I have it I think that would be cool, unfortunately, non of my current 5G Video accessories work with the iPhone.

Bummer #1

I’m getting ready for a trip and decided to try the iPhone with my Pioneer DEH-P4900IB Car Stereo. No joy. I got an error message on the Pioneer unit and a notice on the iPhone that this is not a compatible accessory. This is really only a minor issue since I usually have my 60-gig 5th generation iPod hooked up but what I wanted to really know is if it will charge the iPhone. I had just taken it off the dock and it had a full charge so I didn’t notice but I’ll try it again. The DEH-P4900 unit has only been available since Dec 28, 2006 and it kind of bums me out that it doesn’t support the iPhone.

Bummer #2

Neither my wonderful Grado SR-80s or my Sony Earbud MDR-EX81LPs work as manufactured because the headphone port is recessed and the plugs won’t go in. I know there is an accessory that will extend the port but it seems kind of susceptible to damage. There is some chance I’ll have a friend help take the excellent Sony earbuds and mate them to the stock Apple earphones. I’d like the better sound as well as be able to keep the nearly hands free phone features of the stock Apple headset.

Bummer #3

My cool XtremeMac MicroMemo microphone is not supported either.This would actually be useful if it worked. I wouldn’t have to carry around the 60GB Video to make recordings though I don’t know if I’d plug the iPhone into the dongle at a Radiators show!

I expect we will see some similar devices in the future if not just updates of these units. Time will tell.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone

For some clients I bill for consultation time spent on the telephone. On my RAZR I could pull up a call and check the duration for the call and enter it into my time-tracking app so that when it is time to bill at the end of the month I don’t have to remember how long that phone call a couple of weeks ago was. Well, for the life of me I can’t find or figure out how to do this with the iPhone. From what I’ve found there is no iPhone call timer or call duration timer except for the overall usage timer. This is not really an issue at my office because I can just start a new task in the time-tracking app but sure would be cool on the iPhone.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone

Today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, or is it still iCEO, posted an open letter to all iPhone buyers who made their purchases before the price drop announced on Wednesday. In his open letter to all iPhone Customers Jobs states:

“Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.”

There you have it. Whining works. Although, some will say this response was already in the works, if not finalized, BEFORE the announcement of the $200 drop. Either way, now you can quitcher bitchin’.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone

I don’t know if they have anything else up their sleeve but I expect that the October introduction of Leopard will be the next big event. Could be as early as a month away. I am getting excited! So, is Apple going to have an introduction event like the recent iPod lineup refresh. Will it be at Mascone again?

Did you know that you can Pre-Order Apple Leopard at Amazon?

BTW you can see the “The Beat Goes On” iPod roll out keynote as a QuickTime streaming video. I like watching these events even though I kept up with Gizmodo’s feed detailing the keynote on their site so I already know what to expect. I like the recorded version because it is really hard to judge crowd reaction when someone is writing.

Technorati Tags: apple, macintosh

Geez aren’t all the people who bought the iPhone in the first two months probably the same type of person? A serial tech, electronics and computer addict. Don’t they know how it goes with tech products? If not let me illuminate!

1. You wanted to be first on your block and decided that $499 (4GB) or $599 (8GB) was a fair price to be cool.

2. Did that fact that you new computer either costs less or has better features now than it did 2 months ago? Well, that should have been a clue.

3. Don’t get pissed so fast, there is a 10 day cost protection policy at Apple and if you are a real whiner, and don’t just take your medicine for being first, you can probably get that extended a few days.

4. First generation releases are always a bit iffy especially for a software product. There have already been 2 iPhone software updates with a 3rd on t he way. How about considering part of that $200 as tech support for what was basically a public beta project.

5. Ya shoulda waited like me. You know this would happen, but again, you just wanted to be first. If you’d have waited 2 months, heck I was willing to wait 6 months, you’d have either gotten a better product or, in this case a lower price. Better yet, for me, they discontinued a current model, the 4GB iPhone and are offering it for $200 less than before at $299. Now it makes sense to me to try the phone out. I still have the contract with Verizon to deal with though. The 8 GB iPhone is now $399 was $499.

6. Face it, you are a tech addict. Many of you’d have probably paid $1,000 just to get their greedy hands on them.

Anyway, instead of crying and whining, do something about it. Either demand something or shut it!

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone

After the new iPods were introduced and the 8GB iPhone dropped to $399 I saw a couple of references to the Clearance on the 4GB iPhone at $299. The iPod portion of the phone is the least important to me so 4GB should be plenty but I really want to try having a mobile web browser with me. Some of the potential social networking features may be interesting too. I’ll have to see when I get it.

Technorati Tags: iphone, apple

Still working on this project but so far today I tossed 1,300 emails and moved to more permanent archiving scheme about 800 messages

I noticed that a lot of what was clogging the inbox arteries were subscriptions to newsletters, online order receipts and other flotsam that should be archived but mixed in were some important items I let slide and then forgot about. I could have probably finished the cleaning task today but I took time to do several of the more important jobs. Some dated back 9 months and more! Soon, my pretty, we will be in clean mode!

Currently my Inbox has 8 folders that filters route mail to for different businesses or tasks At this point 6 are completely empty and staying that way. There is one that has about 500 messages left in it that I am currently working on and a final 3,286 message monster that I am leaving for last because I am sure it has the most work to pare down. I will likely DMZ this one just to get a head start on a clean new box. Correction, I DID DMZ it just now. Feels better just thinking about it! This way I can give priority to new messages while working towards killing off the DMZ box. So, I guess like everyone who adopts this strategy, if you sent me an important message and did not hear back from me, now is the time to re oil the wheel.

More on this soon but I started a campaign, even an all out assault, on my Inbox to get some control over it instead of it over me.

Using some of Merlin Mann’s advice from his Inbox Zero series I began the arduous task today and am happy to report that I trimmed over 3,200 emails from Inboxs and outright deleted over 1,800 emails! This puts me about a third of the way to my goal of 0 in the Inbox.

So, after this I’ have to start on the 15,000 plus archived messages! Oh well, gotta start somewhere.

I got all excited there for a minute when I saw this new iTunes Widget thingy. But it doesn’t do the one thing I’d like it to, List currently playing songs on MY iTunes. It shows album/songs I recently purchased, albums/songs I’ve reviewed (none) or my Favorites which is merely a list of the artists I’ve purchased most at iTunes. It would be cooler if this was actual data from MY iTunes listening.

If you look in the sidebar to the right you will see a heading called “iTunes is Playing”. This is a near realtime list of what I am listening to right now. The only lag is that is is a very bandaged together system that uses the old KungTunes to publish locally and then an Interarchy mirror to upload because KungTunes stopped being able to directly upload a long time ago, like at iTunes 4 or 5 and development stopped back then (2004).

Right below that is a Last FM widget that does even more. Not only does it list tracks scrobbled from iTunes but it lists songs that I listen to right on the Last FM radio stations.

I liked my band-aid solution because it serves MY interest, not Apple’s or Last FM’s by automatically generating a link to Amazon where you could grease me a bit through the affiliate program if you bought the album there. Obviously both Apple and Last FM want you to go to there sites and spend your rupees there. I guess we are all self serving!

If the iTunes Widget let me make coin from my iTunes affiliate account maybe it would be more useful to me. Also, I went through my library and of the nearly 5,000 songs about 250 have been purchased at iTunes. the iTunes Widget is hardly representative of my total listening habits.

Anyway, here is what my Apple iTunes Widget looks like:

Oh, if you looked at the “Songs” section and noticed “That’s What Friend’s Are For” in three versions, don’t hate me. My daughter had to sing it for a 2nd Grade project so I got those for her to practice with!

Well I’ve seen several stories that the Office 2008 update will not be out until January at the earliest. Bummer. The Office Suite is the last set of apps that I use regularly that is still not native. Heck, even GoLive 9, possibly the last GoLive update is Universal now. 2 years from when the Intel processor Macs were introduced (and Microsoft had to know before that) and before the release of Office 2008 it will be very close to 4 years since the Mac saw an update to Office. That said I guess 2004 does run OK in Rosetta so either I’ll keep plugging along or maybe look at that switch to Mail/iCal etc. I’ve been considering for a while.

This is the first post from the new machine. So far so good. It is snappier for sure. Right now the configuration is very similar to the MacBook Pro it is replacing, Same 2GB of RAM and 7200RPM drives although the old Core Duo 1.83 has a 100GB drive while the new machine, a 2.2GHz version, has a 160GB drive. Very soon though the new machine will have a full 4GB of RAM.

Why a new machine? After all the old one is only 18 months old. Well here are some reasons:

1. I run a lot of apps at once and some, like Aperture, Photoshop and Parallels can chew up the RAM. Whlle the old machine was maxed at 2GBRAM, the new one will have 4GB of RAM. I am expecting that to help quite a bit when I am running a lot of apps.
2. The old 100GB drive only ad about 8GB of free space and that was often eaten up by Photoshop or with temporary exports from Aperture. Sure, I could have replaced the drive but that would not have solved the RAM issue. Also, I want to install a BootCamp partition to run a flight simulator called RealFlight 3.5 that will not run under Parallels. (The only app I tried so far that doesn’t!)
3. Core Duo2 vs. Core Duo. at least 10% more speed for equivalent clock speed plus the new machine is 2.2 instead of 1.83.
4. The original MacBook Pro was a first-generation machine. I reckon a few generations newer has worked about a few more bugs although I have to say that the old MacBook Pro was SUPER reliable, just getting a little long in the tooth.
5. I love the smell of a new computer in the morning. That fresh, electronic smell. There is nothing else like it in the world. It smells like, productivity!

Kudos to Apple for finally doing this. There is no reason to have to pay for a song twice if you tried a track and then decide to buy the whole album. I had about 40 albums from which I bought songs but not the whole thing. I only “completed” one album, the other I wanted said it was being modified and to comeback later, but I also bought several songs from albums I’d previously purchased a song from. The reminder of the songs I’d bought was a nice tickler to look over the bands again and listen to the snippets to see if any other songs struck my fancy.

To find this new feature just go to the itunes home page at the iTunes Music Store and look on the right side in the “Quick Links” section and go to “Complete My Album”

I’ve had my Wireless Mighty Mouse since it came out and it has been great. The rare times the scroll wheel has not worked involved just flipping it upside down and working the wheel over my pant leg and presto, it worked again. Until today.

I hunted a bit around the Internet and found this post about taking the mouse apart. But wait! Before you do that do what I did. Read the comments. #3, when I looked, was by Nu Tron and simply involved using Isopropyl alcohol and a cotton cloth. Worked like a charm. I’m glad I didn’t open the little bugger up. Seems like I often have extra pieces after doing something like that.

I played around with this plug-in for a while today. It was one of MacUpdate’s deals of the day and at $12.00 (40% off the regular $19.95) it seemed like a good deal

I ended up playing with the settings for most every song I listened to on my Dual 2.0 G5 with M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B’s running digital in through an M-Audio 2496 Super DAC (This is my mixing and mastering speaker set up and for that work I really like the flat response and the in-your-face sound field the SP-5s create.) I was trying to get the perfect settings. What worked for one song did not, necessarily, work for another. It seemed like I needed to tweak it for every song and especially if it was a change in Genre, say Metal to Jazz. Bummer because my playlists are pretty eclectic with the musical style varying a lot from song to song. Too much overhead for me. I think that if you listen to similar musical styles a lot you may get by with a standard setting like the preset “Rock” or other Genre. With the SRS on at my mix volume it was usually too much processing and I liked the clean sound straight through the SP-5s. It always sounds like the high-end of the frequency spectrum is getting muddied or something. At low volume, the type I like to work with in the background when I am doing web coding or writing, I liked the added presence of iWoW doing just a touch of work. It seems to open up the sound stage some.

Unfortunately, on my G5 running 10.4.8 there is a bug or conflict that does not let me see the iWoW window after I close it. Couldn’t do anything to get it back. It does not show up in the “Window” menu like it is supposed to. I reinstalled it and as long as I don’t shut the window using the “x” it seems to be working even after I quit iTunes and restart. Weird.

On my MacBook Pro I tried it with both the stock speakers, where I noticed the biggest improvement in sound quality and fidelity, and with my Grado S-80 headphones where it was a waste. The Grados are so good that any processing just muddied up the sound. The stock speakers, however, are so poor normally that some of iWoW’s voodoo actually helped quite a bit, especially being able to move the apparent crossover frequency with the “Speaker Size” control.

So, because of the bug on the G5 and the way I normally listen to music I guess I’ll just leave it installed on the MacBook Pro for those times when I have to use the built in speakers. That seemed, to me, the biggest bang for the buck anyway.

You can find a Mac or PC version at http://www.srslabs.com/consumerhome500.asp

Technorati Tags: macintosh, mac software

I am right now downloading the Photoshop CS3 Beta to the MacBook Pro. This is a HUGE 684MB file and I am 5 minutes into the 22 minutes or so the download should take although I am noticing the throughput slowing. i wonder how many copies will be downloaded today? Talk about bandwidth!

I will try it on the Dual 2.0 G5 as well but CS2 works pretty well there I am really interested in the speed increase on the MacBook with the Intel processors.

More of a report when I get use it some.

Note you will need a valid copy of a CS2 serial number.

Download the Photoshop CS3 Beta

I got the low battery notification from the Wireless Mighty Mouse today and since I originally got this thing about July 30th it looks like about 4 months of life out of the packaged with the mouse Energizer Lithiums. Don’t know how much longer they could have lasted but I took them out and threw in some standard AA Coppertops. I’d have waited to see how long they “run on empty” but I kept getting a low battery warning annoying me so I won’t find that out. One noticeable thing about the lithium batteries. They are lighter by quite a bit. I’ll find some more just for that reason. I suspect they last longer as well. All in all, I think the life was very good considering I never shut the thing off and use it every day for several hours.

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Ya’der hey, and you bettcha it is.

I was supposed to have a conference call this afternoon with one of those Free Conference Call type services but it had a standard phone number, not a tool-free line, so I figured as long as Skype is still free on the Skype Out end that I’d set up the Macbook Pro to use a headset for the call. First I hooked up a Plantronics DSP 500 and that worked fine. Call never happened, rescheduled until tomorrow, but I did a bunch of tests in anticipation and all went well.

A cool thing about Skype is that is mutes iTunes when you make or receive a call. I like that little extra.

Another cool thing about Skype is that I can tell the Mac to send all normal sounds through the built in speakers or externally connected speakers and direct the Skype sound to the headset. Pretty cool but not that useful if you have to wear a full headset like the Plantronics. That feature is cool when I decided to try my motorola HS820 Bluetooth headset for kicks to see if it would pair with the MacBook and what do you know, it does. So, now I can get my Skype calls on the HS820 and have the other system sounds coming out of the regular speaker setup. Pretty cool.

I never got in to using the HS820 with my Razr. I don’t use that phone all that much where having the Klingon look is really necessary but this new use for the 820 seems to be just what the doctor ordered.

We’ll see how it goes tomorrow for the big call.

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