Office 2008 for the Mac Delayed

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.

Just Got My New MacBook Pro!

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!

iTunes Complete My Album Feature

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”

Cleaning the Wireless Apple Mighty Mouse

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.

iWoW iTunes SRS Plug-in

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

Downloading the Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta Now!

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

Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse Battery Life

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.

Technorati Tags: macbook pro

Ain’t Technology Cool Sometimes?

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.

Technorati Tags: macbook pro

Ordered Aperture

Well, the trail version did its job. Kudos to Apple for finally releasing a pro tool as a trial version. After ten days or so of using and playing with the 1.5 trial version I stepped up to the plate and ordered the full version from Amazon.

So far here are some things I really like:

• I can gather previews from all my catalogs across all my drives and then sort and rate with out having to be connected the the actual media.
• I love the new loupe that stays in one place while I move the cursor to the area I want to see enlarged.
• I installed a Flickr plug-in that is really slick. it lets me upload directly into Flickr
• The easy rating system

I am testing Aperture by running it on my MacBook Pro because having this tool on the road is important. I figure it will be better on the G5 with the good graphics card and the 23-inch display. Aperture runs fine but if I have Parallels, a couple of browsers, Photoshop, Skype and a few other applications running it does slow down even with 2 Gigs of RAM.

One of the reason I got the full version is so I can have an install on my G5 as well.

Technorati Tags: aperture, macbook pro

Aperture 1.5 Trial

I am again trying Aperture since the recent posting of the fully functional trial for Aperture version 1.5. So far so good. I imported about 10,000 photos and am working trough them much more quickly than I did when I was using iView Media Pro 3. I really like the full screen version.

After reading reviews I was almost ready to make the commitment to Aperture anyway but having the trial version is helping me see if it will really work in my situation before plunking down the 300 clams for the full version.

More on this as I use it.

FYI, I am running Aperture on my MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM but will get it installed on the G5 as well; just as soon as that video project is finished!

Replacement MacBook Pro Battery Helps My ‘Book Run Cooler?

Since I have not done any software updates since the replacement battery was installed, as of this writing, I can’t attribute the fact that, according to iStat Pro, my MacBook is running about 12 to 15 degrees cooler than with the original battery to anything other than the new battery. Same work environment and charger. I verified this by installing the original again and sure enough, the temp went up again. Weird!

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What the Flock?

I’m posting this from Flock, a new browser that has a blog editor built right in. Nice, basic formatting is available in a WYSIWYG window. Not sure it will replace Ecto yet but I like the idea of not having to leave the browser to do a quick post.

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