Tips From Tony Blog

They’ve finally updated the less-expensive model, and just before the holidays:

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Apple Updates MacBook Line.

Apple has updated the MacBook line of notebook computers. New features include Intel Core 2 Duo processors at 2.0GHz or 2.2GHz,  an 800MHz frontside bus,  Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 graphics,  4MB of shared L2 cache,  support for up to 4GB of main memory, and a larger 250GB CTO hard drive option. MacBook is now lighter (5.0 lbs) with a new keyboard layout, and it supports one high-powered USB port.

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I find this to be very interesting, because this newest upgrade makes the low-end laptops nearly perfectly equivalent to the more-expensive current MacBook Pro’s.  This is a VERY attractive upgrade, for the same cost as the older laptops.

I’m predicting that the new, high-end MacBook Pro’s will be out shortly, if only to justify their extra cost.  It had better be a major upgrade, in order to cost so much more, frankly - These new MacBooks are looking better and better as I look through the specs. The only, only significant current difference that I can find between the two price-ranges is that the MacBook Pro supports 30-inch external displays, versus “only” up to 24″ monitors on the MacBook.  That’s NOT worth an extra $1,200!

In the meantime, if you’ve been waiting on my advice before buying a new laptop, then your time has come. I’d be plumb grateful if you’d use my personal link when shopping for your new Macs.  It keeps me in Apple’s good graces, and it makes me smile!

Make SURE that you specify the largest internal hard drive that your budget affords when you order your Mac.  There’s no cost penalty for doing so (versus other sources for hard drives), and I’ve seen a lot of people fill up their internal hard drives almost immediately.  This causes drive directory damage that I have to fix, shortly thereafter.

Also, don’t skimp - Since all new Macs are shipping with Leopard, get a large external hard drive, too.  Get the biggest one that you can afford.  Yeah, yeah, yeah - I know that I’m harping waaay too much on backups using Leopard’s new Time Machine function (be sure to watch the video demo), but try to understand my biases:I’VE been the guy on the other end of hundreds and hundreds of panicked support-calls, with folks begging me tearfully to help them get their precious data back.  Now, with Leopard and an external hard drive, you have the possibility of NEVER LOSING ANY MORE DATA FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.  Now, isn’t that worth spending the extra bucks, cheapskate?

I’d make less money from fixing horrifying tragedies, but I’d be a lot less stressed, too.  After nearly 27 years in the biz, my nerves are SHOT, baby!  I want happy, joyful calls, if given a choice.

On Oct 22, 2007, at 6:02 AM, Bob wrote:

You have sent several emails talking about leopard but you have not weighed in yet. Should we all be upgrading now or should we wait to see how the roll-out goes?

You caught me!

I can easily drum up enthusiasm for the CONCEPT of something new and zoomy, but I always wait a bit before I say “It actually works, and won’t blow up in your face!” You won’t hear anything like that until I’ve actually had time to test it out myself, and read a BUNCH of hands-on reviews. I would hate to say something rash and cause a bunch of unhappy folks to lose important work or something.

It might be a good idea to wait a few days before taking the plunge.

I promise - I’ll be very regular and informative in my writings, keeping everyone up to date. This is the biggest, most technologically-advanced operating system upgrade I can ever remember, and it holds great promise, but it also holds the possibility of messing with the ways that we’ve done things for a long time.

For instance:

If you are using a program that runs in “Classic” mode (such as the Clients & Profits ad agency business management software), it absolutely will NOT work with Leopard on your computer (without spending an additional $1600 for the newer version), since Leopard does not support OS 9 at all. However, I found a really cool way for older programs like that to continue onward without any problems - Just run Clients and Profits on an older Mac across the room, running an older operating system, and use a program such as Chicken of the VNC to remotely operate that computer as if you were sitting in front of it. At current network speeds, it’s downright pleasant to use… Just one click of an icon, and you’re staring at another computer’s desktop and programs!

As you might have noticed, Apple finally announced the shipping date for Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5): It’ll be available starting at 6PM on October 26th. Expect to see lines forming at the Apple Store!

It’ll be $129, unless you’ve purchased a new Mac or Xserve on or after October 1, 2007, you can get Leopard for $9.95.

If you buy a Mac AFTER October 26th, it’s free and pre-installed!

Be sure to check out the new features… They’ve done a lot of work to make your computing experience easier and more enjoyable. I’ve been up here in Silicon Valley for days now, learning how to support my clients that will be using Leopard, and it’s a BIG update. Much to learn, and all of it good. Microsoft Windows is miles further back than it was before, and it’s disappearing over the horizon. Apple’s stock value is going to go much higher, because the Mac is going to eat up a lot of market-share that was unavailable before.

I’m very excited about the Leopard Server software. They’ve changed it so that most small businesses will be able to own a powerful server computer that will do automatic backups (that are ridiculously easy to restore), handle all calendar and addresses for the whole company, share printers and provide centralized storage. The price-point has dropped to a tenth of what it would have been for the same storage, power and features a couple of years ago, and it’s Macintosh-easy to manage. 2008 is the Year of the Leopard Server, folks.

I was a faithful Apple fan ten years ago, when there was much doubt about Apple’s future. Life is much less stressfu, now that Apple is building one success upon another!

I swore in a previous post that I would wait, order an iPhone online, and avoid the long line at the local Fashion Valley Apple Store. Well, THAT resolve didn’t last. I now have THREE of the eight-gig models… One for me, and two for a favored client. It only took me a few minutes of waiting (with around two hundred other folks) before I was able to buy the first two iPhones. Then, I went home, came back, walked right in and bought another one. The Apple employees were charming, ultra-friendly and a constant source of pleasure. I didn’t expect to see them erupting from the store just before opening time, hooting, hollering and slapping palms with jubilant customers.
There’s very little new that I can add that hasn’t been said and said and said, over and over. I love the iPhone. I have no objection to the keyboard, at least for basic usage. My short-subject nature documentaries and Tom and Jerry cartoons play flawlessly. In fact, it’s mesmerizing to watch a full show from start to finish. I’m doing it too much, though - I’m getting a crick in my neck!
My iPhone wish list is not so important - I would love to use a folding Bluetooth keyboard with it for longer posts, such as blog entries. I like the onscreen keyboard, but it’s still a pain to edit something complicated, such as today’s entry.
Being me, of course, I had to do something that nobody else gives a hoot about. I emailed myself (from the Mac to the iPhone), sending an MS Word copy of “Our Lady of Chernobyl” by Greg Egan. Why? Because I wanted to evaluate the iPhone as an electronic book. I like the idea of reading, even though I do it so rarely. On my previous phone (the Treo 650) I always kept a minimum of 200 (and sometimes as many as 1,500) electronic books. It actually works very, very well - It’s much clearer than a regular dead-tree-technology book, and it doesn’t flicker like an old picture-tube display, so I don’t expect tired eyes fom reading on the iPhone.
I’m sure that I’ll have plenty more to say eventually, but I can easily say that the iPhone is a breakthrough device that will change the rest of the portable phones on the market - ALL of them. Once a customer has experienced having all of the world’s online knowledge available in their hands, 24 hours a day, anywhere at all, using a phone in the old ways will seem repugnant.
I forget where I saw it, but somebody said that this iPhone is the worst one that will ever exist. No matter what, they will get faster, more capacious, friendlier and less expensive. So will all of their competitors, and it’s all to the good.

The next step up the evolutionary ladder, of course, is the little StickerPod that goes just behind your ear, allowing you to gain access to the planet’s accrued information just by thinking of it. Steve Jobs and his crew are probably already working on it. I think I’d better patent that idea, fast!

Dateline: Macworld Expo 2007

Photoshop CS3

I spent some time watching the Photoshop CS3 beta demonstration today, and it was wonderful - The main impressions I’m taking away with me are:

- It’s jammed with new, very worthwhile features
- It’s a lot faster (on Intel Macs), and
- It’s going to be worth the upgrade, but…
- We will all need to take tutorials to find the best new tools.

Once Photoshop CS3 comes out in final, production form, I will probably be giving overview classes, just to motivate everybody to learn more.

Apple Consultants Network

I spent some time chatting with the folks representing the Apple Consultants Network today, and I think that I’m going to re-join. I used to belong to the ACN back in the very first days, but it didn’t suit my needs at the time. According to everything that I’m hearing, it’s time to give it another look. I expect that I’ll be getting referrals from other local consultants, once they find out that my specialty is CREATIVE people - Fussy, non-linear, high-maintenance types. I love ‘em!

MOST nerdly consultants get a bad case of the hives from folks like that. Creative folks don’t communicate in the same fashion as technical types, and they tend to talk right past each other. I’m unusual because I can speak fluent Geek (sometime it feels like Ancient Geek), but I relate better to artists than to accountants.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of vendors, products, publications, handouts, demos and people that I haven’t written about, and I feel guilty about it (that darned Catholic Guilt!). Instead of trying to feed you the whole smorgasbord via two-fingered typing, I chose to absorb the entire show osmotically and to use what I’ve learned in future writings. If you’re one of my local clients, you can grill me directly, next time that we see each other!

I’m very glad that I came here this week… It’s wonderful to be at the very tip of the wave of change, and everybody here is on the same blissful high. I haven’t seen anybody be a jerk. I’m surrounded by Techno-Hippies!

Dateline Macworld Expo 2007

I don’t have a unifying theme for this posting, so I’ll just ramble (in a really endearing way) for a bit:

The iPhone

I’m finding it difficult to express how the upcoming Apple iPhone has avalanched over everyone’s consciousness here. It’s clearly a big hit with the early-adopter nerd crowd. From what I’m hearing, it’s all that anybody’s talking about in Las Vegas at the CES convention. Lots of people in Nevada are wondering if they are attending the wrong convention!

This photo doesn’t begin to show how many people are jammed around the Apple pavilion. The seats are full of nerdy oldsters, and they are surrounded by hundreds of avid people who don’t move a muscle (or blink much) during the entire presentation. It’s a standing-room-only show, over and over, all day long.

The AppleTV Box

I griped about the lack of support for geeky file-formats yesterday, but I’ve relented a bit since then. Who knows? Maybe Apple’s two supported file-formats for high-definition video will force the rest of the world to stop coming out with exotic video-clips that require a dedicated techie to enjoy. I really don’t relish finding player-programs that constantly need to be upgraded in order to support some new, alien video format. It’s time to settle down and go with the simplest answers. Thanks, Apple!

I Think That I May Have Instigated A Fight

I went up to one of the guys from Apple’s Aperture Team and asked him whether they had inspected the new Photoshop CS3 beta yet. He told me that nobody had said anything about it to him, so I pointed him to the Lynda.com booth about 200 feet away and told him that they featured some free Quicktime tutorials that clearly demonstrated how Adobe Bridge (that comes free with Photoshop CS3 beta) is a direct rip-off of ALL of Apple’s Aperture interface design and features. He got a hard glint in his eyes and thanked me very fervently.

I suspect that Apple’s team is going to be very angry at Adobe for designing software (included with Photoshop) that is designed to kill off Apple’s pro-photographer business! If scuffling breaks out while I’m here (or a naked knife-fight), I’ll video-capture it for you on my Treo 650. Yes, my next phone will be an iPhone.

Warm, Tender, Affectionate Thoughts about Microsoft

I admit it - I’m a complete pig for being pampered. I’ve been tramping around the Moscone Convention Center for the last few days, lugging my computer bag and getting back-aches. One of the high points of my day is to arrive at the Microsoft Blogger’s Lounge. I sign in, sink into a big, comfy chair, hook up to a nice, fast Ethernet cable and grab a soda. MmmMMmmmm… Nerd Paradise.

I’ve been writing these messages from the Lounge, and it’s so much better than sitting on the sidewalk outside the Apple Store, getting pigeon-poop on my butt while I leech the free Airport signal after the store is closed. I can afford to pay ten dollars a day to get Internet access at my hotel, but I object on moral grounds.

To me, it’s sort of like being charged for water, or electricity, or sewage pipes (or air) in the modern age. The Internet is CRUCIAL in the new century, and being charged for it (when the competition doesn’t) is just plain dumb. No hotels without free internet from now on!

What’s In My Plastic Bag

Everything that I’m buying during this trip is a Business Expense, but I’m still being very frugal in my choices. My wildly-profligate days are over. So - What items have I found that I’m willing to spend money upon?

- I couldn’t resist the Expo Discount Price for Micromat’s Techtool ProToGo software, which simplifies the process of creating digital “doctor’s bags”, in the form of those little keychain drives that contain all of the best diagnostic-tools for a computer consultant’s needs, along with a bootable copy of the operating-system.

I can whip out my keys, plug in a thumb-drive, re-start while holding down the Option key on the Mac’s keyboard, and start up my favorite diagnostic programs that will help me to fix the Mac’s problems. It’s a heck of a lot faster than booting from a CD - around 1/3 the wait. I have better things to do with my youth and beauty than wait eighteen minutes for Disk Warrior to boot frm a clunky old CD!

- I bought three MacAlly IceCams - They were cheap, and they will allow more of my family-members to video-chat with the rest of us. You can’t get iSight webcams from Apple any more, and the used-iSight market is pretty expensive for what you get.

So, I bought three webcams that will work (adequately) with older Macs, and this will shove a few family-members further along the path to long-distance web-chatting pleasures. I love my family, and want to see them more often.

- I bought a few MacWorld 2007 shirts. Two of them say “Mac Daddy” on them, and the third one is a nice “bowling-shirt” design.

What I WISH Was In My Plastic Bag

- I’m quite attracted to the NEC Multeos flat-screen LCD monitors. I’m planning to sell my 1961 Imperial Crown Convertible on eBay starting March 1, 2007, and I have only ONE “frivolous” purchase in mind after I sell the car and several tons (no exaggeration) of parts. I want a big-screen display for the living-room.

I’m limited to a certain physical size for the display - It has to fit between the hammered-copper sconces on the wall of our 1918 Craftsman-style bungalow’s living-room. Also, it shouldn’t be an eyesore design that will clash with our “turn-of-the-century front parlor” decor. Whatever monitor I eventually get, I’m tempted to construct a frame out of quarter-sawn oak that will make the monitor appear to be an antique from 1918!

So, I stopped by the NEC booth and threw some unusual questions at the reps standing around. All of my nerdly concerns were handled nicely… My main interest was in how Mac-friendly the plug-in connectors were. No matter how pretty a display may be, if it doesn’t just plug in and work right away, EVERY SINGLE TIME, I can’t be bothered. Right now, the Mac-friendly NEC’s are at the top of my wish-list.

If you are about to buy a big-screen monitor for any purpose, it must, must MUST support “1080P” resolution. If it doesn’t clearly say so, walk on by. Only the newest monitors can handle such enormous resolution, but you WILL want it someday, so don’t be a cheapskate.

It’s now common and easy to hook the newest, “Digital” generation of guitars to your Mac and use them with Garageband. Cheap USB-equipped models are now commonly found at Target. (You can listen to a sample, here).

Higher-quality USB-equipped guitars and basses cost around $1,095 plus $200 for the USB upgrade. I predict that the upgrade price will drop as time goes by.

If you have an extra $4,000-$8,000 lying around, Gibson has finally started shipping its new (Ethernet-based) digital guitar at the beginning of December 2006, after around four years of promising, but not delivering. They have a high-end, classy website explaining why it was worth the wait.

I suspect that the Gibson ultra-guitars will be natively Mac-compatible at some point (at the moment, the software that ships with them is for Windows-only), given the fact that so many professional musicians use Mac laptops onstage.

The problem with recording guitars on Garageband is that it’s a purely analog sort of experience - You CAN add spacey effects if you have the right adapters to connect your Mac to your older, non-digital guitar. It’s nice, but barely one step beyond pure analog.

To go one step further than that, why not play a guitar and have Garageband transform your playing into the sound of a xylophone, tuned bongo drums or thousands of other instruments under your direct control? All that you need is a special translator-box (and $395).

Well, I’ve downloaded and installed the Public Beta version of Photoshop CS3 (which also includes Adobe Bridge CS3). Better than that, I’ve also downloaded the FREE video tutorial for Photoshop CS3 Beta, which taught me one thing, very, very clearly:

Adobe really HATES the idea of Apple taking business away from them.

A while back, six programmers at Adobe jumped ship and started working for Apple, and created Aperture, which is one of my favorite programs. It’s optimized for professional photographers, and it’s hard to learn (because it uses such advanced new concepts), but it’s really fast and easy to use, once learned. I took some classes, and I love it. It does not compete with Photoshop in any way.

Adobe DESPISES it, though - They want all of that pro-photographer business for themselves. Right around the same time that Apple announced Aperture 1.0, Adobe announced Lightroom, which directly competes with Aperture.

Now that I’ve taken the free Lynda.com tutorial for Photoshop CS3 Beta, I can see that Adobe is folding everything in Lightroom into the Adobe Bridge software that works with Photoshop CS3. Bridge is identical-identical-identical in operation to Aperture. Other than the shape of the magnifying glass (square vs. round), Bridge CS3 steals Apple’s ideas, down to the very tiniest details. I mean seriously - It’s time for Apple’s famous lawyers to start filing papers in court. I’m boggled - I haven’t seen such a blatant interface-theft case since Windows 1.01.

Other than that, I haven’t done much hard-core evaluating of Photoshop CS3 Beta’s speed. I’ve been letting other folks do the heavy lifting, so far. It seems to work fine on MY MacBook Pro, but I haven’t got any hard jobs to throw at it, so close to the holidays. I’m also aware that it has all sorts of issues, so I’m in no rush to be on the bleeding edge, quite yet.
I’ll keep y’all posted on any progress that I have made, though. Watch this space for further developments.

Well, not quite, but pretty darned convincing to MY eyes, nonetheless…

I’ve been able to experiment with all sorts of High-Definition (HD) video files, and I’ve had access to plenty of recent hardware to test them on. DVD images are horrid compared to HD video… I need to cover my DVD’s with plastic sheets because I keep wanting to spit on them! :-> HD movies are actually sharper than what you originally saw in the movie-theater, the first time around. CinemaScope is pretty close, though.

I have found that the 24″ iMac (particularly when gussied-up with the high-end graphics and larger hard drive) is IDEAL for watching HD video:

- The hardware can keep up, even with the largest file-formats. No stuttering or screen-hashing. Just glorious imagery and sound.

- The 24″ screen is plenty tall enough for even the largest HD movies. George Lucas uses the “1080p“-sized digital format when he projects those extra-cost, luxury versions of his Star Wars films (and there is only ONE theater in San Diego County that can project them). The 24″ iMac can easily display the same format, and it still has 120 extra pixels of height (count ‘em) left over!

Here’s a nice screen-shot, to pique your interest. It looks best if you look at it in Safari.  Now, imagine an entire movie, just as crisp and clear in every frame, during every second of the movie.

Starting yesterday, you can even order your 24″ iMac with a 750-gigabyte hard drive. Trust me, you might need it, once high-definition media becomes common. A high-resolution documentary such as Microcosmos takes up 7 gigabytes, and the entire, three-movie, non-extended “1080i” (BIG) version of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy takes up 76 gigabytes!

So… If you don’t have a new iMac, then what other Mac hardware can handle the biggest HD Video?

MacBook Pro’s, Mac Pro’s or possibly G5 towers (with a 23-inch or 30-inch monitor hooked up externally). Nothing else can keep up with the massive flow of data. In a year or so, ALL new Macs will have sufficient graphics horsepower, and the price of flat-panel screens will drop even lower. Pretty soon, we’ll all be luxuriating in High-Definition video!

Welllll, actually, it’s more like version 5.0 by now:

- Version 1.0 was faxed to a handful of people using the very earliest Mac-compatible faxmodem ever offered. I think that it was around 1986. I just wanted to test out the technology for a single, bogus “newsletter”, but then everybody started demanding MORE!

- Version 2.0 was handled by e-mailing people using my AOL address book. Most of my clients were annoyed at the very idea of “e-mail”… It was too newfangled, and didn’t involve paper (Dead Tree Technology)! I spent a lot of time convincing people back then that e-mail was The Coming Thing. Managing the addresses quickly became painful as more and more subscribers piled on, all over the world. Mac users were online at long last, and they were frantic for any kind of online community.

- Version 3.0 was the BIG one (named Mac*Chat, with almost 100,000 readers), using a unix listserv from out of Texas. It grew that big in a year and a half! Then, I trimmed it WAY down and renamed it to TipsFromTony:

- Version 4.0 used the free OneList service, then

- Version 4.1 used eGroups, and then

- Version 4.2 used YahooGroups, as each company consumed the one before it…

So, I’m moving to the next level higher after twenty years of newsletters, and I’m dragging y’all with me!

I’ve decided to use my own mailing system (blessedly free of Yahoo ads) to send out better-looking, interactive e-mails, mostly pointing everybody to a web-page where you can add comments and continue the discussion. I’ve been getting many, many replies in response to my postings, and I haven’t been particularly rigorous about re-posting these golden nuggets of wisdom in the past. Now, I won’t have to manage stuff like that manually any more, and everyone will get the benefit of each others’ generosity and experience.

Frankly, I’m several years overdue… Blogs have seemed sort of wierd and newish compared to the simplicity of sending out an e-mail, but I read a LOT of blogs nowadays, and I certainly have what it takes to keep a popular, well-read site. It’s time for information to flow in both directions.

Honesty compels me to give full credit to my husband Dennis for the design and quality of the website, blog, newsletters, business cards and everything else that you’ll be seeing from now on. We’ve been together 16-1/2 years (and we were married back in 1991). His vast experience as a founding web-editor and designer for the San Diego Zoo’s phenomenal website is all gravy for my business too, as you will see in the years to come.

So, thanks for your patience, and I hope that you stick around!