Tag: Mac

PEBKAC: Moving, and Moving On

This column originally appeared in the August issue of About This Particular Macintosh.

The past few weeks in our home have encapsulated the Great Room Reshuffle of 2011. My wife and I are in the process of adopting our third child (Boy2 is also adopted), and this is requiring some shuffling of resources. Our guest room will be no more so each boy may have his own room. New bedroom furniture has been ordered, and will be in place by the time, you, dear reader, are seeing these words.

Boy1 is remaining in the same room he’s been in since we got the original furniture, which is now in Boy2’s room. Boy1 is getting the aforementioned new furniture, including a desk, useful for doing homework and LEGO building. The new full bed ensures Boy2 or Boy3 can bunk with him when my parents come for a visit. (See above: guest room going away.) Boy3 will, at some point in the future, once we actually have Boy3, get new furniture, but for now his room remains semi-complete.

So now we’re at the third paragraph, you know way more about my home life than you ever wanted to, and you’re wondering what the heck this has to do with Macs, aren’t you?

Mac OS X Lion released a couple of weeks ago, and for a subset of users, shuffling installations was a concern. Just as we’re rearranging rooms, some found themselves moving to a clean drive partition to put the new operating system on. Most simply did an update install, which shuffles off the old Snow Leopard bits and moves the new Lion furniture in to the former’s place.

As of this writing, I’ve only installed Lion on one of our four Macs, my 11-inch MacBook Air. As more than one commentator has stated, Lion and the Air seem like a match made in heaven. Or Cupertino, as the case may be. I utilized the method most who upgraded to Lion have, the update-in-place. Snow Leopard is packed up, moved off the drive, and Lion is moved in and unpacked, everything put in its place.

It was time-consuming, but otherwise uneventful, much like the Great Room Reshuffle, which saw lots of sweating and grunting by yours truly as dressers and chests and beds were carried and slid about (yay for carpeting!), but no dented furniture, busted walls, or broken bones. Likewise, my moving on to Lion has only seen one hiccup, and that was the need for Java for Mac OS X 10.7 to be installed afterward so CrashPlan would work properly. Just a little sweating over my off-site, online backup, but no grunting this time.

Seasoned Mac veterans may take their time upgrading to Lion, and users of Quicken will most especially want to wait. (Though honestly, given Intuit’s lack of motivation thus far to update Quicken’s code, Quicken users may be better off looking for alternatives from committed developers.) Like many long-time Mac users, I’m not sure I’ll use the new Launchpad or Mission Control features, but I’m otherwise enjoying the many subtle changes Apple has made to OS X’s face. And as with previous Mac OS X updates on previous Macs, this latest operating system just feels faster on the same hardware.

Just as I’m glad we’re doing the Great Room Reshuffle of 2011, I’m happy so far with the Great Lion Upgrade of 2011. If you’ve been on the fence, and don’t have any application-compatibility issues, I encourage you to make the move to Mac OS X Lion. It’s the best Mac OS yet.

PEBKAC: Lions, and Airs, and iPads, oh my!

This column originally appeared in the July issue of About This Particular Macintosh.

In what may be a sign of an impending midlife crisis, I find myself, more and more, beginning sentences with the phrase, “When I was your age…” or some variation thereof. Maybe it’s because I’m the father of two young boys. Maybe it’s the past five years spent around high schoolers and college guys and gals through Bible studies I’ve led for a local church. Maybe it’s just that I’m forty and I’ve seen enough in my life now to see large distinctions.

In seventh grade, we spent about half a semester learning BASIC on the venerable TRS-80 computer. Then we switched to Turbo Pascal on Apple ][s. (See what I did there with the ASCII symbols in place of capitalized Is for the Roman numerals? That’s called “old school”.) When we finished our assignments, we could play Lemonade Stand or Oregon Trail. I died many a death of dysentery.

And if we weren’t playing games, we were taking what we’d learned and started working on our own text-based games.

The first computer to make its way into the household I grew up in was an Apple ][e, purchased used from one of my high school teachers. He’d bought a new computer from the same fruit company called a “Mac”. I still have a sharp memory of seeing the little all-in-one Mac running on the teacher’s desk at his home when we went to pick up the ][e.

That ][e was responsible for every essay paper my last year of high school and four years of college. Another vivid memory I have is printing out a paper on Salvadoran death squads for Dr. Mokeba’s poli sci class. (Dr. Mokeba was from Cameroon and immensely proud of their 1990 World Cup bid.)

I moved to a DOS-based machine, then Windows 3.1, then Windows 95, before coming back to the Apple fold in 1994 with the purchase of a Performa 6115CD. And I’ve never looked back.

What’s the point of this stroll down memory lane? So you have context for “When I was your age, we didn’t have touchscreen smartphones, iPads, or solid-state hard drives. We computed by swapping out floppy disks, and I mean floppy disks, not those hard, little three-and-half-inch jobs. And you could screw all your data by bending one of those big floppies between some textbooks in your backpack.”

In other words: the only constants in life are death and change. And if you keep your hand in the technology game, you know change happens quickly.

Arguably, the biggest news out of the tech sector last month [June 2011 –R] was what was revealed to developers at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5 look to be the best versions yet of those respective operating systems. Apple’s iPad is the tablet computing market right now. No other company is even close, mainly because no other company gets it. (HP seems like they have taken a cue from Apple’s playbook; the new WebOS-based TouchPad is likely the best bet from any manufacturer to take on the iPad’s dominance. This is because HP, like Apple, is controlling both the hardware and software experience.)

It’s not just other companies that don’t get it. One thing that hasn’t changed since I got into the tech game is that Wall Street know-it-alls still don’t understand Apple.

“They’re making the same mistake with the iPod as they did with the Mac.”

“They’re making the same mistake with the iPhone as they did with the Mac.”

“They’re making the same mistake with the iPad as they did with the Mac.”

Look at how there are more Android phones out there than iPhones. Sure, but how many different versions of the Android OS are scattered about through those phones? How many of those Android phone users can update to the latest version of the OS? (Not many.) User experience matters, and the iPhone’s is the best because Apple controls the entire experience, not just part of it.

Look at how there are more Android tablets out there than…oh. Wait. That one’s not holding up so well at the moment, is it? No to mention that a tablet is a vastly different type of device than a smartphone. Apple gets this. Manufacturers relying on Android don’t.

And where are those Android or other OS MP3 players, dominating the iPod? Oh. Right.

Apple hasn’t blown by both Microsoft and Intel in the stock market by being dominated, by responding to the whims of stock analysts, or chasing other companies. Apple sets its own agenda, pursues it, and pursues it as close to the perfection of its vision as is humanly possible. And it reaps the rewards.

I look forward to the continued change our favorite fruit company offers users, and the day when I can say, “When I was your age, we had to use our fingers to control our iPhone. We didn’t have any of these fancy eye- or brain-controls you kids have now…”

ATPM 16.09

The September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Shhhhhhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. Mark is hunting dwagons. He then ponders who’s really using less paper, us or them. (Them being corporations, not dwagons. Er, dragons.)
Yours truly had the pleasure of interviewing a friend: Heather Sitarzewski. Heather’s a very creative gal; the things she comes up with never fails to surprise me.
ATPM staffer Wes Meltzer has had to travel quite a bit of late for his other employer (the one that actually pays him). With finances being tight enough that a MacBook Air wasn’t in the cards, and needing something lighter than a 13-inch MacBook, Wes decided to try living with an EeePC netbook running Ubuntu Linux on the road.
Rob regales us with his tale of iPad purchasing, noting that our favorite fruit company’s tablet is an earnings and revenue monster.
If you like flowers, you’ll love this month’s desktop pictures selection. ATPM reader Sterling Garwood shares some photos he took in North Carolina.
Calling out the hazmat team, too much caffeine, avoiding FBI warnings on DVDs, old-fashioned copy editing, menopause, multi-level marketing, outsourcing the boss, and recycling: all in the line of duty in Out at Five.
Ed boldly goes where most of us fear to tread: into the realm of accounting. With his look at Acclivity’s AccountEdge and FirstEdge, things appear to be heading into the black. Finally, Eric puts his baby in then hands of Griffin’s Loop, a tabletop stand for the iPad.
As always, this issue of About This Particular Macintosh is available in a wide variety of formats for your enjoyment:

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ATPM 16.08

The August issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Rob gets us going with a recap of Apple’s latest earnings, as well as their new product introductions. Two lines in Rob’s analysis really stood out to me:

At $65 billion in annual revenue, Apple’s revenue take is greater than the GDP (gross domestic product) of most nations.
And:
It’s interesting to note: In the June quarter close to 50% of Apple’s revenue was generated by products that did not exist in the marketplace just over three years ago.
It’s no wonder how favorite fruit company continues to be the envy of the tech industry.
While vacationing in Normandy, Mark discovers “wee-fee”, a new French cuisine. Despite some, er, “digestive” problems with the “wee-fee”, it was much preferable to the palate than his having to deal with refurbishing a Windows-running Dell.
Ed not only returns to update the Next Actions GTD app list, but shares his workflow and tools for processing e-mail. This is a great resource for those of us floundering through e-mail inboxes full of stuff we know we should get to, but never seem to.
Linus shares his experience going from 10 GB iPod to iPod touch to iPad, and learns some times the greener grass is hiding a few weeds. Sylvester shares his travails on maintaining the household network, noting that this sometimes unpleasant task has gotten easier over the years.
The August edition of our desktop pictures is courtesy of ATPM reader Giuseppe Balacco, his daughter Maria Luisa, and his wife Cecilia. They feature the gorgeous Tremiti Islands. I’ve already downloaded the entire set.
In this month’s edition of Out at Five, we are treated to unqualified sales recruits who’ll stab you in the back at the first opportunity, lightsaber confusion, why you should never finish every project you have at work, and finally those notes taped to the outside of the fridge should always be heeded.
Yours truly reviews the OWC Express USB 2.5-inch hard drive enclosure, a welcome addition to my tech stable. Finally, Matthew puts Ambrosia’s WireTap Anywhere through the wringer of digital recording.
Our all-volunteer publication is always looking for talented writers, photographers, and graphic artists to contribute regularly. If you’re interested, please contact the editors.
As always, this month’s edition of About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of flavors:

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ATPM 16.02

The February issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Mark laments how the technology of his employer isn’t quite there when it comes to telecommuting when the weather’s bad. Then he laments how his home entertainment technology isn’t quite where he’d like it to be, either. Mark also ponders if anyone still cares about the browser wars.
Ed updates the Next Actions master list. If you can’t find something on there to help you get things done, then I suppose you’re content with pen and paper. (And there’s nothing wrong with that.) ATPM reader Stanley Jayne was kind enough to share with us his first experience with the Mac, which began with, well, the first Mac.
Yours truly is responsible for this month’s desktop pictures, which come from our trip to New England in May of 2006. At Weiser Graphics, Chad deals with a finicky printer and the changes in technology, while there appears to be an irrepressible march toward “green products” no one’s heard of. Or may need.
Finally, Sky King Chris has a pair of iPhone-related reviews, checking if the Element iPhone Stand and i.Tech’s SolarCharger 906 can measure up.
As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for your enjoyment:
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ATPM 16.01

The January issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure. The staff of ATPM is pleased to note with this issue we are entering our 16th year of publication!
Mark kicks off the new year having some fun with a GPS iPhone app, comparing it to its hardware-based brethren and how they work in the United Kingdom. He then notes some consternation with the ability of a XP-based Dell to not multi-task while his equivalently-equipped Mac strolls along chewing bubble gum.
Sylvester is kind enough to take us through building our own additions to the Services Menu. What’s that? You’ve never heard of the Services Menu? Crikey. Sylvester’s certainly got his work cut out for him then…
ATPM friend Delwin Finch loves macro photography, and was kind enough to share some shots of water drops under low light conditions in this month’s desktop pictures section. At Wieser Graphics, they’re feeling the economic crunch. Todd runs headlong into the digital vs analog wall, but proves adept at translating marketing speak for his boss.His greatest achievement, however, may be…well. You’ll see. If you haven’t made a New Year’s resolution yet, but would like to, Linus is ready with some suggestions.
Ed takes a look at a device I’m beginning to pine after: the Harmony 510 Universal Remote. Why, pray tell, might a publication dedicated to things Mac review such an item? Because Ed’s using it with an Apple TV, that’s why. And a Sony DVD player. And a Dish Network DVR/receiver. And an Onkyo 5.1 AV unit. And…well, you get the picture. Or maybe just Ed does…
Matthew drops his nets in the Craigslist ocean using Marketplace. It has a few limitations, sure, and some might find its price (there is a fully-featured trial period) off-putting. However, I recently used Marketplace to help my sister locate a used MacBook, and it was pure pleasure compared to searching Craigslist via its web site.
Linus claims he used Ortelius to make a map for his son, who wanted to use his green and tan plastic army soldiers in a game of world domination. But we really know who was playing with the green and tan plastic army soldiers, don’t we? Don’t we, Linus?
Chris gives Uniea’s U-Motion, a workout sleeve for the iPhone, a, well, workout. Then he goes after the U-Motion’s more formal sibling, the U-Suit Folio Premium.
As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for your enjoyment:
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ATPM 15.09

After a couple-month hiatus from my usual blog posting announcing publication, I’m pleased to note the September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
After more than twenty years of self-employment, Mark finds himself in the company of, well, a company, and is exasperated by the many instances of “anti-time” he is encountering. Oh, and he misses his Mac. (Who wouldn’t?) Angus performs some fortune-telling as he gazes out over the technology sector.
Back in July, Lee took a 10-day excursion to merry ol’ England. (Technically it was the United Kingdom, as Wales and Scotland were visited too, but “merry ol’ United Kingdom” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.) While on his journey, he chose to forego taking along his trusted MacBook Pro, winging it solely with his jailbroken (ahem) iPhone.
In addition to providing us with his Mac-less trip experience, Lee also shares with readers this month’s desktop pictures. My favorites include Becky Falls, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey 1. Matt showers another array of his new cartoon, Out at Five upon us; I really like “Difficult Printer” and “Get to the point”.
Chris finds a simple and inexpensive iPhone stand, while Linus wonders if Cram is the learning tool it’s cracked up to be. Chris also puts the In Your Face “flexible holder” for one’s iPhone through its paces.
It’s always handy to be able to power up one’s iPhone after a busy day of texting, mapping, web surfing, e-mailing, oh, and using that voice thingy that comes with it. No, not the Skype app. That thing that says Phone. Thus, Lee is pleased he can do so thanks to Griffin’s PowerBlock Reserve. Finally, Ellyn takes control of Safari 4 thanks to, um, Take Control of Safari 4, one of the latest titles from TidBITS Publishing’s Take Control e-book series.
As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for your reading enjoyment:
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ATPM 15.05

The May issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Reading about Mark’s travails in obtaining faster broadband across the Pond, I’m thankful our step up to fiber optic a couple of years ago was relatively painless. I’m also thankful we’ve never had the sort of printer troubles Mark’s run in to, thought he does aptly highlight how inkjet printers are pretty much a commodity now. In some cases, it’s to the point of, “We need more ink? The new ink costs how much?!? How much was that new printer at Costco?”
Ed updates the master GTD app list for May, while Sylvester walks us through Front Row. Linus’ attempt at making it through the Bible of GTD, David Allen’s Getting Things Done, offered at least inspiration for this month’s Qaptain Qwerty.
I’m especially proud of this month’s desktop pictures selection. Not only were they were shot by Jessica, the teenage daughter of my good friend Rob Leitao, but they were done so not with even a low-end digital SLR, but with a run-of-the-mill Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot. We hope you enjoy Jessica’s stunning photos from Yosemite National Park.
Lee works out the combo of Slappa’s PTAC laptop sleeve and shoulder bag, while Chris crisscrosses the country with his iPhone in a Core Case. Rob puts iWeb ’09 through the wringer as he creates from scratch a new web site. Chris puts two non-case iPhone accessories through their paces: the Pogo Sketch stylus, and the “tuned conical deflection chamber” of the SoundClip. Finally, Ed pours some audio through the interesting Transcriva: dump in the audio, out comes text transcripts. I may have to look into that one myself.
As always, ATPM is available in a variety of formats for your enjoyment:
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ATPM 15.04

The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Mark discovers an unexpected benefit of the iPod nano apparently having a mind of its own, while at the same time dealing with the beta of Safari 4 and problems with paperless billing. As usual, Ed updates the GTD App Master List, while exploring the automation of file management.
Rob brings us photos of the Vasquez Rocks, part of the San Andreas Fault just north of Los Angeles, in this month’s desktop pictures. (Be sure to tune in next month when Rob’s teenage daughter’s photos of Yosemite are featured, and we can all see how much better a photographer she is than dear ol’ Dad. Love ya, Rob!) Linus shows us how Mac users really can be affected by Windows viruses.
Ed expands the capabilities of Photoshop Elements with the extremely capable Elements+, which unlocks big-brother Photoshop features otherwise hidden in the application’s source code. In the quest to protect sensitive data, Linus conducts a little Espionage, while Lee looks at the iPhone app for Facebook, a place where far too many people aren’t sensitive enough with their data.
Frank conducts the Mother of Current Big Three GTD Mac Apps Round-Up™, having a hard time choosing between OmniFocus, TaskPaper, and Things. (I use TaskPaper myself, though I admit I don’t really use it every day, in the way I should be using it. I guess I have trust issues. Which is funny because many times, my brain itself can’t be trusted, so… Oh. Right. This month’s issue. Sorry.)
Chris is a little disappointed with the iFlyz Personal Media Solution Stand, whereas Lee finds KavaServices rather useful. Finally, when he’s not flying the friendly skies, Chris is trying out the Showcase with his iPhone 3G.
As usual, ATPM is available in a variety of formats to suit your reading needs:
+ Offline Webzine
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ATPM 15.03

The March issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Mike ponders a Jobs-less Apple future, especially in light of a certain comment made by a certain Apple fan-baiting hack. After a long hiatus, Mark re-enters the world of book design with a job hunt, and comes away pining for a twenty year-old Mac rather than suffer the slings and arrows of the Windows machines he encounters. Also in the employment hunt, Mark discovers the paperless office and instant communication are still a long way off, especially, and not surprisingly, in the bureaucratic wasteland of government offices.
Sylvester has a wonderful introductory piece on Time Machine. Be sure to read the comments; after submitting the article for publication, Sylvester encountered an error with Time Machine backups, and his solution may prove valuable to some of you in the future.
David Siebecker was kind enough to share some amazing photos from his 2006 safari to Tanzania for this month’s desktop pictures. (Consequently, Tanzania is the home of Emmanuel, the boy our family sponsors through Compassion.) I especially like the shots of the rhino, elephant, and the two sunsets. In this month’s Qaptain Qwerty, Linus shows us how backups have grown up.
Speaking of Linus, he puts ChronoSync, an app I’ve long had on the Eventual To-Try list, through its paces, and finds it worthy. One booth we made sure to stop by at while at Macworld Expo was the Eye-Fi one, and Lee has given the namesake Explore wireless SD card a workout. Finally, Chris determines whether or not the PED3 iPhone Stand is a worthwhile replacement for Apple’s iPhone dock.
As usual, ATPM is available in a variety of formats for your convenience. Thanks for reading About This Particular Macintosh!