Author Archives: LES

About LES

Hi, I'm LES and this is my Wordpress Blog. Here I'll share my thoughts and ideas and just some general information about random things. Feel free to post comments, or send me a email.

Upgraded Apple MacBooks and Lower Pricing

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I haven’t blogged in a while so I figured I’d catch up on some posts and give some information on the new line of Apple products and software.

overview-gallery1-20090608I’ll start off with the new line of MacBook Pro laptops that Apple released in early June.  Now even the 13″ model is considered a Pro.
I’ll start with the pricing and then go into the features they have added.
The 13″ now starts at $1199 and for $1499 you get a slightly faster processor, more memory, and storage.
The 15″ now starts at $1699 and for $1999 and $2299 you will respectively get a faster processor and storage but the $1999 model comes with a GeForce 9600M video card with 256MB vram in conjunction with the GeForce 9400 video card.  The $2299 model adds a GeForce 9600M with 512MB vram in conjunction with the GeForce 9400.
Finally the 17″ now is priced at $2499 and has the same specs as the last model 15″ but includes a 17″ screen and still has a express card/34 slot.

All models use the GeForce 9400M with the last two 15″ and 17″ having the option to switch to the more powerful 9600M video cards to do tasks that require more graphic processing.
All models now come with a Firewire 800 port.
All models but the 17″ dropped the express card slot and added a SD card slot instead.
The 13″ models only have a line out/shared optical out port now with support for the Apple stereo headset with microphone that is used for the iPhone.  The 15″ and 17″ models have both a line in and out / shared optical in and out port with the out having support also for the Apple stereo headset with microphone.
All models now have a backlit keyboard.
All of the models have support up to 8GB of ram.
All of the models now follow the previous 17″ design of having a long life integrated non removable battery.  (You can still unscrew the bottom case off to change the battery, hard drive, or add ram)

In my opinion these are the best notebooks Apple has released and the lower pricing is definitely a better bargain than what was previously offered.
You can find out more information here – http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

Drobo + Mac Mini = File/Media Server

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design_angled20090303= File/Media Server

About a month ago, I picked up a Drobo and stopped using my Vista PC for my raid storage.  At first I picked up the Droboshare with the Drobo which is a network interface for the Drobo which has gigabyte Ethernet.  I thought that would be good, but turns out the connection to the Drobo is still USB 2.0. So it basically has a bottleneck from 1000Mbs to 400Mbs.  Also when testing out the Droboshare over my gigabit network I was getting constant disconnects from the Droboshare.
I later decided I would pay about 400 more and just get a new Mac Mini that has Firewire 800 and hook that up to my Drobo and share it over the network.  This solution worked and has been very reliable so far.  I can also run Boxee and other media related applications on the Mini which is a plus.
If anyone is planning on getting a Drobo and a Droboshare, I would highly reccomend checking out this common solution instead.

New Mac Pro and updated Consumer Desktop Line

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macproimacmacminiEarlier this month Apple released a New Mac Pro and updated the Consumer Desktop line which consists of the new iMacs and Mac Minis.
The new iMac’s and Mac Mini’s are based on the new NVidia chipset like the unibody MacBooks and run on 1066mhz DDR3 ram.
I recently picked up a new Mac Mini and a Drobo storage device to setup as a file/media server and will be posting a little about my setup later on.
You can buy and find out more about the new:
Mac Pro here – http://www.apple.com/macpro/
iMac here – http://www.apple.com/imac/
Mac Mini here – http://www.apple.com/macmini/

Buttonless Talking iPod Shuffle

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shuffleA few weeks back Apple released it latest version of it’s small portable music player.  This new version doesn’t even have buttons on the device but instead it incorporates controls on the headset sorta like how the iPhone has a mic and button to hang up calls or skip or stop songs.
The negative part about this new setup is the inability to use 3rd party headsets that people might already have.
I’m sure 3rd party companies will offer better aftermarket headsets with controls and better sound quality but I really think that will be a turn off for some buyers.
The new player is extremely small and incorporates a built in clip that makes it easy to attach to the listener.  It also boasts a 10 hour playback time when fully charged.
But the most amazing thing about this player is VoiceOver, the ability to speak track and artists names and also playlist names since the device has no readable LCD display.
You can buy and find out more about the new iPod shuffle here – http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/

Exporting Photos from Aperture to iPhoto

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I’ve been using Aperture for a while but now that iPhoto ’09 has all these new features like Face Recognition, Flickr and Facebook integration I figured I wanted to be able to use iPhoto.
Problem is that I’ve been exporting all the photos from my camera to Aperture and not iPhoto.
To get your Aperture photos to iPhoto you need to export the masters from Aperture into a folder and then drag that folder into iPhoto and it will import the photos in.
I choose All Photos in Aperture, and selected all the photos. (I selected the first photo, scrolled to the last photo, held down shift and clicked on the last photo to select all photos)
After selected all the photos I clicked File -> Export -> Masters, and choose to export the masters into folders based on the project name.
After all the masters were copied to the specified folder I dragged that folder into iPhoto and everything was copied over.
Now I just gotta wait for the new iPhoto ’09 to be released and try out all the new features.

Apple releases iPhone 2.2 Firmware

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Apple just released the new iPhone 2.2 Firmware.
Some of the new features include:

  • Enhancements to Maps
    • Google Street View*
    • Public transit and walking directions
    • Display address of dropped pins
    • Share location via email
  • Decrease in call setup failures and dropped calls
  • Enhancements to Mail
    • Resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
    • Improved formatting of wide HTML email
  • Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular network)
  • Improved stability and performance of Safari
  • Improved sound quality of Visual Voicemail messages
  • Pressing Home button from any Home screen displays the first Home screen
  • Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings

To enable street view, you go to a area on the map where street view is available and drop a pin if you don’t have one currently up and click the small person in the red circle.
You can find out more about the update here – http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

Google Video Chat

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Well Google finally released a Video client.  They have had the chat client for a while, but now you can video chat also.  This is good like Skype for cross platform communication, because other services like MSN video chat require you to run Windows to video chat with users, so if you have a Mac, you can’t video chat with MSN users unless you run Bootcamp or the like.
You can download it over here – http://mail.google.com/videochat