I’ve been a huge fan of .Mac - Apple’s suite of online services for syncing and accessing your address, calendar, email, files and many other types of data - for many years now.
Back in 2006 I first started using .Mac to backup key personal data and OS X settings. It also proved a great tool enabling the auto-configuration of most of your settings and reinstalling data when doing a clean install of Mac OS X. From Panther to Tiger to Leopard, all seamless clean installs.
But today is .Mac’s last day. Tonight Apple will take the service offline and lay it to rest forever. So, .Mac, I thank you and bid you farewell.
Tomorrow is all about Me, no not me, Me, as in Apple’s major revision of .Mac known as MobileMe. It will offer pretty much all the same capabilities as .Mac (minus bookmarking and iCards) but will now also enable real-time seamless syncing of data between devices via ‘the cloud’ without any need to wait for or manually run the sync services.
.Mac MobileMe is essential for keeping my work Mac and personal Mac insync as well as the few instances when I need access to the same data carried on my iPod touch. These days Apple’s online services offer so much more than just data syncing and backup. With services such as Back to my Mac and Gallery (both of which I use extensively), not to mention the new web-based access to iCal, Address Book and iDisk, Apple is offering a suite of tools that are essential to how I run my life and enable me to work and store/accesss data remotely.
And I get a cool @me.com email address, though, I never did use my @mac.com address. Oh well.
People grumble about the battery life of their laptops and various makes and models offer considerable difference in the mileage you’ll get. Living in a Mac only world, I’ve always thought that Apple has done a pretty good job of getting the most out of the battery on their laptop range.
I have two MacBook Pros. One for work, and one at home. They are pretty much identical in spec. On long flights, such as my regular trips to Seattle or Houston, I’d get 4+ hours out of the MacBook Pro by turning off Wi Fi and dimming the screen right down during the flight. Makes for a very productive journey.
Continue reading ‘MacBook Pro Battery Problems’
Hallelujah !! Apple today finally released 7.1.3 firmware upgrade for the Airport Extreme Base Station updating the base station with support for wireless Time Machine backup.
Since Leopards initial release last October there has been uncertainty as to why Apple pulled AEBS wireless Time Machine support from the release at the last minute. To add fuel to the speculation, Time Capsule’s announcement at MacWorld led many to consider the fact that Apple was going to pull a fast one over the faithful and force us to purchase a new device.
Now we know this is no longer the case. As of right now I’m wirelessly backing up my hard drive over to the 500GB USB drive attached to my AEBS. Hallelujah !!
Since Macworld in early January I, like many others, have been eagerly awaiting the AppleTV take 2 update. Near the end of last month, Apple announced a 1-2 week delay and in true Apple style, waited until the last day of the 2 weeks to finally release the software update on Tue 12th.
Jump on over the MacApper to read my First Impressions of the update and new features. Was it worth the wait? Will AppleTV now be the success it was originally intended to be?
I just recently purchased the Logitech Z-10 desktop speakers. My objective was to buy a set that worked via USB to reduce the number of cables I need to remove from the MBP. There are many choices of notebook speakers, most of which are USB, but just about all of them are poor in the low base range and I really didn’t want to sacrifice the sound quality too much.
The Z-10 speakers have an interactive panel on the right speaker which displays the current iTunes song information and allows you to advance tracks and change the volume level directly on the front of the speaker. The big problem here is that Logitech had no support for Macs.
Enter LogitechLCDTool. This is a great tool to enable display of the iTunes info on the front panel. The tool needs a script update to support Leopard, which can be found in the developers forums.
There is an even more advanced Multiscreen tool for the Z-10 which enables the 1-4 context buttons with information such as weather, date/time, email details etc. I followed the details in the forums but never quite got it to work, always ending up with a blank screen. If anyone else has managed to get Sei’s Multiscreen update to LCDTool working, I’d love to hear from you.
