tech ronin

My Leopard IMAP is breaking my Email

I don't have all the facts yet, but since setting up Mail on my new iMac in Leopard, I haven't been able to receive email. That's since Monday! Just figured out that shutting down mail on my iMac makes email work again. I can then check the mail with a web browser on my iMac or I can check in Mail in Tiger on my MacBook Pro. Just a little heads up.

Leopard on iMac 24 2.8 - Bliss

Got an iMac 24 2.8 on Sunday. My G5 tower 2 ghz dual was 3 years old. I loved that it still does Classic. But it was starting to show its age and I believe in replacing my Macs before they become completely obsolete. And I like to get new Macs at the end of the year for tax reasons.

I didn't want to pay for a new Mac Pro plus a 23" or 30" screen. Wasn't a good deal from my perspective and a high end iMac seems good enough. I considered the lower-end 24" iMac but I want something that will still seem fast for a while. Not something that is just fast enough now and will start seeming a little slow a year from now.

You pay an extra $250 for the 2.8 ghz processor compared to the 2.4 ghz version. That's a reasonable anti-obsolescence investment. Since the processor is going to give out before the screen does, I want the faster processor so that this gorgeous hunk of metal and glass will have a long life span before hitting the dump or recycling bin.

The other $250 I paid ($2299 total) included a 500 gb instead of 320 gb hard drive and 2 gb RAM instead of just 1 gb. Again, I liked the higher end configuration because it won't be easy to upgrade the hard drive later. At some point I do expect to upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM but 2 will do for a while.

I also sprung for a wireless keyboard and mouse. Because I was buying at the Apple store, I had to pay full price for the wireless gear. I forgot about that when deciding to buy locally rather than online. Oops. That cost me an extra $120. But, I do regard the extra gear as backups should the batteries go bad one day I'm in a crunch.

The 24" screen has been something I've wanted for years ever since I saw my first 23" cinema display years ago. It is huge!

I have been using a 20" cinema display (about 4 years old) and a 17" cinema display (about 6 years old). I thought maybe I could use the 24" iMac and deploy or sell the older displays elsewhere. Not quite!

I missed having a second secondary screen to put things on that I want open but want out of the way. Spaces didn't feel like it would do quite what I need. I have a habit of having that screen there. For example, today my email wasn't working. I wanted to keep the email inbox in sight but needed it out of the way so I could use the screen for other things.

I already had an adapter that let me use one of my old Apple displays with the G5's newer DVI port. All I had to add was a mini-DVI to DVI adapter and plug that into my Apple Adapter and plug the Cinema display into the adapter. Apple sells the mini-DVI adapters for $20 and the Apple-DVI adapter for $100. Luckily, I just needed the $20 item. Went over to the Corte Madera Apple store (which was rocking hard at about 5:30 pm) and picked up the mini-DVI adapter. Plugged things in and I'm set.

Now I have my 20" monitor as the secondary screen. It is about 3" lower because it doesn't have the iMac's chin, but it works. I doubt if I'll bother trying to elevate it.

Now, about this new iMac! It is a thing of beauty! It is a great, great machine. The screen is brighter than bright, so I keep it set to the minimum brightness for normal use. I can turn it up for use with photos and video. You are going to need extra ambient light if you want to work at night with this screen without blowing your eyes out.

The wired and wireless keyboards are exquisite. The touch is to die for. The look is awesome. So far, I'm using the baby-sized wireless keyboard with complete satisfaction. I'm not a numeric keypad fan, so I delight in losing the extra weight and size of the wired keyboard. Every other keyboard seems clunky compared to this.

I was not too surprised to find that Tiger was installed on the iMac. A Leopard DVD was in the box but that's it. I had to install Leopard at home. A whole extra chunk of time when I couldn't use the new machine. Bummer!

One advantage, though, is that I got to see how much better I liked the new iMac with Leopard on it. Leopard on my MacBook was one thing, but Leopard on this screamer with giant screen is fantastic! The 3D dock looks like it was made for this screen. It looks great and their's plenty of vertical space so I don't need to begrudge losing vertical room to a dock at the bottom of my screen. On the MacBook, I had to put the dock on the left to get some room.

Leopard is gorgeous. It runs blazing fast on this machine. Everything pops. Safari is wonderful. I'm hooked on Leopard now. I'll try hard to hold out till Christmas with my MacBook Pro on Tiger just in case I run into trouble. Steve was telling the truth in June when he said Leopard would be worth waiting for.

This is my first iMac. Who knew I would love the integration and simplicity? I am beginning to see things Steve's way on this. It's so easy. So elegant. Sometimes options are more trouble than they are worth. That's the religion you get with the iPhone.... I'm being corrupted but perhaps for my own good.

Leopard still only for my experimental use

I got started with Leopard on my backup computer, my MacBook, on the Saturday after Leopard launched. Had some problems there. I was tempted still to upgrade my main axe, my MacBook Pro, to Leopard but held off. Lucky thing.

I'm convinced that I would have lost more than I gained by switching my main machine at that time. I'm still happily productive on Tiger on my main axe. And, I haven't had a lot of time to do much with Leopard yet on my MacBook. But I have a few initial impressions and experiences to share.

I tried using the dock at the bottom of my screen because I wanted to see the cool new dock. This week I switched back to the dock on the side. I like it there. I like it on the bottom from an aesthetic point of view but a widescreen like the MacBook's really works better with the dock on the side. I like it on the left. The left side dock loses its 3D look, but still looks different enough to be a nice touch.

If you have a 24" iMac or even a 20" or 17" MacBook Pro or maybe a 15" MacBook Pro, you may have room for the dock on the bottom. But forget it on a MacBook. No way!

I like the way Leopard looks overall. I like the consistency and the great number of small refinements throughout. And, I am still being surprised by big improvements here and there. For example, the Network panel rocks (see above). It looks enticing and actually gives you the most important information you need on one panel.

I heard Mac guru, Dr. Bob Levitus, talking about Leopard on the Mac OS Ken podcast recently. He wasn't really recommending it. He loves it but thinks there are enough issues like the blue screen of death to make it a prudent idea to wait a while. Wait until you can upgrade with confidence. Wait until there's enough time for good advice to be published and for lesser but prized applications to be upgraded and fully Leopard-compatible.

I'm lucky to have a secondary machine handy that I could upgrade to Leopard and use for web browsing, feed reading and some email. I can tinker with it and explore and not get stuck with extra problems when I'm under deadline and have to get something out the door.

So what's the plan with Leopard? I'm going to keep this up for a while. I have my fun, new Leopard machine to play with and I have my MacBook Pro for work and anything else I want on my main machine. I want to wait until my favorite backup program, SuperDuper, works flawlessly with Leopard.

I have every intention of upgrading to Leopard on my MacBook Pro by Christmas. Maybe Thanksgiving weekend even. I'll be tracking the Leopard news. Once I'm convinced the chances of problems has diminished to unlikely, I'll go for it.

By the way, even when I go to Leopard on my MacBook Pro, I'll still have my G5 tower on Tiger. That machine isn't Intel based and still runs Classic. I still have one Classic application I like to run from time to time - Civilization II - a classic game if ever there was one.

I hear Intel Macs are the ones that get speedy on Leopard. Older machines don't fare as well. My 3-year-old G5 runs great and I don't want it slowing down on Leopard. It'll probably be fine, actually, since the Mac towers have decent and upgradeable video cards.

Then there are the highly anticipated screen sharing and remote control features in Leopard to consider. Once the kinks are worked out (hear Ted Landau's rundown of initial limitations on the Nov 8 episode of the Tech Night Owl Live Podcast), this snazzy sharing stuff is going to be compelling.

If I fall in love with Leopard over the next few weeks, I may decide I want an all Leopard household at some point. The advantage to NOT doing that is that I'll be able to run Leopard-incompatible applications on my non-Leopard machine(s) as needed rather than being stuck without that option.

Up and Running in OSX Leopard

I dropped by my local Apple store in Corte Madera last night around 9:25 pm. It was busy but there were lots of Apple staff around so I could get help fairly quickly. I used my iPhone $100 credit and bought the Family size of OS X Leopard. Got my free T-shirt which is still in the bag.

I'm moving this weekend with movers coming early Monday morning. No time for much fun. But, I did think I could stop working around 9:15 pm long enough to get Leopard on Leopard night.

I left pretty quickly and headed over to the new place in Tiburon. There were no special treats other than the T-shirts at check out. Not exactly a party. My new apartment has my new Sony XBR4 40“ HDTV, so I coordinated my trip with a brief visit to the new TV to watch Numbers in HD. Looking good!

While the show was on, I tried to install Leopard on my MacBook (my #2 machine). I just tried the upgrade. First time through it failed. Second time through it was failing and said the only way it would work is if I erased my drive. I forgot about archive and install and erased the drive. Too bad. The install failed which left me with an unusable computer on day 1.

Today, in between packing boxes, I used SuperDuper to copy a backup of my MacBook Pro to the MacBook. That took about an hour. Then I was able to boot the MacBook again. I read the installation instructions a bit more this time and decided to do an archive and install.

Worked like a charm and I am writing this post in Leopard using ecto as we speak. Leopard is definitely snazzy. The consistent look and differences are really nice. I'm already plotting to upgrade my MacBook Pro as soon as possible.

But, after my first bumpy install experience, I think I'll give it at least until Tuesday after the move. Meanwhile, I can use this machine to check my IMAP email in Mail and surf the net. I did upgrade my copy of NetNewsWire when it notified me there was an update and it is running just fine without a problem.

I can't wait to play with Go to My Mac and screen sharing in the near future! I'll make several more posts no doubt as I discover the niceties of this new OS for myself over the next few days.

iPhoto 08 and Numbers Rock

I scored the new iLife 08 and iWork 08 today. That's a great impulse buy and I'm sure Apple knows it. What a deal for $158. With the upgrade of Pages and addition of Numbers, I'm hoping to forego an upgrade to the next version of Office for Mac.

I actually have never upgraded to Office 04. So, why bother with Office 08? it better be good is all I can say if Microsoft wants to have a prayer of getting people like me to upgrade.

Meanwhile, I'm trashing Excel. OK. I'll keep it around but I hope to use it rarely if ever. Of course, there may be places where I like Excel better than Numbers, but right now I'm liking Numbers. Ease of use is excellent. The program isn't very big which is a major plus. And it feels way different (Apple does not disappoint).

The differences in Numbers are several but I can't do a point by point comparison because, like I said, I'm still using Excel X from 2001 or 2002. I'm just about positive, though, that this paradigm change in Numbers is not in Excel.

See the photo above. The two spreadsheets there are tables. From what I can see here, Apple has done a really nice job. You want to work with Numbers. I haven't had that feeling about a spreadsheet program in a long, long time.

Numbers has sheets. Excel has worksheets. Similar there. But numbers has tables and you can have multiple tables per sheet. A table is like a mini spreadsheet object that can have as many rows and columns as you want and can be dragged around to the exact spot you want it on the sheet.

You can insert rows and columns right on the sheet. Calculations that I tried are easier to use. Charts are droolworthy. There's a certain scrumptiousness to the look and feel of the application itself.

Numbers is accessible, easy and fun. The way I figure it, that's what most of us want in a spreadsheet. If you push spreadsheets every day for hours on end, maybe that's not what you want. But the majority of us use spreadsheets less frequently and less intensively. That's the sweet spot Apple exploits with Numbers.

I hope to write more on this the next time I get into a spreadsheet project. Actually, knowing me, I will think up a spreadsheet project just so I can play with Numbers some more. You can download their 30-day trial free or just pop the $79 to get Numbers plus improved versions of Pages and Keynote.

The first program I tried today was iPhoto. I take a lot of photos and wanted to see what else I could do. Mostly, I've just played around with the new Events feature. I loved having all my photos grouped by import batch. Some of the batches are a mish mash of things for that day. But, often enough, the batch deserves its own grouping and now I don't have to do it the hard way.

Good thing. The Events view in the multiple photo view shows a single photo for each event. This seems much more manageable. You can easily see mini views of each photo just by moving your cursor over the single photo. You can split and merge events to modify the groupings. I plan to create a big iPhone July 07 event which will be all the iPhone photos I've collected online in the first month.

This is fun people! Photos are great to play around with and this is a substantial upgrade to iPhoto so the fun gets even better. You also get easy integration with .Mac photo galleries and other cool features there where you can email photos taken on your iPhone and let your friends email photos to gallery photo Events. That's going to be great for aggregating photos taken at parties and other get togethers. And for interest groups I would think. There are new flag and hide functions that should come in handy.

I am not planning to buy a new Mac in the next couple months, so I couldn't wait. If you do buy a new Mac, you'll almost surely get iLife for free. I couldn't wait, but that's just me.

Picked up a few more shares of APPL

Woo hoo! Got 65 more shares of AAPL at $130.09. Remember that I'm nobody and totally inexperienced with stocks. All my other holdings are mutual funds. But, I wanted to have a round number of shares. Now I have 200. Much easier math. I have an iPhone and I think Steve Jobs is at least as competent as any other corporate exec out there and APPL is worth more than $130. So there!

And that doesn't mean it won't drop below 130. I just think overall it is headed towards 200. And I'm looking forward to iMacs next week, Leopard, upgrades to iPhone, widespread adoption by the non-early-adopters, international sales, and the ultraportable.

New Thinner iMacs Due Next Week

It looks like Apple is going to start letting non-iPhone cool stuff out of the gate. Mum seems to have been the word for a few months now. We don't know for sure what is going to be announced. But, it has been explicitly stated to invitees that no iPod or iPhone announcements will be included at this event.

It is certain that there will be an exclusive press event next Tuesday, August 7, at Apple's Infinite Loop in Cupertino at Apple Town Hall. This is where the Intel Mac mini and the iPod Hi-Fi were announced.

Since I work out of my home, I am excited that the widely expected new iMacs (17"*, 20" and 24") have been described as not so much for the office by 9to5mac:

This will be something designed more for the living room or family room (or bedroom or dorm room) than the office.

The iMac is supposed to be thinner with a thin keyboard. You know how these rumors go, but cross your fingers! I'm hoping for cheaper, lighter and more portable. The rumors also indicate that the iPod-like chin will be considerably reduced.

The iMac part of this rumor regarding what will be announced seems close to rock solid. More iffy, is a rumor that iLife applications will be announced. A new version of the iWork apps is also a longer shot but a possibility.

*We've got more rumors saying the 17" iMac will be dropped but some say it will be included.

Other References: Apple Insider, Think Secret

State of The Mac - July 2007

Just a note to let you know I wrote a new entry on the front page of my tokerud.com website on the above subject. Enjoy.

iPhone Day 2 - More Features in the Works

Cool news. According to a HowardForums post, lots more stuff is on the way. This is still unverified but tantalizing and I expect it will pan out.

iChat is coming very soon

a Finder like Leopard will be added at Leopard launch probably or sooner

widescreen keyboard support in every app not just Safari

Disk mode will be there, so the iPhone will mount on the desktop

Stabilization will be added to the camera (in software)

.Mac syncing eventually (that will be great for backup)

Flash is coming to the Safari browser

Keynote presentations are coming

Copy and paste, clipboard is coming

Engadget says there is a 620 mHz ARM chip in the iPhone with 3D graphics and energy saving functions. They say they are getting way better than expected battery life out of their 12 iPhones.

Other than that. Everywhere I have been in public using my iPhone, people have come up and asked about it. I've done a lot of demos quite gladly.

I have barely used the keyboard but I am glad widescreen is coming and I already like it as well as a Treo or the BlackBerry Pearl. Word guessing helps a lot since it tailors to your own vocabulary and gets better as you type more. When you type into the sender field in email, it uses your most recent sender that starts with that letter as its guess immediately and gives you all the other matches in a finger scrollable list to choose from.

Will get back to you once I've taken the 2 hours of free training at the Apple store this afternoon.

To iPhone or Not?

The painful memories of looking forward to and being disappointed by the first Newton still affect my thinking on whether or not to get in line and buy an iPhone next week. I am an optimist and a technology enthusiast.

I am strongly tempted to get in that line Friday the 29th. I am watching all the tech sites, gathering information here and there.

Newton 1.0 didn't have the best handwriting recognition but I could live with that. What didn't work is that when I put in 50 contacts, it got slow. Unusably slow.

Steve was not at the helm when the Newton was released. In fact, he killed the Newton project. Maybe he deserves a free pass on the failure of the Newton. Steve is the most competitive, perfectionistic tech exec out there. He is betting the company on the iPhone or close to it and I don't see him letting it fail.

However, I am a techie. I know the advice and have given it often to not buy a 1.0 device or OS. Wait awhile to see how things shake out the first couple of weeks and months. But, of course, being a blogger and tech professional, I often break the rule so that I can better advise my clients.

I want to know what it is like to use an iPhone. I want to see how well it will work for me. Whether it is better than my BlackBerry Pearl by leaps and bounds.

Since I bought the Pearl in February, I am in a bit of jam when it comes to signing another 2 year contract. I will be studying the details in the days before launch to see what my cost would be to get an iPhone right out of the gate.

The TV ads and the iPhone demos on the Apple site look awesome. I am sure next week I will be swept up in the excitement and be sorely tempted. And yet, I am not looking forward to waiting in line for hours on end and then finding out that the cost is too high or the store I choose has run out.

OS X on a mobile phone seems amazingly cool. I am one of those who believe the mobile phone is the next computing platform of interest. The always-on connectivity and the universality of cell phones is getting to a tipping point that I am sure will produce all sorts of cool stuff.

I want to lead the pack ahead of the next guy, rather than sit on my hands next week and wish I were one of the lucky first adopters.

By the way, I sold 1/2 of my Apple stock Monday morning. I was nervous and wanted to take some profits (4x since I bought in 02 or so). But, I didn't want to miss out on what could be a sky high stock price as the impact of all the ads and hoopla hit a crescendo next week. I may sell another 1/4 on launch day. I'll see how I feel. Lick my finger and stick it in the air. You know the drill.

I am worried about the possibility that the keyboard will suck. I have used a Treo 650 and a BlackBerry Pearl. Can I appreciate and tolerate or even enjoy the iPhone touchpad keyboard? What is your advice? Are you there in the line next week?

UPDATE Jun 19 5:08 pm
Ooh. Apple's latest press release says you can buy an iPhone on the Apple Online store. Waiting in line is not required.