friday 10 november 2006.

Dear All -

News for UKOnline users; photographers; and a couple of general notes.


0.	Apple announces updated laptops

Appe has announced modified MacBook Pro laptop computers using faster processors. A little cheaper, and 
definitely faster.

0.1	Latest OS versions are: System 9.2.2; OS X 10.2.8; OS X 10.3.9; and OS X 10.4.8


2.	Applications of interest - photographers, sound editors, ideas people

2.1	For photographers

Apple has updated its photo editing application, Aperture, to version 1.5.1, but more importantly, offers a 
30-day trial download of the application that competes with Adobe's Photoshop.

Go to: http://www.apple.com/aperture/

In addition, there is a Digital Camera RAW Support update in OS X 10. (Tiger):

Mac OS X Tiger provides support for a variety of popular digital camera and image file formats. Applications 
such as Aperture, iPhoto and Preview utilize this support to work with digital camera RAW files. This update 
improves RAW file format compatibility for the following digital SLR cameras: Canon Digital Rebel XTi / 400D / 
Kiss X Digital, Nikon D80, Pentax *ist DS. Other issues addressed: Handling of large Canon RAW files (.CRW), 
DNG compatibility on Intel-based Macs, Lines sometimes appearing in images exported from Aperture.

2.2	For sound editors

Adobe has released a public beta of Soundbooth, an application intended to make audio editing easy for non-audio professionals.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/soundbooth/

Where it gets interesting is that while there is a Mac version, it is Intel only. A surprise that they've 
done this so soon, considering the huge numbers of creative professionals out there who are still on PPC.

2.3	For ideas managers

A#'s Opal 1.0.1 is the Mac OS X successor to the popular Acta outliner from Classic Mac OS. The new outliner 
also includes extra features such as multiple selection, topic filtering, smart checkboxes, multiple undo, 
spell-checking, OPML support, Word export, and HTML output. This release adds an option to draw lines between 
topics, fixes a few bugs, and plugs some memory leaks. Opal is $32 for Mac OS X 10.4 (Universal Binary).

Go to: http://a-sharp.com/opal/


3.	Skype version 2 with video

Skype version 2 does make video calls to users with a PC


4.	Fixing UKOnline mail when it appears to "stick"

Last time I wrote I told you UKOnline users about the problem you have with " " emails which stop Apple's 
Mail program from downloading your email. There seem to be a lot of the about - here's how to short-term fix 
the problem: http://www.themacdoc.co.uk/UKOprob.html

However, UKOnline and Apple need to fix the problem.

You need to complain, frequently I suggest, to: dsl.support@ukonline.net. If you all send an email once or 
twice a week for a while it may get through to them hat "something needs to be done"!

Also, some of you have repeated password unrecognised errors. Complain about that too. If all you UKOnline 
users complain together then something might happen. Especially if you all move to another ISP!

UKOnline did a good job for about 10 years with hardly any problems, but since about a year ago they have been
much less good. S I've stopped recommending them. But about 35-40 of you are UKOnline customers - about 1% of
their clients I think - so make a noise!


5.	Preferred Broadband supplier

OK, so who do you like? None of them are perfect, but let me know if you are unhappy, neutral, or happy with
your broadband supplier. Tell me the name of the supplier, the technical quality, and the customer service 
quality, as you perceive it.

6.	Extensis Suitcase

Are any of you using Suitcase under OS X? Any views? One client lost a lot of time after Suitcase messed up 
the System's Fonts - a BAD idea. I'm going to see someone else who has reported corrupted emails and web-
browsing (which sounds like the same sort of problem).


8.	From the field!

This is a new section, featuring small snippets written by fellow Macintosh users.

Nothing this time.




Any questions? Let me know! Anything you'd like me to write a note on? Let me know!


thanks for being Mac users

hugh