wednesday 08 august 2007
Dear All -
As always, a warm welcome to new readers of this newsletter, going out to nearly 500 people now around the globe - most of you are clients - thank you. Let me know if you want to be deleted from the mailing list, let me know if you change email address - each mailing comes back with a few "Not at this address anymore." notes.
As I noted in the last newsletter - this email goes out to you all - to some of you it will seem all "old news", to some of you it will "over my head, dear boy", some of it will be of interest to some of you. Call me if you'd like more information about any of the items here.
For reference, the last Quick Update (no. 6) was issued on 12 july.
Mac Doctor Towers news: Later this month I will move myself and my assistant "Janet" (more usually known as Penny) and my computers and my thousands of books into a new purpose built fully serviced hi-tech office (formerly our garage - thanks Pete!).
I plan to shut the office for about three days for the move, so expect some delays to replying to emails and 'phone calls. I'll let you know when it happens.
There are two main sections in this newsletter.
Here's the Apple stuff:
News from Apple:
Yesterday Steve Jobs made a number of product announcements - new iMacs; new iLife, new iWork, new key board, and updated miniMacs and .Mac service.
The new iMacs are thinner again, and come in new aluminium casings with glossy 20" (£800 or £950) and 24" (£1150 or £1450) )screens. Prices according to screen size and processor speed (2.0, 2.4, or 2.8 GHz Intel Core Duo). Gigabit ethernet, FireWire800, USB 2.0 ports, and supporting upto 4 GBytes of RAM, and terabyte (TB) hard drives. Designed more for recycling. See them on the Apple website.
Also announced - iLife'08 (£55) with major upgrades to
* iPhoto ("Event" - see a day's worth of photos of an even represented by a single picture;
hide photos you don't want to see every day, but don't want to throw away);
* iMovie (more import files formats; skimming clips; more export possibilities);
* iWeb (Live web widgets; My Album page templates, links to Google Maps, AdSense);
* and GarageBand (Multi-take recording; interaction with virtual players of varied genres)
Also announced - iWork'08 (£55) with a new spreadsheet package, and upgrades to the other components
* Pages (Word processing and page layout (now managed distinctly), lots of templates,
including import from and export to MS Word and others);
* Keynote (presentation package, including import from and export to MS PowerPoint and others);
* and new Numbers (including import from and export to MS Excel - hurrah!).
Also announced - a new thinner, aluminium framed keyboard (wired and BlueTooth flavours) - needs
OS X 10.4.10 :-(
Also announced - updated Mac mini computers - faster processors, same price
Also announced - a Mac Pro RAID card (if you need to ask you probably don't need it!)
Also announced - updates to the .Mac service (links to iLife'08 for direct upload of pictures, movies, websites, from Mac, PC, or iPhone; more storage; better email features).
Cor! That's a lot of stuff. More details will emerge over the next few days, but all are available now.
Updates from Apple:
Apple has recently released two important updates which have had errors in them for some people, update 10.4.10, and iTunes 7.3.
!iTunes 7.3.2
Apple has replaced the error-prone iTunes 7.3 with 7.3.1 and 7.3.2. My advice is as before - only update if you need to, and only after doing a full back-up of your music and your iTunes library. Worldwide a lot of people have reported errors with this series of updates - but, of course, it works fine for most people.
Quicktime 7.2
Quicktime is now at 7.2, and apart from the usual few prblem reports seems to be OK.
iPhoto 7.0.1, Aperture 1.5.4, Front Row 1.3.1
All smaller updates released for compatibility issues
Update 10.4.10.
As noted previously, this has been a notorious release with lots of people reporting errors. I have applied it, without problem, to new machines I have set up, but have not applied it to my own machines. I continue to recommend not installing this update unless you need to.
If you wish to carry out this update, I strongly advise you to do a good back-up of all your data, and any applications and downloads that are important to you, and that you apply the so-called "Combo" updater. This is an enormous 170 MBytes or so, but it will apply all the updates, in the right place, from a core OS X 10.4, all the way to 10.4.10 (v1.1).
Be patient and allow the machine plenty of time to do the updates, which may require more than one restart.
There have been rumours of a 10.4.11 update. And of course, OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is still due for release in the autumn.
Remember, you should be running - OS X 10.2.8; or 10.3.9; or a recent 10.4.x - update you machine using Software Update (in System Preferences if on 10.2; in the blue Apple menu if on 10.3 and 10.4).
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And in other news..........:
Microsoft Office 2004
Update to 11.3.6
Microsoft delays Office 2008 until Jan 2008...
Microsoft's Mac Business Unit has announced that the next Mac version of its industry-standard Microsoft Office suite will be delayed. Saying the decision was purely "quality driven," the company said that the release of the highly anticipated (Microsoft's words) Office 2008 for Mac suite has been pushed back from its originally projected late 2007 release date to early 2008--"hopefully" in time for the annual Macworld Expo Conference, which takes place in early January. (As recently as June, the Mac BU said that Office 2008 was "on track" for release in the second half of 2007.)
FileMaker Pro
Upgrade to v9
QuarkXPress
Upgrade to v7.3
Adobe Flash
Update to 9.0.47.0
Apple: Record Mac sales, record profit Proving that the Mac is still king, Apple posted its highest ever profit for the June (3rd) quarter, and highest ever quarterly Mac sales. Apple shipped 1,764,000 Macintosh computers, representing 33 percent growth over the year-ago quarter and exceeding the previous company record for quarterly Mac shipments by over 150,000. "We're thrilled to report the highest June quarter revenue and profit in Apple's history, along with the highest quarterly Mac sales ever," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We're thrilled to report the highest June quarter revenue and profit in Apple's history, along with the highest quarterly Mac sales ever," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "iPhone is off to a great start -- we hope to sell our one- millionth iPhone by the end of its first full quarter of sales -- and our new product pipeline is very strong."
Apple posted revenues of $5.41 billion and net quarterly profit of $818 million, or $.92 per diluted share. Gross margin was 36.9 percent, up from 30.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 40 percent of the quarter's revenue.
The company also sold 9,815,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 21 percent growth over the year-ago quarter.
Tiscali to buy Pipex (incl), offer from PlusNet
Following the sale of the Pipex broadband business to Tiscali announced recently, Plusnet has been quick to issue an offer for Pipex customers unsure about the future, and wishing to migrate away. The offer includes customers on Pipex services as well as those on acquired brands Toucan, Freedom2Surf, Bulldog and Nildram. No fixed time limit has been applied yet but Plusnet do point out this will be open for a limited time only.
Users of the above service providers who migrate to PlusNet will receive their first month of service free, including broadband and home phone services if you move both to PlusNet. After that, they will benefit from PlusNet's 90 day money-back guarantee (see terms) for migration orders.
"Tiscali acquiring Pipex will create massive customer churn in the consumer broadband market. Pipex is ranked fifth for customer service by Uswitch and Tiscali ranked seventh. We expect Pipex customers will react to this move by voting with their feet. Broadband users want speed, reliability and first class customer service, not mass market offerings." said a company spokesperson.
Intaglio
Intaglio is a traditional Macintosh drawing & illustration application exclusively for Mac OS X. Patterned after the original Macintosh drawing applications, Intaglio is intuitive to beginners and familiar to traditional Macintosh users. Intaglio builds on the 2D graphics, text, color, and scripting capabilities of Mac OS X to provide unprecedented power and flexibility in an inexpensive drawing program. Intaglio isn't just compatible with with Mac OS X, it was designed from the ground up to fully exploit the capabilities that make this platform ideal for graphics work. Naturally Intaglio is great for casual users, but it is also an ideal tool for experienced graphics experts who need special features or want a simpler experience than what is provided by the usual multi-platform graphic franchises. You can download and try Intaglio in demo mode before you purchase it.
Intaglio works with yesterday's software as well as today's. Intaglio will convert old drawings from ClarisDraw and MacDraw II to Quartz graphics so you can continue to use your old work. You can also convert PICT images saved by any classic QuickDraw application. Of course Intaglio also supports the popular image formats today including PDF, EPS, SVG, and many bitmap file formats such as JPEG, PNG, and TIFF. You can drag graphics out of Intaglio and drop them directly into most modern applications such as Apple's iWork suite. Because Intaglio also converts modern formats such as PDF and SVG, you can frequently drag another application's graphics into Intaglio for editing and drag the modified graphics back to the original application.
Notes from the field
No "Notes from the field" have been received this month. Notes are contributions from users like yourself. They might be something discovered; they might be a question that is looking for an answer, they might be publicising something you or your organisation have done. They will be posted at www.themacdoc.co/field.html immediately, and some posted here:
OK, that's it for the moment. Any questions - let me know!
Best wishes to you all, and thanks for being Mac users
hugh
As always, previous newsletters can be found at http://www.themacdoc.co.uk/pastemails.html where this one will be posted in a while