thursday 13 september 2007
Dear All -
As always, a warm welcome to new readers of this newsletter, going out around the globe (greetings Bolivia!) - 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 always point out – 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.
Apple Store purchases. Please note that Liz Stafford has gone off for a year on adoptive leave (it's like maternity leave, but for a person who is adopting a child!), and Rod Gorgia is our new man at Apple - call him on 0800 03 999 01 extn 88094 for your Apple (and other) purchases with discount.
Mac Doctor Towers news: The move to the new office space is well underway (the paperwork and boxes of bits are in; the computers and books go in the next few days).
There are two main sections in this newsletter.
Here’s the Apple stuff:
News from Apple:
New iPods
Steve Jobs announced new iPod models. The range now has four models: the iPod Shuffle (49£); the iPod nano (99£); the iPod Classic (159£); and the iPod touch (199£).
the iPod Shuffle - in addition to original silver, now in (PRODUCT) RED, silver, "aqua", green, and mauve/lavender. 1 GByte - upto 240 songs.
the iPod nano - now with 2 inch video screen, 4 or 8 GBytes capacity (1000 or 2000 songs, or 3500/7000 pics, or 4/8 hours video). 8 GByte comes in 5 colours (RED, aqua, green, black).
iPod Classic - 2.5 inch screen, 80 or 160 GByte capacity, (stores just lots and lots of anything), upto 40 hours battery life. Black or silver.
iPod touch - this is the iPod based on the iPhone, so it runs OS X! Video on a 3.5 inch touch and stroke screen (this has to be seen to be believed!), 8 or 16 GByte capacity, in black only. Music, pictures, video (including widescreen format), podcasts, ebooks, web-browsing, access to YouTube . There is Wifi connection to iTunes store, (free in some Starbucks stores, and you can see on your iPod touch what's playing in the store).
See www.apple.com/uk/ipod/whichipod/ for more details. (Change /uk/ to // if you are not in the UK).
iPhones
Over this past weekend, Apple sold its 1 million iPhone, just 74 days after the gadget's public release on June 29. Rumours continue to abound about which carrier will provide these phones in the European country markets, but a recent piece of news indicates that they probably will come with 3G for Europe. Make of it what you will but Vodafone is said to be updating its network to support EDGE (a bolt on for GPRS networks to increase data rates).
New iMacs - report
I loaded one of these last week. They are remarkable and gorgeous - much thinner than the previous model, and with a flat front surface - the screen is coverd with a sheet of plastic/glass. The back is black, and the surround frame aluminium (hmmm I hope it's coated aluminium - the sea air here attacks bare aluminium metal!). I think I prefer the older white one for looks, but the new machine is THIN!
AppleWorks
Apple have stopped all work on developing AppleWorks (I thought that decision had been taken and implemented looooong ago!), and the software has been declared "end of life". Latest version (2004) was 6.2.9 for OS X. Sales have officially stopped and the website now re-directs to iWorks'08.
AppleWorks originally came out in 1984 for Apple II computers, and has been known as ClarisWorks. Although iWorks has a writing package (Pages), a spreadsheet package (Numbers), and a presentation package (Keynote), there is no drawing, painting, or database component.
Logic Studio, Logic Express
"Apple has just introduced long-awaited upgrade to its Logic audio production suites. Logic Studio replaces Logic Pro 7 as the company's professional editor and is the first to include MainStage, a live performance tool for both rehearsals and stage sessions; on-screen controls link directly to faders, knobs, and other hardware controls on mixing equipment. The app provides an easier-to-read display for the dim light of a concert environment and a set of pro templates that encourage experimentation with new sounds. Studio also revolves around Logic Pro 8, a new version of Apple's primary music editor that switches to a more intuitive single-window interface and enhanced features such as a snap-to-transient selection, time stretching, and sample-accurate editing straight from the Arrange window. Quick Stripe Comping that generates an ideal take and dynamic channel strip creation are also staples of the new core program, Apple says."
Updates from Apple:
Apple have now released iTunes 7.4 - a few problems reported so far, but not as much as the ill-fated 7.3! Only update to iTunes 7.4 if you are running OS X 10.3.9, or 10.4.7 or later.
Oooops! That's already iTunes 7.4.1!
Update 10.4.11.
The 10.4.11 update is almost ready. Leaopard (OS X 10.5) is scheduled for release in october.
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..........:
On treating batteries right - pretty technical:
"Although progress in battery capacity is snail-like compared to the progress in energy consumption of the devices powered by batteries, rechargeable batteries have come a long way the past decade or two. All current Apple laptops, iPods, and the iPhone use lithium ion or lithium polymer rechargeable batteries. Apart from spontaneous combustion (which is rare), the main problem with rechargeable batteries is that they lose their capacity over time. This is especially worrisome with devices like the iPod and the iPhone where the battery isn't easily replaceable. So what can we do to keep our lithium batteries in good health until old age?
"
Apple has a battery page that has some general information about the way lithium batteries are charged and discharged. They stress that you should charge your batteries early and often, rather than let them drain (almost) completely. For the purpose of battery wear, several partial charge cycles count as one full charge cycle. A battery should still have 80 percent capacity after the equivalent of 500 full charge cycles.
"Apple also has pages that go into detail about battery issues for notebooks (they carefully avoid calling them "laptops"), the iPod family, and the iPhone. One recommendation is that you "keep the electrons flowing" by working on the battery from time to time—at least once a month. And you need to run on the battery until the device sleeps once every 30 cycles or so to make sure that the charge indicator stays in sync with the actual battery capacity.
"For each type of devices, there is an optimum temperature range that the batteries like, which is 32 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to 35 Celsius) for the iPhone and the iPods, and 50 to 95 F (10 to 35 C) for laptops. I can personally attest to the fact that when it's freezing outside, an iPod's battery charge will seem to disappear into the cold, thin air. Although the batteries will work fine under more tropical conditions, the problem with that is that they age prematurely. According to BatteryUniversity.com, it's a public secret that lithium batteries start losing their capacity as soon as they're manufactured, but this process is greatly accelerated by two factors: a high temperature and a full charge. This is probably the reason why laptop batteries can be completely worn out after a few years: the battery is completely charged most of the time, and the insides of a computer generate a lot of heat.
"When I got a PowerBook almost four years ago, I wanted to keep the battery in as good a shape as possible, so I tried to avoid going through too many charge cycles. I averaged less than three a month. But I still only have 1600 milli-amp-hours left, which is less than half the original capacity. But the second battery that I got 2.5 years ago, which has seen about two charge cycles a month, is still at 4200 mAh, 95% or its original capacity. Apple's laptop batteries have a voltage rating of 10.8 V, so multiply the mAh capacity by 10.8 and divide by 1000 to get rid of the milli, and you'll have the capacity in Watt hours.
This difference probably has something to do with advances in battery manufacturing, but I'm attributing most of it to the fact that I keep this battery in the refrigerator with about half a charge when it's not in use, while the original battery occupies the battery slot in the PowerBook. Moral of the story: the toasty underside of your laptop will prematurely age the battery anyway, so trying to avoid charge cycles is probably not worth the effort. If you have a second battery, store it in the fridge (not the freezer) at 40 percent charged when you're not using it. But most of all: keep your electronics out of the sun and especially out of parked cars."
Microsoft Office 2004
Updated again, to 11.3.7. MS Office 2008 is now due for release in january 2008.
Virtual PC
Upgrade to v7.0.3
Parallels Workstation
Upgrade to v3
Google Earth
"I just read in a German online magazine that Google Earth contains a "hidden" yet complete flight simulator! Currently, two jets are available (F16 and SR22), and also the list of airports is not that long. Just open Google Earth (you'll need the newest version, 4.2), and then type Command-Option-A. A dialog will appear, asking you to pick your airplane, airport, and a few other things. (Once you've used this keyboard combo once, you can invoke the flight sim in the future via the Tools » Enter Flight Simulator menu item. This entry will be missing, however, until you invoke the simulator once via the keyboard.)
"Flying is rather tricky, as the Google team seems to have invested lots of efforts into the UI (joysticks are supported, for instance) so that the flight instruments are rather "mimosa-like". A test flight using a normal keyboard and mouse ended shortly after takeoff. Here's a list of flight sim commands http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/index.html"
Skype
Upgrade to v2.7
Opera (fast web browser)
Update to 9.5 (early alpha release). 9.2 is stable.
GraphicConverter
Update to 6.x
Flip4Mac (Windows Media files to Quicktime converter)
Update to 2.1.3.3
Acorn - image (picture) editor
"Mac OS X users enjoy a fairly wide selection of image editing, sharing, and organizing applications than virtually span as far as a shareware site can scroll. That said, a gap has been growing for some time now between industry behemoths like Photoshop and more basic tools like iPhoto and ImageWell. Fortunately, Gus Mueller of Flying Meat has been paying attention, and today he released Acorn, his new image editor that wraps up some of the most powerful tools in the industry in a surprisingly streamlined, unique UI with plenty of refreshing new features and tricks to spare.
"Flying Meat, developer of VoodooPad, released Acorn 1.0, a layer-based bitmap image editor. The program offers filters, chaining of filters, image and canvas resizing, flood fill, gradients, vector shapes, draw and erase tools, text tools, GPU support, and more. Acorn is a Universal Binary with an introductory price of $39.95 for Mac OS X."
iMsafe - personal backup
iMsafe backs up data stored in your home folder to any mounted OS X volume. You can run backups from within iMsafe or schedule your backup to occur every day, on weekdays or on a specific day of the week. And you can create as many backup tasks as you like, so the possibilities are unlimited. Backups will run in the background. And when a backup occurs, it won't interfere with running applications. iMsafe can automatically connect to another Mac on the network before starting the backup.
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