Listen to today’s show here! 
MC20051125.mp3 [27.8mb 01:00:42 64kbps]
A podcast about Macs done by a Mac geek for Mac geeks. Show 104. Apple Stores offer “Black Friday” sale, iPods will be a hot holiday gift item, shortages are expected. Apple announces long term agreements for Flash memory. Aperture is Gold Master and should be available next week. Mac OS X 10.4.3 for Intel cracked. Apple iTunes Music Store ranked 7th in US retail music sales. TiVo will support video transfer to iPod. Customers report Issues downloading full album purchases from iTunes. Comments on the Snowball’s PC interview. Where in the world is J.H.? A warning on using Switch Rez. Turns out batteries not covered under AppleCare. Lots of feedback on moving iLife libraries. What to do for OS X maintenance. My thoughts on 2-button Apple laptops. PocketMac review. How to run FinalCutPro 4.5 on a new dual core G5 PowerMac. What do you know, XBox 360s are overheating? Hmmm.
New music, Dormant and Grey by Derek Clegg.
Promos from The Jersey Boys Podcast, Sounds for Sights (50% MacCast offer), MacPro Video Podcast and The Ponderplace
You will have your own challenges, and I’ll bet you’ll meet them splendidly.
Shownotes: HTML or OPML
Subscribe to the Podcast Feed or Get the MP3
I’m a fairly recent switcher, and I wanted to comment on why the mac laptop doesn’t necessarily need a right click. I think the main reason is that the user interface doesn’t require it. Any decent mac program will have conveniently placed buttons in its window, reducing the need to right click for a menu. Hotkeys are another big part of the interface. Cut, Copy, Paste, and select all can all by accessed with command + the corresponding letter. On Windows you either right click to do these things, or you would press control + the letter. I find the apple command key to be much more comfortable and close to the rest of the keys, so the hotkey becomes a more obvious alternative. Like conveniant buttons, most mac apps will have a lot of hotkeys that further remove the need of a right click. Since I can close a window with command + w and quit the app with command + q, I find that I use the mouse much less than I would on a windows machine. One more thing about hotkeys: They all make logical sense on a mac and are easy to remember. I forget what you press to close a window in Windows, I think it’s control + shift + F2 or something. It feels like Microsoft doesn’t want us to use hotkeys. Anyway, I’m a lot more productive on my mac and my wrists don’t hurt from dragging a pointer around all the time. And by the way, in case you didn’t know, you can always access the right click menu by holding down control as you click :)
I am based in Western Canada and am on the Shaw Cable network. So far, I am still able to download multiple podcasts and purchase multiple songs via iTunes.
XBox 360s are overheating… If only they had listend to Jobs
Actually, most people are now reporting that its actually not the power pc chips over heating, its the external power supply. They say if you “suspend” it in the air it will not over heat as much. My extra plug is 2 feet above my TV and I’ve had my 360 power supply plugged into it, so far no problems at all.
I forgot to mention one other advantage to a two button mouse, or at least a mighty mouse type thing for the single button on the ibook and powerbooks… Once intel chips our here, we will be able to install Windows on a seperate partition, or at least dual boot Mac OS X with XP on our notebooks. Trust me… I REALLY don’t like Windows, however, I can see this being very useful for those games or obscure programs someone might like where there are no Mac equivilants (yet). It would be difficult to use any Windows OS without a 2nd mouse button available.
Although I haven’t personally had to replace my iPod battery, I don’t know why the Genius Bar would tell Adam that the battery isn’t covered by AppleCare. I found this on the iPod AppleCare website regarding its coverage:
Protection for the iPod and iTunes solution
Covers iPod and included accessories(1):
iPod battery
iPod earphones
Other accessories in the iPod box
Supports iTunes and connection with iPod
and then I found this on its Terms and Conditions for iPod Applecare:
AppleCare Protection Plan for iPod
Terms and Conditions
Your AppleCare Protection Plan for iPod (“Planâ€) is governed by these Terms and Conditions and constitutes your service contract with AppleComputer, Inc. or its related subsidiaries and affiliates (“Appleâ€). 1.Coveragea.Coverage. For the period (“Coverage Periodâ€) stated in your Plan’s Certificate or Proof of Coverage document (“Plan Confirmationâ€),Apple, at its option, will provide you with repair or replacement service, as described below, in the event that (i) there is a defect in materials and workmanship in the iPod hardware product listed in the Plan Confirmation and the hardware accessories contained inthe iPod’s original packaging, (collectively the “Covered Equipmentâ€) or (ii) after being fully charged and the iPod hardware productplaying music with all settings reset (“Standard Operationâ€), the capacity of the iPod battery (“Batteryâ€) to hold an electrical charge has depleted fifty (50%) percent or more from its original specification. During the Coverage Period, Apple will also provide you withtechnical support, as described below, for the Covered Equipment. Any carrying case is excluded from your Plan.
If it were me, I would show up at the AppleStore with this info at hand and insist on a replacement battery.
Dawna
On the battery issue:
Found this site a while back. It has some good info on how different types of batteries work, and different things that can affect their performance and lifespan.
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
Battery Issue:
I had the same issue, but I insisted that they already promised it, so I demanded to talk to the applecare manager, and he said “were going to stick to our promise and send you a new battery, but for future refrence, we dont cover batteries because they are perishable items”. Try calling again and insist youve been promised by the apple reps, and they will rather send you a new battery rather than lose you as a customer. Try that and tell me what happens :)
I’m a recent switcher also, and a context menu fanatic, and thankfully OSX for the most part has good context menu’s. But I must agree with Adam on the touchpad mouse button issue, 1 button is more comfortable to use on those things. Whenever I’m using the ibook on a desk though I’ll plug in a 2 button mouse. ;) I must tell this wanna-be switcher than the 1 mouse button is not as big of a deal as you think, because if you click control-mouse button it’ll bring up the context menu, that’s something many windows users don’t know about OSX.
About 10.4.3. Many things are cracked a lot faster than in a whole 2 weeks. ;)
Yes… i like the concept of a touch sensative clicker… that you could turn off and on…
Forget dual boot :P Bring on Intel Vizulization the ability to run both OS’s similtainisaly.. not that i have any need for windows
Yes since the introduction of the mighty mouse we all came to the conclution that apple was going to start bundleing it with the new machines from then on.. and guess what they did :) and its purly for the intel advantage :)
Only time will tell :)
@ poster No. 5
Adam was talking about his iBook battery – NOT his iPod battery
I have bought CandyBar – it’s great.
There are some really amazing free icons out there. See http://telefonica.net/web2/macdesigns/iCons.html for example
great artwork and thankst the author for giving it away for free.
And now for something completely different.
The header (or whatever it’s called) for the eMacCast now says it is “Clean” (as distinct from “Explicit”). What am I missing by only subscribing to the eMacCast instead of the regular MacCast; what _are_ you doing, Adam? What’s up?
(By the way, my wife tells me [quite regularly] that I should point out when I’m making a joke, so here’s your notice. Nonetheless, it does seem a bit like overkill to so label it. Is there concern you might be discussing the internal workings of memory chips?)
Adam was talking about being able to double click the separator between fields in iTunes and have that field open to as wide as it needs to be to see all of the text. He then said that it doesn’t work in the Finder. Sure it does. In column view double click on the 2 little vertical lines at the base of the separator, and voila, the field expands to accomodate the longest line of text.
Neil,
You are right if you are talking about column view, but I was talking about list view. In that view it does not work. :)
I have some clarifications on Adam’s “explanation” of the 3 different Mac Utilities out there. I am a Mac systems engineer, and use all 3 on a regular basis. Here’s a quick outline of each one.
Disk Warrior from Alsoft. It only does 1 thing, but it does it brilliantly. It can rebuild the disk Directory. It can’t suss out physical problems like bad blocks, it can’t do things like repartition and it doesn’t defrag your drive. All it does is take directories that are damaged or not ideal, and rebuild them clean. It works really well, has been around since OS9 days, and is easy to use. It’s the first thing I reach for.
Drive Genius from ProSoft Engineering. This is the Swiss Army Knife of utilities. It can do an awful lot of things, including basic disk repair, as well as advanced stuff like re-partitioning of disks and low-level disk sector editing. It can also defrag and clone a disk. It is relativley new however, and the interface is not intuitive. I’ve found it great at some things (the repartitioning on the fly is awesome), not so great at others. Promising, but not there yet.
TechToolPro from Micromat. This has disk repair functionality too, but it is also the only utility that does hardware checks. It can check a drive for bad sectors, and it can also check other hardware too: it can cehck RAM, onboard video etc etc. You can defrag a drive with Techtool, and it will also allow you to recover files from a damaged volume, although you might want to use a specific file recovery tool like Data Rescue for that. It’s been around for sometime, but I question just how useful the hardware tests are, because I’ve yet had to have it find a bad piece of hardware, even when more in-depth tests using Apple tools do find bad RAM etc. I use TechTool in cases where I want to check for bad blocks on a drive, or if a client insists that I defrag the drive, as unnecessary as that is.
Hope you find this useful.
Neil
Adam, I just finished listening to the podcast and heard your “thumb-tied” rationale for not wanting a two-button trackpad on future apple portables. First of all, try using the trackpad with your index finger and not your thumb! You’ll have a lot easier time clicking the trackpad button. Secondly, I think your oldtime Mac geekiness is showing through. As Apple acknowledged with the Mighty Mouse — two buttons are better than one!
I love my 360 and hearing and reading comments about the overheating issue is absurd. Ever buy a lemon? We have lemons in every industry product. Not anything is perfect.
You don’t hear about the good statements from 360 users because we are all busy playing! This is an amazing product and Microsoft has done a great job. If you love gaming, go and try one. The experience is unique to what we have played in the past.
In response to Ronald Ishmak…
Apple: “AppleCare service line, how may I help you?”
Adam: “Well, I know that you don’t cover batteries under AppleCare, but I am considering getting a PC anyway, so you will lose me as a customer if you don’t give me a new battery.”
Apple:”We will need your name.”
Adam: “Adam Christianson”
Apple: “You mean the guy from that PodCast?”
Adam: “Yeah.”
Apple: “You are considering switching to Windows?”
Adam: “Sure am.”
Apple: “Nice try.” *hangs up*
Sorry, that should be Ronald Ishak.
Love the show! I agree with the review of Pocket Mac Pro. I am usning it to synch an HP IPAQ Hx2400 with my PowerBoookG4 running OSX 10.4.3 and Entourage. After some frustrations with setup it now synchs calendar, contacts, tasks, and files well. I have not enable iTunes or iPhoto. The pdf instruction file is very poor, and the laptop does not readily recognize the PDA when the cradle is plugged into the USB port the way it does an iPod or digitial camera. Open the application. This puts a PDA icon in the top tool bar. Click on the icon and then click on browse. The laptop will then recognize the PDA plus its expansion card. In order to synch, click on synch off of the PDA icon not iSynch and give the program plently of time to run. When no more activity is evident on the turning wheel on the dock you need to quit the application to get the synch window to disappear. After figuring out the above I am very pleased with the program.