MacCast 12.11.2008 - Show #247
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Media/Links
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Opening
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Opening Music
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Music is Say Anything by Manda and the Marbles
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Mandaandthemarbles.com
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iTunes Best of 2008
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In case you missed it, we were named one of best "Classic" podcasts of 2008 in iTunes.
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An honor shared by many other friends and podcasters. Also named were:
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TWiT, TWiP, Buzz Out Loud, Coffee Break Spanish, Geek Brief, Tekzilla, Coverville
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Sponsor
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Audible
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Free 14-day trail of Audible listener Gold
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Free audiobook to keep.
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A Christmas Carol Narrated by Patrick Stewart. (ABRIDGED)
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Ideal for long Holiday travel, you might not even mind if your flight gets delayed.
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News
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Developers say Snow Leopard still needs work
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AppleInsider says the latest builds of the big cat still have a ways to go before they are ready for release at least according to recipients of the latest builds.
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This is despite rumors that we may get a Q1 2009 launch.
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According to the article core features like Grand Central (mulitcore support), 64-bit support and 64-bit kernel still have a ways to go.
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Currently Exchange support seems to be a focus of testing for developers and other areas like power management on notebooks are being asked to be ignored.
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99 Dollar Walmart iPhone
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BoyGenius Report started the rumor. 4GB model at a reduced price after the Holidays?
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Became a lead story in a slow news week.
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Walmart is not the first place I think of for an elegant sales and customer support experience.
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Why when the current iPhone is doing so well?
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iPhone Central is reporting that numbers from Gartner showed Q3 iPhones world wide smartphone market share growing by 327% From 3.4% in 2007 to almost 13% this year.
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Apple is in second place in North America and Europe. 25.4 US share just behind Blackberry RIM and 15.6% EU share behind Nokia.
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WallMart will likely come on board, but selling at standard prices. Gene Munster says if they do Apple may sell as many as 4.5 million more iPhones.
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iTunes didn't go all DRM free, yet?
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Appleinsider on rumors out of Europe that Apple would go all DRM free with music from Sony, Universal and Warner last Tuesday.
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Didn't happen.
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Apple is IN seemingly constant on-going talks with the labels
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DRM free would solve Steve Jobs' troubles with some agencies in the Netherlands. Norway, and Europe
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Apple's OpenCL specification ratified
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According to Electronista the Khronos Group announced the ratification and public release of the Apple's proposed Open Computing Language (OpenCL) 1.0 spec.
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OpenCL technology is for tapping GPUs to enhance parallel processing tasks.
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OpenCl is open, available cross platform and royalty-free.
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Supported by Activision, Blizzard, AMD, Apple, ARM, Broadcom, Electronic Arts, IBM, Intel, Nokia, NVIDIA, and Samsung. But not Microsoft, who is looking to counter Open CL with their next generation of DirectX.
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OpenCL will also work with Snow Leopard's Grand Central which coordinates tasks between multiple processors, making it easier for developers to take advantage of parallel processing.
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NVIDIA chips have a head star on OpenCL support with CUDA driver interface.
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Every GPU (including GeForce, Tesla and Quadro lines) from the GeForce 8 series onwards will support OpenCL
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New Macbook issues continue, but some fixes arrive
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TUAW has some readers pointing to numerous Apple Discussions that claim 3rd party RAM causes Macbooks and Macbook Pros to become unstable. Reports are unverified and contradicted.
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Grey or white lines in displays on new Macbook Airs according to MacNN.
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Almost looks like interlacing.
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Suspect issues with NVIDIA 9400 Ms or the anti-glare display coatings
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The Inquirer says some new Unibody 15' Macbook Pros may still suffer from faulty NVIDIA Chips
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"bad bumps', tiny balls of solder that hold a chip to the green printed circuit board it sits on, crack, and the computer it is in dies.
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NVIDA acknowledged some defective chips back in July, but says the problems have been fixed.
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The Inquirer feels otherwise
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MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air firmware was released Wednesday
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2 for each model. One addressees the SMC and the other the EFI Firmware
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the SMC updates "improve the sensing and accuracy of the MagSafe Power Adapter indicator light
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The EFI updates improve stability and address sleep/wake issues.
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Sponsor
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Faronics
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Power Save Mac
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Smarter energy management that pays for itself. Just USD$14.40 and the average yearly energy savings is USD $25.00.
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Cut down on the impact your Macs mac on your holiday energy costs.
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Feedback, Comments and Commentary
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Correction on how to say fresnel
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Play some corrections from the optics experts.
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See even I can learn something on these shows.
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Apple retracts virus article
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Probably minutes after the last show was released Apple pulled the tech article that recommended Mac users use virus scanning software.
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They claim it was outdated and inaccurate and that Mac OS X includes adequate security protection out of the box.
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I think a better approach is to educate people on the risks and what tools are available and let them decide the best course of action for them.
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Just last week Intego found another variant of the RSPlug trojan, OSX.RSPlug.E
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Apple vs. Microsoft Font Rendering
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Amir sent me a common question I get from switchers, "why the font rendering on Macs is not as crisp as it is on PCs"?
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Funny thing is I always ask why do PC fonts look so harsh and distorted?
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Comes down to a philosophy about how to handle something analog in a digital world. Art vs Science. Style vs. Function. Ultimately Jobs vs. Gates.
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The difference is in how closely or, in Apple's case, not you adhere to the pixel-grid when you render your fonts.
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Apple choose to protect the style, shape and form of the font using anti-aliasing. Microsoft forces or adjusts the font face slightly to better conform to the pixel grid. Results in things like "g"s with flat tails, and thinner weights on fonts.
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A great piece by Joel Spolsky on his "Joel on Software" blog explains it this way....
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Apple generally believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness.
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Microsoft generally believes that the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface.
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Apple likely choose the route they did because of their history in desktop publishing. WYSIWYG is very important. Kerning, matching print to screen, typesetting.
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Non-Apple wireless Time Machine Backups, possible?
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Play question from Eric
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Very difficult to make it work connected to a PC for a few reasons
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Sharing is over SMB which isn't supported by Apple. Terminal hack required.
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The Time Machine volume needs to be Mac formatted.
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Adam Cohen Rose has a blog that details the process, but basically:
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Need to create a TM backup to another network connected Mac, stop Time Machine, tar zip the sparsebundle file using some special flags, copy the image to the unsupported network volume, un-tar zip the file with some other special flags, turn back on Time Machine and point it at unsupported shared network volume that you moved the sparseimage bundle to.
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Or use one of 3 Apple supported options:
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Direct connect via FW or USB. Probably your best bet for speed and reliability. You can also move the drive around to backup multiple machines.
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Use another Mac on the network (wired or wireless).
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Can be slow, especially over wi-fi and will slow down other network traffic
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Host machine and connected drive must be on and awake. Set the Energy Saver settings to "never".
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Use and approved Apple network solution. Latest Airport Extreme Base Station or Time Capsule.
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Stop iPod Touch from launching iPhoto
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Devin has an iPod Touch that was launching iPhoto when he would dock it.
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Seen this behavior for cameras, memory cards, and iPhones, but wouldn't think a Touch.
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There is no camera on the iPod Touch, but there is a photo app and you can "add" photos from apps and email attachments, etc.
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This was triggering the launch iPhoto when camera is connected feature.
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Change the setting in the latest version of iPhoto in the Preferences-->General tab under the "Connecting camera opens:" option
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Or change it using the Image Capture app
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1) Launch Applications-->Image Capture
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2) Choose File-->Preferences....
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3) Set "When a camera is connected, open: to "No application".
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Using iPhone/iPod Touch as storage
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One of my favorite features of the iPod s the ability to enable it for disk use, something that went away with the iphone and iPod Touch
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Clarke is a new iPhone owner and wanted to know if there was a way to get that functionality back. Play comment.
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You can enable it with software for the Mac or PC
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eCamm Networks PhoneView
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Wide Angle Software's TouchCopy for Windows
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Another option is to use an iPhone app that enable it as a network share
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A little more complicated, basically sets up the iPhone or iPod as a WebDAV server (like your iDisk) and it shows up on your network and you can copy items to it.
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Several apps available, a couple I like and use are AirSharing and MobileFiles. There is also DataCase, FileMagnet, and others.
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They can actually access and view iPhone supported files from the app. Editing capabilities should be coming soon for some of them.
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Extreme cleaning you Mac
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Sometimes it's just time to suck it up and re-install. Once every year or two, if your system is having issues and the other typical remedies just don't seem to be working.
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Full backups, in fact make two.
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Migrate older stuff to archive media. CDs/DVDs, on-line, external HDs.
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Gather all you your software installers and keys. Take inventory. Good time to remove "app bloat".
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Boot from your system disk and do a clean erase and install of OS X (you have your backups, right?).
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Consider using the "custom" install options and only install the languages and printer drivers you need. Can save GBs of space.
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I don't recommend doing it after the fact with a tool like Monolingual. can be dangerous if you aren't careful (remove the non-Intel architectures feature).
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Use Migration Assistant to restore your User data.
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Re-install your apps.
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Run System updates. May need to do this multiple times
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Result... an extra lean, clean OS X machine.
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Closing
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Podcast Marketplace
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Thanks to my sponsors
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Merlin 2, Project Wizards - Project management, Gantt Charts, MS Project import/export
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Circus Ponies, Notebook Save 20% with coupon - MACCAST. Until December 24th.
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Smile on my Mac, DiscLabel - Great for your holiday projects
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Softpress, Freeway Express and Freeway Pro.
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Faronics, Deep Freeze
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Audible, free audio book with Audible Listener Gold
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Keep emails coming. Audio comments.
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281-622-4269 or 281-Mac-I-Am-9
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PLEASE LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
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MacCast Forum
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Macworld is coming
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I will be there, covering it all
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Birds of a Feather - Podcasting Meetup on Wednesday night. At Moscone center from 6:30 to 7:30 PM
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Mac Mingle Party put on by my friend Deb Shadovitz.
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"Here Comes Santa Claus" by basic
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Listener Greg sent a track from his band in back in 2005, Joy to the World
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Bands site
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Buy in iTunes
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EOL: Jobs IS Apple
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Cool image via Wired's Cult of Mac blog. A mosaic of Steve Jobs made from Apple products
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