MacCast 04.26.2009 - Show #264

Media/Links

Opening

Opening Music

Music is Say Anything by Manda and the Marbles

Mandaandthemarbles.com

www.mandaandthemarbles.com

Sponsor

Thoughtout

MagStay Uni

thoughtout.biz

First 10 listeners to use code "freemagstaymaccast" will get one free (just pay shipping & handling).

News

Apple's Q2 results. Not too shabby.

Just before Apple's results call AT&T announced that they activated 1.6 million iPhones in Q1. 40% of iPhone owners are new customers to AT&T.

AT&T activated 1.9 million iPhones in the prior (holiday) quarter.

Apple sold 3.79 million iPhones in the second quarter vs. the 4.363 million sold in the first quarter. But up 123% over the same quarter a year ago.

Electronista cites ABI Research data that note Apple's global cell phone market share rose to 1.5%. This is in a period when Nokia and Sony Ericsson say their share fall.

3% year of year unit growth in iPod sales. 11.01 million iPods in the quarter.

Apple had their best non-holiday quarter in history.

Net quartery profits were up slightly from a year ago at 1.21 billion on gross revenue of 8.16 billion vs. profits of 1.05 billion on revenue of 7.51 billion in Q2 2008.

Mac sales were down 3% from the same quarter a year ago

Apple sold 2,216,000 Macs. Notebooks made up 63% of that number.

Apple Retail store revenue was up. 1.47 billion vs. 1.45 billion from a year ago

MacNN notes Apple's SEC filing which shows Apple cut about 1,600 full-time employees between Q1 and Q2

Conservative estimates for Q3. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer expects revenue of 7.7 to 7.9 billion.

Vendors vie for Apple Netbook

Report from Commercial Times (Taiwan) via Electornista

Foxconn is said to be competing for Apple's netbook business

Could be competing against Quanta for the contract

Earlier reports claimed Apple had placed orders for 10" touchscreens from Wintek which Retuers claims will be delivered in the 3rd quarter.

Tim Cook sends mixed signals on Netbook during Apple's Q2 results call

"Not interested in them in the short term"

"The iPhone and iPod touch already do a lot of what a netbook does"

"We have interesting ideas in the space"

"If we find a way to deliver an innovative product we’ll do that"

Also on the topic of displays, Electronista agian cites a rumor this time from Smarthouse in Australia

They claim an LG executive said Apple will use a new version of LG's 15" OLED displays in a notebook due out in June.

OLED displays are about 2 to 3 times as expensive as other current technologies

Apple and LG already have an announced 5 year deal which Apple paid 500 million for up-front. LG provides about 70% of Apple's cyrrent displays according to Electronista.

More next gen iPhone stuff

An AppleInsider report says that Scott McElroy, AT&T Mobility vice president of technology realization, confirmed to TelephonyOnline that they are performing base station upgrades to double their high-speed packet access (HSPA) network from 3.6Mbps to 7.2Mbps.

AT&T will leap frog a 14.4Mbps HSPA upgrade and go straight to 20Mbps HSPA+ in advance of 4G LTE which they are saying willbe rolled out in 2011.

In conjunction AT& T is beefing up it's backbone network in advance of expected increased data traffic.

USA Today reports Apple in talks with Verizon

Launch a version of the iPhone on thier network in 2010

Tim Cook denied that Apple would do a CDMA phone saying a single GSM model is more desireable for Apple. Says Apple is very happy with AT&T

4G will be standardized and Verizion will have at least part of it's newtork ready by 2010 when the AT&T contract runs out.

iPhone 3.0 software may finally have voice control

Ars Technica says the beta OS has calsses and methods related to something codnamed "Jibbler” which is believed to bring voice synthesis and voice recognition capabilities to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

1 Billionth app downlaoded from App store

Bump created by Bump Technologies. Let's you exchange contacts between iPhones using a 'fist bump' gesture.

13-year old Connor Mulcahey from Weston, CT downloaded the app and received a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a 17" MacBook Pro.

AppleInsider points out that apps are being downloaded from the App store at a rate of about 5 million per day (5.55 million after Apple announced the contest).

Feedback, Comments and Commentary

Feedback on online backup services

Play comment from Joel

Carbonite

carbonite.com

iDrive

idrive.com

Soonr

soonr.com

Play comment from Dave on JungleDisk

All of the services got pretty positive reviews. BackBlaze, Jungle Disk, and BackJack seemed to be favored

BackBlaze, might take months to do first backup. Happens in background (resources?), can backup externals + internals (no NAS support), $5/mo unlimited.

backblaze.com

Jungle Disk, hard to figure out pricing, but people say it's cheap. $2.00/mo (or $20) + storage at $0.15/GB

jungledisk.com

Mounts as a drive, so you use your own software to do the backup if you want.

Pay only for the storage you use.

BackJack, least amount of up front storage (10 x10 GB for ~$8.50/mo. add 10GB for another ~$4.50)

backjack.com

Incremental recovery

With all the services you may want to be more selective about what you backup.

Formatting USB drives another tip

Anthony says he was able to format a USB drive under Leopard by booting off the System DVD.

Correction on iPod recycle credit

It's 10% off a new iPod at the Apple Store, not 15%.

Shortcuts for display sleep

Rick was wanted a quick way to display sleep his Mac, other than Hot Corners.

In 10.5 you can press Control+Shift+Eject (F12 on non-Apple keyboards). May need to make sure your keyboard & mouse settings are set to use media keys by default or add the 'Fn' key in if needed.

If you want a shortcut for full Sleep...

In the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences under the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab...

Add 'Sleep' and give it a shortcut, say Control+Option+command+S.

Review of MAXPower 802.11 USB 2.0 Stick Adapter

From Newer Technology

I needed to extend the ramnge of the built in 802.11g wi-fi built into my Mac Mini

The MaxPower is a USB 2.0 stick that comes with a cradle and works with Mac or PC

Do need to install driver software to do the inital configuration

Interesting that once configured it shows up as a USB ethernet device. I could actually trun off the built-in Airport.

The range is great and seems to perform at good speed.

Does take a while to "warm-up" on start and wake from sleep.

$39.99 USD from OWC

macsales.com

Challanges of getting 'Back to your Mac'

Had a couple listeners this week looking for solutions to access parts of their home Mac networks remotely.

Alejandro wanted to remotely monitor his store in Mexico from his iPhone

He used an app called AirCam

AirCam (iTunes)

iCam seems to have better ratings and is $4.99 vs. $7.99

iCam (iTunes)

Problem is that you need to port forward traffic through your router to software server running on your desktop.

Problem with routers and port forwarding

Most ISP accounts are DHCP, so your public IP address changes.

Buy a staic IP from your ISP, usually $$$

Use a service like DynDNS

dyndns.com

Some services like Slingbox, Mobile Me (back to my Mac), Simplify Media, etc. use a central directory server.

You internal network IPs might change (DHCP)

Most routers you can set up a smaller range for the DCHP. (192.168.1.1 would typically be the router).

192.168.1.2 - 192.168.1.101, then use static IPs for machines you need to port forward to.

In Network preferences choose the interface and then select the 'DHCP with Manual IP Address' option. Add an address above the DHCP range you chose for the router, say 192.168.1.102.

If you have a firewall software enabled you may also have to open up specific port depending on the service you are trying to allow through. If you can only open up specific ports for the staic IP'd machines even better.

Managing 'remembered' Wi-fi networks

When you connect to a wi-fi network you can have your Mac remeber that network so that if you are near that network again your machone will automatically connect. What if you want ot "remove" that?

All these tips are for Leopard. Should be similar functions in Tiger, but might not be quite the same.

In the Network System Preferences you can manage those "favorite" networks

Select 'Airport' from the list of interfaces

Click the 'Advanced…' button.

There you will see the list of "Preferred" networks. You can add, or remove them using the +/- buttons. Set the order they will try to connect by dragging them, or edit them

Change the 'remember any network this computer has joined' option in the screen as well.

Bonus: Changing Service Order

Also in the Network System Preferences tab

From the main window that lists the interfaces (Ethernet, Airport, etc), click the little 'gear' icon to see options.

You can Add, rename, or make a service inactive.

Also set the 'Service order'.

Bonus, Bonus:

You can set up all of these setting for different 'Locations'

In the main System Preferences-->Network window at the top is a drop down for 'Locations'

Click that and choose 'Edit Locations...' to add or remove.

Use the drop down to switch locations and settings. Hit 'Apply' to make tem active.

Once set up you can quickly change your network settings for a location from the Apple menu. Under the Location… item.