Listen to the show here!
Guy’s the REAL old timer, while Gaz gently guides him through the 21st century with new technology. We have Neil Worton as a Listener invite as we go over all the big announcements for the September 1st Apple event. New iPods, iOS updates, iTunes 10, and a twist on an old hobby made for a pretty exciting presentation! Neil and Guy tried watching it on their iPads while out and about, but apparently 3G connectivity isn’t the best solution for a video streaming event‚ who knew?
Contact info: Want to be on the show as a listener invite yourself? It’s as easy as falling off a log if you’re so inclined to stand on things like that. Gaz and Guy on Twitter, guy@mymac.com and gaz@mymac.com, feedback@mymac.com, or our Skype direct number 703-436-9501.
Hardback Folio and Hardback Folio DX
Company: Acme Made
Price: $39.99 US, DX $49.99 US
Product page
More and more people are reading on a Kindle. Just like an iPod and iPhone, a Kindle should be enclosed in a case. Acme Made has recently released the Hardback Folio, which is now my Kindle cover of choice.
If you are the kind of reader that needs room for a pen and paper within the case, keep looking. The Hardback Folio is simply a Kindle cover, no more or less. And it does its job superbly.
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Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote
Company: Logitech
Price: $249 USD
How many remotes do you have in your living room? I have one for the satellite/DVR, one for the TV, one for DVD player, one for Apple TV, and that makes five in all. If my stereo was in the family room, I’d have six. Turning on the TV requires you pick up at least two different remotes and while watching TV it is not unusual for me to have two or three remotes lined up in front of me. If the portable phone rings, I’m all messed up!
Wouldn’t it be nice to consolidate all of these remotes into one? I thought so, and I went to Logitech to see what this well known maker of universal remotes had to offer. I found six models ranging in price from $49.99 to $399.99. The pricing gets higher as the feature set goes up. I decided to take the Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote (Hereto referred to as the “H1”) for a spin.
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Photoshop CS5 Extended
Company: Adobe
Price: $999 upgrade $349 (education pricing also available)
Last June I presented my first look at Photoshop CS5, and I was very impressed with the new features. Back then I felt it was definitely worth the upgrade. After many more weeks of using the software it is time to reevaluate and see if my opinion is the same or has changed.
For part one of the review I am going to cover Content Aware Fill and Puppet Warp.
Book Review: Take Control of Apple Mail in Snow Leopard (Ebook version)
By Joe Kissell
Take Control Ebooks
$15.00 US
Apple Mail is a free product that comes with every Mac and OS X operating system disc. This is both a strength and a weakness. Apple Mail is a fairly simple email client, which means that it is easy to use in most respects. On the other hand, it has some idiosyncrasies that can make it feel limiting and frustrating at times. The ebook Take Control of Apple Mail in Snow Leopard by Take Control Ebooks from Tidbits Publishing, Inc., by author Joe Kissell, can help make using Apple Mail both easy and productive.
Take Control of Apple Mail in Snow Leopard is 133 pages, and covers every conceivable aspect of Apple’s Mail application. The book walks you through setting up accounts, reading and searching messages, address and contact handling, sending email, encryption and signed email options, managing mailboxes, synchronizing mail across multiple devices, and many more Mail related topics.
One of the joys of buying consumer electronics is having to decide whether or not to purchase a warranty for your shiny new toy. Most warranties are fairly limited, expensive, and generally worth thinking about carefully before deciding to purchase. But not so with AppleCare. AppleCare is a no brainer. If you’re considering buying an Apple product, and you’re not planning on getting AppleCare, then Lucy, you have some ‘splainin to do.
Apple’s web site shows AppleCare options for Mac and Apple display, iPod and Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad. What might not be obvious is that if you purchase AppleCare for your Mac, it will also cover things other than the Mac and an external Apple display, such as a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme. I’m not sure how Apple handles it if there’s any question about the other device being purchased at a different date than the Mac, but I have firsthand experience that they will honor it.
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Lowepro Verapack 200 AW
Company: Lowepro
Price: $129.00
Lowepro’s Versapack 200 AW is a lightweight, all weather camera backpack. There are two main compartments: a top area for general gear, and the bottom camera area. I was looking forward to seeing just how much stuff I could stuff into this diminutive and clever pack.
I’ve got a Nikon D700 with all the trimmings. More about that later. The question is: Can I get enough gear comfortably into the 200 AW for an entire day of hiking and picture taking, whether it be in the wilds of Idaho, or the wilds of downtown Newark. But before I began loading up I checked out the included pamphlet for a quick tour around the unit.
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G-DRIVE mobile — portable FireWire/USB drive for MacBook Pro
Company: G-Technology
Price: $150 for 500 GB
I’m using both these portable Mac accessories today and every day, and I’ve been using them all summer while traveling through the American Southwest. G-Technology’s G-DRIVE mobile is my new favorite portable external bus powered FireWire/USB backup drive. FastMac’s new TruePower battery is a reliable replacement or additional battery for original MacBook Pro users with removable laptop batteries.
G-DRIVE mobile is designed to match the black and silver styling of Apple’s recent MacBook Pro laptop computers.
Gallery of additional company photos is here.
Guest review by Suzé Gilbert
Book Review: The Photoshop CS5 Pocket Guide
By Brie Glyncild
Peachpit Press
$14.99 US, $17.99 CN
I recently upgraded to Photoshop CS5 and came across Brie Glyncild’s new book, The Photoshop CS5 Pocket Guide. The book’s 5” x 7” size makes it convenient to keep near the computer. This volume contains black and white photos and illustrations, and its chapters are interspersed with the author’s quick tips.
Brie Glyncild states “…that this is a pocket guide to Photoshop, not a photography primer,” and her description is apt. She begins with a simplistic and brief explanation of the tools and workspace. Subsequent chapters discuss resolution, layers, masks, resizing, tonal corrections, editing in RAW, painting, effects, preparing images for the web, printing, working in Bridge, and actions. A lot of information is in a very small book.
How Wikipedia Works is a guide to the inner workings of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopaedia. Though deeply flawed as an academic tool, Wikipedia is certainly a very popular hobby, and a great many people — the author of this review included — enjoy making occasional edits to Wikipedia articles. The basics are generally very easy to pick up, but beyond a certain point some understanding of the underlying Wiki technology becomes useful, particularly once the editor switches from tweaking existing articles and starts writing entirely new sections or articles.
The book is divided into four sections, entitled Content, Editing, Community, and Other Projects. Broadly, the first section introduces Wikipedia and describes the types and quality of material to be found there. The Editing section focuses on the nitty-gritty of producing articles, covering everything from basic textual edits through to uploading images and the use of templates. The third section looks at the Wikipedia community, primarily the forms of communication between them, the policies Wikipedia editors are meant to follow, and how arguments between editors are settled. The final section is about the family of projects to which Wikipedia belongs, including the different language versions and the popular Wikimedia Commons free media library. Each of these sections is subdivided into chapters, of which there’s seventeen in total, plus a trio of appendices.
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Gaz is back from a work and holiday break from the podcast and got to see the Royal Air Force Red Arrows acrobatic flying team. Guy obviously confuses the US Navy Blue Angels and the US Air Force Thunderbirds and he’s really, really sorry about that. They gab a bit about the iPad on the road, the Magic TrackPad, and Gaz’s problems with his Mac Mini. We go on as well about iPhones and Verizon. We FINALLY get to the 2nd part of the Gaz and David Cohen interview (because we both like David so there!)
TotalFinder Beta 0.9.6
Company: BinaryAge
Price: Free for now, $15 when version 1 is released
Hardware Requirements: Intel based Mac, OS X 10.6
Hi. My name is Guy Serle and believe it or not, I’m a writer for MyMac.com. The reason why you may not believe it is that it’s now August and I’ve yet to write anything at all this year while Mark Rudd, John Nemo, and Donny Yankello have been writing and posting like MAD all over this site while I have sat in my air-conditioned comfort and oozed various platitudes over the MyMac.com podcast with a variety of people each week. Well I say enough sir! Blow out that dusty keyboard, roll up your sleeves, and get to work!
Obviously this is a review of BinaryAge’s TotalFinder application which adds a number of enhancements to OS X’s Finder, first and foremost adding tabs to the top of the Finder Window. This is a feature sorely missing from Apple’s Finder and one you’ve tried it, you’ll wonder how you ever did without it. With a normal Finder, you must have multiple windows open to drag and drop items in-between, or go through the painstaking task of mouse-click after mouse-click to get from one side of your hard drive or network to another. Neither is easy, intuitive, or fun. TotalFinder however works and looks much like Safari, FireFox, or Google’s Chrome (and now Internet Explorer 8 in Windows) web browsers with the ability to have multiple tabs going to whatever directory, hard drive, network volume, or even a shortcut available to your computer.
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Speck Cases for iPhone 4
Company: Speck
Price: $24.95 – $29.95
http://www.speck.com
No surprise to anyone by now, your iPhone 4 probably needs a case, if not only to keep it from suffering connection and reception errors, but to protect the finish as well. And you might just want to protect that glass from drops and bumps too. Yes, I know, you can get one for free from Apple (for a short time), but personally, I did not see one in their free collection that I actually liked.
So I went looking for other cases, and the first place I went was Speck! I have one of their cases on my MacBook Pro, and another on my iPod touch, and really like them both, so what better place to start. Speck has a few new designs out for the iPhone 4, and I looked at three different cases.
Smart Laptop Sleeve
http://www.acmemade.com/product/The-Smart-Laptop-Sleeve,29,6.htm
Price: $34.99-$39.99 US
The Kate
http://www.acmemade.com/product/The-Kate,25,11.htm
Price: $99.99 US
I’ve been using a laptop computer for almost nine years. In that time I’ve never owned a laptop case, even though it was the first thing I bought my kids when they got their own laptops. If I needed to leave the house with my laptop I put it in a canvas bag. Not too smart, or safe. Acme Made has a full line of laptop cases for every taste and budget, so you don’t have to make the same mistake I made. Read on for a review of two of those cases.
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Otterbox Defender Case for iPhone 4
Company: Otterbox
Price: $49.95
http://www.otterbox.com
Until now, cases for the iPhone 4 have been scarce. With both the front and back of the phone being made of glass, most of us worry about breakage for good reason. I was fortunate enough to find an Apple bumper for my new iPhone while visiting an Apple Store in Charleston, SC. I’ve been using this bumper as my primary case, but while proudly showing off the beauty of the hardware, the bumper doesn’t offer much protection for the iPhone’s back glass.
In true form, Otterbox has has solved this dilemma by delivering what amounts to armor for your iPhone with its new Defender series cases. As someone who spends a lot of time outdoors with my phone, I really appreciate the thought Otterbox has put into the Defender. Don’t let the higher price-point scare you, the Defender’s built quality and functionality fit the price.
Air Display
Avatron Software Inc.
Price: $9.99
iTunes Link
If you have wanted two displays on your Mac but never wanted to buy a second display or don’t have the space for one you should check out Air Display. Air Display is an app for your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad that turns you iOS device into a second monitor. It is a universal app so you only have to buy it once for all three devices.
As smart phones get smarter, the chance that a malicious piece of software could sneak into one was bound to happen. And if you have an Android phone, it may already have one!
Links:
Email us here, or call our Skype number (703-436-9501)to leave a message. We want YOU as a listener invite!
Drive Genius 3
Company: Prosoft
Price: $99.95
http://www.prosofteng.com
Nothing is ever perfect, nor do things work perfectly all the time. When things go wrong with your computer, sometimes it’s something very simple that will only take a few minutes or one or two steps to correct. Other times, you aren’t so lucky and that’s when you have to bring out the right tools to find out what’s wrong with your computer. On the Mac you have Disk Utility or you can utilize applications developed by other companies, such as Disk Warrior or Tech Tool. Among the latter is also Prosoft’s Drive Genius 3, another tool that you might want to consider adding to your utility toolbox to help you out when things go bad.
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