This Christmas I learned that not only do I like my Mac, but my family does so as well. Last year I created a DVD with photo slide-shows and made them an integral part of my present. This year I just didn’t have the time and there was a certain amount of disappointment with my parents. Of course I sat down after Christmas and created a 45 minute DVD with picturs from my holiday(s), business trips and my brother’s wedding in August. My parents were really pleased, and I enjoyed the process of creating this “belated present” as well.

As you know, it really isn’t difficult at all, iPhoto will get you going really quickly, iDVD puts it all together “professionally” and my LightScribe DVD-Writer took care of labelling the discs. So it isn’t difficult, but it takes a bit of time. Some of this time is pure processing time and this is when I remembered that I really wanted to buy a new computer. I love my Mac Mini to bits, but it is a bit sluggish at times. It isn’t that underpowered (1.42GHz G4, 512MB RAM), but it could do with more RAM and while I am at it, it could do with an Intel Processor as well…

There are a few compelling reasons for buying a new machine, but there is also one problem, currently buying a new Mac would mean a compromise, which I am not quite ready to make. Thus I wait for Steve’s Development Team to come up with a “Mac for me”.

Mac Mini – this currently is actually my most likely choice. The cost is plain simply affordable, even though the 2GB Memory Upgrade is a bit dear. While it is a gorgeous package, it doesn’t really allow me to upgrade simple things like the hard drive or the memory (RAM). These are upgrades I am happy to do myself and that can make quite a difference in performance of an older machine. More RAM is always good and a faster and larger hard drive can help a little as well. I will admit that with a bit of surgery, you can add memory and a new hard drive, but the Mac Mini really wasn’t made for it. A new Mac Mini also only comes with graphics on board, which isn’t that bad, but it shared the main memory of the computer.

iMac – lovely as they are, great value for money, I just don’t have space for one. When I am not traveling for work, I work from home and that means I have a Dell Laptop and that is hooked up to a TFT monitor. I have a KVM Switch to add my Mac Mini to the setup and it works beautifully. Unfortunately work will not permit me to switch to a Mac and finding space for another monitor won’t be possible. While for me it is one of the most desirable Macs out there, it is a non starter. And changing jobs ain’t an option either (unless you’ve got a marvelous offer).

Mac Pro – well it would give me all the upgrade options I want, but starting at €2449 (US$ 3,224.18; converted today) it is a bit beyond my means and while I want more power, I think this one is too powerful for me.

Mac Book – this would be a nice alternative, it allows you to upgrade the hard drive and memory yourself. But I don’t really want a laptop, nor do I need one. I will only ever travel with one and that will usually be the company issued Dell. Very frequently my personal vacation time starts just after company business. For example this month I had to go to Oxford for some meetings (they were great) and I added a few days in Birmingham, York, Liverpool and London. I had my company laptop, I wouldn’t take another one. So really the Mac Book, desirable as it is, just isn’t for me.

What I want is something in-between a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro and I can’t believe that no-one out there feels like I do. Having outgrown the Mac Mini, but not quite needing a Mac Pro. What do you think?

Am I the only one feeling that Apple currently has a hole in their product line up?
Should I go ahead and buy a new Mac, because I am unlikely going to see a Mac that really fits my needs? If so, which one should I go for?
Should I possibly wait until the new version of Mac OS is out?

Hoping that the discussion will not only benefit myself…

As Alfred put it himself:

>>Filmed in 1984, Alfred demonstrates the $10,000 Apple Lisa computer on a tri-state cable channel. This was a very early ‘mass introduction’ to a system that had a graphical user interface, icons, pull down menus, and a rodential input device called ‘a mouse.’<<

So our friends at Microsoft came up with a flash front end for their Live Search product. Ms. Dewey is the most annoying, yet most entertaining search engine front end I have seen.

Ms. Dewey

Type in a simple search, let’s say “ipod” and dear Ms. Dewey will tell you that she analyzed your MP3 collection and is going to report you

Type in “zune” and she doesn’t quite know what you want of her. At least the Microsoft Search developers recognized that they shouldn’t recognize – well you get the idea.

Anyway, please feel free to ignore Ms. Dewey for a little while after you did that search and well… you might just get her to react.

Try a search for “naughty librarian” – a colleague of mine suggested that one, don’t blame me – and what do you get? She will curse at you.

As I said, most annoying, yet most entertaining, search engine front end, I have seen in a while…

Prof. Mike Wesch of Kansas State University has uploaded a video to YouTube, he calls it “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us” and I just loved it so much, that I felt the urge to share with you.

As always the topics he raises could make for a nice discussion – but for right now, enjoy his work, really well done:

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

When the AVM FRITZ!Box 7150 showed up this morning I had just returned from the Internal Revenue Service (Finanzamt) to hand in my tax return. With the tax return taken care off I got right to setting it up and usually setting up a DSL Modem/Router shouldn’t be much trouble and it wasn’t – but there was one thing that truly annoyed me, enough to blog about it.

The box had all one would need, including a Quick Start Guide, but it was Windows only. At least they had included a readme file for Mac OS X on a CD, which finally told me that I could get to the web-interface by typing http://fritz.box in my browser, but why couldn’t they simply put that somewhere more visible?

Still, so far I am tremendously pleased with the new router and once I have had a chance to test the VoIP functionality a bit more I will most likely post a review.

Just one note – maybe that router was designed with Windows users in mind, but on my particular setup, being on a Mac made things easier

You see, I have a Brother MFG-9180 multip-purpose printer, scanner, fax. I wanted to use the USB Host port of the router to get the printer to print, though I am fully aware, that it won’t allow me to scan. I followed the instructions to the dot and it didn’t work on my Windows Laptop. I tried this and that and no luck. I then decided to follow the Mac OS X instructions and lo and behold it couldn’t have been easier.

Full of confidence I went back to Windows XP and tried a little harder, uninstalled the printer driver, reinstalled it and voila after about half an hour, for something that took me 3 minutes on my Mac, I was finally able to print from my laptop as well.

Now I might just have been incredibly unlucky with my system setup… but still it kind of showed, why I like my Mac so much. Simplicity that turns to efficiency…

I spend last weekend in London, it was an early birthday present for my girlfriend and I have to admit I enjoyed the present an awful lot myself.

While on the way back to Liverpool Street to catch the bus to the airport, I came across “PC and Mac” hanging out in one of the hallways:

Interestingly enough PC Pro (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/html/Latest_Issue-pcpro.html) ran a feature on their cover this month saying “Hello, I am a PC, don’t believe what Apple’s saying about me” – or “32 Reasons, why PCs are better than Macs”.

Now I couldn’t buy it since our flight was called, but I am back on Sunday on my way to Detroit and will try to pick up a copy…

When my boss told me that I had to attend a meeting in Ann Arbor this week I knew that I would buy an iPod with video.

While looking around a mall I ended up in Sears and they had a massive ZUNE display, lots of iPod accessories, but no iPods on display. So I went to the customer service desk and asked and well they have them in store, but keep them behind the counter.

Are iPods items you have to keep behind a counter? I don’t think so! I wonder how much Microsoft is paying Sears and other stores to promote the Zune…

Anyway there is going to be an Apple Store in that Mall soon, so potential shoppers will not have a hard time to find an iPod. And what will I be doing?

Well, rather than buy the iPod at Sears I shall buy it at Radio Shack. I am not going to reward them for a biased marketing approach…

Have you come across other stores that clearly favor the Zune over the iPod? Any ideas why that is?

Hello – here at MyMac.com we have been contemplating the idea of providing screen recordings (a.k.a. screencasts) to offer basic help on certain topics.

I’ve created a very basic screen recording outlining how to install spell check in Firefox web browser.

If you want to see more screen recordings, please do post a comment or contact me by eMail.

The product values of this one are actually quite low – but future recordings should be much more professional.

You will get the best quality from visiting the website, where I host the video. Simply follow this link http://blip.tv/file/335264/

You might want to check out the little icon that lets you view it full-screen.

The below video is hosted by Blip.TV – I suggest you view it on their website since it offers better quality.

Click To Play

This is the same video hosted as a QuickTime file on Revver. I would argue it has a better quality when viewed inline. So maybe you guys want to tell me in the comment as well, whether you’d like to see these in Blip.TV or REVVER in future. Please pardon the advertisment at the end.

Firefox offers search plugins for many search engines, and you can use them to replace the default search engine in the top right hand corner of Firefox. But what if you are looking at searching a smaller site, like mymac.com?

In this screencast I am showing you, how to add search keywords to three websites wikipedia.de; dict.leo.org and mymac.com. It works with any website, the same three simple steps are needed:

If you would like to see a different format, like quicktime, please visit Revver for more options…

RapidWeaver
Realmac Software ( http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/)

Almost two months ago the nice folk at Realmac Software gave me a license key to look at their web authoring application, called RapidWeaver. The software is great, though I hardly had time to look at it and I feel rather guilty about it – here at MyMac.com we try to turn around reviews quickly and efficiently and I feel like am letting everyone here down. Let me just apologize, very publicly, to Realmac Software, for not upholding the high standards they have every right to expect from us.

So far all I can tell you about RapidWeaver is that it is a great application, its very intuitive to use and it seems flexible enough to support those, who’d like to explore a little more about web programming. You can drop in some html code and it will know what to do, I tried it with a bit of code that would drop in a Google Map into a page.

One of the biggest benefits of RapidWeaver is its extensibility, not only will you have no problem to find the most awesome templates for your page, but you can extend RapidWeaver with new functionality. Yes, you’ll have to pay for it, but most seem reasonably priced and they are provided by proper third party developers. The type of support that iWeb could use, but doesn’t seem to be getting anytime soon.

I was fascinated with iWeb for all but a week, until I realized its limitations. I haven’t seen the new iWeb and I know that Guy Serle is just telling you how to make the best of iWeb. Haven’t seen it, visit this page on MyMac.com. You’ll find it very interesting.

So there are plenty of tools out there – iWeb that comes free with iLife, and RapidWeaver, that comes at a modest US$ 49 / or € 36.51. Will I continue to explore RapidWeaver – yes of course, I will want to let you have a full review, the up and down, but it might be a bit longer. And here is why:

Let me start with the biggest problem

I like to tinker around with html code

If you have been editing web-pages for as long as I have, you might sometimes feel like RapidWeaver is holding you back. Just remember that this application wasn’t written for those of us, who’ve learned to create their web pages in a text editor. Still the heritage of typing your tags sometimes can be very strong and lead to minor frustrations. Those are the moments that I need to remember that this isn’t a tool that was designed for me and I will need to remind myself that the beauty of RapidWeaver is the fact that you don’t have to get your hands dirty with html-code.

It is one of those things that can be a curse. I remember the “good old days” of FrontPage Express, the code was so horribly bad, that you would sometimes use it to create code quickly, just to spend twice as long to clean up that code. FrontPage, which I used as part of Office 2000 on my Windows PC was a bit better, but not perfect.

Mostly I am using GoLive these days, it gives me a great combination of using both a quick WYSIWYG editor, and lets me tinker with the code to my heart’s content.

Still RapidWeaver is awesome and I just need to find the time to get the review done. This brings me directly to my next reason

I am just too busy these days

Sometimes it sounds like the silliest excuse ever, but I have hardly any time anymore. I got engaged just two months ago and look forward to getting married next March. The wedding date is just under five month away now and I am telling you, there is so much to think about, so much to prepare, that you wouldn’t believe it. And from what my friends, who got married already tell me, I am not even scratching the surface of the wedding preparations yet.

I have also started to travel a lot for work again. This month is a good example, in the office for one week and out another. I look forward to Saturday, when I am flying to Detroit and traveling on to Ann Arbor for some company meetings next week.

I will get to do some essential Apple shopping, I want a copy of iWork, I’d really like an iPod touch, but can’t justify the expense. I’d love a new iMac, but that I’ll get in Germany. Well, I will surely use my time for some shopping, the Dollar is cheap and I look forward to spending time in Michigan.

So, this blog entry has gotten me nowhere nearer to completing the RapidWeaver review, but maybe I have been able to wet your appetite and get you to check it out. Let me know what you think about RapidWeaver and maybe I can use it for the review.

Thanks for understanding, I promise to finish the review ASAP.

Last time I came to Ann Arbor I bought a new iPod, a 30GB model and I am a very happy iPod user.

When I visited the Apple Store in Ann Arbor today I was touched the by iPod touch and it was hard to resist buying one right away.

This is the type of device that reassures me that Apple knows how to build great devices. Not only is it incredible slim, but the touch interface really is awesome.

In the few minutes that I had to play with the iPod Touch I really didn’t get to feel comfortable with the virtual keyboard, but was amazed at the quality of everything else.

The iPod function seem outstanding. I have heard how people said that they are missing the tactile feeling and I guess I can understand that. Even for adjusting the volume you need to look at the screen – not something I usually do when adjusting volume, or just skip a track.

But Apple could easily alleviate that pain by offering an in-line remote control, similar to the one that used to be available for the iPod Mini. That would give everyone an opportunity to have both the tactile feeling they like, plus this outstandingly beautiful touch interface.

I looked at the YouTube integration and at a video I had uploaded to YouTube. It looked outstanding – I mean nowhere near perfect as YouTube had questionable quality, but it definitely looked just as good as on my computer screen, maybe even a bit better.

I had a look at Safari and my own web-page and I was amazed at how easily Safari rendered that page and how easy it was to navigate around. The pinch (or double tab) to zoom, just ingenious. Especially, if I consider the pain my treo puts me through, or compare to the Nokia that my colleagues in the UK use, this is just a dream come true.

Looking at Photos made me jealous and that was the point where I had to put it down to stop myself from buying one.

I admit I really want one, but it just isn’t in my budget, despite the fact that the exchange rate is outstanding.

I bought a copy of iWork and a $25 iTunes gift card – total $108.74 (incl. Sales Tax). When converting that to Euros that’s only €76.24 and thus considerably cheaper than buying iWork from Apple in Germany.

You might wonder whether a US iTunes gift card will work on a German iTunes account and the answer is “no”, it won’t. But there are ways around that

So I am about to say good bye to America, I had my last meetings this morning, I had a decent lunch and am now on my way from Ann Arbor to Detroit Airport.

I am taking the bus – Michigan Flyer and they have me amazed.

It is a comfortable bus with lots of leg room, and free WiFi Internet on board. As a matter of fact I am typing this as the bus is turning to get on I-94.

America never ceases to amaze me and this is one of the reasons why – you guys know how to travel in comfort

Good Bye America and hello “home, sweet home”

We all like Apple and we know that they have one of the sleekest Marketing Teams around. But what happens, if a Television interview goes in a direction Apple, Inc. doesn’t like? That’s right, they will just stop talking to you.

Benjamin Cohen of Channel 4, a British TV Station, had to find out the hard way. He dared to ask a critical question about iTunes and had his interview cut short.

Watch this YouTube clip to see for yourself:

See the Channel 4 news report at Channel 4 Website. It also nicely talks about the potential trouble Apple could have about the exclusive deal in Europe…

I had a look at the iPhone at a T-Mobile store in Berlin, while on the road this week. I have to admit it still strikes me as a fabulous phone, but the price in Germany is too steep for me to buy one…

Authors at Google is a great programme, with Google posting the talks on YouTube. Here’s one of those that you really must see, it is truly funny, the guy is a great speaker:

Apple Germany will hold a one day sale, hopefully similar to the one in the US the day after Thanksgiving on 30 November – to kick off the Christmas Shopping Period. The announcement at the Apple Online Store reads:

“Verpassen Sie nicht unseren 1-tägigen Shopping-Event am Freitag, den 30. November.*

An diesem Freitag findet im Apple Online Store unser spezieller 1-tägiger Shopping-Event statt. Schauen Sie doch einmal vorbei! Hier finden Sie viele großartige iPod und Mac Geschenkideen.

Streichen Sie sich den Termin in Ihrem Kalender an. Und bis es soweit ist, können Sie in unseren Geschenkideen schon einmal nach iPod und Mac Geschenken für alle auf Ihrer Liste suchen.”

What I found interesting is that the URL for the info above says “campaigns/black_friday_teaser”

Will we get €101 off an iMac? If so that would rule, I most certainly plan to buy my iMac on Friday and am rather pleased that I decided to wait another week or so

Claus looking forward to his new toy, which will be used for serious work