Bookendz Docking Station for 13” MacBook
BookEndz Limited
Price: $159
http://www.bookendzdocks.com
Back on Podcast 153, Tim and Owen reminisced about the Apple PowerBook Duo line of computers. These machines were available from 1994-1996, and were very small laptop computers without the usual collection of ports and built-in drives. They could be placed in a separately available DuoDock, that added all the missing ports and devices, as well as a larger hard drive, and of course a fixed power supply and a proper monitor. As such, the concept was a full desktop Mac that allowed the most important parts to be removed and used as a laptop.
Wind forward twelve years, and technological development has certainly caught up with the concept! Today’s portable Macs are as fully featured and functional as any desktop machine – in fact, parts of the Mac desktop line-up have embraced the design and implementation of the portable systems – the Mac Mini is a MacBook in a desktop case! Accordingly, many people have a MacBook or a MacBook Pro as their only Mac.
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Switcheasy Biscuit Case for 3G Nano
Switcheasy Limited
Price: $20 for color, $22 for black
http://www.switcheasy.com
Apple’s latest iPod Nano is a true thing of beauty – more so than we expected when we first saw pictures of the fat little chap. To hold one in the hand is in my mind to experience a near-perfect form factor, coupled with stylish Apple design. However, their very desirability means that we often immediately compromise the form factor by encasing it in rubber and plastic!
As such, the perfect case will protect the iPod as much as possible, without adding bulk or looking displeasing. And the unusually-named Biscuit cases from Switcheasy are a pretty good attempt.
They come in a variety of colors, some of which are more successful than others. My favorite was the slightly more expensive Black Biscuit – a smoked black design that incorporates a seamless transparent section for the screen – turn the Nano on and the screen lights up like magic from the middle of the case. Others have a more conventional transparent window in the middle of a plastic shell.
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WriteRoom and TaskPaper
Hog Bay Software
Price: WriteRoom $24.95, TaskPaper $18.95
http://hogbaysoftware.com/
One of the things I rapidly grew to love about the Mac platform when I came to it from Windows was the vibrant software coding scene. Windows has a lot of shareware, but much of it is poorly written, poorly maintained and written in such a way that it all looks the same.
Mac software is very different – it is often innovative and well presented, very well supported and fairly priced. A lot of this comes from the overall Mac experience, I think – if you are using a fresh and creative computing environment then it is more likely that you will be inspired to create clever software.
Two good examples of the sort of software I mean can be found from Hog Bay Software, the development company of Jesse Grosjean. Jesse has a refreshing approach to software that is summarized by the phrase ‘Less Is More’
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Aego-M Speaker System
Acoustic Energy Ltd
Price: $199
http://www.acoustic-energy.co.uk
It could be fairly said that nowadays the United Kingdom is a shadow of its former self. At least, as a native of said shores I can say it, anyway! We once governed half of the planet, and during the 19th Century British Engineers were at the forefront of science, technology ad engineering. Even during most of the 20th Century the image of a white-coated “British Boffin” was a shorthand way of depicting the men behind the forefront of cutting-edge technology.
Nowadays, we are more often known for being plucky triers than at the forefront of many fields. One area where I think we can still claim to be at the vanguard, however, is in high-fidelity sound amplification. Many of the well-known names in quality Hi-Fi remain in British hands, and Acoustic Energy is one of those.
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Drobo Storage Robot
Company: Data Robotics, Inc.
Price: $499
http://www.drobo.com
MyMac.Com has reviewed different large multiple-disk storage products recently. They all share some common traits – multiple disks in an enclosure (USB or FireWire), looking like a large single volume, and some form of RAID technology applied.
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, and is a server room technology for allowing disks to be pooled. There are different types of RAID implementation, with differing types of data protection and performance. The most common RAID used on two-drive multiple disk products are RAID 0 (disk striping) or RAID 1 (disk mirroring). John Foster of MacBreak Tech refers to these as “Scary RAID” and “Slightly less scary RAID”, which should tell you plenty about how useful these actually are. The fact is that these systems offer at best only slight data protection, and at worse less protection than a single disk USB drive. If something fails, you may lose all of your data, and the unit may need factory repair. You may also need a replacement drive of exactly the same make an size as any others in the unit – problematical if you have had it for more than six months.
So, the whole topic is a techy nightmare. What is needed is someone to bring an Apple-like user approach, that is centered on usability, functionality and simplicity. Enter from stage left the Data Robotics Drobo Storage Robot.
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Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III 1.5TB External Drive
Company: Seagate Technology LLC
Price: $549.99
http://www.maxtorsolutions.com/en/
How much storage do you have on your Mac? The demands of photo, video and audio files mean that more and more disk space is a real requirement nowadays, and has really driven down the cost of hard disks.
However, for most of us the Mac is not the most expandable of platforms for disk space. Unless you have a PowerMac or a Mac Pro, internal disks can only be replaced by the use of a specialist Apple engineer. Fortunately, USB and Firewire offers an external storage option, and the availability of external drives has mushroomed.
But that in itself creates a new problem. If you bought an external drive 12 months ago, you can probably buy double the capacity today for the same price (or less!). And if you use a drive to store precious data like photos or downloaded iTunes tracks, then you need a backup, so you’ll probably have to buy another drive and some backup software. Then you have to remember to do the backups, of course…
PowerBlock Travel/PowerDuo Travel
Company: Griffin Technology
Price: PowerBlock Travel $34.99, PowerDuo Travel $39.99
www.griffintechnology.com
I bought my first iPod around three years ago – a second generation 10 gigabyte model. Back then, USB support was a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye, and it was Firewire that was the interface du jour. More importantly, the iPod also shipped with an AC charger.
Nowadays, you don’t get Firewire support or a charger. USB 2.0 is an adequate data transfer interface, but it is not a good way to charge a power-hungry device with a colour screen. It is fairly low voltage, so it charges an iPod very slowly – and in fact, on my machine it won’t charge at all (due to the number of devices on my USB hub). And I hate having to sync my iPod just to charge it! Apple do offer an AC charger for the iPod range – a small block with a USB port. However, all you get is the charger, so you have to use your existing iPod data cable, which is not very convenient if you have it hooked up to the back of your Mac.
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Pzizz
Company: Brainwave Enterprises
Price: $29.95 per module, $49.95 for both modules
www.pzizz.com
Everybody loves to sleep. Really, what is not to like? It makes you feel refreshed, you get free entertainment in the form of dreams, and it works like time travel on a long journey!
Which makes a lack of sleep all the more irritating. Sometimes it can’t be helped – you have to work late, the kids are sick – but there are other times when, as tired as you are, you can’t sleep at all.
I’d never considered that my Mac might be of help with insomnia – but then I heard about Pzizz. Developed using psychological techniques like Neuro Linguistic programming, Pzizz is a software package that can create unique and customized soundtracks to help you sleep.
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FastTrack Schedule 9.2
Company: AEC Software
Price: $349
www.aecsoftware.com
Project Management – one of the business buzz terms you often hear being bandied about. A project can be defined as any one-off attempt to create a unique product or service that will impose some sort of benefit or added value. But you can strip all the jargon away – a project is about getting something done, and project management is about doing it while balancing time, money and workers.
Those of you not in the business world may think that we will never have to deal with Project Management, but the truth is that many things in life, even doing taxes or planning a meal, can benefit from the discipline of being run as a project. But realistically, we do those things as a one or two-person project in an ad-hoc way based on personal experience.
Zozen iPod with Video Case
Company: Zofunk
Price: $24.95
www.zofunk.com
There is a fine line between form and function – a line that as fans of Apple products we know well. We are used to seeing exemplary industrial design in our computers and MP3 players that provide an experience that really works well but also looks good.
This provides a challenge to manufacturers of accessories for Apple gear, especially cases for iPods. Should they cover those designer lines in the interest of functional protection, and potentially compromise Apple’s designs?
Zofunk have adopted a compromise approach with their Zozen case for the iPod with Video. The case is a minimal impact design of very thin silicone rubber, that avoids adding bulk to the lines of the iPod. They are available in a variety of colors, and form an all-in-one covering with only the headphone and dock ports uncovered. You slip the iPod in through the open screen area in the case, and Zofunk provide a clear screen protector for this area once the case is on.
There is no cutout for the click wheel – instead, the Zozen denotes this using a stylized swoosh design – with the colour of the case denoted in German underneath, for some reason. I found that having the click wheel covered was not much of an impediment to its operation.
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Mindjet MindManager 6
Company: Mindjet
Price: $229 US, £69 (until 30th May 2007, then £149)
www.mindjet.com
Have you ever watched The Apprentice? After Donald Trump has announced the task of the week (while shamelessly plugging either one of his companies or the show’s sponsor for that week) the candidates go off in their respective teams and figure out how they are going to tackle the task. Regular viewers will know that this is when things normally go wrong – the candidates often don’t effectively capture and organise their ideas for success. Having spent some time using Mindjet MindManager, I feel that if they had the use of this software, the Apprentice candidates might do substantially better!
MindManager is a tool for organising thoughts and ideas. There are many such tools available on the Mac (OmniOutliner being one of the more well known), but MindManager use mind mapping techniques as its basis, rather than pure hierarchical outlining.
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Regular readers of the MyMac website or listeners to the MyMac.com podcast will be familiar with the disappointment expressed by Tim Robertson and myself about the divergence in compatibility between Microsoft Office versions on the Windows and Macintosh platforms.
Unlike Microsoft, one of the other giants of the software industry that also straddles the Apple and PC divide recognizes the business benefits that truly embracing a cross-platform approach can offer – that company is Adobe.
Maybe it is because Adobe started in the font business (where the look of text needs to be consistent on different computers), and originally developed for the Macintosh alone, but their approach has always recognized that making it easier to share data benefits everyone. Take the development of their Portable Document Format (PDF) technology – using PDF means that any document can be distributed to any user, and that document will always appear and print exactly as the creator intended – whatever the computing platform being used, and whatever the print platform might be (be it a cheap inkjet or a high end professional print setting machine).
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Taking Control of Running Windows on a Mac
Company: TidBITS Electronic Publishing
Price: $10
www.takecontrolbooks.com
In May of 2006 David Every of MyMac reviewed Joe Kissell’s ebook, Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac, and determined that in his view it was the best book so far for the average Mac user who wants to jump into the world of running PC applications.
Now the book has been updated in a second edition, bringing it up to date with the latest developments in Apple’s Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop, and the Q emulator.
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Bravo SE Disc Publisher
Primera Technology, Inc.
Price: $1495 new, $1250 refurbished
http://www.primera.com
Convergence – it is one of the buzzwords in computing at the moment. It is the joining of disparate technologies in a single device – for example, a cellphone and an MP3 player. Done well, and you are the darling of the industry, (such as the iPhone), and done badly it will be a failure – Motorola’s ROKR comes to mind.
Primera Technology sent me a different and intriguing example of the same convergence concept – their Bravo SE Disc Publisher. What they have done is integrate a DVD writer, inkjet printer and a nifty robot arm to create a unit to automate the production of professional quality DVD or CD discs.
The unit is the size of a large inkjet photo printer. A large smoked plastic lid opens to reveal a hopper that can take 20 blank discs, and a mechanism to lift these discs to a conventional computer disc writer drive (the review unit supported DVD+R and DVD-R at 16x speed, and CD at 40x), with an inkjet printer head mounted above it. The robot mechanism uses a precision pick-and-place arm, and completed discs are dropped in to an output tray that can be pulled out separately while the unit is running.
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John Nemo kicks off the conversation:
Apple is promoting its MacBook for consumers, which makes sense due to the modest size and price relative to its set of features. A basic MacBook sells for $700 less in U.S. dollars than the least expensive MacBook Pro, or $800 less when you factor in an AppleCare three-year warranty (which MyMac.com strongly recommends).
For buyers over the age of 40, that extra expense can be a bargain. As we age our eyes and brains prefer a larger screen area. Keys that illuminate in low or dark ambient room lighting are a bonus. Typing keys are engineered to a higher standard, with more tactile response. Trackpad and mouse are larger, and palm rest areas are more spacious. Audio playback is better, with larger on-board speakers. A second FireWire port, with faster FW800, is very useful. Weight and size are only marginally larger on a 15″ MacBook Pro than on a 13″ MacBook.
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The London show is not directly Apple sponsored, like those in Paris or San Francisco, but they do have a good record of attendance, and this year is no exception.
When I attended last year, the show was abuzz with the new iPod Nano and iPod with video, which had been launched a few weeks previously, and the then G4 Powerbooks had just received an incremental speed bump and screen update.
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i-deck iPod Music System – Review
Company: Monitor Audio
Price: £249 GBP/ $349 USD
http://www.i-deck.com/
Music, music, music. We all love it, don’t we? Few things can touch you emotionally like a favourite tune, bringing memories and feelings flooding back like they just happened yesterday. Because we can listen to music while doing other things, melodies can get linked to people, places and events like no other entertainment.
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Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1″ Widescreen Monitor
Company: Dell, Inc.
Price: $ $434.00 USD
http://www.dell.com
What’s the best thing about going into an Apple store? The hordes of black-shirted dudes with gleaming iPods round their necks? The Genius Bar answering any and every question that might come up in the Apple universe? Well, in my book it’s the rows of Macs with those killer large TFT screens. Even if a lowly Mac Mini is out on display, it will be connected to a gleaming Apple Cinema Display, and even the iMac G5s seem to favour the 20″ models. As for the Power Macs, a pair of 24″ or 30″ screens seems to be the only way to truly show off Final Cut Pro or Logic.
Cinema Displays are killer cool, with their gleaming aluminium cases and fabulous industrial design. They are priced as a premium product, and they look like they are worth every penny but that doesn’t make it any easier to afford one. I’d always thought that I would never be able to aspire to such a fine window to OS X. However, I have recently discovered that this is not the case. This technology is now available to us mere mortals, for little more than half the price that Apple charges.
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In my previous article, I gave you an overview of Ethernet networking from the point of view of cabled connections, and a discussion of the basics of network protocols and addressing.
Cabled connections are all well and good, but in the home setting they are rarely overly useful. Broadband connections will terminate at their point of entry to your home – typically the main phone jack or your cable modem box, where as most people will want their Macintosh in a study, kitchen or bedroom. You can run long cables round your house if you like, but unless cabling is built into the walls like an office this is not an attractive solution.
The rise of wireless networking is a perfect solution to this dilemma, and recognizing this, Apple was one of the earliest adopters of the technology right across the Macintosh range. They branded the technology Airport, and made it available as an option on all machines – though nowadays, the vast majority of the range come with it as standard.
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InvisibleShield for iPod nano
Company: Protective Solutions, Inc.
Price: $19.95
http://www.theinvisibleshield.com
Impossibly small, impossibly fragile? Continue reading »
Have you been seduced yet? Have you been suckered by the fabled “reality distortion field”? I am, of course, talking about the latest, hottest iPod device from Apple – the tiny nano.
Comments. Be heard!
MyMac Podcast #403
Review
Review
Review