MacGetIT

After hearing tons of speculation about Apple’s Wednesday’s event I’ve come to the early conclusion that I won’t be getting an iPad/iSlate/iTablet from Apple. Why? Here are my reasons.

1. It’s another thing to carry around besides my MacBook Pro and my iPhone. While I MIGHT be able to substitute my MacBook Pro for the iPad thingy, I do too much work that the iPad would be more of a bother adding it to my repertoire of Macs.
2. An iPad might replace my MacBook Pro, but it only becomes a smaller MacBook Air and I don’t own one of those and don’t need or want one of them. I want something with a little more power.
3. I can only see that an iPad might cannibalize from the MacBook Air or MacBook sales for those that do light computing work, such as doctors that need to enter data into a hospital system or writers that travel more than most of us.
4. While the iPhone’s swipping and pinching motion makes it’s use fairly useful, for those of us that are keyboard “attached” such as UNIX geeks that don’t like the mouse are most productive with keyboard shortcuts and the pinching movements will limit productivity.

However, if Apple “limits” the features to the iPad it’ll upset the rest of the Apple customers. How?

1. If the “publishers” that Apple is “courting” for the game changing technology of the publishing industry does not port or translate the technology to the rest of the Mac platform then it’ll “force” Mac users to move or purchase the iPad.
2. No USB or display port to hook up larger screens or an external keyboard to do heavy workloads.
3. An Apple iTunes focus on the publishing industry whereas you can only get ebooks and may or may not be able to get a physical book for those that want both. If the same “experience” of getting an iPad book is not the same as getting a real one it’ll detract from the reader’s experience of both.

But want WOULD make me consider getting one?

1. The data “cloud” that everything on the iPad syncs up with my other systems seamlessly and I never have to bother about where my data/books/contact information resides. If I can read on an iPad and then bring it up on my  or my wife’s MacBook Pro then that’s a consideration.

But that’s about the extent of my reasons. For me an iPad is just another smaller laptop with added functionality that Apple has been stair stepping in that direction with it’s trackpads. It’ll be adopted by early adopters for sure, but the masses won’t change as the “back end” may not be there for the average users.

But by far the worse part of this potential publishing “arm” of Apple is: will Apple control the publishing content like it controls the iPhone apps? How much of your rights will Apple control for indie publishers?

But we can only wait until the 27th to see what Apple does.

Here’s the Apple answers to this question. Here are the indicators:

• Your Apple notebook’s display has no picture after you turn it on.
• You don’t hear any fan or hard disk activity sounds after you turn the computer on, and the sleep light doesn’t turn on.
• The computer doesn’t seem to have any power when you try to turn it on.

For those that have used Macs for a while you understand that Apple does a great job of getting good stuff as a whole to it’s customers, but after reading this article about the new 27″ iMac it gives some interesting specs about the high quality monitor that hides a “cheap computer” behind it.

For a while I’ve seen my iPhone Notes showing up in my Inbox in my Mail program. It did not bother me until I began to clear out my Inbox and all I had left were the Notes. How were they showing up? Where’s the switch to turn them off in my Inbox?

There’s a check box under Mail’s Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors for each email account you have. Check to the box off so that the Notes will not show up in your Mail Inbox.

Now I have a clean Inbox.

Oh, be sure that if you have a number of email Inboxes that you can select those accounts that show the Notes.

Installed Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro and here are two little things that I saw after working with it for a while today.

First, this is the preferences screen and notice the little green and red dots next to your printers, these indicate whether or not your printer is connected and to be used by your Mac. Nice little touch here. The one thing that I have found is that using the Airport Extreme does not give a “quick” or updated indication if the printer is connected or not. In Leopard it just shows a green dot, in Snow Leopard the dot turns red if the printer is not available to be used.

Second, here’s the drop down box trying to print, notice the “indicator” that the two of the printers are not available to print to. If you could use the printer the small icons would be done. Also nice touch.

Third, low ink indicators are great and does not require the utility tool to find out, depending on your printer.

These are all nice little touches to indicate to the Mac user to what is going on with their Mac printers.

For those that are in the graphics industry when Apple went with the new higher resolution screens in the Unibody form they did away with matte or anti-glare screens. Many graphic artists were furious about this since colors in this industry is so important. Now you can get these screens via the Apple store, but only in the 17 inch model, if you want a 15 inch model with the matte screen you have to get it either online or call small business to have it special ordered.

Had a presentation yesterday at Creative Connections Meetup in Denver and it went well and it was the first time that I had used Apple’s iPhone Keynote Remote ($0.99) with Keynote.

I had used it in “trial” mode at home checking it out, but was a little concerned about using it on another network. At home it was very simple to set up because of the WiFi setup with my Mac laptop, but there are some steps to take in order to get it to work elsewhere. Here are the steps to take.

1. You have to have  a WiFi network for both your laptop and iPhone/iPod Touch Keynote Remote to work. The iTunes store does NOT say this in the requirements space, but it is essential.
2. Start your Mac and connect both your Mac and iPhone to the WiFi network.
3. Start up iWork’s Keynote presentation software and open up your presentation.
4. In Keynote under Preferences select the Remote icon and connect your iPhone/iPod Touch to your Mac (I’ll say it here, when I went to the new network I had to “Unlink” my iPhone and “Link” it up again on the new network to get it working). Enter in the code on your Mac to link them up.
5. Start the iPhone’s Keynote Remote software.
6. Once you’re completely connected you’ll see a button on the bottom to “Play Slideshow” or another style button depending on the status of Keynote and your Mac.

The only thing that was a little troublesome is reconnecting the iPhone to the Mac and Keynote via the “linking” part once you change networks. Once that was done it was straight forward.

Using it was also straight forward, you just swipe the “slides” left and right to view them. The best part is seeing the Presenter notes on the bottom of each slide. This is nice because you don’t have to look up at your slide, you can look at your iPhone.

Overall I’d give it a 4 out of 5.

Let me know what you think of this software.

Updated 1/23/2010: Make sure you turn your iPhone to Airplane Mode as this will prevent any calls from interrupting your presentation.

As a Mac user we all come to the point that we need to get a new Mac because the old one just can’t hack it any more. The old one still works, it’s just not fast enough and you’d like to still use it if possible. So, how can you use that old Mac.

• ScreenRecycler is an application that allows you to use that old computer’s monitor to be used as a second monitor without having to purchase another monitor and/or a graphics card or cables. For $29.90 you can download the application and begin using that old Mac as a second monitor.
• Network that old Mac and add or swap out that hard drive for a larger one and it becomes a file or a backup server for your files.
• Use that old Mac to hook up an old printer and share that printer on your network using the System Preferences > Sharing > Printer Sharing.

Macs last longer than most PCs do, so keep them running and redeploy them in other ways.

Update: 07/31/2009 – A comment from a Twitter post today said that running an old Mac computer just for the screen is a waste of power. That may be true, but you could have it both a second screen AND a file server for you at the same time. Depending on how old the Mac is they may be right, but from a cost perspective, you may not have the money to purchase another monitor at the moment.

I was at a business meeting Friday morning from my Meetup group “Creative Connections” and a person came up to me and when he saw my Apple logo on my polo shirt he stated he loved his Mac at home, but his small office did not want to spend the money and so he had to have a PC. Right away my “Mac Opportunity” kicked into gear.

So here’s how you can get your favorite Mac into a small business.

• Draw up some paperwork for both you and the owners files explaining in agreement what you intend to do.
• Ask the business owner what they intend to budget for a PC for the job? Say $900 laptop.
• Offer to take pay the difference between what you want (a $1699 MacBook Pro) and their laptop ($900), about $800.
• If you need to run Windows, then offer to pay for a copy of an OEM version of Windows (for new PC computers only) and use Boot Camp to run the Windows side, or use VMWare Fusion + Windows.
• If you leave the company, pay for the used price of the originally intended laptop back to the owner and keep the Mac.
• If the owner wants to buy a new PC for you in two years, pay the owner what he would get for the used “PC” price and pay them that and keep the Mac.
• If they like the Mac and what it can do, wipe the Windows off of the Mac and jump for joy at getting a Mac at work.

However you work this out, you get to use the Mac and the company gets a Windows computer. There might be other legal issues such as who owns the computer, etc, but it could be worth the try to get to use a Mac in a small business.

How did you handle getting a Mac into a small business?

You know, Apple does things that it thinks are right, but often it leaves things on the table that others pick up. When Apple went with an all aluminum case for the MacBook Pro and a white and black MacBook case it sometimes leaves others with a sense of loss, i.e. they’d like to have something that the other Mac has. In this case, it’s a black MacBook Pro looking similar to a black MacBook.

Well, wait no longer. Check out what Colorware has done for a MacBook Pro: turned it black and made the Macs skin out of the soft touch material. Sweet.

You can take a look at the Colorware’s web site to find out more about it.

The one thing that I like about it is that it uses the matte screen instead of the gloss screen. For graphic artists, this is absolutely essential to get color corrected images. While the glossy screens are nice to look at, for those of us that prefer the matte screen Apple has left out some of it’s customers to search elsewhere for solutions.

So, are you going to get a Stealth MacBook Pro?