Rumors have been flying for weeks now about the coming iPad 3. I know several people who have already decided that it will be the replacement for their original iPads. My own thoughts? From all that I’ve read so far, I’ll probably be staying with my 1st gen iPad for a while longer. What I really want is something smaller. I’ve been looking at Android-based tablets for a while now (hey, we need to know the competition, true?) and when Barnes and Noble released the 8 GB Nook Color Tablet last week, I grabbed one.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my Apple tech goodies, but as good as they are, they’re not perfect. (Yes, I actually said that.) I ran into problems while my husband was hospitalized recently. The hospital has an open network for patients and visitors, but apparently, certain ports are blocked making it impossible for Mail to connect to retrieve my .me email. Gmail has an app that works, and I could also check my gmail using Safari. iCloud doesn’t allow you to use iOS Safari. It just offers to help you setup your iApps. Terry suggested iCab (set to mimic Safari for Mac), and while it worked once, I could never connect to my email after that. And yes, I deleted it, rebooted the iPad, reinstalled, and it still wouldn’t work. It allows me to log-in to my iCloud account, but quits when I try to access email. Has no problem with iCal. Don’t need it to access iCal. As the commercial says, there’s an app for that.
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Whether you like Facebook or hate Facebook there is no denying that it’s the largest social networking site on the planet. However, Apple hasn’t done a lot to integrate Facebook support into the Mac OS or iOS as they have with Twitter. If you look at iOS 5 you’ll see Twitter support throughout. Also if you look at the upcoming Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, you’ll also see native support for Twitter in the OS. Sure I’m a Twitter user and appreciate having Twitter integrated in the OS itself, but I’m also a Facebook user and would love to see the same level of integration in the OS that Twitter is getting.
More people post photos to Facebook daily than any other place and while Apple DOES have direct Facebook posting in iPhoto, this level of built-in support hasn’t made it to iOS or anywhere else for that matter. Status updates and sharing links would also be appreciated. I’m not sure if there is a technical limitation or one of a business nature, but I just find it surprising that Apple would favor Twitter over Facebook considering the disparate size differences between the two networks.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I recently finished reading this biography. While I expected it to be a fascinating read, I didn’t expect to feel so connected to it. I’ve been a user, supporter, lover of Apple products for decades and thinking about “where I was and what I was doing” as I was reading passages in the book had the effect of connecting me even deeper to the whole culture.
Snuggled up with a hot cup of cinnamin spice tea and a down blanket at 3am, engrossed in reading on my iPad became a common occurence. It was truly hard to “put the book down”, while being nice not to have to deal with the normal problems of reading a paper book; like holding it open or adding a light source when it gets dark.
There are many points in this book that stay with you when you read about Steve Jobs. For me, while I’ve often read about his meticulous attention to detail and wanting to also “design” the user experience, it wasn’t until reading about it that it made such an impact.
I won’t spoil your reading experience by giving away book details. All I can say is, love him or not, it’s a great read. And, as tomorrow would have been his birthday, I’m putting out into the universe to wish his family well on a day that will be of great meaning to them.
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As you probably know by now, Apple announced that they’re committing to annual releases of OS X (no longer “Mac OS X”) and in addition announced this year’s model, 10.8, Mountain Lion. If you’re a member of the paid developer community, you can download a preview version now. Since I need to make sure TicketDrum works on it, I downloaded a copy.
At this point – preview 1 – I expect the OS to be only semi-stable. So I don’t really want to run it on top of any of my existing installs. I’m not even sure it’s worth putting on an external drive at this point – I think I’ll wait for the next release. So how do I plan to test? Virtually.
I have both VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop software (because I have found one or the other necessary at one time or another as they add features). So I figured I’d load it up in both, just to see if it worked.
I started out with Parallels. Both products let you load from a real or virtual disk, so I opened the package contents from the Mountain Lion installer and mounted the install disk inside. But I couldn’t get Parallels or Fusion to use that disk to install. Then I remembered that they both support using the installer, so I unmounted the drive and told Parallels to use the install app instead – bingo. The wizard led me through setting up a new virtual machine, although it was stumped as to the OS – I had to tell it I was installing OS X. But after that, things went flawlessly. After booting, I was able to install Parallel tools. If you’re not familiar with the Tools, they are extra drivers that allow you to do things like move your mouse seamlessly from the VM to the real machine and back, resize the screen and have the VM auto-resize, share files and folders more easily, etc. Fusion has something similar.
After getting everything working and connecting to iCloud, I decided to try Fusion. It all went well – I pointed Fusion at the install app, and it correctly deduced I wanted to install OS X. I let the wizard set up a virtual machine for me, then let the installer go. Again, flawless. Then the final reboot and BAM! Kernel panic and crash.
I wasn’t sure if it was a fluke or if Fusion just couldn’t handle it. Because I hadn’t really configured anything, I could have just thrown the VM away and begun again. But I wanted to try out the recovery partition. The recovery partition was a feature added in Lion that is supposed to let you boot to a hidden partition and re-install the OS. I haven’t needed to use it on any of my systems, so I thought I’d give it a try. I wasn’t even sure I would be able to access it in Fusion, but I half down Command-R while booting, and after a couple of minutes of staring at the boot screen, the recovery program came up. I told it I wanted to re-install, and it asked me for my App Store ID and password. Once those were entered, the installer began downloading another copy of Mountain Lion to install.
It then rebooted and proceeded through the install process again. I would have been faster to start with a new VM, but I wanted to see for myself how a restore went. It took about 30 minutes on my fairly-fast Internet connection to download the OS.
If you get bored with the progress bar, you can see the detailed log of the install (this is not new with 10.8, it’s been available for a few releases now). Just hit Command+L while the install is running. Chances are it won’t mean much to you, but I found it interesting. Don’t be worried when you see errors in the log – there always are some. That’s because the installer has to check for many different configurations, and some things just aren’t going to be on every system.
I let the install finish, rebooted and – BAM! Kernel panic. So if you’re planning to give Mountain Lion a virtual whirl, you might want to try Parallels. I have seen claims from others that they got it working under Fusion, but I can’t.
(Stick with the video for a minute or two to get to the music.)
Nothing this week. I have a husband in the hospital recovering from major surgery, so my mind is not on tech. Instead, I’ll wish one and all a happy Mardi Gras and share one of my NOLA favorites, Dr. John:
When Apple updated the Messages App in iOS 5 to support “iMessage”, we all assumed that this functionality would eventually come to Mac OS X as well. It’s very similar to what happened with FaceTime. First FaceTime was only on iPhone, then iPad and iPod touch and now it’s part of Mac OS X. iMessage allows you to send text and multimedia messages to other iMessage users for FREE. Think of it as Apple’s Free SMS/MMS Messaging service. When it first appeared in iOS I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal for me, but as it turns out it has been great and I’m totally hooked on it now. Although I have unlimited test messaging on my personal AT&T plan, my company phone plan is NOT unlimited. When I’m communicating with my friends and family (most of which use iOS devices), I can send/receive all the text and picture messages I want without impacting my text message limit. I’m a Google Voice user and while Google Voice also allows me to send/receive unlimited text messages, Google Voice still doesn’t allow MMS (picture messages). Speaking of Google Voice, one of the main reasons I like texting with it is that I can do it either from my iPhone via an App or from my computer via my web browser. This is why I’m so glad to see the Messages App (public beta) come to Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3. Get it here.
Send and Receive iMessages on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or your Mac
If you have a Mac running the latest Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 then you can download the Messages public beta. Apple introduced the next version of Mac OS X Mountain Lion due out later this year and Messages will be a part of it. However, like FaceTime they made it available early to current Mac OS X users. I couldn’t wait to download it and give it a spin. Like Messages on iPad or iPod touch, it can use your email address/Apple ID to send/receive Messages. If you’re sending to an iPhone user then you can use either their iPhone number or email address. Keep in mind that this is a beta and therefore it’s not perfect.
Here’s what I like
- Conversations started on the Mac will be picked up automatically on your other devices.
- Messages replaces iChat, but still works with AIM, Google Talk and Jabber for a unified Messages system
- Much to my surprise I received a GTalk message from someone and then later I went to send them an iMessage and it put the new iMessage thread in the same area/window as the existing GTalk thread. In other words it keeps all conversations to a contact in one window regardless of the messaging platform you use.
Here’s what could be better
- I’m having issues with messages that I read still showing up as unread and the dock icon showing unread messages even though I’ve read them all
- Sometimes If your message window fills up and a new message comes in, it doesn’t auto scroll. Once the window fills up with a long thread, I then have to scroll to see every new message that comes in.- <-they have to fix this, arggghhhh
- Alerts! I understand that Messages doesn’t know which device you’re near, so when an incoming message comes in much like your home phones, all of your extensions/devices sound off. However, once I’m actively responding back and forth with someone it’s kind of a pain to continue to hear all the devices beep for every reply that comes in. It would be nice to have a “silence other devices while I’m on this device until after a period of inactivity.”
- Like on iOS there should be a more straight forward way to select a file/picture to send. Drag and drop is great, but there should be a button that lets you go find the file you want.
The Bottom Line
I’m happy to see Messages on the Mac and even happier that I didn’t have to wait for Mountain Lion to get it. Messages is rough around the edges, but it has potential and even with its quirks it works good enough for me to use it throughout the day.
By the way: If you think Apple is putting too much focus on iOS and not enough on tradition Mac users, this article might help you bring things into perspective.
Also here’s a great video walk through of the other Mountain Lion features:
It’s another Friday!
I have an associate at work who has a MacBook Pro. His MacBook was running out of disk space and he needed more. he asked what needed to be done to upgrade the hard drive in his MacBook. He asked me what was the best way to do it. These are the steps that I suggested and he then followed.
1) Order the appropriate size hard drive you need. he went with a 1 terrabyte internal hard drive. he bought it from OWC because the upgrade drive kit came with an external USB enclosure for the drive. This came in very handy as you’ll see.
2) Download a copy of the software “Super Duper” from Shirtpocket software to his existing MacBook internal hard drive “Macintosh HD”. Installed the “Super Duper” application into the Applications folder on the internal MacBook hard drive.
3) Once the drive kit arrived, we installed the 1 terrabyte drive in the external USB enclosure.
4) Connected the USB external drive to the MacBook and started up “Disk Utility” application that is in the “Utilities” folder of MacOS X. Used Disk Utility to format the external USB drive in “Mac OS Extended Journal” format. Once completed, Named the drive “1 Terra”.
5) Started the “Super Duper” program. Took the defaults in the program and copied/cloned the entire contents of the internal Macintosh HD hard drive to the external “1Terra” hard drive. Run the application till it was completed successfully.
6) Rebooted the MacBook with the external USB hard drive still connected and holding down the “Option” key. Selected the “1Terra” external hard drive as the startup disk and booted the MacBook with this drive. After it booted, the MacBook was checked to see that it was working just like it was with the internal drive. It worked just fine. Shut down the MacBook.
7) Flipped over the MacBook, removed the cover, followed the instructions and removed the internal hard drive from the computer (OWC provided a tool kit and instructions on how to remove the drive. Removed the drive from the external USB enclosure (1Terra) and installed that drive into the MacBook and re-assembled the MacBook. Installed the former internal drive (Macintosh HD) into the USB external enclosure.
Booted the MacBook with the USB drive attached and selected the external USB drive as my startup disk. Made sure that the MacBook worked as before with the external USB drive. Shutdown the MacBook. Disconnected the USB external drive.
9) Booted up the MacBook as normal. He now has a 1 terrabyte hard drive in his MacBook instead of just a 350 gigabyte hard drive.
Advised him to keep aside the external hard drive and don’t use it for about a month or two to assure that the new drive is working without problem. If there was a problem, he could easily switch back to the old hard drive with a connect of the USB cable and a reboot.
Ahhhhhh. Backup done & nirvana!
Musical Selection
A guy in stingy brim hat can’t go wrong. This is the good life!
Enjoy
Radio Days
Make sure that you tune in for this weeks installment of “The Internet Advisor” on 760 AM WJR. This Saturday 2/18/2012 I will be there with Foster, Ed and Gary to share all things Internet and Technology. Fire up the radio at 3:00 PM and keep it on till 6:00 PM.
Father has some words for his ungrateful teen…
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If you have an older vehicle, you may not have integrated Bluetooth, so you can’t use your phone hands-free. In some localities, you have to use your phone hands-free if you use it while on the road (and that’s probably wise – if you must use your phone while driving, make it hands-free).
One solution, of course, is to get a Bluetooth headset. I’ve been very happy with my Jawbone headsets, but there are plenty of times I’d like to drive without having to stick a headset in my ear.
Another alternative is a Bluetooth add-on speaker. I’ve been using the Motorola T325 for a while now, and I’m very happy with it. It’s a small unit that just clips to a visor, so you can take it with you between vehicles (or if you are traveling, into a rental – just don’t forget it!). The T325 runs off a rechargeable battery, so there’s no wiring into your car. The battery lasts me about a month, and you get plenty of warning – when you first get into the car, the unit announces the current battery level (high, medium, or low) and that’s it’s paired to your device.
Now, I only use it for a few calls a month, so that’s one reason the battery lasts. Another is what I think is a great feature – the device will automatically connect to your phone (after an initial pairing, of course) simply by you opening the door. It has a motion sensor inside, and opening a car door is enough to set it off and start it looking for your phone. The same sensor will send the unit into a low-power mode when it senses the vehicle has been stopped for a while.
Another reason I like this unit is because it works well with iPhones. Not only does it pair up, but the unit can read the iPhone’s address book, and voice dial up to 25 contacts. It will also announce up to 1500 contacts by name – so that when someone calls, and the phone sends over the number, the unit will look it up and announce the caller’s name to you. The top 25 calls from your history become the 25 “favorites” you can voice dial. The first time you pair the device, it will download the phonebook and history, and after that you can force an update by hitting the Call and Mute buttons together.
I don’t use the “favorites” feature though – because the T325 does a great “pass through” right to the phone. Hit the large Call button, and it connects to the iPhone (or “ephone” as the nice British lady on the device says). If you have an iPhone 4S, and have Siri turned on, it will start Siri up, and you can voice dial, voice text, or do anything else you can do with Siri. The T325 will stay connected until you send Siri away (or if you make a call, until you hang up). If you don’t have Siri turned on, or use a different iPhone, you get sent to the iPhone Voice Command to make a call, change your music, or whatever.
This works much better than the OnStar in my wife’s car – to get to the phone, she has to touch the call button, say “Bluetooth,” wait for a response, say “voice,” wait for a response, and then Siri will finally come up. However, quite often after just a few seconds, OnStart determines that your “call” is complete and disconnects!
The T325 speaker is loud enough to be heard, but not real loud – you might miss it if you have the windows down or the stereo cranked up. It does have a light on it that will flash when a call is coming in as well. But since I play my music from the iPhone anyway, it gets interrupted automatically for me.
When you need a recharge, you can hook it to your computer – it has a micro USB port on it, and charges off my computer in about an hour. It didn’t come with a charging cable though, so something to keep in mind if you don’t already have some micro USB cables handy. You can buy a charger that plugs into your cigarette lighter if you want.
Motorola lists the T325 at $79.99, but you can find it regularly for under $40 (like at Amazon where I got mine).
I readily admit to being a tech junkie. Runs in the family. My father and maternal grandfather were responsible for setting me on this track. They were early adopters of all things tech, although, in my grandfather’s case he bought and expected me to run the gadgets. I was doomed from the start.
The last few weeks I’ve been giving serious thought to what my next major hardware upgrade will be. Rumors of the iPad 3 being released next month are flying, and I’ve given serious thought to retiring my original iPad, but I’ve also had the chance to work with the MacBook Air. The 11″ Air is not that much bigger than the iPad, and it is not much more expensive. There’s nothing I do on the iPad that I couldn’t do on the Air, but there are lots of things I do on my current MacBook that can’t be done on the iPad.
My current MacBook still works like a champ, but after 4 years it’s getting a bit long in the tooth. And it’s heavy. It weighs in at 5 pounds, while the Air is less than half that. Of course, the current iPad weighs in at less than 1.5 pounds. Decisions, decisions, decisions. I guess my decision will depend on the specs of the new iPad 3. Will new features further blur the line between tablet and laptop? Guess I’ll have to wait and see. I did give brief thought to finally getting an iPhone, but all things considered, I don’t use my cell phone enough to justify the monthly cost increase.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all. Because a metric buttload of chocolate will be consumed today, I leave you with one of my favorite Smothers Brothers songs:
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